Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 202

Azealia Banks, Anarchist

Azealia Banks is a 24-year-old New York rapper who calls herself a womanist and wants reparations for black people. Recently, she endorsed Donald Trump. “If the United States of America is an aircraft on its way down, (which it seems to be) I must put my own air mask on before I assist others,” she wrote in reference to his immigration policy. Later, she tweeted, “I have no hope for America. It is what it is. Capitalist, consumerist, racist land of make believe,” and “Donald trump is evil like America is evil and in order for America to keep up with itself it needs him.”

These statements have, like many of Banks’s actions, been written off as trolling by some. But there’s reason to think them sincere. “I have no hope for America” is certainly far from “Make America Great Again,” yet both demonstrate deep disgruntlement with the status quo. Both demonstrate the belief that Trump can cause real change, though Banks’s belief is that the change will be purely destructive. And while Banks and Trump may be ideologically opposed, it’s not too hard to draw tactical similarities between the two. In politics and in art, shocking bluster has power.

Banks has made fantastic music throughout her five years in the public eye, most recently on this past Friday’s mixtape Slay-Z, where her slick, profane boasts over pop-rave beats will help listeners feel invulnerable for a few minutes at a time. Her songs, though, have long been overshadowed in the media by the insults she has slung toward other public figures. She blasts people from Lady Gaga to Lil Kim to her own record label based on alleged slights toward her, often resorting to comments about their looks and their presumed sex life. She also uses the word “faggot” to present homosexuals as weak and demonize the “white gay media”—which continues covering her because, to her delight, she retains a sizable gay fan base.

Diagnosing a public figure’s motivations is inherently impossible, but she has, at least, stated the reasons behind her provocations. Read her interviews and her tweets and you’ll see ideology, though not always a consistent one, that represents a radical response to the notion that America was built on the exploitation of women and minorities and, especially, minority women. She sees this unjust history as relevant even to her violent altercations with flight attendants and the incident where she’s alleged to have bitten a nightclub security guard’s breast. You can argue that she’s abusing history in citing racism and sexism at every slight. But you can also sense an internally logical system of justification. If you have no hope for the society you’re in, why play by any of its rules?

Perhaps surprisingly, there’s not a lot of overt politics in her songs, though transgression of all sorts of norms is a huge part of her appeal. Her breakout single, the modern classic “212,” is the most joyful ode to the word “cunt” ever recorded. My favorite song of hers, “Esta Noche,” featuring a Montell Jordan sample and what sounds like a fire alarm, is about seducing a guy while viciously insulting his girlfriend. The more evil she seems in her music, the more infectious she becomes.

The more evil she seems in her music, the more infectious she becomes.

Slay-Z, the mixtape she posted online on Friday after claiming her former studio engineer was leaking its songs out of spite (no surprise, right?), is only mildly evil—not her best work, but pretty enjoyable. Its focus is mostly about how fabulous she is for breaking rules. The first track, “Riot,” has a sweeping, melodic hook that could rule radio with polished production and promotion from the music industry that has rarely gotten along with. “I like unrest, understand?” she raps helpfully. “I like conflict and command.” On a the trancey ballad, “Used to Being Alone,” she uses her wispy, bewitching singing voice to air heartbreak—a reminder of the humanity in the troublemaking.

Perhaps the most interesting thing here, as has been the case before, is the way she feminizes typically male rap swagger. The cover art is her topless, showing off the boob job she has bragged about on social media. Rick Ross shows up for the rowdy “Big Talk” and shouts out Banks’s recent Playboy spread, whose existence becomes yet-more-provocative the more you think about it. The catchiest thing, “Queen of the Club,” is the kind of glistening, by-the-numbers party track that belies the idea that she isn’t interested in commercial success; she just wants to achieve it on her terms, as telegraphed by when she intentionally mispronounces “Versace.”

Just three days after Slay-Z’s release, Banks made headlines again, this time for threatening and hurling gay slurs at paparazzi. It’s another reminder of why her antics often seem to be undermining her music career, and how disgust with a person’s public persona can influence the reception of their work. But you don’t have to look very far these days for examples of the flip side of that disgust: the allure of blatant jerkiness—the idea that speaking one’s mind, no matter how vile its contents, is noble. It’s an attitude that refuses to try and improve the world other than through conflict, and if its implications as politics are frightening, its power as pop is sometimes undeniable.

Why Trump's Campaign Manager Was Arrested for Battery

Donald Trump’s been having a rough few days, and they just got worse. Just after 8 a.m. on Tuesday, police in Jupiter, Florida, charged Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with assaulting a reporter on March 8.

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Will Trump's Campaign Manager Face Criminal Charges?

Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields said that Lewandowski grabbed her and nearly pulled her to the ground as she tried to ask the candidate a question. After Lewandowski and even other Breitbart staffers questioned Fields’s account, she filed a police report. And on Tuesday, police booked Lewandowski on misdemeanor battery charges. “He was arrested and released with a Notice to Appear,” said Officer Adam Brown, a spokesman for the Jupiter police. Images of the police report are circulating on Twitter:

BREAKING: Arrest report issued for @realDonaldTrump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski pic.twitter.com/lmg4wp0wII

— Emily Cahn (@CahnEmily) March 29, 2016

Lewandowski, the Trump campaign, and other Trump backers have continued to insist that he did not grab Fields, even in the face of increasingly strong evidence to the contrary. Washington Post reporter Ben Terris witnessed the whole thing and wrote about it. Fields tweeted a picture of bruises she said she received when Lewandowski grabbed her. Several videos offered strong (if not absolutely conclusive) corroboration for Fields’s account.

But new overhead surveillance footage released by Jupiter police seems to put any questions to rest. The tape shows Lewandowski grabbing Fields and yanking her away. (Fields wears a cream-colored sweater; Terris is in plaid.)

The arrest is the latest in a string of difficulties for Trump. There’s been a large amount of criticism—even by the elevated standards of Trump outrage—for his taking potshots at Heidi Cruz, wife of his primary rival for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz. Polls show he may be losing ground ahead of the Wisconsin primary. And with the GOP race looking more and more like a delegate fight, he lashed out at Cruz’s machinations to win over delegates, threatening to sue.

Lewandowski’s arrest is the latest chapter in a bizarre story. Breitbart has been exceedingly friendly to Trump, making his rough handling of Fields an odd decision. It appears that if Lewandowski had owned up immediately, the story would have gone away. Instead, his steadfast public refusal—and decision to call Fields “delusional”—simply fueled interest. (Fields subsequently resigned from Breitbart after editors refused to back her.) Lewandowski was also caught handling a protestor at a rally roughly, and accused of harassing reporters, especially women. He denied those charges, and the campaign issued a statement Tuesday asserting his innocence in the Fields case as well.

Batman v Superman’s Empty Obsession With Grimness

Jimmy Olsen, the freckle-faced, bow-tie wearing photojournalist, is a well-known member of Superman’s ensemble cast—a bumbling, lovable sidekick who’s always getting into scrapes the hero has to rescue him from. He’s been in basically every cinematic Superman iteration, including Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and yet many viewers may have missed his brief appearance. He’s present in the early scene where Lois Lane interviews a fictional African terrorist and gets double-crossed; her male companion, played by Michael Cassidy, is gunned down and identified as Jimmy Olsen only in the credits. When asked why he felt the need to kill him off within minutes of his appearance, Snyder was ready with an answer. “We don’t have room for Jimmy Olsen in our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right?”

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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Rubbish

There may be no better evidence than the above for the profound mistake Snyder has made with Batman v Superman, intended as a the beginning of a massive franchise for Warner Brothers based on the DC Comics universe. Snyder’s initial plan for Jimmy Olsen was to cast a big-name actor like Jesse Eisenberg, then surprisingly kill him off in his first scene. After meeting with Eisenberg, he instead decided to cast him as Lex Luthor—but otherwise stuck with his plan. For the director, “fun” apparently equals shocking violence and death—so perhaps it’s no surprise that Batman v Superman is such an unrelentingly grim affair. It isn’t the first comic-book property to mistake darkness for quality, but it fails more than its predecessors by not grounding that darkness in anything richer.

The dominating presence of the Punisher in Daredevil’s flawed second season, for example, at least existed as a philosophical counter to the titular hero’s crime-fighting code, a representation of the lines of vigilantism and how easily they can be crossed. The ultra-violence of the box-office smash Deadpool was only part of a whole, a logical element of a film that sought to mock the excesses of comic-book movies in every single way, from needless crossover appearances to convoluted origin stories. Batman v Superman, on the other hand, isn’t in on the joke. Snyder might think there’s something clever in tossing Jimmy Olsen’s body onto the pile of anonymous lives lost throughout the film, but it feels unnecessarily bleak: a spiteful reaction to decades of cheery heroism.

It may not matter from a commercial perspective—Batman v Superman made plenty of money in its opening weekend despite receiving largely negative reviews. But Snyder is being tasked with launching an ongoing series of connected films, aping Marvel’s successful approach over the last eight years. A prominent feature of the Marvel films’ success, starting with the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in the original Iron Man, is consistency of tone—there’s snarky humor, frothy romance, and a lovable jackass in each installment, from the sci-fi epic Guardians of the Galaxy to the celestial slog of Thor to the small-scale heist movie Ant-Man. That style has rightly met with complaints of blandness: Even the darker hero vs. hero setup of the upcoming Captain America: Civil War feels low stakes, as if fans know everyone will end up friends again soon enough. But mixing levity into its formula has helped Marvel market its films to a broad audience of youngsters, teenagers, and older viewers nostalgic for their own comic-book collections.

