The Big Chill (2019)

Trigger warning: This blog is not romancing, placating, or marketing. It is resigned to inevitable alienation, and that is what this entry is about. It is also inherently hypocritical because blogs are crap and "part of the problem." It may even be boring. And also please excuse the formatting. I NEED, NEED, NEED paragraph breaks and haven't figured out how to avoid how Blogger crams everything together. Other than maybe adding videos or pictures. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Most controversial thought: Victims are ticking time bombs. If they don't have guns like Halloween (2018)'s Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) they will gravitate toward whatever forms of weapons are available, even social media networking, to take something back and feel effective instead of powerless, maybe in perpetuity, whether they realize it or not. Only they may not be I have to examine and question the whiff of radicalization that permeate social media, and I am totally inept at maintaining a bubble of protection against bullshit. Lately what comes to mind is a Lawrence Kasdan film released back in 1983 - the same year as the last Original Trilogy Star Wars film Return of the Jedi which Kasdan co-wrote if that helps give younger people context. I had assumed for years that the title The Big Chill referred to death, because the premise is old friends coming together at a funeral over the suicide of their most charismatic friend. But special features on the DVD have Kasdan explaining how years after college he met an old mate of his whose youthful idealism had changed over the years and his politics had become repugnant to him and that is what Kasdan calls a big chill. Today, I think most fragmentation happens over sub-issues. There are many people I like with whom I might not get along. Would I get into a tiff with him because I think his son Jon is too SJW ? It has come to that. I may respect Oprah Winfrey for many things she has done. She did after all receive a Schindler ring from Steven Spielberg. But more recently she failed to do her due diligence as a broadcaster with such reach; she jumped onto the post PoundMeToo freight train with Dylan Farrow, as did her chum Gayle King, without having read the copious fact-checking articles by Robert Weide that would have caused any reasonable person to look elsewhere for a case study to examine and make an example of. The BelieveHer movement also decided to ignore Soon-Yi Previn's claim that Mia Farrow had abused her. It didn't fit the enforced narrative any more than Moses Farrow making the same claim. Can't question Mia - the blind spot of Ronan. He can joke, "Aren't we all?" as a reply to whether he might have been conceived by Frank Sinatra, even if someone else was allowed to pay his child support. But I digress. There is no point in paraphrasing the well put writings of Robert Weide on the subject. Here is just one sample. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// https://ronanfarrowletter.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/qa-with-dylan-farrow/ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// That saga alone can be the wedge that separates friends or causes them to fill in the blanks of verbal DNA to construct your character as a human being. Common social media topics that have engaged chilly debate may be Terrorism and Rape - two crimes that nobody on either "side" of the argument would ever support. If the argument splinters for either, it is either "Keep living exactly as you do, or that is how the terrorists win" or "here are some safety tips to minimize vulnerability to crime A or B." In either case, even discussing (on-line especially) with a reasonable person who knows you as a three dimensional human being, you can have your head bitten off by a shrill creature on the sidelines. People on the right think I am a bleeding heart liberal or SJW and people on the extreme left think I am a regressive conservative. Just left of the middle is about correct, and I reject package deals because each case under discussion deserves its own respect. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Consider any victim of a tragedy or a crime or trauma. Is it likely that someone raised with alcoholic or physical abuse might grow up to act out in similar behaviour? That had been a taken-for-granted danger for decades. If someone loses parents at an early age, will he/she grow up to be Batman or a criminal having had to fend for themselves or deal with instability? I can only say anecdotally that I have clashed with one con artist whose parents died in an explosive car crash when she was five. I am inclined to believe that violence begets violence. Surely not all victims of child molestation end up offending as adults, but many do. Victims of rape may spend their whole lives trying to fend off or get revenge upon an attacker or violator who is long gone. That energy