Lily Salter's Blog, page 952

November 16, 2015

“Why can’t we take out these bastards?”: Why the media’s apocalyptic Paris response should be making you very nervous

"Why can't we take out these bastards?" CNN's Jim Acosta asked President Obama at a press conference on Monday. Acosta's language may have been rougher than some might have used, but he was speaking for a press corps whose thirst for an apocalyptic confrontation with ISIS has been let loose by last Friday's attacks in Paris.

Ever since that terrible day, much of the establishment media has eagerly reverted to its default position when it comes to foreign policy: the more hawkish, the better.

The Sunday shows were dominated by such talk. NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton turned up on both CBS and ABC's Sundayshows, warning darkly that if spy agencies couldn't monitor cell phone communications, ISIS might be able to attack New York more easily. Unsurprisingly, he was met with little skepticism. ABC viewers were then treated to the sight of Bill Kristol, a pundit who would invade his local grocery store if he had a problem with it, calling for 50,000 American troops to combat ISIS.

On Monday morning, subscribers to Politico's highly influential Playbook newsletter were greeted with Mike Allen's pronouncement that the best person to listen to about Paris was former deputy CIA chief Mike Morell, now on the CBS payroll. If they turned on Allen's favorite show, MSNBC's "Morning Joe," they could have seen Joe Scarborough ask James Stavridis, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, if NATO should go to war with ISIS. Surprise! Stavridis thought that was a great idea.

It's not just American media, either. British viewers watching Sky News on Sunday were treated to one of the more blatantly warmongering interviews you are likely to find anywhere, as anchor Dermot Murnaghan demanded that Diane Abbott, a left-wing member of the opposition Labour party, sign up to British bombing in Syria. "Even if it's just a gesture, why not join?" he asked—a stunningly casual way to discuss deadly military action—adding later that any strategy to combat ISIS should involve "trying to kill as many of them as you possibly can."

Listen to the language being used here. "Kill as many of them as you possibly can." "Take out these bastards." This is the hyper-macho language of some two-bit action movie, not a foreign policy strategy. It's also evidence of the way that a supposedly "objective" press can reinforce one very narrow view of the world through its own ideological insularity.

It has been said many times before, but it's worth saying again: what do these people think has been going on all this time? Despite the current narrative that paints Obama as some pacifist hippie, the US is currently conducting military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and god knows where else. We have been in Afghanistan for 14 years. We have been in Iraq for 12 years. What has any of this gotten us? For one, it got us ISIS. It should hardly be controversial to say that the rise of ISIS is directly connected to the American-led destabilization of the Middle East. It didn't even exist a few years ago. Does Jim Acosta seriously believe that more of the same would stamp it out?

It now appears that the overwhelming majority of the people involved in the Paris attacks were Europeans, people whose relative luxury and safety in the world were nevertheless overwhelmed by intellectual and ideological forces whose complexity far outmatches the force of any weapon. Does Bill Kristol think we should pulverize Belgium back to the Stone Age?

It takes ideas and emotions of immense and terrible power to convince someone that they should murder people in a concert hall one by one, or blow themselves up outside a stadium. How many bombs, how many guns, how many troops, how many Orwellian tactics do the hawks now crying out for "something to be done" think will be useful in fighting that ideology, when decades of war has helped to fuel it?

It is a real tragedy that, rather than attempt to grapple with any of this, so many in the elite media beat the same drums we always seem to hear at times of crisis. We are in desperate need of new ways to think about this fragile world of ours. Instead, we get "take out these bastards." Some things never change.

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Published on November 16, 2015 14:17

The disgraceful Charlie Sheen “tigerblood” jokes have started already: The actor reportedly will reveal he’s HIV-positive tomorrow

Charlie Sheen will reportedly announce tomorrow during a “Today” show appearance that he’s HIV-positive.

TMZ reported that Sheen’s appearance—teased in an NBC press release to be a “revealing personal announcement”—will pertain to today’s National Enquirer cover story on Sheen’s suspected diagnosis and 4-year cover-up.

UPDATE: TMZ now reports that sources say Sheen will reveal that "he beat the disease because it's undetectable in his system." Twitter reactions have been decidedly polarized. On one hand, you have words of empathy support, even from folks who might not normally find themselves in a position to defend Charlie Sheen:

[embedtweet id="666349883083853824"] [embedtweet id="666348384366813185"] [embedtweet id="666327341950464000"] [embedtweet id="666321172175302657"] And then you have the cheap shots — easy cracks involving Sheen's own catchphrases like "winning!" and "tiger blood" and referencing his sexual history. [embedtweet id="666311243892936705"] [embedtweet id="665415283331436546"] [embedtweet id="666347480754335745"] [embedtweet id="664464743420284928"] [embedtweet id="666353574318841857"] [embedtweet id="666353571668090880"] [embedtweet id="666353542400049152"] Sheen's reported diagnosis is undoubtedly tragic for all involved. Worse yet, though, Sheen's promiscuity is already being misused to stigmatize his HIV status, which feels like the worst kind of callback to the 1980s. Matt Lauer interviews Sheen tomorrow morning on "Today."

Charlie Sheen will reportedly announce tomorrow during a “Today” show appearance that he’s HIV-positive.

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Published on November 16, 2015 13:29

Spare us your French flag filter: The self-indulgent social media performance doesn’t help anyone

My Facebook profile picture is a white cat. It’s not a real cat. It’s a cat-object created out of rabbit fur, a quirky birthday gift my niece received from one of her tween classmates. She insisted that I use her photograph of it as my Facebook avatar. So there it is, and it will probably stay the rabbit-cat until the next time my niece gets an Idea in her head. It has not been French-flagified on Facebook. I am not about to change it. My niece is half French. My brother-in-law is French, from France. Through them, I have family-in-law in Paris and its environs. One of them lives in the 10th arrondissement, where the worst of the terrorist carnage unfurled. The French relatives are not French-flagifying their pictures on Facebook. It is ludicrous to assume that their indifference to screening a tricolor flag over their profile photos--a move that, bluntly, requires more tech-savvy than I care to use up brain cells to learn--somehow suggests that they are secretly sympathizing with the terrorists. They’re simply too sorrowful, too exhausted to worry about the semiotics of their social media usage. More to the point: Since when has an affirmative declaration that one is #Standing with X, Y, or Z, or announcing #Je suis Charlie, #Je Suis Paris, etc., become a performative requirement on Facebook, at the risk of being trolled by outraged strangers policing the allegiances being pledged inside Facebook nation? That emotional energy is not only misplaced, but ironically demonstrates self-involvement masquerading as empathy for others. For even as I write these words, my niece is sitting in French class at school conversing en français, unaware that a few blocks away, the Yard at Harvard University is being evacuated due to an unconfirmed bomb threat. My niece would panic if she knew, because her mother—my baby sister forever, no matter how old we both get—works there. This morning, a similar bomb threat was issued for Cambridge Public Schools, though that threat was dismissed as a hoax, and the public schools remained open. My niece is too young to be on Facebook and even if she were, the fact that I did not overlay my profile picture with the French flag would mean very little to her. She wants and needs adults to be in the room. A digitized French flag over that weird rabbit-cat she adores will do nothing to assure her that the world is not collapsing, and that her friends and family are safe. French-flagifying your Facebook profile is a nifty way to let others know that you’re standing with France or whatever, but it is an empty signifier of sympathy that rings hollow in the face of ongoing and very real threats of violence erupting around a world that now includes our backyards. And so, as Claire Bernish wrote pointedly:

“I refuse — despite my partial French heritage — to cloak myself in nationalism of any stripe or star, particularly not now. Because, besides victims in Paris, an incomprehensibly astronomic number of people have been grieving loss of the highest order for some time — in places whose names roll off our tongues as if it’s accepted that violence simply happens there — and a majority likely couldn’t guess the colors on these victims’ flags.”

These are the flags of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, and so on, places where explosive, unexpected violence is a daily occurrence, and emotional exhaustion has become the default. In the wake of the latest attacks on Paris, the New York Times reported,

“Monuments around the world lit up in the colors of the French flag; presidential speeches touted the need to defend “shared values;” Facebook offered users a one-click option to overlay their profile pictures with the French tricolor, a service not offered for the Lebanese flag.”

Thanks to social media, nonetheless, the ideological uses of patriotism stand starkly illuminated, throwing into high relief the political limits of the claim “all lives matter.” (For how long? To whom?) Frenchify your avatar to your heart’s content, or leave it the way that it has always been. Either way, the attacks on Paris illuminate one terrible new reality: that #Je Suis Paris is now literally true. Pledging allegiance to the red, white, and blue does nothing but make you look good to people with the time to criticize you. Meanwhile, Harvard Yard stands locked and emptied, as bewildered students mill around helplessly, watching as the Boston and Cambridge Police, Homeland Security, the Fire Department, Department of Mass Transportation, and heavily armed officers gather to assess the threat. It looks a war zone. Because to all extents and purposes, it is.

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Published on November 16, 2015 13:17

This is why Ben Carson lies: The dark, disturbing reality of race, religion and today’s right-wing

For months now, Ben Carson has been rising in the polls, but as long as the far more flamboyant Donald Trump was ahead of him, the chaos engendered by Trump focused almost all attention around him. Last week, all that changed as Carson clearly emerged to top Trump, and finally started getting a level of attention and scrutiny he's warranted for some time. It has not been pretty. No one doubts the core truth of Carson's Horatio Alger narrative—a child of the underclass who became a world-renowned neurosurgeon. But that only makes the surrounding, objectively unnecessary lies all the more puzzling to many. Why lie about having been a violent youth—even stabbing someone—when no one else remembers him that way? Why lie about being offered a full West Point scholarship, when no such thing exists, and he went to Yale anyway? And when such questions are raised, why complain that “I do not remember this level of scrutiny for one President Barack Obama,” when, as Bill Moyers noted on April 25, 2008, “More than 3,000 news stories have been penned since early April about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama.” As Kevin Drum explains, one reason Carson tells “unnecessary lies” is that for his evangelical base, they're anything but unnecessary, they're essential:

Serious evangelicals really, really want to hear a story about sin and redemption. That requires two things. First, Carson needs to have been a bad kid. Second, redemption needs to have truly turned his life around.

