Daily Archives: October 20, 2020

‘America Is Hard To See’ at The New Whitney Museum – Ocula Magazine

Posted: October 20, 2020 at 6:28 pm

The new Whitney building, designed by Renzo Piano, with its multiple jutting terraces between which you can clatter up and down stairwells, is a welcome addition to Manhattans art scene. From its decks you can look over what feels like the whole of downtown Manhattan in one direction, and across the Hudson River in the other. Inside its walls you can currently see America Is Hard To See, the Whitneys polemical opening exhibition, and the defining US museum show of the season.

This exhibitions mission is to reconsider American art history through highlighting 600 works from the Whitneys permanent collection. It manages this challenge convincingly in places, integrating striking works by lesser-seen artists into the American canon, and offering a welcome historicised contextualisation of Postmodern and Contemporary art against what had gone before and what you see in commercial galleries today. Most of all, it exhibits great numbers of artworks thematically, so moving through the show you grasp art historys waves anew.

The top floor predictably starts with American learnings from the European avant-gardes. Lots of collage and Futurism, and works reflecting the shadows of Americas founding and its nostalgic but irreverent adoption of elements from European culture. In this new building, and in todays field of installation, performance, digital, post-digital etc art, this top floor feels like a different world to the present, but the ideasif not the materialsin art feel the same as now. The main concerns are the sense of fracture and dystopia, and the need to change how those things are represented in art, brought on by the heightening automatism of modernisation.

The first galleries explore abstraction and the early twentieth century moderns experimentation with form that still captivates the popular eye, despite (or probably because of) having faded into conceptual simplicity against the contemporarys complications. Emphasis is emphatically placed on certain reminiscences, such as the flattened forms of Patrick Henry Bruce and Stuart Daviss 1920s paintings, John Covert and Arthur Doves morbidly forlorn palette from the decades either side, and Lyonel Feiningers Gelmeroda, VIII, from 1921 with Georgia OKeeffes 1926 Abstraction, both of which employ shadow and angularity to locate the viewer and paint modernity as serenely seductive. One of the exhibitions goals is showing that art history picks its stars by caprice, but these rooms undermine this sense by the brilliance of major stars like OKeefe whose work shines out as somehow more brilliant, more talented than its neighbours.

A romantic interlude on a single wall celebrates abstractions affinity with synaesthesia and music. Concise curation here makes it work with only six pieces: paintings by Charles Burchfield and Oscar Bluemner, and two small poised and beautiful gelatin silver prints by Imogen Cunningham and Alfred Stieglitz. The line-up has impact because its quiet; the theme continues more brashly opposite with poet EE Cummings bright swirling painting Noise Number 13 and Richmond Barths 1933 lyrical sculpture African Dancer, beside a work by Agnes Pelton, another OKeefe, and work by Stanton MacDonald-Wright who in the 1910s founded the colour-based practice Synchromism, the first abstract movement that art history considers originally American. Here Four Part Synchromy, by Synchromism co-founder Morgan Russell, and Oscar Bluemners Last Evening of the Year look fresh, even though were still in the 1920s.

Moving into the following decades, Alexander Calder, Man Ray and Theodore Roszak succinctly locate visitors in mid-century mechanisationuseful as Joseph Stellas 1939 painting The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme could be 1990s street art. Here the silvery representations of the Empire State and the Chrysler make their inevitable appearances, taking their proper place in the canon at the expense of the exhibitions promised curatorial novelty.

On the floor below, things get big, boisterous and ugly as the show lands in Americas heyday. Calders downright adorable and insanely fiddly Circus installation of miniature figures contrasts with its strong-stroked canvas neighbours, but defines the character of this floor as one of animated spectacle. Reginald Marsh and Thomas Hart Benton dish up hips and tits in grotesque social realism. Overtly queer art emerges here in Modernism, setting the scene curatorially for its blossoming a few decades later, on the gallery floors below. Gentleman lovers admire a cocknballs sculpture in work by Charles Demuth and Paul Cadmus gives his terrifying hookers and muscular sailors cartoonish full physiques with the virtuosity of Renaissance painting. Its the seedier side of a spectacular society. In a clever touch, colourful works like these are broken up at intermittent rhythmic intervals with small-scale photography and etchings; their flattering monochrome offer relief and invert the narrative of the period, foregrounding the underside in colour and putting societys glamorous echelons in the background in black and white miniatures.

The gallery opens up towards the terrace, and Willem De Koonings eye-catching Woman and Bicycle (1952-53) portrays the pin-up girl with maniacal double grin (the second being her pearl necklace) riding a bike in homage to Duchamp. Abstract Expressionism (with its Surrealist outtakes) always appears to be the art form that is most at home in big American museums, their white cubes scaled up precisely to flatter expressive gestural works like these made in vast lofts when progressive artists could afford to live in Manhattan. They look striking, are pleasingly dwarfing for the viewer and deliver that sense of awe many people seek at galleries. It inevitably feels repetitive, however, to revisit these overexposed works. Although welcome, their historical contextualisation by this show is noticeably sidelined by the sheer aesthetic experience these showpieces produce. Thats probably a result of its quality as stand-alone art though.

Three sculptures work hard in this gallery to locate their painted neighbours in time. Louise Bourgeois Quarantania (1947) of empathic ghostly painted white wood figures huddled together, John Chamberlains Velvet White (1962), a Ford Triumph crushed to resemble a figure, and Mark di Suveros domineering Hank (1960)a champion of repurposed wooden beamsdemarcate through their material forms that we are in the American pre-Now in a way the surrounding paintings cant.

Despite their overfamiliarity and the machismo of this era in art history, the stellar paintings here are moving and beautiful to re-encounter, with De Koonings luminous chalky-hued Door To The River (1960) and Rothkos heavy Four Darks In Red (1958) leading the charge to show that the adoption of these works into the vocabulary of corporate taste merely dinted their aura from afar and only for a passing moment. The Whitneys distribution of space is significant here as it gives these big guns their proportional acknowledgement without resorting to short shrift, in keeping with the realigned canon attempted by the exhibition.

Fighting With All Our Might, a gallery about the Great Depression, holds a set of gems by Jacob Lawrence. His 1940s War Series conveys struggle and suffering in graphic, nave strokes using repetition and evocative figures. The African American artist had recently served in WWII and his skill for combining colours drawn from the ocean and naval dormitories creates high-impact little paintings. Next door, George Tooker, Peter Blume and Louis Guglielmi, alongside Hopper and Man Ray, look at America after modernitys impact on the mind and society. The most outstanding works here, however, are a set of eight wood block prints from Chiura Obata depicting the American landscape in the Japanese tradition in a beguiling blend that highlights the cultural conditioning of the artistic lens.

Down further, floor six brings us into familiar early contemporary territory as brash commercialism vies for attention with minimalisms serenities. A gallery titled Large Trademark is dominated by the loud and influential imagery of people like Jasper Johns and Alex Katz, but the softer aesthetics of Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Malcolm Bailey counterpoint with their framing of Americana through nostalgia and tragedy. Nearby, Carmen Herrera, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella and Jo Baers monochromatic works populate the White Target gallery, where minimal colour blocks appear to be the most gorgeous things youve ever seen having had your retinas seared by Tom Wesselmann and Andy Warhol.

