PREJUDICE AGAINST "BABY BOOMERS" IS NOT OKAY EITHER

Me in my early 20's

When I was young and knew nothing, I had scores of people clamoring for my opinions, my friendship, and my heart, especially when I was a young, fairly pretty screenwriter, selling my work to a major Hollywood studio. But now, despite years of experience, education, adventures and wisdom, I am fighting a general tendency of others to treat me as if I am a dunce or a mental patient, simply because I have reached a certain age. Being poor, disabled and needy probably has something to do with my sudden status as an imbecile. Too often, I am the recipient of the unwarranted rolled eyeballs. You know what I am talking about.

I am aware that, in the spiritual realm, this treatment is supposed to be good for me, and I try to bow my head to it as much as possible, but it goes against the grain, having been an entirely independent woman from the age of 17, when I walked out of my natal home with nothing but the clothes on my back and South Indian hippie purse that contained little more than a hair brush and some lipstick. It is my life experiences that have taught me to speak out against injustice and prejudice, otherwise the next gal will get an even worse time of it. I owe it to her to put the brakes on, if only just a little bit.

In the wake of the Trump era, I have experienced incidents of discrimination having to do with my disabilities, which is made worse by ageism and fat prejudice. You may remember that grocery clerk at the Smiths store who told me that he believes in "Trump's law" (whatever THAT was) and that, unless I have had "two arms cut off or two legs cut off," I am not really disabled and don't deserve to park in the handicap parking, despite being actually disabled and having a legitimate, state-issued parking placard.

Many people in our culture are making these decisions about the worthiness of others, based only on what a cursory glance tells them.

Last Friday, I had a horrible experience with a passport agent at the post office who was unreasonably nasty, personally offensive, and condescending to me in a way that I never experienced before the addition of wheels to my life; wheels on my walker, wheels on my electric scooter, and wheels on a car I cannot live without because walking has become impossible. I had nightmares for two days afterwards.

Today, I endured the sneers, rolling eyeballs and tsk tsking of fellow shoppers at Whole Foods, as I tried to maneuver down the aisles in the electric cart that is far too big, the dimensions of which were blatantly ignored when the clerks placed their food displays in the narrow corridors. One woman was so keen to circumvent my little parade, she pushed her cart with great force from the checkout line to the far wall. It neatly clipped my shuddering vehicle. She glared at me, as if it was MY bright idea to send a grocery cart careening across the waxed floors, unmanned.

When my groceries were finally rung up, I discovered, to my utter chagrin, that I'd left my debit card in my other purse, something I have never done in my life, and thereby earned a withering glance from the cashier. It was then that I learned that Whole Foods does not take checks and, though owned by Amazon, has no method of getting payment from you if you leave your card at home. It's cash or plastic, and that's it. I seem to remember it being very easy to read someone's check, in day's gone by, but apparently, that is too simple. The cashier was completely devoid of empathy. He said he could put the groceries aside for me to pick them up later or they could put them all away. He and the packing clerk exchanged ugly glances.

One of the reasons that my apartment is not suited to my needs is that I live in a food desert. There is one very small neighborhood market with highly suspect, extremely expensive fruits and vegetables. Expiration dates are very near or actually expired and I suspect that the storage in the back room is not air conditioned properly because the fruits and vegetables wilt within a day of buying them. ALL of the grocery stores that carry healthy foods are MILES away from where I live, and shopping trips are very hard on me. I was a long way from home, with no debit card. I just couldn't come back.

I couldn't see myself driving 20 minutes home to get my card, 20 minutes back to the store, 20 minutes home again. I could not do that extra hour and also put away groceries that would be half ruined from sitting out for so long. I opted to have them put it all away. Neither the cashier nor the packer uttered a single kind word. I don't know why I was apologizing, but I did - probably because they were making it clear that I had wasted their very precious time. I received no sympathy or fellow feeling or recognition that I was still a customer. No. Just those ugly glances.