Which is the purpose of anecdotes such as his story about a professor giving him $10 when he was flat broke for being “the most honest student in the class" of 150 students—a story that now appears was based on a humor magazine's hoax. If such stories sound wildly implausible, well, they are—and that's a feature, not a bug:

No one who's not an evangelical Christian would believe it for a second. But evangelicals hear testimonies like this all the time. They expect testimonies like this, and the more improbable the better. So Carson gives them one. It's clumsy because he's not very good at inventing this kind of thing, but that doesn't matter much.

Indeed, Carson's clumsiness readily gets reinterpreted as “authenticity.” But there's another suspect aspect of the Carson candidacy that deserves much more scrutiny: his role as the “some of my best friends are black” candidate, to help cover for the GOP's unrelenting racial hostility, as the nation grows more diverse, and the GOP grows increasingly antagonistic. Black commentators like Christopher Parker see this in terms of tokenism. Carson is “way too far out of his depth to be taken seriously as a political leader,” he writes, citing some of Carson's wilder claims. “By serving as tokens, Carson and other black Republican candidates allow racist whites to continue to hide from their racism,” he argues, and in the end:

By continuing to represent the GOP as a black man who is patently unqualified, his candidacy does more to perpetuate racism than undo it. His political incompetence is on public display for all to see. It’s very much akin to a show in which black performers were complicit in their own degradation. And since blacks are almost never afforded the opportunity to be seen as individuals, the humiliation is often extended to blacks as a group.

But, of course, Carson's evangelical base does not see him as a political incompetent. Parker's sense of humiliation as a black professional is valid and real. But something more complicated is going on. The tokenism charge is accurate, but tokenism takes on many different forms, and since it overwhelmingly serves white needs, it helps to pay attention to the white side of the story, which, after all, is where Carson's political appeal lies. White supremacy, after all, is overwhelmingly a white problem. Funny how hard that is to remember. When I was kid in the late 1950s, first encountering racial politics, I was exposed to two types of racists: those who proudly despised blacks, and those invariably prefaced their racist attitudes with the words, “Some of my best friends are negroes, but....” Given that I lived in Northern California communities with almost no blacks for miles around, it wasn't just my gut telling me that adults saying that had no such black friends, and every word they said was probably a lie—a fairly transparent one. I figured that deep down, they were every bit as racist as those who freely used the N-word, they just felt compelled to hide it—more from themselves than from anyone else. I can't help but see the same sort of dynamic at work bolstering Ben Carson's candidacy today. After all, the primary purpose of imaginary black friends is to help defend against imaginary black devils, and for most of the GOP base, there has never been an imaginary black devil quite like President Obama, who has now become the very embodiment of the Democratic Party. It's no accident, then, that Carson first gained national attention for rudely attacking Obama directly at the National Prayer Breakfast, an explicitly non-partisan event where politics are supposed to be completely set aside. The Wall Street Journal immediately proposed him for president, and now the right-wing masses have followed suit. But my take here is not just based on my own particular childhood experience. First, the notion that “some of my best friends are black,” or Jews, or gay, or whatever proves anything at all has long been a subject of ridicule. After all, George Zimmerman had a black friend who vouched for him, and four years ago the New Republic published a brief history of the defense, and how it's been mocked. It included mention of John Roach Straton, the Baptist preacher who popularized the notion that Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, was “the candidate of rum, Romanism, and rebellion,” but who subsequently told the AP, “Understand I am not a foe of the Catholics. Some of my dearest friends are Catholic.” So, there's nothing new, unusual or idiosyncratic about my reaction to this particular lie. Second, the whole history of white supremacy in America is shot through with numerous examples of similar face-saving strategies, whenever the core logic gets too ugly to be defended without apology. Any time blacks advance their own leadership, white supremacists look for black allies to substitute for them—allies they can claim as bosom buddies, who fully endorse their anti-black politics. When there were slave rebellions, it was docile, relatively privileged house slaves who were turned to, which helps explain why so many plantation owners felt betrayed after the Civil War, when freed slaves abandoned their plantations in droves—including those many slaveowners claimed were “like part of the family.” During the civil rights and black power era, the relentless hostility toward black leadership was paired with attempts to prop up alternative “representatives” to strike deals with. In fact, a crucial part of the behind-the-scenes work in desegregating Birmingham, for example, consisted of countering such efforts to split the black community. It took many months to lay the groundwork for the necessary unity, and even then that unity was sorely tested in the battle. Indeed, Martin Luther King's famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was written in response to a public letter from eight local clergymen who called the demonstrations he led “unwise and untimely,” and went on to say, “We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area.” With this in mind, there's little surprising in how Republicans have reacted to Barack Obama, going back to when he first ran for U.S. Senate, in 2004. Obama won the Democratic primary with a clear majority, 52.8 percent, more than double the second place candidate, while the Republican candidate, Jack Ryan, won the GOP primary with just 35.5 percent, ahead of two other strong contenders in the 20s. Yet, when Ryan unexpectedly dropped out for personal reasons (the release of divorce proceedings alleging he had taken his wife to public sex clubs), the state party leaders ignored both of them, and instead took six weeks of precious campaign time to select and secure Alan Keyes, a carpetbagger from Maryland, for no other apparent reason than that he was black, and would attack Obama in an all-out manner that no white candidate would dream of doing in the 21st century. As the L.A. Times reported:

Desperate to find someone to compete against Harvard-educated Obama, the Republicans "needed to find another Harvard-educated African American who had some experience on the national political scene," said Republican state Sen. Steven J. Rauschenberger. "We need that because the Democrats have made an icon out of Barack Obama. The only way to fight back is to find your own icon, and that is not an easy thing to do."

Like Carson, and Herman Cain (Remember him? 9-9-9?), Keyes had no experience in elected office—though, in his case, not for lack of trying. The Times noted that Keyes had lost badly in two previous Senate runs in Maryland. "In 1988, he got 38% of the vote; in 1992, he got 29%." Some icon! But he had managed to make a decent career out of being a black conservative, as have many others as well. In fact, the Times reported:

In 1992, Keyes was criticized for using campaign funds to pay himself a monthly salary of $8,500 -- an unusual, though legal, strategy at the time. Illinois GOP officials said that Keyes had assured them he wouldn't do that during this campaign.

Not only was Keyes a carpetbagger, he was a carpetbagger with a record of denouncing carpetbagging. When Hillary Clinton first ran for Senate in New York, Keyes said, "I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness to go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent the people there. So I certainly wouldn't imitate it." What Keyes did have (foreshadowing Carson) was a religious conservative message—and the claim that he, not Obama, represented the authentic African-American experience, since Obama's ancestors hadn't been slaves. "Barack Obama claims an African American heritage, yet stands against the very things that were the basis for [stopping] the oppression of my ancestors," Keyes told George Stephanopoulos, going all-in on the religious right effort to equate abortion with slavery—a popular position among white evangelicals, that tends to make many black religious conservatives a good deal more uneasy, just as religiously conservative Jews tend to denounce, not embrace, antiabortion "holocaust" rhetoric. Carson entertains some of the same confluence of attitudes. His notorious claim that Obamacare “is slavery, in a way” appears to be partially rooted in the same sense that he, Carson, is the authentic African-American, descended from slaves, instinctively freedom-loving, as opposed to Obama, who is an imposter, an interloper—which ties in with birtherism as well. This isn't to claim that Carson himself is a birther, only that his questioning of Obama's authenticity synergizes with that coming from the broader, white right-wing base. Similarly, a white conservative casually equating Obamacare with slavery would be savagely condemned in a way that Carson was spared, simply because he is black. There is a back-and-forth exchange of “likely stories” that facilitates the creation of an elaborate shared fantasy, in which, among other things, all the outrageous things Carson says are true, and white conservatives defending him prove that liberals, Democrats and the vast majority of blacks are the “real racists” after all. And if Carson can help them to really believe that fantasy, well, maybe he really is one of their best friends after all. At least that's what today's GOP would like to believe.

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Published on November 16, 2015 13:16

Our frustrated emoji year: A laughing-through-tears smiley face is the Oxford dictionary “word” of 2015