Batman v Superman tilts in the opposite direction. Its Batman, as played by Ben Affleck, is an embittered street warrior, burned out by 20 years of crime-fighting in Gotham and utterly cynical about the future. An opening scene relates Superman’s arrival (in 2013’s Man of Steel, also directed by Snyder) as Bruce Wayne’s 9/11, as he dashes and dodges among the rubble of Metropolis to save his company’s employees while Superman does battle with the villainous Zod in the sky. Batman brands criminals with a hot, bat-shaped iron and barks about Superman needing to be destroyed if there’s even a one percent chance he’s bad. This Bush-era, us-or-them rhetoric might have signaled a fascinating alternate take on an already much-explored character—if only Snyder had any intent on following through (he didn’t). Batman instead learns his lesson by the end of the film and pledges himself to the cause of justice.

Why is Batman so antagonistic and cruel, murdering criminals multiple times throughout the movie? When asked, Snyder referenced Frank Miller’s legendary 1986 comic The Dark Knight Returns, which imagines an older Batman resorting to more brutal methods to keep the peace in a dystopian future, eventually doing battle with Superman (a battle he, it should be noted, loses). Miller’s comic, an undeniable masterwork, was a landmark moment in “grim and gritty” mainstream comics, the same movement that birthed heroes like the Punisher and Deadpool. These characters existed as a reaction to decades of simpler tales about do-gooders. If Snyder is doing the same, pushing back against the sunnier, funnier world of Marvel, he picked an odd film to do it with—Miller was writing about the end of his hero’s life, whereas Snyder’s universe isn’t the dystopian future, but the recognizable present. There are future films to consider here.

Batman v Superman’s subtitle, Dawn of Justice, suggests a bright future, with the legendary Justice League on the horizon. The film has no such optimism. Superman is a distant, stoic figure throughout the film, hated by Batman and much of the world for his seeming invincibility, and wrestling with the question of whether he should even try to fix things on Earth if he’s so despised. He ends the film (spoiler) dead in a coffin, after another cataclysmic battle (this time with a colossal monster named Doomsday). He’s likely to return—the final shot suggests as much—but Dawn of Justice also contains several apocalyptic visions of the future that suggest he could come back as a bad guy.

The only defense of Snyder that makes sense is that he hasn’t made a superhero film at all, but a Randian treatise, where only the strongest can win the audience’s respect while mere acts of heroism amount to nothing. So what if Batman beats up criminals or if Superman rescues innocent survivors from floods and tornadoes? Who cares about the content of their character? The world is unrelentingly evil, and Superman’s only heroic moment comes as he sacrifices himself on that altar, holding chaos back for at least another day.

Despite the unpleasant tone Snyder has set, there’s hope in the upcoming DC properties that will be helmed by other directors. A Wonder Woman film will arrive in 2017, and though she doesn’t get enough to do in Batman v Superman, she’s a welcome presence untainted by everyone else’s unrelenting gloom. Further off into the future, James Wan is slated to make an Aquaman film. The director is known for horror films such as Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, but in an interview Monday he emphasized how crucial humor is to his style as a filmmaker. He said he’s excited to “to actually show a really different, cool, badass side to this character … but at the same time, let’s not forget to have fun with it.” It’s an approach more comic-book movie directors would do well to emulate—at least for the sake of fans.

A Narrow Escape for Public-Sector Unions

The U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 in Friedrichs v. CTA on Tuesday, thwarting a legal challenge that labor activists feared would deal a crippling blow to public-sector unions throughout the country.

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” the justices wrote in a brief, unsigned ruling.

The case was closely watched not only because of the implications for organized labor, but also how the court would rule following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on February 13. Scalia was seen as likely to have ruled against the unions, and his death deprived the court’s conservatives of a tie-breaking fifth vote.

Tuesday’s deadlock means that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in favor of the teachers’ union will stand. But it also signaled that Justice Anthony Kennedy, who almost certainly joined Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on one side of the split, would be willing to overturn Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the decision that became the basis for public-employee contracts. (The Court did not disclose how each justice voted in today’s decision.) That tosses the precedent’s ultimate fate to the next justice who serves on the Court.

Rebecca Friedrichs and nine other California teachers who brought the suit argued the state’s agency-fee system violated the First Amendment by forcing them to subsidize political activities they don’t support. Under California labor law, public employees—teachers, police officers, firefighters, and so forth—vote to designate a union as their exclusive representative for collective-bargaining purposes. These employees can’t be forced to join a union, but many of them do. Those who do join pay dues to support the union’s activities, which range from collective bargaining itself to broader political advocacy.

Those who don’t join are still required to pay a smaller “agency fee,” also known as a fair-share fee, to the union to help fund its collective-bargaining functions. Unlike member dues, funds from the agency fees can’t be used for the union’s political purposes. The lesser fee helps avoid a free-rider problem where employees benefit from the union’s representation without paying to support it. Twenty-two other states and the District of Columbia have similar labor laws on the books.

The Supreme Court upheld agency fees in the 1977 decision in Abood and, theoretically, that would have been the end of Friedrichs. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the teachers’ union with a two-page opinion, describing the teachers’ case as “so insubstantial as to not require further argument.”

