Tag: Cyberbullying

TRUMP’S TWITTER FIREWORKS: HOW LOW CAN HE GO?

To nobody’s surprise, Donald Trump’s first shot at presiding over an extended Independence Day celebration has been singularly unique. Other presidents have used the occasion to wax eloquent about American exceptionalism, the dignity of freedom and the inherent goodness of democracy. The Donald dispensed with such trivialities in order to address one of the core issues of our times: Mika’s bleeding facelift.

It’s been a bombs-bursting-in-hot-air kind of holiday weekend. One minute, Trump was calling MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and claiming she was once “bleeding badly from a facelift”. Then he took on her co-host and fiancé, Joe Scarborough, tagging him with the moniker “Psycho Joe,” and alleging that he once begged the president to have a National Enquirer story on the couple’s then-unannounced romance killed. As the weekend progressed, he sent out a doctored video that purported to show himself assaulting a CNN broadcaster. Then he went before a faith rally at the Kennedy Center to assert his superiority over the reporters who cover him. Falling far short of John Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you . . .”, Trump offered this prosaic little ditty about the news media: “I’m President and they’re not.”

Politicians of every stripe weighed in quickly. Even Republicans were critical of the president’s unpresidential behavior. House Speaker Paul Ryan, specifically addressing Trump’s comments about the MSNBC hosts, said, “Obviously, I don’t see that as an appropriate comment.” Republican Sen. Ben Sasse had this message for the president: “Please just stop. This isn’t normal and it’s beneath the dignity of your office.” His colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham offered this: “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.”

Anyone who has ever dealt with a deeply troubled family member – an abuser, addict or even someone traveling through the pain of dementia – will recognize what we are going through right now in our broader American family. Normalcy is constantly changing, expanding to include behaviors once thought abhorrent or unimaginable. Over time, they become routine through the process of repetition and escalation. It’s exhausting to constantly react to bizarre, out-of-control behavior. You do it in the beginning, but it gradually becomes more common; not more acceptable, just more known and, to some extent, anticipated. Yet, every so often, no matter how accustomed we’ve grown to this devolving normalcy, a new version of the grievous conduct presents itself, nudging us, once again, to ask, “What on earth has our life come to, and what can we do about it?”

Our reaction to the president’s holiday weekend binge of verbal abuse and indecency is not a result of rational, linear processing. It’s not that he hit a new low; he has said and done much worse. But every once in a while in this deeply abnormal environment we find ourselves in, Trump’s maniacal behavior strikes a new responsive chord, reminding us that we can never, under any circumstance, accept this conduct as normal. No matter how used to it we have become. And that’s a good thing, because it lifts us out of the numbness that repetitive acts of abject abnormality tend to create.

One of the more telling moments in this latest episode came when Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked by reporters for a reaction to the Mika/Morning Joe flap. Now, contemplate this situation. White House spokespeople over the years have been forced to account for a lot of presidential behavior, from Watergate to Iran-Contra, from Monica Lewinsky to the Iraq War. Now comes a question never before proffered to a president’s press rep: deeply personal and hurtful remarks about two television personalities shared with 33 million Twitter followers. Here is how Sanders responded: “The American people elected a fighter. They knew what they were getting when they voted for Donald Trump.”

It may have been the most straightforward, honest response ever issued by the Trump press office. Buyer beware, indeed. We knew Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, just because he could. We knew he was mean, that he delighted in calling women “fat pigs”, and body shaming Miss Universe contestants. We knew he encouraged violence at his campaign rallies. We knew he said vile, hateful things about blacks, Mexicans, Muslims and anybody who got in his way. Shame on us for electing him.

But think about this for a minute. When the person in charge of promoting the president’s image, of presenting him in the best possible light, reaches for the you-knew-what-you-were-getting into-when-you-voted-for-him defense, rock bottom is not too far away. It’s a creepy guy line from way back. Ask any marriage counselor or family court judge. As a reporter in the 1970s, I covered the opening of a new shelter for battered women. There was a sign on the wall that told this story: “A snake was hit by a car. A woman picks him up, feeds him, and gets him to a full state of health. But then he bites her, injecting her with his deadly poison. On her death bed, she asked, ‘After all I did why me?’ The snake responds, ‘You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.’”

The fact that we allowed this snake to be elected and inaugurated as our president, will not take away the venomous sting he is inflicting on the psyche and soul of this nation. And it won’t take away his culpability. In an act of patriotism for the country we love, we must be vigilant for every rattle and snakebite to come. As disheartening and unsettling as that may be, it is an opportunity to strengthen the resistance and to remind people that meanness, cruelty, obstinance and solipsism are not building blocks for America’s greatness.