It’s been a big year for our culture. A huge year, one might say. Within the course of less than twelve months, we’ve witnessed history-making steps in the name of civil rights and social progress in both forward and backwards directions. We’ve become increasingly accepting of expressing sexual fluidity, and champion those willing to advocate for individual rights and question the norm. Yes, it’s been a big year -- quite possibly indescribable in some cases. As it turns out, the Oxford Dictionaries agree. This year’s Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year isn’t a word at all. (A brief pause while you re-read that sentence, I couldn’t believe it either. Okay, let’s pick up.) The “word” best reflecting the cultural year in language is the “face with tears of joy” emoji. Seriously. Other contenders on the short list of potential winners included “Brexit,” a term for the hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union; the phrase “on fleek,” used as an adjective to describe something extremely attractive or stylish; and “refugee,” used in the standard sense to describe a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. These candidates ultimately missed the mark in being named the top word of 2015, which says a lot about our culture’s current emojinal state. “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a release. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully.” One of the major draws of utilizing emoji is the adaptability of the symbol. It can be used to soften blows of sarcasm, as a more aesthetically-pleasing expression of “LOL”, and also to express frustration. There’ve been many times when girlfriends recount text exchanges with would-be suitors over brunch or cocktails, and follow up describing a particularly sarcastic statement with “Well, I sent the crying while laughing emoji, so he knew I was kidding.” In other situations, the emoji reflects situations that are a bit more grim. “Laughing through tears” is frequently used as a buffer to express frustration at social injustices, a form of humor to deflect from the stark reality that we’re faced with situations so dire our language fails to accurately articulate the emotional implications. The 2014 word of the year was “vape,” based on the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes. The top word of 2013 was “selfie,” which continues to dominate both our lexicon and Instagram feeds. It’s not surprising that we’ve reached the cultural moment where an emoji most accurately captures the values of our culture. Utilizing the cutesy symbols used to be exclusive to teenage girls, but linguistic shifts now have emoji being used in meaningful ways by the likes of potential presidential candidates such as Hilary Clinton. This year saw a solution to the backlash against light-skinned emoji bias, when the standard set was replaced by a broad spectrum of skin tones we can now choose from. This update not only reflected company’s receptivity to feedback from users, but showcased what seems to now be universal use of emoji based on multiple demographics. Emoji are so popular that it’s now possible to use them for weblinks. I wonder about the future of emoji. Given the ubiquity of “selfie” and “vape,” it’s possible that in a few years we’ll see a movement away from the myriad tiny faces and objects currently used to express our emotional complexities. For many reasons I hope we do. While I enjoy the convenience and colorful display of emoji, there’s something derivative about it, limiting the value of a statement’s or expression’s potential impact. I was at a party this weekend where a friend of mine read a poem that I’m still processing because of the way he pieced together his words and images. It made me realize how much I miss being gutted by language. Other listeners were similarly affected, reaffirming the power of words to take our breath away. So while the “face with tears of joy” emoji may be the most common expression in our language, I’m willing to hold out for those rare moments that elicit actual tears of joy. I’d rather be written a love letter than sent a heart eyes emoji any day.It’s been a big year for our culture. A huge year, one might say. Within the course of less than twelve months, we’ve witnessed history-making steps in the name of civil rights and social progress in both forward and backwards directions. We’ve become increasingly accepting of expressing sexual fluidity, and champion those willing to advocate for individual rights and question the norm. Yes, it’s been a big year -- quite possibly indescribable in some cases. As it turns out, the Oxford Dictionaries agree. This year’s Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year isn’t a word at all. (A brief pause while you re-read that sentence, I couldn’t believe it either. Okay, let’s pick up.) The “word” best reflecting the cultural year in language is the “face with tears of joy” emoji. Seriously. Other contenders on the short list of potential winners included “Brexit,” a term for the hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union; the phrase “on fleek,” used as an adjective to describe something extremely attractive or stylish; and “refugee,” used in the standard sense to describe a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. These candidates ultimately missed the mark in being named the top word of 2015, which says a lot about our culture’s current emojinal state. “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a release. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully.” One of the major draws of utilizing emoji is the adaptability of the symbol. It can be used to soften blows of sarcasm, as a more aesthetically-pleasing expression of “LOL”, and also to express frustration. There’ve been many times when girlfriends recount text exchanges with would-be suitors over brunch or cocktails, and follow up describing a particularly sarcastic statement with “Well, I sent the crying while laughing emoji, so he knew I was kidding.” In other situations, the emoji reflects situations that are a bit more grim. “Laughing through tears” is frequently used as a buffer to express frustration at social injustices, a form of humor to deflect from the stark reality that we’re faced with situations so dire our language fails to accurately articulate the emotional implications. The 2014 word of the year was “vape,” based on the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes. The top word of 2013 was “selfie,” which continues to dominate both our lexicon and Instagram feeds. It’s not surprising that we’ve reached the cultural moment where an emoji most accurately captures the values of our culture. Utilizing the cutesy symbols used to be exclusive to teenage girls, but linguistic shifts now have emoji being used in meaningful ways by the likes of potential presidential candidates such as Hilary Clinton. This year saw a solution to the backlash against light-skinned emoji bias, when the standard set was replaced by a broad spectrum of skin tones we can now choose from. This update not only reflected company’s receptivity to feedback from users, but showcased what seems to now be universal use of emoji based on multiple demographics. Emoji are so popular that it’s now possible to use them for weblinks. I wonder about the future of emoji. Given the ubiquity of “selfie” and “vape,” it’s possible that in a few years we’ll see a movement away from the myriad tiny faces and objects currently used to express our emotional complexities. For many reasons I hope we do. While I enjoy the convenience and colorful display of emoji, there’s something derivative about it, limiting the value of a statement’s or expression’s potential impact. I was at a party this weekend where a friend of mine read a poem that I’m still processing because of the way he pieced together his words and images. It made me realize how much I miss being gutted by language. Other listeners were similarly affected, reaffirming the power of words to take our breath away. So while the “face with tears of joy” emoji may be the most common expression in our language, I’m willing to hold out for those rare moments that elicit actual tears of joy. I’d rather be written a love letter than sent a heart eyes emoji any day.It’s been a big year for our culture. A huge year, one might say. Within the course of less than twelve months, we’ve witnessed history-making steps in the name of civil rights and social progress in both forward and backwards directions. We’ve become increasingly accepting of expressing sexual fluidity, and champion those willing to advocate for individual rights and question the norm. Yes, it’s been a big year -- quite possibly indescribable in some cases. As it turns out, the Oxford Dictionaries agree. This year’s Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year isn’t a word at all. (A brief pause while you re-read that sentence, I couldn’t believe it either. Okay, let’s pick up.) The “word” best reflecting the cultural year in language is the “face with tears of joy” emoji. Seriously. Other contenders on the short list of potential winners included “Brexit,” a term for the hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union; the phrase “on fleek,” used as an adjective to describe something extremely attractive or stylish; and “refugee,” used in the standard sense to describe a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. These candidates ultimately missed the mark in being named the top word of 2015, which says a lot about our culture’s current emojinal state. “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a release. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully.” One of the major draws of utilizing emoji is the adaptability of the symbol. It can be used to soften blows of sarcasm, as a more aesthetically-pleasing expression of “LOL”, and also to express frustration. There’ve been many times when girlfriends recount text exchanges with would-be suitors over brunch or cocktails, and follow up describing a particularly sarcastic statement with “Well, I sent the crying while laughing emoji, so he knew I was kidding.” In other situations, the emoji reflects situations that are a bit more grim. “Laughing through tears” is frequently used as a buffer to express frustration at social injustices, a form of humor to deflect from the stark reality that we’re faced with situations so dire our language fails to accurately articulate the emotional implications. The 2014 word of the year was “vape,” based on the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes. The top word of 2013 was “selfie,” which continues to dominate both our lexicon and Instagram feeds. It’s not surprising that we’ve reached the cultural moment where an emoji most accurately captures the values of our culture. Utilizing the cutesy symbols used to be exclusive to teenage girls, but linguistic shifts now have emoji being used in meaningful ways by the likes of potential presidential candidates such as Hilary Clinton. This year saw a solution to the backlash against light-skinned emoji bias, when the standard set was replaced by a broad spectrum of skin tones we can now choose from. This update not only reflected company’s receptivity to feedback from users, but showcased what seems to now be universal use of emoji based on multiple demographics. Emoji are so popular that it’s now possible to use them for weblinks. I wonder about the future of emoji. Given the ubiquity of “selfie” and “vape,” it’s possible that in a few years we’ll see a movement away from the myriad tiny faces and objects currently used to express our emotional complexities. For many reasons I hope we do. While I enjoy the convenience and colorful display of emoji, there’s something derivative about it, limiting the value of a statement’s or expression’s potential impact. I was at a party this weekend where a friend of mine read a poem that I’m still processing because of the way he pieced together his words and images. It made me realize how much I miss being gutted by language. Other listeners were similarly affected, reaffirming the power of words to take our breath away. So while the “face with tears of joy” emoji may be the most common expression in our language, I’m willing to hold out for those rare moments that elicit actual tears of joy. I’d rather be written a love letter than sent a heart eyes emoji any day.It’s been a big year for our culture. A huge year, one might say. Within the course of less than twelve months, we’ve witnessed history-making steps in the name of civil rights and social progress in both forward and backwards directions. We’ve become increasingly accepting of expressing sexual fluidity, and champion those willing to advocate for individual rights and question the norm. Yes, it’s been a big year -- quite possibly indescribable in some cases. As it turns out, the Oxford Dictionaries agree. This year’s Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year isn’t a word at all. (A brief pause while you re-read that sentence, I couldn’t believe it either. Okay, let’s pick up.) The “word” best reflecting the cultural year in language is the “face with tears of joy” emoji. Seriously. Other contenders on the short list of potential winners included “Brexit,” a term for the hypothetical departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union; the phrase “on fleek,” used as an adjective to describe something extremely attractive or stylish; and “refugee,” used in the standard sense to describe a person who has been forced to leave their country to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. These candidates ultimately missed the mark in being named the top word of 2015, which says a lot about our culture’s current emojinal state. “You can see how traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st century communication,” says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries in a release. “It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully.” One of the major draws of utilizing emoji is the adaptability of the symbol. It can be used to soften blows of sarcasm, as a more aesthetically-pleasing expression of “LOL”, and also to express frustration. There’ve been many times when girlfriends recount text exchanges with would-be suitors over brunch or cocktails, and follow up describing a particularly sarcastic statement with “Well, I sent the crying while laughing emoji, so he knew I was kidding.” In other situations, the emoji reflects situations that are a bit more grim. “Laughing through tears” is frequently used as a buffer to express frustration at social injustices, a form of humor to deflect from the stark reality that we’re faced with situations so dire our language fails to accurately articulate the emotional implications. The 2014 word of the year was “vape,” based on the rising popularity of electronic cigarettes. The top word of 2013 was “selfie,” which continues to dominate both our lexicon and Instagram feeds. It’s not surprising that we’ve reached the cultural moment where an emoji most accurately captures the values of our culture. Utilizing the cutesy symbols used to be exclusive to teenage girls, but linguistic shifts now have emoji being used in meaningful ways by the likes of potential presidential candidates such as Hilary Clinton. This year saw a solution to the backlash against light-skinned emoji bias, when the standard set was replaced by a broad spectrum of skin tones we can now choose from. This update not only reflected company’s receptivity to feedback from users, but showcased what seems to now be universal use of emoji based on multiple demographics. Emoji are so popular that it’s now possible to use them for weblinks. I wonder about the future of emoji. Given the ubiquity of “selfie” and “vape,” it’s possible that in a few years we’ll see a movement away from the myriad tiny faces and objects currently used to express our emotional complexities. For many reasons I hope we do. While I enjoy the convenience and colorful display of emoji, there’s something derivative about it, limiting the value of a statement’s or expression’s potential impact. I was at a party this weekend where a friend of mine read a poem that I’m still processing because of the way he pieced together his words and images. It made me realize how much I miss being gutted by language. Other listeners were similarly affected, reaffirming the power of words to take our breath away. So while the “face with tears of joy” emoji may be the most common expression in our language, I’m willing to hold out for those rare moments that elicit actual tears of joy. I’d rather be written a love letter than sent a heart eyes emoji any day.

