The best take I heard re: this week’s CNN Town Hall starring the twice-impeached reality TV entertainer whose name I shall not mention: one thing we learned from the event that all parents already know, is that we don’t leave two-year-olds unsupervised for more than a few minutes. I add to that take only to say that it’s especially true when the two-year old in question is a compulsive liar, in a room full of cameras and sycophants on live TV. The audience, all members of the GQP, with a few Indys mixed in, were given explicit instructions that while they were free to applaud, they were not, ever, to boo.
Okay. I agree. To quote an actually competent former President: Don’t boo, vote.
Also, in case you missed it this week, Texas State Representative Bryan Slaton, a Republican resigned from office after being caught with, essentially, his pants down. Here’s a link to his anti-LGBTQ legislation, form 2022. Oops. The tales of conservative, Christian creeps like this guy being total hypocrites are kinda boring, they’re so routine. And, I post this here because outing patriarchal creeps (he’s resigning and looking forward “to spending more time with his family” LOL) feels good. #DivorceYourRepublicanHusbandMrsBSlatonEdition
the link: https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/bryan-slaton-to-file-bill-banning-drag-shows-in-presence-of-minors-latest-texas-republican-anti-lgbt-crackdown-14160924
The article excerpted below is From the Texas Tribune, with reporting done by James Barragan
Rep. Bryan Slaton resigned from the Texas House on Monday after an investigation determined that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 19-year-old woman on his staff, providing her with enough alcohol before their encounter that she felt dizzy and had double vision. Pressure had mounted on the Royse City Republican to resign since Saturday, when the House General Investigative Committee released a 16-page report finding Slaton, who is 45 and married, had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with his aide. The committee of three Republicans and two Democrats recommended that Slaton be the first state representative expelled from the body since 1927.
***The below is from the actual report, which is linked but, to save you time, ultimately reads like a lengthy high school text message thread, which makes sense, as this dickwad Slaton is clearly one entitled, incredibly immature white dude, attracted to teenagers because emotionally and psychologically they are right on his level:
I. Proceedings of the Committee
1. This proceeding was initiated by the filing of multiple complaints naming Representative Bryan L. Slaton as respondent and alleging that he engaged in conduct violating a House rule, the Housekeeping Resolution, or House Policy and engaged in inappropriate workplace conduct, specifically conduct constituting sexual harassment and retaliation. The complaints were made by:
a. Hannah W.,2 a 21-year-old intern in the Capitol office of Representative #1, dated April 10, 2023.
b. Emily J.,3 a 19-year-old legislative aide in the Capitol office of Representative #1, dated April 11, 2023.
c. Sophie A.,4 a 19-year-old legislative aide in the Capitol office of Representative Bryan Slaton, dated April 20, 2023.
Each complainant signed and submitted a complaint under penalty of perjury.
***back to the article: Slaton’s resignation, however, may not stop a planned Tuesday vote on a House resolution expelling him from office.
Rep. Andrew Murr, a Junction Republican who leads the investigative committee, said Monday that he still plans to call up the resolution that he drafted and filed on Saturday. “Though Representative Slaton has submitted his resignation from office, under Texas law he is considered to be an officer of this state until a successor is elected and takes the oath of office to represent Texas House District 2,” Murr wrote on Facebook.
Slaton did not address the inappropriate relationship that led to his downfall in his resignation letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, saying instead that he looked forward to spending more time with his young family. He was not on the House floor Monday. State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, blasted Slaton for not apologizing in the letter, calling it ‘inconceivable’. “His resignation gave no apology to the young woman he violated, his wife whom he betrayed or his district that he failed,” Toth said on social media. “No remorse. No acceptance of responsibility. He’s the victim that rides off in to the sunset. That was the resignation of a narcissist.”
In a statement, Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi commended the House for responding swiftly to “the reprehensible actions of Representative Slaton,” which were first reported in early April. He said the misconduct detailed in the report “should never be tolerated and is proper grounds for expulsion.” “These actions have betrayed the trust that the people of Representative Slaton’s district put in him as an elected official, and he has rightly resigned,” Rinaldi said. “We are encouraged that this investigation signals that the House has entered a new era of accountability where all members will be held to the same fair and high standards.”
