E. Jean Carroll, George Santos, and the Stumbling of Tech Giants

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • E. Jean Carroll’s Civil Suit Against Donald Trump

  • George Santos Indicted

  • The Stumbling of Tech Giants

  • Heather Armstrong’s Tragic Death and Meaningful Impact

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EPISODE RESOURCES

THE STUMBLING OF TECH GIANTS

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to be talking about the verdict in E Jean Carroll's case against Donald Trump, as well as the indictment of George Santos. We're also going to talk about the stumbling of the tech giants and what we think that means for all of us. And we'll end the show as always talking about what's on our mind Outside Politics. And today, that is the tragic death of Heather Armstrong.  

Beth [00:00:49] As you know, we are in our bi-annual moment of asking you to consider becoming a premium member of Pantsuit Politics so that your dollars can help support what we do here. We talked on Tuesday about how undependable advertising can be as a revenue source, so we really depend on our premium community's financial support to do everything that we do that grows Pantsuit Politics. And so, growing and retaining people as part of that premium community is a big deal to us. And honestly, the last couple of years have made that harder. And we do need more people to join that community so that we don't lose ground over time. And more people in the community makes it better. The comment threads on Patreon are wonderful. The support that we receive from our Apple Podcasts subscriptions members, and the feedback and just the relationship that people have with the show when they connect with us in that way are a big deal. Elena said so generously that listening to us has changed her life. She said with full affirmation. "Changed my life." And I really valued that she said we treat her not as someone who is dumb, but as someone who can think through complex issues and come up differently. She says the $15 that she spends on our premium community is the best $15 they spend every month in her household because she gets Sara's daily news briefs, my nightly podcasts about things that I think are really important, and supports the two podcasts that we make that are free to everyone every week. So, thank you, Elena, for your support and for those kind words. Thank you to all of you who are part of the premium community and thank you to everyone who is considering joining us there.  

Sarah [00:02:31] Next up, we're going to talk about E Jean Carroll and George Santos. E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for sexual assault. The jury found him liable for sexual assault and defamation and ordered Trump to pay E Jean Carroll $5 million. That's the high point. There's a lot more going on underneath the surface. I really did appreciate Maggie Haberman’s piece where she said there is no world in which the result of that civil trial was a positive development for the project he is most focused on: the presidential campaign for which he remains the Republican front runner.  

Beth [00:03:13] I think it's important for people to know that this, in my mind, was a very measured verdict. She sued him under a New York law that allows you to bring a rape or sexual assault claim many years after. It could be brought as a criminal charge and with a totally different standard of proof than you would have to meet if it were a criminal charge. So, instead of saying this happened beyond reasonable doubt, which would be required if you were going to deprive Donald Trump of his liberty, she just had to prove this by a preponderance of the evidence. And I am a big fan of this statute that New York has enacted, allowing people to bring these claims in a civil way, because so often survivors of sexual abuse, assault and trauma, especially people who were abused, assaulted and traumatized before the MeToo movement made it clear that they were not alone, did not immediately gather the kind of evidence that's necessary in most cases to prove rape beyond reasonable doubt. So this jury, which consisted of six men, and I think that's also something that people should know, heard the evidence that she had, heard Trump's lawyers responses to that evidence. He did not choose to present a full defense. He did not testify. He did not show up for the proceedings and decided that she did not prove her case for rape, but that she did prove her case for sexual assault. And I thought it was also measured that the punitive part for the sexual assault claim was only $20,000. So this wasn't a jury who said we hate Donald Trump, let's crater him regardless of what the merits of this dispute were or not. They had a complicated jury form. They clearly took it seriously. They did not find him liable on the rape count. And this is where they landed. And I just hate that so many Republican politicians are undermining this process when the facts show that this jury considered a civil case with a lot of diligence.  

