Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

He really is that stupid.

The willow is too close to the house.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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Different for girls

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Been thinking about this a lot, but my therapist advised against watching Charlie Rose clips:

Many of the male journalists who stand accused of sexual harassment were on the forefront of covering the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Matt Lauer interviewed Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump in an official “commander-in-chief forum” for NBC. He notoriously peppered and interrupted Mrs. Clinton with cold, aggressive, condescending questions hyper-focused on her emails, only to pitch softballs at Mr. Trump and treat him with gentle collegiality a half-hour later. Mark Halperin and Charlie Rose set much of the televised political discourse on the race, interviewing other pundits, opining themselves and obsessing over the electoral play-by-play. Mr. Rose, after the election, took a tone similar to Mr. Lauer’s with Mrs. Clinton — talking down to her, interrupting her, portraying her as untrustworthy. Mr. Halperin was a harsh critic of Mrs. Clinton, painting her as ruthless and corrupt, while going surprisingly easy on Mr. Trump. The reporter Glenn Thrush, currently on leave from The New York Times because of sexual harassment allegations, covered Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign when he was at Newsday and continued to write about her over the next eight years for Politico.

Reader Interactions

144Comments

  2. 2.

    Cacti

    Call me crazy, but it also seemed like a certain primary opponent treated Mrs. Clinton with cold, aggressive, condescension, only to pitch softballs at Mr. Trump and treat him with gentle collegiality.

    And a lot of erstwhile men “of the left” for that matter.

  3. 3.

    Trentrunner II - Pie Is Squared

    I will NEVER forget Lauer asking HRC at the CiC summit: “But don’t your emails DISQUALIFY you from being president?”

    Lauer’s thought bubble: You don’t have pussy I want, so you can’t possibly be of use to anyone for anything ever, right?

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    These are the four money paragraphs:

    A pervasive theme of all of these men’s coverage of Mrs. Clinton was that she was dishonest and unlikable. These recent harassment allegations suggest that perhaps the problem wasn’t that Mrs. Clinton was untruthful or inherently hard to connect with, but that these particular men hold deep biases against women who seek power instead of sticking to acquiescent sex-object status.

    A month ago, Rebecca Traister wrote in New York magazine that with the flood of sexual harassment charges, “we see that the men who have had the power to abuse women’s bodies and psyches throughout their careers are in many cases also the ones in charge of our political and cultural stories.” With the Lauer accusations, this observation has come into sharper focus on one particular picture: the media sexism that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss.

    That is why it’s so egregious that sexual harassers set the tone of much of the coverage of the woman who hoped to be the first female president.

    These “Crooked Hillary” narratives pushed by Mr. Lauer, Mr. Halperin, and a long list of other prominent journalists and pundits indelibly shaped the election, and were themselves gendered: Hillary Clinton as a cackling witch, Hillary Clinton a woman it was easy to distrust because she was also a woman seeking power, and what kind of woman does that? Mr. Trump emphasized this caricature as part of his more broadly sexist campaign, but he didn’t invent it. Nor was he the only famous man going on television to perpetuate it — while revealing a deep disdain for women when the cameras weren’t rolling.

  5. 5.

    lollipopguild

    Chickens coming home to roost-Karma. The people at NBC who covered for Matt Lauer all those years need to be fired, if they still work there.

  8. 8.

    Jerry

    There is some sort of irony that this story is coming from the New York Times. They pretty much set the standard on Hillary bashing, did they not?

  11. 11.

    B.B.A.

    @Doug!: I certainly try, but human nature is tribalistic.

    I overcompensate for my biases by being extra critical of people like me (male, white, Jewish, nerdy, etc.) Sometimes I, um, go a little overboard.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Lauer should be in prison. I hope his victims take him for every fucking dime he’s got

    @Adam L Silverman: if and when somebody tells their story about Tweety (beggars the imagination that he hasn’t at the very least made some very crude remarks to young staffers, the Erin Burnett video is already pretty gross), we’ll all remember how much he loved that joke about Hillary sounding like “everybody’s first wife”. I always wondered how the woman who is, I believe, his first and only wife felt about that

  14. 14.

