Sunday, September 05, 2021

Talking post

Tired, so this will be a talking post.  Working through e-mails while I do it.  Janet e-mailed asking what I was listening to?  Right now, I'm listening to Dionne Warwick's SOULFUL album.  That's because Mike and Elaine's daughter is here (as are they) and she (a) loves vinyl and (b) has loved Dionne forever -- since at least 2019 but it actually predates that post by Elaine. She'd picked out some vinyl to listen to Thursday -- about ten albums -- and was all done with those so she asked me to go with her to get some more about two hours ago and we went through the vinyl at length.  (And, for rhe record, left up to me, she's fine going into that room and picking whatever she wants out but I respect Mike and Elaine's wish that she not touch it without an adult present.  That might be because that's how it is -- a rule -- that Mike's dad has, I don't know.)  So right now, at this moment, we are listening to Dionne's SOULFUL.  At some point, we'll be listening to HERE WHERE THERE IS LOVE -- also an album of Dionne Warwick's.  The only thing we grabbed that wasn't Dionne was Lily Tomlin's THIS IS  A RECORDING.  She picked that album -- as she does most -- because of the cover (Lily dressed up as Ernestine).


An e-mail to the public account is from someone aghast at Marcia's "Chelsea and Glenn" and they want me to be aghast as well.  I am in charge of this site.  That's all.  I'm not even in charge of THIRD -- at THIRD, I'm one of six people -- Ava, Ty, Jess, Dona and Jim being the other five responsible for that site.  So let's start there.  Second, I'm not in the habit of slamming other community sites.  In fact, I've long noted I won't.  Third, Marcia's the last person I'd ever slam.  In the early days -- probably the first two years of her site -- she would call me about a post she had written and was about to post.  I always told her if she was true to herself in that post, post it.  It wouldn't be a problem for me and I would support her on it.  So you really were off base e-mailing me.

I will comment on that post, however.  I don't usually, I wouldn't usually.  But I happen to agree 100% with Marcia.  I would've worded it differently -- and Ava and I have -- but her point is one we've (Ava and I) made before.  We usually talk about the newly outed Chastity Bono taking it upon herself to speak for Gay America.  See our "TV: Another idiot for the idiot box" and "TV: Gay characters: Two networks stand still whil..." among other pieces.  For those too young to remember,  Chastity was as irritating as Star Jones only Chastity's shtick was "as a Lesbian" and not "as a lawyer."  


As a lesbian, Chastity wanted the world to know that Tom Cruise wasn't gay because he'd dated her mother (Cher).  I don't like Tom and I'm on the record about htat so let's substitute him with David Geffen whom Cher also dated.  David and Cher dated and lived together.  David was gay then and is gay now.  The public talk about Tom has been that he's hiding the fact that he sleeps with men.  I have a friend who's a name actor (maybe bigger than Tom -- certainly known for a decade longer) and he's bi.   So Tom could be that.  (I honestly have no insight into Tom's personal life.  I truly loathe him.  I do consider Paula Wagner a friend.  But even with Nicole Kidman, when she was married to Tom, I kept my distance despite the fact that when we would bump into each other we would end up with this or that shared connection.  Once she left Tom and I stopped putting up barriers, Nicole turned out to be a wonderful friend.)  Chastity "as a lesbian" chose to limit the public's understanding of sexuality with her remarks regarding Tom Cruise.


As a lesbian, Chastity wanted the world to know that Mel Gibosn wasn't homophobic.  Why, he was nice to her.  Like most people, Mel was nice to her because of her mother.  Cher's well liked. I'm not thrilled with the way Mel's been ostracized by so many. But he has brought it on himself and the ways in which he did that do include his homophobia.  He was highly homophobic.  Was?  I'm told he's gotten more laid back on all issues and that is true of his homophobia.  I hope that's true.  But he was homophobic and he was at the time Chastity was denying it and doing so "as a lesbian."


As a lesbian, Chastity took it upon herself to tell the world that ELLEN and Ellen DeGeneres were "too gay" for TV.  As Anne Heche rightly noted, that declaration is one of the reasons that ELLEN got cancelled.  ABC was looking for any reason to cancel ELLEN.  A lesbian lead character as the final episode of the program?  They could get behind that and promote it.  But ABC-DISNEY was not comfortable with a lesbian lead every week.  ELLEN's ratings were as high as many other ABC sitocms that got renewed (higher than SPIN CITY which was renewed).  But the show made ABC uncomfortable -- hence the warnings ahead of every episode (and Ava and I have to do something about ABC-DISNEY's use of that warning on a current program -- even if it's a two paragraph piece) and they were looking for a way to axe it and yet avoid looking as homophobic as they truly were.  Along comes big mouthed Chastity.  


