Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 244

A Suspension for Melissa Click

Just days after being charged with assault, Melissa Click, the University of Missouri assistant professor of communications who tried to kick student journalists out of a protest in November, has been suspended by the University.

Following a special board meeting Thursday, the University of Missouri Board of Curators declared Click “suspended pending further investigation.” The board didn’t indicate whether she will be paid or not during her suspension. On Monday, Click was charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor to which she has pleaded not guilty.

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The Prosecution of Melissa Click

The suspension and charges are both delayed fallout from Click’s actions during the race-related protests at Mizzou in November. Click angered free-speech proponents nationwide when she was filmed telling student journalists to stop documenting a demonstration at the Columbia campus on November 9—the same day the president of the university system and the chancellor of the Columbia campus stepped down. A video shows a debate between student protesters and journalists over First Amendment rights escalating when Click calls for “some muscle” to remove student videographer Mark Schierbecker.

After Schierbecker posted the video online, Click recieved a mountain of angry email, and her “courtesy” affiliation at Mizzou’s school of journalism was revoked. In December, a group of state Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to the university asking that she be fired. In response, a group of more than 100 faculty members wrote a letter supporting her, calling the video “at most a regrettable mistake.”

Just Monday, interim Chancellor Hank Foley said the university would “allow due process to play out" and not rush to a decision regarding Click’s employment or tenure status. At the time, Schierbecker told the AP he was “disappointed” by the announcement.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Click is due in court in February. Meanwhile, student protests against racial insensitivity on campus inspired by those at Mizzou are happening across the country.

Sundance 2016: One Huge Hit, Two New Players, and a Flatulent Corpse

The Sundance Film Festival occupies a curious spot in the Hollywood timetable. It falls just before the Oscars, but is attended largely by critics and industry insiders who are already looking to set the narrative for the next year’s race. Even by those standards, though, the buzz from this year’s festival felt serendipitously timed, given that the most-talked-about film was easily The Birth of a Nation, a depiction of an 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. Also noteworthy: the presence of Netflix and Amazon, whose aggressive bidding indicated a sea change in the world of indie-film distribution.

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The Power of the Sundance Brand

The Birth of a Nation was made by the actor and first-time filmmaker Nate Parker, who stars as Turner, and its labored development echoed the ongoing discussion about how difficult it is for black filmmakers to break out in Hollywood. An intense bidding war ended with Fox Searchlight paying a record $17.5 million for the rights to distribute it. Is this a classic case of “festival fever,” where hit Sundance movies disappear in wide release after their buzz has dissipated? Or is it the beginning of a larger shift in Hollywood thinking after the meaningful furor around #OscarsSoWhite?

Parker, best known for his performances in films like Beyond the Lights and Red Tails, began writing a screenplay for a Nat Turner film in 2009 and eventually took a break from acting to make it himself, scraping together a $10 million budget and shooting the film in 27 days. Parker told the The Hollywood Reporter that he’d been “frustrated” with the roles that came his way as an actor, and that while developing The Birth of a Nation (the title is a knowing reference to D.W. Griffith’s landmark, but deeply racist 1915 work of silent cinema) he was frequently told it would be unmarketable to a wide audience.

“Resistance lives in the air in this current moment,” Parker said. “Anyone who sees this film should leave the theater and feel compelled to be a change factor with respect to relations that are taking place in this country. But also, they should be proud to be an American. This country was built on rebellion.” At a Q&A session after the film’s Sundance screening, Parker added, “I think anytime we’re dealing with our history, specifically with slavery, I find that it has been desperately sanitized. There's a resistance to dealing with this material.”

His isn’t the only film making waves at Sundance this year, but if it proves to be a success, it may break the mold of the typical festival hit—small-budget, quirky indie movies that find favor with Oscar voters. From Little Miss Sunshine to Beasts of the Southern Wild to In the Bedroom, Sundance usually produces at least one or two memorable film a year, but rarely on scale with of The Birth of a Nation, which apparently draws from epics like Braveheart.

If The Birth of a Nation proves to be a success, it may break the mold of the typical festival hit.

Other big hits out of the festival, which draws to a close on Sunday, were more along the usual Sundance lines. Manchester by the Sea, a new film from the Oscar-nominated director and playwright Kenneth Lonergan, sparked a bidding war that was eventually won by Amazon for $10 million. Starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, and Kyle Chandler, the film is said to be a quiet meditation on grief and family, a specialty of Lonergan’s (whose previous films were You Can Count on Me and Margaret).

