Read Blog for Arizona | Politics from a Liberal Viewpoint for more about sexism

The Trump tapes on the Howard Stern Show

October 9, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

I don’t know why Tea-Publicans are feigning surprise and shock over Donald Trump’s comments about sexually assaulting women after the way he talked about his own daughter: “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.” video.

Tea-Pubicans knew exactly what they were getting, but they deluded themselves or didn’t care. Anyone who has ever listened to the Howard Stern Show over the years knows the real Donald Trump.

On Saturday afternoon, CNN published several audio clips from the Howard Stern Show of conversations between Donald Trump and Howard Stern. Donald Trump to Howard Stern: It’s okay to call my daughter a ‘piece of ass’ (audio clips at CNN):

Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Beth Ostrosky and Howard Stern (Photo by James Devaney/WireImage)

Donald Trump engaged in crude and demeaning conversations about women over a 17-year-period with radio shock-jock Howard Stern, according to a review by CNN’s KFile of hours of newly uncovered audio.

Among the topics Trump discussed: his daughter Ivanka’s physique, having sex with women on their menstrual cycles, threesomes, and checking out of a relationship with women after they turn 35.

Trump’s long track record of making misogynistic comments and engaging in lewd conversations about sex took on a new and much darker tone on Friday night, when the Washington Post published audio of Trump, caught on a hot mic in 2005, bragging about how women let him do whatever he wants to them because he’s a celebrity.

While Trump’s comments — in which he describes forcing himself upon women — stand apart from anything he has said in the past, Trump has long engaged in sexually explicit banter over the years, particularly on Stern. Trump appeared on Stern’s radio program for decades, and while many of his appearances have been reported on, KFile’s review has turned up previously unreported examples of Trump engaging in crude conversations.

John McCain was Donald Trump before Donald Trump

October 8, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

Republican leaders have condemned Donald Trump for his comments caught on a tape released to the media on Friday, but they are still standing by the GOP nominee. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell Reject Donald Trump’s Words, Over and Over, but Not His Candidacy:

The two top Republicans in Congress — Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Speaker Paul D. Ryan — have repeatedly condemned statements by Donald J. Trump, but they have not joined the dozens of leaders in their party who have said they will not vote for him.

On Thursday, another 30 former GOP leaders, including former Tucson Rep. Jim Kolbe, signed a letter saying they cannot vote for Donald Trump because he “makes a mockery” of their principles. 30 Former GOP lawmakers sign anti-Trump letter.

But what about Senator John McCain, who has endorsed Donald Trump and consistently reaffirmed his endorsement after each and every outrageous statement made by Donald Trump over the course of this campaign?

John McCain released a statement yesterday hours after the Trump tape became news:

“There are no excuses for Donald Trump’s offensive and demeaning comments. No woman should ever be victimized by this kind of inappropriate behavior. He alone bears the burden of his conduct and alone should suffer the consequences.”

Once again, McCain wants to have it both ways: condemn Trump’s comments to get praise from his McMedia base, but not disavow his endorsement of Trump or repudiate him as the GOP nominee, because he needs Trump’s deplorable base of voters for reelection.

Will Trump suffer the consequences for his crude comments about women? Maybe not. John McCain never suffered the consequences for his own crude comments about women.

Name it and shame it, don’t apologize for it

September 11, 2016 by AZ BlueMeanie

One of the most effective tools of the Civil Rights Movement was the use of name and shame to reveal the identity of a person or organization guilty of illegal or unacceptable behavior in order to embarrass them into not repeating the offense.

This is harder to do today now that we have a conservative media entertainment complex that is shameless, and that has created an alternate reality in which those who engage in such illegal or unacceptable behavior feel that they are entitled to do so and receive affirmation from the right-wing noise machine.

The latest feigned outrage of the day from the media is comments made by Hillary Clinton at a private fundraiser that the media villagers who love the “both sides are equally bad” narrative and false equivalency reporting were quick to label as a “gaffe.” It was not a gaffe, it was the truth, and is the use of “name it and shame it” to embarrass a segment of Trump supporters into not supporting a blatant racist.

Clinton’s remarks took attention from Trump’s spate of gaffes last week and also from her own effort to turn the public’s attention to her qualifications for office and vision for the nation.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right?” Clinton said to applause and laughter from supporters at the LGBT for Hillary fundraiser Friday night in New York.

The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

And here is the part that the vast majority of media reports have failed to report:

But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.Context is everything.

Clinton’s comments have the advantage of actually being true. Donald Trump has left no doubt that he is a “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” in his shockingly offensive campaign. And Trump’s campaign is being managed by the alt-right white nationalists from Breitbart News.

$500 Billion: Gender Pay Gap Is Bigger than You ThinK

April 12, 2016 by Pamela Powers Hannley

It is a well known fact that in the US women– regardless of economic status— are paid less than men. Gender pay gap is real.

Overall, women make 78 cents for every $1 earned by a man, with African American and Hispanic women earning far less. Over one woman’s lifetime, that is a significant amount of money. Across the country, that pay gap costs American women $500 billion per year, according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women and Families. On an individual basis the report findings break down like this:

To put it in individual terms, if women earned as much as men, each woman with a full-time job would be able to afford an additional seven months of mortgage and utilities, or 1.6 years worth of food, annually.

Tuesday, April 12, is Equal Pay Day, which was created to draw attention to gender pay gap, which has remained basically the same since 2001. Women will not have equality until we have control over our own bodies, equal pay for equal work, an equal voice in government and the Equal Rights Amendment.

For background on gender pay gap, continue reading…

Sexism in America: Peggy Olson, Hillary Clinton, Mom & Me

March 9, 2016March 8, 2016 by Pamela Powers Hannley

Beyond the booze, the babes, the cool, retro clothes, and the slick mid-century modern Madison Avenue backdrop, AMC’s Mad Men is a story about office work and sexism at the dawn of the feminist era– before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), before Roe v Wade, before Ms Magazine, and before the Equal Rights Amendment’s (ERA) revival.

Mad Men’s Peggy Olson is the quintessential poster girl for working women and office survival. As Mad Men begins, Peggy is the Plain Jane secretarial school graduate who is assigned to be the secretary for handsome cad, sex addict, and creative genius Don Draper. As the episodes unfold, Peggy breaks out of the secretarial pool– with Draper’s help– to become a copywriter. Even in her success, Peggy isn’t given the respect she deserves. Initially, she shares a tiny office with the copier, suffers through Draper’s unrealistic demands that rob her personal life, and works primarily on women’s products– stockings, bras, make-up, and cleaning products. She presents at pitch meetings when they need someone to give “Mom’s opinion.” Fighting sexism and entrenched behaviors, roles, and ideas in the ad agency office, Peggy claws her way up the career ladder and against-all-odds becomes a sought-after creative genius in her own right toward the end of the series.

Mad Men presents a more honest view of the 1950s-60s than the moralistic TV shows of the period– like Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet, or Lassie...