So Much for Sisterhood: On Liberal White Lesbians, Entitlement and Benign Racism

It was only a matter of time.

Michelle Obama is tall, intelligent, and is a graduate from two of America's best private universities. She is a black woman from a working-class home.

She is also the First Lady of the United States of America.

But you know?

She owes  a lot to a lot of different factors and constituencies, right?

I mean, she has admitted as much.

How her parents were tough, fair, and loving.  How her father, even after being stricken with a debilitating illness, always maintained his work ethic, not just for practical reasons but also because he wanted his children to understand that one should endeavor to power through difficulties and overcome challenges.

She owes the people of Chicago, too, those who supported her husband during his community organizing and later his political career as a young Senator from Illinois.

Of course she owes women, also, especially women who have supported her healthy food and her exercising initiatives. As for any constituencies -- blacks, women, union workers, and gays and lesbians -- that have written big checks for President Obama's two presidential election bids?  Well, yeah of course, Michelle Obama is obliged to them,  right?

What I am doing here is attempting to put myself into the brain of Ellen Sturtz, the 56 year-old California resident who landed in D.C. recently. She is part of an organization known as GetEQUAL, which is affiliated with a human rights organization known as Code Pink. Sturtz turned up at a fancy Democratic fundraiser in the bucolic Northwest neighborhood,Kalorama, on Tuesday night, and reportedly paid $500 to attend. Sturtz is advocating for a change to Federal workforce laws that would protect lesbians and gays against discrimination.  She wanted President Obama to support the effort.  Of course, President Obama was not at that fancy fundraiser in Northwest D.C., on Tuesday evening....but Michelle Obama was. Close enough, right?  And also, Michelle Obama owes Sturtz, get it?

An Iraqi Man Threw His Shoe at Dubya: The Worst Presidential-level Heckling Ever!

I really, honestly, want to understand why Ellen Sturtz felt it was A-OK to shout out demands to Michelle Obama. For the record,  I engaged in this same thought-experiment a few years ago, when that guy threw the shoe at George Bush, remember that?  Admittedly, I undertook that exercise in that instance in an amused vein: Me, as the Shoe-thrower: "I wonder how much time I will have to set my AIM before I fling this shoe at President George Bush of America, and also, how much time I will have to drop and roll before the Secret Service comes and kicks my ass?"
 
 I also watched with mild bemusement two weeks ago when Madea Benjamin of the advocacy group Code Pink heckled President Obama. In that instance, I took to the Twitter to observe that the President handled Benjamin with strategic calm, and TV-ready aplomb.  My colleague Jeff Winbush later exposed Benjamin as a publicity-seeking crackpot-cum-gadfly but I demurred.

What I noted in the few comments that I shared during that Beltway story du jour was that the President, weighted with his Office and history, very wisely "tolerated" the woman who interrupted his address on terrorism and national security not once, twice, but three times. He is after all The President of the United States of America, so it is a big deal that he actually acknowledged that Benjamin raised a topic that was worth debating (drone strikes, secret prisons and the like.)

But I am talking about nuances of gender and culture here with this recent heckling of Michelle Obama. And I am drawing your attention to a fraught contemporary history of tone deaf white women who Mean Well but who really, deep down, either resent, fear, or are deeply flummoxed by successful, confident, well-spoken black women.

Yes, it is personal -- also, political.

It is personal because I am familiar with the Ellen Sturtz types,  having grown up in San Francisco, and worked in media for many years. Without irony, I say that many of my closest friends are white, and few of them are lesbians.  I know this demographic to be as diverse as any other.

But I am not trying to give cover to any partisans in the Left or Right wing of media when I say this: The shops that I've worked in since the mid-1980s have always had at least a handful of women like Ellen Sturtz in them -- self-righteous, Messianic zealots. Women who are so PC that that they made me want to go buy a gun, a Ford F-350 pickup and hightail it to my Mother's ancestral home in Rock Springs, Wyoming to hunt elk and complain about uppity Native Americans.

But really, this is no laughing matter. Politics on the ground impact politics in the voting booth, which in turn affect policy. These twin towers of realpolitik in turn affect economics, for all of us. I am an expert in my field, Communicating. Mrs. Obama is an expert in her field -- public service and yes, organizational governance. And yet neither of us are immune from the hoary stereotypes that many white people still hold about blacks in America in general, and about black women in particular. We are not immune from the attempts to dominate, "alpha," or otherwise diminish our validity by individuals or institutions that view us as expendable or unworthy of respect or serious consideration.  
It is not a "one day" or a "single news cycle" story, it is constant.

