Happy Grammys Day Tomorrow

I'm not in the music business any longer. I remember when I told my boss I was leaving, I told him the thing I most wanted to never have to have anything to do with was the Grammys. First of all, I was joyful I would never have to be a prop in their TV show any longer. You can't imagine how boring it is to go to that thing year after year. Sure, once is exciting and twice is ok... but year after year after year? Even I have better ways to spend my time. Worse was serving on one of their selection committees, as I did for a few years. There was always something shady in my mind about how the final decisions got made.

Anyway, that's been so over for so long, I thought I'd never have to even think about the Grammys again. And now the whole mess has been all over the media, not even blotted out by Trump's impeachment trial!





I didn't know, but it turns out that tomorrow is the TV show. There are tributes to Prince (Sheila E and Usher), Nipsey Hussle (John Legend, DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Roddy Ricch, YG, and Kirk Franklin), Ken Ehrlich (Camila Cabello, Gary Clark Jr., John Legend, Debbie Allen, Joshua Bell, Common, Misty Copeland, Lang Lang, Cyndi Lauper, Ben Platt, and the War and Treaty) and John Prine (Bonnie Raitt) and performances by Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Rosalía, Ariana Grande, Tyler the Creator, Lil Nas X, BTS, Diplo, Mason Ramsey, and Billy Ray Cyrus, Charlie Wilson, Gary Clark Jr. and the Roots, H.E.R., Demi Lovato, Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C., the Jonas Brothers, Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani and, last but not least, Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Trombone Shorty together for the In Memoriam segment, remembering recently deceased artists. (Now if they only had a category for worst song by the worst performer, people might actually enjoy the shit show. My nominee is Karen Sokolof Javitch for this garbage:





The biggest set of scandals to ever hit the Grammy Awards might be bigger than tomorrow's ceremony and TV spectacular. Emily Peck's version is the most fun to read:

From the outside, it looks like the Grammys have come a long way from 2017, when the award show was widely criticized for being dominated by men.

Powerhouse artists like Lizzo, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande are set to perform Sunday night at the music awards, hosted by Alicia Keys. Women make up the majority of nominees in the four biggest categories, including Song of the Year and Best New Artist.

Five of the eight nominees for Album of the Year are women. That’s a big turnaround from the past: From 2013 to 2018, a staggering 91% of Grammy nominees were men.

Behind the scenes, however, the game is still rigged in favor of the powerful and well-compensated men who actually run the show, according to explosive allegations from Deborah Dugan. She was put on leave last week from her role as CEO of the Recording Academy, the nonprofit in charge of the Grammys, a little more than a week before the award show.

Dugan was the organization’s first female leader. She told HuffPost that she was forced out by the academy’s male board members and powerful lawyers after trying to make significant changes at the academy and speaking up about sexual harassment at the organization.

“I knew it was going to be an old boys club, deeply entrenched and not diverse institution,” Dugan said Thursday. “I had no idea how bad it would be.”

Dugan, 61, filed a bombshell 44-page sexual harassment complaint Tuesday against the academy with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which handles discrimination complaints.

In it, Dugan said she faced sustained, persistent sexual harassment from the group’s lead lawyer, Joel Katz, a partner at the influential law firm Greenberg Traurig. She claims he tried to kiss her at their first meeting, a dinner, that took place before she officially started her job.

“She was very weirded out,” a colleague of Dugan’s at the Recording Academy told HuffPost. Dugan confided in the colleague about the dinner soon after it happened, the person said, requesting that their name not be used for fear of retaliation.

Katz did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost, but has denied her characterization of the dinner through a lawyer to other media outlets.

Dugan also claimed that the nonprofit vastly overpays its powerful outside attorneys, including the well-connected Katz, and that the process for nominating artists for the Grammys is flawed.

The Recording Academy tells a different story, and that story has shifted over the past week.

When Dugan was first placed on leave, the academy put out a statement claiming it was investigating complaints about Dugan’s treatment of a female member of the academy.

That complaint, a 1½-page document sent by a former executive assistant at the academy and reviewed by HuffPost, accuses Dugan of “bullying” and “hostility.” It contains no specific details of the behavior.

Yet that was apparently enough to spur the academy to action. “In light of concerns raised to the Recording Academy Board of Trustees, including a formal allegation of misconduct by a senior female member of the Recording Academy team, the Board has placed Recording Academy president and CEO Deborah Dugan on administrative leave, effective immediately,” the academy said in a statement last week. “The Board has also retained two independent third-party investigators to conduct independent investigations of the allegations.”

The misconduct complaint occurred in December, weeks before she was put on leave.

This week, the academy seemed to change the timeline, claiming that Dugan was put on leave only after her lawyers asked for several million dollars in order to be let out of her contract.

“Following that communication from Ms. Dugan’s attorney, Ms. Dugan was placed on administrative leave as we complete both of these ongoing investigations,” interim CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in a statement Monday about the ongoing dust-up.

...HuffPost obtained the misconduct complaint filed by Claudine Little, the former assistant to Portnow who had been at the academy for 20 years. The letter, written by an outside law firm, is addressed to Katz and threatens a lawsuit.

“Ms. Dugan has exhibited open hostility toward Ms. Little ― perhaps because, according to Ms. Dugan, Ms. Little is not ‘young’ and ‘cool.’” It says Dugan “belittled” and “demeaned” her but doesn’t provide examples.

Little claims in the letter that Dugan was trying to replace her as retaliation for her report of abusive behavior. But Dugan’s former colleague told HuffPost that the plan was always to shift Little to another role.

It’s unusual that a CEO would be put on leave based on such a thin complaint, and it’s equally strange that an investigation like this would take so long, said Dugan’s former colleague.

“This is all a sham,” they said. “Have you ever heard of a serious investigation of a former executive who has walked off the job because she can’t get along with the new CEO of the company?”

“Ms. Dugan’s choice to litigate in the press and spread a false narrative about the Academy and me and my colleagues is regrettable, but it is also emblematic of Ms. Dugan’s abusive and bullying conduct while she served as the Academy’s President and CEO,” Little said in a statement provided by the academy. “I am proud of my career with the Academy-- where, as a woman, I was able to work my way from secretary to Director of Administration in the executive suite, solely based on merit and while working for and with leaders far more demanding and hard-charging than Ms. Dugan.”

“It is disappointing that Ms. Dugan hopes to leverage public opinion along gender lines and expects not to be scrutinized for her inexcusable behavior simply because she is a woman,” she added. “She should be held to the same standard.”

