Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Tuesday Male Beauty

 

Much of the Media Continues to Fail America

For years now this blog has complained about the mainstream media and its failure tobe truth-tellers and call out the ugliness and fascism that has overtaken the Republican Party and to call out the gratuitous cruelty that Republcan politicans utilize as a form of performance art to thrill the party's white supremacist and Christofascist base. Indeed, had the mainstream media been united in exposing Donald Trump's lies, his shady business history, the 2016 election might have had a different result.  Instead, we saw endless false equivalency between Republican lies and misogyny versus Democrat policies and positions.  The two were never remotely the same, yet talking heads did not - most still do not - directly challenge outright lies and falsehoods giving undeserved defference to morally bankrupt and/or opportunistic interviewees.   This failure of the has not only damaged American democracy but now puts it at risk if a shape change is not made to correct the media failures,  Frighteningly, as a column in the Washington Post notes, much of the media still does not grasp that it is aiding the forces that seek to end Aerica's democracy.  Here are column excerpts: 

Donald Trump has gone full QAnon. As he spoke during a rally for Ohio Republican candidates on Saturday, a soundtrack associated with the conspiracy theory played. That elicited one-armed salutes — another QAnon symbol — from many attendees.

The display bore an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Nazi salute. The delusional incitement and zombie-like response should put to rest the notion that President Biden (or anyone) should be “reaching out” to these people. They are unreachable, and pretending otherwise misleads voters.

No Republican should ever escape an interview or news conference without being asked to condemn this monstrous event. The cynical GOP leaders who know that Trump is unfit for office and that many of his cult followers have become violent should not be treated as ordinary party hacks. They are enablers of a dangerous movement. Yet they continually evade persistent, aggressive questioning.

Compare this with the mainstream media’s response to Biden’s recent speech condemning the MAGA movement. Biden — though he generously (and inaccurately, in my book) distinguished the movement from the Republican Party writ large — highlighted the MAGA movement’s far-right extremism and its refusal to ascribe to the basic tenets of democracy (e.g., renunciation of violence, sanctity of elections). Yet many in the mainstream media turned up their noses. “Biden should have been more welcoming,” they said. “He’s too divisive!”

And herein rests the fundamental failure of the mainstream political media. Far too many continue to disguise the political reality we face. They refuse to use appropriate descriptors to describe Republican conduct, such as “fascist” or “racist.” Instead, they mislabel radical authoritarians as “conservatives.”

If this were a foreign country, the media would accurately describe the MAGA movement as a far-right cult. Yet in the United States, too many reporters cannot help themselves in normalizing the movement.

“It seems to be very deep in the mainstream press’s DNA to strain for equality when none exists,” said Margaret Sullivan, media critic and author of the upcoming memoir, “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) From an Ink-Stained Life.” She adds, “Maybe journalists just don’t have the language to truly get across how disturbing and abnormal some of this stuff is. If so, it’s high time to grapple with that.”

And it’s not just Trump who has displayed the GOP threat to democracy. Consider also Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s inhumane transportation of asylum seekers to liberal states or cities to make a political statement. . . . . Regardless of the legalities, the tactic is straight from the Jim Crow handbook. Though the GOP applauded DeSantis’s disdain for human beings fleeing dictatorial repressions, his actions followed in the steps of White citizens’ councils from the 1960s that bused thousands of Black Southerners to Northern communities.

DeSantis is the alternative to Trump, we are told. But alternative does not mean always better.

The two Republicans prioritize intentional cruelty and unabashed xenophobia. Whether it is ripping children from parents’ arms or denouncing Mexican immigrants as “drug dealers” and “rapists,” they and other Republicans vying for consideration in 2024 seem entirely comfortable with dehumanizing vulnerable people. It is abject racism, and the vast majority of their party either applaud them for it or remain mum.

Yet mainstream media hosts rarely manage to bring up the Jim Crow origins of DeSantis’s scheme when interviewing Republican lawmakers. They do not compel lawmakers to explain how using humans as props is legal or decent. Instead, the favored oh-so-polite conventions hold: a mildly probing question, followed by a filibuster answer and then a change of topic. Such performances are insufficient to illuminate the vileness of the party propounding these stunts.

As the GOP becomes more brazen, the media seems to shrink further from its responsibility as truth-tellers and democracy advocates. Our democracy hangs in the balance.

