Tag: new york times

Traitors in the White House: What the NY Times Op-Ed Really Means

“I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

This oath was taken by the author of the editorial written in the New York Times, two weeks ago (yes, I know I’m late to the party). So what does it mean when the same person who spoke allegiance to the Constitution chooses to undermine a democratically elected President whose administration s/he serves in? What should we think about a person: who anonymously (along with others) has ‘vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses’? Who praises the unsung, unknown heroes of the West Wing who work to isolate the rest of us from the commander in chief’s poor, erratic decisions? I have a word: coward.

We don’t know who this person is, but if accounts by Bob Woodruff and Michael Wolff are to be believed, backstabbing is a pastime in the White House. Perhaps this individual is jockeying for a more favorable position and, knowing the President’s anxieties, reached out to the Times and offered an op-ed in an attempt to give confirmation and false comfort to the general public, but primarily, to push the President to cut off competitors from within his inner circle.

I am not assuaged by self congratulatory statements about the ‘steady state’ and ‘adults being in the room’. This individual described a sitting President as being amoral, anti-democratic, and as having a leadership style that is petty, adversarial and ineffective, but to Trump’s face, likely says otherwise. What would we call someone in the real world who does that?

The author describes early talk of invoking the 25th Amendment, but claims ‘no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.’ And I get it, specifically, if by ‘constitutional crisis’, they mean precipitating certain career suicide. Who wants to risk self when you can maintain the status quo (with all its horrors) and double talk the President and the public into thinking you’re on their side?

It’s clear to me that this person is quite clever and manipulative. They might think that after enough time, they will be able to reveal themselves and be considered a hero of sorts, a truth teller in a time of alternative facts, but they are not deserving of such a title. True heroism requires sacrifice, something not embodied by taking papers off a desk. Furthermore, if you have to go that far and still choose to be a silent witness, then it’s not about sticking around to preserve the democratic institutions you claim to love or the Constitution you are sworn to uphold, it’s about self preservation and maintaining party dominance.

Removing Trump from office through impeachment or the 25th Amendment requires those ‘resisting’ in the shadows to make their truth publicly known. There will be backlash and shouts of ‘traitor,’ but I believe deeply that those voices will be silenced when they see a unified front of members of both parties and houses of Congress agree that their leader is incapable. The only way to get the Never Trumpers and the MAGA crowd to wake up from their blind allegiance/hatred toward the President is through an act of courage. Courage is truth in action and people respond to truth and that’s undeniable, no matter which way you lean.

(random thought: it’s not the 25th amendment or the Mueller investigation that’s going to end Trump’s presidency, it’s the emoluments clause of the Constitution.)

Fast Acting, Slow Thinking

There’s currently a lot of brouhaha following an op-ed piece in the New York Times about Shonda Rhimes’ tough, black female characters including Viola Davis’ Annalise Keating on ABC’s new drama, How to Get Away With Murder. The negativity surrounding the article comes down two sentences (in a nearly 1,500 word piece): the opening line, “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman” and the real fire-starter,  ‘Ignoring the narrow beauty standards some African-American women are held to, Ms. Rhimes chose a performer who is older, darker-skinned and less classically beautiful than Ms. Washington, or for that matter Halle Berry…” Some have referred to the comments as ‘racist’ and ‘offensive’. I have a feeling they did that without reading the article, but focusing on incendiary tidbits fed to them through the social media machine. I found the whole piece to be flattering (to Rhimes) and truthful (re: Davis). The author, Alessandra Stanley, smartly writes how Rhimes flips the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype on its head, giving us black female characters that seethe out volcanic monologues, but somehow never come across as cliched or playing into tired archetypes; she writes and creates tough and sometimes unlikeable black women without dealing with the societal burden of promoting nice black role models because ‘there’s only so many black characters on TV’. If folks had bothered to read what was written, they would have found the writer stating it more eloquently, “Ms. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable. She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn’t break.” As for Ms. Stanley’s point about Viola Davis being “less classically beautiful” than Kerry Washington, she has a point. Let’s not pretend that Hollywood, advertising and magazines don’t have a preference for certain types of beauty that skews lighter and thinner; it is these outlets that have framed our understanding of classic beauty, as well as Ms. Stanley’s. A couple of years ago, when asked why The Help was her first starring role, Davis replied, “There just aren’t a lot of roles for—I mean, I’m a 46-year-old Black actress who doesn’t look like Halle Berry—and Halle Berry is having a hard time.” If Ms. Davis doesn’t have a hard time speaking and facing the truth, why do we?