I have written extensively about Women and particularly Motherhood and the larger Mommy Blogger Scene that has risen like a flood and a tide that has become a cottage industry of its own. We have reformed Mothers, converted Mothers, Christian Mothers, Aged Mothers, Royal or “former” Royal Mothers, Hot Mothers, Grandmothers, Lesbian or once straight Mothers, and all of them versed well in what defines being a Working Mother. That is a redundancy in and of itself as all Mothers are. We revere the concept of Motherhood yet not all of us should be nor want to be. Ah yes that is the question.
And while every day when you are a Mother is Mother’s day there are many many Women who have elected to not be Mothers. We are obsessed with Mothers and we are sure that again in our faux Meritocracy that it is some type of intrinsic failure to be a mother. We have Women who go to great lengths to be Mothers and hire women when all else fails to be one for them. We are sure any Woman wants to be a Mother and if not why not? I got 99 reasons and do you really care or is this again somehow about you? I feel that is our society now, it is always about me, no you, no I mean I. As My Mother used to say, “What are you an Eye Specialist?” I’ll let that sink in.
I realized the other day why I am shitty at interpersonal relationships. I don’t care. I used to try and it was over the top, as I thought if I tried real hard to care I would. It doesn’t work that way. Not a day goes by thanking myself that I did not have a child. I do believe we see all relationships as a type of a Mirror and I have used that euphemism repeatedly when it comes to Children. They see themselves as a reflection of the Adult holding it. And that is a bag of mixed nuts right there. And we do that with our Adult ones trying to find a reasonable compliment to our own view of self. As mine changes frequently anyone in a partnership with me would have to be a shape shifter. I loathe the expression finding a Partner just like Mom or Dad, YIKES, paternal incest how charming. And with that I duplicated my Parents marriage to a perfect imitation where we were literally in a Marriage of one. I liked it, he did not. And with that I moved on and out and about and he is in what I believe his 15th year of Marriage with someone who I assume gets him in ways I had no interest. No regrets what.so.ever. I learned something, got something from it and with that I am happy to be alone. I would enjoy genuine friendship/companionship but I do not miss day to day routines and I especially do not miss Sex. I can handle that one on my own.
People do confuse Intimacy with Sexuality and I realize that again I liked them in their own lanes and now perhaps at this age it seems to make sense more and with that I tried to hard to co-join them like bad Siamese Twins. (I believe that term is of course outdated and will the language Police give me the new and approved one) It takes a lot to realize that the difference between the two and I often think that is why when Women have children all of that unconditional love, the endless obsession and desire about what that is is now directed to the child. And that in turn is as equally smothering, damaging and destructive, it just takes longer to see the results. Much is often made of those Couples that have distinct relationships outside of Parenthood and those are thought of as Outliers who are selfish, weird or eccentric. And there are many Women wish they had not; The irony that the most famous Authors of Children’s books hated or did not have kids. The Cat is not in that hat. This is what we do as adults, make adults ones and leave the child behind.
The word CHOICE is being heavily bandied about of late as it is regards to decisions that surround Pregnancy. The move to make any type of option outside of carrying a Child to term is being now decided by the States, the same States that think Drag Shows and Drag Queen Reading Hour is a some type a recruitment mission or a pedophile on patrol. They are sure that Trans Men and Women are a threat to Bathroom freedoms and sporting shenanigans. I recall the scandal of the Women of the East German Swim Team. “Gosh Grunhilda can really do the backstroke, check out those shoulders!” I still will go to my own death bed believing it is about fucking and dicks. I can see a (fill in the blank word) Man standing at the Urinal and the guy next to whips out a foot long or he sees the feet in the closed stall facing forward. And the other is that the hot chick next to him is in fact a Trans Woman with still a Penis. Fucking or Pissing are two essential dominant factors in men’s thought process and then sports. See that is the Trans obsession.
Women I assume have less interest in where that dick is. We get bored of sex early on. How many Dick pics can you see where you think, “Haven’t I seen this in a Museum and wasn’t it better?” And when you love sex as I once did, it takes one too many dicks after a time where you think “God please let’s end this now as I got shit to do.” It will be a cold day in hell when I shove a dick down my throat ever again. That gag reflex is restored thankfully.
