Who's Your Daddy? Donald Trump

After months of working the phones at the Democratic headquarters in Batavia, Ohio I am bitterly disappointed at the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. Donald Trump scared the bejezzus out of me when he won the Republican nominee for president and he still scares me.

I forced myself to watch his speeches and coverage of his rallies. I cringed along with half the nation every time he came up with some childish bully name for one of his opponents or went on a tweet storm when someone insulted him. He refused to release his tax returns so we still know very little of his business acumen. He is still a thin-skinned bully and easily baited. As far as surrounding himself with good people, I have yet to see any.

There was a time when I, too, was hesitant about Hillary Clinton. After all I was a registered Republican when Bill Clinton was president. But as I learned her history, as I examined the intense campaign by Republicans in office to discredit her honesty and integrity, I came to admire her strength to get back into the fray and still hold on to her principles. I admired her dedication to the disenfranchised, to the underdogs of our society, a dedication that began long before she was in college.

As election day came closer, I was encouraged when one conservative newspaper after another endorsed Hillary Clinton. I was encouraged when respectable Republicans refused to endorse Donald Trump. I was encouraged when the pollsters talked of a landslide win for Clinton.

But the underdogs were duped into believing she really was Crooked Hillary and came out in droves from the rural back roads and voted in their Daddy.

Like I said, I worked the phones for months before election day. Our call lists were comprised of registered Democrats and Independents. The first time I spoke to a woman who said she "would never vote for a woman president!" click, I sat there in shock. I realized there is a faction of our society who isn't just against Hillary and the manufactured baggage she carries. There is a substantial population of women, predominately white evangelical women,  who simply believe in, what is viewed by them, the traditional roles of men and women in our society. Daddy is in charge and Mommy stays home and has babies and bakes cookies.

For them NO woman belongs in the presidency. Not now, not ever. For them Donald Trump represents the patriarchal figure that embodies the traditional family structure to which they cling. Inter-racial marriages, gay marriages, and single moms are an aberration to the white Christian society they believe to be superior to the rest of the world.

So what if Trump is a sexual predator. Those women probably asked for it just like all those rape victims of guys who emulate Trump's personality. So what if Trump is currently involved in nearly a hundred law suits, stiffed his contractors and filed bankruptcy multiple times. That's how strong men operate. It's not for us women to worry our pretty little heads about complicated business negotiations.


And now that the votes are counted? Sure enough, 53 percent of white women, most identifying as evangelicals, voted for Trump.

So who's your Daddy? The answer is clear. Donald Trump.

Update:  Excellent point of view from inside the Evangelical camp. "The Evangelical Church Has Lost Its Witness In Supporting Donald Trump"

1/25/2017 Update: This very insightful and very nerdy blog post by George Lakoff, a Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, validates my point of view here.
A Minority President: Why the Polls Failed, And What the Majority Can Do

A Lot Has Changed...But Much Has Not

Today is Martin Luther King day in the USA. And today my favorite local public radio station, WVXU 91.7, rebroadcast an interview from September 2015 with Marian Spencer and Dorothy Christenson, the author of KeepOn Fighting: The Life and Civil Rights Legacy of Marian A. Spencer. Marian Spencer was 95 at the time of the interview. 

Marian Spencer was and still is an amazing civil rights activist locally and nationally. She was raised in Gallipolis, Ohio in the home of her grandfather, a freed slave from West Virginia. She joined the NAACP when she was 13. In 1938 she came to Cincinnati to attend the University of Cincinnati. She earned a BA in English in 1942. In 1981 she became the first black female president of the local NAACP and remains the only black female to have held that position in the Cincinnati chapter. She was the first black female to be elected to Cincinnati city council and served as Vice Mayor as a member of the Charter party.

One of her most famous battles was against Coney Island in 1952. After her sons had heard a radio ad inviting children to Coney Island to meet a local TV personality she called to verify. But once she told them they were “Negroes” she was told that her children were not allowed. On July 4^th Spencer showed up at the gate of Coney Island and was banished by a guard brandishing a gun.

Soon after her banishment she chaired the  NAACP Legal Action vs. Coney Island, Cincinnati, Ohio. The day Spencer showed up at the gate at Coney Island she had enlisted the help of approximately 25 other African-Americans to stand in line and be turned away. They all testified and were asked who called them to go to Coney Island. All answered, “Marian Spencer.” When she took the stand the attorney for Coney Island admonished her, “a white woman”, for getting involved with the Negroes. He called her a Communist. Her simple reply was “Sir, I am neither a white woman nor a Communist.”The NAACP subsequently won the case.

More recently Spencer spoke out against the controversial parks levy which was pushed by Mayor John Cranley. She initially supported the levy. But when she found out the money would only be used for capital projects and would become a charter amendment she pulled her support.  The levy was voted down.

Much has changed since MLK marched and gave his life for civil rights in the United States. Yes, we elected a black president…twice. But there is still a lot that has not changed.

Unarmed black men (and children) are being murdered by rogue policemen, who are indiscriminately protected by their blue brethren. We are seeing more black artists in the movies but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seems to be blind to that fact. OprahWinfrey is the most respected, wealthiest, influential and generous black woman in the world, yet blacks still rate as the highest percentage of those living in poverty and imprisoned in the United States, which touts itself as the richest country in the world. The face of our government, local state and federal, is still predominately white men. 

Today while visiting my 87-year-old father he sarcastically remarked “I wish they’d make a holiday on my birthday.” This is not the first time he’s made that crack and he is not the only person I have heard use this kind of coded language.

Yes a lot has changed, but much has not.