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Published on November 16, 2015 13:16

November 15, 2015

This is how we remake monogamy: More choices, better sex, better marriages

If the editors of Time had asked for our response to the question, “Is monogamy over?” we would have answered, “It’s absolutely not over; however, it means different things to different people, attitudes toward it are changing, and the changes benefit everybody.” There was a time, just a few generations ago, when there was a broad societal consensus on the definition of monogamy. It meant lifelong sexual exclusivity -- virginity until marriage and absolutely no sexual interaction with anyone else “till death do us part.” (And none after the death of the spouse, for that matter, except upon remarriage.) This was deemed to be the only acceptable and healthy choice. This started to change in the 1960s, as divorce became more common and access to birth control was determined to be a constitutional right. By the 1970s, serial monogamy started to become the norm. At that time, there was a fairly common understanding that serial monogamy included premarital and post-divorce sex. The 1960s and 1970s were also a period of upheaval and experimentation. The “monogamy mandate” itself began to loosen up. During that era, swinging went public and grew popular, and people started talking about open marriage. Some went even further, exploring communal living and group “marriages.” Cultural attitudes have continued to evolve over the last four decades, and the meaning of monogamy has become considerably more ambiguous, something we explore in depth in " Designer Relationships ." Some who identify as monogamous still adhere to the old-fashioned definition, but this is becoming increasingly rare. Many people will simultaneously date multiple partners and be sexual with them before “settling down” with one. And of course, the rate of cheating among those who profess to be monogamous is high, though estimates vary. Social conservatives decry all of these changes, but with the exception of cheating, we see them as a step forward. They create an opportunity for people to explore their relationship choices with more freedom and awareness than was available in earlier generations. No wonder a recent YouGov poll found that 25 percent of Americans think that polyamory is morally acceptable, and that percentage rose to 58 among the non-religious. When monogamy is mandatory and unexamined, marriage can be reduced to being a means to an end (financial security and social acceptance, for example). And when people don’t consciously explore what they want from their relationships, superficiality, dishonesty and dissatisfaction are common and inevitable results. Of course, it’s “easier” to play a predetermined role than to do the work of figuring out who we are and what we want. The latter takes courage, open-mindedness and the willingness to examine and possibly reject a lifetime of cultural conditioning. Yet the rewards are well worth the effort. When we make active choices instead of just accepting the established norm, we’re far more likely to end up with stronger, more authentic connections. The fact that monogamy is no longer obligatory and one-size-fits-all is something to celebrate. It gives us the freedom to do the hard work and reap the very real benefits in the quality of our relationships and rate of our personal growth. Rather than thinking of our relationships as something that comes off the rack, we can craft them to suit ourselves, as individuals and in partnership with others. The first step toward designing a relationship is developing a clear and nuanced understanding of how one defines infidelity and monogamy. There’s no universal consensus on either. As the furor over the Ashley Madison “outing” revealed, some people think posting a profile on a website is equivalent to having an affair; others may feel the same about viewing pornography or experiencing desire for someone else. There are many people who identify as monogamous for whom these behaviors or emotions, and even more, are not a problem. What’s important is figuring out exactly where you fall on the spectrum. Having clear understandings makes it possible to reach informed agreements that are mutually comfortable—whether you define your partnership as monogamous or not. And of course, the process of reaching these understandings requires deep communication, which itself is good for the relationship. This is particularly important for those in more conventionally monogamous relationships, because assumptions tend to be tacit. Monogamy itself is not a monolith. It is multifaceted, incorporating sexual, emotional, social and practical components. While the sexual and emotional aspects of monogamy may seem to be self-evident, this is by no means always the case. Is “sex” limited to genital intercourse, and if not, what specifically does it include? How much emotional intimacy can a partner have with someone else before you begin to feel uncomfortable? Do you feel a desire to bond deeply with one other person, two or three other people, or with no one at all? Remember, the answers to these questions may change over time. We live in an era when everything is customizable. Relationships are no exception. Some people will continue to practice their grandparents’ form of monogamy, and others, probably the majority, will be serially exclusive and pair-bonded. Still others will explore some form of non-monogamous expression that encompasses one or more of the facets we’ve discussed or may flow in and out of being exclusive based on what the relationship requires. (We’ve done this ourselves.) Having the ability to customize a relationship means having the freedom to respond to life’s vicissitudes. To return to Time’s question, monogamy isn’t over, and it probably never will be. Its future is strong, and the availability of options should make it stronger. Those who choose it are likely to be happier for having made a fully informed decision rather than having fallen into it by default. Those who opt for an alternative approach will be free to do so authentically and without fear of being stigmatized. The freedom to choose will lead to higher levels of relationship satisfaction and a healthier, happier society across the board. The only thing that’s over with regard to monogamy is the requirement that one size must fit all.If the editors of Time had asked for our response to the question, “Is monogamy over?” we would have answered, “It’s absolutely not over; however, it means different things to different people, attitudes toward it are changing, and the changes benefit everybody.” There was a time, just a few generations ago, when there was a broad societal consensus on the definition of monogamy. It meant lifelong sexual exclusivity -- virginity until marriage and absolutely no sexual interaction with anyone else “till death do us part.” (And none after the death of the spouse, for that matter, except upon remarriage.) This was deemed to be the only acceptable and healthy choice. This started to change in the 1960s, as divorce became more common and access to birth control was determined to be a constitutional right. By the 1970s, serial monogamy started to become the norm. At that time, there was a fairly common understanding that serial monogamy included premarital and post-divorce sex. The 1960s and 1970s were also a period of upheaval and experimentation. The “monogamy mandate” itself began to loosen up. During that era, swinging went public and grew popular, and people started talking about open marriage. Some went even further, exploring communal living and group “marriages.” Cultural attitudes have continued to evolve over the last four decades, and the meaning of monogamy has become considerably more ambiguous, something we explore in depth in " Designer Relationships ." Some who identify as monogamous still adhere to the old-fashioned definition, but this is becoming increasingly rare. Many people will simultaneously date multiple partners and be sexual with them before “settling down” with one. And of course, the rate of cheating among those who profess to be monogamous is high, though estimates vary. Social conservatives decry all of these changes, but with the exception of cheating, we see them as a step forward. They create an opportunity for people to explore their relationship choices with more freedom and awareness than was available in earlier generations. No wonder a recent YouGov poll found that 25 percent of Americans think that polyamory is morally acceptable, and that percentage rose to 58 among the non-religious. When monogamy is mandatory and unexamined, marriage can be reduced to being a means to an end (financial security and social acceptance, for example). And when people don’t consciously explore what they want from their relationships, superficiality, dishonesty and dissatisfaction are common and inevitable results. Of course, it’s “easier” to play a predetermined role than to do the work of figuring out who we are and what we want. The latter takes courage, open-mindedness and the willingness to examine and possibly reject a lifetime of cultural conditioning. Yet the rewards are well worth the effort. When we make active choices instead of just accepting the established norm, we’re far more likely to end up with stronger, more authentic connections. The fact that monogamy is no longer obligatory and one-size-fits-all is something to celebrate. It gives us the freedom to do the hard work and reap the very real benefits in the quality of our relationships and rate of our personal growth. Rather than thinking of our relationships as something that comes off the rack, we can craft them to suit ourselves, as individuals and in partnership with others. The first step toward designing a relationship is developing a clear and nuanced understanding of how one defines infidelity and monogamy. There’s no universal consensus on either. As the furor over the Ashley Madison “outing” revealed, some people think posting a profile on a website is equivalent to having an affair; others may feel the same about viewing pornography or experiencing desire for someone else. There are many people who identify as monogamous for whom these behaviors or emotions, and even more, are not a problem. What’s important is figuring out exactly where you fall on the spectrum. Having clear understandings makes it possible to reach informed agreements that are mutually comfortable—whether you define your partnership as monogamous or not. And of course, the process of reaching these understandings requires deep communication, which itself is good for the relationship. This is particularly important for those in more conventionally monogamous relationships, because assumptions tend to be tacit. Monogamy itself is not a monolith. It is multifaceted, incorporating sexual, emotional, social and practical components. While the sexual and emotional aspects of monogamy may seem to be self-evident, this is by no means always the case. Is “sex” limited to genital intercourse, and if not, what specifically does it include? How much emotional intimacy can a partner have with someone else before you begin to feel uncomfortable? Do you feel a desire to bond deeply with one other person, two or three other people, or with no one at all? Remember, the answers to these questions may change over time. We live in an era when everything is customizable. Relationships are no exception. Some people will continue to practice their grandparents’ form of monogamy, and others, probably the majority, will be serially exclusive and pair-bonded. Still others will explore some form of non-monogamous expression that encompasses one or more of the facets we’ve discussed or may flow in and out of being exclusive based on what the relationship requires. (We’ve done this ourselves.) Having the ability to customize a relationship means having the freedom to respond to life’s vicissitudes. To return to Time’s question, monogamy isn’t over, and it probably never will be. Its future is strong, and the availability of options should make it stronger. Those who choose it are likely to be happier for having made a fully informed decision rather than having fallen into it by default. Those who opt for an alternative approach will be free to do so authentically and without fear of being stigmatized. The freedom to choose will lead to higher levels of relationship satisfaction and a healthier, happier society across the board. The only thing that’s over with regard to monogamy is the requirement that one size must fit all.If the editors of Time had asked for our response to the question, “Is monogamy over?” we would have answered, “It’s absolutely not over; however, it means different things to different people, attitudes toward it are changing, and the changes benefit everybody.” There was a time, just a few generations ago, when there was a broad societal consensus on the definition of monogamy. It meant lifelong sexual exclusivity -- virginity until marriage and absolutely no sexual interaction with anyone else “till death do us part.” (And none after the death of the spouse, for that matter, except upon remarriage.) This was deemed to be the only acceptable and healthy choice. This started to change in the 1960s, as divorce became more common and access to birth control was determined to be a constitutional right. By the 1970s, serial monogamy started to become the norm. At that time, there was a fairly common understanding that serial monogamy included premarital and post-divorce sex. The 1960s and 1970s were also a period of upheaval and experimentation. The “monogamy mandate” itself began to loosen up. During that era, swinging went public and grew popular, and people started talking about open marriage. Some went even further, exploring communal living and group “marriages.” Cultural attitudes have continued to evolve over the last four decades, and the meaning of monogamy has become considerably more ambiguous, something we explore in depth in " Designer Relationships ." Some who identify as monogamous still adhere to the old-fashioned definition, but this is becoming increasingly rare. Many people will simultaneously date multiple partners and be sexual with them before “settling down” with one. And of course, the rate of cheating among those who profess to be monogamous is high, though estimates vary. Social conservatives decry all of these changes, but with the exception of cheating, we see them as a step forward. They create an opportunity for people to explore their relationship choices with more freedom and awareness than was available in earlier generations. No wonder a recent YouGov poll found that 25 percent of Americans think that polyamory is morally acceptable, and that percentage rose to 58 among the non-religious. When monogamy is mandatory and unexamined, marriage can be reduced to being a means to an end (financial security and social acceptance, for example). And when people don’t consciously explore what they want from their relationships, superficiality, dishonesty and dissatisfaction are common and inevitable results. Of course, it’s “easier” to play a predetermined role than to do the work of figuring out who we are and what we want. The latter takes courage, open-mindedness and the willingness to examine and possibly reject a lifetime of cultural conditioning. Yet the rewards are well worth the effort. When we make active choices instead of just accepting the established norm, we’re far more likely to end up with stronger, more authentic connections. The fact that monogamy is no longer obligatory and one-size-fits-all is something to celebrate. It gives us the freedom to do the hard work and reap the very real benefits in the quality of our relationships and rate of our personal growth. Rather than thinking of our relationships as something that comes off the rack, we can craft them to suit ourselves, as individuals and in partnership with others. The first step toward designing a relationship is developing a clear and nuanced understanding of how one defines infidelity and monogamy. There’s no universal consensus on either. As the furor over the Ashley Madison “outing” revealed, some people think posting a profile on a website is equivalent to having an affair; others may feel the same about viewing pornography or experiencing desire for someone else. There are many people who identify as monogamous for whom these behaviors or emotions, and even more, are not a problem. What’s important is figuring out exactly where you fall on the spectrum. Having clear understandings makes it possible to reach informed agreements that are mutually comfortable—whether you define your partnership as monogamous or not. And of course, the process of reaching these understandings requires deep communication, which itself is good for the relationship. This is particularly important for those in more conventionally monogamous relationships, because assumptions tend to be tacit. Monogamy itself is not a monolith. It is multifaceted, incorporating sexual, emotional, social and practical components. While the sexual and emotional aspects of monogamy may seem to be self-evident, this is by no means always the case. Is “sex” limited to genital intercourse, and if not, what specifically does it include? How much emotional intimacy can a partner have with someone else before you begin to feel uncomfortable? Do you feel a desire to bond deeply with one other person, two or three other people, or with no one at all? Remember, the answers to these questions may change over time. We live in an era when everything is customizable. Relationships are no exception. Some people will continue to practice their grandparents’ form of monogamy, and others, probably the majority, will be serially exclusive and pair-bonded. Still others will explore some form of non-monogamous expression that encompasses one or more of the facets we’ve discussed or may flow in and out of being exclusive based on what the relationship requires. (We’ve done this ourselves.) Having the ability to customize a relationship means having the freedom to respond to life’s vicissitudes. To return to Time’s question, monogamy isn’t over, and it probably never will be. Its future is strong, and the availability of options should make it stronger. Those who choose it are likely to be happier for having made a fully informed decision rather than having fallen into it by default. Those who opt for an alternative approach will be free to do so authentically and without fear of being stigmatized. The freedom to choose will lead to higher levels of relationship satisfaction and a healthier, happier society across the board. The only thing that’s over with regard to monogamy is the requirement that one size must fit all.