    Yarrow

    The media didn’t want to talk about misogyny and sexism playing any kind of part in the 2016 election. It rarely came up during the campaign and after the election it was almost never cited as a reason Hillary could have lost.

  15. 15.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Doug!: I see myself as more of a misanthrope. I hate everyone regardless of gender.

    I’d join your club, but I would never join any club that would have me or anyone else as a member

  18. 18.

    hellslittlestangel

    Some people say The Orange Better One won because of racism. But the fact is his party’s tent is big enough for every kind of hatred.

  19. 19.

    Hunter Gathers

    NBC is sitting on a treasure trove of Apprentice outtakes. You’d think they have something to gain (cough, corporate tax cuts, cough) by not releasing them.

  20. 20.

    m.j.

    This is a man’s world
    This is a man’s world
    But it would be nothing, nothing
    Without a woman or a girl

    This song is about knowing your place. As vibrant and wonderful as the music is, it is saddening to know that there really exists a persecuted majority.

  21. 21.

    Amaranthine RBG

    @Yarrow:

    There were 35 stories in the NY Times alone just in November 2016 featuring the words “Clinton” and “Misogyny.”

  24. 24.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It will be what it will be. But I also think there is a difference between stuff by guys in their 70s who grew up in the 50s and early 60s and guys in their 40s and 50s who grew up in the 70s and 80s. Tweety spent far more of his life, and far more of the formative learning parts of it, in an America that thought all of this behavior that we all now agree is wrong was how things were and that was that. The Lauers and Halperins should know better. Which actually makes it worse.

  25. 25.

    Yarrow

    @Riccardo Cabeza: I keep waiting for the sexual harassment and assault allegations to take down a CEO or other top executive, not just a more visible person like a media anchor, entertainment personality, or politician. Someone up the food chain who, as you said, is signing the checks.

  26. 26.

    Lahke

    Slightly off topic but I had one of those epiphanies in the shower today (where all my best ideas happen) that we women need to adopt the NRA’s arguments going forward. When the Planned Parenthood office is surrounded by right-wingers with fetus posters talking about abortion deaths, we tell them that’s the price of liberty. That they’ll have to pry my birth control from our cold dead hands. N’RAL, freedom’s defenders. In fact, could someone with editing chops recut those angry NRA ads to be pro choice?

  30. 30.

    B.B.A.

    @Steve in the ATL: Programmer who went to law school, graduated into the Great Recession, and went back to programming. I consider myself to have dodged a bullet by not entering the legal profession.

  31. 31.

    TS

    @Jerry:

    There is some sort of irony that this story is coming from the New York Times. They pretty much set the standard on Hillary bashing, did they not?

    And they haven’t stopped. So many of their political stories manage to mention emails – as does this one.

  34. 34.

    jl

    Might be something to it. I remember seeing a clip of Chris Matthews more or less admitting on air that HRC gave him a castration complex (edit: or more accurately, triggered one that was already there). I don’t remember whether that was in 2008 or 2016. But weren’t news celebs like Andrea Mitchell just as bad?

    These guys were pretty bad on covering 2016 election, and their misogyny probably played a role in that. But others were just as bad for other reasons.

  36. 36.

    matt

    I’m hoping they made the calculated decision to do what they did because they were afraid that their harassment histories would be a problem if they won. That would be a nice twist.

  38. 38.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lahke: What will eventually stop this harassment is that in a stand you ground law state a woman with a carry permit will eventually stand her ground and then correctly state that the anti-abortion folks screaming at her between the car and the clinic and shoving graphic pictures in her face and invading her space made her feel scared and threatened. This is, unfortunately, the only way anything ever changes here in the US.

    ETA: And before anyone poo poos this, it is important to remember that the firearms sites and blogs regularly do posts or have comments about the reason women need to carry is to protect themselves from being attacked, assaulted, sexually assaulted, and raped. So the 2nd Amendment absolutist crowd is already providing the justification. Here’s an example:
    http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/07/mike-mcdaniel/real-war-women/

  39. 39.

    Hunter Gathers

    @Millard Filmore: I didn’t say anything about control. They are sitting in their archives. The amount of money they’d have to give the guy who owns them through litigation is pocket change to Comcast. They are legitimate news stories. They are sitting on them because they stand to gain a shit-ton of cash from corporate tax cuts and killing Net Neutrality.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    It seems to me that they treated Hillary the way they treated all women. Why would you have expected them to treat her any differently?