I was in so much pain by this point that I was unable to walk, and when I tried to take the electric cart to my car, the stupid "sensors" did not want to let me through the door - not because you're not allowed to take the carts to your car, but because the sensors have been installed so that you won't run into the towers of groceries that I previously mentioned were placed in the aisles of the store. As I worked furiously to try to get the cart to go through the exit doors, an indignant man stood inches from me, his face black with rage. I was inconveniencing him. There was another exit door a few feet away. He could have used that, but no, he wanted to make it clear to me just how mad he was that I dared to interrupt his flow through life.  If I had been my former 21 year-old self, he would have been falling all over himself to help the pretty young disabled lady, I would bet. I finally got out the door and drove home wondering what the hell I was going to eat, since my cupboards were bare and I was hungry.

This hostility toward older and disabled people is really disturbing.  It wasn't until I'd read a sullen and resentful diatribe against "boomers" written by a Facebook connection, that I began to comprehend the strong sentiment that is being generated by our progeny and their kids. They blame all of us that were born during certain years for somehow not leaving them a nice enough world to live in, completely missing the fact that only the very wealthy among our generation had any realistic power in which to operate, and the comparative ease of the older boomer's lives was dictated by economic factors that no longer exist.

As in all ages, it is the people who have money who hold the power in the society. The rest of us just scramble to hold onto the edge of the bowl so we don't fall in. As much as I tried to educate my Facebook acquaintance about this reality, her hostility and bitterness toward all people in that generation came gushing from her in a torrent of resentful words, and I had to walk away from the negativity.

I am having a curious ride, between the ageism and the sexism and the disability prejudice and the fat shaming and the misogyny. Being a member of several vulnerable groups can be exhausting. Of course, people of color are the experts on this sort of thing, as the prejudice that is thrown at them constantly is often life threatening. At least no one has made a move to kill me when I got in their way in the grocery store.

Recently, a member of my former parish started circulating an anti-boomer meme that was couched in the form of a comic cartoon. It was really only a pretense of humor. It was bitingly mean and the kind of thing that has a corrosive effect on society, if left unchallenged. When I explained to him that it was insulting and inappropriate, he coolly told me it was a joke and that he found it funny. I tried to reason with him, but his smugness let me know that he considered this particular prejudice to be okay to cultivate and it didn't bother him if anyone was hurt by it.

I found it an odd attitude for a well-churched young man to take. Frankly, I had expected better from him, given his education, but one can't force enlightenment on anyone.  Ageism is wide spread in America. I have heard that this is less of a problem in other cultures where they revere their elders and treat them with respect, but here in the U.S., many take it for granted, assuming their prejudice has some basis in fact.

The baby boomers aren't the first generation to experience discrimination. I remember when my father hit his 40's and he was constantly telling me of the ageism that he was experiencing. He began to have trouble finding work. People dismissed him as an old hack. I discounted his constant carping and assumed that he had earned this treatment because he really did have an unpleasant personality, with no appreciation for social norms.  Clearly, I was missing some information that only experience could provide.

The prejudices expressed by those entitled young people on Facebook aren't even logical. The fact of the matter is that each generation contains all sorts of people. Some are selfish and couldn't care less about the kind of world they leave to their children and grandchildren. Some spend all their time and money on worthy causes. Some are in their own world and live for whatever hobby horse has captured their imagination. Many people - perhaps most people - just struggle to stay ahead of the daily grind.

Wages for the middle class stalled from 1970 to 2005, basically the baby boomer working years. At the same time, however, corporate profits and CEO wealth skyrocketed. Whatever value the baby boomer created by her effort benefited only the company and the executives, leaving her desperate to feed her kids and stay ahead of the repair bills on the car, which is probably why her kids resent her so much. Mom was always working. If she wasn't at her full time job, she left the kids alone in the apartment at night and on weekends while she worked her side hustle.

The kids are blaming their boomer mom for leaving them to their own devices much of the time, but it's an unfair complaint. Life got harder and harder during those working years, from 1970 to 2005. From my personal perspective, I ended up making less money in real dollars in my 40's than I had in my 20's. The economic machine was sending all the value of my work to the bank accounts of a few people at the top of the pyramid, leaving me scrabbling for table scraps that fell from above. Who can build a world for the next generation when you're survival is at stake? It is a rigged system. This is the fault of capitalism, which MUST be regulated, or it naturally results in all the money being concentrated at the top, shared with just a few people.

