The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    A Personal Anecdote Regarding the Matt Gaetz Situation

    By Orion on Sat, 04/03/2021 - 5:09pm |

    When I first started blogging here at Dagblog, I had just interned for a major conservative think tank. Blogging here provided a much needed ideological detox. If you dig far enough, some of my posts that got on that think tank's blog are still viewable. I saw warning signs of the rise of the Alt Right while I was there, and posted about that here. 

    There was another experience that I did report to people in charge, and a direct intervention did occur. I wanted to write about it here in connection with the Matt Gaetz situation, where the congressman is facing calls for resignation and federal investigation upon sex trafficking charges. Making it public didn't really seem like a good idea, since I'm a little person in this world and these were clearly much bigger people I was in the midst of. I wrote about a lot of racist stuff I heard there and that got me in enough turmoil. It also involved someone who had nothing to do with the think tank and was just at a nightclub that interns frequented.

    While I was at that nightclub, a very overweight man started to physically ram himself toward a woman I was with. Everyone interceded to stop what was going on. The man was stereotypical in his appearance: white, male, with that same smug demeanor we've seen so many times in the past few years. The woman was just silent - looking down in shame as all her friends interceded and got her away from the club. The man was quickly scolded, removed and reprimanded. I brought it up, along with other things, with fairly significant people when I resigned from that internship.

    That experience, on top of all others, reinforced the stereotypes of conservative world.  The man wasn't in the circle of people I was working with, and in fact victimized one of them. There are good people who attract to conservatism (Michael Medved, Mitt Romney, we talk about them frequently here) and bad people in progressivism (I'll let you guys think of those people yourself). However, it felt like working there made seeing something like that exponentially more likely than if I were somewhere else. Many people in that world reinforce stereotypes to the point that it's pathetic. I hated my time there to the point that my roommate noted that it was "obvious" that I did. 

    Comments

    Very well-done essay on something I would find hard to write about if I were you!

    so since you have a little experience in that world I just saw this tweet that you might be able to offer an opinion on (note is part of a trending hashtag)

    wink


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/04/2021 - 1:38am

    It seems like he already tried to rat out Tucker Carlson: 

    One thing about Tucker - he's a bit of a professional asshole, like Richard Spencer. Maybe Gaetz thought there's enough people mad at him that he could pull it off with him.


    by Orion on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 8:45am

    At the very least, they should be arrested for their criminal fashion statements.


    by moat on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 11:02am

    You got a problem with Ross Dress for Less (bargain bin)?


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 11:20am


    by Orion on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 1:44pm

    Piper stole the show. But even she couldn't make Matt Gaetz look good. (plus there should be a restraining order keeping him 1000 miles from her whereabouts. Even though she could probably kick his ass, he's such a pussy.)


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 2:28pm


    by Orion on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 1:50pm

    Clearly written for him by an expert who told him to STFU. It's the Trump defense and Trumpies are his base and it's gonna work:

    "Just as they once falsely attacked President Donald Trump as a Russian asset, Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, and even John McCain as having fathered a child out of wedlock, they now attack me," he said. "Of course, none of what they say ever amounts to anything, yet it is endlessly repeated by leftist television anchors such as Chris Cuomo, who uses his platform to cover for his brother's appalling subjection of nursing home patients to death by the coronavirus. They think themselves such wonderful arbiters of moral purpose." 

    The socially conservative evangelical types that didn't like that behavior about Trump have already either left that planet or made peace with the rationalizations required.

    Unless he doesn't STFU with the babbling and follow the script, it's handled. (He's a "florida man" after all.)


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 2:23pm

    "I'm a joker
    I'm a smoker
    I'm a midnight toker
    I sure don't want to hurt no one..."

    - the Steve Miller defense

    (lucky Jimmy Buffett was all booked up)


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 2:32pm

    Joy Reid tweeted a take on Gaetz that might interest you:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/05/2021 - 8:46pm

    I would say that part of the reason they got so far is that, at the time, it seemed like a left that is infatuated by fourth wave feminism was hostile to all men. That's what rapper Tom MacDonald has said in a song that has been circulated by conservative circles. Trump got elected when #metoo was taking off and people like Al Franken fell under the bus. 

    Four years later, though, Al Franken has a hit pocast on Spotify and Joe Biden became president despite going through #metoo himself, so we can see people like Gaetz in perspective. I'm almost certain Franken will return to politics at some point, BTW. He was a pioneer in making progressive talk radio in to a thing and it helped him get elected to the senate to begin with.


    by Orion on Tue, 04/06/2021 - 9:44am

    compare Australia's parliament:


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/06/2021 - 2:14am

    here's another fun anecdote:


    by artappraiser on Tue, 04/20/2021 - 10:26pm

    sounds like there is some method to Fed investigation of Gates, not just witch hunt for being a naughty boy:


    by artappraiser on Fri, 04/23/2021 - 8:10pm

    GOP FL voting come-uppance


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 05/04/2021 - 2:30am

    Still having trouble caring if a bunch of 17-18 year old girls wanna go do a bunch of Molly & bang sleazy men for some Benjamins and party favors. It's one thing to pick up an underage girl from a mall or schoolyard, but if she's out cruising being all "mature" and stuff, whys it my biz? Not enough victim-filled crime in the world?

