Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 841

And We're Off: Oscar Voting Begins Today

Associated Press

The reviews have been published, the movies are out, and now the true campaign begins: The Oscar polls are open. 

Today is the first day that Academy members can vote to nominate films and individuals for the 86th annual Academy awards. Voting continues through January 8, and nominations are ultimately announced on January 16. This year, the nominations will be announced after the Golden Globes ceremony, meaning we won't have a repeat of last year's awkwardness wherein someone snubbed by the Oscars (cough cough Ben Affleck) will have to force a smile as he or she goes up to accept a Globe. 

The Academy has tried to make sure that voting won't be as fraught as last year when the organization first allowed members to vote online via a frustratingly complicated system, which the Academy felt was necessary due to security concerns. The new system has been described as an "upgraded and simplified" one, according to Pete Hammond of Deadline. 

       

Three ISAF Service Members Killed in Kabul Blast

An armored vehicle hit by a bomb attack is lifted by a U.S. truck in Kabul, December 27, 2013. (REUTERS/OMAR SOBHANI)

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reported that at least three of its members were killed in a suicide attack on a foreign convoy in an eastern district of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Friday. A Taliban spokesman said the group was responsible for the fatal strike, according to the Associated Press. 

CNN reports that according to ISAF, an improvised explosive device was detonated in a vehicle in a suicide strike. On Wednesday, the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan's capital city was struck by "indirect fire." No injuries were reported in the dual attacks, which the Taliban also claimed responsibility for. 

The attack occurred about one half mile away from NATO's Camp Phoenix base. 

The U.S. and Afghanistan have been struggling to agree on a plan to withdraw NATO-led troops from the Middle Eastern nation, where fear of a Taliban takeover looms. This week, U.S. officials warned that if Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai doesn't sign a security pact allowing roughly 8,000 U.S. soldiers to remain in his country past 2014, not only could the Taliban regain power, but branches of al Qaeda could establish havens in the region, and the country could lose funding from Washington. Currently, around 43,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Afghanistan. 

Karzai is reluctant to sign the security pact, in part because of the U.S. drone policy that has killed Afghan civilians. He has, however, seen resistance from other Afghan leaders in favor of signing the pact. 

The Taliban warned early this year (as it has previously) that it will step up attacks on local security forces ahead of NATO's withdrawal, and has claimed responsibility for several attacks since that time. Most of those coalition forces killed in Afghanistan in the last two years were victims of "green-on-blue" attacks, where soldiers inside the Afghan army have turned on their foreign counterparts.

       

There Were Zero Somali Pirate Hijackings This Year

The sun may be setting on Somali piracy. (REUTERS)

Not a single vessel was hijacked this year off the Horn of Africa, where piracy waged by Somalis was once rampant, according to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence.

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It’s the fourth annual decline in Indian Ocean piracy, following a peak of 52 vessels in 2009—the year Richard Phillip’s ship, the Maersk Alabama, was commandeered by Somalis. That hijacking was the subject of a major motion picture this year.

As we noted in May, the disappearance of Somali piracy follows:

an increased presence of international navies in and around the Indian Ocean; Kenyan military intervention against al-Shabab strongholds in Somalia; and vigilance among vessel owners, who have rerouted and fortified ships to combat piracy threats.

In all of 2013, only nine vessels were attacked by pirates off the Horn of Africa, four in the final two months of the year. None were successfully hijacked.

Ships on the west coast of Africa were less fortunate in 2013. Pirates there fired on 31 vessels and seized nine this year in the Gulf of Guinea.

       

Watch: Russian Cosmonauts Spacewalk on the International Space Station

NASA

Two Russian cosmonauts will take a 7-hour spacewalk on Thursday to install scientific equipment and a camera onto the outside of the International Space Station. Commander Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy begin at about 8 a.m., Eastern and NASA will livestream the spacewalk, which you can watch below. 

This is the 11th spacewalk on the station this year, but it's also the third one in just the last week. Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins took a pair of emergency space walks last Saturday and again on Tuesday, Christmas Eve, in order to repair a faulty valve system. 

 

Live streaming video by Ustream
       

Miley Cyrus Chews Out Joe Jonas While Chewing On Kellan Lutz

AP

Today in celebrity gossip: Miley Cyrus has strong words for Joe Jonas and strong actions for Kellan Lutz, Anna Wintour threw out her Christmas tree before Christmas, and Beck is a less-than-stellar tenant.

