Politics

How a Crazy Cat Lady Took On The Proud Boys

Update 8-10-20

Disclaimer – An individual who shall remain unnamed is claiming this article is about some sort of plot against him.  He is not hinted at or inferred anywhere in this document. I do not use an alias for him. My story is my story.  Everything in this account can be backed up with paperwork and multiple corroborating witnesses most of whom are named.  There is no implied or hidden story. 

For the past three and half years I’ve secretly worked as a researcher of the far right.  The story I’m about to tell is bonkers.  It involves an aging hipster, a hate group, an ambush by the NY Daily News, a phone call to the FBI, a surprise visit by the NYPD anti-terrorist task force, a bomb threat, homemade raw cat food and burlesque performers.  

Before I get into it, I feel I need to introduce myself to any readers who might not already know me.  I’m a 47-year-old divorcee in Brooklyn who lives with three cats. I’ve worked as a face and body painter for the past 19 years.  I won’t waste too much time with my personal history except to say that up until 2013 I used to work as an emcee/producer in the burlesque scene in New York City.  You can probably still find photos of me online in various costumes screaming or singing at strangers. I only mention my past with burlesque because it directly lead me into becoming a researcher of a far right hate group.  

I’m not exactly sure when this whole endeavor started but sometime before the last presidential election in 2016 a few friends asked for a favor.  They were still actively working as burlesque/nightlife performers in various clubs in New York City.  They sometimes worked with a woman who was making them extremely uncomfortable.  For legal reasons I’m going to call this woman Portia.  She’s not the focus of this story but because she’s made several false accusations about me in the press and on social media I’m going to avoid using her legal or stage name.  This story is long and involved so I’m going to use a bit of a timeline throughout to help frame the events.  

Fall 2016

My friends sought my help because they knew I worked with video.  At this point Portia had made a few appearances on the The Gavin McInnes Show (TGMS).  TGMS was one of many shows on the subscription based streaming platform, Compound Media, founded by disgraced shock jock Anthony Cumia.  The burlesque performers wanted me to capture every time Portia appeared on TGMS and give them the footage.  One of them was already paying for a subscription but she had no experience working with video.  They wanted to show producers proof that Portia was espousing what they thought were anti-LGBTQ and racist views.  They didn’t feel safe performing with her.  They were also concerned that a fan of TGMS might show up and cause trouble for a number of LGBTQ performers who worked with them.   McInnes did not hide his contempt for trans women, even going so far as to call them “mentally ill gays” and even wrote an article claiming that transphobia was perfectly natural.

I’d never really captured video off of a computer screen before and I didn’t want to spend any money on expensive software.   I used my old camcorder and a laptop to capture episodes of TGMS featuring Portia.  I would just line up the camera and crop the screen as best as I could.  The trickiest part was keeping my cats from meowing too much or walking through the shot. This was more difficult than you can imagine some days.  

Almost immediately I switched my focus from Portia to McInnes.  Portia gave me exactly what my friends wanted.  She would insult them, trash the nightclub and burlesque scene while occasionally saying something embarrassing, hateful or racist.  The other performers were happy with what I was giving them but Portia didn’t really interest me.  I had stopped working in burlesque around 2013 and had no personal history with her.  

I admit I’d never heard of McInnes before I watched the first episode of his show on Compound Media.  McInnes was a founder of Vice Media who severed his ties with the company in 2008 due to creative differences.  His departure included a large multi-million dollar settlement.  His rhetoric was the same old tired aggrieved white male schtick mixed with racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and general bigotry.  McInnes wasn’t unique in his vitriol.  I could easily find a few dozen angry white men on various platforms spewing the same kind of hate.  What set McInnes apart were two things — a fraternal group of men he’d founded called The Proud Boys, and McInnes’s repeated statements glorifying and encouraging the use of violence for political means.  

The Proud Boys were supposed to be about celebrating masculinity and Western civilization.  Members could be any ethnicity or sexual orientation although most of them featured on TGMS were straight and white.  Proud Boys were initiated into the group via a mild hazing and prohibited from masturbating.  Soon after he founded the group, McInnes claimed to have at least 10,000 members with chapters worldwide.  His appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience helped promote the group. 

I contacted a local antifa group in New York City since they had already run a story about Portia along with other local far right figures.  I let them know what I was doing and asked if they wanted any specific footage.  They told me immediately they wanted whatever I could find of McInnes inciting violence.  I sent them my first clip, one of McInnes saying.

Episode 006 – McInnes – “Five men in this room have violated some stupid fucking law, and we can get thrown in jail tomorrow.  So instead of hiding and hoping we don’t get caught we have to go, these laws are insane, get a fucking gun.”

They thanked me but didn’t really do much with it.  I knew I could find more quotes so I kept hunting.  When I started this project McInnes had already made a couple hundred episodes and was making about four new episodes a week.  I realized I would never be able to catch up and capture/edit all of them.  I figured the best way to get what I needed was to create a spreadsheet and edit episodes with high profile guests such as Richard Spencer, David Duke and Milo Yiannopoulos.  I spent a day going through the entire catalog of existing episodes on the Compound site and wrote down as much as I could find.  Then I went to work.  I’d capture the episodes on my camera, then download and edit them on my desktop.  To speed things up a bit I would watch and edit most episodes at 125% speed.

Within a couple of months I’d completely given up on working with antifa.  We weren’t exactly a good fit.  They didn’t seem to know what to do with the footage I gave them and they sometimes completely blew off my emails.  I wasn’t about to sit through dozens of hours of toxic rants by McInnes for nothing. 

I decided to seek out a reporter who might be interested.  At this point I had about 10 minutes worth of clips of McInnes inciting violence.  I created a transcript so I could easily cut and past quotes to show reporters exactly what I had.  McInnes had mentioned a woman named Amanda Marcotte on multiple episodes.  He claimed he was suing her over an article she’d written about him on Salon.com.  I figured if anyone would want to see this footage it would be Marcotte.  I discovered we were already friends on Facebook as I had added her a couple years prior after sending her some fan mail over an article she’d written.  When Marcotte and I met she was floored by the sheer amount of clips I had gotten at that point.  I had folders for every topic: black, Latino, Asian, Women, Muslims, LGBTQ and of course violence.  Marcotte said she would talk to her editor and she what she could do.

McInnes has said repeatedly that the Proud Boys are not violent and did not promote white supremacy.  The amount of times McInnes used the n-word and other racial slurs was staggering.  He often went on long rants about how different ethnicities evolved over time.  Here are a few clips that indicate the true nature of McInnes’s beliefs. 

Episode 130 – McInnes – “I used to box at a gym called Church Street Boxing Gym here in New York. That had a huge motto, and it was on their t-shirts too. “Fighting solves everything”. We need more violence from the Trump people, Trump supporters, choke a motherfucker, choke a bitch, choke a tranny, get your fingers around the windpipe if they spit on you. That’s assault. Don’t fucking let anyone spit in your fucking face.”

Episode 322 – McInnes – “I was on Malsberg on Newsmax yesterday and he goes and I go it’s fun to punch these kids because they’ve never been punched before. So they fall on their ass and they look like Indiana Jones, I was watching Indiana Jones last night remember that bald dude when he’s trying to get into the Nazi plane and he keeps punching him, Indiana Jones, and the guy’s so huge Indiana Jones is like “bonk” on his ass after every punch and that’s what it’s like with them and Malsberg was like “You’re not advocating violence are you?” and I was like “I absolutely am. In fact I’m mad at you for not advocating it in the past. It’s a wonderful effective thing.”

Episode 104 – McInnes “I think there’s uh something that a lot of people are too scared to bring up when you talk about Western culture is white culture. And I keep it cultural and I’ve got plenty of black friends and I’m not gonna, but when I think of other cultures and other races in America the ones that thrive are the ones that tend to go white . . . so I think the west is made up of white people and people who recognize that the white system seems to be a pretty good system.  It’s a very contentious subject but I think the sorta the sub-angle with this is that Western culture is on the demise and if we could unify it we might have a chance of it going like this (gestures down) to this (gestures up).  Because you know whatever replaces the West is going to be worse.

Episode 267 – McInnes – “God started the microchip 3.5 billion years ago and he just sort of rolled it and he said if you’re a Dodo bird and you’re delicious  you’re going to get eaten and you’re not going to last long.  The other guys who experience winter they’re going to become really tough they are going to become Vikings they are going to take over the world and they are going to be my best people, (laughs) they are the chosen ones.” 

Episode 145 – McInnes – “My favorite monkey has to be Barack Obama, he’s my favorite n*gger.”

Episode 059 – McInnes – “(Black people) They spent more times climbing trees or I don’t know what it is but genetically something is built up. (mimes climbing with his arms).”

Episode 230 – McInnes “If you’re with Leslie Jones and you see you’re guys the next day, and you’re like (said in Jamaican accent) why you going on with that big gorilla from SNL.”

After a month or so Marcotte let me know her editor didn’t want to go with the story for a number of different reasons but she referred me to other reporters who worked the same beat. 

March 2017

At the same time around March of 2017 I anonymously sent a flash drive of what I had with a one page document to the FBI headquarters in New York City.  From what I’ve read in the press the FBI was already investigating McInnes and the group at that point. 

The Fourth Degree

I’m not sure exactly when I stumbled on the fourth degree as I was jumping around the catalog of episodes.  On 11/28/16 Episode 253 McInnes announced a new level in the Proud Boys organization.  A Proud Boy named Shawn Fitchner was declared the first “fourth degree” Proud Boy after he’d gotten arrested and then briefly jailed over a fight.  The 1st, 2nd and 3rd degrees of Proud Boy membership were as follows:

1st degree – Stating the Proud Boys creed

2nd degree – Saying five breakfast cereals while being punched by other Proud Boys

3rd degree – Getting a tattoo of the words Proud Boys somewhere on their body.

4th degree – Get in a fight, get arrested for the cause (Exact wording changed over time) 

Episode 253McInnes – “It’s being physically assaulted for the cause.  Getting arrested, getting in a fight.  Now the fight has to be an organized fight, not just getting in a fight.  So it has to be some conflict that’s officiated.  Now if you get arrested for something, that’s been officiated by the police so that counts.  I’ll just make it two things, one an organized fight in a ring.  Boom fourth degree.  Two you got arrested for fucking around and it was Proud Boys related.  That’s fourth degree, one of those two things” 

As I progressed through the series I noticed McInnes ramping up his calls for violence.  I was collecting quotes from nearly every episode.  Then something happened that dramatically changed his tone.  

