Bitter Gertrude

Samantha Bee. (Source: USA Today.)

By now, you’ve heard that Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c*nt” on television for Ivanka’s unwillingness to do anything to stop her father’s administration from ripping children away from their parents at the border– a deliberate strategy the Trump Administration adopted in the past few weeks to discourage illegal immigration. As Special Advisor to the President, and as someone who has repeatedly said she “cares” about families, she seems to be the one of the few people in the nation who might be able to put a stop to this human rights violation. On the contrary, it appears Ivanka has instead openly mocked the pain of these families ripped apart by her father’s administration, posting a picture of herself cuddling with her safe, white child while the rest of the nation demands that she do something about the children made unsafe by her father. At best, the picture is remarkably tone deaf.

Valerie Jarrett. (Source: Time Magazine)

A few days prior to Bee’s statement, Roseanne Barr, who has had a long history of racist, transphobic, and Islamophobic public statements, tweeted out that Valerie Jarret, former advisor to President Obama, was a “Muslim ape.” Although this was not the first time she called a Black woman an “ape” on twitter, this came in the midst of Barr’s career revival with a rebooted series that acted primarily as an apologia for her Trump support. Instead of the racism, transphobia, and Islamophobia that underpinned Roseanne’s actual Trump support, the character Roseanne was allowed to claim in all seriousness that she was motivated by the fact that “he talked about jobs.” After this latest racial slur, Barr’s show was cancelled, she was dropped by her agent, and it appears that her career will need to veer into right wing media if it is to survive at all.

Those on the Right are howling with indignation, pretending that Samantha Bee should be punished in exactly the same way Roseanne was. In a stunning, unconstitutional abuse of power, the White House itself has demanded that Bee’s parent company “must demonstrate” that “explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned.” 

We have two different problems here.

One, Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c*nt” is not the same as Roseanne calling Valerie Jarret a Muslim ape. One white woman calling another white woman a nasty name describing her behavior is not the same as a white person using a dehumanizing racial slur against a Black person AND using “Muslim” as a pejorative because the sociocultural power dynamic is different.

When a white woman calls another white woman a nasty word, she’s just being mean.
When a white woman uses a centuries-old racial slur that dehumanizes Black people, whom white people have oppressed for centuries, knowing full well that that very same type of dehumanization– “they are no better than apes”—has been used for generations as justification for their enslavement, brutalization, murder, and oppression, that is MUCH WORSE. When the same white woman adds to that dehumanizing racial slur the idea that we must hate and fear Americans who belong to one certain religion, that that religion is evil and bad and those people should be shunned, mocked, and reviled, that is EVEN WORSE. It is, in fact, horrific.

Samantha Bee’s middle school taunt is not in the same league as a white woman using a racial slur that was used to justify slavery.

Conservatives think liberals protect other liberals no matter what because that’s how they are with each other. Liberals instead turn on our own so predictably Republicans use it as a political strategy. If Samantha Bee had said what Roseanne tweeted, Bee’s career would be over.

But we all know they are not the same, just as Michelle Wolf’s comment that Sarah Huckabee Sanders uses the ashes of facts as eye shadow is nothing remotely like a racial slur. When conservatives send me emails calling me a “c*nt” for blog posts like this one, it is far less upsetting than when conservatives send me emails calling me a “filthy Jew.” “C*nt” is about behavior. “Filthy Jew” is about who I am intrinsically, and knowingly references centuries-long antisemitic persecution.

Now multiply “Filthy Jew” by 100,000,000 and you are starting to get somewhere near the onramp to the interstate to get to the airport that will take you within 500 miles of the horrific racism of “ape.” I would rather have 1000 conservatives call me a “c*nt” (and I might be close to that number by now) than ONE PERSON call any Black person on earth, even one I dislike (looking at you, Clarence Thomas) an “ape.”

The outrage about Bee’s use of the word “c*nt” is, of course, nonsense and best ignored. What makes this newsworthy is the second, much larger problem: the White House itself has violated the Constitution—again—to demand that Bee “must” be punished for a word she used to describe an administration official.

THE WHITE HOUSE DEMANDED A JOURNALIST FACE CONSEQUENCES FOR CRITICIZING AN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL.

And conservatives applaud it.

This isn’t a violation of some obscure emolument clause. This is an OPEN violation of the first amendment.

You know why no one believes conservatives when they say they need guns outside of a “well-regulated militia” so they can use them against the potential tyranny of the government? Because that tyranny is happening, right now, and they applaud it. You know why no one believes conservatives when they say that they “love the constitution” more than liberals do? Because they’re thrilled to see its most cherished principles violated if it might have even a slight chance of hurting “libtards.”

Obviously armed rebellion is not the solution to the Trump Administration’s (many) constitutional violations. The solution is in Congress (in the form of impeachment proceedings), in the court of public opinion, and at the ballot box. We must use the tools of democracy to fight its enemies. When the White House itself demands that a journalist be punished for using profanity while criticizing a member of its administration, we’re in a fight for the most basic principles this nation holds dear. There are two sides here, and two sides only: The side fighting for democracy and the US Constitution, and the side defending the Trump Administration.