Month: October 2021

So it’s come to this.  A new name for the old Facebook company.  F Book will still exist, but with all the proven irresponsible social consequences, it will remain only for the aged including me and my generation.  How kind of the kids at FB.

A corporation, on the New York Stock Exchange and valued in the billions and billions of dollars, that has to change its name and rebrand itself is in B.I.G. trouble.  Yet I, a tech novice but observer of people, could see a problem with social media way back in the early 21^st century.  I came late to Facebook, my first social media venture, maybe around 2010.  My husband got on the band wagon and told me all these old buddies and classmates and long lost relatives he found or who found him through Facebook—of all places, cyberspace.  It was neato!  We saw many siblings, split up as children, who found each other on Facebook. I don’t know anyone whose heart wasn’t softened by this miracle for all lucky enough to be living in the tech age, the high tech age.  Still … I was hesitant. Seemed like we first had to give millions of strangers too much information about ourselves, this before stolen identities became a reality.

Behold, the internet

My first realization of something called an internet and email was watching a gritty cop show called Homicide: Life on the Street.  On an episode airing in the mid-1990s, the police detectives had to use the internet to lure a criminal suspect, a very clever person.  The one guy in the squad room who was the computer nerd got on the World Wide Web (oooooo!) and started typing whatever his tech-challenged colleagues told him.  One detective started using profanity to communicate to the perp.  The computer nerd said the internet only uses polite language.  Wha?!

Through the turn of the century as everyone got online, commencing to email faster than the speed of thought, internet language and imagery reflected the coarse and crass more than the refined or well mannered.  Americans at that point in time had long been more DeNiro than Jimmy Stewart.  Then social media came along, and anything goes!  People like to chat and gossip, and they like sharing anything off the internet they find funny or suspicious with like-minded friends.  Plus, a lot of people like to type whatever idea pops into their little heads, like kids. 

Today the internet has saturated the collective consciousness with lies, half-truths, nontruths, misinformation and disinformation.  IDK.  When did the internet become evil?

The internet is only as evil as the people who post on it.  For years, perhaps from its inception, Facebook maintained the sanctity of ‘free speech.’  They guaranteed all users the right to their free speech, even hate speech, and therefore refused to censor anything or anyone on its platform.  The bottom line was money.  Facebook somehow makes money.  It’s never sincerely been a free space for the masses to debate and challenge ideas in a moderate low-key style. It was supposed to be about getting together like on the phone or at a party.

People who study the human psyche know lots more people respond to negative information than positive.  More shares for the rumor the Obamas are divorcing than the pix of a cute baby tasting sugar for the first time, at least on Facebook.

A cyber mile away

I wasn’t surprised that Facebook would fade away like everything else.  It is simply evolution, and tech is about evolving every few months.  The smart money is on that principle.

Sure, it was warm and fuzzy finding old friends and relatives from long ago, old teachers still around and kicking, old acquaintances and former neighbors we haven’t thought about in years.  So we got in touch and can visit anytime we want.  We don’t need to physically see these people.  We can visit virtually in the 21^st century!

But … then we all did something we knew we weren’t supposed to do: talk politics and religion.  Those two subjects are not to be discussed at parties and social gatherings.  We forgot we were on social media.  Perhaps the feeling was it was unreal.  Social conversation is supposed to be polite not intense, ending in freestyle cussing fights and rifts.

God help us, we Americans take our politics seriously, as seriously as we do religion.  Many like-minded people, through Facebook and other social media platforms, formed tight associations.  Many ‘unfriended’ people when they discovered extreme differences in political and societal ideologies, one way or the other. Through Facebooking, we found out a whole lot more about each other than we ever wanted to know.  We were better off not knowing everything about each other, weren’t we?

We were once so happy just to know one another.  Totally oblivious to our neighbor’s true beliefs and ideals whether alt left or alt right or old-fashioned Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative.

We’re ready to draw guns now, are we?

Words, typed or spoken, can destroy.  How many people wish they could take back some things they’ve said?  That was human nature before email.  And nothing posted is truly deleted.

We live in such an advanced age that many of us can’t keep pace.

