Dispatches From the Queer Resistance (No. 3)

[Content Note: Homophobia, transbigotry, torture, terrorism.]

It's Pride Month, y'all. Was it only 150 days ago when we had a President who officially recognized Pride Month, and could speak coherently about this and other issues? Feels like a decade ago!

1) This is a periodic reminder that exit polls showed that 77% of LGBT people voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

2) Five years ago during Pride Month, prominent opponent of marriage equality David Blankenhorn publicly changed his opinion on same-sex marriage. In his New York Times reversal, he acknowledged that his side had failed to win public opinion on the issue and that much of the opposition to marriage equality stemmed from anti-gay animus, a fact that marriage equality advocates had been observing for years. Meanwhile, same-sex marriage advocates, at both the individual and organizational level, continued to battle onward and resist this animus.

Three years later in 2015, also during Pride Month, the US Supreme Court issued a decision effectively legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide (PDF). Two years have passed since that decision and many social conservative believe they have lost the so-called culture war on same-sex marriage, a loss they widely seem to experience as widespread acknowledgement that opposing marriage equality is bigotry. Most heterosexual Americans likely also understand that same-sex marriage has little tangible impact on their lives. The world is not ending! (Well.... maybe it is, but for other reasons).

However, I note two potential synergies that could swing the pendulum back in their favor. One, some anti-LGBT groups remain convinced that if they can get the right Supreme Court composition, SCOTUS will overturn the marriage equality precedent. For instance, this June, the anti-LGBT National Organization for Marriage (NOM) will hold a "March for Marriage" (which I'm intentionally not linking to) and the organization has vowed to not rest until same-sex marriage is repealed.

Secondly, Team Trump/Pence have shown a willingness to appoint radical conservatives to SCOTUS, and I believe that's largely Pence's doing. The Republican-controlled legislature has shown that they will rubber-stamp these picks no matter how out touch they might be with the mainstream.

Meanwhile, 64% of those in the US believe same-sex marriage should be legal, the highest percentage since Gallup began this tracking in 1998. Donald Trump's popularity has been hovering at under 40% since his inauguration. These numbers are a reminder that a deeply-unpopular President who lost the popular vote is in a position to play a key role in overturning a precedent that most people in the US support. With Republicans willing to use the "nuclear option" to confirm Trump Supreme Court picks with only a simply majority vote, Democrats must take back the Senate in 2018 - because of this issue and so many more.

3) Speaking of NOM, earlier this year, the organization launched a tour of its so-called Free Speech Bus. This bus was decorated with anti-trans, gender-essentialist messaging which seems to have been inspired by Kindergarten Cop-approved boys-have-a-penis, girls-have-a-vagina logic.

The messaging was provocative and, accordingly, NOM tracked every real and perceived act of counter-protest, which they spun into their usual narrative of how LGBT advocates are the real bullies. For instance, during the course of its tour, the bus was allegedly vandalized. On Twitter, NOM then asked "prominent LGBT leaders" to "condemn" the vandalism.

I'm not prominent, but I tweeted why I passed on issuing a condemnation. (Spoiler alert: I believe NOM's messaging contributes to an overall climate of hostility, which leads to violence toward and murder of trans people).

4)  Multiple news outlets have reported that gay men are being detained, tortured, and killed in Chechnya. Via The New York Times:

"A spokesman for Chechnya's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, denied the report in a statement to Interfax on Saturday, calling the article 'absolute lies and disinformation."

'You cannot arrest or repress people who don't exist in the republic," the spokesman, Alvi Karimov, told the news agency.

'If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return,' Mr. Karimov said."

It's not exactly reassuring when a spokesman can't hide his eliminationist homobigotry during the course of denying that eliminationist homobigotry is occurring in his country.

In response, some countries - Lithuania and France among them - are opening their doors to gay men from Chechnya. The US has not. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has called on Chechen authorities to investigate the allegations, ostensibly the same authorities who believe gay men don't exist and/or should be killed.

In fact, it's reported that these abuses are done under the auspices of the Chechen leader, with PinkNews reporting that Kadyrov wants gay men eliminated by the start of Ramadan, which was May 26th. (Note: Some media reports that these atrocities are committed on "LGBT people" without clarifying whether queer women and trans people are also being targeted. However, if gay men are targeted, it's likely that other LGBT people are as well.)

Donald Trump himself has not addressed these reports. Possibly related: Chechnya's leader is a close ally to Vladimir Putin. Here I note that a President Hillary Clinton and her administration might have offered more assistance in this situation. In fact, she has issued a condemnation. (But her emails, the misogyny, "establishment," etc.)

5) The first anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting will be next Monday, June 12. This terror attack was the deadliest hate crime against LGBT people in the US, killing 49 people, and the deadliest since 9/11. My thoughts are with the victims, their friends, and their families. I stand in solidarity with them, and with anyone who remains outraged, scared, and wounded by this tragedy

6) Ehhhh:

.@POTUS @VP Why is this in the "last chance" bin? pic.twitter.com/Wd2zLxcQSb

— Full Frontal (@FullFrontalSamB) May 30, 2017

7) Via the National Center for Transgender Equality, Trump has appointed anti-LGBT activist Roger Severino as Director of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), in the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Severino was previously at the Heritage Foundation, where he "authored a report opposing OCR's implementation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, age, disability, and sex in federally funded health programs."

Just another example of a Trump appointment placed in a position to enforce an agency's work who seems to fundamentally disagree with that work.

8) This weekend, instead of a Pride Parade, a Resist March will be held in LA:

"We are calling on everyone to peacefully march with us on June 11th from Hollywood and Highland to West Hollywood. Instead of a Pride Parade meant to celebrate our past progress, we are going to march to ensure all our futures. Just as we did in 1970's first LGBTQ+ Pride, we are going to march in unity with those who believe that America's strength is its diversity. Not just LGBTQ+ people but all Americans and dreamers will be wrapped in the Rainbow Flag and our unique, diverse, intersectional voices will come together in one harmonized proclamation."

In conclusion, Donald Trump and Shadow President Mike Pence are scary fucking dudes. If you're attending or marching in a Pride Parade this year, we have a lot to protest and resist!

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The Go Away Hillary Watch, Part Four

[Previously: On Hillary Clinton's Beautiful Refusal to "Go Away"; Can't F#@king Win; Let's Talk About These Optics.]

Immediately after the election, Hillary Clinton took some time to process the outcome. She took long walks in the woods near her home, during which people bumped into her. They took selfies with her and posted them, leading to jokes, so many jokes, about how she was "lost in the woods," frequently accompanied by questions, from media and average people, about why she wasn't doing more.

Then she emerged back on the public stage, giving speeches and interviews. She was greeted not with relief by the very people who had previously demanding her return, but with admonishments to "go away." Often quite literally.