Amazon’s blockbuster acquisition capped a busy festival for streaming networks seeking to bolster their libraries of original films. But one hurdle the Internet-based services still face is the skepticism around their films not getting a wide theatrical release, partly because of cinemas’ resistance to the encroaching reach of home entertainment. Beasts of No Nation, Netflix’s first major film, grossed nothing in theaters and was passed over by the Oscars despite early acclaim. Netflix reportedly bid $20 million for The Birth of a Nation and lost out to a lower bid, perhaps as a result of the lingering stigma.

Other offerings this year included Whit Stillman’s film Love & Friendship, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan (acquired by Amazon); Tallulah, a well-received dramedy starring Ellen Page as a single mother (which went to Netflix); Weiner, a documentary about the disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner (bought by IFC and Showtime); a female-led Wall Street drama starring Anna Gunn called Equity (Sony); and a gentle comedy called Morris From America about a black family moving to a predominantly white city in Germany (which went to the indie powerhouse A24).

You also may have read about a film called Swiss Army Man, simultaneously praised and reviled by critics, which features Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse and Paul Dano as someone stranded on an island who uses Radcliffe’s magically flatulent body to escape, as some sort of fleshy jet-ski. It’s been called “ridiculously infantile” and lauded for its “tremendous imagination,” but as with so many films from Sundance, it may fade on arrival in theaters. Forgettable farces from the past like Hamlet 2 and Happy, Texas, which were acquired for millions and bombed on release, linger as a warning for overzealous distributors. But if anything, this infusion of original features—from stirring historical dramas to farting-corpse comedies—should at least stand out in a release calendar otherwise dominated by franchises, reboots, and superheroes.

Lyft Drivers Still Aren't Employees, but What About Uber Drivers?

The on-demand car-sharing company Lyft has agreed to a settlement in a lawsuit brought by drivers in California who sought to be classified as employees rather than independent contractors. Under the agreement, Lyft will provide some additional driver benefits while still withholding employee status. The settlement, filed late on Tuesday, provides an interesting light in which to consider the similar-class action lawsuit against Lyft competitor Uber scheduled to go to court in June.

The Lyft settlement includes $12.25 million in damages for drivers in California, which will be paid out in proportion to how much time each driver has spent driving for Lyft in the state. The settlement also provides various changes to the terms of service. Lyft will no longer be able to fire drivers at will, and drivers will be able to contest deactivation and pay issues through arbitration, at Lyft’s expense. The settlement still needs to be approved by a federal judge.

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In the Sharing Economy, No One's an Employee

“We are pleased to have resolved this matter on terms that preserve the flexibility of drivers to control when, where and for how long they drive on the platform,” Lyft general counsel Kristin Sverchek said in a statement. Liss-Riordan also celebrated the agreement, telling Wired, “We believe this is a fair settlement and adequate resolution of the claims we brought, given the risks we faced in the litigation against Lyft.”

The “risks” are the result of an arbitration clause in Lyft’s driver contracts—which effectively . While Lyft managed to enforce this clause in a previous case, Uber has not. Liss-Riordan is also representing the Uber drivers in their case scheduled to go to trial in June. A profile in Fusion notes that she’s a rock star in the land of protection against worker misclassification. “Harold Lichten, Liss-Riordan’s law firm partner, describes her as ‘a pit bull with a chihuahua in her mouth’ when it comes to suing on-demand start-ups,” Kashmir Hill writes.

At issue for both of these companies is the “1099 economy”—a large workforce of independent contractors who are crucial to the structure of the sharing economy. Classifying workers as contractors is a boon for the companies but hard on workers because, as Gillian White reported in June, employee status entitles a worker to a broad range of legal protections. Independent contractors are not entitled to minimum wage, overtime, health insurance, workers’ compensation, unemployment, proof of employment, or lower taxes. They also have to pay for on-the-job costs—in the case of Uber and Lyft, for example, gas and car maintenance.

Classifying workers as employees is definitely more expensive for a company, but advocates argue that companies like Uber, with a $62 billion valuation, can afford to treat workers fairly. Liss-Riordan has argued that companies that can’t afford this probably shouldn’t exist. Uber, meanwhile, argues that the independent contractor system is actually good for workers as it allows them flexibility that a 9-to-5 would not.

So what does the Lyft settlement mean for the upcoming Uber case? The fact that the Uber case is headed to trial is another significant difference between it and this Lyft settlement. While the companies are very similar in terms of the service they deliver, the stakes in this issue are higher for Uber. Both companies hold financial details close to the vest, which makes direct comparison difficult, but there is agreement that Uber holds a greater market share in the industry. More drivers in more cities means more potential liability for Uber.