But a slow down is a-coming.  Since we could not control ourselves, our big mouths and quick keystrokes over our deeply-held political opinions and social media businesses continued to permit irresponsible free speech that culminated in deadly attacks—SINCE TOO MANY AMERICANS CONVINCED THEMSELVES THEY NO LONGER KNOW WHAT ‘TRUTH’ IS—our government will control the internet and social media for us.

We don’t have the right to believe whatever we want.   That is the epitome of ignorance.  We have the right to know the truth, and it’s EZ to find, easier in this day and age than any time in human history.  Truth takes time to prove.  In researching truth, we have to be objective.  The internet itself is objective: granted, polluted with lies and rumors but also facts and substantiated verifiable truth, information at our fingertips.

Facebook, social media and the internet are what ‘we the people’ have made it.  We should be ashamed.  But a lot of people have no shame.  Another revelation brought to us on social media with millions of likes.

I … just … can’t be one of those people—the scornful masses who if given the chance would spew at millions of girls and women each year who find themselves ruefully, unexpectedly, unjoyously and secretly pregnant:

“You gonna have that baby!!  You hear me?!”

The noisy & ever nosy anti-abortion crowd has always been about one thing: judging females in their child-bearing years—essentially judging girls and women most of their lives.  Their cause is about butting into millions and millions of lives in which they have no business telling how to react and what to do in the matter of unintentional pregnancy.  Female lives matter.  Those who pursue an abortion are people who for many reasons (all no one’s business) know they cannot have a baby at this time in their lives. 

The Texas all-boys club who swiftly banned abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, AND for some bizarre reason encourage any nut in the country to sue people ‘involved’ in assisting an abortion in the state, is just showing their hind ends to the rest of a weary world.  Why not brand the female with a scarlet letter A?

Ever since Roe v Wade became law in the early 1970s, safe abortion was a private option.  I don’t remember when abortion was illegal.  I mentioned that to a sister as we marched in the national women’s rights protest against the Texas abortion ban.  Her response to me was “I do!”  Our country’s elderly women have not forgotten the hangers, back alleys, unlicensed assistants and other gruesome methods and humiliations endured by many a teen or young woman prior to 1973.  Deaths by self-induced and unsanitary abortions were so numerous and known to most women, feminist Gloria Steinem referred to it as “our Vietnam.” 

The decades since abortion was legalized in the U.S., the anti-abortion crowd seemingly swelled and grew self-assured and politically empowered.  Not only did they intimidate and scorn anyone trying to enter a women’s public health clinic, they also commenced to blowing up the facilities one by one, shooting physicians whose practice included abortions, and publishing names and addresses along with other personal and family information of anyone associated with medical centers where abortions are performed.  In short, the fanatical anti-abortion crowd was notorious for death threats.  Many physicians were murdered by the same people, practically all men, who claim to be pro-life.

Why is everybody getting to decide except the pregnant?

Perhaps if men had a better track record about unintentional pregnancy, abortion would be rare.  But male hormones, AKA male teen-agers, and grown men who find their lover pregnant have had a long history of fleeing the scene.  If truth be told, they may be the first to suggest abortion.  These are private conversations after all.  Abortion is quite likely many a man’s first reaction.  It takes a very special teen-ager or man to accept his consequences of ‘creating a new life,’ of suddenly becoming a father, of acknowledging his offspring, and finding a way to support his new baby.  But alas, this touching scenario is more fiction than the rule.  And every woman knows it, and girls will learn it.

Who was the ’70s feminist who chided: If men got pregnant, abortion would be a legal holiday?  I heard Cher say it.  She’s in that senior women’s group who remember when abortion was illegal, a dirty word, a dirty secret—a shame.  I don’t.  In college I heard rumors of girls who traveled out of state to have abortions … fearing in Texas they might run into their parents.  That’s how ashamed they were.   Many of my generation as young girls felt unable to talk to their parents about being pregnant.  Then the anti-abortion crowd forced the conversation by making abortion a parent’s decision.  No minor could obtain an abortion without her parent’s consent.  How awful.