This is the actual first line of this article: "Hey, Hillary Clinton, shut the f--- up and go away already." https://t.co/6XjGnKsmfl

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 3, 2017

My point. Here it is. https://t.co/4OudJoJzgW pic.twitter.com/Au0GxXTRgj

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 23, 2017

Even when these hot takes don't explicitly tell her to "go away," they audit whether she is saying the right things in the right places with the right tone—a policing designed to always find her failing in one way or another. And they frequently include warnings to her about the ruination she will wreak on the Democratic Party, if she does not STFU and go away.

Over the last several days, there have been two more prominent articles in this vein.

Kayla Epstein at the Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton is returning to public life. But if she wants to help Democrats, she should tread carefully." That's the headline. Epstein writes: "[I]f she's going to return to public life—and help to Democrats—she's going to need to choose her words and actions wisely."

Amie Parnes at the Hill [video may autoplay at link]: "Dems want Hillary Clinton to leave spotlight." The piece quotes a number of anonymous Democrats, only two of whom would go on record, who complain that Clinton isn't taking enough responsibility for her loss and say she sounds "bitter" and "angry."

Oh.

I have spent my entire life watching smart women who got shit right long before everyone else did being silenced and told to "go away," then accused of being bitter and angry and unhelpful.

While simultaneously not seeing the same thing happen to men. Even men who got shit wrong. Sometimes breathtakingly wrong. (*cough* Bill Kristol *cough*)

Anyone who would like to tell me that this isn't misogyny will be asked to explain to me how it is that Bernie Sanders, whose entire shtick is bitterness and anger (that isn't a criticism), and who has never taken any responsibility for his primary loss, choosing instead to blame the DNC, superdelegates, and the primary schedule (that is a criticism), has been elevated to party leader (despite the fact that he still isn't a member of the Democratic Party), while Clinton (who has helped build the Democratic Party for 40 years) is told to STFU and go away.

There is a clear double-standard at work. And every time I write about this, I hear from women who were passionate Hillary Clinton supporters, women of all ages and ethnicities and identities, who tell me that, every time they see diminishing garbage like this directed at Clinton, feel like they're being told to go away. That if Clinton isn't regarded as having something of value to say, when she is saying what they are feeling, that what they have to say and what they are feeling is of no value to the Democratic Party and to this country, either.

That's a fucking problem.

And it's a fucking problem that is magnified by the fact that every Democrat who is being most vociferously targeted for blame following the election is a woman. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Donna Brazile. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, as Democrats strategize to "un-Pelosi the party."

When Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders went on a "unity tour" featuring no female headliners. When Black women are having to write letters asking to be included in party leadership. When a female candidate has to withdraw from a race because of threats. When there's a goddamn sexual predator in the Oval Office.

This is a time when we need to be standing unyieldingly with Democratic female leaders. Not abandoning them. And certainly not telling them to go away.

I am appalled that I even have to write those sentences.

And I will never stop being incandescently angry—and, yes, bitter—at watching a woman who's given a lifetime of service to her country being told to go away.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Hillary Clinton Previews Her Upcoming Book

[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link.]

At BookExpo America yesterday, Hillary Clinton talked a little bit about her upcoming memoir, to be published this fall:

Clinton called losing the election a "painful experience," one she will reflect upon in the new book.

She said writing it has been "an emotional experience," one that has been so exhausting that, after a couple of hours, "I literally have to get up and go for a walk or go to bed."

She promised she will reflect on some of the "bizarre, odd" events of the campaign, and that she'll reveal what she was thinking during the presidential debates. "I'm going to tell you how I saw it, how I felt, because you cannot make up what happened."

As the first female candidate for president in a major party, Clinton said she carried the burden of a double standard, and that her book will take on "sexism and misogyny. We need to pull it out and put it in the bright light."

I am very excited to read this book!

She also revealed during her appearance that she hasn't settled on a title for the book yet, which has led to a hashtag on Twitter suggesting potential titles. I'm sure everyone is shocked to hear that it immediately became a filthy toilet clogged with misogynist turds.

Gee, I never get tired of hearing how misogyny played no role in the election! I'm sure that, despite every positive mention of Hillary Clinton on the internet being immediately inundated with rank sexists from across the political spectrum, everyone left that hatred at the door when they went to vote.

Anyway. I have a suggestion for the title of Clinton's new memoir. It's all yours if you want it, Hillary!

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Shut Up!

Let's Talk About These Optics

This is a very good piece by Charles Pierce at Esquire about one of my central subjects of interest: The media's special set of rules for Hillary Clinton and why, in fact, she shouldn't "go away," no matter how much members of the press insist that she should.

Filed under the wonderfully blunt headline "Hillary Clinton Must Not Be Silent," I particularly appreciated this section:

As a matter of fact, I think the nation would have been better served had Gore raised holy hell about what happened to him for as long as he possibly could. I think the nation would have been better served if some Democratic senator had stood with, say, John Lewis, to contest the results of the 2000 election. I think that Kerry should have hollered louder and longer about the shenanigans in Ohio that helped re-elect George W. Bush. Maybe if they had done this, the subsequent flood of voter-suppression laws, and the ensuing gerrymandering of various legislatures, which continues to rage through the political process today, could have been partially stemmed.

I couldn't agree more.

And I want to add another observation about media double-standards, specifically with regard to the press' obsession with "optics"—the optics of Clinton's emails; the optics of her speaking fees; the optics of her continuing to speak about Russian interference in the election. So intransigent was much of the political media's focus on optics that the campaign between the most qualified candidate ever to run and the most unqualified candidate ever to run centered on optics to the almost total exclusion of policy.

But suddenly optics don't matter anymore when it comes to the optics of telling a historic female presidential candidate to fuck off and shut up.

This is something to which I alluded in my April piece, "On Hillary Clinton's Beautiful Refusal to 'Go Away'."

And I—selfishly, I readily admit—am incredibly relieved, and grateful beyond measure, that Hillary Clinton refuses to go away.

That she continues to speak, that she continues to advocate, that she continues to be seen, that she continues to exercise her right to speak freely, and to be heard.

Though I am ever despondent about the misogyny that obliges her to model such tenacious gumption, I am exhilarated by the example she is setting (again, and always) for young women who will, inexorably, be told in their lives to "go away."

And for we not-so-young women, too. That Hillary is also an older woman who refuses to go away is tremendously important. Older women occupy a very particular space in our culture—a space frequently defined by an abandonment of listening. Rather than valuing the lived experiences of older women, and the wisdom those lives have imparted, we turn away from them, dismissing them as irrelevant; we neglect to listen, just at the moment where they may offer insights most profoundly worth listening to.

Hillary has a voice. And people listen to it. She has experience, which people respect. She has knowledge, and it is widely valued. This is not the typical experience of older women, who are devalued at the intersection of misogyny and ageism—and whatever other parts of our identity (race, disability, body size, sexuality, gender) are used to devalue us, too.

Hillary's refusal to go away is a direct challenge to the habit of tossing away older women, like so much useless rubbish.

The optics of media influencers sneering that Clinton should go away are not good, to put it politely.

Naturally they would assert that it's not because Clinton is a woman, or an old woman, but because she's Hillary Clinton.

But.