Liss-Riordan has hinted that she will work to prove qualitative differences between the two companies when it comes to treatment of workers. “We have not been hearing so many concerns from Lyft drivers, which leads us to believe that Lyft is treating its drivers with more respect than Uber is treating its drivers,” . As Quartz points out, this distinction might be persuasive to a jury, especially given unflattering coverage of Uber’s recruitment strategies and cases where drivers have been accused of assault.

Playing Paris Like a Game

I have never been to Paris. In my provincial life, I’ve never even left the United States. Despite or perhaps because of my localism, I was beguiled by the vision of the city given by Luc Sante in his 2015 book The Other Paris. Sante provides an underground history of the city, of its crime and prostitution, its low-wage work and lowbrow entertainments, its intoxications and insurrections.

Beyond tales of murderous gangsters and wayward streetwalkers, what really comes across in The Other Paris is Sante’s deep mourning for the lost topography of the city. The book hinges on the two waves of urban reform (one in the 1850s, the other in the 1960s) that sanitized the city, spawning “monolithic high rises with all the charm of industrial air-conditioning units.” Paris’s warrens of alleys and passages, too, became networks of over-planned boulevards.

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Sante clearly has a deep appreciation for a Paris-based movement called the Lettrists. They were a Marx-inclined offshoot of the Surrealists, active in the 1940s and ‘50s. Sante characterizes the intellectual project of Guy Debord, the Lettrists’ ostensible leader, as “serious dissipation, seriously intended and seriously pursued, which combined pleasure, poverty, chance, sex, disputation, wandering, and the self-conscious theatre of youth.” The Lettrists’ central practice was the dérive, or drift, which took the form of extended wanderings through the streets of Paris to chart the “psychogeography” of the city. They divided Paris up into “ambiance units” which, due to subjective factors like “an effect of light and shadow or an imbalance of scale or a pattern of commerce,” seemed to leave a fleeting emotional trace. The Lettrists wanted to open themselves up to all the contingencies and chances that made such an emotional trace perceptible; in essence, to become expert players of Paris as a kind of game.

By chance, I happened to be reading The Other Paris at the same time as I was playing Fallout 4. In doing so, the bearing that the Lettrists’ ideas have on open-world gaming became clear.

Open-world games are, on one level, founded on a principle of dérive, of wandering and soaking up the variety of their landscapes. Playing Fallout 4, I spent the majority of a couple of days touring the vicinity of the Commonwealth crater, for no particular end beyond experiencing the psychogeography of that noxious and shattered landscape. The whole game is constructed out of Lettrist-esque “ambiance units”: the light-choking alleyways of the Boston Conflict Zone; the Commons, with the light off Swan’s Pond and the shadow of Trinity Tower; the gouged and barren countryside, which I remember as a succession of broken roads and stark branches against a hazy sky. Though these landscapes are all variations on a theme of apocalyptic menace, the emotional diversity of that menace is crucial to the success of the game.

My cousin once did a playthrough of Red Dead Redemption with both the navigational mini-map and the fast-travel option turned off. He said it forced him to keep his eyes open to signs and landmarks, to remember pathways from one town to the next, and sometimes to drift about in search of activity. Open-world games, at their best, thrive on this openness to accident, this marshalling of a player’s powers of observation and memory.

Sometimes I wonder why I play games at all, when the world itself is so full of menace and risk, beauty and grace.

But open-world games also suffer from a creeping instrumentalism, a tendency to view aspects of the game as means to an end. Each beautifully rendered landscape is just another game level to pass. Each carefully art-designed object is just another stat-enhancer. Fallout 4’s Nick Valentine, an android fiercely struggling with his own almost-humanness, is just another glowing arrow showing players where to stand to trigger a mission.

The struggle here is between two meanings of the word “game,” a specific one and a general one. In the specific meaning of “game” there is a codified set of rules and objectives that designates a field of play. But in the general meaning of “game” there’s a radical celebration of frivolity and human freedom, of the wide-open vistas of life. This second meaning is the one that Sante embraces when he implies that the Lettrist dérive through Paris was a sort of game. These two visions of “game” are very close to Sante’s two visions of Paris: one a capital of planning and administration, the other a riot of independence and abandon. While I would never be so bold as to say that open-world games should abandon stats and objectives and structures, I believe that they reach their full potential when an ethic of freedom and chance is taken as a lodestone.

Michael Silverblatt, the host of the literary public radio show Bookworm, quotes author William Gass, saying that Gass “thought that the job of a writer was to wean his audience from stories and to return them to the love of the world, the things of the world, its details, its nature, human nature.” As with literature, as with any art, I think games can achieve this self-transcendence too. I’m always fascinated by the way I feel upon going back out into the world after a prolonged session with a game. Sometimes this feeling is very dark, like after playing too much Grand Theft Auto, when every passerby looks like a mark or a victim. But sometimes the feeling is sublime, like how playing The Witcher 3 makes me more alive to the wavering of trees in a storm and the varieties of sunsets. Sometimes I wonder why I play games at all, when the world itself is so full of menace and risk, beauty and grace.