The poor girl has to tell her parents she’s pregnant when they don’t know she’s sexually active.  In my day, a lot of parents would have flown off the handle if hearing the news.  I never bought the ‘pro-life’ side that parents are supportive and loving.  The reality I saw was parents pressing for the new life, their grandchild after all, and giving little if any consideration to their pregnant daughter, what she wanted to do.

Life’s a mess.  No doubt about it.  Trouble is, women deal with life’s messes all the time … and men just don’t have to.  Take the Texas abortion ban that assumes pregnancy at six weeks after a missed period.  Doctors don’t even want to see a patient who thinks she’s pregnant, even if a home pregnancy test confirms it, until she misses two periods.  This is the messy reality of which the Texas Legislature and Governor are unaware—and every 21st century woman in America knows it and are both laughing and fuming.  See, men, women aren’t like finely tuned cars, having periods every month like clockwork.  Sometimes the female body just doesn’t want to have a period for one or more months.  May be due to stress.  May be weight gain or weight loss.  May be over exercising.  May be hormonal changes.  Texas Legislators don’t know any of that either.  Did I mention there are tens of millions of women out here, each with her own cycle of which is in reality out of her or any man’s control?  Meanwhile, contraceptives have been known to fail.  I noticed Plan B’s off the shelf at pharmacies, well maybe just in Texas.

To be a woman is to be out of control.  We who are female accept our fate.  Yes, those of us with more testosterone would like to live like men: free a whole lifetime unencumbered without bras and monthly hygiene products.  Must be nice.  Especially between the years of 10 to, oh, 55.  It’s as if God has blessed men and cursed women.

Wait a minute.  That’s exactly what men want us to think.  They’ve written it into laws and cultures for centuries, only in my lifetime to have been overturned.  And it’s been a great lifetime for women since the 1970s, since 1973.

Heart & Soul

Like everyone in America, for years I wrestled with the issue of abortion. Scientists disagree on the moment life begins; they don’t all agree it’s at conception.  That is a belief not a biological fact.  When younger, I would have judged a girl or woman if she had an abortion.  You shouldn’t have sex if you don’t want to get pregnant, I would have thought, as indoctrinated.  But along my solitary spiritual path, I experienced moments of profound enlightenment—on this issue of abortion, which as long as I can remember has never ceased to tear this country apart.

First enlightenment: In the 1980s the Reagan/Bush administrations mandated a survey of women who’d had abortions.  The purpose was to find how abortion impacted the mental health and physical well being of these women.  The survey took years to complete.  The findings were supposed to conclude, as society believed way back when, that women who’ve had an abortion are emotionally unstable and their lives a wreck.  But that was an old wives’ tale.  The modern survey found that a good 98 percent of women who had undergone a safe and legal abortion not only completed their education whether high school or college but suffered no lingering emotional distress, went on to marry and have healthy children, and even work satisfying and rewarding careers.

That two percent or so who maintained abortion was the worst decision of their lives and they could never forgive themselves for what they considered murdering their unborn offspring, well among the general population 10-14 percent suffer anxiety and neurosis caused by assorted past traumas.  Abortion itself did not create mental illness in a woman, the report concluded.  This was according to the former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

Second enlightenment: I support abortion but wondered about the ‘soul.’  Was abortion killing a human soul?  There are cultures in the other half of the world that believe a soul does not enter a body until a few months after birth.  A large number of pregnancies end in miscarriage, 30 to 50 percent, most in the first trimester, sometimes before a woman knows she’s pregnant, and more sadly in the second and third trimesters.  Collectively we mourn the life that was … as if fully formed and created, vibrant and healthy … in our minds.  Miscarriage is heartbreaking.  We even name the unborn before fully formed, before entering our shared world and breathing on their own.

The divide of our society on abortion is stitched into the fabric of American history and our puritanical past.  Today we believe our Puritan ancestors were uptight miserable people so sure of themselves, certain they were the Elect bound for heaven and everyone else doomed to hellfire.  It is ironic that a couple hundred years later ‘the scarlet letter,’ a story from America’s past based on Puritanical prejudices, remains an A, with all the same judgement, scorn, and sexual imagery forced deep down into the human subconscious.  Hypocrisy drives people insane.  As a modern country, leader of the Free World, we’ve been better off leaving judgement to God while privately following our individual spiritual convictions.

