Dangerously close to empathizing with Lena Dunham

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 1 Comment

Lena Dunham, millionaire

Lena Dunham: She’s the worst. I’m not exaggerating, either; I’m curating. I spend hours each day thinking about the people, things and concepts I don’t like, and Dunham is the sandwich that brings them all together. A wealthy Oberlin graduate famous for making works of art about young people who struggle to complete works of art, she got her own HBO series at age 23. Girls is about the experience of being a young woman in New York: not having a job but living in the good part of Park Slope as you learn to accept yourself and struggle to complete works of art. Hanna doesn’t know how she’ll pay the rent after impulsively quitting her internship, so she goes to a party and cries. Hanna isn’t sure whether the new Darth Vader likes her, because he’s so handsome and she’s the protagonist/star/writer/producer. Dunham sucks, is what I’m saying here, and she sucks at the intersection of several broad trends in how society sucks now.

I also heard she was racist. I’ll be saying that at parties for the next 40 years, but today I will add that I heard it specifically from Zinzi Clemmons. The author and former contributor to Lenny Letter said she will no longer work for Dunham and urged other writers of color to do the same. Zinzi identifies a pattern of “hipster racism” among Dunham’s friends when their social circles overlapped in college. “She and her friends are racist” seems like an unfalsifiable statement, but let me give some advice to any white people who may be reading this: don’t say what’s racist and what’s not. Leave that to someone darker than you. You get to say what’s what in nearly every other area of society, but this is a situation where you will not be rewarded for speaking outside your expertise.

Clemmons says Dunham is racist and I believe her. It’s a matter of policy. You know who does not respect that policy? Lena Dunham. I quote the Washington Post:

A quick refresher on what, exactly, Dunham did: Last week, she and Lenny Letter co-founder Jenni Konner issued a statement defending “Girls” writer and executive producer Murray Miller after actress Aurora Perrineau accused him of raping her in 2012, when Perrineau was 17 years old. (In a statement given to The Wrap, Miller’s attorney, Matthew Walerstein, said he “categorically and vehemently denies Ms. Perrineau’s outrageous claims.”) Dunham and Konner stood by Miller, and instead questioned Perrineau’s credibility:  “Insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year,” they said in their statement.

First of all, let me call the crisis center so they can get started on a plaque to thank you for reminding everyone what percentage of assaults didn’t actually happen. I’m sure no one will use that statistic to cast doubt on accusers, as you are doing now. If you adopt the policy “believe victims,” subclauses “believe women” and “believe people of color,” then it’s clear that Dunham’s defense of Miller is bad. She implies that Perrineau is mistaken to accuse Miller of rape—not just because her account of events is wrong, but because any report of assault could be wrong. That strikes a dissonant note given the tone of the editorial she wrote for the Times last month.

So it’s a clear-cut violation of the believe victims policy. At the same time, you can see how she got there. Miller is her friend and coworker. She doesn’t want him to be a rapist, so she doesn’t believe it. She also doesn’t want to imply that other rape claims are false, maybe because that would be brand suicide but probably because she, too, believes women. I bet Dunham regularly reminds people that the rate of false sexual assault allegations is miniscule. So in her statement, she makes sure to emphasize that only three percent are misreported. As she’s writing, it feels like she’s defending her friend while reminding people that this situation comes along very rarely. To the reader, of course, she comes off as casting blanket doubt on claims of sexual assault.

Why doesn’t she see that? Because she sucks! Stupid Lena Dunham can’t write well enough to agree with her own opinions, almost as though she had spent her whole life being rewarded for effortful mediocrity. The thing that sucks the most about her, though, is that she can’t help it. I have no evidence and I disdain her with the cool of a thousand dead suns, but I believe she got caught up trying to defend her friend. Her brain looked for a way this whole situation could be a misunderstanding, and her simpering garbage talent did the rest. The problem with the believe women policy is that you can’t control what you believe. I suspect she is an awful person, and I don’t doubt Clemmons’s assessment of her, but I believe Dunham is at the mercy of her biases as much or more than anyone else.

91 year-old has “great work ethic,” says governor turned celebrity

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 2 Comments

Work

Work: We all have to do it, except for rich people, who don’t. Even those people do a kind of work, though, by stewarding their family fortunes and encouraging the rest of us to cultivate strong work ethics. Sarah Palin participated in that second kind of work today, when she shared this story from usa.sarahpalinnews.com. I wish there were a news site that had my name and the name of my country right in the URL, but that’s beside the point. The point, in the words of USA Sarah Palin News, is INCREDIBLE! You’ve Got to See This 91 Year-Old’s Attitude About Working, It’s Perfect.

