Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 144

The Guns-Terrorism Nexus

As of Monday morning, the death toll of Sunday’s massacre at an Orlando nightclub stood at 50 including the assailant, making the attack not only the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, but also the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since September 11, 2001. The toll was more than triple that of the next-deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11, the San Bernardino shooting of December 2015, in which 14 people were killed. And the weapons used in Orlando, as in San Bernardino, were guns.  

Firearms have a long but not straightforward history in terrorist attacks in the United States and around the world. In 2012, The New Yorker’s Jill Lepore reported that “The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world,” with Yemen ranking a distant second. Yet according to an analysis of the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), a comprehensive dataset on more than 140,000 terrorist attacks worldwide since 1970, guns appear less frequently as the primary weapon in terrorist attacks in the United States than in those committed elsewhere in the world.

Weapons Used in Terrorist Attacks in the United States, 1970-2014

 

Weapons Used in Terrorist Attacks Outside the United States, 1970-2014

 

They have, however, been the weapon of choice in more than two-thirds of fatal terrorist attacks in America; for the rest of the world, they were the primary weapon in about half.

Proportion of Fatal Terrorist Attacks in the United States Involving Firearms, 1970-2014

Proportion of Fatal Terrorist Attacks Outside the United States Involving Firearms, 1970-2014

 

Current patterns of terrorism around the world help explain why this is the case. The overwhelming majority of deaths from terrorist attacks occurred in just five countries in 2014, the last year for which the GTD has data—Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Syria accounted for nearly 60 percent of all terrorist attacks, and 80 percent of terrorism fatalities, worldwide that year. These are countries in which bombings, including suicide bombings and attacks using improvised-explosive devices, regularly claim dozens of lives at a time. Such weapons are extremely difficult to assemble in the United States, as FiveThirtyEight’s Carl Bialik pointed out on Sunday: “[S]ince Sept. 11, the federal government has monitored the use of explosives and the trade of materials that can be turned into explosives.” 

In terms of fatalities, the Orlando shooting is the third-deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. The two deadliest—the September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed some 3,000 people, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168—together accounted for 90 percent of terrorism-related fatalities in the United States as of 2014, and did not involve firearms. In general, though, as the GTD’s program manager Erin Miller pointed out last summer, “[d]espite the potential for attacks involving explosives to cause exceptionally high numbers of casualties,” most such attacks in the United States have resulted in no fatalities at all, either because they were intended to destroy property rather than lives, or through simple failure to cause intended casualties. In the United States, she wrote in a report on the use of guns in terrorism, “attacks involving firearms are more likely to be lethal.”

Miller noted that of more than 2,600 incidents of terrorism in the United States between 1970 and 2014, a little over 340, or 13 percent, involved firearms as the primary weapon. (The numbers do not yet reflect last year’s terrorist shootings in San Bernardino and Charleston, nor Sunday’s attack.) Terrorists including ISIS sympathizers may well be able to exploit the ease of obtaining a gun in the United States, but guns’ use in terrorism in America, Miller wrote, “is approximately one-third as common as firearm usage in terrorist attacks in the rest of the world, where 37 percent of attacks involved firearms as the primary weapon.” 

That proportion fluctuates from year to year, however, and in 2014 the proportion of terrorist attacks in America that involved guns spiked, with the U.S. far surpassing the rest of the world in percentage of terrorist attacks involving firearms. It’s worth noting that the number of attacks in the U.S. was low overall that year; of 19 terrorist attacks in the U.S. that year, guns were involved in 14.  

Proportion of Terrorist Attacks Involving Firearms, 1970-2014

It's not yet clear whether this departure from the historical pattern will prove a lasting trend. There are reasons to suspect it could: As security measures put in place following September 11 have made it increasingly difficult to organize terrorist conspiracies on U.S. soil, America has confronted the threat of self-directed “lone wolves,” inspired by but not necessarily connected to larger terrorist organizations like ISIS. Islamic State leaders, like al-Qaeda leaders before them, have purposefully encouraged such attacks, which are difficult to stop, in contrast to complex coordinated attacks, which require the involvement of multiple actors and create more opportunities to draw the attention of law enforcement. Firearms, being simpler to acquire and use independently than the kinds of explosives that can cause mass casualties, seem to fit the tactic. And while there’s a limit to how much damage one individual can cause, America saw on Sunday that the limit is horrifyingly high.

The Tony Awards: A Win for Inclusiveness

Sunday night’s Tony Awards had a difficult mission at hand: throwing a joyful celebration of the year in Broadway theater while also acknowledging that morning’s horrifying massacre at a gay club in Orlando. Even at the best of times, there’s very little more frivolous than an awards show, but rather than feeling tonally jarring, the revelry ended up being a perfect answer to the misery of the day, its mere existence offering a counterpoint to an act of hatred. It was the kind of night where the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda could accept a trophy with a sonnet in praise of love and have it not feel corny, but necessary. If there was a night for bold, open-hearted sincerity, it was this year’s Tonys.

 

It helped that the winners were wonderfully diverse, in welcome (and repeatedly remarked-upon) contrast to the Oscars, which have failed to nominate even one film actor of color in the last two years (out of 40 nominees). Miranda’s musical sensation Hamilton took 11 Tonys including Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, and three acting awards, while a revival of The Color Purple also won big. To open the show, the presenter James Corden soberly addressed the events in Orlando, saying, “Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality, and gender is equal, is embraced, and is loved.” The ensuing ceremony was a lively, uplifting affair, but one that served as a reflection of that sentiment.

It also helped that there was a palpable lack of tension in the room, thanks to Hamilton, which had been tipped for utter dominance since it opened on Broadway last August. A combination of rave reviews, a best-selling cast album, and a cast filled with electrifying actors of color has turned the show into a mega-phenomenon. Previous hits like The Producers and The Book of Mormon had seemingly represented the ceiling of the Broadway sensation, but Hamilton also tapped into the internet to reach a whole universe of fans still clamoring to see it. Meanwhile, it’s sold out through next year and prices are only going up (the best seats now go for $849, face value).  

Hamilton was the star of the show, and it opened and closed the night. There was a jokey rap introduction for Corden; a “carpool karaoke” video where Corden and Miranda sang along to the cast recording before being joined by the Broadway stars Audra McDonald, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Jane Krakowski; a performance of the song “Yorktown”; and later a more impromptu version of “The Schuyler Sisters” to close the show (with the cast still in their tuxes and gowns). Corden frequently and jokingly referenced the assuredness of a Hamilton sweep, and if that wasn’t already obvious, Barack and Michelle Obama introduced the performance of “Yorktown” via pre-recorded video.

Miranda’s first acceptance speech, for Best Original Score, was the most memorable—his sonnet addressed his wife and child as well as the tragedy in Orlando, making it all the more powerful and spontaneous. “This show is proof that history remembers we lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger,” he said. “We rise and fall and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer.”

