Quentin Tarentino explained what rape is and what it isn’t.

That Tarantino’s apologia is disingenuous in the era of #MeToo could come as a surprise if you’re unfamiliar with the director’s love of depicting women having the shit kicked out of them on camera or if you’re unfamiliar with interviews he’s done in the past. Like, for example, this 2003 Howard Stern interview submitted to us by a reader in which he adamantly defends Roman Polanski’s sexual assault of a 13-year-old in 1977.

Asked by Stern why Hollywood embraces “this mad man, this director who raped a 13-year-old,” Tarantino replied:

“He didn’t rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape…he had sex with a minor. That’s not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down—it’s like one of the most violent crimes in the world. You can’t throw the word rape around. It’s like throwing the word ‘racist’ around. It doesn’t apply to everything people use it for.”

Fair point, very fair point. Polanski didn’t rape the 13-year-old, he simply took advantage of the fact that she was very young and her parents weren’t in the room with them.

Reminded by Robin Quivers that Polanski’s victim—who had been plied with quaaludes and alcohol before her assault—did not want to have sex with Polanski, Tarantino became riled up.

Tarantino: No, that was not the case AT ALL. She wanted to have it and dated the guy and—

Quivers: She was 13!

Tarantino: And by the way, we’re talking about America’s morals, not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.

Stern: Wait a minute. If you have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you’re a grown man, you know that that’s wrong.

Quivers: …giving her booze and pills…

Tarantino: Look, she was down with this.

Yeah. She was a 13-year-old hoor and Polanski did nothing wrong!

Oh, oops, it turns out that the teacher who was “pleasantly surprised” by the extra $1.50 a week…

…wasn’t.

So uh, @CBSNews tracked down the secretary who got the $1.50 @SpeakerRyan was so excited about and she doesn't seem super thrilled. pic.twitter.com/qZsIyJol07

— Tim Hogan (@timjhogan) February 5, 2018

Now Trump is saying it’s “treason” to refrain from applauding when he speaks.

President Trump on Monday accused Democrats who did not clap during his State of the Union address of being un-American and even treasonous. His remarks came in a rambling, discursive speech at a factory in Ohio, during which he celebrated his revival of the American economy as the stock market plummeted by more than 1,000 points.

“Can we call that treason?” Mr. Trump said of the stone-faced reaction of Democrats to his speech. “Why not? I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much.”

Stupid pile of hamburger and polyester. Despising Donald Trump is not at all the same thing as not loving our country. On the contrary, I think for most of us it’s because we value the good parts of our country (while we long to see the back of the bad parts, such as Donald Trump) that we despise The Orange Pretender so much.

But even more than that – how fucking dare he call it “treason” to choose not to applaud him. He could call it bad manners at a State of the Union if he liked (but then we could all point out his own instances of bad manners, which would clog all the communication pipes for a decade), but not treason. He doesn’t get to pretend that he and the country are one and the same, and he doesn’t get to pretend that worship of him is mandatory. He’d put us all in camps if he could but he can’t. Vile toad.

And by the way what about his “love” for our country? If he loved it would he blot its record the way he is? I think not.

Mr. Trump was speaking during a visit to a company near Cincinnati that makes pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders. The company, Sheffer Corporation, awarded each of its 126 employees a one-time bonus of $1,000 after the passage of the tax cut, and the White House clearly hoped to use it to drive home the message of economic health in last week’s State of the Union speech.

“Your paychecks are going way up,” a beaming president said to this more friendly audience. “Your taxes are going way down.”

Yeah right, factory workers’ paychecks are going “way up” because of the Republicans’ tax cut. It might be as much as 75 cents a week for the skilled workers.

As Mr. Trump patted himself on the back for the tax cut, he went after the Democrats for opposing the $1.5 trillion legislation. He delivered a lengthy digression on the State of the Union address, noting that Democrats sat on their hands as he ticked off one measure of success for the country after another.

“It got to a point where I really didn’t even want to look up too much during the speech over to that side because honestly, it was bad energy,” Mr. Trump said.

Poor guy. He’s always so full of positive energy for everyone around him and for all of us, yet what does he get in return? Stony faces and no applause. It breaks the heart.

“Even on positive news, really positive news like that, they were like death and un-American,” he said, repeating, “Un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah, I guess, why not.”

That “somebody” was Donald Trump, but whatevs.

