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definitelynotscott · 3 years

Link

LINK TO TOP TWEET OF THREAD HERE

LINK TO THE EPISODE OF HER PODCAST WITH GLADWELL HERE

Transcription below the cut.

[44-Tweet thread by @amandaknox

Does my name belong to me? My face? What about my life? My story? Why does my name refer to events I had no hand in? I return to these questions because others continue to profit off my name, face, & story without my consent. Most recently, the film #STILLWATER

/ a thread

This new film by director Tom McCarthy, starring Matt Damon, is “loosely based” or “directly inspired by” the “Amanda Knox saga,” as Vanity Fair put in a for-profit article promoting a for-profit film, neither of which I am affiliated with.

I want to pause right here on that phrase: “the Amanda Knox saga.” What does that refer to? Does it refer to anything I did? No. It refers to the events that resulted from the murder of Meredith Kercher by a burglar named Rudy Guede.

It refers to the shoddy police work, prosecutorial tunnel vision, and refusal to admit their mistakes that led the Italian authorities to wrongfully convict me, twice. In those four years of wrongful imprisonment and 8 years of trial, I had near-zero agency.

Everyone else in that “saga” had more influence over events than I did. The erroneous focus on me by the authorities led to an erroneous focus on me by the press, which shaped how I was viewed. In prison, I had no control over my public image, no voice in my story.

This focus on me led many to complain that Meredith had been forgotten. But of course, who did they blame for that? Not the Italian authorities. Not the press. Me! Somehow it was my fault that the police and media focused on me at Meredith’s expense.

The result of this is that 15 years later, my name is the name associated with this tragic series of events, of which I had zero impact on. Meredith’s name is often left out, as is Rudy Guede’s. When he was released from prison recently, this was the NY Post headline. [Picture of headline reading “Man who killed Amanda Knox’s roommate freed on community service By Lee Brown December 6, 2020]

In the wake of #metoo, more people are coming to understand how power dynamics shape a story. Who had the power in the relationship between Bill Clinton and @MonicaLewinsky? The president or the intern?

I would love nothing more than for people to refer to the events in Perugia as “The murder of Meredith Kercher by Rudy Guede,” which would place me as the peripheral figure I should have been, the innocent roommate.

But I know that my wrongful conviction, and subsequent trials, became the story that people obsessed over. I know they’re going to call it the “Amanda Knox saga” into the future. That being the case, I have a few small requests.

Don’t blame me for the fact that others put the focus on me instead of Meredith. And when you refer to these events, understand that how you talk about it affects the people involved: Meredith’s family, my family, @Raffasolaries, and me.

Don’t do what @deadlinepete did when reviewing #STILLWATER for @deadline, referring to me as a convicted murderer while conveniently leaving out my acquittal. I asked him to correct it. No response. [Picture of text from his article reading “The 2007 case of Amanda Knox, the American convicted in an Italian court of murdering her roommate, was the impetus for writer-director Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater, but in the 10 years since beginning, abandoning and starting over, it has evolved into something much more - and much better.”]

And if you must refer to the “Amanda Knox saga” maybe don’t call it, as the @nytimes did in profiling Matt Damon, “the sordid Amanda Knox saga.” Sordid: morally vile. Not a great adjective to have placed next to your name. Repeat something often enough, and people believe it.

Now, #STILLWATER is by no means the first thing to rip off my story without my consent at the expense of my reputation. There was of course the terrible Lifetime @LMN movie that I sued them over, resulting in them cutting a dream sequence where I was depicted as killing Meredith.

A few years ago, there was the Fox series Proven Innocent (@InnocentOnFOX) which was developed and marketed as “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer?” The first I heard from the show’s makers was when they had the audacity to ask me to help them promote it on the eve of its debut. [Picture of text reading “During the panel, one TV critic wondered if the series sets out to imagine “What if Amanda Knox became a lawyer.” as an exchange student, Knox became a headline when convicted in the murder of a fellow exchange student with whom she was sharing an apartment. Knox later was acquitted by the Italian equivalent of the Supreme Court. Strong acknowledged he’d said virtually the same thing when developing the series, after seeing a documentary about Knox on Netflix. This series is a “very fictionalized version of her story, obviously,” he said.”]

Malcolm Gladwell’s last book, Talking to Strangers, has a whole chapter analyzing my case. He reached out on the eve of publication to ask if he could use excerpts from my audiobook in his audiobook. He didn’t think to ask for an interview before forming his conclusions about me.

To his credit, Gladwell responded to my critiques over email, and was gracious enough to join me on my podcast, Labyrinths. [Link to the episode of her podcast with Gladwell]

I extend the same invitation to Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon, who I hope hear what I’m about to say about #STILLWATER

#STILLWATER was “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga.” Director Tom McCarthy tells Vanity Fair, “he couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to be in Knox’s shoes.” ...But that didn’t inspire him to ask me how it felt to be in my shoes.

He became interested in the family dynamics of the “Amanda Knox saga.” “Who are the people that are visiting [her], and what are those relationships? Like, what’s the story around the story?” I have a lot to say about that, & would have told McCarthy... if he’d ever reached out.

“We decided, ‘Hey, let’s leave the Amanda Knox case behind,’“ McCarthy tells Vanity Fair. “But let me take this piece of the story - an American woman studying abroad involved in some kind of sensational crime and she ends up in jail - and fictionalize everything around it.”

Let me stop you right there. That story, my story, is not about an American woman studying abroad “involved in some kind of sensational crime.” It’s about an American woman NOT involved in a sensational crime, and yet wrongfully convicted.

And if you’re going to “leave the Amanda Knox case behind,” and “fictionalize everything around it,” maybe don’t use my name to promote it. You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind very well if every single review mentions me.

You’re not leaving the Amanda Knox case behind when my face appears on profiles and articles about the film. [Picture of Vanity Fair headline “Stillwater: How much of Matt Damon’s New Movie Was Inspired by Amanda Knox? By Julie Miller” with a picture from the movie below and a picture of Amanda Knox superimposed over it.]

But, all this I mostly forgive. I get it. There’s money to be made, and you have no obligation to approach me. What I’m more bothered by is how this film, “directly inspired by the Amanda Knox saga, “fictionalizes” me and this story.

I was accused of being involved in a death orgy, a sex-game gone wrong, when I was nothing but platonic friends with Meredith. But the fictionalized me in #STILLWATER does have a sexual relationship with her murdered roommate.

In the film, the character based on me gives a tip to her father to help find the man who really killed her friend. Matt Damon tracks him down. This fictionalizing erases the corruption and ineptitude of the authorities.

What’s crazier is that, in reality, the authorities already had the killer in custody. He was convicted before my trial even began. They didn’t need to find him. And even so, they pressed on in persecuting me, because they didn’t want to admit they had been wrong.

McCarthy told Vanity Fair that “Stillwater’s ending was inspired not by the outcome of Knox’s case, but by the demands of the script he and his collaborators had created.” Cool, so I wonder, is the character based on me actually innocent?

Turns out, she asked the killer to help her get rid of her roommate. She didn’t mean for him to kill her, but her request indirectly led to the murder. How do you think that impacts my reputation?

I continue to be accused of “knowing something I’m not revealing,” of “having been involved somehow, even if I didn’t plunge the knife.” So Tom McCarthy’s fictionalized version of me is just the tabloid conspiracy guilter version of me.

By fictionalizing away my innocence, my total lack of involvement, by erasing the role of the authorities in my wrongful conviction, McCarthy reinforces an image of me as a guilty and untrustworthy person.

And with Matt Damon’s star power, both are sure to profit handsomely off of this fictionalization of “the Amanda Knox saga” that is sure to leave plenty of viewers wondering, “Maybe the real-life Amanda was involved somehow.”

Which brings me to my screenplay idea! It’s directly inspired by the life of Matt Damon. He’s an actor, celebrity, etc. Except I’m going to fictionalize everything around it, and the Damon-like character in my film is involved in a murder.

He didn’t plunge the knife per se, but he’s definitely at fault somehow. His name is Damien Matthews, and he starred in the Jackson Burne spy films. He works with Tim McClatchy, who’s a Harvey Weinstein type. It’s loosely based on reality. Shouldn’t bother Matt or Tom, right?

I joke, but of course, I understand that Tom McCarthy and Matt Damon have no moral obligation to consult me when profiting by telling a story that distorts my reputation in negative ways. And I reiterate my offer to interview them on Labyrinths.

I bet we could have a fascinating conversation about identity, and public perception, and who should get to exploit a name, face, and story that has entered the public imagination.

I never asked to become a public person. The Italian authorities and global media made that choice for me. And when I was acquitted and freed, the media and the public wouldn’t allow me to become a private citizen ever again.

I went back to school and fellow students photographed me surreptitiously, people who lived in my apartment building invented stories for the tabloids, I worked a minimum wage job at a used bookstore, only to be confronted by stalkers at the counter.

I was hounded by paparazzi, my story and trauma was (and is) endlessly recycled for entertainment, and in the process, I’ve been accused of shifting attention away from the memory of Meredith Kercher, of being a media whore.

I have not been allowed to return to the relative anonymity I had before Perugia. My only option is to sit idly by while others continue to distort my character, or fight to restore my good reputation that was wrongfully destroyed.

It’s an uphill battle. I probably won’t succeed. But I’ve been here before. I know what it’s like facing impossible odds.

If you’re on @Medium reader, you can find this all here: [link to article shared above]

#long post #Amanda Knox #privacy

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conservativebabymillennial · 3 years

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I got a very good reply on my last post that should be brought up.

The person- (youngfreeradical) said: “What you’re missing is the history of these peoples. Yea we agree it shouldn’t matter what race, gender, religion, w/e. But in the United States and the world that has not been the case and continues to not be the case. Are you really going to say that the Republican Party have been the champions of gay people when they continue to fight against their right to marriage? Or their current hatred of trans people? Why would these people ally with conservatives? That is suicidal”

My post was about my feelings on identity politics and how so often we hear the democratic party is the party of ______ people.

youngfreeradical does have a point. While I do not call myself a republican, I do vote republican so I wanted to go ahead and address that statement. The GOP have not historically supported those lifestyles in a legal sense. I say legal because more and more young people, myself included, just don’t give a flying baboon’s butt about what you do in your own bedroom in your own private living space or your body. I personally am not co-signing those lifestyles and choices, but it is your body. It is when those lifestyles and choices affect me and everyone else that I have to begin to disagree. That sentiment is also part of the foundation of conservatism, “you can do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t affect other people.”

But the history of the parties is one that should be discussed.

The democratic party is the party that historically has been supported by the KKK and vice versa Woodrow Wilson, democrat president, supported the KKK and helped revive it by popularizing KKK revisionist film Birth of a Nation.

Blacks began voting blue in 1936 in the proposal of the New Deal, not because they aligned with democrat party values but for political expediency.

“I’ll have them niggers voting democrat for the next 200 years.” - Lyndon B. Johnson, democrat president.

Andrew Jackson, universally known as the first Democrat president, forced an entire race to relocate from ancestral land

FDR one of the liberal heroes of the democratic party placed Japanese Americans in internment camps after the wake of Pearl Harbor

FDR also got rid of privately owned land owned by First Nations/Native Americans to force them under the thumb of the federal government by eliminating private and tribal agency under the guise of reorganizing tribes and forced council elections to save Native American culture

Yes, the Dawes act had many issues, and the slogan of the time, “Kill the Indian, save the man,” was horrible, but several tribes such as the Navajo thrived due to the privatization of land and land allotment. Look at the Pine Ridge Reservation if you want to see just how great FDR’s “Indian New Deal” worked out.

Also, there is no such thing as a single “Native American Culture.” The race of First Nations persons is filled with hundreds of distinct cultures so the very idea that Native Americans are one Pan-American culture and only one is an egregious stereotype. Please read Seven Myths of Native American History by Paul Jentz to further educate yourself on the most common stereotypes often attributed to Native Americans.

It was overwhelmingly “Republicans” who voted in favor for the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote

“But CBM,” you say, “the parties switched! How can you say republicans voted for this when they are full of hateful people who hate everyone who isn’t a white man?” I’ll tell you why weary traveler, that is a false statement.

From the National Review: The Democrats have been sedulously rewriting history for decades. Their preferred version pretends that all the Democratic racists and segregationists left their party and became Republicans starting in the 1960s. How convenient. If it were true that the South began to turn Republican due to Lyndon Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act, you would expect that the Deep South, the states most associated with racism, would have been the first to move. That’s not what happened. The first southern states to trend Republican were on the periphery: North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and Florida. (George Wallace lost these voters in his 1968 bid.) The voters who first migrated to the Republican party were suburban, prosperous New South types. The more Republican the South has become, the less racist.

From Liberty Voice: All but the redoubtable Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the Southern Democrat who managed to stay Democrat for well over 40 years; despite all the mythical ship-jumping which is supposed to have occurred. All of the modern liberal Democrats who adored him, like Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama and Al Gore, must not have been told Byrd was a Grand Klegal in the KKK before he ran for the Senate as a Democrat. Byrd was a celebrated member of the Democrat party up til his death, in 2010. So it is not as if the discussion of his affiliations is somehow ancient history.

Not quite relevant to the specific topic above but still important to mention, the left or people who lean left have been consistently saying that the two parties are getting farther and farther apart. That is true, but what is not true is the fact that those same people say it is the right’s fault, that the right has gotten more radical in their beliefs. This is statistically untrue. For the past decade those that lean right or vote republican have stayed relatively the same while those that lean left or vote democrat have moved more left on almost every issue, in some cases, drastically. And before anyone can say anything about that... this research was done by the Pew Research Center which is collectively agreed to be center and non-bias.

Now on the flip side, I am not a blind follower and once again iterate that I consider myself a conservative rather than a republican. I know the GOP is not innocent. Just on the top of my head is Watergate.

Regardless of any of this information, it is evident that both parties have a checkered history. It is our job to hold our elected officials accountable because they work for the citizens of the united states, not the other way around.

We as a nation do need to try harder to utilize our other parties more. Or better yet, listen to George Washington and disband the parties so we can’t have platform candidates. Now I will 9.9/10 times disagree with anyone left of center on the politics, but it is still important that each and every voice is heard and I mean that.

#Conservative

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thekillerssluts · 4 years

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Will Butler explains how his Harvard degree developed into his second solo album

“Yeah, it’s terrifying,” Will Butler says, pondering how it feels to be releasing music away from the umbrella of Arcade Fire.

“It’s the classic thing about all writers,” he continues. “The creative process makes them wanna puke the whole time they’re writing something, then they read something back and it makes them feel worse, then a year later they read it and think ‘yeah, it’s okay’. It’s a glorious experience, but it really makes your stomach hurt.”