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    as several people have pointed out, it was a three day story when Nancy Pelosi said John Conyers was entitled to go through the House ethics process

    Daily Kos Elections‏Verified account
    Paul Ryan won’t call on Blake Farenthold to resign because there’s “not substantial reason to believe” the allegations—despite the $84,000 in taxpayer money used to settle with the complainant

  46. 46.

    Mary G

    @Jerry: It’s an op-ed fig leaf from a contributor; the staff reporters are still empowered to as much Hillary hate snark as they want.

  47. 47.

    raven

    @Adam L Silverman: Actually it hasn’t been that great. The airline work was with a firm he and his pal started and when that dried up things got tough. He did do ok against Zepplin.

  50. 50.

    James E. Powell

    @Yarrow:

    Hey, I’m convinced. I’ve always found Russian lawmakers, particularly when found in pairs, to be very convincing.

  51. 51.

    tobie

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: This a thousand times over. Farenthold walks away scot free. Rep Conyers by contrast is hounded by the press.

    The other person who of course called HRC dishonest, unlikeable and untrustworthy was Bernie. I find it interesting that his writings from the Vermont Freeman haven’t been the subject of discussion given the current interest in politics, sexism and rape culture. For those unfamiliar, his gross article from 1972 can be found reprinted in full in snopes.

  54. 54.

    gene108

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The problem is our base actually cares about sexual harassment and wants to reduce it. We echo the “outrage” the media drums up about this.

    Republicans don’t give a shit. They would like to repeal sexual harassment laws.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: It’s Florida. Until that opossum has 10 or more units of alcohol it’s just drinking, rather than an opossum that has a drinking problem.

  58. 58.

    hitchhiker

    Glenn Thrush used to run a podcast called Off Message — if you can stand it listen to him interviewing David Axelrod. Axelrod also has a show called The Axe Files, which he used during the summer and fall of 2016 to exhibit his visceral distaste for both Clintons. Thrush also did an interview with Miss Ann Coulter that was vomit-worthy at the time, but he cautions his audience to keep an open mind, because she’s actually “delightful.”

    And there’s always Jon Stewart to put up a photograph of Hillary Clinton while he notes that that look is where boners go to die.

    I remember cringing at the time, but who knew back then how this would all play out. Imagine a world were all the comedians, pundits, bankers, lobbyists, judges, and politicians are women. The rare dude with a shot at real power shows up, and one of the best (female, of course) comedians mocks him with the joke that that look is where we all cross our legs. And everybody laughs, because the point of that joke is that what we have here is a person who doesn’t know his place, doesn’t get it that whatever else he fucking does, his primary job is to make us — the powerful — want to screw him.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @raven: That may be, but I don’t like rubbing salt in someone else’s wounds unless it is actually called for.

  63. 63.

    Mary G

    @Yarrow: I saw that late, thanks. I went through a few pages of projects, but didn’t see voter registration specifically. I followed them on Twitter.

  65. 65.

    Yarrow

    @Mary G: You might find this article interesting. From it:

    In response, the activists came up with TOP. Goldman, who was its first executive director, told me that TOP was designed to focus on specific Texan needs and realities and thereby avoid the “national cookie-cutter approach.” The organization would work on three levels: doorstep canvassing, intense research on policy and strategy, and mobilizing voter turnout among people customarily neglected by the powers that be.

    Also:

    Digging deep into voter files and other databases, Zermeno confirmed that Texas contained a “wealth of non-voting people of color.” Most of them were registered, but seldom (if ever) turned up at the polls. The problem, she noted, was especially acute with Latinos, only 15 percent of whom were regular voters. In her detailed report, she calculated precisely how many extra voters needed to turn out to elect someone who would represent the interests of all Texans: a minimum of 1.1 million. Fortuitously, these reluctant voters were concentrated in just nine big urban counties, led by Harris.

  66. 66.

    noncarborundum

    @Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
    Not to downplay Lauer’s scumbaggery, but WaPo says that the lock wasn’t installed at Lauer’s request. It was a legacy lock from whatever GE exec had originally occupied that office, it wasn’t the only office in the building so equipped, and it only prevented people from entering, not leaving.