For example, in the very fiscal quarter when Sheryl Sanberg made her courageous stand for women in the corporate workforce, I was in touch with a close friend who was having run-ins with her own cut-rate Ellen Sturtz on the job. My friend was daily being described as "aggressive" by a white woman lesbian who considered herself to be a good, staunch liberal.  This person said to my friend that my friend was was "loud-mouthed," "aggressive," "confrontational" -- all in the context of what should have been professional discussions involving work.  In short order, it became evident to my friend that this individual was blind to her own entitlement.

My friend's "boss" is an individual who did not compete for the executive position she held. She was given the job thanks to a family connection. Her position arrived courtesy of what Rutgers professor Nancy DiTomaso forcefully describes in her book, "The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism." In shorthand, Professor DiTomaso describes the "hook up factor" that many wealthy white people enjoy, the closed networks of family members and friends that sure comes in handy when the economy contracts.

This Ellen Sturtz doppleganger that my friend dealt with is, according to my African-American friend, acutely unqualified in several core competencies required in the particular position that she held. Moreover, this individual is also culturally tone-deaf. How did my friend arrive at that conclusion? In a series of meetings, this "boss" admitted that she knew nothing about the Unitarian Church, or the African-Methodist Episcopal Church or -- God help her -- the details of the Healthcare Reform Act.

And yet, this person (who, my friend assured me, is of an age at which one should by rights be aware of such cultural, economic and political touchstones), regularly and with a degree of alpha-entitlement bordering on testosterone-driven aggression, insisted that my friend was out of line for sharing her professional counsel on key aspects of the work...assignments that called for my friend's expertise in areas for which the "boss" had zero competency.

"I am Looking For Equality Before I Die!" (While Some of Us Have Ancestors Who Literally Died.)

Yet, owing to the power differential of the arrangement, this particular woman boss, a self-described "liberal," and "lesbian," felt comfortable remarking regularly that my friend's attempts to press for high quality standards, clearly-defined ethical guidelines, and technical innovations in regard to the work -- all delivered by my friend calmly and with good humor, my friend says -- stemmed not from my friend's professional expertise, but from what the white woman boss viewed as scary "aggression" on my friend's part. Were my friend not as experienced as she is within her field, she might have been upended by those exchanges. As I received this information, I had no trouble relating: in the past, similar workplace encounters have throw me for loops of self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy.

But by now, my friend has thick skin, and a finely-attuned radar to this dynamic (which is not to say that I am hyper-sensitive or spoiling for fight,  nor prone to "playing the race card.") We're not perfect but women like me and my friend are self-aware and pragmatic. And speaking only for myself,  any white woman in a workplace who feels threatened by me is very likely insecure, incompetent, culturally ignorant or a combination thereof.

Ellen Sturtz -- who described as "aggressive" Mrs. Obama's action, after Mrs. O walked over and spoke to Sturtz after Sturtz had rudely interrupted the First Lady's address --  seems to have a lot in common with that "liberal" lesbian I described above. Mrs. Obama did not yell or scream or grab Sturtz around the neck. But she did make herself clear....which apparently led Sturtz to feel "taken aback."  Coded words  are now being deployed by Sturtz and her ilk to distract from Sturtz's coded behavior, that moment when she attempted to make an unacceptable intrusion on Michelle Obama at the fundraiser.

Yes, Well....

More important: There is a sense of entitlement that drives these kinds of interactions between black and white women, particularly women of a certain vintage. In the minds of these white women, it is a case of, "Hey 'Sista Friend,' I know what's best -- and aren't you grateful for my insight?" Their enthusiasm for their own righteousness is an assault, a bullying tactic. But Michelle Obama is, as Sturtz learned, the ultimate Alpha Woman at this time -- she doesn't owe Sturtz a single thing, least of all her own dignity.

I am not grateful. Nor will I remain silent when confronted with such self-righteous, pseudo-liberalism and cultural and professional incompetence.  It appears that in that garden fundraiser in Kalorama on Tuesday night, Mrs. Obama didn't either.

UPDATED: Three Ways to Consider Tarantino's "Django Unchained"

Two weeks after it opened,  "Django Unchained" continues kicking up a windstorm of commentary, critiques and rants.  It has also earned more than $100 million at the domestic box office, not exactly small change for a spectacularly complicated film that opened at the height of the Christmas season.

I'd read the reviews in The New York Times and other outlets and sat it out, opting for a Christmas holiday free of blood-splatters.  During the film's first week, I followed and sometimes chimed in on the discussions that clogged my social media channels. Many of the writers, academics and media folks who are the core of my network expressed -- sometimes in heated language -- widely diverging opinions about the movie.  In summary:


-- Tarantino foolishly makes light of the horrors of slavery. (Susan Fales Hill.)
-- Tarantino delivered a liberating revenge fantasy, disturbing but legitimate (TaRessa Stovall.)
-- Tarantino wrongly suggests that an eye-for-an-eye philosophy would have been an acceptable antidote to slavery, i.e., slaves or former slaves killing whites in retribution. (William Jelani Cobb)
-- Tarantino is talented but woefully immature. (Me.)