Sarah [00:05:22] Yeah, I was really mad at the NPR covers the next day. They basically led with his attorney saying, "We're going to challenge this because he can't get a fair trial in New York." And I was like, that is so reductive and some real malpractice as far as covering the complexity of this case.  He didn't show up, but the part he did participate in the deposition was incredibly harmful. He said that she wasn't his type and then confused her for his former wife, Marla maples, in a photo. At one point, Ms. Carroll's attorney asked him, based on the Access Hollywood recording, if he believed that stars could grab women by the genitals. And he said, "Well, if you look over the last million years, I guess that's been largely true. Not always, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately." I mean, he have made their case for them especially. They leaned so heavily on that Access Hollywood recording. And so, when you think about that he barely defended himself and when he did show up it was incredibly damaging, I think that even further proves that this was a very measured verdict. And to just sort of lean into their argument that, well, it was New York City so it doesn't count, just really upset me.  

Beth [00:06:31] It is repugnant and antidemocratic to say that he cannot get a fair trial in New York. There is no jury system if we believe that you can wipe an entire geography out of the running to sit on a jury and fairly hear the claims. There's a lot in our judicial system that operates on fiction and that relies on people to be much less biased than they are. But I got to tell you, I still think it's the best system in the world. And as we learn more about artificial intelligence, I do want humans, not chat bots, deciding these kinds of cases. And I just think, especially for senators from other states, to act like the whole of New York is disqualified because they know Donald Trump best, because he lived there and dominated their media coverage for years before he became the president, or because it's a blue state or whatever you think, that the whole of New York is disqualified, that is some real authoritarian garbage. And it is the kind of logic that has this entire party in its most vocal leadership saying, well, we can't trust jurors in New York; we can't trust the FBI; we can't trust the entire Department of Justice; we can't trust anyone who says anything about Donald Trump that happens to be true.   

Sarah [00:07:56] And also, it just feels like a natural progression on this road we're on where people are selecting based on geography, both progressive and conservative. You saw that in the mifepristone case, and it feels like I don't ever read a write up about any judicial proceedings, especially in nationwide politics, where they don't tell me who appointed the judge; just a little like, oh, just so you know... And it's so damaging. And also, I feel like it is a natural conclusion in a way to electing judges and pretending like the Supreme Court should be appointed for life and can be completely neutral. I don't know the answer because I think this is a manifestation of a real problem and also one that I don't want to just accept as the reality and would like to work on. And I think you see it in the coverage of the other big thing we were going to talk about, which is George Santos, who just he there's all this case, there's all this evidence, and he's like, "It's a witch hunt." And they're like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "It's a witch hunt.".  

Beth [00:09:00]  That's enough.  

Sarah [00:09:02] That's enough. It's this nasty virus that is just spreading that if someone with opposing politics or what you perceive to be opposing politics goes after you legally or much less just criticizes you, well then that just gets to be thrown out. It's not valid.  

Beth [00:09:16] And I don't think this always goes both ways. I don't think you can just both sides this. I have open on my computer the entire report the Jamie Comar trotted out this week about Hunter Biden and the Biden family. I'm going to read every word of it. I'm going to do an episode of our premium show More to Say about it, because I care about that and I care about what the truth of it is. And I'm not going to say, well, these must be Trump appointed prosecutors or clearly these are biased members of Congress. I'm interested in what they have to say. I want the truth about any of these people. But to get back to George Santos, it's remarkable that the same members of Congress can say, one, Donald Trump could never have gotten a fair trial in New York. But then hang on to George Santos's vote for dear life, who was also elected in New York. But it doesn't matter. It's not supposed to be consistent. That's not even their goal.  

Sarah [00:10:14] No, it's not. But I do believe-- maybe just so I can continue to wake up every day and do this work, I do believe in my core that the hypocrisy has to have a limit. Not with everybody, but with most people. I think we saw that in the midterms, and so I just think to be the party of law and justice and rising crime and to hold on to this complete and total fraudster, everybody's innocent until they're proven guilty. And also, complete and total fraudster is so obvious. And I just think it's like with the abortion and the weakness of that political moment for them that you see reflected in Donald Trump's answer on the town hall. I just think that has to have impact-- maybe not as much as I would like it to. My worry is always, though cynically, that people just go. Once they decide that someone and their side of the political spectrum is conflicting, hypocritical or just outright fraudulent, they just decide, well, it's true for everybody. It's just the whole system is like this. And I don't know how to short circuit that reaction.  