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Published on November 15, 2015 15:30

“I am infuriated by India right now”: Delhi gang-rape documentary director lashes out against government ban on “India’s Daughter”

In 2012, when a young medical student was gang-raped and left for dead on the side of a road in Delhi, India, neither she nor her assailants could have predicted the furor that would follow. India has a problem of systemic, horrific violence against its women—perhaps not more than other nations, but certainly not any better, either. The preconceptions about rape, sexuality and gender were not challenged by any number of stories preceding this one; why should Jyoti Singh’s story be any different? For whatever reason, it was. Protests shook both the capital city of Delhi—India’s "rape capital"—and outrage spread not just to the rest of India but to the rest of the world. In this climate, Leslee Udwin, a novice filmmaker, went to India to attempt to tell the story of a woman the media was beginning to call “India’s daughter.” The resulting documentary—“India’s Daughter”—is, itself, a remarkably balanced documentary, one that distinguishes itself from other accounts of sexual assault by interviewing the rapists and their team of defense lawyers. The only convicted rapist who admits to what he did was the driver, Mukesh Singh, and interviews with him take up nearly as much screentime as the interviews with Jyoti’s bereaved parents. What immediately followed the film was controversy. As the New Yorker reports:

After clips of the Mukesh Singh interview began circulating online, the Indian government stopped the scheduled Indian broadcast of “India’s Daughter,” which was set for March 8th, International Women’s Day. On March 4th, a statement from the Indian Home Minister’s office said that the government was enforcing a ban because Udwin hadn’t secured the correct permissions to interview Singh in prison, didn’t abide by agreements to show authorities unedited versions of the interview, and because Singh’s statements are “an affront to the dignity of women.” (Udwin has since published copies of the letters of permission she received.) In another statement, the government warned that clips from the film “appear to encourage and incite violence against women.” Some supporters of the ban say that airing the Singh interview is tantamount to giving a platform to the rapist’s views; others say that the documentary paints sexual violence as an Indian issue rather than a global one, and fear that it will perpetuate a “white-savior” attitude in foreign viewers. That the government finds the film nationally embarrassing is a likely reason for the ban—members of the ruling B.J.P party have stated that the film is part of “an international conspiracy to defame India” and have protested that its release will affect tourism.