If there was a night for bold, open-hearted sincerity, it was this year’s Tonys.

The show’s other winners included Daveed Diggs, who plays the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson, for Best Featured Actor in a Musical; Renée Elise Goldsberry, who plays Angelica Schuyler, for Best Featured Actress; and Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Aaron Burr, for Best Leading Actor, beating Miranda as many awards pundits had anticipated. Hamilton’s haul of 11 trophies fell one short of The Producers’s record 12—it lost Best Scenic Design to the gorgeous jewel-box look of She Loves Me’s 1930s Budapest perfumery, and Best Leading Actress to Cynthia Erivo in The Color Purple.

Erivo brought the house down with her performance of “I’m Here,” earning the first standing ovation of the night. Almost all of the show’s musical numbers were well-staged, a departure from the typical pattern at the Tonys, where songs often feel awkwardly truncated so that they can fit in enough ad breaks. Hamilton’s dominance came during an overall strong year for Broadway—revivals like The Color Purple, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, and Spring Awakening (which featured a partly deaf cast and innovative staging) were well-received, while new musicals like Waitress, School of Rock, and Bright Star showcased the thematic variety on offer for theatergoers.

The searingly dark family comedy The Humans was another big winner, collecting accolades for Best Play, Best Featured Actor (Reed Birney) and Actress (Jayne Houdyshell), and Best Scenic Design. Jessica Lange took Best Leading Actress for Long Day’s Journey Into Night (leaving her only a Grammy shy of an EGOT), while Frank Langella took his fourth Tony Award for his work in The Father, a new play by Florian Zeller about a man suffering from Alzheimer’s. In his speech, Langella also referenced the shooting in Orlando, saying, “When something bad happens we have three choices: We let it define us, we let it destroy us, or we let it strengthen us.”

Often with awards shows, such moments can feel incongruous with the comedic antics that buttress these presentations, but Corden was a successful emcee in that regard. As a former Tony winner himself, he had an air of authenticity alongside the winners and performers, but as the host of CBS’s Late Late Show, he’s well-practiced in making the audience feel like insiders. This year’s Tonys were inclusive in so many ways, from the diverse faces onstage to the message of love that pervaded throughout the speeches, and Corden gelled perfectly with that atmosphere. “Hate will never win,” he said in his opening remarks. “Together, we have to make sure of that. Tonight’s show stands as a symbol and celebration of that principle.”

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Girlhood

Elise and Jenni, the protagonists of Abigail Ulman’s short story “Head to Toe,” are best friends. They are inseparable, precocious, popular. The winter they’re 16, they tire of their teenage peers; they stop responding to text messages and lose interest in house parties. Their parents worry “it’s chronic fatigue or something.” Instead of shopping for clothes at the mall, they blow their spending money on movies, one after the next. One is “about a girl who moves to the city to fulfill her dream of becoming a performer.” Another, Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture, is “about a girl who moves to the city to fulfill her dream of becoming an artist.” A third is “about a girl who goes looking for her dead father,” and yet another is “about a girl who goes looking for the killer of her dead father.” Finally, before Elise’s mother picks them up, they see one “about this girl who visits her dad. She makes him macaroni and cheese, and cheers him up.”

 

The nod to Dunham’s debut is surely deliberate: Everywhere these days, it seems, there are stories of young women, moving and performing, making macaroni and cheese, lying with friends and lovers on their childhood beds, fighting with their parents and clinging to them, wondering what it means to grow up. Ulman, whose debut collection, Hot Little Hands, has just been published in the U.S., is in good company. Like Elise and Jenni, the characters in the stories in Rebecca Schiff’s recent debut, The Bed Moved, have internalized the idea that to be a young woman is to live within—and in constant relation to—a succession of Girl Stories. One of Schiff’s narrators tells her “best stories” to a love interest she’s met on the internet, though she keeps leaving out the important parts. “In ‘Every Foreign Country I Visit Reminds Me of Long Island,’ I forgot to say that’s where I was from.” Other items in her repertoire include “The Summer I Spent Working With Pigeons,” “I Ate a Pot Cookie and Believed Myself to Be Already Dead,” and “My Allergies Will Charm You.”

In both books, the risk of falling back on raked over, twee, trope-laden Millennial pastiche is high. Is there anything new about a privileged (white, we presume) 22-year-old in Brooklyn procrastinating on her collection of personal essays by updating her People Using 10-Color Pens in Offices Tumblr? But that risk is, at this point, practically a prerequisite for the genre in which Ulman and Schiff operate.

Theirs is a literary ecosystem fueled by the dream of achieving viral acclaim—of appealing to the masses by parading one’s exquisite, insecure individuality. The heroes of this ecosystem, in movies and on TV shows as in books, are the popular girls whose fame and celebrity come from essays like “Girl Crush: That Time I Was Almost a Lesbian, Then Vomited” (which appears in Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham’s #1 bestselling collection) and from frank exposure of bespoke tattoos on cable television. Schiff and Ulman aren’t mimicking Dunham so much as they’re gleefully—fondly—spoofing the predictability of her brand. As the critic Harold Rosenberg wrote, “There is a mass culture of ‘individuals,’ too, obviously.”

If anything, this particular mass culture of individuals—the booming market for such girly, arty angst—has upped the ante for young women who want to write, as Ulman put it in an interview, original work “that centralizes the secret voices and perspectives of young female characters.” What rescues Schiff and Ulman from stale generational stereotypes comes as something of a surprise: They supplement their 20-something characters’ bellyaching with the more forgivably immature musings of even younger voices. In both books, teenagers—and the reactions they provoke in those around them—steal the show.

Most of these girls sense the inevitability of a young adulthood marked by awkwardness and bad sex: That, after all, is what the culture has told them young adulthood is. Yet it never occurs to them that they’re victims, and the last thing they want to be mistaken for is ingénues. They are wry and ambitious protagonists, and Ulman and Schiff present them without the kind of “touchy-feely girl empowerment talk” (in the withering words of one of Ulman’s teenagers) more moralizing authors might serve up.

If anything, this particular mass culture of individuals has upped the ante for young women who want to write.

Wry and ambitious themselves, both writers offer rich comedies of manners that take in not just the girls, but also the mystified boys and authority figures in their orbit, the head-shaking teachers and the parents who double as anxious chauffeurs. Schiff’s teenage girls know the boys around them are just as lost. “We all aspired to orgasm,” one narrator says matter-of-factly, “but were afraid of our GPAs slipping. Everything counted. We aced Sex Ed.” Throughout the book, her sparse, poetic paragraphs are packed with forceful wit. Ulman, whose stories build more slowly, excels at dialogue and narrative. The more you get to know her characters, the funnier it is to witness their verbal code-switching as they navigate between nosy parents, fumbling love interests, and trusted friends.