The fact that the academy’s story has changed is telling, said Michael Willemin, a partner at Wigdor, the New York law firm representing Dugan. “Anytime a company starts changing the reasons it presents for taking an adverse action, it raises the specter that the reasons are false.”

None of this was how it was supposed to go. Dugan stepped into her role just six months ago as part of the academy’s efforts to do better with women after a disastrous 2018 award show that left the hashtag GrammySoMale trending.

Her predecessor, Neil Portnow, was forced to step down last year after saying that if women wanted to get more acclaim, they needed to “step up.” (Worth noting: Portnow’s predecessor, Mike Greene, was ousted in 2002 in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal and amid accusations of financial wrongdoing.)

The outrage over Portnow’s comments, coming at the height of the Me Too movement, was intense. Entertainers including Pink, Sheryl Crow and Katy Perry, as well as powerful female industry executives, called for his resignation.

The Recording Academy then brought in Tina Tchen, who would later go on to become the president of TimesUp, to lead a task force aimed at improving things.

An investigation from Tchen’s task force found the Recording Academy to be overwhelmingly dominated by men-- men made up close to 75% of the nominating committees, according to the report. The academy seemed to take the findings seriously, increasing the number of nominees in its four biggest categories to eight from four, and diversifying its voting body by adding more women, people of color and younger members.

The Recording Academy hired Dugan in August 2019 with a mandate to work on improving diversity and inclusion. She was an industry pro who was the CEO of (Red), the nonprofit group founded by Bono, and prior to that an executive at EMI and Disney, and wanted to make more changes, particularly at the board level, to add diversity.

That’s not how it worked out.

Dugan said her first clue came soon after she signed a three-year contract to lead the Recording Academy, at a dinner with Katz.

The general counsel propositioned her, she says in her complaint, called her “baby” and told her about his private plane and his money. At the end of their meeting, at which Dugan said she just tried to keep things professional, he tried to kiss her. Every time the two met one-on-one after that incident, Katz would tell Dugan she was pretty and referred to her as baby, according to her complaint.

Dugan told HuffPost that she’d been made to feel like a “whore” at that first meeting with Katz. She emphasized that she thought the point wasn’t romantic but a test to see what she’d put up with.

Through a lawyer, Katz denied Dugan’s recollection of the dinner, the New York Times reported. He did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment Thursday.

The next sign of trouble for Dugan came at her very first board meeting-- before she’d officially started her job. Dugan said she was whisked into a private room and told that Portnow, who was still CEO, was facing a rape allegation from a female artist. The day before, Dugan had been asked to sign off on Portnow’s bonus. And a little before that, she’d also been asked to approve a deal in which he would stay on as a consultant for the academy for $750,000 a year. She told HuffPost she rejected the consultation deal because she didn’t “want him giving the impression that the female CEO can’t do it alone.”

Portnow has called the rape claims “ludicrous and untrue” and has said he didn’t demand the $750,000 fee.

A representative of the academy confirmed to HuffPost that there was indeed a rape allegation but that Portnow was cleared.

“Ms. Dugan was made aware of previous rape allegations, for which Mr. Portnow was cleared, and she did not do anything with the information,” said the representative, who declined to be named.

Was Portnow put on leave while he was accused of rape? The representative of the academy was unable to answer that question.

It was becoming clear to Dugan that there were deep problems at the academy, but she said she was already locked into the job. She had signed a contract. And, word of her hiring had leaked out quickly. She also had moved her teenage daughter and 91-year-old mother from New York to Los Angeles.

Dugan wanted to hire in-house lawyers, but the board rejected her bid to do so.

Katz, for example, is paid $250,000 a year simply to be on call for the academy, according to the complaint ― he then earns fees on top of that for any work performed and is paid a salary by his firm. Katz’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, is a dominant player in the recording industry-- and indeed the academy has paid out $10.3 million in fees to the firm in the past four years, the New York Times reported.

Dugan also alleges that she was paid far less than her two male predecessors and that, when she raised the issue, “she was told she should be happy to be earning more than she had in her previous role,” according to the complaint. Dugan does not reveal those compensation numbers in the complaint. However, she earned $537,000 a year at (Red), The Associated Press reported. In 2016, Portnow made $1.7 million. He had been CEO since 2002.

A few artists have spoken up on Dugan’s behalf.

“I salute Deborah Dugan for her truth and courage to try and effect change. As always, a bunch of ignorant, testosterone-fueled, usually old white men stop progress and screw it up,” said hip-hop icon Chuck D. in an Instagram post after Dugan was put on leave. “Same old bullshit.”

Dugan never wanted to go public with these claims, she said. She had hoped to reform the academy from the inside. But that all changed in November, when the board got wind that Portnow’s former executive assistant Little had taken a leave of absence and accused Dugan of bullying her. Little sent her formal legal letter on Dec. 17.

The board used that complaint to strip Dugan of some of her powers. In early December, they told her that she could no longer hire or fire people without board approval, she said in her complaint.

Dugan-- powers shackled-- wanted to at least put her experiences somewhere on the record, hoping to prod the board into action.

On Dec. 22, she sent a letter to the academy’s human resources representative outlining these complaints-- about pay, lawyer fees and Katz’s behavior.

Just three weeks after sending the letter, which is included in her complaint, the academy put Dugan on administrative leave. Dugan said she was assured the matter would be private.

Yet that same day, the Los Angeles Times published a story about how she was put on leave because of misconduct allegations-- and the story quickly spread.

To push Dugan out right before the Grammys looks “clumsy,” said Rosemary Carroll, an industry lawyer and the founding partner of Carroll, Guido, Groffman, Cohen, Bar & Karalian, who’s been working in the music industry for 30 years.

The two weeks before the Grammys is the only time anyone pays attention to the Recording Academy, she said. “To do it in those two weeks, in this clumsy, awkward, obvious way, seemed lame to me.”

Carroll is one of the female executives who called for Portnow’s ouster.

Even though Portnow left and the academy brought in Dugan, it seems it wasn’t serious about making changes, she said.

“They just wanted her to come in like window dressing, it seems.”

Dugan said the charges are “bogus,” manufactured in order to push her out.

“There is a pattern of sexism and corruption in the Recording Academy,” Dugan said. “There is no pattern in my 40 years of anyone going to HR complaining about me.”

Dugan said her career is essentially “ruined,” and she now assumes she’ll never work again.

She won’t be going to the Grammys on Sunday night. She said the academy yanked her tickets-- and the tickets of all the industry contacts and friends she had invited.

