One of my all-time favorite stories about my mom is the following:
My mom got invited to an embassy reception in D.C. for the former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. She and my dad got to know him when they lived there. Not because they were fancy people, but there weren’t many Americans there in the 60s, and even fewer who were fluent in Swahili. And only they who had adopted a Tanzanian son and rode around with him stuffed between them (no helmets on anyone) on their motorcycle, a box on the back for the cat.
It had been years since they'd seen each other, so when my mom got to the front of the reception line Nyerere greeted her like an old friend, like any African would. They nattered on about my siblings and his children and my dad, all in Swahili. And my mom realized that Kissinger, that “pompous ass” as she called him, was standing impatiently behind her, clearly wondering who the hell this bespectacled, buck-toothed nobody of a woman was delaying him from time with an important man, not understanding a single word they were saying. Totally excluded from the meat of the moment. So, she just kept Nyerere talking as long as she could (for something like 20 minutes, which is forever in a reception line), periodically side-eyeing the “war criminal” (what she also called him) tapping his toe aggressively behind her, delighting in her power, at least on the inside of herself, to put him in his place.
It was one of the proudest moments of her life. :) There were plenty of other moments when my mom was vocal in her confrontations with the powerful, but she's also from the South, though she denies any real connection to traditional, Southern styles of womanhood. But if this wasn't an example of that, I don't know what is.
Don’t speak ill of the dead is perfectly reasonable when what it means is “don’t be an asshole to the family at the funeral.” But that's light years away from “Don’t write negative news stories.”
Favorite tweet about Kissinger: punk's not dead but reagan, thatcher, and fucking kissinger are. I would say anyone who hosted him is a runner-up dingus.
Ha, see my comment on shotgunning beers when these stains on humanity die. Shotgunning for Reagan happened on the railroad tracks in between bands at a punk show.
I saw Henry Kissinger on the street once in midtown; must have been the mid-90s. I was walking down E. 52nd to the subway and he was on the sidewalk outside the Four Seasons. At first I thought "that man looks like a dried up tree root carved to look like a person" and then I realized it was Henry Kissinger.
R.I.P. Kissinger: Rest In Perdition. I'm only sorry that no one from Cambodia got to him before old age. Spencer Ackerman is the author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (a book which is on my to-read list), so I'm not surprised he isn't toeing the neolib line. Good for him.
re: Sizovs: It's not THAT hard to find intelligent women in tech. Unless you're a gross little dingusy creep and then they all avoid you because of how you are a gross little dingusy creep. I work at a company of less than 25 people and four of the software developers are women (including me), and two of them have the title of senior developer (not including me. Yet.). Also people calling you out for being a fucking loser is not a "lynching", how about you just shut up, man.
Thank you for this. Years ago, some friends and I accidentally started the tradition of shotgunning a beer every time a fascist warmonger died. We did it for Reagan, Thatcher, Rush Limbaugh. We're getting too old to shotgun beers now, but my partner and I did tequila shots in solidarity with the Latin American countries he contributed to destabilizing with the cheers of "good riddance to warmongers!"
And I think of an old friend, adopted out of Cambodia as a baby among the ruins of that country, by a well-meaning white American couple, considered a "lucky one," who struggled with drugs, mental health, identity, and who knows what else for as long as I knew him. I didn't know enough to ask and be there for him in the ways I could have or should have at the time. Rot in hell, Kissinger.
I keep thinking the next up war criminal is George W. Bush. Can we please quit whitewashing him as he continues to hide out in Texas doing bad paintings? With healthcare for rich boomers as it is, I'm sure we're decades from his shuffling off. Can someone at least send him to the Hague in the meantime?
Yes, I had a similar thought, when I read about Peter Jennings' confrontation with Kissinger. Who is saying that now to Bush? I hope somehow he's not so comfortably insulated, though I fear it might be the case. Likewise Cheney, Rice, Powell et al. Rumsfeld is dead so he missed out on a needed reckoning. But many of the players are still around and not facing the necessary music.
Just contrast Bush with Carter. Bush is holed up in Texas not saying anything to anyone (who would really want to hear it?!) while Carter and his spouse continued to do incredibly good things for decades after they left the White House. True heroes of this country, compared to Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, even Obama and of course Trump and Biden. We will not see the likes of them again, I fear.
For what it's worth, when Roslyn Carter's service was held earlier this week, all living FLOTUSes were present but only two presidents: Clinton and Biden. Unfit to travel or just too busy scheduling Milosevic to sit for him? You choose which is the more pleasant option.