She likes to lie about that.  He, now.  But when she was still a lesbian, Chastity liked to lie about that and pretend like she was on the spot with Jay Leno and just uttered the words.  That's a damn lie.  She used the same phrase with THE HOLLYWOORD REPORTER -- "too gay" -- and other periodicals over a week before going on Jay Leno.  She stabbed people in the back with that remark.  And I've always thought Anne was immensely talented (and she is) and I've known her to do many brave things but I've never been prouder of her then when Chastity tried to pretend like that moment didn't happen and Anne ripped her apart for it.


On Anne, the reality is that Ellen wouldn't be Ellen without Anne.  Any other woman she'd been involved with at that time -- like all the women before had -- would've told her to stay in the closet and would've undermined Ellen's instinct to be her own true self.  And Anne by her side when she came out was important for many reasons not the least of which was that Anne was a hot and rising actress.  Ellen, in other words, is George on SEINFELD and Anne was the model that he dated who made other women look at George twice as a result.


I've known Ellen for years and I do not condone the way Ellen has treated Anne since they broke up.  If you've read Ava and my pieces at THIRD, that's not a surprise.  But to be very clear, Ellen owes Anne a lot and this toxic masculinity that Ellen's put out regarding Anne is disgusting.  It's bordering on Melissa Etheridge's dead-beat dad energy.  

As a lesbian, Chastity Bono did great harm.  She provided a lot of cover to protect homophobes and a lot of cover to allow attacks on LGBTQs.  


Today, this person is Chaz Bono.  Today, Chaz is a man.  I've yet to hear Chaz apologize for all the harm Chaz previously did to lesbians in particular or to note the reality that Chaz was never the person to be speaking up.  Events made Chaz a celebrity, nothing Chaz himself did ever made him worthy of attention.  But because he had celebrity, he elected to think he had wisdom and that he knew what it was like to be a lesbian.  Clearly, he did not know and clearly he should have shut his damn mouth.


Which is how we get to Chelsea Manning.

I think I made it clear here years ago that I had no use for Chelsea Manning.  If she was under attack from the government, I would note that and would note that it was wrong.  If she was under attack for her stupid mouth and the idiotic things that come out of it, she was on her own.


Chelsea is very lucky that the media didn't have access to her when she became famous because she's more problematic than that Jenner woman.  (See Ruth's "Caitlyn" which is a great review of a documentary about Jenner.)  Had Chelsea been giving press during her court martial, she would have found her support plummeted -- even if she'd done it as a man -- because she's no Joan of Arc and the kindest remarks on her politics would be that 'she's not easy to classify.'  But I was done with her, washed my hands of her, when she attacked Ann Wright who made the 'mistake' of praising Chelsea's actions ''for peace.'' This led to a long and dull lecture from Chelsea that she didn't do what she did -- expose crimes in Iraq -- for peace purposes. 


Oh, Chelsea, you don't know what you did, you don't know what you're doing.  Here's a hint though, you've spent the last years trying to look pretty and you keep failing.  It's time to go to a counter and ask an expert for a make over.  I'm tired of seeing your s**t poor attempts at make up.  You look like a clown, get professional help -- at least when it comes to make up.


Then maybe Chelsea can accept the fact that she doesn't know a damn thing.  She doesn't know who she is.  She stumbles and fumbles around like an idiot.  And that's fine just don't try to pretend you've got your s**t together and tell the rest of us what to do.  Because you don't have it together and you're a public embarrassment.  You turn 34 this year, not 17.  Get your s**t together.


She's an idiot who thought she could run for office.  Who was going to vote for her?  Peace activists might have . . . at one time.  They might have voted for her before 2013 when she attacked Ann Wright and insisted she did not expose War Crimes to bring about peace.


So who was left to vote for her?  The pro-war crowd?  The right-wing and the center? Don't see how they could because the reality is that Chelsea broke the law with her actions.  Now if you're for peace -- and I am -- you say, "She did the right thing."  But, remember, she spat on us when she attacked Ann Wright.  So among peace voters, she only had a few who would support her -- the masochists.  And in the center and on the right?  Those people saw her as a criminal who broke the law.


My position on Chelsea was made clear in the March 19, 2014 snapshot:


She's been sentenced.  After being found guilty, she renounced her actions.  If you want mercy from a military court you seek it minutes before they impose a sentence (but, hey, she had an idiot for an attorney).

I'm unclear on what we're supposed to be doing for Chelsea now.  If she admits that she was wrong to do what she did, I've got others to focus on.  So do most people.

Ann Wright tried to keep Chelsea in the news and her thank you for that -- the entire 'thank you' to the peace movement -- was a bitchy little letter from Chelsea insisting she did not want to be called anti-war and she just might be pro-war.

Look, I can understand her difficulty in admitting she was a woman trapped in a man's body.

But being anti-war doesn't carry a lot of social stigmas.  Even the Pope (every one of them) tries to cultivate the image of being a person of peace.