Still, she’ll watch the show on TV. “I worked really hard on this show, and it’s going to be great.”

I don't know Dugan but her side of this rings true to me.

Bloomberg's Ugly Trump-Like Sexism Makes Him Absolutely Unfit To Be The Democratic Nominee

Bloomberg is running in 3 super-Tuesday states so far: Alabama Arkansas and Tennessee but his campaign always says he hasn't decided if he's running for president or not yet. Sounds crazy to me but... he's also spending $100,000,000 on digital ads in battleground states the way you or I might spent $100. Michael Scherer and John Wagner, writing for the Washington Post, reported that the first ads popped up yesterday in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona and that "the outlay far exceeds what any other Democrat already in the race has spent on advertising."

The New York Times reported that the ads will stay up through the primary season even if Bloomberg ultimately decides to run only in Alabama Arkansas and Tennessee. (He's not actually in the ads.)

The announcement of the ad campaign might take some of the attention off all the stories that inundated the press this week about Bloomberg's sexism. Bloomberg's arrogance makes him incapable to responding directly to a long litany of example of his misogyny but he did have a lackey, tell the media that "Mike has come to see that some of what he has said is disrespectful and wrong. He believes his words have not always aligned with his values and the way he has led his life."

On Thursday Mediaite reported that "Bloomberg’s demeaning or outright disturbing comments about women and sexual assault date back decades. In mid-to-late ’90s, four women sued Bloomberg LP for sexual harassment and details that came out of the suit include the billionaire allegedly demanding a woman sales executive 'Kill it!' when she announced that she was pregnant. While discussing the same sales executive getting engaged, the lawsuit claimed Bloomberg looked at her engagement ring and said, 'What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?' before asking several days later if she was 'still engaged,' adding, 'What, is he that good in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?' In an incredible argument insisting he did not make sexually inappropriate comments about the sales executive, Bloomberg said in a deposition that he thought the phrase 'I’d do her' was a reference to having a friendship with someone, not sex. The suit was settled out of court and Bloomberg claims he passed a lie-detector test proving his innocence, but the supposed test results were never released."

In a late ’90s lawsuit over Bloomberg LP’s sexist work culture, a woman employee claimed she had been raped by her superior, but in a deposition, Bloomberg suggested that she was lying by saying that the only time he believes rape accusations are when there’s “an unimpeachable third-party witness” vouching for the victim. The suit accused Bloomberg of using phrases like, “I’d do that piece of meat” and “I’d do her in a second;” the billionaire took issue with just one part of those comments, saying, “I don’t recall ever using the term ‘meat’ at all.” A Village Voice report from 2001 suggested that Bloomberg may have quietly settled the suit out of court with the woman, like he did in the lawsuit years previous.

In a book from the early ’90s-- titled, The Portable Bloomberg: The Wit and Wisdom of Michael Bloomberg-- written by Bloomberg LP staffers to canonize some of their boss’s most memorable quotes, the lines "If women wanted to be appreciated for their brains, they’d go to the library instead of to Bloomingdale’s" and "I know for a fact that any self-respecting woman who walks past a construction site and doesn’t get a whistle will turn around and walk past again and again until she does get one" are attributed to the billionaire. When journalist Michael Wolff wrote about the book, he reached out to former Bloomberg LP executive Elisabeth DeMarse, who confirmed that the quotes were accurate, adding that Bloomberg “was touched” by it because “He loves things that are about himself.”

Business Insider made him sound like Trump! "In his 1997 autobiography, Bloomberg wrote that he kept 'a girlfriend in every city' during his years on Wall Street in the 1960s and 70s. And he once told a reporter, 'I like theater, dining, and chasing women ... Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. What do you think? It's a wet dream.'... In 2008, at least 58 women filed a class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg LP alleging pregnancy discrimination. The women alleged they were demoted, had their salaries cut, or were otherwise mistreated after they returned from maternity leave. One of the women's complaints alleged that an executive at the company said, 'I'm not having any pregnant bitches working for me.'" A Democratic Party presidential nominee? Maybe in Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee... nowhere else.

Republican Ladies, There's A Fella Who Says It's OK For More Of You In Congress-- But Only The Types He Approves

Nice shoes! Can she dance?

New York's North Country Republican Elise Stefanik did well in November. Her R+4 district, the biggest in the state, which stretches from just not of the Albany/Schenectady/Sarasota Springs are along the Vermont border and Lake Champlain to Quebec, along the St. Lawrence, past Waterown and into Lake Ontario. In 2016, the district went for Trump 53.9% to 40.0%, after voting for Obama twice. In November, Stefanik beat progressive Democrat Tedra Cobb 131,981 (56.1%) to 99,791 (42.4%). She won 10 of the 12 counties, spending $2,810,249 to Cobb's $1,538,958. Neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's House Majority Fund gave Cobb a dime.

Stefanik is a well-liked mainstream conservative. Her Trump affinity score was 89.6%. Right around the average for the 9 New York state Republicans. (Aside from Stefanik, there are only 5 left, Faso, Donovan and Tenney having been swept away in the anti-red wave.) Serving on the Armed Services, Education and Labor, and Intelligence Committees, she was an ally of Ryan's and never gave leadership a hard time-- until after the election, when she served notice on GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy that she would no longer work with or pay dues to the NRCC and would be using her own leadership PAC to recruit women to run in primaries (against Republican men). "I am going to keep pointing out to my colleagues," she explained to the media, "that we are at a crisis level for GOP women. This election should be a wake-up call to Republicans that we need to do better... We need to be elevating women’s voices, not suppressing them."

This kind of thing doesn't go over with in the GOP. Identity politics is a no-no for white patriarchs and the new NRCC head, reactionary Tom Emmer (R-MN), blew his top, and menacingly told an on-the-record interviewer that she was "making a mistake" to help female candidates in primaries. Stefanik tweeted that she was informing him, not "asking for permission." Other GOP women-- including even some on the most extreme fringes, like Tennessee sociopath Diane Black-- backed Stefanik... and Emmer was forced to back down and apologize.

