Macy and Bette forced to recant

That's very interesting. Be interested if JKR, a massive Labour donator might have been similarly talked to, or at least reached out to by them.

The interviewer is the host of the Today Show, Hoda. She took over after Matt Lauer was fired for alleged sexual misconduct. So I suspect they know full well who actually is a woman on The Today Show, those that get sexually harassed. It’s a very famous show in the US by the way. They chose full visibility for Macy’s public recantation.

I feel sorry for them, especially Macy after watching that hostage video. Just shows how amazing JKR has been. Takes real guts to hold the line.

That video demonstrates perfectly why Kellie-Jay “holds the line”.

No capitulation to this warped and dangerous ideology.

Is it a total absence of empathy, so the words are all that's needed?

Yes. It's the power trip.

This, exactly.

Maybe it feels like winning, power, hollow vindication and control.

‘Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.’

@teawamutu

Yes.

You're both right, and it does reinforce what I kind of knew but hadn't articulated.

I am still, though, fascinated by how that feels. TRAs seem so invested in validation - how valid does it really feel when you know deep down that most people are either being kind, or scared?

Is it a total absence of empathy, so the words are all that's needed?

Male dominance. Fundamentalist religion. Big parts of all the cultures in the world. Neither much cares about individual consent as long as you submit and recant and recite.

@teawamutu

Because it’s a demonstration of power.

The chilling effect. It reinforces preference falsification.

www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674707580

Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one’s wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, such as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies, Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including those rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities.

A common effect of preference falsification is the preservation of widely disliked structures. Another is the conferment of an aura of stability on structures vulnerable to sudden collapse. When the support of a policy, tradition, or regime is largely contrived, a minor event may activate a bandwagon that generates massive yet unanticipated change.

In distorting public opinion, preference falsification also corrupts public discourse and, hence, human knowledge. So structures held in place by preference falsification may, if the condition lasts long enough, achieve increasingly genuine acceptance. The book demonstrates how human knowledge and social structures co-evolve in complex and imperfectly predictable ways, without any guarantee of social efficiency.

The bit I can never understand is what value the TRAs place on the recantation.

We know they're lying. The TRAs know they're lying. Why put so much value on the pretence, once you know it IS pretence?

It's an appalling situation, where it's only those ON THE LEFT in the arts who are at the absolute top of the global tree fame-wise dare to speak out. The arts are balls deep in this at the moment. It feels like a bunch of middle class white people have found an easy way to imagine themselves into or 'allying with' a spicy 'identity' that is somehow 'cooler' than middle class white, well-heeled and capital city-dwelling whilst most often being exactly that, and doesn't actually require any genuine outreach to meet and employ people outside their white, middle class, able-bodied, well-heeled social sphere.

I can't recall any men being made to do this kind of hostage video, and they rarely have 'pronouns in bio' either. Funny that.

My take is that every show trial , false confession , recantation and public humiliation for speaking the truth serves to further enrage ordinary men and women.

We all know she was right - and is right. The gender cult will lose but , in the USA 🇺🇸 it will be at the cost of a Republican victory alas.

I'm a man fwiw .

I'd have thought Bette Midler had enough 'f you money' and status to say what she likes.

I should think that it won't wholly be the money but her status and legacy. It would be fascinating to understand the leverage that is being applied but I have no doubt that it is being applied and she's all but force fed the thought-terminating clichés.

She's a lifelong Democrat, iirc, and she's plausibly under some pressure from them. Which is, of course, bittersweet given that she spent a lot of time criticising the Democrats for being too polite to Trump (whom she styled as "fascist" and "dictator") when he was in office. She has a record of saying stuff that she walks back for political reasons.

It can't be that only untouchables in the entertainment (and publishing) world like JKR and Gervais can hold the line? That's a small sphere.

I'd have thought Bette Midler had enough 'f you money' and status to say what she likes.

I guess it's more than that, it's facing a horrific kickback and personal slurs. Hats will be off to the future US double down JKR type when they emerge.

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus
See Lifton's 8 Criteria for Thought Reform

Thanks for this. Another day, another useful bit of knowledge from the amazing women of FWR!

