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White Hot: The Boys in the Waistband

There's a fascinating word missing from White Hot, Netflix's new documentary about the Abercrombie and Fitch years: the word is Aryan. And it dovetails with a similar elision in examining Bruce Weber's visual aesthetic - which the documentary rightly centers much of its grim fascination and derision upon - as the film also elides comparing Weber to Leni Riefenstahl.

And yeah, I get it: "Nazis? Can't you see why that might be a problem?" The point is, yes I do, and frankly I am neither the first, nor the last, to have brought up those comparisons. The other point is, the very reluctance of this doc to follow its own through line to some logical, difficult and obviously uncomfortable ends is why the film, which dances adroitly around the hard questions, never really lands a solid indictment of what was, and is, most deeply problematic about the whole moment when A&F dominated our popular culture.

And boy (cute boy), did it ever. I can tell you because I was there: The whole Abercrombie and Fitch thing was a little nuts. The cadre of topless boys outside their flagship stores! They literally sold a softcore porn catalog 4 times a year! They ran an ad of a naked man on a horse! (BTW - bareback? Get it?)

The first 30 minutes or so of White Hot get at, mostly well, but somewhat imperfectly, what it was to live through the madness. How desirable the bran was at its height. The weird, oversexed vibe of the stores. The even weirder, even more oversexed vibe of the advertising. After that the documentary delves, more deeply, into the underpinnings of how the venerated brand was reshaped by owner Mike Jeffries, and the role, especially, played by Bruce Weber, in creating the brand's visual identity.

Left surprisingly unspoken, really, is the role of the changing culture around the brand, and specifically, the sudden, newfound openness of the American culture to explicitly gay iconography. A&F spoke, as a brand, to teens and college kids... but even more obviously, it spoke to a generation of young, often recently out, gay men in their twenties and thirties, newly positioned in urban enclaves and white collar work. Largely white, heavily professional and service working, these gay men knew Weber, knew what he was doing, and knew it was aimed at them. And they, in turn, helped propel "A&F style" into a cultural watchword.

That the documentary misses, or at least sits quietly, around these dynamics is part of the major hole in its presentation. Because it's the very white, very oblivious nature of this gay community to its own internal racism, that helped create the problems the documentary points to: a culture within A&F focused on lookism and frankly racist definitions of attractiveness that affected hiring, store staffing, as well as advertising and marketing. It's partly why all of this was a merry little game   part of which was merrily avoiding asking why images weren't just overwhelmingly white, but so very male. Or asking why "Fierce" the store's signature fragrance, was a men's cologne. Or asking, eventually, whether straight frat boys understood how gay all of this really was?

The film unpacks, cleanly and effectively, the unravelings of the brand as lawsuits over representation, hiring policies and the like came home to roost. It helps, but also hurts, that key players like Jeffries and Weber don't participate in the documentary, thus making convenient, easily blamed bad guys.

But questions linger: why does the film absolve virtually every staffer in the film of any role in perpetuating just this kind of racist iconography? What does it say about a top to bottom corporate culture that hid, minimized and mistreated its minority work force? What does it say about our culture that the brand was so dominant, so revered, so damn hot? And can we not, at the very least,, take a moment and unpack that difficult and uncomfortable role of Aryan ideals luring in Weber's work?

No, by the end of White Hot, everything has vanished: the images from the bad years, the voices of the minority workers, the omnipresent, overly easy moralizing of folks like Robin Givhan.... in favor of corporate branding that literally tries to paper over the past. It's okay, the film says, because A&F now runs ads with a wide mix of body types and skin colors and... blah blah blah... world peace. That the film soft pedals its own outrage and runs away from the hard questions is, unfortunately indicative of how this mess came to be in the first place: if we don't examine our idealized views of these perfect fit bodies and sexualization of youth, we really aren't trying to sort out how this all worked to sell the brand to begin with. And that's the real problem we need to solve. not run from. Or at least, not continue, in our dirtiest secrets, to ogle them while claiming pious purpose. Cause boy, you still look hot in dem jeans.

Melania Trump Is Selling A Hat

There's a lot going on in the world, but I find myself stuck on the strangest, if not smallest, of news stories: that Melania Trump is auctioning off her hat.

The hat - one she wore to meet President Macron and his wife - is part of an online auction where Mrs. Trump is also selling NFT's of photos of the hat for cryptocurrency.

According to the press release, the starting bid is $250,000.

While much of her husband's family, including his children from his first marriage, are embroiled in a series of financial and political scandals, Melania Trump has managed to find a fairly private life in the post presidency. She is rarely seen. She does not speak, and only occasionally nets public attention, particularly, it seems with auctions. This is her second foray into NFTs.

There are of course, all sorts of questions to be asked over this turn of events - why does she need the money? Is she unhappy? Does she have, as most former First Ladies do, an office and a staff? What do they do, anyway? Sell off her possessions?

And again... why does she need the money?

Myself, I have more questions about the hat. It's a Herve Pierre hat, by the way, and while many may not know, Pierre - a veteran of Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera - designed Mrs. Trump's Inaugural Ball gown and has been a stylist to her for a number of years. The hat was the topper to a severe white suit Mrs. Trump wore, which complemented the white Chanel suit Mrs. Macron wore that day. The hat, however, was wide brimmed and oversized, and generally blocked most views of Mrs. Trump's face. Mrs. Macron, one might note, did not wear a hat. One might also observe that, in general, outside of the British nobility, hat wearing has largely fallen out of favor.

And - this is really only my opinion - it was kind of an ugly hat. I may not be a huge fan of hats, but I enjoy a dramatic picture hat as much as anyone, or the "fascinators" of Britain, cloche hats, cowboy hats... I'm not hard to convince. But the Trump/Macron hat was the sort of hat that, well, annoys me: too big yet not big enough to be a dramatic statement; droopy, rather than jaunty; limiting things like sight and hearing, which seems counterproductive in a social setting. 

