Category: Sexual Politics

Here and Here

The key thing is this: if the journalists at the annual Correspondent’s Dinner had wanted informed editorial opinion, they would have chosen an informed editor to give it.  What they chose was a comedienne.

There is a big difference between journalism, editorial opinion, and comedy.  Trevor Noah– who is not that sparkling of a comedian– completely lost the distinction.  So did Michelle Wolf at the 2018 Correspondent’s Dinner.

Wolf is not a journalist.  She is not a graduate journalist: an editor.  She is not a qualified reporter.  She is a comedian.  And she is a trained kinesiologist.

But thanks to Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, and Stephen Colbert, people are beginning to lose that distinction between an editorial opinion and comedy.  Trevor Noah has become horribly boring because he acts as if he is a journalist and offers unqualified editorial opinions all night.  It’s not funny, and it’s not informative, and it’s not even interesting.  Why does he do it?  When did he start thinking he was sort of like an editorial writer for a newspaper, instead of a comedian?

The same problem has happened to SNL’s “Weekend Update”.  There is no longer a parody of news casts.  It’s mainly a couple of blow-hards just mouthing off about Trump.  It’s not funny or interesting when they do that.  It can be funny when they actually parody the news, but when Michael Che reads a report of some comment or action by Trump and then more or less says, “what a moron”, it’s not funny.  It’s not witty.  It’s not even amusing.

I think I can safely assume that Wolf was chosen for her qualifications as a comedienne.  I’m not even sure if the people who appointed her get the difference: she mainly just got up there and called Donald Trump names.  That’s what Donald Trump does to other people and it’s not fun to watch.  It’s contemptible.

Undoubtedly, Michelle Wolf felt she had a right to express the following, but it’s pure editorial.

“You guys are obsessed with Trump,” she said, near the end of her routine. “Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you.

“He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him.”

There is no joke, no wit, no cleverness to it at all.  This is the kind of commentary– when done right– that you would expect from a journalist with good first-hand knowledge of Washington politics and the White house.

But it’s just a comedienne who suddenly thinks she’s Martin Baron.

I will say this though– Stephen Colbert was right when he observed that the reporters complaining about Wolf’s speech sound like a man complaining that the valet just stole his car.  Think about it– it’s a great metaphor for what happened at the Correspondent’s Dinner, which, in all truthfulness, is a bizarre and unnecessary annual ritual anyway.

 

[whohit]The Wolf Who Cried Boy[/whohit]

This Piece by Lili Loofbourow

If you cannot appreciate the most complex, richest, best writing or film-making or art or music in the room because you just aren’t smart enough to get it, you will be completely baffled as to why the stuff you do get is not regarded with the same esteem.

Ms. Loofbourow believes that female writers and film-makers are just as good if not better than male writers and film-makers, but do not get the respect they deserve.  Let’s be clear– she is making a judgement based on her own personal knowledge, that female writers she knows of are just as good as male writers she knows of.

And we all devalue women’s writing due to the fact that “we” devalue the art works that women value more highly, because they are valued more highly by women.  I’m confused too.  Here’s a quote:

Study after study has shown that, no matter how loudly we complain that reality TV is heavily scripted, or that an image is the product of makeup, lighting, and Photoshop, we’re totally unable to disregard the evidence of our own eyes.

And that “evidence of our own eyes” is that this stuff is brilliant.

Who the hell is “we”?  In the most outrageously narcissistic comment in the piece, Ms. Loofbourow declares that she– and she alone, because all of the rest of us have deficient appreciation– knows what we are all thinking.  She can’t “disregard the evidence” of her own eyes and so she must insist that no one else can either.

She cites Mark Twain’s inadequate appreciation for Jane Austen as if, again, she really believes that Jane Austen–a fine writer who nevertheless remains one of the founders of soap opera, with it’s obsessive concern with how men unjustly under-appreciate the wonders of women–is on par with Tolstoy or Dostoevsky or even Dickens.   She is not.  She is a fine novelist in her genre who inspired an endless parade of mediocre writers– but her novels are still about the emotional lives of women who are consumed with their relationships with men and with each other and don’t have any real importance in the world of politics or science or the arts apart from their emotional lives.

