In Defense of Roseanne

I have been crazy about Roseanne since I saw her on Johnny Carson in 1985.  Her humor is an acquired taste -- or not.  Her voice is grating, she insults with the charm and bad taste of W. C. Fields.  She stood Rodney Dangerfield's "Take my wife... please" on its head when she began to take potshots at marriage and husbands.  And I loved it.

I enjoyed the first run of the sitcom, but at the time I was an older parent with my first child and pretty much in denial of any conflicts about parenting.  That meant I was uncomfortable with Roseanne's trademark insults.  Now, after having raised two kids that aren't addicts or in prison, I can step back and admit we had our rough patches.  And some of that affectionate sarcasm might just have helped a bit.

I don't follow celebrities.  I haven't followed Roseanne, although I had heard that she is a right-wing nutcase.  If you couldn't tell she was flaky and off-center right from the start you just weren't there.  Like Cosby, Franken and Van Gogh, Roseanne's genius came with baggage; her brilliance at pushing the envelope meant that she would at times go too far.

I wasn't surprised to hear that she was a very vocal Trump follower.  We have all had to distance ourselves from loved ones since that asshole came down that escalator three long years ago.  But, since November 8, 2016, I have been listening to Democrats obsess ad nauseum about what they need to do to understand and capture the trust of the Trump voter.  Too many have gone so far as to support abhorrent positions in order to attempt to win over abhorrent people.  All the while completely missing the boat.

While the pussy-grabber-in-chief flaunts his racism and misogyny and pushes through an agenda that enriches himself and destroys families, Democrats are still looking for the safe stance.  We talk about being a big tent, but instead of meaning we will try to help all, it ends up meaning we will support a candidate or issue that denies some group its rights if only we can get the approval of a Trump bigot somewhere.

I live on a shoestring, but my worries are still in the future.  I have an old car that runs reliably, a house that is nearly paid for, and never lack for food or an alcoholic beverage.  But there are working class Americans who have never had the chance I had to sock away some savings, or who lost jobs and homes a short decade ago and never got back on their feet, or whose income goes to health care or trying to educate their kids.  I am happy to say most of my friends, also on shoestring budgets, are also not walking that tightrope to survival.  And most Democratic politicians can't even fathom the fears blue collar Americans live with, or the painful decisions they have to make on a daily basis. 

So, that in mind, let's talk about the Roseanne reboot.  Because what I have heard from the majority of my Democratic friends is how they hate Roseanne.  And that they would NEVER watch her show.  Which reminded me of those Dems who just couldn't vote for Hillary, and then added, "I just don't trust her."

I loved the reboot.  I loved that her cast loved being part of the original sitcom so much that they ALL happily signed up.  And that Roseanne would happily work creatively with a bunch of liberals like Sara Gilbert and Laurie Metcalf.  Looking back through eyes that raised two kids, I loved the affection that so obviously went with the wisecracks.  I loved the twists and turns, like the cross-dressing grandson and D.J.'s marriage to an African-American woman, Gina, stationed in Afghanistan.  And it turns out that Gina dates back to the original show as well.  Where D.J. is in a play and refuses to kiss Gina; Roseanne tackles racism and sexism in one wonderful wack.

I heard a TV blowhard critique Season 10's Episode 7 because the anti-bigotry plot was simplistic.  I imagine that's a person who doesn't spend a lot of time around blue collar Americans.  No wonder they get insulted by us liberals, who turn up our noses at a 30-minute sitcom that doesn't get into the complexities of anti-Muslim attitudes.

And the last episode to air took my breath away.  If you want to understand how good people (not the Nazi sympathizer or right-wing religious zealots) could have supported Trump in 2016, there could be no better portrayal than that of Dan Connor, stuck along with too many Americans between the rock and the hard place, trying to survive.  Having to compromise life-long values to take care of his family.  In fact, the problems the Connors encounter are the ones that day after day, one by one, add up relentlessly in an America where the quality of life has declined for some forty years, where wages have dropped and education has been corrupted by profit and premiums, co-pays and deductibles have rendered health care unattainable.

I am saddened by the tragedy of Roseanne, much as I was saddened by the tragedy of Bill Cosby, who also spoke so much truth about the absurdities of life.  I am glad we got this short flash of brilliance before it blew itself up.  Roseanne Barr is a disturbed -- conflicted -- woman, one who is destined to self-destruct.  ABC was right to give Roseanne the chance despite her past bigotry, and ABC was right to cancel.

And my heart breaks for it.

Sex and Violence

Now that I have your attention.