Calls for Slaton’s resignation had grown since the report’s release Saturday. Over the weekend, two of the three Republican parties for the counties he represents asked him to step down, and more than half of the 62-member State Republican Executive Committee had done the same by Sunday night. By Monday, even some of Slaton’s closest supporters had left his side. Texas Right to Life, a staunchly anti-abortion group that was a key supporter of Slaton’s political campaigns, revoked its endorsement in the morning, saying it was a “Christian organization” that held its staff, board members, scholarship recipients and political endorsees to high moral standards. “In light of recent reports and the findings of the Texas House General Investigating Committee, Texas Right to Life PAC has decided to formally revoke our endorsement of Representative Bryan Slaton and is praying for a biblical response for all those involved,” Kimberlyn Schwartz, a spokesperson for the group, wrote in a statement. (*WTAF is a biblical response?! The skies parting, the sea? Will Slaton be turned into a pillar of salt?)
Slaton was among the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber and had been one of this session’s loudest voices for cracking down on drag shows and decrying drag artists as “groomers” who want to sexualize kids. The committee report said Slaton had invited the 19-year-old woman to his Austin apartment late March 31 and gave her a large cup of rum and coke, then refilled it twice — rendering her unable to “effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether it was welcome or unwelcome.” In other questionable actions, Slaton also provided alcohol to the aide and another woman under the age of 21 on several occasions, the report said. The report also alleged that after Slaton and the woman had unprotected sex in the early hours of April 1, Slaton drove her home, and she later went to a drugstore to purchase Plan B medication to prevent a pregnancy. Slaton, a staunch abortion opponent, later tried to intimidate the woman and her friends into not speaking about the incident, the report said.
On Sunday, the Texas House Freedom Caucus, a group that includes some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber who are usually politically aligned with Slaton, also called for his resignation. “The abhorrent behavior described in the report requires clear and strong action,” the caucus said in a statement. “He should resign. If he does not, we will vote to expel him Tuesday.” Later that night, 36 members of the 62–member State Republican Executive Committee, party activists who help set the agenda for the party, also called for his resignation, calling his conduct “wrong and unacceptable.” They were joined by the party’s vice chair, Dana Myers, and secretary Vergel Cruz. Three more committee members who could not be reached Sunday night added their names to the call for resignation Monday morning. At least three lawmakers had already called for Slaton’s resignation before the report’s release: Reps. Toth, Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Ana-Maria Ramos, D-Richardson. Cain and Toth are members of the Freedom Caucus.
Also on Monday, the Young Conservatives of Texas joined the calls for Slaton to resign and urged the House to follow the committee’s recommendation without hesitation if he did not. “The Young Conservatives of Texas fully support his expulsion and will score the vote in our legislative ratings,” the group wrote in a statement. Abbott must call a special election to fill the vacancy for House District 2, but that election cannot happen before the legislative session ends on Memorial Day. That means Slaton’s constituents will be left without representation for the final days of the session.
*This is absolutely not a wild goose,but rather a baby peacock, which image I saw on the interweb and was immediately smitten by… A thing of beauty is a joy forever, said Keats. Y’know what else is beautiful: FRIDAY, and I’m not even in the conventional workforce! That said, it’s been a long week, and the baby peacock in me says chill, and be fabulous, so I will, while quoting Mary Oliver.
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” ― Mary Oliver
The 2014 film Whiplash was recommended to me over and over again by a friend with whom I share a passion for movies. He knew I’d been an actor, so please, he insisted, it had to be right up my alley! You gotta see this, you gotta! You’re going to love it. I knew what it was about, had read a couple of reviews, and while yes, sure, you liked it buddy (my friend is an educator, but longs to be an actor, or singer), I lived it, I lived it, and I ain’t watching that shit, at least, not now, not yet. So maybe three or four years later, I rented the film, on DVD (remember those?) and okay yes, it’s very good, and – ugh. I had to turn away while watching, a lot.
Bob Smith. Bob Smith was his name, the teacher/director I fell into company with in the ‘80s; he was a charismatic, brilliant talent, a venerated teacher as well as a manipulative, grasping, minimally educated con man who psychologically tortured myself and numerous other young, vulnerable actor types – particularly women – during our time studying or working with him. I will say I did learn from the man, although I have since found out a handful plus of his fascinating ‘facts’ about Shakespeare are more properly called theories, possibilities, or even ‘Bob’s puerile fantasies’. And, he’s still at it, or at least he was in 2019, when this article – linked here https://www.globalglam.com/shakespeare-with-bob-smith/ – was published on line; the piece, written by one of his then current and clearly devoted female students to promote his class, is classic Bob. I’ll betcha a hundred dollars he gave her a month of free classes, or maybe two, or a private session – gratis! – in exchange for this puff piece. Seeing his photo in the midst of the text actually made me gag.
