Public vs. Anonymous, and Partisanship in the Age of Trump

Nope, didn't get the appeal way back then either.
Image from World of Wonder.

I got myself into a little bit of trouble yesterday. Someone I work with was either alarmed, offended or simply disagreed with something I had written online that appeared on their Facebook newsfeed.* I don't know what it was--I actually hadn't posted anything overtly political directly on my Facebook wall in some time--and we quickly dropped the subject. But it opened my eyes a bit about the pros and cons of being "open" online, vs. being anonymous, as well as the difficulty in holding your online tongue in an age of hyper partisanship.

I've been blogging since 2007, and before that, had an online presence stretching back to the days of Prodigy. But it wasn't until the beginning of the blog that I became transparent, and easily searchable. Much of the world is the same way. We write under our own names, with our own pictures and much of our own bios easily readable and knowable. We don't hide behind cute internet handles or pseudonyms. Which can give a person a bit of credibility, and accountability. But also, it can take away privacy (nothing on the internet is ever really gone). And it can get you into trouble if you say something that runs contrary to the beliefs, politics or sensibilities of other people you know.

Likewise, I didn't (and don't) understand the Clinton hate in 1992.
Image from ABC News.

So, I have a bit of a problem. I'm too entrenched in my behavior, and have already written too much publicly, to try to change my stripes now.  I mean, I can be more thoughtful and careful about what I say and how I say it. In fact, I probably will consider my words a bit more carefully, at least while this incident remains fresh in mind. But, what I've said is already out there. And my behavior patterns are difficult to break. I tweeted two or three things later that day, and only pondered their content afterward. Oops. But, also, we live in an environment of extreme partisanship on virtually every issue. And there are times when holding back, and not contributing is very difficult for a person who has political blogging as a hobby!

And let's talk about the political side for just a second. Everybody knows that in business and personal relationships, politics and religion are conversational minefields. But I think that it is obvious that this political season is quite simply different. It has elements that aren't simply right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal. The two main figures in the presidential battle are individuals widely loathed by huge segments the public. But while one, Hillary Clinton, is despised through an almost completely political prism, the other has only become explicitly political relatively recently.

Yes, Donald Trump has been in the media spotlight for decades. Until 2015, it was perfectly reasonable and acceptable to despise him as a superficial reality TV star, a libidinous, philandering shyster, with an abrasive personality. I personally have never understood his appeal, except as a curiosity and a target for humor. I didn't like him during the Ivana era, the Marla Maples days, The Art of the Deal, his many media utterances, and his more recent career as host of The Apprentice/The Celebrity Apprentice. If anything, my estimation of the man went down along the way.

Both loathed, but for different reasons.
Image from Restate.

And now here we are with Trump as the Republican candidate for president, and all of that baggage follows. If I were a Republican (still), I'd still despise Trump. I think this is borne out by the turmoil his candidacy has put the GOP through. So, I don't see my anti-Trump attitudes, beliefs and advocacy as a purely political thing. Yes, if the candidate was Jeb Bush or Ted Cruze, I'd still be for Hillary Clinton. But the arguments, the advocacy, everything would be very, very different.

If I were seeing Jeb! or Cruz signs in yards, I wouldn't question the judgment, taste or intelligence of the folks who put them there. With Trump, I can't help it. How does someone look at this guy, listen to this guy, and say, "Yeah! That's my guy!" I can't see it. And I do understand that there are people who say the same thing about Hillary Clinton, but the difference is, that's almost entirely politically based. Also accumulated over decades, but overtly partisan, and drenched thoroughly with questionable sourcing, innuendo, and opposition research.

So, the antipathy toward both candidates is similar in that it has been fostered for almost exactly the same amount of time (Trump has actually been nationally known for longer, probably), but comes from an entirely different place. Could my loathing of Donald Trump be colored by vague discomfort with his public persona, just as "colored" by perception as the political sourness a conservative might feel against Clinton? Maybe. I'll concede that, but only to a degree. Because I can honestly say that absent politics, I'd still have a strong negative reaction to Trump, in virtually any context.

Despite the honest disliking of this individual going back decades, it is unfortunately true that my personal anti-Trump campaign will be seen by many or most as a purely political position. Everything these days comes down to a black and white, binary partisan divide. But since I am a transparently open internet presence (if only to the random people who might look me up), I thought this explanation might at least provide context.

*On a tangent, the problem with being public on Facebook, and commenting transparently, is that Facebook itself will "feed" commentary made on other pages, even other websites, to Facebook followers and friends. Most people will never see your comment over at Huffington Post, but it could appear on anyone's at any time. Apparently, this time, something I said that was maybe particularly pointed landed upon this person's feed. I still don't know what it was, but am relatively certain it was pro-Clinton or anti-Trump. 

The Gay Thing: Retribution for Gay Bashing in Philadelphia

The Concerned Women for America--a badly named, anti-gay hate group--recently filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court. They're arguing that case for marriage equality shouldn't be treated with heightened scrutiny, because gay people have too much "power." And, I know, with all the talk in Right Wing World about "gaystapos" and "gay mafias" and whatnot, you could take their overplayed rhetoric for more than it is.

In point of fact, in many places in America, a gay person can be fired for no other reason than their sexuality. They can face housing discrimination. Though our we have marriage equality in 19+ states, they aren't recognized in most of the rest of the states, and are only tenuous in some states where they are legal. Conservative Christians--especially from the safety of the internet--have no qualms and no limitations on the nastiness and invective they're willing to unleash. Increasingly, they're also trying to carve out exceptions to the public accommodations laws that do exist, so that they can legally shun gay customers from their businesses. And, we're still regularly subject to abuse, both verbal and physical.

