Friday Reads: Frankly, I can think of worse things to call Ivanka Trump

Posted: June 1, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , , | 33 Comments

Roman Empress Aggripina Great-Granddaughter Of Emperor Augustus, Great-Niece; Adoptive Granddaughter Of Emperor Tiberius, Sister Of Emperor Caligula, Niece & Fourth Wife Of Emperor Claudius, Mother Of Emperor Nero!

Happy “yet another Tempest in a Teapot while America Burns” Day!

First, I’d like to remind y’all that vaginas are deep and warm and Ivanka Trump is neither so I suggest we think of a better set of words to describe KKKremlin Caligula’s daughter than “feckless cunt”.  We could adopt Demoness reincarnation of Diva August or good ol’ Aunt Livia to keep it all in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Historically, Livia was the mother of Tiberius and if you know anything about Roman history of the time, you’ll know he was as perverted and evil as the rest of them. Remember, Rome was still supposed to be a Republic at the time but that dreadful set of ghouls–including the fiddling Nero–ruined nearly everything within a few generations.  We could give her a nick name based on Agrippina but that would be a weirder sexual dynamic than I’m prepared to put through my mind.  However, I am praying for a few good men with lean and hungry looks to end our Trumpvian nightmare.

So, let me do a shout out for Samantha Bee whose ‘feckless cunt’ description was probably kinder than Ivanka deserved but who timed the use of the c word badly. I’ve never particularly liked the word when used by American men because it completely drips of toxic masculinity, the patriarchy and misogyny.  Canadians–of which Bee is one–and the English use the word differently and profusely.  But, as Childish Gambino raps, “This is America”.   Still, there’s is no way it’s misogynistic in this context or equivalent to the virulent, ongoing racism displayed by Roseanne Barr.

Rebecca Traister explains it best at The Cut.

As a left-leaning feminist, I agree with Sarah Huckabee Sanders that “silence” on the matter of Bee’s comedic critique — and its connection to ABC’s recent cancellation of Roseanne is inexcusable. So even though I am on the last day of my leave from New York/the Cut and am supposed to be finishing the book I’ve been writing — which is not coincidentally about women’s rage — it is important to be clear about the dynamics at play in these situations, which are absolutely not remotely in any way equivalent to each other.

Language’s ability to inflict harm depends on the power of who’s wielding it and against whom it is being wielded. I’m not talking simply about the power of the individuals in question. For example, it’s not about the damage done by Samantha Bee to Ivanka Trump or Roseanne Barr to Valerie Jarrett, all of whom are individuals with various kinds of power. It’s not about them. Rather, it’s about considering the relative degrees of power of the entities and ideas that those individuals are representing.

It is true that in her critique of Ivanka Trump, Bee used an expletive that is explicitly misogynistic; it is wholly reasonable to object to the word cunt for feminist reasons. It is also reasonable and worthwhile to consider why a term for female anatomy has become such a potent pejorative; why does a word that means vagina also mean “very bad person,”? That’s a valid question, but it’s crucial to consider it in this context. Bee was not reinforcing or replicating the crude harm that “cunt” has been used to inflict historically: the patriarchal diminishment and vilification of women. In fact, Bee was using it to criticize a woman precisely because that woman is acting on behalf of that patriarchy, one that systematically diminishes women, destroys families, and hurts children.

This context makes the situation fundamentally different from Roseanne Barr comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape, as she did earlier this week. That comparison was an explicitly racist locution with explicitly racist roots, but unlike Bee’s deployment of “cunt” against a misogynistic and racist administration, Barr’s racism has been deployed in support of that racist and misogynistic administration. That administration, as well as the party that has helped to build and shield it, came to power in part on explicitly racist and misogynistic rhetoric that both vilified and promised revenge against the previous, historic administration of Barack Obama, of which Jarrett was a member. That context matters, as does the fact that the Trump administration is using the power it so gained to inflict real-world racist and misogynistic harm on human beings.

Russian proclaimed Emperor KKKremlin Caligula

Yes.  This!

While all the little Trumpsterfires around the country and in the West Wing call for Samantha Bee’s head, Chealsea Clinton reminds us that they’ve all called her mother worse!  Specifically, that subhuman asswipe known as Ted Nugent–bless his little heart– called Hillary Clinton a ‘toxic cunt” and got invited to the White House for tea and cake!

