Political cartoons. Sex predators. Nazis then & now. Gillibrand. Giffords. Daddies. Humor from Holland & Australia. Contraception. Craziness. Films. Books
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN NEWSLETTER #55 OCT. 24, 2017
Words are inadequate to express the outrage many of us feel about recent news events. This time, I think cartoons and pictures speak louder than words.
EVERYTHING I WANT TO SAY ABOUT HARVEY WEINSTEIN
If you love political cartoons as much as I do, subscribe to Daryl Cagle's free daily cartoon service.
TRUMP WATCH
History as prophecy? Chilling as it is, you need to watch this 6 -minute video of the 1939 event in Madison Square Garden when 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City. Now that Richard Spencer is holding rallies in the name of white supremacy & Trump is revving up his ultra--nationalist base, those pre-war crowd numbers may be predictive. Like the Nazis 78 years ago, today's neo-Nazis fan the flames of hatred with the memes of patriotism. The 1939 event was called, "Rally for America." Their stage showcased George Washington and the Stars & Stripes. The crowd says the Pledge of Allegiance and sings the national anthem. Without a trace of irony, the German-accented speaker shouts: "Our country must be returned to the American people who founded it."
Kill the messenger. POTUS' credo: If you don't like the news, shut down the news media. Now he's thinking of challenging TV broadcast licenses. How Putin-esque.
A must read: "What's Normal? A Scientific Inquiry" by Ben Rowen in the November Atlantic
Maria Konnikova on how the unthinkable becomes normalized. There's method to the madness.
Trump jokes about Mike Pence's hatred of LGBT people. What's next -- lynching?
POLITICS
"A Woman Can Be President, Right?" I respond to that question in the current issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas,
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (above), a fearless advocate for women, LGBTQ people, and working families, is profiled in Vogue whose editor, Anna Wintour introduces the article with: "We’re all used to hearing the word authentic a little too often these days, but in Senator Gillibrand’s case, it’s entirely accurate."
Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson isn't the only uppity woman whom Trump and his chief of staff John Kelly seem to have a problem with. Is it an accident they're after women of color?. 17 black female lawmakers demand that Kelly apologize for "blatant lies" about Wilson .
VIDEOS & PODCASTS
The Dutch give good political humor. In this video, they beg Europeans to rescue America from NRA-- National Rifle Addiction..
Australian comedian Jim Jefferies (above) riffs on America's gun problem. Smart, funny, painful.
For the 2nd amendment but against insanity. Former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in the head at a shopping center rally, and her husband Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran and former U.S. Astronaut, launched a new effort to require background checks for gun buyers. Watch video.
Daddy Matters."Give yourself a break from the headlines: Watch Laguardia Cross' podcasts about the joys of fatherhood, his conversations with other involved Dads, and his interviews with his tiny daughters.
Forgive the qvell but my daughter Robin is one of the singers in this whimsical rendition of "Broadway Baby" performed by Times' employees in honor of Stephen Sondheim who was interviewed by Lin-Manuel Miranda in Sunday's paper. Robin Pogrebin (arms up in 2nd row) covers Culture for the Times. See if you can find Frank Bruni and Maggie Haberman.
Untold Holocaust story. Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 Jewish children in Czechoslovakia and kept it a secret for 50 years until his wife found his notebook & gave it to a journalist, who gave it to a producer. Watch the grown-up child survivors (above) surprise him on TV years later.
FILM
"One of Us" is a riveting Netflix documentary about thjree Hasidic Jews, a woman and two men, who leave their insular religious communities after suffering years of abuse and identity displacemen,t and who pay the price in ostracism, bullying, addiction, post-traumatic stress, & separation from their kids,
The 11th Annual "Other Israel Film Festival." Movies that take a deeper look into Israeli and Palestinian societies and create a platform for conversation and further engagement. Screening line-up here. Nov 2-9 at the JCC of Manhattan. Amsterdam Ave @76 St. 646-505-4444.
"Big Sonia," is a paean to a petite, 91-year-old Holocaust survivor who drives herself to work at her Tailor Shop six days a week and meets regularly with middle school kids and incarcerated men to tell her story. One prisoner said listening to her traumatic experiences in the death camps was "life changing" for him. Opens in NYC Fri, Nov 17 at Quad Cinema , 34 W. 13 St. info@quadcinema.com
ACTIVISM
Help spread the word! For most states the period in which to sign up for HEALTH INSURANCE is Nov 1- Dec 15. The website is healthcare.gov. Trouble is the Trumpers have cut most of the funding used to alert the public to the deadline. Without that alert many people may fail to sign up But with guidance from getamericacovered.org you can publicize the time frame and also clarify that there are 12 state-based marketplaces with different contact info. Please consult getamericacovered.org & forward to all your lists.