Honestly I wish Clinton had stayed home (Bill, not Hillary). I don't have much good to say about him. And not THAT much good to say about Biden either, not for the same reasons to be sure, but mostly because I think he needs to step away and let someone 20+ years younger fight for the Presidency in 2024. I am 72 but I don't think people my age or older should be serving in this capacity. During COVID, it wasn't quite as bad as everyone was sheltering anyway, but nowadays, Biden looks less and less like a potential winner, sigh, even though he is obviously head and shoulders above the entire GOP.
Anyway, all of that said, it was REALLY clear to me that Ms. Carter is someone we should ALL honor. Ditto her husband. The Carters represent, to me, the best of politics. And he (and she) continued to do incredible good for the next 44 years despite the screw-ups of the various other chief executives who wormed their way into power. I am sad to think that we may not see the likes of them for a long time, possible forever.
Thanks for this. And for a previous post taking the Washington Post to task for the dumbest piece about women and men I have read in a long time. And for every post. And while I'm here and we are discussing burnished reputations...Fuck Reagan.
"Their kids are so big now and so are mine. And we wonder where the time went? What happened? But we know time went into our hair and our skin and our hearts."
Regarding unions/labor: Shawn Fain, Chris Smalls, & Sarah Nelson are 3 of the best things to happen to workers in (easily) the last 20 years. What a refreshing change after decades of milquetoast union leadership, and going along to get along.
If POTUS understood exactly how he got elected, his administration would have rewarded Ms Nelson with a Cabinet position (or higher) as their first phone call. As it is, just as well. It would have been a demotion for her.
I may have my history wrong, but I thought she didn't want it? That aside, I'm 100% with you. Secretary of Labor or Transportation would've both been good fits.
Either way works for me. Repping your constituents and putting pressure on elites can (and should) happen outside of high government office. Billionaires certainly aren't waiting on a Cabinet title.
Most people are too young now to remember Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Laos. I'm not. Henry was despised. Then he hung on with Ford. He left things in such disarray that when Iran popped up, we were ill-prepared, which led to the Iran hostage rescue attempt. Which helped lead to Reagan.
It's ancient history to most people now. But it's not to those who fought it and experienced it. Lyz is right. The media coverage has been surprising and less than satisfactory.
I personally feel that Kissinger’s publicity glow-up is a symptom of a key problem for Americans (primarily white men), in that we have a very difficult time acknowledging when we are not the good guys. Before Kissinger, people went to great pains to rehabilitate the image of Robert E Lee, to the point where they basically created a fictional character also named Robert E Lee that represented the fantasy of the noble Confederate soldier. Even now, a lot of white male politicians are going through great pains to suppress the teaching of black history out of fear of making white students uncomfortable with the realization that their ancestors were probably shitty people. Kissinger is just the latest expression of American men’s obsession with America being seen as the country that can do no wrong.
Thinking about how many white cis men do appalling things and usually get away unscathed, I see Anthony Bourdain as a really good example of how to use ones' social power (see, privilege) for good. He was beloved AND he didn't shy away from calling out bullshit and gross fawning when he saw it, AND it didn't damage his career or reputation. A true model for the ages.
(My brain is also thinking about people pointing out Bush Jr. being a war criminal and Ellen DeGeneres' terrible hot take that we should 'be nice' to war criminals and given the war crimes actively happening the past too many days...it's like everything I was taught in school about the Lessons We Learned As a Society after WWII were *lies*.)
Another good Bourdain quote I saw yesterday: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands."
Right? Yes to all the dog-piling on Kissinger right now, but empire gonna empire. His replacements are already in all the right places, pulling levers and trading genocides for improved quarterly profits. Holding our representatives, elected and otherwise, is the work that must continue. The warmongering is, after all, in our names.
Parker Molloy is a national treasure. So is Spencer Ackerman. So is Rolling Stone, and how they categorize their stories ("Good Riddance"). Can someone be a posthumous dingus? Kissinger certainly qualifies. As Jeff Tiedrich might say, "live your life in such a way that people aren't lining up to piss on your grave." <3
Just for the record, Rolling Stone (assuming the magazine) is not a national treasure. Maybe a mixed bag as it has done some excellent political reporting and has some good columns, but it also has (had?) Jann Wenner who is (was?) essentially a misogynist pig who marginalized most great black and women artists at least for 3-4 decades, and only started to do ANYTHING to fix this over the past 10 years at best. Wenner literally just apologized for various remarks he has made on black and women artists, after calling them "not articulate enough" to be included in his book The Masters (he only included 6 white musicians Jagger/Dylan/Lennon/Townshend/Bono/Springsteen and one partial Hispanic Jerry Garcia with no black or female musicians). Rolling Stone is NOT (at least IMHO) a national treasure, just a good ole' white boys magazine for liberals.
