Baiting Trump

By Kelly Cogswell

I was so happy when I saw the SNL skit for the first time with the brilliant Melissa McCarthy decked out as Sean Spicer, guzzling gum, throwing tantrums, blasting the press for questioning Trump's Muslim ban, destroying language itself and offering an imaginary narrative, while accusing journalists of spreading fake news.

It was a blistering characterization that not only ridiculed the incompetent, know-nothing Spicer, but highlighted the undercurrent of violence in Trump's blustering, authoritarian administration which aims to rule through sheer domination, destabilizing tactics, and fear.

McCarthy seemed the perfect choice after her role as Detective Joyce Nelson in the movie The Heat with her potty-mouthed rage and extreme physical comedy. You want fury? She's a bundle of it. Want fearlessness? I can't think of a male actor in recent times who's thrown their body around as audaciously as McCarthy.

It seemed irrelevant that she was doing it drag. The script didn't mention women, and Alex Baldwin's fake blonde wig seemed more of a stretch than her thinning brown wig, and ill-fitting suit. She dominated the room, not with a dick, but the pure force of her personality. What did gender have to do with anything?

But then the news broke that what had Trump and Spicey going nuts was not so much the portrait of Spicer as an enraged, gum-chewing, shit-gibbon, but that he was played by a woman. Once we heard that, the game was on. Rosie O'Donnell replaced her Twitter profile with a convincing image of herself as Bannon.

Stephen Colbert declared "... If the president thinks a woman playing Sean Spicer makes him look weak, then he’s really not going to like this picture we made of a little girl pretending to be Donald Trump. And he’s especially not going to like it when you retweet at him with the hashtag #largerhands."

This statement, which came with the release of a photo of a little girl in a pink dress with a big Trump wig, was where I started to squirm. Because there's a big difference between a grown woman laying bare the rage of a toxic white masculinity, and a photo of a pretty little girl in a Trump wig designed to impugn his manhood, not critique it.

Apparently, the only thing worse than being a little girl, is throwing like one, crying like one. What could be worse, in fact, than being a man touched by femininity? A fucking fag? A trans woman who abdicated her rights in a man's world? Sorry, but we don't need more misogyny -- ever. So fuck you, Stephen Colbert. And everybody whose Trump-baiting humor doesn't go beyond jokes about Trump's small, feminine hands.

This is especially important with the Renaissance of White Nationalism where the subjugation of women by men is the model for every other domination, Christians over Muslims, White over Blacks, Straights over Queers, good old American English over every other language, every nation in the world. Yeah, let's grab 'em all by the pussy. Who's the bitch, now?

The control of female bodies, forcing us to remain pregnant and have children whether we want to or not, is not a separate issue from the control of black and brown bodies in the street, and workplace, and school. The defense, even encouragement, of domestic violence against women, is the same as the bullying of certain young white males to insure they remain in their place. On top. And know what to do once they get there.

Using a little girl to attack Trump actually reminded me of Lynndie England--the U.S. Army Reserve private serving in Iraq who got her 15 minutes of fame for agreeing to pose for a photo holding the leash of a naked detainee cowering on the ground at Abu Ghraib prison. In another, she gave a thumbs-up behind a pyramid of naked prisoners. In another, she smiled as a guy was forced to whack off.

She was one of the few who went to jail for abuse of prisoners, but women soldiers under Bush were regularly used to humiliate men who were compelled to crawl on the floor, wear women's underwear, pose naked. Men were also forced to engage in homosexual acts. Let's humiliate those Muslim bastards any way we can.

While Colbert didn't torture anybody, the image of the little girl was used in the same way, to pollute, to provoke disgust and ridicule. Like the SNL jokes about Trump's attraction for a bare-chested Putin.

Nothing good will come of it. It never has. The Abu Ghraib photos boosted anti-U.S. sentiment worldwide, became big recruiting tools for Al Qaeda, were cited for the execution of American Nicholas Berg, and set back progress for women and queers.

In the U.S., sneering only at his masculinity might piss off Trump, but it won't help us, won't do anything to undercut his desire to be a “real man”, and dominate America by violence, instability, and hate.

