Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Rivers of money are pouring into sustainability and impact bonds, and the numbers are mind-boggling. A record $US490 billion was raised in 2020 by governments, corporations and other groups selling green, social and sustainability bonds.

Then theres an additional $US347 pumped into ESG-focused investment funds during the same pandemic-wrecked year. According to Bloomberg, the investment levels were an all-time high. Around 700 new funds were created just to collect all this money.

But wait, theres more. The same Bloomberg article reports Moodys Investors Service expects sustainable-debt issuance to reach $US650 billion in 2021 as ESG funds continue growing at astounding rates.

All this while the world was (rightly) preoccupied by COVID-19 and geopolitics.

The more important point, however, is that its hard to ignore an inevitable conclusion: Weve reached a tipping point and were not going back.

Globally, the sustainable investment industry manages more than $US3 trillion of funds. And investors are not done yet, despite accusations of greenwashing. Clearly the investment community has realised ESG funds are delivering better returns than non-ESG funds.

It turns out if you look after the environment, your community, employees and customers its better business (knock me over with a feather).

But if you step back a second, its no exaggeration to say all this ESG investing (inclusive of its flaws) is symbolic of a fundamental shift in human history.

In this, the Modern Era, weve lived through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and then the Contemporary Period or Information Age. Technology has defined every aspect of economic, social and political life in this most recent period of history.

Weve seen the world through the lens of software, AI, robots, fake meat, smartphones and incredible advances in science. Technology is arguably the dominant narrative nations use as a reference point for measuring progress.

Its all great, and progress will continue. But the Information Age was just the setup. The punchline has arrived, courtesy of investors and a groundswell of like-minded people across the globe.

Im calling this next period of history the Impact Era.

When you look at three clearly identified, converging forces (pictured below) they combine to form this notion of impact. It could be positive or negative, but long-lasting impact nonetheless.

The dominant narrative in society has shifted from marveling at our scientific and technological advances to asking harder questions: will our actions as humans positively or negatively impact the planet, our neighbours, our colleagues or customers?

In the Impact Era, we want answers and solutions.

Time to unpack these converging forces: Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG); Global Community Consciousness; and Corporate and Social Sector Purpose.

Granted theyre not snappy names, but bear with me.

To follow are a few data points that illustrate how these forces are redefining the global narrative.

The worlds leaders continue raising ESG up the board and governance agenda, and the investor story above proves the point.

However, heres another useful reference point: When big banks dont want to support coal, oil and gas, you know the world really has changed.

The SMH recently reported leaders in fossil industries accused the banks of zealot-like enthusiasm for withdrawing support for their organisations.

They even claim some areas of Australia may become uninsurable as the economy swings towards renewable energy and climate change strategies. That is, they wont be able to do business.

Perhaps a good way of summarising the meta message here. Black Swan Capital says: ESG investing is moving into the mainstream..

Corporate and Social Sector Purpose

Purpose remains one of the biggest buzzwords in corporate marketing and brand strategy.

Whats changing though, is an appetite for companies that do more than write clever purpose statements. Action is everything.

Thats why leaders in the corporate, social, NFP and government sectors are looking at each other for guidance and inspiration. What actions work? How can you best connect purpose to some kind of tangible impact?

This movement is illustrated by the global B Corp movement, of which my firm is a member. B Corps strive to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability. They believe business should be a force for good.

B Corp certification grew 23 per cent globally last year, and 21 per cent in Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Australian CEOs are taking notice of the need to connect purpose, profit and impact. The latest PwC 24th CEO Survey found that a growing number of Australian CEOs believe climate change is a serious threat to growth.

The issue is that theyre less likely than overseas peers to believe they should do more to measure and report on their environmental impact.

Sadly for the laggards, the growth of B Corps and corporate enthusiasm for purpose means this issue isnt going away.

For example, Andrew Forrest, Australias second richest person, not only runs a philanthropic organisation but is focused on green energy deals and realising his dream for a carbon neutral world (AFR).

Other notable moves recently include Woolworths2025 sustainability plan, T2 Teas Reconciliation Action Plan, and over in the US Impossible Foods is capitalising on appetite (pun intended) for plant-based meats.

Its product is now for sale in more than 11,000 stores across the US, up 77 times on pre-pandemic retail numbers.

A final note for this category: the purpose movement is placing employers under greater pressure. Employees expect them to create meaningful, fulfilling jobs. And according to McKinsey, if leaders fail on this score employees will consider leaving (particularly embattled millennials).

Finally, Global Community Consciousness is another way of talking about the modern zeitgeist.

What do we, the global community, agree is worthy of celebrating, or attacking, in society?

The 2021 Australia Talks survey, recently published by the ABC in partnership with Vox Pop Labs, brings this idea to life.

It surveyed 60,000 Australians on many aspects of modern life from climate change, how often we have sex, indigenous issues, and our attitude towards lying politicians (no surprise 94 per cent of us want them kicked out).

The relevant data point is 72 per cent of Australians (at least, those in my middle-aged demographic) think Australia is doing poorly at addressing climate change.

More broadly, survey respondents give our sunburnt, flooded and plague-ridden country a Fail for not supporting older people, assisting people in regional communities, treating refugees and Indigenous people well, and caring for the environment.

We expect our country to do well on all these metrics. Its the right thing to do. Governments, social sector organisations and corporations must help solve these vital social issues, and if not, why not?

As countless global movements attest, were getting impatient with inaction.

Theres much more to say, but suffice it to say, the global community is finally realising that climate change, the pandemic, myriad social issues, and sustainable life on planet earth can only be realised if we work together.

Corporates, social sector organisations, communities and governments are inextricably connected.

This list of global events on this UN calendar illustrates the point. Wildlife, biological diversity, oceans, environment, food systems, climate change and transport all feature as event topics.

Forget the keyboard warriors, the forces of change are locked in and change is coming.

Fourth bottom line

The so-called Fourth Bottom Line or Quadruple Bottom Line in accounting is one way of tying all these stats together.

Joining People, Planet, and Profit on the bottom line is Purpose.

This is a notion pioneered by author John Elkington in 1994. He saw Purpose as a vehicle for measuring, valuing and reporting on an organisations impact on culture, spirituality and faith. In other words, companies make an impact on the real world and it should be measured accordingly.

Appetite for the Fourth Bottom Line and other measures like the 1 per cent Profit Pledge is catching up with John Elkington and the rest of us in the Impact Era.

Sure, it will still be messy. History repeats itself ingloriously. But theres hope in another old cliche: follow the money.

At least the environmental movement and investors can finally agree on something.

Mark Jones is CEO at ImpactInstitute, an impact advisory firm. He is the author of Beliefonomics: Realise the true value of your story, and survived working in Silicon Valley as a technology journalist during the dot-com crash.

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Follow the money: Three mega trends shaping the Impact Era - Which-50

Illustration by Tim OBrien.

As I walked along Manhattans 11th Avenue one day in late April, the wind seemed as if it were trying to blow the plywood outdoor-dining huts over and rip the spindly trees from the ground. I arrived early to the Gotham West Market food court. My date, Andrew Yang, showed up unfazed by the violent weather, as buoyant as he appears on TV.

A candidate for mayor of New York City, Yang is a businessman and failed nonprofiteer with no experience governing and a hodgepodge of centrist, liberal, banal, and just plain quirky opinions. He has some potentially interesting ideasa public bank, for instancebut he also loves solutions involving philanthropy and public-private partnerships. And right now, although Eric Adams, an ex-cop and a more conventional politician, has been pulling ahead recently, Yang is polling well with every demographic, including those identifying as progressive or liberal. With his name recognition, he could easily win a race made less predictable by the citys new ranked-choice voting system. The former executive of a small test-prep company, Yang may well become the next mayor of the biggest city in the United States. I wanted to know how a Mayor Yang would address the concerns of the progressive movement, from racial injustice to affordable housing to the climate crisis.

Given the inhospitable weather, we decided to eat indoors (a pandemic first for me). Yang, wearing his usual dark blue blazer over a dress shirt with no tie, exuberantly assured me that the pizza herefrom Corner Slice, an upscale enterprise aesthetically evocative of a vernacular New York pizza shopis the best. I decided to have what hes having, the special, festooned with a suspicious variety of items. Pizza is a risk for any New York City mayoral candidatewhen Bill de Blasio ate a slice, inexplicably, with a knife and fork, it was a tabloid scandalbut particularly for Yang, who has drawn mockery for his lack of authenticity as a New Yorker. His social media posts have reflected confusion on points ranging from the meaning of bodega to the trajectory of the A train, and hes been roasted for being a bandwagon fan of the New York Knicks. In this light, it seemed bold of him to consume a pricey square slice of pizza with a journalist, but Yang is too confident to worry about such things.

The candidate, whos 46, grew up in Westchester County north of the city. Raised by immigrant parents from Taiwan, he remembers almost no political discussion in his house. Once, he recalled, his mother looked at the TV and said, I dont like him. Yang is pretty sure him referred to one of the George Bushes.

Eating pizza with Yang made clear to me why he is popular with New Yorkers. He does not bring up his competitors scandals in conversation. He often changes the subject when asked about big, systemic issues, but he knows what most New Yorkers, especially the apolitical, care about: bringing back jobs, returning kids to school, lowering the murder rate, and getting some cash relief.

He told me he donated to Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign in 2016. He also said he voted for Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City actress turned education activist who challenged Andrew Cuomo for governor in 2018. Still, his politics are largely those of a centrist or conservative Democrat, friendly to school privatization schemes and cops. He did not join any of last summers protests over George Floyds unconscionable murder by a police officer, though he has met with family members of people killed by police violence and did attend a vigil for the victims at a church, an event he went out of his way to describe as very peaceful.

I asked Yang about education. After three decades of struggle and lawsuits by public school parents and community activists, the state legislature decided this year to fully and equitably fund New York Citys public schools. Parent advocates won the court battles years ago: The state was found guilty of underfunding city schools and had been under a court order to allocate billions of dollars to the citys public schools to enable them to provide a sound basic education to their students, most of whom are Black or brown. But it took much more organizing and protesting, and the election of a progressive legislature, to finally put that funding in the state budget this year. The city will also be flush with new federal reopening funds. This seems like an exciting opportunity to address the persistent racial and economic segregation and inequality that has plagued the system. Whats Yangs plan? He listened politely but a little blankly, as if much of this information was new to him.Current Issue

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I mean, he said doubtfully, I would love to make progress on some of these inequities. But, he insisted, the most urgent issue is reopening the schools. The topic has become a signature one for Yang, and it shows how attuned he is to the moment: Many parents are, indeed, desperate to have their kids back in school full-time. Not having school, sports, and normal sociability has been devastating for some childrens mental health and for most kids development, he emphasized. Im a public school parent, and it feels good to have our suffering acknowledged by a prominent person.

I pointed out, however, that he wouldnt be taking office until January 2022. Mayor de Blasio has said that all students can go back to school full-time in the fall. Some elementary school students are already attending full-time, and city officials say more may have the opportunity to do so later this spring. High school sports are back. Teachers have had the chance to be vaccinated by now. Many adults in the surrounding community have, too (at this writing, more than half of Manhattan, more than a third of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and more than 40 percent of Queens has been fully vaccinated). Wont this be a settled issue by the time Yang takes office? Youd hope! he said skeptically, but Im really concerned.