  67. 67.

    Mike J

    BTW Adam and Doug or anyone else with the keys: if you change nyms you’re modded until released which is a good policy. If somebody is changing nyms solely for the purpose of dodging the pie filter, they should be shitcanned. I like the permissive nature of this blog where only personal attacks get you banned, but IMO trying to circumvent tools users have to avoid you should fall into that category.

  69. 69.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ll argue with that, Adam. The way things will change is when men who wouldn’t do stuff like that call out the ones who do. When women can go to HR with a complaint and have it fairly investigated. When major newspapers or networks recognize the crappy interviewing techniques Lauer used. I recall that one and was horrified at what he did.

    Somewhere along the way, your scenario may play out. I’ll put it at 75% probability that the woman will be pilloried in the local media for sure, and someone will run for a state or national office on the idea of keeping those broads in line, although it may not be put that crudely. And the national media will present “both sides.”

    It’s really, really hard for men to see how pervasive and difficult to root out this is. I’ve started a post on it, but it’s much more difficult to write than I anticipated. After yesterday’s and today’s uproar, I thought I’d just put it away. But maybe I should go back to it.

  73. 73.

    mainmata

    @Yarrow: True that it was not pretty anywhere on the MSM but the awareness on social media, e.g. Twitter, Facebook and bloggers was regularly commented on during the campaign especially after the conventions if only because Trump was such a monster.

  77. 77.

    Yarrow

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Somewhere along the way, your scenario may play out. I’ll put it at 75% probability that the woman will be pilloried in the local media for sure, and someone will run for a state or national office on the idea of keeping those broads in line, although it may not be put that crudely. And the national media will present “both sides.”

    Completely agree.

    I’d be interested in your post, but understand that it’s hard to write.

  78. 78.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I am willing to bet Ross or Thrush made a pass at Hillary back in the ’90s and she smacked them down.

  80. 80.

    Yarrow

    @mainmata: Agreed, it was discussed on social media, blogs, etc. It didn’t filter up to the media, though. It was kind of fascinating to watch, in a horror show like way, just how they studiously avoided it.

  83. 83.

    TriassicSands

    @B.B.A.:

    If, by a “little overboard,” you mean way, way, way off the deep end, then yes, you went a little overboard.

    Please, try to understand that misogyny is not mere sexism, which is pervasive in our society. Misogyny is HATRED of women. Not some women. Women. To use misogyny as a synonym for sexism or misogynist for sexist is to rob the words of their power.

    That said, all men are not sexist either.

  84. 84.

    eemom

    @Mary G:

    WHAT, if anything, is the difference between a possum and an opossum? And if there is none, WHY is the o sometimes there and sometimes not? This has been bothering me for years.

  87. 87.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Cheryl Rofer: I think it’s worth pointing out the two tier system going on here; for most of us just saying “good morning” the wrong way is enough to get a visit from HR. And then we have clowns like Ross and Laure. It really is mind boggling to read “dropped his pants” when you have to fight screaming out the F-bomb when something falls on your foot at work. Something is seriously wrong with the harassment laws when this is going on.

  88. 88.

    mainmata

    @Cheryl Rofer: I work in the field of international development (specialty environment and climate change). Much of my career I worked as an “independent contractor” but for the last 25 years I have worked for large private sector firms that contract with State/USAID, World Bank or similar. They all have pretty rigidly enforced sexual harassment regs in part, frankly, because they have a lot of staff who are immigrants or staff located in the country where the project is implemented. There is no tolerance for harassment whether for “cultural” reasons or just males being jerks. Seriously. I’ve managed big projects in Muslim countries, Russia and eastern Europe. The Matt Lauer/Charlie Rose/Hollywood problem is corporate culture. In international development, a large proportion of US-based staff and many foreign project staff are women (for lots of reasons). So the issue of personnel conduct and “sexual harassment” (this is a newish term) has always been paramount for managers like me. It’s the corporate culture; that’s a really big part of this.

  89. 89.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Cheryl Rofer: I’d also love to see your post — and yes, I’m sure it’s probably a hard one to write.

    It’s really, really hard for men to see how pervasive and difficult to root out this is.

    It definitely is. Guys, if you think you know… trust me, you probably don’t.