So, on the one hand, I get it: why not unload an outfit specific, already worn hat that, frankly, only sort of worked? On the other hand... if you're going to auction off First Lady items, ostensibly "for charity" (vague "scholarships" are promised), why not pull together a substantial, wide ranging representation? Why just... well, you know... a hat?

By virtue of her silence, Mrs. Trump remains largely a cipher. It's why, aside from being well written, that the two books about Mrs. Trump - Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's and Stephanie Grisham's - have been the most intriguing looks behind the Trump curtains. Mrs. Trump, it is suggested, feels the press is unfair to her. Yet this could easily be addressed in a friendly interview. There is of course the fact that she does not seem entirely confident of her English (though her facility in a number of languages was touted frequently by Trump press agents), why not surprise everyone and do the interview in French? Or Italian?

Aside from the Trump family claims of press mistreatment, there's the similar, but not the same feeling across the conservative right that 'Liberal media" is deeply unfair, even disrespectful to Mrs. Trump, and her role as First Lady. This is, yes, a bit rich, coming from the folks who coined "Pig in a Pants Suit" and suggested, repeatedly, that Michelle Obama was a man. But then, too, the "support" for Mrs. Trump is itself kind of odd - a kind of force fitting of a few thinly known details into a blown up, largely fictional presentation of the former First Lady as a folksy, classy mom just trying to stage tasteful events. And indeed, though Mrs. Trump has been dogged by some fairly salacious photos she took as a model, the idea of widespread liberal disrespect for her is a bit extreme. One would have to have a much better sense of her to really even know where to begin or what to criticize.

As it is, Mrs. Trump largely sailed through the Presidential years largely unseen and undisturbed - arguably bringing a rarified, if occasionally severe sense of high style to White House decorating, and occasionally raising controversy with outfits like "I really don't care... do U?" and $75,000 Dolce jackets that were perhaps a bridge too far. And continuing that largely private life appears to be her plan. Which only brings us back to the overall weirdness of this story: why is Mrs. Trump selling that hat?  

 

The Hillbilly Elegy of JD Vance's Senate Campaign

While it's not entirely surprising that JD Vance has achieved "massive distraction status" in his campaign to campaign for Ohio's Senate seat, that doesn't make it any more serious.

Vance, a veritable compendium of notes on white rural poverty in Appalachia with a soupçon of absurd Trumpism plus a lot of angry white guy, has enjoyed outsize success with a modest book... and well, that's about it. Initially hailed as possessing some sort of unique insight into the Appalachian communities of his ancestors, over the course of the Trump years Vance devolved from Trump critic keenly aware of Trump's know-nothing appeal to rural communities to a Trump cheerleader eager to join the jeering crowd of rural supporters. 

The theory is that Vance's high profile combined with a media ready presence results in a field clearing romp to the GOP nomination; so far that 's been held up by a number of pesky realities. One of which is that Vance isn't from Ohio, but Kentucky, and though he has borderline appeal with some parts of neighboring Ohio territory, he's been out of step with Ohio's less rural, more cosmopolitan cities and nearby suburbs. Another is that Trump personally, for a variety of reasons, favors other Ohio candidates. A third is that Vance seems to be struggling to find a narrative that can be comfortably pro-Trumpist, while not edging into simply "out there" politics. The latter is what's been surprising, since Vance initially seemed well within political mainstreams.

But these are wild times and Vance has, so far, managed to head for Crazy Town at almost every opportunity. He advanced a "pro-family" notion of politics so weirdly extreme even conservatives were baffled (claiming at one point that all left wing politicians including Nancy Pelosi, a mother of 5, could only be childless and anti family). His opposition to even the most common sense approaches to vaccination and other public health responses to Covid has been as extreme as a deep southern governor: fine for them, but absolutely at odds with the popular, sensible policies of Ohio's Mike DeWine. More to the point, Vance has yet to advance the kind of holistic politically centrist policies of a senatorial candidate that have traditionally marked Ohio, where candidates achieve national status as bellweathers of the "realistic middle").

Democratic fear of Vance, aside from the relative star power, has everything to do with the vast nameless fears that Trumpism isn't in retreat but rather running silent, but deadly, under America's cultural notice. The theory being that while normal people may think this stuff is crazy and disastrous for the GOP... just like 2016, liberals will be caught short when Republicans overwhelm them again at the polls.

What can one say? Perhaps that's true... though as a theory it tends to favor 2016 over all that's happened since, including Trump's eventual defeat in 2020, and the sense that without Trump, Republicans are struggling to achieve similar vote results (which, fair enough, could be fine for 2022, but just kicks the fears to Trump re-emerging for 2024). 

Either way, though... Vance, as a harbinger is so far not working out as planned. He continues to poll weakly in potential Republican matchups, never mind any scenario in which he actually gets a nomination and runs against a Democrat. Hillbilly Elegies alone won't solve that problem, and political extremism, so far, is making it worse. Unless some GOP behind the curtain magic works to transform Vance's extreme edges and tendency to mouth off unsupervised, it's hard to see how Vance pulls off a primary, never mind the general.

One larger thread to pull from this, though, is an insight that upsets both the right that's invested in Trump and the left that fears that they're right: ultimately, Vance's take on the rural audience may be right about their anger, but wrong about how that translates to long term political success. Vance's insights, such as they are, provide a window into the sense of hopelessness and despair that drives rural poverty, and he's surely onto something there. But rather than proving that populist politics can be their salvation, the events of the last few years have probably illuminated that hopelessness and despair tend to lead to poor choices, not wise ones, and thus, may just reinforce what it was meant to relieve. Trump, in other words, is a dead end. And Vance, provocative views or not, can't solve that any more than any other non-Trump voice. Trump himself only manages to camouflage the dead endedness with more bluster.

