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The Thing About France, Season 3

Produced by the cultural services of the French Embassy. French Morning is a media partner of Season 3.

New episodes every other Tuesday, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, the website of The Thing About France, and French Morning.

Being first and foremost understood as American where the primary identity that I had in society wasnt a racialized one, it was nationalized actually, was liberating.

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In this weeks episode of The Thing About France, the podcast by and for American Francophiles, guest Thomas Chatterton Williams got into a deep discussion with host Liesl Schillinger about black Francophilia, James Baldwin, and the impact of social media on expat life. Williams is an author and cultural critic whose notable works include the memoirs Losing My Cool: How a fathers love and 15,000 books beat hip-hop culture (2010), and Self-Portrait in Black and White (2019). An alum of Georgetown and NYU, the Newark, NJ native fell in love with France while on a summer study-abroad program in Tour, and now lives with his French wife and children in Paris.

Williams is an expert on the works of James Baldwin, and thinks about race professionally, so its not surprising that he had some interesting things to say about the American racial imaginary as a black man and an expat in the era of George Floyd.

Its interesting to watch these things from France, because France has a very different relation to political correctness, to identitarianism, to identity politics, he explains, mentioning Robin DiAngelos book White Fragility, which has only just been released in France this month. Im really interested to see how that is received. Because in many ways it challenges fundamental premises of the Republican ideal, that everyone is the same and that race is not something to be taken into account.

Regarding Baldwin, he discusses the notion of the expats responsibility to his or her home country. Though Baldwin eventually returned to America because of the draw of the Civil Rights movement, Williams feels that social media and online publications make it possible for him to take part in the transatlantic conversation no matter where he is.

But how exactly did a boy from New Jersey end up so far from home? Williams talks about his love of France, and how his father encouraged him to learn French as a child in the hopes of someday being able to experience the country and the culture. Paris symbolically holds a very special space in the black American imagination. Theres a strong expat tradition of writers like James Baldwin or jazz musicians like Sydney Bichet and others, even Miles Davis.

And dont think Coronavirus fatigue hasnt caught up with him, even in the small village in the Loire Atlantique where he and his family have been quarantining. This has been just such an extraordinary year full of so much, and on top of that youve got an election coming up thats extraordinarily important, and the whole world is watching, and it feels like were just exhausted. So my instinct in those situations is just to try to isolate, bring some good books, read, write as much as I can.

Sound advice. For those who would maybe prefer to listen than read right now, new episodes of The Thing About France will be available every other Tuesday. Stay tuned on Frenchly and French Morning for more.

The Thing About France, Season 3

Produced by the cultural services of the French Embassy. French Morning is a media partner of Season 3.

New episodes every other Tuesday, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, the website of The Thing About France, and French Morning.

Continued here:

The Thing About France, S3E2: Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Philosophy, and COVID-19 - Frenchly

Donald Trump is a political arsonist. He has unleashed a firestorm across America. The kindling was always there. Trump chose to throw gasoline on it and set it afire.

Trump's political cult members and other followers are dancing in a circle around the flames. In the light and noise, they see and hear things which are not there. Like the troglodytes in Plato's allegory of the cave, they have lost the ability to discern truth from lies. All that matters is their proximity to Trump's fire.

Good Americans have encircled Trump's conflagration. They know the danger and power it possesses. They are also willing to be burned and suffer other injuries to save the country from its worst inclinations in the form of the fire devils that Trump commands.

Good Americans also know that fire can be used for both creation and destruction. As such, they are waiting for the right moment to seize the fire for their own purposes.

There are observers as well.Many are in the shadows cowed and afraid. Other watchers aresad and depressed and more than a little confused by what America in the Age of Trump has become.

Trump's blazingfire is the main attraction in the American terrordome, wherethe spectacle of Trump's threats, violence, lies, fear, intimidation, corruption, racism andcruelty unfold. Thisis the logic of reality TV made into a presidency and the resultingsurreal nightmare that has entrapped the American people in the Age of Trump.

The protagonists in Trump's spectacle are the "virtuous,""strong" and "heroic" Donald Trump and his"patriotic" and "law-abiding" (white) followers and of course the police and other enforcers of "law and order."

The villains are the various recurring bogeymen of the right-wing imagination, such as Latino "rapists" and "murderers," "invasions" and "caravans" of nonwhite people, Muslimsand any othergroup deemed to be despised. "Anti-fascists" and "Black Lives Matter" activists, who supposedly hate America. Black athletes who kneel in protest against police thuggery and other social injustices are "thugs" who should be kicked out of the country. The George Floyd protesters and anyone else who dares to disagree with the Trump regime are enemies of the state to be purged. "Anarchists," leftists, liberals and intellectualswith their "political correctness" are also to be disposed of.

Thisspectacle circulates across American society via Fox News and the larger right-wing propaganda disinformation machine. Unwittingly, those Americans with their "doomscrolling" a phrase that sounds like something from theH.P. Lovecraft mythos or the "Hellraiser" moviesand other Trump fixations are all part of the spectacle as well.

In total, Trump's terrordome is the theater of political terror and the "American carnage" he first promised in his 2016 inauguration speech. Trump hopes tousethe samethemes to win the 2020 election -- and then to stay in office for as long as he wants.

Trump's terrordome has a new attraction: his personal stormtroopers, a de facto Gestapo.

In a massive violation of the civil and human rights of the American people, Trump's secret policeareoperating in Portland, Oregon, grabbing protesters off the streets and disappearing them for interrogated. Trump's Gestapo is beating, gassing and shooting protesters with so-called non-lethalweapons, which in reality can cause grievous physical harm.

Trump has promised to unleash more than 50,000 of his personal enforcers in Democratic-led cities across the country. He will likely use these same enforcers to try to steal the 2020 election.

Trump's theater of terror in Portland (and soon elsewhere, perhaps) is following a script common to the authoritarian playbook where the leader creates a crisis, the people resistand then the threats and violence are amplified with the end goal being a "state of emergency" that"justifies" the authoritarian seizing even more power.

At the New York Times, former FBI director James Comeyaccurately summarizes Trump's Portland gambit:

What better way for Trump to demonstrate to his followers that he is "your president of law and order" than to deploy highly visible federal officers, and in a way that is sure to invite violent conflict, which, of course, demonstrates the need for a law-and-order president? And on it goes. The only thing damaged in the process will be the United States and the federal law enforcement agencies our country needs. Yet again, the craving of our president for reelection seems to override everything.

The Trump regime is so unrestrained that it actually uses the word "theater" to describe the Portland protests and the president's related instigationsand plots to remain in power.

As reported by the Washington Post, a Trump regime official said the president had chosen Portland as "a theater for his fight,"adding that"the White House had long wanted to amplify strife in cities, encouraging DHS officials to talk about arrests of violent criminals in sanctuary cities and repeatedly urging ICE to disclose more details of raids than some in the agency were comfortable doing. It was about getting viral online content."

Last Friday, Trump's White House press secretary,Kayleigh McEnany, presented the regime's own version of a Joseph Goebbels propaganda film in the form of a video purporting to show "riots" in Portland. This presentation was sotasteless that even Fox Newscut away from the White House press briefing.

Of course, there are no "riots" except for those instigated by Trump's enforcers and the right-wing extremists and other paramilitaries who have infiltrated what are largely peaceful gatherings.

McEnany's propaganda film is part of a larger and obvious strategy of terrifyingthe American people or at least Trump's base of older, white Fox News watchers, who he imagines as a"silent majority" into supporting the president's crackdown and re-electing him.

In Trump's terrordome these distorted images of anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter activists, mothers, veteransand other protesters are doing another type of political work as well

Violence by the Trump regime against dissenters is made legitimate. Moreover, violence by Trump's supporters against his perceivedenemies is encouraged and renderedvirtuous as well

In many ways, Donald Trump's terrordome spectacle is his version of the "Two Minutes Hate" as depicted in George Orwell's essential book "1984".

Writing at Bloomberg, legal scholar Cass Sunstein explains:

To see it, we have to step back a bit and consider one of George Orwell's most powerful creations: the Two Minutes Hate, directed against Emmanuel Goldstein, "the Enemy of the People" and opponent of Big Brother.

As Orwell depicts it in "1984," Big Brother focuses the public on Goldstein's misdeeds and the continuing threat he poses: "He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators." As citizens see Goldstein's face on a screen, they break out into "uncontrollable exclamations of rage," followed by a "hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer."

Orwell's ominous words suggest that every human heart is vulnerable to that ecstasy. "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in." (Think of what happens on contemporary social media.)

For Big Brother, the Two Minutes Hate is shrewd politics. It is a diversion from issues of policy, and from problems that people face in their ordinary lives. It focuses citizens' attention on a malevolent, even demonic force, who continues to threaten them.

Trump's terrordome and the power he has over many tens of millions of Americans (including bystanders) also recalls the description of Nazi Germany injournalist Milton Meyer's book "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45":

The world you live in your nation, your people is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

Donald Trump is an authoritarian and a neo-fascist. Like others of that ilk, he is only able to destroy and not create. Nearly 150,000 Americans are dead from the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump's willfully negligent response. The country is teetering on the edge of a second Great Depression. Other existential threats, such as the global climate disaster, continue their march largely unabated.

Ultimately, the Trump regimeand its politics of terror and cruelty amplify the pain, suffering, fearand insecurityof the American people and by design do nothing to soothe and heal them.

Public opinion polls and other research showthat the American people are experiencing high levels of anxiety and other mental health challenges from the Age of Trump and his pandemic. Suicides have increased. The American people largely want a return to normalcy and consistency and not the chaos of the Trump regime. Life spans continue to decrease among many populations in America, include the "white workingclass". The American people know that the country is going in the wrong direction and the myth of American exceptionalism is collapsing.Patriotism is at the lowest levels in several decades.

The pain, sorrow, loss, and misery are the goal: Trump and his regime are illegitimate, and hope to use his terrordome spectacle to remain in power.

Because of a deep reluctance to state those plain facts, America's mainstream news media continues toignore thatthe country is in the grip of a fascistpolitics and authoritarian spectacle where normal politics and the folk theory of democracy with its "free and fair" elections, responsible political parties, politically engaged citizens, rule of law, and respect for the Constitution as well as existing political and social institutions no longer apply.

Those people who are fortunate to live outside of Trump's terrordome see something horrible in America.Once the leader of the world,the U.S. has lost its prestige and moral authority. Writing at the New York Times, Roger Cohen reflects on how America now looks from Germany, a country which was destroyed by fascism and then rebuilt as a leading democracy:

When paramilitary-style units have no identifying insignia, there is no transparency, no accountability and that means impunity. Democracy dies. Think of all this as setting the scene for Trump's own "state of emergency" if he does not like the November election result. Social media is combustible enough for a physical fire to be unnecessary.

The president says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens. In 1933, after the Reichstag burned, Hitler issued the "Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State" as his means to seize power.

German horror at Trump has many components. He's the fear-mongering showman wielding nationalism, racism and violence as if the 20th century held no lessons. He's the would-be destroyer of the multilateral institutions that brought European peace and made it possible for Germans to raise their bowed heads again. He is a fascist in the making.

At present, Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump inthe polls. There are many ways, legitimate and otherwise,that Donald Trump couldwin a second term, but many observersnowbelieve that he will be vanquished in historic fashion. Of course, that is no guarantee that Trump will peacefully leave office in January or that he may not find away to contest the outcome.

A Biden victory would show that the American people want a return to normal. But what does "normal" really look like when the status quo did so much tovomit out Trump's neo-fascist regime and allthe destruction and human misery it created?

To light the way forward to a better America will demandmuch more than going back to "normal" fromJoe Biden and from all of us.

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Welcome to Donald Trump's terrordome: But even this may not save him - Salon

As I read the Friday, July 24, 2020 headline, "PC Beach Passes Mask Mandate," I was momentarily heartened that finally, the light of science was burning through the dark clouds of preconceived notions of the anti-mask crowd with their Luddite world outlook and faux-freedom rhetoric. At least until I got to Councilman Geoff McConnell's bizarre deconstruction of his vote FOR the temporary mandatory mask ordinance.

McConnell's "deep reservations on the enforcement" side of the mask ordinance, which simply calls for the wearing of a facemask inside all business within the PCB city limits, is rife with political connotations of a politician attempting to appease all sides and failing to do so, excuse himself from what is the correct decision by couching his assent in the vanilla fish wrap of the anti-masking crowd.

Is this McConnell related to Moscow Mitch McConnell? Talk about the character of one's convictions! McConnell's, Geoff McConnell's, that is, comments show part of the deconstruction that has occurred in this country among public officials whose "grave doubts" for voting on controversial proposals seemingly does not extend beyond their own thoughts of Panhandle political correctness.

Why not be satisfied that the Council did the right thing to assist in preventing a further spiraling out of control of a virus already rampant in our State because of the very reticence of public officials, yes that is spelled DeSantis, to do the right thing and heed the advice of the public health officials?

Is there no end to the political grave-robbing of those that wish to highlight their vote by weaseling "Yes, but..."?

It's time for public officials to stop the side commentary in an attempt to appease a segment of the electorate that might get their noses out of joint next election, that is if they survive until then.

They should stand on their conviction that they have voted with the best evidence at hand and work to mitigate the inconveniences caused by having to tell people to do something that costs them nothing and gets the economy back on a more normal footing and saves lives, rather than publicly second-guessing your vote for political expediency.

You ran for office because you wanted to lead. So do so, with conviction.

Gordon Gral, Panama City Beach

Original post:

OPINION: PCB Council did the right thing - The News Herald

KIRK WISEMAYER

DR. HARVEY WOLBRANSKY

There have, of late, been disturbing statements made by high profile individuals on air and in social media that reflect not ignorance, as many claim, but pure, unadulterated bigotry and hate. We are, of course, referring to the anti- Semitic comments made by Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson and Viacom- CBS personality Nick Cannon.

