Be Careful Of Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing

I read LGM when I have time; haven’t been there in a couple of weeks. But here is this. I thank another friend of the blog for the link to this. It’s concise.

Graham Platner, Donald Trump, and Gender

By Cheryl Rofer

Graham Platner, son of wealthy parents, is cosplaying as a salt-of-the earth oyster farmer who sells his product to his mother and is running to become the Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine, against Susan Collins. He was outed as having a Nazi tattoo, which he had tattooed over with a slightly less Nazi tattoo. His earlier writings and activities include slurs against women and wearing a Blackwater hat to own the libs.

He is now running ahead of Governor Janet Mills, who is an older woman but who actually has experience in government, something Platner lacks.

Why is Platner doing so well? We can look to Donald Trump for that.

All of our politics today are gender politics. It’s very difficult to talk about that, because it permeates everything we do, leaving us fish unaware of the water. The response is frequently that no, it’s something else, maybe power. But power is gender infused too. So let’s focus on gender if only for the amusement of seeing something through a new lens.

We have multiple models in our heads of what women and men are. Mute eye candy, intellectual, blue collar are some general descriptors, but more specifically, we associate particular groups of characteristics with particular manifestations of gender. Graham Platner and Donald Trump are avatars of a particular way to be a man. I will enumerate some of them.

Men tell it like it is. This means that they can say things that are associated with this type of masculinity, like referring to women by their genitals and using slurs against other groups that are not able-bodied white men.

Men are muscular and do hard work. This means that blue-collar men are Real Men™.

Men are strong. This is different from being muscular, but the two bleed into each other. A man can take on emotionally difficult tasks and bull his way through.

Men never apologize. From what I have read, Platner has acknowledged the tattoo and his earlier actions but has not apologized. Trump, well.

Men are by nature fit to lead. Platner has no experience in government, as was the case with Trump in 2016. But they were/are questioned very little on this issue.

Men may become violent. Platner was in the military and Blackwater, with a violent tattoo. Trump shouts, rages, and talks about violence all the time.

To my mind, this type of masculinity is disqualifying for elected office. But obviously others disagree.

He’s a plain-talking guy you could have a beer with. Or at least a man could have a beer with. The comfort factor is enormous, and Platner and Trump give people permission to be comfortable in a particular way. Ezra Klein interviewed (gift link) one of conservatism’s intellectuals, Christopher Caldwell. Caldwell writes at the Claremont Review of Books and is one of the New York Times’s resident conservatives.

One of the things he settles on as an aspect of Trumpism is what he calls free speech. He has felt throttled by woke and was delighted to be able to be comfortable in what he says. That banker interviewed by the Financial Times said it out loud: He can say the “r” word and refer to women’s bodies in conversation. It’s what all conservatives mean by “free speech,” sometimes with Nazi phrases or concepts thrown in. When they say “free speech,” they mean whatever speech white men in charge want to use.

Those “free speech” advocates are given permission to speak freely by Platner and Trump.

There are other reasons people vote for men displaying this cluster of traits considered masculine. It’s a comfortable stereotype – much in the media and what people who don’t have close contact with blue-collar men may believe of them.

Even Rahm Emanuel feels he has to put on a muscular performance of eating his salad.

Enjoy Some Clay Jones This Morning!

Mr. Johnson No Johnson

Gonads are gone-gone

Clay Jones

(Clay Jones publishes with his toons; his writing is always spot on. Click the title above to go to the page.)

Grifting With The Aliens

Those aliens are going to starve

Clay Jones

BREAKING: Armageddon has Begun

Some News Bits

A few things I ran across before lunch, in one post with links. Ollie and I had a good lunch, got a few things done, then took a nice walk on a cooler day when his thick black fur coat is not too heavy for him to be on a jaunt before 7 AM; it was 2 PM.😃

Back to reality, I saw this Reuters story about Iran hacking US FBI, but it was a subscriber only story (I agree-WTF? Why should profit be made on a story like that, when some of the free articles are such dreck…) But, here is a free one:

FBI director Kash Patel’s emails, photos hacked by Iran-linked group

The vigilante group Handala Hack Team said that it had successfully gained access to Patel’s personal email account.

Then, I know many of us, if we didn’t yawn, noticed the hypocrisy in wrangling for a law that includes banning mail-in voting while on the way to the post-box. If you’re busy, just click through; the money phrase is right there at the top.

The young woman who is running for my district’s US House seat, Katy Tindell, has a website now! I’ve mentioned her, but couldn’t link because all there was was an Act Blue contribution page. But now, she has her own website.

Every one of our states has at least one candidate like this running. Please choose a campaign anywhere (But work from your home district/state first, if you can,) and sign up. Money’s tight everywhere, but give the candidate some time if you want to see them in office. There are many things that need doing, and campaigns are better off with volunteers helping.