Elena Griffing is a patient relations coordinator at the Sutter Health Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley. At age 91, she’s been working there 71 years—ever since she came in with a hemoglobin disorder at 19 and stayed four months, until a lab technician told her to “get to work.” She took a job as a secretary and has been at SHAB Summit ever since. In all that time, she’s only taken four sick days. It’s an inspiring story, especially if you are a human brand who went from local newscasting to executive government to vaguely monetized celebrity. If you are a person who has been working in medical billing for 40 years, on the other hand, it’s a glimpse of a nightmare from which you might never awake.

USA Sarah Palin News describes only taking four sick days in 71 years as the “perfect” attitude toward work. Perfect for whom? If you run a hospital, that’s exactly what you want from your workers. But if you work in the hospital, one day off for illness every 18 years does not describe your ideal working life. Yet the Yahoo piece from which this article was aggregated frames the relationship between Griffing and her employer in terms of ethical obligations on her side and her side only. Here’s the lede for their recurring feature, called Lifers:

In current culture, millennials move from job to job in order to climb the ladder. The average time spent at a company is just two years. For baby boomers and other generations, this was not the norm. Loyalty and dedication to a single company or career drove, and still drives, many of their careers.

Damn you, current culture! Another way to look at the statistical differences in employment length between millennials and baby boomers is in terms of what employers are offering. Compared to older generations, millennials are much less likely to find jobs that offer benefits or even a living wage. You can see their propensity to move from job to job as a failure of “loyalty and dedication to a single company,” or you can read it as a failure of those companies to give them reasons to stay. Millennials change jobs because the jobs available to them suck. Maybe that’s because nice old ladies refuse to retire, perhaps because the same economy that forces young people to move from job to job also forces older people to work until they’re dead.

But that would require us to think that businesses owe something to their workers. Businesses owe nothing to anyone; their sole obligation is to make money, and the rest of us should thank them for what jobs they create in the process. USA Sarah Palin News skirts the question of why Griffing didn’t work for the same company for five decades instead of seven and then enjoy a posh retirement. Instead, they hit us with some statistics about how unreliable millennials are. Quote:

According to the most recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2016, American workers often changed their employment after just 4.2 years, but one 91-year-old woman looks to blow that average out of the water as she is celebrating 71 years working for the same company. The employee tenure saw a noticeable difference between age groups, with workers ages 25 to 34 years staying with the same company for 2.8 years, workers ages 55 to 64 stayed 10.1 years on average.

Yeah, it is bullshit that the average 25 year-old hasn’t been working at the same company since they were fifteen. It’s a rare editor who looks at these numbers and does not point out that people who have been working four times as long stayed with their companies, on average, four times as long. That’s the kind of ace USA Sarah Palin News is hiring, though, and I assume they’re getting great pension plans.

Straight-faced, AP reports 11 year-old “saving for college” by flipping house

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 3 Comments

Horatio Alger

The 19th-century novelist Horatio Alger had one vein of narrative skill, and he mined it deeply. Alger specialized in stories about young boys who escaped poverty through hard work and/or good character. His fourth book, Ragged Dick, exemplifies the form. At the outset of the novel, Dick is a 14 year-old bootblack living on the streets. Various middle- and upper-class characters note his refusal to steal, supporting him in small ways until he has occasion to rescue a drowning child. The child’s grateful father gives Dick a suit and a job in his firm. Now a respectable member of middle-class society, Dick changes his name to Richard Hunter, Esq., and lives (mostly) happily through six sequels.

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In poll, 85% favor big changes to campaign finance laws

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 1 Comment
Democracy

Democracy

In a New York Times/CBS poll released yesterday, respondents were split on the issue of campaign finance: 39% favored “fundamental changes” to the way elections are funded, while 46% said the system needed to be “completely rebuilt.” There is too much money in politics, and everyone but the Supreme Court seems to know it. Show me another issue on which 85% of Americans agree. While we’re at it, show me an issue that poses a greater existential threat to our democracy. Forget corruption and the appearance of corruption. When two thirds of respondents say the wealthy have a greater chance to influence elections than ordinary voters, they’re describing a crisis of faith in the American experiment.

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Since 1978, the cost of college tuition has increased 1,225%

By Dan Brooks in Class Warfare 2 Comments
Knowledge is good.

Knowledge is good.

According to Bloomberg, the cost of college tuition has increased thirteen-fold since 1978—more than medical care, at nearly five times the rate of CPI. But that’s because a college education is five times as good now, right? Possibly not—anecdotes suggest that our universities have not become dramatically better at teaching than they were four decades ago, and the record number of bachelor degrees we’ve awarded has not necessarily yielded a smarter populace. It has, however, produced an enormous quantity of debt—Americans owe $1.2 trillion in student loans, compared to just under $900 billion in credit-card debt. The class of 2015 is graduating with an average of $35,00 in debt per borrower; meanwhile, 46% of recent college graduates are working jobs that do not require degrees.

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