Unite the Right Rally  – The Death of Heather Heyer

On August 12th, 2017 in Charlottesville Virginia, James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally drove his car into a crowd of people injuring 28 and killing Heather Heyer.  Fields previous espoused white supremacist and Neo Nazi beliefs.  Although there is no evidence that Fields was connected in any way with the Proud Boys or their organization, a former Proud Boy,  Jason Kessler was one of the organizers of the event.  McInnes did not attend the event himself but some members of the Proud Boys did attend. 

To quote the Southern Poverty Law Center

Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions: rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Indeed, former Proud Boys member Jason Kesslerhelped to organize the event, which brought together Klansmen, antisemites, Southern racists, and militias. Kessler was only “expelled” from the group after the violence and near-universal condemnation of the Charlottesville rally-goers.

After Unite the Right McInnes immediately pulled back on most of his violent rhetoric and disavowed Jason Kessler claiming he was never a Proud Boy to begin with.  McInnes soon left Compound Media for a new job at CRTV, a network owned by Mark Levin a conservative lawyer, author and radio personality.  The move appeared to be an attempt to rebrand.  CRTV had more of a traditional conservative base including Christians who wouldn’t go for McInnes’s typical antics.  I watched a couple of episodes of his new show Get Off My Lawn on CRTV and immediately lost interest as I could tell McInnes was essentially muzzled.  I knew I wouldn’t get useful content so I didn’t bother capturing any of it.  

Quotes from the footage I’d captured from TGMS were making their way into various articles.  The real game changer came when Michael Edison Hayden, now of the Southern Poverty Law Center, introduced me to the satirists Vic Berger IV and Nathan Bernard.  

At the time Berger worked for a Super Deluxe, a division of Turner Broadcasting.  Berger was known for making trippy, surreal, satirical videos using found footage of various politicians and celebrities.  Berger had already targeted McInnes for ridicule before I contacted him.  His first short videos of McInnes made with my clips were meant to embarrass and mock McInnes more than anything else.  McInnes made this job somewhat easy as he tended to do incredibly outrageous things on camera such as: inserting a butt plug up his own anus, whipping his penis out and humping green screens with porn stars projected on them.  

May 2018

In May of 2018, after a couple of somewhat successful parody videos of McInnes, a member of the Proud Boys showed up at Vic Berger’s house as a means of intimidating him.  Berger chased the man down and filed a police report.  Berger’s response was to double down and make even more videos critical of McInnes using the footage I gave him. 

Around this same time my name appeared in an article on the now defunct blog/website of Milo Yiannopoulos.  In a long and rambling mess written by fellow Proud Boy, Pawl Bazile, I was accused of all sorts of nonsense regarding Portia.  The article used the plural pronoun “they” throughout so I wasn’t really sure what I was being accused of by Portia or Bazile.  The blog post didn’t show up in a news search for my name so I decided to ignore it completely.  I got exactly three hostile comments on my social media from it.  

About a week later I got a voicemail from a state trooper in Rhinebeck, NY telling me he was contacting me on behalf of Portia.  This was utterly bizarre as I had never even been in Rhienbeck, NY and had no idea why he was even contacting me.  I knew that Portia was from that area of NY state and a friend told me she thought Portia had a relative who was a retired state trooper.  After two and half months of phone tag, the officer did not have voicemail, the entire ordeal was resolved in a phone call.  The officer let me know the compliant was not a criminal matter.  The accusation against me was that I had given private information about Portia to a local antifa group.  The only information I’ve ever had regarding Portia was her media appearances on TGMS and elsewhere.  The local antifa based group had already published an article featuring Portia before I’d even contacted them.  Portia then went on various right wing media outlets where she made claims about suing me and having me arrested.  Although she never called me out by name, it was obvious to me who she was talking about.  I wasn’t following her at all at this point.  The other burlesque performers sent me links to everything. 

McInnes gets kicked off of Twitter

In August of 2018 about a week before the second Unite the Right rally in Washington DC, Twitter suspended the account of McInnes and all accounts associated with the Proud Boys.  I suspect part of the reason for his suspension might have been the incident involving a Proud Boy showing up at Berger’s home.  Twitter never gave an exact reason.

Things calmed down a bit until the night of October 12, 2018.  McInnes was invited to speak at the Metropolitan Republican Club in the posh Upper East Side neighborhood in Manhattan.  The club had been hit with vandalism and threats allegedly by antifa groups before the meeting.  That night several different groups showed up to protest the event which ended with McInnes brandishing a plastic sword before he entered a car and drove away.  Soon after a fight broke out and a group of protesters were beaten by members of the Proud Boys. 

As soon as news broke about the fight I was flooded with requests for my footage.  At this point I had currated and edited about an hour’s worth of clips about violence.  I created a file sharing account and then contacted journalists who I was already working with such as Andy Campbell, Michael Edison Hayden, Christopher Mathias, Jared Holt, Amanda Marcotte and a slew of other reporters. 

Within a couple of days Berger, using my clips, made a video that got roughly 2 million views on Twitter.  Berger’s video was devastating.  He captured what I had been seeing for years in a perfect 2 minute 20 second video.  The Proud Boys and Gavin were summarily kicked off of Facebook and Instagram soon after.  Within a week or so of the video dropping McInnes was fired from his show on the newly formed Blaze TV.  

That week I decided to call the FBI and tell them what I had.  Although I didn’t give the agent my name I did give her my phone number which would have lead them to me instantly.  She told me to go ahead and drop my letter and the flash drive off at the FBI office in New York City.  After working on cleaning up all of my files for hours I rushed to get to their headquarters where I was told that I couldn’t drop anything off in person.  Due to security reasons they would only accept my submission via the USPS.  I asked them what was the best way to hide my identity and the clerk told me to use their address as my return address. 

I went home and mailed the padded envelope the next day along with one for the State’s Attorney.  I included Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch as a potential contact if they needed any additional information.   I then made a list of everyone else I thought should see this footage.  I started with a brief list of government officials the Southern Poverty Law Center provided on their website.  The governor and mayor were both begging the public for information.  With the help of some of the burlesque performers I purchased flash drives in bulk from Amazon.  I made a six minute montage of the worst clips for government officials and filled larger drives with everything I had for media outlets.

Over the course of a few days I sent out about 20 padded envelopes all addressed as the FBI had instructed.  Each envelope was completely flat, weighed exactly 2 ounces and contained nothing but a flash drive and a piece of paper.  I decided to send the video this way since I ran into so many problems when I tried to contact people via email or a website form.  I was ignored by any number of reporters.  I figured if I just sent them the flash drive, they could watch it if they wanted, and if they weren’t interested they could throw it away.  I used the sender’s address as my return address.  I mailed about half of them from my local post office using my debit card, and the other half from the main post office across from Madison Square Garden.  I purposefully used a clerk instead of stamps or a self-service machine to avoid suspicion.  

On the morning of October 24, 2018 I got an email from Amanda Marcotte.  She knew I was sending things out to various officials and thought she spotted my envelope.  She attached an image.  My heart sank.  There it was – a photo of the envelope I’d sent to the governor on some type of scale in a mail room.  I had the unfortunate luck to send my packages out on the same day that a crazy Trump supporter sent out pipe bombs to various Democrat politicians and media outlets.  The fact that my envelope contained a small piece of metal and had no return address was enough for authorities to panic and flag it.  I immediately called the governor’s office.  As soon as I could get an operator I said the following, 

“I’m the person who sent that package that you think is a bomb.  It’s harmless.  Do you know that yet?”

The operator replied, “You need to speak with a police officer.  Can you hold please?”

About ten minutes later I spoke to a State Trooper in charge of the case.  At this point they’d opened the envelope and realized it was in fact harmless.  After speaking with the officer for at least 20-30 minutes I thought my ordeal was over.  Here’s what my package looked like.    

This is what the pipe bombs looked like. 

Notice the many differences.  Mine included a label from an actual clerk in a Brooklyn post office.  The information on the label would most likely trace back to my debit card if law enforcement really wanted to know where it came from.  The pipe bombs were sent from Florida.  I also hand wrote the address and my package was completely flat and weighed two ounces.  I even wrote “Proud Boys” with an asterisk on the bottom of the envelope in the hope that someone might figure out it was a crime tip.  I’m not sure why they thought anything that weighed only two ounces could be a bomb but apparently my innocent crime tip set off a reaction that lead to about 400 police officers storming the mail room and Manhattan offices of Governor Cuomo. 

Meanwhile on Twitter people had traced my package back to the post office from where I sent it.  My mind raced as I thought back to the ridiculous article on Milo’s website that had been published in May.  I’m sure the author, Pawl Bazile, knew where I lived.  They might actually figure out who sent the package.  I contacted the reporters who posted the image but they couldn’t care less that they had documented a crime tip as a potential bomb.   

That night it was time to make a fresh batch of cat food, an activity I do about once a month.  To make the cat food I have to move everything off my counter onto my table, which makes a huge mess.  I then have to take frozen chopped up chicken thighs, bones and all, and shove them through a grinder which makes a lot of noise and tends to splatter bone marrow in various directions.  The whole process is arduous and disgusting. 

At 9:00 PM that night after making the first batch of food I got a knock on my door.  Again my heart sank.  Maybe it was one of the Proud Boys who figured out that I was a source of information showing up to my home like they did to Vic Berger.  I said, 

“Could you idenitfy yourself please?”

“NYPD and State Police we just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Oh thank God it’s you.”  I said as I quickly peeked open the door. 

“I’ve got blood all over my hands.  I was making cat food.  Give me a second.”

I put the remaining frozen chicken back into the freezer, put my meat cleaver down, ripped off my gloves and let the cops in.  My apartment looked about as bad as it ever looks so I apologized for the mess.  I could also smell the distinctive stench of dead chicken throughout the entire place. 

The cops walked in, realized it was a studio apartment and settled in.  I was sitting while they stood.  It was two state troopers and two NYPD officers all in plain clothes while an unknown number of plain clothed officers also waited outside in the hallway. 

Then the questions started. 

  • Have you dated any member of the Proud Boys? No
  • Are you a member of antifa? No
  • Why would you do this? Because I was seriously worried they were going to hurt someone.  
  • What are you trying to get out of this? Nothing. I was just trying to help.
  • Why would you send this on the same day as a pipe bomb?  Well if I had a crystal ball I would go back in time and send it on another day.

The state troopers were kind and openly made fun of Gavin.  The NYPD members acted like I was insane.  The main NYPD detective starred at various objects in my office area, an old mermaid parade costume of the statue of liberty with the words “RESIST” across the crown was of great interest.  

The female state trooper seemed genuinely interested in the raw diet I fed my cats.  My guess is she was there to keep me calm.  After about 30-40 minutes I gave the officers a list of everywhere I’d sent an envelope and proved to them that I had absolutely nothing to hide.  I got my first laugh line when I told them. 

“I’m not a radical.  I voted for Hillary Clinton.  Do you want to see one of my campaign t-shirts?”

