This focus on women neglects of the struggles of men

I avoid Halloween. I don’t have children and for many years I needed to avoid sugar. So I didn’t see much of a need to buy candy to hand out and perhaps have some left over I shouldn’t eat. My method of escape last night was to see the movie The Wild Robot in an actual movie theater. I think there were all of ten people there. At the advertised time there were still parts of the “pre-show” that theaters now run when one enters the theater. Then there were at least five previews. I don’t object to previews, but most were too violent for my tastes, even if they have an interesting concept (Santa kidnapped). None of them went onto my wish to watch list. Then there were a couple more commercials about the theater chain. So the movie I came to see started about 20 minutes after the advertised time. That reminded me of my time living in Germany about 1990. I occasionally went to a movie theater that showed movies in English. They started with 20 minutes of commercials (all in German, some rather humorous – even though I didn’t understand the German). And then there was a short break (to buy more refreshments?) before the feature began. The Wild Robot is an animated feature about a robot that is shipwrecked on an island with no human inhabitants. It, named Rozz, is programmed to perform whatever tasks it is asked to do, but animals (all very North American) don’t speak, so it doesn’t know what to do. Rozz decodes the animal sounds (they all start speaking English) but there is still no task. Then Rozz rescues a goose egg from a fox who wants to eat it and when the goose chick hatches it imprints on the first thing it sees – Rozz. So now Rozz has to be a parent – with advice from the mama opossum and assistance from the fox. So now Rozz has clear tasks: get the chick to eat, teach it to swim, and teach it to fly before the fall migration. When the young adult goose, named Brightbeak, begins to try to swim (thinking wings, not feet, are for paddling) he encounters other geese and they make fun of him. From there the story has lots of messages of perseverance and working together while the robot becomes more humane. It is all very enjoyable and the animation is all first-rate. This is a good one. Not until the closing credits did I see Brightbeak is voiced by Kit Connor, who played Nick in the Heartstopper series I saw through October. There wasn’t a time when I thought that goose sounds just like Nick! Connor’s IMDb page says he was 18 when the first season on Heartstopper came out and 20 when the recent season 3 came out. Looks like Connor’s career is thriving. Prices: Movie $12. Popcorn $9. I skipped the popcorn. I rarely get phone calls. Today I got a dozen, the first just before 8am. Thankfully, I either missed them or they were helpfully labeled “Scam likely.” One gets tired of writing about the nasty guy and the current outrageous things he did, so I’ll just mention them. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported the nasty guy is already claiming that “Democrats have already started cheating” in Pennsylvania. There is no evidence. And some suggest if you are already laying the groundwork in case you lose, you must know you’re losing. Oliver Willis of Kos reported the nasty guy said he’s the protector of women – “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.” Willis wrote, “Trump’s language was the language of an abuser, which is fitting.” Harris was quick to condemn. Willis reported:

Donald Trump fantasized about guns being put in the face of former Rep. Liz Cheney during a campaign event on Thursday night. “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her where the rifle’s standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about—you know when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.

Yup, he wants the disloyal before a firing squad. His rhetoric has been quite violent and getting more violent. And after those violent comments against women Kos of Kos wrote that Republicans are digging the hole deeper. Some of that is in response to the add narrated by Julia Roberts that encourages women to defy their husbands and secretly vote for Harris. In the comments of a pundit roundup exlrrp posted an appropriate meme. It says, “Donald Trump is going to lose this election because of the women in this country. Whether he likes it or not.” exlrrp posted a second meme appropriate to Halloween: “My housemates are convinced our house is haunted. I’ve lived here for 274 years and not noticed anything strange.” The incidents above are misogyny, which the nasty guy campaign has been featuring for the last nine years. That and the gender gap – women strongly favor Harris and men strongly favor the nasty guy – prompted Steve Inskeep of NPR to talk to pollster Frank Luntz and Richard Reeves, a researcher of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Luntz said some of the men admire the nasty guy’s badass style and that he built an empire. Some agree with his views on climate change and other issues. They also rejected the version of masculinity demonstrated by Walz. But they don’t see the election as a gender issue and are hostile when that idea is proposed. But they see the Democrats and liberals as anti-male. Some men believe that Democrats are declaring the only reason men could vote against Harris is because of sexism or racism they’re not willing to admit. They believe these are attempts to shame or scare men into voting Democrat. The discussion then feature a quote from Michelle Obama to take women’s lives seriously, to not put them in the hands of male politicians who don’t care about women. Luntz says that’s absolutely not an effective pitch because it comes across as demonizing men. It claims that if you don’t vote for Harris you are anti-women. But most men do care about the women in their lives. They also care about other things, like the stagnating wages of men without college degrees who are poorer than their father’s were. So this focus on women means the neglect of the genuine struggles of men. Kos posed the question: Why did the joke about Puerto Rico and garbage become a story when the rest of the racist jokes, and much of the racism of the nasty guy’s campaign, haven’t? Kos says he doesn’t know, though he has ideas. The nasty guy didn’t say it. Another speaker did. The nasty guy has the reputation of saying anything and the media seems cool with it. But that doesn’t apply to anyone else. The media was primed for it. After all the talk of Haitians eating pets that media refused to describe as racist – and after nine years of the nasty guy saying racist things and not being called racist – and all the blowback from all that media was more willing to call something racist. Puerto Ricans are different from other Latinos in that they are US citizens. They are able to be “loud, proud, and opinionated” in ways that Latinos from other countries can’t be. And Puerto Ricans live in large numbers in many states, including (as Kos lists) in numbers in many swing states much larger than Biden’s margin of victory in 2020. They’re also in large numbers in Florida and Texas. They can do real electoral damage. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary. An example:

“Election Day is just a week away and a new report found that Americans are changing their vacation plans due to election anxiety. Yup, people are waiting until after the election so they know whether they’re buying a round-trip or a one-way.” —Jimmy Fallon