No woman can wrench her personhood from her womanhood, nor can anyone else can do it to us, least of all for the purposes of silencing us.

And let me be abundantly clear on this point: That is exactly what the members of the press who engage in this execrable codswallop are doing. They are arguing that they're not telling the first-ever major-party female presidential candidate to FOAD; they're just telling Hillary Clinton. As if those are separable.

It's decidedly inconvenient that Hillary Clinton, the woman who they want to silence (as if they wouldn't criticize her for that, too), is a history-making candidate. But that is a stone-cold fact that even the most mendacious critics of Clinton's cannot dispute. So they're never just telling Hillary Clinton to "go away." They're telling the only woman who's ever had a real shot at the U.S. presidency.

They also, not incidentally, happen to be telling a former Secretary of State, a former Senator, a former First Lady of the United States, a former First Lady of Arkansas, an advocate for women and children, a key player in the Irish peace process, an undercover investigator of educational segregation, a researcher on educational accessability for disabled students, and a girl avenger who punched a boy in the nose for endangering neighborhood bunnies.

Among many other things. Hillary Clinton has lived an extraordinary life.

So you tell me what the optics are of telling a woman who has been and done all of those things that she has nothing to say worth listening to.

Tell me what message women all across this country, including and especially all the women who do not have Clinton's immense privilege, are meant to take away from seeing one of the most accomplished women in the nation be told that she has nothing of value to offer anymore.

Do tell why I shouldn't care about the optics of a woman giving a lifetime of service to her country and being told to go away.

Actually, don't bother. Because I do care about it. And that isn't going to change.

[H/T to Aphra_Behn.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Can't F#@king Win

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton appeared at the tech conference CodeCon for an interview. Naturally, this prompted a whole new round of the Hillary Clinton Can't Fucking Win game in the press.

I did two short threads on Twitter, which I combined into a single moment, for those who would like to read it: The Hillary Can't F#@king Win Game.

I will note that, once again, Clinton did say during the interview that she took responsibility for the things that went wrong in her campaign. You wouldn't know it from the criticism she's getting.

The fact is, there are things that contributed to her loss which were within her control, and things that weren't. And no matter how many times she flatly states ownership and responsibility of the things within her control, every time she talks about the things that weren't (when she is asked about them), she is lambasted for "blaming everyone else but herself." That is mendacious in the extreme.

And there's something particularly ugly about a political press who are publicly patting themselves on the back for their "big scoops" about Trump's ties to Russia simultaneously shredding Clinton for talking about Russian interference, especially when she warned us.

About Russia and much, much more.

UPDATE: The full transcript of her interview is available here.

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Shut Up!

Meanwhile on Twitter: Hillary Clinton Edition

[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America.]
Over the weekend, I did three threads on Twitter about Hillary Clinton, for each of which I created a Moment for easy reading, in case you missed them.

1. This Hillary Clinton.

2. Woman of the People.

3. Debunking the "Hillary Was Uninspiring" Narrative.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Comey's Devastating Unprofessionalism

On Wednesday, we learned that former FBI Director James Comey's public communications during the election about the Hillary Clinton email probe were influenced by a fake Russian intelligence document.

And it gets even worse.

[Content Note: Video autoplays at link] Dana Bash, Shimon Prokupecz, and Gloria Borger at CNN report that not only was the document fake, but Comey knew it was fake.

Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email was fake — created by Russian intelligence — but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the process.

As a result, Comey acted unilaterally last summer to publicly declare the investigation over — without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — while at the same time stating that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in her handling of classified information.

...US officials now tell CNN that Comey and FBI officials actually knew early on that this intelligence was indeed false.

In fact, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back on the notion that the FBI was duped, according to a source familiar with a meeting McCabe had with members of the Senate intelligence committee.

...In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.

Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.

As Eastsidekate succinctly summarized: "They admitted to intentionally using hostile propoganda to undermine HRC in order to prop up their own credibility?" Yup.

You know how I keep hammering away about how this war between Donald Trump and intelligence community is not a good thing? And issuing reminders that pro-Comey leakers are shaping their narratives to be favorable to him? Yeah, this is why.

Comey engaged in devastating unprofessionalism during the election, and it had catastrophic consequences. There is very good reason to withhold enthusiastic cheerleading for James Comey, and many of the people on "his team" in this escalating war.

As usual, Hillary Clinton gets it right (commenting before this news broke) in a new profile by Rebecca Traister:

"I am less surprised than I am worried," she says of the Comey firing. "Not that he shouldn't have been disciplined. And certainly the Trump campaign relished everything that was done to me in July and then particularly in October." But "having said that, I think what's going on now is an effort to derail and bury the Russia inquiry, and I think that's terrible for our country."

It will be days before newspapers report that Trump asked Comey to move away from the Russia investigation prior to firing him, but the implications are already clear. History, says Clinton, "will judge whoever's in Congress now as to how they respond to what was an attack on our country. It wasn't the kind of horrible, physical attack we saw on 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, but it was an attack by an aggressive adversary who had been probing for many years to figure out how to undermine our democracy, influence our politics, even our elections."

Her hope, in the wake of Comey's dismissal, is that "this abrupt and distressing action will raise enough questions in the minds of Republicans for them to conclude that it is worthy of careful attention, because left unchecked … this will not just bite Democrats, or me; this will undermine our electoral system."

The takeaway here is that it is the Republicans' job as the majority in Congress to take this stuff seriously. That's the way our system of government is supposed to work.

When they refuse to take action—and we can be certain they will refuse to take action on this newest revelation of breathtaking failure, as they have on every other piece of the colossal scandal that was the 2016 election—they are actively preventing the government from working the way it was designed. They are breaking it.

Because they are enemies of the state.

Will Comey ever face meaningful accountability for the role he played in 2016? I suspect not. And that is a real shame. For us all.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Hillary Clinton Is a Builder of Villages

Today, Hillary Clinton delivered the commencement address at her alma mater Wellesley, 48 years after she gave the first-ever student commencement address. And it was tremendous.

[Complete transcript.]
There were, as ever, so many things to appreciate and value about this address, but this part was particularly meaningful to me:

You know, our culture often celebrates people who appear to go it alone. But the truth is that's not how life works. Anything worth doing takes a village. And you build that village by investing love and time into your relationships. And in those moments, for whatever reason, when it might feel bleak, think back to this place where women have the freedom to take risks, make mistakes, even fail in front of each other. Channel the strength of your Wellesley classmates and experiences. I guarantee you it will help you stand up a little straighter, feel a little braver, knowing that the things you joked about and even took for granted can be your secret weapons for your future. One of the things that gave me the most hope and joy after the election, when I really needed it, was meeting so many young people who told me that my defeat had not defeated them.

And I'm going to devote a lot of my future to helping you make your mark in the world. I created a new organization called Onward Together to help recruit and train future leaders, organize for real and lasting change. The work never ends. When I graduated and made that speech, I did say, and some of you might have pictures from that day with this on it, the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible. That was true then. It's truer today.

