20 Feb The Real Story

I have a confession to make: last week I almost—for 11 seconds—felt sorry for Kellyanne Conway.

It was just that the woman looked exhausted, haggard, and ooooh, cranky! Gone was Propaganda Barbie’s Dentyne smile, as she stammered that she’s not worried about thousands of people jamming phone-lines at the White House and the Senate protesting Trump’s policies and cabinet nominees. Nor was Kellyanne concerned about his record-setting, plummeting poll numbers, because she only cares “about my RPI meter: Real Person Impact meter.” (We’re not “real people,” you and me. I’m imagining myself writing this, and you’re imagining reading it.) Then again, Kellyanne has reason to be grumpy. She’s persona non grata on TV these days, including MSNBC’s Morning Joe program and, at least for now, all of CNN. The reason? CNN stated, “She doesn’t provide reliable information.” The former pollster is reportedly trying to book herself on TV shows without much success, although there’s always Fox News to come home to. Moreover, The White House sent her out to tell the world that Flynn had Trump’s full support—then two hours later fired Flynn.

Which brings us to a new category I’m starting: Bit the Dust.

Bit the Dust. Vincent Viola, Trump’s businessmen nominee to lead the Army, withdrew his name from consideration when strict Defense Department rules wouldn’t permit him to transfer ownership of his businesses, including the National Hockey League’s Florida Panthers, to family members as a form of fake divestiture.

Bit the Dust. Senate Republicans—even senior Senate Republicans —besieged by public outrage, pressured Trump to pull the plug on Andrew Puzder, his nominee for Labor Secretary. Puzder’s hearings had been repeatedly postponed while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell frantically tried to corral his own senators, who were defecting because of accumulating Puzder scandals: having employed an undocumented immigrant, not paying taxes on her salary, having apprenticed himself to a mob lawyer early in his career, and having allegedly beaten his ex-wife—as she testified in court, then withdrew her testimony to gain custody of their children, and later discussed in detail while in disguise on Oprah’s TV program. This particular dust-biting was thanks to that tape being found and made available to Senators. Mind you, these men hadn’t been deterred by a possible Labor Secretary who wants to abolish the minimum wage or by his other multiple political and business offences. But the possibility of that tape going public (as it has) terrified these guys. Cherchez les femmes, these days: the boys are quite nervous about female anger.

This was a big win for street pressure—marches and phone calls and emails to Senators. It was, and had to be, formidable, because on Puzder’s side loomed vast lobbying money and the mobilization of the National Restaurant Association, The International Franchise Association, The National Retail Foundation, and chain restaurant groups like CCR. They did rapid response, social media, and email blasts to Senators, provided free food, and promised hefty campaign contributions, and they still lost out—to Oprah, fast-food waitresses, a battered ex-wife, and a woman who is a genuine investigative reporter.

Politico‘s Marianne Levine was the intrepid journalist who discovered the tape’s existence and then set out to search for it, spending more than two months on two coasts, and countless hours digging through at least 90 episodes buried in an archive for more than 25 years. It’s a real-life “All the Presidents Men” and “Spotlight” kind of story, and you can check it out @politico.com. Hats off to fine reporting on a domestic-violence victim from the 1980s going public with a video that caused the first Trump cabinet nominee to pull out under pressure.

But back to Bit the Dust—this one with a loud thud: former general and briefly National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. An average National Security Adviser’s tenure is 963 days; Flynn was forced to resign after 24. And the story’s nowhere near over. We’ve learned Flynn was in daily communication with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the campaign and transition, reassuring Russia regarding sanctions, and that he lied to Vice President Pence about having done so. We learned that former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, later fired by Trump for having refused to enforce his travel ban, had informed the White House of Flynn’s conversations and Justice Department concerns that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Now, it turns out that numerous high-level operatives in Trump’s campaign were in touch with Russian intelligence agents. So the refrain becomes, as it was in Nixon’s dwindling days, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” Meanwhile, Trump claims Flynn’s fall was due to an “erosion of trust,” not because Flynn did anything wrong; Trump even praised him and blames his fall on the intelligence community—for finding out the truth. He also blamed “leakers” in the intelligence agencies (although the leakers may have been in the White House itself), and of course he blamed the press.

