Category Archives: Politically Incorrect

University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson, who famously opposed Canadian gender pronoun mandates, disclosed Wednesday that he had resigned as a tenured professor years earlier than planned.

In a lengthy and impassioned account of his decisionfor the National Post, the bestselling author argued that the "radical leftist Trinity" of diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE) is reducing his students to their race and ignoring their merit. He faulted colleagues for "going along with the DIE activists."

Meanwhile, an Ivy League law professor who is even more politically incorrect than Peterson may not have a choice in whether she keeps her job of two decades.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School changed its tune about Amy Wax's tenure and academic freedom days after lawmakers showed up at its doorstep demanding sanctions.

Democratic state Sen. Anthony Williams demanded it remove "the veil of tenure and put Wax "on trial." Republican Philadelphia City Councilmember David Oh questioned whether Wax has a right to keep both her job and her views, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Near the end of the lawmakers' press conference, the law school told the media that Dean Ted Ruger would "imminently" announce "appropriate action." Asked whether that was "sufficient," Williams responded: "What's sufficient is that Professor Wax is removed."

Ruger told the community this week he would serve as the "named complainant" for aggregated complaints against Wax in a faculty review that could lead to her firing. She has "repeatedly made derogatory public statements" about a "majority" of the community, he claimed.

Brown University economist Glenn Loury interviewed Wax for his podcast last month, where she questioned the value of elite Asian immigration to the U.S. When Loury pushed back, she asked: "Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breasts?"

In a running dialogue on Loury's website, Wax clarified that the "mystifying" Asian support for the "pernicious" Democratic Party was the basis of her objection. She has previously said the U.S. should favor immigrants from "first world" and Western countries for cultural reasons.

Wax has ruffled feathers on campus going back at leastto 2017, when she praised the "bourgeois culture" of the 1950s. Next, she told Loury she wasn't aware of any black law student graduating in the top quarter of the class and "very rarely" in the top half since she joined Penn in 2001.

Accusing her of lying, Ruger countered vaguely that black students have "graduated in the top of the class" without giving a time period.

The dean's Jan. 18 message alluded to that data, saying Wax "has exploited her faculty access to confidential information about students in ostensible support of her inaccurate statements."

Ruger accused the professor, who was a neurologist before a lawyer, of "pervasive and recurring vitriol and promotion of white supremacy" that was "cumulative and increasing."

Students complain they can't take her classes "without a reasonable belief that they are being treated with discriminatory animus," he said. Ruger stripped her of teaching mandatory classes, however, in response to her claims about black student performance.

Director of Communications Rebecca Anderson declined to specify the "white supremacy" Wax promotes, the "majority" of campus she has denigrated, or the correct figures on black student performance, which the school has refused to share in any greater specificity for nearly four years.

Penn Law will not "make any public statements about the charges and proceedings until they have been completed" as required by the University Handbook, Anderson told Just the News.

Wax declined to comment to the Philadelphia Inquirer following Ruger's announcement and has not answered Just the News queries.

She told Loury in that December interview that she wasn't "terribly worried" about ongoing alumni campaigns to get her fired. Wax previously floated the idea of suing Penn Law for defamation because Ruger accused her of inventing statistics.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education warned Tuesday that Penn Law was copying the attacks on tenure by "ruby red state legislatures" and inviting "suppression of any speech that offends some segment of society."

Ruger's Jan. 3 statement criticizing Wax for her "thoroughly anti-intellectual and racist comments" also emphasized that tenure shields scholars so they can "engage in critical and overdue analysis of this nation's historical and structural discrimination."

That spurred a petition signed by nearly 500 Penn Law students and alumni and another 1,500 other Penn students and alumni. They demanded the law school form a committee with student representation by Jan. 31 that will conform tenure to "principles of social equity."

Days later,all but one member of the City Council told Penn President Amy Gutmann that Wax's comments contribute to "rising animosity and scapegoating of Asian Americans."

Wax has a few defenders, some reluctant, as compiled by Law.com. "This is little more than an end run around" the Supreme Court's 1968 Pickering ruling, Acadia University politics professor Jeffrey Sachs tweeted. "Absurdly offensive, but protected nonetheless."

The First Amendment landmark Pickering v. Board of Educationestablished the principle that public employees do not sacrifice the right to speak out on issues of public concern by virtue of their employment.

Loury has been posting mostly critical letters in response to his interview but also aPenn Law student's defense of Waxaddressed to Oh, the Republican councilmember.

"As a Republican in a place like Philadelphia, you surely realize that media reactions and blue checkmarks on Twitter are not always the best indicator of what is true," Erich Makarov wrote, saying his parents "escaped a brutal, totalitarian regime and came to this country penniless."

A former student of Wax's, Makarov said the professor has "never advocated for any kind of ethnostate" but rather seeks to "prevent the kind of race-based, equity-seeking system that progressives push on the American people."

Loury is also urging Penn not to punish Wax. "Her detractors do not have to invite her to dinner!" the economist told Law.com. "I am at pains to observe that neither social sanction nor vitriolic condemnation can prove her wrong."

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Politically incorrect professor faces firing after ...

I feel like a spectator in my own life, say Julie (Renate Reinsve), a young woman still piecing together the spectrum of her emotional wants and needs. She explains this to Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), her lover who is over a decade her senior. In Julie, millennial anxiety manifests in flares of frustration and feeling stuck as she wrestles with self-discovery.

Segmented into a dozen chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue), the literary-structured film introduces Julie with a montage of her college days trapped in a swirl of indecisiveness and exploration, between career path changes and romantic flings. But by the end of the first act, Julie will turn 30 and be faced with the looming question of potential motherhood.

Trier and his longtime co-writer Eskil Vogt constantly invigorate our understanding of Julie and her romantic partners via insightful visual digressions guided by the voice of a female narrator. Soaked in Harry Nilssons deceivingly cheerful songs, their high-spirited narrative language finds an ideal vehicle in the way cinematographer Kasper Tuxen suffuses the characters genuine visages with the softest, most elegant lighting of the Nordic skies.

Working at a bookstore, after dabbling in medicine and photography, Julie is now in the shadow of Aksel, a revered cartoonist of politically incorrect material. Hes a safe choice, a reasonable partner, but she is not ready for the commitment he desires. A montage adds to thefeeling thatshes behind on lifes schedule, showinghow the women in her lineage across generations were already raising children at her age.

Part of Julies growth in the gracefully whimsicalThe Worst Person in the World, as she navigates an estrangement from her father, comes from moments about herfortitude to step away from a situation or a person in order to pursue her own happiness. Theres an agency in her perceived recklessness that places her in a limbo between juvenile hedonism and expected maturity.

Yet, in addressing the necessary selfishness to let herself move along based on her intuitiveness, she shows a deep compassion for the human being on the other side of every schism. Its in those scenes where Julie and Aksel air out the sorrow for the things that might never come to pass between them, that Trier captures an almost shocking display of honesty, rid of any defensive armor. Here are two people that love each other, who can come to terms with the impossibility of their union at this moment in time.