I am crazy about Jim Jefferies.  He is Australian, now living in the U.S.  I discovered him when a friend sent me a link to a stand up comedy bit he did on guns.  It is biting, hilarious, and just as relevant today as it was when he first did it.

He also has a filthy mouth.  He happily pushes the limits way past humor.  He has to tone it down for basic cable, but his podcast is something to behold.  It is basically him and a couple of his writers getting drunk and dirty for an hour after the show each week.  The filth is pretty meaningless, just drunken slobber for the most part.  It would be nice if it were funnier, but his political commentary is so brilliant, as is his humor, that I will plow through the pure crap for it.  I don't know many who would.  Even my son has said, Uh, no thanks.

But Jefferies follows a long line of great comedians who pushed the limit.  Lenny Bruce was slightly before my time, but he fought the law for freedom of speech.  George Carlin did it when the zeitgeist welcomed it, and I am so glad he did.

As he branched out from the seven words you can't say on TV, two things happened.  He really exercised his First Amendment right, and in so doing, exercised it for the rest of us.  And he offended a lot of people.

Being a child of the 60's and in full-blown rebellion against parents that would curse at times but tell me it was a sin, I rejoiced in Carlin's literally calling out the hypocrisy.  In my home, "god-damn" was the forbidden swear word, requiring confession on Saturday.  Carlin welcomed sexual curse words into our vocabulary.  It was glorious to be able to toss out a "fuck" back in the day.  Today those dirty words more often are uninspired, about as clever as a burp, but truly tinged with violence.

Today we have a "president" who dismisses his comment about grabbing pussy as locker room talk, and then is celebrated at the annual prayer breakfast.  Granted, you still can't say "shit" on TV.  But Roy Moore very nearly became a US Senator with the religious right fully aware of his pedophiliac past.

I was planning on writing about sexual harassment and women's rights.  But there is the power of words, and maybe we need to start there.  After all, it was a matter of empowerment that African Americans have forced our entire country to say "N-word" instead of, well, you know.  And yet, "bitch" isn't even consistently bleeped on TV.

A staple of Bill Maher's comedy for the past two years has been inviting his audience to join him in calling Donald Trump a "whiny little bitch."  This gets my back up.  And yet, when I searched for the inception of this routine I came up with the funny and ironic "New Rule" in which he turns the stereotypes of women on its head, and applies those stereotypes to the whiner-in-chief.

The most powerful of words, the dirty words, have power because they are sexual.  And they have the potential to twist our morality into knots because our sense of our sexuality is so twisted.

Men who, despite their thoughts and prayers, don't flinch over mass murders, are willing to legislatively rape women in the name of "saving babies."  And women have been willing to let them.  The most logical comparison is of the fight to preserve a man's god-given right to own a gun versus the fight to allow women to control their own bodies.

In the 60's we welcomed those seven dirty words into public life, but began to refer to sex as "making love."  Is sex talk dirty, does it have to be?  And when is it degrading, because it surely can be.  As, for example, when used by the "president."  And what does it do to women, who are still considered the weaker sex?  When is sex talk violent, and when are insults sexual?

#MeToo has us all wondering how afraid men should be about stepping over the boundaries between approach and harassment, sex play and coercion.  I would like to suggest that sexual harassment and assault is the end result of verbal attacks on women that we ignore and/or accept.  If you aren't uncomfortable with Maher calling Trump a "whiny little bitch" you are either a man or a woman who doesn't recognize the power that words have to demean you.  If you don't cringe when you hear men insulted by being referred to as "girls" you are accepting not just that women are physically weaker, but that women are weaker.

The answer is not censorship.  The answer is changing perceptions, refusing to accept stereotypes and insults.  The value of forcing us to refer to the derogatory term as "n-word" (when we are in civil society) may be a constant reminder of how wrong it is, but it also denotes the power that African-Americans now have that they can compel this change.  Sadly, another result is that racists become ever more filled with rage at the imposition on their freedom to publicly display their bigotry; the backlash was destined to happen.  But African-Americans aren't taking it anymore, and that too will be quashed.

Women don't like to fight.  We want to fix things.  This makes us appear to be weak, and people like Congressional republicans and Donald Trump will use us as a battering ram to force their way into power.  On the other hand, they can dog whistle other misogynists by painting those of us who aren't compliant as bitches, you know, like Hillary, Nancy and Elizabeth.

Sexual equality is going to mean a fight.  Our daughters have grown up in a world we thought was safe, but was still fraught with sexual harassment and degradation.  As long as there are laws that establish rules about what is contained within our bodies, men will control us.  And we will be demeaned.