Most of us have experienced anti- Semitism in some form, both veiled in political correctness and overt, which means we can never be surprised when people share views or invoke tropes that are anti-Semitic. It does not, however, mean we will ever be immune to them, or worse, that we should ever overlook them.

What is surprising, and what should trouble us all, is that it appears to be open season on publicly and unashamedly expressing anti-Semitic views. The comments made by Jackson and Cannon certainly reflect this trend, as does Mel Gibsons reference to Jews as oven dodgers and comments made by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. This trend signals a deeper, more problematic issue, one that compelled New York Times opinion writer and editor Bari Weiss to resign due to bullying in what she called a toxic environment, one in which coworkers felt safe calling her a Nazi. The more problematic issue that needs to be addressed is whether anti- Semitism is becoming socially acceptable, or worse, institutionalized. Do the hateful comments in every public forum stem from this trend?

Such statements are never acceptable, but it is virtually impossible to ensure this when high profile athletes, celebrities, politicians, and others utter them in the public arena. Worse still is the impact of empty apologies and flaccid responses. While both Jackson and Cannon have offered apologies (of sorts) to the Jewish community, neither has taken responsibility for their statements. Neither has demonstrated any willingness to examine their views or to question their wellspring. What good is an apology if you do not commit to seeking truth, if you do not commit to educating yourself, if you continue your association and support of hate groups and hate mongers such as the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan? Such apologies are no apology at all; they are lip service. It tells us that in their hearts they believe what they said, and that their only regret is the bad publicity being generated. No visit to Auschwitz will change such hearts.

More insulting than Jacksons comments are the toothless responses of the Eagles and NFL organizations. If there are no consequences and requirement for remediation attached to the statements issued by these organizations, and no elaboration as to how Jackson was penalized, then at best they are no more than pro-forma public relations statements. At their worst, they condone the beliefs expressed and held by Jackson. Ending their official statement with, We must continue to fight against anti- Semitism and all forms of discrimination, while not losing sight of the important battle against systemic racism, the Eagles organization is essentially telling their fans that anti- Semitism takes a back seat to racism.

In contrast, the response from Viacom-CBS was clear and strong. In their statement, they did not share having constructive conversations with Cannon, or that they were ready to take the next steps. They fired Cannon. In further contrast to the Eagles statement, Viacom-CBS concluded its statement by declaring they are committed to doing better in our response to incidents of anti- Semitism, racism, and bigotry.

Those who quote Hitler, who espouse conspiracy theories, who claim that Jews seek to oppress others, who invoke stereotypes of Jews, who deny the Holocaust, who claim Israel is committing genocide, or who claim that Jews are not a Semitic people are not ignorant of history and truth; they are anti-Semites. Those who are associated with and who support individuals such as Louis Farrakhan and organizations such as Nation of Islam are not misinformed; they are anti-Semites. Similarly, the corporations, employers, fans, media outlets, organizations, universities, voters, and others that condone or overlook anti- Semitism in any form and who fail to extinguish it are part of the problem. They are proof that you are the company you keep.s

See the rest here:

You are the company you keep - Jewish Community Voice

Its been 10 years since The Kids Are All Right, a queer family dramedy that was the darling of that years Sundance Film Festival, charted an unlikely ride to the Oscars and helped shift popular opinion about gay marriage.

Written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and directed by Cholodenko, the movie arrived as attitudes about gay rights were shifting dramatically. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore starred as a couple whose long marriage had grown stale, further strained by an emptying nest. As their eldest child prepares to leave for college, she hatches a plan with her teen brother to meet their biological father, an Echo Park-dwelling free spirit played by Mark Ruffalo. Tensions escalate as Moore and Ruffalo embark on a secret affair, the kids launch into full rebellion, and Bening unravels with boozy abandon.

While controversial in the LGBTQ community upon release for depicting a lesbian having an affair with a straight man, the movie has now been embraced universally, even by GLAAD. The project has earned lasting cinematic admiration as a portrait of queer people that does not exploit the communitys struggles, but elevates their averageness. Its also widely seen as a valentine to Los Angeles, given Cholodenkos flair for exposing the richness of a town known for palm trees and billion-dollar zip codes.

Variety has unearthed the untold history behind the film, which earned four Academy Award nominations including best picture. Ruffalo had fired his agents and was ready to retire from acting before the film revived his career. Jodie Foster (who wasnt out at the time) passed on the lead role that eventually went to Bening. Quentin Tarantino called the movies climax one of the scariest scenes hed ever seen on screen.

The cast and filmmakers reflect on the decade since we first saw The Kids Are All Right:

Cholodenko was living in Los Angeles in 2004, and had just finished shooting Laurel Canyon, a very different look at California families, starring Frances McDormand as a wild rock star and Christian Bale as her strait-laced son.

Choldenko: I was getting settled in a new place after living in New York for 10 years. My girlfriend said, Get your butt downstairs and start writing your own thing. Youre not going to keep taking jobs for hire. So she shoved me in the apartment downstairs and I started writing The Kids are All Right. I got to about page 20, and I could tell that it was a bit rarefied. I could tell that I was getting into something that I didnt want to get into. I wanted to take this subject and make it a comedy, and make it broader, and play with it in a way that I hadnt with the other stuff that I had done.

Bening and Moore in The Kids Are All RightSuzanne Tenner

Blumberg, the writer-director of Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrows Thanks For Sharing, saw his acquaintance Cholodenko at the 101 Cafe, the legendary diner at the base of L.A.s Beachwood Canyon.

Blumberg: Lisa told me that she and her then-partner were trying to have a kid with a sperm donor, and she was thinking that would be a cool idea for a movie. I said, Wow, thats weird. In college I was a sperm donor, and I always wondered if I have kids and what would happen if they tried to find me. Then the lightbulb just went off.

A lot of guys I knew donated sperm to pay for their spring breaks or to get money for pizza. Honestly, the way I rationalized it for myself was there are people out there who want kids and cant have kids. If they say my stuff is good, then why not me as opposed to somebody else? I did it my junior year of college. They tested me out, said I had good motility, and I donated. I dont know if I have kids. I might have zero, I might have 10.

Anyway, I told Lisa I always thought she was so amazing, and she should try to write something more commercial. She told me, Oh, fuck you! You should try to write something more independent. And then she asked if I wanted to start work dating, and it became this multi-year process.

Their script attracted interest from major studios like Disney and the indie kingpin Miramax, which was still under the control of Harvey and Bob Weinstein. But life was about to imitate art.

Cholodenko: I brought it to Nina Jacobson, who was running Disneys Buena Vista Group. She had just worked with Wes Anderson, so she seemed interesting. We had a nice conversation, but it wasnt for them. There was other interest, but it was not robust. The most interest, weirdly enough, was from Miramax. At the time, I was also trying to get pregnant, and it happened. I had to sit with that. I had a cast, which was different originally, and then the Weinsteins wanted to do this. I said, Time out. Im not ready.

Moore: I met Lisa at a Women in Film event, and I said, How come I never saw the script for [her first film] High Art? She told me, I think you were working. I said, I know I wasnt.

Then she sent me the Kids Are All Right out of the blue. I remember our initial conversations, it took a really long time to get set up. At the time, she said I could choose either part. I wanted to play Jules, because it was something I had never played before. We were finally ready to get going, and then Lisa got pregnant with her son.

Blumberg: We probably rewrote that script fully about eight to 10 times. We had independent financiers going, Why would I make this movie about two 50-something lesbians?

Cholodenko: I worried about that. Plus all of these A-list, very well respected actors were interested. I couldnt understand, when I was taking it around, and people said, Im not sure, and, Is it interesting enough? I was proud that we went to the mat to take the political correctness out of it.

The film landed financing for a tight 24-day shoot in 2009. Moores character Jules, a wispy organic Angeleno who drifted from career to career, would be partnered with Nic a doctor whose nightly wine intake eased the pressure of breadwinning. Their offspring were the academic golden child Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her adolescent brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson, before The Hunger Games had made him a household name).

Bening: I had met Lisa socially, because we live in the same neighborhood. She asked me to do it. I think Julianne and I maybe had a couple of rehearsals over two days. One of the privileges, as an actor, is that you have an immediate intimacy with each other. Thats what were used to doing. Julianne is very experienced, and Ive made a few movies, and thats the job. The writing was very good, and everything starts and ends there. Lisas process is very straightforward, and shes very observant. Shes watching and listening, not interfering, and she knows where to put the camera. Mia and Josh were so good, and so ready, and real.

Josh Hutcherson: I didnt read the script before I went in. My audition for Laser happened three weeks before production started. It was very quick. Lisa is the shit, and so talented, and such a fantastic director and writer. There was a sense of truthfulness and honesty in the family dynamic. We had one day of rehearsal, we didnt even read the script, we just went to a park and hung out. We all gelled.

Mia Wasikowska: They were the best moms. It was one of those things where everyone was immediately warm, and that helps when youre a slightly awkward teenager like I was at the time. Playing Joni, she sort of mirrors what the family is going through itself. I remember, I was probably quite shy anyway, but I think people might have been a bit nervous about me yelling at Annette and Julianne in some of our scenes. I had quite a bit of anxiety about it, but it was fun to let loose at a couple of amazing actors I grew up watching.

The films third lead was Paul, the sperm donor, a role that had previously attached actors Ewan McGregor and Peter Skarsgaard in various stages of development. With weeks to go, Moore turned to her friend Sunrise Coigney, to see if her husband Ruffalo might be interested.

Ruffalo in The Kids Are All RightSuzanne Tenner

Ruffalo: I was ready to hang it up as an actor and look towards directing. I pretty much had disbanded my team, I didnt have an agent or manager anymore. The things that were getting me down was the business, and what the priorities were. I had good people, but I had lost my joy for it. Then this happened. I got nominated for an Oscar, and I started getting calls. It sort of rejuvenated my career and my feelings about acting. It was a different kind of role for me, and people started to see me in a different kind of way.

Cholodenko: The timing is such that I think it helped. He got an Oscar nomination, and that almost didnt happen. I didnt even work with him before day one. We had a hug, went into the trailer and looked at some leather jackets, and then he walked on the set. That was it.

Ruffalo: Filming this movie, I was very aware that it would be what I thought was my swan song. I came to it with this kind of openness and fearlessness that I hadnt felt since I was a young actor. Working with a gay director, in this particularly important moment, and having it be led by a story about a gay couple I knew that it would have the appeal that it ended up having. I fucking fooled everyone! You wouldnt have Bruce Banner without this queer Focus Features indie. I love that.

The script did not shy away from frank explorations of sexuality, both straight and queer. In one scene, Laser discovers that his mothers enjoy watching gay male porn.

Blumberg: We were at this deli called Victors near Beachwood Canyon, and we were talking and she threw that out. Because I am a white cisgender male, I can see things that she couldnt.

Cholodenko: We were younger, we would have these saucy conversations when we were writing, kind of picking into each others lives. I mentioned that a lot of gay women do that. He said we should put it in the film, and I was like, Theres no way Stuart. Im not putting that in here. It was too intimate, or something. He was like, Its funny. Who cares?

Ruffalo, who had broken out 10 years earlier with an acclaimed performance in the indie You Can Count On Me, had never been cast as a playboy let alone one of Pauls sexual prowess. Ruffalo shot his sex scenes with both Julianne Moore and Yaya DaCosta, the gorgeous Tanya, an employee at Pauls farm-to-table restaurant (shot in Cypress Park).

Yaya DaCosta and Ruffalo in The Kids Are All RightSuzanne Tenner

Ruffalo: Paul was so far from me. Honestly, it was at that time that my brother had passed away, and my brother had these easy vibes, an easy sexuality, a real sense of fun and joie de vivre. He also had alternative points of view, so a lot of that character was [my brother] Scotty.

My feeling was, maybe no one wants to see me do a sex scene anymore, and my wifes like, Youre right. I did have her OK it, and because she said its Julianne and I trust her, youre allowed to do this. My first day at work, first scene, was with Yaya DaCosta and I threw out my back.

Lisa says, Stand in the middle of the room naked. And I want to see your ass, and youre just out there doing it like two animals. So I told Yaya It was nice to meet her, and I apologized in advance.

DaCosta: Tanya was dope, and he was lucky to be hanging out with her! While it wasnt about her being Black, the choice in me to play that role definitely gave some information to the audience about what kind of a dude he was, you know? She was sort of a huge living adjective serving his character.

Among the films pivotal moments was a 12-page dinner scene, where Benings character discovers her wife is having an affair with their sperm donor. The realization comes with an other-worldy tracking shot around Benings face, which many argued landed her the Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Cholodenko: The end of that scene, it was the end of the night. We had to get that shot, and I remember my DP saying, Im going to put the camera on a slider and were going to over crank it so its slow motion. I certainly could relate to that feeling of learning something and being in shock, and having to handle it.

Blumberg: Shes in her own private hell. That was deliberate on the page and Lisa brought it home. I remember Lisa saying she talked to Quentin Tarantino about the film, and he said, Lisa, man, that was one of the scariest scenes Ive ever seen in movies.

Bening in The Kids Are All RightSuzanne Tenner

Bening: Lisa and Stuart somehow knew that the way the movie goes along you dont think about the camera, it never calls attention to itself. But she did that deliberately, because she doesnt do that in any other moment. She draws out and dramatizes that moment in a way that is like handing you a gift as an actor.

The finished film headed to Sundance in 2010 with a great deal of buzz. For Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski, who at the time handled international sales, it was the only movie he cared to see.

Kujawski: It felt naturally like the kind of story we wanted to bring into the world. I drew the straw to see the other things that night, because the majority of international territories had been sold. I remember sitting in another movie, and I dont remember what it was, and I was texting the whole team when I knew they got out. My phone exploded, people absolutely loved it.