Former Jonas Brother (but current Jonas brother) Joe Jonas' December tell-most to New York Magazine delighted and annoyed for the same reason: He named names. From spilling details about Demi Lovato's former cocaine addiction to giving an account of how a teenage Miley Cyrus (along with Lovato) first pressured him into smoking weed, Jonas scored a publicity coup that instantly gave him the credibility he'd never had. But since then some of us noticed that his allegedly candid admissions served to throw others under the bus without him actually admitting anything unflattering about himself. One person who also noticed the slightly gross Eve-corrupts-Adam narrative in his pot story was Miley Cyrus herself, who finally gave a public response to Jonas' comments this week when she told The New York Times, "If you want to smoke weed, you're going to smoke weed. There's nothing that two little girls are going to get you to do that you don't want to do." Told! Take that, Joe Jonas. Miley Cyrus is basically an unstoppable publicity machine these days and when she's not trolling the world via outlandish sex-parodies on awards shows she's scoring publicity points the old-fashioned way: Sounding smart and funny in interviews! Imagine that. [Us Weekly]

But telling off a Jonas brother in the NYT may not even be the best thing Miley Cyrus did this week. Depending on your fondness for C-list beefcake, you might be even more impressed/excited by Cyrus' newest hunk conquest: Kellan Lutz. Rumors of a possible tryst began last week when Cyrus and the upcoming The Legend of Hercules star were spotted ride-sharing in a private jet, but now an "insider" has revealed to Us Weekly that Lutz "reached out" to Cyrus earlier in the month and, despite his friendship with Cyrus' ex-fiancé Liam Hemsworth, the two HIT. IT. OFF. Or, as the source put it, they "hung out" because "they really enjoy each other's company." Which means so much sex, right? Just all the sex. We all need to keep warm in the wintertime, and Miley Cyrus is no different. (Now could we get a few more deets on that Lutz-Hemsworth friendship pls? Do they ever spot each other at the gym just asking.) [Us Weekly]

If you heard that Vogue editor Anna Wintour had deemed her Christmas tree "too messy" and had it thrown away well before Christmas Day, to what degree would you be shocked? Two percent shocked? One percent shocked? Maybe just a big ol' goose-egg of shocked? Well get ready to not be very shocked: Anna Wintour threw away her Christmas tree before Christmas because it was too messy. According to  Bee Shaffer's (Wintour's daughter) Instagram account, the Wintour family gift-opening ceremony involved no actual trees. And as Meryl Streep's speech in The Devil Wears Prada taught us, the decisions made by fashionistas today will trickle down into normal practice tomorrow, so you know what that means: No more Christmas trees ever! It will be a harsh reality, but then again so is beauty. Deal with it, Baby Jesus. [Page Six]

Few things are as fun as celebrity-on-celebrity property disputes (like, remember that time Quentin Tarantino sued Alan Ball because his birds screamed too much?), and here's another good one: Apparently Beck rented a beach house from German heartthrob Til Schweiger for three years and left it in shambles when he moved out. That last part neither side disputes, but the question seems to be who should pay for the damages? Beck claims that the house needed serious renovations including mold removal and pipe restoration while Schweiger contends that Beck's unauthorized "improvements" to the home actually damaged it severely. What will happen? How will this all play out? All I know is, very few of us will ever rent an $11,000-a-month Malibu beach house from a famous German actor, but this is a lawsuit we can ALL enjoy. [TMZ]

Every year Barbara Walters overturns a steel drum and spreads a fistful of chicken bones to determine which celebrities qualify as her 10 Most Fascinating. But as we all know the only celebrities more fascinating than the ones Walters profiles in these specials are the ones who are chosen, but decline the honor. What kind of celebrities wouldn't want to be featured on Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating specials? Fascinating ones! This year is no different, as the list of "thanks, but no thankses" include Kristen Stewart, Robert Downey, Jr., and Jay Z. Radar's unnamed source declined to explain why Downey, Jr. or Jay Z didn't want any part of this special, but the Kristen Stewart explanation was a big ol' no-brainer: "Kristen hates being interviewed — by anybody — with a passion." I realize it's no longer 2010 and Kristen Stewart's 'tude is not terribly novel or newsworthy, but this quote reminded me of just why Kristen Stewart's interviews actually ARE really good. It's because she hates doing them, that's why. Seriously, say what you will about Stewart, but she's not one for preplanned sound bites or fakey banter even if the faux-sympathetic face of Barbara Walters hovers perilously near. Anyway, another reason why Stewart probably declined is that nobody knows where she is anymore. Enjoy it, Kristen Stewart! [Radar]

