Category: Politics

Goodbye, Roseanne.

The value of the Roseanne Connor character was the other side of the double edge that got her fired: frankness, a willingness to put her ideas out there, regardless of possible consequences. There’s bravery in that, and the risk factor made for good comedy, most of the time. The show Roseanne also felt essential in this time as an avenue for the dialog that we have long since stopped even attempting to have as a nation.

I have family who are like her — the character and the flesh and blood woman — in some ways. Though most people who might happen across this post might not agree with me, I think this culture lost an important opportunity today, a chance to dialog across this widening chasm between those of us on the left and those on the right. The point of the show was to look beyond the ideological stances that divide us so sharply and remind ourselves that even though we disagree, we can at least try to see each other as people: as family.

Still, what Roseanne was fired for, she absolutely should have been fired for. It was a gross betrayal of the very thing that was most crucially valuable about Roseanne. There’s nothing defensible about the things she put in that tweet. Those remarks were personally directed and indefensibly mean-spirited. They were uncalled for and bore no constructive value. In fact, quite the opposite was true: they were meant to wound and they betrayed an attitude of dehumanization and cruelty. Their ilk has been with us for centuries, and there is nothing to be said in response to them. One can only dismiss as irredeemable the person who would invoke those ideas at this point in history.

On the other hand, Roseanne has said harsh things about trans people. Those comments about bathrooms and trans folk still need to be addressed whenever possible, because public cognizance of us as normal, productive, well-adjusted members of society is new — not the truth of them, but the currency of them in our society. I hate to hear the sorts of things those who hate us say, but I would rather those things get said out loud than thought and not said, because I can’t respond to hateful, wrong ideas about who I am, about my experience, if I never hear them stated. If ideas like that can’t be said in the public sphere, people will only transmit that hate among the like-minded, in private. If somebody is hiding what they think of people like me for fear of the consequences of speaking their minds out loud, that’s far more dangerous for me.

I’m reminded of sitting with family recently, after my transition, an uncomfortable and impenetrable silence between us. Those people no longer talk to me. If only someone — either my cousins, or my aunt, or, for that matter, if I — had spoken up, said what we were thinking, maybe we could have found a way to still be talking, even across the divide and disagreement we would still both have between us, rather than the huge, resounding silence that is all we share now.

This November, my state (Massachusetts) is going to vote on my right to exist via a ballot initiative. I would very much rather have the conversation about who I am and whether I am a danger or not, as painful and frustrating as it is, than to have to worry about what’s going to happen with people who think one way and talk another. It’s the way they think that will determine what happens when they vote, not what they’re willing to say when I’m in earshot.

Roseanne was the one TV show making the attempt to conduct some sort of dialog between conservatives and progressives, on issues that are, frankly, life or death for many. It was rightly cancelled due to the words of its star. Unfortunately, I fear that the failure of this lone attempt at having a conversation is a sign that it’s already too late for us to find our way to be one national family again.

Arrogant

In a recent thread on a social media site, I posted a link to an article on The Intercept which includes a recording of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer trying to brow-beat progressive Democratic primary candidate Levi Tillemann into getting out of the of the race for the Colorado’s 6th Congressional District in favor of the DCCC’s preferred candidate, high-powered corporate lawyer Jason Crow. I offered it as evidence that the Democratic Party is anything but democratic.

Anyone who has noted the behavior of the DCCC and the DNC for the last few years knows of any number of instances where the party leadership has quashed (or attempted to quash) progressive and leftist voices from prominence within the party, all the while demanding that all progressives fall in line with their centrist views and preferred candidates. For many, including myself, this pattern of behavior has been disturbing as well as alienating. Some of us have begun organizing within the party under the banner “Justice Democrats,” others have left the part altogether, some for the Green Party, others for the Democratic Socialists and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, publicly questioning the motives and actions of the Democratic party leadership inspires many rank-and-file Democrats to shout down any criticism of the party and/or its methods. Two years out from the 2016 election, woe be to anyone who has the temerity to mention that they supported Jill Stein, as I did and still do, or, in some circles, brings up Bernie Sanders.

I have been told that I am personally responsible for the Trompe presidency. I’ve been called a self-centered child. No matter that my gender is female, I have been called a “Bernie Bro” more than a few times. I’ve been told repeatedly, as I continue to stand up for myself, that I am arrogant. I have recently been told that the country is “in flames” because of my support of, and vote for, the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

At the point where any discussion of non-support for the Democratic Party and/or its leadership reaches this level of rhetoric, the possibility of further reasonable discourse would appear to have been trashed. You will almost certainly be told, as Steny Hoyer helpfully explained to Levi Tillemann, that you don’t understand “how the world works.”

I created this post in response to such a discussion. The first draft of it was filled with the hurt and anger I felt, mixed with amusement when the person I was having an exchange with concluded their final post in the thread with “Up yours!” My assumption, based on prior experience, was that I would be unfollowed and/or blocked. I also assumed that it then wouldn’t matter what I said or did, there would be no way to reach yet another centrist Democrat, and that political discussions of any sort are no longer worthwhile: everyone is so wrapped up in narrative that an actual discussion of the merits of any particular point of view aren’t productive: either we already agree or I won’t be listened to because there is no incentive to go beyond one’s tribal viewpoint.

But the person I had had the argument surprised me: they reached out via private message, explaining their point of view, and when I sent a thoughtful response, they thanked me for it. I found that hopeful.

We are still very far from being on the same page in our opinions, but I think that at the end of this minor crisis in our long-distance friendship, we found that the friendship is still intact, and we are also more likely to hear each other’s views without perceiving them as an attack or threat. The risk turned out, in this case, to be worth taking, and neither of us has had to back down from our positions in order to move forward.

What this means for situations like the Hoyer/Tillemann exchange above is less clear. My hope is that Levi Tillemann stays in the race for the Colorado 6th. I believe that he will, but I say that from clear across the country and from outside the Democratic Party. I’d be more willing to support Democratic candidates if I knew that the DCCC and DNC were allowing the voters to choose their candidates rather than the party leadership dictating to those voters who their candidates should be.

In truth, I believe that the party would be stronger, the country would be stronger, the candidates the party picks will be stronger for having earned the voters’ support through cultivating a more direct and authentic connection with the voters, rather than fishing for advertising $$$ via the DCCC and the DNC.