I thought it would be obvious when they saw three cats running around and two giant overstuffed bookshelves what kind of person I was — a nerd. 

The next day – Thursday, October 25, 2018

I was coming home from a kid’s party I’d just worked for a regular client in the Upper West Side.  I had on a blue velvet jacket trimmed in metallic brocade and a felt top hat, along with my shopping trolly covered in kid friendly patches.  I saw an older white man in my lobby who was just sitting there with a notepad.  I assumed it was another cop.  I went to my mailbox got my mail and tried to avoid him. 

“Ms Jesk” he mispronounced my last name.  It’s a common mistake.  People assume the e is silent.  My last name is pronounced closer to Jes-key.  

When I turned I saw his press badge (NY Daily News) around his neck and then I really panicked.  Somehow having four cops in my apartment didn’t freak me out but being exposed as a source on this story sent me into an aboslute terror. 

“How do you know my name?  I sent you something anonymously.  I do not want to be named.  I don’t want to be the story.  Why would you do this to a source?  Please leave me alone.  Give me your phone I want to talk to your boss.”

The reporter seemed stunned and obliged.  I proceeded to chew out his boss.  I was then hit up with the same series of questions all of which I answered as I had in the past with the cops.  The one that really pissed me off was “Have you ever dated any of these men?”  I understand why that might seem like an obvious question but it annoyed me off that they would think a woman couldn’t do something like this without some type of revenge motive. 

Then he asked “Did you give this to the NY Post?”

I responded “No, why would I waste the postage on them?”

“Good.” 

The reporter’s boss told me that they received my information through a source at the NYPD.  My panic only got worse.  I found out weeks later that they most likely got my information through a police scanner.  They were making an educated guess based on the fact that both the NYPD anti-terrorism task force and state police showed up at my apartment the night before.  

After going back and forth with the reporter on the phone and the one in my lobby I had a complete breakdown.  I quoted to them from video I’d seen and captured the night before that Pawl Brazile had made on a Facebook Proud Boys group.  (The entire group was kicked off of Facebook only a few days after this incident)

“We will find whomever sent this fake bomb to the governor and hang them from the highest tree, metaphorically of course.”

With that quote and my complete emotional break down the reporter decided to back off.  I then said something to the effect of having Grandparents of German descent who couldn’t even speak of World War II without sobbing.  I had always asked myself what would I do if I saw the rise of something so horrible in my lifetime.  I was just trying to help.  I didn’t want publicity.  I didn’t make any money off of this entire ordeal, I’d spent money on it.  

I’m not even sure what I said as I was a complete and utter mess.  As I got off the phone I saw the reporter, a man probably in his late 50s.  He was also crying.  He said,

“I’m so sorry.  We didn’t know.  Thanks so much for trying to do the right thing.  We need more Americans like you.”

I wiped my tears and got into the elevator and called a family member who assured me they couldn’t run a story like that without my consent.  I guess I should have known something like this could have happened but I never would have thought in a million years that my tiny flash drive would get mistaken for a bomb or that a reporter would want to do a story about me.  I found out later that the NYPD had gone around to all of the locations I’d sent envelopes and picked them up.  The only two media companies who refused to give them up were the NY Daily News and Buzzfeed.    

Saturday, October 29th 2018

I woke up late having been drained by the week’s events.  I picked up my phone and continued to have another meltdown.  My phone filled up with updates about a mass shooting.  It was a synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Eleven people were dead simply for being Jewish.  The man was driven by deep hatred that had been stoked by others on the far right.  

I couldn’t move and could barely breathe.  Through studying McInnes I’d learned far more about any number of far right personalities and the toxic hate they promoted.  McInnes had made a number of problematic statements about Jewish people including terrible jokes about the holocaust.  McInnes tread a fine line he was usually not overtly anti-Semitic yet he’d had guests on his show like David Duke who had built a career on his hatred of Jews. Was this the start?  Would there be more shootings?  

November 21, 2018

McInnes posts a video on YouTube where he formally quits the Proud Boys.  He claimed he was quitting the group on the basis that it might help the men who were charged in the fight outside the Metropolitan Republican Club.  I wasn’t really sure how that would work as he’d have to go back in time and never form the group in the first place to really help these men.  It seemed more like McInnes was trying to save himself more than anything. 

August 1st, 2019

The trial for two of the men arrested and charged in the fight outside the Metropolitan Republican Club begins.  A couple of weeks earlier I contacted the Assistant District Attorney handling the case, Joshua Steinglass.  I was suprirsed that the operator gave me him directly and not a paralegal.  At first he also thought I was a random nutjob until I described exactly what I’d sent the states attorney.  For the next few weeks I agreed to capture and edit any comments McInnes or any of his guests made about the case and send them to Steinglass via his paralegal.  I would find myself coming home after long catering gigs or special events and then watching McInnes on his new network.  McInnes talked about the case constantly.  

I also discovered that some of the clips that I gave to the States Attorney were used as evidence in the case or at least submitted as evidence.  The quote about Gavin comparing Barack Obama to a monkey was quoted in The New York Times.  

October 22, 2019

About a year after the brawl outside the Metropolitian Republican Club two members of the Proud Boys were sentenced to four years in prison for the actions the night of the fight.  I found out via text by Jared Holt while in the middle of a catering gig.  I had mixed feelings.  I actually felt somewhat sorry for the two men.  One of them did kick another man in the head but I agreed with the judge on the case Mark Dwyer who said, 

“It’s a shame when some people jump up and down on a platform and their followers, their soldiers, get into trouble.”

McInnes was reckless in his promotion of violence.  He somehow thought using violence as a means of political change was something he came up with.  He didn’t bother to notice the overwhelming evidence that violence just begets more violence and that any group who tries to beat their opponents into submission is rarely viewed positively.  

November 19, 2019

A group calling themselves Latinos for Trump held a rally in support of the convicted Proud Boys outside of a Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.  About two dozen Proud Boys supporters were met by approx. 300 counter protesters across the street.  The protest was rather tame as the NYPD made sure the two groups were nowhere near each other.  The night before I made a two-sided sign.  I rarely go to protests of any kind but I decided I should go to this one.  I put on my Vic Berger IV t-shirt and layered up as it was bitterly cold that day. 

The front of my sign said. 

This was meant as an inside joke for Vic Berger and the many reporters I’d worked with.  The flip side of my sign said. “Proud Boys Go Back to Your Mommies” the following image is from a story about the march in the NY Post.  

That’s yours truly on screen while McInnes discusses my sign. I nearly fell over when I realized they were referencing me. I realized at that moment why antifa protesters often cover their faces.

Soon after this I stopped watching or editing McInnes’s show. He spent most episodes complaining about his plight more than anything else. He once had a 50 minute segment called “The People in your Neighborhood” where he ranted about the various different types of people who accosted him in public. I’m sure his viewers could relate.

This whole experience changed me in ways I can’t begin to describe in words. In the days after the Pittsburgh shooting I decided I was going to change course completely and go back to school to pursue researching and writing about the far right full-time. McInnes was his own worst enemy. In his attempts to silence or intimidate his critics like Marcotte, he lead me directly to the best resource to expose him. I met other reporters this way. McInnes would insult them in a segment. I’d capture the footage and then send it to a reporter. It’s how I met Colin Moynihan of the NY Times.

I’m sure now I will be trolled for days or even longer. McInnes will call me a spinster with dried up ovaries who has become a colostomy bag for men’s cum. He will say I can’t write and that I’m a loser, even though as an entrepreneur technically the Proud Boys are supposed to celebrate me. I will take the hits as they come. The first amendment applies to everyone, including people McInnes doesn’t agree with. If he or anyone says anything into a camera they should expect someone who is critical of them is watching. Of course he or anyone can say whatever they want on any platform but those words do not come without consequence.

In the most surprising twist of this story I discovered that Alex Jones was kicked off of Facebook due to his association with McInnes. I sent an email to a number of the reporters I’ve worked with the subject title “We are the Masters of the Universe.” I was joking of course but I never would have imagined when I set off on this project that I would ever have any influence towards getting someone like Jones kicked off a platform like Facebook. I was just a nerdy crazy cat lady after all. I still make raw cat food, although now I have a much better meat grinder it doesn’t make nearly as big of a mess.

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Why a Primary shouldn’t be a Death Match.

For the past few months I’ve watched in horror as the Democratic primary has skidded off the rails into death cage match.  I tried to sound the alarm.  I can’t say in the past 28 years since I started to vote in National elections that I’ve seen anything quite like this race.  Social media and the explosion of outlets on the internet is part of the problem.  Voters can consume only the media that perfectly aligns with his or her point of view without ever seeing a differing opinion.  This creates echo chambers of political purity.  After a while political junkies start to view anyone who questions or even mildly criticizes their chosen candidate as a heretic who must be purified or destroyed.

A primary is supposed to be a scrimmage of people playing on the same team.  Some of the more passionate progressives didn’t realize that eviscerating another Democratic was a bad idea.  They didn’t anticipate that when that candidate dropped out of the race his or her supporters didn’t just disappear.  The doxxing, insults, harassment and threats wouldn’t be quickly forgotten.  A scrimmage is not supposed to result in broken bones and bloody head injuries.  The main source of this kind of extreme negative campaigning came from young, passionate Bernie Sanders supporters known as Bernie Bros.  Of course no campaign was completely free of this kind of toxicity but the overwhelming source of it came from supporters of the Democratic Socialist from Vermont. 

Tweets like these didn’t help.

I used a blurred version of the image because it depicts a scene from a movie of a teenage boy being sexually tortured by a group of men.  The person who tweeted it was Virgil Texas of the popular progressive podcast – Chapo Trap House.  Virgil Texas and his cohorts don’t work for the Sanders campaign directly but they are enthusiastic supporters.  Texas and his fans laughed off any claims of homophobia although the tweet is clearly hateful towards gay men.  Texas might have thought it was clever but it certainly wouldn’t win over any Buttigieg voters once he dropped out of the race.

This is just one out of many examples of self-defeating attempts to boost Sanders.  It doesn’t make sense to smear Pete viciously because his voters will vote for someone else doesn’t win the nomination.  A critique of Buttigieg’s policies, background or donor base would be much more productive.  A disgusting homophobic smear is not going to lure any Buttigieg voters to the Sanders camp.  It could also turn off supporters of other candidates.  

Images like this one were also celebrated as some kind of victory but in the end all they did was alienate supporters of those campaigns.

Again someone forgot to realize that new voter outreach was also part of the game.  Do images of bloody campaigns make supporters of Beto, Harris or Pete want to join the Grim Reaper?  I saw Sanders supporters gleefully repost this while supporters of other candidates saw this as proof of Bernie Bros’s toxicity.   