Wasikowska: I was so new to all of that, and I dont think I knew at the time how amazing that was. But it was a dreamy experience, the screening and the buzz afterwards. Lisa and her managers and a few people around the dinner table after the screening, they were already in negotiations to sell it and I didnt even know what they meant. Someone said, It got sold! and I said, Great! I didnt know it wasnt sold!

Hutcherson: We were in the Eccles Theater, and I hadnt seen it yet. Were sitting there and watching, and everyone was laughing a lot, and I was very confused. I had read the script and thought it was a family drama. And I thought, shit! This is a dark family comedy. That went right over my little naive head.

Focus landed the film for $4 million, and released it on July 30, 2010. This came two months after the Season 1 finale of Modern Family, and in the thick of preliminary hearings and national discourse about gay marriage. The producers and studio were shocked to see that many lesbians were offended by the film, particularly over the fact that Moores character slept with a man.

Cholodenko: The only people that really, I think, took umbrage with the film were lesbians, who were like, Oh, the trope. And shes with the man. And I was like, Im not having it. Im not saying anything about anything. Im just saying its all on the table and its all fine.

Moore: I can see why people took issue with a lesbian character having an affair with her sperm donor. On the other hand, I think that Jules character was someone described as being very fluid, sexually and personally. She was floating, in the sense of her entire identity as a woman, as a person, in her career.

There was also criticism, at the time, in the queer press about how Bening and Moore were both straight actors playing gay roles.

Moore: Ive thought about that a lot. Here we were, in this movie about a queer family, and all of the principal actors were straight. I look back and go, Ouch. Wow. I dont know that we would do that today, I dont know that we would be comfortable. We need to give real representation to people, but Im grateful for all of the experiences that Ive had as an actor because my job is to communicate a universality of experience to the world. The idea that, rather than othering people, were saying were all the same. Our humanity is shared.

Cholodenko: Super interesting argument. It really is. I tend to err on the side of, Its make believe, and its of the discretion of the director whos the most compelling for that job. So, I dont think its mutually exclusive. While I want to promote gay people representing gay people, trans people, all the rest, queer people its also a commercial prospect. Its all those things.

When I cast Julianne and Annette, I really felt like, on the continuum of gayness, I could feel their gayness. It didnt feel phony to me. I didnt feel like I was putting somebody in an outfit and asking them to parade as something that was false. There was a conversation about going out to Jodie Foster. I think somebody even asked her. So there was a gay person who wasnt interested in portraying a gay person.

Jodie Foster (over email):I honestly dont remember it being offered to me. I really like Lisa Cholodenko. Weve met socially a few times since the film came out. Funny she never mentioned this anecdote to me. FYI, I dont like it when journalists mention parts that were passed on by other actors. It diminishes the actors who DID play the role beautifully. I have NEVER commented on films that I passed on. I find it disrespectful to the artists by creating a gratuitous public competition. Im pretty sure all of my peers would agree. It has been an issue of discussion with some of the actresses I have worked with.

Foster, again, hours later: I was just looking at the dates for the Kids Are All Right release. I was prepping and then shooting The Beaver at the same time as they were doing their film. (our release got pushed into 2011 although was slated for Fall of 2010. We missed the Cannes lock picture date for that Spring of 2010 because the edit wasnt ready. Went onto do reshoots in the summer 2010. Remember?) I acted in and directed that film. I wasnt available in the time period of Kids Are All Right shoot.

Five years after The Kids Are All Right released, gay marriage was legalized in the U.S. The cast and filmmakers feel that legacy today.

Bening: One of the most incredible things that happened was, after the film came out, I was on a trip to Cuba with the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences]. We were part of this international outreach committee, so we got to go to the major film festival there. Sadly in Cuba, theyre so forward thinking in many ways but in the revolution, one of the things they really got wrong was gay people, and they were very repressive to gay people. When I landed and walked through the airport, a young guy came up to me and grabbed my arm, and had seen the film. He said that he was able to show it to his family. He said that because they had all watched it together, it made a huge difference in their understanding and acceptance of him being gay.

Ruffalo: What made that movie so powerful is that it wasnt a polemic. It was people watching themselves their own relationships, whether they were straight or gay, thats why it had such a cultural impact. Folks saw these people are really no different than them.

Cholodenko: Recently, I was doing something at the American Film Institute, and a woman from somewhere in China, came up to me and said, I just want you to know that part of why I wanted to become a filmmaker, and actually something that really changed my life was getting a bootleg of Kids Are All Right. It was banned in China, and it changed everything in my life for me. I could see myself, finally.

And things like that, where youre just like, Fuck! That should be so easy to see. You forget that youre doing something that could really touch people, because they dont get to see themselves.

Read the original here:

The Kids Are All Right Turns 10: The Untold History of the Queer Family Classic - Variety

NEW YORK So you've probably read a lot about cancel culture. Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper's Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what cancel culture is? Some takes:

It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity, says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense.

I dont think its real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it, says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didnt talk about cancel culture when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldnt afford the bail.

"'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

It means different things to different people, says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn't know what it was.

Confusing debates

For some, cancel culture is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn't exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular cancellations include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose, Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech."

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don't share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper's. It warned against a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she did not know who else" had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel The Satanic Verses, numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own," the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper's letter. ('Cancel culture' ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as canceled, nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. Canceled is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person whos been held to account."

'Boomerrang effect'

Cancel culture is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in All the Money in the World replaced by Christopher Plummer's.

Others are only partially canceled. Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously canceled Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest a country that oppresses black people and people of color." But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero, says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith.

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren't enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture far-left fascism and the very definition of totalitarianism while so far proving immune to it.

Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn't survive, Packer says.

I think you can say that Trump's rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society, says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book Dare to Speak, which comes out next week. People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

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Everywhere and nowhere: The many layers of 'cancel culture' - Gloucester Daily Times

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No One Asked Me But I have just completed reading two books written by two men who served American presidents as their National Security Advisor. One, John Bolton, came from a career in the Washington, D.C. bureaucracy. The other, Colin Powell, from a career in the American military.

When John Bolton left the position of National Security Advisor to President Trump he did so in the mood of vengeance against what he perceived to be an unstable and incompetent leader.President Trump in his never-let-a-criticism-go-unanswered manner helped Mr. Bolton sell his book entitled The Room Where it Happened.

If indeed you are looking for something new or insightful, I would suggest you skip this book. There is nothing there that you have not already heard 100 times on CNN or CNBC.

Mr. Bolton did, however, confirm for me the fact that elected officials in Washington have not run the country for years. According to Mr. Bolton, President Trumps major fault was that he refused to merely rubber stamp the actions of the professional bureaucrats who have run the country.

Abraham Lincoln faced an issue with his cabinet when they all voted against the presidents proposal. President Lincoln said I vote aye. That is seven nays and one aye. The aye has it.

This is not the leadership desired by profession bureaucrats. Those who watched the recent impeachment hearings saw that the complaints of the bureaucrats who testified were not of any criminal activity on the part of President Trump but that he refused to do as the bureaucats told him.

If you are interested in how a real leader thinks, you will enjoy Colin Powells book My American Journey. Most of the rest of this column is made up of examples of the wisdom of Colin Powell. This wisdom led to his gaining the highest military rank in America and becoming the confidant of numerous presidents.

While these are the words of Colin Powell, I like to think they reflect the leadership principles I followed in the rather lowly leadership positions I have filled in my life. If this is true, it may well be due to the fact that we both learned our leadership qualities in the American military.

It is important to find ways to make individuals feel important and part of something larger than themselves. Therefore, traditions and rituals remain essential for they instill a sense of belonging and importance in these people. However, being in charge means making decisions, no matter how unpleasant. If its broke fix it. being in charge means sometimes making people mad.

Gen. Powell states: Incompetence, corruption, and flashy dress seems to increase as a direct ratio to rank. dont be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world. Dont be afraid to challenge the pros Moments of stress, confusion, and fatigue are exactly when mistakes happen. people want to share your confidence, however thin, not your turmoil, however real.

We elect a President to run the country, but Presidents soon discover that they dont necessarily control the machinery of government. Their wishes are often thwarted due to the fact that as President Franklin Roosevelt observed: the federal bureaucracy is a huge beast: you kick it in the tail and two years later it feels the sensation in the brain.

When confronted with bureaucratic nonsense Gen. Powell advised one should fulfill those requirements with a minimum of effort and then go on with the things that really matter. Dont wrestle with the pig, the pig has fun and you just get dirty. Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than management says is possible.

Gen. Powell advises that, Bad news in not like wine; it does not get better with age. Loyalty means giving the leader advice even if he doesnt like it. If he accepts the advice fine; if not, once a decision is made loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.

Something the CCSD leadership should learn is: The field commander is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proven otherwise. The field commander is on the scene, feeling the terrain, directing troops, facing and judging the enemy.

The quote below explains Colin Powells political philosophy and explains why I would vote for him: I am a fiscal conservative with a social conscience. Neither of the two parties fits me comfortablyI am troubled by the political passion of the extreme right I am put off by extreme liberals who claim to know what is best for society but devote little thought to who will eventually pay the bills. I distrust rigid ideology from any direction the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge to represent this sensible center of the American political spectrum.

Explaining why he is not interested in getting involved in the present political world, he states:I feel that civility is being driven from our political discourse. Attack ads and negative campaigns produce destructivedebate. television and radio talk shows, and print media chasing afteraudiencesdisplaces reasoned dialogue. any public figure espousing a controversial idea can expect to have not just the idea attacked but his or her integrity. And Lord help anyone who strays from accepted ideas of political correctness.(they) will be met with cries that the offender be fired Mr. Powell indicates we seem to have lost our sense of shame as a society.

What is his answer to these problems? We have to start thinking of America as a family. start caring for, sacrificing for, and sharing with each other. stop constantly criticizing.get back to the can-do attitude that made America.

These are the qualities I would like to see in our next President, and presently, I do not see any candidate that will fill those hopes and dreams for the America that I love.

If you think the riotous minority that are burning our cities and murdering our inner city residents are not a threat to America let me remind you that the revolution that established this country was supported by less than one third of the people in the colonies at the time.

While the majority of the law abiding American citizens quietly stand by, they may very well see the country where they grew up disappear.

Thought of the week The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. Eugene McCarthy

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No One Asked Me But (July 29, 2020) - mvprogress

The prospect of federal agents being deployed to Chicago marked the realization of long-held conservative aspirations.

Conservative media for decades have painted Americas third-largest city as a national hub of gun violence and gang activity, crippled by what they see as political correctness thwarting real solutions.

Now President Donald Trump is indulging the dream more than any national leader in recent history, attempting to turn a major liberal city into an election-year example of his pledge to deliver law and order across the country. The presidents drumbeat of attention on Chicago with a pledge to send in hundreds of federal agents to quell the citys gun violence problem has turned into a stampede of voices designed to rally his troops in the culture wars.

If I were mayor of Chicago, I would be begging the president to help me out here in terms of providing more resources to control gun violence, said John Lott, a prominent conservative gun researcher frequently cited by the National Rifle Association.

Lott, president of the pro-gun Crime Prevention Research Center, accused city leadership of years of neglect due to politically correct restrictions, budget reductions and cuts to the police force, leading to lower conviction rates for murders and fewer disincentives against crime. And he said Trumps overtures should be welcomed.

I wouldn't be yelling at him and calling him a racist for trying to help, because the people that are having their lives destroyed are poor Blacks, Lott said.

The federal government in recent weeks has deployed agents to Portland, Albuquerque, Seattle and Chicago. In Portland, and to a lesser degree in Seattle, federal agents are backing up police, guarding federal buildings and arresting protesters en masse with dubious methods. In Portland, that move has only fueled protests, prompting thousands of people to take to the streets, inadvertently creating riotous scenes that press secretary Kayleigh McEnany is, quite literally, broadcasting from the press room podium.

Story continues

Law and order will prevail, she told reporters last week as she played a dramatic video from Portland during a briefing. As you can see, that is anything but a peaceful protest. And this president will always stand on the side of law and order.

The process toward law and order is similar in Albuquerque and Chicago, where the agents are being assigned to work behind the scenes with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Other cities on Trumps potential list include New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, Calif.

Though Chicago has been the focus of conservative complaints for decades, at least dating back to the 1968 Chicago riots during the Democratic National Convention, Trumps recent actions capped off years of threats to send the feds into major cities for myriad reasons such as solving homelessness or ridding communities of undocumented immigrants. This time, Trump and his allies say weeks of protests against police brutality, white nationalism and Trump himself have turned into a nationwide spasm of antifa violence. If liberal city leadership cannot deal with it or, at least, push back against the visuals spreading across conservative media then it was up to Trump to fix it.

Liberals see it as a spectacle by Trump and his allies to distract from soaring coronavirus cases and a tanking economy just over three months from Election Day. The focus of his efforts are cities and towns whether Chicago or Portland that he wont win in November anyway. His effort to fight violence is a show for the rest of the country.

What Trump is doing now and I think this is part of his motivation is to portray cities as dystopic hubs of illegality and crime. And theres a heavy racial component to that, said David Axelrod, a longtime Chicago resident and senior adviser to President Barack Obama. I think its a strategy to try to scare particularly suburban voters back into his column.

Trumps views on Chicago were fueled in part by the rights focus on Obama, who during his administration sought to reduce gun violence by banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Theres no doubt that when Obama became president that the right wanted to use Chicago against him. It was his hometown, Axelrod said. The fact that Chicago was his hometown was something that intrigued Trump notwithstanding that he built Trump Tower here and had some regard for the city, or he wouldnt have built here.

Trump also poked at Chicago during Mayor Rahm Emanuels administration, likely, said Axelrod, because Emanuel worked as Obamas chief of staff. Rahm was associated with Obama. They were impetuses for him.