and indignation has to be vented somehow. Don't take my no-nothing word for it -- look it up. That hostility can become the eggshell-paved floor of a dysfunctional home or it can be a twitchy existence on Twitter. There was a tag line for the Louis Malle film Damage, "Damaged people are dangerous because they know they can survive." It may not be in fashion to suggest that the victim-offender continuum still exists, because that would be called "blaming the victim." /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// "I was raped," someone can say to shut down a conversation or make any follow-up seem cruel. "The United States bombed my town and killed many of my family," another person can say with similar impact. Nightmares. Either a true mike drop or akin to Al Franken calling 9/11 George W. Bush's "Little Black Dress." How do you best control the discourse? And what value is the discourse? And is it THE discourse or merely A discourse? I once had to unfollow someone who was constantly posting about rape and rape culture and I had tried to contribute to discussion and get to the bottom of it as politely as possible but it was a distraction. I won't say trigger. More like just one more thing I can't do anything to help. Once she tried to describe her frustration with an anecdote that she once reported her apartment had items stolen after a party and she was affronted that the police asked questions and checked out the place. Nevermind that plenty of insurance fraud cases would love to be furnished with a police report, so police do have to vet information. If that robbery represented a rape, the Crown Prosecutor needs to know there is a chance at conviction so the questions had better be asked at the outset. And yet people can be demonized for asking questions. I have encountered some vile people, many of whom like the same films and espouse similar political positions. It is fairly easy to find people with a healthy hatred of Doug Ford or the forty-fifth "President" of the United States. But wow, under the surface of a so-called liberal can be a seething control freak sending a cyber swarm after someone who disagrees on a point. To paraphrase the villain Phillip Seymour Hoffman played in Mission: Impossible III, "You know someone's character by how they treat someone they don't have to treat well." That can be a guy who is all about posturing and telling women what they want to hear. It can also be about the victim of past trauma who will never meet her attacker again and must find a substitute. I was once in a play where the woman playing my wife was really punching me and it hurt. She admitted she was actually losing control because she was thinking of her real husband. In the absence of a true monster, people are often looking for micro aggression or signals -- anything that can take as a tip of the iceberg indicator or dog whistle that this person is "the other" infiltrating a conversation and must be shamed instead of having their views absorbed and actually assessed. If you belong to a critic-proof permanent victim class, what may even be a psychotic pattern of mind-fuckery can be masked as a showy social activism. Never mind that it intrudes on others and what they do or what they like, because that is the point. It may only be unconscious abuse but it is still abuse. It is still following through on the cycle. The world did something to you and now you will do something back. A friend of yours died in a pool, so nobody should have a swimming pool. You had an abortion, so the sound of someone else's baby is triggering. Caucasians historically have kept others down, so their success or the appearance of it is triggering. Have a spite against the Catholic or Christian Church? Down with Nativity scenes. (No, there's not a war against Christmas but there are some griping and badmouthing only because those are the weapons available.) The inmates - at least on-line - run the asylum. You read a tweet of a blog about Baby it's Cold Outside and some twisted victim or self-styled white-knighter told you it was rapey so now you can take mall musac as an insensitive act against you. Because it may trigger memories of rape or if you are just a sensitive soul it evokes the terrible social ill of rape that you definitely don't want to think about in those spare moments between Googling "rape culture" and insisting that back to the Future would play far better for everyone if it started with a rape trigger warning over Biff's attack on Loraine. You are not a fan of RoboCop, so it means nothing to you to forbid the best scene where he shoots a rapist's balls off. Just as it is reasonable for the pro-choice movement to say, "keep your laws off of my body" it is also fair to say "keep your agenda out of my movie enjoyment." The iconic death of Chrissy (Susan Backline) at the start of Jaws unnerves me to this day. But it is part of the contract with a storyteller and the engagement and stakes