What Is Life Coaching; Part 2

Herewith the conclusion of the case fiction I presented last Friday. You will understand that, considering the length, it was better to present it in two halves.

Much time had passed since Imogen had last given any of her clients the silent treatment. She had rejected this relic from the Freudian past because it was rude and insulting. An individual who felt disconnected and detached did not need to have a therapist who refused to look him in the eye or to converse.

So, Imogen wanted to converse and discuss. She wanted to engage in normal exchanges with her clients. Some thought it was a bizarre experience. Most got used to it.

First, Imogen wanted to diminish Clarissa’s jealousy. To do so she adapted a cognitive technique. Since the jealousy derived from one interpretation of her husband’s behavior, Imogen tried to offer some other interpretations. She invited Clarissa to join her in imagining other scenarios that might have caused Garrett to withdraw. She suggested that these other scenarios were less dramatic and less compelling than the narrative about the mistress.

True enough, Clarissa had entertained alternatives. At one time she believed that Garrett might have made a mistake with anesthesia and perhaps lost a patient. Perhaps he is the only one who knew and felt burdened with a truth that he could not share. How could his wife respect him if she heard such news? If anyone mentioned it to the wrong person, he could be facing a major malpractice suit, or even charges of criminal negligence.

Clarissa followed the exercise and admitted that she had imagined that Garrett suspected that he was ill, but was hiding his symptoms from everyone, beginning with his wife and through his physician. As a physician’s wife, Clarissa was aware of the fact that male doctors especially refuse to admit anything that resembles illness. They often make the worst patients.

Imogen found these interpretations plausible. They did not have the sordid tone that the jealousy narrative had, but they worked to balance Clarissa’s judgment. 

Yet, Clarissa was not ready to give up. She insisted that she and her husband had always told each other everything. She could not accept that he was keeping something from her, because he did not trust her fully.

And yet, Imogen pointed out, if the problem was professional, there was nothing that Clarissa could do. If the problem involved another lover, then she could feel that she might win back his affections. 

Would you trust yourself to keep a professional secret? Would you have found it impossible to keep the secret? Would you have chosen to share it with someone very close to you, regardless of the risk? 

Such were the questions that Imogen asked Clarissa. She was slightly indignant at the assumption that she might not be completely trustworthy. She did not believe that her husband would ever make such a mistake and she knows that malpractice lawsuits are part of the business.

So she responded that she would stand with her husband, no matter what. She was confident that he understood as much. She added that if she discovered he was seriously ill, of course, she would stay with him. It is grossly insulting to imagine that she would walk out on a sick husband.

These are not the only alternatives. What if Garrett made some bad investments? What if he had a gambling problem? What if they needed to sell their apartment and move to less spacious quarters? Perhaps, Garrett had failed as a breadwinner and was incapable of admitting to it.

Clarissa had never imagined it. She counted on the stability of her home and had never doubted that the family would remain in their three bedroom co-op on East End Avenue. 

Evidently, the scenarios that Imogen was inviting Clarissa to imagine did not involve her being at fault. They did not allow her to blame herself by inventing a scenario where her husband was leaving her because she had become less interesting and even older.

Imogen had expected a bout of self-doubt. She did not want to let it go unchallenged. She began: “Of course, we do not know whether or not your husband still loves you. Besides if you fall in love with self-doubt you will make it more difficult to function within your marriage.

Imogen reasoned that however necessary it might be to allow such feelings, encouraging their full expression in treatment, counting them as legal tender, would set Clarissa on the wrong course. 

Imogen wanted to conjure alternative scenarios. So she asked Clarissa if she could recall any other thoughts about what was wrong. Clarissa admitted that a few had been so ridiculous that she had quickly banished them from her mind. In one she imagined that Garrett had fathered an illegitimate child on a ski trip to Vail some seventeen years ago. What if both mother and child had relocated to Manhattan and had contacted Garrett in order to make him a more active part of their lives. Perhaps they are requesting financial support, and threatening to sue him.