In Whiplash, the film, Miles Teller plays a talented drummer who is in his first year at a highly competitive music conservatory, one where he has the opportunity to play in the school’s elite jazz ensemble – if and only if he is good enough for the ensemble’s leader, played by J. K. Simmons. Simmons, who won an Oscar for the role, is a man who – to say the least – is emotionally and psychologically manipulative and abusive of his students. Is he brilliant? Sure. Is the ensemble the best in the nation – possibly – but at what cost? Students, especially in competitive fields, and I would say that any of the performing arts fall under that rubric, are particularly vulnerable to those who seem to be, might be, keyholders to a desired future. Bob had worked with several young actors who went on to success on TV and film, and naturally he used their stories and his connection to them, however tenuous in reality, to seduce new students. A very brief stint at SUNY Purchase, where he directed one compendium of ‘Scenes from Shakespeare’, introduced him to Stanley Tucci, and not too long afterward we three (among many others) worked together on Loves’ Labours Lost, until, that is, Tucci got a role working with Mel Ferrar in, as I recall, a national tour of Cyrano. I like to think that Tucci got out of Bob Jail on an early release program, but the idea that he would ever have continued working with Bob Smith, given the depth and breadth of his talent and charisma, is ludicrous. Others of us were not so talented, or lucky. C’est La vie. C’est la guerre.
Bob certainly loved, and loves, his Shakespeare, as do I, and I cannot fault him for my personal dark well of self-abnegation, the bottom of which I wasn’t capable of finding for more years than I like to admit while I knew him, but oh what a mean son-of-a-dick he was. Entering his classroom, his presence (after the honeymoon phase), was like facing a firing squad, each of us as if in a long line of prisoners, never knowing which person he would pick out of the line-up to shoot, to humiliate and shame that day, each of us praying it wouldn’t be us, or someone we really liked, or anyone, maybe? Maybe he’d be in a good mood, maybe he’d just get to it, instruction, coaching monologues and scenes, talking Shakespeare, while we breathed collective sighs of relief. Whiplash, indeed.
Bob could be terribly charming, and when he turned his klieg light on you positively, which he did to everyone at the start, he was irresistible, incredibly compelling, way beyond seductive. Imagine a therapist who, instead of sitting there listening all the damned time, listened intently for two or more sessions then boom! dominated the ensuing conversation, identified what your core issues and strengths were, issues that they and they alone could diagnose, and finally, knowing you in this way, this therapist (who was recommended by friends!) told you precisely what you should do to fix yourself to get where you wanted to go in your life/career. You’re twenty-three or four years old at the time, and you think this is what therapy (or acting class) should be like, maybe, in the big, competitive apple? In other words, you’re young and dumb AF. Healthier individuals always self-selected themselves out of his class, and years later I entered another acting classroom where, right off the bat, the teacher pulled ‘a Bob’: screaming at me for entering the studio in the ‘wrong way’ on my very first day of attendance. My then much healthier self turned right around and walked TF out of there, never to return. Once bitten, twice – fuck that shit.
The business of teaching acting, including Shakespeare, is quite lucrative; just think of all those wanna-bes, and Bob had very expensive tastes (three-piece suits, silk ties and handkerchiefs, penthouse suites), so he was, initially, very, very charming. If he sniffed out someone had money, an actor who – wonder of wonders – came from a wealthy family, they were treated with kid gloves, because they might have the means to make his dream of running a Shakespeare troupe come true. He was also very nice to attractive young men who might’ve been confused or persuadable with regards to their nascent or conflicted sexuality, some of whom appeared and disappeared like shots from a cannon, Bob so scared the pants off of them, or tried to. Yet, Bob’s ass-kissing of the well-off and manipulations in general got him only so far, not just because his students, including the not-so-rich, had options, flying off to LA for pilot season never to return, but also because he was so volatile and mean he eventually alienated even those like me who had been dumbstruck by the force of his personality. Seduced by his charm and brilliance, Bob Smith was ultimately like a beautifully wrapped gift in a box that’s difficult to open, topped by an intricately knotted but gorgeous bow. Finally, when you get to it, there at last is the present he’s given you: a poisonous snake that leaps out at your stunned, disbelieving face. The bite can paralyze you, if you’re not careful.