Be very afraid for the future.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Monday Male Beauty

 

Republicans Wear Cruelty as a Badge of Honor

The Republican Party laughably contines to be the party of "family values" even as it abuses undocumented immigarnt familes fr sport and scoring political points with the party's white supremacist and right wing religious extremist base. Evangelicals, who wear false piety and religiosity on their sleeves, applaud the mistreatment of families so long as they have a different skin color, make it clear that Christ's message of aiding the poor, feeding the hungry and giving shelter to the homeless has been totally excised from their bibles.  Their sole focus - when not engaging in Pharisee-like behavior - is embrace the brutality and cruelty of the most heinous Old Testament passages. What is particularly disgusting is how so-called country club Republicans have gotten on board with such vile behavior and/or look the other way only worried about paying less in taxes.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the moral degridation of today's Republican Party.  Yes, Trump has been a toxic influence, but the moral bankruptcy extends far deeper.  Here are column excerpts: 

Many in the media had a meltdown when President Biden called the MAGA movement “semi-fascist.” They tut-tutted because they said his speech in Philadelphia was too “divisive.” In reality, the fault in Biden’s speech is that he was not tough enough on Republicans.

Biden seems to believe there is a mass of normal, non-MAGA Republicans out there. If there is, it is a small minority in the party. Most are all too comfortable with the extremism and violent rhetoric of their peers.

Donald Trump and his flunkies have predicted violence if he were prosecuted for hoarding highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He did it again Thursday, declaring that if he were indicted, the country would have “problems ... the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before.” He added that Americans wouldn’t stand for prosecution.

His statement is an incitement to violence, plain and simple. It echoes the same rhetoric he deployed in the run-up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. No pundit or Republican official who continues to defend Trump or who feigns outrage at characterizations that his movement is “fascist” can claim ignorance.

Scores of Republican election deniers are on the ballot, including many who actively sought to overturn the 2020 election (e.g., Doug Mastriano, candidate for Pennsylvania governor; Adam Laxalt, candidate for Senate in Nevada). To call these individuals “conservatives” or to treat them as garden-variety candidates is to conceal that they, too, are a threat to democracy.

The horror show does not stop there. The Post reported last week, “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) claimed credit Thursday for flying dozens of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard . . . . Let’s put it this way: Sending migrants to “liberal elites” attempts to use non-White human beings as “punishment.” This conduct is not only dehumanizing; it is racist.

As Jonathan V. Last explains at the Bulwark, DeSantis used migrants as “props” because “he saw that he could use them as a means to the ends of his personal ambition.”

Christians should look at this act and be revolted. They should be horrified.” Some are, no doubt, but the MAGA base is delighted, which is why DeSantis is doing it.

DeSantis is not alone. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has repeatedly tried the same stunt. . . . . This is how he chooses to spend taxpayers’ money (when he is not bullying LGBTQ children or forcing women to give birth against their will).

Meanwhile, another spasm of bigotry from Republican Senate nominee J.D. Vance of Ohio was uncovered last week. Back in January, he let loose this stream of bile that managed to merge racism, antisemitism and forced-birth extremism . . . .

And I haven’t even bothered with the most notorious MAGA loudmouths, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake or the election deniers running for secretary of state in Arizona and Nevada.

One wonders when the media will stop calling these Republicans “conservatives” and affix a more accurate label. With all due respect to the president, there is nothing “semi” about their brand of fascism.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

The GOP Revives A 60-Year-Old Segregationist Playbook

Teaching history has long been given short shrift in America's public schools and now, rather than pushing for a more complete and accurate teaching of history, Republicansacross the country - including the current occupant of Virginia's executive mansion - want to sanitize and re-write the nation's history tofurther their reactionary agenda.  Such a whitewashing of history would certainly exclude mention of the white segregationist tactics now being employed by the governors of Texas and Florida most recently spotlighted by Ron DeSantis using public funds to fly 50 undocumented immigrants to Martha's Vineyard.  As a displeased family member in Texas noted recently. if you or I did such a stunt involving lies and disinformation to vulnerable people, we'd likely be accused of human trafficking.  But in today's MAGA republican Party such deception and cruelty is cheered by the white supremacist/Christofascist base of the party.  I have argued many times that one cannot be a decent and truly moral person and be a member of today's Republican Party.  DeSantis and Abbott and other copycats are underscoring this reality and make it clear that unless one is white, heterosexual and right wing "Christian" you best be prepared to be treated like human garbage. A piece at Mother Jones looks at the ugly segregationist playbook that the GOP is reviving.  Delibrate cruelty has been added to hate and bigotryas one of the pillars of today's GOP. Here are article excerpts: 

On May 22, 1962, Victoria Bell and her 11 children, ranging in age from two to 14, arrived in Hyannis, Massachusetts, after a days-long bus ride to Cape Cod from Little Rock, Arkansas. Amis Guthridge, an attorney and the leader of the southern segregationist group, the Capital Citizens’ Council, gave Bell $60 and paid for the family’s one-way tickets north. Bell was forced to care for her children with little support after her husband left and the local government cut off her welfare. In a photo from that time, she and her sons and daughters can be seen waving in front of a sign for the Cape Cod Community College, which had been turned into temporary housing for her and other families. “I hope my children get a better chance here,” Bell told the Boston Globe. The following day, Lela Mae Williams, a mother of nine from Huttig, Arkansas, disembarked from a Greyhound bus at a stop near President John F. Kennedy’s summer home in Hyannis. She had heard about “free rides” on a Louisiana radio station and been lured by promises of housing, job prospects, and a presidential welcome at their final destination.