In that scenario he wanted to protect his wife and daughter, but felt some responsibility to a grown-up son who bears a strong resemblance to him. As she grew silent, Imogen remarked: “Such a secret would not signify any rejection of you. In fact, it would show the opposite, his commitment to you and Chloe. The one person Garrett cannot face is the one he feels like he betrayed.

Clarissa explained that if something similar had happened before they had met, she would more easily forgive him. If it had happened during their marriage, forgiveness would be more difficult. 

And yet, whatever the reason, Garrett had shut his wife out of his life. Clarissa  concluded that her husband must be guilty of some transgression.

Imogen wanted to show her client how to step back from her dilemma and to consider all the different possibilities.

Clarissa had been willing to follow Imogen’s exercises, which resembled nothing as much as policy analysis. And yet, she did need to address the possibility that Clarissa was right. And then she would need to help her client formulate a plan of action for dealing with the situation.

From her own experience with marriage and from her work with couples in crisis, Imogen had developed a deep aversion to divorce. As for cheating husbands, Imogen knew that more often than not men were creatures of routine and habit. They would go to considerable lengths to avoid the disruption of divorce. The image of a man dropping everything to ride off into the sunset with a comely young lass is a woman’s fantasy. Most men will not destroy their family for a romantic dalliance. 

To put it differently, it would be better if Clarissa thought about how to save her marriage, not how to exit it.

And then there was the other woman. Imogen raised a simple issue. However Garrett thought and felt about a current girlfriend, she might not feel the same way. It might be more casual for him than for her. He might have got himself caught in a situation he was having difficulty managing. Perhaps she was pressuring him to leave his wife. 

Now, Imogen’s strategy was to affirm the alliance between Clarissa and Garrett. She wanted Clarissa to see herself as the solution, not the problem. It would be better for her to see herself as her husband’s ally than as a rejected spouse.

Imogen wanted to help her patient recover her shattered confidence and she wanted to diminish the anxiety about a drastic change in life circumstances. Even if Garrett was having an affair with a comely nurse, Clarissa was still holding more than a few cards of her own. First she had been functioning as a wife and mother for many years. 

Considering the importance of reconfiguring Clarissa’s place in her marriage, it was a good thing that she had not confronted her husband and had not expressed her feelings fulsomely. It was also good that she did not do what many therapists would recommend, to whine and complain.

And Imogen wanted Clarissa to act like a wife and mother. She did not want her client to withdraw from those roles, the better to leave the places open for another woman. And that meant, Clarissa would need to create circumstances under which Garrett could explain what was the matter. Again, the best way to accomplish this end would be for Clarissa to act as though nothing were.

Treatment now needed to concern itself with social skills more than with psychological explorations. Surely, introspection, withdrawal from the situation, would have done very little to solve the problem.

You might guess that creating the conditions for a serious talk is more difficult than blurting out: We have to talk. As everyone knows, that unfortunate phrase puts the other person on his guard. It is almost a threat. 

So Imogen wanted Clarissa to invite Garrett out for Saturday dinner. At a time when her daughter was having a sleepover, she would make a reservation at a favorite restaurant, La Parapluie. Surely, a public venue was better than a living room. The more public, the less chance there will be anything untoward. No one wants to become a public spectacle.

Imogen explained her reasoning: “If you feel rejected and excluded,you should act in the opposite way, by affirming your connection with your husband. Your public connection, not merely your private connection.

As for raising the issue, this is tricky. In the best of circumstances, Clarissa would confess to a problem she is having, a problem that has been weighing on her. By definition, when someone opens up about a personal problem, the other one is, according to the laws of conversational reciprocity, more inclined to reciprocate. Besides, if the problem is personal, there is nothing resembling an accusation.

Imogen wanted Clarissa to be the solution, not the problem. She did not want her client to blurt out her suspicions or to attack her husband for withholding. She understood that Clarissa ought to be able to walk away from the dinner feeling pride in the way she had conducted herself.

