Part One:
Our first guest is Chloe LaCasse, a transgender woman, radio producer, and activist. In the wake of “coming out day” on Sunday, Chloe shares her moving narrative about how she lived her life as a man for more than 40 years, trying to be someone she wasn’t. She describes her gradual discovery of the wonderful woman deep inside her, until she finally came out in 2016.
Much of who we are is whether we see ourselves (and are seen by others) as “a boy” or “a girl.” Either way, one is excluded from a lot of things that the other gender takes for granted. As a man, Chloe was taught that “he” could not be soft, warm, compassionate, or empathic. To display these character traits, a boy would be seen as “queer,” a traitor to what it means to “be a man.”
So for 44 years, Chloe kept hidden a lot of her most fundamental self, closeted, full of shame and fear, in a “gender straitjacket.” After “finding” her female self and having conversations with that self for several years, she announced her true identity and, for the first time in her life, felt free.
Just as Chloe was able to find herself and to be honest about who she is, our country has to rediscover its true self and describe – to ourselves and to the world – what kind of people we want to be: people who are fundamentally good, who know the difference between right and wrong, who will help/care for other human beings, and will take action to make the world a better place. Chloe has done this as an individual. Now we as a nation we must do the same thing collectively. Honesty will be good for us, just as it was good for Chloe.
Part Two:
We break an important story, although it may not come as a surprise to many listeners. There is a lot wrong with Fox News, and it’s not just that they’re extremely conservative. They spew hatred so often and so loudly that they have transformed their listeners and our society into separate hostile camps which view each other as enemies. And this could undermine the democracy we’ve been taught was our fundamental core as a nation.
We speak with Robert Endman, professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, about his article in The Conversation: “Fox News uses the word *hate* much more than msnbc or cnn.” A graph in his article demonstrates the steep increase since Trump’s election.
Then Endman noticed who Fox says is doing the hating and who is being hated. The people who watch Fox, and who have established themselves in a community where they idolize Trump. Fox viewers and Trump are united in being reviled and despised by liberals and democrats. There’s nothing more arousing of hatred than being told that the other guy hates you. And Fox says it directly (not merely by implication) and they direct this hatred right at the Fox viewer.
Fox speaks of how Democrats and liberals “hate us” (conservatives) and are trying to destroy “us” and “our” values. This language creates a war-like view of American politics, an “us against them” mentality. It teaches Fox viewers that Democrats are “*the enemy*” (and also the press who fact-check the Fox mouthpieces and critique the right-wing policies of Trump and other Republican leaders)
Fox News hammered home the words “they hate you” almost as often as they used the slogan that Fox was “fair and balanced.” Of course, this same hateful language and world-view comes from Pres. Trump as well. Trump’s way of selling himself: I’m the only guy who loves you. “they” hate you.
This is like shouting fire in the crowded tinderbox theater of American politics. How could this inflammatory narrative – and using it nightly on the most popular news network – fail to create a conflagration?
