Fran Leibowitz on the night Trump got elected

[octoberlib]

She voted and went to lunch, and on the way home she felt like New York was getting ready to welcome its first female president. She walked past a party being set up, hosted by Harvey Weinstein. They said, “See you tonight, Ms Lebowitz!” But she didn’t attend that party, opting instead for the party of the then Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter.

“Everyone was in a great mood and there were these huge American flags draped everywhere. Everyone was drinking champagne.” From time to time over the night, Lebowitz popped into the kitchen to look at the election map on TV and, with each visit, became increasingly nervous. The map was turning red.

A friend, the contributing editor at Vogue, André Leon Talley, who had been on a strict weight-loss regime all year, entered the room. “I had been with this guy in restaurants all year and he was like, ‘Fish, just a little salad, no dressing!’ There were all these chocolates and cookies and stuff [on the table] and he started eating them without even looking.Then I’m smoking as usual but at a certain point I realised I’m smoking two cigarettes and Andre had eaten all the cookies. Graydon had in his hands two martinis and a waiter said ‘You want another?’ and he said ‘Yes!’ He couldn’t even hold them. At a certain point [another] friend of mine said, ‘I’m going home, I can’t take this – I’m not tough enough. I’m going home to take drugs.’ This is a man my age, a very distinguished man.”

Lebowitz went home to SoHo through neighbourhoods usually busy with nightlife. “But there was no one in the streets – it was nothing. It was like grief inside those houses. It was horrible. I felt that strongly affected emotionally for at least a month. My level of rage, always high, is now in fever pitch all the time.”

Lebowitz believes naked racism is behind Trump’s election. “He allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. It’s a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred – what is that about? It’s a fear of your own weakness.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/mar/20/fran-lebowitz-you-do-not-know-anyone-as-stupid-as-donald-trump

[A-Schwarzenegger]

1. Wow. This quote---

"It’s a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred – what is that about? It’s a fear of your own weakness.”

Fran slices through the horseshit.

[MFM008]

2. Hatred keeps them alive

It's their stink.

[Cosmocat]

4. That is it

This is what our elections have been devolving toward for a LONG time now, it just keeps getting exponentially worse, to that point that ... 45.

[DownriverDem]

10. Let's all hope

that those who think otherwise have awaken. We all need to focus on November 2018. I go to bed sad and wake up sad every day when I think of what has happened to our great country.

[Cosmocat]

18. Even further

People need to be aware of the need to be vigilant on a consistent basis.

We rose up in 06 and 08, then pretty much went dormant except to get BHO reelected in 2012.

We have to match the intensity and step up to every battle against the endlessly fomented hate and division coming from the right.

[IluvPitties]

15. Magnificent quote!

[lagomorph777]

30. Yeah, that struck me too.

[poboy2]

34. This is the truth. Its all around me. Hateful people. In a word, deplorable.

Its the LBJ quote to a 't'. I suppose the hidden 'fear' in that quote would be the fact that maybe if others aren't to be looked down upon, what does that mean to my value? Small people thinking small.

"Give them someone to look down on...'

President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

How LBJ Foresaw the Election of Donald Trump
Over a year ago by DEREK BERES
http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/lbj-lowest-white-man

[A-Schwarzenegger]

36. "look down on" equals fear + hate

no = sign in the title box?

[sprinkleeninow]

46. I remember something like this:

Large-minded people speak about ideas.

Mid-minded people speak of things.

Small-minded people talk about other 'people'.

Category one and two are innocuous.
Category three is harmful and destructive.

What has come out of his mouth on a regular basis. Adam Schiff. Maxine Waters. Hillary. Others. Disturbing and vile for the office he is pretending to represent.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

44. it also explains gun fever. n/t

[betsuni]

3. I LOVE Fran Leibowitz.

And I love her even more for having decades-long writer's block.

[True Blue American]

5. The hatred has been there

Since Reagan, grown increasingly worse during Clinton, exposed all over when Obama was elected.

That hate put Trump in the WhiteHouse. Even Nixon was insecure. He hated Kennedy for winning.

