Mindy Newell: Why D’ya Think?
From Martha Thomases’s column of August 4: Last week Heather Antos, an editor at Marvel, went out with a bunch of her colleagues for milkshakes at a nearby Ben & Jerry’s and posted a selfie on Twitter. She said “It’s the Marvel milkshake crew! #FabulousFlo.” The hashtag refers to Flo Steinberg, who had just died.
So, you know, a Friday after a long week, Heather and a group of her pals went out to remember a woman who was their friend and mentor. They didn’t go to a bar. They went for ice cream. They posted a photo on Twitter because that’s what the kids do these days. I don’t know what could be more wholesome.
Naturally, there was an upset. To some, this photo represented everything that was wrong with Marvel today. Women and people of color in editorial offices apparently is a menacing concept to them, and they menaced back. Ms. Antos received threats of rape and other kinds of physical violence. Others chimed in to say these women weren’t attractive enough to rape.
Fuck them.
Uh-oh. Mindy’s on a rant. Duck and cover.
Who the fuck gave these maggots permission to insult and threaten anyone who lives outside their minuscule, ignorant bubbles?
I’ll tell you who.
The liar. The bully. The malignant narcissist. The “Baby-Man.” Or, as I call him, Il Tweetci The Mad.
On June 29, Self magazine writer Nina Bahader listed 22 sexist comments made by the man who sits in the Oval Office. Here are some of them:
- In tweets sent out earlier today, (June 29) Trump referred to Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and claimed she visited Mar-a-Lago while “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
- He tweeted that sexual assault in the military is simply what happens when men and women work together.
- He wrote that women are inherently manipulative. In his book Trump: The Art of the Comeback (1997), he wrote: “Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye—or perhaps another body part.”
- He referred to women as “pieces of ass.” In an interview with Esquire in 1991, he said: “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
- He implied that unbelievably beautiful supermodel [and television host and entrepreneur] Heidi Klum was “no longer a 10” simply because she’d dared to age. During aNew York Times interview with Maureen Dowd, [he] mused: “Heidi Klum. Sadly, she’s no longer a 10.”
- He said that women with small busts are not attractive. During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show, he told Stern: “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10.”
- He told a lawyer she was “disgusting” for pumping breast milk. In 2011, Trump was testifying in a lawsuit when lawyer Elizabeth Beck asked for a break from the proceedings so she could pump breast milk for her 3-month-old daughter. “He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, ‘You’re disgusting, you’re disgusting,’ and he ran out of there,” Beck told CNN. The New York Times reports that Trump’s lawyer does not dispute that he made this comment.
- He credited women’s professional successes to their looks. “It’s certainly not groundbreaking news that the early victories by the women on The Apprentice were, to a very large extent, dependent on their sex appeal,” Trump wrote in his 2004 book, How to Get Rich.
A leopard doesn’t change his spots. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. During the campaign, he tweeted: “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” and said, “When she walked in front of me, believe me, I wasn’t impressed.” And he attacked her with this: “The only card [Hillary Clinton] has is the woman’s card,” he said in April 2016. “She’s got nothing else to offer and frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card, and the beautiful thing is, women don’t like her.” He said of Carly Fiorina, his opponent during the Republican primary season: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that the face of our next president?!’ and “I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really folks, come on. Are we serious?”
He called Megyn Kelley a “bimbo,” and then told CNN when asked about her questions during the debate, that “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.”
He has tweeted warnings to Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about getting in step with the agenda.
He calls women he doesn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs.”
His actions have led to abusive behavior by members of the Republican Party. The Washington Post reported that Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas said of Republican Susan Collins of Maine after her “No” vote in the health care debate that if she were a “guy from south Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.” In an interview with Ali Velshi of MSNBC, Georgia Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter said that “someone should go over there to that Senate and snatch a knot in their ass” a phrase that means to hit someone as punishment. And after Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska also voted “No” on the bill, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told the Senator that her vote had put Alaska’s future with the administration in jeopardy.
And you wonder why the maggots feel empowered?