The room called Scotch Tape is one of the most engaging, full of the strange, textural mixed media of Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson, Claes Oldenburg and Bruce Conner. Particularly special is Louise Nevelsons 1959 white sculpture in painted wood called Dawn's Wedding Chapel II, and Noah Purifoys playful untitled leather figure from 1970 is a potent example of the new canon angle. Suddenly, the art here seems to have jumped ahead in time. The works in the Raw War gallery are particularly interesting having seen the responses to war on the previous level. By now its Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement; slogans, smooth photography and graphic lettering. Larry Clarke, Judith Bernstein, Bruce Nauman, Robert Morris and On Kawara are among the artists whose angry and mournful observations make this a powerful room.

Richard Tuttle, Anne Truitt, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra and Michelle Stuart are among the artists whose clever works, often sculptures, give the segment called Irrational Rationalism its intriguing, if at times alienating, mood of being very serious about playful approaches. Overall, floor six reminds of how assemblage and Pop Art never lose their easy appeal; dynamic, witty, full of caricatures and quotation, but whats interesting is their contrast with barely-there canvases and soft-touch photography. The sheer density of images proliferating in the middle of the last century comes through on this floor, an easy ride compared with the previous, and one that marks a notable step towards the dominance of the image culture we live with today.

The last floor, level five, is the shows greatest strength, celebrating with tender polemic the art scene that gave New York its sceney kudos, and using the exploration of identity and personal narrative that dominates more recent contemporary art to support its curatorial proposition. It can sometimes feel jarring to mix works dating as far back as the 1960s with todays, framing everything as the Contemporary, but those of todays themes and artistic approaches included in the Whitney collection actually dont diverge too far from what occupied radical artists fifty years ago, meaning the selection resonates together to reflect what does feel like American art today.

Threat and Sanctuary is one gallery here; it shows the emergence of conceptual art and attempts to reform painting entirely. Aesthetically incredibly diverse, compared with higher floors, works range from Cy Twomblys subtle scribbly-handed paintings to Alma Thomass graphic bright Mars Dust (1972) and Chuck Closes photorealist portrait Phil (1969). Individual works are enticing here but thematic coherence is strained. Far tighter is the neighbouring room Learn Where The Meat Comes From. Through mainly photography and video (Lynda Benglis, Paul McCarthy, Ana Mendieta, Martha Rosler) the low-tech qualities of a grunge mood emerge. The room feels like the American subconscious memory, where hyper-performativity, sexism, and an encompassing fascination with self-image still reside today. Racing Thoughts is equally about a media-dominated society, but here it becomes glossier as the 1980s produces a Pop Art reloaded style, in contrast to the gritty realism of the previous decade. Barbara Kruger, Jeff Koons, Nam June Paik, Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring make this gallery fun, if not especially moving.

Through emotionally charged photography from artists such as Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz and Robert Mapplethorpe, Love Letter from the War Front portrays the tragic romanticism of the legendary 1980s and 1990s Downtown Scene during the AIDS epidemic. It also reveals the documentary turn that art took as photography became the medium for expressing the moment, giving these works more intimacy than art from previous periods, and adding poignancy to viewing it as many of the artists who made it have since died from the illness.

When you get to Guarded View, the nub of this exhibition becomes clear. The Whitney was founded on outsider-ish principles back in the 1930s, and when in the 1990s it exhibited work by gays and lesbians, women and ethnic minorities, critics complained on grounds of aesthetic taste and political correctness. Of course their exhibitions like Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art turned out to be the zeitgeist. In this room today the museum shows Matthew Barney, Catherine Opie, Jimmie Durham, David Hammons, Mike Kelley, Karen Kilimnik, Lorna Simpson, Sue Williams, and Fred Wilson, often using the body in their work to push similar themes of identity and cultural construction as defined those earlier radical shows. America Is Hard To See is aimed at re-iterating the Whitneys credibility as a change driver in American society, using the site of a new building to claim the role of the big New York museum most in tune with art and culture nowand it does so.[O]

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Gerry Hassan: Scottish independence as an idea won the 2014 referendum – The National

Posted: at 6:28 pm

INDEPENDENCE is the new normal and the mainstream. This is a huge historic shift and moment. It is a dramatic change and opportunity that will require a very different politics and attitude compared to 2014.

Then, independence represented the insurgents and outsiders, the new kids on the block, shaking the insiders, taking independence in from the cold and the margins. This is independences tipping point or getting close to that point; the moment when everything changes: the argument, context and how the public see things with the potential to permanently alter perceptions well into the future.

This is politics for high stakes and with it comes huge challenges for independence, the Union and institutional and public life. Up for grabs is the future of Scotland and whether it becomes independent and what kind of independence.

Independence as an idea won the 2014 referendum something different from the detail of the official SNP offer which lost. Independence then and more so now is something that large numbers of voters find attractive and positive; this sentiment can be found across the electorate, particularly in younger voters, those under 45 and even among soft No voters. BBC Newsnights Lewis Goodall reflected on this observing that: Every time Ive interviewed young voters in Scotland and asked them if theyre in favour of independence, they look at me as if Ive asked a stupid question.

READ MORE:Gerry Hassan: Car crash Donald Trump presidency didn't come from nowhere

Independence as the new mainstream fundamentally changes everything and requires a different kind of independence, in content and style. First, look at what is driving independence: 64% of all voters think Scotland and England are moving in very different political directions according to Ipsos MORI Scotland, while 63% do not trust the UK Government to act in Scotlands best interests both of which attract significant support from current No voters.

Second, as Ipsos MORIs Emily Gray points out, Boris Johnson is just toxic in Scotland. He has 76% dissatisfaction, while Nicola Sturgeon has a 72% rating. These two leaders and styles of leadership have been put in stark contrast by Covid-19 and define the independence debate. Johnsons ratings are about more than the person, as Ailsa Henderson of Edinburgh University points out, with the rise of independence in part being a proxy for dissatisfaction with a UK Government and UK Prime Minister.

Third, independence cannot become identified with the inadequacies of present-day Scotland whether health, education, local government, transport. This is a trap some SNP supporters fall into, defending every aspect of Scottish Government policy. Independence has to be about change and not just constitutional change but economic, social and environmental justice and greater democratisation, not just shifting power from London to Edinburgh, but within Scotland too.

Fourth, the detail of independence matters but so does the wider philosophy. Whether we can embrace maturing as a nation, facing our own strengths and weaknesses, and acknowledging where we fall short what Fintan OToole called the art of growing up.

Fifth, independence involves a psychological dimension about risk, uncertainty, future unknowns and how and by who these are managed. This entails acknowledging that independence involves risk as does all fundamental change, and the central issue is who assesses these and what values inform their decisions.