Older people can be repositories of great wisdom, information and inspiration. That isn't true of all elderly people, of course. You know the saying, "with age comes wisdom, but sometimes it comes alone!" To pretend that every gray haired granny is a wizened old sage would be just another type of irrational prejudice. One must recognize, though, that the wisdom of many years is certainly a latent possibility in every person of a certain age. By very definition, they have more years of experiences than the young and, even if they DO start to become a little addled, don't they deserve simple human kindness? Jesus would say so.

It would be wonderful to think that writing a blog would disabuse scores of people of the notion that older people are all losing their minds and have nothing to offer the world. I don't have a prayer of changing the entire culture, but I will do my bit here. I am the perennial advocate for the misunderstood and maligned.

If you consider yourself a spiritual person, a religious person, or a person of honor and integrity, then you must agree that prejudice is evil. Condemning someone or ridiculing anyone, based solely upon some general group to which they belong, is an injustice to that person and shouldn't be tolerated. Pretending that comical character assassinations are benign is, likewise, dishonest. Don't encourage the incorrigible by laughing and then passing on the sentiment!

Jesus clearly wanted us to be kind to one another, and that doesn't include expressing contempt toward your elders in the mistaken idea that they are somehow less than you and that therefore it is alright to be prejudiced about anyone over the age of 40. There is no prejudice that is "allowed" or is culturally acceptable. Just stop it!

My postal carrier commiserated with me today, making the observation that, "it's a very strange time in America. People are so MEAN." This is true, but we have to fight this tendency as hard as we can. This meanness is not a holy stance to take, and it is incumbent upon Christians to follow the commandments of the Lord to the best of our abilities - and that means that we are to love everyone.

Read the Beatitudes again. That's a good place to start.

God bless us all.

Silver "Rose" Parnell
"Sannyasini Kaliprana"

What Will History Report?

Winter in Old Town Albuquerque

Copyright (c) Silver Parnell, 2018

It has been a rough few weeks, and I have been knocked off my pins. Two days ago, a robber tried to steal a bicycle near my house, and we were in lockdown for the entire day, while the police and their swat vehicles and boats and horses and all kinds of armored this and thats were camped out in the middle of the street. They didn't catch the guy. For someone with PTSD, this is a particularly stressful situation.

I was already feeling somewhat pressurized because of the misogynistic, bigoted, xenophobic government being pressed into place by the current "leader" of our country, along with his fawning sycophants in the shockingly transformed Republican Party.

Last month, I wrote about how a supermarket employee expressed hostility toward my disabled status, telling me that, "I believe in Trump's law. Unless you've got two arms cut off or two legs cut off, you're not handicapped!" It took several weeks to call him to account for this outrageous verbal attack and, although he was suspended from work without pay for some time, I was left with the stress of having been the recipient of Trump's disgusting animus, through one of his MAGA nuts. I continue to remind the skeptical that the supermarket employee sailed into his diatribe without my having said anything even faintly political. When the president of the United States sneers at, mocks and criticizes disabled people, this is what happens. None of the MONEY trickles down, but the insults and the prejudices sure do!

~Trump mocking a disabled man during a pep rally~

I have had people tell me that I should just ignore what Trump says, that it doesn't have anything to do with me and does no good to say anything, but they are dead wrong. My life has already been directly affected by his nauseating comments and behaviors. He has emboldened and encouraged hateful people who, in turn, inflict their vile bigotry and ugliness on me and others like me. Fat, female, senior, disabled; I've got four strikes against me, in the mind of the Trump supporter who feels entitled to torment me and others like me. In addition, I live in low income housing, and, if it is discovered, is yet another mark "against" me because the alt right wackos claim that all the social programs are rife with fraud (which is a lie.)

Trump supporter

We're in the middle of a government shutdown that is costing 800,000 Americans the loss of their income and is risking their basic survival of food and housing. Our Federal lands are being vandalized and trashed. TSA workers are calling in "sick" at double the customary rate because they aren't being paid for what is, at the very best of times, a stressful, physically demanding job, which makes it all very unsafe for travelers.