So when not planning the career life that will be crashed by Men in some way shape or another; That the Aging Parent that you now have to care for like a child will occur or that at some point you will be required to drop one from your Uterus or hire someone else to do it for you in both cases. I do wonder is that due to biological problems? And in turn that may be a sign that you should not breed or for some other reason that has little to do with fertility that demands you become a Parent. And then it begins.
When I read this essay from the Sister of Frank Bruni, the former NY Times columnist, I thought it was actually true. Children are not your clones and with that it explains again much of the Mommy Industry. When you can’t have a career you pimp your children. It is like Mama June only not making your kid a stripper.
Success for my children meant finding their own paths, not retracing mine
By Adelle Kirk
Every year, without fail, about 20 of my best female friends from college and I reunite for a long weekend. It’s not always easy to pull off; we’re career women, wives, mothers, busily “having it all,” which means having almost no free time. But we relish traveling back across the decades together. We reminisce about the nights spent dancing to Liquid Pleasure, our favorite 1980s band. We laugh about the sleepless fog we lived through our senior spring as we tried to finish the thesis papers required to graduate.
Then, inevitably, the talk turns from our antics back in the day to our kids today. To the trials they put us through or the challenges of parenting that no one saw coming. Some of our kids have real limitations. Others are quietly defiant. Still others are outright rebellious. But a single common thread runs through our observations and complaints about them: Why can’t they be more like we were?
We’re no doubt seeing our pasts through rose-colored glasses when we ask that. We’re also measuring our kids with the yardsticks of the academic accolades that we accrued, the elite university where we got our cherished diplomas, the big jobs we snagged, the fairy-tale parents we expected to be. We want exactly — and I mean exactly — the same for them.
But is that concerned parenting or simple vanity? Are we trying to encourage and shape authentic individuals or create clones of ourselves?
The positive spin is that the path we’re best equipped to help them navigate is the one we took, so we’re simply giving them the surest set of directions we can. There’s truth in that and in our desires, heartfelt and understandable, to make certain that they and we continue to have the same bearings, enjoy the same interests, speak the same language. It’s a way of holding them close as long as possible. It’s a recipe for lifelong friendship.
Now that they are young adults, I look back at my two children’s youths, and I see, over and over, me frantically trying to determine who they’d be rather than letting them discover who they really were. I’d been on my high school swimming and basketball teams, so my son needed sports of his own, and I forced him to play football and lacrosse, though what he loved was watching, not participating in, both. As soon as I got an inkling that he was better with numbers than with words, I bought verbal SAT books for him every summer and spent endless hours playing editor on his high school papers. He had to find a route to well-rounded academic excellence.
With my daughter, it was much the same. I rotated her through one sport after another, intent that she also follow in my footsteps. Alas, she was more an artist than an athlete — but that was OK! I loved theater in high school and performed in countless plays throughout college. So I pushed and pushed in that direction, a backstage tiger mother with a mighty roar.
I now realize that I wasn’t simply and benignly motivating my children. I was probably giving them the constant feeling that they were disappointing me, that their natural interests, talents and drive were never enough. That’s by far my biggest regret as a parent — not that neither of them has my alma mater, not that neither of them was all-American in lacrosse, not that neither of them had a precocious turn on a Broadway stage. I worry that neither of them understood how little I really cared about that. And that’s because I didn’t understand it myself.
Somehow, they survived. The credit goes entirely to them. My son prospers at a top-notch public university, where his major and his side interests bear absolutely no relation to mine at his age. He’s happy. My daughter decided that college wasn’t for her — at least not now — and took a job in the restaurant industry in a city halfway across the country from our New Jersey home. I visited her there recently. I ate where she works and watched her in action. She moved with a confidence that wasn’t always there before. She moved with joy.
So what was the tug of war that I went through with them — and that so many of my friends go through with their children — all about? What was the point? The gift our children give us is their individuality, and they develop strength of character not by emulating or outdoing us but by finding their own ways once we finally let them. That destination may not be one we ever imagined. But in being a surprise, it can be a special delight.