If Clarissa wanted her husband to explain himself and to take responsibility for his bad behavior, accusations and indictments were clearly not the way to do so. They make people defensive. 

So, Imogen counseled Clarissa to consider the possibility, not only to confess to a sin or two, but to claim responsibility for the seeming breakdown of their marriage. Considering that Garrett had been a less-than-adequate husband, Clarissa could opine that she does not believe that she has been a very good wife.

Evidently, the self-deprecating approach is a ploy, a way of testing the waters. If her husband responds by going on the attack, she will know that something is seriously wrong, and that she is not responsible for it.

This communications gambit assumes that the moral duty to reciprocate is stronger than the will to destroy or to gain power over the other person. One would like Garrett to respond by taking responsibility for his own bad behavior. If he does not, the situation is worse than Clarissa thought.

So, Imogen was coaching Clarissa. She was preparing her to enter the fray with her husband. She was trying to help her to avoid psychodrama or grand opera. She wanted her client to help solve her problem, not to make a spectacle of herself.

So, Clarissa set off to have a Saturday dinner with her husband. 

Waiting for Clarissa’s first session after her dinner with her husband Imogen was slightly anxious. Imagine her surprise when Clarissa sat down and explained that she had discussed the situation with Garrett and that all of their hypotheticals were wrong.

In truth, Garrett knew that something was wrong, but he had no idea what it was. Somehow the joy had been drained from his life. He was too embarrassed about his depressed mood to talk about it with his wife. He had no reason to be depressed, and yet, depressed he was. So he had made an appointment next Tuesday to see a psychiatrist.

Clarissa, however, had taken charge of the conversation. She had asked Garrett: “Do you remember when it started? It must have been caused by something?”

Garrett gulped hard and went silent. Clarissa simply said: “Please.”

He replied that he thinks it began when his father’s doctor told him that his father had been diagnosed with acute leukemia. There is nothing they can do, and his father abhors radical medical interventions. 

The doctor told Garrett first, and then his mother, but had not yet told his father.  His mother thought it best that his father not find out. Garrett thought he could handle it, because he is a physician, but he began having morbid thoughts about his father dying, his mother being alone, his being responsible for her. 

His mother continued to insist that nothing could be gained by telling his father. Garrett had felt that if he told Clarissa she would not be able to hide the truth. His father would see it on her face the next time they got together.

Imogen was surprised to hear this. Its sheer implausibility made it plausible. She had in the past counseled people who did not want their loved ones to know that they were dying. And yet, she was still puzzled by the fact that Garrett had kept his wife in the dark.

Clarissa replied: “It was not very clear to me either. I felt that I had been excluded from something that we ought to be sharing as a couple. I did not want to express personal hurt, because it would have paled next to his, but I did want to understand why he had not confided in me. So I asked him point blank.”

“What did he say?” was all Imogen needed to interject.

“In part he thought he was protecting me from a bizarre aspect of his family life. He was embarrassed at how his mother was handling the situation. He had suspected that his father was gravely ill, but he did not want to alarm people. Besides, he thought that if he had started to talk about it he would have become overly emotional. He does not like me to see him weakened. He was thinking that the feelings would sort themselves out, and then he would tell me. “

Imogen interjected: “Now that he has told you, how do you feel about it?”

“I feel considerably better,” Clarissa replied. “I feel like a fool for having become so jealous, but my obsessions have vanished for now. I am glad that I kept my fantasies to myself.”

Some therapists would insist on a further analysis of the content of Clarissa’s obsessions. Imogen saw no great advantage to saddling her client with these thoughts. She felt that the best outcome of these consultations would be for Clarissa to discard her demons as so much static. Not everything that passes through your mind is relevant.

Coda-- I hope you enjoyed reading this case fiction. Next week I will offer another case with another coach.

I have several open consulting hours in my life coaching practice. If you are interested, please contact me via email, at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com.

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Good-bye to the Ivy League

Bret Stephens is correct to call for a reckoning with America’s elite academic institutions. Clearly, the explosion of anti-Semitism at these places has made Jewish students feel largely unwelcome. Jewish parents have taken notice. Many of them are encouraging their children to apply elsewhere.