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/4-women-say-matt-gaetzs-wingman-pressured-...


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/12/2021 - 10:29am

    right now hits me as the correct way to think, our distraction with this kind of stuff, whether politician or celebrity, seems ridiculous sometimes, especially if the person is not married. it's like, wtf are we getting carried away with here?


    by artappraiser on Wed, 05/12/2021 - 1:02pm

    OIC! I ran across this lecture about this whole thing now. We gotta do more #MeToo on white men now because we racist wimmin of the whypipple supremacist conspiracy only persecuted black men about it before; this will be karma, will even out the universe:

    Dr. Umar and I debate whether Bill Cosby, Deshaun Watson and other Black men accused of sexual misconduct (and worse) are part of a conspiracy. pic.twitter.com/MEXdykfYH4

    — Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) May 12, 2021

    P.S. Romans 12:19 is no longer operative! Anger and revenge for all ills (real and imagined) of the past is the way forward! (Reminds me someone; could it be why he got more of the black male vote in 2020?)


    by artappraiser on Wed, 05/12/2021 - 2:51pm

    In space no one can hear you scream.


    by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/12/2021 - 3:19pm

    looking like it's not going to stop tho-


    by artappraiser on Fri, 05/14/2021 - 4:14pm

    Still having trouble caring if a bunch of 17-18 year old girls wanna go do a bunch of Molly & bang sleazy men for some Benjamins and party favors.

    We've decided as a society to protect young people from mistakes they might make due to immaturity. Some age has to be picked to define "youth" that are protected and those old enough to protect thenselves though they might be immature also. Basically we decided to pick 18 in most cases. Is it the "right" age? I don't know. But I talked often with the brother of a friend and once he made the exact same argument you're making about a 13 year old prosititute. He really felt is was wrong that he couldn't fuck her because she was 100% consenting to let him do it for 20 bucks.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 01/28/2022 - 1:38am

    agree with you that 18 is too high; would make more sense if it was like 16.

    it's kind of a boomer thing - we fought because of Vietnam draft to have the vote and have the drinking age lowered to 18 in many places, to be treated as an adult. but as parents all of a sudden there is this back sliding to helicopter parenting and college students are children and you still pay all their bills. well, I didn't have any children, I find a lot of that ridiculous and I'm still with the idea that I was an adult not just at 18 but at like at least 17....

    edit to add: when it really started standing out for me is when right wingers started claiming Monica Lewinsky was a innocent child, that's when it went over the top


    by artappraiser on Fri, 01/28/2022 - 2:50am

    I didn't say 18 was too high. I said I don't know. And I recognize it's all very arbitrary. But if a kid is still in high school grown men shouldn't be fucking them. Especially not 30 and 40 year old men. You may have been precocious while others might not be ready to make mature decisions at 18 or later. I'm perfectly fine with choosing 18 as the arbitrary cut off point. Lewinsky was 21 so I agree, no innocent child.


    by ocean-kat on Fri, 01/28/2022 - 4:40am

    I left home just after turning 17. For thousands of years people were getting married at 13 & 14, even outside arranged marriages, plus there was little "childhood" when you took on adult chores at 12. How does Central Asia and Africa fit with these age brackets? (Keeping young girls in school vs allowing them freedom/a longer life arc). Our 21 for drinking is pretty weird, holdover from prohibition i guess, but it queers our idea of adulthood for other things. But do we save all budding adults from bad decisions? Birth control & morning after pills should solve one of the biggest worries. The line between consent & rape is something females have to deal with for decades later, not just college campuses, so it's not quite like these laws have solved a societal issue, they just tried to improve it by drawing a line, but since it's about the capabilities and maturity of real humans, it's all rather arbitrary. Divorce used to be disallowed, but i see people who are ideal for each other on their 2nd or 3rd try. Let's check back in 100 years, see where we got.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 01/28/2022 - 6:37am

    re:Making it public didn't really seem like a good idea, since I'm a little person in this world and these were clearly much bigger people I was in the midst of.

    I thought of you saying that when I saw this:

     


    by artappraiser on Fri, 05/21/2021 - 11:59pm

    As she gets older, Monica will seem like the wry Jewish grandmother most of us never had. It's also funny that the joke that was already unfunny a week in now gets more hilarious year by year (part has to do with the set-up & delivery, i realize). It's also curious that 1950's Ivy League co-eds were more comfortable with blowjobs than our post-Monica scolds, no matter how many explicit rap records there are.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 05/22/2021 - 6:35am


    by artappraiser on Thu, 10/21/2021 - 3:28pm

    UPDATE:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 01/27/2022 - 3:02am