I try to embrace different yardsticks for my children now: theircontentment, theirfulfillment. And I genuinely admire their decisions and their determination to live their lives on their own terms. Maybe I’m just mellowing in my advancing age, or maybe they’ve taught me something crucial about the tyranny of precise expectations and the liberty of sloughing those off. When I swap parenting stories with my college classmates during our next weekend together, I won’t lament what my children haven’t done or may never do or the degree to which they aren’t replicas of me. I’ll celebrate their originality. Or — imagine this — I won’t hold them up for inspection at all.
On a Personal Note
Over the years, Frank has used his newsletters and columns to write at length about our family, including his relationships with our two brothers — Mark and Harry — and me. So I thought I’d seize this opportunity to give you my perspective on his. It’s not so much a correction of the record as a refinement and an elaboration.
He says that we’re big eaters and loud talkers. True. I mean, we’re (half) Italian. It’s in the genes.
He says that we take pains to carve out time for trips together. Also true.
But I’m not sure he gives you a full and accurate sense of how he fits into the group. As the second-born boy, he wasn’t the natural leader of our pack; that role fell to Mark, the firstborn, who cast a long shadow for Frank to grow up in. Frank also didn’t fly somewhat under our parents’ radar, the way Harry, the youngest of my three older brothers, did. And he wasn’t the pampered baby of the family, a long-awaited daughter. I drew that lucky card.
So Frank became, well, the family’s narrator. Its chronicler. We often turned to him to describe what we were going through, to put it into words (and this was before he went ahead and did that for a living). I can still remember the puzzled expressions on Mark’s and Harry’s faces when Frank sometimes came out with a verb or an adjective they’d never heard of. He was sort of like an SAT prep guide on legs. And if I’m being honest, he could be a little lordly — that’s a Frank kind of word — about it.
While we’re on the subject of his foibles, I should give you myview of his caretaking of Regan, given how frequently he regales you with tales about her. It’s … obsessive. He agonizes if he has walked her less than five miles on a given day; he’s stupidly happy if he has gone over eight. My dogs always gyrate with excitement when Frank and Regan drop by, because he’ll take themalong for one of these marathons or force meto bring them along.
Oh, and on those family trips? No one else suggests that cocktail hour begin quite as early in the afternoon as Frank does.
He’s the only sibling each of us calls regularly. I’m not sure why, but it works out that way. He and I talk almost daily, often at some early morning hour when the ring of my phone beats my alarm because Frank is already up and (you guessed it) out walking Regan.
He’s generous — to me, to my children, to his other nieces and nephews. He’s generous with his time, with his confidences, with his advice (which is pretty good), with his gossip (which is even better). Heck, he’s even generous with his newsletter space, giving it to me this week. I’m grateful. And I thank you, too, for indulging me.
That was a proposal by Radical Feminists to remove the male root from the word and make Women that. And with that you thought Binary was a tough one to learn. And with that I reject both as I am a WOMAN and proudly one.
I have no problem with rights being bestowed among all of us equally, be that of gender or of sexuality or of normative choices regarding ones gender and with that religion or culture. I chose to not capitalize any of them as they are smaller in reference as when you put the capital on that it becomes a proper noun as related to IDENTITY. And we have learned that we can CHANGE all of them. Yes if you have read Black Like Me or understand that when Rachel Dolezaal decided to choose her race as Black she was demonized. Really? We elected to actually abuse a woman who felt more connected to another race due to oppression or emotion or simply cultural norms that should have been perhaps snickered at but fuck it if she wants to be Black have at girl, go with it and get with that program of being further marginalized and ignored as any Black girl can tell you. And with that I want to say that if you are Biracial do you do a genetic test to see which is the predominant genetics to CHOOSE which Race you select on the form you check? Maybe in this new state you will have to.