  90. 90.

    guachi

    If women don’t speak up then men can’t know. We aren’t mind-reading wizards.

    Just like if men don’t speak up about being harassed or assaulted by women then it makes it look to women like women never harass people and it’s something only men do.

    I’ve personally witnessed only three episodes of what I would call assault and each was committed by a woman.

    And men can’t “call out” men who do this stuff because the guys who do this stuff don’t routinely hang out with and do this in an obvious way in front of guys who don’t find it acceptable.

    I don’t see it because I don’t hang around guys who do this kind of thing and never have.

  95. 95.

    Arclite

    I wonder if you could quantify this in some way: come up with a set of criteria to measure interview attitude and objectivity, and measure the difference.

  96. 96.

    Mary G

    @eemom: What @Steve in the ATL: said. Same animal, but in the South the ‘o’ is silent. My parents were from Texas and Kentucky, highly educated and eradicated their accents, but still said possum, so that is where I go when not thinking about it.

  97. 97.

    Roger Moore

    @mainmata:

    It’s the corporate culture; that’s a really big part of this.

    I think it’s tightly tied into the MOTU mindset. They really see themselves as masters of the universe, and that makes it their right to do as they please to the rest of us. It also makes it their responsibility to protect other MOTUs from little people trying to drag them down.

  98. 98.

    patrick II

    When Naomi Klein was interviewed by Charlie Rose for her book “Shock Doctrine”, he kept talking over the top of her answers when they were answers he didn’t like. At the time her thesis that capitalists were taking advantage of or even causing system shocks, or at least her persuasive popularization of that thesis, to take advantage of those situations was new and evidently Charlie didn’t want that challenge to the establishment asserted by a woman. He was condescending and rude. I didn’t really watch much of him after that.

  100. 100.

    Fair Economist

    @Mary G:

    My parents were from Texas and Kentucky, highly educated and eradicated their accents, but still said possum

    I’m originally from the South and though my accent is long gone I call them “possums” too.

  101. 101.

    Roger Moore

    @eemom:
    Opossum and possum are loan words from Algonquian languages. Like many loan words, they’re hard to render perfectly into English, hence some slight discrepancies in the way they wound up being written in different place. It’s also possible that they were taken up from related Native American languages in different places, so the word being borrowed isn’t consistent everywhere.

  102. 102.

    BellyCat

    @hitchhiker:

    …doesn’t get it that whatever else he fucking does, his primary job is to make us — the powerful — want to screw him.”

    Pretty sure men have thought this way forever — when it comes to dating! //

    Reminds me of an old Joan Collins(?) joke: Men and women are not equal. Men wonder if they’re going to get laid. Women know!

  103. 103.

    Mary G

    @Yarrow: Wow, they are exactly what I was talking about. Will donate. Bottom up organizations is what will do it, like Kay is always saying.

  104. 104.

    Ruckus

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    It needs to be said, even if this is a responsive audience. It needs to be said as loud as possible, everywhere and as often as it takes to elicit change.
    A tipping point has to be reached to change a culture. And that takes exposure and repetition.
    Women need to tell their stories and/or their friends stories and/or their family stories, to change the air from negative to positive, to bring attention to the width and depth of the issue. I think men need to speak out as well but that sounds like lecturing. As someone up thread said, hopefully a bit tongue in cheek, men are misogynists. Or at least biased. We were raised in the same culture and while a lot may/have recognized early or late that all humans deserve respect rather than domination, attack and second class status probably more never did. That’s how we got a chickenshit bully for president. And as has been pointed here and elsewhere, out a lot of women are not all that great towards their gender either. Other cultures are better at this, we can be as well.
    As Scott says, my $.02

  105. 105.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Damn it, who is that Mia something actress from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for whom I do not want to click on some bullshit Tabula ad to find out what she looks like now, no matter how unbelievable I would find it, and also I’m too pissed to detour to IMDB to look it up. Fuck you, Tabula, in case that wasn’t clear from the subtext.

    My brain has seized up on Mia Hamm and Mira Sorvino. Stupid, stupid brain.