Trump is holding us ALL hostage, really. Despite the fact that illegal immigration over the Southern border is at its lowest since the 1960's, most "illegals" are in this country on VISA OVERSTAYS, and the drugs are coming through the standard ports of entry - not smuggled illegally across the border, Trump is fixated on having a WALL, which is a decidedly low-tech method, even if the problem WAS illegal border crossings! But it isn't.

[Note: The source information for this chart comes from the U.S. Border Patrol.]

The problem with this particular issue is that, instead of leaving the method up to the experts, Trump has slapped them aside and is insisting that everyone accept his opinion about the proper method of fixing a problem. The underlying defect, of course, is that, although he bleats constantly about a "crisis" at the border, there isn't one. Illegal entry over the Southern border is the lowest it has been since the 1960s.  Sure, it happens and it has to be dealt with, but there are a variety of measures that the experts recommend.

So, Trump wants to spend billions of dollars for a low-tech solution to a nonexistent problem, and that bit of crazy is why we are all on tenterhooks - conducting our lives under a bleak, dark cloud of foreboding. I'm afraid Trump will start a war, in order to distract us from his crimes, or simply because he bungles his way into it because he doesn't have a clue about how to be presidential and refuses to get counsel from anyone. His followers don't respect experts either. I have given up responding to their hysterical, overblown comments on social media. I just block them when I see another overwrought, lie-filled comment. I can't deal with it.

Our constant sense of apprehension or anxiety is well founded. We have been here before. Trump's fascist, authoritarian tendencies are easily compared with those of dictators like Hitler, who, as I've mentioned before, was also fond of calling the press "fake news" ("Lugenpresse") and was prejudiced against the same minority groups, with the exception of the Jews, who are the darlings of a segment of the electorate that identifies as Christian.

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi and other representatives were about to board a plane to go to Afghanistan and, at the last second, Trump issued an edict to Pelosi telling her that none of them may go because they should be staying home to negotiate with HIM. Pelosi already did her job and passed legislation through the House that temporarily funds the government until border security issues can be resolved, which then passed the Senate and Trump refused to sign it. There is a remedy for that, but Mitch McConell refuses to follow procedure. Other Senators have tried to bring it before the Senate (again) and McConnell just objects. You get the picture. Trump is acting like a 12 year old. McConnell and the GOP enable him.

A flood of information about Trump's Russian connections continue to flood in from the various cases that have been turned over to the Department of Justice. Although Trump keeps bellowing "no collusion" every time he is the same room as a reporter, we also have a lot of quotes from him from the pre-presidency years when he and his sons bragged about all the money they were getting from Russia. What does this have to do with me?

Well, Russia is the enemy of democracy. It is run by oligarchs who steal all the money they can from their people, and they murder anyone who gets in their way. It looks very much as if Trump is just another "convenient idiot" through whom Putin originally thought only that he would launder his money, but now that he is president, they are making greater use of him.

Trump's longtime attorney has recently testified that Trump ordered him to lie to Congress. One of the many articles about that can be found HERE

Russia would be thrilled if America would leave NATO (which Trump wants us to do) and, I don't know about you, but I rather like democracy and I do not want it messed with.  But it has ALREADY been messed with - during the last elections. It has been confirmed by OUR intelligence agencies, and they are a lot more credible than Trump.

I am astonished that more people are not alarmed, stressed and anxiety ridden. Our entire way of life is under threat.

Winter in the neighborhood

Copyright (c) 2014

So, I don't feel like writing blissful little tomes about the beauty of meditation and prayer this week. Certainly, I am praying and meditating a lot lately. I am in constant communication with the Lord - but He is the Lord of free will. He doesn't force his will on anyone. Occasionally, He chastises. Sometimes He heals. Sometimes He appears. Sometimes He sends his angels. But He doesn't usually force Godless oligarchs to stop attacking democracy, and I am not so surrendered and sanguine that I am oblivious to the dangers.

Christianity is not magic, folks. God doesn't manipulate Heaven and the world in favor of Americans, as if they were His chosen people. We are expected to behave a certain way. Perhaps all of this has been visited upon us because our Christianity has become a sham. I really don't know, as I do not speak for Him, but I do dread the punishment that may come our way.