Now that I've watched it, here are two points on the film, brief analysis on the buzz surrounding the film, and observations on the filmmaker's comments about how and why he made it. 

1) Story

"Django Unchained" is a love story wrapped in an action-packed revenge fantasy set against the backdrop of slavery in the Deep South and in the Southwest. 

Or is it?

As a postmodern, edgy action movie, it is wildly successful. As a love story it is weakened by excesses that Tarantino either didn't notice, failed to reign in, or willfully created. As a revenge fantasy-cum-commentary on racism, it succeeds moderately.   There are strained metaphors and over-long scenes that hamper the action  (Fales Hill, for example, quite astutely noted the 'hamfisted' inclusion a reference to Wagner's "The Ring Cycle,"  within the plot).  But the  biggest story deficit is that the film's spine -- it's core meaning -- isn't clear. Is it foremost a love story? A revenge fantasy? A buddy film? Tarantino's reputation as an enfant terrible of modern film auteurs springs from his ability to produce jarring, swift acts of violence, unexpected moments of tenderness, and black humor laced with creative explosions of colorfully profane language.

All are present here, but given the incendiary frame (slavery, the ultimate third-rail in American cultural politics), identifying the genuine point of the story is difficult. Tarantino's biggest weakness as a filmmaker (in my book) has long been his inability or unwillingness to honor the tradition of linear cinematic storytelling, i.e., plots that have clearly defined beginnings, mid-sections, and endings. His elliptical style, in which flashbacks and future developments pop up randomly, swing around and double back on each other, sometimes at a dizzying pace ("Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction") is used, I believe, as something of a dodge: He may indeed be capable of writing a linear narrative and simply elects not to. But as I view his catalog, Tarantino is more interested in encouraging incipient ADHD in the audience than in steadily building our investment in the characters, in cultivating a gradual, creeping tension as plot developments logically unfold. (No, I am neither inflexible or inherently opposed to 'non-traditional' storytelling tactics, I merely prefer the former method and Tarantino has yet to produce a film that  has this flow.)  The story within "Django Unchained" is obscured; it takes a back seat to the main theme that Tarantino is promoting -- blacks avenging the cruelties of slavery. That is not a 'story,' it is a political statement.

2) Artistry

Other reviewers -- film scholars and smart movie-goers alike -- have correctly identified the film's obvious homage to the "Spaghetti Westerns" of Sergio Leone.  Unmentioned, though, is its liberal borrowing of motifs from a host of other films and filmmakers, including Hitchcock, John Ford,  Gordon Parks, Mel Brooks, and in a fleeting reference, David O. Selznick. Taken individually, the references to Leone, Hitchcock, Parks, and to Brooks are not problematic.  Collectively though, they diminish the opportunity for a truly original film that might have been enhanced by deploying fewer (or by a more subtle deployment) of references to past films or other genres. As it is, the driving artistic feature of "Django' is that it is a mash-up, however slick, visceral and humorously drawn the total sum of its parts.

There are liberal doses of Peckinpah in the grisly images of spurting blood and rending limbs; reminders of Parks in the many shots of  Django's quick-draw skills and bad-ass lines of dialog; hints of Ford in the back-lit, sillhouettes or heroic shots of Jamie Foxx's Django swaggering away from the camera framed by looming mountain ranges;  big splashes of Hitchock in Django's intense, tunnel vision focus on rescuing Kerry Washington's Broomhilda, a character who serves as the proverbial 'McGuffin' -- that item or person identified by the Master of Suspense as the driving momentum of a plot (really, Broomhilda in "Django' may as well have been a mysterious uranium formula, a la Cary Grant's and Ingrid Bergman's 'McGuffin' in 'Notorious"). The scene in which the Klansmen -- led by Don Johnson's character --  disagree over their hoods is an updating of the bandit's 'beans for dinner' scene in "Blazing Saddles" -- unexpected, hilarious and decidedly un-PC.