A MURDER ON FACEBOOK CASTS LIGHT ON TECHNOLOGY’S DARK SIDE

“Facebook Murder” blared from the headlines a few days back. I took it as an extreme approach to unfriending and was all set to delete my sarcastic political memes. Figured my life depended on it. Turns out this was far more serious than un-liking a post. A guy in Cleveland actually filmed himself murdering a man, a random victim, and quickly uploaded the video to Facebook. The murderer killed himself a few days later, apparently off camera.

Although we seem to be building an immunity to shock and dismay, the reaction to this murder broadcast was close to apoplectic. “No More Snuff Videos on Facebook,” demanded the Boston Globe. “Facebook Helps Violence Go Viral,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “What Could be Worse than Murder on Facebook?” asked Inc.com. Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post media columnist, said this of the episode: “Facebook’s existential crisis arrived with a vengeance this week.”

Really? So this is where we draw the line? This is where Facebook turns evil, when a guy kills somebody in cold blood and turns it into social media content? Death and violence are no strangers to Facebook. Earlier this year, a two-year-old boy’s death was streamed live there. He’d been riding in a car with his aunt and her boyfriend when a driver cut them off, left his vehicle and started shooting. The aunt filmed it for Facebook Live. Four teenagers filmed themselves on the same platform while torturing a mentally disabled man. Just last month, several men live streamed their sexual assault of a teenage girl while dozens watched on Facebook.

None of those cases provoked the wrath that followed Steve Stephens’ Easter Sunday murder of Robert Goodwin Sr., his handpicked snuff film victim. Rape, torture and a dead child fly under the radar, but this first made-for-Facebook murder was apparently a step too far over the line of outrage. Facebook is sympathetic and insists it moves as quickly as it can to delete offending content when users complain, but that the process can take hours. Amazingly, however, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a plan. It is called Artificial Intelligence. He says it will take many years to fully develop, but he envisions software sophisticated enough to distinguish between acceptable and deplorable content. Imagine that: an AI program to tell the difference between right and wrong, between a cute kitty video and a murder in progress.

Remember the days when technology was cool because it gave us more control over our lives? Think of that first time you sat smugly on the couch and changed the channel with the push of a remote button. If you weren’t up for a long diatribe on the wonders of supply side economics from your Republican brother-in-law, you could let the answering machine deal with him. And if you didn’t have the slightest idea what supply side economics was all about, along came Google. The technology was there to serve us. It was, in a sense, an extension of ourselves. We retained control.

That’s no longer the case. We now have social media networks so large and complicated that the only way they can be stopped from publishing vile, offensive content is to create a whole new layer of technology through Artificial Intelligence. When was it, exactly, that we, as a people, ceded control to technology? More importantly, how do we get it back?

This is about a lot more than one deranged man staging a murder on Facebook. A huge fact of our new technological life is that people are being constantly hurt and traumatized over social media with seemingly no remedy in sight, save a promise of AI and not-yet-invented software. Hundreds of kids kill themselves every year after being bombarded with cyber messages telling them they are too fat, or ugly, or dumb, or worthless. Over and over.

A sidebar of the Facebook killer story, one that got very little attention because it represented business as usual, involved the killer’s former girlfriend. Before Stephens pulled the trigger, he demanded, at gunpoint, that his victim pronounce the woman’s name for the video production. It was Joy Lane. Although she had nothing to do with this murder, Lane was quickly persecuted by the tapping of angry fingers on thousands of keypads. The messages: “Moral: don’t date Joy Lane.” “Joy Lane deserves to feel horrible.” “He killed people because of a fat bitch.”

Twitter hashtags emerged quickly. One was #JoyLane Massacre. “No disrespect but if somebody had to die it should’ve been Joy Lane,” read one of the tweets. Over on YouTube, there was an “Original Song About Stephens Ex-Girlfriend”. Lyrics: “Hell yeah I’m sick, psychotic deranged/And it’s all over a bitch named Joy Lane.”

This kind of stuff happens all the time. It breaks people and destroys lives. It has become the new normal. Jonathan Weisman, deputy Washington editor of the New York Times, quit Twitter last year after a barrage of anti-Semitic messages. Feminist writer Jessica Valenti unplugged from all social media after receiving a rape threat against her five-year-old daughter. Until Reddit finally banned it, there was a discussion group with 150,000 subscribers called “Fat People Hate”. Users would find pictures of overweight people, mostly women, attach mean captions and post them on the target’s Facebook Page.