Running through all the above is the asymmetrical nature of the debate. This is a debate which understandably motivates independence supporters. Yet, it is one that many Unionist supporters would rather not be having as it is not their raison dtre. Look at some of the language of Unionists this week as they attempt to over-compensate.

TORY MP Andrew Bowie declared: The UK Government is back in Scotland. Get used to it. Which did make you wonder where it had been. John McTernan, previously Tony Blairs political secretary in Downing Street reacted to the 58% support for independence stating: You break it, its not ours to fix. Nothing to do with us which seemed to contain many levels of anger and displacement.

The Union argument has increasingly taking shelter in detail whether the currency, EU membership, Barnett consequentials or the economic argument. This is telling. The Union case is a retreating army conceding the principle of independence and laying its last-ditch line of defence on such detail. Such a defensive politics has little chance of winning. At best it can hold out for a period.

It puts all your eggs in one basket: transactional nationalism, Barnett and the fiscal transfers across the UK. This has three weaknesses. First, it reduces the debate to the transfers across an unequal kingdom and the concentrations of wealth and power in London and the South East. Second, it is based on the maintenance of Barnett which is under attack from right-wing English Tories. What happens if a future Tory Government proposes the abolition of Barnett?

Third, the figure cited of 1975 per head per year transfer from the UK Government to Scotland is never acknowledged in context. Scotland like the rest of the UK has suffered from 10 years of Tory austerity and could lose 2400 per head due to a No-Deal Brexit, according to LSE modelling. Pro-Unionists cannot cite the 1975 figure as one-way traffic without noting there is a financial cost of Scotland remaining in the Union: that fiscal decisions are imposed on us without us having a say and which cause us harm.

READ MORE:Gerry Hassan: Scottish Labour faces the future and the rocks

A second dynamic is that independence has got into this place, aided by the continual misrepresentation of it by the Union case. It has been associated with an over-romanticised past, with pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs writing in The Spectator that victimhood has always been the core of nationalism and presenting the rise of Scottish nationalism as about Bruce, Wallace, the Declaration of Arbroath, and in more modern times about Thatcher, the poll tax, Tory ascendancy in England and the decline of Labour and in this case the European Union. Often flags and symbols are added to this making the case that this is an irrational, emotional politics which will be defeated by rationalism.

The Union argument has consistently ignored the democratic legitimacy argument of independence based on experience and principle. The former has seen 32 out of the past 50 years witness Scotland getting Tory Governments it did not vote for; this has happened two-thirds of the time since 1970 and did not happen before then; the second being the principle that Scotland has the right to decide its own future.

Independence has to be careful not to fall into the same argument, caricaturing all No voters as Unionists or Yoons, completely othering the British state and presenting it as a caricature which can be hard to resist with Boris Johnson, and recognising the emotional attachment many still have to British identity and history.

The SNP are pivotal to winning independence but they cannot claim a monopoly on the project of independence. Rather independence belongs to every single person who lives in Scotland and chooses to make it their home: it is an inclusive, democratic vision.

As it becomes more popular there will be among some long-term supporters a sense of loss: the equivalent but more serious to those times when your favourite band or artist became massively popular and everyone claimed a slice of them. The Timess Kenny Farquharson put this saying that the Yes movement has to recognise that it wont own independence, and wont be able to create it in its own image. An independent Scotland will reflect all of Scotland, including the bits that didnt vote for it.

The SNPs propensity to command and control politics cannot define independence. For example, a future white paper should come from the Scottish Government but not emerge finished as a fait accompli with no warning, rather it should be owned by as wide a constituency as possible. Commentator Joyce McMillan believes that any new white paper has to be much more robust, and preferably produced by an alliance of the independence movement, rather than the SNP and learn from the disaster example of Brexit with a majority voting for something that has never been described or properly debated.

A pivotal issue is holding power to account, scrutiny and challenge. This is not an area in which we have traditionally done well, given how hierarchical and institutionally dominated society used to be. We cannot pose democracy here as just by default better than Westminster, rather we have to practice it, and the politics of centralisation and accumulating power led by the Scottish Government is an increasingly unedifying and unsustainable one.

The diversity and pluralism of an independent Scotland need to be encouraged because the character of our future is being made here and now. It is worrying that, 13 years into the SNP in office, there is still no independence-supporting mainstream think tank to engage with and listen to beyond the example of Common Weal. This is because the main party of independence looks with suspicion upon independent initiatives and ideas. Such an attitude has grown more pronounced the longer the SNP has been in office.

IN the run-up to next years elections and their aftermath there has to be a new seriousness and commitment to nurturing an ecology of debate, ideas and policies beyond the control of the SNP leadership, which is part of a bigger, more open debate. Alex Bell, formerly the First Ministers head of policy, notes: The challenge is as much about getting British thinking out of Scottish politics. We need a leap of imagination to solve issues about poverty, spending and the deficit.

The alternative to this is not an attractive one a Scotland where all the main policy ideas come from the SNP and government and the narrow insider world of corporates and lobbyists who exist in any political system and here, as elsewhere, serve their own interests.

READ MORE:Gerry Hassan: The political and moral collapse of the Conservative Party

This debate is bewildering to parts of pro-Union sentiment. But not all. Some are sanguine and will be open to persuasion to come to terms with this new dispensation. Independence has to have humility towards those not convinced. That figure of 58% is not yet permanent and includes lots of soft Yes voters as well as having the potential to rise. The Yes side has to listen to the soft Nos and ask them what do they need to hear to convince them of the merits of independence.

Finally, there is the challenge to institutional Scotland, public life and the mainstream media. The challenge to the media is an acute one: the print media has for the most part turned its back on the new Scotland emerging and dug into a Unionist bunker. But the issue of the broadcasters: BBC, ITV and Sky, is very different. The former in particular follows behind the curve of this debate, seemingly incredulous of the Scotland it sees before it and scared to take risks portraying and representing it. Stirling Universitys Iain Docherty on the back of this weeks poll observed: If independence is indeed becoming the settled will, at which point and how do the Scottish press and broadcast media pivot to recognise this?

Scotland is changing. That carries with it huge responsibilities. Next years election will be a huge historic moment and opportunity for Scotland to decide its own fate and future. This opportunity belongs to all of us and we should act and recognise that we have the power to do great things which help to shape our collective future.

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Stockard Channing Answers Every Question We Have About Practical Magic – Vulture

Posted: at 6:26 pm

Role Callis a series in whichVulturetalks to actors about performances they've probably forgotten by now, but we definitely haven't.

The actress on nailing her spooky look, getting drunk on tequila with her co-stars, and filming the movies climactic sance scene. Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Warner Bros.

When Practical Magic was released in 1998, it opened at No. 1 at the box office. As a lifelong fan of the movie, which I had always remembered as more of a VHS slumber-party favorite than a major blockbuster, I was stunned by this information. But, of course, fans were into director Griffin Dunnes supernatural romantic-comedy-drama from the jump, even though critics had little clue what to make of its hodgepodge of genres all stuffed inside a story that centers the relationships of women and treats men mostly as plot devices who have to, for the most part, die. (A particularly cringeworthy Entertainment Weekly review lamented, The witch sisters get empowered, all right into wild and crazy girls.)

