Lily Salter's Blog, page 156

How Billy Graham’s legacy lives on in American life

(Credit: AP)

On Feb. 21, Billy Graham, the evangelical Christian minister who was widely regarded as “America’s pastor,” died at the age of 99.

Graham is best known for his global “crusades” — rallies that attracted crowds in the millions — and for the spiritual counsel he provided to American presidents for over a half-century. But, what is less widely known is his contribution to the religious language in American public life.

Americans before the mid-20th century were often ambivalent about religious language and images in public life. Graham helped change that reality.

Religion in American public discourse

Rhetoric linking the United States with a divine power, which Graham would later embrace, emerged on a large scale with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. M.R. Watkinson, a Pennsylvania clergyman, encouraged the placement of “In God We Trust” on coins at the war’s outset in order to help the North’s cause. Such language, Watkinson wrote, would “place us openly under the divine protection.”

In 1864, with the Civil War still raging, a group supported by the North’s major Protestant denominations began advocating to change the preamble of the Constitution. The proposed language would have declared that Americans recognized “Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government.”

If the amendment’s supporters had succeeded in having their way, Christian belief would be deeply embedded in the United States government.

But, such invocations of God in national politics were not to last. Despite lobbying by major Protestant denominations such as the Methodists, this so-called Sovereignty of God amendment was never ratified.

Though “In God We Trust” was added to coins, it was not added to the increasingly common paper money. In fact, when coins were redesigned late in the 19th century, it disappeared from coins as well.

As I demonstrate in my book, these developments were related to the spread of secularism in the post-Civil War U.S. For many people at the time, placing religious language in the Constitution or on symbols of government was not consistent with American ideals.

Graham’s influence on religious politics

In the 1950s, however, religious language found its way into government and politics, due in no small part to Billy Graham.

In 1953, at the strong encouragement of Graham, President Dwight Eisenhower held the first National Prayer Breakfast, an event that brings together political, military and corporate leaders in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday of February.

In the following years, Eisenhower signed a bill placing the phrase “In God We Trust” on all American currency and the phrase was adopted as the first official motto of the United States.

Both of these developments reflected the desire to emphasize Americans’ religious commitment in the early years of the Cold War. Historians such as Jonathan Herzog have chronicled how leaders such as Eisenhower and Graham stressed the strong faith of the nation in setting the U.S. apart from the godlessness of Soviet communism. But, there were domestic concerns as well.

Princeton University historian Kevin Kruse has shown that religious language was not merely rhetoric against communism.

Indeed, this belief in American religiosity had emerged over several decades. Conservative businessmen had allied with ministers and evangelical leaders such as Billy Graham, to combat the social welfare policies and government expansion that began with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. These wide-ranging programs, designed to tackle the Great Depression, irked many conservatives. They objected to government intervention in business and Roosevelt’s support for labor unions.

As Kruse notes, this alliance of conservative business leaders and ministers linked “faith, freedom, and free enterprise.”

To be sure, Billy Graham was not singularly responsible for all of these developments. But as his biographers have noted, he loomed large in the religious politics of the 1950s.

Graham’s legacy

The prevalence of religious language in U.S. politics that Graham helped inspire continues to this day. Indeed, the Trump administration has been particularly swift to employ it.

In his address to the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 8, President Donald Trump emphasized the centrality of faith in American life. After describing the country as a “nation of believers,” Trump declared that “our rights are not given to us by man” but “come from our Creator.”

These remarks came a week after Trump linked religion with American identity in his first State of the Union address. On Jan. 30, he similarly invoked “In God We Trust” while proclaiming an “American way” in which “faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of the American life.”

Trump’s language captured the linking of faith and public life that Graham encouraged as he rose to fame nearly 70 years ago.

This is an updated version of an article, originally published on Feb. 2, 2018.

David Mislin, Assistant Professor of Intellectual Heritage, Temple University

Fred Rogers, champion of gentle masculinity, has a cure for the gun violence that plagues us

Fred Rogers (Credit: AP/Gene J. Puskar/Mark Wallheiser)

Like much of Generation X, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was a childhood TV staple. Even as I grew older and came to see the world both inside my home and beyond its front door as considerably harsher, Mister Rogers’ gentle affirmations remained steady and true. Thus I found myself watching the series long after I matured out of its target audience, probably because his central message was ageless. “‘You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you,” he says at the end of every show. “There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.”

Interestingly, over the years I noticed that many of my male friends said they stopped watching the series soon after outgrowing the toddler stage. Some even professed to having a strange aversion to “Mister Rogers” that they couldn’t quite put their finger on and rarely watched, if ever.

In a recent conversation with David Newell, the man who played “speedy delivery” postman Mr. McFeely for the entirety of the series’ 31 seasons, it finally dawned on me as to why it was: Fred Rogers was unwavering in his presentation of gentle masculinity.

