Bien sûr, c’est normal. There are Christina Hoff Sommerses and Ella Whelans in France too, and they join their anglophone sisters in saying this has gone too far.

Just one day after Hollywood offered a show of support for the #MeToo movement on the Golden Globes red carpet and stage, a famous actress on the other side of the Atlantic lent her name to a public letter denouncing the movement, as well as its French counterpart, #Balancetonporc, or “Expose Your Pig.”

Catherine Deneuve joined more than 100 other Frenchwomen in entertainment, publishing and academic fields Tuesday in the pages of the newspaper Le Monde and on its website in arguing that the two movements, in which women

Originally a comment by Lady Mondegreen on Spiked says solidarity is the work of the devil.

That is, equality was won by was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves one at a time and separately and without conferring or joining forces in any way whatsoever. Yeah! No need for solidarity, no need to organize, no need for campaigns, just each woman square her shoulders and be as great as she can be.

This is the story conservative America tells itself over and over again about how equal rights were fought for.

I grew up hearing that Rosa Parks was really tired one day after a hard day’s work, so she refused to give up her seat on … Read the rest

David Brooks being even more willfully wrong and middleminded than usual.

Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

That is, let him start with congratulating himself for Going Against the Tide, for Thinking For Himself, for Not Following the Herd.

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Are.you.fucking.kidding.

If they’re going there to have a meeting with … Read the rest

However. A ruling just now:

A panel of federal judges struck down North Carolina’s congressional map on Tuesday, declaring it unconstitutionally gerrymandered and demanding that the Republican-controlled General Assembly redraw district lines before this year’s midterm elections.

The ruling was the first time that a federal court had blocked a congressional map because the judges believed it to be a partisan gerrymander, and it deepened the political chaos that has enveloped North Carolina in recent years.

“We agree with plaintiffs that a wealth of evidence proves the General Assembly’s intent to ‘subordinate’ the interests of non-Republican voters and ‘entrench’ Republican domination of the state’s congressional delegation,” Judge James A. Wynn Jr. wrote in a 191-page opinion that another judge

Again the Times pretends shit is a bowl of rose petals. Joe Arpaio is “fiery” and now Breitbart has a “defiant editorial spirit.” Defiant of what, though? Oh, truth, civility, fairness, proportion, humanity – that kind of bourgeois frippery.

They’re reporting that Breitbart has thrown Bannon out.

Mr. Bannon’s departure, which was forced by a onetime financial patron, Rebekah Mercer, comes as Mr. Bannon remained unable to quell the furor over remarks attributed to him in a new book in which he questions President Trump’s mental fitness and disparages his elder son, Donald Trump Jr.

Mr. Bannon and Breitbart will work together on a smooth transition, a statement from the company’s chief executive, Larry Solov, said.

In the statement,

Spiked has another “contrarian” what’s all this fuss about sexual harassment piece, this one by Ella Whelan. The target this time is Time’s Up, which turns out to be rich women condescending to poor women, I guess by not ignoring them.

No one should have to put up with injustice. But this patronising campaign assumes working-class women are incapable of sticking up for themselves. How did women ever win equality in the workplace in the first place? Was it through Hollywood-run schemes to stop bad male behaviour with lawsuits? Of course not. Equality was won by ordinary women standing up for themselves and demanding their freedom. This is what #MeToo types can’t understand – that women aren’t all helpless

No.

No no no no no.

No.

No.

No.

Oprah Winfrey is thinking about running for president.

What she lacks is political experience.

In an interview with Winfrey on Bloomberg last March, interviewer David Rubenstein broached the possibility, saying “It’s clear you don’t need government experience to be elected president of the United States.”

You don’t need it to be elected, tragically, but you do need it, or a relevant education, to do it well. You can’t just walk into it because you’re famous. Have we not learned that?

It’s true that she would be vastly better than Trump. If the choice were more Trump and Oprah Winfrey I would choose her in a shot. But the choice is … Read the rest

An equalities watchdog has stepped in on the BBC-Carrie Gracie confrontation.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission has written to the BBC to seek answers about allegations of pay discrimination following the resignation of Carrie Gracie as its China editor over its “secretive and illegal” pay culture.

The BBC is also facing the prospect of lawsuits from female employees who believe they have been paid less than men for doing the same jobs.

It’s all very disappointing, not to say infuriating.

The journalist, who has worked for the BBC for 30 years, said the corporation had offered to increased her pay from £135,000 a year to £180,000 but she refused because it did not guarantee her equality with its other

Carrie Gracie, the BBC’s China editor, wrote an open letter:

Dear BBC audience

My name is Carrie Gracie and I have been a BBC journalist for three decades. With great regret, I have left my post as China editor to speak out publicly on a crisis of trust at the BBC.

The BBC belongs to you, the licence fee payer. I believe you have a right to know that it is breaking equality law and resisting pressure for a fair and transparent pay structure.

In thirty years at the BBC, I have never sought to make myself the story and never publicly criticised the organisation I love. I am not asking for more money. I believe I am very

Holy shit. The case against the Bundys for that time they drew guns on the Feds has been thrown out.

A federal judge in Las Vegas dismissed charges against Cliven Bundy and his sons, Ammon and Ryan, on Monday.

Judge Gloria M. Navarro of Federal District Court, in a ruling from the bench, said that the government’s missteps in withholding evidence against the three Bundy family members and a supporter, Ryan W. Payne, were so grave that the indictment against them would be dismissed.

…

The 2014 standoff, the focus of Monday’s hearing, was set off when the Bureau of Land Management seized cattle from Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., in an attempt to force him to pay

Ari Berman covers the voting rights beat. Today he explains the National Voter Registration Act. In 1988 barely half of eligible voters voted in the presidential election, which was the lowest rate since the 1920s – decades before the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act.

In an effort to increase participation, Democrats in Congress—backed by a few Republicans— drafted the National Voter Registration Act, a bill that would require states to allow voters to register at Department of Motor Vehicle offices and other public agencies.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, led the opposition to the legislation. “This bill wants to turn every agency, bureau, and office of state government into a vast voter registration machine,” 

Dana Goodyear at the New Yorker takes a look at “the purge” so far.

I’m calling it the Purge,” a friend who works in Hollywood told me, a few days into the post-Weinstein era. Off the top of his head, he listed half a dozen men in the entertainment business whose behavior, he hoped, would no longer be condoned. In the weeks to come, they started toppling, joined by others, in a seemingly never-ending cascade, the world’s longest domino trick. The morning-news anchor, the worldly talk-show host, the animation genius with the awful shirts, “feminist” men, liberals, tortured artists, moguls, icons, “bad boys,” funny guys, even the folksy curmudgeon from public radio: they are being fired; stepping down; awkwardly