Professional junior high student Ke$ha was once amateur junior high student Kesha, but the twist is that the amateur version had better taste in music? BuzzFeed has uncovered a clip from Ke$ha's middle school days in which she sang a sincere rendition of Radiohead's "Karma Police" in front of a presumably baffled audience. Though the future popstar lacked the sleazy-drawl and thick slathering of glitter vomit she came to make her trademark, there are already whispers of the sort of desperate hunger for coolness that would make her what she is today. Which is, uh, I forget. What exactly is Ke$ha supposed to be today? This is perhaps our greatest mystery. Anyway, the video is below! [BuzzFeed]

And finally, let's maybe close out this Christmas week with one last celebrity pajama selfie, this time from the endlessly appealing Kristen Bell and her househusband Dax Shepard (and their dogs).

Roll call! Boys in green, girls in red: @daxshepard1 pic.twitter.com/lR6c2y78zS

— Kristen Bell (@IMKristenBell) December 25, 2013

       

Foe of Assad and Hezbollah Killed in Beirut Car Bomb

Reuters

A large car bomb explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, killed six people, including a prominent Sunni politician who has been an outspoken critic of Hezbollah and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. At least 70 others were injured in the blast, and The New York Times is reporting that local footage shows multiple fatalities and many more wounded.

Among the dead is Lebanese Finance Minister Mohammed Chatah, who was most likely targeted for assassination. Chatah was an economist and close advisor to Rafik Hariri, the former Prime Minister who was also assassinated in 2005, a crime for the Syrian government has repeatedly been blamed. Five members of Hezbollah are to be on trial for the murder next month.

Hezbollah just admitted it is an enemy of Lebanon RT "@Naharnet Hizbullah: The assassination of Shatah only benefits the enemies of Lebanon"

— Daniel Nisman (@DannyNis) December 27, 2013

The latest attack appears to be yet another example of the sectarian conflict in Syria spilling over its borders. Chatah, also the former Lebanese ambassador to the United States, was reportedly on his way to a meeting with Hariri's son, Saad, another former Prime Minister who is currently one of the leading opposition politicians in Lebanon. Saad Hariri said in a statement on Friday that whoever murdered Chatah "are the same ones" who assassinated his father eight years ago. He added, "The murderers seek to assassinate the whole of Lebanon and weaken the state."

 

Strong explosion shakes Lebanese capital http://t.co/OW6SxYpTeT #Lebanon #Beirut pic.twitter.com/2WuhZTNA5Z

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) December 27, 2013

Exclusive footage from Future TV arriving after 2min on the explosion scene behind 4 season hotel #beirut #lebanon pic.twitter.com/SYARFWHJeF

— Amer Tabsh (@arzleb) December 27, 2013

Oh my God! After bomb in Beirut! A "car" #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/yrapEYTdrD

— سينم بكتاش (@sinembektas) December 27, 2013

More shots from the explosion site in #Beirut #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/u9sRvGYiSQ

— Naomi Sargeant (@NaomiSargeant) December 27, 2013

 

       

Deal to Move U.S. Base in Okinawa Finally Receives Approval

A Japanese man protests the Okinawa base in 2006.

A long-running plan to change the location of a U.S. military base in Okinawa has finally received approval from the governor of the Japanese state. The struggle over the base has been going on for more than a decade and a half as some local residents have protested the military's presence in the region.

Here's how Time summarized the stalemate over the current Marine air station at Futenma:

Futenma is the most controversial military base on Okinawa — dangerous, some say, because of its location in the middle of Ginowan City, a town of 95,000 residents. In the mid-1990s, with Okinawa protesting en masse following the rape of a schoolgirl by three American servicemen, the U.S. agreed to shut the unpopular base to demonstrate its willingness to ease Okinawa’s burden. However, Futenma had to be moved to a new site, rather than simply closed, the U.S. government insisted, to enable the Marines to keep operating. The Futenma Relocation Facility (FRF) was thus conceived, and a site on the island’s northeastern coast identified.