There’s a pattern here. After Yates warned them about Flynn, the Trump inner circle sat on this information for days, not sharing it with the VP, pushing the White House Counsel to let them know whether what Flynn did was strictly illegal, or whether there was any weasel room to get away with it. In other words, Trump was not concerned that his own National Security Adviser had violated national security by conducting business with an antagonistic foreign power well before the inauguration. Nor was Trump concerned with moral or even cosmetic fallout—only with whether he could hide the issue and, if caught, whether the legal minimum was one you could squirm out of. It’s the same pattern as his comments on being smart for getting away with not paying taxes, and his comments on the Access Hollywood tape about what women will “let you get away with” when you’re famous: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything . . . grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

This means that as long as Trump thinks he can get away with something without being stopped, he will.

That’s an important lesson for us to learn.

Meanwhile, in the uproar over Flynn and sanctions and hacking and Russia, guess what Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight Committee, did? This is the same Chaffetz who conducted endless probes of the Obama administration, of Hillary Clinton, and of BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi, the same Chaffetz who was booed by constituents a week ago when he returned to his district. Well, Jason has decided he probably won’t delve into the Flynn-Russian problem. He also says he won’t after all investigate the Kellyanne Conway ethics problem (about her having hyped Ivanka’s products on TV); earlier, he denounced Kellyanne’s statements as “Wrong wrong wrong,” but now he’s decided the problem has “taken care of itself.” Besides, Jason’s too busy investigating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as to why, in an attempt to raise awareness of the Zika virus, the CDC gave a grant to the Jim Henson Muppet Company to feature Sid the Science Kid in an educational cartoon about the virus. A cartoon? Now, that’s a serious threat, people.

Another threat is apparently posed by peaceful, tax-paying, undocumented immigrants. Trump’s deportation purges have begun. Campaigning, he repeatedly swore any deportations would commence with violent criminals who are in the US illegally, not with the millions of undocumented peaceable others. So naturally they began with Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a Phoenix, Arizona mother of two United States-born children, who herself has lived north of the border since she was age 14. Guadalupe’s “violent crime” was having impersonated another employee in order to get work at a mini golf park, and she’d been arrested by notorious Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, since voted out of office. (The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against Arpaio for unlawful discriminatory police conduct.) Guadalupe had been detained for months, but after appealing deportation was allowed to remain in the US for years, so long as she checked in with immigration every six months. Previous administrations permitted this, and she dutifully checked in. This time, thanks to Trump’s Executive Order, she was seized, ripped from her family, and deported to Mexico. Deportation raids are increasing, and Sanctuary activists across the nation are mobilizing as never before.

Meanwhile, three women psychiatrists started a trend that’s now popping up in newspaper Letters to the Editor columns all over. After the election, Dr. Judith Herman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Nanette Gartrell, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at University of California and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Dee Mosbacher, assistant clinical professor of the Department of Community Health Systems, University of California, sent a letter to then President Obama, members of Congress, and United States military leaders. It read, in part:

“[W]e are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of President. Trump. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure we have not evaluated personally. Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability—including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality—lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office. We strongly recommend that he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators. If such an evaluation were to take place, we recommend that it specifically focuses on antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders.”

More such concerned expert letters surface every day, all in the wake of these three courageous women who acted even before Trump’s recent press conference sent red-alert alarm signals through the mental-health community.

Then there’s creative rebellion at the local level. States are finding new ways to nibble at Trump, as reported by Natasha Korecki in Politico. A California lawmaker is demanding Melania Trump’s immigration records. New Hampshire lawmakers have introduced a resolution demanding a federal probe into Trump University. I love this one: Illinois legislators are calling for an investigation into Russian interference in the election—and have drafted a formal invitation to Mexican president Enrique Piña Nieto, inviting him to their chambers to speak about the potential ill effect a border wall could have on Mexico-Illinois relations. Blue state legislatures are not only in full frontal rebellion against Trump, they’re trolling him.

Last, four thoughts on facts and news and opinion.

1. I do wish the Trumpian crew would get inside the same book, much less on the same page, regarding nonfacts or unfacts or antifacts. Two hundred years ago during the campaign, Trump spokesperson Scotty Nell Hughes, said, “There’s no such thing anymore as fact.” But then there was Kellyanne Conway’s memorable phrase “alternative facts.” Now, we’ve been treated to the all but brown-shirted image of Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a precocious Josef Goebbels at only age 32, holding forth about the supreme infallibility of Trump’s actions being above the courts. He also repeated lies about voter fraud, then barked, “It is the fact and you will not deny it.” Well, well. Achtung! Miller has also proclaimed, “I will say and I will do things that no one else in their right mind would do.” We’d better keep a sharp eye on the fanaticism of Miller, and not just because he has the demeanor of a rabid Rottweiler.

