Color and Cliterature

by G. Murphy Donovan

“There are three “musts” that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”  –  Albert Ellis

Branding is everything if you are in the “activist” business.

More than a few bizarre brands are trending these days. Black Lives Matter and the Me Too (aka Times Up) movements come to mind. The first arrived with a melanin predicate and the second rides a wave of estrogen angst. Hyperbole, hysteria, and hypocrisy joins the two at the hip.

Black murder rates, nationally, are largely driven by mayhem in liberal (Democrat Party) sinecures like Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore, and New Orleans. For the most part, American blacks kill other blacks. The number of African Americans killed or injured by white racists or white cops is statistically insignificant compared to the number of blacks maimed by home boys.

Mark more irony. Only one of four murders in places like Chicago ever get solved. If black lives matter, they seem to matter little to other black Americans – or liberal, white urban politicians either.

Rap and hip-hop icons seldom cooperate with cops, insuring that abysmal closure rates are a permanent certainty. Biggie Smalls takes a bow here.

Three of four or more urban gun slingers are still cruising in a hood near you. Gun violence is worst in liberal cities where gun control laws are draconian.

Blaming cops for social pathology in African American neighborhoods is a little like blaming rest room/bath house sex and AIDS on Ronald Reagan.

The Me Too blame game suffers from similar confusion and contradictions. Such movements are propelled by ego, self-pity, and envy; not facts, data, science, or social justice. The “tell” for both memes is in the titles.

Shouldn’t all lives “matter?” Shouldn’t blue lives matter? Shouldn’t white lives matter? Shouldn’t junkie lives matter? Shouldn’t gay lives matter?  Shouldn’t jihad victims matter?

Withal, shouldn’t behavior matter?

How does skin shade, and not behavior, have more to do with who gets help, goes to jail, who lives or dies in a liberal city? If the subject is social justice, as opposed to special pleading, then the movement might better be called “behavior matters.” Alas, personal responsibility is seldom in the mix when the subject is urban American racial, sexual, or cultural mores.

The problem with tropes is that too many, like tattoos, have evolved into stereotypes. The scabs are dry now. Behavior is, if we are honest, the mother of all stereotypes.

All of which brings us back to that other conversation, the Me Too crowd, the so-called “fourth wave” of feminism.  Me Too and “me” millennials are sisters from the same litter. Note the emphasis is on “me,” not we or thee.

If you chose to emphasize the “too” part of the argument, you can’t help but ask where sisters have been for the last hundred years. Or better still, girls, where was the distaff left when Bill was getting a Monica and Hillary and a liberal press was trashing Billy’s chippies as bimbos?

Say what you will about Donald Trump, America dodged a real bullet with the collapse of Clinton’s second act. If contemporary feminists didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any.

Take Megyn Kelly, formerly at FOX, now flashing her primaries for NBC News. Early on, she entertained her press colleagues with a slut strut and photo ‘spread’ in Gentleman’s Quarterly. Later she made headlines as Donald Trump’s sex inquisitor in the 2016 primary debates. Trump couldn’t believe he was being grilled about sexism by a cheesecake veteran.

Voters couldn’t believe it either. They elected Trump anyway.

Listening to Megyn whine about Donald was a little like listening to a Boston archbishop pontificate about pedophilia. Such is the moral banality of the feminist wing of the American left.

   

More recently, the feline feeding frenzy caught up with the media boys club with a vengeance. Notable casualties included creeps at PBS, CBS, NBC, and FOX. The most notorious were Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer.

Infamous because both are ‘sandwich anchors,’ newsboys usually squeezed between two almost-famous newsgirls. The wrap for Charlie Rose at CBS This Morning was provided by Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell. Over at NBC’s Today, Matt Laurer was flanked, most recently, by Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. Laurer has had a virtual harem of vapid second ladies over the years.

    

The typical host sandwich at network news has man meat in the middle with distaff salt and pepper on the sides.

When decades of hanky panky finally castrated Rose and Laurer recently, lady co-anchors across the land were faking orgasms and throwing high fives – and pleading ignorance like campfire girls. For decades, apparently, not a single lady side-kick at CBS or NBC had a giblet groped, had a fanny pinched, or saw Charlie’s or Matt’s schlong.