Glosswitch at the New Statesman takes issue with the way “genius” male movie-makers get a pass for obvious misogyny in their movies because Genius. Are they even Genius? she asks.

One of the many ways in which abusive men get away with terrible things is because we’re supposed to respect their genius (and assume that misogyny is somehow a necessary part of it). Right now we’re calling time on the misogyny, but why can’t we call time on the perception of genius too?

…

Men who don’t like women – and there are an awful lot of them – frequently make art that a male-dominated establishment considers to be amazing, but which a high proportion of women consider to be crap. You didn’t know this? That’s because up till now we haven’t said.

Why haven’t we said? Partly because of the hipster aura around guys like Tarentino.

Just as the “best” postmodern theory tends to be appallingly written in order to fool us that the difficulty is in the ideas, the nihilism and misogyny of the “best” male directors is so glaringly obvious we end up assuming we’ve missed the hidden message (so we use “hyper-reality” as a posh way of describing unimaginative exaggeration). The real creativity isn’t in Manhattan or Inglourious Basterds; it’s in the imaginative contortions critics have gone through to make these films seem more than the sum of their parts.

[jumps up waving hand] I’ve considered Manhattan misogynist all along – misogynist, and bad, and self-admiring.

There’s nothing unsophisticated in recognising that an industry mired in sexism will produce art that is tainted by sexist beliefs. There’s nothing childish or bourgeois about calling time on representations of the human condition which fail to accommodate half the human race. For too long genius has been defined as male, far removed from such petty concerns as granting consideration to the female gaze. This isn’t just unfair; it’s dull.

Time to say good-bye to hipster misogyny.

Princess Ivanka and Marco Rubio have an awesome new plan for Princess Ivanka’s pet project of family leave. It’s so genius. What you do is, you tell people to pay for it out of their savings, and then they can have it! The CEO and the WalMart employee alike can have paid leave if they pay for it with their own money! It only costs about $1.50 a week, right? And people are getting these huge raises of $1.50 a week thanks to the tax cut – except for CEOs and similar who are getting like $10,000 a week – so it all works perfectly.

Marco Rubio is starting to strategize with Ivanka Trump to win over skeptical Republicans on a traditionally Democratic issue: paid family leave.

Capitalizing on President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the idea in his State of the Union address, Rubio is trying to marshal Republicans behind a plan that would neither impose a mandate on employers nor raise taxes to pay for it — two hurdles that have long halted the GOP from embracing paid family leave.

And they finally hit on it! Make the people who want the leave pay for it! And go right on calling it “paid family leave” at the same time!

Rubio has barely started crafting a paid leave bill, much less a broader legislative strategy. But he envisions an idea that has recently gained traction in conservative circles: allowing people to draw Social Security benefits when they want to take time off for a new baby or other family-related matters, and then delay their checks when they hit retirement age.

For instance, a person who would begin receiving full benefits when he or she turns 67 years old but wants to take six weeks of paid leave wouldn’t draw Social Security checks until six weeks after his or her 67th birthday.

It’s practically FDR-level progressive, yeah?

“That’s a new idea for Republicans who still identify it as something that comes out of the left,” Rubio said of paid family leave. “Forcing companies to provide it is perhaps an idea that finds its genesis on the left, but the notion that pregnancy should not be a bankruptcy-eliciting event is one that I think all Americans should be supportive.”

I don’t know, it seems kind of scary-lefty for Republicans to say use your own savings to keep from going bankrupt when a baby turns up. Shouldn’t people be made to give half of the money to the nearest CEO to balance things out?

Rubio and Ivanka Trump have recently exchanged emails about paid family leave. And in his Senate office in late January, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also privately pitched the concept to the president’s daughter, who gave it a warm reception, according to one person familiar with the meeting.

Yaaaaay paid family leave for all, paid out of their own Social Security! Utopia at last!

Rubio argues the overall plan would benefit those with lower incomes, since they’re less likely to work for companies that proactively offer paid family leave.

Of course, they also won’t have much in their Social Security accounts, because it’s based on income, but oh well – they should have thought of that before they decided to be low income.

Speaking of the difference between saying insults and violence are the same thing and saying they are related…Eve Wiseman at the Guardian starts a piece on Jo Brand with that subject:

It was early in November and, responding to a headline about an MP taking his personal trainer to the cinema, Ian Hislop had chuckled: “Some of this is not ‘high-level’ crime, is it?” But Jo Brand, hosting, didn’t smile. The temperature changed quite suddenly. “If I can just say,” she began, “as the only representative of the female gender here today – I know it’s not high-level, but it doesn’t have to be ‘high-level’ for women to feel under siege in somewhere like the House of Commons. Actually, for women, if you’re constantly being harassed, even in a small way, that builds up, and that wears you down.” There was a pause. Then the audience started cheering.