Yang has crusaded against other pandemic measures that are likely to be irrelevant to his mayoralty, calling for fully reopening the bars. A few days before we met, he held a press conference denouncing the Covid rule mandating that food be served with drinks. Thats a matter of policy decided by the state, not the cityand the legislature repealed it the next day.

All cops are beneficial? Andrew Yang strongly opposes reducing the size of the NYPD. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

A weird thing about Andrew Yang is that everything he says sounds reasonable unless you know anything about the topic. He talks a lot about making New York a hub for cryptocurrency, but as James Ledbetter of FIN, a financial technology newsletter, pointed out, the states intense regulatory environment, in which engaging in any virtual currency business activity is illegal without a license, makes that idea ridiculous. Much depends, I suppose, on the definition of hub, Ledbetter told me. But New Yorks reputation among blockchain and cryptocurrency companies is as a place to avoid, and changing that reputation would appear to be largely outside the capabilities of the mayor. Over lunch I asked Yang about this, and a mush of buzzwords about blockchains and trust ensued.

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Hes famous for giving more prominence to the idea of a universal basic income, which is intriguing, but his proposal is neither universal nor basic (just $2,000 a year for some of the poorest New Yorkers). Yang, courting the citys Orthodox Jewish community, has praised the academic quality of the Orthodox yeshivas, but years of research, lawsuits, and testimony by graduates show that many of them dont meet their obligations to provide even a basic education. Hes floated the idea of a city takeover of its transit system, which seems sensibleif you dont know that the funding is controlled by the state, a knowledge gap that met with consternation from experts interviewed by Politico.

Yang doesnt know what hes talking about. He hasnt followed the long-term social and economic issues that have consumed the citys most political people for years. But he does know something that the citys institutional left seemingly doesnt: what people who dont care about politics care about. Getting kids back in school. Having fun again. Being safe on the subway and in the streets. Helping businesses that have suffered. Looking forward to the future.

As the New York City political journalist Ross Barkan has written, Laugh at him at your own peril. Yang sounds silly to the knowledgeable, but the idea of a return to better times is a powerful one. His vibe and rhetoric remind me of Ronald Reagans Morning in America, one of the most successful political appeals in US history. And didnt the liberal media also laugh at a certain repellent weirdos promise to Make America Great Again?

Yang benefits from being much more plugged into the zeitgeist than progressives are. The left lacks a clear message on school reopening. Several left-wing education groups even counterprotested Yangs reopening rally on May 1. You could disagree with the feasibility of the rallys demandfully reopen now!but to counterprotest means what? Dont reopen school, even as the pandemic wanes and the federal money pours in?

Yang speaks to another visceral issue on most apolitical peoples minds and overlooked by New Yorks NGO left: high murder rates. In a time of constant news alerts about shootings and stabbings in the cityNew Yorkers may remember the terrifying A train slasher this wintercalls to defund the police (though correct), coming from people largely silent about such violence, can seem tone-deaf. In fact, given how often high crime leads to far-right political reactionplease note that Brooklyn and Staten Island Republicans have endorsed Guardian Angels founder and racist madman Curtis Sliwa for mayorwe may be getting off easy with Yang, who speaks in measured tones about stopping both crime and police violence.

So far, no left mayoral candidate is as good at running for office as Yang is. In last years state Senate and Assembly races, New Yorks leftincluding but not limited to NYC-DSAran charismatic, visionary candidates who addressed broadly popular priorities like taxing the rich, single-payer health care, renters rights, affordable housing, stopping police violence, and funding public schools. They won big. In contrast, the progressive candidates for mayorMaya Wiley, Dianne Morales, and Scott Stringerhave been unremarkable.

Yang is also not vulnerable on the things that trigger the most outrage on the well-informed left, since that is not his base. When Yang was caught awkwardly shrugging off a sexist joke, Wiley took him to task in an Internet ad. Her scolding manner and stern visage offered a bracing reminder of why some voters preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton. Stringer has hemorrhaged endorsements because of a sexual harassment accusation, while Yang has been unharmed by complaints of sex discrimination and anti-Blackness by a few former employees. None of these charges have been proven, but among Stringers base of nonprofiteers and political activists, hes toast even without any evidence, while Yangs basethat is, most peopleprobably arent paying much attention.

Yang sometimes floats ideas that are absurd and terriblea casino on Governors Island, a crackdown on street vendorsand then backs off from them amiably. He issued an appalling statement in support of Israel, then walked it back after criticism from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and his own staff. Despite his bro reputation, he doesnt exude toxic masculinity; he can change course when hes wrong. To follow his campaign statements, then, is to constantly oscillate between alarm and relief.

Tunnel vision: Yang has floated the idea of a city takeover of the transit system, seemingly unaware that funding is controlled by the state. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

The week before our lunch, on Earth Day, I met Yang for the first time. I went out to see him give a press conference in the Rockaways, a coastal area of Queens that was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was a cold day, and the area felt gray and deserted. From the A train I saw buffleheads, cormorants, and a couple of egrets. Rockaway Community Park, the site of the press conference, is at the base of what used to be the Edgemere Landfill. The area is owned by the city, but only a small portion of it is clean enough to use as a public park. Yang is here in support of a proposal to install solar panels on the still-toxic part of this property. When I got there, I met Tina Carr, the policy director of AC Power, a group that promotes and develops solar energy projects on landfills and brownfields. She called the idea a no-brainer and was thrilled to have Yangs backing.

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Yang, sporting the cheery orange and blue striped scarf he always seems to wear in cold weather, praised the project quickly but sincerely, then expounded a bit on getting rid of burdensome red tape. He meant this to be in support of helping the environment, but this kind of language is, of course, beloved by polluters and libertarians.

A TV reporter asked about a letter signed by hundreds of prominent Asian and Pacific Islander American progressives declining to support Yang because he is not progressive enough. Yang was on surer ground here. Hes clearly aware that his base is the apolitical: I take exception to, frankly, trying to categorize people in various ideological buckets. Most New Yorkers are not wired that way.

A journalist who lives in the Rockaways asked about ferry service to the area. Yang has criticized the New York ferry service, since it is heavily subsidized by the city and its ridership is low. Its heavily subsidized, but we need it, the man said. This is a transit desert.

Yang wasnt sure about that one. He said hed look into it.

If youve ever knocked on doors or made phone calls for a political campaign, youve probably encountered that guy who doesnt know the issues but wont commit to your cause because, he says, he has to do his own research. Andrew Yang is that guy, said Susan Kang, a political science professor at John Jay College and a cofounder of NO IDC NY, which successfully ousted a group of conservative Democrats from the state legislature in 2018. (Kang is also one of the signatories to the anti-Yang letter.) If youve encountered that guy, you may have suspected that he isnt, in fact, planning to do any research.

Who wouldnt love the idea of turning toxic municipal properties into solar farms? But the rest of Yangs climate plans are vague compared with the lengthy specifics that some of his mayoral competitors, especially Stringer and Kathryn Garcia, have provided. And when I interviewed Veekas Ashoka of the Sunrise Movement NYC, along with some of his colleagues, Ashoka asked why Yangs climate plan accepts the Biden administrations climate targets: As one of the richest and most progressive cities on earth, shouldnt we aspire to do better than the federal government, to be leaders on this issue? Another youth climate activist I interviewed separately made the same criticism.

When I raised the climate activists exhortation with Yang over our pizza lunch, as angry winds continued to batter Gotham West Market, he beamed disarmingly. I love that point! he exulted. I would love to drive past those goals.

I asked if hed ever researched the matter of the Rockaways ferry service. He admitted he hadnt.

Yangs press secretary told him it was time to go. As we stood up, a man in a Columbia Sportswear fleece waved him down, shouting, Mr. Yang, were behind you! He got a selfie with the candidate. The Yang fan was Jay Underwood, a principal at George Jackson Academy, a private school for gifted, mostly low-income boys. I asked Underwood why hes so excited about Yang. He praised the candidates connectivity and reflected on what a role model Yang would be for his students, many of whom are Asian American. Underwood acknowledged sheepishly, I dont know much about policy issues.

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Andrew Yang Doesn't Know What He's Talking About - The Nation

As cultural moments go, the current reassessment of the Tulsa Massacres true impact feels long overdue. Black artists and intellectuals have been telling these stories for a while now, but it feels like we have only just started listening.

Damen Lindelofs 2019 adaptation of Watchmen (the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) expanded the universe of the book, working both as a prequel and a sequel. Perhaps the most ambitious gambit was connecting some of the most disturbing moments in American history to the covert history of superheroes/vigilantes which is why the stunning opening sequence (the first thing they shot in the series as well) depicts the infamous Tulsa Massacre.

Hundred years ago this week, on 31 May and 1 June, 1921, white mobs aided and abetted by local authorities murdered hundreds (official estimates now place the toll at 300-odd) of Black residents and business owners in the neighbourhood of Greenwood, Tulsa. Greenwood was an oasis of Black prosperity amidst the racial inequality of World War I-era America and so, it was targeted by supremacist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan (in one shot in Watchmen, you can clearly see a hooded KKK member on a horse, directing the mob).

Where Watchmen succeeds spectacularly is giving the audience a ground-level view of the brutality as it unfolded in real time a childs point of view, no less. Young Will Williams, the son of a Black soldier who fought the Germans in World War I (this detail is crucial, as we discover later), watches as his neighbourhood is razed to the ground. Women and children are shot at point-blank range, their corpses tied to the backs of speeding vehicles. Their homes, salons, theatres and so on, are systematically destroyed.

Significantly, the episode is called Its Summer and Were Running Out of Ice," a line from the song 'Pore Jud Is Daid' (poor Jude is dead) in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, one of the cornerstones of American musical theatre. The original song can be heard when Tulsa police chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) is seen hanging from a tree circa 2019 we later discover that an elderly, wheelchair-bound Will is responsible for the hanging. Throughout the premier episode, a number of Oklahoma! references march by. Judd, we learn, had played Curly (the protagonist of Oklahoma!) in his high school production ofOklahoma!so he sings the feel-good number 'People Will Say Were in Love'during a dinner party. But as we discover through the course of the show, Judds actions he was a covert KKK member were more in line with those of Jud, the antagonist of Oklahoma!. And so we have the hanging scene, scored to 'Pore Jud is Daid.'

Earlier this week, The New York Timesreleased a startling new interactive story in their online edition: it collates the stories of the victims against a 3-D recreation of Greenwood. As you scroll down to read the stories, the POV shifts to show you the precise area of the neighbourhood occupied by the deceased. It is a sobering, non-fiction counterpart to the more visceral impact of that Watchmen scene. Before shooting that sequence in Georgia, the Watchmen set was blessed by a priest. Understandable, I would say: when you are channelising such untrammeled, large-scale brutality, even lifelong atheists can feel the need for a higher power backing them up.

