Monthly Archives: October 2016
One of my most famous images. Lewis Powell, Lincoln assassination conspirator, April 1865. pic.twitter.com/IfkDm3volD
— Marina Amaral (@marinamaral2) October 2, 2016
What’s funny about this image is how – if you overlook the shackles – inconspicuous he would be in DC today. Of course, he’s wearing prison garb which has a contemporary feel to it. He also has the disaffected stare down pat, and not just in that picture. Both of those contribute to it. Present fashion being what it is, even in everyday clothing he could almost pull it off.
So the sexualized ad burdens the flight attendant with another task, beyong being unfailingly helpful and open to requests: she must respond to the sexual fantasies of passengers. She must try to feel and act as if flirting and propositioning are “a sign of my attractiveness and your sexiness,” and she must work to suppress her feelings that such behavior is intrusive or demeaning. Some have come to see this extra psychological task as a company contrivance. A flight attendant once active in Flight Attendants for Women’s Rights commented: “The company wants to sexualize the cabin atmosphere. They want men to be thinking that way because they think that what men really want to avoid fear of flying. So they figure mild sexual arousal will be helpful in getting people’s minds off flying. It’s a question of follars and cents… Most of our passengers are male, and all of the big corporate contract business is male.
{source, but I don’t know what book this is from.}
If You Like Your Doctor’s Advice, You Can Keep Your Doctor’s Advice: A New State Challenge to “Medical Judgment” (Tim Kowal, New Reform Club)
In 2014, Dr. Bob Sears wrote an exemption for a two-year-old who suffered adverse reactions to prior immunizations. Sears is an outspoken supporter of both vaccines and vaccine choice. He is respected by opponents of SB277 for his even-handedness on the fraught subject. The California Medical Board is now accusing Sears of “gross negligence” related to the 2014 exemption. The Board alleges Sears failed to get written medical history concerning the child’s prior adverse reactions.* “If the board finds Sears negligent,” the Orange County Register reports, “he could face discipline ranging from a public reprimand to revocation of his medical license.”
On the one hand, you have to have a rearguard against circumventing the law. This strikes me as analogous to cracking down on Dr Feelgoods more recently physicians who make bank with medicinal marijuana cards. This one, though, is (a) more tied into the public health since we’re dealing with contagious stuff, and (b) the subject of a much greater ideological battle (as opposed to simple profit, as is the case with the drug docs).
That second one kind of cuts both ways, though…
.@UtahCoachWhitt expresses disappointment in both the #Utes injuries and the phrase "it is what it is" all in one great quote #Utahfootball pic.twitter.com/ndWoPWGys2
— Brennan Smith (@BrennanJSmith) October 17, 2016
Jacob T. Levy at Bleeding Heart Libertarians argues that Gary Johnson helps Clinton more than he helps Trump:
And this is the pattern in almost every poll I’ve looked at that compares the 2-way and 4-way races. It’s the pattern in a large majority of states including most swing states. It’s the pattern you would expect from two former Republican governors running a ticket against a deeply unpopular (und un-conservative and unhinged) Republican nominee. It’s the pattern you would expect from the fact that (at this writing) six traditionally-Republican newspaper editorial boards, including the very conservative swing state New Hampshire Union Leader and the rock-ribbed Chicago Tribune and Detroit Free Press, have endorsed Johnson. I’m happy that Johnson and Weld have run a more leftward campaign than Libertarians usually do, and have emphasized Libertarians’ liberalism on drugs, crime, policing, imprisonment, and war. I’m happy that they’re bringing some young liberals into the movement, and I think that’s good for the future of libertarianism. But it’s still the case that the low-tax, free-market, free-trade candidates running against a protectionist Republican consistently bleed off a few more disaffected Republicans than they do Democrats. And the punditry, commentary, and strategy that pits Clinton’s interests directly against Johnson-Weld’s is mistaken.
I find the argument convincing, and I wouldn’t have the chops to challenge it if I didn’t. But…
…If Johnson (and Stein) weren’t running, and Clinton and Trump were the only ones on the ballot. I’d vote for Clinton hands down. My (potential) vote for Johnson will in my case take a vote away from Clinton. That might not matter in Sangamon. I haven’t really looked at the polls, but Sangamon tends to go Democratic and strikes me as anti-Trump anyway. Still in my case, if I vote for Johnson, that will be a loss for Clinton.
An organic response from ladies who finally felt angry enough to come forward, or felt for the first time—in the wake of the leaked tape—that their allegations against Trump would be believed? A coordinated attack from Clinton supporters? Or can we blame the press, as reporters rushed to contact and listen to anyone with an anti-Trump story in the hopes of breaking the next big scoop or winning that day’s ratings cycle? I’m prone to think it’s some of all three.