Besides, it wasn’t Jane Austen’s fault that she wasn’t involved in research on gravity or negotiating treaties, or commanding armies.  What else could she write about?

This is really a giant, hoary screed at men: how dare you not think that I am as smart or smarter than you.  And rather than show us, she tells us and expects us to take her word for it.

Apparently, men like me are too stupid to realize that the narcissistic Lena Dunham character in “Tiny Furniture” is supposed to be unattractive.  I don’t believe it.  There is a difference between acknowledging the reality that cannot be denied and deliberately creating an unattractive character in order to say something important about unattractiveness.  Aura is Lena Dunham, her mother is her mother, her sister is her sister, the apartment is the apartment.

Is Maude Lewis supposed to be unattractive in “Maudie”?  Or is she just Maude Lewis, described to us by the film-makers using all of the information available to them?

Amy Schumer’s most distinctive passion is her instance that, no matter what men think, she really is very sexually attractive.  She doesn’t care what you think.  You think what she tells you to think.

Dunham is too honest to fall for that shtick.

Sometimes we just get pure blather:

Thanks to shows like Fleabag, Enlightened, Insecure, The Good Wife, Awkward Black Girl, The Book Group, Scandal, One Mississippi, The Maria Bamford Show, The Comeback, Top of the Lake, Orphan Black, Orange is the New Black, Getting On, Happy Valley, and Doll and Em, we’re finally getting some nourishing fiction that welcomes female protagonists with wrinkles and corrugated narratives that don’t easily convert to motivational posters. Most of these narratives destabilize the implied male position behind the camera and queer its conventions in sometimes transformative ways.

“Destabilize the implied male position behind the camera and queer its conventions in sometimes transformative ways”?  I defy you to defend that line.

She even believes that because three colleagues of an award-winning professor missed a clumsy joke — which, in her mind, was somehow transmuted into a brilliant piece of performance art–  that they therefore must also have completely ignored her speech, sitting there for an hour, apparently, not listening to the speaker in front of them, and had discounted her work as a teacher because they misread her lousy joke as nervousness.  This is idiotic.

In a desperate attempt to empower herself, she presents a self-condescending comment by a 19th century memoirist as an incredibly hilarious satirical jibe at Mark Twain, again, even though, it is clearly intended to disarm critics by proclaiming the modest ambition of the writer, while subtly claiming that women’s thoughts might actually have some value.

Elizabeth Gilbert, she alleges, was considered a serious writer when she wrote about men, and trivial when she wrote “Eat, Pray, Love”.  The latter truly was a mediocre book, but whoever thought she was ever a great writer must belong to the mythical “we” of this piece who only exist as the imagined monument to Lili Loufbourow’s ego.

The further you move away from white masculinity, the more points of view you have to juggle.

Well, let’s keep it simple for a minute Ms. Loufbourow: how the hell do you know what white masculinity sees?   How do you know that those who are not white males have a deeper, more embracing perspective?   Show us even one clue that you have one clue what white men see when they look at women’s writing.

I don’t regard Alice Munro as a one of the greatest writers in the English language today– or Salmon Rushdie– because she is a woman, or because he is a man.  They are both simply brilliant writers, and if you don’t know what makes them brilliant that is a limit on your perspective, not theirs.

 

[whohit]The Subtle Aesthetic of Soap Opera[/whohit]

On Friday, January 5, Ann-Marie MacDonald, who occasionally hosts programs on the CBC, appeared on CBC radio to announce her own #MeToo.

This is her story:  years ago, around 2005 I believe, Albert Schultz, the SoulPepper Artistic Director, informed several actors at a production by SoulPepper that he had raised $30,000 by auctioning off dinner with the actors to several donors.  He had not asked the actors for permission to do this.

Yes, that’s it.  That is the charge.  I am not making this up.  I have put it in bold face so you won’t miss the details of this horrific accusation.

Ann-Marie MacDonald, perhaps aware of a difficulty, went on to link this heinous behavior with recent allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior by Albert Schultz in the complaint brought forward by several former actors who were suing Schultz and SoulPepper for millions of dollars.

There must be some reason why the CBC was giving valuable air-time to this triviality.

Yes, that was it.  He didn’t ask them first.