In recent years, the Tulsa Massacre has received a great deal of attention, both in general terms pop culture. Journalists, historians, and documentarians have covered the pogrom in great detail. Apart from Watchmen, the HBO series Lovecraft Country also used the massacre as a major plot point in one episode. Last year, Bob Dylan began Murder Most Foul, a 17-minute track on his new album Rough and Rowdy Ways, with the line: Take me back to Tulsa to the scene of the crime. Earlier this week, Trinity University Press issued an all-new edition of Mary E Jones Parrishs 1923 eyewitness account of the massacre: The Nation Must Awake: My Witness to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

Still from Lovecraft Country

Perhaps the clearest indicator of the zeitgeist yet: US President Joe Biden has confirmed that he will be in Tulsa for the 100th anniversary proceedings.

As cultural moments go, the current reassessment of the Tulsa Massacres true impact feels long overdue. Black artists and intellectuals have been telling these stories for a while now, but it feels like we have only just started listening.

In Rilla Askews 2001 novel Fire in Beulah, for example, there is a first-rate fictionalised version of the massacre in the final few chapters. At one point, we see TJ, one of the novels main characters, witnessing a fellow Black man being lynched by a white mob; he is shot and then hung from an elm tree the hanging bit is intended to strike fear into Black people. Askew channels historys crushing weight very effectively indeed, through the image of the elm tree.

Inside his mind, TJ watched again as the three cars drove away in crimson dust; again he turned to the elm tree, to know again, in the same sinking blood-rush, why theyd hung Everett as well as shot him. Because the image of the hanging black man was part of the terror. Because Everetts body had to hang there for black men to find, for a sign, for a warning.

In the second episode ofWatchmen, we see Will Williams father, OB in the middle of World War I. OB comes across a pamphlet air-dropped by the Germans, addressed to Black American soldiers like himself, urging them to switch sides on account of the fact that they are treated like second-class citizens by white people. OB is not entirely convinced by the argument, we can tell, but he pockets the pamphlet anyway. Fire in Beulah, too, has a similar moment of moral reckoning, when TJ and friends are planning their defense against the white mobs. Their service weapons remind them that they are being hunted by the same people they defended using these guns.

I got a shotgun home and a couple of pistols, Luther Adairs got some fine carbines

A bunch of us got service revolvers, aint we?

Oh, yeah, we good enough to get killed in their goddamn war, but we not good enough to try on clothes in their goddamn stores

Much of the recent attention coming Tulsas way can, arguably, be traced to the 2014 publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates long essay The Case for Reparations in The Atlantic. Coates signature brand of historical readings interspersed with memoir-ish segments and good ol fashioned reportage is at its strongest here. He is a polemicist who is quite aware of the limitations of the polemic approach but powers through anyway, thanks to the strength and the versatility of his style.

In The Case for Reparations,' Coates argues that the US government should provide Black people financial reparations for centuries of slavery, followed by systemic discrimination that persists to this day. Right-wing politicians, of course, feel that such a move would be divisive (a convenient buzzword designed to protect the status quo). To them, Coates says that the wealth gap between white and Black people in the country merely puts a number on something that we feel but cannot say namely, that as a country, the USs prosperity has been built on a solid foundation of murder, looting, and slavery (Black people. Modern-day Americans, therefore, are enjoying the fruits of a poisoned tree. Coates, therefore, makes the case for a series of Congressional hearings to decide the extent and trajectory of financial reparations.

A commission authorized by the Oklahoma legislature produced a report affirming that the riot, the knowledge of which had been suppressed for years, had happened. But the lawsuit ultimately failed in 2004. Similar suits pushed against corporations such as Aetna (which insured slaves) and Lehman Brothers (whose co-founding partner owned them) also have thus far failed. These results are dispiriting, but the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them.

Still from Watchmen

One of the major themes of the Watchmen series was the idea of masks empowering ordinary people to become vigilantes, without the fear of their family members suffering retribution. Young Will Williams, of course, grows up to become Hooded Justice, the first Black superhero in the Watchmen universe. But of course, the other, white superheroes/vigilantes are the public face of the superhero movement. In post-World War II America, they do not allow Will to reveal his identity to the public: they say that the public is not ready to accept a Black superhero.Will/Hooded Justices story is meant to be a critique of incremental reform, the idea that the pace of change must be slow and gradual, lest the oppressor majority rejects it wholesale.

Hundredyears after the events of Tulsa, its doubtful whether America has learned its lesson. The state of Oklahomas Centennial Commission,' which oversees Tulsas Greenwood Rising history center and has been involved in a number of awareness campaigns, raised over $30 million in recent years. And yet, they failed to involve the three remaining survivors of the massacres or the families of the victims who reside in Tulsa to this day. Indeed, one survivor, 106-year-old Lennie Benningfield Randle, has issued acease-and-desist letterordering the commission to stop using her name or likeness to promote the project. Randle and others feel that Greenwood Rising has appropriated their suffering to fill its coffers.

Even while deigning to honour the slain, America has fallen back upon old habits.

(Also read The Underground Railroad, Black Panther, Da 5 Bloods: How alt history is reshaping the Black narrative in pop culture)

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Hundred years of Tulsa Massacre: How cultural offeri..d Lovecraft Country have depicted the historical event - Firstpost

In The Number Ones, Im reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the charts beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

Red Red Wine had a wild ride. The UK band UB40 first released the single in 1983. At the time, UB40 didnt even realize they were covering a song from cheese-pop master Neil Diamond. Their version was a cover of a cover, intended as a salute to a beloved reggae oldie. In its original form, Red Red Wine became UB40s first #1 hit in their homeland, and it did respectably well on the American charts. But Red Red Wine didnt truly become a smash in America until nearly five years later, when a pop-radio program director, unsatisfied with the new music he was getting, went rogue and threw the song into rotation.

UB40s label had to scramble to keep up with this new demand for a half-forgotten song, and Red Red Wine ultimately became the most straight-up reggae song that had ever reached #1 in America. By the time Red Red Wine topped the US charts, the songs co-producer was dead. Red Red Wine might be a simple song, but its trip to #1 was very, very complicated. Lots of elements went into the songs eventual triumph: Musical evolutions, shifting tastes, random happenstance, and the sort of music-business maverick shit that simply could not happen today. That song had a journey.

The Red Red Wine journey starts in 1967. At the time, Neil Diamond was an up-and-coming Brill Building songwriter who was also starting to make some noise as a solo artist. A year earlier, Diamond had landed his first-ever top-10 hit when the garage-rock rave-up Cherry Cherry peaked at #6. (Its a 10.) Hed also just scored his first-ever chart-topper as a songwriter; the Monkees version of the Diamond-written Im A Believer hit #1 on the last day of 1966. Diamond had written Im A Believer for himself, and he included his own version of the track on his second solo album, 1967s Just For You. That same album, which Diamond recorded with Brill Building greats Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich as producers, included the original version of Red Red Wine.

Diamond wrote Red Red Wine from the perspective of a heartbroken man who can only forget the love hes lost with the help of the titular beverage. (Diamonds first #1 hit as a solo artist, 1970s Cracklin Rosie, is about the same thing, more or less.) In its original form, Red Red Wine is a stately weeper. Diamond belts out these lyrics about his own misfortunes while strings and organs and rhythm-guitar clicks murmur consolingly. The song wasnt a hit; released as a single in 1968, it peaked at #62. But Red Red Wine went out into the world, and it found its way.

When they recorded their version of Red Red Wine, UB40 had never heard Neil Diamonds original, and they didnt even know that hed written the song. Instead, UB40 thought they were paying tribute to Tony Tribe, a Jamaican rocksteady singer whod recorded his own version of Red Red Wine in 1969. Tribe had turned Red Red Wine into an uptempo dance number less of a sulk, more of a celebration. His version of the song was a minor hit in the UK, where it peaked at #46. Thats the version that UB40 knew. Tony Tribe never got much of a chance to make an impact beyond that one single; he died in a car accident in 1970.

Years later, UB40 percussionist and vocalist Astro said, Even when we saw the writing credit, which said N. Diamond, we thought it was a Jamaican artist called Negus Diamond or something. The eight members of UB40 grew up listening to reggae in Birmingham, a working-class English town with a big West Indian population. The members of the biracial band had all grown up loving reggae; the music had been part of their environment. They became a band after singer Ali Campbell got a glass smashed into his face in a barfight on his 17th birthday. Campbell got a corneal implant and 90 stitches, and he spent a month in the hospital. The UK has a thing called Criminal Injuries Compensation, where victims of violent crimes get payouts from the government. Campbell used that money to buy some instruments, and UB40 started.

Campbell put the band together with his brother Robin and with a whole crew of his childhood friends. They named themselves after the form Unemployment Benefits form 40 that broke young people would use to sign up for the dole. The band members were mostly unemployed when they started, and that name works as a kind of sly statement of working-class solidarity. UB40 played their first show at a Birmingham pub in 1979, and theyd only been a band for a few months when Pretenders leader Chrissie Hynde saw them play a London pub. She invited UB40 to tour the UK as the Pretenders opening act, singlehandedly yanking them out of obscurity. (In the US, the Pretenders highest-charting single is 1982s Back On The Chain Gang, which peaked at #5. Its an 8.)

While touring with the Pretenders, UB40 released a double-sided indie single, King b/w Food For Thought, which took off in the UK, reaching #4. UB40 had showed up at the exact right moment; their sound and working-class leftist perspective fit perfectly with the British pop zeitgeist. In the late 70s and early 80s, groups like the Specials and the Beat were playing around with early-60s Jamaican ska, and they were scoring huge UK hits. (That whole two-tone movement never took off in the US; the only real hit from any of the British ska bands was Madness Our House, which is not a ska song and which peaked at #7 on the Hot 100. Its a 7.) UB40 played reggae, not ska, but their whole approach and lyrical focus wasnt too far from what those bands were doing. Within a couple of years, UB40 cranked out two albums and sent four singles into the UK top 10.

None of UB40s early singles charted in the US, and their third album, 1982s UB44, didnt do as well in the UK as its predecessors. But UB40 turned their fortunes around with 1983s Labour Of Love, a collection of covers. That album, recorded when UB40 didnt have enough new originals to make a whole new record of their own, was made up entirely of the bands versions of reggae classics from the late 60s and early 70s. UB40 wanted to bring pop attention to this music that they loved, and they had no idea that the most immediate of those covers was a damn Neil Diamond song.

UB40s version of Red Red Wine fits right in with the rest of Labour Of Love. Musically, their take fits somewhere between the Tony Tribe version that the band members knew and the Neil Diamond original that theyd never heard. UB40 slow the tempo to a crawl, building the song around a digital bassline and a breezy, loping drum track. They were playing around in the studio at the time, messing with some of the same electronic techniques that Jamaican reggae artists were using at the same time, and some of Red Red Wine sounds closer to early dancehall, which was being born at the time, than it does to UB40s earliest singles.

On UB40s Red Red Wine, Ali Campbell sings lead in a high, reedy sigh. He sounds both fond and regretful, and his voice almost effortlessly floats through those cleverly phrased Neil Diamond lyrics: I just thought that, with time, thoughts of you would leave my head/ I was wrong, now I find just one thing makes me forget. (I love the little hesitation between that line and the chorus.) Theres real yearning in Campbells voice, but the rest of the band wont let the song get too sad. Instead, the groove bubbles away pleasantly, and Astro comes in with a thick-accented toast. Astro starts out by saying that red red wine makes him feel so fine and keeps him rockin all of the time, and by the end, hes gotten into a story about, Im pretty sure, a monkey who smokes weed. (Shout out to that simian. I bet hes a great hang.)

