Tag: Yes Virginia

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Power to the people: Getting off on the hero myth

Six of the top 10 highest grossing movies in the U.S. last year were superhero fantasies, earning a tremendous sum of $2.29 billion in box office receipts. We’re desperate to live in these simply drawn stories, eager to watch a powerful guardian—no! the most powerful guardian of all!—rise from the rubble and set things right. But as Roxane Gay has put it so bluntly, in truth no one is coming to save us. Photo credit: Warner Bros

“Catnip for reporters.” That’s how Metallica fan and Democratic newcomer Danica Roem described her winning campaign in Virginia’s 13th District last November. She is, after all, the transgender woman who defeated the anti-LGBT incumbent Bob Marshall.

Nevermind that her platform was all about lines of stalled traffic and not lines outside bathroom stalls. The simple narrative of vindication, course correction, redemption—whatever you want to call it—proved irresistible to many observing that race. Good vs. evil, progress vs. tradition, insider vs. outsider, rebel vs. authority? Those are fun stories to write.

Such was the undercurrent for Nikuyah Walker’s visit to “The View,” too. Nazis and Klansmen march on Charlottesville and just a few months later a black woman is named mayor?  Why that’s enough to get Whoopi and the gals feeling better about the state of the world. Enjoy the buzz, viewers at home, and meanwhile let’s sidestep the part about how mayor is a ceremonial post in this town.

Yep, there’s no shortage of simple narratives, and their appeal crosses every divide.

A couple of weeks ago, I worked security for one of the women’s marches, and doing so put me directly up against a reporting crew from Alex Jones’ Infowars. Positioning my body between InfoWarriors and the marchers as per non-violent training protocols, I heard nearly an hour of nonstop right-wing commentary from behind me.

The terms reporter Owen Shroyer used to describe the scene didn’t match the assembly I saw before me, yet his vocabulary was familiar. At first I recognized his talk of things that were the “greatest” or the “best” as being the lexicon of the 45th president.

Indeed, when he wasn’t comparing the marchers to Satan and decrying their obviously slavish devotion to fake news, he was talking about the “massive success” of the administration, with “record high” thises and “record low” thats. Bestest, worstest, beautiful… Sounding like nothing so much as Donald Trump himself when he’s dishing the base a simplistic world view that’s two parts stimulant and three parts red meat, Shroyer could have been a “Daily Show” regular from the Jon Stewart days.

Yet his schtick was more comic book than comical. These days, it’s Marvel’s world, we just live in it. And pay for the privilege while we’re at it. Six of the top 10 highest grossing movies in the U.S. last year were superhero fantasies, earning a tremendous sum of $2.29 billion in box office receipts. We’re desperate to live in these simply drawn stories, eager to watch a powerful guardian—no! the most powerful guardian of all!—rise from the rubble and set things right. After the credits roll, we hope we’ll find her or him out in the parking lot kicking ass and taking names. But as Roxane Gay has put it so bluntly, in truth no one is coming to save us.

Not Oprah. Not Mark Warner. Not Elizabeth Guzman, the new Virginia delegate who was tapped to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union address in Spanish, not Robert Mueller, Devin Nunes nor any of the folks at the Riverside who want to oust three Charlottesville City Councilors.

It’s time to remind each other that when we get high off simple delicious rhetoric, we can’t do the painstaking work that lies ahead. As a great master named Ben Kenobi once put it, “The truth is often what we make of it; you heard what you wanted to hear, believed what you wanted to believe.” In other words, mind the catnip, Padawan.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Pussy riot: Women find their voice. Get used to it.

The global Women’s March in January 2017 set the tone for women refusing to sit by any longer while their bodies were insulted and their rights hijacked.Photo by: Karen Ballard via ZUMA Wire)

The high-profile sexual harassment cases continue to pile up and I’m reminded of the Emerson String Quartet. The world-renowned musicians can hold audiences rapt with the passion and delicacy of their playing. And yet without fail, when they rest their bows between movements the concert hall will erupt in a chorus of coughing and sputtering of near-tubercular intensity. It’s as if the concertgoers are reading from a score marking the precise moment when their noises will be most impactful.

The women who are speaking out now have seized a powerful moment, too. The tone has been building since January 21 when almost 3 million of them descended on Washington, D.C., and hundreds of U.S. and foreign cities for the Women’s March. The stunned silence of November 8 was quickly answered by a crescendo of fed-up women who refused to sit by any longer while their bodies were insulted and their rights hijacked.

And it hasn’t been about just calling out sexual misconduct by powerful men—though it’s not not about that either, thank you “Access Hollywood.” In Virginia, a record number of women—51—competed in House of Delegates primaries. Moreover, last July USA Today, citing Emily’s List, the nonprofit that helps elect pro-choice Democratic females, reported that 16,000 women had expressed an interest in running for office. As the Charlottesville City Council race demonstrated, women will no longer wait their turn to speak.