Sorry, but I actually heard cheering from Republicans when Kennedy died. That was the beginning for me of how full of anger and hate the Republican Party is. They hated FDR for saving the nation with his programs.

This is not a recent thing. Evangelicals also fed on this irrational hate.

I just heard yesterday that Jeremiah, TV Evangelical compared Ivanka and Jared to Mary and Joseph.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/04/the-last-temptation/554066/

Richard Land compared Trump to Churchill!

[Nitram]

6. Nixon was using racism to get votes well before Reagan.

[True Blue American]

9. Yes,he was

I think I mentioned that Kennedy’s death exposed me to my first understanding of hate on the right.

You are quite correct.

I was glad to see Kennedy win. His death was like a death in the family, then Bobby,MLK. I have seen it explode over the years, but Reagan opened his campaign on racial hatred.

[IluvPitties]

17. Sickening.

[neohippie]

7. Psyops used to take down our democracy

The Cambridge Analytica story shows that when you weaponize information and have a strategy where you play on peoples emotions to manipulate people this is dangerous ground.

If you run a campaign where facts don't matter and you are more concerned with triggering people we end up with a gaslit republic.

There's a huge ethical problem with turning over experts in psychological operations who use stolen data on tens of millions of people to create the kind of big data models we see now to develop psycho-graphic messaging techniques and have a platform like Facebook to help them change up messages in real time to adjust to whatever trigger is the most successful.

And then you have Facebook embedded staff in the Trump campaign also helping them maximize their platform at a huge cost advantage for one candidate over another, this is a perfect storm of corruption.

[Farmer-Rick]

8. The weak, the poor, the hungry, the fearful, the lonely

Are more susceptible to this kind of psychological control. Cult leaders, abusers and pedophiles have known this for years. But if you use them as a scapegoat or hunt them down to expel them, they will turn on you.

We need some controls on psych ops. If you know what's being done to you, you are less likely to be manipulated. Notice in the CA story, they made a great effort to keep secret what they were doing. The truth will set you free.

[bigbrother05]

11. It was the perfect storm of propaganda, racism, misogyny, greed, and suppression

All combined to swing 74K targeted votes.

All focused on destroying the fabric of our liberal democratic society.

Those are little "l" and little "d" because America is (was?) both at it's core. Everything behind Trump was aimed at making America and it's people less. Less free, less kind, less equal.

Electing Trump just meant it would all happen sooner than if they had to grind down Hillary the same way they did Obama. They want a new Dark Ages where only the elite can see the light and all others are yoked to a subservient past.

Their success will be their downfall. All their maneuvers are exposed because they aren't in opposition anymore. They can't claim to be protecting the country against HRC's liberal excesses. The GOP owns all the problems now and have no way to hide their hideous schemes. May they all stew in their bilious juices.

[Thirty by 30]

26. Weaponize information?

That's been going on since Thomas Paine and long before. It's the weakening of the American mind that has enabled racist, ignorant thought - and the horrific hate radio and Fox "news" - to rule the day.

[neohippie]

28. Do you believe what CA is doing is the same thing?

I'm pretty sure that psychological warfare, has come a long way since Thomas Paine.

When you gas light voters on a scale of millions, is that still comparable to printing out leaflets?

Why don't you do a little reading on how information is being used in the digital age


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

[Thirty by 30]

29. And why don't you read some history

Start with Remember the Maine! Mind-bending has been going on for decades. All it needs is a media interested more in promoting one viewpoint than in even-handedly reporting news. It occurs on a digital, near-global scale now, but it's always been there.

[neohippie]

31. I'm a student of history is fascinating

So are you advocating that we just dismiss psychological war on a scale of tens of millions being conducted to affect the outcome of election because people have always used information to sway opinion.

Did those people, declare that we no longer need facts in campaigns because now we can use emotional triggers specifically targeted down to individual voters getting fake news directed directly at them in real time? And were they able to build the big data models they needed to achieve that ability by misrepresenting their goals effectively lying and stealing the individuals data without these people being aware of not only the data theft but that they were also part of this highly illegal and unethical experiment?

[DinahMoeHum]

12. With all due respect, Lebowitz lives in a bubble herself.

She can't even deign to look at people living in the "rust-belt" or "flyover country".

All she knows is her SoHo-Manhattan-Hamptons realm and the people in it.

I, for one, don't want clueless jerks like her in the "resistance" against Trump.

[betsuni]

20. Fran a "clueless jerk"?

She's an extremely witty intellectual. What's your problem with that?

[DinahMoeHum]

22. We don't need "extremely witty intellectuals" like her in our ranks.

We need people who want to fight the Trump pigs and are not afraid to get their hands dirty doing this.

We need canvassers, people who are willing to do the dirty work of going door-to-door with our neighbors, promote our candidates and provide information about them and where the prospective voter can go to get further info or help out.

And we need people to actually join up with their local Democratic club/committee to do this.

[betsuni]

24. Well then, I don't belong in your ranks.

I'm an introvert. Sorry, can't deal with door-to-door anything. I love witty intellectual introverts.

[octoberlib]

33. What nonsense. We need everybody we can get. Even witty intellectuals.

[DinahMoeHum]

35. Then let her just send some $$$$. . .

. . .and otherwise STFO if they're not willing to do anything more than piss and moan about the way things are.

[robbob]

39. You want a well known author to send money

and STFU? I’m speechless.

[DinahMoeHum]

40. If all she's going to do is complain complain complain. . .

. . .about how we're not doing it right, she's wasting her time. . .and ours.

[RobinA]

37. Yes, She May Live

in a bubble, but she and her fellow bubble-dwellers seem to have had pretty much the same reaction on that evening that I did. I take anyone in the resistance who wants to be there. Plus, influence matters.

[BigmanPigman]

41. Bill Maher got really pissed off at her and Salman Rushdie

when they were on his show about 6 months ago. He wanted these two fellow liberals to agree with him that the Dems play too nice and need to use some of the tactics the GOP does to win elections and they both said, "No, you must take the high road". Bill was as frustrated with that answer as I was.

[Ligyron]

13. I thought she was blonde?

[octoberlib]

14. I've never seen a picture of her as a blonde.

[betsuni]

19. You do not know who this Fran Leibowitz is.

There's a different person with a similar name who has written a book.

[Ligyron]

32. Oh, you are absolutely right!

I was thinking of Annie Leibowitz, the photographer for Rolling Stone magazine whose iconic images of Rock stars captured the golden age of music and culture.

I need to start putting my glasses on when I read.

[BigmanPigman]

42. I knew who you meant, I mix up the names but NOT the faces

myself.

[Duppers]

38. Fran blonde? Never.

This old gal would never have stooped to dyeing her hair blonde. She's authentic thru and thru.

[Duppers]

47. Just a thought, you could have her confused with

The famous photographer Annie Leibovitz. Very similar names.
And both are extremely talented, gay, Jewish ladies.

Fran is a real character tho, whom I've always admired. We share attitudes:

"My level of rage, always high, is now in fever pitch all the time."
- Fran talking about how she feels since TRump was elected.

[Ferrets are Cool]

16. It's about a hatred of ALL things they are NOT. nt

[lunasun]

21. K&R excellent interview . Thanks for the read

[oasis]

23. "Naked racism is behind Trump's election". True that. nt

[bdjhawk]

43. Naked racism AND

misogyny. Somehow that always gets left out of the equation and played every bit a role in this horror story.

[Scurrilous]

25. K&R

[cilla4progress]

27. We need EVERYONE

who shares our liberal values!

[Bettie]

45. I've said it before

they love him because he gave them permission to be the very worst versions of themselves. He made it OK to be a bigot again...and they think that's what MAGA means, making it OK to be filled with hate.

[Cha]

48. We felt her PAIN! Only I

don't drink or smoke or take any meds.. I had nothing but extreme shock to deal with. I now know how that feels.

We knew it would be this bad.. that's why everyone who wasn't a racistrump voter was in such unbelievable pain on the Rigged In night.

Thank you, octoberlib

[Duppers]

49. I can so identify with this quote...

"My level of rage, always high, is now in fever pitch all the time.”
- Fran