And that bluster, I suspect, is itself wearing thin... which is why, while Trump serves as a major distraction for the GOP, he doesn't represent any kind of solution down the political road. Between legal issues, his own short attention span, laziness and greed, Trump would happily scoop up all the money he could and shirk the actual work of even running again if he can avoid it. All because, unlike Vance, Trump isn't running away from a nightmare past in rural poverty. And because much more like Vance, he has little empathy or sympathy for all the people still trapped there.

As an aside, I suspect Vance would seem more dangerous, his appeal to rural whites more on point, had Hillbilly Elegy translated into a film that had not been met with derision rather than awe. Ham-handed and overthought, the film underscored that as much as Vance's story had some appeal, it was not necessarily new, save for the reality that America tends to ignore the addiction issues of non-privileged whites. And indeed, were Vance to position himself as an earnest, hard working voice fighting to help those addicts against an unfeeling system of bureaucracy and privilege, he might very well be the threat many left and right imagined he might be. Doing that, though, would require tapping into the things Vance himself has rejected via Trumpism: a sense of hope, of fairness, of seeing the good in what we do when we help one another.  By defining his quest in terms of his own personal victory, Vance underscores why the Trump dead end is just that dead: "only one of us gets out of here alive. And it better be me."

Critical Race Theater

What I really want to do is yell at my TV, pretty much all the time lately, either "you don't even know what Critical Race Theory is" or, in the case of an expert who does, "Nobody cares what actual Critical Race Theory is" (at which point I usually add "honey" or "Mary" because I'm gay).

That's just where we are, it seems. (No, not about me. Keep up, Mary.)

I'm not going to waste time trying to explain Critical Race Theory because for the purposes of this discussion it's irrelevant; nothing about this supposed "debate" has anything to do with the actual use of critical theory (and sure, I could then, as a critic, go deep into why I actually find a lot of Marxist or Marx derived critical theory to be exasperating... but again, not the point). And that, too, is kind of the point.

My best friend - in his brilliant, often poetic sense of creative wordplay - was the one who observed to me that this wasn't so much real as theater: "Critical Race Theater," a way to take a strange, unfamiliar, vaguely threatening phrase like Critical Race Theory and simply obscure its actual meaning until it actually means nothing at all, and becomes a kind of performance art aimed at reviving America's discomfort and tensions around any and everything having to do with race... not least of which, questions of race, education, and acknowledging the painful aspects of our history.

"We don't want Critical Race Theory taught in schools" means basically nothing at all; no American public school - and I'm guessing, no private one either - is teaching this at any grade level, not even high school, certainly not below that. Instead, at the precise moment where America was just starting to face up to  realities of our past - be it Juneteenth or the Tulsa race riot - the question of what we teach our kids has a much more basic, underlying objection: "don't tell my white kid that white people did bad things to black people and that racism and prejudice still have a role in our culture and society... because they might realize it's true."

In the course of my lifetime I have lived through both amazing progress on race in this country and enormous setbacks; and even so, this retrenchment to racist excuse making is mind boggling, never mind scary and depressing.  The architects of this Critical Race Theater - apparently ginned up by right wing think tankers in DC - really do deserve whatever hell eventually comes for them; it's disgusting to think that someone actively worked this hard (and this openly) to set back race relations 50 years for a mix of political amusement and supposed advantage.

That last part - the question of "who gains politically" off of this is both gross and ridiculous to discuss. No one is winning here, least of all the people who think - hatefully - that electoral success derives from prodding white racial hatreds. This isn't even "Southern Strategy" or "dog whistles" for modern times - we're way past that puppy. This is just flat out "let's scare white people into seeing every black intellectual as the enemy." Nothing good will come from it. Nothing.

Conservatives and Republican opportunists figure they will "win" this by "putting liberals on the defensive;" part of the problem is, outside of a few knowledgable university level academicians, there is no one to put up a defense. Few care; fewer can or will expound the energy to "save Critical Race Theory" for places it didn't belong to begin with. What this will do is confuse the development of productive K-12 curricula, especially in American History, a backlash against the 1619 Project and other reexaminations of history - again THAT'S NOT CRITICAL RACE THEORY - which was already under way, but much easier to sell in this "Critical Race Theater" performance piece.

And sure, trying to wrest political advantage on K-12 education is a desperate play for the right, one that casting Teachers Union as their mortal enemies wasn't quite getting done, nor the largely theoretical, though still hateful, stances against trans kids in sports. It's not clear that Critical Race Theater changes all that much either, bottom line: the "Karen" notion of suburban college educated white women that Republicans are apparently chasing to realign back to their worldview were pretty well turned off by Trump's uglier racist tendencies. And lurking behind Critical Race Theater is a "same old, same old" of white tropes just waiting to implode on the right, yet again. The net-net is that Critical Race Theater, while showy and damaging at a macro level for race relations, may not ultimately move the needles Republicans need to win in the midterms, without solid candidates and actual policy proposals. It surely destroys any vestige of GOP hopes in virtually any black, or racially mixed urban area.

Still, that this happening at all is disheartening and the group that I think may turn out to be most demoralized by it - beyond the reality of the many black people who maybe, kind of were just starting to hope that there was some progress - are those older white civil rights fighters of the left. And I'm just saying... they may not be the student agitators they were in their youth... but when they get pissed, they do know that you only have one choice: organize, and go out and do something. And if the right thinks that fight goes better for them on the field of Critical Race Theater... well, it's a theory.

A Change Is Gonna Come

While I'm generally not one to embrace the "waiting to exhale" metaphor of being African American in general... I have to admit. I heard the Derek Chauvin verdict and, well, I exhaled.

I'm not clear - haven't been, may not ever be - on why George Floyd affected this country as it did. It's easy, a little generic even to say "the video". We've had videos. We've been upset, Appalled, even. But George Floyd was... different.