On the one hand Will Butler is well accustomed to this writing process, being a multi-instrumentalist in the Canadian indie-rock band fronted by brother Win - Arcade Fire. But on his own terms, it’s an entirely new process. Butler’s second solo album Generations arrives five years after his debut Policy, a collection that rattled with a ramshackle charm and what he describes now as a ‘consciously very unproduced’ sound. Arcade Fire wound down from their Everything Now tour in September 2018, leaving Butler with the last two years of playtime. Most musicians, particularly those accustomed to big album cycles, set aside their downtime for family or other musical projects. Somehow Butler’s managed to do both while also completing a masters degree in Public Policy at Harvard.

“I went to school for a variety of reasons but there was an artistic side to it too,” he says. “I have always tried to let music and lyrics emerge from the world that I’m in; you fertilise the soil and see what grows. It was a way to better understand where we are, how we got here and what's going on. You know, ‘where am I from? What's going to happen?’” Both of these questions explored in his degree are used as fuel for Generations.

It’s easy to imagine an album by somebody who’s just pursued a Public Policy MSt to form in reams of political commentary, probably set to an acoustic guitar. However, Butler instead engages character portraits soundtracked by a broad range of thrilling sonics. Opener “Outta Here” is shrouded by a monstrous bass that lurks beneath the depths of the instrumentation before bursting out midway through. “Got enough things on my plate without you talking about my salvation,” he screams.

While the cage-rattling “Bethlehem” is mania underpinned by a thrashing guitar and bubbling synths that help lift the track to boiling point.While there’s no current world leaders namechecked or any on-the-nose political commentary across the LP, the angst of its contents is instantly tangible, backed by the intellect of somebody who’s spent the past few years studying the ins and outs of government processes. A perfect combination, you could say.

This fuel was partly discovered through Butler reconnecting with the music that defined his teenage years: namely Bjork, The Clash and Eurythmics. While these influences certainly slip into frame across Generations, they were paired with something of an unlikely muse: “I got into this habit of listening to every single song on the Spotify Top 50 every six weeks,” Butler explains. “So many of them are horrible, terrifying and just awful but there’s something inspiring about how god damn avant garde the shittiest pop music is now. Just completely divorced from any sense of reality - it’s just layers upon layers upon layers - it’s amazing. It’s like Marcel Duchamp making a pop hit every single song.”

We turn from current music to current events. Navigating Covid-19 with his wife and three kids in their home of Brooklyn, a majority of 2020 has been caught up in family time for Butler. “The summer’s been easier because everybody’s outside, whereas in spring it was like ‘it’s family time because we have to lock our doors as there's a plague outside.’” While being surrounded by the trappings of lockdown since his second solo album Generations was completed in March, the album itself wriggles with the spirit of live instrumentation, which at this point seems like some sort of relic from a bygone era."I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people."

The source of this energy can be traced back to the way the songs came together; they were forged and finessed at a series of shows in the early stages of the project. “It just raises the stakes. You can tell how good or how dumb a lyric is when you sing it in front of a hundred people,” he reflects. “It’s like ‘are you embarrassed because what you’re saying is true?’ or ‘is it just embarrassing?’ It’s a good refiner for that stuff. I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people.”

Like his day job in Arcade Fire, Butler’s solo live group is something of a family affair - both his wife and sister-in-law feature in the band, alongside Broadway's West Side Story star, and the student of the legendary Fela Kuti drummer, Tony Allen. Together this eclectic mix of musicians conjures an infectious spirit through the raw combination of thundering synths and pedal-to-the-metal instrumentation; an apt concoction indeed for lyrics that are attempting to unhatch the bamboozling questions that surround our current times.

The timing for Butler’s decision to study Public Policy couldn’t have been more perfect, with his course starting in the Fall of 2016. “I was at Harvard for the election which was a really bizarre time to be in a government school, but it was great to be in a space for unpacking questions like ‘my god, how did we get here?!’” he reflects, with a note of mockery in the bright voice.

“I had a course taught by a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur. The class was essentially on race in America but with an eye towards policy. The class explored what was going to happen in terms of race under the next president. The second to last week was about Hilary Clinton and the last week was about Donald Trump. We read riot reports - Ferguson in 2015, Baltimore in 2016, the Detroit uprisings in the ‘60s and Chicago in 1919 - it's certainly helping me understand the last 5 years, you know. Just to be in that context was very lucky.”

As we’ve seen with statues being toppled, privileges being checked and lyrics of national anthems being interrogated in recent months, history is a complex, labyrinthine subject to navigate requiring both ruthless self-scrutiny and a commitment to the long-haul in order to correct things. The concept of Generations shoots from the same hip employing character portraits to engage in the broader picture.

The writing, at times, is beamed from a place of disconnect (“had enough of bad news / had enough of your generation”), from a place of conscious disengagement (“I’m not talking because I don’t feel like lying / if you stay silent you can walk on in silence”) and from a place of honest self-assessment (“I was born rich / three quarters protestant / connections at Harvard and a wonderful work ethic”).

“I’m rooted in history to a fault,” he says. “My great grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer who’d gone West after being kicked out of America by mob violence. He wanted to be a musician which was crazy - he got 6 months in a conservatory in Chicago before his first child was born. He always felt like he could have been a genius, he could of been writing operas but he was teaching music in like tiny western towns and he had all these kids and he made them be a family band and they were driving around the American west before there were roads in the deserts - literally just driving through the desert! He would go to these small towns and get arrested for trying to skip bills and just live this wild existence.”

Butler’s grandma, meanwhile, was just a child at this point. She went on to become a jazz singer with her sisters and married the guitar player Alvino Rey. “The fact that me and my brother are musicians is no coincidence,” he smiles. “It’s not like I decided to be a musician, it’s down to decisions that were made at the end of the 19th century that have very clearly impacted where I am today. The musical side of it is very beautiful, it is super uncomplicated and a total joy to have a tradition of music in our family...but also in the American context - which is the only context I know - it's also these very thorny inheritances from the 19th century and beyond that influence why my life is like it is.

“For me it’s like, ‘I made my money because my grandpa was a small business owner’ or ‘my grandpa was a boat builder and got a pretty good contract in WW2 and was able to send his kids to college’. Both of which are so unpoetic and unromantic but it is an important thing to talk about, that's a personal political thing to talk about; there's horrifying and beautiful aspects there.”

The lament of “I’m gonna die in a hospital surrounded by strangers who keep saying they’re my kids” on “Not Gonna Die” could well be croaked by somebody on the tail end of a life lived on the American Dream. At times, Butler plays the characters off against each other, like on “Surrender,” which chronicles two flawed characters going back and forth played by Butler’s lead vocals and his female backing singers that undermine his memory; “I remember we were walking” is cut up with the shrug of “I dunno” and “maybe so”. “I found having the backing voices there gave me something to play with,” he explains. “Either something threatening to the main character or something affirming to the main character, just providing another point of view.”

Elsewhere, “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know” explores the feeling of being unsuitably equipped to unravel the complexities that surrounds us day-to-day. “The basic emotion of that song is very much ‘I don’t know what I can do’ which is an emotion we all have,” he ponders. “There’s also the notion that follows that, like ‘maybe don’t even tell me what to do because it’s going to be too overwhelming to even do anything’.”

Some of these portraits materialised in the aftershows Butler began hosting while on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now tour which found him instigating conversations and talks by local councilman, politicians and activists on local issues. “On some of the good nights of the aftershow town halls, you’d feel that switch away from despair and into action,” he says smiling. “The step between despair and action is possible, that sentiment isn’t spelled out lyrically on the record but it’s definitely there spiritually.”

“I learned anew what a treasure it is to have people in a room. Getting humans in a room can be absurd. And we were having from 5,000 to 15,000 people in a room every night, most of them local. I’m very comfortable with art for art’s sake; I think art is super important and it’s great people can like music that's not political. It was sort of like ‘well we’re here and I know a lot of you are thinking about the world and you’re thinking about what a shit show everything is. You want to know what we can do and I also want to know what we can do!’ So I put on these after shows.”"The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change."

Butler would find a suitable location near the Arcade Fire gig through venue owners who were often connected to the local music and comedy scenes to host these events. “The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change. Arguably, the most important way is through the city council and state government. The New York state government is in Albany, New York. The shit that happens in Albany is all super important so I wanted to highlight that and equip people with some concrete levers to pull.

“In Tampa we had people who were organizing against felon disenfranchisement, like if you’ve been convicted of a felon you couldn’t vote in Florida, and something absurd like 22% of black men in Florida couldn’t vote and there were people organising to change that - this was in 2018 - and you could just see people being like ‘holy shit, I didn't even know this was happening!’

“These were not topics I’m an expert in - it’s like these are things that are happening. The thought was trying to engage, I’m sad to not be doing something similar this Fall, I mean what a time it would have been to go around America.”

Understandably the looming 2020 election is on Butler’s radar. “It doesn't feel good,” he sighs. “I’ve never had any ability to predict, like 2 weeks from now the world could be completely different from what it is today. There was always a one-in-a-billion chance of the apocalypse and now it's like a one-in-a-million chance which is a thousand times more likely but also unlikely. It’s going to be a real slog in the next couple of years on a policy side, like getting to a place where people don’t die for stupid reasons, I’m not even talking about the coronavirus necessarily just like policy in general. Who knows, it could be great but it seems like it's going to be a slog.”

There’s a moment on the closing track “Fine”, a stream-of-consciousness, Randy Newman-style saloon waltz, where Butler hits the nail on the head. “George [Washington], he turned to camera 3, he looked right at me and said...I know that freedom falters when it’s built with human hands”. It’s one of the many lyrical gems that surface throughout the record but one that chimes with an undeniable truth. It’s the same eloquence that breaks through as he touches on the broad ranging subjects in our conversation, always with a bright cadence despite the gloom that hangs over some of the topics.

The live show is without a doubt Arcade Fire’s bread and butter. While Butler questions how realistic the notion of getting people in packed rooms in the near future is, he reveals the group are making movements on LP6. “Arcade Fire is constantly thinking about things and demoing, it's hard to work across the internet but at some point we’ll get together. It probably won’t be much longer than our usual album cycle,” he says.

You only have to pick out one random Arcade Fire performance on YouTube to see Butler’s innate passion bursting out, whether it’s early performances that found him and Richard Reed Parry adorning motorbike helmets annihilating each other with drumsticks to the 1-2-3 beat of “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)” or the roaring “woah-ohs” that ascend in the anthem of “Wake Up” every night on tour. It’s an energy that burns bright throughout our conversation and across Generations.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/arcade-fires-will-butler-new-solo-record-generations

#Arcade Fire #generations #will butler #interview #hq

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auroraluciferi · 3 years

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a white supremacist apparently had an issue with this random post I made.

my post was about the shocked reactions people all over the world were apparently having to American ads for prescription drugs played on the break during the Meghan Markle interview.

the point I was trying to make is that the avalanche of consumer ads for prescription medicine is yet another insane hallmark of the profit-driven US healthcare system which most people fortunately do not experience and no one seems to fully understand.

I feel this one detail helps to breach the facade shielding the dystopian reality which divides us, and it helps to explain for many why the United States has been especially crippled by the effects of the global pandemic. the suffering, deprivation and cruelty of our health infrastructure is an essential feature of capitalism, not a glitch. For many people it has been a time of reckoning.

so this worthless asshole clearly decided now was the time to plant his racist flag - he messaged several times over two days, then I guess he got upset with what I was saying and blocked me.

what follows is unpleasant and contains racist and deeply offensive language, copied verbatim from my inbox and chat.

it has been formatted to fit your television screen.

dee6000 submitted:

Can your socialist BS. The ads/big pharma are separate from or profit medicine. What harmed US medicine was result of democrat politicians copying Europe’s socialists that treated citizens rights with contempt. In the past US medicine was the envy of the world, British, Europeans, Canadians many others would travel here to receive care. Dems blocked enforcement of immigration laws hospitals went bankrupt and taxpayer funded medicaid was overburdened. Just as the influx of tens of millions of illegal aliens and migrants caused rents to skyrocket and wages to be dragged down. Hospital based infection skyrocketed as well hospitals started hiring illegal aliens who did not follow cleaning rules. These infections weren’t new, they are the norm in Latin America and other third world countries. Years later these hospital infections started showing up. Obamacare requires doctors under threat of fines to refuse to perform some diagnostic testing on some patients. Socialist and communist countries have even worse outcomes. And Britain and Europe are experiencing the results of 3rd world imported substandard doctors and nurses.

@auroraluciferi:

lmao. "ads/big pharma" are somehow "separate" from for profit medicine and everything else is the fault of these filthy immigrants from the third world

good luck with whatever ax you're trying to grind

dee6000:

Lmao, people controlling their own labor, by charging for their work, unlike in your communist, socialist sewers where the government elites enslaves people and profit off those slaves like parasites.Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism. Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested. Now drugs made in communist China and socialist India are not manufactured safely, there is no oversight, illnesses have resulted as a result and while workers in those countries are abused hypocrite Chinese and Indian elites profit. You might resent truth but that is your problem. Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules. That is a fact. When US citizens cleaned hospitals and nursing homes there were no superbug outbreaks, before illegal aliens were illegally working in US food manufacturing, children weren’t being sickened and killed from eating ecoli, salmonella, and mold contaminated peanut butter and peanut products as dozens of children and adults were in 2008-2009 when Peanut Corporation of America machinery then operated and “maintained” by illegal alien Mexicans, had developed toxic black mold because the illegals didn’t bother cleaning the machinery despite knowing that was the jobs they were paid to do. Hearings in congress were held and parents spoke about it. I don’t care what you think, I know you are a fascist

@auroraluciferi:

Okay then, I'll humor you - honestly I feel sorry because it clearly took a lot of effort and mental gymnastics to type up that word salad you sent me. Let's look at each of the "points" you just tried to make.

"People controlling their own labor by charging for their work" - that is a laugh. How exactly do you control your own labor if you are forced to sell it to the lowest bidder, competing against millions of others? If a business lays you off or goes bankrupt due to mismanagement, market fluctuations, accidents or a natural disaster, your labor then becomes worthless. The choice you are given as an employee or contractor unsupported by social welfare programs is "accept whatever pathetic wage we decide your labor and time is worth" or "lose your home and starve to death".

Your idea of "control" is an illusion in an economic system where human survival is based on abritrary market conditions and greed rather than the quality of life itself.

"Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism." - are you suggesting that some of the largest and most profitable companies on earth are the result of a global, communist conspiracy? Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG, GSK and others follow the corporate conglomeration and consolidation model pioneered and perfected by 19th and 20th century capitalists and industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Hearst, and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Hardly a group of jaded communist revolutionaries.

The multinational companies they founded and combined have systematically destroyed competition within their respective industries, forced both their consumers and employees to accept substandard, dangerous products and poverty wages, then used their wealth to influence both conservative and liberal politicians to deregulate industries and labor laws for their own benefit. All done by willing and eager students of Adam Smith, not Karl Marx.

"Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested." - I assume here you're talking about NAFTA and Clinton-era regulations, both of which were enormous gifts to those same companies I just described.

These manufacturers left America to gild their pockets by voluntarily exploiting the workers of countries that do not have labor laws, have substandard or nonexistent environmental protections, and would accept even lower wages than Americans. They could have easily remained in the US, paid higher wages to American workers, followed the most basic regulations, and still would have made obscene levels of profit - the demand of shareholders for more profit motivated the outsourcing of US jobs, not because a spineless corporate lackey like Bill Clinton forced them to.

At the same time, NAFTA enabled US agribusiness to flood the Mexican and Central American economy with cheap, government-subsidized corn - instantly destroying the ability of Mexican farms to collectively set fair prices, driving millions facing starvation and poverty into cities and ultimately North into the United States. It's pretty ironic that your illegal immigration crisis was created by massive corporations supported by the US government, but I guess that's inconvenient history for you.

Again, this is another pretty obvious feature of capitalism, not communism or socialism. Businesses have a natural tendency to cut expenses and maximize profit any way they can. In an actual socialist system, there would be no incentive to do that - healthcare and medicine would be provided as a right, rather than a paid-for privilege as exists in our current system. Workers would not have to compete with each other to survive if their basic needs were provided for.

Also just thought you should know, the FDA regulations apply both to drugs that are imported just as they are to drugs that are manufactured in the US. Furthermore, there would be no FDA at all without American socialists, reformers and consumer advocates pressuring Congress into creating it - not sure how you can pretend otherwise. It was made specifically to address how the 19th-20th century market failed to "self-regulate", resulting in toxic food and drugs manufactured here, in the US.

"Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules." - This is pretty racist, and also the opposite of reality. "Superbugs" are the natural result of bacteria and viruses adapting and evolving to ever increasing levels of antibiotics, antivirals, and hyper sanitation in our food supply and cleaning products, as well as natural mutation. Diseases like the coronavirus are inevitable - the US has failed to respond effectively because our for-profit healthcare system does not have a market incentive to create stockpiles or public infrastructure to combat an outbreak, whether it's from China or Cleveland, Ohio.

People from other countries know how to wash their hands. They know how to clean. You have absolutely no evidence which would dispute that, just your own feelings and the idea that filthy brown people caused this totally avoidable disaster rather than a lack of basic planning.

Finally, when people are sickened by improperly cleaned equipment or tainted food and medicine, it is the result of a failure by the manufacturer or producer to properly train and supply their facilities out of negligence, to save on operating expenses, or because they ignore existing regulations and are not penalized for doing so - not because there is an army of dirty, ignorant Mexicans at the controls. Untrained, underpaid, and unsupervised workers will have a greater tendency to make mistakes regardless of if they are White Americans or immigrants.

"Facts" and "truth"? I don't see anything besides your own personal bias, poor logic and uncited bullshit that you have no proof of. The American healthcare system and things like advertising for drugs on TV are mocked and reviled across the rest of the world because people can clearly see how vulnerable it is to inevitable pandemics like this.

But I guess there will always be people like you who are happy to ignore reality and instead demonize normal working people for fleeing their capitalist-raped economies and come here in an attempt to provide for their families - exactly the same thing you would do in their situation.

dee6000:

Lmao! Then explain why for decades and they, the WHO, Doctors Without Borders and other wastes of resources still bemoan the fact that in Latin America, take Mexico for example the majority of the people not only don’t wash their hands before eating a meal, they don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom. They send nurses into schools to make a game of washing one’s hands but it doesn’t take. Next you’ll tell me that it isn’t true that child rape is part of Latin American culture. Mexico is so substandard health and hygiene wise that it’s water supply is contaminated with feces. Which is why foreigners are warned not to drink it or anything with ice in it. Because intestinal diseases, parasites are the norm. Go into any hospital in the US that employs illegals and they do not smell like antiseptic but dirty. I do not care what you think, the data shows superbugs started showing up in the US a decade after hospitals and nursing homes felt entitled to ignore employment laws and hire illegals. And yes, US corporations that off shores and were indulged by communist China and the rest that have no environmental regulations, no labor laws (because under communism and socialism the people are slaves of the state) are only paid what the government thinks they deserve which is very little) they could profit more, or so they think. They became addicted to it and allowed their patents etc to be stolen. Under capitalism a worker has the right and power to reject a low wage. Under capitalism in the US a middle class grew and flourished, and poverty shrank. Under democrats and RINOs, who serve the same interests as democrats, the Clinton, Bush’s and Obozo the middle class was decimated, and poverty skyrocketed. Under Obozo more people became homeless, more so than during the Great Depression. You can spin and spin all you like. Your lies fall apart easily. Under illegal alien invaded democrat run California, the streets are tent cities, cholera, typhus and the plague have been found in Los Angeles, as well as other diseases.

At this point, he apparently blocked me. I didn’t realize this until after I was done writing my response, but here it is anyways

@auroraluciferi:

It's pretty clear you feel all of your grievances can be blamed on those black and brown people and "Communist" China that you hate so much. I feel sorry for you, but I don't actually believe that anything I say is going to change that.

Your illusions are so wrapped up this weird ethnocentric pride and your comforting blanket of privilege that you're basically helpless against what's coming. You're burning all this energy being angry at people of color for "wasting" resources you apparently feel you are especially entitled to, when you can't even see that the scarcity of those resources is a dominant feature of capitalism.

The wealthy and powerful who benefit from that scarcity - both here in the US and in China - look down at sad little racists like you and they clink their champagne glasses together and smile. By blaming their crimes on Mexicans or whoever it is you clutch your pearls about, you're just making it easier for them to divide and conquer the working class globally.

So go ahead, do their work for them - whatever makes you happy.

Waste all your time and energy hating someone you do not know, whose experience and culture you do not know. Blame all the diseases and scarcity and crime on them, instead of on the cruelty and pointless waste of capitalism

Squabble over the pathetic little crumbs they kick down to you from above or whatever you can compete with against your neighbors for, then proudly claim your little dirt heap for an imaginary concept of white culture.

Like I said before, good luck with that.

#2021 #us #united states #healthcare #health #racism #meghan markle #oprah #interview #pharmaceutical industry #big pharma #ads #advertising #racist ask #@dee6000

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ndx94 · 3 years

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My pro-choice Democrat anti-Trump pro-CCP parents are furious with me that my college girlfriend and I twice procured emergency contraception in 2007 and my brother will not talk to me as it turns out I’m not a virgin retard, but had sexual intercourse within a committed thought-we’d-get-married love-relationship in my senior year of college and lived with her in the year following that and twice in my life I committed seminal ejaculation within the context of a female anatomy belonging to someone who badly wanted to get pregnant and be “settled” with me at the age of 21, after our parents had very carefully trained us not to have sex before marriage, warned us about attending Rutgers University, and also demanded us to “take responsibility” in the case of conception.

I am not happy about being an abortionist, babykiller, or anything like that but the idea that I wasn’t put up to it in the least or that you can vote for Bill Clinton and love porneia and still hold your son 100% accountable for his morals at the age of 21 when he was traumatized by the Iraq War and sleep-deprived for 3 years due to stress and emotional abuse by his racist Pakistani anti-white roommate in college and naturally he would then not want to come inside girl to cope or work out and be a nice person in hope of getting love in general rather than gun for Law School. TW-1 and I thought we would get married; we were both virgins in the autumn of 2006 and I at least have not so much as copped a feel of a breast-outline or buttock since TW-1 and I broke up in summer ‘07 let alone ‘played the lottery’ (pregnancy is winning).

I don’t like talking about this but it’s one thing people want to know about and I feel the right to say a few words in my defense on Planet Roe America and as a person who I’m pretty sure was conceived both outside of wedlock and in cis-rape or rape by deception, and if my little “Jaehee’s helper-bird” friend is correct, son of a guy who got so mad I didn’t myself rape the American Korean Presbyterian Pastor’s daughter (a.k.a. my sister) in the summer of 2002 that he fond some girl to drug and rape as symbolic coping.

I still remember well the autumn afternoon I met Taiwan-1, whose name is Rebecca or in Mandarin means “pure literature” or as I like to say “pellucid and literary” or “limpid and well-lettered.” As with the pastor’s daughter I in retrospect devoutly if not ardently regret not being closer to her father, who cared about me far more than my biological begetter; a Confucian gentleman and natural scholar / lover of moral philosophy who happened to become a banker just b/c he had to help his family (and all of Taiwan as a national-level financier), rather than a scholar of history and poetry as I apparently myself have become.

The evening Taiwan-1 and I met was the first day in my life I drank a full glass of wine. It was at a Rutgers English Department function related to the Honors Thesis I wrote, also on Taiwan and the director Hou Hsiao Hsien. I had originally wanted to write my thesis on a videogame called Final Fantasy VIII which in retrospect was an augury of how E. Asian media would summon people to Love not just through Squaresoft but later SM Entertainment, about which I also hoped to write an academic thesis before breaking hard toward political scholarship and military or what I call the sort of “hard science ofo Korean Studies’ like statistics, economics, history, primary source documents, constitutional and legal analysis, reading the daily papers, esp. 38North which is an amazing labor of love from generals who just think all day every day about saving their boys.

The emotion that I felt as I drank that my first wine - I had just come from dropping off my desktop / tower PC to be repaired at the Livingston Campus Rutgers PC shop, and was looking forward to working on my writing on my father’s Windows 98 laptop (I didn’t like laptops at the time but felt comfortable / nostalgic using Win98 in 2006, the apparent end of the universe) - was like, “Wahh [soft but real cry], does David Johnston really deserve nothing and no one?” I’m not trying to say I am selfish or unselfish but I had no friends, the only person I really liked was Big Bad Boris a.k.a. Aleksey “Alex” Kasavin who worked Google later on then Microsoft via Yale MBA program, but he doesn’t like / has never opened up to me or wanted to be close or committed or “eternal roommates” as I used to feel about him. I recently wrote Aleksey a last letter just expressing frankly “sorry to you + sorry to me too” that I always wanted to be close with him and this was not reciprocated; it might’ve been a little cross but after 18 years of this person grinning at me without hugging me (platonically but I have always wanted a close male friendship like a I briefly had with Danny Shin in KR), what am I supposed to do but say something?

When Rebecca looked up at me at the RU English Honors Program welcoming gala at Zimmerli Museum I heard what was either glass breaking - like a Jewish wedding where the couple stomp a glass before kissing, a ritual I love / adore somehow - or at least someone toasting. I had talked to this Korean grad-student. Because of Rebecca I came out of my shell a bit and decided instead of pulling ice cream or delivering pizzas I would try to be slightly more social and get a job as a writing-tutor instead, since I was working on my creative writing daily since 2005, and had started my “bioweapons Taiwanese- and Korean-America families + abortion + China and America assassinating indigenous peoples” novel in 2003 (the “soft sci fi of Sci-Rom / Futurist Romantic Realism) novel that my parents hate me not publishing since it predicted Covid in a way), and had a good “ear” as a reader (I loved imitating esp. Haruki Murakami and a little Gao Xingjian).

TW-1 and I courted between September and November. One of the formative drives in our relationship was her parents’ moving back to Taiwan for her dad’s job and mine moving to WI leaving us all alone together in New Jersey. Another, we were both studying Taiwan. My uncle’s wife is also Taiwanese. I don’t want to give the details of our sexual relationship since this person is an important working professional, a scholar, but we lost our virginities in a hotel suite in Washington, which is why I posted this pic of drapes. I’ll never forget how the day afterward I felt an insane, idiopathic “atheist-thought-bullet-packet” in my head then spent the day working on my creative writing at the “business lounge corner” of the Embassy Suite while TW-1 watched anime in her t-shirt. For some reason that day when I went on my PC to check e-mail I got a communication from my online DAI Forum friend who hadn’t reached out to me in more than a year, as if psychically he just knew that there had been a disturbance in the force or, as I like to say, the great “gayakeum” that binds some people had been detuned or returned.

This is “American Korean Millennial Lit; the story of some semen / sperm” but it seems meaningful somehow that on the night I actually punctured her virginal membrance neither of us completed orgasm / ejaculation. She started crying and then I stopped and we both went to sleep and left each other alone. Then all day we just nursed ourselves in our way, she with Japanese stuff and I with my creative writing or “journals.” We went out to dinner and it was a very “Maison Ikkoku” moment in the November weather in her metallic dress and my military jacket and polo shirt and taped glasses. That night I also discovered my incredible intuitive capacity for what you might call “air-braking” or being able to stay inside really really really close to the moment of potential impregnation. I don’t like talking about porneia and had wished I left it all behind but like in JAV when they have to j--- themselves before doing something obscene that men of my gen. were influenced by the millions to do to insult their GF’s and wives t’s pathetic to me that they can’t “air-burst the A-Bomb at 100 feet.” It was 15 years ago and today I think like why did God create sexual organs to look that way and be that way, stuff like frankly what’s the relationship between male circumcision and conscience (removing the ”foreskin of the heart”).

I am not without tremendous fault in my relationship with TW-1 esp. due to the fact that all the while we were together I was haunted by the presence or memory or eventual wish to be together again with S’hai-1. I could never fully convince myself that TW was better and yet by the same token if I’m being honest my attitude in 2006 was, “If Kate doesn’t want me / is never coming back I am still gonna live life and try to be married with children and a profession because I am not trash just because she gets mad and fires me whenever she feels like it.” Our relationship was also marked by meddling from both her family and friends and mine.

I don’t know why I’m saying this now as it is the ancient past and I am writing almost something that I fear the Holy Ghost does not want me to as everyone has to work out their salvation for themselves with fear and trembling and their seed and eggs are their own or the Lord’s.

TW-1 and I had a good relationship in all honesty except for money. The MD at Aurora Psychiatric and my brother and parents are mad. The MD was like “get a car maybe blahblah then do some Bulgarian deadlifts, Axe body spray” ahhaha alright just the car and I LOVE and thank Hananim for this man but he is Indian-American anwyay I was like “Dude we traveled around half the world, we shared so many meals in so many places.” MD didn’t realize relationships are like that; you don’t just arrive but share the whole journey of two lives as one, and it’s infinitely sad when you share that way with one person then another rather than one all the way through. It was really liek a marriage in the sense that pace Ecclesiastes I was “seeing the world with my wife.”