But Republicans are still smarting from the little lady stepping out of line and talking too loud. Over the weekend, one right-wing goof-ball, Neil Dwyer, wrote an OpEd for oligarch Philip Anschutz's crackpot misogynysitic website, the Washington Examiner, We need more GOP women, but not in the mold of Rep. Elise Stefanik. He tried-- but failed-- to make the point that Republicans lost so many seats in November was because they didn't have enough extremists and it was "moderates" who dragged the party down. He used long-time far right psychopath Barbara Comstock, who lost her suburban DC district in a landslide to a relatively conservative Democrat, Jennifer Wexton, as an example. "One moderate who did win re-election and has asserted herself in the face of her party's defeat," he fumed, "is Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). She has conducted many interviews describing the level of women in the Republican caucus as at a 'crisis level.' Stefanik has also announced she will be using her political action committee, 'E-PAC.' for congressional recruiting, aiming for more Republican women to get through primaries and win races. There's nothing wrong with recruiting more female Republican candidates for Congress," he condescended. "But is Stefanik the mold we want to see the party's candidates being shaped from?" No, he wants the women to be just like neo-fascist Arizona lunatic Debbie Lesko or like even further right Marsha Blackburn.

Stefanik has voted for a farm bill without the original work requirements, for amnesty, against spending cuts, against tax cuts, and for taxpayer-funded sex change procedures in the military. She voted for $81 billion in emergency aid for natural disasters (two months after a $36.5 billion bill for aid was also passed). Meanwhile Republican women such as then-Reps. Martha McSally, Marsha Blackburn, and Kristi Noem all voted "nay." While Stefanik voted against the major tax reform law passed in 2017, her upstate New York Republican colleagues like Reps. John Katko, Chris Collins, and Tom Reed all voted for it. Katko's 24th District even trends at a D+4 rating on the Cook PVI, yet he won re-election by more than 6 percentage points.

...Republicans who want to limit Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's second term as speaker to two years need to find women who serve as a counterpoint to the Women's March, women who can speak directly to the mothers in these suburban districts and appeal to their family values, which include treasuring life, security (which includes immigration), and prosperity. Recruiting women for the sake of optics will get the party nowhere."

This past cycle, Stefanik's leadership PAC raised $250,167 and contributed $105,000 directly to 68 House candidates, 49 of them men and 20 of them women. Among the Republicans she gave to were very extreme right candidates like Steve Knight (CA), Mimi Walters (CA), Rod Blum (IA), Barbara Comstock (VA), Dino Rossi (WA), Randy Hultgren (IL), David Young (IA) and Marty Nothstein (PA), all of whom were defeated Nov. 6 by Democratic women.

Dwyer should go out on tour-- perhaps with that other long-time GOP woman-hater, Ed Rollins, who referred to Ocasio as "the little girl" a couple of days ago omg Fox. Maybe they can start with an interview with Teen Vogue. I'm sure editor Lucy Diavolo would be delighted to take them on.

It's MOTHER Nature, Not Father Nature

I was fascinated a few days ago to hear Marianne Williamson address a crowd of Laura Oatman supporters in Huntington Beach. Laura is the progressive woman running against Putin's favorite congressman, Republican Dana Rohrabacher. Marianne and Laura spoke to the crowd about the special strength and power of mothers that has evolved over millennia to ensure the longevity of the species. And if we, as a society, ever needed that power, it is now, with Trump and his self-serving enablers in power.

Yesterday, outgoing Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen told Face the Nation that her party is in trouble. "When you look at the future of the Republican Party," she said, "I think that we would be foolish to not see that we’re heading into trouble. Part of that problem is that the GOP is a predominantly male party, with few women running and with a generally hostile attitude towards women. "Far greater numbers of women are identifying themselves as being in the Democratic party," she said. "When you look ahead, what's our future going to be? Are we going to end up a marginalized party? I think that we need to look toward the future, and we need to have the policies that attract millennials, women and minorities. I don't see that... I don't see those Asian women and-- and those minority women, serving in the House GOP or in the Senate GOP... we used to be more accepting of having moderate positions, and now-- now it's getting harder."

Greed-driven, selfish, entitled patriarchs-- the Trump crowd-- aren't going to protect anyone or anything but their own wealth and status. Trump doesn't recognize the concept of a future, very much the opposite of the role that has evolved for women. From the website, Motherhood: "While there are many characteristics that make up a good mother, protecting their young is a common quality that both the human and animal mother share. The mother bear has always been the quintessential example of a mother’s love, and this is mainly because of their fierce, protective nature. It is a widely accepted belief that the most dangerous place to be is between a mother bear and her cub... seventy percent of human deaths caused by grizzly bears are related to a mother grizzly bear protecting her cubs."

Some of this year's best candidates are fierce women who talk about preserving the environment about protecting children from the NRA-coddling Republicans, from the oligarchic tendencies the GOP has adopted that will turn the majority of people into victims. Women like Lisa Brown (WA), Jenny Marshall (NC), Katie Hill (CA), Jess King (PA), Lillian Salerno (TX), Katie Porter (CA), Marie Newman (IL), Nina Ahmad (PA), Antoinette Sedillo Lopez (NM), Mary Matiela (AZ), Wendy Reed (CA), Laura Oatman (CA), Kara Eastman (NE), Marge Doyle (CA) and Alexandria Ocasio (NY) are the future of the Democratic Party... and the future of America. There are 22 women in the Senate, so 22%-- 5 Republicans and 17 Democrats. There are 84 women (19.3%) in the House-- 62 Democrats and 22 Republicans. By the way, 51% of Americans are women and 49% are men. Do we need more women in Congress? Desperately. But keep in mind, some of the very best members of Congress are women-- take Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Judy Chu (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)-- while some of the most horrible members-- even among Democrats-- are also women-- Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-DL) and Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL). And the Democrats have some amazing women running this cycle, like the aforementioned Nina Ahmad, Jenny Marshall and Lillian Salerno, right alongside some of the worst candidates you'll find on the 2018 campaign trial, from Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Susie Lee (New Dem-NV) and Mike Sherrill (New Dem-NJ) to Gretchen Driskell (Blue Dog-MI) and Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)... and that even before we look at neo-fascist Republican monstrosities like Diane Black (TN), Virginia Foxx (NC), Liz Cheney (WY), Vicky Hartzler (MO) and Marsha Blackburn (TN).

And you want to talk about destructive corruption? Three little words: Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

And that's not to say that women politicians can't become as jaded, vile and self-serving as men. In fact, the longer someone is in Congress, the more likely that becomes. Look at Kirsten Gillbrand for example, who is desperately trying to turn the #MeToo movement into a stepping stone for her own careerist ambitions. She's corrupt, racist and devoid of a moral core... but she knows an opportunity when she sees one. Doesn't this look like it was cribbed straight from DWT?