I’m also prone to think any of the women’s claims could be true, even if they originated in opposition research—but I’d probably be more skeptical of those that did. And it’s certainly not the realm of Trumpkin conspiracy-theory that pro-Hillary forces may have enticed some of these women to come forward. That’s politics. We’re in the final stretches of the race for the most powerful position in the country. Democrats would be idiots not to try and stoke these flames.
And Republicans, at least those who still find a Trump presidency worth fighting for, would be idiots not to paint Trump’s accusers as liars who are politically motivated.
It’s a good reminder why campaign politics is a horrible context in which to have a productive national conversation about sexual consent (if such a thing is even at all possible). The stakes here are just too high. It’s he-said/she-said with not just one person’s reputation, freedom, or justice on the line but the reputations, hopes, and livelihoods of all those personally invested in the outcome of this election and, to some extent, the future of the Republican Party. If anything, it’s only going to get uglier from here.
Tod has a post Over There taking some conservatives to task on their complaints about the media allegedly unleashing a bunch of October surprises they should have approached more diligently at an earlier point in the cycle. I agree in parts, and disagree in others. I’m using these two terms somewhat loosely. But let’s review:
Conservative media critics really do need to let this go, for a variety of reasons. First, because it was first and foremost the job of the other candidates to get this out there. Second, because what happened with regard to the media was not only predictable, and predicted, but actually understandable in context and not remotely unique to Trump (except to the extent that Trump himself is unique). Third, the notion that the media sat on stories of this sort for this long to unleash it all in October is absurd. Fourth, and most importantly, the media presented more than enough information for the primary voters to discard him, and they didn’t.
That said, I really hope the media does take a step back and look at how it contributed to the situation. It did. While it’s very much not helpful for conservatives to complain about it because it’s deflecting. The truth is that everybody needs to be looking at their own behavior. That includes boosters and Republicans and conservatives first and foremost, but also the media. People who harbor less responsibility are too fond of simply pointing the finger at those who harbor more. The media got played. Its poor attention span, its attraction to the immediate, and its inability to figure out how to handle such a different candidate are things that they will hopefully do better next time. (Not optimistic about the first two, but think they may have figured out the third.)
It’s also worth noting that “the media” covers a lot of ground here. I was saying last week that print and (some) web did a much better job than television and television punditry. Most of my criticism is reserved for the latter. And to some extent the interaction between them.
Ultimately, though, the media coverage has changed. Partially because it flows from having an actual recording. While stories of this kind aren’t new, but the way that they’re being covered is. Where I really disagree with my #NeverTrump brethren is that I don’t think it’s anything strategic on the part of the media, or that it’s related to the fact that Trump ran as a Republican. Covering a primary race with a half dozen candidates is simply different than a two-person race. Coverage in the home stretch is different from coverage earlier on. The only substantive change is that at least a part of this may be a response to the media responding to criticisms from the left over the last month about how they were covering the race, which caused a re-evaluation. Sure, similar complaints from the #NeverTrump right went unheeded, but that really wasn’t the problem.
As Tod points out, the stories were out there but they were lost in a sea of other things going on. Including by us. Tod points out a number of stories that I was aware of but that never really penetrated. There was a lot happening. In a weird way, things actually sort of needed to get boring for things to heat up. The news cycle needed to give way for impossible-to-avoid wall-to-wall coverage that had before been muddled with horse race coverage that (since he was leading) almost necessarily put Trump in a positive light. And the Clinton scandals needed to die down (or focus had to be moved away from them).
And it’s not impossible in a couple of weeks this will all trail off and it’ll be an “oh, yeah” thing. We’re running out of time for that, though. And that was the case for anything breaking in October. The spinning bottle has to stop somewhere.
The theory that the press actually withheld these stories, though, has very little going for it. That’s just not what the press does. You run with a story before anyone else finds it, which means as soon as you get it and (hopefuly) do due diligence. There are isolated counterexamples, but the most famous (Bush+TANG) didn’t work out very well (the “due diligence” thing matters). Most of the time, October Surprises aren’t October Surprises because the media held on to it, but because the opposing candidate did. (I believe it’s entirely possible the Octoberness of this story is because the Clinton campaign competently worked it this way.)
Yes, Liz Mair and Rick Wilson have both said they were approaching the media with blockbuster stories while the primary was ongoing, but you have to think that through. If the media turned it down, it was almost certainly light on details. And, to be honest, a desperate appeal to the media to do the candidates’/consultants’ jobs. If they had a story on a silver platter, of course the media would run with it. And even in a world where they somehow decided not to, a Trump-skeptical conservative outlet would have. With enough work, the media would have had to cover the coverage, if nothing else. That was what happened with some of the Clinton archives unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon.