Maybe this is all just an elaborate way of saying that I should put down the controller and go to Paris, and see what I can see.

Will the Government Finally End the Tyranny of Cable Boxes?

Cable boxes deserve the scorn of any television-loving American: They’re ugly, they’re heavy, and they’re expensive. And when they don’t work, it’s a pain to get them fixed.

Last year, a U.S. senate study estimated that Americans spend $19.5 billion just renting boxes from cable providers every year—about $231 per household, on average. Worse, people who try to save money by buying one up front often report running into nightmares of technology logistics. The lack of innovation in the cable-box industry has made them a product of the past that’s generally a pain to deal with.

But now, it seems that things might change for the better: Next month, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on a proposal that would, in its words, “tear down anti-competitive barriers” and let customers access cable through devices other than cable set-top boxes. If passed, it’d allow viewers to access cable directly through third-party devices or apps—perhaps ones made by Google, Apple, Tivo, or Roku.

The proposal was laid out by Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the FCC in an op-ed on Re/Code published midday Wednesday. He elaborated on his reasoning: “The proposal is about one thing: consumer choice. You should have options that competition provides. It’s time to unlock the set-top box market—let’s let innovators create, and then let consumers choose.” He notes that the current regulation is “woefully out of date and based on 20-year-old technology.”

Wheeler really does have a point about a lack of competition in the industry. The FCC has noted that while computer, television, and mobile-phone prices have dropped by 90 percent in the last two decades, the cost of set-top boxes rose 185 percent during that time.

Unsurprisingly, traditional cable companies are not excited about any proposal that seeks to reduce those costs. Instead, they have been pushing a different proposal whereby cable providers would provide an app—the same way Netflix or Hulu works—but maintain control over cable access. (There’s also a little bit of vagueness about what the proposal would specifically change, as it only indicates that “FCC is proposing is to allow consumers alternative means of accessing the content they pay for.”)

No matter what, cable companies are going to put up a fight, as they stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue over set-top rentals. The Wall Street Journal reports that “more than 40 telecommunications, media, and other groups are expected to announce a coalition as soon as Wednesday to oppose Mr. Wheeler’s anticipated plan.” On top of that, Wheeler is on a tight timeline to pass the proposal, as it’s an election year and the next president is expected to appoint new FCC leadership.

A Dramatic Turn in the Oregon Standoff: Eight Arrests and a Death

Updated January 27 at 2:33 p.m.

For three weeks, a ragtag militia led by Ammon Bundy has illegally occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. And for three weeks, residents and federal officials have worried about the potential for violence to break out, and wondered how the stalemate might be resolved. Suddenly, there’s intense movement to end the occupation.

On Tuesday, eight people were arrested in connection with the occupation, including Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan. One man, the militia spokesman LaVoy Finicum, was killed in a shootout with police. Officials have now tightened roadblocks around the refuge and during a press conference Wednesday signaled their intention to bring the occupation to an end as quickly as possible.

“I would say the armed occupiers have been given ample opportunity to leave the refuge peacefully,” said Greg Bretzing, the FBI agent in charge of Oregon. “They have been given opportunities to negotiate. As outsiders to Oregon, they have been given the opportunity to return to their families and work through the normal legal process to air grievances. They have chosen to threaten and intimidate the America they profess to love.”

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The arrests and death happened Tuesday afternoon, when Oregon State Police and the FBI officers intercepted several militia members, including Finicum and the Bundys, on Highway 395 around 4:25 p.m. The group were on their way from the refuge to the town of John Day, about 100 miles away, for a meeting. Law-enforcement officials have not provided details on what happened next, but The Oregonian reports that the group resisted arrest, and shots were fired. It’s not clear who shot first.

“I’m disappointed that a traffic stop that was supposed to bring a peaceful resolution to this ended poorly,” an emotional Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward said Wednesday. The various law-enforcement agencies involved developed “the best tactical plan they could to bring these guys down peacefully. It didn’t have to happen. We all make choices in life. Sometimes our choices go bad.”

Authorities say one other person, who is reported to be Ryan Bundy, sustained non-life-threatening injuries. In addition to Ammon and Ryan Bundy, those arrested on the highway include Shawna Cox, Ryan Waylen Payne, and Brian Cavalier. Peter Santilli and Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy were arrested later in Burns, while Jon Ritzheimer surrendered in Arizona. All of them face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats. The charge carries a fine or a maximum of six years in prison. Several have been booked into the Multnomah County jail in Portland.