The fact that three Chicago mayors Richard M. Daley, Emanuel and now Lori Lightfoot sometimes criticized Trump regarding his lack of action on guns also may have irked Trump, who grates at any criticism.

Rev. Michael Pfleger, a gun control advocate whose Catholic parish is in the heart of the citys South Side, where gun violence has been pervasive, said the NRA has fueled the rhetoric about violence in Chicago.

They dont deal with statistics or data, he said. Chicago isnt even the most violent city in the country. The NRA deals in fear. It loves to glorify crime and violence in the Black community. More recently, its gotten help from the president who has created a racial divide greater than Ive seen in a long time.

Though Chicagos crime stats are lower than those of other major cities, no one doubts the city has a gang violence problem. One reason is that guns are so readily available which a City of Chicago study found are mostly coming from Indiana. And in recent weeks, Chicago has seen a spike in shootings and murders of children a development that has drawn repeated attention from Trump and his aides.

Lightfoot, the current mayor, said she welcomes federal support to assist agencies such as the ATF, DEA and FBI, all of which have offices in Chicago. We do not need or want troops, she said in a recent statement, referring to the type of federal involvement occurring in Portland.

Conservatives have wanted the federal government to take control of crime in Chicago for decades long before Trump got into politics.

In the 1960s, the city was a hub for riots, and that reputation stuck after violence erupted during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

But it wasnt until the 1980s that the right, especially the NRA, started zeroing in on Chicago, which had instituted a ban on handguns. In the 1990s, under the direction of then-mayor Daley, the city filed suit with families of murder victims, claiming the gun industry was to blame for Chicagos violence. The suit accused gun manufacturers of blanketing the city and its suburbs with guns.

It took six years to get the case to the state Supreme Court, which in 2004 ruled against Daley. In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court then ruled in a landmark case against Chicagos ban on handguns. During the many years of court battles, the NRA and the right perpetuated the idea of Black-on-Black crime, a racist trope that has been used to instill fear especially in suburban white communities.

It became a political fight, a distraction, said Gary Slutkin, CEO and founder of Cure Violence Global, a Chicago-based group that trains residents to stop violence in their own communities. Each side blamed the other and neither properly stepped forward to find a solution.

Slutkin sees a similar political battle being waged in the middle of trying to control the Covid-19 pandemic. The political fight is a distraction from solving the problem, he said.

Three months from a general election, Trump is trying to energize the same suburban white communities that the NRA focused on years ago. One of the gun lobbys targets has long been the citys gun possession laws and how they differ from other cities.

It's really in Chicago that they're saying, Look, you do have all these strict gun control laws, and it's not actually doing anything about crime. So you shouldn't put restrictions on guns, said Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics.

Trump himself has falsely claimed that the city has a handgun ban, citing it as a reason the city is soft on guns, when in fact Illinois allows concealed carry.

Chicago also became a useful tool of deflection from other mass shootings over the past decades, such as Sandy Hook, the Las Vegas Strip and Pulse Nightclub, Hemmer said.

Whenever one of these mass shootings happens, it moves public sentiment towards gun control, she said. And so talking about Chicago is a way of deflecting the conversation.

Read the rest here:

Trumps Chicago theater: Guns, violence and a conservative offensive - Yahoo News

NEW YORK So you've probably read a lot about "cancel culture." Or know about a new poll that shows a plurality of Americans disapproving of it. Or you may have heard about a letter in Harper's Magazine condemning censorship and intolerance.

But can you say exactly what "cancel culture" is? Some takes:

"It seems like a buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity," says the author and journalist George Packer, who went on to call it "a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense."

"I don't think it's real. But there are reasonable people who believe in it," says the author, educator and sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom. "From my perspective, accountability has always existed. But some people are being held accountable in ways that are new to them. We didn't talk about 'cancel culture' when someone was charged with a crime and had to stay in jail because they couldn't afford the bail."

"'Cancel culture' tacitly attempts to disable the ability of a person with whom you disagree to ever again be taken seriously as a writer/editor/speaker/activist/intellectual, or in the extreme, to be hired or employed in their field of work," says Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the author, activist and founding editor of Ms. magazine.

"It means different things to different people," says Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

In tweets, online letters, opinion pieces and books, conservatives, centrists and liberals continue to denounce what they call growing intolerance for opposing viewpoints and the needless ruining of lives and careers. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week shows 44% of Americans disapprove of it, 32% approve and the remaining 24% had no opinion or didn't know what it was.

For some, "cancel culture" is the coming of the thought police. For others, it contains important chances to be heard that didn't exist before.

Recent examples of unpopular "cancellations" include the owner of a chain of food stores in Minneapolis whose business faced eviction and calls for boycotts because of racist social media posts by his then-teenage daughter, and a data analyst fired by the progressive firm Civis Analytics after he tweeted a study finding that nonviolent protests increase support for Democratic candidates and violent protests decrease it. Civis Analytics has denied he was fired for the tweet.

"These incidents damage the lives of innocent people without achieving any noble purpose," Yascha Mounk wrote in The Atlantic last month. Mounk himself has been criticized for alleging that "an astonishing number of academics and journalists proudly proclaim that it is time to abandon values like due process and free speech."

Debates can be circular and confusing, with those objecting to intolerance sometimes openly uncomfortable with those who don't share their views. A few weeks ago, more than 100 artists and thinkers endorsed a letter co-written by Packer and published by Harper's. It warned against a "new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity."

The letter drew signatories from many backgrounds and political points of view, ranging from the far-left Noam Chomsky to the conservative David Frum, and was a starting point for contradiction.

The writer and trans activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who signed the letter, quickly disowned it because she "did not know who else" had attached their names. Although endorsers included Salman Rushdie, who in 1989 was forced into hiding over death threats from Iranian Islamic leaders because of his novel "The Satanic Verses," numerous online critics dismissed the letter as a product of elitists who knew nothing about censorship.

One of the organizers of the letter, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, later announced on Twitter that he had thrown a guest out of his home over criticisms of letter-supporter Bari Weiss, the New York Times columnist who recently quit over what she called a Twitter-driven culture of political correctness. Another endorser, "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, threatened legal action against a British news site that suggested she was transphobic after referring to controversial tweets that she has written in recent months.

"The only speech these powerful people seem to care about is their own," the author and feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in response to the Harper's letter. "('Cancel culture' ) is certainly not about free speech: After all, an arrested journalist is never referred to as 'canceled,' nor is a woman who has been frozen out of an industry after complaining about sexual harassment. 'Canceled' is a label we all understand to mean a powerful person who's been held to account."

"Cancel culture" is hard to define, in part because there is nothing confined about it no single cause, no single ideology, no single fate for those allegedly canceled.

Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, convicted sex offenders, are in prison. Former television personality Charlie Rose has been unemployable since allegations of sexual abuse and harassment were published in 2017-18. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has made no films since he faced allegations of harassment and assault and saw his performance in "All the Money in the World" replaced by Christopher Plummer's.

Others are only partially "canceled." Woody Allen, accused by daughter Dylan Farrow of molesting her when she was 7, was dropped by Amazon, his U.S. film distributor, but continues to release movies overseas. His memoir was canceled by Hachette Book Group, but soon acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, which also has a deal with the previously "canceled" Garrison Keillor. Sirius XM announced last week that the late Michael Jackson, who seemed to face posthumous cancellation after the 2019 documentary "Leaving Neverland" presented extensive allegations that he sexually abused boys, would have a channel dedicated to his music.

Cancellation in one subculture can lead to elevation in others. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has not played an NFL game since 2016 and has been condemned by President Donald Trump and many others on the right after he began kneeling during the National Anthem to protest "a country that oppresses black people and people of color." But he has appeared in Nike advertisements, been honored by the ACLU and Amnesty International and reached an agreement with the Walt Disney Co. for a series about his life.

"You can say the NFL canceled Colin Kaepernick as a quarterback and that he was resurrected as a cultural hero," says Julius Bailey, an associate professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University who writes about Kaepernick in his book "Racism, Hypocrisy and Bad Faith."

In politics, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, remains in his job 1 1/2 years after acknowledging he appeared in a racist yearbook picture while in college. Sen. Al Franken, a Democrat from Minnesota, resigned after multiple women alleged he had sexually harassed them, but Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of Virginia defied orders to quit after two women accused him of sexual assault.

Sometimes even multiple allegations of sexual assault, countless racist remarks and the disparagement of wounded military veterans aren't enough to induce cancellation. Trump, a Republican, has labeled cancel culture "far-left fascism" and "the very definition of totalitarianism" while so far proving immune to it.

"Politicians can ride this out because they were hired by the public. And if the public is willing to go along, then they can sometimes survive things perhaps they shouldn't survive," Packer says.

"I think you can say that Trump's rhetoric has had a boomerang effect on the rest of our society," says PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, who addresses free expression in her book "Dare to Speak," which comes out next week. "People on the left feel that he can get away with anything, so they do all they can to contain it elsewhere."

View original post here:

Everywhere and nowhere: The many layers of 'cancel culture' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

In the Venn diagram that is my professional world journalism, Jewishness and New Yorkiness the red-hot overlap belongs to Bari Weiss, until recently a writer and editor on The New York Times opinion pages. Before coming to The Times in 2017 as a putative contrarian voice, Weiss, now 35, cut her teeth on pro-Israel activism and Jewish journalism. When she announced her resignation earlier this month, it was a sensation among journalists, but also among Jews on the right and the left.

The Jewish right reviles The Times Israel coverage. They lamented the loss of what they consider one of its few pro-Israel voices (Weiss, the author of a recent book on anti-Semitism, claimed that her colleagues mocked her for writing too often about Israel) and a bulwark against political correctness. In her scorching public resignation letter, Weiss accused her bosses and colleagues of liberal groupthink.

Her liberal Jewish critics have accused her of sloppiness, hypocrisy and disingenuousness, saying she promoted discredited conservative ideas under the guise of free speech, blurred distinctions between anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, and sought to cancel writers with whom she has tussled.

From where I sit, rarely did the things she write and commission deserve the attacks she attracted (only among New York Twitterati, many suggest, would her centrist views be seen as far right). Even when I disagreed with Weiss, I looked forward to reading her. Id rather argue animatedly over something she wrote than nod with boredom over someone I always agree with. But she courted and welcomed controversy, and often her words and assignments seemed calculated to provoke exactly the reactions she now decries.

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The Weiss affair is tied up in current debates over wokeness, free speech, liberalism and, in Weiss case, gender and Israel politics. But one thing her resignation is not about is the death of American journalism, despite peoples efforts to portray it that way. Journalism is not the latest social media argument over this or that op-ed or tweet and whether it should have run or been written. Journalism is rarely what they are doing on cable news after 8 p.m., when panels of like-minded people agree to agree.

Andrew Silow-Carroll

The New York Times opinion section is journalism, of course, but only of a singular, if highly influential, kind. Like the paper itself, it tends to overshadow the more typical work of the thousands of reporters, editors and broadcasters who are trying to provide us with the diet of information that is essential to a healthy, functioning society.

So whats journalism? Its the small-town reporters who write up the days events, hold officials accountable and capture those moments a school honor, a retirement celebration suitable for framing, as Dan Barry recently put it. That these reporters are disappearing is a bigger blow to our democracy than the resignation of a celebrity pundit.

Journalism is the solid, dogged investigative work being done by nonprofits on everything from toxic chemicals in the environment to the opioid crisis to what it means to live on the minimum wage.

Journalism is about gaining access for us, the citizens to a massive federal database on coronavirus cases, and describing what it reveals about racial inequalities, as The Times did earlier this year.

Journalism is exposing a governments typically misleading statements, as Vox did in determining that U.S. Park Police did indeed use tear gas to disperse a crowd protesting outside the White House.

Journalism uncovers the true story behind a Republican presidents complex and deceptive finances (again, The Times) and behind a Democratic-led citys failed efforts to help its Black residents deal with the pandemic (The Washington Post, in an expos about its hometown).

Its the kind of storytelling that makes you take an interest in something through delightful writing and deep reporting that you never, ever thought youd care about. In other words, every issue of The New Yorker.

And at the risk of bragging, its the deeply knowing ethnic reporting done by my indefatigable colleagues at The Jewish Week, whether it is exposing sexual abuse in our community, chronicling the American-Jewish response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or helping readers find essential services and solace in the midst of a global health and economic crisis.

Thats not to say every medium is firing on all these cylinders every day. Mistakes and biases sometimes creep into news stories, or newsrooms dont always treat their staff as they should.

But journalism is essential to our reeling republic. Luckily there are lots of good people still in the game, going out there and finding the facts and shining light in dark corners. They do their jobs well, and often without fanfare, and sometimes at great risk to their own lives, and we are a better society for it. Dont let Twitter tell you any different.

***

The July 31 issue of The Jewish Week will be the last in print while we explore our options, digital and otherwise, going forward. To all the readers who have written to mourn the loss of print, Ill say this: I agree with you. But given our growing deficit and shrinking revenues it would have been irresponsible to continue publishing a print edition. We will use our hiatus to create a new model that will satisfy our loyal readers and find new audiences as well. In the meantime, thank you for supporting a storied Jewish newspaper, and welcome to the next chapter in Jewish journalism.

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What Journalism Is, and Isnt - Jewish Week

Just a day before the Harpers Open Letter appeared on July 7th, Osita Nwanevu wrote an article for The New Republic on The Willful Blindness of Reactionary Liberalism that made Matt Taibbi sound as if his name would show up there the next day. Indeed, in a convivial Rolling Stone podcast that Taibbi and his partner Katie Halper did with Thomas Chatterton Williams, the godfather of the letter regretted that he didnt have Taibbis email address otherwise he would have been invited.