But a majority of justices indicated in 2014 they could be willing to overturn it, and granted certiorari to the Friedrichs plaintiffs when the case reached the Court. In Harris v. Quinn, a 5-4 case that struck down fair-share fees for home-health care providers in Illinois, the majority laid siege to Abood at length. Justice Samuel Alito and the other four conservatives criticized the 1977 case for purportedly misunderstanding the previous cases it cited as precedent, for failing to understand the differences between public- and private-sector unions, for practical administrative problems, for burdening public employees who don’t join a union, for shoddy statistical analysis, and for other perceived sins.

“The Abood Court’s analysis is questionable on several grounds,” Alito wrote for the Court. “Some of these were noted or apparent at or before the time of the decision, but several have become more evident and troubling in the years since then.” He and the other justices declined to overrule Abood, however, arguing instead that it didn’t apply in Harris at all.

The message was clear nonetheless. “Readers of today’s decision will know that Abood does not rank on the majority’s top-ten list of favorite precedents—and that the majority could not restrain itself from saying (and saying and saying) so,” Justice Elena Kagan replied in dissent. “Yet they will also know that the majority could not, even after receiving full-dress briefing and argument, come up with reasons anywhere near sufficient to reverse the decision.”

During oral arguments in Friedrichs, the court’s five conservative judges seemed poised to overturn Abood. The teachers made the expansive claim that all public-sector union activities, even negotiating health benefits and pay raises, are inherently political. Scalia seemed to embrace this point at oral arguments. “The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, almost by definition,” he told the advocates.

A decision that struck down agency fees would not deal a fatal blow to American organized labor, but it would leave a grievous wound. As my colleague Alana Semuels noted in January, states that ended the agency-fee system through legislative action saw declines in union membership, including in former labor strongholds like Michigan and Wisconsin. More than one-third of U.S. public-sector employees belong to a union.

The Shooting at the U.S. Capitol

Updated on March 28 at 4:56 p.m. ET

A gunman who drew and pointed a weapon at the Capitol Visitor Center’s northern screening facility was shot Monday, said Matthew R. Verderosa, the U.S. Capitol Police’s chief of police, prompting a lockdown of the Capitol Complex.

Verderosa called the incident the “act of a single person … and not more than a criminal act.”

The incident occurred at 2:39 p.m. ET, Verderosa said. The as-yet unidentified gunman, who the chief said was known to police through previous contact, was arrested and taken to hospital where he is undergoing surgery. His condition is unknown, Verderosa said, adding a weapon was recovered from the scene.  No charges have been filed yet, he said.

Multiple news organizations, including NBC and ABC, citing unidentified sources, named the alleged gunman as Larry Dawson of Tennessee. Dawson was previously arrested at the Capitol last October after he shouted “I'm a prophet of God” from the balcony of the U.S. House of Representatives.  

A female bystander, aged between 35 and 45, received minor injuries, the chief added. No officers were injured, he said, and it’s unclear how many officers fired at the gunman. News reports in the immediate aftermath of the incident suggested an officer had been shot.

Capitol Police, which is responsible for security in the Capitol complex, placed the complex on lockdown, citing a “potential security threat.” Staff inside the complex were told to shelter in place. The lockdown was lifted at 3:40 p.m. A shelter-in-place issued to those inside the building was also lifted. The Capitol was open for official business only, and the Capitol Visitors Center remained closed. It will reopen Tuesday, the chief said.

A vehicle with Tennessee plates believed to belong to the gunman was found near the Capitol grounds, Verderosa said. It will be seized with a warrant, he said.

Two Capitol Police officers were shot and killed in 1998 when a gunman opened fire at the Capitol building. The Capitol Visitor Center was meant to prevent such incidents from recurring.

“It appears the screening process works the way it’s supposed to,” the chief said.

The incident sparked chaos in the nation’s capital even though the House and Senate were on recess.

Like an exodus. Tourists being allowed to leave Capitol complex after shooting pic.twitter.com/XJwZfnHL3F

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) March 28, 2016

The U.S. Secret Service temporarily placed the White House on lockdown following the reports, according to reporters there. This is not unusual when there is a threat to a government building.

The Shooting at the Capitol Complex

A Capitol police officer has been shot and the shooter is in custody, news reports said.

BREAKING: Capitol officials say 1 Capitol police officer shot, not seriously, shooter in custody.

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 28, 2016

Capitol Police locked down the complex in response to what officers called a “potential security threat.” Staff inside the complex were told to shelter in place.

“If you are outside, seek cover,” said a notice sent to offices at the House of Representatives.

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

Uber’s Troubled Kenyan Expansion

Uber’s expansion in Kenya is being met with some of the same kinds of protests that greeted the ride-hailing service elsewhere in the world.

On March 23, an Uber taxi was burned in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the same day the service was launched in Mombasa, the country’s second-largest city.

The driver was directed into an alley by his passenger. He “sensed danger” when four men approached the car, Japheth Koome, Nairobi’s police commander, told reporters. The driver was able to escape without injury, but the car was burned. Nairobi’s police force is “determined to end this madness where people are maliciously attacking and damaging other people’s property,” Koome said.