It wasn't even the slow starting, but eventually thorough move to prosecute Chauvin (and his fellow officers... someday). No, what was different - what still has the ability to surprise me - is how Floyd's death and the protests that followed unblocked what had, in many cases, been years of lack of progress on many things, at many levels. Watching companies wholesale revamp policies and procedures. Hearing TV and film producers acknowledge and then take concrete steps to address systemic racism in casting and projects. Seeing all sorts of political conversations move to a whole other level of seriousness. I have been watching and discussing and writing about politics for a long, long time. And this past year, I can attest, is in many ways a thing I have never, ever seen in my lifetime.

And they found him guilty. And then I exhaled.

Chauvin's trial, at the very least, stands as the new prime example we can point to of how to get justice for policing right: whatever dismay I felt about Keith Ellison going into this effort, he made good on his promise to seek the appropriate justice: put the best prosecutors on the case. Assemble a compelling presentation of evidence. Anticipate the defense's pushback. And get police leadership to participate in acknowledging behavior that is simply out of bounds.

Unlike some, I continue to have deep admiration for Marcia Clark, and one thing she pointed out in her presentation of the OJ trial was how the prosecution went in and laid an unexpected story in chronological order: her first witness was a man walking his dog by Nicole's apartment, who heard noises and went to investigate. It was the start of establishing a timeline... one that, as she points out, became a bulletproof, uncontested demarcation of the events, and one which was deeply damaging to Simpson's claims of innocence.

Here too, the case against Chauvin started with a woman none of us had really seen: the gas station worker across the street, who, as it turned out, had the eyewitness seat for the start of Chauvin wrestling Floyd to the ground and pinning him there. She eventually took video, but as well, the gas station's camera, and a street camera were all introduced behind her testimony and laid out, before we'd seen the videos we all knew, the tragic sequence of events. And, per Clark, because of that gas station clerk, the defense was hemmed in well before they had even tried to discredit the bystanders on the other side of the street.

And I cry as I write this. I generally think the case was doomed for the defense once Donald Williams, the older man with martial arts experience, testified as to what he saw. When her broke down so thoroughly - as we all did - reliving that tape of that day, there was no coming back. He knew what he saw that day, and so did most of us. And once you know, you know.

Conservatives, faced with defending the literally indefensible, largely gave up. Fox refused to air courtroom coverage, despite the fact that obviously, America was watching. And at the end, rather than simply isolate Chauvin's guilt from everyone else ("lone bad actor" was a gift), Fox's most egregious types - Tucker, Jesse Watters, Greg Gutfeld - proclaimed that this was "caving to the mob" and "unfair to the police". In part, clearly, they understood that underlying this case was the long history of police misconduct against minorities, especially men, but hardly exclusively. But in part, that throwing up of hands elided the harder question they don't want to be asked - just what, exactly, was unfairly presented by the prosecution in that case? In more sober moments, even Fox lawyers and judicial experts (even Jeanine Pirro fer Chrissakes) admitted that the defense played a weak hand badly and evidence of guilt was fairly clear.

There are those who want a moment to solve everything, those for whom the exhale is not enough. I can't say, wouldn't begin to guess, that this Chauvin verdict is a world changer. A young woman was killed in Ohio the day of the verdict. A case in North Carolina is already going sideways. There's every chance that those conservative, pro police types will exert whatever backlash they can to slow or withstand progress. No, the point is smaller, and simpler, and just, well, what it is: we got Chauvin convicted. And for now, that alone will be the change we wanted. 

"the arc of history bends towards justice" is just that: the bending of a long line, away from the bad and towards the good. Thirty years after Rodney King, we have finally made it heard: the video shows what you think it shows. The bad cops in the videos are the problem. And that problem must be addressed. A change is gonna come. Something has already changed. It's not perfect, and no, it's not enough. But just for a minute, exhale. And let us catch our breath.

Spiritus DeSantis

Given that it's way to soon to start talking about 2024 (OFFICIALLY), now seems like a good time to get ahead of the game and nip some things before they take off. And Example A of that would be... Ron DeSantis.

David Frum, combining prescient and clueless, posted the "watch out for DeSantis" lookout piece in The Atlantic this week, and he's not wrong: DeSantis is surely positioning himself to be a serious contender for the next presidential run. What's missing from Frum's otherwise compelling examination is... any sense of why the DeSantis show may well not be ready for prime time.

It takes far braver souls than I to dive deeply into Florida's politics; the state's unique mix of stalwart seniors (it's the oldest state in the US), large Hispanic native and immigrant populations, snowbirds with a dream, and a huge helping of deep southern traditionalists makes for a wild mix to begin with, add in the laissez faire, gold coast approach to economic opportunities and almost anything goes. There's a "Florida Man" meme for a reason. But the state's tantalizing bundle of electoral votes and politics that sway in the damp ocean breeze make for a sense that, well, anything's possible.

Not everything is, though. DeSantis is third or fourth in a string of lackluster, what's in it for me Republican opportunists elected as Governor, a line that includes millionaire healthcare executive Rick Scott and Charlie "now I'm a Democrat" Crist, as well as Jeb "I married an immigrant" Bush. All have enjoyed unique, famous for the wrong reason reps as Chief Executive... and careers that don't end, necessarily, in spite of it. DeSantis more or less limped his way into the job, pulled up by either unexpected turnout (the nice version) or some sort of manipulation (the darker conspiracist view) when Trump won office. As a result - and given Trump's Palm Beach residency which solidified on his watch - DeSantis was, outside of maybe only Kristi Noem, the President's biggest Governor toady.