  107. 107.

    patrick II

    @Mary G:

    That joke reminds me of a comedienne (sorry don’t remember her name) on the old Tonight show on why there were so few women’s magazines with naked men (at the time just playgirl) and so many men’s magazines. Her answer: If you want to see a naked guy — just ask him.

  108. 108.

    Yarrow

    @Mary G: Happy to have helped you find what you were looking for!

    I’m very interested to see what happens in Texas in 2018. I know there’s a long way to go but there is a ton of energy on the Dem side. Six or seven Dem candidates declared for TX-07, currently held by John Culberson (Republican). TX-32 in Dallas held by Pete Sessions is getting a lot challengers too. Hillary won his district. Various Congressional Republicans are retiring, like Ted Poe, so there are opportunities for pick up.

    Statewide candidates still have a challenge. The Governor is up for reelection and so far big names like either of the Castro brothers are staying out of it. Don’t quite get that. I think 2018 has the potential to be a blue wave. And of course Beto O’Rourke, who, as you know, is challenging Ted Cruz. He’s running an interesting campaign and in a blue wave year, who knows how it might work out.

  109. 109.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Mary G:

    In my (admittedly limited) experience, possums always act like they’re hung over and coming off a nasty bender.

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @eemom:

    Same animal. Usage is changing, and even an old-school martinet such as myself uses possum. The o doesn’t really stand a chance of hanging on as a silent letter, such as the p in ptarmigan, because it’s a vowel and that seems to throw everything off.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Yarrow:

    The mysterious takeover of @LAWeekly starting to seem even more sinister: The new EIC is not only an OC rightwinger who writes pro-Putin editorials, he’s affiliated with a Russian emigre who’s a close donor to pro-Putin OC Rep Dana Rohrabacher!

    I remember the good old days when right wingers were anti Commie. They were simpler times back then.

  114. 114.

    Aleta

    @Steeplejack (phone):
    With all due respect: Possums probably arrived on this continent after foloowing a prehistoric route from New Guinea or Australia, on rafts made of balsa logs. Opossums came to the New World much later, having been content to remain in their native Ireland until the potato bug famines drove them out. To distinguish their heritage from that of their slug eating distant cousins, they’ve made a point of retaining the O’ . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcfu1EZFgU4

  118. 118.

    fuckwit

    @Cheryl Rofer: It’s worth doing if you can find the time for it.

    I’m now convinced that 2016 was as much about misogyny and sexism as it was about racism and xenophobia. Took me a while to realize it, but now it’s very clear. This is one seriously fucked-up country, and this conversation needs to happen now.

  119. 119.

    ericblair

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Thank you. I will be content to remember her the way she looked 30-whatever years ago.

    That sort of clickbait fits with the subject of this thread. If you look at most of these “OMG SEE HER TODAY YOU’LL BE SHOCKED!” pictures, these actresses look, well, pretty much like someone 25 years older who takes care of herself would expect to look. But hey, she’s not a 20 year old piece of ass anymore! Shocking!

    @fuckwit:

    The current Russian oligarchy is virulenly anti-Communist.

    I think it’s more than that: they just think it’s a scam that served its purpose for ensuring Russian dominance and has outlived its usefulness except as a marketing campaign for the olds. There are some communists who actually believe in it, and are using it to focus some unrest against the kleptocrats, but they’re the minority. They celebrated the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution, the Orthodox Church condemned it as a tragedy and mass murder, and the Kremlin did its best to ignore the entire event.

  126. 126.

    Karla

    @hitchhiker: Yes. And Axelrod continued trying to draw people he interviewed into criticizing Hillary Clinton after the election. I lost a lot of respect I once had for him after starting to listen to his podcast, and even though I’m still subscribed I’ll often go with another choice for something to listen to after considering one of his episodes.

  129. 129.

    Zinsky

    I belive the election of Trump in 2016 (although he didn’t really “win” the election) was more of a white racial backlash against the first black president, than it was a misogynistic assault against all women. However, John Lennon wrote in 1972 that “woman is the n*gger of the world” (link here). Sadly, not that much has changed in 45 years.

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Adam L Silverman: She’d get the chair. There have been enough cases to make clear that when women actually do that kind of thing the law comes down on them hard. Especially if they’re black.

  131. 131.