Heres the gist: Many moons ago, the first Owens woman, Maria, was outed as a witch and sent to live in exile on an idyllic-looking island. She was pregnant (!), but the babys father never showed up to rescue them; offended deeply by this ghosting, Maria cast a spell dooming any man who would ever love an Owens woman. Generations later, young sisters Gillian and Sally Owens (childhood Sally is played by baby Camilla Belle) lose their father (see above curse), so Sally decides to cast her own spell (those who do not learn from history, etc.), conjuring a man who doesnt exist with whom she can fall in love. Their mother eventually dies of a broken heart sure! so they live with their aunts, practicing witches Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Frances (Stockard Channing). Everyone in town thinks the aunts are weird as hell, but who cares? Jet and Frances live in a fantastic house with a massive garden, eat ice cream for breakfast, and are as committed to dramatic eyeliner as Jennifer Lopez is to a nude lip.

The sisters grow up to be Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, with absolutely perfect hair, and while Nicole/Gillian leaves the island to date around and be free, Sandra/Sally stays and marries a man, with a magical nudge from the aunts, who dies (again, curse). So she and her two daughters (one of whom is baby Evan Rachel Wood) move back in with the aunts. (This is not super-relevant, but you should know that Margo Martindale plays one of their neighbor-frenemies.) Meanwhile, Gillian gets into a tight spot when her boyfriend, Jimmy (Goran Visnjic), reveals himself to be abusive; Sally comes to save the day, but in the process oops! they kill Jimmy. At the aunts place, they try to use magic to bring him back to life, but when he obliges, he is somehow even worse than before. In the midst of all this, cute state investigator Gary (Aidan Quinn) shows up and, unfortunately for Sally, seems to fit the bill of that impossible man she conjured as a kid, which means she is doomed to fall in love with him and therefore he will die.

All this is to say that Practical Magic is a chaotic, completely deranged movie about six different things at once: a coming-of-age tale of tragically orphaned sisters who react in divergent ways to the trauma of their youth; a spooOOooOky flick about generations of witches whose love is literally fatal to any man; a rom-com about a woman who commits manslaughter, then murder (of the same guy! He comes back from the dead, its a whole thing) and then falls in love with the man sent to investigate the homicide(s); a serious drama about abusive men and the violence they inflict on the women they claim to adore; a saga of outsiders cast aside by a small-minded community for being different; and a treatise on destiny.

When I called up Stockard Channing just before the 22nd anniversary of the movies premiere, she confessed that she hadnt seen it in about as many years she doesnt like to watch her own work. But she patiently indulged all my questions about nailing the just-right witchy aesthetic, drinking tequila with her co-stars, and why Practical Magic persists as a seasonal classic.

Where am I finding you? Where are you riding out the pandemic?Im living in London. Its great. Ive been here since December.

Did you move because of the pandemic? This is not a bad time to be not living in the U.S.I wont say anything about that, but I basically live here now.

Okay, so lets talk about Practical Magic.I hear that this is one that people really love. Its a favorite for a lot of people.

Yes, my sister and I watched it together growing up. We revisited this VHS tape more than once. Over the years, its interesting, I hear that a lot. Especially from women, which, I dont really know why that is, but its great. It was a very happy time.

What was going on in your life and career when this movie came about?It was a very good time in my life. I was in Los Angeles, and actually Griffin [Dunne] was an acquaintance of mine and, to be perfectly honest, I had a party with a lot of mutual friends and something about that movie came up. The next evening, he rang, and I said, I want to do it. And it happened.

Had you read a script? Or was it just this party conversation where you were like, Sure, sounds great!?It was a lot of conversation. Id seen a script. It did happen extremely quickly, for whatever reason. I think what I remember most about preparing for it was the look of these witches.

What went into that?I can only speak for myself Dianne had her own situation but I remember a lot of conversation about how this character should look. The wonderful Judianna Makovsky did the clothes. Shed done Six Degrees of Separation, and shes just miraculous. Youre playing somebody who is hundreds of years old. I remember a makeup and hair test that didnt work out because I wasnt wearing much makeup. But it was a strange thing you dont want her to look old and haggard, because thats not who the character is. The makeup artist whod worked with me and Dianne before we had a very candid conversation, and we came up with the idea together: ballet makeup. This enormous amount of black lipstick, this, that, and the other. I remember the wig was curly and long and everything, and we just went way out on a limb with the crazy fabrics and clothing. It was kind of marvelous because it lifted [the character] out of time, if that makes sense. She wasnt young or old. She wasnt unattractive she was quite attractive at times. But the more eccentric it was, the more it worked.

Were you consciously trying to reference any witches from pop culture?No, not at all! That was one of the interesting things about it. I think also because, with my background in theater, Ive done my makeup over the years, and Ive done strange ones. So I was very aware of how artificial we looked, but the DP [Andrew Dunn] was wonderful and everything was very soft and beautiful. So I hope it isnt wrong to say this it didnt look as much like a drag queen as it did probably in life! Or maybe it did? But he worked so well with the eccentricity of the looks, so it became otherworldly. Did it remind you of anyone?

It felt a little Stevie Nicksy to me. That very female, feminine thing all those fabrics and floating things that was especially Judianna Makovsky. Lots of beads and jewelry. Not as mobile as Stevie Nicks, probably. But that same sense of timelessness.

Do you remember having to calibrate how witchy to make things, seeing as the movie needed to stay grounded in reality? It wasnt a full-on thriller.It was really about the relationships of all these women the aunts and the nieces and all that. That was Griffins focus. We werent playing witches; it was more like we were playing the relationships.

What was it like meeting the rest of the cast? Had you worked with any of them before?It was a very, very congenial situation, playful. Both Nic and Sandy were enormously warm. Sandy is very, very funny and smart, and Nic was just lovely. It was a very, very congenial time, and all that coven-y thing of running around. But its hard work! That scene where Nic was on the floor writhing around, it went on for days. And she was incredible about it.

Where were you shooting? Were you in a real house? It was out in Friday Harbor, off Seattle. Those were the exteriors. It was this gorgeous house. And the rest was pretty much on a soundstage and then there were locations for the stuff Dianne and I werent in.

Ive read that for the midnight margaritas scene, you were all actually drunk. Please tell me everything about that.I dont know how drunk we were, but we decided to spiff it up with a drink. I think one of the hardest things to do is a fun, raucous party scene. By take 28, it is very hard to keep that up. I think it worked.

I also read that it was Nicole Kidman who provided the tequila.I dont remember. I dont think any of us had any objections, Ill put it that way.

Was there anything in particular that was challenging to shoot?Once we had the look down, in terms of my situation, I was very relieved and could just go with it. It was otherwise just the usual challenges of getting a scene right, choreographing it and so on. Probably the one I mentioned earlier, where [Nicole] is sort of taken over and possessed, because theres a lot of people in the room and it had to go all the way around. She was incredible. She just went for it every time, even when she wasnt on camera.

