The Good, The Bad And The Stormy
Stephanie Gregory Clifford aka Stormy Daniels is the missing member of the Wu-Tang Clan because she ain’t nothing to fuck with. From the onset of this circus, it has been an utter delight watching the right-wing almost sexually contort to either rail against what a slut Stormy Daniels is, or to dismiss everything she has said as hearsay and money-grubbing.
The hyped heavyweight interview with Anderson Cooper was on 60 Minutes Sunday night. True to form, she sat poised and confident and told the lusting, thirsty public what we all pretty much assumed happened to her. In the hard light of politics and internet reaction porn, Monday morning was like Alice stepping through the looking glass. From the fountain of bittersweet water known as Morning Joe, Mr. Scarborough mentioned in less than twenty minutes how he didn’t think she was credible, how she was looking for more money, and then slut-shamed her — as did the rest of the panel. This trifecta would not be complete if he didn’t mention the scandal with President Clinton and Monica Lewinski two decades prior.
In the same segment — dominated mostly by the male voices (somehow Mika wasn’t present) — Scarborough & Company said how Anderson Cooper didn’t ask logical follow-up questions but claimed they “didn’t want to hold him to a prosecutor standard.” Joe began to say how Anderson should have had possible photos of this mysterious man who told Daniels, “That’s a beautiful girl you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to her mother.” Trite? Yes. However, this administration operates like a mob family, why (or how) could it not be possible? And in typical Scarborough fashion, he didn’t notice that he indeed was holding him to a prosecutorial standard.
The mainstream media fallout behind this is no short of ludicrous. Even two days later, when White House reporter April D. Ryan asked about this affair with Stormy Daniels – an affair that the president has denied — she wasn’t called on again during the daily White House press briefing! This situation has become more volatile only because of the crazy precipice the Executive Branch is now on! As her interview transcripts have made the rounds, and have been quoted over social media, the impossibility of what is happening is becoming more and more plausible. It is that plausibility which is causing all pundit heads to spin. The mainstream media goes from the extreme head-spinning from the impossibility, to a conservative hydra unable to allow the head of a facet of this problem to die — only to sprout two where only one was.
In the aftermath of this interview, you see one of the glaring things wrong with the depiction and treatment of women. During the media fallout, one pundit on Morning Joe, John Heilemann, mocked Stormy Daniels when she said she didn’t want her children to find out about what she had done. In the snark laugh, this pundit made mention of her being a porn star. There was also this air in his tone, as if to say if she were embarrassed about what she had done, she shouldn’t have a become a porn star. Oh, like clockwork, there’s the sexism and the slut-shaming! Right on cue!
In the blaming of Stormy Daniels, in the figuring out of what she did, why she is doing what she is now, and whether this is a noble cause or a fool’s errand, the mainstream media is only feeding the voyeuristic fetish this nation is known for and exports. The media focuses on what she did with a married man that paid her, along with spank him with a copy of Forbes. The media keeps spinning because they don’t know whether to tell the truth about what David Dennison aka Donald Trump and Michael Cohen were up to, lash out at the president for the fuckery this causes which leads to culture wars or give Stormy a scarlet lettered-bustier.
Stormy Daniels may be many things, stupid is not one of them. This is far from over, and I am waiting for round two, and the subsequent healthy Mike Tyson-esque knockout punch which will put someone on their ass. Or out on it.