That none of these stories is constrained by any need for tidy endings makes them all the more believable; Ulman and Schiff see clearly the poignant paradox of their enterprise. Both books feature characters, several of them recurring, who are wise beyond their years and utterly immature. And how could they not be? They’re primed from puberty to know that perfecting the desired mix of sophistication and youth, of vulnerability and confidence, is not going to get any easier. When the father of the frustrated young Tumblr-ing essayist in Ulman’s “Plus One” tries to reassure his 22-year-old daughter that “there’s a good market” for books like hers (working title: Don’t Mess Up My Mood Board, Or My Unicorn Will Cry, And Other Instructions), she replies, “I’m not in that market anymore. I’ve outgrown it. I can’t write it. It’s over.” Of course, such a moody dismissal only confirms her fitness to play the role of high-achieving adult-slash-adolescent-mess.

Ulman and Schiff are fresh voices well worth listening to in our mass culture of individuals. They haven’t given up on the genre yet, or given into the temptation to declare it “over.” Neither should readers. There’s plenty of caustic, moving humor in the revelation that growing up doesn’t mean leaving girlhood behind. Elise and Jenni, restless at 16, are already practicing what will doubtless become a useful refrain. They conclude that they’re “so glad [they’re] not 11 anymore,” because “it’s the worst. Everything’s so confusing, and like, no one has their shit together.”

The Beheading of a Canadian Man

A Canadian man held hostage by Abu Sayyaf, the Islamist terrorist group in the Philippines, was beheaded Monday, Canadian government officials said.

Canada refused to pay the $8 million ransom for Robert Hall, a 58-year-old from Calgary. His fellow captive, John Ridsdel, was decapitated in April. They were both killed in Jolo Island in the southern part of the Philippines, reports the National Post.

They and two others from the Philippines and Norway were kidnapped in September in Davao, the hometown of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte.

In a statement Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government was still attempting to “formally confirm” Hall’s death. While he condemned the “vicious and brutal actions” of the group, he confirmed the Canadian government’s position on ransoms would stay the same:

With the tragic loss of two Canadians, I want to reiterate that terrorist hostage-takings only fuel more violence and instability. Canada will not give into their fear mongering tactics and despicable attitude toward the suffering of others.

This is precisely why the Government of Canada will not and cannot pay ransoms for hostages to terrorists groups, as doing so would endanger the lives of more Canadians.

While the Abu Sayyaf group is rather small, it has been active in bombings and kidnappings in the Southeast Asian nation for several decades. The BBC reports:

Abu Sayyaf is a fragmented but violent militant group with its roots in the Islamist separatist insurgency in the southern Philippines. Several of its factions have aligned themselves with the so-called Islamic State.

It has repeatedly taken hostages over the years but has often released them in exchange for ransoms.

It is still holding several captives, including a Dutch birdwatcher taken in 2012.

The Filipino government has launched several military operations to go after the group. Trudeau, in his statement, said the Canadian government would work with the Philippines “to pursue those responsible for these heinous acts and bring them to justice, however long it takes.”

Qatar’s Prosecution of an Alleged Rape Victim

A Dutch woman who reported being drugged and raped in Qatar in March is finally going home after authorities detained her for three months on suspicion of adultery and alcohol consumption.

While she was convicted of those charges and sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence on Monday, authorities are allowing her to leave the small, oil-rich country in the Persian Gulf, and head back to the Netherlands.

Her attacker was not convicted of rape. Instead, he received 140 lashes for sexual activity outside of marriage and drinking alcohol. DutchNews.nl describes the March incident:

The attack happened following a night out at the Crystal Lounge in the Doha Hotel, a popular hangout with foreign tourists where alcohol is permitted. She claims she was drugged and raped and woke up in a strange apartment.

After she reported the rape to authorities, she was detained. Daphne Kerremans, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry, told The New York Times:

“The ambassador is with her now and is making sure that she can go home as soon as possible. It was quite overwhelming for her.”

In its ruling, the court said she would not have to serve the one-year sentence as long as she didn’t commit further crimes in Qatar for the next three years. She was also fined $850.

Qatar, a major regional ally of the West, has faced intense criticism over its human-rights violations in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup. This incident, along with several others involving migrant workers and women, are only likely to add to questions over whether the country should have been allowed to host the soccer tournament in the first place.

Game of Thrones: Trial Without Combat

Every week for the sixth season of Game of Thrones, Christopher Orr, Spencer Kornhaber, and Lenika Cruz will be discussing new episodes of the HBO drama. Because no screeners are being made available to critics in advance this year, we'll be posting our thoughts in installments.

Kornhaber: “I choose violence” has been the headline quote in Game of Thrones teasers for months now. Tonight, Cersei Lannister finally spoke those words within the show’s narrative—but it still turned out to be a tease. The episode repeatedly toyed with characters’ and audience members’ expectations for carnage, with the most memorable scenes made up of dialogue, surrenders, and Meereenese comedy slams.

 

Just take a tally of aborted or strangely muted fights that took place. Arya’s climactic duel with the Waif happened off-screen. The Hound only took compromised vengeance against the men who massacred his friends. Jaime’s siege of Riverrun ended peacefully, save for the slaying of the Blackfish—which, again, happened off-screen. A battle for Meereen commenced, but barely. And Tommen thwarted Cersei’s big plans to resolve her predicaments via combat, except for when it came to that poor missionary in the Red Keep courtyard.

Perhaps these relatively unwarlike developments made for a necessary pendulum backswing after the previous episode’s pacifist massacre. But tonight’s series of unspectacular confrontations sometimes just felt like stalling or shoddy plotting. The hour had its twists, but they resulted from circumstances the viewers have never had a chance to fully understand, which is to say they weren’t super-satisfying twists

The episode opened with Lady Crane giving Tonys-worthy treatment to the same feelings that Lena Headey has earned Emmy nominations for portraying. The motif of mothers’ fierce loyalty to their kids would recur through the night, including when Crane took in the wounded Arya as if she were her own child. Their fleeting moments of bonding were poignant, but much like Tyrion’s later talk of starting a vineyard, the wandering Stark’s professed goal of seeing the West side of Westeros made me nervous: Thrones isn’t a show where people get to imagine happy endings long before dying.

It turned out, though, that the terrifying assassins guild Arya had offended wasn’t actually all that terrifying. Recently, wild theories that have flown around the internet regarding the House of Black and White plotline in part because it seems hard to believe that the Waif’s really as reckless as she seems on screen. Yet tonight’s episode kept her raging-incompetent routine going, with the nameless assassin gloating like a Bond villain upon thwacking Arya’s hostess (which, bafflingly, happened only after Arya awoke from a drugged sleep). The Waif then let herself be lured into her target’s lair, where she was promptly defaced.