Finally for this post, Sojo has run a piece the author, Emma Cieslik, writes about Taylor Tomlinson, and Tomlinson’s influence on the author’s own deconstruction and being out. Seriously worth the click.

A Message For Tomorrow:

(I don’t care for twangy folk music that would be country&western if it wasn’t U.S. Folk music, but. I have high regard for Woody Guthrie, really like the lyrics of this song, and Bette Midler covers it well, updating lyrics a bit while retaining its folk integrity. Thanks, Ten Bears!)

Bound to Lose …

Theocracy Advances With Menace

Iran isn’t the only theocracy

Sec. of War Hegseth quotes scripture during press briefings.

Ann Telnaes

Trump held a toadies meeting today.

And along those lines, check this out, and also check in on your own state legislature, because these laws are coming from a national organization. Also, dig “Independence Day”, which is not at all acknowledged in the Bible; it gets more time than even Christmas or Easter. I do not think “Christian” means what they think it means. Emphases within are mine.

Kansas Legislature’s negotiators on education bills drop sports ban tied to Christian calendar

Senate majority leader’s amendment forbid sports on Sundays, Wednesday evenings

By:Tim Carpenter

TOPEKA — The Kansas Legislature’s negotiators on education bills deleted a Senate-approved change to state law prohibiting school sports practice and competition on Sundays, Wednesday evenings and multiday periods centered on Easter, Christmas and Independence Day.

The effort to expand on Kansas State High School Activities Association rules for scheduling athletic events, currently concentrated on Dec. 25 and July 4, was led by Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, R-Wichita. He convinced Senate colleagues to accept his amendment to Senate Bill 515 expanding no-sports days on calendars at public and private schools statewide.

During Senate debate on Blasi’s amendment, questions were raised about his focus on Christian faith traditions. His amendment passed on an unrecorded voice vote of the Senate.

During Senate and House negotiations Monday on SB 515, Wichita Republican Rep. Susan Estes and Wichita Sen. Renee Erickson, who serve as lead negotiators on the Legislature’s education bills, agreed to cast aside Blasi’s broadened moratorium. His amendment was removed from legislation intended to enable homeschool students to join sports at private schools in the way state law permitted them to be part of public school athletics.

Blasi said he was motivated to act on concerns expressed by constituents that school-sponsored sports interrupted periods that ought to be reserved for family or church activities.

Specifically, his amendment would forbid sporting events on Sundays and on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. to midnight from Sept. 1 to April 30. In addition, he sought to apply the prohibition to a four-day window around Easter, but only from 6 p.m. to midnight. A five-day ban at Christmas and a seven-day ban encompassing Independence Day would be part of the new state law.

“This is going to assure we focus on what really keeps communities strong — that is family and faith,” Blasi said.

Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said she was anxious the Legislature was wading into the KSHSAA rulebook without considering family interests in other religious faiths. Blasi’s amendment didn’t address Islam’s Ramadan, Judaism’s Passover or Rosh Hashanah, Hinduism’s Maha Shivavatri or Buddhism’s Bodhi Day.

“Not any religion was considered,” Blasi said. “This was just a response to constituents.”

Francisco wasn’t convinced of the amendment’s merits.

“My constituents would like me to be as inclusive as possible,” she said.

The amendment left on the cutting room floor by the House and Senate conference committee was defended by several other members of the Senate.

Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, said she was a strong supporter of Blasi’s effort to turn back the clock in Kansas to an era more respectful of faith traditions.

“It’s a sad day that we have to legislate this,” Tyson said. “Years ago, it wasn’t even an issue. It was a standard and acceptable, but here we are.”

Sen. Brad Starnes, R-Riley, said the amendment was crafted to affirm religion as the “bedrock of our country.”

The objective of the amendment was to clear school calendars so students had more time to pursue religious interests, said Sen. Michael Murphy, R-Sylvia.

“As we move away from that, we do so at our peril,” Murphy said. “It’s time we moved back to some of those traditions that served us well.”

The House-Senate conference committee bundled the stripped down SB 515 and Senate Bill 361 into Senate Bill 382. SB 361 allows foreign exchange students to enroll in their host’s public school district. SB 382 deals with administration of state assessments to K-12 students in virtual schools. As of Tuesday, neither the House nor Senate had voted on the the three-bill deal.

Banned Books

It’s a blog entry by Jenny Lawson, about one of her books. I haven’t been able to open her WP blog for a few weeks, now; I get the page that says it’s an unsafe connection. I either don’t know how, or can’t get a whole post in the WP Reader, but I did get this whole post in email, so I’ll copy & paste it here. Jenny is funny, but this is not good news about Texas and literacy.