Working with Bernard Rose, the director who would later make the modern horror classic Candyman, UB40 built a half-hour black-and-white short film around the songs from Labour Of Love; the Red Red Wine video comes straight from that. On that video, and on the single version of Red Red Wine, Astros toast has been edited out. Thats the version of Red Red Wine that took off in the UK, giving the band its first #1 hit over there. In the US, the toast-free edit of Red Red Wine was also a respectable hit in an era when reggae only rarely made a dent in the charts. In March of 1984, Red Red Wine peaked at #34 on the Hot 100; it was UB40s first single to chart in America.

None of the other singles from Labour Of Love charted in the US, but the album eventually went gold over here. In the UK, UB40 kept cranking out hits. In 1985, UB40 teamed up with Chrissie Hynde for a reggae cover of Sonny and Chers 1965 smash I Got You Babe, and that became their second UK chart-topper. In the US, I Got You Babe did better than Red Red Wine had done, peaking at #28. UB40 had found a lane for themselves, doing digital-skank versions of old pop songs. It would serve them well over the years.

In 1988, UB40 and Chrissie Hynde teamed up again, this time for a cover of the Dusty Springfield classic Breakfast In Bed. When Guy Zapoleon, a program director at a Phoenix radio station, heard the bands version of Breakfast In Bed, he wasnt impressed. Zapoleon decided that UB40s new single wasnt a hit and that Red Red Wine, which had been a hit, shouldve been bigger. Zapoleon had a Saturday-night dance party show called Party Patrol, and he started playing the full original version of Red Red Wine, with Astros toast included. People in Phoenix loved it, so Zapoleon put the song in rotation on his station. Other pop stations started playing the song.

Zapoleon started telling A&M, UB40s American label, that they needed to reissue Red Red Wine and to promote it like it was a new single. The people at A&M were trying to push UB40s new music, so they werent into the idea, but they couldnt deny the demand. Eventually, they gave in, and the reissued Red Red Wine took off nationwide. Ray Pablo Falconer, whod co-produced the song with UB40, didnt live to see the track climb back up the American charts. Falconer died in a 1987 car crash. His brother Earl, UB40s bassist, was driving. Earl served a six-month prison sentence for drunk driving; hed only just gotten out when Red Red Wine reached #1.

Red Red Wine made its its improbable comeback at a time when there was a serious demand in America for breezy vacation-sounding music Dont Worry, Be Happy was a #1 jam and I guess Red Red Wine fit that bill. But I maintain that Red Red Wine, repetitive as it may be, is a whole lot richer and prettier than the other tiki-bar jams that were floating up the pop charts at the time. The bass is heavier. The groove is punchier. And while Red Red Wine isnt an actual Jamaican record, its still the first real reggae song that ever reached #1 in America.

That distinction is up for debate, of course. Reggae had been influencing the Hot 100 ever since the late 60s; Desmond Dekkers outright classic Israelites made it to #9 in 1969. (Its a 10.) Over the years, a bunch of #1 hits attempted to engage with Jamaican music in one way or another: Johnny Nashs I Can See Clearly Now, the Staples Singers Ill Take You There, the Hues Corporations Rock The Boat, Elton Johns Island Girl, Eric Claptons cover of Bob Marleys I Shot The Sheriff. In 1981, Blondie got to #1 with their cover of The Tide Is High, the Paragons 1967 rocksteady classic. But Red Red Wine was different.

Red Red Wine is a distinctly pop version of reggae, made by a half-white band from the UK. But reggae was always more closely entwined with the British charts than the Hot 100, and UB40 were a full-time reggae band. They were fully immersed in the genre, and they never tried to venture outside it. Instead, they brought pop sounds and, increasingly, actual mainstream pop songs into reggae. The success of Red Red Wine helped clear the lane for Jamaican artists to score American chart-toppers, something that would start happening in the 90s.

The success of Red Red Wine also cleared the way for something else. Once a five-year-old single reached #1 in America, other radio programmers started digging through their stacks of songs that had never reached their full pop-chart potential. Those re-released songs, usually just a few years old, started hitting the Hot 100 in a serious way in the late 80s. This craze didnt last long, but it mustve made life tough for record-label promotional teams, who were stuck with the task of pushing new songs to audiences who were suddenly very into rediscovering near-miss hits from the recent past. Red Red Wine will not be the last reissued single to appear in this column.

If you like this column, I would heartily recommend my friend Chris Molanphys Hit Parade podcast, which goes deep on fun, weird little chart-history stories like this one. When Chris started doing his podcast a few years ago, he did his first episode on Red Red Wine, a song that rode a freaky and unpredictable path to #1. Red Red Wine was a song with ripple-effects, not least for UB40 themselves. The band will appear in this column again.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: Theres a great scene in Steven Soderberghs underrated 2019 film The Laundromat where Will Forte hears Red Red Wine in a Mexican bar, gets into a conversation about how Neil Diamond wrote the song, and then promptly walks into the wrong bathroom and gets murdered. Unfortunately, that scenes not online anywhere except for Netflix. So instead, heres the bit from a 2019 Community episode where a local band plays an easygoing reggae song called Pierce Youre A B, which Im pretty sure is supposed to be a Red Red Wine parody, mostly because of the poopoo in his pants and poopoo in my heart bit:

(Donald Glover will eventually appear in this column.)

THE 10S: Bobby Browns sleek percussive glide Dont Be Cruel peaked at #8 behind Red Red Wine. Its a real troop-trooper, aiming for the top, and its a 10.

Read more:

The Number Ones: UB40's Red Red Wine - Stereogum

Has Prince Harry ever had a thought and not made it public? Are there feelings or emotions he has experienced but kept to himself?The latest episode of The Me You Cant See, the Dukes documentary series exploring mental health and emotional well-being, aired this week. Loyal viewers were rewarded with a bonus town hall conversation show in which Harry and his co-host and producer, Oprah Winfrey, were reunited with advisors and participants from the series.

The premise of the programmes, drummed home once again in the town hall special, is that having a me we cant see is bad for our mental health. Full emotional disclosure is open, honest, liberating, brave and true. Keeping our feelings to ourselves, on the other hand, is dishonest, repressed, unhealthy and, most likely, dangerous.If this is the Princes guiding philosophy, he certainly walks the talk. We are all by now familiar with Harrys unresolved grief, his genetic pain and his youthful self-medicating with alcohol, as well as every twist and turn of his decision to break away from the Royal Family and start a new life in California.

For Harry, the boundaries between therapists couch and television studio are completely erased. In one episode of The Me You Cant See, he is filmed undergoing an eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy session.Given how much Harry has already revealed, this weeks releases offer little new. In the town hall show, he talks with Robin Williamss son Zak about the pain of losing a parent whos in the public eye, you see so many people around the world grieving for someone they feel as though they knew better than you did, in a weird way because youre unable to grieve yourself.

Harry alludes to his own difficulties and adds to his criticisms of his family, when he discusses the shame people still feel when talking about mental health problems. This echoes his claims, aired in the latest documentary episode, that families hide their struggles from close relatives, even when everyone is aware that there are problems. The Duke said: As parents, and as siblings, theres an element of shame that we feel because were like How could we not have seen it? But we all know that when people are suffering or when people are struggling, were all incredibly good at covering it up for those that know we are covering it up.

It is all too easy to mock the privileged Prince who likes to bang on about his struggles for a fee. We can laugh at the hypocrisy of the privacy-loving Duke whose favourite topic of conversation is his own personal life.But, as so often with Harry, he unwittingly exposes the zeitgeist and helps us clarify whats troubling about the times we live in.And there is something that should concern us about Harry and Oprahs push for openness. Certainly stigma around mental health difficulties is dangerous if it stops those who need it fromseeking professional help. But must the opposite of stigma be the boundary-less individual who, in exposing all, is left without a private, interior world? Revealing every intimate detail of our lives brings its own pressures. Complete transparency both robs personal relationships of significance and makes it more difficult to separate ourselves off from the lives of others.

In this weeks town hall discussion, Harry talks about dealing with his wifes suicidal feelings - a fact Meghan disclosed in the couples first public outing with Oprah. This time around he told Winfrey:Im somewhat ashamed of the way that I dealt with it. Because of the system that we were in and the responsibilities and the duties that we had, we had a quick cuddle and then we had to get changed to jump in a convoy with a police escort and drive to the Royal Albert Hall for a charity event.

Harrys intentions are no doubt good. He advises: But what you [want] to say is Youre there. Listen, because listening and being part of that conversation is without doubt the best first step that you can take.But in going public with the idea that suicidal individuals can have a quick cuddle before pulling themselves together and glamming up for a gig at the Royal Albert Hall, the pair risk trivialising the contemplation of suicide.

Indeed, The Me You Cant See series utterly fails to distinguish between mental health and mental illness. Mental health, as the fashionable meme has it, is something we all have. Mental illness is most definitely not. Mental health can be improved with a walk on the beach, a bubble bath or a quick cuddle. Mental illness cannot.In the town hall show, Harry and Oprah try to counteract some of these criticisms. They are joined by a team of mental health experts and discuss the need for better funding for mental health provision and the need for healthcare reform. But the pop psychology mantras of openness and self-care remain.

Princess Diana famously wanted to be a queen of peoples hearts but her son seems determined to become Prince of our feelings. Its enough to make me nostalgic for the stiff upper lip.

Continued here:

The problem with Prince Harry's mental health drive - Spectator.co.uk

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 5 finale of Lucifer. Read at your risk!]

Lucifer's co-showrunner Joe Henderson wasn't kidding when he told TV Guide: "Season 5 is our big, crazy spectacle season." In the hefty second half of a 16 episode order, Lucifer Season 5B plunged deep into the darkness to unearth the traumas of a usually happy-go-lucky Devil. The latest episodes had Lucifer's (Tom Ellis) traumatic reconciliation with his father; Lucifer running a campaign as God (Godcifer); Michael being responsible for Dan's death and killing Chloe (Lauren German) as a twisted hellish gift for Lucifer -- and then Lucifer dying in order to give Chloe a second chance at life.

As they say, the road to Hell (or Heaven, in Lucifer's case) is paved with good intentions, but even the Devil wasn't impervious to death or protecting those he loves most from dying. Through the finale's epic battle, and the ultimate sacrifice of both Lucifer and Chloe, we learned that with death also comes rebirth and second chances for redemption.

"We decided that he was going to save [Chloe], and put himself at risk by going to Heaven, where he was supposed to burn up if he ever re-entered," co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich told TV Guide. "And by loving somebody, finally, more than himself, officially, [Lucifer] earned the right to be in Hell and in Heaven."

Lucifer dying to save Chloe was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this jam-packed season. TV Guide sat down with both Lucifer showrunners to talk about Michael's path of villainy, Lucifer's maturation, the long-awaited "I love you," the epic battle to become God, and what's in store for Season 6.