It’s possible the aforementioned wild theories (investigate at your risk) could explain how Arya was allowed to get into the temple’s inner sanctum and threaten Jaqen H’ghar, a man who until now has seemed the most unthreatenable person in the realm. But it’s also possible showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are simply ripping this portion of Arya’s story from the kind of airport-paperback thriller George R.R. Martin likes to subvert. Viewers have no choice but to view the latest happenings in Braavos with some bewilderment—the information needed to make what’s happened fully comprehensible just isn’t there.

Meereen is also feeling a bit blurry lately. Tonight’s episode told us that the Lord of Light’s minions had unified the city, with little rationale given for “why”—was there not a religion there before? We also saw that the slavers had strongly declined the deal Tyrion offered them, sans any mention of forewarning—what were Varys’s little birds doing before he left? The most charitable interpretation of this latest development imagines Tyrion as an audience surrogate, blindly holding to certain modern-seeming ideals in a land ruled by very different values. At least now that the slavers have laid siege, Tyrion might not have having to justify his seven-years-of-slavery compromise to Danaerys, who typically abhors compromise on the issue of slavery.

In King’s Landing, another main character’s confusion is also the audience’s confusion. Cersei by now is so isolated in the capital’s political scene that she’s caught unawares by her son’s pronouncement that she stand for non-combat trial. Why have the machinations in King’s Landing, once the source of so much fabulous intrigue, been obscured from viewers? Probably for suspense’s sake. It’s clear that Margaery and the High Sparrow’s grand plan may involve the elimination of the Queen Regent; it’s not clear whether they realize how hard it is to kill the Franken-Mountain, regardless of whether he’s legally allowed to crack skulls. Another mystery is the rumor Cersei and Qyburn discussed. What’s it about: a High Sparrow abuse scandal? A secret Wildfire supply? Hillary Clinton’s VP pick?

Jaime might be the perfect Thrones hero: morally compromised, yet still striving not to cause more brutality.

The developments in Riverrun also were built on viewers’ ignorance. Before this episode, there was little reason to suspect that rank-and-file Tully troops would rank or file Edmure above the Blackfish to the point of giving up the castle. In retrospect, it does make some sense that the prospect of slowly starving over two years to lose some war that’s long been finished would give the average man incentive to let down the drawbridge. And Jaime’s confrontation with Edmure—about serving Cersei above all else—was crucial in that it underscored how personal desires, not abstract duty, motivate many of the realm’s most passionate people (though not in all cases: “Lots of horrible shit in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves,” the Hound said, with chilling relevance).

For the first time in quite a while, the audience is reminded of why Jaime’s such a compelling character. Really, he might be the perfect Thrones hero: morally compromised, willing to do anything, yet still striving to survive a brutal system without needlessly perpetuating more brutality. He threatened to murder an entire house—but in doing so, he ended up reducing the body count to one old man holding fast to a lost cause. (And even then, who knows? The Blackfish might be swimming down that waterway below Brienne.)

What did you two think of the night? Got any jokes for Grey Worm? Appreciate the Hound’s chickens callback? Interested in investing in Tyrion’s winery?

Entries from Lenika Cruz and Christopher Orr to come.

Orlando Nightclub Attack: What We Know

Here’s what we know:

—President Obama is calling the attack at the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida, “an act of terror and an act of hate.” Fifty people were killed in the shooting and 53 others were taken to local hospitals. The attacker is also dead.

—The incident began at the popular LGBT nightclub at about 2 a.m. ET and ended at about 5 a.m.

—The gunman has been identified as Omar Siddiqui Mateen, a U.S. citizen of Afghan descent living in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Officials said he used an assault rifle and a handgun—both legally purchased in the last few days—to carry out the shooting.

—Law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. The FBI said it had questioned Mateen in two separate terrorism-related investigations in 2013 and 2014, both of which ended inconclusively.

—The Islamic State has claimed responsibility, according to its news service. It is unclear whether the organization directly planned the attack or if Mateen carried it out independently.

10:26 p.m. ET

We're signing off for the night. Coverage will resume at 6 a.m. Monday morning.

10:17 p.m. ET

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks says earlier reports that a man arrested earlier today in Los Angeles intended to harm the L.A. Pride Festival were inaccurate.

James Howell held on weapons and explosive materials charges. Stated intent: go to Gay Pride event; wrong on initial rpt of wanting to harm

— Jacqueline Seabrooks (@SantaMonicaCoP) June 13, 2016

The Los Angeles Times has more:

Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks initially said on Twitter that the 20-year-old man told one of her officers after he was arrested that he wanted “to harm Gay Pride event.”

But Lt. Saul Rodriguez said later the tweet was a misstatement. He said the suspect told investigators that he was going to the Pride festival but said he did not make additional statements about his intentions.

"It was a misstatement," Rodriguez said. "Unfortunately, she was given incorrect information initially, which indicated that that statement was made; however, that statement never was made. He did indicate that he was planning on going to the Pride festival but beyond anything as far as motives or his intentions that statement was never made nor did any officer receive that statement.”

8:14 p.m. ET

Host James Corden opened tonight’s Tony Awards in New York City on a somber note by paying tribute to the Orlando shooting victims.

All around the world, people are trying to come to terms with the horrific events that took place in Orlando this morning. On behalf of the whole theater community and every person in this room, our hearts go out to all of those affected by this atrocity. All we can say is you are not on your own right now. Your tragedy is our tragedy. Theater is a place where every race, creed, sexuality, and gender is equal, is embraced, and is loved. Hate will never win. Together, we have to make sure of that. Tonight’s show stands as a symbol and a celebration of that principle.

The New York Daily News reported that the cast of "Hamilton," a popular Revolutionary War musical, won't use muskets in their performance during tonight's ceremonies out of respect for the victims.

6:57 p.m. ET

Donald Trump's condolence message also took aim at his likely Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. In a statement, the Clinton campaign fired back against him and his comments on the shooting.

JUST IN: Clinton campaign's @jmpalmieri responds to Trump statement on Orlando shooting: pic.twitter.com/jQGTmKOT6u

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) June 12, 2016

5:42 p.m. ET

In New York City, two towers will make two different tributes tonight.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Sunday afternoon that One World Trade Center will “be lit [in] the colors of the pride flag in a tribute to LGBT Americans and the lives that were lost.”

At the same time, the Empire State Building announced its upper floors will not be lit at all in memory of the deceased.

In sympathy for the victims of last night’s attack in Orlando, we will remain dark tonight. Photo: @isardasorensen pic.twitter.com/FCmp4JMnph

— Empire State Bldg (@EmpireStateBldg) June 12, 2016

5:19 p.m. ET

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump offering his condolences. He also said President Obama “should step down” and his likely Democratic rival Hillary Clinton “should get out of this race for the Presidency” for not calling the attacks “radical Islamic terrorism.”

He added:

If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore.

The terrorist, Omar Mir Saddique Mateen, is the son of an immigrant from Afghanistan who openly published his support for the Afghanistani Taliban and even tried to run for President of Afghanistan. According to Pew, 99% of people in Afghanistan support oppressive Sharia Law.