I never could have imagined where I would have been 48 years later. Certainly never that I would have run for the presidency of the United States or seen progress for women in all walks of life over the course of my lifetime. And yes, put millions of more cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling. Because just in those years, doors that once seemed sealed to women are now open. They're ready for you to walk through or charge through. To advance the struggle for equality, justice, and freedom. So whatever your dreams today, dream even bigger. Wherever you have set your sights, raise them even higher. And above all, keep going. Don't do it because I asked you to. Do it for yourselves. Do it for truth and reason. Do it because the history of Wellesley and this country tells us it's often during the darkest times when you can do the most good.

Double down on your passions. Be bold. Try. Fail. Try again and lean on each other. Hold on to your values. Never give up on those dreams. I'm have been optimistic about the future. Because I think after we've tried a lot of other things, we get back to the business of America. I believe in you with all my heart. I want you to believe in yourselves. So go forth. Be great.

Hillary Clinton is a leader for people who want to lead. She is a shatterer of glass ceilings. She is a blazer of trails. She is a dreamer of big dreams, and the inspiration for even bigger ones.

Above all, Hillary Clinton is a builder of villages.

She knows, and reminds us often, that it takes a village. She knows, too, that not everyone has the village they need—and so her life's work has been, and continues to be, finding ways to ensure that every person is part of a strong, supportive, sustainable village that can uplift its villagers to achieve their goals. And to imagine radical goals of otherwise improbable scope, which can only be conceived in the safety of spaces where opportunity and community make the impossible seem within reach.

Clinton embodies the absolute inverse of the Republican Party's destructive instinct. Following days and weeks (and months and years) of the Republican Party proposing and enacting policy designed to destroy democratic institutions, communities, and people's very lives, it was an excruciatingly stark juxtaposition listening to Clinton speak about the things we can—and must—build. And promising to help us build them.

[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America.]
Following Clinton's address, a number of Important People wondered: "Where was this Hillary Clinton during the election?" There is, perhaps, no more dishonest or self-serving musing anyone could make in response to that address, which was classic Clinton.

It is a musing that is naught but rank victim-blaming and gaslighting. A rhetorical device meant to absolve oneself of having failed to see who she really is.

She was right in front of our faces, all along. I spent the entirety of the campaign writing about "this Hillary Clinton," which was one of the great privileges and highlights of my professional life. She was there to behold, for anyone who was not busy instead being enchanted by Trump's empty podium or four decades of misogynist filth.

The difference between now and the campaign is not in Clinton: The difference is that she is no longer seeking power. The terrifying threat of female power is gone. (For now.)

"This Hillary Clinton," the one giving a sharp and stirring commencement address, was the same Hillary Clinton who has always stood before us, offering her service. The same gifted leader, the same master of policy, the same patriot who petitioned to lead this nation.

The same builder of villages.

I am incandescently angry at the people who made great efforts to not see "this Hillary Clinton" during the election. I will never get over her not being my president; we will lose so very much because she isn't—and I lay a significant portion of the blame at the feet of those who couldn't be bothered, or flatly refused, to see Clinton for who she is and has always been.

And I almost—almost—feel sympathy for them, that they have denied themselves the opportunity to get to know and spend time with this extraordinary woman, and with the people who believe in her; the people who see her.

Because it is a fine experience indeed to be a part of the village she's built.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

"The Document Was Bad Intelligence"

According to a new report, former FBI Director James Comey's public communications during the election about the Hillary Clinton email probe were influenced by a fake Russian intelligence document. Of course.

Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett at the Washington Post: How a Dubious Russian Document Influenced the FBI's Handling of the Clinton Probe.

I strongly urge you to go read the entire article, because there is a lot there and it's difficult to easily summarize.

I will only say this: Given that the FBI's own assessment has found that "the document was bad intelligence—and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau," there is a distinct possibility, as Eastsidekate noted in a private conversation (which I'm sharing with her permission), that "the Kremlin understood that the US intelligence community harbored an irrational hatred of HRC, and used that to its advantage."

In other words, Putin was probably well aware he isn't the only man of influence who hates Clinton, and he leveraged that hatred to play the U.S. intelligence community.

Tell me again how misogyny didn't play a role in this election.

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Shut Up!

Yeah, They're Virtually Indistinguishable

Donald Trump's proposed budget in cruel in the absolute extreme. Its rank hatred of vulnerable people perfectly, terribly reflects how Trump was and is the inevitable endgame of Republican politics: A 100% empathy-free zone whose antipathy for his fellow humans is evident in every syllable of his disgusting budget proposal.

Last night, Hillary Clinton gave the keynote address at the Children's Health Fund annual benefit, where she was being honored. She had a few things to say about Trump's plan:

"This administration and Republicans in Congress are mounting an onslaught against the needs of children and people with disabilities, women and seniors," Clinton charged.

She said the budget, which was released earlier in the day, "shows an unimaginable level of cruelty and lack of imagination and disdain for the struggles of millions of Americans, including millions of children."

There is more where that came from. You can watch the entire address here.

Here, then, is one exception to the "there's no difference between Clinton and Trump" narrative: Trump proposed a budget that will utterly destroy the safety net. Clinton said that budget "shows an unimaginable level of cruelty."

So, a wee difference there.

Yesterday afternoon, even before Clinton's address (not like I couldn't predict what her position would be), I had some thoughts about the people who incessantly chanted mendacious garbage about the false equivalence between Clinton and Trump during the election, and the other enablers of Trump.

If Trump gets even half what he wants in his contemptible budget proposal, countless people are going to suffer mightily. That's by design.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 24, 2017

And I'm thinking right now about all the folks who enabled this vile assault on vulnerable people, and having lots of feelings about them.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 24, 2017

The wrongest of all wrong assholes who chanted endlessly that there was no meaningful difference between Trump and Clinton.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 24, 2017

And the people who said, who are still saying, that some sort of leftist utopia will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of Trump's policies.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 24, 2017

And it galls me in unfathomable measure that their lesson will come at the cost of so much needless suffering.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 24, 2017

I cannot emphasize this enough: The idea that from the rubble of Trump's annihilation of our democratic systems and government safety net will emerge the socialist wonderland of our wildest dream is a dangerous fantasy in which people indulge at the cost of people's very lives.

Recovering from fascism, if it happens at all, is a long and painful process. In the places it has happened, there were meaningful differences between those populations and the United States, not least of which is the availability of guns to the public. The United States is a geographically huge country, with numerous distinct regional subcultures. There has already been a massive concentration of wealth among a tiny elite. None of these things bodes well for restoring what Trump erodes every day, no less for a recovery that sees more progressive governance.

If it can be achieved, it will depend on a lot of things happening that are very unlikely and a lot of other things not happening that are difficult to prevent.

"Let him tear it down and then we'll build something better than we ever had" was always an incredibly dangerous gambit. And an incredibly foolish one.

I will never stop being angry at the people who thought that was a risk worth taking, at the cost of millions of people's safety and lives.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Dear Joe Biden: Hillary Clinton Was a Great Candidate

In March, former Vice-President Joe Biden had some garbage to say about Hillary Clinton's campaign. At the time, he didn't explicitly name Clinton, despite the fact it was plain she was about whom he was speaking.