I [also] remember the green-screen flying around wearing a harness. Its very uncomfortable. The people who do those movies all the time have my admiration.

What do you remember about working with the child actors? To me, its one of the weirder things about being an actor, that your co-worker could be like, an 11-year-old. Yes! The actress who just did Kajillionaire

Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Kylie, one of Sandras characters daughters.She was just a little girl. She was lovely. They were really beautiful children in every way. They both turned out very well. I wasnt a child actor, and I wonder how it comes around to happen like that.

Did anything about the movie feel special or different to you while you were working on it?I will tell you one thing: When it came to releasing the film abroad, there was this clause in the contract saying that if [an actor can] speak a certain language, you can dub [the movie]. So I immediately, being ridiculous, said, I can speak French. Mainly because I felt like going to Paris. One of the stupidest things Ive ever done in my entire life. I was with this woman of a certain age who was very strict, and the minute I opened my mouth, I knew I was in trouble. Because they do it in French script across the bottom of the screen, and I had to narrate the beginning. I really did want to shoot myself. I felt so stupid. And also she didnt speak a whole lot of English, so the two of us, plus the technicians it was a couple of very long days, and I learned my lesson. At the end, she said that I basically had a Bulgarian accent. Somewhere in the world or not! there is a copy of me dubbed in French in Practical Magic. Im sure the minute I left, they hired someone else to do it right. But I made a real horses ass of myself, I will tell you that.

Did you have a sense of the movies reception when it came out? Do you read reviews as a general rule? No, I dont. I try to avoid watching myself as well, which is a little tricky because I had to do the narration.

I think it was difficult to market, honestly, because its not a totally spooky-horror-magic film. It has this domestic-violence and abuse plot in the middle and then its also this sister-family-bonding story and a love story. The tone is a little all over the place.Its very unusual. My recollection, which may or may not be accurate, is that it had a greater life after it first opened. I couldnt tell you if it made money; I wouldnt be aware of that at all. But I am aware that, over the years, a lot of people like yourself have been crazy about it. So its lived on, which is interesting. And I dont know why that would be. It certainly is a very unusual film. I think maybe they use the word chick flick, which would hopefully be politically incorrect these days. But whatever it was what do you think?

I think it was rare then, and is still rare now, for a movie to have as its central relationships the connections between women between sisters, aunts, and nieces and for their entanglements with men to be happening on the side. The men in this movie are more like plot devices. Everything really hinges on the way these women relate to one another, which is true in life all the time but isnt depicted all that often onscreen.Yeah, that hasnt changed very much either. I would totally agree with you. And God love the VHS and all the technology. People stayed home and watched it. If you looked at the movie Grease, if it wasnt for the technology of VHS and DVDs thats responsible for a lot [of the success]. And I think the fact that people can pick and choose what they want to see, and its in the privacy of their own home, their friends homes, thats the phenomenon that came on only when this duplication was possible. Otherwise, youd have to go to the movies.

And people can access it now even more so, to the point that theyll see it and resee it. Thats what Ive heard when people have mentioned it to me over the years. I think its uniqueness, probably. And its very beautiful to look at. Its well made, and the performances are wonderful. No slouches here.

When was the last time you saw the movie? Maybe at the premiere. But I wont see anything Im in. I try to avoid myself! Probably it would come up people stop you in the street and say they love the movie. But to be honest, because it wasnt as high profile in its initial release as many other things Ive done, I was struck over the years by how many people would mention it to me.

Of all your work, is this something you hear about a lot?Its up there being mentioned. Mainly by women, definitely.

Do you believe in any of the magic in the movie? Like do I believe in real magic? And witches?

Well, even just normal-life magic jinxes, coincidences, destiny. I do think that coincidence is fascinating, and that is the magic of life. Otherwise, we could all plot and plan and there wouldnt be any surprises. I think de facto we have to believe in it. Thats the stuff we cant control even if we would like to. Thats what makes things magical. Whether you like it or not, its there.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Michael Rivera: Im the United Nations of Political Incorrectness, and a Proud American – Noozhawk

Posted: at 6:26 pm

Im Michael Rivera. Im an American citizen.

When it comes to how much to value my political opinion, thats all you need to know about me. If you want to call me Latino or Hispanic, go ahead. Im OK with that. I call myself American.

I suppose Im a minority, but everyone is a minority of some sort. I am not a Person of Color. I dont know what that means, and I think its a term that divides us instead of bringing us together. There is way too much Us versus Them, too much identity apartheid, in todays political rhetoric.

I did one of those DNA tests, and my ethnicity estimate is 37 percent from Spain and 23 percent from Indigenous Americas for starters. Then theres the 17 percent from Ireland and Scotland, 6 percent Basque, 5 percent from France, and 3 percent European Jewish. Finish (no, not Finnish) it off with a smattering of 1 percent traces, including Northern Africa, Mali, the Andes and the Middle East.

Now I know that these tests are not definitive. They measure the appearance of genetic markers in current populations in various places and make assumptions that those markers have been there for a few centuries.

My Native American ancestors were here for thousands of years, but before that their ancestors were living in Asia, so its interesting, but maybe it doesnt matter.

And thats my point it doesnt matter.

I dont want any additional rights because my formerly European family has been here since the 1600s or because my Native American family has been here long before that. I dont expect more privileges or fewer privileges because of my ethnic pedigree or melanin content.

As an American citizen, Im entitled to one vote, just as is the American citizen who was naturalized yesterday. I want my one vote, and I dont want anyone else to have more than one vote.

America is always a work in progress, but its a wonderful country, and thats why so many people want to come here.

I dont blame people for wanting to come here, but the rule of law is one of the reasons this is a great nation, and if we dont control our borders, we have no rule of law and, eventually, will have no country. I think my Mexican cousins and my Irish cousins both have to play by the rules.

Since many immigrants come from Latin America and Asia, and since most illegal immigrants come from south of the border, anyone who thinks we should enforce our laws against illegal immigration or reduce legal immigration is called a racist.

Why? Because its easier to dismiss someone with an epithet than it is to engage in a discussion about an appropriate immigration policy.

We should be proud that we have built a country so attractive to others across the world. But there are almost 8 billion people on the planet, and they cant all live in the United States. We have an obligation to look after our neighbors and fellow citizens first.

I think we can do a better job of that, and protecting our environment, and rebuilding our infrastructure, if we reduce immigration. So you can call me a racist for that, too, although it turns out that a couple of national commissions have studied the issue and agreed with me.

E pluribus unum Out of many, one. Its a motto that has built this nation. You can agree or disagree with me on a proper immigration policy, but we can discuss our differences without the ugly name-calling that is so common to these debates.

Call me politically incorrect for supporting immigration cuts. Im OK with that. Look at my DNA results again. Im the United Nations of political incorrectness ... and proud to be an American.

Paso Robles resident Michael Rivera is a board member of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Californians for Population Stabilization. He has served on numerous governmental and private boards and commissions in Central California. The opinions expressed are his own.