Nwenevus article addressed the widespread assault on identity politics that makes it sound like the greatest threat to American democracy is diversity training seminars by Robin Diangelo, the author of White Fragility. Indeed, Matt Taibbi describedthe philosophy behind her book as positively Hitlerian.

This furor over cancel culture or what used to be called political correctness is not exactly new. I saw it as early as 1991 when Nat Hentoff was on the warpath against efforts to reduce racism at universities and the media, just as is happening today:

For 2 1/2 years, I have been interviewing students and professors across the country for a book Im writing on assaults by orthodoxies right and left on freedom of expression. Many specific incidents of political correctness with names have been printed in this column from those interviews.

One very bright young man at Brown, for example, told me he finally gave up offering his questions on affirmative action like What has it done for poor blacks? in class. He got tired of being called a racist, in and out of the room.

Just in case you hadnt noticed, Donald Trumps campaign was filled with tirades against political correctness. And after cancel culture became a ubiquitous buzzword, Trump made sure to take a stand against it. If you can spot any difference between the Harpers letter and his speech at Mount Rushmore, Id be amazed:

One of their political weapons is Cancel Culture driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.

Taibbi and Halper asked Williams to define canceling. He replied that there are two aspects, both often rooted in Twitter aggressions. The first might result in someone being fired from a job because they were politically incorrect, although it seems that JK Rowling neednt worry. Williams assured his hosts that he wrote the letter to protect those who were not so nearly as famous and powerful. While everybody should take a stand against people losing a job for their political beliefs, it struck Katie Halper as odd that Williams would have included Cary Nelson. Nelson campaigned for the firing of Steven Salaita in one of the most notorious cancellations of the past ten years. Williams begged off on that choice, saying that he knew nothing about Nelson beforehand. He trusted the judgment of his cohorts. Sure, why look too deeply into inconsistencies when a noble defense of free speech took priority.

More problematic was Williamss notion that canceling can put someone outside of polite, liberal society. By stigmatizing someone like Bari Weiss through repeated tweets, she ends up as a modern-day Hester Prynne with a scarlet letter. Taibbi was furious with how woke N.Y. Times reporters mounted a vendetta against her. It left the editorial page impoverished with its readers ending up with a picture of the world thats incomplete. Does Taibbi mourn the loss of her racist attacks on Palestinians and their supporters in the BDS movement? His silence during the exchange between Halper and Williams on Cary Nelson does make you wonder.

The overarching question is whether stigmatizing someone isnt just part of the battleground of ideas. When Max Blumenthal mysteriously began defending Basher al-Assad after attending an RT gala in Moscow, there were many tweets that canceled him, even leading to bookstores disinviting him from a reading. At the time, Blumenthals allies called this McCarthyism though neither the government nor the corporate elite had any interest in his book tour one way or the other. Blumenthal spoke for most of the left at the time, meriting red carpet treatment on the Taibbi and Halper podcast. If you have the slightest familiarity with left politics, youll realize that canceling has been around since the early 1900s. As long as it occurs only in heated polemics rather than firing squads, Id argue that it is essential.

Taibbi continued with his publicity campaign against the cancel culture. His next stop was a podcast with Bret Weinstein, an ex-professor at Evergreen State College in Washington and a victim of cancel culture, at least in his own eyes. In 2017, Weinstein, who was teaching biology there, clashed with minority students and faculty over a yearly day of remembrance, when they would stay off campus to highlight their contributions to the college. That year, the minority asked white students and professors to take part in a role reversal. They would remain off campus to discuss racism and the minorities would attend class on campus. Weinstein wrote an open letter denouncing this change as an act of oppression since it made a virtual demand for whites to stay away.

In the opening moments of their conversation, Taibbi repented for not making a big stink over Weinsteins ostracism and eventual resignation from Evergreen over student protests. Suing the school for $3.8 million in damage, Weinstein walked away with only a half-million.

One wonders if Taibbi looked into the case against Weinstein made by three Evergreen professors that year on Huffington Post titled Another Side of The Evergreen State College Story. One of them was Zoltan Grossman, who has written dozens of articles for CounterPunch over the years. The three make an essential point:

In order for a propaganda campaign to succeed, it needs a Big Lie. At Evergreen, the Big Lie is that Evergreens Day of Absence demonstrated reverse racism as whites were forced to leave campus because of the color of their skin. It is stunning to us how often this alternative fact has been repeated until it has become unchallenged truth. The truth is that the Day of Absence has long been an accepted and voluntary practice at Evergreen. On the Day of Absence, people of color who chose to do so generally attended an off-campus event, while whites who chose to participate stayed on campus to attend lectures, workshops and discussions about how race and racism shape social structures and everyday life.

Once they got past the Evergreen business, Weinstein and Taibbi settled into a litany of how bad things have gotten in the U.S. because of uppity anti-racist students dragging the country down. They struck me as two middle-aged men ready to write a book titled The Decline of the U.S. after the fashion of Oswald Spengler. They probably could make good money writing such a book since there is always a market for screeds against political correctness, identity politics, and that sort of thing. Usually written by conservatives like Allan Bloom (The Closing of the American Mind), they also have their liberal counterparts like Todd Gitlin, who wrote The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars in 1996.

Gitlin, who signed the Harpers letter, described himself in the book as sympathetic to blacks but was distressed by their retreat into what he felt were self-absorbed, symbolic politics, according to a N.Y. Times review. He wrote that few political campaigns are launched against the impoverishment of the cities and that The diversity rhetoric of identity politics short-circuits the necessary discussion of what ought to be done about all the dying out there. He had come to the same conclusions as Adolph Reed Jr., who also got the red-carpet treatment from Taibbi and Halper.

Weinstein gushed over Taibbis long record of courageous journalism as if writing take-downs of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump risked a jail term. Yes, Taibbi is entertaining, but how far can you go stating the obvious, even if scabrously. Id prefer a little less scabrousness and a lot more economic analysis. Thats one of the reasons I stopped reading Taibbi after the good old vampire squid days ended.

What stopped me in my tracks during the interview was Taibbi calling for an all-out crusade against a culture that was inimical to freedom, enlightenment values and the core ideas of our American experiment. Listening to this, I began to wonder if Taibbi wrote Trumps Mount Rushmore speech rather than Stephen Miller.

We had to protect this great experiment against men like Lenin, whose greatest fault, according to Taibbi, was a lack of a sense of humor. In one of his Sovietologist tomes, Adam Ulam dwelt at length about this flaw, something that helped Taibbi steer clear of anything smacking of Bolshevism. Unlike Lenin, Taibbi has a great sense of humor. Politics, not so much.

Taibbi compared BLM type activists to Lenins little clan of super-motivated Bolsheviks who were never going to go anywhere because they were tiny. They came across as nuts to the Russians, including the more sensible socialists in Russia who saw things like Bernie Sanders rather than the ruthless and joke-averse V.I. Lenin. The Bolsheviks were victorious in 1917, only because they had a way of thinking difficult to counter in an institutional setting. Really? I always thought it had to do with hunger and a war that had cost the lives of over two million soldiers. But what do I know? Ive never read Adam Ulam.

Weinstein then raised the stakes on the kind of danger cancel culture presented. Yes, it could lead to Bolshevism, but other even worse scenarios could unfold. The people writing nasty tweets about JK Rowling or Bari Weiss could be the incubators for the same sort of genocides Nazi Germany, Rwanda and Cambodia suffered. Like the fearless anti-fascists of Weimar Germany, Matt Taibbi and Thomas Chatterton are the only men capable of stopping mobs ready to beat up Jews. Bari Weiss must thank her lucky stars that she has such courageous defenders of enlightenment values on her side.

After spending what seemed like an eternity listening to Taibbi and Weinstein telling each other how great they were, I decided to learn a bit more about Weinstein. It turns out that he is a member in good standing of the Intellectual Dark Web, a term that Bret Weinsteins brother Eric coined. Eric Weinstein is the managing director of Peter Thiels private equity firm. You might remember Thiel for his vendetta against the Gawker website that outed him as gay. Writing for the Cato Institute, Thiel blamed welfare and women getting the vote for making capitalist democracy into an oxymoron. He is also the author of The Diversity Myth, a book that blames political correctness and multiculturalism for the decline of higher education.

Eric and Bret Weinstein are prime movers in the Intellectual Dark Web, whose ideas appear in Quillette. This I.D.W. outlet once asked the question why Jordan Peterson did not make it to a list of the worlds top fifty intellectuals. No one else did, of course. Unsurprisingly, Quillette has embraced the Harpers Open Letter, claiming that it stands in the tradition of John Stuart Mill. Mill is famous for invoking the marketplace of ideas, a concept that is distinctly at odds with A.J. Lieblings insight that freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. Given the roost Harpers signatories enjoy at prestigious magazines and newspapers, one can understand why they are so willing to give free advice. Let others start their own periodicals like Ariana Huffington. No money? No problem. Just use social media even if it pisses off liberals.

The Intellectual Dark Web got a big boost when Bari Weiss wrote an op-ed piece hyping a development that dovetailed with her agenda. She wrote:

Here are some things that you will hear when you sit down to dinner with the vanguard of the Intellectual Dark Web: There are fundamental biological differences between men and women. Free speech is under siege. Identity politics is a toxic ideology that is tearing American society apart. And were in a dangerous place if these ideas are considered dark.

She quoted Eric Weinstein: You have to understand that the I.D.W. emerged as a response to a world where perfectly reasonable intellectuals were being regularly mislabeled by activists, institutions and mainstream journalists with every career-ending epithet from Islamophobe to Nazi. This claim, of course, is made by Taibbi and the Harpers Open Letter.

Weiss also pays tribute to Joe Rogan, whose podcasts reach millions. If you have the patience to sit through the Taibbi-Weinstein lovefest, youll note that Weinstein considers Rogan and Taibbi as two of the most fearless and capable defenders of the great American experiment. Taibbi felt flattered by this salute. Maybe he wasnt aware of the controversy Rogan was embroiled in about a month ago. A video surfaced with him laughing at a friends story about coercing a woman into giving him oral sex. The Independentquoted an exchange from Rogans podcast:

Recalling a woman performing oral sex on him in the Comedy Store in California, Diaz says: You think Im fucking kidding? Yeah, youve got to suck my dick to get up to [venue] the Belly Room. Ill make a call for you. Thats the fucking gateway into Hollywood, everybody knows that.

Rogan then asks: How many girls did you have do that? To which Diaz replies: 20. Rogan bursts out laughing and claps his hands.

I imagine that Taibbi got a big laugh out of this since it reminded him of his days at the eXile, a Russian English-language magazine that put out the same kind of garbage regularly. It had graphic descriptions of women being raped and humiliated, something Taibbi would later describe as only fictional and satirical.

What wasnt fictional was Taibbis nasty attacks on female correspondents in Moscow who had gotten on his and his pal Mark Amess wrong side. The Washington Post reported on their antics, including Taibbis disgusting reference to Kathy Lally, the author of the article The two expat bros who terrorized women correspondents in Moscow. If there was anything satirical about this, I for one couldnt see it:

When I wrote an article about advertisements that used sex to sell cigarettes new for Russia Taibbi addressed my Baltimore Sun editors in his eXile column: Lallys article is pathological, illogical, inaccurate, makes no point, and is insulting and hypocritical besides. ... Lallys gaffes may be comic, the wild meanderings of an aging woman nearing derangement. Once, the eXile declared me the winner of its Gnarliest Elephantine Ass on a Journalist With No Ethics Award. Another time, it published a cartoon showing me in bed with my editor.

In a conversation he had with Reason Magazines Nick Gillespie, this kind of misogynism came up. Taibbi naturally regretted having said things like this even though you get the feeling that he remains nostalgic for the time when political correctness wasnt such a hamper to the funny stuff that Lenin would never have published in Iskra.

Back in the mid-2000s, I used to catch Taibbi on the Don Imus show when the local Pacifica station became too ponderous. They got along famously, especially when Taibbi opened up on some lying politician. Imus, like Taibbi, was a notorious bad boy and much less worried about offending people. After all, thats what shock jocks do. In 2007, Imus resigned after referring to the mostly Black Rutgers womens basketball team as a bunch of nappy-headed whores. Thats a victim of cancel culture, no? If it were up to Taibbi and the Intellectual Dark Web, restrictions on speech would be relaxed even if it made Black people hurt. This is what the culture clash is all about in the long run. Oppressed people have the right to challenge and overcome the racism that has haunted the U.S. since 1619, even if it pisses off powerful liberals.

Originally posted here:

Taibbi, Harper's and the Intellectual Dark Web - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you cant jail the Revolution.

Fred Hampton

As much as academics, celebrities,

friends or anti-capitalists may fret about being deplatformed in various

ways what about activists and unhoused people deplatformed of their

presence and existence by curfews and cops repression?

Tranquil Enes

getting canceled is what happend to heros like Steve Biko. Getting roasted for a Luke warm centrist/fascist take isnt getting canceled, its getting cuckholded

Austin Sankaran

What say the millions of jailed black and brown Americans to the fret over cancel culture? If they could say anything, we would know. But the real cancellation of black lives cannot be ignored as we attempt to assert a white opinion cosmopolitanism. How many Americans are canceled because of their neighborhood or their lack of one? How many Americans have had their literal lives canceled during coronavirus because they cant afford health care or cant afford to not work? How many immigrants are canceled because they cant even report this virus without being deported or caged? How many are canceled because of their record sheet or even specifically their race? Trans folks are canceled with near universality. Women dont have to worry about their abusers being canceled, they have to worry about the opposite. When was the last time a cop was canceled for murder? When was the last time a billionaire was canceled for slavery or ecocide?