The Bloggess

Read on blog or Reader

Today they banned my book. It was not the first. It won’t be the last. Here’s what I want you to know

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By thebloggess on March 25, 2026

This is not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about how I’m about to go on book tour for my new book in a few days. Instead I am writing about the fact that I was just informed that my first book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was banned from the high school library of a nearby town I love and visit often.

Honestly, I’m not that upset about my book being banned. I’ve had so many letters from young people who felt they’d been helped by my books but it does have some profanity and so I can understand the reasoning even if I disagree with it. What I am upset about is the stories about how New Braunfels ISD has pulled more that 1,500 books from their school library shelves after the Texas’ Republican-backed book banning law (senate bill 13) passed. The bill ordered all public school libraries to review books for “profane” and “indecent” content and I guess Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was deemed too dangerous for high schoolers.

Weirdly, my book was not on the original list of the 1,500 books triggered for review on March 13 but a week ago it was added to the New Braunfels ISD website as being removed for being “non-compliant”. (I’ve been called worse.) I guess 1,500 books weren’t enough. But then, it’s never enough for book banners.This is going to happen more and more. It used to be a rarer thing…almost a badge of courage to have a book banned. Now? It’s everywhere…this war against books and ideas and people. Reading is how you fall in love with people different from you, and how you develop compassion for them…because if you love them, you want to protect them. But there are some people who don’t want you to love others. They need you to fear them.

Books save lives. They have saved mine. Books are safety nets for so many of us, and right now those nets are being cut.The list of banned books is incredible in length and includes so many that I adore. Equally upsetting is the fact that so many classics that shaped me have been pulled from the shelves and placed into restricted sections where they can only be accessed by students enrolled in Advanced Placement Literature, because God forbid a normal high school student would want to read the works of dangerous writers like *checks the list* Jane Austen and Emily Brontë (whose name they misspelled).

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in A Brave New World (restricted) and that the book burning of Fahrenheit 451 (restricted) is closer than ever, with no Sense and Sensibility (restricted) about what this will cost. It feels like we’re going through The Crucible (restricted) and are caught in a Catch-22 (restricted) where we can’t convince people how terrible it is to ban books because they either don’t know the power of books or they absolutely know it and fear it. It’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (banned) how book banners go out on some kind of A Discovery of Witches (banned) and fight against Acceptance (banned) and of diversity, while we are losing All The Beauty in the World (banned). America is a Beautiful Country (banned) in so many ways, but we will lose so much of that beauty if we don’t make Changes (banned) to cherish and embrace and grow what makes us Educated (banned) and compassionate. The diversity of voices is necessary…it is a reflection of who we are and who we want to be. A plethora of ideas and voices and experiences…This Is What America Looks Like (banned). We can’t just pretend that Everything’s Fine (banned) and that this is just an overreaction of Anxious People (banned). Do you think this is what the founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton (banned) envisioned? I’m going to stop here because I’m sure you can see that this dumb paragraph is WAY TOO EASY TO WRITE because there are so many books they have issues with and you probably get the picture already but y’all….Jane Eyre? The Color Purple? The Odyssey? Crime and Punishment?? THIS IS WHAT WE’RE SAVING TEENAGERS FROM?

So what can you do? You can buy books that are being targeted, especially those written by the LGBTQ+ authors or authors of color because they are being targeted the most. Supporting those authors tells publishing to keep producing those books because they are needed. Publishers will lose money if libraries become afraid to purchase books and so we need to make sure that they know the audience is there and greedy for diverse voices. Get a library card and start checking out those books and more, to prove to the government that libraries need funding and that people care about reading. Read to your children. Read in front of your children. Talk online about the books that you love so that your passion ignites others. If you’re a parent you can get involved with your school to make sure this doesn’t happen in your school and you can protest it if it happens. You can vote out the people who seem to be obsessed with freedom, but mainly when it’s their freedom to take away yours and your children’s. You can run against school board members who are book banners and show up at the meetings. You can keep updated by following organizations like PEN AMERICA, or the Texas Freedom to Read Project or Authors Against Book Bans.

*deep breath*

This is probably filled with typos and is not really the sort of thing that I should be writing the day before I leave to start my book tour but it’s important. When books and thoughts and people are suppressed, we all lose. Keep fighting the good fight, friends. It’s worth it.

Comment

Josh Day, Next Day

Toons And Stuff

I save the best for first. So, you all should know that Josh Johnson is hosting The Daily Show Tuesday night, along with Wed. and Thurs. nights. Thank you for your attention to this vital matter!

Next, and almost as good: maybe this has been seen, but here it is, for your enjoyment.