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Clinton, on Thursday resurfaced a photo of President Trump meeting with Ted Nugent, who once called her mother a “toxic c—,” after the White House condemned Samantha Bee for using the slur about Ivanka Trump.

Clinton shared a tweet by Shareblue writer Oliver Willis, who put a transcript of Nugent’s use of the crude term next to an image of the musician with Trump. Willis captioned the photos “something something something samantha bee fake outrage something.”

“I keep hoping for consistency too, Oliver. Though I’m not holding my breath!” Clinton tweeted.

Nugent had used the term to describe then-first lady Hillary Clinton during a 1994 interview with music magazine “Westword.”

“You probably can’t use the term ‘toxic c—’ in your magazine, but that’s what she is,” Nugent said of Hillary Clinton. “Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country. This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.”

Bee apologized Thursday after she called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—” during her show Wednesday night.

The White House had sharply condemned Bee’s comments, saying TBS’s “Full Frontal” is “not fit for broadcast.”

Livia Drusilla (58 BCE – 29 CE) the third wife of emperor Augustus of Rome, mother of emperor Tiberius, and grandmother of emperor Claudius.

No one ever asks for an apology for all that Trump called Hillary Clinton.  She still hasn’t gotten any from the press either for endlessly repeating it.

Frankly, Sister Huckabuck and White House Mommy don’t get to complain about any of this given they both suck patriarchal dick and send women to the ash-heap of male property with glee. Ivanka was supposedly different but she evidently is okay with her 40 shekel payment in terms of Chinese Trademarks on her lousy products along with the continued use of child labor.

Nice ladies do not employ companies that enslave children.  Am I right?

First daughter Ivanka Trump has billed herself as an advocate in the White House for women’s rights. But the first daughter, who owns her namesake brand but no longer closely manages it, did not speak out when three men with New York nonprofit China Labor Watch were arrested while investigating low wages, forced overtime, and physical and verbal abuse at Chinese factories producing shoes for her company.

The men were accused of using secret recording devices illegally and jailed, leaving the wife of one of them, Deng Guilian, with no choice but to work an overnight shift at a karaoke parlor that gave her only three days off a month to see her two young children, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

“They seem accustomed to not having their mom,” Deng said of her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.

Trump’s company did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.

“As a public figure, she has the ability and resources to not only work on labor conditions at her own brand’s factories, but also to help improve labor conditions of the global supply chain as a whole,” China Labor Watch founder Li Qiang said of Trump. “However, she did not use her influence to do these things.”

Rome’s 3rd Emperor Caligula

Oh, and about those Chinese patents and a distinct lack of ethics …

“We have recently seen a surge in trademark filings by unrelated third parties trying to capitalize on the name and it is our responsibility to diligently protect our trademark.” That’s somewhat mitigating, in that it does not suggest that Ms. Trump is engaged in aggressive new trading on her name, but she’s still trading on it.

The fact that China granted some of these valuable intellectual property rights just a few days before the president agreed to relax U.S. sanctions on Chinese telecom giant ZTE only fortifies the appearance that foreign governments seek to influence the U.S. government by bestowing business favors on the president’s daughter. This is an inference of impropriety that most ethical people, whether in business or in government, would go to the greatest possible lengths to dispel, but — so far, at least — not Ms. Trump.

And, she’s no friend of other women as Elizabeth Spiers writes for The Chicago Tribune: “Ivanka Trump wants power with no accountability'”

“Ivanka Trump is the president’s visible right-hand woman, and she stands by her man no matter what.”

As an adviser, Ivanka Trump has traveled the globe (on the taxpayers’ dime, no less) claiming to be an advocate for women’s rights and speaking on behalf of the country. Whether the president — who aside from being her father is also her boss — has sexually assaulted 19 women is obviously relevant for an administration that just this month dismissed senior aide Rob Porter over reports that he allegedly abused his ex-wives. It’s an obvious question for any senior White House adviser. But Ivanka Trump wants to put it off limits because the president is her dad. She acts like a sort of ersatz first lady, while Trump’s actual wife, Melania Trump, occupies more of a seen-and-not-heard role usually relegated to children. Ivanka Trump is the president’s visible right-hand woman, and she stands by her man no matter what.

Why else does she work at the White House despite her total and absolute lack of political and policy experience? Or despite her refusal to divest herself fully of her businesses and relationships to the Trump Organization, or the inability of either Ivanka Trump or her husband to get a full security clearance (possibly because of her business relationships and the conflicts of interest and potential for corruption they present)? Because she and Kushner are related to the president. And because they wanted powerful jobs they could simply take even though they weren’t qualified for them.

