There’s that saying, “no man is a hero to his valet.” Miriam Jordan at the NY Times has talked to Trump’s housekeeper at Bedminster.

During more than five years as a housekeeper at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Victorina Morales has made Donald J. Trump’s bed, cleaned his toilet and dusted his crystal golf trophies. When he visited as president, she was directed to wear a pin in the shape of the American flag adorned with a Secret Service logo.

Quite an achievement for an undocumented immigrant housekeeper.

Ms. Morales’s journey from cultivating corn in rural Guatemala to fluffing pillows at an exclusive golf resort took her from the southwest border, where she said she crossed illegally in 1999, to the horse country of New Jersey, where she was hired at the Trump property in 2013 with documents she said were phony.

I got nervous when I read that yesterday, wondering why the Times was putting her at risk this way, but in fact Morales is going public on purpose and with legal assistance.

She said she was not the only worker at the club who was in the country illegally.

Sandra Diaz, 46, a native of Costa Rica who is now a legal resident of the United States, said she, too, was undocumented when she worked at Bedminster between 2010 and 2013. The two women said they worked for years as part of a group of housekeeping, maintenance and landscaping employees at the golf club that included a number of undocumented workers, though they could not say precisely how many. There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or Trump Organization executives knew of their immigration status. But at least two supervisors at the club were aware of it, the women said, and took steps to help workers evade detection and keep their jobs.

All while Trump rants and raves about “illegals” invading our precious lily-white Nayshun.

Ms. Morales said she has been hurt by Mr. Trump’s public comments since he became president, including equating Latin American immigrants with violent criminals. It was that, she said, along with abusive comments from a supervisor at work about her intelligence and immigration status, that made her feel that she could no longer keep silent.

“We are tired of the abuse, the insults, the way he talks about us when he knows that we are here helping him make money,” she said. “We sweat it out to attend to his every need and have to put up with his humiliation.”

Ms. Morales and Ms. Diaz approached The New York Times through their New Jersey lawyer, Anibal Romero, who is representing them on immigration matters. Ms. Morales said that she understood she could be fired or deported as a result of coming forward, though she has applied for protection under the asylum laws. She is also exploring a lawsuit claiming workplace abuse and discrimination.

They gave the Times hours of interviews about their work at Trump’s club and their interactions with supervisors. They say Trump is both demanding and kind, often giving generous tips.

She said she washed and ironed Mr. Trump’s white boxers, golf shirts and khaki trousers, as well as his sheets and towels. Everything belonging to Mr. Trump, his wife, Melania, and their son, Barron, was washed with special detergent in a smaller, separate washing machine, she said.

“He is extremely meticulous about everything. If he arrives suddenly, everyone runs around like crazy” because Mr. Trump inspects everything closely, Ms. Diaz said.

She recalled a nervous moment in 2012, when Mr. Trump approached her and asked her to follow him to the clubhouse, a renovated 1930s Georgian manor, where he proceeded to run his fingers around the edges of frames on the wall and over table surfaces to check for dust.

“You did a really great job,” she said he told her, and handed her a $100 bill.

That same year, she said, Mr. Trump had an outburst over some orange stains on the collar of his white golf shirt, which Ms. Diaz described as stubborn remnants of his makeup, which she had difficulty removing.

In other personnel news, there’s the Fox News personality who is currently the State Department spokesperson and is now going to be the US ambassador to the UN.

The United Nations came into existence to vanquish Germany, as 26 nations jointly pledged in 1942 not to surrender to “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”

To vanquish Nazi Germany, rather than Germany as such, which continued to exist after Hitler did away with himself in the bunker. Germany was and is bigger than Nazism, as the US is bigger than Trumpism. (Not enough bigger, and getting less so all the time, but still bigger.)

Three-quarters of a century later, the woman who would soon become President Trump’s pick to represent the United States at the United Nations cited the D-Day landings — a cornerstone of this unwavering Allied pledge and the basis of the Nazi defeat on the Western Front — to showcase the strength of German-American relations.

“When you talk about Germany, we have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany,” Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said in June. She added: “Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government.”

Remember D-Day? When the US and Germany joined hands to defeat the villainous Norwegians? We were tight then, man.