Once, in the midst of a rehearsal, he spoke of his developmentally disabled sister and how at dinners nightly his father would berate her and their mother, screaming that they, that women as a whole, were useless, worthless, stupid, expensive inconveniences and burdens. He’d felt little loyalty to his mother, he said, because he was mostly just relieved to be beyond the sights of his father’s ire, particularly as it became ever clearer to him that he was ‘not like other boys’. Bob used to say he was pure New England WASP, announcing his full name to us occasionally as if he were royal, Robert William John Smith, but he was Catholic, and Irish. I never questioned his claim of WASP-ness as not making sense, because you just didn’t challenge him if you valued your life in class, and wanted to be cast in one of his shows (I was cast in two, four if you include compendiums and staged public readings). He further shared with us that his father was a drunk, always angry and abusive, and that the theatre provided an escape; the family lived in Connecticut, near Stratford, where, at the summer Shakespeare Festival, he began working as a teenager. Bob had a lot of stories we ate up like candy, anecdotes including the likes of Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Roy Bolger, Jessica Tandy – funny, revealing stories of the on and off-stage antics of stars. Wow.
We were sitting in a circle of chairs that day, and he was clearly feeling expansive, a rare thing, sharing more than he’d ever said before about his early life, about his younger sister, that her disability wasn’t her fault, wasn’t ‘in-born’ like Richard IIIs crooked back. She’d fallen down the stairs of their childhood home, breaking her skull, and was never the same; he even went so far as to admit he’d been at the top of the stairs with her before the fall. I was too scared to ask outright what immediately popped into my head, ‘you pushed her, didn’t you?’. After all they were both small children, and he was Bob, so – maybe? But I didn’t say it, although I did say it sounds like you’ve become a lot like your father. How so? Bob. C’mon. You work primarily with men, and you literally scream at the women in your classes, calling them ugly, stupid, and unnecessary – reminding us that all the characters in Shakespeare’s plays could be and had been played by solely by men. You don’t see any similarities?
Blank stare.
I left his class shortly after that, when he accused me of being a homophobe, stating that my homophobia was the reason he and I weren’t get along, because I’d finally, finally started pushing back against his inconsistencies, his cruelty, after six plus years of taking his classes, of paying for one on one help with audition prep, of watching and taking his direction – and abuse – while being in the shows, 12th Night, and Loves’ Labours Lost. He knew my best friend from high school had died of AIDs; I’d missed a class to go to his memorial service in Ulster County, but I didn’t argue with him; I was too stunned, and too exhausted by his hostility and misdirection. Finally. Maybe I was a homophobe, maybe we all are in this culture. But I knew for sure that whether I was a homophobe or not, Bob Smith hated women.
During 12th Night, I had witnessed him tell the actress playing Olivia that she was the worst actress and ugliest woman he had ever seen or worked with, right as she parted the curtain to go on stage in front of a live audience. He told me during the same run that I reminded him of a paternal aunt, who longed to be a nurse, except she hated sick people. Huh? What does that even mean, Bob? But I said nothing, nor did any of the other women in the dressing room that day, my ‘friends’. Making people feel small after gaining their trust was his specialty, but his genius was in bringing us along for the ride as complicit, compliant, frightened witnesses to his cruelties. I guess he did create a certain sort of Shakespeare troupe after all – right, Bob?
Truth was, I finally realized that for me, being in his class was like being at home with my mom, who was just as brilliant, blew just as hot and cold, a woman who resented and humiliated me on a regular basis depending on her mood, all because she could, and because, like Bob, she was in pain, pushing it off on someone or someones else, including me. I did learn a lot from Bob Smith, loved every moment of acting in and memorizing reams of Shakespeare, but, finally, it was time to move on, to find a teacher who wasn’t filled with resentment and anger, jealousy and hate. I’d gravitated toward that same familiar flame, but as time and life went on, I was getting better. I didn’t have to live like this anymore.
Bob and I never spoke again, and that’s okay – it’s a relief, actually. And, I pray he’s kinder – he’s in his 80s now – to the students in his care.
*While I salute the many, many wonderful moms out there, on this day every year (in fact, for the entire week leading up to this gawd-awful ‘holiday’) I need to, contrarian that I am, acknowledge the less than stellar mom-sters who are worthy of little or no celebration. Moms have so much power, and in them resides so much – too much – cultural mythology and expectation; no one, no single individual, can live up to that bullshit, and most moms are doing the very best they can in a country and world that talks big about honoring mothers and loving children but delivers little to actually support women, and their families.