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Could Lack of Security Cause WA, OR Votes to Be Tampered With? – newstalk870.am

Posted: at 6:26 pm

WA and OR have used ballot by mail for many years, ballots are sent out by county auditors, filled out, then either mailed back or dropped off at official drop boxes (at least in Benton and Franklin County).

However, especially this year, the issue of voter ballot security has become a hot button topic. With numerous stories of allegedly lost, thrown away or otherwise mistreated ballots, people are concerned; and with online registration as well.

And now, perhaps online tampering? The Epoch Times ran an article over the weekend indicating that in Washington and Oregon, it appears that what they call "lax" security or safety requirements could allow persons to "cancel" other people's votes.

It's not cancelling as in wiping away completely, rather, has to do with requesting a new ballot online. The system is designed especially for first time voters, but others who may not have received an official ballot. If you have created a profile at vote.wa.gov, you can request a ballot, but if one has already been sent, that one will be cancelled--replaced by the new one requested.

The Times says people's birthdays are readily available online, especially via social media profiles. We looked at voter.votewa.gov, and your name and birthday are all that's required to register to vote, and view your vote/ballot status.

The Times raises the question that it would be easy for someone to obtain a person's birthday to go with their name, log into their voter profile and request a new ballot, thereby cancelling one they may have or have already filled out and sent in. This would greatly increase the chances of issues arising and their vote potentially not being counted. It would also cause greater backlog and confusion and delays in results.

The Times says it contacted a WA voter, who walked through the process with them, and confirmed this is possible. Here is what the screen looks like at vote.wa.gov, the page in question. It just requires name, and yes, birthday:

What led to this investigation is a report The Epoch Times saw on a website4chan.org and a discussion panel called "Politically Incorrect."

The panel showed screenshot examples of how some Oregonians were able to log in as Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Oregon Secretary of State Bev. Clarno, and some other officials. The Times says it's not clear if they were able to print overseas, disabled or military ballots under the names of these officials. But it underscores how the lack of security requirements leaves these system ripe for potential misuse.

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Taking a gamble with the pandemic | Column – Tampa Bay Times

Posted: at 6:26 pm

The Great Barrington Declaration might instead be called the Great Barrington Manifesto. That tweak would give it a more shall we say? proletarian ring.

The manifesto, to stick with that term, is named after the town in Massachusetts where it was unveiled earlier this month by three scientists with distinguished academic appointments who advocate a Focused Protection strategy for controlling COVID-19. The idea is to focus still more on protecting the most vulnerable while letting others live normally even if the result is that the virus will spread among the less vulnerable until, in a sense, it begins to burn out.

Hardly mainstream. But wrong?

The crux is this: Dont wait for a vaccine waiting still longer will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.

The manifesto thus weighs in more on the side of the jobless, the hard up and the impoverished than on the side of the perennially comfortable. It recognizes that he who can wait for a vaccine is the retired executive toasting friends during Zoom cocktails, not the restaurateur looking for work after the business in which he invested years of his life went puff. She who cannot wait is the maid shown the door to the street by a struggling hotel chain, not the six-figure-income lawyer who finds doing conference calls from her home is a nice break from doing them from the office.

You will recall that the pandemic and the lockdowns following it have cost tens of millions of jobs in the United States alone, and you have to ask how far the federal treasury can be stretched to provide continuing relief.

The manifesto advocates a gamble, and as Floridians understand, it is a gamble that Gov. Ron DeSantis is already making as he lifts COVID-19 occupancy limits on restaurants and prohibits local governments from fining people who violate their face mask orders. Indeed, he has taken advice from the manifestos authors, which flies in the teeth of the COVID-19 orthodoxy holding that we must continue to hunker down, albeit differently from state to state until, someday, vaccine makers bring us deliverance.

The authors of the manifesto are Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya, all epidemiologists, their university affiliations being, respectively, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. They remain dissidents among their peers, to be sure. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins calls their strategy fringe and dangerous. The chief of the World Health Organization predicts unnecessary infections, suffering, and death.

The authors of the manifesto see it differently. I should say at this point that, hardly expert but also desiring a new way forward, so do I.

The manifesto slants not toward a libertarian line of protest but rather a communitarian. Who suffers most from lower vaccination rates resulting from lockdowns, from fewer cancer screenings, from depression? The manifesto answers: the working class and younger members of society.

As for the young, it goes on: Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice. And who are the young who have the fewest out-of-school education options? We all know.

The manifesto does not, cannot, shy from the term herd immunity, an epidemiological concept now all but deemed politically incorrect. Though complex in its mathematical expression, the concept essentially refers to the natural immunity that builds across a population as a virus passes through it. Herd immunity, though assisted by a vaccine, can be attained safely enough ahead of a vaccine that is the manifestos hotly contested proposition.

Heres the argument, then: The most compassionate approach that balances risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection while better protecting those who are at highest risk.

Better protecting those at highest risk, especially the frail elderly, will be a big test of the gamble now under way in Florida, never among the states to lock down soon and hard. To date, of the roughly 16,000 COVID-19 deaths in Florida, about four in 10 have occurred in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. There is nothing but misery in those numbers, even if the nursing-home figure roughly accords with the national average despite the special challenges in a state with a large retirement population.

Every approach to COVID-19 is a gamble weighing risk versus benefit, an effort to be the least bad option. In the weeks since the manifesto was issued, it has been signed by more than 400,000 people betting it is a gamble worth taking.

Richard Koenig, a retired pharmaceutical-company executive and former reporter at the St. Petersburg Times, the predecessor of the Tampa Bay Times, is the author of the Kindle Single No Place To Go, an account of efforts to provide toilets amid a cholera outbreak in Ghana.

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Letter to the editor: Prescription for ‘Trump Fatigue Syndrome’ – The Topeka Capital-Journal

Posted: at 6:26 pm

ThursdayOct15,2020at12:45PM

Are you suffering from "TFS"?

Maybe you voted for Trump in 2016 because you were tired of business as usual. You loved it when Trump would say or do things that were so politically incorrect. You thought he would become more "presidential." But all the name-calling, juvenile tweets and drama have become too much. After almost four years, youre suffering from "Trump Fatigue Syndrome."

You may have started to have second thoughts when you heard thousands of young children were being separated from their parents at the border. His refusal to criticize white nationalists carrying torches and shouting racial obscenities in Charlottesville made you uneasy.

You liked the idea that Trump was a wealthy businessman, so you were surprised and a little angry that he only paid a total of $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

You were shocked to learn that he knew how dangerous the coronavirus was back in February, but chose to play it down. Even now, he shows little sympathy for the 215,000 who have died.

When Trump got it due to his own reckless behavior, his first instinct was to suggest he got it from the Gold Star families who attended a reception at the White House. You grimaced when he put his own Secret Service at risk, forcing them to drive him around Walter Reed hospital in a cheap publicity stunt.

If youre suffering from "TFS," the cure is simple: Cast your vote for Joe Biden, and youll feel better in the morning. So will the nation.

Jim Van Slyke, Topeka

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Every Adam Sandler Netflix Movie Ranked Worst To Best – Screen Rant

Posted: at 6:26 pm

Adam Sandler's lucrative deal with Netflix continues with the recent Hubie Halloween, so it's time to rank each of his movies from worst to best.