“It didn’t have to happen. We all make choices in life. Sometimes our choices go bad.”

The militia members represent a range of causes, but the central animating spirit of their protest is opposition to the federal government’s control of land in the western United States. The occupation was inspired by the conviction of Dwight and Steven Hammond for arson on federal land, though the Hammonds said they do not support the Bundy gang. The Bundys’ father, Cliven, conducted a lengthy standoff in Nevada with federal officials from the Bureau of Land Management in 2014, after Cliven Bundy refused to pay fees owed to the government for grazing his cattle on public land.

“Some of these folks have spent a lot of time in town, trying to stir some issues in the community,” a visibly emotional Ward said Wednesday. “If it was simple as waiting out some folks in some buildings, we could have waited a lot longer. But this has been tearing our community apart.”

Finicum, 55, had become a spokesman for the group occupying the refuge. He was also present for the 2014 Nevada standoff. Finicum had previously said he’d rather die than be arrested. “My dad was such a good good man, through and through," his daughter, Arianna Finicum Brown, told The Oregonian. “He would never ever want to hurt somebody, but he does believe in defending freedom and he knew the risks involved.” He was wanted by police. Although multiple sources, including family, have identified him as the deceased, police did not yet offer a confirmation Wednesday.

Finicum seemed to foretell the dramatic events on Tuesday during an interview on Monday. “They're doing all the things that shows that they want to take some kinetic action against us,” he said.

Ritzheimer had gained national attention for a pair of videos. In the first, he filmed himself explaining to his daughters why he was away for the holidays, saying, “Daddy swore an oath.” In a second, he complained about people sending sex toys to the refuge as a gag.

While making clear that their occupation was illegal and that they would be prosecuted, the FBI had kept a low profile, sitting back to wait out the occupiers. But patience had started to wear thin among Oregonians. Although many locals share the Bundy gang’s antipathy toward federal control, the community overwhelmingly opposed the occupation, which had disrupted their lives and brought scores of gun-toting outsiders to town. Local officials had repeatedly asked the militia to leave. Last week, Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, sent a letter to FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch imploring them to end the standoff as quickly as possible.

“This can’t happen anymore. This can’t happen in America, and it can’t happen in Harney County.”

A meeting between Ammon Bundy and the FBI was canceled on Friday amid a dispute over how to conduct the meeting: Bundy wanted the press to be present, while the FBI wanted to meet privately. One militia member posted a video showing Bundy talking to an FBI negotiator on Tuesday.

Finicum’s death adds a sad note to a story of piracy, illegal seizure, and futility. Federal officials had hoped to avoid violence in resolving the standoff, haunted by public backlash to the 1990s incidents at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Yet the Bundy gang’s seizure was unlawful, and its demands were clearly unrealistic: “It needs to be very clear that these buildings will never, ever return to the federal government,” Finicum told The Washington Post this month.

Even with its leaders arrested, there was no indication that the militia was ready to leave the refuge. While occupiers had come and gone freely throughout the standoff, police have now used roadblocks to seal off the refuge. During Wednesday’s news conference, they said that anyone who wanted to leave could still leave through checkpoints where they would be identified, and invited them to speak to an FBI negotiator if they had other questions. They also promised residents that they would work to bring the standoff to a peaceful solution. But they made clear that they were done tolerating the standoff.

“If we have issues with the way things are going in our government, we have a responsibility as citizens to act on those in an appropriate manner. We don’t arm up and rebel,” Ward said. “This can’t happen anymore. This can’t happen in America, and it can’t happen in Harney County.”

Who’s Covering Up the Italian Statue Cover-Up?

Offense, annoyance, and accusations of “cultural submission” rippled across Italy after naked Roman statues were covered up during a state visit to the Capitoline Museums by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

“Plywood boxes and panels were placed around the objects to obscure them from the Iranian president’s vision, or at least in photo-ops,” Ishaan Tharoor reported Tuesday. “Rome’s nude statues covered to spare Rouhani’s blushes,” read one headline chronicling the incident.

The backlash gathered on social media where many Italians used the hashtag #statuenude to tweet pictures of, well, nude statues in protest. One representative remark: “When in #Rome, do as the #Persian do.” The incident inspired both satire and screed outside of Italy as well.

If they covered nude statues for Rouhani, will they strip some statues for the Italian PM if he visits Iran out of respect for his culture?

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) January 26, 2016

Labeling the episode “Italy’s shambolic appeasement of Islamism,” Nervana Mahmoud posed a rhetorical question: “Should a sovereign non-Muslim nation sacrifice its historical legacy to please foreign dignitaries?”