That said, I used to wish my mother had put out cigarettes on my arms or legs, so that I would have the actual scars to show those who insisted that all mothers love their children, a cohort that includes my first therapist. Uh, no, no they don’t. Deep breaths. Somewhere in the early 80s, when the trade edition of ‘Mommy Dearest’ by Christina Crawford came out, my mother called me from her hairdresser’s to ask me to promise not to write a book like that about her, and while I was surprised she had any level of self-awareness regarding her behavior toward me, I was also at that time exhausted, struggling to survive, and – as I said to her – ‘I don’t even own a typewriter, mom, leave me alone’. And no, I didn’t make that promise. Fuck that annihilating bitch, and the friends who watched and supported her from the sidelines. That hairdresser, a woman who was also a former student of hers, a fellow Catholic, and big fan of my mom’s, told me that when I was six years old I was such a horrible child she was tempted to drown me in our pool. She would have been twenty-four or five at the time, with a daughter my age, a child that she resented for revealing her imperfect Catholicism, as getting married in March and delivering an 8-pound baby in September isn’t consistent with purity a.k.a. virginity ’til marriage. She went on, after telling me of her former homicidal instincts, ‘But, I’m glad I didn’t because you’ve turned out okay’. Was I supposed to thank her? Did she think I was unaware of her, and other friends of my mom’s, hostility? Did it ever occur to her that maybe, just maybe, growing up in such an atmosphere was not ideal for a child, any child? And, did it ever occur to her that maybe I was not ‘okay’, in and of myself? More deep breaths.
The text below is an excerpt from the eulogy I wrote for my mom in 2007, subtext heavy but only to me – only, it seems, to me. As for my own personal version of the ‘no more wire hangers’ story, I’m still thinking about and working on that. Perhaps you’re reading it right now?
Hello and thank you for coming. Today is a good day – mother wanted not a funeral but a celebration of life – so let us celebrate the life of Dorothy Jean Byrnes Miller. Mother is at peace, with those she loved who went before her, and so again I say to all of you: today is a good day.
First a short list: my mother’s favorite word – yes, she had a favorite word – pavement. Pavement. My mothers favorite Roman; Julius Caesar. My mother’s favorite food: ice cream. My mother’s favorite person: Dick Miller. She had great taste. My mothers favorite family: the Byrnes Clan. My mother’s favorite thing to hold: babies. My mother’s favorite students: Ray Sprague and the Rosa twins, Gary and Gene, although Chuck Jenkins gets a gold star for effort and making her laugh – after all what student in the history of teaching didn’t get his homework done because his mother saw a UFO the night before? Christine Geehrer also gets a gold star for remembering and singing Gaudeamus Igitur over the phone once when mother was getting her hair done at Marcia’s. Something mother never was: cynical. Something mother always was: an idealist. My mothers other favorite thing to do other than read or eat ice cream: talk.
…to those of us who had the privilege of knowing her, my mom was a great lady – brilliant, stubborn, willful, full of laughter, sentimental, naive, generous, volatile, quick-witted, warm, fierce, loyal, rarely unforgiving, a great story teller, a great teacher – a loving, complicated, endlessly fascinating and tender mother and a wonderful life’s companion to my dad, her very best friend. An orphan at twenty, a teacher at twenty-two, a wife at twenty-seven, a mother at twenty-eight, a mother of four at thirty-three, a loving daughter-in-law to the end of my grandmother’s life, a devoted sister, and, finally, a women who wanted and deserved only to rest.
…Mother’s ultimate legacy lies in the students she taught, especially those she inspired to teach or lead their lives to the very best of their abilities – and in her love for my dad and the immense impact their relationship had on so many people their lives touched.
…Finally, I want to quote one of her other favorite Romans, Cicero, who said that the ‘life of the dead rests in the remembrance of the living’. Mother will always be remembered – well-remembered – by her students, her colleagues, her friends, family, and those who cared for her these last few years. And today – today is a good day.
Gaudeamus igitur Juvenes dum sumus! Post jucundam juventutem Post molestam senectutem Nos habebit humus.Nos habebit humus.
Therefore let us party While we are young! After pleasant youth After troublesome old age The earth will have us. The earth will have us.
*you better believe it was a good day.ding dong, t.w.i.d.!deep breaths.