Some of the thugs in question. Image from source, 6ABC

The attack that happened to a young gay couple in Philadelphia recently was only the latest in a string of gay bashings around the country. But this one grabbed people's attention for a couple of reasons. One, it was a crowd of relatively young adults, both men and women who initiated the attack. But more interesting that that, is that this crowd turns out to have been a reunion class from a Pennsylvania Catholic high school, and they gave themselves away via social media. They're busted.

[Excerpt]

CATHOLIC HS COACH FIRED IN CONNECTION TO GAY COUPLE ATTACK IN PHILADELPHIA

Police say they are questioning several people in connection to an attack on two gay men in the Center City Philadelphia area. Though, no suspects have been identified, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia confirmed that one of the people suspected in the attack worked as an assistant basketball coach at Archbishop Wood High School. The Archdiocese went on to tell Action News that person was terminated on Wednesday evening and will not be permitted to be a coach at any other Archdiocesan school. . .

Read more at: 6ABC

Meanwhile on Facebook: Guns vs. Knives, A Bad Analogy

You hear it all the time regarding politics and hot button issues: both sides do it. Meaning, both sides are equal in their horribleness in whatever way they're being horrible right now. As a liberal, but also a somewhat dispassionate observer--at least over topics that aren't my hot-button issues--I think on the gun control/gun rights issue, the right is nuttier than the left. There are exceptions, but liberals don't tend to get as instantly frothy over guns.

One area where both sides can get out of hand though, is memes. These images with words are passed around on social media, and sometimes can be very clever. Sometimes they can be informative, and sometimes they can really grab you. Other times, they only think they're clever, and are in reality deeply stupid. Also frequently in bad taste. Throw in abuses in punctuation, spelling and grammar, and they can really be a mess. Take this image, now floating around on Facebook

The target (pardon the pun) is ripe for parody, were the subject matter not in almost-impossible-to-pull-off comedy danger territory. Hint: too soon. And even though the best humor exaggerates the truth, this one misses the mark (pardon) for a very large, glaring reason:

The crazy guy who stabbed all of those people? He didn't manage to kill any of them.

That's a fairly stark difference between a mass stabbing and a mass shooting. Nobody has ever argued that there aren't crazy people. That crazy people aren't dangerous. That other weapons aren't dangerous in the wrong hands. The aim is to try to do something to prevent mass murder. Most weapons outside of guns and bombs are very inefficient for killing lots of people in a short period of time. Bombs and bomb making materials are subject to pretty tight restrictions and laws. Why aren't guns?*

The other day I posted a very bad analogy between guns and cars. Now this one. I'm sure there are many more, and I'll try to explore those as I find them.




*Come to think of it, there are fast ways to kill lots of people, like toxins, poisons, hijackings, and other terrorism. But last I looked we have a war on most of that stuff, and people don't seem to mind (or at least put up with) controls, restrictions and laws around all of that stuff.

Film Critic Roger Ebert Dead at 70

Image from Funny or Die

Roger Ebert had a strange last decade of life. He went through cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands, lost his lower jaw--along with it the power of speech and ability to eat--and got cancer again. But along the way, the popular movie critic (and former TV partner of the late Gene Siskel) also gained a different sort of following on social media. If you followed him on Twitter as I did, you know that this was a very smart man, with more than just refined movie tastes. He also had a layered sense of humor, and an eye for the oddly interesting and the interestingly odd. Much like George Takei's internet success, Siskel's showed an entirely different side of himself that really showed him in a different light.

When I was a kid, Ebert was half of the team somebody referred to as "the fat one and the gay guy," on Sneak Previews and At the Movies, even though Siskel wasn't gay, and Ebert not fat, at least not by today's standards. And while they pioneered movie reviewing on TV, and their "two thumbs up" style became their schtick, it was nice to see the interesting side of Roger Ebert in these last few years. I'm just sorry it had to be at the same time as a disfiguring and ultimately fatal disease. RIP, Roger!

[Update: Excerpt II]

(This is so much funnier than the one below, though it too is worth your time)

Roger Ebert's 20 Most Epic Movie Pans

. . .18. The Village

"To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backward out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets. . ."


Read more at: BuzzFeed


[Excerpt]

11 Funniest Lines from Roger Ebert's Reviews of Bad Movies

. . .Mad Dog Time, 1996

 "Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line. . ."

Read more at: Funny or Die

Like Us on Facebook, Follow Us on Twitter! (Please?)

Yes, it is once again time to whore myself for "likes" and "follows" on Twitter and Facebook. Since I started this part of Greenlee Gazette, I've managed to gather 38 "likes" on Facebook, and somewhere around 111 "follows" on Twitter. The likes are solid but smallish. The follows are very, very fickle. I don't prune my Twitter follows very often, but other people seem to. Meanwhile, Stupid Monkey Planet and his Church of Primatheism has gathered "likes" like nobody's business. What am I, chopped liver?

I am thankful for every reader, and heartened by the fact that I get from 250 to 1,000 readers on any given day. But dammit, I want more! Like me! Follow me! It doesn't cost you anything, and will make a middle-aged Las Vegas denizen very happy. Mmmkay? Mmmkay.

   

Greenlee Gazette is Now on Twitter and Facebook!

Yeah, I'm a little slow getting to the transition, I realize that. But from now on, most posts here on the main site will be posted to Facebook, and all Facebook posts will automatically post to Twitter. Plus, a few "quickie" posts that don't make the main site will be available there as well. I'm trying to cajole Stupid Monkey Planet into setting up a presence there with me, and if he does, I'll make sure everything is cross-posted. Follow me, you'll be glad you did!