Beth [00:11:39] And the truth is, there are problem points in the whole system. There are. What we need to be able to trust is that we find those and deal with them. George Santos could have been dealt with by the party. A strong party would have dealt with him.  

Sarah [00:11:59] So could Donald Trump.  

Beth [00:12:00]  That's right.  And, look, Democrats don't always do this perfectly either. But we are now talking about an indictment against George Santos, an indictment against Donald Trump, a civil suit. So to focus on those two for a second, they were not inevitably the Republican nominees for their positions. A strong party could have dealt with this. Instead, the strong partisanship of base voters for that party convinced the party to become wholly ineffective around candidate selection. And that is a failure that we are all living with now. I really struggle because I don't identify strongly with either Republicans or Democrats because Kentucky is a closed primary state. You got to pick a train if you're going to participate in that part of the process. And so, I am a Democrat because I am more closely aligned with that party as it exists today than the Republican Party as it exists today. But I don't feel an affinity for either party that makes me want to jump in and get involved in its infrastructure. And I'm conflicted about that because that infrastructure is important. It matters that we have political parties that say, who do we want to represent us in these contests? Not just represent our voters, but represent us, the people who in the long term are invested in what the platform looks like and what kind of people we're putting up and what kind of decisions we can make as a group.  

Sarah [00:13:30] Well, problem points in the system seems like an excellent transition to our next topic, which is big tech. The bubble seems to have finally burst with so much of our economy and culture built on this sector. What does the stumbling of tech giants mean for the rest of us? We'll talk about that next. Beth, the statistic got my attention as I started to do research for this show. In 2022, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta lost a combined $3.9 trillion in market value.  

Beth [00:14:20]  It is a lot of money. And I am so interested to have this conversation with you to understand what it reflects to you about these tech companies and then also what it reflects about the nature of market value and what investors are looking for.  

Sarah [00:14:37] And I just used the metaphor of a bubble bursting. I don't know if that's quite the right metaphor for this. It feels to me more like a realistic adjustment, that we did pass through a threshold, I think sparked in large part by the pandemic, where we looked around and thought, what's going on here? What's the reality of not just these platforms and their impact on the culture? I think we spend a lot of time on that in 2016, 2017, 2018, but then with the pandemic just with the business itself being so disrupted, people's presence inside this industry being disrupted, forced all the rest of us to sort of take another look as well. And I just think it continues to grow and grow. I think the narrative that they were these behemoths, that they were untouchable had been crumbling for a while. And just like with so many things, Covid sped up that process. I think you see it in particular with Elon Musk's purchasing of Twitter. He makes the $44 billion offer, I think, on a whim. I think it was just a fun idea.  

Beth [00:15:55] Just a way to feel when you're a billionaire in charge of things.  

Sarah [00:15:58] He wanted to feel. That's right. He gets cold feet, and then I think the Twitter board was like, "Oh, no, this company is not worth that much. Nobody knows better than we do. You're going to overpay. We're going to force you to overpay." Then he does sort of the classic, I'm going to charge you for everything. I'm going to lay off all these people. Twitter staff is down from 7500 employees to less than 2000 since Elon Musk took charge and his sort of erratic management and just an instinct for over disclosure I think has really pulled back the curtain on that one. And I think that's a good one to start with, because it had outside cultural impact, but not as much industry valuation. And still you see this pattern of behavior with Twitter, much less with Meta or Google.  