I’m pretty sure the image posted above is supposed to be satirical.  The underlying message is that if someone isn’t with Sanders and his mob they might find themselves at the wrong end of the guillotine.  Even if it’s meant as a joke the message is literally “Support Sanders or else.”  

I’m not sure why they thought they could bully their way to the top.  It’s just not how voting works.  They should have been trying to win over new people by selling the great and wonderful qualities of this man who made them so excited.  Most Sanders supporters did not engage in this type of behavior, but sadly the worst ones created an insular toxic clique that would only accept the purist supporters.  

I’ve compiled a short list of the worst trends on Twitter I’ve seen since this whole ordeal started that do the opposite of attracting new supporters.  

#1. The How Dare you not love my candidate.

 “If you don’t support my candidate then you obviously want people to die!  You just want people to die!  You want millions to get sick and die from climate change, never-ending wars, poverty, and the evils of giant corporations. 

It’s never occurred to a “How Dare You” ranter that someone might care a great deal about the same issues, they just think another candidate might have a better plan.

#2. The classic insult.

Anyone who doesn’t support my candidate is an idiot and a moron, I guess your brain doesn’t work.  What the fuck is wrong with you?

What is a person trying to accomplish with this one?  Do they want them to like their candidate or just feel bad about themselves?

#3. The insult you won’t even understand approach.

Well of course you wouldn’t like him/her you neoliberal corporatist, centrist, Democratic establishment, shill.

I mean what does half of that even mean?  

#4. I guess you can’t read.

Obviously my candidate has the best policies.  How do you not see it? 

Instead of scolding them, and acting like they are illiterate buffoons maybe try to sell the policies you love so much. 

#5. My candidate is a victim

Everyone is against my candidate.  The Democratic establishment wants him/her to lose.  The media is trying to stop them.   

I kinda get this one as the media isn’t always fair.  The DNC is less than perfect.  The problem is painting a candidate for president as a perpetual victim does not make that person look like a strong leader.  Trump uses this exact same tactic.  It works for a portion of the electorate but it also turns people off. 

#6 Gaslighting

I’ve heard about some supporters being abusive but I’ve never seen it myself.  It must be bots, fake accounts or some plot to make my candidate look bad.  

Just because you don’t see something personally doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. 

#7 The Threat

We will keep lists of anyone supporting that candidate.  We won’t forget who you are.  You will pay for this. 

An actual threat of death will usually motivate anyone to vote for whatever the person holding the gun wants, otherwise this is a losing strategy. 

#8 Some voters are just stupid 

Voters who did not vote for my candidate are low-information.  

Low information is just a fancy way of saying stupid.  It doesn’t help. 

#9 The abuser approach

You will be forced to vote for my candidate because it’s him/her or Trump.  When we win we laugh in your fucking face.  

Who wouldn’t want to vote for their candidate after getting a tweet like that?  

#10 The scorched earth

Your candidate is…

  • a racist
  • a Russian asset (Unless you’re Tulsi Gabbard) 
  • a looney toones
  • a child molester
  • a rapist
  • not really gay
  • a rat
  • a snake
  • a murderer
  • secretly working for the CIA
  • a Republican
  • a cop
  • the person who will bring on the end of the Democratic party
  • the person who will make sure Trump wins the election

Where did they learn this?  Is it the media? Angry podcasters that tap into entitlement and rage? Are these folks simply stuck in a sports team menality and don’t realize that they have to reach out and persuade others in order to build their base of support?  

Negative campaigning during a primary towards other Democrats and their supporters is counter-productive.  There is a reason we’ve never seen this type of extreme vitriol in the past – it simply doesn’t work.  The slings and arrows might silence people from speaking out but it doesn’t change their opinion.  If anything it makes the candidate the bullies are trying to build up look worse. 

Attacking a Republican is something else entirely, especially someone like Trump.  We will still face swing voters though who might not like Trump but won’t be swayed if someone calls them a murderer when they don’t support a vague plan for Medicare For All. 

Will this primary get any better?  I hope so but I’m not convinced that the worst actors in this mess have learned anything.  I fear that even if Sanders gets the nomination this type of behavior will continue or just get worse.  There are potentially millions of voters who voted for Trump in 2016 who don’t want to vote for him in 2020.  Our best bet at getting them on board with a Democratic nominee, whomever that person is, should be by selling our candidate in the best possible light.  The scorched earth tactics should be used against Trump, not moderates and independents and certainly not towards other Democrats.  

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Does it Feel Like 2016 All Over Again? One Thing Hasn't Changed – Bernie Sanders.

I did not intend to write this piece about the Bernie Sanders campaign. When I started this experiment I honestly wanted to find out why this primary already feels divisive and toxic. In some ways we are re-living the traumas of the 2016 Democratic primary. I’m not going to rehash that horror show here, as it’s been dissected and picked apart down to the last smashed campaign button.

I wanted to find the source of this bad blood so I turned to the epicenter of online nastiness — Twitter. I realize searching for answers on Twitter has its limitations. Only a small percentage of voters even use the platform. Regardless the POTUS uses Twitter so often, his misspelled and grammatically challenged tweets often end up as top stories in the news cycle. He’s nearly started wars with his clumsy tirades.

I decided not to study the tweets of ardent supporters of any candidate. It’s simply too easy to fake an account on Twitter. A Republican or Russian could masquerade as a Democrat just to sow discord. Some folks create dozens of fake sock puppet accounts to make one person appear like several.

I figured it was better to look at what paid staffers were saying about each candidate and go from there. I selected the two positions that are the best representatives for voter outreach and public relations.

Director of Communications

National Press Secretary

In the cases where a campaign did not have anyone with those exact titles I made my best guess. For a 24 hour period roughly from the night of Sunday 1/19/20 to Monday 1/20/20 I tracked and cataloged 100 tweets from both staffers from the following campaigns — Sanders, Warren, Biden, Klobuchar and Buttigieg. I ended up reading and taking notes on 1000 tweets which were broken down into 10 spreadsheets.

I didn’t go into long thread or conversations. I simply scrolled down each account and made notes on everything they tweeted themselves or retweeted from another account. I marked a tweet as negative if it attacked another Democrat, the press or used the term centrist as a pejorative. Although many on the far left are no fans of centrists, four out of every 10 American voters identify as Independent. Many people proudly call themselves centrists as they are disgusted by both political parties. I did not include any attacks on Donald J. Trump as a negative tweet. Any negative tweet about President Trump was included in its own category.

Out of the ten staffers only one, Brihana Joy Gray of the Sanders campaign, repeatedly spewed negative vitriol at other Democrats, centrists and the media. The following is a breakdown of each campaign. I’m going to start with Bernie Sanders since his campaign is the only outlier.

Bernie Sanders

Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director – Arianna Jones – 97% positive, 3% negative including 2 tweets critical of President Trump. Biden was mentioned negatively three times. The media was also mildly criticized. Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang were mentioned favorably as was Chuck Schumer. Overall a mostly positive feed that retweeted Bernie Sanders often.

National Press Secretary – Briahna Joy Gray54% negative, 46% positive, with 2 tweets that were critical of President Trump. Roughly 15 tweets included the idea that the media was somehow being unfair to the Sanders campaign. The top tweet pinned to the top of her account was an attack on Joe Biden. Media targets included NYTimes, MSNBC, ABC News, PolitiFact, and Joy Ann Reid. Joe Biden was mentioned negatively 36 times, Elizabeth Warren 3 times, and Klobuchar 2 times. There were two tweets that used the term centrist negatively. Briahna Joy Gray also dedicated an entire episode of her podcast “Hear the Bern” to Biden’s Record. The actual title of the episode is called “Biden’s Record.” This episode was widely promoted in a series of tweets. Gray also retweeted David Sirota, Bernie Sanders speech writer, 14 times. In each tweet Sirota attacked Biden and Politifact. I did not do a deep dive on Sirota’s tweets because he didn’t fit the criteria I set up. It would be unfair to include Sirota since I didn’t track a speech writer of any other candidate. The overall tone of Gray’s tweets was that Bernie was under attack and Biden was enemy #1. One would almost think Biden was the current president and Trump didn’t even exist. Ironically Biden’s team went after Trump the most aggressively out of all 10 staffers I profiled.

Joe Biden

National Press Secretary – Jamal Brown 97% positive, 3% negative with 9 tweets critical of President Trump. His negative tweets were directed at the media and Facebook. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders were all mentioned favorably. Barack Obama and Julian Castro were also mentioned in a positive light. The most common theme repeated in his tweets was the support Biden among black voters.

Traveling National Press Secretary – Remi Yamamoto98% positive and 2% negative with 17 tweets critical of President Trump. Yamamoto also included an negative tweet about Lindsay Graham. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were mentioned in one tweet but the reference was neutral.

Pete Buttigieg

Director of Communications – Lis Smith 99% positive 1% negative. The only negative tweet was a mild dig of the NYTimes editorial board not endorsing Buttigieg. No tweets about Trump. Her tweets were overwhelming positive and included the most humor out of the bunch. She did not mention any other Democratic candidates

National Press Secretary – Chris Meagher 100% positive. No tweets about Trump. Mentioned Corey Booker twice in a favorable manner. This campaign was overall extremely positive and upbeat. Most of their tweets were of volunteers canvassing in Iowa and elsewhere. It was also Buttigieg’s birthday so there were a lot of Happy Birthday tweets.

Elizabeth Warren

Communications Director – Kristen Orthman – 96% positive 4% negative, 4 tweets about President Trump. Her negative tweets were directed at the media. She also used humor often. Mentioned Ayanna Pressley, Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Corey Booker, Julian Castro and Andrew Yang. None of her comments or references to these Democrats were negative. Included two positive references to Bernie Sanders specifically.

Press Secretary – Gabrielle Farrell – 100% positive. Mentioned Julian Castro 3 times always in a favorable light.

Amy Klobuchar

Communications Director – Tim Hogan – 100% positive 2 tweets about President Trump. Included images from the service for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that included all of the Democratic candidates arm in arm. Mentioned Corey Booker and Elizabeth Warren favorably. He also included some humorous tweets.

National Press Secretary – Carlie Waibel – 100% positive. No tweets about President Trump. Also mentioned Elizabeth Warren favorably. Included two images from the service for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the Democratic candidates arm in arm. This account was almost identical to the Communications Director. Overall the Klobuchar staff members were the most positive followed by Pete Buttigieg.

Bernie Sanders can run his campaign however he sees fit. Some voters might view this caustic approach as aggressive or effective. The downside is of course that the scorched earth approach could cause tremendous damage to the rest of the Democratic field. At this point in time it’s highly likely that Bernie will not get the nomination. The vote is fairly evenly split into a 4-way race and the polls are changing by the day. If another candidate seizes the nomination how much damage will be done by this style of campaigning? Is their goal to beat Trump, or to win at all costs? Will this lead to another Bernie or Bust movement? Will disgruntled Sanders voters write in Bernie or pick a third party candidate? This also makes me wonder how much control Sanders has over his staffers. The other campaigns showed a strong sign of coordination between the Communications Director and the Press Secretary. On Sanders team these two women were polar opposites with their approach.