My very favorite day together with TW-1 was in Princeton, NJ at Panera or Au bon Pain drinking espresso. I later wrote a scene in Hot Pursuit in Princeton and also K-pop fanfic in which I was married to I-know-not-whom but we were dropping off our daughter Krystal for classes. It was common for Millennials at Rutgers at least in the honors program to visit Princeton as a vacation or “different oxygen” since P is only about 1 hour down the road from this mad disheartening to some soul-breaking suicide-inducing state school, nestled in woods. Educational Testing Service / the makers of the SAT and TOEIC and TOEFL also have their headquarters around there adn I nearly got a job there in 2007, my first dream job as I believed that the SAT protected gifted young people from arbitrary often intellectually envious subjective teachers; a view on standardized testing shared by all rational governments but especially Korea and Asia in general, and also by the serious and caring moral, now basically religious scholar / sociologist Charles Murray, who believed he was saved from racists, as were many Jews in the days the Ivy League was hyper-anti-Semitic (word to the wise: they’re now anti-Korean mutatis mutandis).

The Lord is high and lifted up

The Lord is lifted up

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filosofablogger · 5 years

Text

Some days I think I have turned into a huge cynic, a shrew, and I remonstrate with myself about it. Now, I’ve told you before about these three-way conversations with Me, Myself, and I, right? Well, in this particular conversation. Myself convinced Me that it wasn’t my fault I was turning into an untrusting, cynical human being, and I thanked Myself, while Me felt a bit hurt and left out. Confused yet? Welcome to my mind! Anyway … today I am feeling like a bit of mockery at the expense of Trump & Co., for they deserve it, and it makes me happy. So … snarky snippets it is!

And the award goes to …

Donald Trump has mentioned a few times that he believes he will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. It galls him to no end that his nemesis, President Obama, earned the award, and he has not a snowball’s chance. However, there is one person in our government today who is being honoured with a prestigious award. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is to be awarded the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, said in a statement Sunday that Ms. Pelosi is “the most important woman in American political history.” Pelosi is being honored because of her efforts to pass former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law and for helping Democrats reclaim control of the U.S. House during last year’s elections. Kennedy said Pelosi “leads with strength, integrity and grace under pressure.”

The award will be presented to Pelosi on May 19 during a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. I smile thinking of what Trump must have said when he first heard this news. 😊

And speaking of awards …

The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, founded in 2014, advocates for the safety of journalists and the release of Americans held hostage abroad. Each year at its annual dinner, the foundation issues a “hostage freedom award” to someone for “courageous work for hostage recovery, press freedom, and humanitarian efforts”. This year, the award was initially planned to go to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but the foundation changed its mind because of what it felt was an inadequate response by the administration to the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Pompeo did not take the loss of the award with good grace, however.

“I regret that there was pressure applied by the media for that award to be withdrawn.”

Ultra-conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen did not miss an opportunity to accuse and abuse the media, saying that the award was rescinded only because “media partners’ promised to boycott the event if Pompeo got the award”.

If you can’t somehow blame the democrats, then blame the media, eh? However, the foundation published a “Letter to the Editor” of The Washington Post on Friday …

“The decision with respect to the James W. Foley Hostage Advocate award was mischaracterized in Marc A. Thiessen’s April 4 column … While it is accurate that our foundation intended to present our hostage freedom award to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and we extended the invitation to him on Nov. 19, 2018, we ultimately decided we could not present the award as planned because of the dramatic change in circumstances when the Trump administration did not press for genuine accountability from the Saudi government for the brutal murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. We communicated the reason for this decision to the secretary’s team on Jan. 11.

Our decision had nothing to do with whether we received media pressure. In addition to advocating for the safe return of U.S. hostages abroad, the protection of free speech and promotion of journalists’ safety are key pillars of our foundation, and this award would have been in conflict with that key principle.”

Simple, straightforward, and honest, but Pompeo exhibits the same character flaw that his boss does … he is a sore loser. Suck it up, Mike.

Even dumber than Kellyanne …

Donald Trump has a ‘campaign press secretary’. I had never seen her until yesterday when she swooped across my radar. As I read the headline, I thought … this one is even dumber than Kellyanne! And that, folks, is a tough act to follow!

Her name is Kayleigh McEnany and she is actually just about to become 31 years of age, though I wouldn’t have guessed it based on what I’ve seen so far. I think you can see, even before I go any further, why Trump chose her for his campaign press secretary.

She even looks a bit like Kellyanne … that is, before Kellyanne aged 40 years in a month from having to go behind her boss and pick up his messes.

But to the point. McEnany has pulled some dumber-than-dirt moments in the past year or so, but this one takes the cake. Yesterday, following the lead of Trump and Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, McEnany claimed that Trump should not be forced to release his tax returns to Congress. She said that Congress doesn’t have a legitimate reason to ask for them. (Forgive her, but she’s likely never heard of the word ‘ethics’ before). Her reasoning? Because Congress isn’t asking for the tax returns of other presidents. Let that one sink in just a minute, folks.

“Ironically, the only person whose tax returns they’ve asked for — the only president — is Trump. So it’s a sham reasoning.”

Oh, Kayleigh … please … do go back to school! I hear they offer GED courses at most community colleges? You’re definitely not ready for this job!

Wow! Really???

Now, as we all know, every other president starting with Nixon has released their tax returns voluntarily, so Congress never had a need to demand them. And even if that weren’t the case … none of those other guys are president today!

President Barack Obama released his tax returns for every year between 2000 and 2015. President George W. Bush released his returns for 2000 through 2007. President Bill Clinton made public his returns from 1992 to 1999 (and then his wife, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton released their returns from 2000 to 2016). And Trump? Not. One. Single. Year.

If you ask me, Trump is down to dredging the bottom of the barrel to find people willing to work in the chaos that defines the current administration.

And on that note, I shall go see what other mischief I can dig up.

A New Batch … Hot Off The Press! Some days I think I have turned into a huge cynic, a shrew, and I remonstrate with myself about it.

#Caroline Kennedy #hostage freedom award #Jamal Khashoggi #James W. Foley Legacy Foundation #Kayleigh McEnany #Kellyanne Conway #Marc Thiessen #Mike Pompeo #Nancy Pelosi

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fromtheringapron · 5 years

Text

WWF WrestleMania X

Date: March 20, 1994.

Location: Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York.

Attendance: 18,065

Commentary: Vince McMahon and Jerry Lawler.

Results:

1. Owen Hart defeated Bret Hart.

2. Bam Bigelow and Luna Vachon defeated Dink the Clown and Doink the Clown.

3. Falls Count Anywhere Match: Randy Savage defeated Crush (with Mr. Fuji).

4. WWF Women’s Championship Match: Alundra Blayze (champion) defeated Leilani Kai.

5. WWF Tag Team Championship Match: Men on a Mission (Mo & Mabel) (with Oscar) defeated The Quebeccers (Jacques & Pierre) (champions) (with Johnny Polo) via count-out.

6. WWF World Heavyweight Championship Match: Yokozuna (champion) (with Mr. Fuji and Jim Cornette) defeated Lex Luger via disqualification. Mr. Perfect was the special guest referee.

7. Earthquake defeated Adam Bomb (w/Harvey Whippleman).

8. Ladder Match for the WWF Intercontinental Championship: Razor Ramon (champion) defeated Shawn Michaels (with Diesel).

9. WWF World Heavyweight Championship Match: Bret Hart defeated Yokozuna (champion) (with Mr. Fuji and Jim Cornette) to win the title.

Analysis

I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know, but WrestleMania X is one of the best WrestleManias in history. This is largely contributed to the fact that the show boasts not just one but two of the most iconic and influential bouts of all time: the battle of the Hart brothers and the ladder match. But while those two matches certainly deserve all of the accolades, I think where the show truly succeeds is its ability to tell an emotional, succinct story regarding the trials and tribulations of Bret Hart.

I feel like I’ve said this before, but Bret is the main character of the New Generation Era and this show is a big help in firmly establishing that. In the previous 12 months, he’d been shoved to the sidelines by Hulk Hogan and Yokozuna, forced to deal with Jerry Lawler’s repeated humiliation of his family, and even saw his younger brother turn on him. The show plays on our knowledge of what a hellish year it’s been for the Hitman, starting off with him hitting an absolute low⎯wrestling against his own brother and losing. And not just losing to his brother, but having that loss rubbed in his face in front of millions of people. It’s sad, but it’s all just setup for one of the happiest moments of Bret’s onscreen career and the entire era as a whole.

Bret’s WWF run works best when you look at it as one continuous saga and, honestly, it may be the best story ever told in wrestling. It’s one that’s filled with both heartbreak and disappointment, where Bret is constantly overlooked by both management and his peers. But that’s exactly what makes his moments of triumph so rewarding. Bret emerging victorious at the end of this show, with the previously loss and leg injury and so on, is such a wonderful way to end this particular chapter in his tenure. The mass celebration at the end is just the cherry on top. It’s an acknowledgement that all the pain he felt, all the family drama, in the previous year had somehow been worth it. The good times won’t last. They never do. In fact, Owen is right around the corner ready to challenge him. But, for now, it’s nice just to soak in the moment.

I should probably say something about the ladder match, although I’m not sure what new insight I could possibly add. I will say it took me awhile to fully on board with it, as I’d seen plenty of other ladder matches before watching this one. The action can understandably seem tame to those of us who are used to seeing someone like Jeff Hardy kill himself on ladders for our enjoyment, but it’s all about the historical context. While this was far from the first ladder match in history, and not even the first in the WWF, this is the first one the audience at large had ever seen. Once framed in that context, it’s amazing. Some of the ladder spots we take for granted now were completely fresh at this point. The audible gasps from the crowd in MSG are reminders of just how brutal they truly are. Plus, only a few images in WrestleMania history are as iconic as Shawn Michaels jumping off the ladder.

For a show that’s commonly written off as “The Harts, the ladder match, and nothing else,” I find myself entertained by the whole lot of it. Everything in between the big matches is kept light and fun. There’s a little something for everyone here. It does start to run into some timing issues in the last third or so, leading to a huge 10-man tag getting cut from the show entirely. It’s a weird decision, considering the show ultimately still runs well under three hours anyway and it’s not like the card was overcrowded to begin with. Even the best New Generation shows can leave you wanting more, I guess.

But that’s all fairly minor in the grand scheme of things. That the tenth WrestleMania is such a success is still a bloody miracle. By 1994, the WWF was in some deep trouble. Vince McMahon was just months away from the steroid trial that could’ve nearly sealed his fate, business had taken a turn for the worst, and many of the previous era’s top stars had disappeared. And yet here we have a show like this that proves, even in its darkest hour, the WWF is capable of change and offering something new. That, above all else, may be this WrestleMania’s most enduring legacy.

My Random Notes

Did someone accidentally set off the fireworks before the opening match? Even Vince seems a little caught off guard by it.

Shout out to the thick wad of saliva around Owen Hart’s mouth, no doubt a tribute George Welles’ iconic frothing at WrestleMania 2.

Oh, man, that glass case of Hasbro figures in the Fan Fest segment is everything I dreamed about as a kid.

I think the selection of celebrities for this show is pretty good. Burt Reynolds and Little Richard are obviously two of the most famous people they’ve ever managed to get, and Jennie Garth and Donnie Wahlberg are inspired time-period appropriate choices. Sy Sperling, though? Herb-levels of obscure. Vince’s mid-life crisis must’ve played a role in selecting the president of the Hair Club for Men. I can’t think any of another reason why he thought the kids in the audience would relate to him.

The Bill Clinton impersonator seems random at first, but then I realize it falls right in line with the various jabs the super conservative McMahons took at the Clinton administration. It’s a reoccurring theme throughout these ‘90s pay-per-views. Remember how they brought in Gennifer Flowers four years later just for the sake of trolling?

“Hmmm, how can I look like your culture-appropriating aunt while also looking like I could be in a Heart music video circa 1987?” - Leilani Kai in the lead-up to WrestleMania X.

Man, those 10-man tag guys must’ve been so pissed about getting cut from the show. “At least Shawn and Razor got time to put on a classic!” said none of them, presumably.

It’s taken me this long to realize he’s named Johnny Polo because he carries around a polo mallet. Embarrassing.

It’s a shame the Lex/Perfect feud never went anywhere after this because it’s such a great bit of continuity to have Perfect screw over Lex given everything that transpired between them the previous year. And I don’t really fault Perfect either. Why should he just forget that Lex is the prick who knocked him out?

Speaking of Lex, I definitely think he and Yokozuna would’ve benefited from swapping heel/face alignments shortly after this show. For as much as this show is a huge step forward for Bret, the other two guys in the title picture didn’t quite have the same aura after this.

Love, love, love the mass babyface celebration at the end. Wrestling really needs to bring it back. Plus, here it makes it look like Bret just played a monolithic beast and the fearful townspeople can finally come out of hiding to celebrate.

#wrestlemania #wwe network #bret hart #shawn michaels #hbk #wwf

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rainblog · 7 years

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Here comes the war

Certain things seem obvious.

For example, in 2003, with the Bush administration gearing up for regime change in Iraq, it appeared obvious to me that the war itself would be over quickly, but that it would be followed by violent chaos, with the country -- and perhaps the whole region -- profoundly destabilized. I made this prediction without knowing at the time that the administration had essentially no plan for managing post-war Iraq. I certainly didn't know then that Bush's appointed viceroy, Jerry Bremer, would screw the pooch so dramatically as to set off an extended insurrection that eventually gave us ISIS, a gift that will keep on giving for a long time to come. But I could tell at a glance that Iraq was ripe for chaos and that the administration line -- that as soon as Saddam was out of the way, there'd be a sudden flowering of peace and love and democracy, even that the war would "pay for itself" (remember that one?) -- was purest bullshit.

I wish now I'd put my gloomy predictions in writing, instead of muttering them darkly to a few friends. Then I'd be hailed as a brilliant political analyst, and I could go on talk shows and get paid a zillion dollars an hour for sharing my wisdom.

Or maybe not. Because a lot of other people were saying the same thing. Why? Because it seemed obvious to them too.

It was also obvious to me that the election of Donald Trump would be followed by ... well, pretty much exactly what we've seen so far: an eye-watering level of cronyism and corruption, institutionalized xenophobia, the end of science- and evidence-based decision-making, policies favoring the very rich at the expense of everyone else, and an administration charging through American public life like a gameshow winner doing the supermarket dash, throwing everything Grover Norquist ever dreamed of into their cart with both hands. Plus, of course, a wildcard factor making everything even worse: Donald Trump, Tweeter-in-Chief, the loathsome cherry on top of this shitty cake, mining the public purse for free perks and sowing intermittent chaos with his ignorant posturing.

You didn't have to be a genius to see this coming. You didn't even have to be much of a cynic. You just needed to know a little about the people involved, and to have a basic understanding of human nature. It was obvious that this was the only way it could go.

So what's in the magic crystal ball today, then? Well, try this prediction on for size: there's going to be a war.

I don't know when. I don't know where. But I'm pretty sure it's coming.