Adam Sandler has now released seven Netflix exclusive movies but which are the best and the worst?Thanks to his charming and energetic personality,as well as his accessiblestyle that mixes crass humor and over-the-top slapstick, Adam Sandler's comedies have been massively popular with audiences for a quarter of a century. The same unfortunately can't be said about the critical reception of most of these films, as most of Sandler's films are labelled as bad. Critics more often than not correctly labeling them as lazy humor that caters to the lowest common denominator and this is especially true when it comes to output that's produced by his own studio, Happy Madison.

Just like any artist with a body of work as extensive as Sandler's, not every Happy Madison production that stars him is equal in quality, or lack thereof. This metric also applies to the films that were released exclusively by Netflix as part of their $400 million deal with Happy Madison.The seven Adam Sandler comedies released by Netflix so far contain the kinds of juvenile gags and jokes we expect from his Happy Madison output. However, each filmvaries enough in tone, sub-genre, and narrative drive to stand out on their own.

Related:The Adam Sandler Multiverse Theory Explained

As much asSandlersticks to his guns when it comes to specific tropes that are expected from his work, there's a refreshing amount of variety as well.But which ones are on par with his worst, like Jack and Jill, which ones are genuinely inspired, like You Don't Mess With The Zohan, and which ones are in between?

There's a solid, TV-MA-rated, 80-minute western parody that wears its envelope-pushing, politically incorrect absurdity on its sleeve, hiding within The Ridiculous Six's bloated two-hour runtime. Sadly, it's padded with repetitive gags that are designed to make you gag for no other reason than easy shock value, though the TV-14 rating keeps Sandler from going overboard. There are bright spots of absurdist slapstick, like a character shooting his own head aftergetting decapitated, but it's all too rare. Otherwise, The Ridiculous Six's go-to humor is divided into several cringe-inducing categories, from any excuse to mixing all kinds of bodily fluids in the grossest permutations possible to lazy and kind-of-racist puns likegiving Native American characters names like No Bra and Beaver Breath. The Ridiculous Six is not only the worst of Sandler's Netflix outings but is one of the worst films in his career.

Sandler's latest Netflix outing purports to be a lighthearted, family-friendly comedy-horror that takes place in Salem, Massachusetts -the Halloween capital of the US-, like Hocus Pocus, the other Salem-based season's favorite. Director Steven Brill manages a playful tone that finds the right line between real scares and comic relief, and Hubie Halloween's contrast-heavy cinematography is the most attractive out of Happy Madison's Netflix outings. The problem is Sandler himself, whogoes full Little Nicky and The Waterboy by creating yet another mumbling and abrasive cartoon character while expecting the audience to take him seriously whenhe switches gears into the obligatory tear-jerking territory. In many ways, Sandler's titular character, a Halloween super-fan who gets bullied by his neighbors, sticks out even more than Nicky and Bobby Boucher, since Hubie Halloween sports amore-or-less grounded list of supporting characters.Hubie Halloween carries an anti-bullying message, but it's delivered in an after school special way that practically breaks the fourth wall to make sure that the audience learned their lesson.

The Week Of, about one rich (Chris Rock) and one working-class (Sandler) father butting heads with each other about who will pay for their children's upcoming wedding, could have turned into an insightful and organically humorous study on modern class differences in the US. Co-writer/director Robert Smigel, who created Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, is certainly not a stranger to such biting satire, but the film is too toothless and languidly paced to work neither as satire nor as a madcap Adam Sandler comedy. Smigel also returns to the same well of one-note gags too often. Sandler's icky 1990s exploitation of people with disabilities to score cheap laughs gets an unwelcome reunion in the form of his character's amputee uncle (Jim Barone) freaking everyone out at the wedding party simply because of his condition. The plot gets lost in a series of 1980s sit-com-style conflicts that can easily be resolved with a single line of exposition. The Week Of doesn't rank as low as The Ridiculous Six and Hubie Halloween mainly thanks toRock's introspective performance as a broken man who gradually realizes that his entitled behavior resulted in the dissolution of his family.

Related:Theory: Adam Sandler Made Hubie Halloween To Punish Us For Uncut Gems

Most of the time, Adam Sandler's comedies try to cater to the family market with PG-13 material that contains crass humor but doesn't become too edgy. But every once in a while, he'll let loose with a comedy album that firmly earns its "Parental Advisory" sticker, or a hard-R-rating. The Do-Over is a fairly competent comedy-action that wears its TV-MA rating on its sleeve. Fromsimulated double-fellatio that becomes funnier as it uncomfortably drags on to a gag about hairy testicles, Sandler successfully translates the naughty man-child energy from his comedy albums to The Do-Over. There certainly isn't much depth to any of the gross-out gags, but at least this time Sandler swings for the fences. TheMacGuffinthat the odd couple protagonists are after a tablet that has the cure for cancer hidden inside it results in a plot that becomes too labyrinthine for the film's more simplistic tone, but Sandler and David Spade's commitment to the script's politically incorrect humorkeeps the pace chugging along.

For Murder Mystery, Happy Madison wentAgatha Christie bydropping two working-class New Yorkers (Sandler and Jennifer Aniston) in the middle of a whodunit full of intrigue, suspense, and the prerequisite rich and smugcharacterswho sometimes literally stab each other in the back for the sake of power and money. Ever since the first season of Friends, Aniston has perfected playing characters who are adorably uncomfortable in settings they don't think they belong in, so she's a natural fit for this material. Sandler, on the other hand, is a bit too charged and abrasive to fully sell the "fish out of water" quality of his character. Murder Mystery's glitzy style and halfway clever murder plot full of surprising twists and turns make it an engaging experience that runs a brisk 97 minutes. It's not the best Sandler comedy, nor is it the best Christie send-up, but together they result in a fairly entertaining romp.

In Sandy Wexler, Sandler pays loving tribute to his real-life manager Sandy Wernick, with this charming dramedy that sees Happy Madison and Netflix adopt a Woody Allen-esque freestyle character study mixed with the studio's trademark affinity for potty humor and broad slapstick. It's certainly an odd mix and Sandler almost blows his performance by using yet another silly voice, but the title character'slove forhis craft and dedication to his Z-list celebrity clients disarms the initial skepticism. The central romance of the story, between Wexler and his rising star singer client Courtney (Jennifer Hudson), works thanks to the natural chemistry between Sandler and Hudson. And the story's hilarious Greek Chorus, made up of the most celebrity cameos in a Sandler film to date,is the film's cherry on top. The plot goes on too many tangents and the final edit could have used a trimming by about half an hour, but Sandy Wexler earns its credit as one of Happy Madison's most compassionate outings.