See more here:
The Worst Person in the World movie review (2022) - Roger Ebert

Dear Reader (excluding DJ Jazzy Donald),

This FiveThirtyEight headline caught my eye like the squirt from a grapefruit when the spoon goes in for the first time (if you dont like that analogy, be grateful I didnt go with the wayward fishhook one I worked on for too long and then abandoned):

I think the analysis in the piece is a mixed bag. Theres some stuff I think is wrong or tendentious and other points are well-taken or defensible. The authors, Alex Samuels and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, begin with a highly critical account of how then-candidate Glenn Youngkin made critical race theory a centerpiece of his campaign and then, once elected, signed an executive order banning critical race theory in schools. But, they add, the impact of this executive order is less straightforward than it seems, because critical race theory isnt actually taught in Virginia public schools. And then they add:

This kind of tactic is increasingly familiar in politics today. Republican politicians, in particular, build entire campaigns around false or misleading information, then implement policies that respond to those falsehoods, cementing them further in our political landscape.

Now, I have any number of objections I could raise. For instance, the claim that Virginia didnt incorporate CRT in schools to one extent or another is at least more contestable than the PolitiFact piece the authors rely on suggests. But even if you agree with PolitiFacts analysis, I dont see anything inherently wrong with a politician promising to keep what he and many voters think is a bad pedagogical approach from becoming entrenched in public schools.

Think of it this way: If there were a growing movement to teach white supremacy in public schools, I doubt many liberals would denounce a politician vowing to keep that movement from spreading to their local schools. Note: Im not saying that CRT is equivalent to white supremacy, Im merely illustrating the point that what public schools teach is a perfectly legitimate question in local or statewide elections.

Similarly, I think many of the authors claims about abortion are deeply flawed. I wont dwell on all of it, but the claim that pro-life Republicans are peddling myths and falsehoods in their opposition to late-term abortion (something they fairly accuse Donald Trump of doing) ignores efforts and statements by pro-choice Democrats that make pushback from pro-lifers understandable and defensible. For instance, a Democratic Virginia state delegate introduced legislation in 2019 that would have, in her initial explanations of her own bill, legalized abortion through the 40th week, including during labor. She later cleaned up her remarks in response to wholly defensible blowback. Then Gov. Gary Northam, a pediatric neurologist, explained in an interview how very late-term abortions were carried out in his experience: The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if thats what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

Northam also cleaned up his remarks. Still, theres a certain one-hand-clapping nature to complaints about Republicans opposing late term abortions of viable babies when Democrats often lend rhetorical or policy support to their concerns. It was Sen. Barbara Boxer who infamously said that a new human has recognizable rights when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights. When then-Sen. Rick Santorum responded, Obviously, you don't mean they have to take the baby out of the hospital for it to be protected by the Constitution, Boxer didnt say,of course I dont mean that. She said, I don't want to engage in this.

Damn those Republicans for taking Boxer literally or seriously.

Kulturkampf ber alles.

Okay, with that out of the way, I actually want to talk about that one-hand-clapping thing.

Lets start with the headline, Why Democrats Keep Losing Culture Wars. This gets at a long-running point David French and I have been making for a long time. Both sides of the culture war are convinced that they always lose. Heres a Newsweek piece from last April, Why Conservatives Keep Losing the Culture Wars. And heres Dinesh DSouza saying the same thing. The idea that conservatives always lose the culture war has been a staple on the right for a long time and was central to the case for Trump in 2015-16.

Its a simple fact of logic that if combatants on either side of a war or wars think they are losing or always lose, then someone is at least partly wrong. Yes, yes, theres a venerable pacifist point of view that holds that everybody loses in a war, and theres a lot of truth to that. But thats not what people mean when they say they always lose.

Second, culture wars are nothing new and there is nothing inherently illegitimate about arguing about the kind of culture you want to live in.

Now, I personally believe that the left wins culture war conflicts more often than the right does. And despite being a conservative, Im sometimes glad for it. For instance, the civil rights movement was far more bipartisan than Democrats sometimes like to acknowledge, but I think its fair to say that it was predominantly a movement from the left. More broadly, its undeniable that the cultural left has wracked up any number of big wins over the last half-century, from abortion to gay rights to the role of religion in public life.

Importantly, this also requires acknowledging that the left is very often the aggressor in the culture war. It drives me crazy to hear resistance to cultural offensives from the left described as aggression. If existing law says that nuns shouldnt be required to pay for birth control, its just ludicrous to cast their pushback as aggression. If you stick to the millennium-old view that men cant get pregnant, youre not the aggressor in the fight to overturn that view.

Indeed, taking immense pride in your movements history in delivering change and progress is fine. But dont play the victim when some of the institutions and individuals youre steamrolling object.

Both sides is real.

But my objections to the FiveThirtyEight piece arent merely philosophical or rhetorical. The notion that Democrats dont routinely initiate culture warsin the way the authors attribute to conservativesstrikes me as preposterous.

Consider the brouhaha over a Tennessee school district removing the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus from its curriculum. Countless outlets have described this as a ban and part of the rights culture war. Heres Barrons: The Maus ban added to the list of so-called culture war fights in which conservatives have forced local schools to proscribe books, particularly those written with the perspectives of ethnic and gender minorities. And heres CNN anchor Christine Romans:

All right, to the culture wars nowthe fake culture wars. The Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus is back on bestseller lists. This, after that Tennessee school district pulled the book from its eighth-grade curriculum for what it said was rough and objectionable language. Maus is an account of the author's father's experiences with the horrors of the Holocaust depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

First, let me say upfront, I think removing Maus from the schools curriculum is a mistake, and I share a lot of the scorn from liberals for the decision.

But removing books from required reading lists, course curricula, or even individual libraries is notand has never beena ban. Saying students wont be required to read something is not the same thing as banning them from reading it.

But if youre going to say that this sort of thing constitutes book banning, then that requires you to acknowledge it is wholly a bipartisan practice. Indeed, barely a week ago a school district in Washington state banned To Kill A Mockingbird because it contains the n-word, among other thought crimes. In 2019, Democrats in New Jersey tried to ban Huckleberry Finn. Both books have apparently been banned in Minnesota since 2018.

I disagree with these decisions, too. But that misses the point. Wheres the bowel-stewing panic or sophisticated condescension about mule-headed and retrograde Democrats waging a culture war and banning books? And by the way, who made the banning of Maus a national culture war issue? Hint: It wasnt Republicans. Conversely, who usually makes anecdotal cases of Huckleberry Finn being banned national issues? Hint: Its usually not Democrats.

The FiveThirtyEight authors insist that Republicans peddle misinformation and distortions in order to appease their whipped-up votersand they have a point!

But Democrats often peddle misinformation and distortions in order to appease their whipped-up voters, too.

What is the constant invocation of Jim Crow 2.0 if not a rich cocktail of misinformation and distortion? I listen closely every time a cable news talking head or Democratic pol rails against the Republican refusal to extend the Voting Rights Act. They virtually never point out that the Voting Rights Act doesnt need to be extendedits the law of the land. The extension stuff is entirely about one narrow aspect of the law invalidated by the Supreme Court that reasonable people can believe doesnt need to be extended. Reasonable people can also disagree, but they cant reasonably insinuate that those on the other side of the argument are akin to Bull Connor or other segregationists.

At the rhetorical level, the war on women is often little more than culture war boob bait. Pay disparities between men and women often vanish when you control for all sorts of relevant factors, starting with the individual choices of women. The way Democrats talk about guns is shot-through with culture war dog whistles, misinformation, and distortion.

My point isnt that liberals dont have colorable arguments on any or all of these issues. Nor is it that Republicans are always right when they ignite culture war fights. When Dr. Seuss estate opted to pull a couple of his more politically incorrect books from its catalog, Kevin McCarthy thought it was more important to read the unbanned Green Eggs and Ham than to stand in the way of Bidens $1.9 trillion spending spree. Im happy to mock that.