The host of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” had a kind, soothing voice that never spiked in frustration or sagged with sorrow, even in episodes navigating such rocky emotional terrain as divorce, or death, fear or anger. He never roughhoused with guests or invalidated the observations of the children to whom he spoke. Above all, he celebrated the importance of feelings, the very thing boys are too often counseled to ignore or stifle.

“Fred was a gentle man, but he had a backbone of steel, you know,” Newell said. “You don’t stay in television without that. It’s tough, tough business in children’s television, with all the demands and the competition . . . that’s tough because you have to raise money.”

On Monday “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” marked the 50th anniversary of its national television debut after developing a local following on WQED in Pittsburgh. The day didn’t slide by without notice; a number of stories extolled the show’s legacy and mentioned lists of works and items commemorating Fred Rogers and his iconic PBS series.

There’s a PBS retrospective, “Mister Rogers: It’s You I Like,” debuting Tuesday, March 6. The United States Postal Service is releasing a stamp featuring Rogers and King Friday XIII, ruler of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, on March 23. The documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” was a hit at Sundance, and is set for a wide release on June 8. Earlier came the exciting announcement that Tom Hanks is portraying Fred Rogers in the upcoming scripted feature “You Are My Friend.”

And starting on Monday, February 26, PBS will feature back-to-back episodes of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” paired with episodes of its popular animated spin-off, “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” that were inspired by its predecessor.  (Kicking off the event is “Daniel’s Fish Dies/Daniel’s Strawberry Seeds” and the memorable “Death of a Goldfish” installment of “Mister Rogers’”)

But if pop culture’s observance of this golden anniversary for “Mister Rogers” seems muted in comparison to full-throated celebrations of other TV series and films of lesser cultural import, it’s probably because the nation was once again caught up in processing its collective feelings.

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” turned 50 four days after another mass shooting at a school, this time Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead and 14 others wounded. In the days following, a tide of sorrow alchemically transformed into a political anger that is sweeping through high schools nationwide. Students are assuming the mantle of leadership in a movement finding its momentum. And it flexed its might on Wednesday night during a CNN-hosted town hall in Sunrise, Florida.

Survivors of the massacre, their parents and an audience of local people took part in a heated and charged debate that featured Representative Ted Deutch, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch and Florida Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio. Among that panel of officials, Rubio and Loesch took the lion’s share of the heat and notably, a significant critique against Loesch came from Israel — a law enforcement official.

You may be wondering what the fallout from the Parkland mass shooting has to do with a classic PBS children’s series turning 50. On the surface of it, maybe not much. But this forgets the entire point of “Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood” and the life’s work of its host.

Parkland and all the school shootings that have come before share many characteristics, but one that simply cannot be ignored is the fact that every single one was committed by a young man described as mentally ill, bullied or disconnected from others in some way.

These young men are the result of a culture that conditions our children to equate masculinity with the ability to lash out violently and the muting of emotional expression, the very ideas Rogers sought transform with his work and his presence.

I’m not alone in this opinion. Michael Ian Black, who currently stars in Comedy Central’s “Another Period,” penned an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he declares, “America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.”

Black cites an outdated model of masculinity as the culprit, “where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others.”

“They are trapped,” he writes, “and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to express the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine.”

One day after that CNN town hall, I was reminded of Rogers’ testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications in May of 1969. Footage of it exists on the Internet, and it’s mostly remembered as a potent and eloquent defense of public television’s continued importance as a public trust.

But the substance of what he says presses on the heart in light of the horrific tragedy in Parkland — and Sandy Hook, Isla Vista, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and every other mass shooting that came before.

“This is what I give: I give an expression of care, each day, to every child,” Rogers tells the senators. “. . . And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.  I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something [with] gunfire. I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing.”

When the competition happens to be animated series whose stories hinged on heroes pitted in violent battles featuring explosions, guns and fistfights, surely his task did not become easier.

“Maybe the gentleness still speaks to boys, but it’s not something they want to acknowledge,” Newell observed. “. . . I think that boys cover up that gentleness sometimes. It’s the culture that does it. And it’s wonderful for boys and girls to see a gentle man on television, instead of seeing the ‘Power Rangers’ at every moment.”

Suggesting that one television series or one person could have stopped or even slowed the surge of gun violence is naïve, I’ll admit. But how many gentle men dedicated to the emotional welfare of children do you see on television in the modern era?

How many series feature a live human dedicated to teaching kids the value of empathy and constructive ways to, as Rogers’ put it in one his songs, deal with “the mad that you feel”?

Television has not really responded to Rogers’ legacy by creating clones of “Misters’ Rogers Neighborhood” or finding other men like Fred Rogers. The closest a commercial channel came to doing so may have been the hiring of Steve Burns as the live-action host of Nickelodeon’s excellent series “Blue’s Clues.” He, too, is gentle . . . but the curious, animated blue pooch drew most of the attention.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the gun lobby has succeeded in buying off enough politicians to ensure that easy access to semi-automatic rifles continues to be prioritized over the lives of American citizens, including school children. And why would the average person who isn’t in the military of a member of law enforcement need an AR-15? For protection, the argument says.