This comedy special, in which Adam Sandler employs a gamut of his trademark songs laced with adult humor, edgy stand-up bits, and honest tidbits about his personal life, captures why he's endured as a beloved pop culture figure in as much of a vulnerable and unfiltered manner as possible. 100% Fresh is pieced together using footage from various venues where Sandler performed in, from a cozy comedy club to a theater full of thousands of adoring fans. Yet no matter the size of the audience, Sandler exudes his unique warmth and charisma, always making it seem like he's merely shooting the breeze with some close friends. This lack of ego in his approach turns 100% Fresh into one of his most engaging efforts as a comedian. In between the howling laughter, it's also hard not to shed a couple of tears at a touching tribute to Adam Sandler's deceased friend and SNL alum Chris Farley.

Next: Adam Sandler's Career is Underrated

Marvel Wasted The Opportunity To Tell The Avengers Coulson Is Alive

Oktay Ege Kozak is a screenwriter, script coach and film/TV critic. He lives near Portland, Oregon, with his wife, daughter, two King Charles Spaniels, and a Golden Retriever.

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Never mind Covid, the woke brigade is turning this into a very dark world – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted: at 6:26 pm

A friend of mine, a research scientist in a Cambridge lab, told me about a pre-Covid encounter he had in his faculty building earlier this year. He saw two female colleagues coming out of the loo, and greeted them: Hello, ladies.

But, before he could go on his merry way, looks of thunder were fired at him and he was told off for having called them ladies, and as is so often the way now slapped with a lecture about his presumptuousness, patriarchy and offensiveness.

My friend is no dunderhead when it comes to politically incorrect bloopers, so the mistake baffled him. Being a gentleman, he apologised but was left shocked, deflated and uneasy.

Welcome to the brave no-longer-so-new world created by the people now controlling what can and cannot be said, written or thought. Its mean-spirited, dreary and frightening.

But theres something especially intolerable about their regime now. It was bad enough before Covid. At least we could ignore them and go to the pub with friends (remember those people from other households whose company we like?) and bitch about them.

But now we are being constantly bludgeoned by the PC police, who instead of worrying about more important things, like peoples livelihoods, or China are busy enforcing lunatic rules that change by the day.

People are battling isolation like never before in this crisis and, on top of that, the woke brigade is causing a deep sense of alienation. Our culture and language are fast becoming unrecognisable.

I was particularly struck last week by the strangeness of the new things added to the verboten list. In what might have been a ray of light in the gloom for her many millions of fans, it was announced that Gal Gadot, the beautiful Israeli star of Wonder Woman, had been cast as Cleopatra in a forthcoming film about the Egyptian queen.

But the cultural bullies lost no time in crying racism and Israeli imperialism. Twitter poured forth responses like this one from Sameera Khan, a broadcast journalist and former Miss New Jersey who has 65,000 followers: Which Hollywood dumb--- thought it would be a good idea to cast an Israeli actress as Cleopatra (a very bland looking one) instead of a stunning Arab actress like Nadine Njeim? And shame on you, Gal Gadot. Your country steals Arab land & yourestealing their movie roles smh. (Which, if you were wondering, stands for shake my head.)

It was quickly pointed out that Cleopatra was not Arab; she was Greek with Persian heritage and therefore Gadot was entitled to the role (the anti-Semitic jibe about Gadot being Israeli was left aside as just business as usual).

What got lost, of course, was the fact that whatever Gadots ethnicity, she should be able to play Cleopatra if she is the best woman for the part. Roles in art dont belong to certain ethnicities, with the possible exception of Othello. But who has the energy to point that out?

In another ludicrous little tantrum by the PC police, it was made clear that the term sexual preference is now offensive. In Tuesdays confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett used it in reference to a legal case concerning same-sex marriage.

Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono wrote a lengthy admonishment, which has since been applauded by thousands.

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Why are kids so messed up? Murphy thinks cops in school do it – Journal Inquirer

Posted: at 6:26 pm

Police officers stationed in schools, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told a conference at the University of Connecticut last week, are why there is a "school-to-prison pipeline" that targets Black and Hispanic students. So he has introduced legislation to forbid federal funds from paying for such police.

"All across our country," Murphy said, "kids are being arrested, sent into the school-to-prison pipeline for ordinary misbehaviors often connected to their disabilities or childhood traumas, and that one negative interaction, which ends up with an arrestable offense, often leads kids down a path from which they can never return.

In Connecticut, a pretty progressive state, if you are a Black student in a school with a school resource officer, you are three times more likely to be arrested than if you're in a school that doesn't have a school resource officer. For Latino students in our state, for some reason, the number is actually six times.

So are school administrators and teachers a bunch of racist bums as Murphy suggests, or as the social science suggests, are crime, misbehavior and failure in school, and child neglect and abuse racially and ethnically disproportionate because poverty is?

To illustrate his point, the senator told the story of a student in a Connecticut city school system who at the start of 10th grade began walking out of class, "wandering the hallways until he bumped into another teacher, administrator, or school security officer who would bring him to the principal's office. He ended up getting suspended for a few days and sent home to his grandmother, with whom he lived."

Eventually in one of his wanderings the student got into an argument with a vice principal that was loud enough to prompt the school resource officer to arrest him for disorderly conduct. As it turned out, Murphy explained, "This kid didn't know how to read. He was years behind his peers. He had a learning disability and was mortally embarrassed to sit in this class when he couldn't understand anything the teacher was talking about. Luckily he had access to a good legal aid attorney who kept him out of the court system."

But the senator's example doesn't sound at all like a case of racism, overbearing pedantry, or the "school-to-prison pipeline." Instead it sounds like a case of chronic disruption by a student, of the disorderly conduct eventually charged to him -- probably because it was necessary to lay hands on him to end the confrontation with the vice principal -- and a routine diversion from the criminal-justice system.

It also sounds like a case of child abuse or neglect at home and grotesque social promotion at school. How do you get into 10th grade without being able to read? It's easy in Connecticut.

Indeed, Murphy's anecdote makes him seem unaware of just how hard it is for anyone to work his way into prison in Connecticut these days. For the prison population is steadily declining even as the state has more incorrigible offenders remaining free after their 10th, 20th, and even 30th arrest.

Police officers in school aren't the problem. At worst they are a symptom. Nor is the solution what the senator advocates, "wraparound social services." Whatever the solution is, it begins with asking: Where are all the messed-up kids are coming from?

But with Murphy and most elected officials, that is a most politically incorrect and prohibited question.

* * *

BARRETT THE LIBERAL: Restoring the civil rights of felons after they have completed their sentences is properly part of the liberal political agenda. For permanently alienating people from society just invites more trouble.

But Connecticut's U.S. senators, Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, both liberals, are making an exception in the hope of obstructing appointment to the Supreme Court of the federal appeals court judge nominated by President Trump, Amy Coney Barrett. In a dissenting opinion last year Barrett wrote that the constitutional right to bear arms can be revoked only for someone who has shown a proclivity for violence or threat to public safety. The case before her involved a man who had committed Medicare fraud.

Barrett's opinion in that case, Connecticut's senators say, makes her a dangerous extremist. Actually that opinion puts her in the liberal mainstream, which the senators have betrayed so they can defeat her.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer.

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Why are kids so messed up? Murphy thinks cops in school do it - Journal Inquirer

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