Proliferating predators. Kirsten Gillibrand. Tweetle Dumb. FBI vs. POTUS. Perfect GOP cartoon. Great statue. Good books. Unfunny SNL skit. Fave quotes
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN NEWSLETTER #61 DEC 5, 2017
I'm one of the last people I know who reads the NY Times on paper, not online. One benefit of seeing the hard copy is that the placement of each story -- section, page, location on the page -- reveals how the Times editors evaluate its importance. So I couldn't help noting how far back in the paper the following appeared today: Nirai Chokshi's story on sex harassment charges against Public Radio host, John Hockenberry (p.A-19) and my daughter Robin Pogrebin's piece on sex harassment accusations against Peter Martins, director of the New York City Ballet.(p. A-20) A month ago, both stories would have been front page news. Is the press and the public getting inured to the proliferating tales of workplace sex harassment? Will it reach the point where the seriousness of this egregious male behavior is dismissed on the grounds that "they all do it?"
DEPT. OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
*Even after all the stories and testimonies, there's something really raw about Jenny Lumet's account of her sexual assault by Russell Simmons, a man of color whose attack on her was not just terrifying but felt like a betrayal of their common heritage and peoplehood. Lumet is the daughter of director Sidney Lumet and granddaughter of singer Lena Horne.
* Texas Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold used $84,000 in taxpayer funds to secretly pay off victim of his sex harassment.
* As sex assault accusations continue to mount against powerful men in Hollywood, newsrooms, print journalism, Congress, churches, synagogues, and sports (including the smarmy doctor, Larry Nassar, who molested Olympics gymnasts), why am I so shocked by the alleged behavior of Metropolitan Opera Conductor James Levine? Probably because of my unconscious classism; that is, I'm predisposed to believe the best of the heroes of high culture. Yet if Levine molested teenage boys as charged, then the revered maestro is no better than all those predator priests and "middle brow"abusers like Alies, O'Reilly, Spacey, Moore, Lauer, Cosby, & Weinstein.
POLITICS
* As the self-proclaimed president of the Kirsten Gillibrand fan club, I was delighted to hear our New York Senator (pictured with me above, right) address a small group of friends & supporters the other night at the home of Maria Cuomo & Kenneth Cole. For years, Sen Gillibrand has been ahead of the curve, speaking out & fighting for survivors of sexual harassment in the military and on college campuses. A month ago, before the outing of Messrs. Franken, Conyers, Moore, Farenthold, etc. Sen. Gillibrand introduced legislation that will change how Congress handles sex harassment claims and make it easier for accusers to get justice.
* Kudos to the editors of NY's Daily News for its candid front page headline (above). The rest of the media must stop enabling our Liar-in-Chief to get coverage for his ravings.With facts and truth under daily attack, the journalistic ideal of "objectivity" must be replaced by simple truth telling. To wit: The President of the United States is Tweetle Dumb. He is deranged. He's not just an egomaniacal narcissist preening in a little golf cart. If the world is a wooden ship, Trump is a loose canonball rolling around on the deck. He has brought us to the brink of war with North Korea and seems ready to ignite the tinder box in the Middle East. His diplomatic blunders, coddling of extremists, and insane tweets are evidence of a serious mental disorder. He has encouraged white nationalists to crawl out from under their rocks and has normalized racism in public life. He wants in the U.S. Senate a man whom Alabama police banned from a shopping mall for harassing underaged girls. Trump is debasing American democracy and shaming us before the world. Impeachment is not the answer; Pence would be worse because his ideology is fundamentalist/extremist but his veneer is sane. The answer is more resistance. Demonstrations. Protests. Phone calls & visits to legislators. Letters to Editors. Disruptions of Republican power centers. (Thanks for Sunny Goldberg for forwarding today's best cartoon.)
SENATE GOP MEETING THIS MORNING
* More than 12,000 current and former FBI agents blast back at Trump's bizarre claims against the agency.