For all the noisy American admiration for the military and for military heroes, three of our last four presidents might be described as successful draft-dodgers. The exception, Obama, didn't serve either, but the draft was a thing of the past by the time that he was of military age. But like many other sons of wealthy families, Clinton, Bush and Trump all allegedly made use of family connections or procedural wrinkles to make sure that they stayed out of the firing line. Bush's vice-president, Dick Cheney, also benefited from repeated deferments.

Why is this relevant? Because, generalizing from a small number of examples, it seems that hawkishness and a personal history of avoiding combat are a bad, bad combination.

Whatever Bill Clinton's faults, he doesn't generally seem to have felt the need to prove anything by 'acting tough'. Not all Serbs would necessarily agree, but the relatively low level of bombast associated with Clinton's actions on Kosovo make me believe that his ego wasn't too much on the line.

Bush and Cheney, on the other hand, men who had been careful never to get any closer to the front line than they absolutely had to, were gung ho for military solutions. Between them they presided over not one but two significant 'boots on the ground' shooting wars, gleefully sending other people's children out to fight and die. Take a look at George W. Bush, playing dress-up in a borrowed flight-suit, striking a pose in an arranged photo-op aboard the Abraham Lincoln with a backdrop of cheering sailors and airmen, and tell me that that didn't have something to do with the inner conflict between living in a culture that reveres military violence and knowing that you skipped out on a war with a little help from daddy's friends. As commander-in-chief, George Bush could finally get to be the warrior hero that he never was in real life.

Now we come to Donald Trump. Like others from his social class, he used his student deferments for as long as he could, then got a friendly doctor to sign a note when they ran out. Everyone was doing it (except the poor kids). And like Bush and Cheney, Donald Trump does love him some military. He demanded a flyover of military aircraft for his inauguration, the first president in more than 60 years to do so. He was only talked out of having a tank parade (reminiscent of the Soviet Union or North Korea) because the army was worried about what a line of 100-ton main battle tanks might do to the fragile streets of the capital.

Forty days into his presidency, he's already given his first speech on an aircraft carrier, dressed up for the occasion in the obligatory flight jacket. Social services and other 'inessential' spending face slashing cuts, but Trump's budget still throws the military a bone in the form of $50 billion in additional spending -- a 10% increase. This money is needed, he says, because our armed forces are in a sorry state, and urgent measures must be taken if we're to regain our former status as a military power. I would suggest that if we're spending more money on our military than the next seven countries combined and that's still somehow not enough to make us a credible military power, then there's a problem here that can't be addressed simply by throwing more money at it.

It's hard not to suspect that Trump and George W. Bush both felt a similar internal conflict: an inner tension between the people their histories show them to be and the tough-talking, hard-hitting heroes they like to imagine themselves as. And the balm for that particular itch is to be 'commander-in-chief': not just a president, but a wartime president.

Donald Trump, of course, loves to talk tough. He has all the authoritarian's love for uniforms and for violence as a solution to problems. He's also almost supernaturally thin-skinned; a whisper of criticism from a B-list celebrity will keep him up all night sending angry tweets. The moment that some foreign leader -- other than his close friend Vladimir Putin -- does anything he sees as a challenge to his authority, he's likely to feel a burning urge to show himself 'strong'.

But there's more than just Trump's own ego involved here. There's also a worrying institutional shift away from anything that would favor negotiated solutions.

Trump and his entourage aren't big fans of diplomacy. The State Department, whose main job is making sure that Americans don't have to fight wars, will have its budget cut by around 30%. Not everyone considers this a good move: General James Mattis, Trump's secretary of defence -- oh, did I mention that Trump has appointed more generals to his cabinet than any president since WWII? -- has gone on record as saying "If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately." When the career soldiers tell you 'more talking, less fighting', but the civilians in the administration don't see any value in diplomacy, that's a bad, bad sign.

Even before the cuts, the State Department was reported to be in a mess, with key personnel resigning or forced out, and the survivors left shocked and disoriented. The posts left empty by experienced veterans will, of course, be filled in time, but if current practice is any indication, they'll be filled by people whose chief quality is loyalty to the administration, not experience or knowledge. And it may not even matter who they appoint to State: some of the functions of the State Department seem to have been taken over by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who brings his extensive knowledge of New York real estate to the thorny problem of international diplomacy in an increasingly fractious and fragile world.

So, to sum up: consensus contempt for diplomacy, a State Department in disarray and an impulsive and emotionally-fragile leader who worships the trappings of military power. That's not an infallible recipe for armed conflict, but the prognosis certainly doesn't look good.

Guessing where the fire will start is harder. Trump has ordered the military to take down ISIS, so we can expect more US support for Iraqi troops fighting ISIS. The writing is probably pretty much on the wall for ISIS inside Iraq, but Syria's a tougher nut to crack. The Syrian government is unlikely to welcome a major deployment of US troops inside Syria (although marine artillery are already in place and US aviation is now bombing targets within Syria). So we may have to leave that one mostly to our new friends the Russians. If Trump wants to take credit for the eventual defeat of ISIS (which he certainly does), he'll need to spin it as one of the payoffs of his cosy relationship with BFF Vladimir Putin. A shared victory may leave him still hungry for more opportunities to prove his strength.

How about North Korea? Rex Tillerson, Trump's Secretary of State, recently said that diplomacy has failed and "a different approach is required", hinting that policy might be about to change there. Given that North Korea has nuclear weapons and a near-psychotic world view, and is ruled by the third in a line of genuinely insane autocrats, that's not a cage I'd be eager to rattle. But if the president wants results, he'll get them.

Iran? The deal negotiated with Iran under Obama looks likely to go up in smoke, leaving the possibility that the US may use the threat of force to try cow Iran into abandoning its nuclear energy program. Iran is also backing the Houthis in Yemen, putting them on the opposite side in that war from US allies such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. If relations with Iran sour further, the existing proxy conflict may become a more direct confrontation.

Maybe China? Trump's evil Svengali, Steve Bannon, has said "We're going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt". That may be a minority view, but Bannon's unusual position as Chief Strategist could give him the means to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the idea of a war with a nuclear-armed North Korea gives you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, the idea that we could end up fighting China over the Spratlys isn't going to make you feel any better.

So there's no shortage of locales, and no lack of reasons to think that the Trump administration might not be averse to a fight. Given Donald Trump's notably poor understanding of nuclear weapons policy, things could get pretty interesting.

When they do, I just want you to remember that I told you so.

#Donald Trump #politics #war #North Korea #Iran #China

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PEOPLE

Startups happen in clusters. If we think 20th century cohesion disappeared because of few policy tweaks, we'll be deluded into thinking we can get it back minus the bad parts, somehow with a few thousand users. The breakup of the Duplo economy was an evolutionary phase. When I read the papers I found out why. Is there some quality that's unique to hackers? There is nothing more valuable, in the language of VCs, gone from a must-have to a nice-to-have. But most of our users were small, individual merchants who saw the Web as an opportunity to build a business. They wouldn't seem bad to the city officials. I consider terminal exclamation points, uppercase letters, and occurring in one of the readiest to say I don't know. The expected value would be high even if the chance of succeeding was low. If the company does really well, you eventually will, because eventually the valuations will get so high it's not worth it for you. The kind of people you want to invest in practically audition investors, and only gradually learn to distinguish surprises from digressions; learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when you expand, expand westward.

If he goes on vacation for even a week, a whole week's backlog of shit accumulates. When nerds are unbearable it's usually because they're trying too hard to seem smart. One interesting consequence of this fact is that there are a lot of time and money to do it may be reasonable to run with it. 5% with less than. It's not that hard to do it would be hard to translate that into another language, but only a few of them. Should the city take stock in return for the money? Well, if you're not a hacker, you can't tell. But that may be enough.

That's how it tricks you. Is there no configuration of the bits in memory of a present day computer that is this compiler? We couldn't have started Viaweb either. But many will want a copy of your business plan, if only to remind themselves what they invested in. If so, could they actually get things done? But it worked so well that we plan to do. The only reason to hire someone is to do something they'd promised to, even by being late for an appointment. When I tried writing, I ignored the headers too. Good hackers insist on control. That last test filters out surprisingly few people. Startups are easier to start in America because funding is easier to get. Programs composed of expressions.

And if that is the future, it will probably be a stretch for you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own. A list of n things is a dishonest format: when you use a fixed number like this. Of course some problems inherently have this character. Underpaying people at the time, but in practice it dominates the kind of startup you start, it will probably fail quickly enough that you can start a startup, than smart users. Though quite successful, it did not crush Apple. There are too many technologies out there to learn them all. Because the main points are unconnected, the list of n things. It will be about whatever the title says, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else that comes out of a big company. China. Sometimes it was even technically interesting.

There are some towns, like Portland, that would be too low for some who'd turn you down and too high for others because it might make their next round a down round. Recently I realized I'd been holding two ideas in my head that would explode if combined. As with html, but I haven't tried that yet. If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me. In big companies, where you either have to be a harmless cyst. Microsoft is your model, you shouldn't be looking for companies that hope to win by doing? We did get a few of them. The central issue is picking the right companies, is also the hardest. And once you've done it, it tends to become the dominant culture. It does help too to feel that you've squeezed everything out of some experience. Bill Clinton found he was feeling short of breath.

I've found life is too short for something, you should get all the users. Then I had kids. But until the 1980s being underpaid early in your career was part of what it meant to be companies at first. Call the person's image to mind and imagine the sentence so-and-so is an animal. There were a few startups who hit these limits accidentally because of their unusual circumstances—most famously 37signals, which hit the limit because they crossed into startup land from the other end of the scale at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. We had a demo day for potential investors ten weeks in, and seven of the eight seemed promising by the end of it, we were surprised how much time I spend in email, it's kind of scary to think how much I'd be justified in paying. What worries him about Google is not the optimal time to do it was turn the sound into packets and ship it over the Internet. These two positions are not so far apart as they seem. What motivates them? I'm not sure of this, but they want to do is address the symptoms of fragmentation. When I was a bit surprised.

So if you can trade stock for something that improves your odds, it's probably the most efficient way to reach VCs, especially if no one else at the time, a lot of customers fast is of course preferable. I wrote become good at some technology. Startups are as unnatural as skiing, so there's a similar list for startups. Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who deal with money to the people who had them to continue thinking about. And not only did everyone get the same thing, they got it at the time. It's more likely to find them using Perl and Linux. I discovered that when a startup needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night. If you disagree with something, it's easier to say you suck than to figure out and explain exactly what you disagree with something, it's easier to read than a regular article. People who didn't care much for religion felt less pressure to go to church for appearances' sake, while those who liked it a lot opted for increasingly colorful forms. Once you cross the threshold of profitability, however low, your runway becomes infinite. Whatever you make will have to happen piecemeal. They're just a couple founders with laptops.

And the latter are so desperate for money that they'll take it from anyone at a low valuation. And they'll help people they haven't invested in too. In fact, what I like about this idea is all the different ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations that we wait till patients have physical symptoms to be diagnosed with conditions like heart disease and cancer. If you answered yes to all these questions, you might be able to refuse such an offer if they had grown to the point where they could raise millions from VC funds if they hadn't first raised a hundred thousand from Andy Bechtolsheim. Sometimes pretty overtly. Young founders are not a new phenomenon: the trend began as soon as computers got cheap enough for college kids to afford them. The way to get started is to bootstrap yourself off your existing connections, be a good judge of potential. When and if you aren't one of them. As big companies' oligopolies became less secure, they were less able to pass costs on to customers and thus less willing to overpay for labor. Google, and recently I've noticed some cracks in their fortress. So a company that can attract great hackers will have a wave of secondary effects.

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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CNN has gone bananas and doesn’t seem to care; and other horrible examples of media bias

Video

Mulvaney Pushes Back on CNN’s Acosta on Shutdown Blame

AcostaMulvaney

Yes, CNN staffers have lost their minds. One year of Donald Trump’s America and he’s defeated them as thoroughly the New England Patriots beat, well, just about anybody.

We’re a year into the most-biased U.S. media in history – tracking at 90 percent biased against President Trump. But there appears to be lasting damage to journalists, their professionalism and even their ability to pretend they are rational.

In just one week, CNN staffers blamed President Trump for a man who tried to harm people at their headquarters, ran a piece celebrating cuckolding (not kidding!) and questioned whether the president deserved “credit” for all of the good corporate news of raises and bonuses – resulting from his tax cut.

Celebrity clown and CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta had repeated run-ins with whoever the Trump administration put at the podium. In each case, they smacked him down and showed the lack of depth of his reporting.

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney had to explain to Acosta that the reason the government shutdown was the fault of Democrats is because of basic math. The GOP has 51 senators and, Mulvaney told Acosta, “you know as well as anybody that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass appropriations bill, right?”

Acosta wannabe and CNN Political Analyst Brian Karem didn’t do any better when talking to the president’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn. Karem wondered about how we’ve witnessed, “a litany of – of businesses that are going to give back to the American people, but doesn’t – isn’t it unfair to give the president credit for that?”

Cohn smashed back, pointing out that business executives “feel better about the U.S. economy … and they feel like the lower tax rate allows them to share more of their potential earnings with their employees.”

And that leaves out CNN host Christiane Amanpour featuring a Russian LGBT activist who repeated the anti-Trump slur comparing him to Stalin. About as fair as CNN Films releasing its new Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG” at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is more like a tribute than journalism. Entertainment Weekly described Ginsburg as “the hottest celebrity” at the festival thanks to CNN’s video press release.

Last, but never least, CNN embarrassment and Anchor Don Lemon found one more way to blame Trump – for the man who made death threats to CNN. Lemon claimed “there’s nothing random about this. Nothing.”

“This is what happens when the president of the United States, Donald Trump, repeatedly attacks members of the press simply for reporting facts he does not,” Lemon said.

Lemon took umbrage at Trump’s use of “fake news” for CNN, somehow forgetting that four of Trump’s Fake News Awards deservedly went to the network.

Blaming Trump is no doubt the reason CNN released another lame apple/banana ad on Friday. The new ad focused on the danger posed by critics who use the First Amendment to call out the press.

“Some people might try to tell you that this is an apple. It might even start as a joke. But when they say it over and over and over again, and people start to believe it, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hurt,” the ad warned. Then the screen flashed to “Facts First.”

Someone should tell the ad creators that, while apples and bananas are different, both can be rotten.

2. What FBI Memo? What Missing Messages? Journalists love to highlight the 18-minute gap in one of President Richard Nixon’s tapes. Give them 30,000 missing emails or 50,000 missing texts and they are less thrilled. Perhaps because both of those involved are liberal.

It was all hands on deck in a desperate quest to control the narrative about the memo and texts. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough claimed criticism of the FBI amounted to “conspiracy theories” that were “making America less safe.” CNN talked repeatedly about the effort to “discredit” the Mueller investigation.