Thank you so much sir, for correcting my opinion and my assumed musical tastes and politics. I could not be more grateful to have a man yell at me, especially here. My tiny lady brain is constantly in need of a man to explain things to me, incapable as I am of discerning even my own lived experience.
My Granpa always said “a son of a b***h alive is a son of a b***h dead.” He did not tolerate “don’t speak ill of the dead”. I have long adopted his philosophy. In fact, as I write this, I’m trying to remember to which ring of Dante’s Inferno Kissinger is most appropriately consigned.
This was one of my favorite comments, by Mo Weeks on Twitter:
“Everybody is celebrating Kissinger dying and no one is thinking about the low wage workers forced to build an entire new level of hell at depths never reached before. You guys are so anti-labor. “
This was one of my favorite comments, by Mo Weeks on Twitter:
“Everybody is celebrating Kissinger dying and no one is thinking about the low wage workers forced to build an entire new level of hell at depths never reached before. You guys are so anti-labor. “
For all my sins, I forsake the "big" picture for the specific. Dr. Kissinger supported Indonesia’s military dictator in the invasion of East Timor, and for that alone he needs must twist in the eternal fires of Hell.
One of my all-time favorite stories about my mom is the following:
My mom got invited to an embassy reception in D.C. for the former president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. She and my dad got to know him when they lived there. Not because they were fancy people, but there weren’t many Americans there in the 60s, and even fewer who were fluent in Swahili. And only they who had adopted a Tanzanian son and rode around with him stuffed between them (no helmets on anyone) on their motorcycle, a box on the back for the cat.
It had been years since they'd seen each other, so when my mom got to the front of the reception line Nyerere greeted her like an old friend, like any African would. They nattered on about my siblings and his children and my dad, all in Swahili. And my mom realized that Kissinger, that “pompous ass” as she called him, was standing impatiently behind her, clearly wondering who the hell this bespectacled, buck-toothed nobody of a woman was delaying him from time with an important man, not understanding a single word they were saying. Totally excluded from the meat of the moment. So, she just kept Nyerere talking as long as she could (for something like 20 minutes, which is forever in a reception line), periodically side-eyeing the “war criminal” (what she also called him) tapping his toe aggressively behind her, delighting in her power, at least on the inside of herself, to put him in his place.
It was one of the proudest moments of her life. :) There were plenty of other moments when my mom was vocal in her confrontations with the powerful, but she's also from the South, though she denies any real connection to traditional, Southern styles of womanhood. But if this wasn't an example of that, I don't know what is.
Your mom is a hero!
This story is so epic! I love her!
Absolute legend. Southern women can often be quite crafty in their use of power.
your mom sounds awesome!
What a great story!
Don’t speak ill of the dead is perfectly reasonable when what it means is “don’t be an asshole to the family at the funeral.” But that's light years away from “Don’t write negative news stories.”
Yes. This.
Exactly, thanks for saying it so well.
Favorite tweet about Kissinger: punk's not dead but reagan, thatcher, and fucking kissinger are. I would say anyone who hosted him is a runner-up dingus.
Ha, see my comment on shotgunning beers when these stains on humanity die. Shotgunning for Reagan happened on the railroad tracks in between bands at a punk show.
That tweet makes me laugh! Thanks for sharing.
We speak ill of other dead monsters, why not Kissinger? Jennings was a beacon of truth in evil times. I miss him on the news. Happy holidays🍷🎉
I saw Henry Kissinger on the street once in midtown; must have been the mid-90s. I was walking down E. 52nd to the subway and he was on the sidewalk outside the Four Seasons. At first I thought "that man looks like a dried up tree root carved to look like a person" and then I realized it was Henry Kissinger.
This is rude to tree roots and wood carvers, tho.