Even with race there is a complex nature of genetics and culture. African American, Caribbean, Afro-Caribbean, and with that shades of Black that is very important among many Black people as you think there are 50 shades of Grey? Try Black. I was corrected on this recently when admiring the style and presence of Shaye and her Mother, Lady Ruby in the recent Congressional Hearings. They were striking in their looks and clearly were very engaged in that world as Lady Ruby discussed that as her business and work aside from being a poll worker. I loved that she had on a clearly dark purple wig and gorgeous white outfit during her Deposition and was the Lady in Red at the Hearings, sitting behind her daughter. And when I shared that I thought this woman in our building who is a Nanny how she is always decked out in the most outrageous of outfits and even when her hair is in curlers I think it must be intentional as they seem more an accessory than a hair product. And when she looked up the women, she informed me she is nothing like them as they are Chocolate. I knew instantly that my remark was thought a put down and she was clearly offended. I informed her that shades of skin is her world not mine and I was only commenting on shades of fashion not giving shade to anything. And I left it at that. So with that is Michelle Obama a chocolate black and Iman a vanilla black? Does that matter to me and should it? I found this from 1977:
The Journal of Negro Education Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter, 1977), pp. 76-88 (13 pages) Published By: Journal of Negro Education
And as I have said that among any culture there are also equal distinctions and sense of identity that can cause division and disagreement. See how Asians view themselves in regards to the world and their place within. Folks it is more than what us white folks do over our political identity and by far more insidious as it contributes to the concepts of racism and identity. And with that comes again the argument over the word Women and women who support women and see those who identify as Trans as just that, women who were once men who transitioned to becoming a woman. And with that they are going to have to accept all that comes with being a woman but also add another stigma that being trans adds to one’s life; however, it doesn’t let you cut in line. And with that I ask if I get to change gender to male, can I finally get al the privileges and positions denied to me as a woman, as now I am the pinnacle of the top of the charts, a WHITE MAN!! In a word no. I never will ever be a member of that club as no matter how to slice it my DNA is XX. How I feel and look and move throughout the world will always enable some access but again I will never be a real boy Pinocchio. But if I am happy that I can do that, be that I believe I should have been it is better than not and that is all that matters. But again I can’t cut in line and say I have it tougher, as I could have stayed a woman and bitched about that as another problem in and of itself; I could have been a Lesbian and added that to the roster but I again CHOICE and BELIEF matter more, so great, but don’t think that you get a pass.
And I read today the singer Macy Gray agrees that a woman is one born with boobs and a vagina. Again I agree with her and it does not mean we are anti-Trans we just understand the physiology that makes a woman. Identifying, believing and surgically becoming one is not the same as having lived as a woman when one is BORN one. And with that I support the same concept that Rachael Dozeeal did when she believed and identified as a Black Woman. Her body, her choice.
And when a Senator is asking a prospective Justice to appoint to the Supreme Court, “define Woman” I think that is what she wanted to know, how do you define a Woman that is word being eradicated on the left and demonized on the right?
I reprint the below opinion piece as again the pendulum is swinging to extremes on both ends and they are both equally Misogynistic in the approach. It is why I said I am out when it comes to the current climate regarding the right to choose as apparently since I CHOSE to not give birth, never had an abortion and managed to live to age 63 without children of any kind, I am NOTHING and NO ONE. Well then I can’t write you any checks can I?
The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count
July 3, 2022
Pamela Paul Opinion Columnist The New York Times
Perhaps it makes sense that women — those supposedly compliant and agreeable, self-sacrificing and everything-nice creatures — were the ones to finally bring our polarized country together.
Because the far right and the far left have found the one thing they can agree on: Women don’t count.
The right’s position here is the better known, the movement having aggressively dedicated itself to stripping women of fundamental rights for decades. Thanks in part to two Supreme Court justices who have been credibly accused of abusive behavior toward women, Roe v. Wade, nearly 50 years a target, has been ruthlessly overturned.
Far more bewildering has been the fringe left jumping in with its own perhaps unintentionally but effectively misogynist agenda. There was a time when campus groups and activist organizations advocated strenuously on behalf of women. Women’s rights were human rights and something to fight for. Though the Equal Rights Amendment was never ratified, legal scholars and advocacy groups spent years working to otherwise establish women as a protected class.
But today, a number of academics, uber-progressives, transgender activists, civil liberties organizations and medical organizations are working toward an opposite end: to deny women their humanity, reducing them to a mix of body parts and gender stereotypes.
As reported by my colleague Michael Powell, even the word “women” has become verboten. Previously a commonly understood term for half the world’s population, the word had a specific meaning tied to genetics, biology, history, politics and culture. No longer. In its place are unwieldy terms like “pregnant people,” “menstruators” and “bodies with vaginas.”