What's on Netflix This Week: Lucifer Season 5 Part 2, Bo Burnham's New Stand-up Comedy Special

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Lucifer Morningstar is a serial self-sabotager.

"Lucifer's the kind of person who doesn't realize something until he actually does it," Henderson laughed. "Sometimes his heart is in front of his head."

It's undeniable that Chloe and Lucifer love each other in one form or another through various stolen glances, soft and curious kisses, and the inevitable case of "BlueBallz," which finally ended with the consummation of their relationship. Everyone alive, or otherwise, knows that Lucifer is in love with Chloe, but it took his own death for him to realize it.

"It was the combo of saying it and showing it," Modrovich explained. "He was willing to sacrifice himself for her, and that act was showing her he loved her even more than saying it."

In the last remaining moments before he combusted into flames, Lucifer realized not only that he has always loved Chloe, but that a world without her would be much worse than his own death. And so with his last breath, he saved her with his immortality ring and succumbed to the ashes.

"So much it was sort of chicken and the egg [for Lucifer]. When can you realize that you are capable of love and do love someone, but you have this denial? The answer was that he had to show it. So that was always a big part of how we structured Season 5," Henderson said. "I think the way it happened probably shifted here and there, but it was always the plan to end Season 5 with him finally saying those three words."

Tom Ellis and Lauren German, Lucifer

In the season cliffhangers to end all cliffhangers (never mind The Sopranos), Lucifer ascended. Modrovich and Henderson spearheaded what was initially a relatively light-hearted, fantasy-crime procedural into new territory going where no Devil has gone before; God. Now the question is what does this new job have in store for Lucifer and how will it affect his relationships with those around him.

"That sounds like a great question and exactly what we will explore in Season 6." Henderson quipped. "Lucifer's greatest enemy is always himself." Meanwhile, Modorovich teased, "[Becoming God] is more than Lucifer bargains for, I'll say that."

Oh and about that fantastic line that the show ends with, "Oh my Me"? Unscripted. It turns out the triumphant flaming sword moment as Lucifer stood proudly while his siblings bowed down to his holiness at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was courtesy of Modrovich, Henderson, and an adlibbing Ellis.

"That's what's so great about being on set sometimes, you're like 'Ooh, let's do that!'" Modrovich recalled. "I think Tom did like a 'Holy Sh--' or 'Bloody Hell' kind of thing. We threw some alternatives at him, and he tried them. Tom [Ellis] is so good at finding those lines in those key moments that are reflective. And we often keep them in there," Henderson added.

Lucifer Season 5 Part 2: Release Date, Casting, Spoilers, and More

After God announced his retirement and left Earth to live in another dimension with The Goddess (Tricia Helfer), it was not entirely surprising that Lucifer's twin Michael revealed secret plan is to take up the mantle of The Almighty just to spite his brother. The twist was the second part of the plan -- sending Chloe to Hell.

"In 5B, one of the things we wanted to do is peel back [Michael]'s heart, understand his pain, understand his rivalry towards Lucifer," Henderson said.

It was surprising is just how deep the rot is behind the unpeeling of Michael's unhinged plans: to give Chloe guilt so that when she died her soul would go to Hell, further solidifying Lucifer as the underworld's leader so she could stay with him for eternity.

"Michael was given multiple opportunities to redeem himself and he just [continuously] chooses the wrong path," Henderson explained. "You see his regret and his pain, but he thinks he's right. And that was what we wanted to build towards."

The decision to have Lucifer -- imbued with God's powers at the end of the season -- spare Michael's life was controversial. Why didn't Lucifer kill Michael, banish him from Earth, or trap him in Hell for a millennia or two?

"I don't think that [storyline] is a done deal," Modrovich said. "But we can say this about Season 6 [is] we don't like to tread the same ground. We like to explore different things and put our characters through new obstacles."

Tom Ellis, Lucifer

Season 5B picked up right after the end of an epic celestial blowout interrupted by the surprise appearance of God at the precinct. As fans know, Lucifer has always had a complicated relationship with his all-knowing, all-absent omniscient father. Upon his arrival, God revealed that he had come down to Earth in order to reconnect with his son, retire, and to find a successor to the kingdom of Heaven. But while God was trying to make amends with his rebellious son, Lucifer was projecting his feelings of parental neglect onto his relationship with Chloe.

"So much of the story of Lucifer is one step forward, two steps back. Or two steps forward, and one step back. In this case, he was so close, but his father's arrival coming at the exact wrong time for his arc forced him to take that step backwards." Henderson said.

A big cliffhanger from the first half of Season 5 was God's arrival and the fact the Lucifer couldn't say "I love you" to Chloe. In the first episode of the new batch, "Family Dinner," Lucifer dealt with his father's mysterious arrival, but then Lucifer admitted to himself and Chloe that he believed he doesn't love her because his father never loved him. Therefore he didn't think he can love anyone, at least not until his father expressed his love for Lucifer (which he didn't do).

"The biggest thing was really channeling the idea of a character who finally is face-to-face with his dad for the first time, really almost ever in the physical form on Earth, and channeling that idea that when we're with our parents, we regress." Henderson explained. "On top of that, when we're with our parents, we see ourselves in them. Combining those two things was really the heart of it because it was the idea that here is Lucifer, he finally gets to confront his father. And unfortunately in 'Family Dinner,' he sees himself in his father more than he likes and projects it onto his relationship with a woman he loves."

Though Lucifer can't see it fully until the last moments of the season before earning his godliness, this confrontation and resolve pushed him on the path to ultimate growth and maturity.

"The point was for him to regress and to devolve." Modrovich added.

The Best TV Shows and Movies to Watch on Netflix in June

Now that Season 5B is out, the wait for the final Season 6 begins. What can fans expect to get out of these last 10 episodes?

"With a character as rich as Lucifer, there's a lot of places you can build a good ending, but I do think that where we end in Season 6 is the best ending," Henderson explained. "What I love about our show is that we entertain while also trying to sneak up with emotional insight. We're trying to all have a great time, but we also hope you walk away surprised at how much you cried or had a great time watching a devil solve crimes in Los Angeles. It's fun to be a stealth bomber for feels and emotional insight. I hope people feel fulfilled."

As Lucifer unfurls its wings, propelling us to the sixth and final season, the Lucifer creative team felt a responsibility to address the ongoing discussion about police and the Black Lives Matter movement. With America continuing to reckon with policing and racial inequalities, Henderson and Modrovich felt the series, which centers around police detectives, should dive deep by addressing the Black Lives Matter movement in the show.

"Speaking personally, it was something that I really reckoned with as someone who wrote a show that glorified the police for six seasons. And you know, there's a lot of looks into how 'copaganda' affects how people see the police and the sense of us having to reckon with our place in it. We felt like we wanted to tell a story that also grappled with that, and there is an episode that focuses on it, but also permeates Season 6," Henderson explained.

While Season 6 aims to permeate the BLM movement, this won't be the show's first foray into racial profiling. Season 4's "Super Bad Boyfriend" launched the show from the religious to the political zeitgeist to talk about societal and police profiling of Black males. When Season 6 digs back into the topic, the optics of Amenadiel being an angel in Heaven but having to tackle being viewed as a Black man on Earth will be further explored.

"That's a large part of Season 6. It also goes hand in hand with our BLM episode." Modrovich said of the Season 4 connection to the final season. "We were on Zoom just a few weeks after George Floyd had been killed, and it was in our minds. We're a show about cops. We're solving crimes, and we felt that none of us should ignore that. Even though we're this escapist show, we didn't want to shy away from it. We do it from an emotional standpoint through a character's eyes, and through our emotions and care that's the [storyline] we found."

Tom Ellis, Lucifer

Though Season 5B was supposed to be the final arc for Lucifer, some loose threads remain. After a run-in with a serial killer boyfriend, and "a close encounter with an emu," Ella (Aimee Garcia) is the only one that has yet to discover Lucifer's true identity. Henderson and Modrovich promise that something "big, adventurous and cool" is in store for Ella.

Of course, the biggest questions going into Season 6 are whether Chloe is officially immortal now that she's in possession of Lilth's soul ring that brought her back to life? Does her staying alive depend on whether or not she wears it? Can fans suspect that Chloe can now live forever with Lucifer in harmony? Henderson was quick to set the record straight.

"The idea is that the last remaining [magic of Lilith's immortality] brought her back to life. And now that it's spent she does not need [the ring to survive] it. One of the things that's important to us is always wrapping up a season arc, and so much of that was planting that seed in the first half of Season 5 so that it could pay off [in the finale]. That story has been told, and now it's just a beautiful ring."

In regards to having an impact on the fantasy pop-culture zeitgeist, the executive producers are hoping the show's journey is symbolic of its message.

"If people take something away from having watched all six seasons of Lucifer, it's that none of us are perfect and that we are all worthy of love and forgiveness," Modrovich adds. "I think that's what people connect within our show. We're all broken, we're all fallen angels. That's been the heart of our show. Who doesn't want to be loved despite all of our flaws?"

We all know that when angels fall, they also rise. And though our time is coming to an end, we can't wait to see the final ascension for all of our beloved characters in Season 6.

LuciferSeasons 1-5 are now streaming on Netflix.

Originally posted here:

Lucifer Bosses Weigh in on That Heavenly Season 5 Finale Cliffhanger - TV Guide

Sydneys Anglicans have just elected a new Archbishop the current Dean of Sydney, Kanishka Raffel. You may not have noticed. Only two decades ago, the election of an Anglican Archbishop in Sydney was not just news, it was a matter for critical commentary in the opinion pages of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Earlier this year, the retirement of the previous holder of that office, Archbishop Glenn Davies, was not even mentioned in the secular press. The death of former Archbishop Donald Robinson, Archbishop from 1982 to 1993, likewise scarcely caused a ripple.

All this tells you something about the current cultural moment into which the new Archbishop of Sydney must step. With a Pentecostal Prime Minister, much media coverage of religion in the past three years has centred on Pentecostalism as the fastest growing, and increasingly influential, Christian movement in Australia. The growing subscriber base of the Australian Christian Lobby is reportedly drawn more from these new church movements than from the established denominations.

Sydney Anglicanism is old news: the usual media criticism of Sydney Anglicans weekly fodder for journo-comedians like Mike Carlton for years has morphed into indifference.

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Despite the vigorous efforts of Raffels predecessors, the Anglican Diocese of Sydney has not been growing overall. Parish attendance figures have not declined as sharply as with other denominations and other parts of the Anglican Church, but that is of no comfort. The reality is that, while Sydney itself expands and grows numerically and geographically, the Diocese has struggled to keep up.

Not only that, but the Christian faith is struggling with declining cultural influence. Whereas once to be moral was to be Christian, there is now a serious question over that assumption. Christian morality is not the same as societys general moral sense. However much people speak of Christian values or admiring the teachings of Jesus, when it comes down to anything that matters like money, power, and sex sharp divergences appear.

All churches have been tainted by the revelations of child sexual abuse, which has caused a profound loss of trust in them. In fact, trust in all of our social institutions is at a low ebb, whether they be trade unions, sporting clubs, political parties, banks, or the once-great media companies. But the church had developed a trust problem all of its own. In addition, the Anglican Church is culturally Anglo-Australian in many ways a strange fit for a multi-cultural city, where every third citizen is born overseas.

