Open Letter to Jodie Foster

Last week, Oscar-winning actress and Yale graduate Jodie Foster jumped on the Hollywood lecture circuit to make the following declaration:

"Pretty much every man over 30 has to really look and start thinking about their part. And I guarantee, lots of it is unconscious. When you’ve been in a privileged position where you haven’t had to look at your part, you didn’t 100% understand you were in a bubble. It’s an interesting time for men.

"I have two sons (ages 16 and 19), and I know their perspective," she continued. "They go to a great school that has put them through the wringer about what consent is, what is humanism, what’s integrity. I just wish my generation had the benefit of that, and that everybody had the benefit of that."

 

Well.

 

Where do I begin?

 

In the law there is such a thing as broadness, for which a statute can be stricken because it is overbroad, meaning that it affects people or actions beyond the stated goal.  An example of this, ironically in this case, is President Trump's initial immigration executive order which, in truth, needed to be scaled back -- and it was, rightfully.  That doesn't mean the law as originally intended was bad, only that its reach affected too many people or actions incorrectly.

 

The same holds true here.  Foster's point -- that men should take a look at themselves when it comes to their behavior with women -- is a valid one.  Where she goes off the rails is by stating that "pretty much every man over 30" has to really look at himself and the part in sexual harassment.  Really?  Pretty much every man over thirty? 

 

I don't know how many men in this country are aged thirty or older and I'm too lazy to find the latest numbers on that.  But let's stipulate that there are a few millions out there of men that fit into that category.  How do we quantify "pretty much every man" of that group?  If we assume there are fifty million, does pretty much equal forty-nine million, forty-eight million?  And if that's the case, how are we do know that those forty-eight or forty-nine million men are truly deserving of our condemnation?  Do we know that they have either been actively engaged in sexual harassment or complicit by their silence in such behavior?  Come to think of it, how do we even know that "pretty much every man over thirty" has been engaged in such conduct?

 

This is a typical liberal ploy.  We see it most notably when there's a shooting.  Despite the fact that there are over 300 million privately-owned firearms in this country (or at least that's the figure I saw most recently), only a minute fraction thereof are used in mass shootings, yet gun-control advocates' arguments range from the total confiscation of privately-owned firearms to background checks and other rules that would make private ownership nearly impossible.  Here, there are countless men who combat sexual harassment or do not countenance it on a daily basis, yet Foster believes that we're unconscious men guided by our penises and not our minds.  To suggest that this is patently offensive is obvious, because were a man to make a statement that when distilled suggested women were guided by their vaginas there would be a hue and cry so loud...

 

...but I digress.  The next part of your statement that's severely flawed is the part about being privileged.  To what exactly are you referring when you say that men are in a privilege position?  Is that being an executive?  Or is it simply by being male we're in a privileged position?  If it's the latter, how non-white men feel about being lumped into the privileged group, especially when there's an argument about white privilege?  Should non-white men over thirty be subtracted from this equation?  If so, does that render the "pretty much" portion of your argument null? 

 

I'm not sure what living in a bubble even means.  Is that like living in Hollywood, where surreality is the new reality?  Or how about attending an Ivy League school?  Is elitism a bubble?  To just what kind of bubble are you referring?

The most egregious portion of your proclamation is the second paragraph of the quote.  Because you have two sons who are attending a "great school" (is that a bubble?), you know their perspective.  If that's true, good for you.  But logically, because you have no idea about my origins, about how I was raised and about my Mother, you have no frigging clue about me or how I treat women to make the statement that lumps me in with sexual harassers.  It's patently offensive for you to claim the moral imperative when you know nothing about me or my situation.  And the same goes for virtually every one of those men over thirty whom you've lumped into the same category with Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Roger Ailes.  That you can't see the logical inconsistency in your own statement puts your Yale degree to shame.  Just because I didn't attend a "great school" doesn't mean I wasn't taught the necessary virtues of consent and integrity.  Because I didn't attend Yale, I eschew the notion of humanism and replace it instead with a word that is notably absent from your screed: Respect.  I was raised by a Mother who taught us to respect every person regardless of social standing.  It's something that's sorely lacking in every sector of society, but it's something with which I was imbued and have never forgetten, despite the fact I went to public schools after graduating from Catholic grade school.  This notion that only those under thirty years of age have been raised with a solid grounding is ludicrous.  It is entirely possible that men over the age of thirty were raised with the same lessons as those under the age of thirty and, for various reasons, eschewed them, just as it's possible that there are those under thirty who will do the same.  After all, look at those men who have been caught, finally: Weinstein, Lauer, Ailes.  One thing they have in common is great wealth.  Is that not a lure for some people to do wrong?