Democrats have been hurting in Florida, as those results show. Much hope was pinned on defeating DeSantis  since his campaigning was haphazard at best and his career leading up to his run decidedly muddled. But Desantis managed to eke out a razor thin win (30,000 of 8 million cast) over Andrew Gillum (who, subsequently, flamed out spectacularly himself), and he goes up again next year fairly secure to likely sail through. And that will be largely in spite of, not because of, a mixed record at best.

What sells DeSantis and what he surely will run on, is that Florida wasn't, at least by what we know, a pandemic disaster. Enormous crises favor the well connected and the vaguely authoritarian, and Desantis, though feckless, has both qualities in spades. He locked down nursing homes and senior care facilities early (and, it should be said, at least it appears, tightly). He tried to limit lockdowns, but benefitted from the fact that he didn't have to try that hard: tourism fell through the floor, and has not, so far, rebounded to anything like pre pandemic levels. And he left a lot of the hardest choices to more local authorities, meaning Mayors made most of the hardest choices about mask rules, beach closings and social distancing, day to day.

In terms of vaccinations, DeSantis also had 2 assets on his side - a large senior population that had to be first in line and the ear of Trump officials making the earliest allocation decisions. While news organizations - 60 Minutes most notably - tried to pin him down on favoritism to businesses that supported him, DeSantis used public/private partnerships to distribute vaccines because that's pretty much all the state has: weak central governance and resistance to government run programs means the state leans on outside providers often, for everything. Sure, some rich Floridians jumped the line and anyone with a connection in the state could easily schedule a shot... but he's not a vaccine skeptic and he's made a conscious decision that being the death governor would hurt his image, which is, at least, politically astute.

Still Florida is #3 in total cases, #4 in total deaths (per capita, it's outside the top 10 in both, but so is New York, which may say more about poor choices in less populated states). They are the state which led the huge summer spike, and saw the second huge spike in January after a holiday season where businesses were open and masks not well policed. Further, cases remain alarmingly high and rising, even with a reasonable 25% total vaccinated population. DeSantis has a Covid case to make... it's just not nearly as good as many would like to suggest, at least in terms of actual public health metrics. Economically, DeSantis may have a point. But that's hard to make atop a raft of current deaths.

No, what DeSantis is really selling to a frustrated and angry Trump crowd and a nervous GOP more generally is a kind of Trump Lite: he's much more disciplined, more politically savvy (which isn't saying much), but happy to lay on the code words and conspiracy rhetoric to prove his loyalty. Desperate Republicans are clearly terrified of alienating the Trumpists, even as they know that going full Trump won't win elections; the DeSantis theory would suggest that you can have some of the ugliness but tie it to a more traditional political narrative, an actual office holder with experience in Congress and running a state. And, honestly, they may be right. Or that person might be Kristi Noem.

Whatever the case, national democrats need to take the threat of DeSantis seriously, if not literally. The ill winds blowing around perpetual fratboy Matt Gaetz could just as easily rope in DeSantis (though as a Catholic with a TV trophy wife, a sex scandal seems unlikely), and that Publix money could, in itself, be the tip of plenty of campaign finance messiness... though "sleazy money" and "Florida" are usually hard to make into career killers. No, the simpler case is that, for all his message discipline thus far, DeSantis could easily find himself in a national race out of his depth and prone to missteps. Lots of people think they can manage the Trumpist crowd to their own ends, but don't have Trump's sheer mendacity or desperation to go wherever that road leads. DeSantis may have no shame, but he's prone to mess ups in public speaking and a tetchy demeanor that plays well on Fox but hasn't been tested outside of the local market.

Even with all that, the threat is that all the stink in the world may not be enough to stall DeSantis if he can turn his modest skills into a juggernaut of big money, right wing media support and a MAGA crowd to back it up. That presumes, of course, that Trump himself can be kept out of it (a big if, at least for now) and the MAGA crowd can be managed; I have my doubts on that as well. But still. DeSantis, from a Florida catbird seat, would start with a number of advantages, ones that could be crushing if no one starts, now, assembling the evidence against him. And while I think we are still a country that tolerates Florida, rather than embracing it... I don't want to stress test that theory more than is absolutely necessary. I've been on enough cruise ships, and seen enough Spring Break movies to know... there could very easily be more of them than of us. And I wouldn't just leave the prospect of President DeSantis to chance. 

So... Is The Problem Nursing Homes? Or Andrew Cuomo? (Or Both, And Then Some?)

Like many, I knew it wouldn't last.

When the pandemic broke wide a year ago (I know, what is time, at this point), for New Yorkers events moved at a bewildering pace. And in the midst of madness, it was  both surprising and relieving to discover that Andrew Cuomo was able to step forward, lay out clear information on where things stood, explain what state government was doing in response, and generally try to provide a sense of calm optimism that we could get through for as long as it took. It was a great show (heck it won an Emmy.)

It was also never going to last.

Cuomo's skillset is especially strong on crisis management, he's the ultimate in "I gotta guy" politics, hates unnecessary red tape, and is especially ruthless in getting his way. All very helpful when things are bad. When they're not, people tend to notice things like cronyism, excessive ruthlessness and... hey, what's that red tape hiding in that box over there? And that, as much as anything, goes a long way to explaining why what looked so bright and shiny six months ago, is looking damaged and on life support now.

At first blush, it seemed, and still seems to some that the big scandal is "nursing homes." It's clear that, from the beginning of the pandemic, New York tried hard to minimize the count of deaths in long term care facilities, apparently by (somewhat reasonably) suggesting that dying in a hospital is not dying in a nursing home. While there have been suggestions of "massive undercounting," the overall death toll in New York is quite accurate. It's just that nursing home patients who were taken to hospitals and died there, were not counted, at all, as nursing home resident deaths. Other states (mostly) did. Hence a somewhat large discrepancy.