Whats more, the Christian contribution to the cultural and intellectual landscape has become largely invisible. Its a surprise to many people to discover that two of our leading contemporary novelists, Helen Garner and Tim Winton, profess Christian faith in one form or another. The biblical references and Christian themes remain unnoticed in their work, because literary critics are not trained to notice them. The association of Anglican Christianity with colonialism and with the establishment breeds an assumption among the left-leaning intelligentsia that Australias Christian heritage is, at best, an embarrassment.

Its not that people are become less spiritual as such. True atheists remain a very small (and mostly male) group. But younger people are more inclined to describe themselves as spiritual not religious. In her book Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, Tara Isabella Burton charts the decline of interest in institutional religion among young Americans (and Westerners in general) and the simultaneous pursuit of what she calls intuitional forms of spirituality. She writes of millennials and Gen Zers:

They prioritize intuitional spirituality over institutional religion. And they want, when available institutional options fail to suit their needs, the freedom to mix and match, to create their own daily rituals and practices and belief systems.

Of all the forms of Christianity, Pentecostalism seems a better fit for the intuitional moment. Its emphasis on the experiential, emotional, and spontaneous side of faith feels more in tune with the zeitgeist. But as it becomes more established, it too has struggled with institutional versus intuitional problem.

As one speaker at the recent Archbishops election synod put it, Sydney Anglicans are like the Ever Given, the massive tanker that got stuck in the Suez Canal. The Anglican Church has impressive resources in property and personnel, but its infrastructure was designed for the Sydney of 1850, not 2050. It has an admirable commitment to democratic processes and to the independence of its local parishes, but at the expense of efficiency and quality control. For every growing parish and there are some amazing stories of growth there are many more that are in decline.

Any organisation facing this kind of stuck-ness is open to several temptations. The trouble is, that to fall for any of them is to hasten the decline, not arrest it.

The first of these is the temptation to appoint a crash-through leader. Anxious people want superhero leaders who will fix everything. They dream of the alpha individual who just crashes through the barriers to change and growth, firing and hiring at will. We want the guy who will build the wall and make us great again. (Sound familiar?) The church is no different. We yearn for a radical change agent. And yet, the problem with the crash-through leader is well, the crash. They will likely prove polarising and destructive.

The second is the temptation to become culturally defensive. A church could retreat into itself, becoming a bunker against the waves of social change. It could attach itself to cultural and social conservatism and rage against the advance of progressive causes that it feels are undermining the Christian character of our society. The problem here is not that the church needs to get with the times or that it needs to upgrade its views. The problem is that it always ends up fighting on terms set for it by others. It is perpetually on the back foot. And it never sounds like it has good news to share.

Sydneys Anglicans have noticed that numbers of their members who say that they are willing to invite someone to a church service have fallen in the last decade. If you keep telling people that society is becoming a more hostile place to be a Christian, is it any wonder? Cultural defensiveness will breed a generation of anonymous Christians, brave on Sundays but terrified the rest of the time.

The third is the temptation to pursue structural solutions at the expense of spiritual renewal. There is no question that Sydney Anglicans need to renew and refine their organisation. The administrative burden on clergy sucks the joy out of the job of being a parish minister. Many experienced parish clergy are leaving the job prematurely. As the west of Sydney fills with new communities, we need to shift our resources and quickly. There is a need for greater accountability and transparency, fewer conflicts of interest, and fewer overlapping committees and departments. Less energy needs to be spent on governance and more on sharing Christ.

But what it really needs is a commitment by all Anglicans in Sydney to spiritual renewal. What we need to see is Christians who are more deeply shaped by Christ that is to say, Christians who are more authentically, well, Christian. We need to experience once more the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We need to repent of our past sin and receive divine forgiveness. We need to be marked by our generosity, our humility, and our love. After all, the church of Jesus Christ is not primarily a corporation seeking greater efficiency. Our greatest and most powerful resources are spiritual.

The fourth is the temptation to become obsessed by infighting. You dont need to be a sociologist to know that groups that are under pressure start to fight with one another. This is true of churches, as well. The temptation is to become focussed on finer and finer points of doctrine as markers of true belonging and trustworthiness. Defending the purity and power of the in-club can become a substitute for the real mission. There can be a lot of talk about connecting with outsiders and sharing the gospel, but that can become a smokescreen for the work of internal politics.

Its not exactly a secret that Sydney Anglicans can be very political when they want to be. But the detrimental effects of infighting dont need to be spelled out. The sheer energy taken up by infighting exhausts good will. A person who feels continually excluded from the group is less likely to work for the good of the group. Infighting eats away at trust and creates a motif of fear with a community. Theres not really an upside.

But even more importantly, infighting is profoundly unchristian. From the beginning, Christians have argued with one another about important things. Thats not surprising. But to disagree well is a basic ingredient to the church an expression of the very unity we have in the Spirit.

What, then, can Archbishop Kanishka do? What is the Anglican Church in Sydney to do, under his leadership?

I am reminded of the words of St. Paul when he was imprisoned. Not much use, his followers might have thought, an apostle in chains. But, as he wrote in 2 Timothy 2:9: the word of God is not chained. However stuck Sydneys Anglicans might be, they do not follow a God who is stuck. The followers of a resurrected Lord cannot act as if anything is an insurmountable barrier to him. In just a few short decades, to take one example, the church of Jesus Christ has exploded in places like China, despite the active and violent suppression of the faith by the Communist regime.

And this means: whatever a Christian church is to do, it must not anxious. It mustnt look to crash-through leadership, nor expect it of Kanishka Raffel. It mustnt retreat into cultural defensiveness. It must renew its structures, but not as a priority. It mustnt descend into infighting. At one level, the millennials are right: there is a deadening institutionalism that can infect churches that is antithetical to true spirituality. If the Anglican Church in Sydney is to survive, it must never become poisoned by institutionalism.

The answer must surely be that the church of Jesus Christ needs to be more authentically what it actually is. Christians in Sydney be they Anglican or not need to be more Christian. The calling of the church of Jesus Christ is to be more like him. It is called upon to worship God, and to live life together that reflects his character, whatever the circumstances. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote:

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others ... not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

Archbishop-elect Kanishka Raffel has not been appointed as a manager or as a CEO. He has not been recruited by a firm of head-hunters after a world-wide recruitment programme. Hes been called to be a spiritual leader not to try his hand at a corporate style of leadership, but to embrace the prophetic and pastoral ministry of his office.

He must lead his churches, then, in a concerted effort in prayer and repentance. There can be no priority higher than this. It would be a grave mistake to put evangelism above this, since evangelism is powerfully effective when there is evidence that people really live as if the gospel is true. In the past, weve been too triumphalist, too presumptive. The grace of our message has not always been matched by the grace of our welcome.

Kanishka must lead them in a return to the Word of God. Martin Luther once said, with typical exaggeration, the ears alone are the organ of the Christian. The Christian church is a listening church. It is found wherever the Word of God is preached. Where Jesus is declared to be Lord, and where people gather to hear it, there you find the Spirit of God active not only there, but certainly there. When the people of God are seeking the voice of God in the pages of the Bible when they hear themselves addressed by him from above then there is hope.

The Archbishop must encourage us to be local communities of loving welcome. The action, as it were, is not in the bishops office or in committee rooms. The faith is not a matter of reports by theologians. It lives in the congregations that gather Sunday by Sunday, worshipping God and hearing him address them. Archbishop-elect Kanishka has written of a visit he made while holidaying to a small congregation, unimpressive by normal standards and few in number. And yet, he wrote later that he saw there the stunning beauty of the gathered people of God. It is my experience that people who are you might think the least likely to find a spiritual home in an Anglican Church in Sydney do so when they find that the hospitality they experience is for real.

But there must also be a courageous and prophetic engagement with post-Christian culture. The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth once said that sermons should be written with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. The Bible gives us eyes to see what is really in the newspaper. But it is also the case that news may help us to see better what is in the Bible. The mistake that many American evangelicals have made is to imagine that political and cultural means are the way to pursue or to defend the kingdom of God mostly in alignment with the political right. That is a fools errand. It leads to an idolatry of political power, as was seen the Trumps presidency. It shows no faith in the ultimate Lordship of Jesus, who is the churchs only Lord.

But neither should the church simply follow the spirit of the age. Its calling is not to provide a chaplaincy to contemporary narcissism. It finds laughable talk of getting with the times or history being on our side. It does not pursue relevance, as if that were anything worthwhile. It outlasted Rome: it will surely outlast Atlassian.

The culture question is not simply an either/or. Too often Sydney Anglicans have framed it in this way. Culture and the church are not simply separate, opposing domains one sinful and the other holy. This is intellectually and ethically unpersuasive. Every church lives in its culture, and is part of it, sharing in its besetting sins and benefitting from its glories.

Instead, a new Archbishop will need to sponsor and encourage the kind of work that Augustine did in his epochal book The City of God. Contemporary Western culture is arguably showing signs of decadence, as Ross Douthat has recently argued. The pandemic has exposed the lack of spiritual values at the heart of the secular Western paradigm for human flourishing. Questions of meaning and value have by no means been settled simply by jettisoning Christianity. The Christian tradition presents its adherents with some powerful intellectual and ethical weaponry for just this moment.

Is Kanishka Raffel the person to unstick Sydney Anglicans? No, he isnt. But Ive been arguing that thats the wrong paradigm of leadership in any case. The stuck-ness is primarily a spiritual challenge; and the true agent of spiritual change is not a human being, but the Spirit of God.

Kanishka, however, is a man who will be able to lead Sydney Anglicans to be more truly what they are supposed to be. Converted to Christianity in his twenties from a Buddhist background, he is something of an outsider to the Sydney Anglican establishment. He is clearly not from one of the dynasties that are part of the fabric of the diocese. He did not go to an Anglican school. He has spent many of his ministry years outside of Sydney, as Rector of St. Matthews Shenton Park in Perth.

When he returned to Sydney to serve as Dean in 2015, Sydneysiders were reminded that Kanishka is a preacher of rare quality. And yet what you hear from him in the pulpit is what you hear from him in person. Kanishka is a person of empathy and compassion. He has a noticeable humility, if such a thing can be said. Those who have worked with him have immense regard for him. Rory Shiner, who worked with Kanishka in Perth, says that:

The lasting impression has been his character, integrity, and devotion to Jesus. There are few people I know whom I trust more, respect more, or whose relationship with God Id more like to imitate than Kanishka.

If Sydney Anglicans can catch something of the character of Christ as it has been refracted in their new leader, and imitate him as he continues to imitate and serve his Lord, then who knows what the Spirit of the living God may do? But the task of any Christian, and of any Christian church, is to witness to Christ and to leave history to God. As the great Christian historian Sir Herbert Butterfield once wrote: We can do worse than remember a principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our minds: the principle: Hold to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.

Rev. Dr Michael Jensen is the rector at St. Marks Anglican Church, Darling Point, and the author of Sydney Anglicanism: An Apology, Between Tick and Tock: What the Bible Says about How It All Begins, How It All Ends, and Everything in Between, Is Forgiveness Really Free? And Other Questions about Grace, the Law and Being Saved, and My God, My God Is It Possible to Believe Anymore?