No, my point is that its fine to complain about culture war contests if you have a reasonable complaint. Its also fine to wage culture war fights if you have a reasonable complaint. But pretending that this is a one-sided phenomenon is itself a form of distortion and misinformation. It takes at least two sides to fight a war.

If I could offer one piece of advice to writers and editors of all stripesopinion and straight newswho want to expose the bad practices of one party or camp in the culture wars, or in politics generally, it would be to first ask this question: Does the other side do it, too?

For instance, dont wag your finger at the GOP about gerrymandering without at least acknowledging that Democrats are often just as bad. (And dont cover it under the guise of Republicans say.)

If I can close with a modest plug for The Dispatch, we dont hide the fact that we come from the right side of the ideological aisle. But part of the reason Steve and I launched this thing is to make precisely this point. It took the rise of Donald Trump for me to fully appreciate the degree to which the Republican Party and many conservative institutions are part of the problem in our politics. I also believe Trump made those problems not just more apparent, but objectively worse. But admitting the scope of partisan corruption doesnt require relinquishing ones commitment to conservative policies or principles.

For instance, Liz Cheney is still a principled conservative, but shes not willing to ignore or downplay the facts about January 6 because of that. The Republican National Committee just voted to censure her (and Adam Kinzinger) for this fact. The upshot of this is that Paul Gosar, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and the other gargoyles of the right can spew their bile and be considered Republicans in good standing and receive help from the party. The censure resolution begins, WHEREAS, The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the United States Constitution and share our values. Donald Trump, it is now abundantly clear, endeavored to invalidate a constitutionally valid election, with the full support of such poltroons and gibbons. But support for the thrice-married serial adulterer and coup-plotter, is considered consonant with our values but seeking the truth isnt. Thats because Trump has become the personification of our culture war conflicts.

If thats what defines the culture war, Im happy to sit on the sidelines with my colleagues and simply tell the truth as I see itabout the GOP and the Democrats.

Various & Sundry

Canine & feline update: The dogs are doing just fine. Pippa found a wonderful, super-terrific stick the other day (yes, I let her bring it in) and she remains quite proud of it. Shes also upping her camo game. Zo is bossier these days for reasons I cant quite identify. Well return to the subject another time. But the big quadruped news is that Chesterour neighbors cat and the late Ralphs chief frenemyis basically stalking Gracie these days. Technically, Chester is waiting for the Fair Jessica to give him treats, which she does daily. But then he hangs around staring at Grace. Lots of people want us to let him in. This would be a bad idea. Hes kind of a bully and Gracie is getting up there in years and doesnt need any confrontations. Also, I think Zo and Pippa would see this as a fundamentally unacceptable breach of security protocols.

ICYMI

Last Fridays G-File

A very academic Ruminant

Thank you for smoking

Volodymyr Zelensky, voice of reason

Wednesdays newsletter, released to the masses

The Dispatch Podcast on Trumps attempted election theft

Are we living through a new Cold War?

And now, the weird stuff

C. Montgomery Bezos

Sorry

Cock of the walk

Bearing all

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It Takes Two Sides to Fight a War - The Dispatch

Karen Pittman beams through a Zoom screen, cheers-ing me with a coffee mug that says, "Its official, youre awesome," on it below a painted faux lipstick smudge. Over the course of our conversation, Pittman, who plays Dr. Nya Wallace on the Sex and the City reboot series, And Just Like That, reads more playful and bubbly than her character, a college professor and community organizer struggling to conceive a child. The two of us are immediately giggling about the lotus-like chandelier in her background, which seems to be growing out of her head, before she remarks on some of my "yummy" recent Instagram posts.

Pittman is a celebrated stage and screen actress, and has worked on and off Broadway for years, as well as in a steady string of supporting television roles, including on FXs The Americans, Netflixs Luke Cage and, perhaps most notably until now, as Mia Jordan on Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoons Apple TV drama The Morning Show. As Jordan, Pittman plays a harried television producer, one of only a few people of color in the largely white, extremely chaotic world of a fictional morning news program. The Morning Shows first season nabbed eight Emmy nominations and one win, and if the Screen Actors Guild nominations are any indication, season two could be poised to make an equally strong showing.

If The Morning Show is what first brought Pittman to our attention, its And Just Like That that cemented her status as television royalty. In her first scene, the one and only Miranda Hobbes (portrayed to Emmy glory by Cynthia Nixon) has just arrived for her first day of class to pursue a Masters in Human Rights. Seeing Pittmans character headed to sit in the professors chair, Hobbes blurts out something like, "Dont sit there, thats for the professor." When Wallace calmly explains she is the professor, Hobbes defends herself, saying she was confused by Wallaces hair, having seen a photo with a different haircut online. What ensues is one the cringiest monologues ever committed to film and, as Pittman was quick to assert, awkward comedy gold.

From there, the relationship between Wallace and Hobbes first nosedives as Nixon's character continues to humiliate herself, but then slowly blossoms into a genuine friendship between the two women. Pittman plays Wallace as poised, no-nonsense and shrewd, but, as the series progresses, reveals a softer, more sensual side and becomes part of one of only a handful of sex scenes weve seen so far in the series, notable because of its prequels title.

I was captivated my Pittmans radiant kindness and thoughtfulness. She graciously began by asking for my pronouns, and when I explained I was open to any at the moment, and apologized for the potential confusion that might cause, she responded, "We are living in the age where: I get to decide who I am and you need to respect that. Trust me, I appreciate that." As someone who worked as a background actor in one scene of the series (keep your eyes peeled for a pink beret in episode eight), I was eager to talk shop about the filming process and the experience of joining such an iconic franchise.

Our chat ranged from her relationship to the original Sex and the City and its overwhelming whiteness, how she navigated the responsibility of representing so many types of women historically erased by the show, filming that earth-shattering opening scene with Miranda and much more.

PAPER: I wanted to start by going back chronologically to how you joined And Just Like That. Were you a fan of the original series?

Karen Pittman: Oh, I was! For sure, I was. I think like everybody, I became enthralled with New York City life, and sisterhood, and womanhood, through these four incredible characters. And also, with the city of New York. It just made me want to be a New Yorker. With the Manolo Blahniks on cobblestones. It was very romantic and whimsical, but also very groundbreaking. They were doing something, and telling stories about how people really lived here. All of my friends and I would get together, and it was common ground for us, to sit down and watch a fun story that was enchanting, right? Id actually met the executive producers on the show, John Melfi and Michael Patrick King, years ago when we did a pilot for Hulu, with... do you know Bridget Everett?

The comedian, yeah! Shes great.

Fantastic. So we did this really irreverent pilot. Really awesome comedy, where she was at the center of it, because shes a superstar. And that pilot didnt move forward, but I remember having such a great time with Michael and John, and John... I remember him coming to see a play I did. Hes just always been really supportive. So when I auditioned for And Just Like That, I remember seeing him on the Zoom, because you were still Zooming back then, and I saw him and Michael Patrick King and it felt like, "Oh, there go my brothers. Its time to see if we can find a good playground to play on." And it happened to be this story that I could tell with them, and I feel so grateful to do it.

Did you identify with one of the four women back when you were a viewer?