2. “The Gateway Pundit,” an arch-conservative blog with a penchant for promoting false rumors about Hillary’s health and yes, voter fraud, will now report on politics from the White House press corps. Lucian Wintrich, who’s previously collaborated with Milo Yiannopoulos—the guy who thinks Breitbart and the Drudge Report are too moderate—has been credentialed by Press Secretary Sean Spicer to attend White House briefings.

3. Here’s the spirit of authentic journalism pushing back. A Colorado newspaper is threatening to file a libel suit against a state lawmaker, in a possible legal battle that could test the definition of the Trump phrase “fake news.” When Colorado State Senator Ray Scott, a Republican, tweeted that The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction had published “a fake news story” about a bill that would change the state’s public records law, the paper’s publisher, Jay Seaton, wrote, “Senator Scott has defamed this company and me as its leader. To borrow a phrase from another famous Twitter user, I’ll see you in court.” Seaton later said he might take a couple of weeks to cool off before deciding whether to file suit, but insisted to The Washington Post that he was not merely engaging in tough talk. During the campaign, Trump vowed to weaken libel protections for journalists, “So when they write negative articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.” Let’s hear it for The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction and its publisher, Jay Seaton. It’s quite unusual for a news outlet to be the plaintiff in a defamation case.

4. Finally—in case anyone thinks I’m an uncritical pushover always praising the press—here’s a critique, not of reporters but of some assigning editors (I’ve been one) who develop opinion and analysis pieces. Why does it seem to be a ritual that after a visible triumph of the Women’s Movement, some editors feel compelled to assign “analysis” articles trashing feminism? Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, while the burgeoning feminist movement kept mushrooming, covers of Newsweek, Time, and other mainstream magazines displayed variations of the same theme, the absolute impossibility of feminism: Why the women’s movement will never get off the ground. Why the women’s movement is dying. Why older women will never join the women’s movement (then, as time went on and we young ‘uns aged, why younger women will never join the women’s movement). Why the women’s movement is dead. Isn’t the women’s movement dead yet? Once, a cover of The Atlantic actually displayed a coffin covered with the feminist fist-inside-the-women’s-symbol. And all the while the movement grew bigger, deeper, broader. In fact, the predictions of our demise became a running joke among those of us who were long-distance runners and who were—and are—still truckin.’

So why am I surprised that in the wake of the largest march in the history of this country at least three major opinion pieces have landed within the past weeks: “The Case Against Contemporary Feminism,” by Jia Tolentino, in The New Yorker; “Since When is Being A Woman A Liberal Cause?” by Susan Chira in The New York Times Week in Review; and “Forces in Opposition,” by Amanda Hess in The Times Sunday Magazine.

Good grief. Separately and collectively the pieces declare that the movement has factions (gasp!), and disparage feminism itself as being at once too insular and too broad, too inclusive (thus diluted), not inclusive enough (thus elitist), too white and too multicultural, too practical and too idealistic, too leftist and too capitalist, too political and not political enough, and so forth and so on blah bloody blah bloody blah. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to some lazy editors to stop assigning the same story after 50-odd years of contemporary US feminism, despite all the fresh angles now available for covering this subject in original ways.

Look, I understand that young journalists have a hard time saying no to a juicy assignment, even if they think it’s a make-work filler—and a dumb one, at that. But gimme a break. Give yourselves a break.

The Women’s Movement is global and alive, vibrant with both factionalism and solidarity, pragmatic and visionary, and each day more representative of the majority of women in the United States—and in fact on the planet. It’s a source of pride that half of humanity doesn’t act in cookie-pattern uniformity!

So critique us all you like; we’re not afraid of criticism, and god knows we’re used to it. But spare us the boredom of having to tolerate what misrepresents itself as a new piece on feminism, in which the publication, editor, and writer are still stumbling on platitudes with an air of great discovery. Even leaving feminism aside, that’s bad journalism!

The 5 million women and men and children who gathered in the women’s marches across the United States—joined by the rest of the world—did so with affirmation, peaceful protest, righteous rage, even joy. What’s more important, the marches were devised and organized and led by women, in fact by women of color—and for the first time ever, men didn’t try to wrest leadership away or co-opt the events: they joined. What’s most important, people didn’t go home and forget about it afterward, as naysayers predicted. They’ve mobilized, and are making and sustaining glorious trouble. Led by women! Unheard of in planetary history!

That’s the real story, sister and brother journalists and editors, and it’s one helluva story. The Women’s Movement may have been your mother’s movement but now it’s your movement, and it will keep on being a movement as long as it’s needed. Feminism is more plastic, more dynamic than your cramped definitions—and feminists are here to stay. Put that in your pipe and write it.