The D-Day comment raised eyebrows over the summer, when some suggested it demonstrated a lack of historical understanding from the former “Fox & Friends” presenter who gained prominence on television during the Monica Lewinsky scandal but has no diplomatic experience.

No no, she has more historical understanding than anyone else, so much more that she sees a deeply hidden friendship beneath the superficial appearances of, say, the Battle of the Bulge, not to mention Auschwitz.

She also has a wealth of experience as a talking head on Fox and Friends.

She has broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun, as documented extensively by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

In 2014, she warned that immigrant children arriving in the United States were bringing “disease.” In 2015, she attackedthe Environmental Protection Agency by suggesting that a grant to college students working on a device allowing hotels to track water usage by guests was a “Big Brother move.”

…

Nauert has referred to immigrants in the United States without status seeking to obtain an education as “illegals.” She has spread conspiracies about the 2012 Benghazi attacks.

Couldn’t they have found someone even more qualified though? One of the real housewives of Palm Springs or Atlantic City or Las Vegas?

It’s all so…Hitleresque. Emily Badger in the Times:

In much of Wisconsin, “Madison and Milwaukee” are code words (to some, dog whistles) for the parts of the state that are nonwhite, elite, different: The cities are where people don’t have to work hard with their hands, because they’re collecting welfare or public-sector paychecks.

Da big city, where all the Jews are.

That stereotype updates a very old idea in American politics, one pervading Wisconsin’s bitter Statehouse fights today and increasingly those in other states: Urban voters are an exception. If you discount them, you get a truer picture of the politics — and the will of voters — in a state.

Thomas Jefferson believed as much — “the mobs of great cities add just so much to support of pure government,” he wrote, “as sores do to the strength of the human body.”

Wisconsin Republicans amplified that idea this week, arguing that the legislature is the more representative branch of government, and then voting to limit the power of the incoming Democratic governor. The legislature speaks for the people in all corners of the state, they seemed to be saying, and statewide offices like governor merely reflect the will of those urban mobs.

We have the same split here in Washington state: east of the mountains is where the real people are and over here on the west side it’s all granola-munching libbruls.

Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Statehouse, drew this distinction even more explicitly after the midterm election.

“If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority,” he said. “We would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature.”

Hmm, yes, and if you took California and New York state out of the US you would have far fewer cities; if you took Chicago and Detroit out, white people would be a bigger majority; if you took every city over 100,000 people out probably everyone left would believe in god. Or something. But we don’t take cities out, because guess what, cities are not frivolous extras or plots against pale people, they’re places where a lot of useful activity happens, alongside a lot of nonsense but there is nonsense everywhere.

Republican gerrymandering in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina have pushed the limits of how much the urban voter can be devalued.

In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates for the State Assembly won 54 percent of the vote statewide. But they will hold only 36 of 99 seats. They picked up just one more seat than in the current Assembly, a result of a gerrymander drawn so well that it protected nearly every Republican seat in a Democratic wave election.

That’s a jaw-dropping set of numbers: 54% of the vote but 36 of 99 seats. That is some heavy-duty cheating the Republicans did. And they did it so well it will never be undone, apparently.

Now there’s a shock – men wildly underestimate how much women are harassed. You don’t say!

The survey was carried out after the #MeToo campaign – first ignited by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexually abusive behaviour towards female actors – spread worldwide with women sharing their experiences online.

In Denmark, where a 2012 survey found 80% of women had experienced some form of sexual harassment since the age of 15, the average answer among men was 31%.

In the Netherlands – where a prominent conductor was recently fired due to allegations of sexual harassment – 73% of women reported being affected yet the average answer among men was 38%.

French men put the figure at 41% whereas the 2012 survey found that 75% of French women had been harassed. The survey was carried out just months after footage of Marie Laguerre being struck on a Paris street for responding to sexual harassment went viral.

France previously introduced legislation which include fines in an effort to combat sexual violence in the country.

In the US, where a 2018 poll found that 81% of women had experienced sexual harassment at some point in their lives, American men’s average answer was 44%.

Meanwhile we get a Yale philosopher – a man – expressing bewilderment that there are feminist women who are gender critical.

Central to far right movements globally is an attack on "Gender Ideology", which @mashagessen characterizes as "an imaginary Marxist movement to erase differences between men and women."