Why are we watching Impeachment: American Crime Story?  We know the entire lengthy sordid saga and its anti-climactic outcome, we who are middle aged and older and I mean the world over.  The FX series, which Monica Lewinsky is a producer, presents all the juicy details in addicting soap opera segments.  Each episode reveals intriguing behind-the-scenes storylines with plot and character development unknown to many of us who in the late 1990s had to deal with President Bill Clinton’s affair with a young White House intern, Ms. Lewinsky, and the subsequent big fat federal case made out of it, ram-rodded by his arch enemies the DC Republicans who would not stop investigating his every move (past, present and future) until they got him impeached.

And after an over-the-top drawn-out hardball investigation in which every single sexual detail between Clinton and Lewinsky was publicized online, in newspapers, conservative talk radio, and nightly news (not to forget late-night TV and weekly SNL and MadTV sketches) THEN painstakingly repeated during the impeachment trial—all of it seeming an eternity—President Bill Clinton was … shoot, what’s that word, you know when you’re not convicted?  Yeah, he was acquitted.  Do you understand?  The same federal legislative body who voted to impeach President Clinton for lying under oath about an affair turned around and voted to acquit.  That means he was found not guilty.  He didn’t do anything major enough to forcefully remove him from office.

Wee doggies

Because of a sexual harassment suit against him stemming from Clinton’s time as Arkansas Gov, in his second term as President, Clinton had been brought in for questioning by the plaintiff’s lawyers.  The deposition was videotaped and then presented on the news.  Being a lawyer himself and overly confident, he thought he could pull a fast one over his own colleagues.  One of his memorable responses was about the definition of the word ‘is.’  But when out of the blue specific details were brought out about his sexual escapades with a Ms. Lewinsky, he was caught totally off guard.  His countenance revealed embarrassment.  He was trapped.  The jig was up.  He lied in the deposition about the affair.  In anger he lashed out to the media who questioned him about the affair, lying yet again and this meant to all of us.  He lied to his closest confidantes like George Stephanopoulos.  He lied to his wife. 

Then when a certain unclean dress kept by Ms. Lewinsky became part of evidence against him (not sure how and why this mattered way back then), President Clinton was compelled to tell the truth.  He went on national TV one evening to confess he indeed had had an affair with the specifically named former White House intern and that it was wrong.  His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, did not speak to him afterwards.  He accepted his fate out in the White Dog House.  Meanwhile, wisecracking Texas Gov. Ann Richards made light of the whole thing when he came down here to support her cause.  She told the crowd: “Bill Clinton isn’t the first man to ever lie to me,” then quipped, “And he won’t be the last!”  Everyone laughed, she was so funny, as the President of the United States stood behind her, red faced, head bowed but laughing right along with his people, the Democrats.  We knew everything about Bill Clinton by then.

The good old days

Back in the 1990s, I was a government reporter.  For eight years I covered many of Clinton’s innovative economic programs, which by the way worked wonders in communities and surrounding regions.  He had a plan for everything.  If a community lost a major industry, federal money came in for former employees in the manner of education and job training programs.  The economy in the ’90s—which every Republican enjoyed while vehemently disagreeing with every step Clinton took—was the best of my lifetime as far as investment.  Funny how after the ‘impeachment plan’ didn’t work, Republicans started tossing the word ‘recession’ around just to see if it might stick, just creating a mild panic if possible.  They would not shut up about it as the 21^st century neared.  It seemed witchy, like they were ‘willing’ an economic catastrophe—because, see, when Clinton’s Vice President Al Gore naturally ran for President against Republican George W. Bush, the economy was in great shape and the budget was not only balanced but developed a bountiful surplus!  Clinton handed his robust economy to Gore, but the Dem didn’t win.  And the rest is history, perhaps more bitter than sweet.