The truth, however, is that these weapons boost the possessor’s sense of power. They are tangible tools of might and toxic masculinity and an opposing force to speaking softly while being firm. Children learn about guns at an early age, come to associate them with manliness and, as such, covet them. This was true before “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” ever aired, and it remains true today.

What we haven’t seen, however, are other gentle men impressing upon young viewers at an early age — and boys in particular — that feelings are valid, that they matter and that they need to be expressed in a healthy way.

Before that Senate Subcommittee in 1969, Rogers recited the lyrics of his song about dealing with anger:

“It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong,

and be able to do something else instead, and think this song:

‘I can stop when I want to, can stop when I wish, can stop, stop, stop anytime.’

And what a good feeling, to feel like this, and know that the feeling is really mine.

Know that there’s something deep inside, that helps us become what we can.

For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.”

In that CNN town hall Robert Schentrup, whose sister Carmen was killed in the Parkland shooting, informed Congressman Deutch that Wednesday would have been Carmen’s 17th birthday. In a calm, measured voice, he asked whether the fact that lawmakers refuse to pass stricture gun control regulations, despite polls indicating the vast majority of Americans support such regulations, indicates that our democracy is broken.

Schentrup’s tone never grew strident; he remained steady and composed as he faced down renowned and powerful opponents. Another gentle man with a backbone of steel using that power to shift our world.

If, as Black says, America’s boys are broken, perhaps in the wake of this terrible moment we should renew our appreciation not only of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” but the brand of heart-centered masculinity Fred Rogers personified. Teach it to our children. Our lives and futures may depend on it.

Why are robot-makers trying to outdo each other with terrifying robots?

SpotMini robot by Boston Dynamics (Credit: YouTube/BostonDynamics)

If you’re building technology that recalls the robot oppressors of “The Matrix” or “Black Mirror” it is probably not a good idea (from a public relations standpoint), to show off your robots’ potential to bring on the apocalypse. Most Silicon Valley companies have absorbed this branding wisdom. Case in point: Google often prompts comparisons to “The Terminator’s” internet-gone-haywire SkyNet, but the company wisely directs their marketing dollars in the direction of cute Google Doodles and other PR stunts to lend the company a softer, less apocalyptic edge. Likewise, if you ask Apple’s voice assistant Siri, they swear they don’t know HAL, the evil computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And Facebook, constantly in the news for its easy availability as a disinformation weapon by intelligence agencies, is now emphasizing how the platform is a place to “focus on meaningful connections.”

These are sound public relations strategies from tech companies who are well-aware of their products’ potential to be perceived as tools of hegemonic oppression. Apparently, many robotics researchers didn’t get the memo.

Today and yesterday, we were treated to new test videos from robotics manufacturer Boston Dynamics, featuring their four-legged robots opening doors for one another, and, today, opening the same door while resisting a researcher’s attempts to deflect it with a hockey stick. In the video, “Testing Robustness,” the stick-wielding researcher is relatively gentle with his blunt instrument, before yanking the dogbot by its leash. Still, you get the impression he doesn’t really want to hurt the robot, a model called a SpotMini for its resemblance to a dog (I’d feel more comfortable seeing a follow-up video showing how it fares against a shotgun, or a crucible full of liquid iron, or both).

The videos terrified many. “The new video of Boston Dynamics’ robot dog is even more horrifying than the first one,” tech news site BGR cautioned in their headline. Devin Coldewey’s headline in TechCrunch was perhaps the most prophetic: “Humans sow seeds of destruction by abusing poor robot just trying to walk through a door.”

“Seems like at this point you don’t want to anger them,” Coldewey wrote. “They will find you. Or rather, they’ll find the company’s designated robot abuser and punish him for stopping poor robots from doing what they have been told to do. Soon Spot Mini will not be the one on a leash.”

Indeed, the SpotMini’s resilience in the face of intervention, and its plodding, methodical dedication to its mission is creepily reminiscent of all kinds of sci-fi robots that wouldn’t give up in their missions to seek and destroy. The trope of the indestructible robot is a sci-fi horror staple: the Terminators, every single model in every single movie in the franchise; the bullet-dodging, expressionless agents of “The Matrix;” and the unnamed “dog” robot in the episode “Metalhead” from the latest season of “Black Mirror.”

In the span of that 45-minute episode, an autonomous drone robot-dog chases a terrified trespasser across a barren landscape, handily converting whatever it can find into a weapon while overcoming nearly any attempt to defeat it. The “Black Mirror” team’s robot intentionally resembled the Boston Dynamics design, and prances and capers in a similar manner. Series creator Charlie Brooker admitted in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the design of that episode’s robot dog was lifted from “watching Boston Dynamics videos.” “And with those [Boston Dynamics] videos, there’s something very creepy watching them where they get knocked over, and they look sort of pathetic laying there, but then they slowly manage to get back up,” Brooker said.

