In Other News

Here are a couple of pieces I wrote that were published at BNR over the weekend:

1. On the unleashing of harassment hell on Elizabeth Warren for endorsing Hillary Clinton:

Throughout the primary, a segment of self-described Bernie supporters trolled Hillary voters using threats, harassment, and misogyny. If called on their use of slurs and sexist narratives to talk about Hillary, or her supporters, the refrain was always the same: "I'm not a misogynist! I like Elizabeth Warren!"

This was always a transparent deflection, obvious to anyone who has spent any time engaging with sexist people who tokenize one woman in order to justify their rhetorical assaults on other women.

...Lots of people have been very disappointed to discover that "Elizabeth Warren" is an actual human being, and not a magical incantation that deflects charges of obvious sexism.

...She was only their hero when she was silent. There isn't a more perfect, terrible example of what sexism looks like than that.

2. On Mitt Romney's cynical and self-serving criticism of Donald Trump:

Romney is hardly the champion of social justice as which we're suddenly meant to regard him, just because he used his eyeballs on Donald and reported what he saw.

He doesn't deserve any credit for acknowledging that Donald's racism and misogyny is pretty bad. That's not brave. That's what decent people are supposed to do.

And that's not even what Romney is doing. Not really. What he's doing is trying to distance himself and his party from the brashness and directness of Donald's extremism, as though that extremism is not — and hasn't long been — central to the Republican platform. He's not actually condemning Donald's beliefs, but the unabashed ways in which he conveys them.

After all, Romney may never have publicly called women "pigs," but "binders full of women" was pretty dehumanizing, too.

As ever, click the links to read the entire pieces.