If you’re a huge Bernie Sanders supporter and you love the way his press secretary and staff approach their jobs on Twitter great. Maybe you think he’s not given a fair shake in the press and you loathe Joe Biden. There are still lots of undecided voters out there and voters who will switch allegiances as candidates drop out of the race. This overly harsh approach could drive new people away from the Sanders campaign. It does seem to be a bit of a paradox to offer hope and change while also tearing down other Democrats.

Ultimately it would take weeks and several people collecting evidence from every social media platform to make the best assessment. This cursory glance at Twitter was so lopsided I can’t help but think more research would reveal this style of campaigning also exists on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.

If you disagree with my findings I implore you to check it out for yourself. Each staff member’s name is hyperlinked to take you directly to his or her Twitter account. The negativity, at least on Twitter, is only coming from one direction and that’s the Sanders campaign.

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september-9-11-gettyimages-134352247

Exactly 18 years ago today the United States experienced the worst terrorist attack on US soil.  Nineteen men hijacked four fuel loaded U.S. commercial airplanes bound for west coast cities.  The planes were intentionally flown into both the North and South tower of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington DC.  A fourth plane was diverted by courageous passengers and crash landed in a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The death toll was as follows.

  • Pennsylvania – 40 passengers and crew members
  • Washington DC – 184 Pentagon employees
  • New York City – 2753 workers including 343 FDNY fire fighters, 23 NYPD officers and 37 Port Authority officers.

Since the attack over 241 NYPD officers and an additional 202 FDNY firefighters have died from respiratory illnesses related to the toxic plume of dust at ground zero.

I lived in New York at the time of the disaster.  I had only lived here for five months when this city was stabbed in the heart.  Although my apartment was over three miles away from the World Trade Center, my neighborhood of Kensington Brooklyn was covered in a fine dust of pulverized glass, concrete, steel and human remains that covered victims at ground zero. The ash fell so subtly and faintly that I didn’t notice it until the next morning when every car was suddenly covered in a light gray powder.  I felt the same gritty ash between my fingers as it collected on the only window sill that was downwind of the attack.

After 9/11 I naively thought that this day would be remembered with reverence by all Americans.  Sadly the event has turned into a political football of sorts, tossed around and exploited to serve any number of purposes. The right wing used the disaster as a rallying call to war.  The US dropped bombs on Afghanistan a month after the attack  then invaded Iraq under completely dubious claims that Iraq was somehow connected to the event.

The fringes of the left wing have gone in a completely different direction.  Many have cynically decided that the attack on 9/11 was well deserved for the many abuses and atrocities the US government has committed in the Middle East and elsewhere.  On August 23rd, 2019 a left wing pundit affiliated with the online news network The Young Turks, Hasan Piker flippantly joked on his own twitch account.

America deserved 9/11

I’m not sure where the humor was in his statement but Piker later apologized, although he was less than contrite.  When 9/11 happened Piker was a 4th grader living in Turkey.  Perhaps his youth and inexperience might play a role here.  However Piker is not alone, I have seen similar sentiments promoted by others on the far left.

In some ways I get why Piker might actually believe what he said, why it was easy to let those words come flying out of his mouth.   If I tried to list all of the fiascos the US government has facilitated or exacerbated in foreign countries this article would be several volumes long.  From South and Central America to the Middle East, Asia and beyond the U.S. government has purposefully and indirectly caused great destruction and massive loss of life.  In the case of Iran our government destroyed a democracy while propping up corrupt dictators all in the name of cheap oil.  Even when we are trying to stop violence our policies have often had unintended deadly consequences.  Our attempts to curb drug trafficking and limit the power of drug cartels led to wide spread human rights abuses in places like Columbia.  Most of our attempts to stymie various Socialist regimes have been fruitless. The U.S. government is hardly an innocent bystander in world affairs.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Piker’s point of view, however I don’t think the nearly 3000 people who perished on 9/11 deserved to die.  It also seems incongruous that so called anti-war progressives would be comparing body counts. A new stack of bodies does not undo a prior injustice.  No one surveyed all 2977 victims and asked them detailed questions about America’s role in the many problems plaguing the Middle East.

The victims of 9/11 died because they were American.  The terrorists would have just as easily killed any of the smug, self-important, armchair foreign policy experts who dismiss the attack.  The average American knows little about our legacy of foreign intervention.  Most citizens of any country are not experts on the misdeeds of their government.  We can vote and protest but if our elected officials decide to manipulate or decimate a sovereign nation there’s little a single voter can do about it.

Timothy McVeigh used the exact same reason to justify the bombing of the Oklahoma federal building.  In that domestic terrorist attack, 168 civilians including 19 children lost their lives because McVeigh thought his fertilizer bomb would start a revolution of sorts against the U.S. government.  McVeigh saw himself as a righteous revolutionary avenging the many sins of this country.  McVeigh believed earnestly that the U.S. government had acted tyrannously against its own people, so in his mind the deaths he caused were justified. This eye for an eye, tit for tat mentality just fuels the same exact rhetoric that causes incidents like 9/11 and the bombing of Afghanistan.  War at its simplest form is vengeance for a past injustice.  Does the far left really want to promote this ideology?

Does Russia now get to invade Germany and kill 24-26 million people?  Does China get to slaughter 20 million Japanese?  Do the Japanese get to pick two strategic US cities and nuke them into oblivion?  Do Native Americans now have the moral high ground to seize every acre of land stolen from them and commit genocide on roughly 330 million people?  Of course I could keep going the list would be endless.  Every major world power would be invaded and decimated if vengeance was exacted for their many sins.  Why not open the floodgates?

There’s also a lot of distance in between being highly critical of the US government and being a cheerleader for our enemy.  Why does it have to be all or nothing?  Can’t a person be both against the policies of their government and still mourn their dead?  Why do some folks on both extremes of the political divide live as if we are in a sporting match to the death and must reject anything and everything that the opposing side promotes?  Mourning our dead should be not be a partisan issue.

To anyone who thinks America deserved 9/11, I’d like to point out that New York City still paid the heaviest price.  People living in Iowa didn’t have to see the plume of smoke rising from lower Manhattan every day for months after the attack.  Folks in Northern California didn’t have to listen to fighter jets flying overhead amid the silence of a city completely shutdown.  Texans didn’t have to reach down to help a stranger on the street as they collapsed from grief.  Fourth graders in Turkey didn’t feel the sharp grit of pulverized glass, cement and human remains between their finger tips.  New York City had been a target before 9/11 and has been a target since the attack.  While some cavalier pundit like Piker is out walking his dog we will be digging up dead bodies and cleaning blood off our streets.

Ironically when that same US government decided to use the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to fight a war in Iraq for bogus reasons New Yorkers came out in record numbers to protest against it.  Those of us closest to the dead and dying didn’t want any more bloodshed in our name.  We didn’t want to be used as an excuse for bombs being dropped on civilians or some kind of personal vendetta for our then president.  Most of us accept that we will probably face another attack.  Every time we get on the subway we know that a suicide bomber could annihilate us in an instant.  It’s simply become the price of living here.

The other unintended consequence of a statement like “America deserved 9/11” is that it  only fuels a right wing propaganda machine that promotes the idea that all liberals are cruel, self-centered, elitists who hate this country.  Someone like Piker might need to be reminded that 4 out of 10 American voters  identify as moderates or independents.  Most voters in the middle might find a statement like “America deserved 9/11′ as repugnant.

As time moves forward 9/11 will become a distant act with long dead victims who become more faceless and inconsequential with every passing year.  Both sides will continue to exploit the attack for whatever agenda they think they can use it for.  For me it will always remain a beautiful fall day when suddenly a city full of 8.4 million people was stabbed in the heart.  I will never forget.  The lives of Americans do not mean less than the lives of Afghanis or Iraqis.  If we are really going to promote pacifism then it must be done across the board.  It’s not enlightened or progressive to mock the death of your own citizens as a means of political discourse, it’s just hateful.

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Why Monica Lewinsky is NOT my feminist hero.

Monica_lewinsky

Last week was apparently the 20th anniversary of the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal.  I’m not sure why we need to celebrate or commemorate such a fiasco but this morning I discovered this tweet by Eve Peyser, a staff writer at Vice.com

IMG_0310

There’s a lot in this one tweet.  For starters I don’t how it’s very feminist to make negative blanket statements about two entire generations of women.  To encompass all baby boomers and generation X women in one sweeping generalization like that is really condemning most women in the United States.

I’m not a fan of broad generalizations about any group, and I have a more nuanced view of the Lewinksy scandal so this was my response to that tweet.

IMG_0309

(I actually made a mistake when I wrote my tweet.  For years I always thought I was slightly younger than Lewinsky.  I only discovered when researching this article that Monica and I are actually the exact same age.)

For starters I didn’t learn about the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal from textbooks and news articles.  I lived through it.  I won’t delve into the minutia of the entire ordeal and I might get a couple of small details wrong but the basics go like this.  A young privileged woman (Monica Lewinsky) open and aggressively pursued a married man (President Bill Clinton) who had a long history of infidelity and womanizing.  The GOP leadership was already investigating Clinton for a past real estate deal when they stumbled upon evidence of the affair.  When Clinton denied it, Republican representatives filed for articles of impeachment on grounds that he’d lied under oath.  Every torrid sexual detail was exposed.  Several horrible people profited from tell all books and tabloid exclusives, but when the dust settled Clinton, although permanently tainted from the scandal, stayed in power.  In the upcoming years several of the men who lead the charge against Clinton, ended up in far more lurid sex scandals of their own.

Lewinsky received a disproportionate amount of negative press for her role in the affair.  She was called everything from a slut, whore, home-wrecker, and opportunist.  The press mocked her weight, clothing, and appearance.  Her personal life was dissected and analyzed and nearly everything written about her was negative.  Intimate sexual details between her and the president were printed for all of eternity in the special prosecutor’s report.  Her face graced the cover of newspapers and magazines for months.  Lewinsky tried to profit off of her notoriety by selling her own line of handbags, a venture which quickly failed and did nothing to improve her image.

After millions of tax dollars were spent on the investigation, the whole mess ended up backfiring for the GOP as the general public sentiment could be reduced to the simple question:

Was all of this necessary for a blow job?