Beth [00:16:56] What I think is so fascinating about Elon Musk with respect to Twitter is that he, in one interview, will say, well, Twitter is priceless because it's speech. And having an influence over free speech in our country and in the world is a very big deal to me. And so, even if the economics don't really work, I didn't do this because of the economics, I did it because of the speech issues. And if that were real, then I could sit back and say, fine. He's going to create a real, maybe libertarian leaning kind of echo chamber on Twitter. So I could say, fine, he gets to do that. He's spent the money. He took the company private. He made these decisions and rules. I don't have to like them, but I don't have to be on the platform. The end. But that's not at all what he's done. Because every action since he actually purchased the company does seem to have been about the economics, and in the weirdest, most counterproductive ways possible. And it's just a really fascinating case study to watch. I'm not at all surprised that he's interested in doing something with Tucker Carlson. That feels like what I thought he was going to do when he bought this thing. Take it in a direction that is not for me, but that is what you can do when you've got enough money and you buy a company to make it your pet project. But the verification and just the way the technology is not good now, the algorithms make no sense at this point. I'm just kind of surprised by that side of it.  

Sarah [00:18:33] Yeah, he's such a political dilettante who doesn't realize that he's a political dilettante. That's the worst part of him that shows up on Twitter, particularly around decisions to like, oh, I don't know, defend a Neo-Nazi mass shooter. But I think what's interesting, he took things that were basically priceless, like a Twitter check mark and made them completely worthless where people are like I didn't get this; I don't want it.  

Beth [00:18:59] Like, you don't want it actively.  

Sarah [00:19:01] It's tacky. You don't want it. But I think it's interesting because it just felt like it was just one more disruption of this narrative that these platforms are untouchable.  

Beth [00:19:13] Yeah.  

Sarah [00:19:14] And these platforms are permanent and their impact is permanent. And for that, I am grateful. And I think you'll see that in lots of places. And I think you see that particularly surrounding founders. I think you see this overreach and this cluelessness with Mark Zuckerberg and Meta in this going all in on the metaverse.  

Beth [00:19:39] Yeah, just one more comment on Twitter. I've become a big fan of the Hard Work podcast and they were talking about Blue Sky, which they they said is like a really good alternative to Twitter. You have to understand a little bit more about technology to use it at this point. But people who do are really having fun there. And as they were describing it, I was so happy that people are having fun there. And I think it sounds fantastic. And it crystallized for me that I am not looking for an alternative to Twitter. It is fine with me to shut this part of my life down. It's just fine with me. And I think that's not going to be where everybody is and that's okay. But it is a crack in the idea that I've had for a while that social media is here to stay and is always going to be a part of my life. And I just am seeing more and more of that. I don't think that's true.  

Sarah [00:20:30]  I think it's just built on these legends around these founders that their brilliance stands alone. And their brilliance, as with any successful person, is as much about being in the right place at the right time as anything else. And I think we created this narrative that they were different. They were absent of that requirement. But that's what happened with Mark Zuckerberg. I'm not saying Mark Zuckerberg is not smart. I'm not saying Elon Musk is not smart. What I'm saying is that they also benefited from timing and privilege and the way they move forward, as if anything they touch will turn to gold, because that's the myth we've all perpetuated about them. It's just so obvious. The ability to take this company that had real problems-- Facebook has real problems, Instagram has real problems. And we were learning more and more about those over the course of the pandemic, particularly with the whistle-blower with regards to Instagram and its effect on teens. And the ego to say, I'm not going to actually pay attention to this thing I said I cared about, which was connecting people and fix this platform that matters to a lot of people. I'm going to go in on this other thing, this metaverse, and when that doesn't work I'm just going to just relentlessly cut staff. He calls 2023 the year of efficiency at his companies, which basically just means mass layoffs. He is closing 5000 open positions. He's eliminated 21,000 people. It's like 30% of his workforce. And I just thought, for your company to be so focused on product and you think, well, I'm just overspending on people, I cannot imagine the total and complete lack of self-awareness that must be present. Even down to they're requiring people to come into the office at Meta, but the leaders are all living in Sydney and London and not in the office at all.  