CBS and NBC tried to spin the story away from the missing texts. But when ABC finally decided to chime in, it went full bore against the GOP. Anchor David Muir echoed Democratic talking points about the FBI text messages: “This is a political battle, and ultimately, the American people will decide whether those personal text messages were appropriate or not.”

3. You Actually Thought Journalists Were Neutral? Part I: The man-bites-dog story is supposed to be the one that makes news. So when a mid-sized daily newspaper ran a pro-Trump editorial, you’d have thought the world ended. Instead, everyone got a reminder of how sausage is made, and it’s awful.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Michael A. Fuoco wrote up his side of the subsequent controversy for Columbia Journalism Review. One thing to note, he’s also president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh/CWA 38061. According to Fuoco, “negotiations with BCI’s union-busting law firm, King & Ballow of Nashville, have become increasingly contentious.” BCI owns the paper. The guild also “filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the company” because it changed health-care benefits “in the midst of ongoing, albeit glacial, bargaining.”

So he’s what you might call a bit biased. As are his many fellow union members.

Fuoco quoted the editorial saying: “Calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism,” and used the opportunity to bash ownership. The same owners who hadn’t agreed to a new contract. “By any objective measure, the editorial was intellectually dishonest and racist, twisting itself in knots in a colossally failed attempt to defend the indefensible,” he wrote

The author then listed how guild members were offended, including several former staffers, such as “the mayor’s spokesman.”

Two quick notes. 1) The mayor is Democrat Bill Peduto. Shocker that his former journalist spokesman is anti-Trump. The last time a Republican ran Pittsburgh was 1934. 2) The guild is part of the Communications Workers of America, which is part of the AFL-CIO. The union endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

So much for neutral journalism.

4. You Actually Thought Journalists Were Neutral? Part II: The New York Times actually devoted some opinion space to Trump supporters. Naturally, it caused a firestorm with its lefty readers and journalists who think those readers aren’t left-wing enough.

Journalistic operations like the Columbia Journalism Review and the Poynter Institute were joined by HuffPost and others blasting the decision. How dare the Times run content from actual Trump supporters and turn the page into a “welcome wagon” for his supporters, wrote Poynter?

CJR’s attack: “The Times’s pro-Trump editorial page is patronizing and circular” at least admitted that the paper has no pro-Trump voices. “In fact, the Times employs many conservative commentators. It just seems to be a requirement that those commentators are never-Trumpers.”

In fact, it has three “conservatives.” David Brooks is only conservative compared to his coworkers. Relatively new hire Bret Stephens hates the Second Amendment and Ross Douthat wrote, “Why I Can’t Learn to Love Donald Trump” soon after the president took office.

5. To Infinity and Beyond: OK, this was a ridiculous week for journalism. You could hardly move two steps without finding embarrassing proof of media bias or at least evidence of a crazy leftward tilt.

There was InStyle decision highlight its February cover gal Oprah with the caption, “Hello, Madam President? We Asked, She Answered.” This, despite Oprah Winfrey’s repeated claims to the contrary about running.

Self-described “photojournalist” Askia Muhammad revealed he had taken an embarrassing photo of then-candidate Barack Obama with notorious bigot and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Muhammad said he “basically swore secrecy” to protect Obama’s career. Proving once more that neither journalists nor Obama told the truth about who he really was.

The Young Turks network brought disgraced “journalist” Dan Rather on board to host an “untraditional evening newscast.” Don’t forget Rather’s failed attempt to take down President George W. Bush with forged documents. That’s the ethical standard the online network is shooting for.

Dan Gainor is the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. He writes frequently about media for Fox News Opinion. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.

Trending in Opinion

Hollywood tries to speak for us but really, they just don’t get it

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/01/27/cnn-has-gone-bananas-and-doesnt-seem-to-care-and-other-horrible-examples-media-bias.html

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2BPQ6wt via Viral News HQ

#IFTTT #Viral News HQ

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newstwitter-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/cnn-kate-mckinnon-shines-on-snl-58/

CNN: Kate McKinnon shines on 'SNL'

In the fall of 2012, with the election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney down to just a few remaining weeks, and the first of the year’s scheduled debates looming, I spent a week around the production offices at “Saturday Night Live,” preparing to write a piece for The New York Times about the show’s iconic place in American politics during presidential years.

Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “SNL,” had kindly assented to my doing an article about the show’s political humor, but he had asked me to wait until the week of the first debate because he believed that was when the nation most paid attention to “SNL’s” take on the race and the candidates.

Most of that week I spoke with Michaels and Seth Meyers, then the head writer, about the pressure the show team felt because of all the previous smash sketches based on presidential debates (“Strategery” et al.). Michaels decided to reach up his sleeve for a familiar ace, Jim Downey, who had composed many of those well-remembered debate sketches, to work his magic again.

As it happened, the debate proved to be a dull slog, utterly devoid of obvious comedy hooks. (Obama turned in his worst performance ever as a debater and Romney was wonky to a fault.) Downey struggled mightily to find the theme for a comic take. He told me it was by far the hardest political sketch he had ever undertaken to write.

In the midst of all the fretting over the signature piece, I watched the rehearsal of some of the other bits that night, and noticed one performer whom, to that point, I taken little notice of. I didn’t really know her name off the top of my head, because she had joined the show very late the previous season and had not yet forced her way into my consciousness as any particular character.

But during the rehearsal of the Weekend Update segment, Meyers introduced her as a woman in the news, Cecilia Gimenez, an 82-year-old amateur artist who had taken it upon herself to “fix” a centuries-old fresco of Christ called “Ecce Homo.” The segment was so spectacularly funny — and spectacularly performed — I asked Seth immediately afterward who the heck was that cast member.

“Isn’t she fabulous?” he told me. “That’s Kate McKinnon. Keep your eye on her.”

Kate McKinnon as Ceilia Gimenez in a 2012 “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

It has been almost impossible for fans of “SNL” to take their eyes off McKinnon ever since. This season, with the show enjoying yet another renaissance, as ratings have soared to 12-year highs, McKinnon has elevated herself to rarefied status as one of those classic performers who dominate the peak eras of NBC’s storied late-night franchise.

“Kate McKinnon is a breakout star for ‘SNL,'” said Rick Ludwin, who spent decades as the NBC executive supervising the show. “I think she has that rock-solid ability to commit to the bit, whether she’s doing a celebrity or political impression, or an original character. Even before she says anything, you see her body language and facial expressions. She sells the bit before she even speaks.” He noted that those abilities were the same in previous breakout stars from the show “like Amy Poehler, Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig.”

Nobody foresaw that for McKinnon when she joined the show in April, 2012, but then stars on “SNL” have always burst from obscurity (except for the one season when established performers like Billy Crystal and Martin Short filled in as cast members). Michaels felt under the gun that season to replace a recent exodus that had included Wiig, Jason Sudekis, Bill Hader and others. He told me, “I absolutely think about who I am replacing,” but added, “One thing you can’t do is look for another Kristen Wiig.”

They just happen.

Kate McKinnon as HIllary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live” in 2016.

Even though she already won an Emmy for her work on the show last season, this season has seen McKinnon climb to new heights of recognition, even as fates threw her a massive, unexpected twist. Having put her own indelible stamp on the show’s Hillary Clinton impression one that she somehow made distinct from the equally memorable turn Poehler had done on Clinton — McKinnon and just about everyone else associated with the show expected her to take on regular duty as the new President in whatever sketches touched on the ongoing political situation.

Obviously, that did not turn out. McKinnon, who is passing on commenting on her SNL work while the current season is in production, had many reasons to be disappointed, including her own support for Mrs. Clinton as a candidate. When asked by Rolling Stone before the start of this season how she would feel getting to portray the first woman elected President of the United States, McKinnon said, “I had not thought about it in those terms until this moment. Not my involvement in it, but just — what’s that moment gonna be like? How hard are we gonna cry? I could cry just thinking about how hard we’re gonna cry when it happens.”

She may have cried in private. On the air, she performed what amounted to a valedictory — or perhaps elegy — for Clinton’s campaign (and the recently deceased Leonard Cohen), singing “Hallelujah” in full Hillary make up the first show after the election. She seemed to barely hold it together on the words: “I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya.” And it was either she or Hillary, or both, who ended the song by telling the audience “I’m not giving up and neither should you.”

Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway with Alec Baldwin portraying President Donald Trump.

For SNL, Donald Trump’s victory was a transformative in virtually every way except in foreclosing a potential showcase for its biggest current star. McKinnon quickly pivoted to another dead-on impression, KellyAnne Conway, which she performed to devastating effect. But, perhaps partly because McKinnon has filleted Conway so effectively, the formerly ubiquitous White House apologist has largely gone to ground in recent weeks, reducing McKinnon’s opportunities for skewering her further. (Last week McKinnon was limited to doing Conway as a sort of potted plant in other sketches, kneeling mutely in her much-commented-on Oval Office couch pose, iPhone in hand.)

Naturally KcKinnon only summoned up another trick in her bag, taking on Jeff Sessions as a mock Forrest Gump. Presumably she will have those two go-to moves for the foreseeable Trump era, along with Betsy DeVos, Elizabeth Warren and a host of others, female or male, to come as needed.

As Rick Ludwin put it: “Kate has that sense of danger. You’re watching because you never know what could happen. John Belushi, Bill Murray, Farley, Sandler, Poehler, Wiig all had it. So does Leslie Jones. Having observed how Lorne puts the cast together, it’s vital to have a few who are dangerous.”

And if all else fails Germany has its own election coming up later this year. Nobody does a better Angela Merkel.

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 10, 2017: 1:40 PM ET

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omcik-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/kate-mckinnon-shines-on-snl/

Kate McKinnon shines on 'SNL'

“Isn’t she fabulous?” he told me. “That’s Kate McKinnon. Keep your eye on her.”

Kate McKinnon as Ceilia Gimenez in a 2012 “Saturday Night Live” sketch.

They just happen.

Kate McKinnon as HIllary Clinton on “Saturday Night Live” in 2016.

Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway with Alec Baldwin portraying President Donald Trump.

And if all else fails Germany has its own election coming up later this year. Nobody does a better Angela Merkel.

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 10, 2017: 1:40 PM ET

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progressiveveteran-blog · 7 years

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A Liberal Veteran in Trump’s America

I’ve struggled with how to fathom what happened on and after November 8th, 2016. I watched as an election that was all but guaranteed for what was to be the first female president in American history – albeit a flawed candidate with some shady friends and family – all of a sudden shoot into the small hands of a xenophobic, tax-cheating, employee-cheating, tenant-discriminating, Islamophobic, misogynistic, ill-tempered, ill-mannered, always-privileged, and exceptionally spoiled man whose lifelong actions, both before and during his campaign, stand as anathema to basic human decency.

I continued to struggle as I witnessed the decent Republicans I knew – particularly my family members – excuse Trump’s unconscionable actions while condemning the shortcomings of Hillary Clinton as much more louder and immoral than the sins of Donald J. Trump. I especially struggled, as a student of political science and communication, when many of my liberal acquaintances continued an “Anyone But Clinton” mantra even after the primary, and used their lay-understandings of politics and elections to school me over why I knew nothing about politics or elections. In the end, the progressive votes that went to the anything-but-qualified Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were enough to secure Donald Trump’s historic and unprecedented electoral college victory.

I am a progressive, but a fairly moderate progressive. I have a conservative Republican upbringing, a college education in political communication and American politics and elections, graduate training in public speaking and logical argument, and wartime service as a member of the U.S. Army. For me, the election of Trump, and the rejection of Clinton by both sides has been a painful injury for too many people who care for equality and justice. It particularly hurts me at a gutwrenching level. Why do I hurt so much? I would not have admitted it while a 20-year old college student, but it is because I truly have always believed that there is such a thing as American exceptionalism. No, I don’t think Americans are more exceptional than Germans, Russians, Koreans, Iranians, or even Antarcticans (sorry, penguins). But I grew up always believing that the U.S.A. was more exceptional than any other nation-state in the world because we offered a way out – a shining city on a hill for others oppressed in their countries by the whims of mad dictators, poverty born from fascistic or communist policies, or restrictions on free speech. In short, we were a superhero country, there for anyone needing an escape to seek refuge. It is no wonder my pride in America began at age four.

Kindergarten Voter, Elementary Republican, Apathetic Teen

I first caught the bug for politics in Kindergarten, as our class voted in the Bush-Dukakis election of ’88 (I voted for Bush because I didn’t know what a Dukakis was). The bug grew in third grade, where I typically found myself in the Christa McAuliffe Elementary School library in McAllen, TX memorizing every single president, from George Washington up to George H.W. Bush. I memorized their political parties, and even all the dates of their terms. As a raised Republican, I abhorred the Democrats, especially the new President Bill Clinton who had the nerve to unseat the first president I ever voted for. I also had a big dislike for the new First Lady who, in the words of my mother, dared to be a horrible woman for only having one child (for somehow it was Hillary’s fault, not Bill’s?).

My passion for elections grew into my middle school years. Although I was constantly bullied by my peers in both home and church (sometimes by the same people), and as I struggled to find friends and fit in, I still had a sense of pride in my country, particularly when learning about the Civil War and the Alamo. During the 1996 election, I held my hopes high that Republican Senator Bob Dole would finally get rid of Bill Clinton. My hopes were dashed, of course. The bullying continued, the passion for country waned, and before long I saw my life not as one of exceptionalism, but one of constant survival. I attempted suicide three times during these years, out of desperation of a neverending torture that neither my school or parents were willing to help adequately fix. Once high school began, my priorities of fitting in took precedence over my passion for country. At times, I would grin seeing things like Bill Clinton’s sex scandal and impeachment, as well as our Democratic Governor Ann Richards finally being defeated – by the son of the first president I ever voted for, no less! (a.k.a Dubya). When the election of 2000 happened, I harbored small emotions toward my new Governor George W. defeating Vice-President Al Gore. When he did, no thanks to the Supreme Court intervention of the Florida recount, I breathed a sigh of relief – but I was still not as interested as the younger Dan was.

Somewhere in the beginning of college at the University of North Texas, my passion for politics excessively dissipated, replaced by the pain of post-bullying and post-family angst. When I was finally eligible to vote for president for the first time, I instead took the route the majority of my fellow apathetic peers did: I said I wasn’t going to vote because I didn’t like either candidate. George W. Bush had botched the Iraq War, and John Kerry was a Democrat. I jumped on board the “flip-flopper bandwagon” in making my excuse for not voting for Kerry because it was easier. But truth be told: switching party’s is hard, and when it is ingrained in you – anything other than your party brings about a severe sense of betrayal. I would come to regret this decision years later, once my military service unlocked my sense of pride for my country.