It’s reminiscent of another creepy robot that was presaged almost precisely in the third season of “Black Mirror.” Episode 6, titled “Hatred in the Nation,” took place in a near-future United Kingdom, where Colony Collapse Disorder (a very real thing!) had killed off much of the world’s honeybee population. As modern agriculture is utterly reliant on bees as pollinators, humans in this fictional future were forced to construct artificial robot honey-bees, which appeared as tiny drones that fly from flower to flower. Yet the bees seem to be controlled by an unseen hand, and can be programmed to act as tiny assassins.

Compared to other futuristic technologies, “Hatred in the Nation” ranked right up there on the realism scale. Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have developed drones the size of insects that could act as “artificial pollinators.” That particular “Black Mirror” episode was back in the news this week after a pair of headlines in some of the more sensationalist British tabloids, including the Daily Mirror and the Daily Star, the latter of which interviewed a researcher who claimed that the drone bees could be hacked to release a chemical sting to kill. I should note that the abilities of the drone bees are limited; one critic called the drones as they exist today “comically inept.” In other words, don’t fear the bee-bots just yet.

Robotics researchers must contend with the long history of fictitious evil robots that predates them. Yes, the software makers have their share of evil computers — from HAL 9000 to “Tron’s” Master Control Program to “Dr. Who’s” B.O.S.S. Perhaps because computers are more containable, and indeed, are jammed in every conceivable electronic device, we’ve learned to accept them as normal. The robots, not so much; outside of a stray Roomba, we don’t have a plethora of friendly or unfriendly robots in our day-to-day lives, and many of our observations about robots are negative (Remember that homeless-policing snitchbot in San Francisco last year? That wasn’t doing any favors for the robot PR people). One wonders if the roboticists are cognizant that they are fighting an uphill PR battle.

$38 million awarded to police shooting victim Korryn Gaines’ family is — and isn’t — justice

(Credit: Getty/Andrew Burton)

Last week, people all over celebrated the $38 million-dollar verdict won by the family of Korryn Gaines against the Baltimore County Police Department.

Gaines, 23, was shot and killed in her home on August 1, 2016, after a six-hour standoff with police. Her 5-year-old son Kodi, who survived, was also hit in the face and elbow. A viral video of the standoff was broadcast on Gaines’ Instagram and Facebook Live. The police did not file charges against the officers. A jury of six women in a civil suit, however, found that the initial shots from the police officers were unreasonable, thereby violating her and her son’s civil rights.

The family’s attorneys could be seen cheering as they exited the courtroom. And for good reason — the huge settlement should send a strong message to police departments everywhere. Part of me is happy for the attorneys and the Gaines family; however, I’m sad at the same time.

Her son will receive the bulk of that money, which will secure him financial freedom while also making him a target. No one around him will ever treat him the same because of the money. I know I’d easily choose to have my fallen loved ones back over any dollar amount. Most of us would.

Of course, the cop who shot Gaines and Kodi still has his job. So what, if anything, did he or any other police officers learn from this situation?

J.Wyndal Gordon, attorney for the Gaines family, released an account of how he and the team of lawyers he worked with won the case:

$37M+ for the Wrongful Death and civil rights action brought by Korryn Gaines and her family. Gaines was shot in the back by BaCo Officer, Royce Ruby, as he aimed at an area through the wall where he believed the back of her head would be —from behind a brick wall in an adjacent apartment. Gaines was in the kitchen fixing her son a peanut butter & jelly sandwich at the time Ruby fired his first shot.

Gaines’ son was shot in the face by the same bullet that entered Gaines’ back pierced her lungs bilaterally, traveled through her spine, then exited her body, ricocheting off of the refrigerator, and ultimately striking and embedding in her son’s face. How in the heck could she have the strength to rack and fire a shotgun twice after such devastating, immobilizing, disabling, and paralyzing injuries?

Read the rest of Gordon’s statement here.

The jury deliberated for three weeks, surveying piles of evidence­­, and ultimately deciding that Ruby was wrong to open fire, and yet he wasn’t charged by his own department with any criminal offense. He is free, and was allowed to keep his job. Not only did Ruby retain employment, he was promoted to the rank of corporal while the investigation was pending, according to Kenneth Ravenell, another Gaines family attorney.

I’m not a cop, but promoting someone who is under an investigation that could warrant criminal charges seems extremely unethical. I’m not a lawyer, but a jury awarding millions of dollars to a family because the story of the so-called-innocent-killer-cop was inconsistent and/or false while the same killer-cop gets to keep his job seems extremely hypocritical.

And to make matters worse, the Gaines family may not even receive all — or even any — of the money they were awarded. Last week the Baltimore Sun reported that the Gaines win was one of the highest in the state’s history; however, the state government has a history of lowering amounts on appeal, and then working religiously to get out of paying anything at all. The Sun article references multiple cases where victims were awarded damages and the city found legal reasons for not paying, like officers not “acting within the scope of his employment” or claiming to not be responsible because the officer “acted with malice.”