Now he's opened his yapper again, and this time he at least has the integrity to name her as he criticizes her—though he could hardly avoid it, since it's such a personal criticism.

Appearing at the SALT hedge fund conference in Las Vegas, the possible 2020 presidential candidate weighed in on Hillary Clinton's 2016 candidacy in a way that Clinton supporters sure won't like.

"I never thought she was a great candidate," Biden said, according to reports. "I thought I was a great candidate."

Biden clarified, according to CNN, that "Hillary would have been a really good president."

Three things:

One: It's always easy to say that this or that candidate "woulda won" in a vacuum. Biden may believe, and he may even be right, that he would have had some strengths that Clinton didn't have (although I hope we can all agree that many of the "strengths" with which male candidates are credited often come down to being male, which is not actually a "strength" so much as it is undeserved privilege trading on institutional sexism).

What gets far less consideration in these calculations is what role those candidates' weaknesses may have played. The presumption is, inevitably: Candidate X would have been just as good as Hillary Clinton, plus these other things. But that is neither fair nor accurate.

Biden would have been a weaker candidate in a number of ways. For instance, he would have had far less credibility to push back on Trump's misogyny and sexual assault history, given his disgraceful behavior toward Anita Hill. Similarly, the multiple plagiarism scandals during the campaign, most famously Melania Trump plagiarizing Michelle Obama, would have invoked Biden's own history of plagiarism.

And if Clinton's "corporatism" was a problem for many left-leaning votes, imagine what they'd have made of Biden's record, which reflects his service to Delware, whose "laws and courts...are the most pro-management in the nation. Corporations based there are held to the laxest possible standards of disclosure, shareholder rights, and fiduciary responsibility. Indeed, as the state has admitted in the past, its laws are specifically crafted to appeal to the interests of corporate executives."

Biden has mounted two failed runs for the presidency already. In 1988, he had to withdraw because of his plagiarism scandal. In 2008, he lost the nomination to Barack Obama—and to Hillary Clinton, who outlasted him in the primary.

Might he have been the strongest contender in 2016 if he'd run? Maybe. But that is far from certain.

Two: Hillary Clinton was a pretty great fucking candidate! I'm not sure why so many Democrats are behaving as though she was a disaster, when she ended up winning the popular vote by 3 million votes.

I'm further not sure why so many Democrats are quick to argue that her popular vote total doesn't really matter, because it was concentrated in progressive centers.

Sure, urban elites blah. But millions of the people who are concentrated in cities like New York, Chicago, Austin, and San Francisco (among others) are there because they were persecuted in their homes, and find greater safety in spaces where laws have been passed to protect them. Millions of queer people who are targeted by Republican legislatures in their home states; millions of women who fear childbearing in an area without robust reproductive choice; millions of Black people who are the descendants of elders who were kept out of small Northern sundown towns. Etc.

It is unfathomably shitty to sneer at the concentration of Clinton's voters when that concentration exists in large part because of the very barriers she campaigned on tearing down.

Three: A number of people have observed that Clinton herself said very much the same thing as Biden when she said during a primary debate: "I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed, like my husband or President Obama."

And I will repeat what I wrote at the time:

When Clinton describes herself as "not a natural politician," I am sure she says it because she genuinely believes it; it isn't a false humility, but an honest assessment of what she perceives as her own limitations.

I suspect she also says it as a self-defense mechanism, to undercut charges of arrogance and to deflect other criticisms about her stage presence, voice, delivery, demeanor.

She says it for a lot of reasons, purposefully and thoughtfully.

Which itself is an indication that, even if she is not a natural politician, she is nonetheless a good one.

Because although Clinton saying she is not a natural politician is received as self-deprecating, embedded within it is also an imploration to consider what she has achieved despite not being a natural politician.

Here she stands before us, the first female contender with a real shot at the US presidency, and she has gotten to this place not because of innate talent as a politician, but because she has worked her ass off.

Because she has practiced becoming a speaker, when she was not by nature someone who could command a room. Because she has studied until she has an unfathomable breadth of policy knowledge, when she cannot charm her way through not knowing something. Because she has mustered the courage to overcome her discomfort with campaigning, when campaigning is a part of the job.

I'm not a natural politician...and here the fuck I am anyway.

If there is anything that speaks to the humanity of Hillary Clinton, it is that. She isn't a politician because it came naturally to her. She's a politician despite the fact that it didn't.

And then there is this: Clinton is only not a natural politician according to expectations and standards of politicians defined almost exclusively by men.

She is not naturally a traditional politician.

Not like her husband. Not like President Obama. As she is wont to say.

I am reminded again of that quote from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau: "Her husband charms by talking to you; Hillary does it by listening to you—not in a head-nodding, politician way; in a real person way."

She's a politician powered by empathy rather than charisma, who makes people feel like they're standing in the sun rather than staring at it.

Maybe that just makes her a natural politician of a different sort. Of the sort who can challenge our expectations of what natural politicians look like altogether.

Hillary Clinton isn't a natural politician, but she just might be a revolutionary one.

I stand by that. And revolutionary politicians don't always win. But they change the landscape, so that there is more space for people who are also not traditional politicians.

That space, that much-needed space, will close if there aren't people there to protect and defend it. If instead, people in positions of power and influence decide to be gatekeepers for the traditions that benefit and privilege people like them.

An unprecedented number of women have declared an intent to run for office in the wake of the 2016 election. If Joe Biden doesn't want to shit all over their potential and opportunity, then he needs to recognize that perhaps there is a new breed of great candidate in town. And that we must celebrate that, if we ever want women to lead.

Failing such recognition, and attendant robust support of a future that reimagines what politics has to look like, he could do us all a favor and just shut the fuck up.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Imagine if Hillary...

"Can you imagine if Hillary—" NO! I CANNOT. BECAUSE SHE WOULDN'T HAVE DONE ANY OF THIS GARBAGE IN TEN MILLION FUCKING YEARS.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 17, 2017

More to the point, I won't imagine it.

I utterly refuse to imagine that a competent, prepared, eminently decent career public servant would do any of the despicable, foolish, or downright cruel things that our current fumblefuck authoritarian scofflaw of a president has done.

I have zero inclination to engage in a hypothetical with no purpose beyond making the already excruciatingly obvious point that the Republican Party is comprised of a nauseating collection of unprincipled hypocrites who will abide all manner of thunderous villainy from Donald Trump, but would have spent their every waking moment trying to destroy Hillary Clinton.

I don't need to indulge the painting of invented corruption in order to know, with certainty, that the Republicans are vicious wielders of ugly double standards.