During the Clinton presidency, there were always rumors of him being a skirt chaser, but then the rumors would go away.  Hillary always pooh-poohed any questions about her husband having affairs.  A well-educated, practical, dynamite mother, with a solid middle-class upbringing, the First Lady seemed a logical woman who did not bend to public pressure.  She was the epitome of emotional if not spiritual strength.  Every year, and for years after her time as First Lady, she was named in the top of the Most Admired Women in America and even in the world.  I thought she didn’t believe any of the allegations and so we shouldn’t either.  In fact, she always blamed “a vast right-wing conspiracy” for her husband’s troubles centering on rumored affairs and sexual harassment.  I also remember how every time he was ‘under the gun’ regarding an affair, he’d suddenly bomb the Middle East.  I’ve never forgotten that oddity especially for a peacenik that he claimed to be.  A dark comedy movie was made about his administration, something along the lines of the ‘tail wagging the dog.’

The national media is at fault in bringing us Bill Clinton warts and all.  Surely seasoned hard-nosed journalists would know the truth: that he carried on with a lot of women.  The rumors were played down to nonexistence.  Clinton had the ragin’ Cajun James Carville on his side, too.  And when Carville talks, ever’body listens.  He just makes sense.  But he knew, too, the public and private Clinton were the same.  Clinton’s friends—and he had a lot of them in very high places—played down silly gossip and lauded the great shape the U.S. was in.

Confused, because I don’t know these people or even people who know them, I would argue with others that there was no way Bill Clinton had time to have an affair with a White House intern.  He was a very busy man.  He traveled all the time, did a million things, and made few mistakes. 

But then he told us he lied and indeed had had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky.

From that moment, any time I saw his mug on TV, I cussed the lying sack of (**&.  I removed a framed photo of President Clinton arriving on Air Force One, taken by my brother who was in the Air Force and was part of military detail after the plane landed.

Time to think

As a reporter, I wasn’t sure what to think.  How naïve was I, insisting like Hillary that Bill doesn’t do things like chase women, supporting him till he confessed he lied about an affair?  How did I miss The Story?  Everyone who ever lived in Arkansas knew the truth; they told me all along.  Why did the national media miss the story, the truth about Bill Clinton, or not report it?  There were women who would have flings with Clinton.  The world thought he had charisma and was attractive.  The only person I knew who thought Bill Clinton was attractive and charismatic was Bill Clinton.  That’s reporter instinct.  I never bought into his charisma.  Maybe it’s because I’m southern, too.

Watching Impeachment and rehashing all our national memories and disgust with the former President, I’ve been impressed by the portrayal of certain journalists and the depiction of right-wing burgeoning internet gossipmonger Matt Drudge.  One journalist in the series knows Clinton harasses women for sex but cannot report about it without the women talking to him or confirming through public information like lawsuits.  When presented with Linda Tripp’s taped conversations of Ms. Lewinsky gushing about or sobbing over the affair with BC, the reporter refuses to take the bait.  He explains journalism ethics prohibits him from reporting a story based on conversations in which someone is unknowingly recorded.  Meanwhile, Drudge’s character literally goes through garbage for any gossip to type into his internet ‘report’ for all right-leaning readers to see, facts unchecked yet scooping real reporters.  At a DC Republican party, he’s commended as a journalist who sides with their political views.

Impeachment makes me ponder: What exactly was the crime?  A married man who’s the U.S. President lied under oath about an affair, so he’s impeached?  The Europeans during that time thought we Americans were petty, childish, cruel, judgmental and obsessed about sex.  My ‘Lou Grant’ editor held firm the whole ordeal over Clinton was politically motivated; the Republicans wanted to kick him out of office, they hated him so much.  And lying about an affair is nothing to be impeached over.  As a young adult back then, I wasn’t so sure and was persuaded by the community as well as the nation, even Oprah Winfrey, who were disgusted by the President.  Clinton did lie under oath, and his actions (lying and having an affair with a young intern) were unbecoming of a U.S. President.

Through the decades since, I managed to come to my senses about Bill Clinton’s presidency: My editor was right all along.

Clinton said everyone wrestles with an addiction, whether food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex.  Clinton as President said his hope for abortion was that it be ‘safe, legal and rare.’  Stephanopoulos’ book on Clinton was titled All Too Human.  Impeachment is a much-needed study of a time in American history when national politics was sport to the death one way or another.  Nothing has changed in American politics, but much has changed with the American people: from our lack of empathy then to our hard-wired cynicism today.