For This Culture War Redux, Hil Yeah

By Kelly Cogswell

In 1992, failed presidential candidate Pat Buchanan went to the Republican National Convention and declared "a religious war...a culture war...for the soul of America." America's enemies? Radical feminists, environmentalists, homosexuals, and people of color. Though not all of them, because praising the "brave people of Koreatown" was a good way to slam the terrifying and cowardly [black] mobs of the LA riots.

It's almost twenty-five years later, and we're hearing the same refrain, but a hundred times louder, and in plainer, more dangerous speech. Independent women and feminists are fat, disgusting, threatening pigs. Latinos are rapists and criminals. Black people are thugs. Homos and trans people are pervs that need to be put back in their places by judges appointed specifically for that purpose. And of course, Muslims are terrorists who should be banned from immigrating, and subject to torture any time, any place.

Trump scares me, scares everyone I know. The Latino supers are out in the street talking about the tyrants he reminds them of. And I remember how the Republicans lost in '92 but still radicalized Christians nationwide, inspiring a hydra of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-multicultural campaigns, each followed by violence. Because bigots don't just hate ideas. They hate people in the flesh. They wish we all had AIDS. Were locked up in camps. They want to drag us behind trucks like James Byrd. Burn down our houses with us in them like Hattie Mae Cohens and Brian Mock. Blow up our clubs and abortion clinics. Rape and emasculate black men like Abner Louima, screaming, "It's Giuliani time!" as they attack.

And they never just have a single enemy. I learned in the first Culture War that hate is a habit, a worldview. The white anti-gay foes of the Rainbow Curriculum like Mary Cummins also had racist agendas freaking out over "chinks" daring to run for the school board. That's why the long view demands that organizations and activists fighting for queers also work against racism, and misogyny, and anti-immigrant sentiment. (And vice versa.) And not just because any of them can and will explode into queer-bashing, but because the LGBTQ community reflects America at large. We rise and fall together.

So in this year of the Culture War Redux, hell yes, I’m with Hillary who's already more "evolved" at this stage than the 2008 Obama, who campaigned with the same anti-gay preachers as George W. Bush. As for his policies on homeland and security, don't even get me started. And yet, Obama turned out pretty good.

This time, instead of positioning themselves to cater to the lowest element of the Republican party, the 2016 Clinton and the Democrats are going high. (Yes, I'm stealing FLOTUS' line). Their convention featured a rainbow of speakers from trans women to the disabled. While I'm usually pretty cynical about this kind of circus, they seem like they might actually be on board with a progressive agenda.

Even the speeches designed for disaffected Republican consumption insisting on her (relatively) "hawkish" creds to be commander and chief, also reiterated Clinton's preference for the exercise of soft power abroad--at which she excels. They also strongly denounced torture, which should go without saying, but this is America post-Bush with Trump gung-ho for waterboarding.

Less explicit at the convention was her commitment to economic equality. Sure, she's an advocate for debt-free college, perhaps thanks to the Sanders campaign. But she's gone further than the Senator from Vermont, regularly consulting with the extremely progressive Roosevelt Institute. They not only develop concrete policy measures, they identify key appointed positions across government that could have an immediate impact on economic and racial equality.

I'm not sure anybody cares. So many people just hate her. Just because. Or they dismiss as window-dressing the people of color front and center at the DNC that featured not just speeches by heavy hitters like Cory Booker or Michelle Obama, but even Black Lives Matter, and the black mothers of the victims of racist violence. Clinton herself didn't just speak vaguely of equality, but specifically denounced systemic racism. But so what? So what if the leadership of the party is now in the hands of three formidable black women? Donna Brazile, Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and Rev. Leah Daughtry.

I'm also seeing lefty sneers at the speech by Khizr Khan, which in some ways may be more important than Clinton's historic acceptance. Too bad if he lost his son in Iraq. It's one more narrative of the Good Muslim. These "progressive" critics are missing the importance of his expansive rebuke to Trump in the name of diversity, and why the man exploded in rage.

"Have you ever been to Arlington cemetery? Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one." And by offering to lend Trump his well-worn copy of the U.S. Constitution where he should "...look for the words 'liberty' and 'equal protection of law'" the immigrant lawyer signaled that he is not trying to be accepted as a good Muslim, he's fighting for the soul of America itself.