I mean, I think the answer is all of them, at some point. At some point I was all of those women, which is what I think made it so iconic but so fundamentally female. Those characters lived in our social and cultural psyche, because they were such strong archetypes. And newly created archetypes. That we felt like we could identify with as we came into the 21st century. If we were going to be a woman of the world, we were going to be one of those women, running around New York City living her best life. But I definitely was one of those audience members that was like, "It would be great to see some women of color in that world. It would be really enlightening. And Ive thought more about it as my career has gained steam because there are so many women who have come out to me and said, "Your representation really matters. You doing the thing that you do really matters to me, and its really important for me to see that." I havent completely stepped into the shoes of someone who can really inhabit that with a great deal of dexterity. But I definitely have felt like, "Oh, I see why its important." And I see why it was important for And Just Like That to be different. To be the next chapter of Sex And The City. Why it was important for them to make it diverse, and inclusive, like they have.

Because the original show, as great as it was, certainly was very white, and had its blind spots in terms of gender identities, and all of that... I think its safe to say that the reboot has taken large steps to correct those wrongs of the past, but Im curious to hear more about your take on how AJLT has tackled that. Also, in keeping with the chronology, when you first received that script and read about Nyas scenes, Im curious about your first impressions, and if you were immediately drawn to this character, and what was on the page versus what you brought to this woman through your preparations.

Well, first of all, I did not get the entire script. They were super secretive. Super duper. And then all throughout the filming, when we would get scripts for it, they would be on a highly secure... FBI, CIA version of script-reading documents. But I only got the scene, and the names were changed.

Which scene was that?

It was that very first scene, where Nya walks in with braids. Miranda very cautiously [says]: "Hey, dont, thats where the professor sits." Shes like, I am the professor."

Oh my god, that scene.

[Laughs] That was the very first one. And like many women of color, especially women from my tribe, who saw that scene, theyd lived it. So it wasnt very hard for me to understand the arc of what that moment might look like, and what that relationship might look like. Because, you know, Im sure this has happened to you, you meet someone whos slightly awkward, and weird around you, because theyre trying to figure out how to conjugate what you are, and how to approach it in a respectful manner. And they may just fuck it up. But you end up actually becoming friends with that person, and you endear yourself to them and they endear themselves to you. Thats sort of the way some relationships begin.

When I encountered that audition, I thought, "I totally understand this moment. These women are going to be friends. And by the way, I know this is Cynthia Nixons character." [Laughs] I know this isnt Carrie Bradshaw, and Im pretty sure its not Charlotte! They record your auditions and Cynthia saw mine and she said, "Oh, we have to have Karen, I love her work onstage. Can we really try to go for her?" I really didnt think I got the audition. I thought, "Well, I tried. I really, really tried. And I love those guys, and Ill have my chance. Weve worked together before, and well work together again. I know it." Which is how I approach auditions. If I dont get the job, its not my time. Not my opportunity. So then they called me back and said, "No, listen, wed really, really love to have you." "Oh, good! I need a comedy, after having done The Morning Show for eight, nine months." I need comedy. So thats how I popped in there.

Yeah, that scene, like I said, Im a super-fan of the franchise, so I had some people over, and we were watching it that Thursday night, and the air just left the room. Everyone was screaming.

I know! Because youre like, "Miranda... Oh! Oh! Miranda!" And one of the things that Michael said to me is: "Miranda is probably one of the most is the most loved, of that quartet." And I thought Cynthia Nixon just did a great job of shedding all fragility in the moment. And deciding that she was going to just muck up her character a little bit. She was going to make her a little messy. After seeing her seasons of Miranda as very, you know... not ever mussing, being mussed, in a way, especially around her career. We were going to see her for the first time step her foot into it. For me, it was really important to embody a Black woman who sees her going through the machinations of trying to figure out how to correct herself, versus Nya apologizing for Mirandas gaffe, she just lets Miranda figure it out. I think thats a lot of how it works, nowadays. Because theres been this really strong response, what I wonder is how many people are affected by this notion of cancel culture, where if you make a mistake, a gaffe... Oh, you didnt mean it that way, youre going to get thrown out of society, youre going to get canceled... I think there is some fear that shes, like, a "Karen." I dont think so. I think shes just a human being that said something politically incorrect, but apologizes, and we move on into a good friendship. Do you know what I mean?

Totally. I actually really admired that the show was willing to take these women who we have been with for so many years, and it really isnt afraid to make them the butt of the joke, and make them go through these mistakes, and goof-ups, in order to learn and to grow. It sounds like you feel similarly. I think there was a way where they could have written this show where they didnt tackle anything difficult like that. So I applaud the writers for not being afraid to go there, and have Miranda and Carrie and Charlotte mess up and look bad.

I also thought it was really, for me, and my friends, to have sat in these awkward moments... I thought it was funny. It was entertaining. You know?

Exactly. That scene was so funny. I saw some reactions online about people just thinking it was so horrifying, but, I mean, I was laughing.

If youre cringing on the inside, thats something to experience too. Its a full service story, ay! Cringe, laugh, giggle, cry. Do those things. But I also feel, again, back to that idea of when I came into it, I certainly had fertile ground in my life for being amidst a sea of white women, in white spaces, as it were, and having to navigate that. With all of the education and style and the way you present yourself, you certainly can encounter some weird awkward moments like that, in spite of the fact youre well put together. People are still trying to figure out how to be politically correct. And for me, it was really important, "OK, Im going to bring this character to life, shes going to be different from Mia Jordan, different from what I did on The Morning Show." But she is also going to be this super generous human being around this conversation of what it is like to talk a little bit about race politics, and put that in humor. Because I definitely feel like the last several years we have been on opposite sides. And having any sort of discourse around race, or the introduction of race into our conversations, is awkward, and cumbersome, and were often super clumsy about it. But I dont think that that means it shouldnt be talked about. I think part of what I love about this show that has come out in me, is normalizing the conversations between people of different genders and different races, normalizing the conversation of: "Hey, Im different. This is how I want to be referred to. This is how you talk to someone, or this is how we include my race, or ethnicity, in a part of this conversation." I dont think theres anything wrong with that. In that way I think its part and parcel with the groundbreaking history of the show, that theyre introducing these topics to this audience.

So you touched on some of the fan reactions Im curious to hear more about that.

Once the show came out, I was like, "Everybodys going to love it. Im totally optimistic. So when people had knives out, I was like, What? Are you kidding me?" Some of the feeling was, this needs to change, you guys need to change. Saras character Che needs to be included, la la la, Nyas character, Miranda needs to confront her otherness... But then some people were like, "Why did you change it? Dont change! Change it, but dont change it like that!" It was definitely a knives out experience. But a lot of that has rolled off my back, because I know whats coming. I know whats on the horizon for this series. For this season. So I know that people are going to be like, "Oh, they did the thing that I thought they werent going to do. Or: "Theyre doing more than I ever expected them to do with this." The feedback has been like, "Oh, this character cant just be there to serve the white character." And, as the season has gone on, now youve seen Nya in her relationship with her husband, and you see that really her arc isnt just about being Mirandas professor, its about her struggles with IVF, and managing her own expectations for her life... And what does it mean to be a Black woman in a great relationship with a great Black man, and then decide not to create a Black family out of that? Are you kidding me? Thats also an interesting conversation to have. And I cant wait for the audience to see the rest of the season, because I think theyre really going to be moved, and entertained, and laugh, and really be surprised.

Cynthia Nixon directed episode six, "Diwali." So what was that like, because shes your scene partner as well?