Doing well then doing good. NY Times describes how wealthy donors's giving promotes social change.
* Going too far. This year angry students blocked an appearance by a conservative speaker at Claremont College who eventually had to be rescued from the mob by police. Violent protesters at Middlebury College shut down a speech by controversial conservative Sociologist Charles Murray (above). Eleven NYU students were arrested after trying to shut down a Conservative comedian. Berkeley had to cancel Ann Coulter’s speech due to threats and security concerns. Given today's toxic political climate, I sympathize with the activists' rage but not their tactics. Don't demonize your opponents. Organize your allies!
*About this alarming trend on college campuses, Kelly Oliver, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University decries the fact that " outrage, censoring and public shaming has begun to replace critique, disagreement and debate...." She adds, "the problematic effects of public shaming are many — among them, silencing 'allies,' blaming individuals rather than examining social context, fostering intolerance and divisiveness, creating a 'with-us-or-against-us' ethos, and reducing identity politics to a version of 'oppression Olympics.'” I call it a "competition of tears". Instead of challenging those in power, it tries to measure the salt water.
WOMEN
Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom Hosts Muslim & Jewish Women's Leadership Conference: "Rise Up Against Hate." Sunday, Nov 5th @ Drew University, N.J. Program here. My workshop description here.
Shame on the organizers of the Womens March for inviting Bernie as a speaker but not Hillary.
The Women's Convention, to be held in Detroit this week is besmirched by this flagrant act of partisanship. Many of their speakers are terrific but nothing excuses the organizers having thrown Hillary under the bus, thus dissing a history-making feminist and riling the millions of us who voted for her.
Earth to John Kelly: We're not going back to the 50s. The president's chief of staff said he yearns for a time when women were "sacred," a word that means "holy, hallowed, blessed, consecrated, sanctified." Women don't want to be worshipped. We just want to be treated like human beings.
Everything's Hillary's fault, starting with Harvey Weinstein, writes Rebecca Solnit in a scathingly sarcastic indictment of those who blame women for the heinous acts of men.
Joan Walsh asks: "What would women be doing if we weren't constantly dealing with male abuse?"
Rebecca Traister is tired of hearing how shocked -- shocked -- everyone is by each new case of sexual assault. She wants action on the root causes of this pernicious epidemic. While praising Biden's recent speech condemning sexual predators, she won't let him off the hook for his complicity in the loathsome attacks on Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991.. Great piece of advocacy journalism.
ABORTION & CONTRACEPTION
Linda Greenhouse explains everything you need to know to make you mad as hell about the right wing assault on contraception. Speaking of Trump's new rules, Greenhouse says, "It’s hard to overstate the radical nature of what has just happened."
Dorothy Samuels deconstructs the "wedding cake case" about the baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple-- and its link "between the baker’s legal aspirations and the Trump administration’s new "religious freedom"rule that allows employers to deny women insurance covering birth control.It also eases the way "for religious and also moral exemptions from government laws and policies" of all kinds.
Erin Gloria Ryan says Trump & Pence want to take us back to abstinence or the rhythm method.
Kudos to sci-fi author Patrick S. Tomlinson who manages to shut down anti-choice advocates by asking them the one question they won't answer. Simple but brilliant. ( Re photo above, have you ever asked yourself, Why is it so that many leaders of anti-choice demonstrations are men? And why they're so obsessed with controlling women's bodies and reproduction? Hint: patriarchy depends on it. )
BOOKS
One of America's premiere legal journalists, Linda Greenhouse (above), challenges traditional standards of "objective" reporting in this engaging book -- part memoir, part jeremiad against those who hobble journalists as citizens. Order Just a Journalist: On the Press, Life, and the Spaces Between
Powered by Love: A Grandmothers' Movement to End AIDS in Africa by Joanna Henry with Ilana Landsberg-Lewis. Interviews and photos of hundreds of grandmothers in 8 African countries (including Barack Obama's grandma, Sarah). Extraordinary women fighting for a a better future. Sample the visuals.
Last week I recommended, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” Now the book is on the Times bestseller list. Read it for answers to the question we've been asking for months: "What the fuck is wrong with this man?"
Have a good week, if that's even possible with Agent Orange in the White House .