Those dirty words have power.  I am all for the well-placed curse word, but we have to admit that there is violence in sexual language.  It is not just that men in power can "grab pussy," it is that they are so confident in that right that they are happy to tell others about it.  Confronting men who assault women sexually is the beginning; their acts must have consequences.  What we  do as these men are confronted is going to be a long and tangled path.

But we need to first become sensitized to the words, their meaning, and their effect.  Not to censor, but not to ignore.  Indeed, until there are consequences for a man who brags about grabbing pussy, women will be under siege.  Denial of the power of those violent words leaves us vulnerable, and grants permission to men to continue to put us "in our place." 

It is time to let men know that we are the ones who will determine what our place will be.

What Comey Forgot

Not too long ago I wrote about an important book that went under the radar called, The Unmaking of the President 2016.  The book explains quite thoroughly how Comey's clumsy handling of the Hillary email fiasco caused Trump to win the election.  At the time, I got pretty snarky in describing James Comey.  But I do try to be fair, and now that I have heard him analyze the bizarre details of his past couple of years in the spotlight, and have read his book, A Higher Loyalty, I find that I have changed my opinion of the man.

I believe I have referred to James Comey as smug and compared him to Pence and Gorsuch, which would conveniently make them the unholy trinity of vanity, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.  But I don't believe Comey is like that at all.

He seems to be honestly struggling to do the right thing.  He can be self-deprecating, which means he is attempting to be objective and is aware of his own very human fallibility.  He has a sense of humor, which immediately separates him from the humorless Pence and Gorsuch, as well as Donald Trump.  By the way, I have for some time been aware that Trump never smiles or laughs, a feature of the narcissist-in-chief that had also come to Comey's attention.

Comey has a lot to say about bullying.  In his book he describes having been both a victim of bullying and an instance wherein he became a bully in his younger days.  This kind of self-analysis and insight makes his narrative of the election of Donald Trump both personal and relevant to the current political era.

As with all heroes, Comey's greatest strength became his Achilles heel.  The need to be honest and fair brought him to national attention during the Bush years, when he went head to head with Dick Cheney over the reauthorization of the NSA surveillance program "Stellar Wind."  It was a dramatic moment, when Jim Comey dashed to John Ashcroft's hospital room -- in intensive care -- to head off White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card who were trying to force Ashcroft to sign the reauthorization.

Because of this, Comey had a great deal of respect and credibility when he began the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as Secretary of State.

In his book, Comey goes into great detail explaining the situation as he saw it, and each step of his decision making.  It is obvious from this narrative that he has not only examined his actions but looked to others of his peers for their analysis.  He is aware that his actions may have influenced the election, and he has admitted that the thought of having a hand in electing the deranged and dangerous Donald Trump makes him "mildly nauseous."

I can appreciate, after the diarrhea of lies that have come from Donald Trump and his swamp creatures, that James Comey is being honest.  I share his nausea over the events that led to the election of Donald Trump.  I value the extent of his self-examination in order to get this account right.

But James Comey has missed an even greater factor in this tragic event.  He has neglected to include the effects of a corrupt Congress in the way this story has played out.

The story goes way back, but it was the republicans in Congress after the election of Barack Obama, and subsequently the Tea Party extremists that took over who represent the bully in the room.

It was minutes after Obama's inauguration that the republican leaders in Congress were meeting to strategize how to defeat the president.  Mitch McConnell famously and unashamedly stated,

John Boehner on the floor of the House led the rage with a cry of "Hell no you can't" as he talked about the proposed health care bill, a bill republicans refused to be a part of constructing, and then told the American people that the Democrats were excluding them from the process.

Republicans in Congress thwarted Obama's every effort to move the near-dead economy, ignored or distorted his successes and magnified out of context the defeats. Remember Solyndra?  Thanks to republican spin and the media echo chamber, all the successes that resulted from government investment in such small businesses were buried under headlines about this one failed attempt. 

That was the way Obama's eight years went under this republican Congress, as they doubled down on lies and false accusations with each electoral success.

While ignoring the hunting down of bin Laden and the winding down of one of our most tragic wars, republicans in Congress did not just refuse to work as partners with Obama in defeating our enemies, they actively opposed whatever he proposed.  Isis?  Syria?  The dynamic and entertaining McCain/Graham duo found fault with it all.  McConnell and Boehner refused to offer any constructive alternatives.  In fact, Congress did not offer any legislation that could be seen as a commitment one way or the other; all they offered was cynical criticism of anything Obama thought might work.  And because he believed that he should be working with Congress, he hesitated to take strong actions in Syria without agreement from Congress.  Although Obama's diplomacy turned out well at the time, he has faced contempt throughout for failing to act when Assad "crossed the red line."