    Matt McIrvin

    @eemom: For the New World marsupial, the standard word is opossum, and possum is a colloquial version. For the vaguely similar Australian marsupials, the standard word is possum, though they are named after the American ones.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    (I recall Bryan A. Garner’s style guide flatly insisting that “opossum” was the correct word — but that’s wrong, it depends on which animal you are referring to, the American or the Australian/New Guinean one.)

  135. 135.

    Nicole

    @B.B.A.: I find it interesting that your comment was almost immediately #notallmen’ed and the definition of one of your words was explained to you. Reminds me of the joke- where does a mansplainer get water? From a well, actually.

    When someone’s response to a comment about systemic inequality is “Butbutbutnotallofus’” that’s part of the problem. It dismissed and cheapens the experience of the minority so that the person can feel better about himself. Like when white people get more upset about being called racist than they do about the actual effects of systemic racism.

  136. 136.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Or with your HR department.

    @mainmata: Excellent.

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Guys, if you think you know… trust me, you probably don’t.

    @guachi and Enhanced Voting Techniques: You are part of the problem. It happens all the time. A guy looks a woman up and down, then smirks. You may not notice that, because you don’t do it, and hey guys are guys. There is an embedded sexism, just as Van Buren points out there is an embedded racism in our society. That look tells the woman “You are just a sex object and you’d better stay in your place.” Further, if that is going on, the woman knows that she will only get into trouble if she goes to HR with it or says to the group “Joe just did something unacceptable. I’m gonna tell you about it.” It’s not just guys grabbing boobs, and it has been perfectly acceptable forever in most workplaces. But it also gives the goahead to the guys who want to grab boobs and worse. Or how about the time a woman suggested something in a meeting, it was ignored, and then Joe suggested it and everyone thought it was great. You may not have noticed that either. Fish don’t see water.

  139. 139.

    Obdurodon

    Like @guachi, I used to think I didn’t hang around or work with guys who did this kind of thing. Then I found out I was wrong. Sexual harassers don’t necessarily present as the least bit misogynist around anyone but their victims. Some of them, especially in some corners of tech with which I’m familiar, even use a good-guy/ally schtick to gain the trust and access they need to do their worst. To paraphrase another comment: all men know harassers; some are just aware of it.

    With that in mind, I have a very slightly different take on what the reporters in this story were doing during the election. Maybe they weren’t trying to deny female power so much as female credibility. Yes, they’re related, but it’s a different focus. These creeps might have all realized, at some level, that having women be *heard* and *believed* represents a very direct and personal threat to them. Some of them have had to take orders from a woman, and apparently been quite OK with that. Not a problem. But having women *tell their stories* and be believed? That’s a big problem for them. Perhaps this explains the well known phenomenon of Hillary being perceived better when she’s in office (e.g. secretary of State) than when she’s running for office. Running for office is about telling a story, and about evaluating the candidate’s story against others’ (both opponents and detractors). It’s OK for her to *do stuff* but not to talk about it. Her worth specifically as a communicator has to be challenged. Or perhaps the even more specific aspect of her possibly not keeping secrets secret enough is what unnerved these commentators. They really really really prefer for women to keep secrets, don’t they?

  141. 141.

    lowtechcyclist

    @guachi:

    Just like if men don’t speak up about being harassed or assaulted by women then it makes it look to women like women never harass people and it’s something only men do.

    I’ve personally witnessed only three episodes of what I would call assault and each was committed by a woman.

    It isn’t the same. We guys don’t swim in a sea of stuff like this. If something like this happens to one of us, it’s an isolated incident in our lives, rather than part of a larger pattern of the way it is. Such an incident wouldn’t be physically threatening at the time: I’m an average-sized guy and not particularly muscular other than my legs, but I’m still bigger and stronger than 99.5% of the women I’m likely to come into contact with. And the chances that she’d be able to ruin my career are minimal, given that she’s going to be tapping into a much smaller network of people who would help her do so. I’d be more irritated than traumatized by such an encounter. I hate to use the phrase ‘male privilege’ but it’s hard to see the difference as anything but a rather major example of that.

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Guys, if you think you know… trust me, you probably don’t.

    Lord knows my eyes have been opened a good bit these past few months, but there’s a definite tip-of-the-iceberg sense to it.

    I hope Cheryl writes that post.

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