Me too

How old? In case you're wondering, this foul ad was created and ran in 1969. Ads for cigarettes and Tipalets (they're gone, by the way) are long gone from magazines these days. For that matter, lots of magazines are museum-pieces. The graphics style of the ad doesn't look all that old, at least to me; but the presumptions it assumes are ancient and today off-color. No media anywhere would run this ad.

It's not the suggestion of casual sex--we're far beyond that. It's the assumption of idiot female compliance that's obscene, the belief that a woman will give herself away in a moment when in the presence of a man's man, in this case, a guy fingering a Tipalet. 

The "Me-Too" movement has taken loads of Harvey Weinsteins down, along with Hollywood stars of every genre, esteemed NPR editors, an commencement parade of academics, dozens of TV personalities, and even more politicians. For reasons few of us understand, only our madcap President gets a pass, a mulligan, the good Christians say. Every last American, no matter his or her political persuasion, has watched some alpha male he or she respected fall spectacularly from grace.

That ad up top comes from a wholly different era, and era that's behind us. 

Recently, the press that was about to release the paperback version of a Sherman Alexie's latest book announced they wouldn't. Alexie is the second most-read Native writer in America, bested only by Louise Erdrich. He's a popular lecturer and speaker, a writer who associates himself with what some might consider the most "literary" genre in this country. He doesn't write dime novels. In 2007, his book, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won the National Book Award, and just this year his You Don't Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir took home a Carnegie award for excellence in non-fiction. 

But awards aren't the whole story, or so it appears. He's exploited his talent and success by abusing women who looked up to him and respected him, especially Native women, especially young Native women, most specifically, young Native women writers. And he's done it by presuming what all powerful men do--that their power and success in business or media or sports or politics or art means they can power their penises where they will.

"Me too" says they'll be no more of that behavior, as men as wildly different as Garrison Keillor and Bill O'Reilly have discovered, having been outed.

So what do we do with the work, with Garrison Keillor's "News from Lake Woebegone"? What do we do with any of a dozen movies created by Harvey Weinstein or a thousand captivating interviews by Charlie Rose. Want a list? Kevin Spacey, Warren Moon, Richard Dryfuss, John Hockenberry, Casey Affleck, James Franco. . .

I read Alexie's memoir about his mother not long ago. It's not an easy read--trust me. You can read my own reactions here. I was undecided about it when I finished it, profoundly moved by some sections maybe, and heart sick about having to read others. It persistently went where I thought it didn't need to, but who am I to judge such things, the child of wonderful, loving, Christian parents?  It was, at times, sickening; at others, a blessing.

Still, after the revelations of last week, the stories of Sherman Alexie the bully, I can't think about what he's written in the same light. I just can't. 

Me-too has forever tarnished the lives of those men it's outed; of that there can be no question. 

But it's also changed the rest of us.  Me too.