The rest is here:

Sydney's almost unnoticed Archbishop-elect: The challenges facing Kanishka Raffel and the Anglican church - ABC News

A still from the Humans of CIA recruitment video released in March. (CIA / YouTube screengrab)

My homie Ofelia Cuevas sat spellbound before the CIA recruitment video that folks are still fussing about a week later. The video featured a black suited, code-switching, Latina with plenty of attitudethe kind of attitude Ofelia likes to inspire in her Ethnic Studies students at the University of California, Davis. The confident, thirtysomething woman in the video also wore pumps and big golden hoop earrings. Many a working-class homegirl wears the earrings as a way of embracing their inner Aztec warrior goddess in the parts of the Southwestern United States, like California, that used to be called Mexico. Ofelia and I grew up around fierce, young women who sported hoop earrings back in the 1980s, just before I decided to join war against a US-backed fascist military dictatorship in El Salvador.

She listened intently as the videos violin music crescendoed to the moment when the intense, unnamed Latina delivered the fury of her message in incantatory tones:

I am a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender millennial whos been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I am intersectional.

At first, Ofelia, a scholar of race and media, told me, I couldnt believe it. I thought it was a joke. But as I kept watching, I thought, Oh my Godits real. She added: The fucking CIA is trying to be woke.

Ofelias response to what some are calling the CIAs woke video reflects not just her disbelief but also the acknowledgment of something else, something far more consequential and dangerous: that the Age of Intersectional Empire is upon us.

The CIA videoone of over a dozen Humans of the CIA recruitment videos featuring Black, Asian Pacific Islanders, queer, Indigenous, and other identity groupsreflects a new moment in the long history of identity politics. This isnt the first time the US state is deploying racial and other identity groups to further imperial domination and control. But the scale and speed with which the Biden administration is abandoning the nakedly visible white supremacist mode of governance and dominationsee Trump presidencyfits our times. This hipper, more intersectional look almost makes one forget that the US government is still in the business of empire.

Some, for example, celebrate the fact that more than 30 percent of ICE agents and about 50 percent of Border Patrol agents in the United States are Latinx. Others seem to forget that the appointment of Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban American, as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security does nothing to dismantle or abolish the same department that helped militarize the police that killed George Floyd in Minneapolis and attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in Ferguson. In the vast world that lives outside of progressive circles, there are millions of people who have emotional reactions to Army and Marine recruitment ads featuring proud Black and Latinx soldiers.

The theory of intersectional empire seems to be premised on this idea: The more the government looks and feels like the rest of us, the more difficult it is to criticize and attack it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the diversity that has reached the very top levels of government in Bidens cabinet. Such a situation might make it difficult to criticize the Biden administration, but weve already learned about the contradictions posed by the rise of intersectional empire thanks to Barack Obama.

Those of us who criticized Obamas immigration policiesrecord-breaking deportations, raids, mass child separation and caging, border militarizationwere subjected to attacks by Democrats and their supporters. Five months into Obamas presidency, my reporting about his expansion of Secure Communities and 287(g)deportation programs he promised to endearned me accusations of being anti-Black. Over time, I watched as Obama got some criticism for his deportations, but nary a word was said about truths that have proven inconvenient to many liberals: that Obama initiated the practices of mass caging and mass separation of thousands of Central American children and parents, whose treatment many liberals loudly condemned as state terrorism when those policies were continued and expanded by Trump.

Overcoming the national and geopolitical dumpster fire left by the Trump presidency makes Bidens intersectional approach to governance all the more sensible, according to Stanford professor Vaughn Rasberry. Bidens approach, he says, is updated for the moment were living in. After 4-5 years of unrestrained white supremacy, xenophobia and oppression, its not difficult to see how this has enormous appeal. It enables [the] administration to both communicate alternative values while also continuing the hegemonic trajectory the U.S. has had in the world since World War Twoor even earlier.

Rasberrys most recent book, Race and the Totalitarian Century, examines how W.E.B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham, and other writers chose to align with the communist bloc and the global decolonization movement as a way to counter United States government efforts to recruit African Americans in the fight against Nazism and Stalinism. These writers understood that a new mode of empire was ascendant, and that it understood the complex working of race and identity enough to use them for imperial ends.

One major consequence of the Cold War politics of race and empire, says Rasberry, is the marginalization of more radical voices like those of Richard Wright, Paul Robeson, and others. A more recent example of this marginalization is that of Cornel West, an open critic of neoliberalism and the American empire who formerly enjoyed countless invitations to appear on major news shows. However, once he started criticizing Obama and other examples of what he called Black faces in high places, he has not enjoyed the same media attention.

Were at the front end of a very challenging moment in the history of hegemony and domination, a moment that requires more questions than answers.

Its easy to see the historical continuities, says Rasberry. The key question is what is new about this moment? Is it really just a matter of style and part of the zeitgeist or is it something genuinely new? Im not sure.

Neither am I. But the debates about intersectional empire are just beginning. I recently noticed this through a picture making the rounds on Twitter. It shows four Navy servicemen standing, in battle gear, before a helicopter with a rainbow flag draped on it. The tweet says, History was made on Friday with the first ever all gay @USNavy helicopter crew. I see the grey banality of the helicopters and cant imagine it wouldve made any difference to the peasants bombed in El Salvador whether there were rainbow flags on them.

More:

The Age of Intersectional Empire Is Upon Us - The Nation

I think Boris can safely re-tile the kitchen now. Much of the broadcast media was convinced his No10 makeover would hurt him in last Thursdays elections: we werent far off a Newsnight reconstruction with Lewis Goodall, dressed as Carrie, running around an animated John Lewis with a can of petrol. But the mood on Have I Got News for You on Friday, recorded when the votes werent counted but obvious nevertheless, was funereal. Why, the host asked, didnt Wallpapergate cut through? Given that this show created the Boris phenomenon, much like The Apprentice invented Donald Trump, the confusion is strange.

Have I Got News is a microcosm. Hip when it started in 1990, anti-establishment and witty, it now creaks on as an uncancellable institution, the echo chamber for a cultural elite that is powerful yet not in power and magnificently out of touch. You could not tell from the TV or tinternet zeitgeist that the Tories were going to win Hartlepool, and journalists looked suicidal when they did. Social media fell out of the sky like a rocket made in China. I was reminded of Paul Masons verdict on the 2019 general election: a victory of the old over the young, he tweeted gracefully, of racists over people of colour, selfishness over the planet. No doubt the nurse gently touched his arm and said: And what planet do you think youre on right now, dear?

Hes not even on the distant moon of London, where we were told Count Binface, a joke, woke candidate with zero laughs, would surge in the mayoral race and Shaun Bailey, a black Tory candidate, was a bigot that Londoners would reject. Binface got 1 per cent; Bailey, in the second round, 45 per cent.

The Green Partys Sian Berry said she wanted to make London the most trans-inclusive place in the world, thus adding the capitals tiny trans community to her rainbow coalition of 7.8 per cent, just 91.2 per cent off the 99 per cent socialists claim to speak for. Trans people pay tax and get burgled, too; you might want to talk more about that. Or stick to green stuff! But the Left, which feels every bit as culturally alienated as the dissident Right, betrays its abiding concerns every time it sinks to its knee, recommitting itself to a culture war a very old-fashioned war that began around the time Have I Got News started that in some quarters it has already won and in others doesnt amount to a hill of beans. Laurence Fox, the anti-woke candidate got just 1.9 per cent of the vote in London. He finished behind a YouTube star whose most interesting policy was to freeze the Thames to create an ice rink.

The beat goes on. Someone at Sheffield University says Darwin justified white supremacy. A school has reported its own chaplain to an anti-terror unit. And among the stories on the BBC website, at the time of writing, is a 23-year-old girl who has come out as asexual.How many elections must the Left lose how many viewers, how many readers? before the penny drops that many people find all this irrelevant? Or that when they vote Tory, its not because they dont care about standards in public life, but that they cant see the scandal in this instance?

And far from being a bunch of little Hitlers, they are drawn to a Tory party that has cleverly occupied the centre ground of cultural feeling, a centre ground, incidentally, that is much more liberal than it oncewas. Just not completely bonkers.

But is the Left still winning the war? The Conservatives, once the party of hunting, will this week relaunch as the party of pet welfare, completing their trot from Chipping Norton to Uxbridge, and they couldnt have broken into the Red Wall seats without dumping austerity for big spending. Central banks and governments across the world will continue to print money while keeping interest rates low.

Last week, incumbents did well as voters rewarded them for the vaccine rollout, yes, but probably for the lockdown and furlough, too. There has been hardly any popular resistance to the most shocking assaults on our civil liberties, let alone a mainstream anti-lockdown movement like there is in America. An early rival for Trumps Republican nomination is Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who wanted to keep schools open. Who is the British equivalent? Laurence Fox, and look how he did (sorry to rub it in).

Im not totally against this as Im not a libertarian and I think there are things a strong government should do to help their citizens, but theres irony in it being Boris Johnson who has transformed the Tories into a social democratic force. He once said that his favourite character in Jaws was the mayor. Why? Because he kept the beach open. Now the Tories are like Chief Brody, obsessively scanning the shoreline for fins. Will they ever let us go back in the water again?

Me, I was always pro-shark. I have one at home: my pups teeth are coming through. A fang fell out the other night and he was rushed to the sofa for an emergency cuddle. This Wednesday he goes to doggy daycare for the first time. I have to pack a lunch. They grow up so fast! Yet, strangely, they never ever learn to take themselves for a walk. What are they teaching them in schools nowadays?

Link:

It shouldn't be a shock to the Left-wing media that people vote Tory - Telegraph.co.uk

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The Big Ideas Store is now open for its fourth event asPowered by Nine takes attendees sky high with two-weeks of high-profile speakers, creative workshops, exclusive research, and a retail pop-up taking over the 22nd floor of Nines new HQ in North Sydney.

The Big Ideas Store will showcase the way Powered Nines marketing solutions division can leverage creativity across TV, digital, print and radio, and bring guests physically closer to engage with Nines ecosystem of brands.

Running across the full two weeks is the interactive pop-up, grouped into four categories: Youth, Lifestyle, Christmas Retail and Sport, as well as a series of client and content events, sharing insights from thinkers, leaders and creative minds.

Week one will dig deep into topics such as the allure of branded long-form content; sustainability and societal impact; the power of audio, and effectiveness for senior marketers with all in-person attendees at this session receiving a copy of Powereds exclusive new book, What We Know About Advertising Effectively.

Week one of The Big Ideas Store will wrap up with the virtual-only Culture Shock event in partnership with Initiative, titled Cannabusiness, which lifts the lid on Australias medical cannabis market the fastest-growing in the world and the opportunities for brands and marketers to capitalise on this momentum.

Week two will tackle the changing Australian dream of home ownership; a world without third-party cookies; creativity and innovation in a hybrid workplace; big creative bets, and two exclusive pieces of research. The first explores the phenomenon of living local, and the second unboxes the trends in retail, food and culture for the 2021 festive season.