Beth [00:22:33] It really begs the question of what we think makes a successful business. What is good for Facebook at this scale cannot be in tension with what is good for Facebook's users, and that seems to be what's happening here. What's good for Facebook's investors in the form of these drastic layoffs that they have responded positively to, we know is inevitably going to be bad for Facebook's users. And Facebook, even though it's not the hip new thing anymore, still has a very significant role in our overall society. It's still where schools communicate, where a lot of people get their information about elections. So, what would success for Facebook look like if it is only chasing the investor definition of that or only chasing what makes Mark excited as the next great product for him? That's not good. And I think it kind of points to the fact that truly great founders also know when to quit. They know when to step aside and let someone else take control of what they've built. They know when to wind down what they've built because it's time to invent something new. I mean, I don't think Jack Dorsey is like a mythological being, but the more you learn about Twitter, the more it seems like he saw way before anybody else saw that this thing was going to wind down and that he needed to put his focus in other places and he needed to think about what are the shortcomings here and what could we create that would fill those shortcomings. And I don't see any of that with Mark Zuckerberg.  

Sarah [00:24:07] Well, I always think of the famous example of Steve Jobs that he was just willing and able to cannibalize his most popular product, to take the iPod, this massively successful piece of technology, and make it just a little tiny square of an app inside the iPhone was a huge risk and something that I'm sure a lot of people were like, "What are you doing?"  But to say, "No, I'm going to do that." Now, look, Steve Jobs perpetuates this myth more than anybody else that this clarity of focus-- and even with Jack Dorsey, I'm not even sure if he has the clarity of focus or he's just easily destructible. Who knows? But I just think that all of this is leading me to something I knew all along, which this is not about vision; this is not about a better society; this is about making money. Just own it. At least Jeff Bezos owns that to a certain extent. Just be honest. Like, I just want to make as much money as I possibly can. What I don't understand about all of these men-- and they are largely men. And I feel this way currently about the writers strike and the studio heads. How many times do you have to learn that you can't make money, in perpetuity at massive numbers, particular during a time of dramatic societal change and continue to come out on top. How many different ways do the corporate giants have to learn these lessons? I was joking with our agent when we were in Vegas that I wish I could just sit down with the studio heads and say, "Hi guys, you can either transition through this massive technological change or you can keep making, you know, $40 million a year and think that you're going to get squeak out and wring out and stop through to 30% growth every year forever. But you cannot do both." You just can't. You cannot do both. You have to adapt. You have to accept that some years will be slower and some years you have to lose money to do the right thing in the long run. And it's like I guess when you're legally obligated to turn a profit for shareholders though every year, like there's no capacity, there's no space for any of that type of thinking.  

Beth [00:26:22] I would very much like to see Congress think seriously about what we require of public company is and what investors rights are and how we define what makes a company successful and what shows that corporate officers are acting in the best interests of investors. Because I do think there just has to be more room to sit back and say, we want to make products that we're super proud of and we might be maxed out on our user base for that. We might be. There might not be growth available anymore. What does that mean for us? How do we manage to that? We yesterday looked at a graph from Jessica who helps us with our finances, and it was a graph showing our advertising revenue over the course of the year and it headlines for three different years and we were taking a look at it. It's so ugly. It is a graph that no one in any kind of business would feel great about. It is terrible. If you were looking for a good bet for investment, no one would get into this. And at the same time, we're kind of like, well, that looks about right. That's what our experience has been and it's been okay and we make it work and we want to keep making a product that we're really proud of. But we only get the luxury of doing that because it's just me and you who have to decide if that's good enough for us as business owners. And when you take it to the public level, I just fear that we're prohibiting people from having that kind of conversation.  

Sarah [00:27:51] Well, and then when you take it to the public level with products that the public is so involved in, where they're both the data and the product and the user all together at once, I think we told ourselves this myth about these founders to make ourselves feel better about you being users of their products. I don't think that's the first time that's happened in human history, and it certainly won't be the last. I'm just glad we're waking up and saying, "No, don't talk about Facebook like it's inevitable. Don't even talk about TikTok like it's inevitable. It's not. Anything that is built on a foundation of human behavior in the way that these products are-- even artificial intelligence-- it's not inevitable, it's not permanent. There's too many humans involved. And I'm sad for all the people, particularly the employees of the tech industry, who have been laid off. And I know lots of people have lost lots of money. It sucks because the story we told about these companies is also a part of the story we tell ourselves that everybody can retire on a 401k. So, there's a lot here that is problematic. I would take the open and honest facing of this industry over the fantasy we had been living in for so long.  