The Gillibrand we see today looks very different than the one we saw back in 2007, when she was on her way to becoming the unlikely winner of a House seat in a largely rural and heavily Republican district in upstate New York:

Upon winning, she became a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats. She supported a balanced budget amendment and a ban on deficit spending. Her immigration platform was of a piece with the proto-Trumpism brewing during George W. Bush’s second term-- no amnesty or benefits for illegal aliens; a crackdown on sanctuary cities like New York; more agents, fencing, and tech for the border; and legislation making English America’s official language. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, gave her the lowest rating of any New York Democrat in Congress for her positions on gay rights issues. Her rating from the National Rifle Association, meanwhile, was a solid 100 percent.

All of that made her a controversial pick to fill the Senate seat that opened up when President Obama tapped Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state in 2009. Asked about why her views had changed, Gillibrand had an unusually straightforward answer.

“After I got appointed, I went down to Brooklyn to meet with families who had suffered from gun violence in their communities,” she said. “And you immediately experience the feeling that I couldn’t have been more wrong-- you know I only had the lens of upstate New York.”

She offered up a similar answer on immigration: “I came from a district that was 98 percent white… And I just didn’t take the time to understand why these issues mattered because it wasn’t

right in front of me. And that was my fault. It was something that I’m embarrassed about and I’m ashamed of.” As Alfonsi pointed out, to say Gillibrand “only had the lens of upstate New York” is somewhat misleading, since she had lived in New York City for a decade before returning to upstate to a run for a congressional seat. From their exchange:

Alfonsi: But you had-- lived in New York City...

Gillibrand: I know.

Alfonsi: ...for a decade.

Gillibrand: And that’s why I was embarrassed.

Alfonsi: You traveled abroad.

Gillibrand: I was wrong. What it’s about is the power of the NRA and the greed of that industry. Let’s be clear. It is not about hunters’ rights, it’s about money.

Alfonsi: Your critics will say it’s political opportunism.

Gillibrand: As is their right. They can say what they like.

Gillibrand is doing her best to air out the issues now, hoping that liberals in Iowa and New Hampshire will focus on her unblemished record in the Senate and not a handful of highly damning House votes from a decade ago. As Gillibrand herself said in the 60 Minutes interview, “if you’re wrong, just admit it and move on.”

No mention of Al Franken? Did he get a chance to apologize and move on before Gillibrand scalped him and then mercilessly ripped him to shreds and forced him out of the Senate? Or is that dirty little episode already deep down the national memory hole?

I'm Sure Kirsten Gillibrand Doesn't Want To Lead A War Against Men

Yesterday I was all excited that Kirsten Gillibrand had boldly endorsed progressive reformer Marie Newman against Blue Dog Dan Lipinski. It was probably the first time I've praised Gillibrand since 2006 when she was first elected to Congress-- with a little help from Blue America. (Watch that Rickie Lee Jones/Squirrel Nut Zippers video we produced and promoted on upstate New York radio for her above.)

But then I looked a little closer at Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines PAC, largely funded by the same Wall Street crooks and corporate monstrosities that have made her the #1 recipient of tainted Financial Sector money in the Senate so far this cycle ($1,368,153). Since 2006 she has accepted $9,093,866 from the Financial Sector, more than any other current members of the Senate other than a couple who ran for president (John McCain and Marco Rubio) plus Schumer, McConnell, Rob Portman and Pat Toomey.

I looked at the contributions Gillibrand's PAC had handed out last cycle-- $172,000-- and couldn't find any pattern to the giving in terms of ideology. She gave to some of the most rotgut conservative Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-AZ), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL), "ex"-Republican Monica Vernon, Blue Dog Gretchen Driskell (MI), Chris Matthews' conservative wife Kathleen (MD), and lots and lots of New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like Terri Sewell (AL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Katherine Rice (NY), Emily Cain (ME), gun fanatic Ann Kirkpatrick(AZ), Ann Kuster (NH), and Suzan DelBene (WA), but also to a few very strong progressives like Zephyr Teachout (NY), Carol Shea-Porter (NH), Pramila Jayapal, Joseline Pena-Melnyk (MD), Mary Ellen Balchunis (PA), Donna Edwards (MD) and Lucy Flores (NV). All over the map, right? Yeah... except for one thing. No men. Gillibrand only gives to women. Not even one man was good enough? And then I realized she was also  giving to really terrible women candidates in primaries against really excellent male candidates. OK, that's how she plays... nothing to do with how bad Lipinski was at all yesterday after all.

Same pattern of giving this cycle as well... all women-- awesome ones like Haley Stevens (MI), Tammy Baldwin (WI), Katie Porter (CA) and Elizabeth Warren (MA)... and really dreadful crap candidates like Sinema, Kirkpatrick and Dianne Feinstein. Does Kirsten Gillibrand think some kind of a war on men is what's needed now? Is that going to further her transparent goal for the presidency?

Let me acknowledge-- with great vigor and greater enthusiasm-- the entirely justifiable rage women have now, not only at patterns of abuse that permeate a reactionary patriarchal society, but at Trump stealing the election from Hillary and that, in order to actually change things for the better, there may have to be a rational proportionate series of responses-- even a little EMILY's List type affirmative action. I know for me personally, if the woman candidate is better, I support her. If the man candidate is better I support him... but if the two candidates are equally qualified, I'll always back the woman candidate. Why? There aren't enough women in elected office-- and that is primarily because the patriarchal power structure has disadvantaged women as a class. That needs to be made up for.

Friday night, Politico went up with a post by Gabriel Debenedetti, Gillibrand remark on Clinton sends shockwaves through Democratic Party. "Going," reported Debenedetti, "where no other prominent Democrat had before on Thursday evening by declaring that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the New York senator and potential 2020 presidential contender yet again found herself the face of a national conversation with the potential to dominate headlines and divide her party. At a time Democrats are desperate to keep the focus on accusations against President Donald Trump and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Gillibrand’s stand shocked even some of her close allies. They had no inkling that she was planning to make news-- let alone news that would invite questions about her own ties to a political power family that has dominated her party’s consciousness for nearly three decades."

The comment also put new, awkward distance between two women whose careers have been politically intertwined since Gillibrand-- then a second-term House member-- took over Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat upon her ascension to the State Department in 2009.

Yet it allowed Gillibrand to act as the tip of the spear on a position that many Democrats suspect will slowly become more popular in the party.