Instead of asking me, over and over, to imagine some funhouse mirror alternate reality in which Clinton would engage in the same calamitous malice as the current occupant of the Oval Office, I invite petitioners instead to imagine this:

A country in which there was no Muslim ban, nor even repeated attempts to enact one;

in which twenty million people or so weren't in danger of losing their healthcare access;

in which DREAMers weren't being deported;

in which the Justice Department weren't being run by a racist miscreant;

in which the EPA, the Department of Education, the Energy Department, and virtually every other federal agency weren't being run by people whose primary qualification was a willingness to destroy the very departments they've chosen to lead;

in which LGBTQ rights and protections were not being rolled back but expanded;

in which the Mexico City policy had not been rescinded and the Hyde Amendment was finally in danger of going away forever;

in which most of us would never have been obliged to learn the name Neil Gorsuch;

in which the president had shaken Angela Merkel's hand;

in which investigations into Russian interference in the election, and ongoing attempts to destabilize our democratic institutions, were taken seriously;

in which taxpayers hadn't spent millions and millions of dollars funding weekend trips to a private and insecure getaway;

in which the president wasn't using the office to enhance their personal wealth;

in which any question we had about the president's income could be easily accessed, because four decades of their taxes were available online;

in which there had been no grievous disclosure of classified information to a foreign adversary;

in which the president was surrounded by competent people who were qualified for their positions and weren't as out of their depth as a dog doing particle physics;

in which we had communicated to little girls that they could be president someday, rather than that we're okay with powerful men sexually assaulting them;

in which we weren't spending every waking moment in a panic about what treacherous or imperiling fuckery will come next;

in which so many things, after only 118 days, would be different. Better.

Imagine that, even if it breaks your heart. It breaks mine into a thousand pieces. But what breaks my heart even harder is the relentless request that I imagine Hillary Clinton being a corrupt president that she never would have been.

[Photo: Michael Davidson for Hillary for America.]
I voted for her because of the president she would have been, and I won't disrespect her—or my support of her—by imagining that she would have been something else, something lesser.

I will not imagine if Clinton were like Donald Trump. Never.

And if you need, for whatever reason, to engage in an alt-timeline thought experiment to make the point that the Republicans are shameless and unscrupulous frauds, whose sanctimony is outmatched only by their insincerity, then try this on for size: Imagine if Congressional Republicans treated Donald Trump the way they treated Barack Obama.

We don't have to imagine that. We can remember it.

Remember the way these reprehensible scoundrels actually treated one of this nation's most principled and ethical leaders. Remember how they hounded and disrespected him; how they obstructed his agenda. Remember how they denied him an appointment to the Supreme Court, and the ability to fill more than 100 federal court vacancies. Remember how they treated members of his Cabinet, including Hillary Clinton.

Remember how they said, again and again, that he was a danger to his nation.

President Obama had fewer scandals in eight years than Trump has had in his first 118 days. And they treated him like garbage for every minute of those eight years.

Imagine if they held Trump to the same standards to which they held Obama, with the critical difference that Trump actually warrants that scrutiny.

I neither want nor need to imagine that Hillary Clinton would have been a corrupt president—because I know that the Republicans are a corrupt party.

I'm not interested in talking hypotheticals. I'm interested in talking about that observable fact.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Hillary Clinton Officially Launches Onward Together

Ten days ago, I wrote about Hillary Clinton's plan to launch a new political group called Onward Together. Last night, Clinton officially announced the launch on Twitter.

We're launching Onward Together to encourage people to get involved, organize, and even run for office. https://t.co/8exooosvZ5

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017

More than ever, I believe citizen engagement is vital to our democracy. I'm so inspired by everyone stepping up to organize and lead.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017

.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft .@ColorOfChange is organizing for criminal justice reform, voter freedom, fairness and accuracy in media, and other racial justice issues.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017

.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft @ColorOfChange @EmergeAmerica @runforsomething Those are just a few of the groups Onward Together will support, working with @GovHowardDean and others—stay tuned for more to come.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017

.@IndivisibleTeam @swingleft @ColorOfChange @EmergeAmerica @runforsomething @GovHowardDean This year hasn't been what I envisioned, but I know what I'm still fighting for: a kinder, big-hearted, inclusive America. Onward!

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 15, 2017

As I said before, Hillary Clinton doesn't owe us a goddamn thing, but she loves her country. So here she is, showing up again.

There are an awful lot of people who bitterly complain that Clinton "won't go away." Indeed she won't. Another way of saying that is Hillary Clinton keeps showing up.

For her country. For us.

This is what a patriot looks like.

[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary For America.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Ahem

Who the fuck wants to come tell me that there is "no difference" between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump now?

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

We Are Being Ruled by Cruel Villains

Every single thing I read all day every day about Donald Trump and his coterie of vile miscreants, makes me despair. And yet there is something about this, the petty cruelty of it, how profoundly unnecessary and personally abusive it is, that takes my breath away: Trump Team Marks 6-Month Election Anniversary by Vowing to Air Video of Clinton Campaign's Concession Call.

On Tuesday, Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, celebrated the six-month anniversary of the election by tweeting a screen grab of the late night phone call in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called to concede to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Scavino promised to share video of the conversation, which he said came via a Nov. 9 phone call at 2:30 a.m. from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Trump's then-campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.

Scavino did not respond to an email asking when he plans to reveal the clip. He posted the message on his personal account rather than his official White House Twitter page.

I have no doubt that, should Scavino decide to publicly air the message, Abedin, and thus Hillary Clinton, would come out of it looking like the gracious, thoughtful people we know them to be.

I also imagine that Clinton has literally no response besides the most elaborate eyeroll it is possible for the human body to conjure.

Clinton is not, however, the only, or even primary, target. It's her supporters. It's designed to humiliate and hurt us; to remind us that we didn't win. (As if we could possibly have forgotten.) To other us.

That is a profoundly disturbing position for a president, or any member of his administration, to take—that his opponent's supporters must be punished and shamed and harmed. That we must be reminded he has no loyalty to us or our needs.

It is a despicable act to even suggest, because of the message it conveys, irrespective of whether the message ever gets publicly played.

I am just really exhausted, in a way I've never been before, at witnessing the relentless cruelty of the Trump administration day after day.

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) May 9, 2017

I ache at the sadistic impulses of this administration. I hate every minute of it.

Their malice grinds at me, but also beckons my resolve to be a sentinel for my values. If there comes a day when all I am left able to write with each sunrise is "I hate Donald Trump," I will be here, doing it.

[H/T to Leah McElrath.]

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Shut Up!

Complicit NYT Scolds Clinton and Supporters to Get Over It

During the lead-up to the 2016 election, many commentators critiqued the mainstream media's tendency to frame Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as equally-bad candidates. Given Trump's negatives, such a framing was wildly inaccurate.

At Media Matters, for instance, Carloz Maza, Dayanita Ramesh, and John Kerr warned in October 2016 that while such framing might have been appropriate in more conventional elections, it was inappropriate in this one. While noting that Clinton was not a flawless candidate, they observed that:

"Trump, on the other hand, represents a dramatic break from mainstream American politics. He threatens the First Amendment, demonizes minority groups, cozies up to white supremacists, championed the birther movement, invites Russian interference in the election, promises to arrest his political opponent, lies constantly, lacks the most basic interest in and knowledge of public policy, says he may not accept the results of the election because he believes it to be 'rigged' -- the list goes on and on."