Beth [00:29:18] I'm not really guilt laden about that fantasy because as new tools are introduced that we struggle to understand, you have to have some component that the people in charge here know what they're doing and we can trust them and we can follow them into this new space. I'm encouraged that the conversation around AI seems to be more eyes wide open than we were with social media. I don't think we're all the way where we need to be, but I think we've made progress and we are asking different questions. I just want to give a little encouragement to Google. I know Google feels behind AI and has gone into sort of panic mode about what to do next year. I trust that Google is taking this process slower. I am encouraged by how slow their roll out has been, how careful it's been, especially given the fact that Google has contracts with so many school systems, that so many kids across the country are on Chromebooks and Google classrooms and using Google slides every day. I think they have a lot at stake. And so, getting AI right and making sure that it is both harmless and helpful, as all articles write about, I think that's really great and I don't know what it is inside Google that is enabling them to be more cautious. I know that it's coming at a cost, but it is building trust in me to see them a little bit behind this curve. And I'm enjoying reading from some of the smaller groups working on AI, the ways that they're thinking about this technology. You sent me yesterday a constitution for Cloud. And it was fascinating to read and really encouraging and a level of transparency we've never seen about content moderation on social media. Even with Facebook's made up court system, we haven't seen this kind of distillation of what we're trying to do here. So, I hope that there are lots of lessons learned in the economic news that you just described and all of that sort of whistle blowing and studies and social commentary that's come out around these products.  

Sarah [00:31:24] I wish I was as optimistic as you. This is where my long term history of the Democratic Party comes to play. I don't trust any of these people. I don't trust a single person in charge of an AI company. I don't trust that when there is money to be made, and more importantly because this is the part of the process we have not paid attention to, is the startup funding. That's when people start making bad choices is when they have millions and billions of dollars invested in their company. And it feels just like an enormous amount of pressure on their backs to just make money, return the investment, work hard, work quickly, break things, all that crap. To me, that's the underpinning of so much of what got us here that we don't seem willing or able to re-examine at all. And that's what's happening right now with AI. Just an enormous amount of money being pumped into it. And do I trust people to make really smart, thoughtful decisions? No. The only thing that makes me hopeful is that the government and the Biden administration are stepping in and saying, do the right thing or we will make you do the right thing. And, really, I think it'll end up being what it always is, which we will have to make them do the right thing. I hope there's not too much lost before that point, but I don't have a lot of hope in humanity when there's this much money on the line.  

Beth [00:32:46] I just don't see it quite so binary. It's not that I trust them completely, it's that I see my trust growing in the slow pace of what Google is doing around this. It's not that I think that they will get everything right, because I don't think anybody knows what the right thing is around AI right now. I think it has enormous potential to alleviate human suffering and I think it has enormous potential to cause human suffering and how you channel it effectively, I don't think anybody knows right now. I don't think government has that answer. I don't think the private sector has that answer. Another thing that builds trust in me, again, without trust being a zero sum proposition, is that a lot of the people who have created this technology are afraid of it. And I think that there's a healthy fear around this technology that is motivating people in addition to the money that's out there. This sense that we do need to be careful with what we're unleashing here because we don't completely understand how it's going to be used or even what it is. But I agree with you that the profit motivation is problematic. And that's where I go back to. What I think government could do well is look at what incentives have been built for people to just constantly be on unlimited growth and maximization of profit as their metric of success and scale that back.  