The gambit by the right wing is that by pointing to liberal, yet authoritarian ruling class cultural institutions they can claim persecution when in fact the political and economic forces under this oligarchy increasingly favor the right to the point that it is nearing hegemony. Unfortunately, some on the left buy into this corporate cultural identification and fail to prioritize the class war against people of color on the ground. People of color and their allies are being canceled by bullets. Right now. Corporations who embrace cancel culture rejoice and collaborate in this class stratification through racial violence. Corporations may say they want to cancel bigotry but they really want to cancel the radical underclass by any means necessary.

The law is a paradox and merely a reproduction of the class hierarchy in a society with massive inequality. This is why I cant claim to be an ideologue but merely a person interested in the material consequences. The rich have too many police protecting them but not enough cops on the corporate crime beat. The opposite is true for the poor. Likewise the defunding of the police who generally police the poor through violence and jail will only work if we also find some way to hold the rich who cause poverty to be somehow held accountable. This is why we lose absolutely nothing by defunding the police. A new order will be formed. But it will be one that holds the corporate thieves accountable rather than locks up millions of black and brown folks because of the color of their skin.

The United States is a police state with mass incarceration. It has both occupying armies and slave cells to put in those who do not comply with the state. Similar use of force is used through a bloated military budget around the world. While the world is always on the verge of collapse amidst the class contractions of cruel survival for some and absurd excess for others we have the police as a force who cancels any resistance. These police arent on Twitter because they arent suppressing sketchy white twitter people. They have bigger fish to fry. A serious job of containing the underclass who doesnt believe in any of the shit coming from either the corporate duopoly or its cultural apparatus.

Those upset about cancel culture make the mistake of believing in said corporate structure. The underclass are canceled not because of what they say but because of who they are. Blue Lives Matter and cancel culture rhetoric is a defense of jobs that do not fit with their own ideals because of these class contractions and the limitations of democratization of any institution under austerity neoliberal regimes. Black Lives Matter and the states repression of it deals with the barbarity of being a person of the underclass in these times.

I am willing to accept that all of the trends in our society are related to the crumbling Empire, rapidly deteriorating ecosphere and the resulting heightening of class contradictions. I am willing to accept that just as police and the military have become more militarized to suppress the expression of the people neglected by the state, the media too has become a place less tolerant of dissent.

I am also to a point willing to accept the class reductionists claim that co-optation in the form of liberalism is one tactic used to subdue the real class crisis. But who is this propaganda working on? Or perhaps more importantly, how many people would actually classify as leftists in any traditional sense? What we have is a new order on the ground, one that is quite frankly not concerned by cancel culture because the cancellation of real protestors is not just cultural but also material.

The left can avoid getting stuck in a series of meta-narratives by simply saying cancel culture may be unfortunate but it is part of a broader problem of cancellation done by the state not because of political correctness but because of political necessity. The only way to satisfy the racist Republican base is law and order and the only way for Democrats to join in with the politics of austerity and war is to also join in with the law and order of suppressing their own base. This is why Democrats simply dont care that black and Latino people cant vote in this country. If they could the Republican Party would be toast and the Democrats would have to answer for what they do.

Why are people in cancel culture canceled? For some famous people its because they did something racist or sexually harassed somebody. For some like Adolph Reed or Meghan Murphy it is because they arent part of the consensus but clearly are part of the left we should have solidarity with even in disagreement. While we dont always give these people a fair trial it is also true that unless someone from the ground exposes them the corporate state doesnt really want to cancel them. Has cancel culture hurt our intellectual culture? Sure it has but doesnt it relate to a larger problem of solving problems through punishment and isnt cherry-picking the petty liberal cancellations buying into the right-wing narrative that liberalism is itself a repressive cultural apparatus that it is the cause for our problems? Isnt all of this shifting attention away from a non-ideological corporate oligarchy that doesnt believe in anything precisely because its language is force?

Real resistance is met with a real authoritarian state. We have seen this recently. Black people have always been the leaders of the struggle against the last protectors of the corporate state. Many black folks get it more right than white folks because there is no democracy for them to believe in precisely because they were never included in it.

Lets be honest about it. A black radical who can organize is killed in this country. Thats just the facts. Sure we may want an open discourse in society but it never has existed. If youre serious about taking on Empire and the corporations it protects, theyll kill you if they need to. The deadly force used against protesters recently is part of this tradition.

So the question to me isnt so much about free speech because even in this so-called free country the language of freedom itself has never been permitted. Bigotry may be canceled but the genocide of black people isnt. If such a contradiction exists how much can we even value the pure discourse? This is not to underestimate the power of true pedagogy and education. But this teaching is so much more than freedom of speech. Its about citizenship and critical thinking.

If we simply want a variety of opinions to be respected I again have to ask isnt this just a reproduction of the supposedly hegemonic liberalism that accepts diversity but never deals with class inequality? Because if we want the New York Times to add a left face and a right face to their multitudes of centrist ones isnt that just more diversity?

What we need is to organize first and accept debate and disagreement as part of a healthy left. Whether or not we agree hardly matters and therefore putting it as our primary right seems to be wrong. What we need to do is find other people who share our same goals and get together with them to achieve them.

This idea that everyone gets their own opinion is fine but its more or less a reproduction of the individualism of neoliberalism. When Fred Hampton was murdered it wasnt because he was a contrarian. It was because he organized people together under a common interest.

We have to be careful not to diminish the variety of ways human beings express themselves and how important art and music and literature is to any movement or any free life. However, if politics is a form of this aesthetic rather than the product of it then we have it backward. Art should inform our politics. Politics shouldnt be our art.

Politics at the end of the day is about community coming together to assert its class interest in the face of oppression. It involves putting yourself second. Anything less than that leaves a movement divided and weak. Part of the left project must be convincing people that the project of emancipation is bigger than any one of us.

Cancel culture may be a threat to this solidarity but it is only a product of a larger apparatus of repression of dissent. Resistance then is far more than resisting the hegemonic values embedded in corporate political correctness. It involves resisting the hegemonic corporate power expressed in material politics. Discourse alienated from the struggle on the ground is only used as a distraction from or apology for the brutality of the state.

The work on the frontlines then is this resistance to the police and the austerity politics they defend. Getting a word in may be possible down the line but until we address the true hegemony of Empire and corporatism upon the working poor and the environment I see the free speech debate as a distraction from the fundamental economic forces driving the repression of not only white voices in the left press but black bodies in the street. This is why I say give up the ideology and do the political work and we will see what real cancel culture looks like.

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Police Are The Real Cancel Culture - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

THE TV worlds of Doctor Who and The big Bang Theory go head to head as David Tennant and Jim Parson team up for a podcast next month.

The pair will join forces for the second season of David Tennant Does A Podcast With... among a host of other big names.

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And with the date confirmed as August 11th, fans could not get enough of the good news.

One simply said: "YESSSSSS!!!!!!"

Another added: "Jim Parsons and David Tennant 2 of my favourite actors."

A third put in a request and asked on Twitter: "Hopefully you bring up why he made the decision to leave the big bang theory".

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David, 49, premiered his first podcast season last year with interviews featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Gordon Brown and Jennifer Garner.

This time around 47-year-old Jim, who played the role of sci-fi fan Sheldon Cooper for 12 years, will kick off the conversation with the Doctor Who actor.

The second season will also features chats with Dame Judi Dench, Star Trek legend George Takei, Succession's and The Good Wife's Cush Jumbo - who also recently starred alongside David in Channel 4's Deadwater Fell.

Spoiler

SALLY TO THE RESCUECorrie's Sally confronts Geoff over his lies about Tim's mum Elaine

'didn't see that coming'Corrie's Elaine revealed as Tims mum & was forced to give him up

'ADORABLE'Kerry Katona's daughter Heidi stuns The Voice Kids fans with her amazing singing

Exclusive

BROTHERS TO LOVERSEmmerdale brothers Max Parker and Kris Mochrie are dating in real life

Spoiler

SHE'S BACK!Debbie Webster returning to Corrie to save Kevin from 'unsuitable' Abi Franklin

ELAINE'S PAINCorrie's Tim will reject mum Elaine when he finds out who she is

Others on the schedule include comedian Tim Minchin, US politician Stacey Abrams, The Handmaid's Tale lead Elisabeth Moss and Schitt's Creek's Dan Levy.

David, a father-of-five can currently be seen in episodes of BBC Two's There She Goes.

The comedy sees David and co-star Jessica Hynes play parents of a child with a severe learning disability.

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But David recently admitted the show left the BBC terrified of political correctness backlash for making light of disabilities.

In a chat with The Guardian, David revealed his pride in the way the show tackles its subject matter, even if it is an uncomfortable watch sometimes.

However, the cast and the BBC had had some trepidation about the show, because it lacked a certain sentimentality and political correctness there was a real fear he said.

Follow this link:

Doctor Whos David Tennant and The Big Bang Theorys Jim Parsons team up for TV-centric podcast - The Sun

Andres definition of racism is wrong

It was instructive to read ("Klamath Falls to form equity task force," July 22) about Todd Andres educating the city council on the nature of racism.

His definition is 100% wrong. His definition of racism is one race receiving benefits over another. His concept of benefits should be expanded. Historically, Black Americans received the benefits of plantation slavery, and today, the benefits of disproportionate mass incarceration, high mortality intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, and brutalization and death at the hands of big city police.

If Andres seriously wants to understand the difference between forward and reverse racism, he might imagine himself driving home in Minneapolis after a long day in the unemployment line, out of money and facing eviction. He rolls through a stop sign and gets pulled over, dragged from his car, beaten, tazed, and suffocated by a knee on the neck.

Andres ponders, Are we really, truly tackling the issue? Or are we ... doing something thats popular right now?

Does he mean that opposing the brutality just described is just a fad, an exercise in liberal political correctness? If so, he contradicts himself by emphasizing that racism is 100% wrong and that we must attack all racism.

Fair enough. We should attack the grant proposal for Black business owners with the same ferocity as we oppose the rampant killing of Black Americans. If I see Andres, that social justice warrior in executive clothing, out on the streets of Portland facing down the storm troopers with nude Athena, then Ill send a sharp message to Kate Brown opposing help for Black business owners.

Ed Silling

Klamath Falls

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Letter: Andres definition of racism is wrong | Letters - Herald and News

Then the pandemic and the protests upended Trumps case for reelection. Boasting about a 2017 tax-cut package or a rising stock market is unlikely to sway most of the millions of voters whove lost their jobs in recent months or know someone who died from Covid-19. This perhaps explains why polls show Trump losing considerable ground among voters on economic issues. A Washington Post-ABC News survey released this week found that he and Biden are effectively tied among voters when it comes to trust in their economic policies. Those numbers may grow even worse for the president if Congress fails to extend or supplement federal relief measures that are set to expire at the months end.

Without a positive message to draw upon, Trump is pouring all of his energy into painting Biden as a cognitively impaired figurehead of a far-left movement that wants to abolish cops and suburbs. White grievance politics helped Trump secure victory in 2016, so its understandable that he hopes to harness them again in 2020. I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country, he said when accepting the nomination speech four years ago. I will work with, and appoint, the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country to get the job properly done. In this race for the White House, I am the law and order candidate.

This theme took him all the way to his inaugural address, which struck an unusually divisive and negative tone for the occasion. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential, Trump said. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

But this strategy faces multiple shortcomings in 2020. First, its a wildly inaccurate description of Bidens policy stances. Second, Biden is perhaps the least convincing avatar of a purported leftist plot to destroy white America that Democrats could have put forth. (Discussions of Bidens cognitive state have also, thus far, largely revived debates around Trumps own mental faculties instead.) Third, its hard to claim a law-and-order mantle when youre granting clemency to former aides who lied to Congress on your behalf and overseeing a Justice Department that corruptly protects the White Houses friends from consequences.

Perhaps most importantly, however, its impossible for Trump to claim the dog-whistle meaning of law-and-order politics while Fox News is broadcasting wall-to-wall coverage of riots in major American cities. Media Matters for Americas Matt Gertz noted earlier this week that the president and his favorite news network appear to be locked in a strange feedback loop, where footage of protests on Fox inspires Trump to launch a federal crackdown that only provides more footage of protests. The subconscious goal by both the president and the network is to attribute this violence to the cities Democratic leaders, as if to say that Trump is all that stands between the mob and his voters.

This dynamic is dangerous for Americans on its own terms. I also suspect that this feedback loop is more harmful than helpful for the president himself. His first campaign took place amid an earlier wave of public reckoning with police violence and systemic racism. Trump pitched himself as a way to suppress that reckoning and to reverse the gains and achievements made by the nations first black president. To some extent, he succeeded. Colin Kaepernick lost his job. The Justice Department under Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr largely abandoned police reform. Rush Limbaugh, the archfoe of political correctness, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union address.

A more competent leader would have taken steps to confront these various challenges: by wielding the federal governments full power and influence to contain the pandemic, by urging Congress to approve more consistent direct aid to Americans to offset the economic damage, and by trying to address the nations racial inequities, if only superficially. Instead, Trump undermined the national pandemic response and took a sluggish approach to economic assistance for struggling Americans. Perhaps the defining moment of his response to last months civil unrest was his retreat to an underground bunker while protesters gathered outside the White House. A Trump voter who expected him to maintain Americas racial status quo can only conclude that he abysmally failed.

Ironically, what was once Trumps greatest political victory might turn out to be a curse. During the impeachment proceedings in January and February, Trump and his allies told the Republican-led Senate that removing him from office would be tantamount to deciding the upcoming November election. I noted at the time that in past impeachment proceedings, removal from office and disqualification from office were decided in two separate votes. In theory, 20 Republican senators could have voted to convict and remove Trump from office, then voted against permanently disqualifying him from holding it again. Trump would still have been free to run for reelection, leaving the final judgment on his political fate to the American people.

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Trump's Greatest Liability Is His Own Incumbency - The New Republic

Conflict can spawn creativity. The Great War brought a golden age of music hall for the Home Front, alongside the trench humour that helped keep some of those on the frontline going; the Second World War inspired a boom in art, poetry, music, film, literature, the NHS (eventually) and thousands of business patents. It also sparked plenty of "funny" as people sought to "keep smiling through".

