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NuClear


Last Friday I did what I do most Friday nights – watch the PBS NewsHour for Shields & Brooks. While mainly I appreciate their analysis, at times, and for me, this is one of those times, I find them out of step with the populace. This has to do with the comments Samantha Bee used to describe Ivanka Trump recently. Shields claimed the word was “nuclear,” and that there was no worse word that could be used in regard to women.
My husband had been at a Fringe festival show, so had missed it, and streamed that portion of the show later. I was just as baffled then as I was Friday night, since all I could think about the original phrase was: “yep, that’s Ivanka.” Maybe all those years of Deadwood and the Sopranos have caused me to be immune to the power of such a word.
I think I also feel that Ivanka is one of the worst types of hypocrites for women. She’s claims she’s a modern woman and understands working women, yet she lives a completely 1% gilded life. Plus, her father’s a misogynist pig who, along with his fellow Republicans, wants to take all the rights women have worked so hard to gain over the years away. I don’t think the reason she doesn’t have 12 kids is due to abstinence, nor do I feel any sympathy for her when she says her day is ruined when one of her kids gets sick (How many nannies and assistants does she have? More importantly, how many aides do real working women have?).
In some ways the real issue is that the word bothers people of Shield’s generation (and Brooks’ and clearly Judy Woodruff’s). Up until the 2000s, I don’t remember it being heard as much. I don’t know, other than TV shows, why that would be, but I do think context matters. Just like I cringe as a white liberal woman when I hear the n-word, the use of the c-word means a lot depending on who uses it.
Ted Nugent called Hillary this word and got invited to the White House by Trump, who I’m sure has used this word. It didn’t look like Sarah Palin had problems with Nugent using that word from the photos taken of the three of them together. If it’s okay to use the word against Hillary, why can’t the democrats use it against such a useless hanger-on and recipient of way too much support by her father like Ivanka?
Again, context is key. A male white supremacist and sexist calling the Democratic Presidential nominee that word is nuclear. A female progressive with a TV show that does its best to call out hypocrisy and stupidity by the government and media using such a word to aptly describe the President’s enabling daughter has power, but for the better good (or at least it is for me).

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