Moreover, there has been considerable debate that a decision, early on, to release nursing home residents back to nursing homes after they recovered from life threatening conditions that sent them to hospitals, coupled with a policy of not sending residents to hospitals unless they needed life saving care, may have exposed more residents to Covid and contributed to additional deaths.  That part of the story - heavily flogged by Fox and other Murdoch owned outlets - is driven in significant part by Janice Dean, Fox's chief meteorologist, whose in laws died in a nursing home in New York state, Dean though is not necessarily keen on making an especially fact based case (and Cuomo, for his part, is all too happy to attack Dean rather than mount a factual defense). And indeed, while several investigations are ongoing, the overall nursing home story is much more complicated. But... let's get back to Cuomo for a moment.

As I said, Cuomo has several problems, and the nursing home zealots have been flummoxed by additional scandals which have overtaken any nursing home issues and become the real driver of Cuomo's problems; namely, allegations from a number of women of predatory behavior and larger concerns about an especially toxic office environment in the state's executive branch. What began, seemingly, as a bit of a publicity stunt by Lindsay Boylan, running for Manhattan Borough President, offering up some vague allegations has morphed into a serious, damaging look at longstanding problems with Cuomo's management style.

Whether Cuomo can survive any or all of this is mostly unclear at this point - Cuomo's style has been to double down in the face of adversity and he's done that on all fronts... but with New York's leading democrats almost entirely aligned in calling for his resignation, investigations aplenty and an impeachment process starting in the Assembly... it's hard to see how this doesn't end, and soon. Cuomo has resorted mostly to hiding, or pandering to popular sentiments, but it's not clear he can smooth talk or smooth pander his way out of this. Given the moribund state of Republican party politics in the state, Democrats can hold onto power easily and put Cuomo behind them... but let this fester, and all bets are off.

Which leaves one to wonder how much of this current outrage is just Cuomo, and how much is other issues, whether state governance (losing Cuomo is just step 1 in cleaning up Albany's sleazy rep) or... well, that whole nursing home story. Because, to get back to that large messy issue - there's a much longer, much harder conversation to be had, should we get serious about it.

Because the fact is that a disease which was especially deadly for older folks was tailor made to rip through long term care facilities. Lest we forget, the first Covid mass death event was a Washington state nursing home.And that story was repeated, literally countless times, in every state in the country. To get a real sense of the horrific nature of this, loop in prisons -- the other "congregant care" facilities most states operate - and you have the epicenters of death across this pandemic. Should one want to raise this topic. Which, not surprisingly, almost no one does.

We could, in fact, go back and point out that "nursing homes" are in fact, a questionable approach to care to begin with. It's demonstrably clear that warehousing the elderly isn't a good solution for the elderly, or their families, or for the costs associated with care. It's also clear that, in scandal after scandal, states have failed to regulate, protect, or assure proper care in those settings. Oregon, in fact, this week reported that the state has failed, in the year of Covid to even try to address the obvious failures identified in the pandemic. And they are clearly not alone.

Of course, the conversation that results from looking into this is horrendous. And for any number of reasons - not least of which the fact that he served as Trump's main pandemic response foil - making Cuomo the sole issue in this story serves a lot of needs. It will be much harder to face up to, never mind actually deal with, even thinking about revamping the nursing home based approach to elder care. The same, only more so, for a better more humane approach to prisons. Why even start to look when... hey? did another woman just say Cuomo touched her?

And yes, Cuomo honestly makes all too easy - at best, he's been the placeholder for a better leader in New York state for nearly 12 years, and it's no wonder people are tired of putting up with so much bad for the occasional good. Sure, we've got a great safety net, great civil rights protections, gay marriage, and more coming down the pike. But nearly every New Yorker knows we could have all that, and better, without him. More to the point, though, the conversations we need to face - about how to deal with the next pandemic, starting a hard conversation about elder care, really drilling down on the prison problem... all of these will be harder to paper over if Cuomo is gone. So sure... he's gotta go. But be careful what you wish for... because the hard part is what comes after he's gone.

You Can't Do That!

Like many a Gen Xer, let me just say up front: I'm quite relieved they didn't have Twitter in my youth, because... well, God knows what I'd have to be apologizing for now. As it is, I know all too well that hiding in this blog alone are words and pieces I'm not necessarily sure I want repeated or blown out of context.

Still, that said... I'm comfortable with saying generally, nothing I've written went there without a lot of thought beforehand.

But let's back out to 30,000 feet for a moment: In a rather odd week, I've been fascinated with the confluence of a small string of events - the dreadful murder spree in Georgia resulting in the deaths of multiple workers and clients in massage parlors, the discussion it has engendered about attacks on Asians in America, Fox News struggling to not cover this, and the fall of Alexi McCammond.

Bear with me... because I think this all has a central point.

First of all, Fox: it's remarkable, really, how the entire network has been fully flummoxed by the unfolding story in Georgia. It was clearly one thing that, early on, the combination of a young white male shooter and the fact that he killed mostly Asian women working in the massage parlors wasn't, let's say, a good look for them. But a dramatic set of murders, gun play and Southern law enforcement really couldn't somehow get reworked to their purposes? Since January - if not earlier - Fox has been falling quietly apart: a massive reworking on the dayside schedule has resulted in largely sagging ratings, lack of Trump has robbed them of their centrality to each days's new drama, and what's been left in his wake  (yes, we all know about the Dr. Seuss thing), well, just isn't much to build an hour broadcast around. And 5 more minutes of Candace Owen trashing WAP? That just sells Cardi B's next single.

It's one thing for Fox to try and flog its own right wing version of a "main story"; it's another problem entirely when the thing leading every other news broadcast on cable or network - or anywhere really - for more than 36 hours is seemingly invisible to Fox. The murders were graphic and public and provided such a high body count in such a short period of time that the story was simply unavoidable. Add in the clearly troubled young man with the guns and his, by his own admission, complex notions of sexuality and deviance... and it's no surprise how this captured the zeitgeist. And when Fox, or any news claiming network really, refuses to acknowledge the zeitgeist happening right in front of them (and what is Fox, but The Voice of What Happened in The South)... well, that's just a failure.