In 1939, Lieutenant Ricketts wrote that "Hitler has only got one ball"; the comedian Tommy Handley (pictured, top) kept radio audiences entertained throughout the war on the BBCs Its That Man Again, while popular slogans such as "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases", illustrated by HM Bateman with lighthearted cartoons, were also coined. This particular example from the Ministry of Health is as true today as it was back then, and can be seen as a precursor to the NHSs more recent "Catch it. Bin it. Kill it" mantra.

There hasnt been much funny to see during the war on Covid-19 socially, economically, in advertising or in popular culture, as the country comes to terms with the greatest natural loss of life since the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed the First World War.

But with lockdown easing and society beginning to come to terms with how life has changed, following an extended period when agencies proved that they were capable of working from home, the days of stripped-back, austere and functional ads that have tried to display practicality, humanity and utility might be coming to an end in favour of something else.

While these Covid-era ads were steps into the unknown, it was inevitable that the limitations on their creation and production, as well as matters of taste and propriety, meant that many would end up looking the same. Weve all become familiar with empathetic ads featuring scenes of empty streets, and self-isolators stood in their windows applauding key workers, accompanied by a bland but supportive corporate message. And while they may have ended up looking the same, tonally they may have got it right; according to System1 research, ads that used emotion and launched during the pandemic were more effective than those that launched before it.

Nonetheless many people wont miss them. Indeed, some have sniped at their formulaic look. Andy Nairn, a founder of Lucky Generals, points out: "For the first time in advertising history, weve all been working on the same brief. And, not surprisingly, weve then all been making the same ads. And then (with delicious irony), weve all been making the same catty remarks about how similar they all are.

"In the short term, the rather conventional response is, arguably, forgivable: just as we dont berate funeral orators (and apologies for a metaphor which has been all too real recently) for using familiar devices, I think we can cut brands a little slack right now, if theyve followed well-worn paths. But now that were slowly moving into a new normal phase, theres no excuse for vanilla. In fact, with recession looming, its more important than ever to speak and act distinctively."

Research from Lucky Generals (conducted in May 2020), suggested that 90% of Britons agreed that "at the moment, its important to find joy in the small things" and that the same amount feel that "keeping a sense of humour is important in times like these". In fact, 85% believed that "British people often use humour to get through a crisis".

Some have even tried to use this approach during lockdown. Nicky Bullard, chairwoman of MRM McCann, says: "Of course, there is absolutely nothing funny about Covid-19. But there is something funny about joggers whove never jogged before. Or kids wanting a poo while you are on a conference call. Or the fumbling to turn off your camera, two minutes after youve already said goodbye. There may be a bit of a lid on it for now. And quite rightly. But as soon as funny creatives see a crack in the curtains, they are going to pull them wide open and let the sunshine in."

During the height of the crisis, ad colleges responded to the understandable prevailing sense of gloom and anxiety among students by issuing briefs that focused on humour and entertainment to engender a feeling of positivity, rather than the real briefs that were actually doing the rounds.

Marc Lewis, dean of School of Communication Arts in Brixton, explains: "The past few months have been about two extremes: some people are thriving and some are struggling terribly. People whom I speak to can go through a spectrum of emotions in a day. In an hour."

"Now that were slowly moving into a new normal phase, theres no excuse for vanilla" Andy Nairn, Lucky Generals

And from such diametrically opposed emotions, he thinks new forms of creativity could be inspired. "At the risk of sounding predatory or opportunistic (fuck it, I think it is important to be both, if we are to do our jobs as creatives and as leaders), this is such an exciting time to be a creative leader. This is our moment to bring meaning to peoples lives, to help them find themselves, to create connections, to promise hope, to provide a sense of release and relief. I am so excited to be able to sit back and soak up all the creativity that came from coronavirus and commercial creativity is a huge part of that."

But will we see "funny" an emotion that has been largely absent (both in pre- and peri-Covid times)? After all System1 identifies humour as valid as an emotional prompt as empathy. Ben Middleton, founder and chief creative officer at Creature, says that after the brutality of Covid-19 begins to subside, the ad industrys attention is likely to revert to sentimental type but hopefully only briefly.

"Post-lockdown is inevitably going to be a feelings-tsunami of hyper-sentimental films, featuring nervously hugging neighbourhood choirs, banging on about community, so humour, laughter and the lolz are going to be potent tools for making our client partners brands stand out from the crowd," he argues.

However after taking stock and properly preparing for life returning to his own version of "normal", he adds: "Personally, Im looking for the light at the end of the tunnel thats smirk-shaped. It might sound counterintuitive, and even a bit heartless to be pining for the funnies whilst our death-rate outstrips most of the developed world but, as were now meant to be on the downslope, I cant be the only one feeling perversely positive. One of the joys of our job is interrogating a brand or product to find its truth, and then presenting that insight to customers in a fresh and compelling way, thats going to persuade them to do something different. And telling a joke is a bloody good way to start those conversations."

Others are not so sure. Laughter might be the best medicine ha ha but it comes with inherent risks, given that so much of British humour traditionally involves someone taking the role of the punchline. At this point its mandatory to mention Howell Henry Chaldecott Lurys early-1990s Tango ads.

Tony Cullingham, Watford course leader at West Herts College, agrees that we all could do with some humour but thinks that societal expectations of advertising have changed. "Boy, do we need a laugh right now. Something to cheer us up," he says. "Id love to see a comedy renaissance in advertising. I just cant see it happening post Covid-19. The idea of funny ads died years ago when the juggernaut of political correctness shunted comedy into the ditch.

"The idea of funny ads died when the juggernaut of political correctness shunted comedy into the ditch" Tony Cullingham, West Herts College

"Comedy is based on human frailty-ignorance, idiocy and clumsiness traits, which are perceived as being insensitive and unkind. The women pissing themselves over the Harvey Nichols sales was funny ["Wet with excitement", DDB UK, 2012]. It was one of the most-awarded campaigns of the year. It was also the most complained-about ad of the year. Apparently, it was offensive to incontinence sufferers. Personally, I pissed myself laughing."

Quite whether many marketers will be brave enough to sign off ads that make some people piss themselves with laughter and others work themselves up to a tizzy in outrage is up for question.

Cullingham thinks not many will risk it: "Once we get back to our plastic-bubble desks, agency and marketing staff will be fighting hard to keep their jobs. They wont want to rock the boat with crazy, funny, wacky ideas. It will all be earnest, soul-searching, bleeding-heart stuff, driven by data and fear."

Thats not to say that "funny" has completely disappeared from UK advertising. Cullingham identifies 4Creative, Mother, Wieden & Kennedy and Droga5 London as the potential humour flag-bearers.

But will advertising embrace comedy post-Covid-19? "No. But occasionally it might get a social distancing hug from time to time," he opines.

The occasional social-distanced humour of Cullingham or "funny", bathed in all its sunlight, as described by Bullard? The creative jury is out. But much like the early socially distanced brand logos, maudlin Covid-19 advertising has run its course, and its time for something new. Humour is as good a choice of emotion to replace it as any other.

Hamlet, sad and hesitant prince of Denmark, was never a chap to play things for laughs hardly surprising, given the context: his mum was shagging his uncle, who shafted his dad, who came back (tapping his wristwatch) demanding blue bloody murder. Thats not funny, it is just plain rotten. Against this dismal backdrop, Hamlet believed in playing things straight. His advice, given to the actors in Hamlets play within a play, seems to haunt our industry during lockdown. Hamlet wanted no flights of fancy in his drama and demanded his players "hold as twere the mirror up to nature", that they "oerstop not the modesty of nature" and show the world an accurate image of itself. Drama is a mirror in which we can see our lives.

Hamlet the (over)thinker has clearly written the brief for most current ads. Mirror marketing now dominates. Sitting in lockdown, watching telly, feeling a bit plinky-plonky melancholic, we are exposed to lots of ads about people sitting in lockdown, looking a bit plinky-plonky melancholic. The black mirror perfectly reflects us back to ourselves in grainy portrait mode. Each ad has the same strategy-gushing, corporate empathy; each has the same production limitations (shoot it on a phone); and so each looks and sounds the same.

But maybe there are creative and strategic aspirations higher than the mindlessly mimetic. Perhaps, now more than ever, people need a little bit more from their ad breaks, something else from their brands something bolder and much humbler. Brands are not "with us", they are for us. They provide our little treats, our everyday inessentials. They make up the quotidian stuff that matters far less than staying healthy and staying sane. Lockdown reminds us that the job of brands is pleasure not purpose, merriment not mission. So maybe it is time brands got back in their DHL-delivered box, made our mood lighter and dared to make us laugh.

I choose to side with Hamlet, the endlessly entertaining, mild cigar, rather than Hamlet the Dane, the endlessly earnest overthinker. We dont need a branded mirror; we know what our lives look like. We dont need your corporate empathy you are not an actor in our drama. We dont need plaintive pianos, heartfelt CEO letters or pseudo-inspiring hashtaggery. What we need from brands is entertainment, distraction and good humour. It wont be easy, given the lack of production tools right now, but if Ryan Reynolds can make ads on PowerPoint that make mobile tariffs funny and an unknown developer can give me "toco laser eyes" on Instagram, then our brightest and bravest should be able to raise a smirk in a UK ad break before the summers out. So, I say to Hamlet, give me a lamp, sweet prince, to light up the current darkness. And you can keep your mirror and its image of my knackered, strung-out face.

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Creativity after coronavirus: is it time for the return of funny ha ha? - Campaign US

***For All Things Wyoming, Sign-Up For Our Daily Newsletter***

By Dave Simpson, Columnist

Who cares what a pro football teams nickname is if we have to sit through millionaire players and coaches taking a knee during the national anthem to show their contempt for our country?

Why would I care what they call a team if its members have such a low opinion of the country I love?

I was a Broncos fan for decades. But this is it for me. Im finished. Done with football. All it is today is another heaping, steaming helping of political correctness, wokeness, and angry grievances. Brain injuries. Boring contract issues. And anger for the country that made it possible for so many to become so vastly wealthy, so successful.

And apparently way too big for their britches.

No thanks. Ill clean my garage on Sunday afternoons from now on. The library in our town is open on Sundays, so theres that, too. Or maybe while theyre taking a knee, Ill be taking a walk.

To Hell with all of them.

For the record, I dont care if as the woke people insist on saying the Washington football team (instead of what we used to call the Washington Redskins) changes its name to the Washington Walleyes. Although in todays ultra-sensitive environment, who knows if a reference to a fine-tasting freshwater fish might offend someone, somewhere, someday, and trigger some snowflake.

The late, great Washington columnist Charles Krauthammer once wrote that while many die-hard fans wanted to keep the nickname Redskins, words evolve. And since the choice of a nickname for a sports team does not rate high on issues of cosmic importance, the nickname should probably be changed in deference to the evolving nature of language. It was a reasonable opinion. It was the sport he enjoyed, not the nickname, so make the change. He preferred Skins.

The problem today, however, is the larger issue of disparaging our country at the beginning of games by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. According to news reports, a song considered the Black national anthem will be played at the start of the first two games of the season (if there is a season), then the Star Spangled Banner will be played, during which players and coaches may well take a knee, apparently to show their solidarity in not honoring our country.

Who would ever have thought that a hero like Drew Brees would have to apologize for saying he would never dishonor the flag and the country that his grandfathers fought to defend in World War II? How on earth could that be deemed so outrageous that Brees would be browbeaten and berated into issuing repeated apologies?

But, thats what happened.

And who would have expected Bret Favre to liken pioneer anthem kneeler Colin Kaepernick, known to wear socks depicting police officers as pigs, to Pat Tillman, who gave up a career in the NFL to enlist in the Army, and died fighting for his country? Really, Brett? He later backed off from that stupid opinion, after many were justifiably outraged.

The football coach of the Oklahoma State University Cowboys was pictured wearing a t-shirt showing the name of a conservative news site. A player expressed outrage. And the coach gave up over a million dollars in annual salary to try to make amends.

And how about the gutless NFL owners, who own teams in a country that is nuts about football, but cant summon up the spine to defend the economic system that made them all so fabulously wealthy. Or to speak up for the vast majority of the hard-working police officers who patrol our streets. Or for the working-class guy who just wants to watch football on a weekend afternoon without having his nose rubbed in ever more political correctness, smarmy insufferable wokeness, and contempt for the country he loves.

The problem is that pro football is confusing entertainment with just another truckload of seething, hateful controversy, in a world already chock full of hatred. And its just as bad in basketball, where theyre planning to wear protest slogans on the back of their jerseys.

This is entertainment?

No thanks.

Im done.

Ive been putting off cleaning the garage for years.

***For All Things Wyoming, Sign-Up For Our Daily Newsletter***

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Dave Simpson: The NFL Taking A Walk, As They Take A Knee - Cowboy State Daily

Megan Thee Stallion has come clean. Weeks after she was shot during an incident in the Hollywood Hills, she took to her Instagram Live to address all the speculation about it once and for all.

Now that the whole story is finally out, its time we admit shes a victim who deserves our support and probably an apology too.

In a video we can only describe as harrowing, Megan Thee Stallion went into extensive detail about the shooting incident that took place on July 12.

She revealed the bullets missed bones and tendons and that she was lucky they did:

I was shot in both of my feet, and I had to get surgery to get the bullets taken out, and it was super scary. I know my mama and my daddy, my granny had to be looking out for me with that one cause where the bullets hit at, it missed everything.

Its still unclear who shot her. She declined to name her attacker during her Instagram Live stream.

Rapper Tory Lanez, who was with her in the car, was arrested on suspicion of illegally carrying a concealed weapon. Lanez hasnt been charged in connection with the shooting.