It was all a cruel hoax. Bell and Williams were among almost 100 people to be shipped under false pretenses to the resort town over the spring and summer of 1962 as part of a white supremacist campaign to send Black people from the South to northern cities.

The political ploy was a retaliation for the Freedom Rides from the previous year, when a group of 13 Black and white civil rights activists with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) embarked on southbound buses from Washington, DC, to protest continued segregation in interstate transportation despite the Supreme Court having ruled that it was unconstitutional. What became known as the “Reverse Freedom Rides” was meant to embarrass liberal politicians fighting for civil rights and presumably expose their hypocrisy by confronting them with the demand to live up to their values and assist the Black southerners.

Sixty years later, a similarly racist, cynical ploy reminiscent of the “Reverse Freedom Rides” is playing out, But this time with migrants as the innocent pawns. The historical parallels became clear after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, which doesn’t share a land border with Mexico, flew 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. As Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine, DeSantis “had to find migrants in Texas and, essentially, kidnap them for his own use.”

In his attempt to outdo his fellow GOP governors, DeSantis’ move even overshadowed news of migrants being dropped off outside Vice-President Kamala Harris’s Washington, DC, residence. The flight to Martha’s Vineyard, where Barack Obama and Bill Clinton often vacationed, was part of “the state’s relocation program,” according to the Florida Governor, . . . .

The migrants who arrived at the island explained to reporters that they had been told there would be work, food, and housing waiting for them, which was “a sadistic lie,” as Martha’s Vineyard immigration attorney Rachel Self wrote in a statement “Not only did those responsible for this stunt know that there was no housing and no employment awaiting the migrants, they also very intentionally chose not to call ahead, to any single office or authority on Martha’s Vineyard, so that even the most basic human needs arrangements could be made. Ensuring that no help awaited the migrants at all was the entire point.”

Massachusetts state senator Julian Cyr noted, “This endeavor is a cruel ruse that is manipulating families who are seeking a better life. No one should be capitalizing on the difficult circumstances that these families are in and contorting that for the purposes of a ‘gotcha’ moment.”

[T]he historical throughline between these two events seems clear. “One of the threads connecting these events is the underlying racism and white supremacy motivating those who are using migrants as pawns in a large political game,” Elisa Minoff, a historian and senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy told me. “That was very clear in the 1960s and I think it’s equally clear now.”

Back in 1962, the Reverse Freedom Rides campaign started in Louisiana and quickly spread among White Citizens’ Councils in Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi. As Clive Webb wrote in a 2004  Journal of American Studies article, “A Cheap Trafficking in Human Misery”: The Reverse Freedom Rides of 1962, segregationists “had failed to prevent token integration of the public school system.”

In order to restore their influence, they took to increasingly desperate measures. George Singelmann of the Greater New Orleans Citizens’ Council was the architect behind the efforts to relocate some Black residents. . . . . “I selected them by the number of children they had and things like that.” In other words, by what he considered to be the burden to society their presence would create. 

Much in the same way as DeSantis gave Fox News an exclusive on his Martha’s Vineyard stunt, the white segregationists of the 1960s also tried to use the media to their advantage. But their plan largely backfired and the press, even in the South, was critical of the manipulation of vulnerable Black people. WDSU Radio in New Orleans described it as “sick sensationalism bordering on moronic.” Then Massachusetts Governor John Volpe said, “It is shameful that in this country there should be those who traffic in human misery.”

“It became clear pretty quickly that it wasn’t playing out as they expected. If anything, it was increasing support for the civil rights movement and for the political leaders in the North who were not turning families away.” The white segregationists then—as the Republican governors now—didn’t anticipate that communities in the northern cities would rise to the occasion. While President Kennedy wasn’t waiting for the Bell and Williams families in Hyannis, local officials, faith leaders, and civil rights organizations opened up their arms in a show of solidarity similar to what is being showered upon the migrants of today. “Our island jumped into action putting together 50 beds, giving everyone a good meal, providing a play area for the children, making sure people have the healthcare and support they need,” State Rep. Dylan Fernandes who represents Martha’s Vineyard Tweeted. “We are a community that comes together to support immigrants.”

If there is a god, there should be a special place in Hell for DeSantis, Greg Abbott and others like them.  

Sunday Morning Male Beauty