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) December 4, 2018

I don't know what's going on – why is there such heat about "Gender Ideology" suddenly such a big thing on my Twitter feed? Is it about the substance of these debates (about which I take no stand)? Or is it, I worry, something else? I just don't know.

— Jason Stanley (@jasonintrator) December 4, 2018

Let’s go back in time, back to December 1992, courtesy of the New York Times archive:

Six years after the arms-for-hostages scandal began to cast a shadow that would darken two Administrations, President Bush today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan’s Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger’s private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush’s endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.

So he lied to Congress, so what. Wipe it all away!

In one remaining facet of the inquiry, the independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush. Mr. Walsh has characterized the President’s failure to turn over the diary until now as misconduct.

Decapitated Walsh Efforts

But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh’s effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush’s decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday.

Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President’s action, charging that ‘the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.’

Mr. Walsh directed his heaviest fire at Mr. Bush over the pardon of Mr. Weinberger, whose trial would have given the prosecutor a last chance to explore the role in the affair of senior Reagan officials, including Mr. Bush’s actions as Vice President.

But sainted Bush made that impossible. Respect for the rule of law? I guess that’s only for Democrats, eh?

Mr. Walsh hinted that Mr. Bush’s pardon of Mr. Weinberger and the President’s own role in the affair could be related. For the first time, he charged that Mr. Weinberger’s notes about the secret decision to sell arms to Iran, a central piece of evidence in the case against the former Pentagon chief, included ‘evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.’

The prosecutor charged that Mr. Weinberger’s efforts to hide his notes may have ‘forestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan’ and formed part of a pattern of ‘deception and obstruction.’ On Dec. 11, Mr. Walsh said he discovered ‘misconduct’ in Mr. Bush’s failure to turn over what the prosecutor said were the President’s own ‘highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents.’

The notes, in the form of a campaign diary that Mr. Bush compiled after the elections in November 1986, are in the process of being turned over to Mr. Walsh, who said, ‘In light of President Bush’s own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations.’

Filthy, isn’t it. We hear a lot about Watergate in discussions of the Russia investigation, but Iran-Contra not so much. Maybe that will change.

Isn’t it interesting how it’s always Republicans? Watergate, Iran-Contra, Russia-WikiLeaks-sanctions?

In an interview on the ‘McNeil-Lehrer Newshour’ tonight, Mr. Walsh said for the first time that Mr. Bush was a subject of his investigation. The term ‘subject,’ as it has been used by Mr. Walsh’s prosecutors, is broadly defined as someone involved in events under scrutiny, but who falls short of being a target, or a person likely to be charged with a crime. In the inquiry into the entire Iran-contra affair, a number of Government officials have been identified as subjects who were never charged with wrongdoing.

Trump is a subject of the Mueller investigation.

The prosecutor said he would take appropriate action in Mr. Bush’s case, implying he might contemplate future legal action against the President for withholding relevant documents. But prosecutors have said in the past that charging a President or former President with wrongdoing would be highly unlikely without overwhelming evidence of a serious crime.

C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel, said today that Mr. Bush had voluntarily supplied the disputed material to Mr. Walsh, asserting that the notes contained no new information about the affair. Mr. Gray said Mr. Bush wanted make the notes public, but did not say when.

President-elect Bill Clinton, at a news conference in Little Rock, Ark., to announce his remaining Cabinet selections, said he wanted to learn more about the pardons, adding, ‘I am concerned by any action that sends a signal that if you work for the Government, you’re beyond the law, or that not telling the truth to Congress under oath is somehow less serious than not telling the truth to some other body under oath.’

But then along came the blue dress.

But not since President Gerald R. Ford granted clemency to former President Richard M. Nixon for possible crimes in Watergate has a Presidential pardon so pointedly raised the issue of whether the President was trying to shield officials for political purposes. Mr. Walsh invoked Watergate tonight in an interview on the ABC News program ‘Nightline,’ likening today’s pardons to President Richard M. Nixon’s dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in 1973. Mr. Walsh said Mr. Bush had ‘succeeded in a sort of Saturday Night Massacre.’

Democratic lawmakers assailed the decision. Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the Democratic leader, called the action a mistake. ‘It is not as the President stated today a matter of criminalizing policy differences,’ he said. ‘If members of the executive branch lie to the Congress, obstruct justice and otherwise break the law, how can policy differences be fairly and legally resolved in a democracy.’