Sarah [00:34:08] Yeah, I just think at the end of the day the money is a toxin, particularly at this scale. And I think you see such a difference in the AI community once Chat Bot became sort of public and rose to public awareness. And then you can already see the myths, both the positive and the negatives being written about the founders, about the technology itself and it just feels like, not to be a negative Nancy, that we don't learn. I'm happy we're looking with more open eyes at this industry. But it feels like as artificial intelligence grows, that we're willing to apply those lessons as long as they cost nothing and cause no pain, right? As long as there's no sacrifice to be made, no hard choices. As long as we can keep scaling and keep making money and keep doing what we do, we'll be careful and we'll talk about it and we'll maybe slow down a bit. But it's not like anybody is really putting a pause in place. And I think Google brought their founders back. They're spooked. They're not taking it slow. All the reporting is that the team is going at like 150% because they're so terrified. That's an even worse position to act out of. Hopefully, the difference is not necessarily that the industry, which is very insular, I think, has learned something that the rest of us have, that the culture has learned that these giants, these insightful founders, like I said, are not inevitable. And the more we learn about the phases of the Internet and how they act on all of us and how we can see sort of patterns starting to emerge, we can all learn and sort of be on firmer footing. And I think the phases of the Internet is probably a good transition to what we want to talk about Outside Politics. On Wednesday, we learned that Heather Armstrong, commonly known on the Internet as Dooce, died by suicide. And we wanted to talk about that here today because we're both pretty upset about it. I read Heather's writing for many, many, many years of my life. I think if you're of our age, her writing was pretty informative. What I feel is the very derisive title that's been on many of the memorial writings on her life. Is that she was the queen of the mommy bloggers, that she was one of the first to write in this very open, vulnerable and raw way about the journey through motherhood.  

Beth [00:37:02] I started reading Dooce as a young associate in a law firm because a friend of mine at the firm sent one of her posts to me and later brought me her book: It Sucked and Then I cried. And when I saw this news, I immediately was transported back to my office when I was still practicing and Jane had just been born and I was sitting at my desk pumping breast milk with the door locked and trying to do research and wondering what I had done with my. And when I would just hit these moments of like-- oh, I'm not the crier here. This is not how it's supposed to go. When I would hit these moments of like real desperation, I would open up this and she made me laugh out loud. And sometimes I would laugh until I cried. And then that crying would turn into the crying that I actually needed to do. And it was just it was an important-- it was just a gift. It was a real gift the way that she wrote about a life that had almost nothing in common with mine, but there was enough there that I related to it and that it touched me and that it gave me something to hold on to in some really crappy moments. And I really regret that I never sent her an email or left a comment. I didn't understand then how important those things are to people who create on the Internet. And I was so mired in my own stuff that I don't think that it even occurred to me to think about the real human who was bringing this to me and what it cost her. So, I'm just really sad.  

Sarah [00:38:52] I like how you say your friend sent the post to you because it was like pre-social. The only way to go viral is because everybody was just sharing the shit out of whatever you shared on the internet, which is so powerful to think about now. I have a really different perspective in relationship with Heather's work. I didn't necessarily identify really strongly with those aspects of her parenting journey. I didn't suffer from postpartum depression. I didn't feel overwhelmed and sort of stripped out by my early journey of parenting. And I probably read her blog more regularly before I became a mom. The ways that I really followed and watched and learned from her really were professionally. I started my mommy blog with my friend Sarah in 2011-- I think it was. So this was like at her Zenith; 2009 I think was the year that she was named sort of queen of the mommy bloggers and named as such a powerful figure on Forbes. And so, just like watching her just continue to succeed in this space in ways that felt achievable and also impossible because she was massively successful at a certain moment in time. She was drawing in millions of visitors. She was making tons of money on banner ads and kind of would talk about it and you could see her success being played out. I was both jealous and inspired and just kind of caught up with her at that point in her career. And always just invested because I'd started reading her-- I still remember it--  post she wrote about her dog poop on a stick. I still think about it, and it's so funny. And just caught up in the way she shared and the rawness of her writing and that you could be who you were, flaws and all, vulnerability and all, and still be successful. It just felt special. It showed me something that I didn't think was available because we grew up reading women's magazines. Everything was so glossy. And not just about parenting, about everything. This idea that you could show up sort of embarrass yourself and find success. Even though I think her success was so unfairly contained and diminished based on the fact that she was a woman and that she was writing about her journey in motherhood and her marriage and her home improvement and all that.  