Know that I am praying, but I hope you are praying also - and also DOING. Spread the word of God's goodness and mercy, yes - but also spread the word about what He expects of us.

God save us all.
Silver

THE LADDER TO HEAVEN

LADDER BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH

Sometimes, when I hear a pro-Trump mob shouting approval for his xenophobic, racist and nationalistic comments, it really frightens me. It sounds very much like the recordings I have heard of Hitler inflaming the German people, urging them to hate the Jews and blaming Jews for everything that has gone wrong in their lives.

White Germans went on to kill Jews, Armenians, artists, homosexuals, and anyone who violated the cultural norms of middle class whites or disagreed with the Nazi methods. What is next for Americans if the far right wing of the GOP stays in power?

While Hitler was a true believer of his own toxic political philosophy, I think that Trump is simply using the presidency to fill his empty coffers. I believe that Trump is leading his followers into a cruel future, not because he wants to help us reach some kind of ideal, but because he needs the money. He is using his power to fill the government with people who are dedicated to making the rich even richer, removing all obstacles to the wealthy being able to amass even more money than they already have. Along the way, his businesses and the businesses of his relatives, are being flooded with foreign cash.

I suspect that Trump refused to publish his tax returns because he was broke - at least his version of being broke. He gave government positions and offices in the White House to his relatives who manage his business interests. Since becoming president, money from foreign governments especially, has come pouring even harder into the Trump businesses, including his daughter Ivanka's business, which, just this week, received another 7 special trademarks with China - within days of Trump's announcement that he intended to save China's ZTE Corporation, a sudden reversal of his "policy" that no new foreign contracts would be allowed during his presidency.

Ignoring my suspicions about this venal motive of his, which can only be inferred at this point, I am concerned that a large percentage of Americans are being manipulated with tried and true techniques used by authoritarian figures throughout history. They are being turned and formed on the lathe of hate and ignorance. They have given themselves over to it willingly because Trump, a typical authoritarian figure,  either promises them relief from responsibility for the bleak condition of their lives or gives them reassurance that their country will not be overrun with brown people. The authoritarian figure capitalizes upon the mob's fears. He sacrifices the immigrant, the poor person, the black person, in a social lynching.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me,

you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil

and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no

food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger

and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me

no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me."

Matthew 25

Many of Trump's supporters are white evangelicals, according to recent news articles and statistics. These supporters of the far right ignore the continual and insistent message of the Bible to love one's neighbor as much as oneself.  The Bible is full of references to helping the poor and the stranger. Trump supporters imagine that it is acceptable to support the destruction of all our vulnerable populations and to turn away the refugee under a supposedly "pro life" and "pro family" banner. It boggles the mind.

"Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and

her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless

ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they 

were haughty and committed abominations before me.

Therefore, I removed them when I saw it."

Zek. 16:49

I wonder what kind of family they have in mind, when I listen to trump brag about grabbing women "by the p...y" and then, later, denying he had actually done it when 19 women complain about being assaulted by him. He called them liars and impugned their character, as if being groped by Donald Trump was something anyone would want known about them. There is no advantage in it. It is nothing but humiliation.

"Stormy Daniels"

The affair with the porn star, how he tried to cover it up, lied about it, lied about the payment, got caught lying, then had to fess up, does not sound like family values to me. His attorney, Rudy Giuliani, paints a picture of a man who regularly needs his affairs to be cleaned up in this manner and who feeds money into a slush fund for this purpose. Trump's wife, Melania, was pregnant and then had just given birth to their child when Trump was having sex with the porn star, risking the health of wife and baby. What kind of family values is that?

"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has

faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and no food

for the day, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace,

keep warm, and eat well,' but you do not give them the

necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith

of itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

James 2:14-17

I am not being obtuse. I am well aware that the only criteria for "pro family" in the minds of evangelicals is often nothing more than making abortion illegal while at the same time starving the hungry. Abortion is not going to become illegal in America until America experiences severe trauma as a result of not having enough young people working to support the society.