of it. So much of the discussion and debate in issues of the day have to do with TRASHING a craft and an art ostensibly to protect the fragile minds of a few. It is no different that the right wing constantly saying "what will we tell the children?" when confronted with gay or transgender people they would rather sweep under the carpet. As I said at the outset, a victim can be a ticking time bomb. If someone is selflessly feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, that is genuine commendable heroism. If someone is merely expressing anger and letting fly with rage and looking to make enemies ostensibly for the sake of social justice it may not be so remarkable. It may be a pathology. The instinct is to show empathy and offer to solve the problem but even reaching out can be like diving in after someone who is flailing around in the water. They can pull you under or it turns out they are in the jaws of a shark. I don't know that plane crash survivors go on to try to crash planes, but the movie Fearless does explore some of the psychological fallout people can suffer. The reality is that I may have to just accept that some people I like (or whose facades I like) may not consider me part of the tribe. I had someone with a hostile edge who chimed in on a few of my comments and so I blocked her. Too much work to do a back and forth, like answering washroom graffiti. I find I spend far too much time on-line visiting with people I don't like instead of those I most care about. Anyway, I blocked this person. . . even though her boyfriend is also someone I know and had not needed to block. . . but he must have shown her a post on his phone when I answered a comment of his about Baby it's Cold Outside and the rush to abandon all things that aren't deemed "relevant" and "okay" by bat-shit people and she had a discussion about it and a common friend remarked how surreal that was. Not my finest moment. It is almost better to not know people and let them rant and rave and splash in the water. A few years back, I neglected to disable FB alerts on my cell phone and ended up idly replying to useless things while watching a movie at home. Not worth it. Better to leave a comment and then unfollow the thread if possible. A statement is a statement. Someone had posted a blog railing against the male gaze in movies and used as its examples of this Fifty Shades of Grey (neglecting its director and author/boss were women) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (omitting that Joss Whedon was a high profile feminist-- who hadn't been embarrassed publicly just yet), and then as a positive example it threw a bone to Mad Max Fury Road but then jumped through hoops and offered charts to prove that its female focus was forced by the frame. . . . I had to address that and also note that if you like Imperiator Furiosa you can thank the 70 year old male gaze of George Miller because she is his baby girl. I let myself get drawn away from those specifics to a wider sphere of discussion where I had no real opinion and did not realize it was basically a tactic like Bruce the shark leading the Orca further out to sea. People will test the water to put your name out there and make it about you when it is not. To make matters worse, an actor I had to unfriend for abuse the previous year chimed in with shade for me because I had neglected to block him. The sort of guy who likes to use terms like "mansplain." The sort who might not make it to the end of this longer-than-planned post. I don't see this as explaining much, but more trying to reach into the dirt and chaos of life and work out what it is about and name the demons. Social activism (charity, kindness) is not a symptom of anything but someone who wears the sarcastic term Social Justice Warrior as a badge of honor and spends their time on such missions as coloring those of us who in 2016 preferred Sanders over Clinton as "BernieBros" or those of us who wanted a continuation of the Eighties iteration of Ghostbusters as GhostBros to help Sony spin their bad remake idea into something about sexism. . . and then to get rid of any song or film or cultural touchstone that may trigger your girlfriend or your own wounded bird self is to encroach and to take and to invade and undervalue and ultimately to harm or abuse. It is just another form, and it is apparently a perfect crime because they are getting away with it. That is the activism or slacktivism that stands in for physical attack. It completes the circle. It may not satisfy the victim-centered person but it will give them a jolt of "so there - take that." Every now and then I can feel that actress from a community theater play, Dark of the Moon, still jabbing my arm just under the shoulder. It is annoying. All I can say is keep your hard copies of old movies or music or everything that needs to be protected until after the storm where people are constantly spattered with bat-shit.

What is a "Troll" ?