But one glaring omission from your lecture is the glass house phenomenon.  Have you lectured Hollywood?  I mean, Meryl Streep's protestations notwithstanding (is cognitive dissonance a required class at Yale...?), it is well-nigh impossible for people in your industry to have been so ignorant of the misdeeds of such powerful men.  Don't women share secrets?  Where are the newly empowered women of the world standing up and demanding justice and equality?  For what did Anita Hill risk her career if not this very mistreatment?  That took place over twenty-five years ago, yet that fellow Yalie's strength was wasted on you actors.  Whether she was right, she stood up for her beliefs.  Where was Meryl Streep when her pal Harvey was denigrating fellow actresses left and right?  What part did the women of Hollywood, many of whom have now come out of the woodwork to tell their own horror stories, not glean from Ms. Hill's bravery?  If anyone had something to fear by telling her story, it was a black woman in a predominantly white male industry.  Yet, it is incumbent on millions of American males, many of whom know not privilege or bubbles or conduct similar to that displayed by Weinstein, Lauer and Ailes, among others, to look in the mirror and ask what role, if any, they have had because a pampered, elitist actress fails to do the same thing?

It seems you and the Hollywood elite feels that the glass house analogy doesn't apply to you because your houses are made of bulletproof glass.

For as much obliged as I may count myself to have received your lecture, I'll take a pass.  I was raised by a Mother who preached respect, not just for elite people but for the lowest of the low.  I was taught to respect women and treat them as ladies.  I was raised to behave like a gentleman, not a privileged cretin entitled to act on troglodytic impulses. 

And I was taught to spot a hypocrite from miles away.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Why I No Longer Consider Myself Catholic

Yesterday news surfaced that Bernard Cardinal Law, the disgraced prelate from the Boston Diocese, died in Vatican City.  His death wasn't shocking; after all, he was eighty-six-years-old.  Still, it marked a milepost in the discussion of sexual predation by Catholic priests. 

Law had been in charge of the Boston Diocese at the time priests were abusing young male parishioners.  When confronted with accusations against his priests, Law started playing pedophile musical chairs, switching one pedophilic priest with another in a different parish.  The parishioners were none the wiser until years later the stories about the abuse came out and the names of the accused were made public.  Then Law's cynical game was up and the Church, always anxious to preserve its position, removed Law to Rome in an equally cynical move.  Officially, Law was going to Rome to help the Vatican.  In truth, his departure put him beyond the reach of American justice, which would have involved Law in extensive litigation against the priests and the Church.

It is possible, certainly, that some accusations against some priests were false or overblown.  But the overwhelming majority of accusations, sadly and tragically, were true, and for them, the Church owed the State its cooperation, no matter how hard.  Give unto Caesar what is Caeser's, after all.  But the Church decided that the best course of action, as it has done, historically, is to determine how best to protect the Church, even at the cost of the parishioners.  Or to put it a different way, the shepherd decided that it would be best to leave the field after the wolves went after the flock, because the shepherd might be hurt by staying on the field...even after the shepherd turned his back on his flock while the wolves went after it.

It's disgusting.  What moral high ground can the Church claim after taking the position that it did with respect to Law?  Sure, it paid out millions to the victims, but did that really compensate them for their injuries? What's more, what about the consequences for Law and his employees?  Sure, the employees were put in jail -- at least those who had the misfortune not to die before their crimes were discovered.  But Law suffered no consequences but those to his reputation; instead, he got an all expenses paid trip to Rome to live out his life in luxury and style. 

Many Catholics are outraged at what happened.  I know I am.  It's yet another case of the Church using sophistry to justify its actions to protect the Church against righteous accusations of misconduct against its congregation.  But this alone wasn't enough to turn me away from the Church.

I read a lot.  Some would say I read too much.  Perhaps.  But because I didn't take any history courses in college that weren't related to Spanish or philosophy -- my majors -- I missed out on a lot.  Even since taking the bar exam, I've been playing catch-up.  One of the areas in which I've concentrated is the history of the abuses brought upon the Irish people by the Brits.  Perhaps the most shocking thing I learned is that the Church -- not necessarily individual priests but the monolith the is the Holy Roman Catholic Church -- oftentimes was complicit with the British government in suppressing the Irish populace so that it could remain as an institution in a land that the British would have preferred to turn Protestant.  In effect, the Church, as happened so many times in British history, cut a deal as part of the British strategy of dividing and conquering, so that it would retain its position, however tenuous, at the expense of the individual Irishman.  Then, after the Brits were gone, the Church tried to return its hegemony over the Irish populace with draconian measures that meted out punishments almost worse than those the Brits doled out.  As with the Law mess, the Church did what it needed to do to protect the Church's position at the expense of the ordinary Catholic.

Then there's the one issue that proved to be the tipping point for me, personally.  My ex-wife was unable to have children naturally, so we went the IVF route.  It was unsuccessful for a variety of reasons, but one thing I discovered is that the Church finds use of IVF to be immoral.  This makes absolutely no sense to me for the following reason:

St. Thomas Aquinas, the doctor of the Church, declared that there is such a thing as a just war.  That being the case, man can use the genius to create implements to use in war and take life, which is in direct contravention of a commandment.  I don't recall there being an exception to the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill.

