Laura Bush: Separating children from their parents at the border ‘breaks my heart’

Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso. These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned.

.. People on all sides agree that our immigration system isn’t working, but the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer.
.. . She reported that while there were beds, toys, crayons, a playground and diaper changes, the people working at the shelter had been instructed not to pick up or touch the children to comfort them. Imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers.
.. Twenty-nine years ago, my mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, visited Grandma’s House, a home for children with HIV/AIDS in Washington. Back then, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, the disease was a death sentence, and most babies born with it were considered “untouchables.” During her visit, Barbara — who was the first lady at the time — picked up a fussy, dying baby named Donovan and snuggled him against her shoulder to soothe him. My mother-in-law never viewed her embrace of that fragile child as courageous. She simply saw it as the right thing to do in a world that can be arbitrary, unkind and even cruel. She, who after the death of her 3-year-old daughter knew what it was to lose a child, believed that every child is deserving of human kindness, compassion and love.

In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.

Sarah Polley: The Men You Meet Making Movies

He told me, in front of the publicist and a co-worker beside him, that a famous star, a few years my senior, had once sat across from him in the chair I was in now. Because of his “very close relationship” with this actress, she had gone on to play leading roles and win awards. If he and I had that kind of “close relationship,” I could have a similar career. “That’s how it works,” I remember him telling me. The implication wasn’t subtle. I replied that I wasn’t very ambitious or interested in acting, which was true. He then asked me about my political activism and went on to recast himself as a left-wing activist, which was among the funniest things I’d ever heard.

.. Women in technical jobs were almost nonexistent, and when they were there, they were constantly being tested to see if they really knew what they were doing.

.. the photo shoots in which you were treated like a model with no other function than to sell your sexuality, regardless of the nature of the film you were promoting.

.. How would one have left that meeting, or those hotel rooms, which have been described by others, with that relationship intact, when he displayed such entitlement and was famous for such anger? I was purely lucky that I didn’t care.

.. Shortly afterward, I started writing and directing short films. I had no idea, until then, how little respect I had been shown as an actor. Now there were no assistant directors trying to cajole me into sitting on their laps, no groups of men standing around to assess how I looked in a particular piece of clothing. I could decide what I felt was important to say, how to film a woman, without her sexuality being a central focus without context. In my mid-20s, I made my first feature film, “Away From Her.”

.. Most directors are insensitive men. And while I’ve met quite a few humane, kind, sensitive male directors and producers in my life, sadly they are the exception and not the rule. This industry doesn’t tend to attract the most gentle and principled among us.
.. I went into a film as an actor with an open heart and was humiliated, violated, dismissed and then, in one instance, called overly sensitive when I complained. One producer, when I mentioned I didn’t feel a rape scene was being handled sensitively, barked that Dakota Fanning had done a rape scene when she was 12 — “And she’s fine!”
.. for a long time, I felt that it wasn’t worth it to me to open my heart and make myself so vulnerable in an industry that makes its disdain for women evident everywhere I turn.
.. he was just one festering pustule in a diseased industry
.. I hope that when this moment of noisy sisterhood dissipates, it doesn’t end with a woman in a courtroom, being made to look crazy, as these stories so often do.
.. I hope that the ways in which women are degraded, both obvious and subtle, begin to seem like a thing of the past.

We need to look at ourselves.

  • What have we been willing to accept, out of fear, helplessness, a sense that things can’t be changed?
  • What else are we turning a blind eye to, in all aspects of our lives?
  • What else have we accepted that, somewhere within us, we know is deeply unacceptable?

And what now will we do about it?

Trump supporters are already normal

According to liberal critics, the lowlight of the Emmy show was a cameo by Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, who did a riff with host Stephen Colbert making light of Spicer’s famous argument with the media over the size of President Trump’s inauguration crowd. Why was this so wrong? Because it served to “normalize” Spicer.

One example reported by The Post’s Morning Mix came from Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, who tweeted, “Do NOT cheer for Sean Spicer. This is how we normalize & excuse unethical, racist, sexist, etc. behavior.”

 That’s the same warning we’ve been hearing about Trump and anyone associated with him since the campaign. Trump and friends cannot be treated like human beings because doing so will “normalize” them. Translation: The anti-Trump citizenry is “normal,” while Trump and millions of Americans who support him are “abnormal.”
.. We can all only hope that in a civilized world, society will become so tolerant as to recognize that Trump Supporter Syndrome (TSS) is not an illness at all. It is perfectly normal behavior that is merely misunderstood by those who do not share it. Those with TSS should be loved and accepted, not ostracized and shunned.
.. In fact, Colbert should be admired for his brave outreach to Spicer. Stephen, some — including many of your Hollywood friends — may ridicule you. But history will prove you right.