A central principal or conceit of mine is that intelligent, worthwhile people get the idea of parallel ideas and parallel arguments. If one person presents a post or a link or a set of arguments and another person comes along to examine and refute part of it, we understand that the two arguments co-exist and that the intention is not necessarily to erase the other. Even if a movie is remade, the second statement of the premise is likely to be viewed as an also-ran and a knock-off coasting on a brand, with the original benefitting from a new marketing push in association with the next version. If we are talking about Ghostbusters - as will be mentioned later in this blog - people searching the internet or chancing upon a discussion might like to gauge what kind of support an upcoming reboot will get. My position on most issues is left of the middle. If someone is a zealot at either extreme, that person might find me too aloof on matters that they hold with disproportionate importance. A worthwhile and constructive dialogue must be open to the idea that some people in your community don't believe in cheating their way to a win by lying about the state of the zeitgeist on one issue or another. It may come to a point where on the surface nothing can be said that is tested and true, only what is popular and painless to those on the margins. It is expected that a victim of a crime or abuse might be in such a state of trauma - repressed or actively remembered - that their own behaviour is impacted and they are in danger of becoming offenders in their own life. Being is only intelligible in terms of becoming. And yet, the posture of the victim is growing as if it is a badge of honour and there is now a blind spot where it is verboten to even consider implying that the said victim or champion of the victim could possibly develop the traits of the offender by abusing others. We know someone by how that person treats those he or she does not HAVE TO be nice to. If someone tests or challenges your preferred premise, that person must not be dismissed as a troll or perhaps even cyber-swarmed. That person should be engaged with the expectation that he or she has only the best intentions and wishes the issues to be complete and to fairly represent each voice and angle. Here is the definition found on Wikipedia for "Internet Troll." This is as I understand it and have all along. ************* In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[3] This sense of the word troll and its associated verb trolling are associated with Internet discourse, but have been used more widely. Media attention in recent years has equated trolling with online harassment. For example, mass media has used troll to describe "a person who defaces Internet tribute sites with the aim of causing grief to families."[4][5] In addition, depictions of trolling have been included in popular fictional works such as the HBO television program The Newsroom, in which a main character encounters harassing individuals online and tries to infiltrate their circles by posting negative sexual comments himself.[6][7] **************** Seems logical. Recently, I found myself being told by someone on my Facebook that a comment was "trollish." I argued that it was not. The standard she wanted to go by was that any dissenting view or fact-check under a posted or linked article was a troll. I prefer to treat people as I want to be treated. Ads and random posts appear in my "News" Feed, and randomly if I invest a few moments checking out an article that is posted, I think it is reasonable and welcome to ask a question or point out an error or oversight. My former "friend" or frienemy as it turns out apparently wants a standard where whatever propaganda is being presented must be received in a vacuum of agreement, and any representation of the dissenting voice must be pathologized by a slap-down term like "troll" or "truther" in the case of conspiracies. In this case, it was something rather basic. ---------------------------------------------------------- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ An article link was posted by this person on the topic of "The Male Gaze." Apparently the topic was introduced in the 1960's. I do not recall the blog name or the website, not that I would want to promote it with my vast influence. I first asked a simple question, "Isn't there a "Female Gaze?" The blog or article kicked off by railing against the movie adaptation of "Fifty Shades of Grey." It argued that there was too much erotic view of the female form, as if to appeal to men, despite having a target audience of women. I pointed out that the director of that movie was a woman. The response I got, along with the accusation that my post was "trollish," was that the director may have been influenced by others to put that stuff in. So the woman who is directing doesn't count as contributing to the "Gaze" of the movie, and this person discounts the idea that she might even recognize the beauty of the female form despite being married and ostensibly straight. A lot of women on this person's FB posts will add comments about binary sexuality and fluid this or that, yet not entertain the idea that these factors might be part of the director. If said director is not responsible for what is on screen, then why the fuss about more female directors? (This last part is my own aside now, and was not part of my posts.) The article chose as its second example of the offensive "male Gaze" the unlikely target of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which it argued that females "aren't shot the same way as men. I pointed out there that the director was Joss Whedon who is a known feminist and a old sort, not to mention the fact that nothing unflattering or leering struck me in the movie. Finally, the blogger/columnist gave qualified praise to Mad Max: Fury Road but stated that the camera strategy forced everything to be in the centre frame so that women could not be pushed off to the side. There is some invocation of the "rule of thirds" in framing invoked, which seems to diminish the fact that the STORY and deliberate DIRECTING of GEORGE MILLER is what actually guided that movie to have strong female characters we care about. It was not "forced" by some sort of centre-framing policy. The research of the person seems to have come from straight out of the rectum. Yet - and I have heard this from a third party who followed the discussion - my posts remained restrained and clearly well-intentioned. The woman who had posted the link and was playing what she called "moderator" by seemed poised for attack from word one. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -------------------------------------------------------------- Here I am calmly and idly going back on my smart phone as alerts come up, answering whatever post on a Sunday evening, matter-of-fact, and I'm getting kind of a shrill vibe from even the most trivial and innocuous remark. When we got into the trend of women leading films and changes and so on, I remarked that the new reboot of women as Ghostbusters casting Chris (Thor) Hemsworth as their secretary or receptionist is not really a parallel or inversion of the original film, because Annie Potts as Janine was not portrayed as a sex object. The response I got was an affronted spiel along the lines of, "Annie Potts in that movie is super sexy!" Now at that point what am I to say other than reiterate what I have already said, not that I have said anything against Potts. She is funny and an effective character. Sexy isn't a descriptive that I expect she was going for. Any more than Rick Moranis' character would expect to be called sexy. The conversation is like stepping in shit and not being able to scrape it off. And the core of it must be that this person had some sort of spite against me personally from the beginning, despite adding me on Facebook and voicing no objection to past posts over the years. ------------------------------------------------------------ ########################################################################### Then a shark swam into the cove. I would not have noticed if I had not procrastinated about disabling Facebook alerts on my smart phone. It had been giving redundant messages whenever someone replied to whatever. For those alerts, I could wait until when I choose to hit the site myself. But this particular Sunday night I hadn't figured out what to delete or uninstall. So I looked over and saw my old antagonist's name and thought FRIG ! Sure enough, he had put up oner of his boiler-plate bait posts to pathologies me and make an unflattering estimate of my intelligence because I am not reading the script of the party line and not "all in" with whatever zealot intransigence he represents. This post meets the above criteria for a definition of a troll. In fact, I'd say Troll is a weak word for what this guy does. It is harassment, certainly couched in some sort of smug sheep's clothing of ostensibly liberal platitudes and standing up for women which he appears to regard as so fragile that they must be handled with kit gloves and those of us who are not part of a minority (outside of the discussion) are somehow twisted and defending the "status quo." A "like" appeared on his missive around this time. The next day, I was on my laptop and noticed that the like came from the individual who started the thread, and who started a new post to say that she was not moderating or following the thread after a while. . . not mentioning that she had followed it enough to support the most offensive and truly trollish or trollesque post! My antagonist had deleted a couple of his posts over night, leaving my own posts hanging with less context. Knowing that his own had been valued and mine had not, I decided to delete my posts from the thread. I only found out half an hour later that she - the poster of the flawed article link - was upset that I had removed my posts. She said, "Why did you do that. They were important." She then bent over backwards to try to re-tell the story to "followers" of the thread, as if there are pages missing from a Gnostic Gospel. She entreated me to return to the thread, hot-linking my name over and over, only to answer me with what can only politely he called guano. It was all circular. Accusation, my defence, followed by the accusation of being "defensive." Total mind f**kery. It was a merry-go-round that was now eating up a Monday that I had off and which was supposed to be spent on writing and editing. I bowed out, asked her to stop hot-linking my name, and in tern advised that I would stop following the thread. I also ended up clicking "unfollow" of her, since it was clear that any comment on any post could have an unpredictable and soul-sickening result. She responded by de-friending me. I sent one more PM to say something like, "At least that's an answer." &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& ///////////////////// Somewhere in the middle of that, before I had gone to sleep Sunday, I'd sent her a first private message asking if there is anything wrong that I should know about, given the tone of some of her Sunday night replies and the "trollish" accusation. I reminded her that since helping out the previous summer documenting a project of hers I had not heard any reply - timely or otherwise - about what was to be done with footage I had captured and so on. The questions had been time sensitive. I got the feeling she cancelled her project or something, but never got the full scoop. I mentioned the shark/troll that had chimed in on the thread to really mess with me, and apologized for drawing that fly. But I did not hear back until some time after I had asked about her unfriending me. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ She did reply to that. I'll paraphrase rather than paste someone's actual words. She mentioned knowing me for 15 years and liking me in person and having fond memories of the play reading group (she performed a reading of a one-act I wrote in 2001, and did a good job) but then went on to characterize the way I am on Facebook. She also mentioned that the had taken the council of my adversary - the one guy I considered to be a TROLL - whom I had to delete the year before, and who I had failed to block. (I have blocked him since this blow-up, but would have rather not have him seeing and commenting on any of my posts this past year, and have no idea why I have neglected to block him and have somehow allowed him to harass me. It must be discomfort with the settings of the site, which I am a little more familiar with now.) Anyway, it was not encouraging. I can dislike someone and still feel sick if I am rejected. She mentioned a short I made back in 2000, which I would not have thrown in her face and never have. As she describes it, what she signed on for was a western stand-off where two girls fight over an abandoned cigarette in the street. She claimed that she walked off the set because I "added a girl-fight." I mentioned that I don't recall how others characterized the fight, which was part of the script she read and part of the storyboards. If my camera operator whose camera we were using mentioned Russ Meyer, it is beside the point. She had stated that she worried I would "edit in" shots of "nudity or sex" later, which offended me as someone who is only interested in making a straightforward film with no artsy flashes. I reminded her that I did remember her also complaining that there was no craft services table with flies buzzing around and that we did get someone to buy her a bottle of water when she asked for it. She came back with a totally wigged-out lecture about what a hot day it was (not very hot and I hate hot days) and how she wasn't being paid (which she knew going in. She accused me of not even taking "responsibility" for what she complained about and said "there is no apology here" as if I should apologize for questioning or fact-checking a blog she had linked in the news feed. She ended on a note like "please don't contact me again." ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ That's the way to end a conversation that might actually answer questions intended to be rhetorical by someone who can't handle reality. Someone on her page left a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson to the effect of "Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted when I am contradicted." Her friend meant for this to be something to answer the likes of me, but it would have been more appropriate applied to her. I ended up blocking her as well as my main annoyance. But the infuriating thing is this ploy of throwing down an accusation and demanding that it not be answered. On the movie she mentioned, the only reason I have not nursed any animosity over it is that I had another actress who stepped in and saved my ass and did a great job. I got to make the movie people were there to make. I didn't have time to worry about a snack table, but I did ask the remaining people if they needed anything and volunteered to get it. They said they did not and appreciated that time was of the essence. This was a guerrilla-style shoot, less than an hour. I asked how they felt about what was said by the departing actress, and nobody felt the same despite both remaining actresses being principled people themselves. Luckily for me, their principles also included staying with a project they have agreed to shoot instead of abandoning the director and wasting everyone's time. The departing girl had - ironically - flashed her chest in a movie the year before. I won't name the film, but I taped it from City TV and have not het gotten around to trashing the VHS. Just seems hypocritical to me. @@@@@@@ As I reflected on this I recall better times but I also recall an odd moment at the home of the person in question while I was documenting her project on video and having a break with her other guests in her kitchen. The subject of comedy came up and what this or that person likes. I mentioned liking Sarah Silverman. One guy said, with a hint of mustard, "I hear she has a great rape joke." I honestly forget what I said back, but it created no fuss. I could have gone for a quip like, "Your momma is a rape joke." But I likely would not, unless that person were a heckler and I was on stage. I might have ignored his sarcastic intent and the idea that he "hears" and obviously has not heard for himself what Silverman's joke actually was and its context or delivery. I might have said, "Yes, in fact she has a few good rape jokes." I think I mentioned that she also has a great Holocaust bit. I'm a firm believer that comedy can and must include gallows humour and explore the most painful and difficult to process traumas of life. Smokey and the Bandit or Blues Brothers wacky car accidents will not play as amusing to someone who just survived a real car accident or lost someone in one, or killed someone with a car. But that can't be the standard for what is talked about or joked about. Even Blazing Saddles has a couple of "good" rape jokes, as well as frequent use of the notorious n-word. There is definitely a culture or subculture of net nannys playing word police and over-inflating reactions to behaviours and habits and old ideas and slow adaptations to the culture of sales and affirmations and propaganda wrapped up in the fear of a lost audience or a lost market. Sometimes it is fair. It is better to know if Cosby is known by many people as a creep or worse. It is better to know that Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird had more to say in his late seventies and that Scout had to actually get to know him as a human being and get over her disappointment that her dad was not an icon in her head 100% uncomplicated and on-side with all of her own political package deals. I had recently listened to Reese Witherspoon's unabridged audio book of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, and it was very appropriate timing. People will project. There is little to be done about that. People wrap themselves in a rainbow flag or turn their home country flag upside down when the wrong candidate for them gets into office. But what can be a problem is discarding the heart of politics - that your adversary or opponent on one issue or sub-issue may be an ally on many others. I know a few more intransigent jerks than I thought I knew. I'm better off knowing. I've done my own fearless moral inventory and flipped the finger at one imposed on me by a presumptuous and inexplicably pompous pair of piranha. I don't have to boost myself as any kind of moral example to feel wronged and irritated. But perhaps I have bigger fish to fry.