The longtime Clinton ally’s answer to the New York Times' question neatly encapsulated how Gillibrand has placed herself front and center on the dominant issue of the day, even if it forces a debate her own party is uncomfortable confronting. And it highlighted the political dexterity that her critics and rivals often deride as opportunism: A former conservative Blue Dog House member, Gillibrand has reinvented herself as a leading progressive [ROTFLMAO-- sure she is, Gabe] and face of the Trump resistance ahead of a potential presidential run.

"I admire her for speaking out and for being really honest and blunt and brutal about it, even when it comes to Democrats and even when it comes to President Clinton," said longtime Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, a former Hillary Clinton aide.

But, Cardona said, Gillibrand's fight is far from a straightforward one even within the party: "President Clinton is beloved."

So was Al Franken... but no longer. And perhaps he doesn't deserve to be. Perhaps Gillibrand can have a party free on men altogether. That seems brilliant... but unfair. She only wants a party without men who have oogled women or who have jerked off while talking to one on the phone once or committed some other sin against women. This is so touchy but, apparently, we're going to have to deal with it. Many men-- most men?-- are pigs and they're going to not do the kind of crap Bill Clinton and Al Franken did. Is what Franken did a political death sentence? It shouldn't be-- unless the voters of Minnesota think it should. I know one thing for sure... if I had to pick between Al Franken or Kirsten Gillibrand (or Kyrsten Sinema), I'd pick Franken any day of the week. I was never a big Bill Clinton fan but when Gillibrand was asked by the NY Times if he should have stepped down, after the consensual sex he had with another adult, she said, "Yes, I think that is the appropriate response."

A handful of aides to both Clintons declined to comment for this story, citing the political danger of weighing in on such a delicate matter between influential figures in the party. But Philippe Reines-- a longtime aide to the former secretary of state-- lashed out at Gillibrand on Twitter.

“Ken Starr spent $70 million on a consensual blowjob,” he wrote, referring to the investigation into Bill Clinton. “Senate voted to keep [President Clinton]. But not enough for you @SenGillibrand? Over 20 yrs you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money, and seat. Hypocrite. Interesting strategy for 2020 primaries. Best of luck.”

I'm sure Gillibrand is aware that Bill Clinton was impeached for his crime. But that's not enough for her? Nope. This is a topic Democrats are going to have come to some consensus on-- and fast. I can't imagine a Democratic senator having a PAC that only gave money to men. Can you? Of course not; it's a ridiculous concept. There's probably a difference that needs to be recognized between what predators like Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Mark Foley and Roy Moore do and what Al Franken and even Bill Clinton are guilty of. But I would say that if Gillibrand and her single-minded friends keep this up, it will play right into Steve Bannon's hands and crash the anti-Trump wave real fast and do what otherwise looks impossible: keep the Republicans and Donald Trump in power.

And by the way, Gillibrand was once the poster child for the NRA in New York State and the voice of ugly, vicious xenophobia and racism against Hispanics. Should we dredge that up to and drum her out of the party? I don't think so. Is it as bad-- or worse-- than what Franken did? Make up your own mind.

Diversity Vs Free Speech At Google

Google had a good idea. They're trying to encourage diversity in hiring and the company suggested employees use an internal electronic bulletin board for a company-wide discussion. Then they fired someone who discussed.

I remember when I would sit through executive meetings at Warner Bros Records at one point and marvel at how few women and young people and people of color there were around the table. It wasn't just that women and young people and people of color were the bulk of our customers, but that it was tedious, stifling and soul-killing to be in a room filled mostly with old white men for hours on end every week. There was resistance to change-- primarily from old white men but there was a commitment at the top of the company to change and eventually-- and slowly-- it did... a bit.

A friend of mine who works in a top tech firm in Silicon Valley told me about the Google mess. He seemed to be enjoying a rival's distress. The distress started when a male engineer shared a long sexist, anti-diversity screed, "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber," with Google employees. His point, the kind of right-wing perspective anyone who spends time watching FOX News would take as a matter of course is that women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley not because they face bias and discrimination in the technology world but because of "inherent" psychological differences between men and women. The author immediately portrays himself as the victim in "our culture of shaming and misrepresentation [that] is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber." He insists that "alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company." He lists 6 bullet points that comes straight from mindless libertarian orthodoxy:

• Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
• This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
• The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
• Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
• Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
• Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

"At Google," he wrote, "we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices... At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

• They’re universal across human cultures
• They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
• Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
• The underlying traits are highly heritable
• They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

When I first started reading about this story, I was horrified Google fired this guy. Eventually I realized that he needs to see a psychiatrist STAT and that it would have been a dereliction of duty for Google to keep him around normally functioning employees. This is coming from a very, very sick mind straight out of the Republican Party. His fear and hatred of women is frightening-- and far from atypical. He claims women are more directed towards "feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas" and that partially explains why "women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. He claims "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)... may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" and that "women generally hav[e] a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support."

This is followed by all the regular Bronze Age patriarchal bullshit brought forward into the Silicon Valley miniverse. "We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths." it never ends and it's almost painful to read his baseless drivel but Danielle Brown, Google’s VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance tried responding in an internal memo to employees:

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, "Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said."

Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it’s often uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and that’s why I took this job.

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

We asked Ro Khanna (D-CA), the thoughtful and progressive congressman who represents Silicon Valley, for his perspective on the controversy in his own backyard. Here's what he sent us:

James Damore’s appalling and sexist memo, which claimed that women’s biology explains their lack of leadership opportunities, highlights how far the tech community needs to go to address gender and racial stereotypes. I was moved by Susan Wojcicki’s personal essay in response to that memo and appreciate that so many tech leaders are speaking out against Damore’s ignorant views. I am also pleased to see Google’s recent partnership with Howard University and other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to take real steps on improving diversity in the tech industry.

As a company with an immigrant founder, an immigrant CEO, and prominent women leaders, Google should strive to set the standard for diversity in the workplace.

Workplace diversity is an issue that all of us have to be more aware of and work hard to correct. Most of us have implicit biases or blind spots that we need to recognize and take steps to overcome. Building diversity in the face of historical inequities is not easy. It requires conscious effort and hard work from all of us who have positions of power or responsibility.

My hope is that this incident will inspire thoughtful men and women at Google to redouble their effort in building a Valley where people truly have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, or faith. Anything less would be unworthy of the Valley’s core values and principles.

James Damore, the fired Google engineer, is already a hero in certain predictable circles. This one is as incredible as it is twisted:

What If Clinton Were a Man and Trump Were a Woman?