I think this is her first episodic television foray. It was great. Shes an actors actor. Shes a directors actor. This is my first nude scene, naked scene, in television. Simulated sex scene, or whatever. And I had such nerves around it. A lot of vulnerability displayed in the moment for my character, and for my characters husband, LeRoy McClain. As a female actor, youre very sensitive about when you expose your body, when you make your actual, physical presence in that way, when you share it on screen. You always are very, very careful about that, because that shit is meme-able, OK? That shit lives in the world forever. So you just want to make sure that it actually was going to do something for the story, its going to do something for the character... its relevant, you know? So I definitely would not have seen myself doing that with any other director. Cynthia is just really warm and thoughtful. Or in any other production. With Michael Patrick King, and John, I knew they were going to make sure it was very beautiful, and tender, and sweet. There were notes in the script about: this is what it should look like, Nayas on top... And so, it was very specific and really beautiful. Shes just a joy to act with. A lot of fun. Very early on, we had great friend chemistry.

COVID Im sure has complicated things, but you talk about that organic friendship you developed do you feel that the cast has had the chance to really bond off-set?

Inherent to doing episodic television is that youre sitting around in your chairs waiting for the next scene to get set up. During the filming of The Morning Show season two, we really did have to keep our distance. We couldnt be on set that long. This is prior to there being a vaccine, when we were filming that. But by the time we got to filming And Just Like That, the summer of 2021, there was a vaccine, almost everybody was vaccinated who was on set by August 2021, so we could sit around in the chairs and talk to each other without hindrance, without feeling like "I have to keep my distance." So we did build those behind the scenes bonds. Kristin was fantastic. We bonded over dealing with her daughters and their hair Kristin has adopted two beautiful African-American girls. We absolutely had the opportunity to bond. It was special. It really is. My social media person has put this picture online of us during one of our photoshoots for press, and were all seven of us lined up. It was just such a special day. Because we were bonded. I felt really strongly about the women that I worked with on that show.

Youve done so many different roles in your career, and are now reaching this new level of visibility. Im wondering what other types of characters are you most eager to play next?

Its such a great question. I mean, a lot of it depends upon the collaborators, for me. I dont want to tell just any story for any character up there. But I definitely feel like its time for me to start being in a leadership position in storytelling. Which looks like a leading role. Ive spent a lot of time in the experience of supporting really extraordinary, fabulous women, like Jennifer and Reese, and even going back to Keri Russell in The Americans, and in the theater... Ive spent a lot of time observing women, specifically white women, in leadership positions, in the jobs that I have had, and I think that its important for women of color to assume leadership positions in telling a story. Not just because of what it does for the story, but also what it does for the other actors, and how to be in that role. I think I have a good understanding of it now. I think definitely women who are in love, and who are happy, and who are complicated. There are people that Id love to work with, actors Id love to work with...

Can you name any of those?

Well, all the beautiful Black male actors out there, Mahershala Ali, Andr Holland was a colleague of mine from grad school... all the cuties. I also am a big fan of Jessica Chastain. But again, it is a question of who the storytellers are, and how to collaborate. And really, I think, the question is what kinds of stories do I want to tell next. I think there is so much more work to be done societally and artistically with the conversation about how we find common ground. I think my experience of having gone through this really extraordinary time of political unrest and societal unrest, has been "OK. Theres still a lot of work we have to do as human beings to figure out how to come together." We paid a lot of lip service to that, but perhaps there is a lot of good use in telling stories where people find themselves on common ground that they never imagined themselves. And how do I tell more stories like that.

Photos courtesy of Warner Media

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Karen Pittman Talks Wonders, Responsibilities of Joining 'And Just Like That' - Papermag

The co-creators of two brilliant cult-classic comedy series Mindy Kaling of The Office and Justin Noble of Brooklyn99 teamed up with Sarah Aubrey, head of originals at HBO Max, to create The Sex Lives of College Girls . The show follows the chaotic journey of four beautiful girls named Kimberly, Bela, Leighton and Whitney as they arrive at New Englands prestigious Essex College. We get to see a wide range of colours and emotions the girls go through as they steer their new, unfettered lives in college as not just friends, but also roommates.

As the debut season of The Sex Lives of College Girls wrapped up in December 2021, Sarah Aubrey and HBO Max announced the renewal of the show for another season.

It is not surprising that the series was renewed. Along with the announcement of a second season, HBO Max revealed that the college comedy drama was the biggest Max Original comedy launch on the platform this year (2021) and its viewership kept growing every week with the release of the new episodes. Most importantly, the show really hits the spot with viewers and critics. Rated 7.7/10 on IMDB, The Sex Lives of College Girls boasts rave reviews. It also has a 97% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes. The show is hilarious, sassy, smart and refreshingly politically incorrect!

Who is your favourite character on the show and what did you think of the first season? Chris Meyer as Canaan is our personal favourite.

This comedy series is available on HBO Max. Heres the lowdown on season one.

The cast features Timothe Chalamets sister, Pauline Chalamet of The King of Staten Island fame. She plays Kimberly, a studious valedictorian. Kimberly hails from a working-class Arizona suburb. Described as smart, caring, earnest and ambitious, shes definitely a character to look out for. Going to college is very exciting for her, since her sexual experiences up until now have been limited to a lazy three minutes with her sloppy high school boyfriend.

Amrit Kaur from Kims Convenience plays Bela. She loves comedy and has absolutely no filter. Hailing from a rich New Jersey family, Bela claims to be a sex-positive feminist.

Renee Rapp plays the entitled and bratty Leighton. She grew up in Manhattans Upper East Side I know what youre thinking, Leighton from the Upper East Side? Definitely sounds like a silent nod to the cult classic Gossip Girl. We can almost imagine Kristen Bell narrating this in gossip girls iconic voice: This just in: After a long, hot summer away I see it didnt take much time for you to dirty up the clean slates I gave you. My inbox is overflowing, so lets get to the good stuff shall we? Spotted: our favourite party girl Leighton up to her old tricks? Was it only a year ago our It Girl mysteriously disappeared to attend Essex College? Looks like the skeletons out of the (gay) closet?

Now THIS is a spin-off show wed love to see, wouldnt we?

In The Sex Lives of College Girls, Leighton comes from a wealthy and conservative family. The show marks Renees TV debut. She previously played Regina George in Broadways Mean Girls.

Newcomer Alyah Chanelle Scott portrays Whitney. Daughter of an influential US Senator, she enters Essex as a rising soccer star. The supporting cast features some familiar faces. This includes Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star Gavin Leatherwood. He plays Nico, Leightons brother and Kimberlys love interest.

Midori Francis from Dash and Lily has been cast as Alicia, a student at the college. Chris Meyer plays Canaan, who hooks up with Whitney. He was previously in Paramounts Tell Me a Story.

The entirety of season one shows how the four girls navigate the start of a new chapter in their lives.

Bela wants to join the Catallun, a comedy group on campus making it one of her top goals. While working towards her goal, she faces sexual assault by one of the magazine editors. When Bela faces pushback from Catallun members after filing an official complaint, she decides to start her own comedy club with two other college mates.

The star soccer player decides to confide in her mom and tell her about the sexual relations shes been pursuing with her married coach, Dalton. The show realistically showcases the love and tensions between the mother-daughter duo as they find a way to resolve their issues.

Leightons relationship with her girlfriend, Alicia, starts to approach a rough patch. The couple is having trouble figuring out where they stand or how serious they are about their future. Whys that so? This is because Alicia decides she doesnt want to be with someone who is still in the closet hiding their true identity. Leighton processes the heartbreak by coming out to Kimberly.