The answer is simply no. There should be a line of demarcation between hospitality and cultural appeasement. It is alarming that the Italian PM fails to understand the difference, and how his seemingly benign gesture has more troubling implications. Does the Italian PM understand that his gesture will be interpreted in Iran and among other Islamist groups as the West bowing down to them and their beliefs? How can Italy or other Western nations expect Iran to be a partner against ISIS, while Iran shares a basic common value with ISIS—the rejection of art and Western values?

Others yet pointed out that nude statues had similarly been covered up in Italy before without inspiring controversy or comment.

One day after the flap, an even bigger question remains: Who is covering up the cover-up? Both Iranian and Italian officials deny having requested the move for modesty.

“I think there easily would have been other ways to not offend an important foreign guest without this incomprehensible choice of covering up the statues,” Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini told reporters, adding that neither he nor Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had anything to do with it.

One politician for Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party claims that the Capitoline superintendents covered the statues at the request of the prime minister. According to reports, an inquiry was subsequently ordered by the general secretary of Renzi’s office.

Rouhani also said he didn’t make the request, although he did express some appreciation to his hosts. “I know that Italians are a very hospitable people, a people who try to do the most to put their guests at ease, and I thank you for this,” he said.

Rouhani then departed for France, where a high-level dinner between French and Iranian officials was canceled in November after Iran reportedly demanded that wine not be served.

How Rihanna's ‘Work’ Works

Rihanna offered her mission statement way back on T.I.’s smash “Live Your Life” in 2008, a time when her place in the pop firmament was just being cemented. “Got my mind on my money, and I’m not going awayyyyy,” she sang, giving us her entire career: In the Snoop Dogg reference, her hip-hop sensibility; in the elongated final word, her tendency to use words as putty; in the promise of longevity, a prophecy now fulfilled. Most important, though, was the confession of being obsessed with dollars, which over the years has seemed like her main neurosis, her main message, and her main virtue. If pop music today is mythology, Rihanna is unmistakably the goddess of money.

The long and confusing hype cycle for her new album, Anti, has taken this cash craze to new levels. There was “Bitch Better Have My Money,” about debt repayment. There was “American Oxygen,” about material ambition. There was “Four Five Seconds,” about the necessity for leisure to be undertaken only in the capitalistically proscribed zone between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. There was the Samsung tie-in, as unapologetic a corporate partnership as a major working musician has ever attempted. Days ago, Rihanna took a picture of herself listening to the new album in $9,000 Versailles-inspired headphones.

And now, there’s her hugely anticipated single titled “Work.” It’s about working for a paycheck no matter what else is going on in your life. It is also, of course, designed to get her that paycheck. You might call the way it goes about attaining this goal brazen for anyone else but Rihanna: Tempting accusations of boringness, hackiness, and crimes against art, the song offers a hook that practically parodies pop’s love of repetition—and then repeats it, a lot. But there’s something fascinating about the tune, something that elevates it beyond ringtone status. It doesn’t really go anywhere. It approximates what work feels like.

The producer Boi-1da’s bright, bubbly beat creates a see-sawing sensation out of a few sounds. A keyboard ping anchors the downbeat and then climbs up, up, down, down, returning to its starting point. Electronic notes on the low end burble out a more asymmetrical pattern recalling reggae, but they too have the general shape of ascending and descending. The percussion is subtle, rendered with a skittering sound that recalls the shaking of a kettle. When Rihanna’s voice comes in, so do some signifiers of ’80s and ’90s dance and rap: digital handclaps, distorted shouting. It all adds up to the feeling of a lot of bustling in one spot—activity, but not necessarily movement.

Rihanna’s hook conjures a different kind of monotony. After a few quick notes in yet another up-and-back pattern, she gets stuck, like a needle in a groove, for “work work work work work.” There’s no stopping this getting in your head. “Work” becomes “dirt” becomes “love” becomes “turn,” but the modulations don’t matter—Rihanna has found her next great nonsense syllable, another “ooh na na” or “ella ella eh.” Her singing in the verses, where she dresses down some guy who isn’t meeting her expectations, is actually rather pretty. I’ve seen a lot of commenters say she’s copying the mumbling trend that’s taken hold among younger pop vocalists like Ariana Grande, but the truth is that Rihanna helped popularize the notion of liquifying words in the name of catchiness.

Rihanna has found her next great nonsense syllable, another “ooh na na” or “ella ella eh.”

As for Drake’s verse, it strikes me as pretty terrible—the disappointed lounge singer schtick from “Hotline Bling,” but without the silken melody or sense of surprise. “If you had a twin I would still choose you” is the only real attempt at a memorable line. Whatever. Drake being as popular as he is right now will be yet another incentive for radio playlist makers to keep this song in rotation, possibly giving it the activating energy needed to become a hit.