Planned Parenthood, once a stalwart defender of women’s rights, omits the word “women” from its home page. NARAL Pro-Choice America has used “birthing people” in lieu of “women.” The American Civil Liberties Union, a longtime defender of women’s rights, last month tweeted its outrage over the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade as a threat to several groups: “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, immigrants, young people.”
It left out those threatened most of all: women. Talk about a bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.
The noble intent behind omitting the word “women” is to make room for the relatively tiny number of transgender men and people identifying as nonbinary who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth or breastfeed. But despite a spirit of inclusion, the result has been to shove women to the side.
Women, of course, have been accommodating. They’ve welcomed transgender women into their organizations. They’ve learned that to propose any space just for biological women in situations where the presence of males can be threatening or unfair — rape crisis centers, domestic abuse shelters, competitive sports — is currently viewed by some as exclusionary. If there are other marginalized people to fight for, it’s assumed women will be the ones to serve other people’s agendas rather than promote their own.
But, but, but. Can you blame the sisterhood for feeling a little nervous? For wincing at the presumption of acquiescence? For worrying about the broader implications? For wondering what kind of message we are sending to young girls about feeling good in their bodies, pride in their sex and the prospects of womanhood? For essentially ceding to another backlash?
Women didn’t fight this long and this hard only to be told we couldn’t call ourselves women anymore. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s also a question of moral harm, an affront to our very sense of ourselves.
It wasn’t so long ago — and in some places the belief persists — that women were considered a mere rib to Adam’s whole. Seeing women as their own complete entities, not just a collection of derivative parts, was an important part of the struggle for sexual equality.
But here we go again, parsing women into organs. Last year the British medical journal The Lancet patted itself on the back for a cover article on menstruation. Yet instead of mentioning the human beings who get to enjoy this monthly biological activity, the cover referred to “bodies with vaginas.” It’s almost as if the other bits and bobs — uteruses, ovaries or even something relatively gender-neutral like brains — were inconsequential. That such things tend to be wrapped together in a human package with two X sex chromosomes is apparently unmentionable.
“What are we, chopped liver?” a woman might be tempted to joke, but in this organ-centric and largely humorless atmosphere, perhaps she would be wiser not to.
Those women who do publicly express mixed emotions or opposing views are often brutally denounced for asserting themselves. (Google the word “transgender” combined with the name Martina Navratilova, J.K. Rowling or Kathleen Stock to get a withering sense.) They risk their jobs and their personal safety. They are maligned as somehow transphobic or labeled TERFs, a pejorative that may be unfamiliar to those who don’t step onto this particular Twitter battlefield. Ostensibly shorthand for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” which originally referred to a subgroup of the British feminist movement, “TERF” has come to denote any woman, feminist or not, who persists in believing that while transgender women should be free to live their lives with dignity and respect, they are not identical to those who were born female and who have lived their entire lives as such, with all the biological trappings, societal and cultural expectations, economic realities and safety issues that involves.
But in a world of chosen gender identities, women as a biological category don’t exist. Some might even call this kind of thing erasure.
When not defining women by body parts, misogynists on both ideological poles seem determined to reduce women to rigid gender stereotypes. The formula on the right we know well: Women are maternal and domestic — the feelers and the givers and the “Don’t mind mes.” The unanticipated newcomers to such retrograde typecasting are the supposed progressives on the fringe left. In accordance with a newly embraced gender theory, they now propose that girls — gay or straight — who do not self-identify as feminine are somehow not fully girls. Gender identity workbooks created by transgender advocacy groups for use in schools offer children helpful diagrams suggesting that certain styles or behaviors are “masculine” and others “feminine.”
Didn’t we ditch those straitened categories in the ’70s?
The women’s movement and the gay rights movement, after all, tried to free the sexes from the construct of gender, with its antiquated notions of masculinity and femininity, to accept all women for who they are, whether tomboy, girly girl or butch dyke. To undo all this is to lose hard-won ground for women — and for men, too.
Those on the right who are threatened by women’s equality have always fought fiercely to put women back in their place. What has been disheartening is that some on the fringe left have been equally dismissive, resorting to bullying, threats of violence, public shaming and other scare tactics when women try to reassert that right. The effect is to curtail discussion of women’s issues in the public sphere.
But women are not the enemy here. Consider that in the real world, most violence against trans men and women is committed by men but, in the online world and in the academy, most of the ire at those who balk at this new gender ideology seems to be directed at women.