We admit more than 100,000 lifetime migrants from the Middle East each year. Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States.

Hillary Clinton wants to dramatically increase admissions from the Middle East, bringing in many hundreds of thousands during a first term – and we will have no way to screen them, pay for them, or prevent the second generation from radicalizing.

We need to protect all Americans, of all backgrounds and all beliefs, from Radical Islamic Terrorism - which has no place in an open and tolerant society. Radical Islam advocates hate for women, gays, Jews, Christians and all Americans. I am going to be a President for all Americans, and I am going to protect and defend all Americans. We are going to make America safe again and great again for everyone.

Trump added that he planned to make a “major speech” on foreign policy on Monday. He did not acknowledge that the victims were members of the LGBT community.

In a subsequent tweet, Trump also seemed to reference his proposed ban on Muslim immigration, which he first suggested last December after the San Bernardino shootings.

What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

In May, Trump said the ban was “just a suggestion.” Mateen was born in New York.

5:03 p.m. ET

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both offered their condolences to the victims in Orlando. Clinton’s statement focused on terrorism, the LGBT community, and gun control:

I join Americans in praying for the victims of the attack in Orlando, their families and the first responders who did everything they could to save lives.  



This was an act of terror.  Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are hard at work, and we will learn more in the hours and days ahead.  For now, we can say for certain that we need to redouble our efforts to defend our country from threats at home and abroad.  That means defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home. It also means refusing to be intimidated and staying true to our values.



This was also an act of hate.  The gunman attacked an LGBT nightclub during Pride Month.  To the LGBT community: please know that you have millions of allies across our country.  I am one of them.  We will keep fighting for your right to live freely, openly and without fear.  Hate has absolutely no place in America. 



Finally, we need to keep guns like the ones used last night out of the hands of terrorists or other violent criminals.  This is the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets.  



This is a time to stand together and resolve to do everything we can to defend our communities and country.

Sanders’ statement touched on the same themes. He issued it before President Obama and the FBI said they believed the shooting was an act of terror:

All Americans are horrified, disgusted and saddened by the horrific atrocity in Orlando.

At this point we do not know whether this was an act of terrorism, a terrible hate crime against gay people or the act of a very sick person, but we extend our heartfelt condolences to the victims’ families and loved ones and our thoughts are with the injured and the entire Orlando LGBTQ community. 

4:29 p.m. ET

The city of Orlando is posting the names of victims whose families have been notified on the city website. Only four names have been released so far.

Pulse shooting: First victim names we can release: Edward Sotomayor Jr.; Stanley Almodovar III; Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo; Juan Ramon Guerrero

— Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

3:21 p.m. ET

FBI Special Agent Ronald Hopper definitively identified the gunman as 29-year-old Omar Mateen at an afternoon press conference. He said Mateen died in an exchange of gunfire at the Pulse nightclub. Mateen, who was born in New York, was an American citizen of whom the bureau had been aware since 2013, Hopper said. He’d been investigated and questioned in 2013 and 2014, but the FBI didn’t find enough to merit a continued investigation of Mateen, Hopper said.

Hopper said Mateen had made 911 calls before his death. He declined to elaborate on the content of those calls, but said they had “become federal evidence [and] ...it was general to the Islamic State.” News reports had previously said Mateen had in the 911 calls pledged allegiance to ISIS, as the group is also known.

Trevor Velinor, an assistant special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, said Mateen had legally purchased both of the weapons used in the attack in the past few days. 

3:05 p.m. ET

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, via its Amaq news agency.

Breaking: ISIS' Amaq media claims the #nightclubshooting in #Orlando was carried out by an #ISIS fighter pic.twitter.com/wQGLZdZnVG

— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) June 12, 2016

To put this in context, we’ll turn to Rukmini Callimachi, The New York Times reporter, who has been tweeting about the attacks:

38. Alert was posted on Amaq's Telegram channel circa 2 pm EST meaning 12 hrs after attack (well under 2 days it took post San Bernardino)

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 12, 2016

40 Alert says "Source to Amaq: The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando..was carried out by an Islamic State fighter"

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 12, 2016

41. Language to me indicates the shooter was not dispatched from the core / is a Lone Wolf. Amaq was awaiting confirmation of ISIS pledge

— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) June 12, 2016

 

 

3:04 p.m. ET

The U.K. royal family says it is shocked by the killings. Here’s a tweet from its official account:

The Queen: "Prince Philip & I have been shocked by the events in Orlando. Our thoughts & prayers are with all those who have been affected"

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 12, 2016

 

 

2:59 p.m. ET

CNN and others are reporting that Omar Mateen, the man named by several news organizations and a U.S. congressman as being responsible for the shooting, worked as a security guard for G4S Secure Solutions. Here’s a statement from the firm, via CNN:

We are shocked and saddened by the tragic event that occurred at the Orlando nightclub. We can confirm that Omar Mateen had been employed with G4S since September 10, 2007. We are cooperating fully with all law enforcement authorities, including the FBI, as they conduct their investigation. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the friends, families and people affected by this unspeakable tragedy.

   

2:58 p.m. ET

Here’s Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s reaction:

We grieve with our friends in the US & stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ2 community after today's terror attack: https://t.co/nwP2MR2xUm

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) June 12, 2016

2:16 p.m. ET

“Today marks the most deadly shooting in American history,” President Obama said as he addressed the nation from the White House. He stressed the FBI’s investigation was just beginning and he offered no details on the attacker’s motives or associations. “Although it is early in the investigation, we know enough to say this is an act of terror and an act of hate,” he said.

He added:

We are still learning all the facts. This is an open investigation We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer. The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism, and I’ve directed that we spare no effort to determine what, if any, inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups. What is clear is that he was a person full of hatred.

While paying tribute to the victims, the president also noted the singular role of gay bars and nightclubs in the LGBT community, describing them as “a place of solidarity and empowerment, where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.”

While Obama did address gun violence in general, he spoke with a sense of resignation about the intractable debate over gun control. “This massacre is … a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that let's them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub,” he said. “And we have to decide if that's the kind of country we want to be. And to tactically do nothing is a decision as well.”

“In the face of hate and violence, we will love one another,” Obama said. “We will not give in to fear and turn against each other.”

1:52 p.m. ET

Pope Francis condemned “this new manifestation of homicidal folly and senseless hatred” in a statement about the Orlando shootings, Vatican Radio said. 

“Pope Francis joins the families of the victims and all of the injured in prayer and in compassion,” the Vatican’s statement said. “Sharing in their indescribable suffering he entrusts them to the Lord so they may find comfort.”

1:32 p.m. ET

The Los Angeles Times is reporting a man with guns and possible explosives was arrested in Santa Monica on Sunday. He reportedly told police he was going to the city’s gay-pride rally. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is scheduled to take part in the celebrations in LA. Several cities around the U.S., including Boston and Washington, D.C., held gay-pride celebrations this weekend. Here’s a complete list. 