So Chelsea's 'struggle' with where she stands on war, I don't have the damn time and I'm not in the mood for her drama.  Go live your soap opera in something other than press releases.

Now if there's news around Chelsea, we'll note it.  But in terms of people walking away from her?  I believe her rudeness and her lack of gratitude to people who spent years defending her goes a long, long way towards explaining why Ms. Chelsea Manning lacks the support which Private Bradley Manning had.

I don't even understand how we now advocate on Chelsea behalf?  Does a letter to Barack go something like this now:

Dear President Barack Obama,

 Chelsea Manning was a person who served in Iraq and leaked cables to WikiLeaks.  Last year, she was convicted.  Right before being sentenced, she told the court she was wrong to have released the documents to WikiLeaks.

 So, Mr. President, since she's admitted she was wrong -- since she's agreeing she should have been convicted -- isn't that enough?  Can't you pardon since she admits she's guilty.  I think she even said she was sorry, Mr. President, so isn't that enough?

 Best to Michelle and hope she has a blast in China.

 Your number one fan, 
xxxxxxxxx


Chelsea's a damn idiot who disrespected the people who defended her.  Having declared her own actions to be wrong, Manning isn't someone most of us have time to waste on.


She never understands a damn thing.  Her attacks on Glenn Greenwald were embarrassing . . . for her.  She played coy.  What a cute little coquette!  Maybe if she fixed the damn eyebrows. (What is about a number of women who don't realize -- and put Miranda Lambert on this list too -- that they look like idiots because of their eye brows. It's one of the easiest things to fix and yet these uglies seem to think they look just fine with these ugly eyebrows.)  But even then, she would have been ugly on the inside.  She's got a lot of self-loathing to this day which goes to why she can't figure out who she is all this time later.


That's not said as a Glenn Greenwald freak.  Glenn's not above criticism, no one is.  But she didn't offer criticism of Glenn.  She tried to do a whisper campaign and one of insinuation because if she'd gotten to the actual truth she wouldn't have gotten the attention that she did.  The world doesn't give two s**ts what Chelsea thinks of FOX NEWS or Tucker Carlson.  So she didn't Tweet about that.  She Tweeted in such a manner that, honestly, you could've thought Glenn had attacked her physically, maybe forced himself on her.


No, I don't believe Glenn would have done that but that is what her little Twitter attacks were doing -- suggesting something much more sinister than just the reality that Chelsea had her panties in a twist because Glenn was going on Tucker's show.


Glenn going on Tucker's show?  We've highlighted his appearances on it here.  It often troubles me that I'm posting those here.  I'm not a fan of Tucker's (I don't hate him, but I'm not a fan). But they are important appearances where real issues get addressed.  And the audience that is the intended audience for Tucker's show is an audience that is often not reached outside of programs like the ones Tucker does.


Two women let a comedian mock them and all women.  One of the woman I used to be friends with.  The other I still am friends with. Their appearance offended me and still offends me.  They got nothing out of it.  It's not as though some important topic was addressed -- the whole messy was immature.  It was nothing but "Let's play dumb idiots and get publicity as a result!"  That offends me.  Glenn going on Tucker doesn't offend me.  We've also posted Glenn on Laura Ingram.  I loathe Laura's politics but wasn't bothered reposting that clip.  Reposting Tucker probably also falls under the context of, "How many men am I going to repost!"  There aren't a lot of women -- left or right -- doing serious issues.  We try to regularly repost videos with: Katie Halper, Margaret Kimberley, Rania Khalek, Karen Hunter, Sabby Sabs, Abby Martin, Krystal Ball, Marianne Williams, Fiorella Isabella, Mayim Bialik, Bonnie Erbe, Naomi Wolf and Briahna Joy Gray.  Even doing that regularly as well as FEMINISM IN INDIA, we are still running short compared to the number of men we repost. We repost Sharilyn Attkisson's show most times. We're not doing that right now because I don't want her take on Afghanistan, to be honest.  We'll probably start reposting it shortly.  By the same token, when some were trying to turn support for Nina Turner into a litmus test, we stepped away from that nonsense and did not post some videos that were nothing but infomercials for Nina and we also didn't post Karen Hunter because Karen's was advocating for Nina's opponent.  I didn't want to get in the middle of that.  Nina showed real courage when she was part of the Bernie Sanders' campaign.  As a candidate?  She was more disappointing than Wendy Davis and that is really saying something.

By the way, serious issues?  That's not who to vote for.  Who to vote for really has little place at this site because if you're reading this site, you should know who you want to vote for.  You're mature enough to seek out information.  You don't need me or anyone else telling you who to vote for.  If we did the crap of 'Democrats are the best!' videos, we'd have a lot more women to highlight.