A portion of the 2016 presidential debates staged by Professors Maria Guadelupe and Joe Salvatore, in which the Trump character is played by a woman, Rachel Whorton (left), and the Clinton character is played by a man, Daryl Embry (right).

by Gaius Publius

The latest outrage from the Republican Wet Dream Team is Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, cheered by almost every Republican in elected federal office. We have seen and will see plenty of commentary on that world-historical event. It's not hard to be horrified by it, and it may even help, though until real climate hawks — people who are deadly serious about making real and revolutionary changes at the fastest possible rate, of which I see few — get their hands on the levers of American power, it's hard to see how.

My own comment on this announcement was published last December, almost immediately after the election and well in anticipation of the much more recent news. You can read it here. The headline is no exaggeration, and the piece gets fairly specific about why the headline statement is true.

The other topic being bandied about these days is — what's going on in the Democratic Party? Or more specifically, how are mainstream Democrats dealing with being out of power, and how is having lost the White House being post-mortem-ed? The current crop of public questions include — Was it Russia's fault? Was it sexism's fault? Was it Bernie's fault? Was it the fault of the voting mass of the "deplorables"? Or something else entirely?

Among mainstreamers, the question "Was it Clinton's fault?" seems not to be asked at all, at least publicly.

Of these questions, one of the most intriguing in terms of its subtlety is "Was it sexism's fault?" In other words, was it the fault of inbred American sexism that Clinton, who would have been the first woman president, was not elected? The question needs answering even if there were other factors in her loss, including the unpopularity of Clinton herself — a factor that's difficult for many to disentangle from the simple fact of her gender.

For example, if Clinton were a man, would she have been more successful? Answering that would go a long way to disentangling the Clinton-as-Clinton thread from the Clinton-as-woman thread.

We can take that further. If Clinton had been a man, Trump had been a woman, and all other things (or most of them) had been the same, would the electoral results have been the same? If not, how would they have been different?

Testing the Response to Gender in the Presidential Election

We at la Maison are not the first to ask those questions. Two academics pursuing the problem of the role of gender in the last election, Professors Maria Guadalupe and Joe Salvatore, have created an interesting virtual test tube for helping find the answers. They excerpted material from one of the debates between Clinton and Trump, switched the genders while keeping almost all the language — including the body language — the same, and performed the result as a play-cum-research project. You can see a sample of what they did in the video at the top.

There are no simple or clear answers to the above questions — Would the results have been the same? If not, how would they have been different? — but there is suggestive data. Again, the key factors include not just the fact of Trump's behavior as a man, but also as the kind of person he is. Same with Clinton — it's not just that she's a woman that had an effect, but also the kind of person she is. 

Because these elements are hard to separate doesn't mean that they can't be separated, at least on a viewer-by-viewer basis. That is, even if not every person has the same reaction to the gender switch, each person will have some reaction, and that reaction can be instructive.

Try it yourself. If you haven't already watched the video, do this:

• Ask yourself, what was your impression of Trump — as a person first, then as a male person — before the election? What did you like about him and/or his message? What did you dislike?

• What was your impression of Clinton — as a person first, then as a female person — before the election? What did you like about her and/or her message? What did you dislike?

Then watch the video and ask yourself:

• Do you like Trump's manner and message more or less when you see them coming from a woman?

• Do you like Clinton's manner and message more or less when you see them coming from a man?

Be sure to separate your response to each candidate's manner from your response to her or his message. I myself found the exercise remarkably enlightening.

What Did the Researchers Find?

Obviously this is an ongoing experiment. The professors have staged this as a two-performance play for a select audience entitled Her Opponent, which has now been adapted for performance. The next step is to film it using the exact non-verbal cues, shot by shot, that appeared in the televised debate itself as a way to test audience reaction to those added elements.

So the research is continuing. Some information, though, can be gleaned from their work so far. The following are sections of a discussion of the project plus an interview with Dr. Salvatore published at the NYU.edu website. This is from the article's introduction:

Salvatore says he and Guadalupe began the project assuming that the gender inversion would confirm what they’d each suspected watching the real-life debates: that Trump’s aggression—his tendency to interrupt and attack—would never be tolerated in a woman, and that Clinton’s competence and preparedness would seem even more convincing coming from a man.

But the lessons about gender that emerged in rehearsal turned out to be much less tidy. What was Jonathan Gordon smiling about all the time? And didn’t he seem a little stiff, tethered to rehearsed statements at the podium, while Brenda King, plainspoken and confident, freely roamed the stage? Which one would audiences find more likeable?

Sticking with the point above for just a moment, ask yourself this. Did you find "Trump’s aggression, his tendency to interrupt and attack" intolerable coming from the woman playing his role? Was "Clinton’s competence and preparedness" more convincing because it came from a man playing her role? I'm not sure either answer is yes.

About the response of the play's initial audience, mainly other academics, the interviewer writes:

Many were shocked to find that they couldn’t seem to find in Jonathan Gordon [the actor playing the male Clinton role] what they had admired in Hillary Clinton—or that Brenda King’s clever tactics [playing the female Trump role] seemed to shine in moments where they’d remembered Donald Trump flailing or lashing out. For those Clinton voters trying to make sense of the loss, it was by turns bewildering and instructive, raising as many questions about gender performance and effects of sexism as it answered.

Put perhaps too simply, it seems that for many, the Trump character actually works when played by a woman, and the Clinton character seems not to work when played by a man. Again, watch the brief segment at the top and decide if you agree.

The implications of the simplified statement above, even if true, are far from simple.

Some excerpts from the interview (emphasis mine):

[Interviewer] What was the rehearsal process like?
 
[Salvatore] It was really challenging on a number of levels—technically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Especially for Rachel [Whorton], who played the female version of Trump, it was emotionally challenging because of the things she had to say. We started with audio first, so that the actors could listen to it and learn it without the visuals. Then we went back into the room with screens to watch, and they took notes on the gestures to link to the audio that they had already learned.

At some point they were able to do it from memory with the video of Trump and Clinton playing along behind them on a TV, so their level of accuracy was pretty amazing. Once we got into rehearsal and started experiencing Clinton in a man’s voice and body, Maria and I started to think that maybe Daryl [Embry, who played the Clinton-as-man character] had the harder job. We both thought that the inversion would confirm our liberal assumption—that no one would have accepted Trump’s behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate. But we kept checking in with each other and realized that this disruption—a major change in perception—was happening. I had an unsettled feeling the whole way through.

About the audience reaction:

Based on the conversations after the performances, it sounded like audience members had their beliefs rattled in a similar way. What were some themes that emerged from their responses?
 