Or, the real reason:

The idea that a public broadcaster [CBC] would form an inter-departmental investigative team to identify and bring down an as-yet-unknown culprit is not just unusual: in my 17 years of journalism, I’ve never heard of anything like it. And yet in the weeks and months after the Weinstein story, there was a sense among news editors and producers in the Canadian media that we, too, needed to get our man—whoever he might be.  From Toronto Life

Ann-Marie refused to do the dinner.  Well, good for her.  Then she went to the Executive Director.  And received another round of oppressive male abuse when he refused to take her complaint seriously. Except that it wasn’t a “he”: it was a “she”, Leslie Lester, who was Albert Schultz’ wife.  Not a word about female complicity here: it was as if MacDonald regarded Lester as just another male.  Perhaps she thought Ms. Lester was brain-washed.  Or a zombie.  Or didn’t even exist because she did not give MacDonald the respect she thought she deserved.

Not surprising, I suppose, that Lester did not agree with Ann-Marie’s complaint.  What is surprising is that the CBC would allow this ridiculous story onto the air, in prime-time.  It appears that Ann-Marie, desperate to get her own kicks in at the horrible men who run the world in spite of the amazing talents and genius of women like Ann-Marie, decided to use this pathetic story as leverage to get on the air and get her own rant in.  Why haven’t you people called me yet?

Noah Richler, who previously worked at Soulpepper but resigned due to artistic differences, told me he believes the charges against Schultz had been strategically trumped up. “The whole thing has far more to do with power and resentment than sexual battery,” he said. Although many friends and former colleagues echoed this view, Richler is the only one who went on the record…. That Fifth Estate piece was the single worst piece of publicly funded journalism I’ve ever seen.”

I have worked for a female CEO at a social service agency.  She was by far the most manipulative and dishonest manager I have ever encountered.  It would be absurd to use her as an example of sexist oppression of males, and even more ridiculous to link any of her paranoid, conniving behaviors as part of a “system” that exploits young men’s vulnerabilities.  No, she was just a lousy manager, and extremely self-serving.  Schultz’ fund-raising effort was no worse than anything this manager did.  Should I get on the CBC and launch a tirade about it?

MacDonald seized this opportune moment and her connections with the CBC and perhaps her reputation as a mediocre novelist (I found “Fall on Your Knees” tedious at best), to get on the radio and blast men.

Even though it was a woman who had the most authority in this particular “scandal”.

As for the actresses, the lawsuit alleges that the complainants could not expect to have their complaints heard by Ms. Lester “without the perception of bias and fear of reprisal”.  This is a despicable twist on the justice system: we don’t have to find any actual bias or reprisal– just allege that we “felt” it would happen.  This is absurd: did you try?  No.  But you want me to find her culpable for your feelings of victimization?  Yes.  So you will only be adjudicated by someone you like?  Yes.

“You honor, he was standing in a parking lot near a car that was not his.  I fully expected him to try to steal it so I arrested him.”

I would hope a judge throws this out without a moment’s hesitation.  No criminal has recently been convicted of the expectation of committing a crime.   As annoying and tedious as it might seem to some people, the police have to actually wait for a person to attempt to commit an actual crime before he or she can be arrested.  In this case, the complainants themselves do not seem to be asserting that they were fired or had their careers destroyed because they didn’t comply with Albert Schultz’ directorial style.  They assert that they just felt that way.

(Actually, many terrorism cases come perilously close to– oh, heck, they meet– this standard: arrested and imprisoned for thinking about a committing a crime.)

And all of this is beside the fact that they could also have taken their complaints to the Director of Human Resources, or the organization’s general counsel.

I expected no better from MacDonald.  It’s the CBC that should be ashamed of itself for allowing this to get on the air.

As for the complainants, after hearing details of their allegations, I began to wonder if they really understood what acting in modern theatre was all about.  They seemed to have quaint ideas about how sexual intimacy should be portrayed on stage.  In fact, I’m not sure they think it should be portrayed at all.  They seemed shocked that some scenes of sexual intimacy would involve touching, or that a director might physically demonstrate how a scene like that should be executed.