[J. Edgar Hoover with Pres. Richard Nixon, 1971]
Never in my life did I imagine I'd be taking the side of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on any issue. I remember the FBI for infiltrating the labor movement, the Old Left, the New Left, the civil rights movement, and the Women's Movement. I remember Hoover's Cointelpro, red-baiting Congressional hearings, and illegal wiretaps. Now I'm looking to the FBI & Mueller to save us from the lunacy of Public Enemy #1, Donald Trump.
*3 Cheers for Congressman Denny Heck (D. WA, above) who wouldn't let CNN interviewer Erin Burnett trivialize the acts of felon Michael Flynn. Watch clip for a primer on how to nip an appeaser in the bud.
VIDEO
* SNL tries for laughs about sex harassment. I found "Welcome to Hell" too candy-cute tame and girly-girl frothy to be funny. Plus, its treatment of women of color as an afterthought is insulting.
ART, MONEY & POLITICS
In her Times oped, Aviva Kempner poses the question, "As Confederate Statues Fall, What Should Replace Them?" Her answer: Augusta Savage's"The Harp" (above), which was highly praised when exhibited at the 1939 World's Fair, but destroyed afterward when Savage had no funds to store it. The 16-foot-tall plaster piece was composed of 12 stylized black singers as the strings of the harp, God's arm as the instrument's sounding board & a young man kneeling in front holding sheets of music. Stunning. P.S. the DVD of Aviva's splendid film on philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, founder of 5000 schools for African-American kids, can be purchased here.
BOOKS TO GIVE FRIENDS, FAMILY, OR YOURSELF
George Santayana famously said, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Two books about ordinary people exhibiting extraordinary courage remind us of the seismic impact of the 20th century civil rights struggle and demonstrate its immediate relevance to our 21st Century Resistance Movements.
* Janet Dewart Bell's compelling oral history, Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement, captures the unique voices of nine intrepid women who, each in her own way, contributed grit, love, strength, strategy, spirit, and formidable personal commitment to the long struggle for racial rights and dignity that are yet to be fully realized (and are now regressing by the day). Among Bell's subjects are prominent activists -- Myrlie Evers, Kathleen Cleaver, Aileen Hernandez --and lesser known "sheros,"like Leah Chase, the master chef who fed the freedom fighters; Diane Nash, the largely unsung cofounder of SNCC who helped organize the Freedom Rides and lunch counter protests]; and Dr. June Jackson Christmas who fought for racial and gender equality in medicine, housing, and government. You'll wish you'd marched side by side with every one of these amazing women. Order in advance of May, publication.
*-Kent Spriggs, a Southern civil rights lawyer for more than 50 years & former mayor and city commissioner of Tallahassee, has written a book you'll want to give to every law student and practicing attorney you know: ' Voices Of Civil Rights Lawyers: Reflections from the Deep South, 1964-1980 describes the movement from the perspective of attorneys who fought on the legal battlefield during those life-changing decades. Add these vivid recollections to those of the women in Bell's book (above) to get a broader, deeper, fuller sense of the movement that some believe began and ended with Martin, Malcolm, Stokely, and Angela.
RACISM, ANTISEMITISM & ISLAMOPHOBIA
Great idea: popcorn, previews, and promotion of justice.
* AgainstIslamophobia.org bought ads (top) to run with previews at the O Cinema movie house. In this venue, the ad cost $100 per month for 10 seconds exposure before each show. To advertise for justice in your community, get details from Donna Nevel
While daydreaming the other day, my eye grazed over the quotes I've considered meaningful enough to tape to the wall above my desk over the last few years:
"I write to find out what I think." -- variously attributed to Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Myra Goldberg, & Stephen King.
"The self-made man is as likely as the self-made egg." -- Mark Twain
"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -- Thomas Mann
"It's a mitzvah to be joyful." -- Reb Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810) Torah scholar
"The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation." -- Peter Straub
“When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.”-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Women have a choice. You're either a masochist or a feminist. There is nothing else.” -- Gloria Steinem
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Those sentiments still speak truth to me, but this one, written in 2008 by Khari Mosley, then a 19-year old single mother from McKeesport, PA, just makes me sadly nostalgic:
If only...