And to be sure, it will need a good deal of exposure to reach the success levels of Rihanna’s previous smashes. The song’s undeniably catchy, but it also has a strangely unfinished quality. To me, though, that’s its charm. The verses, choruses, and bridge mostly bleed into each other, forgoing soft-to-loud explosions or exciting rhythmic changes. Boi-1da does create some sense of escalation—another drum beat for the second chorus, flashes of flutes, autotuned harmonies, and far-off piano. But the shifts are subtle and fleeting. Unlike a lot of radio pop, “Work” is about small modulations, a singer and a producer and a rapper plugging along as we all must do. At the end, the song makes the unfashionable move of simply fading out. Rihanna put in her three and a half minutes of work; now pay her what you owe her.

Donald Trump Goes to War With Fox

What happens when an unstoppable presidential candidate hits an immovable television network? For now, the result is that Donald Trump is boycotting Thursday night’s Republican debate, the final meeting between the candidates before Iowans caucus on Monday.

It’s the climax of a bizarre confrontation between the candidate and the dominant conservative news outlet. The first debate the network hosted involved some tense moments between Trump and Megyn Kelly, one of Fox’s premier personalities. The aftermath was much uglier, with Trump making comments about Kelly that were acknowledged as misogynistic by pretty much everyone except, well, Trump.

Fox announced that Kelly would be moderating Thursday’s debate, too, and Trump started making noises about a boycott. On Tuesday, he posted a cryptic video on Instagram:

Should I do the #GOPdebate?

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 26, 2016 at 10:04am PST

Fox responded by mocking Trump: “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president—a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

That was too much for Trump, who announced his intention to skip the debate. Since then, the two sides have engaged in continuing skirmishes. Trump called the ayatollah statement “a disgrace to good broadcasting and journalism. Who would ever say something so nasty & dumb.” Fox accused Trump’s campaign of threatening Kelly. Trump called Kelly a bimbo, while claiming he wouldn’t. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz—who’s been engaged in a tense struggle with his old pal Trump for dominance in Iowa—piped up to challenge Trump to an alternate, “mano-a-mano” debate.

In short, it’s a big, absurd circus of performative masculinity, complete with accusations of cowardice, misogynistic commentary, and an unstoppable cycle of escalation leading to a position that hardly seems ideal for either side: Trump is rolling the dice by walking away, while Fox doesn’t get the No. 1 public attraction in every debate so far to appear on the stage.

Anyone who confidently predicts how this will shake out is either bluffing or employed by Trump or Fox. If Fox manages to get one up on Trump, it’d be a huge victory. Trump has consistently managed to marginalize conservative media outlets throughout the campaign, including, to a certain extent, Fox. If it wins here, it will cement the network’s dominance by showing they can win where other right-wing outlets and leaders have failed. For Trump, meanwhile, the danger seems clear enough: Doesn’t he look like a quitter for walking away? Well, maybe, but perhaps he’s just showing what a tough negotiator he is, willing to turn his back. It has been consistently hard to predict what might hurt or help Trump.

With less than two days before the debate, it’s clear that neither side can back down without a serious blow to their hard-won machismo. Unless, of course they can. This isn’t the first time Trump and Fox have feuded. After that first debate in August, Trump swore he wouldn’t appear on Fox again because he felt he was treated unfairly. Within days, he spoke with Roger Ailes, Fox’s chairman, and they made up. They had another blowup in September, then met again to iron that one out.

The political ramifications of this feud matter to both Fox and to Trump, for whom the results in Iowa and New Hampshire could either pave a path to the nomination or quickly and ignominiously deflate his bubble. But who cares about the politics? Ailes and Trump are both show-biz whizzes at heart, and this is great entertainment.

Bernie Sanders Bids for Jewish History

You wouldn’t know it from listening to his speeches, but Bernie Sanders is on the verge of making political history.

If the Vermont senator defeats Hillary Clinton in either Iowa or New Hampshire in the next two weeks, he’ll become the first Jewish candidate to win a nominating contest in either major party. The milestone is both significant and overlooked, in part because Sanders talks so little about his faith and, well, because there’s that other candidate trying to break a glass ceiling in 2016.

In many ways, it’s the lack of attention to Sanders’s Judaism that Jewish leaders find most exciting. “It’s the most wonderful anti-climax in American Jewish history,” said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “You have a guy who is from New York with a Brooklyn accent named Bernie who is a viable presidential candidate and nobody is discussing it, which to me is just a remarkable statement of the success of the American Jewish community to be fully integrated and distinct at the same time.”