Mostly this involves the Ivy League, but similar institutions, like Stanford, are on the list.

And yet, it is not just about Jewish students. The advent of systemic bigotry should tell all students, not to mention donors, that the value of the degrees being given out by these schools is in freefall. All parents, regardless of their ideological predilections, would do well not to feed the beast of America’s elite educational institutions.

Before examining the Stephens analysis, we should point out one aspect of the problem that he does not notice. We can ask ourselves who is financing this anti-Semitism. If it seems now to be endemic to private colleges and universities, that means it is not being funded by the public. It is being funded by Middle Eastern countries and entities, all of whom expect a return on their investment.

Remember the old saw: Follow the money. If the government of Qatar has financed a Middle East Studies Center and some Palestinian professorships, it is engaged in the production of anti-Israel propaganda.

Of course, a double standard is at work. The student demonstrators are all-in for defending every imaginable victim group, except for Jews. By their calculus Jews are oppressors, not victims, even when they are victimized.

Stephens explains:

Students who police words like “blacklist” or “whitewash” and see “microaggressions” in everyday life ignore the entreaties of their Jewish peers to avoid chants like “globalize the intifada” or “from the river to the sea.” Students who claim they’re horribly pained by scenes of Palestinian suffering were largely silent on Oct. 7 — when they weren’t openly cheering the attacks. And students who team up with outside groups that are in overt sympathy with Islamist terrorists aren’t innocents. They’re collaborators.

As for the question of where the students learned to be anti-Semitic, the answer is obvious. They have been fed a radical leftist narrative, one that offers them a place within the vanguard of the coming revolution. 

We all understand that this has been tried and that it failed during the last century, but people who want to extort advantages they have not earned find it irresistible:

They got them, I suspect, from the incessant valorization of victimhood that has been a theme of their upbringing, and which many of the most privileged kids feel they lack — hence the zeal to prove themselves as allies of the perceived oppressed. They got them from the crude schematics of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training seminars, which divide the world into “white” and “of color,” powerful and “marginalized,” with no regard for real-world complexities — including the complexity of Jewish identity. They got them from professors who think academic freedom amounts to a license for political posturing, sometimes of a nakedly antisemitic sort. They got them from a cheap and easy revision of history that imagines Zionism is a form of colonialism (it’s decidedly the opposite), that colonialism is something only white people do, and that as students at American universities, they can cheaply atone for their sins as guilty beneficiaries of the settler-colonialism they claim to despise.

As for the larger context, let us not ignore the simple fact that the Biden administration has been criticizing and attacking the prime minister of Israel. It has lately been withholding munitions from the Jewish state and it has told Israel not to counterattack the Hezbollah forces attacking it from the North. 

This makes it respectable to hate Israel, to see it as a genocidal state.

And groups like the International Criminal Court, led by George Clooney’s dopey wife, have declared that the leaders of Israel and of Hamas are morally equivalent-- both worthy of indictment.

If there is a moral equivalence, you are free to choose sides.

And then there are the college administrators. Many of them, apparently not owing their jobs to their merits, have bought into the oppression narrative. 

They live with a constant threat. They are afraid that someone some day will discover that they do not deserve the jobs that they have. Their fear being called out and discovered to be frauds, so they are far more interested in attacking people, like the Israelis, who have earned and built what they have.

They also got them from university administrators whose private sympathies often lie with the demonstrators, who imagine the anti-Israel protests as the moral heirs to the anti-apartheid protests and who struggle to grasp (if they even care) why so many Jewish students feel betrayed and besieged by the campus culture.

That’s the significance of the leaked images of four Columbia University deans exchanging dismissive and sophomoric text messages during a panel discussion in May on Jewish life on campus, including the suggestion that a panelist was “taking full advantage of this moment” for the sake of the “fundraising potential.”