[00:41:40] And I think to learn that she died by suicide-- I had followed recently some of her posts and she was clearly suffering. I read somebody that said it was like seeing an open wound you felt like you were trespassing. And I thought, yes, that's exactly how I felt. And I struggle with that. I've talked about this a lot. I struggle with musicians, with people who I love, and I love their work, and it killed them. And there's just no other way around it. There's just no other way to say that. They did something. They exposed themselves. And in a lot of ways they were punished for it. And we could all see how dangerous that was for them because of the way they shown themselves to us. And we just feel so powerless. What am I supposed to do about a stranger over the internet that is clearly having a mental health crisis who I feel like I know? We didn't have the word parasocial relationship to talk about Dooce back in 2009. It was so hard. And to hear that she is gone at 47 and these children who we watched be born and grow up don't have their mother anymore, it's just so heartbreaking. And it makes me so angry because I do think she was a pioneer. I do think that the Internet we exist within was created in part by her. I wouldn't be a podcaster if I hadn't been a blogger, and I wouldn't have been a blogger if it hadn't been for Heather Armstrong. And it's just so hard to see these people who go first. Liz Linz and her write up had this great line about it takes difficult women to be the first to do difficult things. And what she did was difficult, and the hate she received. And, look, she lashed out too. But the websites that basically created an industry of hating on primarily female bloggers and influencer's websites that still exist that I will not honor by repeating the name of, it makes me sick. We forgot she was real. She's a real person. She was a real person. And now she's gone.  

Beth [00:43:58] Yeah. If I can gather myself a little bit, I think what I take away is we shouldn't diminish the mommy blogging industry because it is one of the only things that has spoken to how incredibly hard those first few years with kids are. They're just so hard and there are so few people and places that try to meet you there. And so, how busted to diminish the folks who've met some of us there and who are still meeting some of us there. And the other thing is I just keep thinking about the fact that she helped me so much and I had no relationship with her whatsoever. And here was a person who clearly suffered in the world, and I wish I had told her that her writing meant something to me. And so if you need that prompt to tell someone, anyone in your life, that what they are and do mean something to you, do it. And if you are a person doubting your effect in the world, I hope you know that you touch and influence and shape and change and make the path easier for so many people who will never articulate it to you, whether you are doing your work on the Internet or not.  

Sarah [00:45:20] And I just think about this description of the waves of Internet writing that first it was like the people blogging about technology, and then it was the political bloggers, and then it was the mommy bloggers. And I hope we can acknowledge that they were all equally important. They were all equally important. And I just think about how Ezra Klein talks all the time about how his career started with political blogging. And here he is, a New York Times podcaster. And why was what he was doing so different and deserving of praise while what she was doing made people so angry, they just wanted to tear her to shreds. They wanted to tear her to shreds. And I think we all have to ask ourselves, is it that different? I've done both. I've talked about politics and I've talked about parenting. And they're both personal and they're both fraught. But I get treated as a professional more in politics than I ever did talking about parenting.  

Beth [00:46:24] Well, I think that Covid illustrated how we are real comfortable with politics until it starts to intersect with real life. And for the echelon of society that decides that Ezra Klein's work was more valuable than Heather Armstrong's work on the Internet, that's really true. And it's a shame. And I am glad that people are writing about her and that we're aware of this. And I hope that people will write carefully and with the recognition that you don't have to be a PhD to say something pretty important to lots and lots of people about one of the most difficult experiences that you can go through as a person.  

Sarah [00:47:05] And if you don't care, then just walk away. This desire to tear people apart because they're successful writing about something you disagree with or you don't think is important, God, I wish we could move on from that. I wish we can see the cost that extracted in her life and put that behavior to bed. I'm not super hopeful, but what a gift that would be. Well, I want to say thank you to Heather Armstrong for her writing. Thank you to all of you who support our work here at Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

Beth [00:48:00] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:48:05] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:48:11] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers.   

Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment. 

Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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