"We had candid conversations with Sarah as part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history."

"She understands that this type of rhetoric is not acceptable at The Times and we are confident that she will be an important voice for the editorial board moving forward."

From "NY Times Responds to Right-Wing Tantrum Over New Writer’s ‘Anti-White’ Tweets" (New York Magazine).

Can I just give this story my tag "civility bullshit"? If I do that, will you know what I mean and know what my position on the Sarah Jeong question?

Gloria Steinem is still alive. Let's hear her speak for herself.

I'm reading Jeff Greenfield's piece in Politico, "How Roy Moore’s Misdeeds Are Forcing an Awakening on the Left/Years of excusing Bill Clinton’s sexual misconduct suddenly seems morally indefensible":

There's no better illustration of how the ground has shifted than to look at Gloria Steinem’s 1998 New York Times op-ed piece, “Why Feminists Support Clinton.” Published as the Lewinsky story was on full boil, the piece talked not about that story, but about the charges of harassment leveled by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey [but not Juanita Broaddrick]....

“He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life” Steinem wrote of Willey. “She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again.” In her original story, Paula Jones essentially said the same thing. She went to then-Governor Clinton's hotel room, where she said he asked her to perform oral sex and even dropped his trousers. She refused, and even she claims that he said something like, ‘Well, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do.’’

“As with the allegations in Ms. Willey's case, Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection,” Steinem wrote by way of excusing him.... It was labeled the “one free grope” theory.

Politico doesn't give us a link for the Steinem piece, but I wanted to add one. I like to see the original text, not just excerpts. I went to the NYT to do a search and something really weird happened. When I typed in the search term "steinem" and added a space, my spelling (the correct spelling of the name) was accepted, but when, after that space, I added "clinton," the word "steinem" automatically corrected to "seinem" (and returned no results). I retested that over and over and it happened every time, at least as long as I stayed in my browser Safari. (It did not happen in Firefox.)

Anyway, I could not get the 1998 op-ed to turn up in the search of the archive. I got many letters to the editor responding to that op-ed, and I got a 2010 reprint — "March 22, 1998: Why Feminists Support Clinton, By Gloria Steinem" — which has the notation "The preceding was excerpted and adapted from a previously published Op-Ed article, for inclusion in a 40th-anniversary issue." Excerpts!

Greenfield continues:

At the height of the Lewinsky impeachment melodrama, Clinton’s defenders always argued that the president’s behavior was a private matter. To this day, you can find references to Clinton’s “dalliances” and “peccadilloes.”

Yes, NYT columnist Gail Collins and my Bloggingheads interlocutor Glenn Loury used the word "peccadilloes" to try to insulate Bill Clinton, as I discussed in a May 2016 post titled "Why does NYT columnist Gail Collins call Bill Clinton's sexual misdeeds 'private peccadilloes'?"

Collins had written "The sex scandal issue isn’t really central, since Americans have a long record of voting for the candidates they think can deliver, regardless of private peccadilloes." I said:

The phrase "the personal is political" means something important in the fight for women's equality. No one who cares about that fight should call the accusations against Bill Clinton "private peccadilloes." A "peccadillo" is: "A minor fault or sin; a trivial offence."...

Private peccadillo. Really, Gail Collins, what do you think the young women of today — women who know sexual harassment and sexual assault are extremely serious — are going to think of your using that word peccadillo?

I added a clip from I discussion I'd had with Glenn Loury in January 2016 about the same use of the word "peccadillo," and I'm going to embed it one more time because I think it improves with age (even the part where the software causes my words to be completely silenced when Loury overtalks and even the crazily distorted skin tone (flaming red)):



If there is one word that revives my anger on this subject, it's "peccadilloes." That's all I'm going to say now, because I've said the same thing so many times, but I just want to underscore what I wrote in the post title.

Gloria Steinem still lives and breathes, as far as I know. She's getting knocked around for what she said (and the harm that she did) 19 years ago. She should step up and speak for herself now.

"Why should a woman cook? So her husband can say, 'My wife makes a delicious cake,' to some hooker?"

From "61 Comedians Recall Their Favorite, First, and Life-Changing Jokes." That joke is from Joan Rivers, and the comedian who calls that her "favorite joke of all time" is Jen Kirkman. Most of the 61 comedians, by the way, don't identify a particular joke, so the headline is misleading. I chose Kirkman's joke for this post because it is a joke, it's funny, and it gives you something to think about.