And then there is the problem with fashionable theories, the kinds that are propagated on campus these days:

But the real problem lies with some of the main convictions and currents of today’s academia: intersectionality, critical theory, post-colonialism, ethnic studies and other concepts that may not seem antisemitic on their face but tend to politicize classrooms and cast Jews as privileged and oppressive. If, as critical theorists argue, the world’s injustices stem from the shadowy agendas of the powerful and manipulative few against the virtuous masses, just which group is most likely to find itself villainized?

The Palestinian cause has little to do with building a functioning and even prosperous society. It is about expropriating what others have built. Losers are drawn to this cause because it gives them a reason to demean the accomplishments of others; said accomplishments make them feel ashamed. And we cannot have that. 

As for what is to be done, Stephens suggests that the rot is now endemic to the system. He believes that it will take years to clean it out.

Not even the most determined university president is going to clean out the rot — at least not without getting rid of the entrenched academic departments and tenured faculty members who support it. 

Better to look elsewhere for educational opportunity. Go South, young person.

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Wednesday Potpourri

First, as scandals go, it was only mini, Columbia University sanctioned three administrators for sharing anti-Semitic text messages during a meeting about anti-Semitism.

The New York Times reports:

Columbia University placed three administrators on leave this week, a university spokesman said on Saturday. The moves came a little more than a week after images emerged showing the school officials sharing disparaging text messages during a panel discussion about antisemitism on campus.

The panel, which focused on Jewish life on campus amid tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza, occurred during a Columbia College reunion on May 31.

The spokesman did not identify which officials were placed on leave, but The Washington Free Beacon, the website that first published the images, reported that they were Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support.

Ms. Chang-Kim also exchanged texts during the event with Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, according to The Free Beacon. In one exchange, Mr. Sorett texted “LMAO,” for “laughing my ass off,” in response to a sarcastic message Ms. Chang-Kim had written about Brian Cohen, the executive director of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, according to The Free Beacon.

Second, on the fun side, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appeared on the Bill Maher Show. An interesting exchange took place.

“The trial in New York, the one he [Trump] got convicted for, was the greatest fundraising bonanza ever. He was lagging behind Biden, and now he's pulled quite a bit ahead," Maher said to Cuomo during the show. 

To which Cuomo, who was elected as New York State Attorney General in 2006, replied: “That case, the attorney general's case in New York, frankly, should have never been brought."

Cuomo continued: "If his name was not Donald Trump and if he wasn't running for president. I'm the former AG in New York. I'm telling you, that case would have never been brought. And that's what is offensive to people. And it should be!”

"Because if there's anything left...it's belief in the Justice system!"

Third, Israel is increasingly under attack by Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. The Biden administration, preparing to sell out the Jewish state, has told Israel that it is essentially on its own.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized:

The latest misfire is Sunday’s comments by Gen. C.Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to reporters on his way to Botswana. According to the Associated Press, America’s top military officer “said the U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones in April.”

He warned Israel “to think about the second order of effect of any type of operation into Lebanon,” including danger to U.S. forces, and said the Iranians could join the fray directly and give greater support to their proxy “particularly if they felt that Hezbollah was being significantly threatened.”

That’s a calculated red light to Israel—don’t count on U.S. help, do count on Iran’s wrath—but what message is the general sending to Hezbollah? In the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah’s bunker, it probably sounds like: “Go ahead. You can get away with more.”

And also, from the Journal:

It emboldens Hezbollah to keep shooting and extend its range. This increases the domestic pressure in Israel to do something about it. Unprovoked, Hezbollah has already fired nearly 5,000 rockets, missiles and mortars at northern Israel since Oct. 7, depopulating the region. Not that Iran cares, but a major war between Hezbollah and Israel could wreck Lebanon. Central Israel could take damage like it never has before.

The stakes are high, which makes the U.S. policy of publicly trying to deter Israel even harder to figure. Israel is less likely to be compelled to fight Hezbollah if 70,000 Israelis can return to their homes safely in northern Israel.