Dealing with the system as it stands is virtually impossible. You can lose even when you think you’ve won. I hope the family gets what they were promised — what they deserve — because Korryn’s killer definitely will not.

Missouri’s GOP governor indicted in revenge porn blackmail scheme

Eric Greitens (Credit: AP/Charlie Riedel)

Missouri’s Republican governor was taken into custody Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of felony invasion of privacy charge stemming from a 2015 extramarital encounter.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced in a press release that Gov. Eric Greitens allegedly took a photo of a nude woman, blindfolded and hands bound, without her knowledge on March 21, 2015, and then threatened to release the sexually explicit photograph.

The allegations first became public last month, after Greitens, a first-term governor who took office in 2017, admitted to a sexual relationship with his former hair stylist. Shortly after delivering his first state of the state address in January, local TV station KMOV released a partial transcript of a recording of the woman saying Greitens tried to blackmail her with the photo to keep her quiet about the relationship. Greitens is married with children.

The recording was provided to KMOV by the woman’s ex-husband, who secretly taped her admission. The woman, who has not been named, told her ex-husband, “he used some sort of tape, I don’t what it was, and taped my hands to these rings and then put a blindfold on me … I didn’t even know. I feel like I don’t even know. I was just numb.”

“This was a consensual relationship,” Gov. Greitens told the AP last month. “There was no blackmail, there was no violence, there was no threat of violence, there was no threat of blackmail, there was no threat of using a photograph for blackmail. All of those things are false.”

But after opening an investigation into the allegations last month, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said on Thursday that “the Grand Jury has found probable cause to believe that Governor Greitens violated Missouri State Statute 565.252, which was in place at the time of the violation.” As Gardner explained of the indictment, “this statute has a provision for both a felony and misdemeanor.” Because the photo was taken “in a place where a person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the defendant subsequently transmitted the image contained in the photograph in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer,” Greitens was charged with a felony. “The law makes it a felony if a person transmits the image contained in the photograph or film in a manner that allows access to that image via a computer,” Gardner explained. 

The penalty for first-degree invasion of privacy in Missouri is up to four years in prison.

Greitens, who ran for office in 2016 on a family values platform, has repeatedly declined to answer direct questions about whether or not he took any photos of the unnamed woman. On Thursday, his lawyer told local news outlets that the charges against the governor were “baseless and unfounded.”

Officials confirmed to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Greitens was taken into custody and then booked at the St. Louis Justice Center on Thursday. He has since been released on his own recognizance.

Greitens can pardon himself because Missouri limits pardon power to post-conviction. He likely will not make it that far, as some prominent Republican lawmakers in Missouri were quick to react to news of his indictment by calling for his resignation, the New York Times reported.  

GOP MO Sen @robschaaf tells me re: Greitens:

“If he doesn’t resign the House…should move swiftly to bring this to a resolution”

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) February 22, 2018

His wife, Sheena, released a statement shortly after Greitens admitted to the affair, saying that she had already forgiven him and asked others to forgive him as well.

“We understand that there will be some people who cannot forgive—but for those who can find it in your heart, Eric asks for your forgiveness, and we are grateful for your love, your compassion, and your prayers.”

Earlier this week, the GOP-led Missouri state House approved a bill to crack down on “revenge porn,” making it a class D felony to share sexually explicit images or recordings without the consent of the person pictured. Sponsored by Republican Rep. Jim Neely, the bill also created a class E felony for those who even threaten to disseminate “private sexual images.”

Only hours before he was indicted on a felony charge, the Republican Governor’s Association proudly boasted about Greitens’ character.

With @EricGreitens, the people of Missouri have a leader in office focused on returning money to the pockets of taxpayers – not government. https://t.co/Zb9dFSzRXc

— The RGA (@The_RGA) February 22, 2018

Big Pharma investors cash in on Trump’s tax plan

(Credit: Getty/Spencer Platt/Gary Gershoff)

The GOP-led tax plan may have taken months of debate in Washington, but the pharmaceutical industry had already made up its mind as to what to do with its newly-reaped funds from a diminished corporate tax rate. And no, Big Pharma didn’t plan to spend their tax refund gift on, say, actual research; rather, they spent it on stock buybacks.

During the ongoing legislative debate and since the plan was officially signed by President Donald Trump in late December, a total of nine drug companies have shelled out a combined $50 billion on new share buyback programs, Axios reported. “That money is enriching hedge funds, other Wall Street investors and top drug company , but it isn’t necessarily helping patients,” Axios wrote. The corporate tax rate dropped from 35 percent to 21 percent as a result of the new tax plan.

In fact, the combined $50 billion spent between nine drug companies far outweighs company investments into employees and drug research and development, as Axios noted. Of course, the buck doesn’t stop there. Quarterly dividends have also been increased for companies such as AbbVie, which “increased its cash dividend by 35% while at the same time committing to a new $10 billion share repurchase program.” AbbVie, a spin-off of Abbott Laboratories, focuses on discovery and development for biopharmaceuticals and small molecule drugs.