India is notorious for banning media that hint at the controversial; restricted topics include homosexuality, alternative histories of Hinduism, examinations of revered politicians, and of course, rape. In this case, as with most of the others, it speaks of cowardice. “India’s Daughter” has benefited from the publicity surrounding the decision, as illegal copies have proliferated online, but the ban effectively stopped the film from being seen by the people it is about — the poorest and most disconnected segments of the population, the ones struggling most to survive in the most populous country in the world. Beyond the government’s actions, Udwin’s documentary has sparked a conversation that is very familiar to media criticism in 2015—the ongoing questions of who has the right to tell which kinds of stories. Udwin is an Israeli Londoner, and “India’s Daughter” entirely concerns people and events in Northern India. The best intentions in the world cannot erase the racial implications of such a power dynamic, and as “India’s Daughter” has become such an object of discussion in the press, Udwin herself has begun to sound embattled and defensive. I would characterize my own conversation with her as a bit rancorous. Below is my conversation with Udwin; following that are a few closing thoughts from myself and Freida Pinto, who is an ambassador for “India’s Daugher.” How did you come to this topic? I know that you are not Indian yourself. Yes. Well, as a global citizen, and a woman who cares very deeply about the fact that we are still subordinated to men, that we are still lacking in proper respect and representation—true representation, in the world in terms of decision making, in terms of economies and in terms of being independent, and very much in terms of us being unsafe. We know that on a daily basis, every single second, somewhere a woman or a girl is being violently abused and violated. What brought me to the topic was not so much the rape and the case and the darkness of that. It was the light and the horizon of seeing this mass mobilization of the Indian men and women. It was awe-inspiring to me, to see such mass mobilization on India’s streets fighting for my rights. I took it personally, and I thought the least I could do—when these people were being so courageous and so committed to this issue, and facing the most ferocious government crackdown on peaceful protesters—the least I could do was make a film that would be like a megaphone for those voices and join in the protest in that way. That was my way of joining them. So I believe this is your first documentary film, right? Right, yes, and the first time I’ve directed as well. How did it even occur to you to make a film about this? Were you hoping to make a film at some point already? Was India set in your sights at that point? No, no. Not at all. I had no intentions ever of making a documentary film. But it basically took on its own volition. It became a compulsion for me. I didn’t choose to do it. And you know, I didn’t choose India. If these protests had happened in any other country, in any other part of the world, I would’ve gone there and have made that particular case of those protests. I have been up to this point a producer of feature films. I decided to direct the film because I couldn’t afford to hire a director. But I had so much fire in my belly, I was so utterly compelled to make this film, that I had to just go and do it. Obviously I researched very thoroughly before I did it, I didn’t just step on a plane, but I had to do it and therefore by ordinary means, and the means that I had were private means, whatever I had of family savings. And I’ve used them all. [Laughs.] Had you been to India before, or was it a completely new experience? Many times. I’ve had a very close, loving relationship with India, which is why it hurts my heart so much that they have banned this film, you know. And that they even think of accusing me of a conspiracy to shame India—what absolute nonsense. You know, this is a conspiracy to praise India and thank India for being the only country in the world that has come out with such force and vigor and passion and tenacity for women’s rights, to try and make the world a better place for women and girls. There’s not another country on earth that has done that. I went to praise India, not to bury it. Sadly, shame has now appeared to India. But not from the film. From the ban. From the fact that they have banned a film that simply asks for a better world for women and girls. And they have banned the film without even seeing it, which is shameful. It’s so ridiculous. A lot of the media that I read coming out of India about this film suggested a lot of wounded pride or a sense of violation about having a filmmaker who was not Indian make this story that is centered on India in this way. How did you tackle that concern, and how did you respond to that criticism? Well, here’s how I respond. I can understand that certain segments of the Indian population — and believe me, they’re in the minority — I can understand that they have a postcolonial chip on their shoulder. This is what this is emanating from. They call me a British journalist. I am neither a journalist nor British, OK. There’s a kind of exterior that has flown in the face of facts and proper research. And that’s very sad. Because it boomerangs back on the people who are bandying these terms about. They call me a “gori.” You know what that means? I do know what that means. That’s a derogatory word for a white-skinned person. [Note: The word is used for anyone fair-skinned, including Indians, and is considered mild enough that it is featured in both Bollywood lyrics and “Bend It Like Beckham.”] I’m Jewish. In my people’s history, there was a Holocaust in Germany. If I lived my life constantly keeping that paramount in my mind and letting that filter what is right and what is wrong in terms of what is happening around me, I wouldn’t move very far. I think it’s backward-looking. They have to forget about the colonial era, and whatever ax they have to grind with the Brits, let them grind it. You know, let them move on from grinding it, actually! It’s not my fight. I’m not British, OK? Here’s the thing. Any people who refuse to introspect need to really examine their conscience as to why that is. Is your image as a country really more important than saving the lives of your women and girls? Because if that’s what you’re saying, then I’m afraid I don’t have any respect or time for that attitude. You see, I watched as MPs in the Lok Sabha, the Indian Parliament, the morning after the ban were screaming like headless chickens in hysterics. “She’s decimating our tourist industry.” “She’s a conspiracy to shame India,” they were screaming that when they hadn’t even seen the film. There hadn’t even been the possibility for them to see the film because at that point it existed on one thumb drive in my purse. So you know, we shouldn’t give this any credence. We should see it as part of the change-resisting backwards-looking segments of the population. And they don’t only just exist in India. They exist all over the world. There are those people who resist change. There are those people who welcome change and look forward to it. And there are a handful of people who are actively working to change. I know which category I’d like to be in. So let’s talk a little bit about what is the linchpin of your film, which is this very disturbing set of interviews with Mukesh, one of the convicted rapists. Correct. Yes. I interviewed seven rapists over 31 hours. Four of them had nothing to do with this case. One of those four had raped a 5-year-old girl. I sat and interviewed him for three hours. And the reason why I interviewed others who were not involved in this particular case was because I felt the need to practice. Because I was raped when I was 18, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve kept silent about it for 20 years. I didn’t know to what degree the demons inside me that I had buried would rise up. Also, I’d never made a documentary before. I’d never interviewed people before. So I was relying on who I am and what I cared about, you know? Why did Mukesh end up in the film and not the other two rapists? Of the four adults who were candidates to be interviewed — because, remember, Ram Singh either committed suicide or had been murdered in the process, and there was the juvenile, whom there was no possibility of interviewing. I did meet him for 10 minutes, and there was a point in which I had been given permission from the magistrate to simply interview him, but not record him, and have his answers transcribed. And then, the magistrate changed her mind, so I couldn’t do that any longer. Now, one of these four men refused to meet me altogether – Akshay Thakur, the one with the wife and baby in the film. And the two younger ones — whom I sat with over two sessions, for three hours each — they were still maintaining that they were not on the bus. [Here Udwin pauses, as if waiting for me to respond.] They were saying that they were at a music festival—and that music festival was proven by the court not to have existed. They were either in denial, or trying to deny, or mouthing what their lawyers were telling them to say until the appeal. So, there was absolutely no point in including them in the film. What do we gain by them saying they weren’t there? Mukesh spoke very openly and very honestly. That’s strange that he would be honest when — I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why he was being honest. For the same reason. Because he and not a single one of the other rapists I spoke to held any remorse. Really, deep down, they do not believe they did anything wrong. And that is the truth. Their attitude is indignant, in fact. Everybody is doing it, so why are they made an example of? Indeed, from Mukesh’s point of view, why is he being given the death sentence, when there are worse and equally bad crimes, et cetera. That is why he spoke so honestly. As horrible as it is, one of the things your film demonstrates well is that he has a point. There is something about this that really struck a nerve in a way that nothing else had before. Where are the protests now about the 2-and-a-half and 5-year-old girls who were gang-raped last weekend in Delhi? Where are the protests about the 4-year-girl, who in the previous weekend, lay in the same hospital that Jyoti laid in, and had been slashed from vagina to anus by three adults who had gang-raped her? Four years old, and she wound up having a three-hour operation to have a colostomy bag fitted. Where are the protests? What do you think? Where do you think they are? Well, I think that people feel so hopeless about this. We must have sunk so low in terms of our moral crisis in this world. We have woefully and irresponsibly neglected to educate our children. And of course, we have a lot of people, and that has to be said, who don’t even have access of education. But putting that aside, the people who do have access to education do not have access to the right kind of education because they are educating their heads, and not their hearts. We are responsible, as a world, to lead our children, at that crucial period between 3 and 5 years old when neuroscience tells us is the only window to cognitively modify a human being, to change attitudes, change behavior and build attitude. After that, it is all over. How irresponsible have we been not to teach our children the value of another human being? To respect moral values. No wonder we are in the state we are in. And I saw people being so cowed by all of this that they become apathetic. It’s too vast a problem to do anything about it. I, at least, have committed my life. I am not making any more films until I get as many countries in the world, who will be enlightened to do so, to co-op this global human rights initiative that I am spearheading and advising the U.N. Human Rights Office on, and have absolutely extraordinary visionaries as patrons on the committee. We are constructing a global human rights curriculum from day one of the entry of the child to school — on a compulsory basis. I got eight countries already, and I will not stop until I get the rest. What are the eight countries so far? That I will not tell you because I am saving it for the launch, when we announce it. This ban illustrates a lot things, but at least in part it illustrates India’s desire to handle this problem of rape in a different way, and in some quarters, their own way. This education initiative sounds that it would be a top-down thing. Do you think that would ruffle feathers in the same way as the film did? Why is this film preventing them from handling things their own way? Why are they choosing to be mutually exclusive? The ban does not illustrate that they want to handle things their own way. The ban illustrates that they don’t want to face it. We have to call a spade a spade. The ban illustrates that they are pretending it doesn't exist, or at least, they don’t want the world to think it exists there. They don’t want to decimate their tourist industry. These are very shallow considerations, when weighed up against the violation of the human rights of women and girls, and violence that is perpetrated against them on a daily basis. A lot of countries in the world are perfectly willing to introspect when they see this film. When I show this film in America, we talk about the fact that there is one in four girls in college campuses are raped. We talk about the fact that women in America get 78 cents on the dollar for the same work that men do. We talk about the fact that whereas India has article 14 of its constitution, which confers equal rights on women, America still does not have that much respect for women in its constitution, in its law. That has been resisted, and the Equal Rights Amendment acts is still not ratified. And that is shameful. Now, when we talk about these things, do you think an American audience can resist that? Absolutely, not. They’re responsible about it. They say, “Yes, we will hold our hands up. This is appalling. We have to do something about it.” Why can’t India just say the same? India, alone in the whole world, is simply not owning up to it. Do you feel that your affection for India has changed? I love India. I love India. I am infuriated by India right now. It really cracked my heart in two. I don’t like it when a section of the Indian population sends me tweets like: “White bitch, you deserve to be raped!” I don’t like it when they send me tweets threatening my life. Or send me pornography on the Internet. I don’t like that. It upsets and infuriate me, but I am not idiot enough to think this is a sign of Indians. This is a minority of people; every country has pathetic people, who simply resist change. And that is what emanates from. And I am really hurt that the Indian government banned this film without seeing it, and refused to call me. I was on television in Delhi, begging them to call me and ask me any questions they’d like answered. They didn’t want to because they didn’t want to hear the truth. They made a big mistake in banning this film. They should simply put those aside. Those are pathetic considerations, when you consider the issues that are at the heart of this. And anyone who prefers to bury their sand rather than address an issue of this magnitude, I’m afraid lacks respect from me.

* * *

A coda, of sorts. Udwin was not very happy with me by the end of this interview. But I also spoke to one of the film’s ambassadors, the actress Freida Pinto. Meryl Streep and Dakota Fanning have also been involved with promoting the film, but I was most interested in Pinto’s inclusion. The lead actress in the Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” was herself born and raised in the environs of Mumbai. In my brief conversation with Pinto, I asked her why she stood by this documentary, when many other Indians didn’t. She explained: “I support the documentary for the truth that it comes with.” In her view, other Indians had difficulty accepting the film because of a sense of “misplaced national pride.” “That comes into the picture when there is a certain truth, as ugly as it might be, shown to us by an outsider. But sometimes, it is actually more effective, because the outsider does come with a fresher perspective… It’s so easy to get caught up in the blame game of it all, especially when something is kind of bitter.” Udwin, Pinto and even the rapists in “India’s Daughter” express surprise at why Jyoti Singh’s particular tragic story so rocked the nation in December 2012. Pinto offered me her theory as to why her story was the tipping point:

She was a medical student, very aspirational, much like most of the college students who were out on the street protesting. This is a woman who basically had a chance to transform her own life and her parents’. She was very ambitious, and in many ways she was already a fighter, with what she was doing in her life. People love rooting for fighters, we all know that. This girl’s life was taken away from her, in a way that no one expected. It wasn’t a road accident, she wasn’t ill. She was doing something that was absolutely the most normal thing to do—which is watch “Life of Pi” one night. And then something as horrific as a gang rape on the bus followed that. Yes, we hear about rapes all the time, in different parts of the country, but in terms of her being an early 20s aspirational girl, that is something we probably had not heard of on this level. Also the brutality of the crime itself got everybody’s attention. Sometimes, I wish people did not focus on the brutality of the crime, because it really does not help the problem. And the brutality of the crime, in such brutal terms, has happened many times before. I think the number one aspect was that she was an aspirational girl just like you and I.

“India’s Daughter” airs Monday on PBS at 10 p.m.In 2012, when a young medical student was gang-raped and left for dead on the side of a road in Delhi, India, neither she nor her assailants could have predicted the furor that would follow. India has a problem of systemic, horrific violence against its women—perhaps not more than other nations, but certainly not any better, either. The preconceptions about rape, sexuality and gender were not challenged by any number of stories preceding this one; why should Jyoti Singh’s story be any different? For whatever reason, it was. Protests shook both the capital city of Delhi—India’s "rape capital"—and outrage spread not just to the rest of India but to the rest of the world. In this climate, Leslee Udwin, a novice filmmaker, went to India to attempt to tell the story of a woman the media was beginning to call “India’s daughter.” The resulting documentary—“India’s Daughter”—is, itself, a remarkably balanced documentary, one that distinguishes itself from other accounts of sexual assault by interviewing the rapists and their team of defense lawyers. The only convicted rapist who admits to what he did was the driver, Mukesh Singh, and interviews with him take up nearly as much screentime as the interviews with Jyoti’s bereaved parents. What immediately followed the film was controversy. As the New Yorker reports:

After clips of the Mukesh Singh interview began circulating online, the Indian government stopped the scheduled Indian broadcast of “India’s Daughter,” which was set for March 8th, International Women’s Day. On March 4th, a statement from the Indian Home Minister’s office said that the government was enforcing a ban because Udwin hadn’t secured the correct permissions to interview Singh in prison, didn’t abide by agreements to show authorities unedited versions of the interview, and because Singh’s statements are “an affront to the dignity of women.” (Udwin has since published copies of the letters of permission she received.) In another statement, the government warned that clips from the film “appear to encourage and incite violence against women.” Some supporters of the ban say that airing the Singh interview is tantamount to giving a platform to the rapist’s views; others say that the documentary paints sexual violence as an Indian issue rather than a global one, and fear that it will perpetuate a “white-savior” attitude in foreign viewers. That the government finds the film nationally embarrassing is a likely reason for the ban—members of the ruling B.J.P party have stated that the film is part of “an international conspiracy to defame India” and have protested that its release will affect tourism.