This means quieting Hezbollah’s rocket fire and convincing it to remove its fighters from the buffer zone in Southern Lebanon. But Hezbollah has no reason to do that if it thinks it can keep firing away and President Biden will protect it from the consequences.

With friends like Joe Biden, you do not need enemies.

And, remind me of why American Jews are rushing out to support Joe Biden’s candidacy.

Fourth, we have occasionally pointed out that the Ivy League has been suffering reputational damage of late. In part, this has happened because these schools have countenanced anti-Semitic demonstrations. You will have noted that the woke leaders of these schools have been weak and ineffectual.

It’s one poll, so, take it with a few grains of salt, but still:

Just The News reports that in the survey from Rasmussen Reports, a mere 10% of respondents say that they consider Ivy League graduates to be hard workers. By contrast, 75% do not consider Ivy League alumni to be better workers, while 74% consider Ivy Leagues to be out-of-touch with the values and beliefs of everyday Americans.

In the same poll, 67% said that they think students are better off attending a state school than attending an Ivy League university. Only 15% said they believe Ivy Leagues to be superior to state schools.

The discontent with the Ivy League universities was noted across partisan lines: 81% of Republican respondents said that the Ivy Leagues are out-of-touch with the rest of America, while 76% of Democrats said the same.

Ever since the unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel by the Islamist group Hamas on October 7th of last year, anti-Israel protests and riots have taken place across the country and around the world, particularly at college campuses. The most violent and extreme demonstrations were at Columbia University, but spread quickly to other campuses such as UCLA.

These incidents have ranged from mass vandalism to assaults against Jewish students.

In addition to the decline in public opinion, the protests have led to a massive decline in Jewish enrollment at such universities. 

Data from Ivy Coach shows that, while roughly 20% of incoming Yale University students in the 2000’s were Jewish, that number plunged to just 12% in 2023.

Fifth, is there a deeper meaning to the wave of restaurant closings? I am hardly qualified to offer an opinion, so I will limit myself to stating the facts.

It’s not as bad as Red Lobster, which has gone bankrupt, but now Hooters is closing 40 locations. It’s not a good sign for the economy. It seems to have something to do with inflation. It may be the canary in the coal mine. But it is not a good thing.

I know you find it hard to believe, America seems to bes losing its appetite for hooters.

Sixth, yesterday I had my say about the appointment of one Tyler Cherry to a position in the communications office of the Biden administration.

And I noted, dutifully, that Cherry had renounced his prior Tweets, which tended to be anti-Semitic and anti-police.

Now, according to Fox News, an anti-anti-Semitism group finds that insufficient. It wants Cherry fired, right away.

An antisemitism watchdog group is calling for the Biden administration to fire a recently promoted White House official whose anti-Israel social media posts resurfaced this week.

StopAntisemitism said Tyler Cherry, who was promoted earlier this month as an associate communications director at the White House, called for the elimination of Israel and promoted anti-Israel viewpoints on social media going back years, as well as anti-police commentary.

"We're hoping this is the quickest hire and fire scenario in President Biden's administration to date," Stop Antisemitism founder Liora Rez told Fox News Digital. "For the Biden administration to either A, not vet properly, or B, to vet and then approve an inner circle appointee like this… is just horrifying."

In fairness, if he had said as much about any other minority group, he would not have gotten the job, regardless of how much he changed his mind.

Seventh, and now a few words on the great smartphone debate. You will recall that social psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote a best-selling book blaming the mental health problems of American youth on smartphones.

About which Derek Thompson wrote this in The Atlantic. 

You can find a summary of it on page 5 of this year’s World Happiness Report, a survey of thousands of people across more than 140 countries. “Between 2006 and 2023, happiness among Americans under 30 in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand declined significantly [and] also declined in Western Europe,” the report says. But here’s the catch: In the rest of the world, under-30 happiness mostly increased in this period. “Happiness at every age has risen sharply in Central and Eastern Europe,” the report says. “In the former Soviet Union and East Asia too there have been large increases in happiness at every age.”