The last serious Jewish presidential contender was Joe Lieberman in 2004, who sought the top job after serving as Al Gore’s running mate four years earlier. Lieberman never caught fire with Democratic primary voters and dropped out after failing to win a primary, a caucus, or even a single delegate. Yet Lieberman’s Judaism was a major part of his political identity. He was closely associated with Jewish causes and his staunch support of Israel, talked openly about his faith, and didn’t campaign on the Sabbath.

“I don’t think that the leadership of the Jewish community views him as one of their own in the way that they viewed Lieberman or that Zionists might have viewed Brandeis.”

The same is not true of Sanders. His Brooklyn growl evokes a cultural Jewish identity every bit as strong as that of Chuck Schumer or his Saturday Night Live dopplegänger, Larry David. But he is more likely to talk about Pope Francis than any inspiration he draws from his own religion. For the most part, Sanders only discusses his Judaism if asked, such as last June, in the aftermath of an erroneous report mentioned by NPR’s Diane Rehm that he held dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship. “I’m proud to be Jewish,” Sanders said at a breakfast event in Washington. He added that he was “not particularly religious.” When Jimmy Kimmel asked Sanders in October if he believed in God, he didn’t answer directly. “I am who I am,” Sanders replied. “What I believe in and what my spirituality is about is that we’re all in this together, that I think it is not a good thing to believe as human beings that we can turn our backs on other people.”

“And this is not Judaism,” he added. “This is what Pope Francis is talking about.”

He struck a similar note a month earlier during his speech at Liberty University in Virginia, the evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell where he linked himself to the pontiff’s message of social justice but mentioned Judaism only in the context of “the great religions,” and not as his own. (He made his appearance at Liberty on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year.)

“He hardly could run away from it—everyone knows he looks like Larry David,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and the chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. “But at the same time, I don’t think that the leadership of the Jewish community views him as one of their own in the way that they viewed Lieberman or that Zionists might have viewed Brandeis.” Sarna noted that the Iowa caucus—a potential history-making moment for Sanders—will come just a few days after the 100th anniversary of President Woodrow Wilson’s nomination of Louis Brandeis to be the first Jewish justice of the Supreme Court. “Perhaps what’s important is that it’s a nonissue, just as it’s a nonissue that there are three Jewish Supreme Court justices,” Sarna said. (The fact that the other six justices are all Catholic has actually drawn significantly more attention.)

Sanders has spoken more in recent months about his upbringing in Brooklyn, telling The New Yorker that growing up Jewish had an influence on him politically if not religiously. His father emigrated to the U.S. from Poland, and many of his relatives died in Europe during World War II. “An election in 1932,” he said, “ended up killing 50 million people around the world.” As a young man, Sanders briefly lived and worked on a kibbutz in Israel.

Sanders’ wife Jane is not Jewish, and he is not known to be involved in the small Jewish community back home in Vermont. “He just doesn’t connect with organized Jewish religion,” said Rabbi James Glazier, the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai, a reform congregation in South Burlington. Glazier said that while he had seen Sanders attend a prayer service after the death of the father of a longtime friend, he had not been receptive to efforts over the years to draw him into the community. “This isn’t his comfort zone,” Glazier told me. “The doors of the Jewish community are open, and he knows he can walk in, and he knows he’ll be accepted. But we stopped asking because it would be insulting to keep on asking.”

“He just doesn’t connect with organized Jewish religion.”

As Glazier noted, because Jews make up such a tiny portion of the population in Vermont, Sanders has never felt pressure either to embrace his heritage or to take strong stands on Israel and other issues important to Jewish voters. That is also the case in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the dynamic might change as the Democratic primary shifts to states like New York and Florida. And he’s going up against a candidate in Clinton who has typically enjoyed strong support among Jews.

Will it matter to voters that Sanders is Jewish? Not likely, according to a Pew Research Center report released on Wednesday. Whether a candidate was Jewish mattered the least to people of any of a long list of traits—eight in 10 said they didn’t care. And while nearly 40 percent of respondents had the (apparently inaccurate) impression that Sanders was somewhat or very religious, that was a lower percentage than for any candidate except for Donald Trump.

If Sanders upsets Clinton and wins the nomination, he may face extra competition for the title of first Jewish president in the person of Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor reportedly considering a run for the third consecutive election. (He’s never actually pulled the trigger.) A Sanders victory in November, meanwhile, would be historic in several respects. He’d be the oldest person ever elected, not to mention the first president to embrace the label of “socialist” as part of his political identity. But with enough support to win delegates in Iowa, and a commanding lead in New Hampshire, Sanders might not have to wait that long to achieve a key cultural milestone: He’d be the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever—whether he wants to talk about it or not.