* * *

She was a medical student, very aspirational, much like most of the college students who were out on the street protesting. This is a woman who basically had a chance to transform her own life and her parents’. She was very ambitious, and in many ways she was already a fighter, with what she was doing in her life. People love rooting for fighters, we all know that. This girl’s life was taken away from her, in a way that no one expected. It wasn’t a road accident, she wasn’t ill. She was doing something that was absolutely the most normal thing to do—which is watch “Life of Pi” one night. And then something as horrific as a gang rape on the bus followed that. Yes, we hear about rapes all the time, in different parts of the country, but in terms of her being an early 20s aspirational girl, that is something we probably had not heard of on this level. Also the brutality of the crime itself got everybody’s attention. Sometimes, I wish people did not focus on the brutality of the crime, because it really does not help the problem. And the brutality of the crime, in such brutal terms, has happened many times before. I think the number one aspect was that she was an aspirational girl just like you and I.

“India’s Daughter” airs Monday on PBS at 10 p.m.

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Published on November 15, 2015 14:30

We ruined Justin Bieber: Full of apologies and scared of controversy, Bieber makes an unforgivably bland comeback

An average day for Justin Bieber, according to his cover story in Billboard magazine, may end with his “sneaking down from his room to the hotel lounge to play the piano while people drink.” The suggestion is that Biebs is so devoted to his art, he’ll make it for its own sake. But there’s something curious about the idea of a pop superstar happily tickling out aural wallpaper. These days, the best way to be everywhere is to let people forget you’re even there. As Bieber drops his new album “Purpose,” he’s on the verge of completing a perfect 2015 pop comeback. Most musical returns to the public eye have been about proving continued artistic relevance and making strong statements – from LL Cool J’s “Don’t Call It a Comeback” to “It’s Britney, Bitch.” Missy Elliott does both on her brand-new “WTF (Where They From)”: “Got a new idea, let me switch it / Man, I’m so futuristic.” But if she’s continually looking ahead, Bieber, whose adolescent mishaps — from Anne Frank gaffes to a trail of forgotten exotic pets — went disastrously viral, is now perfectly attuned to our social media-driven present: His new music is engineered to offend precisely no one. Bieber’s delivery on “Purpose” is meek – androgynous without the sass of a David Bowie or an Annie Lennox – and the production, some of it by former dubstep bad-boy Skrillex, is airy and vaguely international; you’d expect to hear these songs on credit-card commercials or on an airplane’s PA system before takeoff. The lyrics, seemingly intended to portray Bieber’s personal journey to manhood, are oddly generic. The stark, searching opener, “Mark My Words,” promises much, but in the end, Bieber shies away from definitive statements. He prefers asking questions: “What do you mean?” “What about the children?” “Is it too late to say I’m sorry?” and on the title track, “Ask you to forgive me for my sins, oh would you please?” Forgiveness is certainly a theme for the man who’s been on an apology tour all year, and it’s inevitable his mea culpas should have seeped into his music. In our Taylor Swift/Adele era, pop stars are held up to the same standards of “authenticity” that used to be applied to rockers: They’re supposed to be writing (or co-writing) their own material, which is supposed to reflect who they are as people. There are exceptions to this rule – Bieber’s enigmatic compatriot The Weeknd likes to play the villain – but when you’ve been in the public eye since you were 12, you’re doomed to follow the script. Hence the litany of “nobody’s perfect” songs, themselves shorn of specifics: “People make mistakes,” he sings on “Life Is Worth Living.” For the careful listener, this grows frustrating: Fair enough, Biebs, if you’re not going to sing about abandoning monkeys or egging houses—but couldn’t you make something up to add a little spice? Having had his entire career bolstered, and then buffeted, by social media’s ever-present reality show, Bieber evidently has taken to heart that anything he sings can and will be held against him in the court of public opinion. So the guy who once felt so entitled he pissed in a mop bucket at a restaurant – on video, no less – is adopting the soft sell. Where he once would plead, “Baby, baby, baby, nooooooo!” he now makes non-threatening suggestions. On “Company,” he croons, “Maybe we can stay in touch? Oh, that ain’t doin’ much.” On the lilting “No Pressure,” a song so polite it should come with a downloadable Canadian flag and a coupon for maple syrup, he tells a potential lover, “You ain’t gotta make your mind up right now / Don’t rush.” His milquetoast strategy seems to be working: His last three singles (including the Jack Ü feature, “Where Are Ü Now?”) have hit the U.S. Top 5, and across the Internet, he’s now the recipient of grudging praise by those who used to decry his obnoxious ubiquity. Indeed, Bieber is on the verge of a significant transformation, from courting schadenfreude to engendering goodwill. The odd slip-up aside – a Norwegian stage storm-off here, a petulant chair-flip at a French restaurant there – his narrative is holding up. In “Purpose” he has found an ideal response to what Jon Ronson, in his book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” sees as a “conformist, conservative age,” created by an atmosphere described to him by a journalist friend: “I suddenly feel with social media like I’m tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry, unbalanced parent who might strike out at any moment.” Bieber has learned his lesson. To make yourself impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous forums, you can either withdraw altogether or aspire to blandness. There are hints of potential and character on “Purpose” — in Bieber’s elastic-voiced R&B workout, “No Sense,” and in the slightly eerie bonus-track collab with Nas (of all people), “We Are.” And the album is catchy and tightly crafted – but also safe, anodyne and as ephemeral as a tweet. Justin Bieber may not be the pop star we need in 2015, but he’s the pop star we deserve.An average day for Justin Bieber, according to his cover story in Billboard magazine, may end with his “sneaking down from his room to the hotel lounge to play the piano while people drink.” The suggestion is that Biebs is so devoted to his art, he’ll make it for its own sake. But there’s something curious about the idea of a pop superstar happily tickling out aural wallpaper. These days, the best way to be everywhere is to let people forget you’re even there. As Bieber drops his new album “Purpose,” he’s on the verge of completing a perfect 2015 pop comeback. Most musical returns to the public eye have been about proving continued artistic relevance and making strong statements – from LL Cool J’s “Don’t Call It a Comeback” to “It’s Britney, Bitch.” Missy Elliott does both on her brand-new “WTF (Where They From)”: “Got a new idea, let me switch it / Man, I’m so futuristic.” But if she’s continually looking ahead, Bieber, whose adolescent mishaps — from Anne Frank gaffes to a trail of forgotten exotic pets — went disastrously viral, is now perfectly attuned to our social media-driven present: His new music is engineered to offend precisely no one. Bieber’s delivery on “Purpose” is meek – androgynous without the sass of a David Bowie or an Annie Lennox – and the production, some of it by former dubstep bad-boy Skrillex, is airy and vaguely international; you’d expect to hear these songs on credit-card commercials or on an airplane’s PA system before takeoff. The lyrics, seemingly intended to portray Bieber’s personal journey to manhood, are oddly generic. The stark, searching opener, “Mark My Words,” promises much, but in the end, Bieber shies away from definitive statements. He prefers asking questions: “What do you mean?” “What about the children?” “Is it too late to say I’m sorry?” and on the title track, “Ask you to forgive me for my sins, oh would you please?” Forgiveness is certainly a theme for the man who’s been on an apology tour all year, and it’s inevitable his mea culpas should have seeped into his music. In our Taylor Swift/Adele era, pop stars are held up to the same standards of “authenticity” that used to be applied to rockers: They’re supposed to be writing (or co-writing) their own material, which is supposed to reflect who they are as people. There are exceptions to this rule – Bieber’s enigmatic compatriot The Weeknd likes to play the villain – but when you’ve been in the public eye since you were 12, you’re doomed to follow the script. Hence the litany of “nobody’s perfect” songs, themselves shorn of specifics: “People make mistakes,” he sings on “Life Is Worth Living.” For the careful listener, this grows frustrating: Fair enough, Biebs, if you’re not going to sing about abandoning monkeys or egging houses—but couldn’t you make something up to add a little spice? Having had his entire career bolstered, and then buffeted, by social media’s ever-present reality show, Bieber evidently has taken to heart that anything he sings can and will be held against him in the court of public opinion. So the guy who once felt so entitled he pissed in a mop bucket at a restaurant – on video, no less – is adopting the soft sell. Where he once would plead, “Baby, baby, baby, nooooooo!” he now makes non-threatening suggestions. On “Company,” he croons, “Maybe we can stay in touch? Oh, that ain’t doin’ much.” On the lilting “No Pressure,” a song so polite it should come with a downloadable Canadian flag and a coupon for maple syrup, he tells a potential lover, “You ain’t gotta make your mind up right now / Don’t rush.” His milquetoast strategy seems to be working: His last three singles (including the Jack Ü feature, “Where Are Ü Now?”) have hit the U.S. Top 5, and across the Internet, he’s now the recipient of grudging praise by those who used to decry his obnoxious ubiquity. Indeed, Bieber is on the verge of a significant transformation, from courting schadenfreude to engendering goodwill. The odd slip-up aside – a Norwegian stage storm-off here, a petulant chair-flip at a French restaurant there – his narrative is holding up. In “Purpose” he has found an ideal response to what Jon Ronson, in his book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” sees as a “conformist, conservative age,” created by an atmosphere described to him by a journalist friend: “I suddenly feel with social media like I’m tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry, unbalanced parent who might strike out at any moment.” Bieber has learned his lesson. To make yourself impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous forums, you can either withdraw altogether or aspire to blandness. There are hints of potential and character on “Purpose” — in Bieber’s elastic-voiced R&B workout, “No Sense,” and in the slightly eerie bonus-track collab with Nas (of all people), “We Are.” And the album is catchy and tightly crafted – but also safe, anodyne and as ephemeral as a tweet. Justin Bieber may not be the pop star we need in 2015, but he’s the pop star we deserve.