Other than a complete social media withdrawal, there is no quick and easy answer to this problem. For starters we need to think seriously about our relationship with technology. It has given us so much, but it is quickly evolving beyond our grasp, beyond our ability to shape it in ways that will enhance, rather than denigrate, the quality of our lives. How we and future generations respond to this dilemma will determine whether technology is an instrument that adds value to our civilization, or one that manages to suck all the humanity out of it. If we don’t find a way to control technology, it will end up controlling us. That’s one horror film that should never be made.

FREE MELANIA NOW!

In a sharp departure from previous posts, I rise today in defense of Trump. Wait a minute. Don’t leave me yet. I’m talking about Melania, not Donald. She’s being hammered by pundits and academics for a seeming reluctance to fully embrace her role as first lady. The Washington Post ran a story on the front of its Style section under the heading of “Where’s Melania?” After noting that she “cut an elegant figure” at the inaugural balls, the piece questioned why she hasn’t been seen since.

We are two weeks into the Trump presidency, the Post observed, and several key positions on the first lady’s staff have not yet been filled. Add to that the fact that Melania’s 37% favorability rating is the lowest ever recorded for a first lady, and we are left with the conclusion that something is seriously amiss here. Or so say the Post and its expert witnesses.

Melania made it known some time ago that she intended to remain in New York with the couple’s 10-year-old son so the kid could finish the school year. That’s a problem, says Rider University professor Myra Gutin. She told the Post that Americans are accustomed to seeing the first family together. “She could be giving the administration a little bit of a softer touch, because we do make certain decisions about a president based on his family,” Gutin said. “Ivanka and her family are there, but with Mrs. Trump and Mr. Trump’s younger son, it would be a different kind of feeling.”

Hogwash. First, there is nothing short of daily estrogen injections or a full frontal lobotomy that is going to soften this president’s image. Secondly, Melania and her son, Barron, are not props waiting to be dragged into photo opportunities. They are real people, entitled to lead their own lives, at their own choosing, in or out of the White House.

The first lady concept is an iconic throwback to the old, pre-feminist, economic architecture of American families. The husband ruled the roost and worked outside the home to pay the bills. The wife gave up any semblance of an outside life in order to stay home, cook, clean, manage the household and raise the children, all of which
she did without pay. Although most of the country has moved away from that model, there are those who want an exemption for the White House.

It’s time, way past time actually, to do away with the monarch imagery of the first family. The cultural restraints that made women mere appendages of their husbands were lifted decades ago. Somehow the White House never got the memo. If anyone is seriously hungering for a quick dose of 1950s familial gender roles, let them watch reruns of “Father Knows Best”. Leave Melania alone.

The poor woman immigrated from Slovenia in search of the American dream – provocative photo shoots and marriage to a billionaire. Through a bizarre and cruel twist of fate, the billionaire somehow got himself elected president. So now she’s relegated to a life of sipping tea with the wives of foreign leaders who’ve been insulted by her husband. Come on! That was never in the prenup.

America has been a complicit enabler of first lady spousal abuse for well over 200 years. As a result, many of them suffered depression and substance abuse. One of the victims, Margaret Taylor, prayed unsuccessfully that her husband, Zachary, would lose the 1848 election. When he didn’t, Margaret persuaded the couple’s daughter to play the part of first lady. Sound familiar?

Ellen Wilson said this about the depression she suffered during her husband, Woodrow’s, presidency: “I am naturally the most ambitious of women and life in the White House has no attractions for me.” Lady Bird Johnson succinctly summarized the role this way: “The first lady is, and always has been, an unpaid public servant elected by one person, her husband.”

Eleanor Roosevelt was so determined to avoid the traditional first lady role that she once threatened to divorce her husband, Franklin. The leverage worked and she continued leading her own life, writing newspaper columns and broadcasting radio programs. Eleanor’s position was quite clear: “There isn’t going to be any first lady,” she said. “There is just going to be plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt. . . I never wanted to be the president’s wife, and don’t want it now. You don’t quite believe me, do you? Very likely no one would – except possibly some woman who had the job.”

Because Washington is, above all else, a city rooted in self-interest, there are those nervously awaiting Melania’s first lady rollout in hopes that she can advance their cause. In a rare pre-election speech, Melania let be known that cyberbullying was something she would like to stop. In an instant, regardless of politics, nonprofits were salivating over the exposure a first lady could give their cause. Justin Patchin is co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center. He told the Post that “Everyone is kind of looking around, saying ‘Who is she going to turn to?’ “She is a very public figure. At the very least she can bring this issue to further light.”

With all due respect to the very well intentioned cyberbullying lobby, the biggest contribution Melania could make to their cause is if she found a way to keep her husband’s small hands away from Twitter. It might well go down in history as one of the most significant achievements by a first lady. Other than that, let’s just let Melania be Melania.