Back from vacation, with so much to say

Getting away always draws me back to reality in interesting ways, in this case offering fresh takes on everything from Trump to Barbie.

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I had a very relaxing week and a half away, unplugged from the newsletter, from my SiriusXM program, and, for the most part, from social media. My husband was teaching a course in Paris—he’s a film professor—and I joined him after he was done but while he still had the apartment for the rest of the month, in the heart of Le Marais.

So, it was day trips and lots of leisure time in Paris, which saw temperatures in the 70s and sunny skies with a cool breeze, unlike much of the rest of Europe (and much of the U.S.), which faced the scorching reality of climate change. How did I get this lucky?

Of course, one still follows the news while on vacation because it’s all around you and inescapable. And it’s useless not to follow it in my line of work because you have to catch up on it all anyway, which is much harder to do than just following along.

But you don’t feel obligated to comment on it in the moment. And you look at the broader contours, saving the details for later. And that, combined with what you’re doing to unwind, actually offers you an interesting perspective.

I experienced, for example, the booming U.S. economy in action just as the reports were coming out last week of healthy GDP growth, adding to the reports of inflation ebbing, more spending, wages going up, jobs staying steady, and economists of every persuasion convinced no recession is imminent.

I saw Americans traveling and spending, getting flight upgrades, dining out, and buying up whatever they could. And don’t just take it from me. It was written about everywhere in the past couple of weeks, from the New York Times ("America’s Foreign Vacations Tell Us Something About the U.S. Economy") to NPR, which asked, "What Recession?" touting the "summer of splurging, profits, and girl power."

The big question is: Will the media put these stories up front instead of burying them? Will they stop feeding the GOP’s economic doom and gloom and recession fever and finally give major props to President Biden for steering this economy away from calamity and in a direction that benefits Americans? That remains to be seen.

Trump’s Superseding Indictment

I love the fact that we were all waiting for Special Counsel Jack Smith to hand down the January 6th indictments, but first we get these new charges in the espionage case against Trump and a third defendant—another loyal, stupid employee.

The term "superseding" indictment has drama to it that gets people’s attention and only further alerts the public to how deeply enmeshed in crime Trump is. And now we see, like Richard Nixon, that it’s not just the crime; it's the cover-up—in this case, the attempted destruction of evidence, which is itself an admission of the crime.

The superseding indictment describes guys with flashlights in the tunnels of Mar-a-Lago looking to delete surveillance footage for "the boss." It’s like a mob movie, except it’s for real. And there’s more description of the boxes of classified documents being moved around, from the storage area to bathrooms and the ballroom.

Last week I visited the palace of Fountainebleau, south of Paris—the massive, opulent castle that was a residence of the French kings from the 12th century right up through Napoleon—which is now a museum. And when you look at photos of Mar-a-Lago, including those in the indictment (strewn with boxes of documents), you can’t help but see that Trump styled the place, complete with its marble floors, massive Persian carpets, ornate Flemish tapestries, walls of 17th and 18th century paintings, and $7 million in gold leaf, to look like a French palace, tacky as it all turned out because, well, it’s still Trump.

He also clearly sees himself as a French king, keeping mistresses, taking liberties with any other women who come into his orbit and cultivating loyal servants. And there have been many comparisons between Trump and Napoleon, whom Adolf Hitler admired. Peggy Noonan, the often daffy Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter, even just a few weeks ago made a wish: "May Trump Soon Meet His Waterloo," noting similarities between the cults of Trump and Napoleon and referring to the battle that ultimately marked the final defeat of Napoleon.

But Noonan may not get her wish before the GOP primaries are over (even as Trump may go to prison), as the GOP seems to be screwing it all up again with a huge field of 2024 candidates who will split the anti-Trump voter and help Trump stay way ahead. Last week, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed asking for donors to demand that candidates drop out so that it could be a two-person race, the only chance he sees of beating Trump in the primaries.

But even as a new poll last week showed Trump’s support among the GOP softening, the caveat is that it is only "slightly" softening. And while DeSantis—the only other candidate in double digits in the polls—might be perfectly fine for Mitt Romney, I don’t think a majority of American voters would agree if the choice is between DeSantis and Joe Biden.

Ron DeSantis embraces slavery as a good thing

DeSantis proved that even further last week with his doubling down on Florida’s revised African American history standards, which he backed as part of his anti-woke agenda meant to whitewash the harm done to enslaved people in America—so that White students wouldn’t feel so bad about America’s past, truth be damned. Educators in Florida are now required to instruct middle schoolers that "slaves developed skills that, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

When Black Republicans, including MAGA Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is also running for president, pushed back, joining strong condemnations from Black leaders across the country, DeSantis slammed them: "Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?"

In addition to being profoundly racist, this is profoundly stupid.

DeSantis is already reeling from the impact of the anti-LGBTQ ad his campaign circulated, and he’s burning through cash, firing still more people as he can’t get his numbers up. So now he actually thinks the way to right the ship and get more support is to promote slavery as a job training program?

Maybe DeSantis thinks this will help him win the very first GOP contest in very White Iowa, though his hyper-focus on winning that state’s caucuses defies the reality that the winner of the state hasn’t gone on to win the Republican nomination since George W. Bush in 2000. Remember when Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz won Iowa and then went on to become president?

What’s clear is that DeSantis really believes what he’s promoting and sees a movement out there that he wants to lead into the White House—or wherever it takes him—even if Trump wins the nomination in 2024 and loses the election to Joe Biden. DeSantis and his wife Casey are in this for the long haul, 2028 and beyond, ginned up on Moms for Liberty’s Christian nationalist agenda, fascistic book bans reminiscent of Hitler’s book burnings, flat-out white supremacy, and a brutal anti-LGBTQ crusade.

On a day trip to Antwerp, while visiting Belgium’s amazing Royal Museum of Fine Arts, I saw an eerie exhibition of conservative Catholic Flemish artists who emerged in Belgium as a movement in the 1920s, rising up against modernity, popular music, sexual libertinism, science, and football. The world was getting too out of control and decadent, they believed, and it was time to stand against it and bring people back to faith. Sound familiar?

The movement was called called De Pilgrim, also the name of the exhibition, which included lots of paintings of people finding God and of sinners repenting, including one that appears to be a sex worker and may even be a drag queen or a trans woman (Is that a five o clock shadow in the painting?). You realize how this is a through line in history, and the past is never really in the past, whether it's the Nazis, the Klan, or whatever.

Jesus et les autres - Prosper de Troyer, 1933

And DeSantis is just part of the new version of it, ushered in by Trump and MAGA, including with its war on science. He now even promises, if elected president, to "sic" vaccine denialist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve." I’ve been saying it for a while, and I’ll say it again: DeSantis is dangerous no matter what happens in the 2024 election. He’s someone we’ll have to watch for a long time.

Barbie in Paris

It was fascinating seeing Barbie mania from abroad. But of course, the Greta Gerwig film dropped globally all at once. (This is a spoiler alert, so read further at your own risk.) We ducked into a late-night screening of "Barbie" in Paris, showing with French subtitles, as a spur-of-the-moment thing.

I think the hoopla is a bit overblown, as the film is a little messy. I can’t say that take is necessarily related to being in Paris, though the audience did seem less enthused than I expected.

Of course, any film that sends the right-wing into fits of outrage is a good thing. I reveled in Gerwig’s complicated (and often hilariously right on) feminist take on Barbie. There’s the ribbing of “the patriarchy” for selling Barbie to the public via corporate giant Mattel and the highlighting of a character calling Barbie a "fascist" for promoting body ideals. But there’s also the acknowledgement that Barbie allowed little girls to push aside their baby dolls—which only permitted them to play with dolls in the role of a future mom—offering them an adult to aspire to who could be a doctor or an astronaut or the president.

Yet I thought a lot of the message of the film got very muddled as it went on—even as the satire was bitingly funny at times—especially in how it posed men. It resolved the Ken character in a confusing way.

But what annoyed me more was the lack of overt references to queerness in a film that is about gender roles and sex appeal. There are a lot of coded references, such as the doll "Allan," who was Ken’s "buddy" and who was discontinued shortly after his introduction in the 60s, and who’s been viewed in popular culture as gay (if you read up on it after seeing the film, as it’s not explicit in the film).

And some have pointed to lots of other things that are coded as queer. But why do we need codes in 2023? Why can’t a feminist filmmaker be explicit in showing and exploring, even if briefly, how some gay boys and trans girls have played with Barbie as kids too, and how lesbian and bi girls often had crushes on Barbie, especially in a film that wrestles with Barbie’s influence on children, gender, and American culture?

Just my own two cents added to all that’s been written, and I’m sure many of you have your own takes.

I'm glad to be back. And for those of you who listen to my SiriusXM show, I’ll be on the air tomorrow once again—many thanks to the great Joe Sudbay for guest-hosting while I was out!—and we’ll have a lot to talk about.