The second week will culminate with the Great Debate, with two teams battling it out over this question: Does advertising lead culture, or is advertising led by culture?

Register to see Powereds, director of strategy, insights & effectiveness, Toby Boon, alongside, Rachael Fraser, head of strategy at M&C Saatchi, and Roshni Hegerman, chief strategy officer at McCann go head-to-head with Powered Enterprises, Michele ONeill and Andrew Wynne, CEO of Joy.

The Big Ideas Store continues to grow year-on year and has become one of the biggest events on the calendar for marketers and agencies. Were incredibly proud to be back for the fourth year, showcasing the unique ability Powered has to help brands grab hold of big marketing moments and amplify them through incredible content, said director of Powered, Liana Dubois.

We cant wait to welcome guests back for in-person events, much needed networking and a cheeky cocktail and canape, after Covid sent us all virtual last year. However, we embrace new found flexibilities and so for the first time we are offering The Big Ideas Store as a hybrid event, including virtual options so even more people can benefit from our big thinkers, big ideas, and tackle the big issues challenging marketers right now.

Register for The Big Ideas Store here.

The Big Ideas Store sessions and contributors

Branded Content Strategy: The Allure Of Longform Tuesday 11 May, 3:30pm

Long-form storytelling is once again emerging as a key element in many brands content strategy. But who is best-placed to bring that content to life the marketers who live and breathe their brand and its message, or the media owners who create content with the audience front-of-mind?

Advertisers, agencies and content creators come together with Powered by Nine to discuss the impact of long-form content and how it can best deliver for brands and audiences.

Panellists

Sarah Stewart, director of content partnerships and client experience, Powered Hamish Turner, program director, 9Network Zara Curtis, director of content, IAG Liana Dubois, director of Powered by Nine

Effectiveness The Language Of The Boardroom Wednesday 12 May, 3:30pm

How do senior marketers build internal trust to pursue brand growth whilst delivering against short-term goals? What is the best approach for bringing together audience data, sales results and measurement when looking back at past campaigns and planning for the future?

Join Powereds director of effectiveness, Jon Fox, and director of Powered Enterprise, Nicki Kenyon, with a panel of Australias leading marketers to discuss their Effectiveness journey.

Panellists

Jonathan Fox, director of effectiveness, Powered Nicki Kenyon, director, Powered Enterprise Henry Turgoose, marketing director, Reckitt Health Phil Springall, sales & marketing director Retail, Karcher

The New Commercial Imperative: Doing Well + Doing Good Thursday 13 May, 11:00am

The pandemic has given many companies the opportunity to reset and rebuild aspects of their businesses on stronger foundations for the future. Those taking the lead are defining and measuring their sustainability and societal impact. Beyond doing no harm, they are actively setting out to do good. Is there a rise in conscious consumption and are we holding companies and brands to account?

Director of Powered Enterprise, Michele ONeill will lead an international panel of leading marketers to discuss why doing the right thing matters for all stakeholders; investors, employees, consumers and communities and why it has become a commercial imperative.

Panellists

Michele ONeill, director, Powered Enterprise Rupen Desai, Global CMO, Dole Packaged Foods Kimberlee Wells, CEO, TBWASimon Lowden, chief transformation officer, Arnotts Lisa Davies, editor, The Sydney Morning Herald

Surround Sound: The Audio Evolution Thursday 13 May, 3:30pm

In 2020, Australian audiences doubled the amount of time they spent listening to podcasts. Talk radio continues to win ratings battles, and the emergence of new social channels like Clubhouse signal that we are entering a new era in the evolution of audio.

What is it about audio that connects so deeply with audiences in the 21st century, and how can the platform continue to innovate? A panel of audio evangelists will debate the latest developments in the space, as well as exploring why audio formats are such powerful vehicles for brands to reach consumers and drive real results.

Panellists

Sophie Cook, head of content partnerships Radio, Powered Russel Howcroft, 3AW Breakfast host Helen McCabe, founder, Future Women

Culture Shock: Cannabusiness Friday 14 May, 10:30am (virtual only)

In partnership with Initiative, this session explores the rising cultural (re)acceptance of cannabis and how brands are leveraging this wave to power business growth.

For the last century, the communications around cannabis have been centred on its destructive effects. With a largely negative reputation, cannabis has been attributed to unemployment, violence, and a gateway to the consumption of more illicit and harmful substances. In a way, its a lesson in marketing 101: apply a consistent message for a long period of time and in turn you will build up the desired memory structures. However, there is an undercurrent of change thats closer to our shores than you may think. Australia is now the fastest growing medicinal cannabis market in the world and decriminalisation is building momentum. With the regulatory landscape moving at pace and multi-billion-dollar acquisitions taking place across the world, cannabis is one of the fastest growing industries globallyand its a matter of time before it comes Down Under.

So, the real question is, for a commodity that has a lifetime of preconceptions, misconceptions, and demonisation, how do you set up or study up to ensure youre either leading the charge or leveraging this cultural movement?

Panellists

Sam Greer, national managing director, Initiative Martin Lane, co-founder and chief growth officer, Cannabiz Natasha Gillezeau, journalist, The Australian Financial Review

The Changing Australian Dream Monday 17 May, 11:00am

In 2018, Powered by Nine launched The Australian Dream Reimagined, a study exploring what home means for Australians homeowners and renters alike. Three years on, for many of us our homes have become even more central to our lives: our workplace, school, and place of safety. What does that mean for how and where we choose to live? How do different generations feel about investing in property? And is it time to accept that for some, home ownership is a dream that will never come true?

Join Nines panel of experts as they explore the trends driving property in 2021 and look ahead to what they mean for the next ten years.

Panellists

Lisa Day, partnerships director, Nine James Hennessy, editor, Business Insider Nicola Powell, Senior Research Analyst, Domain Brooke Corte, host, Money News, Nine Radio

Cookies Crumbled: Data And Advertising Beyond Third Party Cookies Monday 17 May, 3:30pm

With major changes to data and privacy regulations on the horizon, advertisers are facing targeting and measurement headwinds which they have never had to navigate before. Join Powered by Nine as they uncover what the new world will look like without third party cookies, the impact for brands and explore data-led advertising solutions that will be available when third party cookies cease being supported.

Hosted by Mi3s Paul McIntyre, this session will bring together Nines director of advertising and data products, Ben Campbell, with a panel of experts across Australias leading data and technology providers.

Panellists

Ben Campbell, director of advertising and data products, Nine Gabbi Stubbs, APAC product marketing lead, Adobe James Young, managing director, Magnite Jonas Jaanimagi, technology lead, iAB Paul McIntyre, executive editor, Mi3 Culture Club: Tuesday 18 May, 10:30am

Marketing and advertising businesses have always thrived on a creative culture and passionate workforce. Collaboration and big ideas came off the back of brainstorms, impromptu or planned, and careers were built from networks made in those formative years. Then along came Covid and the impromptu kitchen table workforce: one defined by Zoom calls, sweatpants and flexible work. As a new normal descends, there is a reluctance to return to the before in order to not lose the new wins. But will it cost in the creativity, careers and office culture stakes?

In this session, Nines experts, along with CEO of Culture Garden Karl Treacher, discuss how to navigate a hybrid workforce and incorporate the lessons of COVID while continuing to innovate, create and move forward.

The panel discuss these questions and more as they explore what the future of work could look like.

Panellists

Anna Quinn, general manager, Powered Studios Karl Treacher, CEO, Culture Garden Matt Rowley, chief executive officer, Pedestrian Group Janine Allis, founder, Boost Juice

Neighbourhood Watch: Is Local The New Global? Tuesday 18 May, 3.30pm

From the noisy clash of State of Origin to fiery debates over whose local caf serves the best flat white, the ties between community and Australian identity run deep. For some time now, unifying moments of disruption such as the 2019 bushfires and 2020s pandemic have accelerated the hold that local identity has on our culture. More than ever before, we have adapted to living local, we have travelled closer to home, and our inclination to support brands and businesses that align to community values has increased significantly.

In partnership with Fiftyfive5, Powered by Nine has explored this phenomenon and what it means for brands. In this session Nine will share their latest research and explore its implications for advertisers both homegrown brands taking ownership of their role within the community and international brands seeking to harness some Aussie magic to connect with audiences.

Panellists

Toby Boon, director strategy, insight and effectiveness, Powered by Nine Hannah Krijnen, director, Fiftyfive5 Susan Wheeldon, country manager, Airbnb Stuart Gregor, co-founder & trade director, Four Pillars Gin Placing Big Creative Bets Wednesday 19 May, 3:30pm

For brands trying to navigate testing times and a disruptive environment, it can be tempting to play it safe. Just how tempting became apparent in early 2020 when, faced with the uncertainty of the pandemic and production restrictions, numerous advertisers went to market with similar messaging, musical cues and imagery much of which did little to help them communicate their distinct objectives and values.

There is, however, evidence to suggest that those brands who were prepared to take risks and innovate have emerged from the Covid era in a stronger position. As Nine prepares to celebrate creativity with the launch of State of Originality Australias richest creative prize, worth $1 million the panel will look back on the brands and campaigns that delivered, and explore the power of placing creative bets.

Panellists

Liana Dubois, director of Powered by Nine Tara Ford, chief creative officer, The Monkeys Ant White, chief creative officer, Howatson+White Chris Howatson, CEO, Howatson+White Melissa Hopkins, CMO, Optus

Unboxing Christmas 2021 Thursday 20 May, 11:30am (followed by lunch)

Last year, in partnership with The Lab, Powered by Nine launched Unboxing a Christmas like no other the research looking back at Christmas 2019 and forward to an unpredictable Christmas 2020. This study helped brands and agencies to navigate the unchartered waters of a Covid Christmas and the broader impact on the Australian summer.

Building on this foundation, Unboxing Christmas 2021 will look ahead to the trends in retail, food and culture which will influence our purchasing decisions during the festive season. Powered will also reflect on the dominant marketing messages of last year, revealing the advertising approaches which delivered the most effective results for brands.

Panellists

Toby Boon, director strategy, insight and effectiveness, Powered by Nine Bec Brody, strategy director, The Lab Jane De Graaff, food editor, nine.com.au and Today Genevieve Quigley, associate editor, Sunday Life

The Great Debate Does Advertising Lead Culture, Or Is Advertising Led By Culture? Thursday 20 May, 4:30pm

Great advertising can open our eyes to new products, new categories and new ways of living. Catchphrases and taglines become so embedded in everyday conversations that we sometimes forget where they came from. But does advertising really hold sway over our culture, or is it cynically raiding the zeitgeist and exploiting the human experience for commercial ends?

In 2021, The Big Ideas Stores Great Debate returns this year bigger than ever. Join as industry heavyweights battle it out to determine once and for all whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog.

Adjudicator

Tim Burrowes, editor-at-large, Mumbrella

Debaters

Toby Boon, director of strategy, Insights & Effectiveness, Nine Rachel Fraser, head of strategy, M+C Saatchi Roshni Hegerman, chief strategy officer, McCann Michele ONeill, director, Powered Enterprise Andrew Wynne, CEO, Joy

Original post:

Nine announces The Big Ideas Store panels and lineups for 2021 - Mediaweek