We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another—a musical theater composer, actually—said that Trump created “hummable lyrics,” while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she was was true and factual, but there was no “hook” to it. Another theme was about not liking either candidate—you know, “I wouldn’t vote for either one.” Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience. There was someone who described Brenda King [the female Donald Trump] as his Jewish aunt who would take care of him, even though he might not like his aunt. Someone else described her as the middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you.

I'm not sure there's real data yet, in the formal sense, to be had from this experiment, but it's certainly instructive. I'll offer two takeaways, then leave the rest to you.

First, Salvatore's comment in the interview summarizes many people's experience of the play: "I was surprised by how critical I was seeing [Clinton] on a man’s body, and also by the fact that I didn’t find Trump’s [aggressive] behavior on a woman to be off-putting." Note that this experiment entirely ignores Trump's obvious sexism outside the debate, most revealed by his "grab them by the pussy" remarks. This experiment does not explore reaction to that kind of aggression.

Second, this play is about the Trump populist performance during the campaign, and does not in any way reflect his decidedly anti-populist actions once he took office. In that sense, the work by Guadalupe and Salvatore is a performance that studies a performance — or two, if you count Clinton's pre-election self-presentation as well.

Nevertheless, fascinating. I hope at some point the entire play, Her Opponent, comes to a Netflix near you. I know I'd be watching if it did.

GP
  

Kind Of Shocking The Kind Of Sewage They're Forcing Us To Wade Through To Elect The First Woman President

Trump didn't enjoy the skit. The thin-skinned authoritarian wasn't amused. Early Sunday morning he tweeted what amounted to a classic SNL advertisement that belongs on the sides of buses and that they would be crazy to not use:

Virginia has produced more presidents than any other state-- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson. They know a president when they see one and they don't see one on Trump. George W. Bush won there narrowly, with 52.5% in 2000 and 53.8% in 2004. Barack Obama won narrowly , with 52.6% in 2008 and with 51.2% in 2012. This year doesn't look like it's going to be narrow. A poll of likely Virginia voters released yesterday shows Trump at 29%-- Clinton beating him by 15 points. She's even leading him among men!

One of the more reliable national polls-- by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal had even worse news for Trump Tower Sunday morning: "In a four-way race, Democrat Clinton holds an 11-point lead over Republican Trump among likely voters, 48% to 37%. In a two way match-up, she leads him 51-41% And in one of the Utah polls just out, Trump comes in 4th, behind McMullin, Clinton and Johnson, among young voters 30 and under. The last time the Omaha World-Herald endorsed a Democrat for president, it wasn't LBJ over Goldwater. They punted that year. It was back in 1932, when they endorsed Franklin Roosevelt over Herbert Hoover. It was the last time they backed FDR and by 1936 they were pushing Alf Landon, who lost Nebraska's 7 electoral votes 347,445 (57.14%) to 247,731 (40.74%). And then yesterday this most staid, Republican of newspapers, endorsed Clinton as the prudent pick. No doubt part of the giant conspiracy against Trump. "The risk of a Donald Trump presidency," the editors opined, "is simply too great."

His alienation of so many groups-- women, the disabled, Muslim-Americans, former prisoners of war, the family of a Muslim soldier killed in action, Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans-- is too divisive.

Trump shows a lack of statesmanship that is fundamental to serving in the Oval Office.

Trump has repeatedly shown a disdain for our nation’s allies and alliances and an affection for its enemies.

He has revealed a lack of command over key issues, such as the nation’s nuclear triad, Russian aggression and the significance of NATO alliances, paired with a propensity for unrealistic hyperbole, such as his promise to end all crime and violence in the country, or to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and have the Mexican government pay for it, with no pragmatic path to achieve such aims.

His claim that he would have Iranian gunboats “shot out of the water” for taunting a U.S. Navy ship shows a reckless response that could trigger yet another Middle East war.

A man who lashes out impulsively when attacked should not be entrusted to command the world’s most powerful military.

These issues, coupled with his statements regarding women, including the taped comments about grabbing women’s genitals and forcing kisses on them, simply make it too difficult to inspire confidence in him as president and commander-in-chief.

This is as good a time as any to ask you to read yesterday's Times column by Nick Kristof, If Hillary Clinton Groped Men. Kristof asks his readers to consider the double standard for women in American politics, by posing situations like:

Imagine that the Clintons had given an interview to People magazine and, while Bill stepped away to change clothes, Hillary told the male interviewer that she had a room to show him-- and then stuck her tongue down his throat.

Imagine if Clinton had boasted on Howard Stern’s radio show that “in the history of the world, nobody has got more hot men than I have”-- and referred to those men she had seduced as her “victims.” What if she were called a sex predator on the show, and she nodded proudly?

...Imagine if it were Hillary Clinton who had had five children by three husbands, who had said it was fine to refer to her daughter as a “piece of ass,” who participated in a radio conversation about oral sex in a hot tub, who rated men based on their body parts, who showed up in Playboy soft porn videos.

Imagine if 15 men had accused Clinton of assaulting or violating them, with more stepping forward each day.

Imagine if Clinton had held a Mr. Teen USA pageant and then marched unannounced into the changing area to ogle the young bodies as some were naked and, after doing the same thing at a Mr. USA pageant, marveled on a radio show at what she was allowed to get away with.

Imagine if in a primary election debate Clinton had boasted that there’s “no problem” with the size of her vagina.

Imagine if Clinton had less experience in government or the military than any person who has ever become president?

Imagine if she had said about a man running against her in the primaries, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

Dozens of them. Does Trump really believe everything is rigged against him? Are Republican office-holders from John McCain (AZ), Rob Portman (OH), Mike Crapo (ID) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) in the Senate to House Members Ann Wagner (MO), Martha Roby (AL), Jason Chaffetz (UT), Mia Love (UT), and Joe Heck (NV) part of the conspiracy orchestrated by Hillary Clinton against him? Is he that unaware of himself? He might be. Or maybe he's a shrewd businessman with a plan to start selling something to his new fan-base starting November 9th.

See this little chart from CBS? It could mean electoral victories November 8th for Catherine Cortez Masto, Ruben Kihuen, Jacky Rosen and Chip Evans and a Nevada congressional delegation that was made up of 2 Democrats and 4 Republicans going into Washington in 2017 with 5 Democrats and 1 Republican (Senator Dean Heller, who is lucky enough not be be up for reelection until 2018.) The two billboards below are on the Blue America truck driving all over the 4th district, letting voters know about their choice there. If you'd like to help us keep it on the road through November 8, please chip in what you can here.