Uber is in “open dialogue with authorities,” about the incident, Samantha Allenberg, an Uber spokeswoman, said.

“Any situation where driver or rider safety is put at risk is unacceptable to us,” she told Kenya’s Daily Nation. “Safety, reliability and choice, not violence, are what continue to draw people towards Uber’s driver-partners as well as alternative transportation service providers.”

The attack, the second of its kind in the past few weeks, continues Uber’s brief, but tense history in Kenya.

Uber drivers reported harassment in January 2015, when the company introduced the service in Nairobi. The app officially launched there last June, and since then there have been sporadic complaints, including smashed windows, and passengers being harassed while attempting to enter Ubers.

Mwangi Mubea, a spokesman for United Kenya Taxi Organization (UKTO), a lobbying group for taxi drivers, denied allegations that taxis drivers perpetrated these attacks.

“We cannot attack drivers who are employed just like us. In fact they worked with us before going to Uber. We have no problem with them,” Mubea said after an UKTO meeting. “Our only issue is the strategy used by their management to attract customers, which is driving us out of business.”

Under that strategy, Uber is registered as a technology company and therefore isn’t subject to government regulations, including taxation, that are demanded of a public-service provider in Kenya. The company does not pay the monthly fee required of taxi drivers. This business model, Quartz reports, contributes to Uber’s ability to provide a much cheaper service than local taxis.

Ashford Mwangi, another UKTO spokesman, said at a press conference those who want to become Uber drivers face other restrictions.

“First they demand the car to be almost new, making it hard for anyone who bought there taxi in 2009 to join them because we all cannot afford new cars,” he said.

UKTO wants President Uhuru Kenyatta to ban Uber, saying its members will otherwise paralyze Mombasa by blocking roads with their cars. Uber, the group said, “threatened the livelihood of 15,000 of” its members. It’s unclear if the ultimatum will have traction.

“We are in a liberalized environment and those who offer competitive services must be protected,” James Macharia, the minister of transport and infrastructure, said in a statement. “Uber operators and their clients will be protected.”

But Mwangi, the UKTO spokesman, points out that his group’s fight isn’t against ride-sharing companies, in general, but the way Uber operates in Kenya. Other ride-hailing apps that predate Uber have peacefully coexisted with taxis, he said.

“We have the likes of Maramoja and Easy Taxi apps working well within the industry simply because they involved stakeholders to determine rates,” he said. “So far, we have never had any issues with those apps for the two years they have been operational in Nairobi.”

Allenberg, the Uber spokeswoman, told  Nairobi’s Business Daily the company has been “engaging with taxi associations since last year to find a way that we can partner with them.

“We are happy that many taxi drivers are already using our technology to boost their incomes and we would welcome more who wish to join their colleagues,” she said.

Besides Mombasa, Uber also expanded last week to Abuja, the Nigerian capital. The company says it plans to use Nigeria and Kenya as “hubs of expansion,” to eventually launch the app in Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania. The service is now available in 400 cities globally, and Uber faces protests from taxi drivers worldwide.

South African Uber drivers are entangled in tensions similar to those in Kenya. Reports of threats and intimidation pushed the app to provide security for South African drivers. Earlier this year, taxi drivers in several French cities refused to drive, slowing traffic “to a crawl.”

Other governments have been more responsive to taxi drivers’ complaints. Rio de Janiero Mayor Eduardo Paes signed legislation, declaring the app “forbidden.”  Sao Paulo’s city council passed legislation barring Uber, though its mayor has yet to sign it into law. The South Korean government charged the app’s founder, Travis Kalanick, with operating an illegal taxi service in 2014.

Mwangi, the UKTO spokesman, insists the group’s fight isn’t with Uber.

“We are not at war and have no problem with Uber staying,” he said. “But the problem comes in because they have not strategized on accommodating local players.”

Georgia's Republican Governor Rejects a Religious-Freedom Bill

As an expansive religious-liberty bill moved through Georgia’s Republican-dominated state legislature this winter, Governor Nathan Deal found himself caught in a pitched battle over gay rights, with conservative evangelicals on one side and major corporations on the other.

On Monday, he sided with big business by announcing he would veto legislation that he said could lead to state-sanctioned discrimination against gay people. “I do not think we have to discriminate against anyone to protect the faith based community in Georgia of which my family and I are a part of for all of our lives,” Deal, a Republican, said at a news conference declaring his decision. “Our actions on H.B. 757 are not just about protecting the faith-based community or providing a business-friendly climate for job growth in Georgia. This is about the character of our State and the character of its people.”

He added:

Our cities and countryside are populated with people who worship God in a myriad of ways and in very diverse settings. Our people work side-by-side without regard to the color of our skin, or the religion we adhere to. We are working to make life better for our families and our communities. That is the character of Georgia. I intend to do my part to keep it that way.

