The details of this squalid little room say so much. Steve Bannon creeping around with a sh*t-eating grin in some Orvis-y jacket that, from a distance, can be seen for what it is: the upscale army fatigues of a suburbanite Harley-rider for whom POW-MIAs are some sort of missing phallus. But when you peel away the rented room’s potemkin wood panel and its faux-sumptuous carpet squares, you’re left with the kind of props an incompetent assistant would pick up at TJ Maxx or Bed Bath and Beyond: ill-fitting brown drapes pinned to a couple of card tables, artless heavy mugs, and faux-leather blotters. But shove all that corporatist dreck aside — that’s when the scene becomes clearer. It’s less of a press conference or a panel discussion than a ’70s-era terrorist group issuing a diktat or the tribunal of a psych cult. I have no idea what did or didn’t happen to these women, but whatever it was/n’t has become indistinguishable from how it’s been used and disused, used and disused.
(FB)