It’s heartbreaking. And it’s counterproductive.
Tolerance for one group need not mean intolerance for another. We can respect transgender women without castigating females who point out that biological women still constitute a category of their own — with their own specific needs and prerogatives.
If only women’s voices were routinely welcomed and respected on these issues. But whether Trumpist or traditionalist, fringe left activist or academic ideologue, misogynists from both extremes of the political spectrum relish equally the power to shut women up.
When I read the article in the Washington Post regarding how Trump’s appointed acolytes went about disseminating false information, obfuscating facts and sowing seeds of falsehoods during the onset of Covid, I was not shocked. A young woman in Florida was terminated over her refusal to alter data for DiSantis and we know Cuomo is under investigation for his altering of the data associated with deaths at Nursing Homes. You honestly think these are the only ones?
Trump officials celebrated efforts to change CDC reports on coronavirus, emails show
Political appointees also tried to blunt scientific findings they deemed unfavorable to Trump, according to new documents from House probe.
The Washington Post By Don Diamond April 9, 2021
Trump appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services last year privately touted their efforts to block or alter scientists’ reports on the coronavirus to more closely align with then-President Donald Trump’s more optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to newly released documents from congressional investigators.
The documents provide further insight into how senior Trump officials approached last year’s explosion of coronavirus cases in the United States. Even as career government scientists worked to combat the virus, a cadre of Trump appointees was attempting to blunt the scientists’ messages, edit their findings and equip the president with an alternate set of talking points.
Then-science adviser Paul Alexander wrote to then-HHS public affairs chief Michael Caputo on Sept. 9, 2020, touting two examples of where he said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had bowed to his pressure and changed language in their reports, according to an email obtained by the House’s select subcommittee on the coronavirus outbreak.
Pointing to one change — in which CDC leaders allegedly changed the opening sentence of a report about the spread of the virus among younger people after Alexander pressured them — Alexander wrote to Caputo, calling it a “small victory but a victory nonetheless and yippee!!!”
In the same email, Alexander touted another example of a change to a weekly report from the CDC that he said the agency made in response to his demands. The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports (MMWR), which offer public updates on scientists’ findings, had been considered sacrosanct for decades and untouchable by political appointees in the past.
Two days later, Alexander appealed to then-White House adviser Scott Atlas to help him dispute an upcoming CDC report on coronavirus-related deaths among young Americans.
“Can you help me craft an op-ed,” Alexander wrote to Atlas on Sept. 11, alleging the CDC report was “timed for the election” and an attempt to keep schools closed even as Trump pushed to reopen them. “Let us advise the President and get permission to preempt this please for it will run for the weekend so we need to blunt the edge as it is misleading.”
Alexander and other officials also strategized on how to help Trump argue to reopen the economy in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, despite scientists’ warnings about the potential risks.
“I know the President wants us to enumerate the economic cost of not reopening. We need solid estimates to be able to say something like: 50,000 more cancer deaths! 40,000 more heart attacks! 25,000 more suicides!” Caputo wrote to Alexander on May 16, 2020, in an email obtained by the subcommittee.
“You need to take ownership of these numbers. This is singularly important to what you and I want to achieve,” Caputo added in a follow-up email, urging Alexander to compile additional data on the consequences of virus-related shutdowns.
Atlas, Alexander and Caputo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Many of the Trump officials clashing with government scientists had little or no previous experience in combating infectious disease. Caputo, a GOP political communications consultant and longtime Trump ally, had not previously worked in public health before Trump installed him to oversee the health department’s communications in April 2020.
Alexander, who was not a physician but recruited as Caputo’s handpicked science adviser, had previously been an unpaid, part-time health professor at Canada’s McMaster University. Atlas was a neuroradiologist and senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution who caught the White House’s attention after defending the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Fox News.
“Our investigation has shown that Trump Administration officials engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference in the nation’s public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, overruling and bullying scientists and making harmful decisions that allowed the virus to spread more rapidly,” Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the subcommittee chairman, wrote to Alexander and Atlas.
The subcommittee is seeking additional documents from Alexander, Atlas and others, noting that some of the Trump officials’ correspondence was sent from personal email accounts. Clyburn also is requesting that Alexander and Atlas sit for interviews with his subcommittee’s investigation by May 3.