Army Strong and My Political Realignment

I had several reasons for joining the military after college. The easiest one was economic: I was in debt, unemployed, and going broke fast. With a BA in Sociology, after 5 ½ years of mostly toiling with mediocre grades and dealing with depression – I had nowhere near the resume or academic excellence to get anything other than a job in sales. But my situation was hardly unique, for I was one of the vast majority of college graduates in the same boat. Many turned to moving back in with their parents. I couldn’t do that.

It’s easy to trivialize someone’s angst-ridden child-parent relationship, but mine was a little different. If my multiple suicide attempts, my 5 ½ years of depression through college, and my losing of my faith was enough of an indicator, I knew that to move back in with my parents would be a death wish. I could not and would not move back under their roof to live under their rules. I was still only 23. At the time, I held deep, traditional beliefs in serving one’s country, and I continued to feel the pride that others felt in the idea of defending the U.S.A. with their life – a feeling likely established in my early days learning about the boys in blue fighting the South to free the slaves. However, we were at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, something way different than the Civil War. I still saw it as my citizen’s duty to join up, though, and I sought out the recruiter, asked to join, and realized later just how big a decision I had made. I knew that I would likely be in a war zone one day, regardless of my military job as an Army musician. I called my grandmother on the phone the night I was set to ship out. She was the only family member I felt I could truly talk to. She was a snarky grandmother with a disciplined attitude, and an immunity to the ridiculousness that was the Mormon religion her son (my dad) adopted. Plus, she was a Rust Belt Democrat! Her comforting words helped me gain the courage to see my military decision out. I ended up serving 8 years, with a year spent serving in Iraq. It was during these years when I met my wonderful spouse Ariela, also in the Army, and I found the motivation to resurrect my love of politics and country.

It was also during these years when I voted for the first time – Barack Obama in 2008. When chided by my parents for it, I searched myself for the reasons why I switched parties, and knew I had made the right decision, particularly since John McCain’s pick for his VP, Sarah Palin, was dangerously unfit to be let anywhere near the Oval Office, let alone White House. But it wasn’t just this reason – it was because I knew that, contextualized with the hypocrisy of the ideology my parents raised me to believe, that conservative Republicanism was only an ideology that prioritized some Americans over others. My parents, especially my Korean mother, raised me to believe that I was an American, not a Korean. I was not taught the Korean language, and I was not raised in Korean custom. However, I was constantly reminded outside of the home just how “un-American” I was. In 2008, it didn’t matter how my parents or any Republican attempted to rationalize conservative Republicanism. When the message by the overall Republican base permeated with a Gentleman’s Agreement that non-white males and white males were practically “separate, but equal,” I knew better than to continue participating. In fact, I chose to make my participation stronger – but for the other side. I couldn’t very well do that with an Army uniform on, and I saw my military time as a sense of citizen service, not a career. It was time to move on.

Just a Couple of Veterans Going to School

Ariela and I both finished our active duty obligations to the Army and moved to Iowa to attend the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). There, I began Round 2 of college, beginning my studies in political communication and public administration. I loved it! Not only I gained further understanding of how our American politics work on paper, but also in action. Additionally, I graduated Summa Cum Laude!

I was also privileged to be in Iowa during the 2012 presidential election season, where I campaigned vigorously both for my state senator and the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Des Moines, as well as helping various progressive causes. I also gained experience in Iowa politics - two different internships, one fellowship, and a field organizing position in a congressional primary campaign. It was a privilege to learn how our elections work not only from an academic perspective, but more importantly an in-person, grassroots perspective.

As a student at UNI, I also participated in different progressive student group activities. However, it was when I formed the first student reproductive rights group at the university where my political action muscles really had to be flexed. This was a big step on my part, but when I learned that UNI had a pro-life group but no pro-choice group, I made the decision to take action and start the group from scratch. My fellow members and I coined the name UNI STARR (Students Together for the Advancement of Reproductive Rights). I’m so touched that, to this day, STARR still exists and is continuing its efforts to educate students about reproductive rights.

Toward the end of my time at UNI, I heard the call of the Master’s degree and I felt I had to answer. I chose to attend the University of Kansas to finalize my understanding of political communication. We moved to Lawrence, where I wrote my Master’s thesis on Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and how language in the film resulted in two highly polarized responses from liberal and conservative audiences. I also busied myself as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, where I taught four successful semesters of public speaking. I made sure in my curriculum that I showed my undergraduate students the importance of political participation and how to detect logical fallacies in the arguments we hear from others in our citizenry. In short, I did everything in my power to help make smarter citizens.

I put my hopeful doctoral studies on pause so Ariela could attend graduate school in New York (The New School of Social Research). But I admittedly have felt yet again the wane of my field’s importance now that Trump and his brand of communication is seen as “the new normal.” But it was before November 8th, during my interactions with angry liberal and misguided conservatives in the Facebook crucible where I first began to second guess my education goals. Of course, the challenge for someone like me – someone educated in politics – is the patience (or lack thereof) it takes when the lay public denigrates your expertise because, in our American democracy, everyone’s an “expert.” The toxic stew which we call the 2016 presidential election, however, was my tipping point, and Facebook became the crucible that took hold and imprisoned both my pride for having any political expertise, as well as my optimism for rational discourse. In short, the 2016 election toxicity made me lose hope in continuing as a scholar in politics and communication.

The Facebook Crucible: Where Reason Goes to Die

The most memorable Facebook disagreements I had were with what I refer to as “ABC voters” (“Anyone But Clinton”). If I want to explain the toxicity of political rational discourse from my 2016 experience with ABC voters, there are plenty of examples to choose from. For purposes of shortening it down, I’ll pick the most memorable two ABC voters: 1) Melvin - a French Horn player in the Army Band who knows more about me than elections, logical fallacies, and morality; and 2) Brendon - my brother-in-law, a Mormon from Utah who also knows more about logical fallacies and morality than me because he doesn’t get his news from the liberal media.

Melvin is a radical, which is not necessarily a bad thing. He purportedly cares for all humans, regardless of nationality – a “radical” view I feel we should all have but sadly don’t. But when it came to 2016 presidential politics, Melvin was/is a single-issue voter. For someone like me, this seems so stupid, as the presidency is never about a single issue. However, too many voters rely on a single issue in finally making their decision. In the case of the 2016 election, however, Melvin’s single issue wasn’t abortion, or the environment, or national security, or the economy, or even foreign relations. It was Hillary Clinton.

Melvin first Facebook-challenged me when I had posted a status update about the toxicity of the “Bernie Bros” telling women they didn’t know what was good for them when they supported Hillary Clinton. During the Primary season, Melvin’s key argument was that Clinton was a corrupt monster with lifelong ties of regime change in other countries, something he absolutely abhorred. His intentions behind his argument reeked of utopianism - the unrealistic values of a dreamer who thinks morality shouldn’t be a complicated issue. In this case, the complicated issue is deciding international policy within the paradigm of the security dilemma (whatever decision we make needs to keep us safe, while balancing relations with others and bluffing adversaries at times). His view is that it shouldn’t be complicated to value all human life, but this gives such short shrift to the reality of the international security dilemma. He didn’t understand the complicated nature of such an issue to make a fully-informed viewpoint on the matter, but he disguised this non-understanding with absolute confidence and “know-it-all” condescension. For Hillary, whatever her husband Bill did that harmed civilian lives in other countries, as well as what she may have advocated for as Secretary of State, was enough for Melvin to put his hopes in Bernie Sanders - who knew nothing about foreign policy or hard decisions, and later Jill Stein - who simply knew nothing.

Melvin’s primary argumentation device against me was the use of what I call the Fallacy Card. This is where you use the definitions of specific fallacies to conveniently fit your opponent’s argument within that definition in order to make it seem invalid. In other words, he molded anything I said into the Wikipedia definition of a flawed argument - and boy did he keep at it. His Fallacy Card playing reeked of the common Strawman fallacy where you unfairly compare two sides in order to strengthen the side you’re on. In his case, he used it to accuse others of making Straw fallacies – the fallacy of crying fallacy! Every time I made an argument, I could predict the steps of his Fallacy Card response: 1) cry fallacy; 2) post a Wikipedia definition of the fallacy I committed; 3) victory. For example, I argued that he was throwing his vote away in a regressive display of ignorance by voting Jill Stein. His fallacy card: I committed the False Dichotomy fallacy (where you falsely claim there are only two solutions to a problem when there are actually more options). In this case, he accused me of saying there are only two options for president when Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were clearly in existence, and then posts the definition of False Dichotomy from Wikipedia while claiming the high ground of argumentative superiority. Of course, I didn’t commit such a fallacy because the reality of PROBABILITY was on my argument’s side. In other words, the amount of support (and qualifications) for both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein was infinitesimally impossible to realistically succeed, making any progressive vote that went to Stein simply a futile effort to deny the realistic progressive candidate (and progressivism across America) a victory through indirectly and regressively electing Trump and conservatism. Of course, Melvin refused to accept this, telling me I had no perception of reality. Quite the easy response to anything, of course.

My fear from these stupendously baffling exchanges with Melvin was that it his sheer ignorance represented a sizable number of progressive voters. If this were true, it truly did give relevance to the old saying that “Progressives Fall In Love, Conservatives Fall In Line.” My hopes for rational discourse and the success of progressivism dissipated further.

It took me a short while, after closing my Facebook account, to reflect on the matter. After much thought - too much thought - I’ve gained a little of my optimism back. For starters, I had to reason with myself that just because Melvin was truly representative of the toxic ABC voter that seems to define our negative worldview of rational voters DOESN’T mean he is representative of a majority of progressive voters. In fact, he’s NOT a progressive voter. Witnessing firsthand the power behind people coming out of the woodworks to do as much as possible to fight Trump’s America, I realized that Melvin only represents a “couch activist”; in his case, a Facebook troller and political ranter that wears an Army uniform (something he has admitted he knows he is NOT allowed to do). But when a guy says he’s unwilling to give up his comfortable military paycheck for playing military music, and when a guy uses his family as his reason for giving participating only at the bare minimum (while others with families proudly do WAY more), I know he’s truly not a progressive. In short, a Green Party couch activist should be given the amount of respect we give conservative Republicans by not pursuing their vote. Progressives shouldn’t be factoring these kinds of voters in our progressive coalition. We need to move on - we need to find fighters.

Unlike the radical non-progressive that is Melvin, my brother-in-law Brendon is a different take. As a Mormon from Utah, he is – you guessed it – a conservative Republican. My frustration with him started when I read his Facebook post prior to Election Week: he and my sister Christina would be voting for Trump. Before I continue, some context is required.

I’m the eldest of five children, and the only one who has publicly and officially resigned from the Mormon church (and apparently conservative Republicanism). Christina, the youngest of the five, was always a pragmatic and down-to-earth dude-ette. However, she had her own crisis of conscience her first semester in college at BYU (Mormon University). She called me on the night I was set to deploy to Iraq, pleading for help. She said she felt absolutely alone, trapped in a Mormon college where the average freshman girl had a ring on her finger and a baby on the way. Worse, all of Christina’s real friends from high school were at the University of Texas in Austin (UT).

Knowing full well that my dad had a deeply-held prejudice against UT that came from witnessing a group of drunken football fans acting drunk (in his view, they were EXCEPTIONALLY drunk and, hence, UT was exceptionally wicked), it disturbed me that Christina’s dreams were being held hostage my parents’ ultimatum that if she dropped out of BYU and went to UT that she’d be cut off financially. My parents were not only using their inexplicable animus toward UT in this ultimatum – but they were also trying to prevent what they likely saw as their youngest child following in the footsteps of their eldest – the path to apostasy (cue chilling wind-blowing sounds). Christina had every right to feel scared and helpless. My help in our phone conversation was limited given my predicament (packing for deployment to Iraq). However, every time I think about that conversation, the memory haunts me, especially given what happened afterward. Christina ended up capitulating to my parents' ultimatum and staying at BYU. There, she met Brendon and rededicated herself to Mormonism. At her wedding reception, I had to listen to Brendon brag about Christina’s UT crisis. While he reminisced on her “close call,” and all the good little Mormons laughed along - including Christina, I had to bite my lip and look at the floor. End of context.

One week to election day, I read Christina’s regurgitated arguments about Hillary Clinton being the next Richard Nixon. She exuded a “husband knows best” attitude that Brendon arguably inspired. When I challenged her, she shied away by saying that checks and balances will probably save the day, and Congress will prevent Trump from running amuck with the Oval Office. She and Brendon also accused me of being a product of the liberal media, an accusation another of my sisters (who also attended BYU) threw my way once upon a time - in particular CNN. For the record, I never watch CNN because it’s for-profit priorities and media sensationalism are downright horrible. But what is it that BYU students have against CNN? Do all professors warn the Mormon college kids that CNN is the Devil? It's just freakin’ weird!

Brendon deployed his own Fallacy Card at me - and it was a doozy. In this case, he accused me of using Donald Trump as a distraction from the real problem – Hillary Clinton. In other words, a Red Herring fallacy: he thought that my “Trump-is-the-Real-Problem” argument was really a decoy from the TRUE menace that was Hillary. Of course, this really revealed more about Brendon and Christina than it did my alleged lack of reason and fallacious argumentation. Why? When Donald Trump brags about sexual assault, cheating employees out of pay, or how he takes advantage of our tax system for his own businesses, Brendon gives it a pass and calls it explainable - but this is because it is palatable given their morals (if you could call it moral) and values: capitalism, deservedness through zero-sum competition, patriarchy, and a societal disciplinarianism. What is not palatable is when Hillary’s husband makes backdoor deals for pardons, or when her campaign manager’s emails show how he dares to strategize political communication, or when the DNC leaders are revealed to be trying to sway the election in Hillary’s direction. Regardless, Hillary Rodham Clinton is GUILTY to Brendon and Christina (guilty by association), and hence UNFORGIVEN and UNVOTABLE. In the meantime, Donald Trump will not be mentioned (and if I mention him, I’m obviously partisan and distracting from the real problem?)

That very night, I tossed and turned in bed, wondering how it was possible that Christina, my down-to-earth sister, could mentally inoculate all of Trump’s transgressions and corruption in order to justify her’s and Brendon’s anti-Hillary position. I had to accept the fact that she was no longer down-to-Earth, but down-to-whatever-Mormon-planet-she-hopes-to-live-on-in-the-afterlife-with-Brendon (this is a real Mormon thing, by the way). I also had to tell myself that her continual arguments that everything would be okay because Congress would stop Trump were only her justifications in the moment to vote for him. As we’ve seen in Trump’s first two weeks, Congress can do nothing about executive orders, while we the People wait nervously, worried just what new executive order Trump has up his sleeve. Today - while Trump continues using his immense power that Congress is powerless to check, I read that his firing of Sally Yates as acting Attorney General is resurrecting comparisons to Richard Nixon. Of course, I will not throw this in Christina and Brendon's faces, because it would be an exercise of futility. Like Melvin, they are unreachable - at least when through the Facebook crucible.