Residents have been waiting a long time for the plan's approval as a myriad number of bureaucratic and political hurdles and divergences have popped up over the years. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe helped usher the deal along this week by pledging 300 billion yen, or about $2.86 billion, to Okinawa annually through 2021.

The New York Times reports that the new base further to the north will reduce the number of Marines stationed on the island substantially over the next decade, from 18,000 now down to 10,000. American officials spoke of how the deal will help augment the appearance of U.S. military strength in the Pacific, especially as tensions with China increase.

       

Who Is More Fallible on Economics: Paul Ryan or Pope Francis?

Associated Press

"The guy is from Argentina, they haven't had real capitalism in Argentina," Rep. Paul Ryan said last week about Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church. With a wave of Ryan's hand, the tension between the congressman's party and his faith is swept away: the conduit of an omniscient God simply doesn't know what real capitalism looks like.

As Politico points out, Pope Francis keeps saying things that step outside of the Republican Party's economic worldview. In November, we figured that Francis's critique of capitalism might bring him into tension with Ryan; after all, saying that trickle-down economics "expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system," is essentially calling out Ryan's non-religious orthodoxy.

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel — somewhat amusingly focused on Ryan's support for a casino in the state — Ryan offered his response. "The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina. They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system." And one certainly can't critique another country's economic system without having lived there for an extended period of time, as Paul Ryan suggests.

This is not a small problem for American conservatives. Earlier this month, NBC and The Wall Street Journal polled Americans on their views about the new pope. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats approved of the job he's doing; fewer than half of conservatives did. (See data at right.) Religion is central to much of American conservative philosophy. Having the leader of one particularly influential religion directly critiquing the party's economic plans is causing people to be a bit unsettled.

For Ryan, it's particularly bad. As 2016 approaches, he's trying to reposition himself as a champion of the poor, even earning a laudatory profile in BuzzFeed for his efforts. As Jonathan Chait points out at New York, Ryan's born-again commitment to the poor isn't a new talking point. Or, in Chait's words, "It might seem odd that Ryan’s determination to keep his love of the poor quiet would nevertheless leak out in the media, over and over again."

[I]t’s impossible to disprove the suggestion that Ryan has grown obsessed with helping the poor. But what exactly does this mean? His entire career has been devoted to policies that would, as first-order effects, increase the incomes of the rich and decrease the incomes of the poor. Ryan has always argued that the first-order effects are less important than the deeper incentives he would unleash — cutting taxes for the rich and reducing subsidies for the poor will make both of them work harder.

Those are the sorts of policies Pope Francis was explicitly critiquing. To which Ryan feebly responds: "Yeah, well, Argentina's lame." As he puts together his presidential campaign team, expect to see a staff member whose only job is to keep an eye out for white smoke coming from a chimney in St. Peter's Square.

       

Mike Lupica's Takedown of Chiara de Blasio Is a Mess

New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio poses with his son Dante, daughter Chiara (R), and wife Chirlane McCray outside their home in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, New York, November 5, 2013.  (REUTERS/BRENDAN MCDERMID)

On Christmas Eve, New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his transition team released a very candid video of his daughter, 19-year-old Chiara, discussing a previously undisclosed struggle with depression and substance abuse, and urging anyone with similar struggles to get help. 

The announcement has been widely received as an effort to protect Chiara by controlling the story's release, and giving her agency over the difficult reveal. The de Blasio team avoided journalists' questions about Chiara's rumored abuses during the campaign, according to the New York Times,  either for her sake or for the sake of the candidate's image. Bill de Blasio indeed put his family front and center during his campaign. His son Dante's charming ad established de Blasio's reputation as the anti-stop-and-frisk candidate, and the tight-knit group of relatives cemented his family-man image. It's not surprising, therefore, that some would raise eyebrows at the video confession, perhaps seeing it as the latest example of de Blasio's perhaps questionable use of family in furthering his campaign, despite the obvious risks of putting his children in the public eye — especially if one of them has a history of depression. 

We anticipated that these reactions might be tactless or vulgar, but we were prepared to read them with an open mind. And we anticipated that someone like, for example, the New York Daily News' Mike Lupica, a notoriously aggressive local columnist, would lead the charge against Bill and Chiara. We were even prepared to hear him out. But what we didn't expect was that Lupica's takedown of the de Blasios would be so logically and grammatically tortured that we'd have trouble understanding what he's trying to say. Maybe you can help us unpack it.