Now back to the idea of Lewinsky being bullied and slut-shamed.  Regarding the charge of bullying.  Although the press was overly harsh toward her, most women I knew had mixed feelings.   Social media didn’t exist at the time and none of us could really have done anything but sit back and watch the train wreck.  I’m sure Lewinsky got mountains of hate mail but no one could tweet at her, make video rants about her, mock her online, share unflattering photos of her, or dox her personal information.  The general public wasn’t nearly as interactive in such affairs in the 1990s.   We just didn’t have the means to get involved.

As far as slut-shaming is concerned, that’s also a bit complicated.  There is a faction of third wave feminism that promotes the idea that anything sexual a woman does should be championed or celebrated.   For centuries female sexuality has been viewed as evil or something to be controlled.  There is nothing wrong of course with two adults in a consensual sexual relationship.  Things get blurry however when sexuality crosses over into unethical behavior.   A person can think whatever they want about the institution of marriage, but they don’t exist in a cultural vacuum where everyone shares the same belief system.  Knowingly having an affair with a married person is a high risk behavior.  When one enters into an adulterous relationship with someone they know is married they are suddenly involving other people without their consent.  Although they might get away with their affair, it could also have extreme negative consequences for both the spouse and children of the person they are sleeping with.  Infidelity is a selfish and unethical act that involves lies and betrayal.  Deception destroys trust in any relationship, and can cause untold damage to the faithful spouse.  Two atheists can tear each other apart in a marriage without the concept of religious sin or morality ever entering the picture.  Simply put an extramarital affair might be fun for the two people involved in it, but it might also wreck emotional havoc on an entire family.

I also don’t think Lewinsky is the best example for the #MeToo movement.  Clinton never threatened Lewinsky’s job.  There’s no evidence that he did anything of the sort.  He never told her he’d destroy her career, harm her family or ruin her reputation if she didn’t go along with his advances.  She has never testified to as much, and there’s nothing in the Starr report that would indicate it.  Lewinsky was much younger than Clinton, but he didn’t exactly coerce or force her.  If anything she was a starstruck girl who got a rush and sense of self-importance by having sexual relations with a very powerful man.  She openly bragged about their affair, about flashing her thong underwear during meeting with him.  She also boasted about “bringing her presidential knee pads to the White House” before she even met him.  Lewinsky probably did have emotional scars from a previous relationship she’d had with another older married man.  She probably had a warped view of relationships with older men because of her past.  Clinton had a long history of inappropriate behavior with women.  It was unprofessional and foolish to get involved sexually with a young subordinate.  As the POTUS he had more important things to worry about.  He used poor judgment, lied to his wife, lied to the American people and ruined his own legacy in the process.  He had far more life experience and more at stake, and should have used restraint.  He wasn’t the first president to have an extramarital affair, and Lewinsky if far from the first woman to have sex with one.

What also compelled me to reject the label of “feminist hero” toward Lewinsky are Lewinsky’s own words and actions since the scandal ended.  At first she tried to ride her notoriety with a line of handbags.  That wasn’t exactly a bold step forward for feminism or women’s rights.  It was a crass attempt to cash in on the media attention.  That venture failed quickly and she faded into relative obscurity.  When she returned to tell her story many years later she was contrite.  She took ownership of her mistakes and failings.  She started a platform to raise awareness of the dangers of public humiliation in the media.

The irony is of course is that although she was humiliated by a vicious press, Lewinsky’s actions also caused great humiliation to Bill’s wife Hillary and their teenage daughter Chelsea.  Hillary was far from unscathed from this whole mess.  Although Hillary has been long-suffering through Bill’s many dalliances she chose to stay in the marriage and forgive her husband.  She has also bore the burden of his actions and poor choices.  Bill’s past with women was constantly brought up during her failed presidential attempt.   Her moral center was questioned even though she’d done nothing wrong but try to defend her husband.   As much as Lewinsky might feel she has to endure a permanent scarlet A on her chest for her youthful mistakes, Hillary also wears the badge of enabler, doormat, or frigid shrew.

Lewinsky didn’t improve the plight of women, and she didn’t do anything heroic through her extended ordeal.  She did have enough personal strength and insight to take responsibility for her actions many years later.  She’s also tried to improve the lives of others through her anti-bullying campaign.  If anything she’s a survivor who tried to use her personal pain for good, but to call her a hero is a bridge too far.

If millennial women are searching for an actual feminist hero of the #MeToo movement the choice should be obvious.  Just a few years before the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal a young attorney testified that she was repeatedly sexually harassed by her boss Clarence Thomas.  She spoke up because he had just been nominated to a position on the supreme court.  Anita Hill sat alone in front of the all male senate judiciary committee and the world to describe her ordeal in brutal detail.  During her brave testimony she was viciously picked apart by the press and Thomas’s supporters.  She also endured an avalanche of scrutiny of every detail of her life, background and personal relationships.  She went through as much grief as Lewinsky if not more.  In the end Clarence got his seat on the court and Anita Hill never changed her story.  At time of her testimony 60 percent of Americans believed Thomas over Hill, yet after her testimony, the number of women filing harassment claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission doubled.  Anita Hill is a feminist hero in every way possible, in fact she’s a feminist superstar.

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Dear Mr. President – Here’s a Bulleted List about White Supremacy.

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Dear Mr. President,

I’ve heard you like bulleted lists so I’ll try to keep this brief.  You said the following regarding the recent racially motivated violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time

I’m not sure what you mean by both sides, or many sides for that matter.  I’m just going to ask you some questions.

  • Do you know a time in US history when black men enslaved white men?
  • Has a white life ever been considered 3/5th the value of a black life?
  • Has there ever been a time when white men were routinely rounded up and hung by their necks from trees for offenses as minor as “whistling at a black woman?”
  • Was there a period in our history when law enforcement became infiltrated by black men who turned a blind eye to violence against white men?
  • Have white folks ever been beaten or bullied at the polls by black people when they’ve tried to vote?
  • How often have white families woken up in the middle of the night to broken windows and flaming crosses on their front lawns?
  • Has there ever been a time when a white child needed to be surrounded by armed guards in order to attend a school full of black children?
  • Has there ever been a single incident of a white person being dragged out of a swimming pool only to see it drained and sanitized to make it suitable for black patrons?
  • How many white churches have been burned to the ground, sometimes with people inside of them by angry black gangs?

I know you won’t bother to research this so I’ll give you the answer.

None of those things have happened to white people at the hands of black people.  NONE OF THEM.

Everything I just wrote has been inflicted on black Americans.  I’m really only scratching the surface here as I could literally write a book on this subject.  I’m not going to focus on the many things our government has done to harm the black community.  I’m ONLY going to focus on what groups like the KKK and other white supremacists have done to further marginalize, terrorize, intimidate and demean black Americans.  I’d lend you a copy of one of many studies on the history of racial violence in this country, but I know you don’t really read.

So again I’ll break it down in bulleted list form.

  • There is NO EQUIVALENT OF THE KKK IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY.  You can probably find small fringe groups that espouse some type of horrible rhetoric but they don’t have any real influence.  They have no history of atrocities.  They haven’t left generations of whites in the South to fear for their lives and safety.
  • The political spectrum includes radical fringe groups with hateful ideas yet none have left a body count as large as the KKK.  Here’s a link about lynching, from your favorite paper the “Failing NY Times”  I know you won’t read it, so I break it down for you.  White people killed black people, mainly because they were black.  Sure they hanged some white folks too, but the majority of their victims were black.
  • The Black Lives Matter movement DOES NOT promote the idea that black lives have more value than white lives.
  • White supremacist DO promote the idea that people of European ancestry are a superior race and every other ethnicity is sub-human.
  • White supremacists DO have a history of murdering and terrorizing millions based on their ethnicity: Jews, Romani, Slavs, Poles, Ukrainians, and of course black people.  They also rounded up Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, LGTB men and women, disabled people, and anyone they deemed a political opponent or threat.  The Nazis in Europe are not that much different from the Neo Nazis in the US.  They use the same rhetoric, symbols, and flags so I don’t see any reason to differentiate them.  The term Neo means new.  I’m sure you’re learning a lot here.
  • Neo Nazis aka the Alt Right, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, whatever you want to call them HATE JEWS by the way.  Your favored daughter, your son-in-law, three of your grandchildren and your long-term attorney are all Jewish.  If the Neo Nazis got their way all of the Jews would be forced out of the country, thrown in a camp, or killed.  I’m sure you really wouldn’t want to support any group that would do that to your family right?
So again if you are comparing the legacy of white supremacists and black Americans there is no comparison.  One group has been victimized, terrorized, and exploited while the other has left nothing but ignorance, bigotry, violence and death.  You might want to acknowledge this difference before things get much worse.  Do you really want to be known as the Nazi sympathizer president?
Most decent Americans on all sides of the political spectrum reject the ideology of the Alt Right (Neo Nazis).  If you want to shrink your base to the most radical voices go ahead.  The rest of us will defend our fellow citizens.  We will fight back without using violence.  We will expose these monsters for who and what they are.   We will march in the streets, pester you on twitter, call our reps and senators until we break the congressional switchboard.  Oh and we will come out in droves for the midterm elections.  We will RESIST.

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If you think Gender did NOT play a role in this election…

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Today a white left-leaning political comedian posted the following on social media.

Voting for Hillary Clinton was not an act of feminism. Now it’s time to prove your true feminism.

I wasn’t the only woman on his thread to react negatively to his statement.  I posted two comments. One was along the lines of

Wow that’s tone deaf

Then I waited a moment, thought about it again, and completely unloaded a rant about feminism, putting up with misogyny, and how liberals are far from immune from white male privilege.  I kind of lost my shit and blocked him.  I didn’t know this man well but there was something about the paternal quality to his request that set me over the edge. He might believe he has empathy for feminists, but he honestly has no idea what it would be like to put up with sexism EVERY SINGLE DAY OF HIS LIFE.  He also doesn’t understand the complexities that gender played in this election.

Voting for Hillary was not a feminist act, but watching this election cycle unfold has been intensely difficult for many women.  To act as if Hillary’s gender did not play a role in how she was perceived by the media and the public at large is a complete farce.

To give an example, let’s take both Trump and Hillary at face value. Now imagine them switching genders.  We would then have a wealthy, bombastic, outspoken political novice with five children by three different husbands.  Her current spouse would be a former model, over two decades younger than her, and a stay-at-home dad.

She’s a self-purported billionaire, born into wealth with a self-aggrandizing ego the size of the moon.  She announces her candidacy with an overbearing, profanity laden, extended rant in which she tears apart entire ethnic groups, and repeatedly declares the United States is deeply broken. Over the course of her primary battles, she encourages violence against protesters and stokes the flames of racial tension. She also flings personal insults at her opponents, mocks a disabled person, and gets in late night twitter battles with private and public citizens.  She even insults the mother of a dead soldier and a Gold Star family.  Any time she is criticized, she reacts in an emotional and dramatic way often resorting to harsh language and personal insults.