Stock buybacks only benefit investors, known as shareholders, who are generally far wealthier than the average American. For example, while stock market increases have been great for many companies, only about half of Americans own any stock at all. This means that while major drug companies shower wealthy investors, they are also raising drugs prices and neglecting to put funds towards research and development.

The revelation poked yet another hole in the Trump administration’s pledge that its tax plan would serve the working class. Trump and several administration officials have touted the tax plan’s success, and lauded companies that provided employees with $1,000 bonuses in the name of tax reform. But Trump has also been silent when those same companies discreetly enacted mass layoffs, and many Americans aren’t buying the idea that the legislation has helped them.

Big Pharma has long been a huge lobbying force in American politics, and Trump has stacked his administration with industry sycophants. The industry’s presence and influence can’t be understated; the tax plan pushed by Trump and Republicans is an indicator of Big Business’s sway on the administration. Indeed, the powerful pharmaceutical lobby has also played a key role in the nation’s opioid crisis, which Trump has previously pledged to aggressively combat and eventually eradicate. That simply is not possible if Big Pharma continues to be enabled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, or by the sitting president.

Twitter cracks down on bot behavior

(Credit: Getty/Leon Neal)

Facing increased scrutiny over its role as a weapon of disinformation, Twitter is taking gradual steps to keep trolls and bots from seizing important conversations on its platform. This time, the tech conglomerate is focusing on minimizing automation and the use of multiple accounts. This change will eventually result in terminating services of those who control multiple accounts that tweet the same content, follow users en masse, and perform simultaneous Retweets or likes to steer public opinion.

Twitter employee Yoel Roth explained in a blog post that “these changes are an important step in ensuring we stay ahead of malicious activity targeting the crucial conversations taking place on Twitter — including elections in the United States and around the world.”

Indeed they are. The indictment filed last week by Special Counsel Robert Mueller shed light into the behavior of the accused Russian trolls who allegedly meddled with the 2016 election. The details of the indictment document released last week showed that the defendants, a Russia-backed group, attempted to interfere with the election through information warfare tactics — going so far as to organize trending hashtags like the #Hillary4Prison, according to the indictment document.

Now, Twitter is asking users to avoid posting simultaneous identical posts or “substantially similar content to multiple accounts.”

“As an alternative to posting identical content, you can Retweet content from one account from the other accounts you wish to share that post from,” Roth explains. “This should only be done from a small number of distinct accounts that you directly control.”

Twitter is also advising users to avoid simultaneous actions such as likes, Retweets, or follows from multiple accounts.

“The use of any form of automation (including scheduling) to post identical or substantially similar content, or to perform actions such as Likes or Retweets, across many accounts that have authorized your app (whether or not you created or directly control those accounts) is not permitted,” Roth writes.

Developers have until March 23 to make changes to their apps and platforms to keep them from partaking in the aforementioned activity. Changes are also coming to TweetDeck, the social media dashboard owned by Twitter.

“Today, we’re also introducing changes to TweetDeck’s multiple account functionality to reflect this guidance,” Roth explains. “Users of TweetDeck will no longer be able to select multiple accounts through which to perform an action such as Tweeting, Retweeting, liking, or following.”

Mass simultaneous tweeting isn’t always a bad thing, though—especially in times of crisis. For this reason, Twitter is making one exception to its new policy.

“As a sole exception to this rule, applications that broadcast or share weather, emergency, or other public service announcements of broad community interest (for example, earthquake or tsunami alerts) are permitted to post this content across multiple accounts who have authorized an app,” Roth wrote.

Meanwhile, Twitter has quietly taken the initiative to purge bots from its platform, which have visibly impacted some right-wing opinion leaders’ follower count. Indeed, many conservative personalities have perceived the follower count fall as part of a grand conspiracy against them.

I lost around 4000 or so. https://t.co/HZRz0y4aJM

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) February 21, 2018

That twitter attack on conservatives hit me too last night. I was deemed “ineligible” to use twitter ads and had followers purged. @twitter should ashamed, we have to organize a response. #TwitterLockOut pic.twitter.com/1Df4jY3Vv6

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) February 21, 2018

https://twitter.com/mflynnJR/status/9...

Twitter has not made an official announcement regarding its purge, but it did release the following statement to Gizmodo:

“Twitter’s tools are apolitical, and we enforce our rules without political bias. As part of our ongoing work in safety, we identify suspicious account behaviors that indicate automated activity or violations of our policies around having multiple accounts, or abuse. We also take action on any accounts we find that violate our terms of service, including asking account owners to confirm a phone number so we can confirm a human is behind it. That’s why some people may be experiencing suspensions or locks. This is part of our ongoing, comprehensive efforts to make Twitter safer and healthier for everyone.”