I do hope Macy is OK. Still thinking of the pile on against Kelly Holmes last week and hoping she is ok. TRAs really love to pile on hard against black women in particular.

It's the modern day Spanish Inquisition.

In the past, bullies and arseholes were just bullies and arsehole - now they get to performatively polish their halos while being bullies and arseholes so it's of no surprise that the "right side of history" attracts those types like flies round the proverbial.

Macy and Bette may be forced to chant the mantra but the truth is still the truth and everybody knows it.

See Lifton's 8 Criteria for Thought Reform. All of the following are quoted from the wikipedia account.

First we have the "Thought-terminating cliche"

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.

Then we have the 8 Criteria of Thought-Reform (a.k.a. Brainwashing)

1. Milieu Control. This involves the control of information and communication both within the environment and, ultimately, within the individual, resulting in a significant degree of isolation from society at large.

2. Mystical Manipulation. There is manipulation of experiences that appear spontaneous but in fact were planned and orchestrated by the group or its leaders in order to demonstrate divine authority or spiritual advancement or some special gift or talent that will then allow the leader to reinterpret events, scripture, and experiences as he or she wishes.

3. Demand for Purity. The world is viewed as black and white and the members are constantly exhorted to conform to the ideology of the group and strive for perfection. The induction of guilt and/or shame is a powerful control device used here.

4. Confession. Sins, as defined by the group, are to be confessed either to a personal monitor or publicly to the group. There is no confidentiality; members' "sins," "attitudes," and "faults" are discussed and exploited by the leaders.

5. Sacred Science. The group's doctrine or ideology is considered to be the ultimate Truth, beyond all questioning or dispute. Truth is not to be found outside the group. The leader, as the spokesperson for God or for all humanity, is likewise above criticism.

6. Loading the Language. The group interprets or uses words and phrases in new ways so that often the outside world does not understand. This jargon consists of thought-terminating cliches, which serve to alter members' thought processes to conform to the group's way of thinking.

7. Doctrine over person. Member's personal experiences are subordinated to the sacred science and any contrary experiences must be denied or reinterpreted to fit the ideology of the group.

8. Dispensing of existence. The group has the prerogative to decide who has the right to exist and who does not. This is usually not literal but means that those in the outside world are not saved, unenlightened, unconscious and they must be converted to the group's ideology. If they do not join the group or are critical of the group, then they must be rejected by the members. Thus, the outside world loses all credibility. In conjunction, should any member leave the group, he or she must be rejected also. (Lifton, 1989)

So…I'm not surprised by the softening, walking back and flavour of recantation. Online mobs can enforce people to become outliers and endure a force of social death, in combination with the loss of bookings and money, that's powerful leverage for recantation. Seeing Bette Midler do it will have a powerful chilling effect.

I just don’t understand why she didn’t come off Twitter for a week?!

close her account so nobody could message etc!!!

Presumably because the consequences went way beyond attacks on Twitter. If most of your income is derived from playing live, and venues or promoters refuse to host you, then you have a significant problem unless you are wealthy enough to weather the storm.

This related to a concert she had already done, but it’s likely others would have threatened to ditch her.

metro.co.uk/2022/07/05/macy-gray-mighty-hoopla-blasts-insensitive-and-transphobic-comments-16945920/

Watching that, it appears certain to me that she's been ordered to do the recant by her record company or management.

The piece starts with the fact she's got a new album out, so everything that follows has to be seen in that context. She's squirming uncomfortably throughout and you can almost see her weighing up her words - delivering the message they've told her to deliver, but without actually denying what she said before

The interviewer is totally leading her and trying to put words in her mouth. 'Has your perspective changed?' 'I've learned so much and... y'know, being a woman is a vibe. It's something I'm very proud of and it's very precious to me and if you, in your heart, feel that's what you are, that's what you are, regardless of what anybody says or thinks. But yeah - I've learned a lot.'

From that I'm taking that MG knows exactly what being a woman is and what it means, and the thing she's learned is that in 2022 misogyny is so endemic that we're no longer allowed to define ourselves. I'd say this wasn't so much a retraction of what she said before but an acknowledgement that people whose identity doesn't align with material reality do exist, but she's not actually saying she believes their alternative reality.

That was difficult to watch.

Men hate women more than we'll ever know.