The governor’s rejection of the bill is the latest twist in a war over religious liberty and gay rights that has played out in conservative states during the nine months since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Public outcries followed similar efforts last year in Indiana and Arkansas to pass legislation that would allow pastors and vendors to cite religious objections in denying services to gay couples.

The Georgia version, which was itself viewed as a compromise designed to win broader support, would not only have allowed faith-based groups to deny “social, educational, and charitable services” to people based on their religious beliefs—but in some cases, would also have preserved their right to fire people for the same reason. A corporate coalition that included Disney, Time Warner, and other major employers threatened to boycott the state if Deal signed the legislation into law. The NFL hinted the law could affect its decision to hold a future Super Bowl in Atlanta.

In announcing his veto, Deal acknowledged threats by interests on both sides, but he said they were not a determining factor in his decision.

Some of those in the religious community who support this bill have resorted to insults that question my moral convictions and my character. Some within the business community who oppose this bill have resorted to threats of withdrawing jobs from our state. I do not respond well to insults or threats. The people of Georgia deserve a leader who will made sound judgments based on solid reasons that are not inflamed by emotion. That is what I intend to do.

Deal was reelected to a second term as governor in 2014 and cannot run for a third, so electoral considerations may have been less of a factor for him than for other Republican governors facing similar decisions. He had criticized earlier versions of the religious-freedom proposal, so his veto was not entirely a surprise, although he announced his decision well in advance of a May 3rd deadline. The lengthy legislative process, which followed two earlier attempts in previous years to pass similar legislation, stood in contrast to last week’s much more rapid action by Republicans in North Carolina, who rushed through legislation that overturns state and local bans on discrimination against LGBT residents. Governor Pat McCrory quickly signed that bill into law.

Reaction to Deal’s veto fell along predictable ideological fault lines. Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, tweeted that he was “extremely disappointed” in Deal’s decision but said the legislature would try again next year and “override a veto if necessary.” Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based conservative activist, wrote that while Deal’s veto wasn’t surprising, it was “completely tone-deaf” to announce it the day after Easter. The Human Rights Campaign and business leaders like Microsoft President Brad Smith, on the other hand, cheered the move.

The State of Palmyra's Ruins

Syrian troops on Sunday regained Palmyra, and for the first time since May 2015, when ISIS took the city famed for its 2,000-year-old temples and Greco-Roman ruins, the extent of damage inside the UNESCO World Heritage Site became apparent.

“We were expecting the worst,” Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiquities chief, told Agence France-Presse. “But the landscape, in general, is in good shape.”

State media aired footage Sunday and Monday after troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian airstrikes, reclaimed Palmyra, killing about 450 militants.

“We could have completely lost Palmyra,” Abdulkarim said, adding, “The joy I feel is indescribable.”

The loss of  Palmyra, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, was one of ISIS’s biggest setbacks since the group declared itself a caliphate in 2014. The city’s architecture––Roman columns, temples, statues, massive funeral towers with carved reliefs––fused Roman and Syrian design in a style that set it apart as an important trade stop in the age of the Silk Road.

Before ISIS took the city last May, archaeologists covered the 2,000-year-old statue of the Lion of al-Lat with metal plates and sandbags, and even hid some artifacts. ISIS views reverence for these antiquities as idol worship, and the group bombed the famed statue, obliterated the Temple of Baalshamin, bombed the Temple of Bel, and dynamited the Arch of the Triumph, one of the city’s most treasured relics. Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, described the actions as “cultural cleansing.” ISIS also demanded that Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-year-old archaeologist who’d looked after sites for half his life, hand over secreted artifacts. When he refused, he was killed and his body strung up to a pole.

There remained little hope for the heritage site amid fears that if ISIS ever retreated, its militants would rig bombs to the ruins as they fled.

Over the weekend, state media and reports from those on the ground showed the city’s medieval citadel, which overlooks Palmyra atop a hill to the west, had indeed taken heavy shelling and damage, and some of its walls were blown away. But Palmyra’s Roman theater, its Agora, the walls of the Temple of Bel, and its gate, remained relatively undamaged, Abdulkarim wrote in an article for The Guardian.

The best news, he said, was that the 2-ton Lion of al-Lat ISIS blew up “could be put back together––we didn’t lose this great statue.”

Abdulkarim said he and other historians and archaeologists would travel to Palmyra to more deeply assess the damage, and to plan how they’ll restore the ancient ruins and sites. He said more than 2,500 people are working with him, and they’ll catalogue the rubble so experts can piece the temples and statues together. And where needed, they’ll quarry more limestone from nearby. Together, he wrote, they “will breathe life again into Palmyra.”

Ben Harper, Reluctant Protest Singer

Ben Harper has been handcuffed and forced to the ground, his face kissing the pavement, twice: once in the ’80s and again in the ’90s. In 1999, he was driving through Burbank, California, on his way to the studio when he spotted a helicopter. “God,” he remembers thinking, “that helicopter is really flying close to me.” He kept driving and the helicopter kept tailing him. He got off the freeway and encountered some roadblocks, which he navigated his way around, and pulled into the parking lot of Alpha Studios, where he was going to record a song called “Steal My Kisses” for Burn to Shine, his fourth album.