This is pretty weird. Smartphones are a global phenomenon. But apparently the rise in youth anxiety is not. In some of the largest and most trusted surveys, it appears to be largely occurring in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. “If you’re looking for something that’s special about the countries where youth unhappiness is rising, they’re mostly Western developed countries,” says John Helliwell, an economics professor at the University of British Columbia and a co-author of the World Happiness Report. “And for the most part, they are countries that speak English.”

The story is even more striking when you look at the most objective measures of teen distress: suicide and self-harm. Suicides have clearly increased in the U.S. and the U.K. Emergency-room visits for suicide attempts and self-harm have been skyrocketing for Gen Z girls across the Anglosphere in the past decade, including in Australia and New Zealand. But there is no rise in suicide or self-harm attempts in similar high-income countries with other national languages, such as France, Germany, and Italy. As Vox’s Eric Levitz wrote, the suicide rate among people ages 15 to 19 actually fell significantly across continental Europe from 2012 to 2019.

So if you were tempted to embrace the smartphones heuristic, think again.

Eighth, as for the notion that America, thanks to its therapy culture, has been exporting mental illness, you can find it articulated well in a book by one Ethan Watters. It is called Crazy Like Us.

Finally, I now have some free consulting hours in my life coaching practice. Email me at StuartSchneiderman@gmail.com to set up an appointment.

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Who Is Tyler Cherry?

Yesterday, the Twitterverse was abuzz about a pathetic transvestite named Tyler Cherry. Currently a communications specialist in the Interior Department, he was just promoted to an associate communications director job in the White House. 

That means, he is third in line to represent the administration and the nation in press briefings. 

Let’s be clear here. What Cherry wants to do during his private time and with his private life is his business. Frankly, we do not care. If he likes to crossdress and to go to parties with his fellow transvestites, it is his business, not ours.

The world would be a better place if Cherry managed to keep his kinks to himself. Unfortunately, as a multitude of posts has made clear, he has made quite the spectacle of himself, dressing up foolishly and posing in a semi-erotic fashion. 

It is almost not worth mentioning, but Cherry, a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause, would do better not to show off his kink  in Gaza or in other Palestinian territories. However fervent his support for the Palestinian cause, he should know that his bizarre behavior is a capital crime in such a culture. Walking down a Gaza street in drag would teach young Cherry a good lesson in the value of American culture. In the time it took for them to hang him from a lamppost or to throw him off a rooftop.

Hot Air reports on some of his dubious opinions:

He celebrated bloodshed in Israel in a 2014 post. He applauded what he called the end of the "occupation of Palestine" amid that year's Gaza War. Palestinian forces, led by Hamas, launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes and a ground invasion. 

"Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine — no shame and f--- your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine," Cherry said on July 25, 2014, in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

And, of course, he hates America. Hot Air brings us up to date on some more of his tweets:

In 2015, he tweeted “the modern day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs."

And he prayed "even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases." 

He also helped boost "Russiagate."

And In 2018, he called for ICE to be abolished.

By now it is clear that young Mr. Cherry is a typical leftist crank. 

In fairness, as soon as he was named to his new position, he erased all of his prior tweets and renounced all of his idiotic opinions.

You may or may not want to call that a come-to-Jesus moment, or a simple expediency. The trouble is, people had no trouble finding them, and figuring out that during the time that he was director of communications for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, he exposed his jejune opinions to the public at large.

But then, no one really cared. Because no one much cares about Deb Haaland. She has not been very public as a cabinet secretary and was obviously a diversity hire. She comes from a native American community.

Now, we know that such opinions did not bother Deb Haaland. Assuming that she knew about them. And we believe that it was her job to know about them. 

So, Deb Haaland did not know what she was doing. And yet, it does not speak well of her when she hired Tyler Cherry, an ideological zealot to be her communications director. Apparently, she is a leftist fanatic.

In fairness, we assume that Joe Biden was not involved in the decision to bring Tyler Cherry to the White House. One assumes that Joe Biden is barely involved in his administration anyway. 

As the saying goes, the country is in the worst of hands.

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