One of the key means through which the media constructed the false equivalence between a walking Breitbart comment section and an experienced, competent public servant was through its singular obsession with reporting on Hillary Clinton's email server. In a piece published at Shareblue on October 28, 2016, Peter Daou observed:

"Our team went back and looked at coverage since the story broke in March, 2015. We found that the emails have been mentioned in the major news media virtually every single day since then, 600 in total. This exceeds coverage of Watergate, Mitt Romney’s 47% comment, Kerry’s swiftboating, Donald Trump’s countless transgressions, and every other major political story of the modern era."

Even for voters who might have approached the election with good faith open-mindedness, the sheer frequency with which the media covered "the server" implied that the issue was comparable in severity to, if not worse than, Trump's many flaws. For those already primed by misogyny or decades of smears against Hillary Clinton, it confirmed their already-held biases and suspicions about her. In their eyes, Clinton was no better than Trump.

Flash forward to May 3, 2017. Trump has been in office for almost four months. Nate Silver has laid out a cogent case for what helped him get there:

"Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had 'learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation' into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College."

Acknowledging that Comey's letter isn't the only reason for the election outcome, Silver further observed, "Few news organizations gave the story more velocity than The New York Times." Although the contents of the Comey letter were a big nothing-burger, Silver noted that the following was the newspaper of record's front page the day after its release:

All three articles above the fold were dedicated to the Comey letter, one of which included a headline quote of Trump claiming that the "revelation" "changes everything." This "revelation," mind you, came less than two weeks before the general election.

So, it wasn't just the release of the letter that was likely, in part, responsible for the election outcome, it was also the media hype about the letter.

And now? "The emails" have, with the benefit hindsight, become a meme. Usually, it's some variation on how Trump is now in a position to do very bad things in large part because of the media's non-stop, breathless reports about Hillary Clinton's email server. Yet, although they're memes, more than a tinge of weariness and justified anger drives them.

For one, investigations have found Clinton guilty of no criminal wrongdoing regarding this matter that the press kept jamming in our faces. Two, despite Trump still regularly leading rallies at which his supporters chant "lock her up," a chant partly based on "the emails," his own team's handling of sensitive information has been questioned multiple times already in his brief tenure, with no comparable level of media coverage.

Three, despite it being conceivable that the NYT saw a national security interest in running so many stories about Clinton's email server and Comey's letter, we must also remember that this same publication acted, by its own journalists' admission, as a "de facto instrument of Russian intelligence" during the 2016 election by uncritically citing emails that Russian agents had hacked from the DNC and John Podesta.

With that backdrop in mind,  you can imagine my lack of surprise that a NYT editorial this past weekend continued the both-sides-are-just-as-bad framing. I'm not linking to it, but it's easy enough to find. It ran on May 6, 2017, and is entitled, "Two Presidential Candidates Stuck In Time." It begins with a scold:

"Six months on, both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton are still waging last year's campaign, undermining their promises to help America heal."

After noting Trump's past four months of pathetic incompetence and need to keep re-living his big win, they note that last week at a women's event, Clinton referred to Trump as "my opponent," suggested that setting foreign policy via tweet was not a great strategy, and referenced the investigation Trump is under for potentially colluding with foreign agents in the 2016 election.

In these activities, the implicit conclusion is that Trump and Clinton are equally at fault for large segments of the populace being unable to get over the results of the election. And then, a grand finale:

"As Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton bait each other, their supporters light up social media, re-litigating old disputes and attacking one another, too. What's the point?"

I find this editorial deeply suspect and alarming.

I imagine the NYT Editorial Board would now very much like us to get over the election. I imagine they might also very much like it if they could successfully frame an ongoing investigation into election interference as a "re-litigation" of "old disputes," and have us overlook the pesky fact that something first has to have been litigated in the first place to have been re-litigated.

One year ago, Melissa wrote a warning that the future of the nation depended on the media changing its approach to covering Trump, as the corporate media regularly engaged in misogynistic tropes with respect to Clinton while treating Trump like an entertaining "character."  Even as its members repeatedly command Clinton supporters to have empathy for Trump supporters, the white male liberal bubble lacks empathy for Clinton supporters. And because of that, they fail to comprehend that the driving forces of the anti-Trump resistance are disillusionment with white-male-dominated establishments, including a media system that consistently fails women and people of color.

You see, I do not have the privilege of naive trust that the systems, media companies, and processes established centuries ago by flawed white men will somehow not fail us in this moment. As our nation's opinion-makers continue to be predominately white and male, it is incontestable that a small segment of the population's limited perspectives, implicit and explicit biases, and "givens" about the world continue to shape national narratives far beyond what their competence warrants, having untold, far-reaching consequences.

I refuse to "get over" the election because, like Melissa, "I manifestly refuse to indulge the corporate media's urge to whitewash what happened during the election; to participate in the institutional forgetting that is central to normalizing the Trump presidency." One does not simply "get over" a racist, incompetent, unqualified, admitted sexual predator who "won" under questionable circumstances over a qualified woman.

Our refusal to "get over it" is a rational response to a dangerous situation. Our ongoing critiques of the establishment press are a rational response to its consistent failures and abdication of all responsibility for helping to usher in this dangerous situation.

I push back hard on this NYT editorial because I refuse to normalize this continued false equivalence between Trump and Clinton, because normalizing it ensures that it will happen again, albeit perhaps next time with a new cast of characters.

Donald Trump is a head of state, part of whose job is to the heal the nation, but instead he incessantly brags about his win in a deeply painful election, continues to advocate for the imprisonment of the only woman in our nation's history to have come so close, and who repeatedly calls established publications—including the NYT—"fake news."

That the NYT would suggest it is Hillary Clinton's responsibility, as a private citizen, to now take on the emotional labor of helping to heal the nation under this set of monstrously-fucked up circumstances is a hellacious way for the newspaper of record to use its platform.

In light of this situation, here is my urgent plea to the media establishment: Keep your eye on the fucking ball. It would behoove us all if you finally learned to appreciate the finer distinctions between a woman recounting facts and a head of state talking like a despot.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Nope

Sydney Ember at the New York Times: 'Shattered,' Book About Clinton Campaign, May Become TV Series.

A new book about Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald J. Trump in the presidential election could be heading to the small screen.

"Shattered," by the journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, has been optioned by TriStar Television, a division of Sony Pictures Television, and Davis Entertainment for a limited series. The deal was confirmed by Bridget Matzie, a literary agent for the authors. A network is not yet attached to the project.

Among the first post-mortems of the election, "Shattered" has been a mainstay in dinner-party chatter in political circles since its publication. The continued interest in the election has brought talk of other book-to-TV series as well. The political journalists and analysts Mark Halperin and John Heilemann are currently working on a book about the 2016 election that has also been acquired for a mini-series by HBO.

No and no.