Immediately, as Harper recalls, “I’m freakin’ surrounded by no less than 20 cops and a helicopter, like, 15 feet above my head.” The police had gotten a call about a stolen truck. Which was blue. “My truck is gold. All right? Guns drawn, helicopter above, face down, cuffed. I said, Well, all you had to do was pull me over, all you had to do was run my license plate.”

J.P. Plunier, Harper’s producer (and childhood friend), was on his way to the same studio, driving in from Claremont. He turned on the radio for a traffic report and, as he hurtled closer to Burbank, heard that his exit was closed due to police activity. That’s when he saw the helicopter. When he finally got to the studio, Plunier learned, to his irritation, that his friend was late.

“So I went, got a cup of coffee, came back out, Ben pulls in, and all of a sudden the whole place is surrounded by police,” he says. “Ben was on the ground and cuffed.” The studio was bordered by a wall, perhaps 12 feet high. And on the wall were sharpshooters. It was, Plunier says, a situation that could have easily taken a bloody turn.

Thankfully, the police were quickly persuaded that Harper, rather than being a truck thief, was instead a victim of mistaken identify. Later that day, Harper says, “the police captain came down to apologize, literally hat in hand.”

“Steal My Kisses” would peak at #15 on the Billboard charts. But seven records and three Grammys later, Harper is not immune to harassment. Eight months ago, he and his wife were followed by police for several miles, until an officer drove up next to Harper’s car, saw his face, and left the couple alone. “It happens a lot,” he said. “I drive a Honda Odyssey minivan, man. If you’re coming after me at midnight and following me—who’s sober, stone sober—someone else is getting away.”

* * *

The burden of being a person of color in America—call it a melanin tax—is among the thematic strands of Call It What It Is, Harper’s 13th record, which comes out April 8. The title—and the album’s main track—grew out of a conversation he had a couple years ago at a skate park.

Harper, a lifelong skater, was at L.A.’s Stoner Park. A few days before, 18-year-old Michael Brown, black and unarmed, had been shot and killed by a white Ferguson police officer. Two days before that, Ezell Ford, age 25, had been fatally shot by the LAPD. It’s what everyone was talking about. The conversation turned to the long history of police brutality against African Americans in the U.S., with the younger skaters hopeful that cell-phone cameras might discourage future assaults.

Harper, who is 46, took a long view. “I’m the old man at the skate park. These kids weren’t around for Rodney King and probably didn’t research Watts and other riots that have happened around the country in the name of racial inequality,” he said. He told them stories, suggesting, gently, that cops have been beating black Americans in full view of cameras for a long, long time. As the discussion wound down, Harper told the kids how frustrated he was that the police shield didn’t permit honest terminology when it came to such assaults: “What frustrates me is that people just don’t call it what it is. I mean, it’s murder!”

Harper went home and, in one sitting, wrote a song.

They shot him in the back

Now it’s a crime to be black

So don’t act surprised

When it gets vandalized

Brown, Ford, and Trayvon Martin are all mentioned by name in “Call It What It Is.” This was to some extent arbitrary. Harper has been asked why he didn’t name, for example, Eric Garner, who died after being put in an illegal chokehold by an NYPD officer. “The other names are there,” he said, “whether I say them or not.”

* * *

Call It What It Is is unpredictable, lacking much cohesion, weird—and brilliant. It was recorded over the course of a year, with sessions sometimes happening months apart. I theorized to Harper that the record’s melodic, lyrical, and thematic inconsistency was related to the intervals between sessions, and he didn’t disagree. “Oftentimes what you are doing and what you think you are doing aren’t the same thing,” he said. He needed time in between sessions to let the recordings settle, to give himself some critical distance. He ended up with an album that tacks between the dark—images of the literal end of the world—and the light, with a girl carried aloft by a pink balloon. Call It What It Is is an exercise in getting jerked around; it’s an 11-track tilt-a-whirl.

“When Sex Was Dirty,” which kicks off the record, is upbeat and drum-driven, beer-soaked. It begins:

I remember when sex was dirty

And the air was clean

Harper grew up in Claremont, which is situated east of Los Angeles in a smoggy nexus of cars, geography, and industry. In the song, he remembers it before all this, in the ’70s and ’80s, when he was a kid. This was, he says, “when there were orange groves,” and sex “was not really in the conversation.”              

The song’s an ode to his old friends who know him best. To all the sons and daughters of the boulevard who learned to go without sleep and to hide all the scars.

“It’s for them, it’s for my closest friends who have survived and sustained through some of the harder periods of the human experience,” he said. “Now mind you, it’s not famine, it’s not a Third World situation, but it’s incredible how First World problems can quickly degrade into a significant level of despair.”