 

Kylie Jenner says Snapchat is dead, company suffers $1.3 billion loss in market value

Kylie Jenner (Credit: Getty/Nicholas Hunt)

Snapchat’s future has been looking grim ever since it unveiled its new interface. A Change.org petition has even been circulating, collecting more than 1.2 million signatures, asking the tech company to remove its latest update. Now, Kylie Jenner — who was once dubbed the “Queen of Snapchat” — has seemingly ceased her operations on the platform. Indeed, she asked on Twitter yesterday, “Does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?”

“Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad,” she tweeted.

sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

still love you tho snap … my first love

— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018

In response to Jenner, some influential social media stars agreed.

It sucksssss :( feel like there is no connection anymore.

— Manny MUA (@MannyMua733) February 21, 2018

Jenner’s public display of distaste of the platform may have caused the company’s stock to plummet as the market closed on Feb. 22. According to Bloomberg, Snapchat parent’s shares decreased as much as 7.2 percent, which equaled an estimated “wipe out” of $1.3 billion in market value.

Snapchat initially announced its redesign in November with the intent of separating content out for its users by source.

“One of the complaints we’ve heard about social media is that photos and videos from your friends are mixed in with content from publishers and creators and influencers. But your friends aren’t content. They’re relationships,” Evan Spiegel, Snap’s CEO, said in an explainer video about the update.

Users haven’t embraced the move with fondness. Snapchat has responded to users who have signed the petition, letting them know they’ve been heard, but there hasn’t been any indication that a reversal of the update will happen in the foreseeable future. Instead, the company said it will be implementing another update “in the coming weeks,” which will make it “easier” to find the stories that they want.

“We hear you, and appreciate that you took the time to let us know how you feel. We completely understand the new Snapchat has felt uncomfortable for many,” the company wrote in response to the Change.org petition.

Some critics say that’s not good enough; they still want the old version back.

“We didn’t ask for more updates we just want the old snapchat back????” one signee, Jess Gray, wrote in response.

Trump blames video games on gun violence, but defends NRA (again)

(Credit: Getty/Chris Kleponis)

President Donald Trump tried to defend the NRA on Thursday, trying to blame everyone but the gun lobby for the epidemic of mass shootings.

“We’re going to take action,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Today we want to hear from you about how we can improve physical security at our schools, tackle the issue of mental health which is a very big issue, this person that was caught after having killed so many people, 17, and badly injuring so many others… and we want to ensure that when we see warning signs we act quickly, and when we have somebody that’s mentally unstable, like this guy that was a sicko, and there were a lot of warning signs, a lot of people were calling saying ‘hey, he’s going to do something bad,’  people have to act.”

After claiming that gun prosecutions have increased “very significantly” during his administration and that he has also cracked down on gangs like MS-13, the president then described his stance on mandatory background checks.

“I’ve called many senators last night . . . they’re into doing background checks that they wouldn’t be thinking about maybe two weeks ago,” Trump told reporters. “We’re going to do a strong background check, we’re going to work on getting the age up to 21 instead of 18, we’re getting rid of the bump stocks and we’re going to be focusing very strongly on mental health.”

The NRA is opposed to background checks as well as raising the age limit on gun purchases  — facts that Trump either didn’t know or chose to ignore on Thursday.

“I don’t think I’ll be going up against them. … They’re good people,” Trump told reporters when asked about the NRA’s stance on raising the age limit. “The NRA is ready to do things. People like to blame them.”

The president also discussed the alleged role of mental health in causing mass shootings and, finally, placed some of the blame on video games.

“I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts,” Trump said. “And you go one further step and that’s the movies. . .  maybe they have to put a rating system for that.”

Movies and video games are already subject to a rating system, one that accounts for violence and sexual content as well as other factors.

Trump also expressed disgust with active shooter drills, describing them as “a very negative thing,” and instead said that he’d “much rather have a hardened school.”

He repeated this point, proclaiming, “We have to harden our schools, not soften them up” and that establishing gun free zones made committing mass shootings there like “going in for the ice cream.” He also suggested “a little bit of a bonus” for trained teachers who arm themselves, arguing, “I want my schools protected just like I want my banks protected.”

Parents should talk to their tweens about the risks of porn

(Credit: Getty/AntonioGuillem)

Editor’s note: This article includes references to graphic sexual content that may be inappropriate for some readers.

Today teenagers are viewing far more pornography than their parents realize. And the porn they’re watching is much more “hardcore” than moms and dads could possibly imagine.

These were the main messages of “What Teenagers are Learning From Online Porn,” a recent New York Times story by Maggie Jones. It quickly became one of the most read and shared articles.

While this may be a surprise to many American parents who perhaps imagine porn as merely a naked centerfold, it wasn’t to scholars like me who immerse ourselves in the world of mainstream porn. We know how widespread violent, degrading and misogynistic pornography has become, as well as the implications for the emotional, physical and mental health of young people.

In an effort to better understand the problem from a “front-line” perspective, feminist activist Samantha Wechsler and I have been traveling the world talking to parents about the issue. The question we’re asked most often is: “What can we do about it?”

