Trump's Obscenity is Far, Far Worse than Samantha Bee's

It’d been a little over a week since Samantha Bee, the popular  comedian, referred to Ivanka Trump with a vulgar slur. Bee was infuriated—rightly so, in my opinion—with the current policy of separating children from their families at the border. The incident seems already to have been largely forgotten; the day after Bee’s commentary, there was a flurry of rage on the airways and on social media, but this soon subsided. Each day seems to have its own scandal in the age of Trump; each day the previous day’s fuss is forgotten. Roth once said that it is difficult to make sense of a culture where “everything goes and nothing matters"—a perfect description of Trumpworld and his enabling media. Like so many examples of conservative rage, classic examples of which are found in Trump’s tweets, the “Bee affair” has been used to deflect attention from the real issues, in this case, the horrific separation of children from their parents, which goes on unabated.  Rage against this deflection informs this article, the hope that things will improve informs it as well. They have to!

Let us first turn our attention to what Bee actually said, along with a few conservative comments tweeted in response.

The Controversy

On May 30, 2018, Samantha Bee said the following on her cable show:

You know, Ivanka, that’s a beautiful photo of you and your child. But let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless cunt! He listens to you! Put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to fucking stop it.

The next day, as one might expect, Fox News and the conservative tweetworld were, well, “shocked.” Here are two examples from prominent conservatives, representative of many:

This is disgusting. How is this acceptable? And how are we expected to take any of these publications seriously if they gleefully repost something like this  at the same time they (rightfully) condemn Roseanne?  You know the saying Love is Love. Well, Hate is Hate.

                                                         --Megyn Kelly

Compare ABC’s reaction to Roseanne Barr’s tweet with TBS’s no- reaction to Samantha Bee and you’ll see a double-standard in action. Three’s no uprising against Bee. Why? Because she is liberal. Because the MSM (mainstream media) protects Obama and his aides, but not Trump. The hypocrisy is sickening.

                                                        
                                                        --Ari Fleisher

What Bee said and Barr wrote are not equivalent. Barr tweeted a racist comment, while Bee used an expletive, however improperly, to defend the vulnerable. That's a very big difference.First, 


Before discussing Trump's policy of separating children from their parents, I would first like to recount our family’s use of expletives, in order to enable the reader to understand better my reaction to this incident.

The Use of Expletives at Our House

It’s not that we have zero tolerance for expletives at our house, it's just that it never occurs to us to use them. I guess it’s a matter of style. My wife, Nirmala, hails from India; we married in 1974, two years after she came to the United States. It is my impression that educated Indians eschew expletives; this is true of all her relatives here and abroad; it also applies to the many people I have met in India. (How do I know when my wife gets angry? Her face turns red. Then she expresses her anger with a rapid barrage of words—without even a darn!)

Following her example, I never heard my son use a curse word. (He is an adult, and we remain close). I must admit that I have used an expletive on very few occasions when I’m very angry at the world, around a dozen times or so in the last forty years. I also admit to being the moody and depressive member of the family. In short, on a scale of 1 to 10 where five represents average expletive usage, I would imagine our family would score very, very much less than 1.

I do admit using the ‘n-word’ on one occasion, in front of my son.  (What I said was the “n-word” not the actual word). We were in the car together; Philip changed the radio to a rap station. I listened to the lyrics. “Phil,: I said, “I don’t like the use of the “n-word” in rap. It's vulgar, and white kids, who listen to a lot of rap are going to repeat it."  “Dad, It’s not ‘n-i-g-g-e-r” but ‘n-i-g-g-a; a term of endearment among blacks--By turning an insult into its very opposite, it is a form of resistance to the racism which blacks face on a daily basis." “I still don’t like it,” I said. It is, of course, not much of a shock for my son to use either term, since he is black. (Background: my wife is Indian, I am of English descent, and our adopted son is black.) It wouldn’t be right for me to use either term, of course, and that’s fine with me, because I don’t.

Just because we don’t use expletives, however, doesn’t mean that we melt when we hear one.We listen to a few cable TV shows, where hosts and guests often pepper their speech with “f—ks” and “sh-ts,” and that's fine with us. For us, it’s more of a matter of not the words you say, but the decency of what is being said. A good example is the dispute, long ago, between Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. (We never liked Bill Cosby. We thought his attempt to appear so squeaky clean was an attempt to cover up something a good deal less clean inside. We were prescient in this regard, as everyone knows by now).

Cosby was lecturing young black males, advising them to clean up their speech. No more expletives please! Be like his family on the sitcom. He excoriated Richard Pryor for using so many expletives during his performances. Richard Pryor’s response to Cosby “Have  a Coke and shut the fuck up!” A truly brilliant response that couldn’t have been better said any other way! Cosby, the product which advertisers love, vs. Pryor, the comic genius, a product of a difficult life—who do you think won! Nirmala and I laughed and laughed at Pryor's Zen-like retort.

We don’t watch the Samantha Bee show. But if we had seen the episode in question we might not have liked her use of the expletive, but we would have hardly noticed it. Out anger would have been directed, in solidarity with Bee, at Trump. Why?

Trump’s Obscene Immigration Policy

On May 8, 2018, Trump adopted a policy of “zero tolerance” for individuals crossing over the border other than at official sites. At the time of this writing, over 11,000 children, some as young as a one-year-old, have been forcibly separated from their parents, while the parents face prosecution for having crossed the border illegally. Some remain at detention sites, many others have been placed in foster care in various states of the country; communication with parents has been sporadic at best. The designated facilities and foster care system were completely overwhelmed, since there had been no adequate planning to accommodate so many children.

This is an abominable practice; it is obscene. Samantha Bee would have had to string together a nearly infinite number of c-words to approach the obscenity of Trump’s policy. How have the media reacted? They were shocked by Bee’s vulgarity. Never mind the vulgarity and horror of Trump’s immigration policy. Once again, coverage of a core issue was deflected by emphasis on, well, nonsense.

When I listened to Trump officials defending this inhumane policy, I was tempted, if only for a moment, to throw a shoe at the TV. 'The adults have committed a crime, and, when that happens, separation from their children is a frequent consequence'.  Yeah, right.

I am a retired pediatrician. I know well that children are not little adults. Forced separation from their loved ones can cause serious trauma in children, the effects of which can last a lifetime.

There is no justification for this horrendous practice; it is not required by law.The true reason for this practice was expressed by John Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary: the purpose is to deter immigration.

The most important moral law by far is,“Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Hillel’s version is especially apt here: "Don’t do anything to others that you wouldn’t like others to do to you". How would these officials feel if kids in their family were forcibly removed from their mothers in tears? It is said that a country is judged best by how it treats the most vulnerable. The vast majority of these immigrant families have been through a lot. Violence in their native lands has forced them to flee. After a long journey, none would have expected this ungodly treatment.

Morality demands that children never be separated from parents except for reasons of neglect or abuse. This time it’s the U.S. government doing the neglect and abuse!

I am ashamed of my country’s actions in this regard, deeply ashamed. I believe there will be future documentaries dealing with the consequences of this criminal policy. That some lives will be seriously damaged, of this I have no doubt.

What did the one whom I sometimes call “El Orange Pesadilla” have to tweet about this crime against humanity?: “Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can’t get their act together! Started the Wall.”

How many expletives would Samantha Bee have had to say to approach the obscenity of that quote? Make-America-Prate-Again, indeed.

For the first time in my life I can understand how good Germans must have felt during the Nazi terror. The important difference is that our democratic institutions, although increasingly under siege, are basically still intact. It’s up to us to utilize them and stop this horror now.