The same candidate doesn’t bother to prepare for all three presidential debates, and only keeps her cool for the first 25-30 minutes each time.  Instead of discussing her policy specifics she hurls insults at her opponent and moderators.  She is caught in lie after lie during interviews, and gets basic facts about US foreign policy completely wrong.  This woman even goes so far as to speak admirably about dictators and despots while managing to insult our allies.  She never releases her tax returns, despite promises of the contrary, and openly admits that she hasn’t paid federal income tax for the past two decades.  She’s caught on video bragging about sexually assaulting much younger men; and audio footage is released in which she admits to walking in on teenaged boys just to get a peek of their naked bodies. Nude photos of her unemployed, formal-model husband are released to the press.  In speeches and interviews she declares that she does not seek help or advice from others, and that she is the only person who can solve all of the country’s problems.  Then to top it all off, she’s endorsed by the KKK and the Alt-right movement.

If anyone believes for a moment that the female version of Trump would have lasted more than a week in this primary battle they are living in a bastion of male privilege or they’ve wrapped themselves in a blanket of patriarchal delusion.  In reality if Trump was a woman, he would not even be considered a viable candidate based on his two divorces, and five children by three different men.  That fact alone would have caused the public to turn against him.  Even ONE emotional outburst or twitter war would have doomed her candidacy.  Women are simply held to a different standard than men.

Watching the fall of Hillary on Tuesday night felt personal.  What I saw was a professional and immensely qualified woman get trounced by a boorish, thin-skinned, sexist man-child who had no intellectual curiosity or desire to learn anything new.

Every woman, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal has been made to feel lesser at some point in her life based solely on her gender.  We have worked twice as hard, only to have someone reduce us to our looks or break us down into body parts.   We’ve sat silently in the room when a man in a position of power makes degrading remarks about our gender. We’ve had to overlook and ignore sexually inappropriate behavior because we didn’t want to lose our jobs or get a bad grade in school.  When we have spoken up for ourselves we are labeled as bitchy, shrill, difficult, mannish or worse.  We’ve had to walk down the street as strange men hurled insults at us, blocked our paths or even grabbed us simply because we didn’t stop to chat, smile, or make eye contact with them. We’ve consented to sexual acts we didn’t want to do because we realized giving in would be easier than fighting back. We’ve had every boundary pushed and ignored by men who decided we were more object than human being.  Many of us have been sexually assaulted, beaten or stalked by men we knew and trusted.  We have learned to fear all men in certain situations – to not walk home late at night, to be constantly aware of our surroundings, to not get too drunk, to worry about our drinks getting drugged, to avoid wearing short skirts or low-cut tops, to understand that we could be sexually attacked by a random stranger.

White men in this country have the gift of being neutral.  They are judged on their words and actions.  Everyone else, in every demographic, is filtered through a lens of gender or ethnicity.  Throughout the entire ordeal of the process the public and press measured Hillary by a totally different standard than they did Trump.  With all of his talk about the media bias against him, the overbearing white male could say and do anything, while the woman had to carefully watch and monitor her every move.  Even then she was criticized for being too inauthentic, robotic, and finely polished.  Voters would declare they just didn’t like her, they didn’t know why, but something about a strong and an accomplished woman shook them to their core.

So yes, voting for Hillary was not a feminist act, but watching her lose to an undisciplined, abusive, ignorant, sexist, racist and xenophobic bully hurt me deeply as a woman.  I couldn’t help but think of all the times in my own life I’ve been underestimated, torn down, humiliated, picked-apart and ashamed just because I was born female.  I could list all of the incidents but this article would become far too long, and every woman I know could also fill several pages with stories of her own.

The smug white progressives can save their advice for how I, or any woman should process this loss.  For me Hillary represented all of us, with all of her flaws and shortcomings she was the woman working twice as hard getting half the credit.  She won’t be the last woman to run for president, but in many ways she was the sacrificial lamb for the next woman to follow.  Maybe by then, our first female president will be judged more on her words and actions, rather than the narrow constraints of what it means to be a woman.

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My Grief is Bigger than Yours

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If someone were to say to a group, “I just found out my dad died.” most people would have enough decency to at least offer a condolence, such as “I’m sorry for your loss.”  On the internet things are different.  A person might say, “I just found out my dad died.” and someone could respond with “You father was a privileged white male, who lived in the richest country on the planet, and died with some wealth intact.  He was given the best medical care and lived well beyond his life expectancy.  Why aren’t you concerned about the many children who die in Africa every day of diseases like malaria.  Where’s your grief for them?”

I’m using an extreme example as only a sadistic sociopath would use language like that towards a someone going through a personal loss.  The scenario I just used is highly unlikely to happen.  We all realize a personal loss is tragic regardless of other circumstances.  Losing your father is traumatic for anyone.

Social media is a strange beast.  It tends to reduce everyone to sound bites, encourage profound self-righteousness, and funnel thoughts and ideas into purist ideologies.  One side claims moral superiority over another and there is little compromise.   Whatever traumatic event or grave offense reported and shared on Facebook, a counter argument forms immediately to dissuade the outrage.

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris are a great example of this phenomena.  As soon as the news broke and people expressed grief for what happened, many countered with,

“You only care about Paris while you ignore Beirut.”

I didn’t see any of these people post a single syllable about Beirut on the day the terrorist attacks occurred.  Where were their voices of outrage in the immediate aftermath?  Why did they only comment in relation to another tragedy?

The harsh reality is that very few Americans knew what had happened in Beirut because it wasn’t a top story in the news. despite our 24/7 news cycle.  Paris and Beirut are very different cities.  Lebanese citizens, in the form of Hezbollah, have openly engaged in warfare inside Syria in support of the Al-Assad regime. These fighters are not sanctioned by the Lebanese government, in fact they’ve tried to stop them.  Regardless there are Lebanese boots on the ground directly battling Isis.  Beirut, unlike Paris has seen far more terrorist violence and political unrest. There is so much bloodshed in Lebanon that the topic has been given its own Wikipedia entry titled – List of attacks in Lebanon.  For the year 2014 there were 16 incidents.  In 2015, so far there have been seven.  Unlike France, Lebanon is surrounded by warfare and instability on most of its borders.  So although the loss of life is just as tragic, a terrorist attack in Beirut is not uncommon.  The press is not going to fixate on something that happens quite often, rather than on something rare and unexpected.

Western media is in large part owned by a handful of conglomerates, sponsored by multi-national corporations, and driven by ratings.   Our news sources, once bastions of serious journalism, have morphed into entertainment machines.  Sensational news gets more viewers, so much of what we see is sensational.  Political unrest and tragedies are often ignored in poorer countries, unless the US has a vested interest in them.   Given our selective press coverage it wasn’t surprising few knew about the equally horrifying attacks in Lebanon.  Far fewer were aware of an attack earlier this year in Kenya with an equally high body count.  I admit I knew of neither, and I’m a bit of a news junkie.

People who speak out about these inequities in our media are right to do so.  I would whole heartedly agree with them that news of Paris is obsessively covered, while other bombings barely register.  The 24/7 cable news cycle tends to simply repeat the same stories morning, noon and night.  So instead of a comprehensive look at world events we get overly detailed coverage of the same story ad nauseam.  Not to mention the amount of frivolous news stories about missing blonde women, murderous mothers and vapid celebrities.

Some critics of the public’s response towards Paris have gone too far.  To quote one article:

“But I refuse — despite my partial French heritage — to cloak myself in nationalism of any stripe or star, particularly not now. Because, besides victims in Paris, an incomprehensibly astronomic number of people have been grieving loss of the highest order for some time — in places whose names roll off our tongues as if it’s accepted that violence simply happens there — and a majority likely couldn’t guess the colors on these victims’ flags.”

The same author went on to advocate for every victim of every global conflict including the war in Syria, Afghanistan,  the continual unrest in Iraq and the entire country of Yemen.  She got a bit off point and ranted about sex slaves in Malaysia, poorly paid workers in Mexico and China but oddly left out the entire country of North Korea.  Of course she’s correct as there is suffering, inequity, and warfare all over the planet.  Some of it is a direct cause of the actions of wealthier nations while other suffering is completely homegrown. There are child brides in India being burned to death by their in-laws, women and girls mutilated from female circumcision, public beheadings in Saudi Arabia, honor killings in Afghanistan, and women and girls dying due to overly restrictive anti-abortion laws in El Salvador.  If we wanted to, we could fill our heads with absolutely soul-crushing images of human misery from around the world.  The author if this specific piece of course didn’t offer a single solution to any of the injustices she ranted about, and I’m not sure what I, or any American can do about the actions of foreign governments.  We can hold our politicians accountable for US military and trade policies. but we’ve got little power to affect certain laws or customs in other countries.   The civil war in Syria is a multifaceted disaster with at least four factions battling each other, while foreign countries including Russia fuel the whole mess.

In contrast to that author’s strident diatribe, I read a simple message from a friend on Facebook.

“Please let me know you are safe.  I am with you in spirit.  I love you all so much.  The news from Paris is breaking my heart”

It was followed by a long list of names, both friends and relatives she was desperate to find.  The specificity of her message broke my heart. Does it hurt any less when a person loses a loved one in a wealthy country than it does when a person loses on in a poor one? Isn’t it human nature to mourn those closest to us more than we would a distant stranger? Wouldn’t anyone feel a greater connection towards a place where they had lived or is similar to their own home? Wouldn’t a Kenyan react more strongly to a story about a neighboring African country, than they might about Paris?  Could any of us really handle the grief if we focused on all of the death, injustice and inequity, that occurs on this planet on any given day?  As a person who lives in New York City I can’t help but see my city as the next target.  I’ll never forget the chaos, loss and despair that lingered here for months after 9-11.  Am I not supposed to worry and fear for my friends and neighbors?  Of course no one should die in a terrorist attack but Is it politically incorrect to care about my own safety?

It’s easy to criticize others for their “misguided solidarity” but it’s human nature to see yourself in another person when they are a lot like you.  We should all be alarmed that Isis managed to pull off such a well executed and organized attack in a wealthy nation like France, one with a professional police force, an intelligence organization, and a well armed military.  If these terrorist could cause so many deaths so easily in a wealthy nation, then countries with less resources are even more vulnerable.  We need to unite together to fight this fanatical scourge that has no respect for life.  So yes, mourn for Paris, Beirut, Kenya, and the entire Middle East Region.  Mourn for all the innocent lives taken by this warped ideology.  The mother who has lost her child in Kenya or Beirut will cry just as many tears as the one who just lost hers in Paris.  This is a time to unite in our grief, not fight over who is more worthy of it.

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Dating Online: What’s in a Name?