Never mind that numerous members of Clinton's staff have strongly disputed the campaign as depicted in Shattered. And never mind this despicable shit:

A special fuck you to the authors of this tome for appropriating "shattered" from glass ceiling to a campaign loss. https://t.co/No2NkcfFfk

— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 18, 2017

And never mind that these projects certainly aren't for Hillary Clinton's supporters, that's for damn sure.

There are so many things about this that enrage me, but chief among them is this: Hillary Clinton and her supporters keep getting told to "go away," but it's open season to make a buck for anyone willing to trade on their hatred of her.

If that doesn't illustrate everything that is wrong with the media's disposition toward Clinton, I can't imagine what would.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Hillary Shows Up. Again.

One of the many things that has made it incredibly difficult to process the results of the election is how vastly different Donald Trump's presidency looks from what Hillary Clinton's presidency would have been. That is, in no small part, because of what vastly different people they are.

One of their most basic, and simultaneously most significant, differences is that Trump doesn't demonstrate any loyalty nor any love of this country.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton is a patriot of unfathomable measure. She has dedicated, and continues to dedicate, herself to a country large parts of which have been deeply unkind to her.

On the same day Trump "wanted a win" so badly he would consign millions of Americans to pain and despair, it was reported that Clinton is laying the groundwork for a new political group that will "focus on sending money to other organizations at a time that Democratic donors are largely unsure about how they should be spending their cash." The group, which is "expected to be called Onward Together—a nod to her campaign slogan, Stronger Together," will focus on funding organizations working on resisting Trump's agenda.

[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America]
Hillary Clinton doesn't owe us a goddamn thing, but she loves her country. So here she is, showing up again.

There are an awful lot of people who bitterly complain that Clinton "won't go away." Indeed she won't. Another way of saying that is Hillary Clinton keeps showing up.

For her country. For us.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

On Who Gets Credit for "Telling It Like It Is"

During the 2016 election, there were two candidates—one of whom went on to win the presidency—who were beloved for "telling it like it is," or some variation thereof. Straight talk. Uncensored. Telling the truth. Saying what we're all thinking.

Donald Trump, an inveterate liar, was the beneficiary of countless stories during the Republican primary and the general election detailing how his supporters valued his willingness to tell what they perceived as the unvarnished truth.

One focus group convened by Republican pollster Frank Luntz found people offering enthusiastic endorsements like this one: "Trump's the first person that came out and voiced exactly what everybody's been saying all along. When he talks, deep down somewhere you're going, 'Holy crap, someone is thinking the same way I am.'"

Trump, of course, was not truth-telling, but reflecting back to his supporters their own perceptions about the world, and validating their bigotry by conjuring a "reality" that does not actually exist. Crime is not going up. Terrorists are not sneaking in as refugees. Mexican immigrants are not raping citizens en masse. And so forth.

Bernie Sanders was also widely and often credited by his supporters—and some members of the political press—for his brash delivery of hard truths. Just yesterday, Bill Maher told CNN's Jake Tapper that he wants to see Sanders run for president again, "to keep everybody else honest in the race, because he just says it the way it is."

Sanders is not an inveterate liar like Trump. He does, however, in rejecting meaningful intersectional policy analysis, telegraph a particular perception of the world that excludes and precludes the perspectives and reality for a great number of marginalized people.

Still, both of these straight, white, wealthy, cis men in their 70s are widely credited with being objective observers and straight-talking commentators on How It Is.

Also yesterday, Hillary Clinton said during an interview at the Women for Women International conference that she lost, in part, because of James Comey, Wikileaks, Russian interference, and misogyny. That, by all accounts, is "telling it like it is." FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver published a big piece today looking at the numbers and concluding that Comey "probably cost Clinton the election." Investigations into Russian interference are still ongoing, but there is no question that they interfered to derail her. Misogyny, I hear (ahem), is difficult to quantify (cough), but "research suggests she might be right."

But the political press erupted with snide resentments about how Clinton was only raising these issues to blame everyone else for her loss (she was not), rather than granting her the label, and attendant respect, of being someone who speaks the truth.

[Photo: Barbara Kinney for Hillary for America.]
Clinton was never granted such awed deference for being consistently right in her grim warnings about Trump. She has been ridiculed for decades for publicly acknowledging the existence of a "vast, right-wing conspiracy," despite the fact that she was right, and about 15 years ahead of everyone else. And, as I have previously observed: "Right now, millions of Americans are working in jobs that will succumb to that same obsolescence, sooner rather than later. When Hillary Clinton acknowledged this reality, saying that coal mining jobs would have to be replaced with jobs in the renewable energy industry, she was attacked and obliged to apologize. For telling the truth."

That was one of many occasions during the campaign on which Clinton told a hard truth that her opponents were not willing to tell, and was castigated for it, because so many people prefer to listen to men who tell them what they want to hear than a woman who tells them the truth.

And the "fundamentally honest and trustworthy" Clinton did indeed tell us the truth.

She was rated by Politifact as the most honest of all the 2016 candidates:

In a little over a month during the primary, March through early May, Clinton received 8 Pinocchios from the Washington Post's Fact Checker, while, in the same timeframe, Sanders got nearly three times as many: 23 Pinocchios. None of Clinton's were 4-Pinocchio lies (the worst possible), while three of Sanders' were.

Clinton told the truth relentlessly throughout the campaign, even when she knew that it would not be as popular as an easy lie, or a simplification of policy so extreme that it might as well have been a lie.

Following one of her debates with Sanders, I wrote: "At her debate with Bernie Sanders in New York, she stood at her podium and held her ground, refusing to make promises she could not keep, hammering away at the details and sticking to her nuanced positions—even though she is keenly aware of narratives that voters aren't enthusiastic for her, that if she'd just relent, if she'd just match Bernie's sweeping promises and abandon her insistence on being practical, she would get more applause."

Her rigorous honesty came at a cost—and the reason that cost exists is because who we regard as "telling it like it is," and why, and who we don't.

I've no desire to relitigate the primary: These things are only relevant because Sanders is now being elevated to a position of national leadership, while Clinton is being cast aside, and because I am obliged to defend her right to speak and be visible and exist now. That the same dynamics from the primary continue to infiltrate these conversations is, suffice it to say, not my preference.

And I'm certainly not suggesting that Hillary Clinton has never gotten something wrong, mistakenly or intentionally, nor that she does not have blindspots in her perception of the world. Of course she has, and of course she does.

The point is: She's not alone in that.

But she is alone, among herself and Sanders and Trump, in failing to bear the reputation of being someone who "tells it like it is." Even though, by every estimation, she has "told it like it is" more often than either of them have.

Faced with this inconvenient fact, many people push back with some version of the old authenticity canard, mixed with some good, old-fashioned tone policing. Sure, she might be telling the truth, but the way the says it makes me not trust her. She's fake. She's too rehearsed. She's a robot. She doesn't mean it.

Which, apart from being a collection of tropes dredged from the most ancient anti-feminist sewer, is actually a concession that facts don't matter.

That what "telling it like it is" really means is: Telling me what I want to hear.

And that is not, and will never be, the same thing as telling the truth.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!