The main supporters of the pardon were Vice President Quayle, the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, and Mr. Gray, one senior Administration official said today. The decision, discussed in private, seemed to coalesce in the last three weeks although Mr. Bush was said to believe that Mr. Weinberger had been unfairly charged ever since the former Reagan Cabinet officer was first indicted in June.

Throughout the deliberations, Mr. Bush consulted with Attorney General William P. Barr and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, who had sat on a Presidential review panel that examined the affair in early 1987.

*cough*

News outlets are saying Barr is Trump’s current favorite for Attorney General.

Mull on that.

This seems skeevy enough for anyone’s taste.

Lobbyists representing the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016 — paying for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months, according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the time, these lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C.-area hotel rooms as part of an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington — then sent them to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed, according to veterans and organizers.

Hey, great, using military veterans to lobby for a law on behalf of Saudi fucking Arabia. While shunting money to Donald Trump.

The lobbyists spent more than $270,000 on Trump’s hotel.

Those bookings have fueled a pair of federal lawsuits alleging Trump violated the Constitution by taking improper payments from foreign governments.

During this period, records show, the average nightly rate at the hotel was $768. The lobbyists who ran the trips say they chose Trump’s hotel strictly because it offered a discount from that rate and had rooms available, not to curry favor with Trump.

“Absolutely not. It had nothing to do with that. Not one bit,” said Michael Gibson, a Maryland-based political operative who helped organize the trips.

Is that credible? No.

“It made all the sense in the world, when we found out that the Saudis had paid for it,” said Henry Garcia, a Navy veteran from San Antonio who went on three trips. He said the organizers never said anything about Saudi Arabia when they invited him.

He believed the trips were organized by other veterans, but that puzzled him, because this group spent money like no veterans group he had ever worked with. There were private hotel rooms, open bars, free dinners. Then, Garcia said, one of the organizers who had been drinking minibar champagne mentioned a Saudi prince.

“I said, ‘Oh, we were just used to give Trump money,’ ” Garcia said.

That and lobby against a law on behalf of the Saudis. Win-win.

These transactions have become ammunition for plaintiffs in two lawsuits alleging that Trump violated the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause by taking payments from foreign governments. On Tuesday, the attorneys general in Maryland and the District subpoenaed 13 Trump business entities and 18 competing businesses, largely in search of records of foreign spending at the hotel.

What’s the law the Saudis were so opposed to?

In late September [2016], Congress had overridden a veto from President Barack Obama and passed a law the Saudis vehemently opposed: the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, called JASTA. The new law, backed by the families of Sept. 11 victims, opened the door to costly litigation alleging that the Saudi government bore some blame. Of the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks, 15 were Saudi citizens.

Oh, that law.

In response, the Saudis tried something new. To battle one of America’s most revered groups — the Sept. 11 families — they recruited allies from another.

They went looking for veterans.

But they did it via a US lobbying firm and without telling the veterans what it was all about.

The lobbyist company (Quora) tells an absurd story in which for the first couple of jaunts they put the veterans up at a Westin in Crystal City, but then next time the Westin was all booked, everything was all booked, so “out of the blue” they decided to try the Trump hotel. Trump Hotel had vacancies; fabulous, do you give veterans discounts? Why yes we do, said Trump Hotel, so the deal was done and they stuck with Trump Hotel thereafter. I don’t believe a word of that. If Trump Hotel really averages $768 a night a discount that would get them close to the Westin would be one hell of a discount. Trump doesn’t give his money away, he puts it in his own pocket.

Veterans who attended these trips said a few things surprised them.

One was how good their group seemed to be at spending money.

“We’ve done hundreds of veterans events, and we’ve stayed in Holiday Inns and eaten Ritz Crackers and lemonade. And we’re staying in this hotel that costs $500 a night,” said Dan Cord, a Marine veteran. “I’d never seen anything like this. They were like, ‘That’s what’s so cool! Drink on us.’ ”

Because hey it all goes to Trump so what could be better?!

Also the lobbying was inept. It was the wrong time of year, they weren’t prepped, they were sent to talk to people like Grassley who had already made up their minds.

Another problem: In some cases, congressional staffers confronted them because they knew who was funding these trips.

Even if the veterans did not.