 

1:27 p.m. ET

Sunday’s shooting comes during LGBT Pride Month, and law-enforcement agencies in major U.S. cities are stepping up their presence at LGBT sites and events. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said D.C. police will bolster their presence this weekend at Capitol Pride, the region’s annual LGBT-pride event, during Sunday’s festival.

In New York City, the NYPD said it placed its patrol and counter-terrorism units on alert. A New York Daily News reporter tweeted that armed NYPD officers have been placed outside the historic Stonewall Inn.

Cops with long guns stationed at Stonewall Inn and other prominent lgbt locations.

— Erin Durkin (@erinmdurkin) June 12, 2016

12:24 p.m. ET

Florida Governor Rick Scott has declared a state of emergency in Orange County, freeing up more state law-enforcement resources to assist in Orlando.

Governor Scott Declares State of Emergency in Orange County Following Tragic Shooting: https://t.co/QHVvPHjRn6

— Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

Addressing reporters in Orlando, Scott said the state “would provide all the resources anyone needs” in response to the shooting.

12:12 p.m. ET

President Obama will make a statement about the Orlando shooting at 1:30 p.m. ET, the White House says. Vice President Joe Biden has also canceled his planned appearance at a campaign fundraiser in Florida tonight.

11:31 a.m. ET

OneBlood, a blood-donation organization in Orlando, is asking for donations on its Twitter feed:

Urgent need for O Neg, O Pos and AB Plasma donors following a mass shooting in Orlando call 1.888.936.6283 or click. https://t.co/4bf6aA1lMS

— OneBlood (@my1blood) June 12, 2016

But gay men, under current FDA rules, will be unable to donate blood to those in need after the attack.

10:26 a.m. ET

Mayor Buddy Dyer said 50 people have been killed and 53 others taken to local hospitals.

“There’s blood everywhere,” he said at a news conference, adding the shooter used an assault rifle during the attack. He said he had asked the governor to declare a state of emergency.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said a handgun and an AR-15-type assault rifle was recovered from the scene. He said an unknown number of rounds were fired. 

FBI said the investigation was in its early stages, and the bureau was investigating all angles, including whether it was a hate crime and if it was terrorism.

Imam Muhammad Musri, president of American Islam and the Islamic Society of Central Florida, urged the media not to rush to judgment. “It’s our worst nightmare, and we are sorry to know it happened to us,” he said.

10:19 a.m. ET

Congressman Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, at a news conference identified the shooter as Omar Mateen. He said Mateen was in his late 20s. He said the gunman was a U.S. citizen, but that is “not true of some of his family members.” Grayson’s congressional district includes part of Orlando.

10:01 a.m. ET

USA Today has more on Pulse, the club where the attack took place, and which labels itself as “not just another gay club.” An excerpt:

One of the owners of the gay nightclub where multiple people were shot early Sunday in Orlando started the club to promote awareness about the area's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Her brother died from AIDS.

Barbara Poma opened Pulse on Orange Avenue in Orlando with her friend and co-founder Ron Legler in 2004. It hosts nightly themed performances as well as a monthly program of LGBT-related educational events.

 

9:42 a.m. ET

Multiple news organizations, including CBS News and NBC, citing anonymous law-enforcement sources, have identified the suspect as Omar Mateen, 27, of Port St. Lucie, Florida. We have not independently confirmed their reporting. 

9:27 a.m. ET

The presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential nominees shared their thoughts:

Really bad shooting in Orlando. Police investigating possible terrorism. Many people dead and wounded.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2016

 

Woke up to hear the devastating news from FL. As we wait for more information, my thoughts are with those affected by this horrific act. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 12, 2016

9:24 a.m. ET

Florida’s governor responds to the attack:

My prayers are with the victims’ families & all those affected by the shooting in Orlando. We will devote every resource available to assist

— Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) June 12, 2016

9:19 a.m. ET

The White House says President Obama has been briefed on the attack.

JUST IN: President Obama has been briefed on Orlando nightclub shooting, White House says. pic.twitter.com/aJEBni7Kus

— ABC News (@ABC) June 12, 2016

 

Updated at 7:14 a.m. ET

Multiple people have been killed and at least 42 people are being treated at local hospitals after a gunman opened fire and took hostages at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, early Sunday, police said. The gunman is dead.

At a news conference Sunday, Orlando Police Chief John Mina said “multiple people are dead inside” the Pulse nightclub in downtown Orlando, but he declined to provide an exact number, saying the number was about 20. Forty-two people have been transported to local hospitals, he said. Mayor Buddy Dyer called it a “crime that will have a lasting effect on our community.” Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, at the same news conference, called it a “domestic terror incident,” and an FBI official said there are “suggestions that the individual may have leanings towards (Islamist) ideology,” but he added the bureau was pursing other angles as well.

Here’s what happened, in Mina’s words:

At approximately 0202 hours this morning, we had an officer working at Pulse nightclub, who responded to shots fired. Our officer engaged in a gun battle with that suspect. That suspect at some point went back inside the club, where more shots were fired. This did turn into a hostage situation. Obviously multiple officers from various agencies responded, SWAT team responded. At approximately 0500 hours this morning, the decision was made to rescue hostages that were in there."

The shooter was found dead inside the club, Mina said. One officer was lightly injured, he said.

The shooter had an assault-type rifle, a handgun, and some type of device on him, he said. Officials at the news conference described the gunman as well-prepared and well-organized. He was not from the area, they said. 

Earlier, the Orlando Police tweeted: 

We can confirm this is a mass casualty situation. Support from local/state/federal agencies. We expect to brief media shortly.

— Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Pulse Shooting: The shooter inside the club is dead.

— Orlando Police (@OrlandoPolice) June 12, 2016

Pulse is a popular nightspot that hosts what it calls “Upscale Latin Saturdays” with three DJs and a show a midnight. On its Facebook page, the club warned customers to “get out of pulse and keep running.” A subsequent message said:

As soon as we have any information we will update everyone. Please keep everyone in your prayers as we work through this tragic event. Thank you for your thoughts and love.

The shooting comes a little more than a day after a gunman shot and killed Christina Grimmie, the singer, at a concert venue in the city. Officials at the news conference said the two incidents were not connected. 

This is a developing story and we’ll update it when we learn more.

The Extraordinarily Common Violence Against LGBT People in America

The attack at a gay club in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday is the worst mass-shooting in U.S. history. The father of Omar Mateen, the alleged shooter, said his son may have been motivated by anger toward the LGBT community; other reports suggest he may have pledged allegiance to ISIS in advance of the attacks. 

 

No matter what, he picked a gay club. He carried out his attack during Pride month, on a weekend when cities across the country, from Washington, D.C. to Detroit to Los Angeles, are hosting celebrations and parades. This is an unprecedented shooting attack in scale and violence, but not in kind. It is an extraordinary example of an extremely common kind of violence in the United States: hate-motivated attacks on LGBT people. 

