So, basically, I listen to all of the POD Save America Podcasts, because I am a politics junkie and nerd-girl and what could be better than to listen to a bunch of smart, funny people talk about several of my obsessions? And, last week one of the many hosts on PSA (clearly, trying to be provocative, but still!) blamed the fall of Roe v. Wade on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That’s right, it’s all Ruth’s fault, because she didn’t retire early in Obama’s second term. FFS, WTF? A liberal, white male pundit is saying RBG is at fault for the fall of Roe? I’ve been stewing on this ever since, because no. No. And just fuck no. The conversational context, to be clear, was the imminent return of Dianne Feinstein to the senate after an extended absence, during which the GOP members of the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate refused to move numerous appointments to the Federal Judiciary forward on an almost evenly divided committee that, lacking Feinstein’s single vote to appoint, was stuck at an entirely even 50-50. Please, please, puh-leeze blame those intransigent conservative fuckers, not Dianne Feinstein, FFS. And, blaming a woman – Feinstein or Bader Ginsberg – for what mostly male Senators, justices, legislators, donors to and members of the Federalist Society, religious leaders, and male everything else in power have done to squash Roe (including creating a Senate where the rules overwhelmingly advantage small states, and white male power), is classic patriarchy. Coming from a liberal voice – a gay white male, no less – simply added insult to injury, but just because a man is liberal, or gay, or a professional pundit re: politics doesn’t mean he isn’t infected with the same biases we all have, including misogyny.
And, this is how the patriarchy works. Patriarchy 101. Blame women. (Or POC, or the Poor, or Gays, or Drag Queens … it’s all the same, really) Blame women who are victims of sexual assault for wearing the wrong outfit or being out at night; blame E. Jean Carroll for entering a store with Trump (I’m still working on getting the sound of the crowd’s laughter at the CNN Town Hall re: sexual assault out of my head); blame Hillary Clinton for Bill Clinton’s infidelities; blame Feinstein for – after a lifetime of public service – not getting out of the way; blame RBG for wanting to do her job to the last moment possible, largely because she wanted to see a female president appoint her successor (like a lot of other people, RBG underestimated the power of misogyny, and misinformation, assuming Hillary Clinton would win the election in 2016). Blame women for the many ways in which our political system is set up to keep those in power in power, which includes, at this late date, a mere handful of women like Feinstein. Gasp!
Call the Violence Against Women Act the Violence Against Women Act, when its purpose is to eradicate, reduce, punish and find solutions for male violence against women, a clever trick of language that erases male responsibility. I want and need to do a deep dive to find out if the original writers of the act believed the it would never pass if you added that language, making men own their gender’s actions? And please, please, please – don’t go there with ‘but not all men’. Not all men, sure, but far too many. Reminds me of that mental trick: ask yourself how many women do you know personally who have been raped, stalked, assaulted, harassed, abused, or groped; now, how many men do you know who are rapists, gropers, stalkers etc., and why it is that no one seems to know any of these men?
Do I wish Feinstein had retired last year, or the year previous, or had simply not run again? Sure. And, feminism at its core is about empowering women (and men, for that matter) wherever they are, whoever they are, to make their own choices without judgement, with freedom, and with the support of individuals, organizations, and our society at large. And, feminism’s mission is to fight the real enemy of equality for all, which ain’t a couple of old ladies in the Legislative or Judicial branches of our government, but rather are the many entrenched misogynistic (and racist, and homophobic, and, and, and) biases and inequalities baked into our systems of justice, policy, religion, finance, education, and government.
If blame we must – and don’t we love to play the blame game – how about we blame Mitch McConnell for refusing even to meet with Merrick Garland, stonewalling his nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016? How about we blame Mitch as well for flipping that script, shoving through Dumpster Fire’s nomination of the handmaid’s tale dream date Amy Coney Barrett at the last possible moment? How about we blame the lying sacks of crap (Kavanaugh and Gorsuch), who swore under oath that they respected and would uphold precedent, including Roe, at their Senate confirmation hearings? How about we blame that conservative Catholic prick Sammy Alito, who quoted 15th century jurisprudence for part of his decision on Roe? A fifteenth Century British Jurist quoted in America in 2022?!? You can’t make this shit up, people. Or how about we blame yet another conservative Catholic, this time Leonard Leo, and his billions along with every other member of the Federalist Society for wanting to control women’s bodies, choices, and futures, claiming it’s because they believe in the ‘sanctity of life’ – while at the same time that exclusive club of mostly rich, white males promote judges, politicians, policies and laws that would fundamentally undermine or eradicate Social Security, Medicaid, Food Stamps (SNAP), and WIC? FEH.
Fuck that shit and those shitty men. RBG was and is an icon, who – along with Dianne Feinstein – may have stayed too long at the party. And, that was her right. Sigh.
And, while I think men (in power, especially) need to fix the fucking problems men have created, feminism at its core is about equity for everyone, freeing women and men from the idiocies and literal harms of the patriarchy. Here’s a link to yet another recent podcast I listened to entitled The Problem with Boys and Men, featuring two white men in what is, regardless, a great discussion re: the challenges and solutions we’re all facing (we are, all of us, in this together) in case you’re interested. I think Richard Reeves has a lot of good points, although I disagree with a few of them and find it maddening how, as the tables turn, men are unable to help themselves out of the trench they’ve dug. Still, it’s vitally important to know what’s being done, being thought, on all sides, and to dig deeper regardless of what issue is being discussed, and how passionately nauseous I feel about the ‘but men are suffering’ and ‘not all men’ narrative lines. Of course, not all men, and of course men are suffering! Rigid gender roles, ancient, unchanging role models for what men can and cannot be and do, harms everyone, women, girls, boys and men: all of us. Humanism 101. Gosh, I spy a theme.
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.