You might think I chose it because CAKE! has been the subject of the week and the tendency of people to pay attention to CAKE!!! has been amply demonstrated. But I didn't. And I'm actually pretty sick of the cake-o-mania of the past week. I've got some really mixed feelings about this cake-focused exposure of the RFRA laws — laws I've studied and taught for many years. I feel as though I should explain things about which I have an overload of understanding, but I also feel hopeless about conveying that understanding. The political demagoguery will overwhelm the legal material. I'm absolutely convinced. I could do my professorly part, but why should I pour hopeless effort into the rehabilitation of RFRA laws, which I've never liked? When it's not hopeless, it's my practice to explain arguments for things I don't agree with. But it is hopeless here. The political noise is too loud.

Okay? Now, please acquire your cake somehow. Have cake and eat it and share it and stop being so obtuse about love.

 

AND: I wanted to replace that cake pic with a photograph of a cake that had "God is love" written on it. That would be a loftier ending for this post, but instead I'm going to return to the joke-y spirit I began with. Here's what Google gave me when I asked for a picture of a cake with "God is love" written on it:



What would Mitt Romney do?

Instead of picking on Indiana, why don't we figure out if we want RFRA laws or not?

Here's Jonathan Adler's explanation of "What will the Indiana religious freedom law really do?"

RFRA laws are common, as shown by this map. Whether or not such laws are good policy, they are about accommodating religious belief, not authorizing discrimination....

The Indiana RFRA is not identical to every other RFRA, but the textual differences are not particularly material....

Are there any scenarios in which a state-level RFRA might result in an individual business owner denying service to a same-sex couple? Perhaps. The most likely scenario would be something like a religious wedding planner refusing to help plan a wedding that violates his or her religious beliefs. But even if such laws eventually allow this sort of thing, it is a far cry from... a general license to discriminate against one’s neighbors....

Indiana has focused attention on RFRA laws, but it's stupid to focus on Indiana. These laws are all over the place. Understand them. Understand how they apply in many different scenarios and how they are limited by courts in their application. Understand that if we're going to relieve religious believers of the burdens of generally applicable laws, courts are going to have to avoid preferring one religion over another. You can't accommodate the religions you agree with or think are sweet and fuzzy and say no to the ones who seem mean or ugly. We need to figure that out. If, in the end, you think the Indiana RFRA is a bad idea, check that map and see if your state has RFRA (or a RFRA-like state constitutional provision) and push for repeal in your state. And get after Congress. Congress started it. Unless you're Hoosier, leave Indiana alone. Stop otherizing Indiana.

AND: I had to wonder What does Garrett Epps think about this? Because Garrett Epps wrote a whole book about how terrible it was for the U.S. Supreme Court to deny special exceptions to religious believers, especially in that case where Native Americans wanted the freedom to use peyote. As I predicted, Epps is otherizing Indiana.

Who wins in an argument over the meaning of a word?

The word is "feminism."

ADDED: The problem on display is:

1. There are widely shared equality goals but these have been met, leaving nothing more to do under the banner "feminism."

2. Some people want other things, and the term is useful to them, so they use it actively, demanding things that are off-putting to a lot of people.

3. Those who were fine with the widely shared goals become conflicted about the term, but not enough to successfully take the definition back.

4. A small group of those who are put off want to make a thing out of disowning the term.

5. Most people don't bother one way or another. They move on, following their individual lives, which is good feminism. Or that's what I'd say if I had to have an argument about it, but I don't.

"So many people here, people that I otherwise respect, have written so much cloaked or naked vituperation about gay people..."

"... and our effect on civilization, that what little sympathy I had for your 'feelings' has long evaporated."

At this point in my life I'm finished with the lot of you, the plantation master so-called "liberals" who are less distinguishable from Fascists every day, and the so-called small-government "conservatives", who have such little faith in their God and the eternal and sacred institution of marriage that they bray for the State to enshrine their doctrine in secular law, and scream "Apocalypse!" when it doesn't happen.

Writes Palladian, in last night's café, where the whimpers of the losers of the DOMA case continued, along with slurpy wound-licking over my calling them losers — which is what they were, having lost in that case — and advising them not to whine over the more-or-less false perception that they'd been called bigots.

I'm telling you for the last time.

If there is a troll here who talks too much, don't talk to him. That's what he wants and that makes him talk more. Don't post to bitch about it. If you do, you are the problem. Get it? You are the problem.

ADDED: If you want to interact with another commenter, go right ahead. But if your point is to make him stop, don't get him fired up by talking to him. And don't debate with him and also tell me I should do something to get rid of him. If you consider someone a troll, don't talk to him. On the other hand, if you are worried that you might be the troll, put that energy into writing better comments. Be concise and interesting. Be creative or funny or something.