Lupica opens with a fairly logical premise — that Chiara's video is a counterpoint to de Blasio's campaign ads, which featured his children's sunny dispositions but still operates as promotional material for the mayor-elect. De Blasio is a family flip-flopper, if you will. This appears to be the crux of Lupica's argument:

This was different, wasn’t as much about the bravery of de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, as much as it was de Blasio and his rather cynical handlers getting out in front of the young woman’s story. And the way the whole thing was handled wasn’t as much about her as it was about her father and political expediency.

Fair enough. Lupica continues by explaining why the Christmas Eve release was especially manipulative:

It is why it all coming about Chiara de Blasio on Christmas Eve, for a Christmas Day news cycle in the newspapers, ends up looking like old-time politicking, from a politician who acts as if everything he does is brand-new.

Hmm, OK. Aside from using "it" confusingly in the first line, Lupica appears to be blaming de Blasio for using the news cycle in a traditional way. It's not really relevant whether de Blasio thinks what he's doing at the moment is "brand-new," but whatever, we get it. 

Next, Lupica references the de Blasio family's quick appearance before their home after the video was released:

You watch de Blasio here, standing in front of his Brooklyn home before he moves his wife and son and daughter into Gracie Mansion, and want to remind him, once and for all, that he’s got the gig, he can stop campaigning now.

Oh wait. Lupica's onto something here. Bill de Blasio has won the race; he doesn't need to campaign anymore, why is he still campaigning? Maybe he's not actually campaigning at all, maybe he's really just doing something to protect his teenage daughter here. This seems like a pretty logical place for Lupica to stop, actually. But he doesn't. 

But what happens now with de Blasio and his daughter shows you what happens when you use your family as much as he did to help himself first win the Democratic nomination and then win the election the way he did, which means going away. Maybe de Blasio has finally figured out that he doesn’t get to decide what is public and what is private with that family.

I don't know, did you get that? What does he mean when he says "which means going away"? Who is going away? What is going away? And what is the "what" in the phrase "what happens now"? Does the video happen now? The video didn't really just "happen," it was an intentional expression of besting personal challenges. "Maybe de Blasio has finally figured out that he doesn't get to decide what is public and what is private with his family." But isn't deciding what is public and what is private exactly what Bill and Chiara just did? Let's move on. 

It comes out now, because de Blasio knew it would come out eventually.

That is possible, I'll allow.  

... trying to stop a story like this is like trying to stop the ocean. 
 

That's a strained use of the English language, Lupica; we don't much care for that simile. 

Lupica continues in this manner, arguing that it's unfair to say that Chiara wasn't fit to speak about her depression during the campaign but is strong enough to handle the public eye now. He also offers a small conspiracy theory, presumably to keep us hooked:

On the day when the video was released, the incoming mayor does not want to talk about when it was actually shot, or who was in charge of its production or content.

What Lupica is saying here, we think, is that we'll never know THE TRUTH if we don't know who, really, is behind this video. Next Lupica swoops in with just a little bit of nonsensical sass:

By the way? You want nothing but the best for that family, and for this young woman, who now stands up this way and tells the world that the de Blasio family is more than the smiley-face picture of it we got during the campaign."

We think "you" here is de Blasio, and that this whole sentence is sarcastic. But maybe the "you" here is actually you, the reader, and Lupica is inserting a genuine aside in support of Chiara and her family's willingness to acknowledge its challenges. But that seems to sort of go against what he was saying earlier, right? Again, we don't know. Let's continue. Here's just one more conspiracy theory:

Chiara de Blasio spoke of how she hoped everybody would watch the video, because it speaks for itself. Her father spoke of “incredible wisdom for someone who’s only 19 years old.” Certainly that is what both of them, and the people who handle Bill de Blasio, want us to believe. 

Wait, is she in on it or not? Is she a child taken advantage of by an ambitious, cutthroat political father or a co-conspirator in the campaign to make the de Blasios seem like a "smiley-face" family? We don't know. What we do know is that Lupica thinks there is no way this is a genuine effort to encourage teenagers to get help during the holidays, when depression levels are especially high: 

The idea that they released this during the holiday season because it would help others battling substance abuse during the holiday season is just another political fairy tale.