“We’d walk in there, and they’d go, ‘Are you the veterans that are getting bribed?’ ” Suesakul said.

Awkward.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to disbelieve reports that say the Saudis cut Jamal Khashoggi into pieces while he was still alive.

Another for-profit chain of “universities” abruptly shuts down, leaving students with big debts and no degrees.

Birmingham, Alabama-based Education Corp. of America said it was closing schools operating as Virginia College, Brightwood College, Brightwood Career Institute, Ecotech Institute and Golf Academy of America in more than 70 locations in 21 states. The company said in October that it had more than 20,000 students, although more recent documents indicate the number may be closer to 15,000.

The company, backed by investors including private equity firm Willis Stein & Partners of Chicago, is the latest in a series of for-profit colleges to close after allegations that they were loading students up with debt while not providing them with marketable skills.

Well, they’re there to make a profit. Providing students with skills is farther down the list.

Like the recently shuttered Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute chains, Education Corporation of America was overseen by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, one of the watchdog groups the federal government appoints to ensure colleges offer a quality education.

The council, known as ACICS, wrote a Tuesday letter to Reed saying it was suspending accreditation immediately at all the institutions, citing “rapidly deteriorating financial conditions,” a failure to make required payments to the council and a wide variety of academic concerns.

ACICS was shut down by the Obama administration over allegations of lax oversight, but was later reinstated on Nov. 21 by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who found it was “substantially in compliance” with federal standards.

Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, urged DeVos to rethink her decision on ACICS after the Wednesday closure.

“We have repeatedly warned about the risks low-quality, for-profit education companies and irresponsible accreditors pose to students and taxpayers across the country,” Scott said in a statement. “Today’s announcement is another painful reminder of those risks.”

In many cases, students and teachers were in class when they got the news Wednesday. Melissa Zavala, who was studying to be a medical assistant at a San Antonio, Texas, campus of Brightwood, told KSAT-TV students were taken to an auditorium.

“The director was there and she was like, ‘I have bad news. The school is closing down,'” Zavala said. “Everyone was like, ‘What about our student loans? We’re almost done.'”

Zavala said campus officials couldn’t provide additional information and told them to look online for other colleges they could attend.

“They took our money, they shut the school down and that’s it for us,” Zavala said.

But hey: profit.

Meanwhile in Canada reminds us:

29 years ago on December 6th, 14 lives were taken – because they were women.
We will remember.
🌹Geneviève Bergeron, civil engineering student
🌹Hélène Colgan, mechanical engineering student
🌹Nathalie Croteau, mechanical engineering student
🌹Barbara Daigneault, mechanical engineering student
🌹Anne-Marie Edward, chemical engineering student
🌹Maud Haviernick, materials engineering student
🌹Maryse Laganière, budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
🌹Maryse Leclair, materials engineering student
🌹Anne-Marie Lemay, mechanical engineering student
🌹Sonia Pelletier, mechanical engineering student
🌹Michèle Richard, materials engineering student
🌹Annie St-Arneault, mechanical engineering student
🌹Annie Turcotte, materials engineering student
🌹Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, nursing student

In Wisconsin, the Republicans in the legislature strip power from the newly elected Democratic governor, because that’s how they do things now.

After a rancorous, sleepless night of debate, Republican lawmakers early Wednesday pushed through a sweeping set of bills that will limit the power of Wisconsin’s newly elected Democrats, including the incoming governor and attorney general.

The legislation, which Democrats vehemently opposed and protesters chanted their anger over, passed through the Republican-held State Legislature after hours of closed-door meetings and some amendments. The votes fell largely along party lines; no Democrats supported the measures.

To make it worse, the legislature shouldn’t even be Republican-held, because the Democrats got far more votes but legislative seats are carefully gerrymandered to guarantee Republican wins all over the state.

They had the gall to pretend it was about restoring “balance.”

Democrats scoffed at that explanation, noting that Republicans had seemed perfectly satisfied with the balance of power when Mr. Walker held the role.

Pure coincidence.