See how that works? She doesn’t say they’re the same, and she says that doesn’t mean they don’t both matter. Too bad Katie Roiphe can’t see that not very obscure point.

Today, Brand, a woman who refuses to be described as a national treasure, preferring “national disgrace”, says she didn’t plan to say a word. “I’m a real hectorer usually – it was lucky I didn’t shout, because otherwise it wouldn’t have taken the wind out of everyone’s sails in the same way. It had an impact.” She says this as if it was a surprise but, of course, Brand, now 60, has been making an impact for decades, first with her monotone standup about men and weight (“I read that book Fat Is A Feminist Issue, got a bit desperate halfway through and ate it”) and today for her dry contributions to primetime TV where, as well presenting the sister programme to The Great British Bake Off, she is often the lone woman on a panel of men.

I hadn’t heard of her before. Clearly a big mistake.

One of Brand’s small pleasures is an hour on Mumsnet. Partly because of the usernames. “My favourite is ‘EatShitDerek’. I’m dying to know the story behind that one.” Partly because she’s a mother, of two teenage girls. And partly because she feels it’s a good reflection of people’s attitudes to controversial topics. “I understand the generational gap in feminist thinking, but the problem comes when the conversations are shut down – they need to be discussed. As a nurse, for instance, I learned that five times as many black people were diagnosed as schizophrenic than white people, and I wanted to know why. You can’t explore difficult questions without offending some people. So I had to admit I was coming from a point of ignorance, and then start a conversation.”

She worries about “no-platforming”.

“If older feminists’ opinions are suppressed, where do we go next? They did a lot of work to move women forward, they can’t be forgotten. But the anger that appears when people do try to talk – even around something as gentle as Caroline Criado-Perez’s plan to put a woman on the £10 note. She got death and rape threats. Who are these people threatening her, and why are they so angry?”

One evening, she was compering an awards ceremony, and a single advertising agency was winning every prize. When they inevitably won the final award, Brand rolled her eyes into the microphone, and tutted: “Not them again.” The crowd laughed, but when the agency’s CEO arrived on stage to receive his trophy, he whispered in her ear: “I always knew you weren’t funny, but I never realised what a cunt you were.”

“He did it to humiliate me, and it worked – I felt like I was shrinking. But then I took the microphone back and told the audience what he’d said. And I’d never heard 1,500 people gasp before. These bullies are lurking around every corner, but it’s worse when they’re anonymous online – at least in print you know where it’s coming from.”

Huh. What was that again about how “cunt” is not a misogynist insult in the UK? The CEO doesn’t seem to see it that way, nor does Jo Brand, nor does that audience of 1500 people.

Indonesia is often touted as that rare thing, a somewhat/comparatively liberal majority-Muslim state. To put it another way it’s touted as being not as bad as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Bangladesh or need I go on. But that’s one hell of a low bar.

Now it’s thinking of making all sex outside of marriage a crime.

Indonesia’s parliament is drafting proposed revisions to the national criminal code that could ban all consensual sex outside marriage, sparking alarm among activists who it would breach basic rights and could be misused to target the LGBT community.

The parliamentary commission drawing up recommendations to change the Dutch colonial-era criminal code has still to finalize its proposals.

But a draft, seen by Reuters on Monday, included measures to criminalize extramarital sex, same-sex relations, and co-habitation, all of which were previously unregulated by law.

Not very liberal, is it. Why should a government even care how citizens arrange their sex lives?

Last month, the Constitutional Court narrowly voted to strike down a similar petition filed by the Family Love Alliance, one of the conservative groups behind the move to push legislation through parliament.

“The truth is the majority of religions in Indonesia hold the same values, so…(the revisions) are representative of the majority and of all cultures in Indonesia,” said Euis Sunarti, a member of the Family Love Alliance, which likens itself to conservative evangelical Christian groups in the United States.

It doesn’t matter what kind of theocracy it is, as long as it is a theocracy.

Junimart Girsang, a member of parliament from the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Stuggle (PDIP), said same-sex relations could not be accepted in the country.