Suburban female voters were the deciding factor in last month’s statewide races in Virginia, too. Many who handed Ralph Northam the governor’s office said they were responding to the president’s equivocations after the killing and mayhem of August 12. But past that, plenty of women had had enough of assemblymen, yes men, who vote to defund Planned Parenthood, discriminate against transgender people and mandate transvaginal probing.

Returning for a moment to sexual harassment, another form of unwanted transvaginal probing, if you will: Like at a classical music concert, there remains the question of why those affected didn’t do something earlier. Must that guy wait until the cello solo to unwrap his lozenge, and why couldn’t the victims of Roger/Bill/Harvey/Charlie/Louis/Mark/Matt/etc./etc./etc. have spoken out sooner?

Answer: They did speak up. The accounts that make it into the reputable press are corroborated by folks the victims spoke to at the time (even if not the human resources manager).

In my own media career, I can count at least three instances when I informed managers at the highest level about sexual harassment incidents others had shared with me. In one instance, the perpetrator didn’t deny the claim when confronted. Instead he teared up and lamented that perhaps he wasn’t the leader he professed to be. His punctured ego was his biggest concern. Today he remains a high-ranking local media executive. The woman left the business long ago. But if she came forward with her account, I could back her up.

Yes, Virginia, it’s a big noise—like a long-stoppered steam valve being released—but not necessarily a new sound. In the past weeks, we’ve learned of some agitation in the Oval Office about who was or wasn’t approached to be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. At press time the issue was still under wraps (pub date is December 6*), but I know who I would’ve nominated: 2017 Women’s March organizers Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez and Bob Bland. They were early conductors in this symphony of outrage. Sadly, we’re a long way from hearing the final note.

*On December 6, Time announced the Silence Breakers as its person of the year.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Extra time and your kiss: New tunes for the resistance

If Desiree Fairooz’s arrest for laughing during Jeff Sessions’ attorney general confirmation hearing demonstrates anything, it’s that law enforcement is irritated by humor. File photo

It’s one thing to seek refuge on Twitter if you’re the sort of the sour-toothed administration official who can’t take a joke. It’s another to drag someone through the courts for the offense of laughing at you. And yet, that is exactly what happened to Loudoun County resident Desiree Fairooz after she chortled during Jeff Sessions’ attorney general confirmation hearing. Back then, Sessions couldn’t have imagined that his issue—a history of unreconstructed homophobia and bigotry that brought activists out on January 10—would rapidly pale next to the public flogging by his boss. Strange days!

A longtime Code Pink activist, Fairooz, 61, had been arrested previously—she famously confronted Condeleezza Rice in 2007 with “blood” painted on her hands—but going to trial for involuntary laughter was a first. Last month, a D.C. Superior Court judge overturned Fairooz’s guilty verdict on charges of disorderly and disruptive conduct and ordered a retrial. Laughing does not alone constitute grounds for a conviction, he said.

It takes fortitude to be an activist, let alone a laughing resister—especially in the face of the current administration’s obscenities and its appetite for punishment. But if Fairooz’s example demonstrates anything, it’s that law enforcement and government are irritated, if not downright befuddled, by humor. The president long ago established his inability to take a joke. Perhaps that’s true of his base, too.

In the spirit of pussy hats, it’s fitting to consider the soft arts of counter-protest as August 12 approaches. The KKK, the alt-right and apparently the local and state police forces come to a demonstration expecting to meet anger and recrimination. They are literally armed for it. But what if they encounter instead humor, theater, even song and dance? Talk about disrupting the gears!

Look at, for example, Gays Against Guns. Following the Pulse nightclub massacre, they tackled a deadly serious issue with facts, figures and persistence. And, when necessary, sing-alongs.

In February, I ran into GaG for the first time when a gorgeous assembly of drag queens, majorettes, mothers, brothers, sisters and fathers fell together in Greenwich Village to protest the new administration. Following along in the GaG Reflex Songbook, hundreds of folks sang this to the tune of Frosty, the Snowman:

Donny the con man / Was a nasty, hateful soul / Just an angry man with a spray-on tan / Telling lies about clean coal / Donny the con man / Did a job Election Day / Telling old white men / They’d be great again / If they’d let him have his way.

As far as I know, no one was arrested for singing. But imagine the courtroom absurdities that could unfold if someone had been.

Going a step further, activists can take inspiration from No. 45’s hateful statement last week that transgender Americans are unwelcome in the military. Given the conservative right’s immediate embrace of that position, the next protest is clear: Kiss-in! Yes, Virginia, it’s time to stage a radical, everyone’s invited, bring-your-ChapStick kiss-in. Is Richard Spencer coming to town? Wave and blow him a juicy one! Grab your Nana, your yogi, your National Guardsman, your dog-walker and pucker up! Let’s see boys on boys, girls on girls, queers on straights, Latinos on whites, Muslims on Jews, cats on dogs—you get the picture.

These are dark days, yes, and it’s up to those who care about small-L liberal values of justice, harmony and free expression to keep the lights on. Illuminate the dangers, we certainly must. Let’s find ways to do that without dampening our spirits. Laughing, singing, smooching—it’s a start.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly op-ed column.