Which isn't to say this is a story where news organizations are particularly distinguishing themselves; from over emphasizing the violence to trying to explore the stories of the victims to getting a bit lost in a tangle of sex work, misogyny and yes, anti-Asian bigotry... this story is a mess and few reporters or news organizations seem to be getting the story right or well. We barely know who the victims are. We certainly don't know much about the shooter's choices or even if he knew any of them. And from his stated reasoning about sexual activity to killing women to the specific choice of establishments with Asian workers... there's a lot to unpack, and mostly, Americans have spent not just years, but generations, trying to avoid just about every aspect this story raises. 

Whatever one thinks about just how these events particularly illuminate, or even intersect with a larger conversation about a rise in anti-Asian bigotry arising out of shallow thinking around the pandemic... myself, I'd say there are no accidents. We are here because we were bound to get here, one day, in one way or another. Objectification and sexualization of Asian women, indeed all women of color, is just one piece of the large conversation around race America desperately needs to unpack, examine, and thrash out. It's not an easy or simple discussion. And while it may not be central to the "Kung Flu" type insults of the pandemic... this is where the point is not some round of picking or choosing which insult is worst. Whatever this sad, murderous kid thought, whatever the world taught him to think about others not like him... it's long past time to have a reckoning about yet another way in which our culture fails a minority group and we all need to do more and better to fix it.

So... here's the thing about Alexi McCammond. McCammond's hiring as Editor in Chief at Teen Vogue, announced weeks ago, got hung up on a revived conversation about a group of tweets she'd written in college, mostly using "Asian" in some derogatory way (but others, as well, that casually engage in hawking "gay" or "homo" as pejoratives). Since college, McCammond has worked her way through journalism and publishing, widely respected, and quite successful. When the issue of the tweets came up in 2019, she apologized at length. Yet and still, staffers at Teen Vogue asked why it was still considered ok or appropriate for McCammond to assume the top spot. In the wake of this week's events - and I'd argue, obviously influenced by the developments - Conde Nast gave up and McCammond withdrew her name.

And who pounced on McCammond's unhiring as their latest example of their mythical "Cancel Culture" morality play? Why, Fox, of course.

To her credit, McCammond, at least, isn't playing along; she's offered no hysterical "cancel culture" defense, and while other journalists are at least lightly bemoaning the state of affairs, the "Cancel Culture" narrative remains largely its own peculiar Fox invention. As it should; as I started, I don't doubt McCammond's sincerity and let those of us whose youth is not widely available online show a bit of pause - there but for Twitter in high school go many of us. But the questions raised do linger - is a 27 year old apologizing away her words at 19 really the point? When did you realize that "gay" and "Asian" and "homo" and who knows what all probably shouldn't be used that way? Who needed to tell you? And why, really, did you need to be told?

And therein lies the thread that I gently pick up and use to tie things together: maybe, in a week of extreme anti-Asian violence and bigotry, we can see why Alexi McCamond was wrong for Teen Vogue in a way that (still) flummoxes Fox. We shouldn't have to say "don't kill Asian women working in massage parlors as some sick response to your sexual issues" just as we shouldn't have to say "don't say that" when using racial and homophobic slurs in casual speech. Just as we shouldn't have to explain to Fox why you can't cherry pick the news when it goes against your narrative. You can't do that. Maybe, in some past time, as a culture we let this stuff slide. And yes, that's on us, and that reckoning was, and is, somewhat overdue. But still.  When Teen Vogue takes on a tough piece about Asian women, sex work, and the myth of the "Exotic Oriental" - one that Fox will probably say is inappropriate for its audience of teen girl readers - this will all make sense. Doesn't it?

 

Got Til It's Gone

A day later and it can seem light years away, but try and recall that until he ducked out early yesterday morning, we did indeed spend 4 years with Donald Trump in the White House. He may have ended much the way he began - in chaos, disarray, and like a thief trying to get away with something - but if there's one thing we came to learn under Trump, it was that what you see is what you will always get.

A day later, it's hard to ask just what we got, since we want to pretend, as we often do, that nothing at all matters before yesterday. By noontime, with the assembled guests in their usual spots (or something like it, under Covid) we once again paraded out an Inauguration, hit the reset button, and gratefully welcomed the return of normalcy. You know, where you can't leave your house, masks are required at the store, and vaccines are impossible to find. That's okay, stay home and watch another chorus of randos sing that song from Rent you didn't need for the umpteenth time. Liberalism means never having to apologize for the theater kids.

A day later and we have our sense of humor back, our divisions, our obstacles to progress as firmly in place as ever... and that's good, isn't it?  Isn't it swell, isn't it?  Well, it's heaven, nowadays (sorry, I was those theater kids, once)... but we may, by day three, already feel deeply disappointed watching Democrats in Disarray. Because why change anything, when all we wanted back was our same old, familiar narratives?

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and by the end, Trump was nothing if not familiar. Even on his way literally out the door, stopping to harangue the reporters, dutiful as ever, gathered at their rope line for one final word. And then, sharply dressed wife at his side, he toddled off (Melania swapped her severe black Chanel for a colorful caftan on her arrival in Palm Beach, and literally never looked back as she got in her car to head into private life). It's remarkable, really, that Trump seems to have exited the national stage in a way similar to other ex Presidents, could we be that lucky? I think not... but it's hard to tell what outlet he would have available to pop up on, even if he wanted.

It's hilarious, this game we're playing of treating Trump as He Who Shall Not Be Named, just one day after he leaves the presidency, whether because it serves Joe Biden's "let's move forward" storyline, or the Republicans' need to pretend they never heard of him, or our own sense that if we just don't talk about him it will be like this never happened. It's another piece of family dysfunction after all - not talking about the bad stuff. Pretending everything is fine. They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot... but it's fine if we just agree it's nice to have the extra space to park.