Given that most of the people complaining now are doing so in an “I Told You So” fashion, they ought to consider that they’re seeing what they’re seeing precisely because they predicted it. Dots connected in a particular way precisely because they correspond with predictions. It is true that we did warn them that coverage would turn sharply negative in the general election. It is true that coverage turned sharply negative in the general election. But that has as much to do with the weeds around it getting cut as it does a change in the thing that the weeds were surrounding. That was always visible, to those that wanted to see it.
Lee Jessim looks at the limitations of Stereotype Inaccuracy and the central problem: The lack of aggregate inaccuracy. {More}
Mene Ukueberuwa writes of millenials, love, and opera.
Alan J Hawkins and Sage E Allen look at how Americans contemplate divorce (and usually don’t).
Michael Fitzgerald was a for-profit college inspector, and tells all.
Pete Saunders looks at demographic settlement patterns in American cities and suburbs.
For those who didn’t see the US presidential debate. Here is a quick version. pic.twitter.com/0NNCcOKpke
— Pekka Phuket (@oilinki) October 10, 2016
One of the offshoots of this conversation has been whether it’s appropriate for men to relate their impression of it with the women in their lives. As some Republicans have backed away from Trump, they’ve cited that they were horrified because of their wives and daughters. This lead to a degree of backlash about how women are people apart from their relationship with men.
I can understand the frustration. Society has often juxtaposed women in relation to the nearest man. Formal letters are often addressed to Mr and Mrs John Smith, for example. Books about women are often titled about their relation to men (Preacher’s Wife, Coal-Miner’s Daughter). And beyond that, there is perhaps something infantizing about it and how it’s deployed.
That being said, the objections in cases like this tend to be misguided.
I don’t consider myself especially sexist or misogynistic. I’ve always believed that women should get equal pay for equal work. I entered into a marriage of non-traditional arrangement with a female breadwinner and a stay-at-home dad, and felt no special compunction about doing so. And of course, rape is bad and sexual harassment is bad and have always been bad.
Even so, it’s one thing to believe things abstractly and another to have a specific reference. While I did believe that sexism in the workplace existed, things changed entirely when my livelihood depended on my wife being treated fairly in the workplace. That was when I started seeing unfairness everywhere. Not just as it pertained to her, but I started seeing it more around me generally. Things I had before found other explanations for became “Well, Other Explanation maybe, but I suspect there is sexism involved as well.”
If we so choose, we can attribute this to Trumwill’s Failure of Creative Empathy. It is not to my credit that I was as dismissive as I was before my own welfare was on the line, for sure. But even if we grant this, my wife became a conduit through which I saw – and saw the importance of – sexism more than I had before. Likewise, having a daughter has made me more keenly aware of the importance of female strength and independence. Strength and independence from the need of a man. This may not be ideal, but it is what it is.
All of which is to say, encouraging men to look at issues of sexism with the women and girls in their lives as a conduit is a good thing. Because it’s likely to be effective. The tangible always trumps the abstract. And this does apply both ways.
I've decided I'm going to start all of my comments if things happen to men with "As the sister of two brothers, I am outraged by this."
— Elise Foley (@elisefoley) October 9, 2016
Toe above tweet is supposed to illustrate the absurdity of this, but it really doesn’t. The key here is whether the bad thing that happens is male-centric or not. If it’s something that is as likely or not to happen to anyone regardless of gender, then it is silly. But that’s not really what we’re talking about when we’re talking about sexual harassment or assault. We’re talking about something I am very unlikely to ever have to deal with, or if I do it’s in a trivial or infrequent manner (like when I was a substitute teacher and rather uncomfortable with a bunch of women talking about the hotness of the CSI detectives). So it becomes easy for me to disagree with the likelihood or severity of the imposition.
Men may generally have less creative empathy than women, but it’s certainly something I’ve seen with issues that they are rarely likely to be on the wrong side of. False paternity is a historic example. Perhaps the most contemporary example of a male-centric problem is due process for college students accused of sexual assaults come to mind. I want women thinking about their brothers and sons when it comes to giving men adequate room to defend themselves against a change. When we talk about kids getting kicked out of college, I think they are less likely to think of it as “no big deal” if they’re thinking of their sons. And sure enough, women who talk about this (from a pro-process perspective) do talk about their sons.
Notably, they almost all have sons.
I am going to keep an eye on things, and if these arguments do really offend women (outside opinion-on-everything Twitter and the like) then I will stop using it. I may lack the creative empathy to see why exactly its effectiveness is insufficient to undermine its offensiveness. It would be a shame if that were the case.