Here’s the crux of the problem:  there was almost nothing in their complaints that a legitimate director might not do for legitimate reasons in legitimate modern theatre.  Actors embrace, kiss, hug, even expose themselves quite regularly.   Most of them appear to understand that that is what is involved in “acting”.

These women simply felt that in the case of Albert Schultz, whom they found “creepy”, these actions should be regarded as abusive.  But in this world, we create the conditions in which an actor may at any time decide to regard things that happened on stage or at rehearsal as “abuse”, or they might regard these things as “acting”, depending on whether they were in the mood to destroy someone’s career that day.

In one case, a young female actor was the subject of the amorous attention of a male character who, in the play, approaches her on a chaise lounge and begins to caress her body. The actress did not say, “no, I don’t want this part, because I find this scene humiliating and uncomfortable”.  That’s all she had to do.  Or “no, I don’t want to be in a play directed by a man I don’t like”.  That is also all she had to do.  But what fun is there in that when you can, instead, wait ten years, and then destroy the life’s work of a man regarded as a genius by many, and publicly humiliate and shame him in the bargain?

Yes, that actress on the chaise lounge describes feeling humiliated and ashamed.  I am puzzled by this.  You are an actor?  You really found a scene of romantic interactions embarrassing?  Shameful?  Disgusting?  You didn’t want to do it.  Why are you in the theatre?  Why did you audition for this part?  Did you not read the play?  Have you never seen a play before?  What did you think actors do?

The actress is now saying that it was unfair to “require” her to perform this scene.  ‘I should get to say, “no, let’s change the play– I don’t like that scene”‘.   And, if I were a director, I would say, “Fine.  No problem.  Here’s what you can do:  go write your own play.  You can make sure there are no scenes like that in your play.  Then you can start your own theatre company, audition and hire your own actors, find a theatre building for your play, recruit an administration and a board, and raise money, and then you can put your play on and see if you can attract an audience to your plays.  Go for it. ”

“Now get me another actress who is willing to play this part.”

Would he have any difficulty finding someone?  No.

Should this scene be removed from the play?  From all plays at SoulPepper?  Or Stratford?  Or Shaw?  If you tried to do that, would audiences like the result?   And would not another theatre company soon come into being, comprised of actors who willingly commit to performing scenes like this without complaint, because they are serious actors willing to give themselves emotionally and physically to a role?  Any actors out there willing to perform “Hair” or “Cabaret” or “Rocky Horror Picture Show”?   Or “Oleana”?  Do you think they might get an audience if the alternative was a squeaky clean free from all and any sexual content play?  Bambi, anyone?

It’s clear they found Schultz creepy.  He slapped their buttocks at times.  He groped them at times.   I think he probably was creepy.  I’ve been involved in community theatre productions with a professional director who behaved a lot like Albert Schultz.  And it’s clear that there are a lot of interactions in a theatre company during rehearsals and behind the scenes that most people would find inappropriate in other settings, like a Mormon church or a Republican policy convention or Marie MacDonald’s boudoir.  (Or would they?)  But it is also very clear that not a single actor in any of these plays is inhibited from simply walking out if he or she doesn’t want to be part of this creative, lively, sometimes vulgar, often beautiful enterprise.

They both felt that Schultz exploited their youth and inexperience—and yet they both kept quiet in the hopes that they would get to work with him again.

In other words– well, figure it out for yourself.  Are you or are you not a willing accomplice?  What is so hard about “and both decided they would never work with this asshole again”?  Why is that not the last sentence in that paragraph?

It’s clear that the actresses are coordinating their stories.  It’s clear that they are seeking large sums of money.  It’s clear that a man who has a long history of admirable achievements in live theatre has had his career and reputation shredded by actors who, safely insulated by their lawyers and legal motions, now, finally, after years and years, are saying, no, I don’t want to be an actor after all.  And instead of not being an actor, I’m going to be an actor and then sue you because I can.  Because right now, I can do this with impunity because a kind of mass hysteria has taken over the world on this issue and nobody reserves judgement any more.   The lawyers and accountants have taken over and they are terrified and they will desperately seize upon any solution that eliminates their own exposure.

Please make it go away!  We’ll pay you anything, but make it go away.   The incoherent rage of your sexual hysteria has shocked and deadened my brain into complete submission: how much money do you want?