In a 2011 analysis of FBI hate-crime statistics, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that “LGBT people are more than twice as likely to be the target of a violent hate-crime than Jews or black people,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center. Because the population of LGBT Americans is relatively small, and the number of hate crimes against that group is significant, LGBT individuals face a higher risk than other groups of being the victim of an attack. “They are more than four times as likely as Muslims, and almost 14 times as likely as Latinos,” Potok added. Sexual orientation motivated roughly 20 percent of hate crimes in 2013, according to the FBI; the only factor that accounted for more was race. 

The vast majority of those crimes are not carried out by Muslim extremists, Potok said. “It’s a mix of white supremacists and their ilk and people who would be considered relatively normal members of society,” Potok said. “The majority of attacks on gay people do not come from people who are members of organized hate groups.”

This is not the first time someone has targeted a gay club with violence in the United States. In 2014, for example, Musab Masmari was convicted of setting fire to a Seattle bar on New Year’s Eve. There were 750 people inside, although no one was hurt or killed. While these kinds of large-scale attacks are horrifying, they do not account for most of the violence against LGBT people, which often takes place in people’s homes, on highways and streets, or even in schools. 

Discriminatory attitudes toward LGBT people are still common, despite advances in LGBT rights over the past several years. “LGBT people have been vilified for as long as any of us can remember, and vilified in a particularly nasty way,” said Potok. “They’re described as perverts, as people who seduce children, as people who engage in horrible, unnatural practices. There’s all kinds of hatred in this country, but it’s rare to have a group described in such incredibly demeaning terms.” 

This kind of attitude is not only held by one particular group, religious or otherwise. In 2014, a majority of Americans said they believed gay sex is morally unacceptable, and 14 percent of Americans said they believed AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. There is of course no causal relationship between disapproval of homosexuality and mass murder. But anti-LGBT sentiments and rhetoric, which are not uncommon, are part of the broader U.S. social context in which more than half of LGBT-identified people say they’re concerned about being the victim of a hate crime.

The Pride movement itself has its origins in this kind of discrimination and violence. The first parades were held 46 years ago in commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots, in which LGBT people protested a police raid of a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn. At the first gay-pride parade in New York, “There were no floats, no music, no boys in briefs,” wrote Fred Sergeant in a 2010 article for The Village Voice. “The cops turned their backs on us to convey their disdain, but the masses of people kept carrying signs and banners, chanting and waving to surprised onlookers.”

In the years since then, Pride events have spread across the country. Cities celebrate their LGBT citizens with parades and festivals, and gay bars and clubs often hold events like the one at Pulse, the Orlando bar where the shooting took place. They’re often happy, celebratory events—safe spaces for people to express their identities and sexuality—that have evolved a long way from their origins in solemn protest. 

But this year, the spirit of an earlier era, in which LGBT people were even less accepted than they are today, returns. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT-rights advocacy group, will march in silence at Sunday’s Pride parade in Los Angeles to mourn the victims of the shootings in Orlando. The moment marks not just Sunday’s violence, but that which is yet to come. In the 10-year period between 2004 and 2014, the share of hate crimes based on sexual orientation increased. Perhaps that trend will not continue. But Potok wasn’t confident.

“I very much dread what is coming next,” he said.

Why Hollywood Doesn’t Tell More Stories for—and About—Girls

My two best friends and I were three lonely children growing up in the ’90s without siblings for playmates. We eventually found each other, but we also found comfort and adventure in a spate of intelligent films about girls like us—heroines of non-franchised stories set in the real world rather than a computer-generated one. There was Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, Sara Crewe of A Little Princess, Fiona in The Secret of Roan Inish, and the protagonists of Matilda, Harriet the Spy, Fly Away Home, The Parent Trap, and Ponette. These girls were too young for love triangles or battling dystopian forces. Their stories and conflicts varied, but they served to eventually reveal certain qualities: resilience, imagination, audacity, and compassion.

 

Another thing these films have in common is that they came out decades ago. Today’s audiences rarely see movies like The Secret Garden and Matilda—live-action works for and about younger girls that celebrate the ambition and resourcefulness of their protagonists. For studios, big-budget sequels and reboots and remakes dominate the day. Kids’ movies as a whole are usually animated and/or feature protagonists who are a bit older (or four-legged). Combine that with other systemic problems like outdated ideas about gender and marketing, as well as a dearth of female writers and directors, and the result is a cinematic landscape for girls that’s in some ways less rich today than it was 20 years ago.

Though modern films with boy protagonists are also increasingly animated (Big Hero 6, Sanjay’s Super Team), there are still a few live-action options with young heroes who use ingenuity and courage to solve problems (Pan, The Jungle Book). But within the broader context of storytelling, toys, and costumes for children, boys have traditionally been permitted to fill a wide range of exciting roles (pirates, superheroes, ninjas, astronauts). Girls, meanwhile, tend to be slotted into a narrower range of character types (princesses chief among them), making it that much more valuable when films present alternatives young female viewers can relate to. The problem is even worse for young girls of color, who historically haven’t seen many images of themselves on screen, animated or otherwise (though films like the upcoming Moana seem to offer some hope that might change for the better).

Nineties films like The Secret Garden or Matilda—many of which were, incidentally, adaptations of books—offered alternatives at the time. Their protagonists healed people and places, primarily through hard work and compassion, not magic. Even Matilda, who could move objects with her mind, was more interested in pursuing an education than in strengthening her powers. Fiona of Roan Inish, Sara of A Little Princess (not about an actual princess), and Mary of The Secret Garden didn’t happen upon adventure accidentally: They practically curated the adventures themselves. These films also exposed their viewers to more grown-up themes and ideas, such as grief and loneliness, and even classism, racism, and war—acknowledging the emotional capacity and maturity of their young viewers, rather than infantilizing them.

Since the ’90s, Hollywood has made small strides when it comes to better depicting women and including them behind the scenes, and yet there are fewer high-quality movies for girls being made today. “The industry is still overwhelmingly male,” said Kathy Merlock Jackson, a communications professor at Virginia Wesleyan College. And men, she added, “write stories that resonate with them, about their experiences growing up.” Pixar creates some of the best children’s films today, but since most of the people who work there are men, the studio produces more movies about boys’ lives, Jackson said.

Almost no Pixar movies feature female protagonists, with one notable exception: 2015’s wonderful Inside Out, which revolved entirely around the anthropomorphic emotions in an 11-year-old girl’s head. But even that film didn’t have a female director, and there don’t seem to be many attached to the movies on Pixar’s horizon. The problem is bigger than a single studio: The federal government is investigating the entertainment industry for gender discrimination after the ACLU argued that women are routinely excluded from directing jobs.

