The 3 People I Blame for Donald Trump Getting Elected... Part 1: Oprah

• I say this with love... I really do... but I blame 3 people for Donald Trump's presidency: Oprah, Jon Stewart and David Letterman... this occurred to me after watching The Loudest Voice (about Roger Ailes, the creator of Fox News), and I just think... damn, liberals quit their influential shows, and these Jabba-the-Hutt nightmares like Roger Ailes, work till they die... nothing is ever enough... and while Jon Stewart quit to help animals and help 9/11 first responders, and Letterman left his show for whatever reason some good, and Oprah continued to be a philanthropist-extraordinaire... all I was thinking was, uh-oh. Like an existential, spiritual nightmare. And I love them. And I blame them. The timing of their departures from their popular shows is significant. It created a chasm. A hole in the soul of America.

• In many ways. Oprah was the heart, but also the brains to the country's Christian women, who we now see could easily go off the deep end. On behalf of Oprah, and as an admitted superfan, I often  feel like I often have to come to her defense. And in light of the hatred that came at Hillary Clinton, I just can't let people get away with the slamming of powerful women anymore. Since the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement, I have been mulling over the crimes that rich men have gotten away with in comparison to famous women. I've been paying attention to stories and anectotes about these women (like Martha Stewart, Anna Wintour) and how tabloids and even journalists and,pretty much, all of society, has attacked them for the smallest infractions. While men were molesting, raping, and harassing (and then harassing them for reporting the molesting, raping, and harassing), women were criticicized for the smallest mole hill. They overwork. They work their employees too hard. They place high expectations on their household staff. The "bitch" word, and worse, are thrown around. I can't take it. It took 50 years in the entertainment business for someone to mention that Charlie Rose would take off all his clothes when a 20-something female worker entered his office... 

People who dislike Oprah for her Oprahness and her Favorite Things and what they think is faux spirituality, forget that she took stands that were risky before she was a billionaire. And she took risks that weren't (at the time) considered to be smart financial ones...

• In the late 80s, she took a lot of crap for not continuing to do the typical Jenny Jones/Jerry Spring talk show. That was a risk she took when she was just becoming a celebrity.
• She also took a risk before we invaded Iraq by showing footage of the city of Baghdad, just to show schoolyards and stores and people, so that people knew that when we go in and bomb, we are destroying a society. She didn't even say that, but this was the subtext. While some people wanted to thump their chests about "shock and awe," she wanted to show that their were human beings there living their lives. She got a lot of crap for that.

• So when she went off the air in 2011, the year that Trump started his birther movement, I think losing the Oprah Show was a bigger hit than people realize. I think she provided a source of journalism and media that we are severely lacking right now. There was something to having her show on every day. And yes, some of her shows were pure entertainment, like movie plugs and such. But I know Oprah would be doing that we're just not seeing, and I think the country needs them. Fake News would surely be a weekly topic. Kids on their phones. She'd probably have Steve Harvey giving dating app advice once a week. And the politics... she'd be smart about that too. She polarized people with her support for Obama, but I also think she got him elected. She knew how to walk a line. And she knew how to get people to join her.

Anyway, here's my girl years ago defending Ellen for coming out of the closet. Every now and then, she would lose some of the unhinged Christian women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1_8Y72Rcvs

Oh the Trauma!

And in today's psycho analysis of a psycho... this guy seems to really delve into all the craziness that is The Donald. It made me think of how now we are in this world where we really go deep into people's minds, rather than just taking them for their actions. I mean, how many articles were there entitled, "Hitler? WTF is this guy's problem and does it stem from a traumatic childhood?' or "Hitler? Concentration camps? We're sorry we didn't like your paintings, but come on..." But here we are in Trumpland where this guy's neoroses are all too obvious and the whys and hows are too real. Domineering father, alcoholic brother. White male privelege. Rampant bigotry and racism, but in rich circles where it's all part of his charm. Below is the author (I realize, he looks pretty dismal, but he studies some depressing shit). 

But what he says below is what made me think...

"However, let me add a point here: In the same article that you cited, John, I also talk about Hillary Clinton’s childhood trauma. Basically, America had two traumatized candidates running against each other for the most powerful office in the nation. The extent of Hillary’s trauma was shown when she had pneumonia in the summertime, she pretended that everything was fine. She pretended she wasn’t sick until she collapsed in public. Such behavior is the result of a traumatized childhood where her mother forced her to suck it up when other kids were tormenting her. There’s an overflow of unresolved trauma in our society, and this is a question that needs to be addressed." (Gabor Mate)

I agreed with this on many levels. Hillary was conditioned to hide her pain and her troubles, and in doing so, came off as standoffish and secretive. But whereas a man doing that would be described as stoic and private, she was demonized. I've come to learn, and this is part of growing up in this era especially, that every plus for a man is a minus for a woman. Being smart for a woman is deemed as "a little evil." Being called sexy, for a woman, always comes with being called a tramp or a slut. Being called beautiful often implicates dumb. And being called ambitious... well that is maybe the biggest insult ever. That makes you Eve, or Lady Macbeth, or Scarlett O'Hara. It's unforgivable. 

So although this author is comparing two nominees and their traumas and how it affected them, I don't think we should ever consider that they were ever under the same lens. Hillary and other girls are taught to suck it up in some way for their entire lives, and from an early age. Being a girl and growing up, in many ways, is learning that although in your childhood, you couldn't see any indication that boys were smarter than you or superior in any way, you were going to have to step back someway. In some ways, you'd have to work 10 times harder for the 1/10th of the prize. Or maybe you'd have to pretend you weren't as smart because it didn't make you attractive to boys. Or maybe you were so attractive to boys that your parents worried about your virtue, so you had dress plainly. Or maybe you'd have to pretend to not be interested in sex while your husband (let's say Bill Clinton) ran around like a sex maniac. Not to say Hillary or most people had his sexual appetites, but in Arkansas, the women there didn't even like Hillary using her maiden name, so Hillary was stifled in many regards. Whatever it is, girls and women have to repress. They have to suck it up. And I hope that's what ultimately changes. 


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-in-society/201112/the-seductive-dangerous-allure-gabor-mat

The Patron Saint of My Blog....Bill Maher

My Sentiments Exactly... before the 2016 election, I often said, "How come Bill Maher is the only one who gets it?" He says exactly what I'm thinking... and when he says it better, I'm not going to plagiarize. I'm just going to post his videos.

"Republicans win for two reasons: teamwork and cheating."

I have said this so many times. Republicans get together early in the morning and have secret meetings about some idiotic message to put on Fox News, and by 10am, all your racist friends and relatives, or all like, "Did you hear that Muslims are taking over England?" And you're like, "Where did you hear that?" And they're like, "Oh, I heard it somewhere..." Well they hear it on Fox and then then google it, and some moronic publication like the Herald Whig has videos of muslims in England, and they're like, "Ya see?" And the rest of you complain... but you know what I see? I see some genius marketing. They see a bunch of D high school students who never learned the difference between a real accredited publication and an article with a web address... and they cater to them... get on it Democrats... remember how upset these same idiots were about Obama and the tan suit... or they pretended to be upset about Benghazi but you could never pinpoint why... it wasn't as if there had never been an embassy attack... and god knows they never blamed the Bush administration for 9/11. But for some reason, Benghazi proved that Hillary and Obama were evil... it'c called teamwork.... it's also called marketing. Ask Coca Cola. Coke is essentially a toxic substance, but you know what their ads used to say: Coke Is It. And it was...