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Hello my name is (Photo credit: maybeemily)

Dating profiles are little windows into a person’s psyche.  They say so much while saying so little at the same time.  I’ve tried nearly every service from eHarmony, match.com, OkCupid, chemistry to even Jdate.  I’m not Jewish but I live in New York City so I thought – why not?  So far nothing has worked.  I’m like a curious bystander staring at a crime scene or car accident, no matter how pathetic my online dating experiences have been, I just can’t tear myself away from the sites.  Pursuing profiles is like a huge sociology experiment.  If I have any advice on here to ANY MAN it would be this.

PLEASE HAVE A TRUSTED FEMALE FRIEND, WHO IS NOT YOUR MOTHER, LOOK OVER YOUR PROFILE BEFORE YOU PUBLISH IT.

I would repeat that three times for emphasis but I like to keep my word count under 1000 on this blog.

One of the things I learned quickly in regards to emails on OKCupid – A guy’s name says so much.  I get email all day on those sites. If a guy has a crazy name, I know it isn’t even worth opening anything until the next day.  Sometimes a name can actually ruin everything, in one case a man emailed me with a name that was a creative spelling of spermbank, yet when I looked at his profile he seemed perfectly normal.  I just couldn’t imagine though, going out on a date with a man who thought SPERMBANK was an appropriate name for a dating profile.  I write this with the intention of helping guys who are well intentioned but have no clue about how a name like, HappyHuggerGuy might come across to a woman.  The more extreme names like Slave4URFeet or BigSugarDaddyLvr will always be there, and easy to disregard.  But if you are a guy and you aren’t sure why your profile isn’t getting more email, or if your a woman and want to see some of the most tragic names I could find…this article is for you!  Most names fall into the following categories.

Sexy Names – must contain one or more of the following

  • 69
  • Deep, Long
  • Big, Huge,
  • Pulsing, Thorbbing
  • Girthy, Girth, Thick, Wide
  • Xrated
  • NSFW
  • Beast
  • Pervert, Perv
  • Naughty
  • CunnyLover
  • ThreeWay
  • Casual, NoStrings, Discrete
  • Honorable Mentions:
  • SpermBank
  • WellHungForFun
  • Youlllovemy
  • NiceGuyButNot
  • Longrider888

I Think the only thing I have to offer is MY MONEY 

  • SugarDaddy
  • Richboy
  • Ferrari, Lexxus, Porsche, Benz
  • HighRoller
  • BigPlayer
  • $$$$

I’m a Sensitive guy – these made my skin crawl more than any other category

  • Cuddles
  • Snuggles
  • Sweet4U
  • SensitiveLover
  • Sweetboy
  • Gentle
  • Lover, Loves, Lovey
  • Friendly
  • Huggs, Huggable, Hugger
  • Kisser, Kisses, Kissy
  • Lonely
  • Honorable Mentions
  • GentleLover4U
  • Mr.Cuddles
  • SnuggleBearLover
  • Soft_N_Gentle

The following are subcategories that depending on the woman could work.  After all, we are all quite different and if a woman specifically seeks a squirrel loving guy who is into BDSM and has a foot fetish – A name like SquirrelDomFootLuv – might be just the thing.  If you are into kinky and this is what you are looking for, by all means don’t hide it.  It’s always better to NOT surprise a potential partner

I’m Kinky or a have a Fetish

  • BDSM
  • Kinky, Kink,
  • Slave, Master, Slavery
  • Submissive, Sub, Dom, Dominant
  • Beat Me, Wimpy, Wimpee
  • LoveFeet, LoveBig, LoveCurves, TallChaser
  • Fisty – Couldn’t make that one up
  • Honorable Mentions
  • SlaveMasterDomme69
  • Mr.Wimppee
  • McFisty
  • WhipMeGuy4U
  • SlapSlaveAssMan

Spiritual – Again these would repulse me, but if you are a mystical sort seeking a similar type of gal, they could be perfect

  • Soul, Soulmate
  • Peaceful, Peace
  • Spirit, Spirit Guide, Searcher
  • Hippie
  • Mystical
  • Seeker, Visionary, Visions,
  • Dreamer, Dream,
  • SunGod, Goddess Seeker,
  • Healer
  • Evolved

Alternative Lifestyle Names – Again for the right girl, these could be just the thing

  • Vegan – probably the #1 I see in theis category.  I get it, as they are probably seeking another vegan.
  • Veggie, Veg
  • Yoga
  • Meditate

I might be Dangerous!

  • Rebel
  • Rogue
  • NoRules
  • Fire
  • Danger
  • Animal
  • Pirate
  • Spicy
  • HarleyMan888
  • Untamed
  • Maverick

Proud to be me

  • Geek, Geeky
  • Nerdy
  • Treker
  • Trekie
  • Robot
  • Gamer

The Classics – These are total cliches.  They aren’t terrible, just massively overused.

  • Guy4U, Guy4Ya, YourGuy
  • Mr.RightNow
  • PrinceCharming, Knight, Prince
  • GreatCatch
  • StopLooking, SearchEndsHere
  • I’mTheOne, TheOne
  • Popeye – I have no idea why this one is popular but I see it a lot
  • NormalGuy, GuyNextDoor, FavoriteGuy, Regular, Average
  • Smiler, Smiles, Smile
  • Boy, Boyz,
  • Johnny or Joe – both extremely popular
  • Happy, Nice, Fun
  • MacGyver – A LOT of guys make variations on that joke
  • Honorable Mentions
  • AllUNeedIsMe
  • AverageJoe4U
  • FoundIt
  • DoneSearching

Animals – Used a lot, not sure why.  

  • Ram
  • Tiger
  • Phoenix
  • Dog or Dawg
  • Monkey – extremely common – I have no idea why names like MonkeySmiler would help a guy out, but to each his own.

Inexplicable names – I have no idea what they were thinking…honestly I don’t.  These are all real names, I’m not kidding.

  • TurtleLover
  • SquirrelBoy
  • Beeswax
  • FrankenChicken
  • BreadPudding
  • BloodDonor
  • PumpkinHeart
  • Mudrunner – Could mean you’re into off-roading, but a woman probably won’t get the reference – this one is iffy.
  • Plopgasm
  • PappyAss – Personal favorite, as what the hell does it mean?  And how would it attract women?
  • MarriednDating

Boring Names – Include things like

  • Occupation
  • Hobby
  • Location – NY, SF, ATL
  • Age – 1973, 1984, 1968

I usually get attracted to a photo, and then I read the profile.  Those are the two things that grab me, a boring name will NOT turn me off.  My own name on the site is fairly boring.  However a super cheesy, overly sexual, creepy, cuddly name could hurt you.  So when in doubt just call your self NYCGuySohoDentist – You’ll probably get more email!

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Weinergate: Can We get Real about Slut Shaming?

Slut

Slut (Photo credit: artgoeshere)

I’ve written about this topic before as I am growing increasingly frustrated by the entire concept.   To quote FinallyFeminism101

Short answer: Slutshaming, also known as slut-bashing, is the idea of shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings. Furthermore, it’s “about the implication that if a woman has sex that traditional society disapproves of, she should feel guilty and inferior” (Alon Levy, Slut Shaming). It is damaging not only to the girls and women targeted, but to women in general an society as a whole. It should be noted that slut-shaming can occur even if the term “slut” itself is not used.

Personally I don’t agree that the term ‘slut’ is gender specific as I know plenty of men who also proudly call themselves sluts or slutty.  I do however think slut shaming is a real problem and that the media uses completely different criteria for the appropriateness of sexual behavior of men and women.  There is a very strong double standard that reinforces the notion that ‘good’ women don’t like sex, don’t have many sexual partners and don’t express themselves sexually.

Recently Think Progress tried to make the argument that the media was using the recent Anthony Weiner sex scandal as an excuse to slut shame the women involved.  Although I agree with them that they have a point, I don’t think Weiner’s sexting partner is best example.

The facts of the story as we know it is that AFTER Anthony Weiner publicly humiliated himself, resigned from congress and nearly destroyed his marriage he started yet another virtual relationship with Sydney Leathers, a 22-year-old from Indiana.  Leathers knew Weiner had a sexting problem, was a married man, and that his wife was expecting their first child.   Informed of all of this, she decided to have a virtual sexually explicit relationship with him.   According to her, Weiner promised her an apartment, political contacts and even a possible job.   After months of these exchanges she grew bored, realized any monetary gain was not forthcoming and ended the relationship.  When she discovered that Weiner was running for mayor she decided to share her story to show the world that he was not a changed man.

During her brief interview with Howard Stern, Leathers came across as flippant and completely uncaring towards Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin.  She seemed completely unrepentant of any pain or humiliation that she might have caused Abedin.   It takes two people to have an affair of course, and Weiner is more culpable for damaging his marriage than anyone.

I don’t see a victim in Ms. Leathers.  What I see instead is an opportunist who knew completely what she was doing and when she didn’t get her promised rewards of a condo or a job she figured she would cash in somehow and take revenge on her lying virtual lover.  If anything her actions have been quite regressive.  Women like her reinforce the stereotype of the shallow, heartless succubus exploiting men when they get the opportunity.

Is anything sacred anymore?  Have we completely thrown out the rule book?  Is it OK to have sex with any adult at any time and refuse to take any responsibility, regardless of the consequences?  Does marriage mean anything?  I can’t bend my morality to the point that all behavior no matter how selfish or hurtful towards others is simply written off.   If Leathers wants the notoriety for being the ‘other’ woman she has to accept the good with the bad.  Not everyone is going to champion a cheater.

Will Leathers appear in pornographic films, get her own reality show or column in the NY Post?  She didn’t accomplish anything, she merely had no  qualms about having an affair with a married man.  She also turned on him on a dime when she saw the opportunity.  Are these values that we want to promote?  Do I have to support every woman’s poor choices in life?  Both Weiner and Leathers made poor decisions and they should live with the consequences.   I’ll save my outrage for slut shaming when a person is actually being shamed inappropriately.   Such as the teacher who lost her job years after her porn past, or the 15-year-old who was harassed by a TSA worker, or when someone blames a rape victim for their own attack.   If we use the term ‘Slut shaming’ when it doesn’t apply we weaken the power of the label.

Women are not inherently victims.  We are human, and just as likely as men to make bad choices.   I seriously doubt any woman rushing to Leathers’ defense, would feel so strongly if they were in Abedin’s shoes.  It’s one thing to knowingly have an affair with a married man, it’s another entire to mock the wife on a national radio program after the fact.  Leathers will disappear into obscurity soon enough, and Weiner has destroyed his own political career.  The person shamed and humiliated is Huma Abedin.  Hopefully she will find the strength to realize she might be better off without a lying, cheating sex addict for a husband.

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