Distracted by her insatiable lust for Leightons brother Nico, a lovelorn Kimberly is on the verge of getting expelled from college for skipping classes and cheating on an exam. However, the school decides to revoke her scholarship instead of kicking her out. To make matters even worse, Leighton casually reveals that Nico has a long-distance girlfriend named Maya, who we havent met yet.

Were readying ourselves for a plot twist, as we realise that Nico, the sneaky little fox, has been cheating on his girlfriend with Kimberly the whole time! Is Nico in an open relationship? The possibilities are endless, but if he eventually turns out to be a two-timer, were going to feel very bad for poor Kimberly. Lets hope she makes better choices for herself in season 2.

All four main leads will be coming back to play their relatable characters and hopefully attend more awkward naked parties in the next season of The Sex Lives of College Girls. In addition, the series regular cast members Midori Francis, Chris Meyer, Lauren Spencer and Renika Williams are on board for the next season too.

Unfortunately, no date has been revealed as of yet, but the show is confirmed to return on screens in late 2022.

(Main and featured image credit: The Sex Lives of College Girls/HBO Max/IMDb)

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What we know so far about The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 2 - Prestige Online

Let's admit it: the time for debate on school reopening is over. It's time to stop treating education as an afterthought, as if it's not a priority. Observing the Covid infection peak-plateau curve to decide whether schools should be open or not, while treating education as a secondary sector in the matrix, has done enough damagenot only to the students and their parents, but also to the entire nation. The short- and long-term effects of the ever-evolving pandemic on the education sector are yet to be measured. But if we don't rethink education as a frontline sector, there will be nothing to measure in the long run.

As a practising academic administrator, my observation is simple: if banks and hospitals can stay open, schools can too. Once we put the same safety measures that we expect other institutions to follow, once we pursue the five key pillars of pandemic control: masking, social distancing, hand-washing, cleaning, and contact-tracing when exposures occur and quarantining those exposed, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't let our students out of the Zoom boxes and back into their classrooms. The accessibility to vaccines gives us additional hope.

We will never reach a consensus on whether schools can be made safe from the coronavirus. Health experts will always have their own measurement sticks. There's no reason to doubt their scientific explanations. But to think schools are the only places where our young ones are exposed to the risk of infection is a fallacy that we cannot afford to entertain. The other parts of society have started to pick up their regular tempo, and the chances of getting contaminated in the communities are equally high for those attending their classes online. The sooner we accept that in-person instruction is essential and physical presence in classrooms is important for the overall learning environment, the easier it will be to reopen our schools. The delayed return to classrooms will only prolong the emergency mode that we adopted at the start of the pandemic. In the last two years, we have learned to live with the disease. It's about time we relearnt to live offline.

Research shows that Covid infection rates in schools have not been higher than in communities. In fact, tracking cases in schools is relatively straightforward as we are dealing with a controlled environment. But the problem arises the moment we are asked to adjudge whether students, teachers, and staff are spreading the virus on campuses or just carrying in the disease from elsewhere. The answer gets convoluted. Hence, instead of treating campus communities as potential vectors, we should weigh up the risks and benefits.

Online teaching has repeatedly brought forth the issue of educational equity. The government intervention for data supply and aid for gadgets came in too little, too late. Meanwhile, we witnessed disproportionate recourse to online teaching platforms and accessibility. We can gloat over the commercial ad in which a father makes a bamboo mobile holder for his daughter's online classes in a peripheral village. The reality is: there is a limit to that particular student's access to a virtual classroom. The internet speed required for video streaming, class participation and presentation is far from ideal. The affordability of services soon becomes an issue. The urban-rural and the rich-poor divides become a reality. Add to that the mental health issues that plague students exposed to excessive screen time without any human interaction.

From my interaction with parents and colleagues, I can tell how social isolation affects our students as they struggle to stay focused on their online lessons. Many students in remote-learning situations are falling behind academically. Their work ethics are changing. They are often taking advantage of the home environment to cheat in their examinations. Many do other things while leaving their devices logged in to virtual classes.

The overall monitoring that schools provide serves as a safety net for many students. A school is a safe place for students to spend the day with their peers. Teachers are often the first to notice if a student is suffering depression, or exhibiting abnormal behaviour caused by domestic, sexual or drug abuse. School closure has put many working parents in a very difficult position. They struggle to balance their regular jobs and parenting. They are forced to give their wards undue access to the internet in the name of virtual schooling. Once we factor in all the damage that school closure has done to our childrenand, by extension, to the education sectorwe realise that there is no reason to suspend school services every time there is a twist in the infection curve. Panic responses will keep on sending mixed signals to all stakeholders.

Online education served its purpose as a stop-gap solution. I think it's time to return to school with a renewed understanding of education. Education is as important as other frontline sectors. The massive vaccination drive undertaken by the government gives us some comfort in welcoming our students back to classrooms. We just need to insist on mask-wearing, physical distancing, and other mitigation measures to ease the process. These are the children who will probably make the best of the education, and come up with solutions to protect us from a similar pandemic in the future. Let's turn them into warm bodies in a physical classroom, rather than zombies in Zoom rooms.

Dr Shamsad Mortuzais the pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).

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Want to save our nations future? Reopen schools. - The Daily Star

No one seemed to be paying attention. No one seemed to realize that as advances in automotive technology took over more of the safety functions, driver inattention would escalate [Page 9, Jan. 25, New vehicles to be rated on how alert they keep drivers]. From driver perspective, the reasoning goes like this: With the car doing most of the driving, driver attention can be redirected to more productive ends. Imagine what one can do with hands-free driving? Card games are not out of the question. Airlines have long faced the problem that increased automation is robbing pilots of hands-on skills. And pilots are highly trained. The motoring public is not. Its too much to expect drivers to snap out of their technology-induced comas in time to correct serious situations. Corporate arrogance shipped our manufacturing base overseas, creating the present supply-chain debacle. Technological arrogance now threatens the safety on the highways.

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Readers Speak: We have to keep fentanyl out of the country - Hartford Courant

Among people who work on Myanmar, there is a politically incorrect but popular saying: When there are three Burmese, there are four opinions. Terrible as it may sound, it gives a flavor of the profound diversity, and therefore division of interests and views, that has long marked the norm in the country. Despite the urgent and unprecedented need for unity after the February coup last year, the old and the new resistance to the military government have not yet been able to find a common path despite the presence of a common cause. Instead, the factionalization within the oppositions that had plagued the national reconciliation process for decades before the coup continues to affect the modality and the effectiveness of the opposition today.

Following the February 1 coup last year, a group of members of parliament elected in 2020 formed the National Unity Government (NUG) on April 16. The ruling military juntas State Administration Council (SAC) promptly declared the NUG illegal and a terrorist organization. The NUG announced the establishment of the Peoples Defense Force (PDF) in May and declared a peoples defensive war against the military government in September. Internationally, the NUG has self-claimed to be the sole legitimate government representing Myanmar and has demanded diplomatic recognition from sovereign governments without success.

By the last quarter of 2021, all members of the NUG had left Myanmar and gone into exile. The Peoples Defense Force, however, has become a grassroots-level insurgency, with organized local branches operating in small pockets of territories across the nation, especially in the ethnic states (Burma is divided into seven regions dominated by the Bamar ethnic majority and seven states inhabited primarily by ethnic minorities). Despite the broad representation the NUG and the PDF claim, the caveat is that not all local armed groups are part of the PDF they might share the PDFs aspirations but are unwilling to accept its command. And not all branches nominally under the PDF are under the control of NUG despite the nominal command structure, they enjoy de facto independence and autonomy in their operations.