“In legal terms, religious terms and ethical terms, we cannot have that in our country,” Girsang, a member of the parliamentary commission, said.

Few Indonesian politicians have voiced support for LGBT rights for fear of alienating a largely conservative voter base ahead of legislative and presidential elections next year.

Not all that liberal then, it seems.

I saw this tweet before I saw the CNN story and I thought it had to be a parody, despite the blue check.

I mean come on. Even Paul Ryan can’t be so clueless that he thinks $1.50 a week is a meaningful pay increase. $1.50 won’t get you a bus ride, or a half gallon of milk, or a pair of socks. You could probably get an apple with $1.50, or a couple of carrots, or a small tub of Greek yogurt. How can Paul Ryan possibly think anyone would be “pleasantly surprised” to have an additional $1.50 a week? It’s meaningless. $1.50 an hour would be a small raise; a week is just nothing.

And yet – it really was his very own tweet.

House Speaker Paul Ryan deleted a tweet Saturday touting the GOP tax overhaul after critics called him out for appearing out of touch with the reality of low-income individuals’ financial situations.

The tweet shared the story of a secretary who, according to a report by the Associated Press, was “pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week.”

“A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year,” Ryan tweeted with a link to the full article.

A basic Costco membership costs $60 a year.

And 52 times 1.5 is 78 so wuhay she comes out way ahead – 18 whole spare dollars to buy socks with.

Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and Republicans don’t want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to corporate America and the top 1% at your expense.

He also doesn’t want you to know he got $500.000.00 from the Koch family. pic.twitter.com/ENXxASfAMP

— Nancy Pelosi (@TeamPelosi) February 3, 2018

As a thank you for passing a $1 trillion corporate tax cut, Paul Ryan received $500,000 in campaign contributions from the Koch brothers, which would probably cover the cost of buying a Costco. https://t.co/piiWqzOEGo

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) February 3, 2018

A whole six dollars more every month. Thank god for Republicans.

Another thought about the Trump versus the FBI melodrama:

Mr. Trump’s current campaign threatens the autonomy of the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, which was seared into the public consciousness after Watergate, according to veterans of the legal system. “Starting with Jimmy Carter, every president has embraced norms that preserve the independence of the D.O.J., law enforcement and intelligence matters from the White House,” Mr. Goldsmith said. “What is happening now is a violation of post-Watergate norms.”

What that passage doesn’t quite make clear is what Watergate has to do with it. Watergate made it eye-scorchingly clear how crucial it is to have federal law enforcement be independent of the president, so that he doesn’t get away with committing crimes while in office. Trump acts out every day the very reason he needs to stop acting out what he acts out every day – his megalomaniacal belief that the Justice Department is his Justice Department and has to do whatever he tells it to do. The independence of the DoJ is a bulwark against authoritarian government…even though it can be authoritarian itself, because nothing is simple. Trump and the Republicans are systematically breaking down that bulwark. This is dangerous, and a constitutional crisis.

David Strauss, a University of Chicago law professor, said Mr. Trump’s accusations were not mere political rhetoric, but messages with consequences. “It’s got to undermine public confidence in the F.B.I. to a certain degree. And it’s got to undermine morale at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to an even greater degree,” he said.

“We have a president who seems to have no understanding of the professional ethos of the Justice Department, who has no understanding how these people think about their jobs,” he added.

Quite. That’s what I was saying about merit and skills and Trump the empty balloon.

Especially upsetting, some former officials said, is how Mr. Trump has publicly taunted specific individuals — a top F.B.I. official, an F.B.I. lawyer and an F.B.I. supervisor.

“It’s one thing for the president to criticize political appointees — although it is quite odd for him to criticize his own political appointees,” said Alan Rozenshtein, a lawyer who left the Justice Department’s national security division in April and now teaches at the University of Minnesota law school. But to attack career employees at the F.B.I. who are barred by regulations from publicly responding, he said, “that’s really bad.”

Some agents are leaving as a result. Josh Campbell, who spent a decade at the F.B.I. and worked directly for Mr. Comey at one time, wrote in The Times on Saturday that he was resigning so that he could speak out. “These political attacks on the bureau must stop,” he wrote. “If those critics of the agency persuade the public that the F.B.I. cannot be trusted, they will also have succeeded in making our nation less safe.”

One F.B.I. supervisor in a field office said public shaming of his colleagues had wiped out any desire he had to work at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington. “I’d rather chew glass,” he said.

MAGA.