Politico first reported on Sept. 11 that Trump appointees had demanded the right to edit the CDC’s reports and won some changes to scientists’ language, prompting Democrats to open an investigation. Caputo took medical leave on Sept. 16, 2020, and HHS announced that Alexander would be “permanently” leaving the agency on the same day.
Alexander had previously spent months battling with scientists over reports that he deemed misleading or insubordinate to Trump, with a particular focus on those detailing the risks of the coronavirus to children. The effort accelerated after the White House last summer installed several new officials as members of the agency’s leadership team, including Nina Witkofsky as acting CDC chief of staff. Witkofsky had previously been a contractor helping plan events for Seema Verma, the Trump administration’s Medicare and Medicaid chief.
“The last 2 MMWR reports have been more positive than usual and I find [that] encouraging,” Alexander wrote to Witkofsky on Aug. 30, according to an email obtained by the subcommittee. “Maybe you are having a huge impact and this is tremendous. Well done!”
Ten days later, Alexander wrote to Caputo, extolling several changes to CDC reports that he claimed were made because of his influence.
For instance, Alexander said he had won changes to the “key opening sentence” of an August report about a coronavirus outbreak at a Georgia summer camp. The draft report’s opening line argued that understanding youth transmission of the coronavirus was “critical for developing guidance for schools and institutes of higher education,” according to Alexander’s email. But that language was removed from the final report and a caveat was inserted to specify that there was “limited data” about spread of the virus among people under the age of 21. The CDC said that the change had been made because of “thoughtful comments” from Alexander and the agency’s
The Trump appointee continued to demand more revisions, calling for changes to a September MMWR report that concluded that children who contracted the coronavirus in child-care facilities later transmitted the virus to their family members.
“In my view, the parents got it more likely when they picked up the kids and came into contact with the school personnel or teachers as happens with my wife and I when we pick our kids form [sic]school,” Alexander wrote to Caputo on Sept. 13.
Then-CDC Director Robert Redfield and other Trump appointees repeatedly claimed last year that the agency’s reports had been protected from political interference.
“At no time has the scientific integrity of the MMWR been compromised. And I can say that under my watch, it will not be compromised,” Redfield testified to the Senate on Sept. 16. However, Redfield told CNN last month that then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar and other Trump officials tried to change several MMWRs that they did not like, a charge disputed by Azar.
In emails obtained by the subcommittee, Alexander and others also repeatedly took aim at Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, critiquing his statements about the coronavirus and complaining that Fauci’s calls to close schools last year were disproportionate to his more measured response to prior flu outbreaks that had led to more deaths among children.
“Dr. Fauci has no data, no science to back up what he is saying on school reopen, none … he is scaring the nation wrongfully,” Alexander wrote to 11 senior HHS officials on Aug. 11, arguing that Fauci was unnecessarily alarming parents.
Trump officials also strategized over how to build the president’s case that virus-related shutdowns were creating a more significant health burden than swiftly reopening the economy. Trump repeatedly cheered Republican governors who rolled back coronavirus restrictions last year against scientific advice, even as virus cases in those states later spiked and some governors subsequently paused the reopenings.
“We have to now ‘unscare’ people while as we reopen, we will see blips and spikes in cases and deaths,” Alexander wrote on May 15 to the HHS secretary’s speechwriter, insisting that failing to reopen the economy would “have far greater consequences,” as deaths related to alcohol, drugs, depression and other causes would mount. “We must school them that we will respond to the spikes and hotspots as needed.”
The long-term consequences of last year’s shutdowns are still not clear. CDC officials this week reported that the total number of suicides dropped by 5.6 percent last year, the largest decline in four decades, surprising some officials who had warned of a spike. However, deaths from heart disease rose by 4.8 percent. Meanwhile, total cancer deaths remained flat in 2020, although public health experts warned that many screenings that would’ve caught early cancers were skipped or delayed last year.
Alexander, Atlas and others also repeatedly drafted op-eds intended to provide an alternative message to government scientists’ warnings, including five possible op-eds detailed in emails obtained by the subcommittee.