Trump has made some movements in the direction of making abortions more difficult to get, but they are not permanent. As soon as he leaves office, all of that will be overturned. People will have to stop killing their babies of their own accord. Men like Donald Trump would have to stop having affairs that need to be hidden, for one thing.

It is a mystery to me why evangelicals have sold themselves so cheaply, with so little to gain, and so much to lose. Associating Donald Trump with the topic of abortion automatically denigrates the position of the pro-life movement with the majority of the voting public.

Donald Trump - the choice of white evangelicals

It isn't just the evangelicals. Just yesterday, a priest blabbed some far right propaganda onto Facebook that supposedly most of our refugees are Muslim and that he believes they should not be "given welfare," (i.e., helped to survive) because they come from Muslim countries and they're old enough to be in the Army. This convoluted, logic-strained rationalization based on a false narrative is what passes for compassion in his world, apparently. He is sucking up all the admiration of his flock, enjoying the status of being a priest, and gut-punching Jesus at the same time. Hypocrites like this make me want to scream and tear my hair out.

Jesus told us that going to heaven when we die is not a sure thing. He said that many people would come to him, in the end, and beseech him, saying, "Lord! Lord!" and He would tell them to get away from him and that he does not know them. Getting baptised, donating to the church and appearing now and then are not going to get us through the pearly gates.

This topic reminds me of an icon that I look at quite frequently. It is the ladder to heaven. All along the ladder, people are falling off and falling into the pit of hell, where Satan's demons await them.

God help me, but the address of Jared Kushner's beleaguered property on 5th street is 666. I'm just saying.

The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed

robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have

oppressed the sojourner without justice...Thus, I have poured out

My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of 

My wrath; their way I have brought upon their heads,: declares the

Lord GOD.

Ezek. 22:29,31

Silver Rose Parnell

DONALD TRUMP, HARVEY WEINSTEIN, AND MY FATHER - Tales of my Life in the Entertainment Industry

My son and me

about 1977

The recent uproar about the assaults and rapes of women by powerful Hollywood characters and prestigious men in government is giving me flashbacks to what I experienced as a young woman working in Los Angeles in the 1970's. In fact, my whole life has been shadowed by sexual assaults of one variety or another, and I know that I am not alone. The world is not a safe place for women and girls to live.

Like many women in the American work force, I had to fend off the advances of men who felt that, since they were attracted to me, I therefore owed them my body.

I had been fighting off the unwelcome advances of employers, landlords and random guys in elevators since I was a kid. I'd gotten my first office job at age 16, shortly after I moved out of the house, and it was remarkably easy to get hired.  I endured a constant barrage of indecent proposals, lewd jokes and offers of "a ride home" on a daily basis. I had actually been chased around the house of a famous actor after he'd ordered up a secretary from a temp agency. Despite assurances that it was a "real job," I quickly learned that everyone was star struck and complicit in the trading of young flesh for the pleasure of the famous.

The entertainment industry is not the only one in which women are objectified. When I worked at E.F. Hutton, the entire department watched porno films during Friday lunches in the conference room. It was an all-male department. They hooted and hollered at me over the vulgar moans and groans blaring from the raunchy film they were watching. The traders yelled at me to come in and join them. I immediately started looking for another job. I couldn't quit. I had no money and no one to whom I could run for help.

Shortly after going to work in that commodities department, my boss, the head of the department, propositioned me to go to Las Vegas with him over a long weekend. I refused and reminded him that I wasn't old enough to enter a casino, being only 20 at the time. He fired me and blackballed me in the industry, telling prospective employers that I was "lazy." Yes, I was too lazy to have sex with him, so he lied about me.

Lying about their victims is typical for predators. Just read the news. Every woman that has come forward and told the public about their assaults has had their reputations sullied - in some cases beyond repair.

A few years later, I learned that my own father was one of those creepy guys who demanded sex in exchange for employment. He was the line producer for a popular television series, after a successful career as a writer on such early television shows such as Combat!, Mod Squad, the Rockford Files, and many others.  I had been helping out in his office at the television studio while his secretary was on vacation when I stumbled into his office one day and discovered that he actually used the couch in his office as the cliche'd "casting couch," I was dumbfounded. He was PROUD of it. He crowed about how he deliberately left the door unlocked because the possibility of discovery was all the more exciting for him. It was horrifying.