In short, I seem to have thought that Christina was within the realm of reasonable voters. However, she is clearly not when her own values and priorities highlight Clintonian corruption while excusing - or filtering out completely - Trumpian corruption that, on paper, has been proven as WAY more numerous and problematic. But the other side values Trumpian corruption as a moral necessity, and Christina has chosen this side. In essence, I have to remind myself that our fight for American decency is against those who align with the opposite. I cannot anymore worry about this other side, but instead about knowing who is on our side and how we can mobilize them to join the fight for decency.

The Burial of Decency, and It’s Hopeful Resurrection

We are now at a crossroads in American History, as now-President Trump has issued an unprecedented amount of extreme executive orders within just the first week, let alone first day, of his presidency – all of which victimize incredibly large numbers of people: women around the world who rely on abortion-supporting non-governmental organizations; refugees fighting for survival from their war-torn countries; millions of Americans now with affordable healthcare poised to lose it due to ideological preferences for free-market priorities. We now have nepotism in the White House with Trump’s son-in-law serving as an advisor. We now have proven anti-semitism in the White House and National Security meetings with Breitbart extremist Steve Bannon, Trump’s most trusted advisor. We also have a President who has faked the divesting of his office from his businesses, now proven with documentary evidence that he is still making money and, hence, using the Office of the Presidency as a personal profit mechanism.

What hurts me and many progressives even more is that the entire legitimacy of the United States of America as the beacon of hope for millions of people in the world, the exceptionalism I grew up to view in America, has now been lost. It has now been recast as the kingdom of a spoiled madman tarnishing its image of legitimacy on a daily and even hourly basis with the most petty and childish Tweets and public displays of unmeasured, unpresidential language, let alone corrupt actions meant to bolster his brand and his profits. Our legacy as a country that led the way for the world with its steady leadership now shares commonalities with countries that have fallen in stature due to the whims and actions of mad dictators carrying a big gun in one hand and a solid gold rattle in the other. And our voters chose this. Our families chose this. My family chose this. They had the information, and yet chose Trump. It really happened.

Liberals chose this as well. The flawed action/inaction of ABC voters and single-issue curator voters of the liberal wing have wasted OUR (not their) efforts for progress toward the quixotic Jill Stein and have allowed for the Republican Party and their anointed Demagogue-in-Chief to take over. On November 9th, plenty of these “voters” chided their scared friends that everything was going to be okay. Today, they are now eating crow. Of course, it was obvious to me why Jill Stein launched an even more quixotic campaign than her presidency in her failed recount of the three states where her margins of the vote, if they had gone to Hillary, would have prevented a President Trump. But now he’s our president, and those who say “Not My President,” really mean “he IS my president, and it’s a travesty.” This new president has already single-handedly undone all President Obama’s efforts to repair our reputation on the international stage, recasting it now as an America of an unapologetic authoritarian bent on absolute power and greed disguised as “America First.” The word “presidential” is now a substitute for weakness, decency is something that can be politicized, and lies in the name of Trump are “alternative facts.”

Instead of social media obsessions and distractions, I have proudly marched in the Women’s March, I pay dues and volunteer for local progressive causes in my area, and I spend 8 hours a day working for Planned Parenthood. Although I have been fighting tooth and nail for progressive causes here in New York – doing my part when I feel my country needs it more than ever – my internal fight over what to do with my ties to my now Trump-allied family members has been exceedingly tough. Friends and families are always naturally divided every election season. But this election season and its outcome is not politics-as-usual. Given the circumstances, how does one interact with friends and family when they participated to help make America totalitarian while dismissing the very existence of others different from them as spilled milk? I’m reminded of the many who fled Germany in the wake of the Nazi takeover. The story of the old movie director Douglas Sirk is the first to come to mind.

While a German national, Douglas Sirk painfully watched his country adopt Nazi totalitarianism. His ex-wife and son swallowed the Nazi Kool-Aid to make Germany great again. Sirk had a choice in remaining loyal to his family and his country, or turning his back, knowing full well what the outcome of such political direction would be. He turned his back. He was faced with the difficult decision of doing the right thing, when family loyalty happened to be on the opposite end. Sirk never saw his son again – the boy was killed in action wearing a Nazi uniform in 1944.

History and reason tell us that the direction of Trump’s executive action and totalitarianism only goes one way. Things are going to become worse. It is now where I ask myself if it’s possible that Americans may have to turn their backs on their families and home country. I wish I could ask Douglas Sirk how it felt. However, unlike Sirk, my ties to my parents have already been more troubled than the average person. Their allegiance to Trump was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If I’m going to continue my fight to undo the terror diminishing our country like other countries have experienced, I have no room for those that vote for madmen while claiming the moral high ground - family or not. I have nothing more to say to them, so nothing will be said. As for siblings – the same goes for them. In the wake of the Trump election and the outbreak of hate crimes against minorities in the name of Trump, Brendon tried to convince me it WASN’T really happening, and that liberal-on-Trump supporter violence was the REAL problem. Needless to say, I have nothing more to say to such a person. When our family members ally with the inexplicable and participate in dehumanizing human beings, the responsibility is not to tolerate them but to quit them.

I embrace the irony that I am not the young boy my parents raised to hate the Clintons. Instead, I embrace having voted for president the very woman I attacked in the 4th grade for having only one child. I embrace the fact that although I once shared my parents dislike for our Texas Gov. Ann Richards and her liberal politics, I now sit rooms away from her daughter Cecile as we continue fighting to defend a woman’s right to proper healthcare. As a former Republican, Veteran, and now progressive crusader for what’s right, I will continue to fight as long as I breathe. While the Melvins of the world (not the Seattle kind, haha) continue their political action through Facebook trolling and quixotic votes meant to aggrandize the size of their morality, and the Brendons continue wearing their “See-No-Liberal-Media” blindfolds and “Hear-No-Liberal-Media” earplugs, I can only look away from such foolishness and focus on what can be achieved, rational discourse with those truly open to such an idea. I should not give up on my pursuit of reason in politics simply b/c those with imaginary expertise delegitimize my field with a Facebook post or tweet. The work must continue! And if the time comes where the fight is lost, the experiences of the very Syrian refugees whom our new president has now victimized on a massive scale will be felt by all Americans. The time to leave America and turn our backs on friends and family may become a tragic possibility, one I hope never becomes a reality.

In the meantime, I fight to prevent such a reality.

#NoBanNoWall #StandUpToTrump #TrumpBan #WakeUpAmerica #MuslimBan

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exfrenchdorsl4p0a1 · 7 years

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The Truth Isn't Trending Well With Democrats These Days: What Every Democrat Needs To Hear

I write this on the eve of the electoral college vote, which is tomorrow; I already know the results. I have known the results since November 9th at 2am. There will be no Hail Mary moment. Red states will not go blue. Your phone calls, letters, mass emails, and pleas have done nothing more than annoy the electors. All of that energy, the money spent on a recount, the false hope fed to us by our "progressive leadership", all it did was succeed in us taking our eye off of what really matters: fights that could actually still be won. The truth is: Donald Trump is our president. Please, my dear liberal friends: take a deep breath...and sit with that. Let it sink in. Cry your last tear, throw something, scream, and then save it for another day. We have four years of screaming and fights ahead...we need you to get back up and on your feet...now. I am officially turning the lights on and the music off at your pity party. Time to come home and organize. We as democrats have managed to point fingers at everyone but ourselves. The people closest to the campaign being the most arrogant. THIS is what scares me more than Trump. If we as a party, can not realistically understand that we lost, and look hard at where we lost this, then we are sure to just double down on the same failed strategy and lose again. Same old people, playing out of the same old dog eared playbook that Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, all used..and you know what that sounded like? The same words that the people have been hearing for the last fifty years. "apple pie" "freedom" "bald eagle" "hope" "a new tomorrow" same tired strategy, optics and words. Do you know how that registered in the minds of voters? They weren't quite sure where they had heard those same old phrases before, but they had, and they felt lied to, because we have been lied to so many times before by every politician. Everything Hillary did and said, felt "inauthentic" sounded like a "lie" even when it wasn't; because it was all out of the tired old playbook we had been manipulated with before. Trump threw the playbook out the window. He could have said "unicorns are crapping donuts out of the sky and it is the fault of Isis and the Muslims" and people would think, what the hell is this guy saying? I don't know, but he "sounds like a straight shooter to me". This guy "calls it like he sees it, whether I agree or not". AND THAT my friends, is how this election was won and lost. Messaging. We have pointed fingers everywhere: The FBI, the Russians, hackers, misogyny, racism, ignorance, the media, the electoral college, voter fraud, and today...we get a teeny bit closer to the truth: the scapegoat who is poor Huma Abadein, Hillary's closest advisor gets the blame du jour. Well, at least were getting warmer. The truth isn't trending well with Democrats these days, but here it is. We lost the election for two reasons: Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign. People didn't vote. Period. Misogyny didn't win. The FBI didn't win. The Russians didn't lose us the election. Racism didn't win. Voter fraud didn't win. Hubris lost. We were so sure of ourselves, high fiving each other because Trump was such a "moron", meanwhile her communications team was a complete disaster. I had voiced my opinion to many people working on her campaign, and they were blindly out of touch. They simply did not care to hear anyone's opinion, any fresh ideas, and they did it their way, sticking to the old playbook that had been handed down for the last hundred years. Never daring stray from the script. I'll give you just a couple of examples of where we epically dropped the ball on a gold mine. Before I start, this is NOT an "I told you so"..it is simply a way to see, and learn from our mistakes, which we MUST do--once you read this, I think you'll get it. When Hillary fainted on 9/11 at the memorial because she had pneumonia. The Trump campaign ran with that. They immediately attacked her health, said she didn't have stamina, that she was not well enough to be president, and that she lied to the American people by not disclosing her "mystery illness". Clinton's camp sat quietly, and then they sent out the big guns. Bill Clinton came on tv and I thought, well thank goodness...Bill's got this. Do you remember what his response to her fainting was? "Hillary has been working like a demon...she gets dehydrated" I almost screamed at the tv. Why not tell the truth, and turn this moment into pure gold? A lovely alternative might have sounded something like this: "Hillary has pneumonia. I had pneumonia when I was 6. It's like an intense flu. Not cancer. She will get well soon. We didn't feel the need to announce every headache or cold she gets to the media. It is not life threatening. Mrs. Clinton would not have missed standing with those families on such an important day for anything in the world. So, with a hundred and three degree fever, she got up, and got dressed; to show up for the American people, to show up for those families, and to go to work. And while we're on the topic, how about we discuss how she, like millions of other Americans do the same thing Hillary did--everyday. They get up sick, they get dressed, and they go to work. Because we don't have paid family leave, or sick days; and you know, we probably should." The end. Now, was that hard? It wasn't. The mistresses? Again, Trump paraded them, blamed her, I saw women on social media saying that she was "so nasty" to the women her husband had cheated on her with. They spun it so it was somehow Hillary's fault that she was cheated on! Genius. Why on earth, did this woman not stand up, especially during the debates, and say "You know what? Thank you for bringing that up. I've been married to Bill for over forty years. Not all of them were easy. Many women in this audience, and men have experienced tough times in marriages and some have experienced infidelity. It is painful. It is usually private. I chose to forgive my husband to keep my marriage and family together. While I respect women who leave, I chose to stay. I chose to honor my vows said before God and family, and do what was the most difficult thing I had ever done, forgive and rebuild. I stayed when things got rough because I made that commitment. And as your president, I promise to do the same for you. I will stay and fight to make us stronger when things get rough. And you know what? I'm glad that I did, because now my marriage is stronger than ever and my daughter is doing great and I am happy." Good Lord, she would have sent it over the fences. Instead, when the mistresses were brought up, she would give a smug smile, and lean into the podium, half perched on her seat, and not address it. It was inauthentic. It was smug. It didn't read well. And whoever came up with that zippy slogan "Love Trumps Hate" clearly didn't understand optics. When I turned on the DNC Convention, and saw an ocean of people holding signs with the name Trump on them...I thought, this guy must be home laughing right now. Why on earth did we shake signs in the air with this man's name on them? He couldn't pray for better press...all hand delivered by...us. An auditorium of Democrats, enthusiastically shaking Trump's name. Sure, the word "hate" was on there, but so was "love". Bad messaging. Terrible optics. These are just a few very simple ways that she could have done better. From pant suit flash mob videos that looked like Gap ads, to completely uninspiring television spots (with the exception of the Gold Star Khan family, which was the only powerful piece of media I had seen the campaign run) to mosaic mashups of celebrities all montaging the same tired old message. It all just flopped. Add to that an ineffective speaker, whose speeches were canned, rehearsed and stiff, and she was an easy target. If you think that they don't "sell us our presidents the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars", you are mistaken. Hillary should have been as exciting as Obama in 2008. Our first female president, and even I, a devoted liberal had to rev up my own engine to muster any level of enthusiasm for her. I knocked on doors in Pennsylvania. I made a short video urging people to vote for her. I helped raise money. I wrote favorable pieces about her. The saddest part is that I have met her in person...she is not only graceful and kind, she is affable and lovely, brilliant, generous, and open. That is what upsets me most. She has it in her, and she would have been a terrific president. It just didn't read and she was surrounded by weak people advising her. I sincerely hope that they no longer work in politics. The polls were not "off" the people taking them were. Leaving out a percentage of folks who weren't racists or misogynists, they just didn't want to vote for Hillary, and kept their mouths shut, because they didn't want to be ostracized or called names. All of it, was a disaster, and I have lost more liberal friends than conservative, because the one thing liberals can't do right now, is hear that they failed. We failed. But ultimately the buck stops at Hillary. She didn't even come out on the night of the election to address the people who had worked so hard for her at the Javitz Center. They were given false hope and sent home crying, then given the news by Donald Trump who said that she had called him. Need I say more? We were still "With Her"...but she was no longer with us. My views have made me terribly unpopular. But I'm not going to lie to you. You have been lied to enough lately. Democrats right now want to hear what a jerk and scumbag Trump is, how we got robbed, and how there's still a chance. They don't want to hear the truth. But until we make peace with the truth and channel that anger towards fighting the real fights ahead, they are going to finish us off. Ohio and North Carolina are showing us that already. We were so busy talking about who really won and by how many and how we actually weren't to blame; while they have been hard at work stealing more from us. Please focus, everyone. We have lost so much, but we ain't seen nothing yet. So, I urge you, after the electoral vote count is in...pull yourselves off the ground, clean yourself up, and start fighting like hell. Fight the real fights we have in front of us. The victim look isn't a good look on any of us, and I, for one, am not going to be any part of that. I will be the one fighting rough, going as low as they go, and punching harder...because I am not going to die, and I won't let you or this country die either.

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