Not just hard to believe. Simply impossible to believe.

The likely explanation for such vacuity is stupidity, cupidity, cowardice – or brain damage. Yet, the network party line for passive poseurs is that these gal pals are real “journalists” – victims too if you believe in tooth fairies.

You cannot claim to be a serious journalist and still claim not to have seen or heard of Charlie’s Johnson or Matt’s Willie at one time or another. Like Harvey out there in the land of fruits and nuts, media mashers are serial perverts, trashing and flashing a host of marks for decades.

Twas a bit of a jolt then, at ABC, when Brian Ross was caught conjuring fake news with his pants on. Ross now joins another Brian, erstwhile anchor (now posturing at MSNBC), on the fakir walk of shame. Brian Williams got canned for inventing a self-serving yarn about combat heroism. 

The most righteous creep kill was National Public Radio’s Garrison Keillor, a major scalp for hypocrites and victims alike. Ever unctuous Keillor and the Washington Post got hung out for defending Barney Frank in print. 

To be sure, the Keillor /Post collusion is consistent with a paterfamilias tradition. Iconic editor Ben C. Bradlee at the Post was notorious for conjugating with the help in the 60s and 70s when he wasn’t fronting for John Kennedy’s lechery, the Democrat Party, or the FBI.

Here’s a thought for journalists everywhere. If you wife can’t trust you, why should readers trust you?

One wag famously described Ben’s third mate, Sally Quinn’s contributions to writing as “cliterature.” Quinn is an exemplar of how far a woman can get in Washington by merging regularly with an aging married liberal oligarch.

Deep throats indeed!

                                  —————–

Science now has a name for ‘me too’ egoism, careerism, or adolescent selfishness. The clinical community calls it musterbating. Yes, that spelling is correct.

Musterbation is, as irony would have it, a homophone homonym; in short, indulging yourself  by other means; “me” and “must” posturing as mandates.

The neologism was coined by behaviorist Albert Ellis. According to Dr. Ellis, musterbation is a series of unrealistic expectations or “shoulds” that the egoist imposes on self – and those around them. Musterbation is not to be confused with aspiration.  Should is a demand not simply a desire.

The mustabator is at once self-absorbed and judgmental about the world around them. Neither facts nor experience are relevant to the activist bound by self-serving rigid expectations of the cruel work outside the womb.

For the musterbator, introspection or reflection is impossible, personal and social problems are always someone else’s fault. “It’s your behavior, not mine, that is the problem,” might be their mantra.

Black Lives Matter and Me Too activists are now musterbating in unison. Both fail to see their behavior as relevant to social pathology. Whitey and “the man” is the excuse for BLM. Covetous men or an oppressive patriarchy are the culprits for Me Too mustabators. Courage in both cases is lacking because hindsight is not the same as a stout heart.

BLM excoriates a small, largely innocent demographic; cops. Me Too cuts a wider swath, demonizing men in general, nearly half the population. The two have much in common.

Hypocrisy is a hermaphrodite.

And yes, Ms. Winfrey; time is up. It’s time for professional victims and celebrity whiners, male and female, to grow up and act like adults.

Catherine Deneuve speculates that the Me Too fad is driven by man hate. Bingo!

Speaking of acting, black skirt feminism was a thing at the Golden Globes this year. Ironically, Hollywood press shills honored the lives of Katherine Graham, Ben Bradlee, and Carl Bernstien. Graham was a weak corporate enabler at the Washington Post, while Bradlee and Bernstein were flagrant womanizers. Bernstein cheated most prominently whilst his wife was pregnant. Heartburn anyone?

Adding insult to irony, black skirt prima donna Meryl Streep is the star vehicle in two films that now have turned two of journalism’s most notorious cheats into national icons.

Indeed, if egoists and special pleaders must do anything, they must take responsibility for their behavior at the moment of truth. Then we can all get on with judging Louie CK, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Megyn Kelly, Sally Quinn, and Senator Pocahontas.

                     ———————————

The author usually writes about national security, only occasionally wandering onto the minefield of social scrimmages.