He had a woman living with him at the time who had appeared in some bit roles in the series my father produced. Is that how she got the job? Is that how she got him?

The use of the casting couch as a method of choosing which actress would be given a role is a blatant and concrete example of the misogynist's theme, i.e., that women are interchangeable and that talent, skill and experience are irrelevant to the work at hand. If an actress were to make a fuss about the status quo, she could easily be replaced, because one woman is the same as any other in the mind of the predator. Nothing is relevant except obedience. Spread your legs, or you don't get that television role.

Apparently, I was the last to learn about this casting couch. EVERYONE seemed to know about it when I queried them.  His was not the only casting couch on the lot, of course. Having a couch in your office was the hallmark of a powerful man. It was a status symbol - something akin to the corner office in the corporate world. I was revolted.

I let him know how I felt in no uncertain terms. Being a classic narcissist, the slightest hint of disagreement or disapproval of anything he did or said was enough to send him into a paroxysm of rage, and this topic was no different. He didn't even have the sense to be embarrassed or ashamed.

A few days after our confrontation about his casting couch, he stole a screenplay assignment from me in retaliation.

These assignments weren't given in writing at the time. You took a meeting, pitched a story, got the assignment for the story treatment. If the story treatment met with approval, you got the go ahead to write a first draft of the script. I'd gotten the go ahead, and had started work when we had our tiff about the casting couch.  The Writer's Guild couldn't help me because I had not used an agent in my negotiations and I had no proof. I didn't figure I needed one, for obvious reasons, but I was innocent and unprepared.

I was so overwhelmed by it all, I decided to abandon my writing entirely. I turned my back on the industry and never wrote another screenplay or teleplay or tried to do anything in that business ever again. My entire being revolted against what I had experienced.

Although we'd had a fight about his abuse of women, I could not make myself stop loving my father. It was a terrible interior conflict that tore me up inside. I ran away from it. I had to remove myself from the ringside seats. I fell into a deep depression. I couldn't find work. I ran out of money. My car got repossessed. I got a beat up old wreck of a car and moved to Arizona for a year, to take some college classes and clear my head.

Meanwhile, my father began telling lies about me to other family members in order to mask what had actually happened. He had to reframe the events to favor himself and hide his adultery from his wife. He had to destroy my reputation so that no one would believe me.

I was not able to resurrect my reputation in the family, becoming the scapegoat for his sins. No one questioned his version of events because people who live in the reflected light of the glamour of stardom  suspend disbelief of anything that the star has to say. Otherwise, they may lose their access to all that yummy glamour - and money. The religion of celebrity is a vile aspect of American culture. We're seeing it now with Donald Trump. His starry-eyed worshippers attribute God-like status to him and resolutely deny his very public moral and ethical bankruptcy.

I suffered a lot for walking away from my writing career, but I could not face the horror of what that industry deems commonplace. In a business where even one's father would steal from you, who could be happy? Then there was the fact that my father was a sexual predator.  From an emotional standpoint, I could not live with the reality of my father's involvement in a sexist system that had always abused me.

I understand completely why all these women who are now bringing suit against Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer and Donald Trump did not come forward sooner. I know what it is like to be immersed in a culture that protects the powerful men and sneers at women who complain of being sexually abused. 

When I heard the Access Hollywood conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush, I became nauseous. Long buried memories came rushing back.

Donald Trump was bragging about grabbing women. "Grab 'em by the pussy," he said. Billy Bush egged him on in a smarmy, sycophantic manner so typical of the hordes of people I'd seen worshiping at the church of celebrity. Trump suggested that, when they saw the actress they'd come there to see, that he might just start kissing her. "I can't help myself," he said. "I just start kissing them." Bush cheered him on, like a frat boy encouraging a more senior member of the tribe.

As I watched Trump pillory the women who came forward to confirm that yes, he IS the sexual predator he bragged about being on that video-tape, I grew furious. I have seen this constantly during my many years  in the entertainment industry. Their stories rang true. Trump's assassination of their character was exactly what I had experienced, first hand. I had seen all sides of it.