The desire to have it both ways extends beyond convenient vacillation between her role as a daughter and adviser to the administration. Ivanka Trump also implausibly attaches herself to disparate and often contradictory political agendas. She came to the White House a socially liberal Democrat who espoused better policies for working women and environmentally friendly approaches to climate change, and she supposedly found the administration’s immigration ban abhorrent. But her convictions on these issues haven’t been so strong that they have stopped her from continuing to publicly support and enable a White House with an appalling record on what she’s supposed to believe.

But she has no problem with the dissonance because she has never known how to be authentic in the first place. She’s been in the spotlight since she was a child; she was a runway model as a teenager. She evaluates everything she does in terms of optics. If she has or had any strongly held beliefs or values, they’re secondary to her utilitarianism.

Livia Drusilla

The bottom line–writes Peggy Drexler of CNN–is Samantha Bee is right. And, I might add, Roseanne Barr is a repeat racist and bigot PERIOD.

But Bee is not Barr — she is not spewing random and racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-theory views over years on Twitter, as Barr has, and often in the service of supporting the President’s policies. Nor, let’s be honest, are we living in a time of particularly polite discourse.

It’s important, too, to remember that Bee is a comedian known for delivering a standup monologue which, like that of other comedians, often uses outrageous, boundary-pushing and, to some, offensive comedy to make strong points about politics. In Bee’s case, though, and unlike in Barr’s, these points are usually made on behalf of those harmed by this President’s policies.
Which is why there’s a difference between Bee and Barr. Directing a single insult, even a vulgar one, at one person, for reasons of defending the disenfranchised, as Bee did, is one thing; promoting racist beliefs, specifically calling a black person “an ape” in response to, well, nothing, is quite another.

All of which is why it’s a shame that Bee’s message has been largely overshadowed by debate over this single word, whether she should have used it, how and if she should be reprimanded and whether her show should be canceled.

Although she apologized Wednesday — sincerely, it seems — for using the word about the President’s daughter, in truth, perhaps the biggest problem with her calling first daughter Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” Wednesday night on her TBS show “Full Frontal” is that the comedian undercut her own message.

The point Bee was attempting to make was that Ivanka Trump, a close presidential adviser, should be held accountable for her failure to influence her father to end his cruel immigration policies, which include separating immigrant parents from children.
As such, the overall point was valid: Sitting idly by when you’re in a position to help is as bad as carrying out the actions yourself.
What sent Bee over the edge though, it seems, was Ivanka’s tone-deaf tweet Sunday in which the first daughter pictured herself cuddling with her 2-year-old son Theodore, even as reports swirled that the government had lost track of some 1,500 immigrant children it had placed with sponsors in recent years.

Emperor Claudius

So, yeah, she is a feckless cunt and worse. She’s sat by and done or said nothing.  We now these things because of her father and she’s a senior policy advisor.

1. Resurrected and radically expanded the global gag rule

2. Banned U.S. funding for the UN reproductive health and rights agency

3. Slashed funding for international family planning programs

4. Installed an anti-abortion extremist to represent the U.S.

5. Tried to hire a staunch opponent of women’s health and rights

6. Puts people’s lives at risk with broad refusal policy

7. Broke a Senate deadlock to install Sam Brownback as Ambassador for International Religious Freedom

8. Slammed the door on immigrants fleeing violence

9. Endangered underserved women by withdrawing from Paris Climate Agreement

10. Censoring the State Department’s annual human rights report

In his first 100 days alone, women and children were hurt by her inaction as a women’s policy advisor.  There’s a list of 100 things there. They are all under these broad headlines.

  • Eroding family economic security

  • Putting children at risk

  • Attacking reproductive rights

  • Undermining women’s legal rights

  • Weakening protections against gender-based violence

  • Undermining women’s leadership

  • Tearing families apart

  • Endangering healthy communities

  • Slashing health benefits

Seriously, go read all the things Ivanka enabled her father to do that made the lives of women and children worse all around the world. So, scrape the freaking bottom of the barrel for all the possible invectives we could hurl at Ivanka and use them resplendently.  The entire realm is under siege by this shit show.

So, I, Claudius remains one of my favorite Brit series.  It led me to do a lot of studying about that time period and little did I know that I would live this 1976 TV series starting in 2016.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?