I read this stuff and I do wonder what kind of world we live in, given the
subject of news stories these days.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2018 8:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Taboo Word for Vagina Distracts From Inhumane
Trump Policy
Will all the little ten year old boys please leave the room? We adults don't
need to hear any more "taboo" words for our...uh...our, private parts.
Talk about strange behavior, we are so Victorian that we can't say Vagina or
Penis, so we invent cutsie little words for them. And then we label those same
cutsie little words as "taboo" words. Vulgar and disgusting And of course,
while we're jumping all around over the crass use of words, the real issue is
passed over.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/4/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Taboo Word for Vagina Distracts From Inhumane Trump Policy By William
Boardman, Reader Supported News
04 June 18
We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word,
when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are
wrenching children from their parents and treating people legally
seeking asylum as criminals. If we are OK with that then really, who are we?
- Samantha Bee acceptance speech, May 31, 2018
Samantha Bee is a smart, talented, funny, incisive, edgy, 48-year-old
Canadian/American mother of three. She is also the star of the TBS
show "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee," now in its third year. In 2017,
Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the
world. On May 31, 2018, the Television Academy's annual awards for
"outstanding programs that have leveraged the dynamic power of
television to inspire social change" included Samantha Bee's "Full
Frontal." The awards ceremony was closed to the media because, in the taped
broadcast of "Full Frontal"
the night before, in the context of castigating the Trump
administration immigration practices, Samantha Bee had called Ivanka
Trump a "feckless [taboo word for vagina]," setting off a cultural
foofaraw over vulgarity, but without concern for children taken from
their parents by government force.
"Full Frontal" was honored especially for its intensely supportive
coverage of the #MeTo and Time's Up movements, another policy area
where the Trump administration has failed and where Ivanka Trump, as a
woman, has apparently been feckless. (On April 5, 2017, Samantha Bee
tweeted a show promo
promising: "The Greatest Feminists in Feminism Herstory Hall of Lady Fame:
Ivanka Trump.")
In the May 30 episode of "Full Frontal," at the end of a seven-minute
immigration segment, Bee referred to a posed, sentimental photograph
from Ivanka Trump's Instagram page, showing Ivanka holding her son,
their faces almost nose to nose, a deliberately charming image. (The
page includes considerable commentary, some of it expressing heartless
disregard for the children separated from their parents.) Bee
juxtaposed this mother-toddler tease with a statement of Trump
administration immigration policy and called on the uniquely
positioned "special advisor to the president to step up and defend the
values implied in her photo:
After decades of ignoring the issue, Americans are finally paying
attention.
Well, most of us. Ivanka Trump, who works at the White House, chose to
post the second most oblivious tweet we've seen this week. Y'know,
Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me
just say, one mother to
another: do something about your dad's immigration policies, you
feckless c***. He listens to you. Put on something tight and low-cut
and tell him to f***ing stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how
it goes.
Predictably, the next morning the White House reacted explosively to
the taboo word for vagina and ignored the human suffering caused by
its immigration practices. At 8:30 a.m. press secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders said the "language used by Samantha Bee last night is vile and
vicious."
Then she blurred the issue by claiming: "Her disgusting comments and
show are not fit for broadcast," logically equating a critique of
government inhumanity with calling someone a feckless taboo word for
vagina. That's a morally indefensible opinion that went largely
unnoticed in the hooha over the taboo word for vagina. Sanders also
issued an implied call for Time Warner and TBS to fire Samantha Bee,
perhaps tortiously interfering with their contractual relationship.
It's also very like an unconstitutional call for government
censorship. And Sanders did not gracefully let it go at that, but went
on to try to make the taboo word for vagina a partisan issue: "The
collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling."
Trump's been using the taboo word for vagina at least since 2004. And
Ted Nugent, who called Hillary Clinton a "toxic [taboo word for
vagina]" in 1994 (without apology since), was a welcome guest at the
Trump White House in 2017. And then there's the Trump classic, "Grab
'em by the pussy," but enough already. Well, just two more
allegations: Trump called both Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and
financial reporter Jennifer Lin by the taboo word for vagina.