And the whole Hillary project may have begun as an innocent misogynist reaction to the smart and powerful wife of a president, but by the time her intentions to run for president had barely been announced, the same game went into play.  Her every action was criticized, lies were told and then retold by the press, and the Hillary that can't be trusted became the narrative. 

The obstructionism worked, because the republican party united in their loud opposition.  They worked the media, and they played the American people.  They lied and then they lied again.

So, when Donald Trump brought his tantrums and lies to his campaign, the only difference between him and Congressional republicans was the degree and the flamboyance.  And because the media likes to follow shiny objects, like the orange hair, we got to witness every moment of the blowhard's traveling salvation show, with fake miracles and full-blown hate and hysteria.

Sadly, Trump gets full credit for Obama's failure to act more aggressively against Russian election interference.  And surely Trump was by then the bully that controlled the entire show.  He spewed anti-democratic hatred with far more flair than his republican allies.  But without eight years of the bombast and bullying of the republican party and Congressional leaders, Trump would have most likely been dismissed as a crackpot.  Without a Congress that refused to fight for anything other than their own survival, Obama would have fought hard against Russian interference.  But the bullies were harassing and attacking one of the candidates, and the opponent was making shrill accusations of cheating.  Bullies win when they cause the rest of us to lose confidence and to hesitate to do what is right.  The bullies won because Obama did not want to be seen as interfering in the election, as the bullies had already intimated.

And this is where Comey lost the thread of the narrative.  He thought he was cooperating with a responsible branch of government, but Congress was a fully partisan player in destroying Hillary Clinton.  He reported to Congress about emails as though the emails were the issue, and not the defamation of a candidate for president.  And then he went back again, because he had promised he would if anything changed, even though he had no reason to believe anything had changed.

Just as Obama went timidly into these last weeks of this election, Comey went obediently to Congress.  He ignored the advice of his boss and he rationalized ignoring precedent, and he interfered in the presidential election by jumping into an investigation because he was afraid of not opening it, and he reported it to Congress and the American people, because he was afraid he would be seen as dishonest if he didn't.

There are times when one has to take the risk of doing the wrong thing in order to do the right thing.  That last decision point, days before the election, was when James Comey decided it was more important that he be seen as trustworthy rather than that he had followed precedent and law.

James Comey has had to face the reality, through his subsequent dealings and ultimate firing by Donald Trump, that his attempt to be honorable led to a disaster for our democracy.  Out of fear of being seen as dishonorable, he allowed himself to be used by a corrupt Congress and a megalomaniac candidate.  Had he not come forward to announce the reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, the outcome of the election would surely have been different.  But then he would have had to face accusations of partisanship by the other side.  And that is where being honorable would really have come into play.

Which brings me to the point of the whole thing.  We have a Congress that is dirty.  Congressional republicans have proven to be wholly partisan and untrustworthy.  They have chosen to continue to hide facts in order to support a corrupt and unbalanced leader in order to maintain their hold over our democracy.  In Germany in 1933, it took elected members of the republic to give Hitler the power to create a dictatorship.  And today we have lapdogs like Devin Nunes and power mongers like Mitch McConnell paving the way for the illegal and undemocratic acts of the Trump administration.  Today this Congressional majority is not only thwarting efforts to protect Robert Mueller from being fired by Donald Trump, they have undermined the investigation into Russian interference.  And incredibly, we continue to hear from one or the other that they think Congress should reopen investigations on Hillary.

While Trump keeps us busy following his criminal and crazy rants, Congress is truly the arm in which the fate of our democracy rests.  I don't believe we can take another session of republican rule.  Not only have they gutted laws that protect 98 percent of us, they have stood by as Trump signs away our environment and our liberties.  They happily approve federal judges that represent the far right:  big business, big money and the curbing of individual freedoms.  They continue to hope baiting us with Planned Parenthood and the Second Amendment will keep them in power, and are blind to the threats to our democracy.  In so doing, they have become the greatest threat to our democracy.

This is why we must do everything we can to turn over both houses of Congress in November.  The only way we can survive the terrorism of Donald Trump is by electing a Congress that will fight for our democratic principles.

We cannot be passive during this midterm election season.  Be informed.  Volunteer.  Donate.  Spread the word.  Vote.

Our lives and our children's futures depend on it.