R.I.P. Kissinger: Rest In Perdition. I'm only sorry that no one from Cambodia got to him before old age. Spencer Ackerman is the author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (a book which is on my to-read list), so I'm not surprised he isn't toeing the neolib line. Good for him.
re: Sizovs: It's not THAT hard to find intelligent women in tech. Unless you're a gross little dingusy creep and then they all avoid you because of how you are a gross little dingusy creep. I work at a company of less than 25 people and four of the software developers are women (including me), and two of them have the title of senior developer (not including me. Yet.). Also people calling you out for being a fucking loser is not a "lynching", how about you just shut up, man.
Preach!
Thank you for this. Years ago, some friends and I accidentally started the tradition of shotgunning a beer every time a fascist warmonger died. We did it for Reagan, Thatcher, Rush Limbaugh. We're getting too old to shotgun beers now, but my partner and I did tequila shots in solidarity with the Latin American countries he contributed to destabilizing with the cheers of "good riddance to warmongers!"
And I think of an old friend, adopted out of Cambodia as a baby among the ruins of that country, by a well-meaning white American couple, considered a "lucky one," who struggled with drugs, mental health, identity, and who knows what else for as long as I knew him. I didn't know enough to ask and be there for him in the ways I could have or should have at the time. Rot in hell, Kissinger.
I keep thinking the next up war criminal is George W. Bush. Can we please quit whitewashing him as he continues to hide out in Texas doing bad paintings? With healthcare for rich boomers as it is, I'm sure we're decades from his shuffling off. Can someone at least send him to the Hague in the meantime?
Oh yeah, I will certainly find a way to commemorate his leaving this plane of existence, as well.
Yes, I had a similar thought, when I read about Peter Jennings' confrontation with Kissinger. Who is saying that now to Bush? I hope somehow he's not so comfortably insulated, though I fear it might be the case. Likewise Cheney, Rice, Powell et al. Rumsfeld is dead so he missed out on a needed reckoning. But many of the players are still around and not facing the necessary music.
Just contrast Bush with Carter. Bush is holed up in Texas not saying anything to anyone (who would really want to hear it?!) while Carter and his spouse continued to do incredibly good things for decades after they left the White House. True heroes of this country, compared to Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, even Obama and of course Trump and Biden. We will not see the likes of them again, I fear.
Like, yesterday.
https://www.bushcenter.org/newsroom/statement-by-president-george-w-bush-on-secretary-henry-kissinger
Barf
Same.
For what it's worth, when Roslyn Carter's service was held earlier this week, all living FLOTUSes were present but only two presidents: Clinton and Biden. Unfit to travel or just too busy scheduling Milosevic to sit for him? You choose which is the more pleasant option.
Honestly I wish Clinton had stayed home (Bill, not Hillary). I don't have much good to say about him. And not THAT much good to say about Biden either, not for the same reasons to be sure, but mostly because I think he needs to step away and let someone 20+ years younger fight for the Presidency in 2024. I am 72 but I don't think people my age or older should be serving in this capacity. During COVID, it wasn't quite as bad as everyone was sheltering anyway, but nowadays, Biden looks less and less like a potential winner, sigh, even though he is obviously head and shoulders above the entire GOP.
Anyway, all of that said, it was REALLY clear to me that Ms. Carter is someone we should ALL honor. Ditto her husband. The Carters represent, to me, the best of politics. And he (and she) continued to do incredible good for the next 44 years despite the screw-ups of the various other chief executives who wormed their way into power. I am sad to think that we may not see the likes of them for a long time, possible forever.
Thanks for this. And for a previous post taking the Washington Post to task for the dumbest piece about women and men I have read in a long time. And for every post. And while I'm here and we are discussing burnished reputations...Fuck Reagan.
Yes. I didn't get to post about the Post Editorial, but yep.
"Their kids are so big now and so are mine. And we wonder where the time went? What happened? But we know time went into our hair and our skin and our hearts."
I'm not crying, don't tell people I was crying.
Regarding unions/labor: Shawn Fain, Chris Smalls, & Sarah Nelson are 3 of the best things to happen to workers in (easily) the last 20 years. What a refreshing change after decades of milquetoast union leadership, and going along to get along.
If POTUS understood exactly how he got elected, his administration would have rewarded Ms Nelson with a Cabinet position (or higher) as their first phone call. As it is, just as well. It would have been a demotion for her.
I may have my history wrong, but I thought she didn't want it? That aside, I'm 100% with you. Secretary of Labor or Transportation would've both been good fits.
Oh wow, if she turned down an actual offer, that would be awesome.