This evidently creates many questions about the insurgency, especially its decisionmaking authorities and the representativeness of any declaratory policy. For example, in November, three former peace negotiators known for their proximity to the Myanmar military claimed that they had been put on a hit list created by the NUG and PDF. Experts and policy practitioners who work on the matter know that such a list indeed exists, especially considering that urban campaigns of assassination against junta members and bombings have been taking place in Myanmars cities. But regarding the assassination plan for the trio, the question is who created it the NUG, the PDF, or people associated with either or both of them. The NUG has denied that it has such a list, but the hydra-headed nature of the resistance force has complicated the determination. The proliferation of actors might offer the NUG and the PDF deniability, but it undermines their authority and reputation at the same time.

The resistance campaign is further complicated by the ethnic factors of the country. During the pseudo-democratic period under the presidency of Thein Sein (2011-2016), the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in Myanmar roughly self-divided into two camps: signatories and non-signatories of the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) negotiated in 2015 by the central government. The non-signatories are from the north, especially those along the Chinese border. These groups, especially the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and its proxies, as well as the Kachin Independence Army, boast larger forces and financial resources and chose to hold out for a better deal later. The signatories are smaller EAOs located further south, in lower Myanmar. They accepted the NCA because it was seen as the best deal that they could get given their weaker material and military position.

These factors also affect the two camps attitude toward the military junta after the coup. Key NCA signatories, such as the Restoration Council of Shan State and the Karen National Union, moved quickly to condemn the military coup. The truce was quickly broken and fighting reignited. But the non-signatories have been much less committal. Key players such as the UWSA have been sitting on the wall without either accepting or condemning the military coup. This is understandable given that these groups have enjoyed higher level of autonomy and operating outside the authority of the Burmese central government regardless of who is in control. For them, as long as the cease-fire is maintained, the chaos in Myanmar on the national level only creates more breathing room for them.

Outside the signatories and non-signatories, there are also three organizations the Arakan Army, the Taang National Liberation Army, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army that have been engaged in active fighting with the Burmese military for the past decades. They were denied a seat at the negotiation table because they were seen as having formed after the peace process started in 2011. As a third category, they naturally align more with the non-signatories.

While the diversity of views among EAOs has been complicated enough, the relationship between NUG/PDF and the EAOs further complicate the picture. The EAOs have been engaged in armed insurgency against the Burmese central government for seven decades. In comparison, the democratic opposition, represented by the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi, had historically adopted a nonviolent political rather than military approach to the struggle with the junta. Now the NUG/PDF has embarked on the path of armed resistance, it is only natural for them to seek alliance and assistance from the EAOs, especially arms, shelter, and training. In fact, many PDF militias have received such assistance from the ethnic organizations.

However, the ethnic groups views of the NUG and PDF also vary. Needless to say, some EAOs have been inspired by the resistance campaign after the coup and have provided training and weapons as well as coordinated operations with the PDF. However, that is only part of the story. In the views of some ethnic groups, the military coup is essentially an intra-Bamar civil-military contest for power, as the Burmese military and National League for Democracy are both predominantly ethnic Bamar, and the ethnic groups have been denied power sharing under the reigns of both. The argument is strengthened by the reality that the NUG is also Bamar-centric. Although it has included some ethnic representatives in its Cabinet, none are ethnic Shan even though Shan make up 9% of the countrys population and predominate in a fifth of its territory. Furthermore, some EAOs are aggrieved by the NUG/PDF refusal to accommodate their political aspirations despite the NUG and the PDFs need for assistance from the ethnic groups, they have rejected a new constitution or constitutional framework proposed by the ethnic groups to better include them in the future government of Myanmar.

The consequence of all the profound divisions and self-serving calculus is the undermining of the unity required for an effective resistance campaign against the military junta. Yet the rifts are a reflection of the diverse historical background and ethnic composition of the nation, as well as the different aspirations and negotiating positions of various resistance groups. There is no easy solution to the factionalization of the resistance, as none of the groups appear strong enough politically, morally, or financially to absorb and unify other groups under its wing.

This is bad news for the resistance. While the oppositions are divided, the Burmese military is a highly unitary, monolithic, and hierarchical organization. The military has tried to keep the resistance divided by keeping the dialogues open with the EAOs in the north in order to prevent them from aligning with the PDF. On the battlefield, the military has run a counterinsurgency campaign against the PDF, including specialized units, scorched earth tactics, militarized police, and mass surveillance. This does not mean that the military can easily conquer the resistance and defeat the insurgency. The past seven decades show the low likelihood of that happening. But it does mean that the resistance has a long way to go before it could effectively match and counter, let alone defeat, the military.

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One year after Myanmars coup, old and new resistance is undermined by divisions - Brookings Institution

One reason the New York Times has become insufferable for readers outside of the activist left is that the former newspaper of record demands an increasingly costly and unrealistic agenda for managing American lifestyles and livelihoods. Two stories today suggest the Times cant bear it any more easily than most readers can.

Times food coverage is often served with a generous portion of anti-business rage. The effect is to shame consumers into forgoing enjoyable meals and searching for items they can consume without leaving an economic or environmental trace. Take todays unappetizing offering, Were Cooked, an opinion video series introduced in an email to Times readers by Adam Ellick. Mr. Ellick at first confesses to his own politically incorrect indulgences, writing that despite years of reading about our malignant food system and the harm that its doing to animals, the natural ecosystem and us, I have been unable to change my wide-ranging diet. He then attempts to make the case for an ideological menu:

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New York Times Loves UnionsExcept at the New York Times - The Wall Street Journal

Its Groundhog Day! OK, technically this uniquely American holiday is observed tomorrow the day when Punxsutawney Phil grabs the groundhog spotlight back from TVs annoying lottery hawker, Gus. But with COVID-19, Donald Trumps non-stop blather, and an endlessly frigid winter, Im feel like Im hearing Sonny and Chers I Got You, Babe on the clock radio every day at 6 a.m. How about you?

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up to receive this newsletter weekly at inquirer.com/bunch, and we promise you a different tune every Tuesday morning.

Referring to the vast rural and industrial American Heartland as flyover country has become politically incorrect reeking of coastal elite condescension yet the phrase aptly describes the life journey of Philadelphia-area native Ro Khanna.

Raised by his Indian immigrant parents in suburban Bucks County, the Council Rock High School grad got his precocious teen political letters published in the Courier Times before flying west as a young man to make a career in Silicon Valley as a lawyer. Then, he flew back over Middle America for Washington when his Northern California district sent the progressive Democrat to Congress in 2016, where he still serves.

Khanna, a 2020 presidential campaign adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, is arguably the last member of Congress youd expect to become an advocate for the economic revival of the rust-bitten Midwest or the rural South. But he experienced a lightbulb moment when he joined a GOP colleague on a fact-finding trip to the rolling hills of Kentucky during his first term. He saw how the giants of Big Tech many of them his constituents or campaign donors back in Silicon Valley could power job growth in Americas forgotten counties. And this sparked an even bigger idea about how rural and Rust Belt development could save democracy.

Khanna has turned his Big Idea into a book Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work For All of Us, officially out today that seeks to flip todays big debates the growing power of tech giants like Amazon or Meta/Facebook and address the political resentment held by rural voters who feel disrespected by coastal elites. Speaking to me Monday by phone from New York where he was about to tape Late Night With Stephen Colbert, this congressman for one of Americas most affluent and educated districts in America, explained his ideas for growth in the regions where access to learning and wealth have lagged.