The same afternoon at 2:16 p.m., Samantha Bee tweeted her apology:
I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers
for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was
inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.
Well, that seems fair enough, doesn't it? Bee apologized to Trump for
calling her a taboo word for vagina, even though that's anatomically
correct. But what about "feckless"? Shouldn't she apologize for that,
too, since Ivanka Trump, whatever else one may think of her, is hardly
feckless as she globe-trots, merchandises out of the White House, and
collects Chinese patents at a remarkable rate? Ivanka Trump has
apparently not yet responded to Bee's apology. When Trump's initial
mother and child photo post appeared on Instagram and she received a
hail of negative reaction, she did respond obliquely to that with
quasi-religious quotes from Marcus Aurelius:
If thou workest at what is before thee, following right reason
seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything to distract
thee. If thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but
satisfied with thy present activity according to nature... thou wilt
live happy. And there is no man who will be able to prevent this.
That was May 29, when Ivanka Trump also said more directly: "Focus on
what is before you, on what you can control and ignore the trolls!
Have a great week." The next night "Full Frontal" aired.
At the Television Academy Honors event, having publicly apologized
earlier in the day, Samantha Bee described what had happened as she saw it:
Stories about 1,500 missing unaccompanied migrant children flooded the
news cycle over the weekend. So last night we aired a segment on the
atrocious treatment of migrant children by this administration and
past administrations. Sometimes even the ones who look best in swim
trunks do bad jobs with things. Our piece attracted controversy of the
worst kind..
I can tell you, as long as we have breath in our bodies and 21 minutes
of airtime once a week, repeats on Saturdays, that we as a show will
never stop shouting [about] the inhumanities of this world from the
rooftops and striving to make it a better place. But in a comedy way.
The next day, the president doubled down on his press secretary's
implied threats, calling for Samantha Bee's firing. TBS has indicated
support for Bee, saying she did the right thing in apologizing and
also accepting some responsibility for allowing the taboo word for
vagina on the air. Fox and fellow festerers continue to call for Bee's
scalp. Her program has lost some advertisers, Autotrader (with
dishonest, inaccurate comment) and State Farm (with a wishy-washy
comment). Neither company took issue with US treatment of immigrants
that amounts to a crime against humanity. The New Yorker has published
an entertaining piece explaining that, for centuries, the taboo word
for vagina was actually in happy, common usage (in Hamlet's reference
to "country matters," for example). Only in the past century or so has
the word become taboo and "dirty." The piece also quotes two tweets
from contemporary actresses supporting Samantha Bee (edited here for
clean living), much to the distress of right-wing virtuecrats.
Sally Field:
"I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a
[taboo word for vagina].
"[Taboo words for vagina] are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest."
Minnie Driver:
"That was the wrong word for Samantha Bee to have used. But mostly
because ( to paraphrase the French ) Ivanka has neither the warmth nor
the depth."
The biggest problem with calling anyone a taboo word for vagina or any
other insult is that it's lazy, meaningless, distracting, and dumb. A
good insult has substance, not just derogation. "Israeli snipers are
killers" may be true but it's easily dismissed, unlike, say, "That
Israeli sniper should not have assassinated that unarmed nurse when
she was tending to a wounded man on the ground 200 yards away."
Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless [taboo word for vagina]"
may have felt good (and has some cultural relevance), but it's wrong,
just on timid civility grounds, but more so on the ground that it
distracts from Ivanka Trump's actual complicity in the real crimes of
the Trump White House against not just immigrants but almost everyone
on the planet. Samantha Bee is reportedly preparing to address this
issue further in her next show, June 6. This is not some poly-bigot
(blacks, Jews, Arabs) like Roseanne Barr, blaming her bigotry on her
medication. Samantha Bee is a serious person who actually wants to
know, "Really, who are we?"
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theater, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
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