I meant it in the context of her making it clear she didn't want it before being asked. But again, I might be off here.
Either way works for me. Repping your constituents and putting pressure on elites can (and should) happen outside of high government office. Billionaires certainly aren't waiting on a Cabinet title.
Old veteran here.
Most people are too young now to remember Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Laos. I'm not. Henry was despised. Then he hung on with Ford. He left things in such disarray that when Iran popped up, we were ill-prepared, which led to the Iran hostage rescue attempt. Which helped lead to Reagan.
It's ancient history to most people now. But it's not to those who fought it and experienced it. Lyz is right. The media coverage has been surprising and less than satisfactory.
I personally feel that Kissinger’s publicity glow-up is a symptom of a key problem for Americans (primarily white men), in that we have a very difficult time acknowledging when we are not the good guys. Before Kissinger, people went to great pains to rehabilitate the image of Robert E Lee, to the point where they basically created a fictional character also named Robert E Lee that represented the fantasy of the noble Confederate soldier. Even now, a lot of white male politicians are going through great pains to suppress the teaching of black history out of fear of making white students uncomfortable with the realization that their ancestors were probably shitty people. Kissinger is just the latest expression of American men’s obsession with America being seen as the country that can do no wrong.
Thinking about how many white cis men do appalling things and usually get away unscathed, I see Anthony Bourdain as a really good example of how to use ones' social power (see, privilege) for good. He was beloved AND he didn't shy away from calling out bullshit and gross fawning when he saw it, AND it didn't damage his career or reputation. A true model for the ages.
(My brain is also thinking about people pointing out Bush Jr. being a war criminal and Ellen DeGeneres' terrible hot take that we should 'be nice' to war criminals and given the war crimes actively happening the past too many days...it's like everything I was taught in school about the Lessons We Learned As a Society after WWII were *lies*.)
Another good Bourdain quote I saw yesterday: "Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands."
Right? Yes to all the dog-piling on Kissinger right now, but empire gonna empire. His replacements are already in all the right places, pulling levers and trading genocides for improved quarterly profits. Holding our representatives, elected and otherwise, is the work that must continue. The warmongering is, after all, in our names.
Parker Molloy is a national treasure. So is Spencer Ackerman. So is Rolling Stone, and how they categorize their stories ("Good Riddance"). Can someone be a posthumous dingus? Kissinger certainly qualifies. As Jeff Tiedrich might say, "live your life in such a way that people aren't lining up to piss on your grave." <3
Just for the record, Rolling Stone (assuming the magazine) is not a national treasure. Maybe a mixed bag as it has done some excellent political reporting and has some good columns, but it also has (had?) Jann Wenner who is (was?) essentially a misogynist pig who marginalized most great black and women artists at least for 3-4 decades, and only started to do ANYTHING to fix this over the past 10 years at best. Wenner literally just apologized for various remarks he has made on black and women artists, after calling them "not articulate enough" to be included in his book The Masters (he only included 6 white musicians Jagger/Dylan/Lennon/Townshend/Bono/Springsteen and one partial Hispanic Jerry Garcia with no black or female musicians). Rolling Stone is NOT (at least IMHO) a national treasure, just a good ole' white boys magazine for liberals.
Thank you so much sir, for correcting my opinion and my assumed musical tastes and politics. I could not be more grateful to have a man yell at me, especially here. My tiny lady brain is constantly in need of a man to explain things to me, incapable as I am of discerning even my own lived experience.
Re: Henry the nightmare
My Granpa always said “a son of a b***h alive is a son of a b***h dead.” He did not tolerate “don’t speak ill of the dead”. I have long adopted his philosophy. In fact, as I write this, I’m trying to remember to which ring of Dante’s Inferno Kissinger is most appropriately consigned.
This was one of my favorite comments, by Mo Weeks on Twitter:
“Everybody is celebrating Kissinger dying and no one is thinking about the low wage workers forced to build an entire new level of hell at depths never reached before. You guys are so anti-labor. “
This was one of my favorite comments, by Mo Weeks on Twitter:
“Everybody is celebrating Kissinger dying and no one is thinking about the low wage workers forced to build an entire new level of hell at depths never reached before. You guys are so anti-labor. “
For all my sins, I forsake the "big" picture for the specific. Dr. Kissinger supported Indonesia’s military dictator in the invasion of East Timor, and for that alone he needs must twist in the eternal fires of Hell.