Well sure, maybe, but you can't leave that there without any explanation. That's just poor exposition. 

We suspect that Lupica is trying to say that de Blasio's reliance on his family to win the election had adverse effects on his children. Which is a fair point, and perhaps one worth making. And in Lupica's defense, the columnist does say he wants "nothing but the best for [de Blasio's] children," and there's no reason not to believe him.

But with this video release, the de Blasio family upped the political conversation, and it seems unfair to comment on it without noting the gray areas of such an announcement. It's possible that this is nothing but an exploitative political tactic, or maybe a wholly genuine way for a young woman to help others by discussing her own struggles. But more likely it's a combination of the two, with shades of familial and personal nuances we can't, and shouldn't expect to, be made privy to. The least we can do is pause and think (and edit a bit) before jumping to conclusions. 

       

Alice Walker's Conspiracy-Filled 'Best of 2013' List Is the Best List of 2013

Associated Press

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and other noteworthy books and poems, has run down her favorite things of 2013. It's an unexpected collection, including Edward Snowden, a conspiracy theorist, and a reptilianism expert.

"What a time to be alive!" Walker writes in a post on her blog called "Solstice Greetings and Gratitude 2013, or Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn Playing Tennis!" She provides a sort of year in review at the outset.

There have been mind-blowing revelations and testimonials of all kinds, along the cracks. About banks and money, about power, about governments and theft and war, about what’s really going on in the parliaments, royal bloodlines, political parties and corporations of the world, and among the religions. About the hatred of and abuse of women, and, especially, of children.

And, then:

About Super soldiers! Mind control! The capture and enslavement of child psychics! About a lot of Nazis still running around loose!

I missed some of those revelations.

The rest of the post, which is essentially a list of the things that Walker appreciates and admires, has that same sort of ping-ponginess: understandable and thoughtful contributor to culture, then a bizarre conspiracy theorist, then a book about Mandela, and then Alex Jones.

Jones, for those not familiar, is perhaps America's premiere conspiracy theorist. On the day that Dallas commemorated the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, Jones went to the city to holler about conspiracies through a bullhorn. To his radio audience, watching live, he explained his actions. "There are cancer viruses in their vaccines. You're being killed by eugenics. They write books about how they're doing it to you, and you're up there laughing." In Jones' universe, the government, big corporations, and shadowy who-knows-whats are always scheming to undermine, poison, and control regular-Joe Americans. Very slowly and subtly, apparently.

Walker likes him, saying that his "voice is a real voice," and that his persistence "endears him to anyone who loves the idea that a regular person can make sense of, and take offense at, the madness." Suggesting that Alex Jones takes offense at "the madness" is like positing that Michael Bloomberg is sick of New York City's rich people.

But then she praises Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning. "May you have joy," she writes to each — "you deserve this for the risks you took." She extols the music of Respighi, the film Twelve Years a Slave.

Jones discusses Icke.

And then British writer David Icke. Twice, actually — first the man himself and his radio show, then his book, Human Race Get Off Your Knees. The latter is a "radical history of how it all fits together," Walker writes. She wishes upon Icke "the peace that comes when a perplexing assignment has been taken on and, in service to humanity, lovingly brought to fruition."

That perplexing assignment is, in large part, explaining how mankind derives from a race of interdimensional reptilian beings. We've written about Icke and the topic before; reptilianism is an integral part of Icke's schtick. And in case you're wondering whether or not Walker endorses the reptilian worldview, here's part of her February review of Icke's book:

Earlier I wrote that David Icke reminded me of Malcolm X. … What I was remembering was how he called our oppressors “blue eyed devils.” Now who could that have been? Well, we see them here in David Icke’s book as the descendants of the reptilian race that landed on our sweet planet the moment they could get a glimpse of it through the mist that used to cover it (before there was a moon). No kidding. Deep breath! Yes, before there was a moon! (Oh, I love the moon; can I keep it? Please?). Anyway, there they came, these space beings (we’re space beings too, of course, not to forget that). But they looked…. different than us. And they were.

As far as celebrity year-end lists go, this is almost certainly the most unique offering. And when it comes to explications of reptilianism, it's hard to imagine they come in much more eloquent form. Though, you know, it's still an advocacy of reptilians.