I must note the recent update on this story: 15 actors and designers who had been rehearsing Amadeus under the direction of Mr. Schultz  asked the board to cancel the production.   They stated that “we believe Diana Bentley…”   But that is not the question.  That was never the question.  That is the question you ask if someone committed an act in secret and denied it after a victim came forward.   This question is different: was Mr. Schultz mean to you?  Did you feel bad because you couldn’t control and manipulate him?  Were you jealous of the respect and admiration he earned because of his achievements while he was not even really very nice to you?

By golly, sue the hell out of him, and his theatre company too.

Why are they cancelling the production?  They are asking for healing and transformation.  But first, let’s destroy the production.

And now the Federal Government is reviewing its policies around funding for arts organizations.  Wonderful: soon, they will begin to specify how “Romeo and Julie” should be acted– no kissing, they’re too young.  And “Joan of Arc” should not be tied up.  And we know that Lady Macbeth didn’t really push her husband into committing murder: it’s obviously just an attempt to deflect responsibility.  Let’s fix it.

Let’s fix it all.

One last note: before you get all self-righteous about my piece here, let me make it clear that I do believe Schultz was a jerk and should have been outed.  Not destroyed.  Not assassinated.  Not buried under a pile of steaming shit.  Outed.  Criticized.  Face to face, not through the media.  The way you criticize a friend who insulted you or forgot to return your lawnmower or got drunk and pissed in one of your potted plants.

Did not a single one of these actresses have the guts to step forward and call him out, in front of the cast or crew or administration?  Yet everyone keeps insisting that you are all “courageous”,  that women are “strong”, and that you admire each other for being so “brave” and determined.

And no one is particularly courageous because she hired a lawyer and demanded millions of dollars.  No, you’re not.  “Courageous” would be standing in front of Albert Schultz right after he slapped your bum and saying, loudly and clearly, “if you do that again, I will sue you”.

If I smacked you on the ass and told you to get over it, would that be okay?” one irate former company member asked me.

Well, indeed, I have had that experience, a long time ago.  It was trivial then and it is trivial now.   I would never, in a million years, have decided that someone should be shamed or humiliated for it.  Never in a million years.  Never ever.  That person is still in my social circle, still friends, and having a hell of a lot better life than she would have had if I had chosen to go the route of the Soulpepper actresses.

How did it end?  There were meetings and mediation.  Albert Schultz– to his credit– refused to concede anything.  Finally, the women were asked what would be required to make them go away.   Of course, the results are covered by a non-disclosure agreement, but yes, they went away, and they never got an apology or the millions they were asking for.  In other words, they have tacitly admitted that they didn’t believe in their own words.

All you people who went along for the ride?  On to the next outrage…

[whohit]Soulpepper and Ann-Marie MacDonald[/whohit]

In this review, Laura Thompson revels in a biography of Janet Auchincloss and her two famous-for-being-famous daughters, Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill.

Jacqueline Kennedy and Lee Radziwill are nothing.  They are nobodies.  They are famous, of course, but the sole reason for their fame is that they were attached to men who did things, who had money and power, and some importance, and who mattered.  Jacqueline and Lee did not matter, did not accomplish anything, and were never important, and neither was their nasty mother, Janet Achincloss.  (Yes, I know that Jacqueline later became a book editor at Viking in New York.  And how did she get that job?  She was hired by publisher Thomas Guinzburg who was her stepbrother’s room-mate in college.  At Yale.  Must have been an impressive interview.)

So,  in the face of the conspicuous fact that you have no accomplishments, no special skills, no talents, and no real achievements, what do you do?  You create an entirely new, fake class of accomplishment, and to conceal the trick you attach language to it that makes it sound important and interesting.

Among Jackie’s sterling accomplishments as a book editor:  a “memoir”– if you want to dignify it with the name– by Michael Jackson, “Moonwalk”.  Vanity Fair, embarrassed by proxy,  wants you to believe that she had to “endure” this task, as if someone chained her to a desk in Michael Jackson’s Foreverland for the duration.)*

 But the magic of Jackie’s aura is imperishable to this day.