‘Hardcore’ porn is everywhere

Surveys and our own experiences show that parents are deeply concerned about the easy access their kids now have to porn via mobile devices.

The statistics paint a dismal picture. A recent U.K. study found that 65 percent of 15- to 16-year-olds had viewed pornography, the vast majority of whom reported seeing it by age 14. This is especially problematic given the findings of another study that found a correlation between early exposure to pornography and an expressed desire to exert power over women.

Yet for all this concern, they know surprisingly little about what mainstream porn looks like, how much their kids are accessing and how it affects them. The Times article, however, cited a 2016 survey that suggested most parents are totally unaware of their kids’ porn experiences. Jones called this the “parental naivete gap.”

This matches our own experiences. In the presentations we do at high schools, we ask parents to describe what they think of when they hear the word “porn.” They invariably describe a naked young woman with a coy smile, the kind of image many remember from Playboy centerfolds.

They are shocked when they learn that the images from today’s busiest free porn sites, like Pornhub, depict acts such as women being gagged with a penis or multiple men penetrating every orifice of a woman and then ejaculating on her face. When we tell parents this, the change in the atmosphere of the room is palpable. There is often a collective gasp.

It bears repeating that these are the most visited porn sites — which get more visitors every month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. Pornhub alone received 21.2 billion visits in 2015. We are not talking about images on the fringe.

Ana Bridges, a psychologist at the University of Arkansas, and her team found that 88 percent of scenes from 50 of the top-rented porn movies contained physical aggression against the female performers — such as spanking, slapping and gagging — while 48 percent included verbal abuse — like calling women names such as “bitch” or “slut.”

Bad for your health

More than 40 years of research from different disciplines has demonstrated that viewing pornography — regardless of age — is associated with harmful outcomes. And studies show that the younger the age of exposure, the more significant the impact in terms of shaping boys’ sexual templates, behaviors and attitudes.

A 2011 study of U.S. college men found that 83 percent reported seeing mainstream pornography in the past 12 months and that those who did were more likely to say they would commit rape or sexual assault (if they knew they wouldn’t be caught) than men who said they had not seen porn.

Another study of young teens found that early porn exposure was correlated with perpetration of sexual harassment two years later.

One of the most cited analyses of 22 studies concluded that pornography consumption is associated with an increased likelihood of committing acts of verbal or physical sexual aggression. And a study of college-aged women found that young women whose male partners used porn experienced lower self-esteem, diminished relationship quality and lower sexual satisfaction.

It begins with parents

Fearing for their children’s well-being, parents at our presentations, whether in Los Angeles, Oslo or Warsaw, want to run home in a panic to have the “porn talk” with their kids.

But in reality, they often have no idea what to say, how to say it, or how to deal with a kid who would rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting across from their parents talking about porn. At the same time, public health research shows that parents are the first line of prevention in dealing with any major social problem that affects their kids.

So what can be done?

Most current efforts focus on teens themselves and educating them about sex and the perils of porn. Although it is crucial to have high-quality programs for teens who have already been exposed, the fact is that this is cleaning up after the fact rather than preventing the mess in the first place.

So a team of academics, public health experts, educators, pediatricians and developmental psychologists — including us — spent two years pooling research to create a program to help parents become that vital first line of defense.

That’s why the nonprofit we set up — Culture Reframed — initially focused on parents of tweens, addressing a key question: How do we prevent kids from being exposed to images of sexual abuse and degradation at that critical stage when they are forming their sexual identities?

What took shape was a 12-module program that introduces parents sequentially to the developmental changes — emotional, cognitive and physical — that tweens undergo and the hypersexualized pop culture that shapes those changes and is the wallpaper of tween lives.

For example, boys learn from music videos, violent video games, mainstream media and porn that “real men” are aggressive and lack empathy, that sex equals conquest, and that to avoid being bullied, they have to wear the mask of masculinity. Girls, on the other hand, learn that they have to look “hot” to be visible, be as passive as a cartoon princess and internalize the male gaze, leading them to self-objectify at an early age.

Navigating the porn minefield

Helping parents grasp the degree to which hypersexualized images shape their tweens encourages them to understand, rather than judge, why their girl wants to look like one of the Kardashians, or why their boy, hazed into hypermasculinity, is at risk of losing his capacity for empathy and connection. This helps parents approach their kids with compassion rather than with frustration and anger that can undermine the parent-child relationship.

Navigating all the minefields of living in today’s toxic porn culture — from sexting and poor self esteem to porn and peer pressure — is very tricky terrain, and parents need all the help they can get.

But ultimately, the Culture Reframed project is about so much more than providing parents with newfound confidence and skills. It’s about taking power back from the porn industry, which is out to hijack the sexuality and humanity of kids in the name of profit, and giving it back to parents.

Samantha Wechsler, interim executive director of Culture Reframed, co-authored this article.

Gail Dines, Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies, Wheelock College