READ MORE: From Council Rock to Congress: Philly-born Ro Khanna is saving U.S. foreign policy from itself | Will Bunch

Khanna explained that most Americans crave what he calls pride of place. Its what he felt in his close-knit and striving middle-class neighborhood growing up in Holland, Pa. but has been robbed from communities with shuttered factories, empty church pews, and rising deaths of despair. Its not just lost jobs, Khanna said, talking about the resentment in these counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump in the last two elections. And its not just telling their kids to move to where the jobs are, but that its done in the most condescending and insulting way.

Not surprisingly for Silicon Valleys man in D.C., Khanna calls himself a progressive capitalist, and the path he envisions in Dignity in a Digital Age not only for the stereotypical Trump Country but also for nonwhite blue-collar swaths of the South and Southwest involves a partnership of tech firms, government, and higher ed. That means he supports ideas such as the federal government requiring its tech contractors to guarantee new jobs in rural areas, and colleges and universities inventing new kinds of programs that target todays labor market yet may not require the massive expense of a four-year diploma.

This is not some charade of, Lets turn everybody into a coder, Khanna said, even as his book notes that new technologies and the work-from-home-ethos thats arisen during the long pandemic has made it possible for software engineers to now thrive in places like the Kentucky areas that he visited (which bills itself, only half-jokingly, as Silicon Holler). He sees last months announcement by Intel of a $20 billion investment to build two large silicon plants in central Ohio with 3,000 permanent jobs and 7,000 more in construction as an example of what can be done if tech CEOs take a broader view of economic development.

In writing about Big Techs role in modern America, Khanna dances close to an overheated third rail, at a fraught moment when politicians on all sides talk about breaking up, regulating, or somehow clamping down on these too-powerful platforms. Khanna told me there needs to be more competition and more rights for consumers. But he also thinks a smarter, more egalitarian vision from the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world could draw the internet back to its original dream of connecting communities and peoples best ideas, rather than spreading misinformation and political venom.

For Khanna, the real goal of both a World Wide Web working for citizens and creating good jobs outside of elite coastal enclaves is the same: a renewed sense of community. That, he believes, can in turn can fulfill the deferred U.S. promise of the worlds first true multi-racial and multi-ethnic democracy where a child of Indian migrants can thrive, but so can a deep-rooted Kentuckian.

We have to have an aspirational, patriotic vision for America, Khanna said. It cant all be doomer-ish. The question, of course, is whether those bleak views of an ever-deteriorating culture war in which many in so-called Trump Country are well past the point of trusting educated outsiders like Khanna can supersede the once-universal faith in the power of economic development. His new book seems an incredibly timely read. Hopefully its not too late.

Do you want to know even more about Rep. Ro Khanna and his new book, Dignity In a Digital Age? Then I have good news for you: You can participate in a special Inquirer LIVE online forum with Khanna moderated by The Inquirers ace political reporter Jonathan Tamari exactly one week from today, on February 8 at 4:15 p.m. You can register in advance at this link.

Is there another Beatles: Get Back-style documentary out there, hiding in plain sight? Yes and no. In 1968, the Rolling Stones hooked up with legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless) to record for posterity the making of one of their greatest numbers, Sympathy for the Devil. Yet Godard was high on Maoist agitprop in the wake of Frances May 1968 uprisings. The remarkable studio scenes the Stones last with doomed founder Brian Jones are interspersed with some bizarre-yet-banal revolutionary theatre. But if youre a 1960s completist like me, Sympathy for the Devil is still worth the $4.99 rental on Amazon Prime.

Question: Why isnt the media freaking out over Trumps statement last night about overturning the election? Why arent lawmakers? Via Heather Cox Richardson (@HC_Richardson) on Twitter

Answer: Its not every week I get a question from such a luminary Richardson, the Boston College historian and author, writes the uber-popular Letters from an American newsletter. Shes referring to the 45th presidents own news release in which he confessed to asking his veep Mike Pence to overturn the election at the January 6, 2021 certification, which Pence refused to do. Its the latest in a series of overt acts that sure seem criminal in nature whether confessing his role in a January 6 conspiracy, obstructing justice, or trying to intimidate prosecutors that Trump carries out in broad daylight. He seeks to numb journalists or lawmakers into complacency how could it be a crime if he admits it in public? and its worked his entire life. Its past time for our milquetoast Attorney General Merrick Garland to act, and prove our presidents are not above the law.

They say its lonely at the top, but President Biden must have been a tad taken aback last week with the icy welcome he almost received from Pennsylvania Democrats on his infrastructure-plan-boosting trip to Pittsburgh. With the 46th presidents approval numbers taking a big hit over everything from inflation to lingering COVID-19 to general malaise two of the Keystone States best-known Democrats with big 2022 ambitions initially claimed scheduling conflicts prevented them from being seen with Biden. While attorney general and lone Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Josh Shapiro stayed away Friday (although he did release a tweet of shooting a basketball called by retired 76ers voice Marc Zumoff), lieutenant governor and Senate hopeful John Fetterman had an abrupt change of plans. When a major bridge over Pittsburghs Frick Park collapsed, Fetterman raced to the scene in his trademark winter shorts, where he met Biden who also diverted to the scene and exchanged some kind words with POTUS.

READ MORE: If Dems want to save American democracy, they need to do these 4 things ASAP | Will Bunch

And thats what Fetterman should have been doing all along! The reality is that there are two competing narratives about both Biden and the Democratic Party right now. The first embraced not just by the presidents Republican foes but also by much of the mainstream media eager to prove its toughness toward a president not named Trump is the glass half-empty storyline. The glass-half-full saga is the booming job market and overall economy aided by Bidens $1.9 trillion on COVID-19 relief as well as the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the restoration of decency and ethics to the Oval Office after The Former Guy. When fearful, deer-in-the-headlines Dems like Shapiro or pre-bridge-collapse Fetterman make headlines for avoiding Biden, they are confirming the Biden is a failure narrative, and making it likely that they will lose in November in a GOP tidal wave. It may be the dumbest political strategy Ive ever seen.

Something horrible has been unleashed in the American Heartland: a flurry of bills in red-state legislatures around gag orders about what teachers can or cannot say in the classroom, especially on the subjects of race or sexuality. Great books like Maus or The Bluest Eye are getting yanked from library shelves. In my latest Sunday column, I looked at whats behind the new McCarthyism a frenzy of book banning and classroom interference that undermines our kids from learning American historical truths.

Over the weekend, I poured my shock and outrage into the news that Donald Trump has dangerously escalated his rhetoric on the road to a 2024 comeback. In a big rally with his cult members in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night, Trump first promised pardons for the criminals of the January 6 insurrection and then all but threatened a new civil war if prosecutors indict him for his past crimes. Then he tossed the gasoline of racism onto this fire. History shows that lovers of American democracy must act quickly to contain Trump, before his insurrection is too far gone.

Nothing stops The Inquirers indefatigable foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin. With her passport already stamped everywhere from Iraq to Afghanistan, Trudy left late last week for the only country that matters right now: Ukraine. With her nose for behind-the-scenes policy voices and everyday folks caught in the crossfire sometimes literally Trudys columns (twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) will offer her readers in Philadelphia insights that others simply wont get. Her curtain-raiser on her Ukraine adventure is a great overview of the crisis. Theres only one way to read every new dispatch from Trudy and from me, for that matter. Subscribe to The Inquirer today.

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