This is the kind of absurdity we have to put up with about Jackie Kennedy.  What is this magical aura?  It is the mountain of trashy tabloid interest that create a celebrity who her worshipers believe is incredibly important because there is so much tabloid interest in her.  They don’t realize that she makes the news because the tabloids made her the news because tabloid audiences want to vicariously experience the delusions of the tabloid world: that she belongs to them.  That she suffers for them.  That they appreciate her beauty and grace with the perversity of privilege of the voyeur.  That something in their own mediocre lives can be compared to her mediocre public life, and can be just as noble, and justified, and beautiful.  That fashion and jewelry really matter and that all of us deserve to be the center of attention because we are beautiful and charming and arrived in a limousine.

So consider for a moment this review, by a woman, of a book, by a woman, about three women.  I don’t know if Laura Thompson thinks feminism matters or if women really are anything more than what she “celebrates” in this book, but I know she has contributed towards the uncomfortably persistent idea of there being something magnificent about women who, purely through privilege– absolutely purely through privilege– lead rich and glamorous lives.  And I mean “glamorous” in the best possible way: trivial, inane, inconsequential, vain, vulgar.

As I point out in my piece on Lee Radziwill, in spite of the incredible volume of celebrity press that insists on calling the sisters “beautiful”, neither one of them really is.  They have this glitz and polish that comes from proper breeding, I suppose, and they know how to apply make-up in a Laura Petryish tone of 1950’s chic– or 40’s really.

And it’s a wonderfully illuminating discussion.

Jackie on her job:

It’s not as if I’ve never done anything interesting. I’ve been a reporter myself and I’ve lived through important parts of American history. I’m not the worst choice for this position.

 I”ve written about this kind of bs before.

Vanity Fair does what Vanity Fair does, with Jackie.

 

[whohit]Ladies: the Very Elusive Charm of Lee Radziwill[/whohit]

This is an actual quote from the NY Times, January 22, 2018:

“There were many ways I tried to make it stop, which included giving in to having sex with him, which I did but was disassociated, frozen inside myself, barely there,” Ms. Rubinstein recalled.

Yes it is.   When she first reported this, in 2006, Ms. Rubinstein acknowledged that she had had an affair with the cad.  The cad was the director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven.  Forget all that– he will now only be remembered as a man who had sex.

It’s a novel approach, Ms. Rubinstein.   You wonder if it leaves room for ambiguity in the minds of neutral observers.  But I heard three women on the CBC the other day– all experts, of course– claiming that all allegations are always true.  I am not exaggerating in the least: I turned the radio up to make sure I understood them correctly.  Allegations are always true.  No woman has ever lied about a man who tried to have sex with her.

Some of us think some innocent men have been accused.  Actually, in many cases, there is very, very good proof that a man was false accused.  Are they collateral damage?

“What collateral damage”?  one of them exclaimed,  insisting there was none.

There are no innocent men.  Not even if you have pity sex with them.

One of them said that when you heard about the horrible feelings that one victim had said about her victimization you can’t possibly give the slightest credence to the perp’s denials.  No awful story about reputations shattered livelihoods destroyed, or families broken up will ever elicit that kind of compassion.  No University of Virginia, no Lacrosse team, no Paul Nungesser, no, no, no.

There very obviously is a lot of collateral damage.  But I’m not sure these women would disagree with me about the basic facts– for example, the woman who charged a man with rape and was later found to have text messages on her phone that expressed more than consent:  she was enthusiastic.  It did not happen as she reported to the police.  The charges– after destroying this man’s reputation– were dropped.  The NBA player who was in a different city at the time an ex-girlfriend alleged that he raped her.  The University of Virginia.  The lacrosse team.

It was a stimulating discussion by the three women on the CBC.  It got me seriously wondering about perception and judgement and memory.

I’m not sure these three women would not have just said, well, it was rape anyway.  If she feels it was rape now, then it was rape.  She’s not lying– just expressing an inner conviction about certain qualities of her relationship with this man.  That is enough.  And even if it wasn’t rape, he was a man who did not give her what she wanted: that is enough to justify vilifying him.  Nobody else should ever be friends with him.  They should be friends with me.

 

[whohit]Collateral Damage[/whohit]