During Trump's campaign, I was stunned by his obvious, overt bigotry and racism. His reduction of women to their physical parts was consistent, base and vulgar. His dog whistles were easy to hear. He put rich white males on a pedestal and urged his devotees to venerate that image and hate every other. The comprehensive nature of the hate takes my breath away.

I was struck dumb when Donald Trump was elected president. 40 years after I bailed out of the culture of celebrity, thinking that I had escaped that environment, I find that it has spread! Even women voted against their own best interests and EXCUSE Donald Trump's behavior. They have bought into the supremacy of the RICH WHITE AMERICAN MALE. This dark and evil soup of malevolent white male dominance and aggression, has spread, widened and deepened.

In the United States, women still make only 70 cents for every dollar a man makes, the glass ceiling is still very firmly in place, and we have never had a female president, despite the fact that many countries have had female leaders for quite some time. We have a serious problem in our country. While we have this arrogant, boasting nationalism that claims an exceptionalism we do not possess, at the same time, we have backward, primitive ideas about women, minorities, the aged and the infirm.

Donald Trump's naked display of the very worst aspects of our culture has caused my PTSD to kick into overdrive. His vision of an America that is hostile toward everyone but the rich white male, is frightening and evil. His childish, virulent twitter storms are a drumbeat that incites the primitive drive of angry white men who dream of  power and the subjugation of inferiors. He even defended NAZIs who marched in Charlottesville, chanting slogans against Jews!

I ask "conservatives" how they would feel if one of the women now suing Donald Trump were one of their daughters, or their wife, or their sister. They get mad at me because they've convinced themselves that the 16 women who came forward against him are all liars. The ease with which they skewer the characters of more than a dozen unrelated women they've never met and know NOTHING about infuriates me.

It has always been thus. Women are sexually assaulted on a daily basis and, if the rapist is a star or a favorite candidate, the sycophants conspire to ruin their reputations. They attack the victims with a cold vengeance. It makes me ill.

I find it ironic that in "liberal" Hollywood, the tide is now turning against sexist monsters who have used their fame and money as a weapon against women and girls, while in so-called "Christians," circles, people are excusing the sins of Donald Trump.

Harvey Weinstein has had some bad press and has lost his position. Louis C.K. has lost a lot of jobs as a result of his exhibitionistic masturbation scandal. Kevin Spacey has lost his job on the hugely successful HOUSE OF CARDS. Billy Bush lost his job on Access Hollywood as a result of that video with Trump, but I THINK he got in trouble because it leaked, not because it happened. Matt Lauer has recently been fired from his award winning, hit television news program on NBC.

Yet nothing happened to Donald Trump as a result of the release of that Access Hollywood video in which he brags about assaulting women. People voted for him anyway. They don't care that he is a serial assaulter of women, a bigot, a vulgar liar and a misogynist.  The women he assaulted are called liars and whores by his followers, who say they have "forgiven" the Donald for his crude behavior and they're SURE he's no longer using that "locker room talk." Some of them say the equivalent of "boys will be boys." A lot of people on Facebook say that he's the best thing that's happened to the Christian Church in years.

The fact that conservative Christians are defending the sex perverts in government while going after their victims is what keeps my PTSD fully engaged. America is a dangerous place to live for women and girls.

I have a granddaughter who is now the same age I was when my boss fired me for refusing to have sex with him. I pray that she is never exposed to the kind of pressure I experienced, but considering the support that Donald Trump enjoys from the very people I would expect to defend the innocent, I am not confident that she is safe, and I pray for her constantly because the only time the "trickle down" theory seems to work is when it involves the subjugation of the innocent.

It is worth noting that one of the reasons predators are not made to answer for their crimes is that there a small number of women who betray other women by taking advantage of this sick arrangement. There ARE some who deliberately trade sexual favors for jobs, and this muddies the waters for the rest of us who do not want this type of commerce in our working lives. There are also women on the Christian right, oddly enough, who follow their men blindly and participate in the savaging of the reputations of the women who HAVE come forward.

God save us all.


Silver Rose Parnell
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