A thread by Rosa Freedman:

THREAD: The excellent @Womans_Place_UK have put on many meetings in the last year to discuss women’s rights, and tonight I had the great privilege of speaking at one of those meetings. We discussed the law relating to sex & to gender identity. In many ways it was uplifting to be

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

by the transactivist lobby. This week I picked up my post & received three more hard copy letters (separate to the daily emails I now receive) from staff and students at universities in the UK and beyond who are scared to express their views for fear of stigmatisation. This week

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

because of my views that a woman is defined by law as biological not psychological. I have been attacked and vilified personally and professionally on social media by a senior Professor at another University who keeps threatening me with action (legal and/or re my employer), and

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

institution that is not a leading light on women's rights). Tonight I met other academics who are being harassed in their workplace for setting out views based on specific evidence (i.e. doing their jobs). We all go to work to do our jobs — and we are pretty damn good at doing

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

up hiding behind trees because I was scared for my physical safety. I have been open about being a survivor of sexual violence, despite which young male-bodied persons have seen fit to abuse me verbally about rape or to follow me in the dark into secluded spaces. It is now 3.30am

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

Piss on her office door and inside on the floor. Threatened with rape, followed outside after dark, by men.

This is not any kind of liberation or progressive politics. This is disgusting male bullying of women.

It was 3:30 a.m…

protection regarding academic enquiry – e;g; factories, shops, schools, restaurants, hospitals, and beyond (where there are fewer / no protections in place in employment contracts and policies) — feel unable to speak up to protect women’s rights. Welcome to 2018, where people

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

Postscript: I think universities ought to consider sending communications to students & staff about appropriate behaviour. Peaceful protest is a legitimate part of freedom of expression. Harassment and abuse ought never to be tolerated. Employers have a duty of care to employees

— Rosa Freedman (@GoonerProf) December 5, 2018

It’s hateful malicious bullying, and you can’t build any kind of progressive politics on that. Harassing women is not in any way a form of talking truth to power, not least because women are not the sex that has monopolized power.

Good god. Ross Douthat wrote a thing, and it’s so jaw-dropping I should just let it speak for itself. I won’t, but I should.

He starts by pretending that the “nostalgia” for George Bush the elder requires subtle explanation when in fact it’s just settled conventional routine: we have to pretend the newly deceased president was a gem, hidden or obvious. They did it with Nixon ffs so obviously they were going to do it with Shrub 1. But the fiction gives Douthat a pretext for quoting this bilge:

Franklin Foer described “the subtext” of Bush nostalgia as a “fondness for a bygone institution known as the Establishment, hardened in the cold of New England boarding schools, acculturated by the late-night rituals of Skull and Bones, sent off to the world with a sense of noblesse oblige. For more than a century, this Establishment resided at the top of the American caste system. Now it is gone, and apparently people wish it weren’t.”

Which people, kemosabe? That’s a tiny minority of rich white males there, and I strongly doubt the rest of us wish they still had a lock on all the levers of power.

But never mind, because Douthat was just clearing his throat for the real meat of his Big Idea:

I think you can usefully combine these takes, and describe Bush nostalgia as a longing for something America used to have and doesn’t really any more — a ruling class that was widely (not universally, but more widely than today) deemed legitimate, and that inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.

Put simply, Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

In other words, we long for the return of the talentless godbothering white male.

He goes on to make the not-new point that meritocracy is not egalitarianism, but he doesn’t make it well or very coherently.

Oh gawd I’m listening to today’s Woman’s Hour, the segment about trans women in women’s sport, and it’s excruciating. It starts around 11 minutes in, with a recorded discussion between the host Jane Garvey and an academic, Beth Jones. Jones starts with burble about estrogen and testosterone and uses the word “cis” so Garvey asks her to explain it. It means people who are satisfied with or don’t question their gender, Jones says. So that would be hardly anyone then. Garvey points out that 99% of women are not trans and Jones is all “Oooooooh I wouldn’t say that, we don’t know, wibble wibble.” Garvey says at any rate the vast majority of women don’t call themselves cis; Jones says yes that’s right, most women are cis. Jones is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Around 14:30 Garvey says should we just do away with sport divided by sex? Jones says in a perfect world that would be great but it’s probably not “feasible” now…but she doesn’t say why and Garvey doesn’t ask. Why isn’t it “feasible” now, though? What’s the obstacle?

Jones says we have mixed sport already, people on weekends in parks and things play together, it works a treat. Garvey says but in professional sport surely women would be pushed out, and Jones pretends to think there is no reason to think so at all, she just can’t imagine what Garvey means. She is thick as two planks.