The reality of course is that it's not that simple, or that easy, and pretending won't make this go away. Trump will linger in our culture, whether we determinedly try to exile him or not, whether he tries to force his way back onto the stage, or not. Trump may be relegated to the interior pages of scandal sheets and gossip rags, the story may move to lawsuits and investigations and financial failure... but he won't just be gone. Even today, Republicans are grappling with one last piece of political mischief, as they try to tamp down his "I could start my own political party" - an idea so half baked and deviously destructive, we can only hope he sees it through, Surely, it's the best next long con he could possibly have created, a grift that could make him millions long before anyone realized it was a complete sham.

Then, too, there's Impeachment, a trial to be held that apparently is the magic key to figuring out how the 50-50 Senate will finally set up shop and get down to business. Because no one is "concerned about ending the filibuster" - that won't happen and doesn't have the votes to pass, anyway. But the timing of a trial, the need for Republicans to get rid of Trump without angering the base... there's no real answer about when a trial could be helpful, or what verdict brings actual justice (at least, not for their side - we know he's guilty as sin). The struggle is real. The answers are elusive. And it's only one half of an entire branch of government that gets held up trying to figure a way out.

Good luck with that, I figure. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone? I don't mean Trump = we knew what we got, with him. No, what we haven't begun to face - in our perfect, don't talk about the dysfunction way - is all the other stuff we got. From literally getting sick to all that's been broken, to all the disarray in putting our government back together, all the aftermath we have yet to unpack... and on and on. We are remarkable, as Americans, at all the things we can refuse to face when we out our collective energy towards it. We put him on a plane, we sent him away... a big yellow taxi came and took away our old man. Can't we just enjoy the Tree Museum and that shiny new parking lot?

The New "Normal"

For me, it was during Biden's press event for his new HHS secretary and various other members of his health team: there he was, taking questions, giving thoughtful answers, outlining policy proposals, laying out a possible agenda for the first few months of his term... and there, I could see it. This was what we had been missing. This could be a return to normal.

Of course, we're not there yet, and 4 years of incredible dysfunction definitely leaves a mark. Our American instinct to instantly pretend we don't remember the bad, awful things minutes, months, moments after we have passed them is more of a curse at this point than a blessing. Painful as it is, we will need to talk about What Just Happened even as we "get back to normal" or really "getting back to normal" won't be any kind of normal at all.

Throughout Trump's farcical, damaging presidency, my metaphor has been "it's like your mom married a violent drunk, brought him home and said he was going to be your new dad." Your old dad, your real dad was a kind caring person... but dysfunctional dad is a nightmare. He rants and raves, he's wildly paranoid, you quickly begin to lose sleep fretting over what could happen next, you're embarrassed when he mouths off in public... and on and on. America has accepted the thinking of codependency and recovery, the worlds of AA and Al-Anon... but still, only a minority of families have experienced the deep dysfunction of alcohol, drug addiction and other traumatic mistreatment on a daily basis in their own homes. At least... not until Trump became President.

The dysfunction of Trump, the chaos around him was destabilizing, debilitating to our national psyche in so many ways. While that was immediately apparent to some, it eluded many at first, only becoming clear by degrees. They were the people who said, "I never thought it would get this bad" or "I never imagined he would..." at some further degrading of our national discourse, or finding kids in cages, or telling people to inject bleach.There were those who woke up, suddenly and said "I can no longer be a part of this," ad left the Republican Party, their job, their family, realizing that they needed to speak up. These are all steps on dealing with dysfunction. And there are those, as there will be, who simply refuse to see, or refuse to take action. Those who say "it's just like the flu" and "I'm sure there was massive voter fraud..." because it's better to be on the side of the bully, or because they're afraid, or because, really, they don't understand how wrong and how dangerous the dysfunction is. 

I always hesitate to share too much in the way of personal detail, but a lot of that fell away during these crazy years. I grew up in a dysfunctional household, my father was an alcoholic prone to mood swings and wild late night episodes of out of control behavior. You develop ways to cope with this because you have to cope. I learned how to pretend everything was fine, to treat crazy as normal, while always fearing the worst. And I learned to survive. 

Unlike many naysayers, I always figured we would reject Trump at the first opportunity, when enough people knew they had had enough. I thought it might be impeachment - I didn't even rule out Trump resigning - but in the end, the solution we chose was the simplest: we held an election and voted him out of office. And still the dysfunction rages. Of course he would claim fraud. Of course he would try to pervert every established venue to achieve his dysfunctional ends. That's what he does. That's who he is. Yes, he has succeeded in corrupting an entire political party while attempting to achieve his warped ends, and probably the GOP is beyond saving. But it's not mine to save, or to judge. Time will tell.

The dysfunction doesn't end when mom decides to throw dad out, or when dad finally, eventually goes. I say that from experience. The dysfunction starts to end when we - each of us, all of us - stand back and assess the damage. When we sort out what happened, and why, and learn from the experience. It can take months, or years, and even a lifetime. The first step was defeating Trump's reelection. The next step is removing him. And neither one should be thought of as the last step. This is just the beginning. I'm not sure we, as a nation, still fully appreciate that January will only be a start. Not an ending.

It is heartening to see Biden calmly and effectively assume control. It's a relief seeing the competent, professional team he is assembling, and resume the sense that official entities may get back to the business at hand, and not the whims of paranoid narcissist who lies all the time. It's nice to come home and not be worried that there's no dining room furniture because dad has thrown it onto the lawn and set it on fire.... but, I kind of had you there, for a moment, right? Life was better when you didn't know how that dining room furniture thing felt, wan't it? Well... welcome to the new normal. It's a lot like the old normal, except for that lingering sense of unease.