One email from Alexander to Atlas on Sept. 3 proposed an “op-ed on possible damage to children immune systems with lock downs and masks,” arguing to Atlas that“I do think locking down our kids (and healthy adults) and masking them can dampen their functional immune systems.”
Scientists have said there is no evidence that wearing masks harms the development of children’s immune systems.
Early on when we knew little I knew one thing that this is where Science matters and immediately turned to Science Journals to garner information as a way of trying to understand what was happening. The CDC was sending so many mixed messages and that Redfield and Birx were involved I knew they were full of Evangelical shit. I have never liked Fauci and he plays politics and he too was pandering to the point of concern, often contradicting others who were in the field with more current relevant info. I began to look a the competing data models and who was funding them as they too seemed to constantly move and change with each passing day. There was no consistent message nor messenger that I respected fully but you read enough you have enough to go and make critical decisions. The one that was the most hilarious was the Covid Theater or contagion by touch. The CDC finally rescinded that today. Again I knew that early it was airborne and when a nursing student told me that it was blood-borne I thought, fuck we are in trouble. For the record, Fauci consistently advocated that. At one point I wondered if he was ever in the loop.
I knew that no one leader was going to provide the truth or facts as well, frankly, they did not know. Since the Cuomo scandal has begun it was revealed that he distrusted the medical and science folks of the Department of Health and in turn that became the norm across the country as many left their jobs in frustration and fear from the harassment done at the hands of the Q Army who took it as their job as keyboard warriors to do and harass any who threatened their Big Q Trump.
And the secondary crazies, the white supremacists and militia crazies stepped up their assaults, threatening of course State Leaders as they did in Michigan and Journalists throughout the country by doxxing them and in turn posting threatening mail to their homes. We saw that in Seattle with the campsite and their role in going to homes of elected officials and Police leaders to make a point. Funny how the right and left follow the same format so it should not be surprising that today members of the Atomwaffen plead guilty to conspiracy and hate crimes; two of the most vitriolic were from good old “liberal” Seattle. What was odd and distressing that one young individual, Ashley Parker-Dipeppe, is a member of the Trans community who for whatever reason thought it was better to join them than be a target of them. How sad. How grim. How pathetic. The Judge concluded the same and Mr.Dieppe has been released with time served. My heart breaks for us all.
And this is why I laugh at those in Covid mode. I argued with an asshole that I feel more threatened by the Q-tards and the GOP than Covid as the reality is that science will come through. And yes another poster attacked me in a typical mixed message that said that the GOP are throwing down restrictive voting laws, anti trans agenda and other hate bills into laws and then says Covid is going to kill us. Okay which is it? True there are many many who are afraid of the vaccine and with the time and continual lockdowns thanks to their stupidity they may finally realize getting shot won’t be as bad as they believed but in the interim these crazy mother fuckers are rallying, organizing and using the downtime to find ways to continue to harass and subvert Democracy. They are a bigger threat and the two posters continued to harass me, call me names and then they finally quit when I refused to rise up to the occasion. I have to have hope and that doesn’t make me less of a realist it just makes me hopeful and we need hope.
The true nature of these groups has managed to get at least two women elected and there are others already in Congress who advocate that same general factor of negativity and paranoia. Asa Hutchinson wrote a op-ed in the Washington Post to cover his lies as he vetoed a bill that prevented trans children from getting care knowing that it would be overturned and signed into law regardless. Neglecting to mention only the day before he signed another anti-trans bill into law. So go ahead and deny truths and continue on your paranoid train of fear and hate. Will Arkansas ever matter? No, but Georgia does and this is a peach of a time to step up. And the same goes for any State in the Union that seems to focus on oppression and suppression of rights. Try Tennessee for example.
The GOP is now the party of hate, of paranoia and of self-loathing. The projection aspect is not lost as we see Matt Gatez of Florida undergoing an investigation regarding sex trafficking, as well as others with varying charges of infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse and other social misdemeanors that they spend the better part of the day attacking others for said injustices against social mores. So far me think one doth protest too much. And today John Boehner, former Speaker, has now joined the apology chorus admitting that he made decisions based on party over politics and doing the right thing! Wow, just wow. Little late to the party but pass me a glass of red.
And this is where we are in America. Hate-based politics. Again Covid is the real problem? It is just one of many.
Off the Rack Publishing 