But, reality, Democrats aren't the best.  Whatever you think of the Texas law, we're at this point because our 'friends' in the US Congress who always promise to fight for reproductive rights never actually get around to fighting for it.  If they made sure the right was secured, after all, they couldn't use it to try to turn out a vote, could they?  


A lot of women should be doing videos about issues but sadly are not.  I wish Deepa Fernandes, for example, or Dalia Hashad were doing YOUTUBE videos.  They were important voices with unique perspectives.  Larry Bensky tried to walk all over Deepa on air, for example, and that's always a sign that whomever Larry's trying to walk all over is (a) talented and (b) offering an important take.  


Al asks what I'm snacking on?  Pecans. Mike's a house guest of late and he went through a huge pecan phase recently that he just came out of a day ago.  So there are a lot of pecans in the kitchen.  Al's also referring to a feature that Ava and I used to do for POLLY'S BREW.  That feature is still on hold, we're going to continue to focus on privacy rights issues in the UK for the foreseeable future in our columns for POLLY'S BREW.


A public account e-mail awhile back -- we're going months ago -- complained about the use of all caps.  I meant to address that wo talking posts ago.  Typing "POLLY'S BREW" just reminded me.  Italics, all caps, how do we note works?  We could also use parenthesis and quotes.  The snapshot gets reposted and there were issues with italics and bolding from those reposting it.  Then we did a feature at THIRD, "Rock Chick: Book discussion" about Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's RROCK CHICK: A GIRL AND HER MUSIC which followed a series of books on sixties essays and Kat, after that roundtable, offered that it would be easier for her if we put works of art and literature and magazines in all caps -- as many rock outlets did in the sixties -- instead of italics.  Many of us were on board with that and have done so since.  Not everyone does that.  Rebecca uses British style -- quote marks and parenthesis -- and always has.  Trina and Ann don't do the all caps.  I don't think Marcia does either.  Those who are doing it are doing it as a result of an acceptable style that was very popular among left outlets in a more radical time.  


An e-mail to the public account is about an issue we've addressed in community newsletters.  The person e-mailing doesn't like that I have changed the links on the side of this site.  Now you have to click a button to see them all.  I don't like that either.  I didn't make that change.  Blogspot did and there's no way for me to fix it.  Just like at Kat's site, you can no longer put her reviews in order, her new ones.  Anything you add to her site, it will automatically go to the bottom of her links.  And I say "you can no longer" because I'm usually the one -- as Kat notes at her site -- who goes in and adds her reviews to her list of reviews -- and I'm the one who first started that for her so that we could all easily track her reviews when we wanted to refer to them or quote from them.  Take it up with Les, he's the one who's frigid (Sarah Jessica Parker's best performance ever, STRANGERS WITH CANDY).


A person e-mailing to the public account wants me to know that the late Glen Ford "would've been helped more if you'd bothered to make the argument that he should be on programs before he died.  Oh, I know, you got lucky and you made that point two weeks before he died but if you really cared you would have made it over a year ago."


How about seven years ago?  This:


Anne Marie Slaughter got it wrong.  I'm not surprised.

I've mocked her repeatedly here.  And, unlike Michael Ratner, that includes when Barack was attacking Libya.  To be clear, Michael called that action illegal as it was.  But there was no time to take on the cheerleaders for those actions.  I can remember being on a campus with an earbud in one ear and a cellphone in another and saying to a friend, "F**k, is there one NPR program that's not going to trout out Anne this week?"  Because she was on every damn one.

And that's the problem.

It's not, "Shut up, Anne!"

She's an American citizen living in what's supposed to still be a democracy.  She can speak as much as she wants and should.  She can write as much as she wants and should.

Where there's a problem is when the media doesn't play fair.  They shut out voices all the time.  The ridiculous and non-left Bill Maher is applauded by stupid idiots on the left who never seem to notice that Glen Ford, for example, isn't shy about opinions.  Why isn't Glen Ford, a genuine voice of the left, ever invited on Maher's programs?


That's from the June 27, 2014 snapshot.  And I could offer many, many more examples.  Glen Ford was an important voice.  His death was a great loss.  We've been applauding Glenn for years.  His life's work is something to marvel over.  I hope someone's gathering essays to be published as GLEN FORD READER.  If they do, I will gladly promote it here.  


Oh, public e-mail is common_ills@yahoo.com.  If I say someone's name and bold it regarding e-mails above, they are a community member (which means they e-mail the private e-mail).  This entry has been updated and posted throughout.  I didn't put a note at the top when I started posting it the way I usually do -- just a sign of how sick I am being online.  Ramon had asked about my A1C and if it was Friday?  Yes, and my nerves over it were why the snapshot was so late.  I dictated it and then almost scrapped it.  I said, "Let me read over it before it's posted."  The A1C was below seven and the best it's ever been, Ramon.  Thank you for asking.

 

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