But the use of IVF, which is the fruit of man's God-given genius, to bring into being life is immoral because it's against the law of nature -- something that man has judged, not something that God decreed, but not something that violates a commandment.  That's illogical, non-sensical and simply wrong.  So if I understand this correctly, it's perfectly fine for the Church to hide a person who had knowledge of and was complicit with pedophilia, and that burdened a people for over a millennium in the interests of political viability, but I'm immoral because I tried to bring life into being??????

Enough.

I'm no longer a practicing Catholic and I don't even consider myself lapsed.  I'm no longer a Catholic.  I'm a free agent Christian.  There are surely some things I adhere to from my past as a Catholic insofar as faith and the Mass is concerned (mostly involving the hymns), but I no longer defend the Church.  Have at it.  For all its hypocrisy and sophistry, I'm done.  I'm not some serf who stands in awe while the educated priest drones on in Latin and cows me with his mystery.  I'm an educated, sentient, thoughtful being whom God has created in His image, not in the Church's image.

In some ways, because I'm protesting, it almost makes me a Protestant, but I'm unwilling to go that far.  Protestant faiths have their own problems.  Check that:  Organized religions have their problems.  I prefer to worship God as He would want it and in my own fashion.  For too long I've been told how to worship by people who have (biased) training on how to worship.

I'm going to live out my life worshipping God the way I believe He wants me to. 

And good riddance Bernard Law.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles.

Et tu....?

And the drumbeat goes on...

Over the last fortnight, we've been treated to the revelations that Charlie Rose, Garrison Keillor and Matt Lauer, not to mention congressman John Conyers, were also doing horrible things to and with women.  The floodgates are now truly open to the point that when we wake up, we wonder who the next deviant to be unmasked will be.

People in the public eye are tripping over themselves to condemn the miscreants while trying to understand how their good friends and colleagues could have been such bad actors right under their noses.  At least, that's how some are portraying their angst.  Of the named wrongdoers, the only one that really surprises me is Charlie Rose.  Not just that he was involved in doing such things to women, but what he did to them, which don't need to be retold here.  I suppose Garrison Keillor might raise an eyebrow as well, but given that he tried to exculpate Al Franken -- another recent pervert outed -- it's not that surprising. 

There are a number of different takeaways from this.  First, how was it that so many women were harassed or abused and complaints made about the harassment and abuse yet no action was taken on any of these men until now?  Was there no one of authority with a moral bone in his body?  From what we know at this point, executives are scrambling to do the best impression of the Three Monkeys and thereby insulate themselves from criticism and legal action, not to mention dismissal.

How is it that some of these men -- Rose, Lauer and Keillor, principally -- were able to sit there with a straight face and criticize the President for his improper behavior when they knew that what they were reporting paled by comparison to their misdeeds?

Reports are emanating that everyone knew about the Lauer misconduct.  If so, was there no journalistic Ronan Farrow or Rose McGowan who had the testicular fortitude to reveal this?  If not, what's the point of being a journalist?  In Charlie Rose's case, his producer is a woman, and women complained to her...and she laughed, or shrugged her shoulders, and did nothing. 

There is, of course, a risk, however small, that such accusations can be used falsely by a vengeful woman who was either scorned, passed over for some job-related promotion or another reason.  So far, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Yet people are ready to storm the castle because Donald Trump made inappropriate comments twenty years ago...

...The Left's mentality is puzzling.  There's no rationale for its action and inaction.  Hypocrisy is its byword. 

Savannah Guthrie, Lauer's latest feckless sidekick, did an interview of one of Conyers' accusers the day after the Lauer story broke and she was roundly condemned for the interview's tone.  People also wondered whether she would do an interview with any of the women her former partner harassed and abused and whether she would be harder on them because of her relationship with Lauer.

The one that baffles me is Rose.  If a deviant ever hid in plain sight better than Rose, I'm unaware of him.  I suppose John Wayne Gacy did, but he was an entirely different kind of deviant and wasn't in the public eye nearly as much as Rose. 

Will there be a much-trumpeted interview with one of these guys months down the road, a la Barbara Walters?  Dr. Phil has to be hyperventilating at the opportunity to get any of these on his show.

All in all, it's a tawdry, reprehensible situation.  Those who are now crying in self-righteous indignation about these men who knew about their behavior before it came to light should be ashamed of themselves twice:  First, for not taking any action before it became popularly acceptable and second for raising a stink after the news broke.  The men, of course, should never be in the public eye again. 

One final observation:  At the rate we're going, the number of men in the public eye to be accused of sexual misbehavior may start to challenge the number of female teachers bedding underaged male students. 

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles