On The Internet Mean Streets

There is a picture making its way around the internet of a grossly overweight woman standing in what looks like a cafeteria line.  She is wearing a pair of shorts that are several sizes too small and the fat rolls at her stomach and bottom are pushed up and exposed. I don't know who the woman is or where the picture came from, but from what I can tell, it's a picture that both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, men and women, Americans and non-Americans, feel perfectly at ease making fun of.

There is another one of an obese man sitting on a motorcycle, butt crack exposed.

And yet another one where a woman's breasts and belly have been photo-shopped to look like a huge, green Ninja Turtle.  

Wander around Facebook or Twitter on any given day and you'll find FB friends and Twitter followers who have posted dozens of pictures like this; where the only purpose for posting is to make raucous, profane fun of a mostly undeserving subject. 

Everyone in the public eye can expect to be the subject of speculation and/or ridicule, simply by being in the public eye.  When Britney Spears had a public mental breakdown, the internet couldn't get enough of it--not to empathize or commiserate, but to shame her and make her misery complete.

More recently, Renee Zellweger may have had an eye-lift but so far she's not admitting it.  Now we're forced to spend hours and hours and hours discussing this important issue, to the neglect of other even more important things. Like whether Monica Lewinsky's entry into the Twitterverse is all about embarrassing Hillary so close to her presidential campaign or is really about the advantage her own experiences might bring during a campaign against cyber-bullying.

After speaking to groups about slut-shaming and cyber-bullying, Lewinsky joined Twitter last week in order to open up the conversation.  This is her focus now, she says.  After 16 years of having almost universal hatred and ridicule directed at her, who would know better about what that kind of unwanted attention does to a young life?   What happened next wasn't surprising: The cyber-bullies came out in full force against her.

The anonymity of the internet allows anyone with a cruel streak and access to Wi-Fi a safe haven for vicious intolerance. Now no one is immune and the meanies are everywhere, hiding behind usernames that keep them safe from the same kind of public scrutiny they're so rabidly enforcing.  

Even the websites I normally go to for mostly true news and views profit from sidebar links to photo-stories about former child stars who are now ugly, about celebrities who smell bad, about ridiculously awful plastic surgeries, about female stars with cellulite or without makeup. 

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube build their numbers to sky-high status whenever hatred and ridicule goes viral.  The comments and re-tweets are nightmarish, and if I think too long on what kind of people are out there gorging on this stuff I find myself questioning whether, as a civilization, we're even worth saving.

And we're not even talking yet about politics and politicians.

The destructive politics of, say, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, or Chris Christie are enough to be the centerpiece of any conversation.  Their looks don't hurt us, their policies do.  But whenever their political activities cause some major ruckus, the comment sections invariably devolve into jokes about their personal appearance--as if the only way they can be hurt is by making fun of weight, chin, or skin.

As a political blogger, I'm not above enjoying the hell out of ridiculing certain Right Wing pols whose own meanness goes beyond hurting individuals and leans more toward causing heartache and dismay to multitudes.  They deserve it.  But going beyond their politics to make fun of their looks, or their spouses' looks, or their children's looks doesn't add to the conversation--it doesn't fix anything.  It's a cruel way to get a laugh.

Inflicting personal, psychic pain for the pleasure of an audience isn't anything new.  The concept of making fun of other human beings is centuries old.  But spreading  ridicule to the ends of the earth electronically in a matter of seconds is new.  And chilling.  Anyone with a camera or a smart phone can snap a picture of someone who looks funny--without them even knowing it--and post it to the internet.  Once the deed is done it's out there forever.  No taking it back.  Forever.

We hear about teen suicides nearly every day.  The direct cause of far too many of them is cruel, senseless public shaming and/or bullying on the internet.  It's time the shamers take the heat.  They're miserable excuses for human beings, made even worse by the fact that they know they can inflict that kind of harm anonymously.  They're heartless cowards, blameless as long as they can stay nameless.

The broad scope and openness of the internet is a gift, but when it's used as a tool for abuse we have an obligation to self-regulate it.  We have to pay attention.  We are the grown-ups here.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog, Daily Kos, and Alan Colmes' Liberaland)

A Long, Long Season of Shame

I used to love to watch John Leonard review movies on CBS's "Sunday Morning". I never knew what he was talking about but I sure loved the sound of his words. Every week, after he finished his review, my husband and I would turn to each other and say, in almost perfect unison, "So? Did he like it or not?" (John Leonard died last November 8, four days after the presidential election. He was only 69. Way too young to die for anybody, but especially young for a wise old owl like Leonard. He was gravely ill but he mustered up nearly the last of his energy in order to vote for Barack Obama. I rarely understood the man but I wasn't the least bit surprised. I knew he would never have voted for McCain/Palin.)

One Sunday he was talking about a plague of spectacularly vile horror movies that had descended upon us that year. At the very end, he heaved that long, sad sigh heard so often during the Bush years and said, loud and clear, "I'm old enough to remember when America still felt shame."

I thought about John Leonard and that remark last week when I was in a Books-a-Million and I wandered over to their Joe Muggs coffee shop. Every table had a tri-folded advertising stand-up and they were all exactly the same. One side focused on BAM's membership advantages, one side told about Joe Muggs's latest Cappuccino flavor, and the third advertised Ann Coulter's newest paean to hate, "GUILTY: Liberal Victims and their Assault on America".

I guessed that Coulter's publisher, Random House (Bennett Cerf must be spinning down there), paid a pretty penny for their third of the stand-ups--an offer BAM maybe couldn't refuse--but couldn't BAM at least have tried to find another publisher--one who recognizes, celebrates and rewards good literature--willing to pay the same? For every Coulter fan turned on by the image of their favorite dominatrix taking a military stance, glaring out at us from above the word "Guilty". . .(Oh, I see now. A bit of sabotage by the cover designer? From a distance it looks like Ann's the criminal. I LIKE it!) . . .they're going to find people like me who just don't get the appeal of hatemongers.

The hateful have always been among us, but never so forcefully or in such great numbers. When I hear that millions of people are buying Coulter's ugly, inaccurate books or gushing over the nonsensical rantings of Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Malkin, and a host of other snarling snipes, I have to wonder who these supposedly sentient inhabitants of the 21st Century, these self-anointed cultural caretakers, these self-appointed arbiters of our United States, these (Must I say it?) Voters really are.
(Stop me! I'm lapsing into a really bad imitation of Leonard-speak!)

Anyway. . .I want to shout to them (because I don't want to get too near): What are you people doing? You glorified and deified Ronald Reagan, a "leader" who almost singlehandedly killed the unions and who gave the destruction of the lower and middle classes such a boost we may never recover from it. He filled his cabinet with anti-government goons who reveled in showing their muscle, depriving poor kids of healthy school lunches by seizing on ketchup as a good enough vegetable, by turning our public lands over to as much private enterprise as their eight year reign would allow, and by introducing "deregulation" into our every day lexicon.

You so longed for the total destruction of Bill Clinton, a popular president not of your choosing or your party, that you readily bought into-- and passed along with a giddy vengeance--the notion that a really sleazy sex life was immediate grounds for something as serious and as rare as impeachment.

On the other hand, you turned your heads and closed your minds to any real evidence that, after Clinton (the really popular president) completed his eight years more or less honorably (no thanks to you), the woefully inadequate one you then so carelessly chose and so happily ensconced was everything you hoped he wouldn't be.

But even after the Bush Administration took the astonishingly shortsighted and murderous detour to Iraq, presided over the sickening mishandling of Katrina, initiated programs that severely undermined the lives of all but the super rich--showing their true colors at every turn--you still came out in huge numbers to put them back into office for four more years!

And even after he proved you wrong so many times, and even after you and your fathers and your mothers and your sisters and your brothers and everyone else you ever came into contact in your entire life got the shaft from George W. Bush and the Republicans, did you finally come to recognize the error of your ways? Did you promise to donate every penny you ever make as long as you live to help take care of those millions of victims who were doing, if not splendidly, at least pretty much okay until your guys came along? Did you press for jail sentences for your former buddies? Something--anything--to wipe those stupid grins off of Bush/Cheney's evil mugs? Did you at least give up Chocolate on Thursdays??

No. You didn't. Instead, you bought Ann Coulter's books and went on listening to Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Malkin and that host of--others. You're over on Newsmax right now yucking it up over Obama's middle name and passing it on that Michelle is a Mother.

I see I'm not getting through to you. . .but I know someone who recognizes shame when he sees it. Watch and learn:



Ramona