Though female authors such as J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins are behind Hollywood’s most popular young-adult material, the directors who adapt those stories are usually men. (This was also the case with many of the great ’90s films mentioned earlier.) An international study led in part by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that fewer than one-third of all speaking characters in films are female, although “films with a female director or female writer attached had significantly more girls and women on-screen.” It stands to reason that getting more women, especially women of color, behind the scenes of children’s movies would lead to an increase in characters who better reflect the makeup of their young audiences.

Another challenge in creating more girl-centric films is the assumption that “girls will go to boys’ films, but boys will not go to girls’ films,” said Jackson, who pointed to the example of Disney picking the name Tangled over Rapunzel (it also used Frozen instead of The Snow Queen). Gender doesn’t strictly matter as a point of identification; kids can relate to anything if given the chance, even inanimate objects. Still, it’s important for young girls to see images of themselves onscreen—to realize their personal stories can have universal relevance, and that they needn’t exist merely as extensions of male characters. 

It’s important for a young girl to see images of herself on-screen—to realize her personal stories can have universal relevance.

Films like Frozen, Twilight, and The Hunger Games exemplify how kids movies with female stars tend to feature young women more than girls. “The marketing philosophy in Hollywood is that younger [female] audiences are ‘aspirational’ and will watch older girls, but that older girls won’t ‘watch down,’” said Susan Cartsonis, the producer of What  Women Want and Where the Heart Is. The result is that movies for younger viewers can feature more sexualized female protagonists (consider how the figure and appearance of Ariel in Disney’s Little Mermaid titillated male film critics at the time).

Even outside of movies, girls are exposed to pop-culture messages that sexualize them from a young age, which can lead to unhealthy attitudes about self-image. Having younger female characters star in their own films helps to counteract that pattern. “The truth is that themes for girls are also themes women carry with them through their teen years, young-adult years, middle age, and old age,” said Cartonis. “Friendship, and the discovery of powers or identity they didn’t know about or underestimated—these themes work at every age.”

Professor Ian Wojcik-Andrews of Eastern Michigan University highlights another roadblock for filmmakers: the lack of a tried-and-true genre for the pre-pubescent girl. “There is no mythological framework for the 11- or 12-year-old child, particularly the girl,” said Wojcik-Andrews. He explained that while movies for older children like The Hunger Games regularly draw on tropes from Ancient Rome and King Arthur, there’s no popular narrative archetype for younger children, especially girls, that Hollywood studios are eager to market.

All of these gender-specific challenges to making films for girls are playing out against a backdrop where live-action films for children have largely disappeared, or rather, been “decimated,” as Melissa Silverstein, the founder and editor of the blog Women and Hollywood, put it. She added that there are far fewer child actors in the central roles of kids’ movies today, and many have been replaced by older characters or cartoons. “A lot of them have migrated to TV,” Silverstein said. “That’s where the good roles are.” 

Indeed, kids’ viewing habits have changed significantly in the last decade or so. “What children are engaged with now is not as much film as it is television, Netflix, or Amazon,” said Lynne McVeigh, an associate professor of television and children’s media at New York University. She said it makes little sense for studios to bother with expensive movies for the younger demographic, since teens are more likely to go to the movies. “I don’t think it’s a bad or good thing—it’s just changed,” she said, pointing to shows like Doc McStuffins (about an African-American girl who plays doctor to her toys), Peg + Cat (an educational math program), and Angelina Ballerina as standout examples on TV.

There’s a silver lining to all this: With more alternative forms of film and TV release available, there are myriad options to showcase independent work. To compete in the children’s movie market, big studios may need an action-adventure spectacle with merchandise; but HBO and Netflix could do for children’s programming what they’ve already done for grown-up shows—expand the limits of a genre by giving producers more creative freedom and placing a higher premium on quality over ratings. This could mean more writers and directors taking risks telling stories with young girl protagonists, including those of color.

In a 1995 review of A Little Princess, Roger Ebert wrote:

Movies like A Little Princess and The Secret Garden contain a sense of wonder, and a message: The world is a vast and challenging place, through which a child can find its way with pluck and intelligence. It is about a girl who finds it more useful to speak French than to fire a ray gun. I know there are more kids this season who want to see Judge Dredd, Die Hard With a Vengeance, and the new Batman movie than kids who want to see A Little Princess, and I feel sorry for them. 

Ebert was right to be concerned; the people we meet, experiences we have, and movies we watch in childhood can resonate for a lifetime. Little girls deserve worthy, thoughtful films aimed at them, as much as anyone—and the rapidly changing home-entertainment landscape should give families reason to hope that the industry will eventually deliver.  

Remembering George Voinovich, a Buckeye Statesman

George Voinovich, who served as mayor of Cleveland, governor of Ohio, and a U.S. senator, has died at 79. A towering figure in late-20th century Buckeye State politics, the Republican died at home in his sleep, according to his son. Voinovich, who was well-liked by colleagues, was mourned by leaders including Governor John Kasich:

Ohio has lost a legendary leader. We are all better for George Voinovich's service. Join me in lifting up Janet & her family in prayer.

— John Kasich (@JohnKasich) June 12, 2016

Voinovich served in various capacities in state politics before running for mayor of Cleveland, his home city, in 1979. He faced incumbent Democrat Dennis Kucinich (later a U.S. representative and presidential candidate), who had been elected as the “boy mayor” but faced a turbulent time in office, buffeted by a hostile attempt to take over the city’s power company but also by his own volatile personality. Voinovich easily won the election and brought a measure of stability to the Forest City. His term as mayor is seen as pivotal to the city’s turnaround from Rust Belt butt of jokes to “Comeback City.” Since he left office in 1989, no Republican has served as mayor of Cleveland.

On the strength of his performance as mayor, Voinovich was elected governor in 1990. Term-limited from seeking a third election as governor, he ran for U.S. Senate in 1998, and served two terms. He won all four races by wide margins. Voinovich opted to retire rather than run for re-election in 2010. He was replaced by Republican Rob Portman.

In the Senate, Voinovich was known as a major debt hawk. While he opposed Democratic spending, he could also rankle Republicans who wanted to cut taxes, arguing in 2003 against President George W. Bush’s tax cuts on grounds of fiscal irresponsibility. He was also deeply interested in Balkan issues, a focus informed by his own background, with parents of Serbian and Slovenian extraction. He was also a devout Catholic. Obituaries recalled Voinovich as a wonky, adept administrator, delighting in the unglamorous but important work of managerial minutiae.

While a staunch fiscal conservative, Voinovich belonged to a Republican Party that for the most part no longer exists in Washington. He voted to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and favored modest gun-control measures. Late in his term, he was critical of obstruction efforts by Republican senators, and he blasted hardline House GOP members. “They’re playing Russian roulette and all the chambers have a bullet.” he said. “They’re flamethrowers. ‘We’re going to get what we want or the country can go to hell.’”