When one hears an otherwise decent person has been attacked, the first question they usually have is, Are they okay?

That didnt happen when Megan Thee Stallion got shot. Instead, both celebrities and regular people alike engaged in some of the most disgusting behavior Ive ever seen in my life.

Take a look at what Dipset rapper Camron, not known for his political correctness, had to say when word of Megs shooting broke.

Professional groupie Draya Michelle lost her Fenty endorsement when she made crude remarks about the tragic incident.

Even 50 Cent initially made a joke at Megan Thee Stallions expense. To his credit, he quickly apologized when he realized his comments were out of line.

Thats not the only apology she deserves.

To this day, hip hop journalists are writing think-pieces about how Taylor Swift was traumatized by Kanye West rushing the stage during the MTV Video Music Awards when all he did was pay tribute to Wu-Tang Clans lyrical giant Ol Dirty Bastard.

Taylor Swift didnt suffer physical harm when Kanye pulled that stunt. The way journalists carry on, you would think he committed a Manson family-style butchery.

These same journalists cant be bothered to pen one piece in support of Megan Thee Stallion. Its a news story, nothing more. It only deserves more than a passing mention when a celebrity cracks a joke at a Black womans expense.

Never mind the fact that research shows shooting victims are legitimately traumatized by the experience. Or the fact that she walked on her injured feet afterthe shooting and probably caused more damage to herself.

No none of those things are worthy of a defense. But Taylor Swift got her feelings hurt one time by a Black man more than ten years ago, and were stilltalking about it to this day.

Megan Thee Stallion and Black women in general deserve farbetter than this.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.

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We Owe Megan Thee Stallion a Gigantic Apology - CCN.com

Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy rejected The View co-host Sunny Hostins baseless claims that multiple women from Barstool refused to grant an interview with HBO because the websites co-founder made rape threats against them.

Hostin made the charges Monday during a discussion on Portnoy landing a big interview with President Donald Trump last week on a wide range of topics including Twitter, the coronavirus and sports. While Portnoys followers were pleasantly surprised and the interview racked up millions of views, Hostin remained unamused staying true to form and calling Portnoy a racist, as has become a go-to attack for the ABC host.

It didnt strike me as odd, at all, that [Trump] chose to sit with Dave Portnoy, because Dave Portnoy is such a controversial figure. I mean, hes had many of his employees quit because of racism, he called [Colin] Kaepernick an ISIS guy, over a dozen women Barstool Sports reporters refused to sit down with HBO because they feared rape threats, hes been on video using the n-word and, so, its not surprising to me that Trump would sit down with someone with that kind of reputation, Hostin said.

Portnoy denied the charges on Twitter, clarifying that his taped use of the n-word came from a lyric to a Ja Rule song.

I made it to View! Portnoy wrote to kick off the online statement, going on to say Hostins rape claim was a flat lie.

Portnoy, who leads a successful sports comedy website that hasnt sacrificed its authenticity to exhaustively pursue political correctness, is no stranger to baseless allegations and dark elements of cancel culture. After several attempts from the most prominent of the woke left, Portnoy knows his status among the small group of uncancellables.

I hate to break it to you guys but whenever you try to cancel us and do these movements that pop up every few years, it only makes us stronger, Portnoy said in a video on Twitter after jokes came under fire for being politically insensitive.

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Dave Portnoy Rejects 'The View' Host's Baseless Claims Of Rape Threats - The Federalist

Wily WileyUntil I read UK rappers antisemitic posts abhorrent (July 27), I was unaware of Richard Cowie (known as Wiley, a rapper), whose virulent antisemitic posts on Twitter were allowed to remain online for an inordinate amount of time before they were taken down. His outbursts were of such enormity that they constitute a hate crime and many are now calling for UK law authorities to investigate and take appropriate action. Wiley has nearly a million followers on his various social media platforms and when his racist anti-Jewish posts are re-tweeted, they reach even more people. Therefore it is incumbent of these sites to heighten their monitoring of such hateful posts, remove them more speedily and close such offending accounts. Many users have called to stop using Twitter for 48 hours to protest this.Finally, Wiley himself has previously had bestowed upon him the honor of an MBE and many have written to the Honors Forfeiture Committee requesting they seriously consider its removal for bringing the honor into disrepute, which constitutes very strong grounds for having the honor withdrawn.Jewish lives matter, too.STEPHEN VISHNICK Tel AvivWiley, you tweet and re-tweet things about Jews like You are the most vile people in the history of humanity; You people commit the worse (sic) acts of genocide; Jewish (sic) would do anything to ruin a black mans (sic) life and more.As an ordinary Jewish person who knows that none of that is true and has suffered more than my share of physical and verbal abuse throughout my life for the accident of being born into this faith if this letter reaches your eyes, Id be curious to know from you or others like you where such strong and hurtful baseless beliefs come from.Thank God for celebrities like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Charles Barkley and now Ice Cube, who project a different message that I have always believed: that when it comes to being victims of racism, blacks and Jews (some of whom are black) are on the same team.MO IRVINGPhiladelphiaThere has been an awkward effort by some liberal Jews to excuse recent manifestations of antisemitism in the black community by athletes and celebrities as just ignorance. That excuse just got weaker now that it has been revealed that Rodney Muhammad, the president of the Philadelphia NAACP, posted on Facebook a caricature of Jewish people identical to what one finds in Der Sturmer. Further, with a straight face, he said he does not see why Jews should be offended. This sick bile from a man whose views are respected in the black community.Many of Muhammads constituents are evidently comfortable with his Julius Stretcher-like Facebook post. At this point there does not appear to be any significant difference between the antisemitism of Black Lives Matter and the antisemitism of the Philadelphia NAACP. The more important question for those members of the Jewish community who are not willfully blind is whether there is any difference between the antisemitism of the Philadelphia NAACP and the rest of the national organization?RICHARD SHERMANMargate, FloridaI know, I knowHerb Keinon discusses the growing credibility gap between the Israeli public and government concerning its dealing with the corona crisis. Some 71% of the public had confidence in the government on May 7 down to 47% today (Coronavirus credibility gap, July 28). But this statistic just reflects the fact that the public is slowly coming to the realization that nobody knows how to deal optimally with the coronavirus. The main failing of the government has been that they have forgotten how to say, We dont know. As have many others. For example, in the same article, Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, was reported to have said in a KAN radio interview on March 18 that he would be surprised if the Corona deaths in Israel would surpass 10. Why would anybody ask or expect Levitt, even though he has a Nobel Prize under his belt, to be able to predict the number of deaths from Corona? And that in March when literally nothing was known about the virus, why didnt Levitt simply say, I dont know? In the media, experts are constantly being questioned: When will it be over? When will there be a vaccine? Will it be effective? Is it safe to visit Grandma and Grandpa? Who is more to blame, the interviewer asking the unanswerable questions or the experts who have lost the ability to say, I dont know? YIGAL HOROWITZBeershebaStop complaining; start actingRegarding Nation descends into coronavirus chaos (July 20), how about the residents of Israel taking matters into their own hands? Instead of demonstrators packing together without masks and fighting police and disrupting neighborhoods how about a mass movement to actually obey the very well-known rules to slow the spread of the coronavirus, i.e. social distancing and wearing a mask properly (covering both mouth and nose) whenever they are in the vicinity of others who are not part of their household. Yes, the political leadership here is chaotic, but the demonstrations that break all the rules will only intensify the epidemic and prolong the misery of the entire population.What if parents told their teenage children that they would not die if they did not have a big year-end party where all the rules are broken, but having the party might lead to a chain of infection that will cause death? What if they told their children to take the money that would have been spent on the party and donate it to someone who desperately needed funds? What if parents would tell their children that they should sacrifice their party for the greater good of the health of the society? What a teaching moment for good values that would be.Citizens of Israel, stop complaining and start doing your part in stopping the virus by obeying the universally acknowledged rules.BETTY KRUGER JerusalemThree ways Netanyahu tries to delegitimize protests against him (July 26) purports to explain the techniques supposedly used by the prime minister to delegitimize the protests. Channel 12 reports that 130 police officers contracted COVID-19 from demonstrators. While the country is in a desperate plight because of the virus, the demonstrators are doing their best to spread it far and wide. They dont care how many people get sick and how many die. What could possibly discredit them more than what they are doing? MICHAEL GREENGARDJerusalemIs buying Chinese goods good?Regarding China takes over US consulate premises in Chengdu as ties worsen (July 27), for years American presidents subscribed to a policy called the US-China Relations Act of 2000. This act encouraged American citizens to buy goods produced in China. This was considered to be good for American consumers, since China was able to produce these items at such low cost. Professors of economics throughout the US praised this policy, and claimed it was good for the American economy. As time progressed, America stopped manufacturing these items on US soil. Before long the rest of the world had their items produced in China. This, unfortunately, included Israel. Why not? After all, its so cheap. Everyone turned a blind eye to the fact that all this was produced by using slave labor. In addition, China runs correction facilities better described as concentration camps where many Chinese citizens are incarcerated and tortured until they fall in line with the governments expectations. Many victims ultimately die from these tortures.Now that the coronavirus which originated in China has afflicted the world and countless people suffered financial losses consisting of trillions of dollars (not to mention lives lost), we see what price the world paid for all the bargains that we got from China. Yet Western governments still have no qualms doing trade with the Chinese government, a rogue nation, regardless of its human rights abuses. Its time for the West to halt all trade with China.I. SIEGMANBeit ShemeshThe Iranian deal with China goes further than mentioned. Not only will China have access to some Iranian ports, but the Chinese are reported to be planning a new military base in the vicinity of the port of Chabahar this could monitor the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf, just like them operating the new Haifa Terminal where they can monitor not only Israel Navy movements but also that of the US fleet in the Mediterranean. Further, the $400 billion deal also includes closer military cooperation, including weapons development, combined training and intelligence sharing. Our government must be completely crazy to allow Israeli businesses to trade with Chinese companies while they are to engage with our enemies in weapons development, let alone intelligence. How can they justify letting them control our major dairy industry company Tnuva through a state Chinese company?DR. COLIN L LECIJerusalemAs perceptive as a batRegarding Going batty in times of corona and politicking (July 24), I look forward to Liat Collinss column every Friday and I have never been disappointed. This weekends article was superb; the information regarding the bats was, well, eye-opening and Taiwans stringency about cleanliness and wearing masks, even pre-COVID-19, resulting in hardly any deaths (fewer than 10 in a population of over 23 million) and no economic ruin, should make the rest of the world wake up and take note. Her description of her navigation woes, even with WAZE and Google Maps, had me wondering if she were writing about me by mistake. I smiled throughout each description, shaking my head, saying, Been there, done that. Glad to know Im not alone. Shes a talented word acroBAT.LINDA KURAS MIZRAHIPetah TikvaBig budget battleI have to ask why Benny Gantz thinks he should have a say about the budget. This is not the function of the Minister of Defense. When (and if) he becomes prime minister, then it will be his purview. In the meantime, I believe the nation should remember that more than once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought the country back from the brink of financial disaster and has established us as one of the most stable in the world. When all were floundering, Israel was prosperous, so let him try to use his magic wand. Because of what is happening around the world, it simply makes sense to pass the budget for only one year, as times are not normal, and we do not what is waiting for us.That said, once a budget is in place, Mr. Netanyahu, lets face it, you need to seriously consider stepping aside to allow someone hopefully from your political camp to take up the reins. But at this time you are creating too much pandemonium!ANNABELLE HOROWITZPetah TikvaTender gender topicRegarding Coalition stability in danger over conversion therapy bill (July 23), how appallingly hypocritical it is of our liberal Israeli Knesset to ban conversion therapy for individuals who wish to overcome their homosexual tendencies. If the claim is that this therapy is ineffective and a waste of the patients time and money, then in time the therapy would cease to exist and thered be no need to outlaw it. But the basis for the ban is the untenable suggestion that anyone might prefer to be straight. Yet when a person born with male organs decides he is really a woman, (or the reverse) the state spends large amounts to fund sex-change operations. No one is requesting the government pay for conversion therapy. And certainly any person undergoing the therapy necessarily must be a willing party to the process if it is to be at all effective. So why is the free choice of the individual wishing to undergo conversion therapy to be summarily dismissed while the transgender choice is respected as well as funded? Respect for individuals personal choices must not be limited to those whose choices find favor in the eyes of the relatively new liberal worldview. Our society is becoming more concerned with political correctness than consistency of principles.SHARON LINDENBAUMRehovotMy husband and I are child psychologists who too often meet children who have been bullied into gay sex. We often meet children who experiment in taking medicines that will cause them to change their sex.Our job as mental health professionals is to explore with the child and with the childs parents whether the choice of gay sex or sex change is a healthy step to take.For the Knesset to enact a law that would forbid mental health experts from doing their job seems to be most inappropriate.DR. ARIELA RUBINJerusalemCOVID calculusWhile I dont want to get into an argument about numbers, I think its important to have things in the right perspective. A letter writer (July 27) states that Israel is in number six for coronavirus in the number of cases. I believe that this was for the number of new daily cases in a particular week, and as reported by The New York Times, rarely a supporter of Israel. Using the total number of cases from the beginning of the scourge, Israel is actually #23 with 6,736 cases per million population (all data from worldometers.com); the US at #10 with double the number of cases; and #1 is Qatar with 38,929 cases per million. I prefer to think in terms of the number of deaths by population, since this is what is the most important. Here Israel is #67 (51 deaths per million), US # 11 (453 per million), Sweden #7 (564 per million), the UK #3 (674 per million) and San Marino #1 with 1,238 deaths per million.I believe that the above information gives a truer picture. There are plenty of actors in the world trying to put Israel in a bad light, and so we need to get the correct information out there.DAVID SMITH Raanana

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Letters to the Editor July 29, 2020: Wily Wiley - The Jerusalem Post