Below are a couple of summaries of articles Robin Bates wrote for his BLTB blog in May:
Ivanka Doesn’t Understand “Beloved”
May 10, 2017
The author seeks to reason how Ivanka’s book, Women Who Work, takes a misapplied quote from Toni Morrison’s book Beloved subjectively interprets this quote:
Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
The protagonist in Morrison’s book is raped and beaten before killing her own baby in order to escape slavery. Ms. Trump uses the quote to describe women her enslave themselves to pleasing everybody. The beef the author has with Ivanka’s blandity curating Toni’s masterpiece is quoted from a book review where the reviewer observes that the quotation seems to falsely equates the scars of a business women’s busy work with the scars of slavery. Inappropriate to say the least.
Robin Bates, who wrote the article, says that if Ivanka had actually read the article, he would give here some leeway. After all, her father has expressed interest in her sexually, and a particular scenario in Beloved might render her a pathway out of that troubling conundrum. Clearly, Bates believes, she hasn’t read the book and merely misappropriates the quotation for her own purpose in her own pursuit of wealth. The quote may be relatable to her as something she already knows but that is where it stops. She doesn’t take it deeper, where it is supposed to take her, outside of herself and to a more understanding and wise self. Knowing more about oneself and understanding what an author intended is the hidden value in a quote, a book, an authorship.
Women Who Work is not literature because it merely recirculates platitudes from a position of entitlement and its author listens neither to authors misquoted nor women who work.
Trump’s Latest Queen of Hearts Beheading
May 11, 2017
For anyone who remembers Watergate and seeks a better analogy to the Comey firing, look no further than Lewis Carroll and his deeply fascinating and subtly suggestive Alice in Wonderland.
In Robin Bates daily blog, he relates the Comey firing to Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. Trump is firing anyone who threatens to investigate him while giving a reason which is obviously not the reason. In Alice in Wonderland the Queen of Hearts, playing croquet, is screaming Off with his/her head once a minute when displeased until there is no one left. The croquet scene is related to Nixon and Watergate, which is in turn related to Trump and Putingate.
The article suggests that NSA head McMaster might be next to be separated from his head. That the Comey firing was a hot example of punishment first – rationale later. And that the country needs the GOP to stand up to Trump the way that Alice stands up to the Queen. Trump is no more dangerous than a slick pack of cards. Grow a spine before this bad dream becomes a living nightmare.