That despair permeates many of the songs on the record. “How Dark Is Gone” is inspired by a friend of Harper’s from Claremont; Dee was a few years older, another black kid in a town where there weren’t many. “I have vivid memories of sitting with him outside the front of my house on the rock wall,” he says. “Even though I was just a little grom, he always gave me an affirming nod and a kind word, seemingly as curious about me as I him.”

In the early ’80s, Dee was put in jail. In an attempt to escape, he tied some sheets together. The sheets slipped open and he fell to his death. Harper wasn’t terribly close to him, but his friends were. Said Harper: “To see them grieve and the stories that we all now tell, having coming up to the middle of our lives—it’s a song for us.”

“How Dark is Gone,” with its fast, aggressive strumming and thumping that recalls a club’s drenched and dirty floor, is effectively at odds with lyrics that deal meaningfully with getting old.



As life traces

The lines in our faces

I won’t look away

* * *

Ageing, in fact, seems to be among the record’s dominant obsessions, and it’s certainly present in  “All That Has Grown,” which is Call It What It Is’s literal midpoint. The song, a reflection on an enduring, not always placid relationship, evokes in the listener a serenity that, given what has preceded, feels well-earned. It offers a few minutes to catch our breath before the record flips over:

After the storm

And the skies are blue

After everything

We put each other through

The dust and the mud

Have become stone

After the storm

Just you and me on our own

“That song was at the end of the record for so long,” Harper said. But late in production it found its proper place.

And then, with “Pink Balloon,” the album reboots. It’s short (not even two and half minutes) and fast and loud, the story of a girl carrying a pink balloon. “It’s really an innocent song,” he said. His wife, Jaclyn Matfus, who isn’t a songwriter by trade, had awoken with the melody in her head, hummed it into her phone, and went back to sleep. Three months later, she got the nerve to play it for her husband.

“A lot of people bring me songs, so I’m not going to go easy on my wife,” he said. “You know, you got to have the goods.” She played it for him and scampered away. “Holy shit,” said Harper, “this is really good.” Matfus got a songwriting credit and, if you listen closely, you can hear her singing the hook.

* * *

Call It What It Is closes with the shimmering, lovely “Goodbye to You.” It’s the antithesis of “When Sex Was Dirty” and borders on a dirge.



I wake up feeling like I’ve aged a year

’Cause I go to sleep in fear of the dawn

Head full of dreams unclear

Make the days seem twice as long

After all we’ve been through

I don’t know how to say goodbye to you

The song was prompted, in part, by the death of Daryl “Chili” Charles, the father of Oliver Charles, Harper’s drummer. Chili was a busy session man for, among others, Taj Mahal, Harry Nilsson, Brian Wilson, and his son is now, improbably, the fifth generation of Charles drummers. But the song is also inspired by the Innocent Criminals themselves, the band with whom Harper recorded 1999’s Burn to Shine and 2007’s Lifeline.

Harper and the Innocent Criminals split in 2008. As tends to happen in collaborations, tensions had emerged, then grown. “I think by the time I threw my Borsalino hat on the stage and stomped it to a pancake, that was probably the sign of things changing,” he told me. This wasn’t a metaphor. He’d really stomped a hat. As Harper later explained it, the incident occurred during a 2007 concert in Memphis. (“I remember it well, as it was the day after my birthday,” he wrote by email. “The hat was magnificent.”) The band had suffered from Harper’s tendency to be a workaholic; too many rehearsals, too many sound checks, too many shows.

“We’ve all had to say goodbye to so much in our lives,” said Harper.  In a way, the band is singing a lament about itself.

The break-up was rough. Most of the Innocent Criminals—Juan Nelson, Leon Mobley, Oliver Charles, Jason Yates, and Michael Ward—had been playing with Harper since the ’90s. A two-year radio silence followed, then, gradually, communication resumed. They all began, as Harper puts it, “ramping up, reconnecting, and individually and collectively processing why it went down the way it did, how it went down the way it did, and gaining an understanding of each other’s perspectives.”

The band began to meet for group dinners. After a while, they decided to try making music together again. Harper didn’t know what to expect, of himself or the band, so he booked only a week of studio time. But the inaugural session went well. It was the same band, but a different sound.

“From the time that we’ve been a band and friends, which is decades now—I mean, through the ’90s, 2000s, 2010s—we’ve all had to say goodbye to so much in our lives,” said Harper. In a way, the band is singing a lament about itself.

* * *

For Harper, “Call It What It Is,” that song that was aching to be written, recalls “Like a King,” which he wrote in 1993, and which appeared the next year on his first record. It begins:

Well Martin’s dream

Has become Rodney’s worst

Nightmare

Can’t walk the streets

To them we are fair game

Our lives don’t mean a thing

It upsets Harper that, after all these years, he can’t get away from it. Racism remains too systemic to completely move on to sunnier topics. Mavis Staples—for whom he recently wrote a song—puts it this way: “I look at the world today, and it hurts me to know what we went through and it’s still not fixed.” Until it is, she and Harper are, to some degree, stuck.

“I’d rather,” Harper said, “be writing love songs.”