And the appearance, mid-way through the second reel, of the word "Mississippi" in all-caps, slowly crawling (or is it 'wiping?') majestically across the screen from right-frame to left-frame, indicating the protagonist's traveling into the Deep South is clearly a reference to Selznick's "Gone With the Wind." Much has been made of the possibility that Tarantino is attempting with "Django' to reap a kind of cinematic payback upon that epic film and presumably other 'Golden Age of Hollywood"  tales of the Old South in which blacks were portrayed as simpletons and victims. This may be the case and Tarantino and modern directors are of course welcome to update that hoary genre at will. Yet, while "Django" is indeed a 'fun,' moderately cathartic revenge fantasy-take on slavery, it is also ultimately a fairly cold-hearted film, unlike "Gone with the Wind." Tarantino is tremendously talented, and I enjoy his films -- within limits. I do though eagerly await the moment when his output begins to show signs of genuine maturity, artistically and in the ability to explore the human condition with a stronger emphasis on compassion rather than cynicism. At least in "Django,' Tarantino has improved on a basic skill of mainstream film auteurs -- constructing mis en scene that is visually arresting, if ultimately in need of editing.

3) Buzz, Criticism, Tarantino's Comments: 


UPDATE:
After I posted this column, news emerged that a merchandising company had teamed up with the Weinstein Company, producer of "Django Unchained," to manufacture and sell 'action-figure' dolls based on the characters in the film.  My thoughts on that development were rounded up by columnist Richard Prince of the Maynard Institute, along with comments from other journalists and cultural critics.

As I said up top, lots of very smart people are chattering about "Django Unchained," with most of the heat apparently arising from Tarantino's decision to take on slavery. Part of the challenge -- and I say this with all due respect to my peers! -- is that academic experts in black studies are not necessarily experts on film, while film scholars are not usually known for their expertise on black American history. Thus, we've had a huge amount of teeth-gnashing in the media ecosystem about "Django Unchained," but not very much in the way of genuinely useful analysis.

Even so, a common  point of contention is the violence and surfeit of images showing Washington's character being whipped and of another slave character being ripped apart by dogs after attempting to escape.  These scenes are upsetting, although, yes, they are meant to be and they should be.  What is objectionable is Tarantino's decision to return to them gratuitously in the second and in the final reel.  The fact that the characters use the word 'nigger' with abandon does not bother me -- it is, after all, a story that unfolds in a era when that word was widely used.  What does rankle me is what appears to be the author's insistence that he deserves a pass on his continued appropriation on black pain (as we have endured it throughout the brutal physical abuse of the antebellum era and in the deep psychological and emotional scarring that has accumulated in the decades since thanks to Jim Crow laws, and more recently, persistent, low-grade racism that permeates American institutions including corporations, the law, and education.) Also, Tarantino does not get a 'ghetto-pass,' just because he grew up among blacks in Southern California, or because his mom 'dated Wilt Chamberlain," as he recently disclosed in an interview. I don't abide anyone using the word 'nigger' in conversation in my presence; and while Tarantino's film characters are obviously fictional, it is not acceptable that he apparently believes that he has earned a license to continuously deploy that word and that he seems to have the impression that by doing so he is diminishing its power.  I argued nearly a decade ago that there was something sick about the proliferation of the phrase 'ghetto-fabulous' in popular media and culture and this appropriation of the word 'nigger' by Tarantino or other artists -- black and white, truth be told -- is in the same category of outsized entitlement and general Dumb Assery.

Moreover, I find Tarantino's insistence that the gleeful depictions of over the top violence that he often highlights in his film are 'fun' to be terribly ill-considered.  Even Clint Eastwood -- who rightly caught lots of hell for the splatter-fests that distinguished his "Dirty Harry' films of the '70s and '80s -- eventually gave up the argument that such violence didn't have any negative impact on our national consciousness.  Eastwood grew out of such displays, likely in no small part because as he matured to fatherhood and grandfather-hood he could no longer justify producing films with the potential to negatively inform the behavior of individuals within his off-spring's cohort.

On January 2, Terry Gross, the veteran host of  NPR's "Fresh Air" published a riveting interview with Tarantino.  I am always rooting for artists, even those who produce high profile work that garners lots of press, generates high heat but which is often stubbornly flawed.  Tarantino, as I've said, is genuinely talented, and I root for his success. Yet his response to one of Gross's questions was very troubling: Gross asked if Tarantino ever considers the the possibility that the violence and brutality in his films may have any connection to or influence over the mass shootings that have increased in the U.S. in the past decade, in particular, the recent horror of 20 dead children and six dead teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Tarantino replies that he is 'annoyed' by such a question, and that even asking it is, 'insulting to the memory' of those who died at Sandy Hook Elementary.

If I were writing a script about a public figure who produces mass media designed to resonate with millions of viewers.....but who also denies that his product has lasting influence on any audience members, I would include a version of this interview.  It would take place in the beginning of the third reel, at the crucial moment when the protagonist finally receives profound enlightenment, matures, and finds the strength and maturity needed to infuse his mission with clarity of vision, the bright light of hope, and the beauty of compassion.