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Published on November 15, 2015 13:00

YouTube star Tyler Oakley on being famous online and beyond: “My inclination is to always go back to the Internet, even if things are rough”

Tyler Oakley figured out social media’s power to launch a brand – in this case, his own – long before most corporations even created Twitter accounts. Oakley uploaded his first public YouTube video in 2007, then only three years later was offered a national marketing campaign with YouTube. He’s obsessed with pop culture – at one point a self-proclaimed "professional fangirl" for One Direction – and charmingly honest, especially about his life as a young gay person. The 26-year-old, who describes himself as “a twink from the Internet,” currently counts 7.5 million YouTube subscribers and 4.6 million Twitter followers. There are some people who don’t want to acknowledge the power of the Internet, but in 2015 social media is a powerful machine. Oakely’s Internet presence – a majority of his followers are teens – even caught the attention of the White House, who reached out to him to interview first lady Michelle Obama. When Oakley posted the trailer for his upcoming documentary "Snervous," it soon (#SnervousTrailer) trended on Facebook. He’ll soon be in homes across America as he’s slated to appear on the upcoming season of CBS’s "Amazing Race." Oakley's rise to Internet prominence, though, didn’t happen overnight, and his recently released collection of humor essays "Binge" discusses his Internet journey. It seems like a wave of YouTubers have been dropping books lately, but Oakley’s stands out, because his topics range from the silly “20 Things I’d Do If I Were Beyoncé for the Day” to the very serious such as his struggle with an eating disorder. To some, 26 might seem young to write a memoir or personal essay collection, but Oakley uses his unique perspective on YouTube to write a touching and timely book. In "Binge," already a New York Times bestseller, readers finds Oakley at his realest. In "Binge," you discuss how much work you’ve put into YouTube and social media accounts over the years. You’ve kind of created your own lane. I have been doing it for eight years now, but the first five years were just kind of a hobby that I loved. I’d come home from work or from class, and it was everything that I loved to do. When I graduated from college, I got a 9-to-5 traditional job doing social media for a company, and I’d spend all day long fighting with the system of getting things approved and the fact that social media has such a quick turnaround. Things had to be very reactive and instant. There had to be a level of trust between the company and social media manager. But back then it was still progressive to even have a social media manager in the first place. It was a battle every single day. Then, I’d come home and work on my own stuff, and I absolutely loved it because I was in charge of my own stuff. I was able to do what I wanted. When I first thought about leaving the traditional route of a 9-to-5 career to pursue full-time YouTube it was terrifying – not many people were doing it. The thought was I have to have money saved up, because this very likely might fail. From the start, I had to give it my all for it to work. If I didn’t, then I would be the only one to blame that it wouldn’t work as a full-time job. Since day one of trying to go full-time it’s been go, go, go, go, go. I think that mentality has just stuck with me, and even though things are going really well, I still haven’t let up the concept of who knows how long it could last. But it’s one of those things where who knows how any job could last? In my mind, it’s kind of just been an unprecedented type of career where who knows how this will go or what the next step is. I’ve always thought if I’m not full-throttle, 100 percent all the time, then it’s on me if it doesn’t work out. There’s this idea in the media that millenials are slackers, but you’re constantly producing stuff and putting it out there for a huge audience on the internet. Half of the perception is the millenial thing and half the perception of a YouTube star being a simple, lazy type of situation might be that people just don’t get it, which is fine. I know what I do. I feel what I do, so if they don’t want to see it, then that’s on them. Since my first experience with the Internet, I’ve been obsessed with it. There was the One Direction incident and that was a moment when I was like I don’t know if I still want to be on the Internet or if I should be doing what I do to the extent that I do. But my inclination is to always go back to the Internet, even if things are rough on the Internet. The Internet has changed so quickly in such a short time. When I was a teen, I was low-key in the Yahoo! chatrooms, because it was the only space I could find. Oh my God, same. I was talking to people when I was way too young to be doing that. Why are young, gay people so good at the Internet? People like you, Todrick Hall and Lohanthony have all found an audience. The Internet offers a younger generation of LGBTQ+ people a resource or a place to learn more about LGBTQ+ culture. They can also find a community that might not exist where they live. I think of my coming out experience – I was really fortunate and privileged to have a lot of supportive community. There were openly gay teachers and students at my school, and so many kids don’t have that. I think the Internet lends itself to a place where LGBTQ+ people can succeed, because they’re being sought out. They’re a disenfranchised voice in traditional media. I think it exists for not just LGBTQ+ people, but for all disenfranchised voices that maybe media is ignoring or not giving a platform to. I think those voices are good at it, because it’s fueled by the fact some people feel like they finally have a platform for their voice to exist. It is a phenomenon for sure – gay voices finding platforms on the Internet. How different was the process of writing YouTube videos for the internet and writing a physical book? The YouTube process has kind of been the most organic for me. I’ve just treated it like a diary, and I’ve never really written out a video – I’ll have bullet points like "don’t forget to talk about this" or "say this." But I’ve never scripted it, really. That’s kind of lent itself to the podcast [Psychobabble] which is very free and open and minimal edited. The first time I’ve been kind of more structured has been writing the book. That was a huge challenge for me. When I was first offered the book deal I was like I am not a writer. I haven’t practiced this. My approach has been completely stream-of-consciousness, and then edit down, because that’s been YouTube for me forever. When I first got the book deal – I didn’t know how I write – so I said no to it. I didn’t want to do it if I didn’t feel like it would be the correct way to go about it. After I said no, I started trying to write and figuring out what my voice was written. It kind of followed the same path of YouTube. I tried to write as much as I could and knew that nobody had to see it but me, then edit it down from there. It seems like you work so much and go after opportunities, so I’m surprised you waited to write the book. With everything that I’ve done with YouTube and podcasts for so many years it’s been: you can record it, edit, and then upload that day. With the book and documentary, it’s been such a longer process. YouTube has a more reactive nature to it. It’s been productive to be more reflective and take my time with things and not do things as quickly as possible just because that’s the nature of my job. There were so many topics I was nervous to share in YouTube videos or podcasts, but I started to feel more comfortable sharing them, because I had taken a chance to write them down in the first place. Do any of those things happen to be the "Binge" essays about Grindr hookups? You made a point in "Binge" that straight people talk about Tinder in everyday conversations. Oh my God [laughs]. Tinder is so common – it’s in movies and in sitcoms. Grindr is usually the butt of the joke or it’s some type of naughty thing that you can’t discuss. But it’s the same thing. That was easier for me to write. I think everyone else was more nervous about those things. The things I was more nervous about were relationships or coming out, body image issues, or about anxiety or feeling pressures or sadness. The more serious things were what I had a challenge with writing. The sex stuff, I was like whatever, who cares. I’ve been talking about hookups on YouTube for a while, so I’m like who cares. It was fun for me. There were some things that didn’t make the book, because everyone was like this is too far. But now having seen the response to it, I’m so ready to write more. How has your family and other people you wrote about responded to seeing it in print as opposed to your YouTube life? I don’t think anyone in my life has gone about their relationship with me and thought oh, someday he might write about this. But I guess that’s a thing that will be on their mind in the future. Almost 99 percent of people in the book have responded to it saying, "you know what that’s a pretty fair assessment of what happened." For example, the boyfriend of mine that is in the chapter “The One That Got Away” and I had dinner after the book was out. He had been hearing some things from friends who read it. We got to really talk through everything. It was nice. He was like we both look like idiots at times, we both look fine at times, but it was really honest. Regardless if they are happy or not, if the response is, "Well, it’s pretty accurate," that’s all I could ever ask for. I love a good breakup essay, and I think that essay “The One That Got Away” is really relatable. When you’re in love for the first time you don’t know how to act. I’m so happy I took a lot of time to write that. It’s the same with a lot of chapters. Had I taken the initial book deal, I would have still been in the middle of things in the chapters. Now that I waited a long time, and I took a long time to write it and wasn’t really on someone else’s deadline, it was like I actually got to find conclusions that didn’t exist yet. I wrote something really similar to “The One That Got Away” in college – I think a year or two after the relationship ended. And I was still going through it. I needed to give myself time to actually process it. With Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, people curate their personas. Your documentary "Snervous" is about to come out and people will see you going through it all. This is the first time I’ve really given up control of my own edit. As a YouTuber, you’re very lucky to be in charge of how you’re perceived. You get to put out what you want. The documentary was the first time when I was not at all a part of the process – I wasn’t filming. The camera was around and along for the ride for the better part of this entire year. A lot of the times I would forget it was even on or I would be very conscious that it was on and be like can we please turn this off, because it was a less flattering or uncomfortable moment. Luckily, the director, Amy [Rice], was so incredible, and I was so comfortable with her that I was just happy to give up the control. The documentary was the first time I gave up control, and when I saw the first cut of it I was like there is so much in this that I would literally never put out there. To have somebody else’s eyes on my life or situation to give a very different angle of what it’s really like was exciting and terrifying. Even now there are parts of the movie I can’t watch, because I would never want to have this out there. But it’s about to be out there. Yeah you tweeted the first trailer like right before this interview. I just changed my Twitter picture, and I just changed my banner. An era is changing over. I’m going from "Born This Way" to "Cheek to Cheek." I hope people like the trailer. I hope certain people aren’t pissed about the book in the trailer. I hope people like the book. So much of these bigger projects are driven by numbers and charting and this and that – things that as a YouTuber I haven’t really been perceptive of. It’s always been more about I hope people like it, and now it’s about I hope the numbers do well or whatever. I’m still so much about I hope people see me for what we’re putting out there, and it’s not misinterpreted. I just hope people get me.Tyler Oakley figured out social media’s power to launch a brand – in this case, his own – long before most corporations even created Twitter accounts. Oakley uploaded his first public YouTube video in 2007, then only three years later was offered a national marketing campaign with YouTube. He’s obsessed with pop culture – at one point a self-proclaimed "professional fangirl" for One Direction – and charmingly honest, especially about his life as a young gay person. The 26-year-old, who describes himself as “a twink from the Internet,” currently counts 7.5 million YouTube subscribers and 4.6 million Twitter followers. There are some people who don’t want to acknowledge the power of the Internet, but in 2015 social media is a powerful machine. Oakely’s Internet presence – a majority of his followers are teens – even caught the attention of the White House, who reached out to him to interview first lady Michelle Obama. When Oakley posted the trailer for his upcoming documentary "Snervous," it soon (#SnervousTrailer) trended on Facebook. He’ll soon be in homes across America as he’s slated to appear on the upcoming season of CBS’s "Amazing Race." Oakley's rise to Internet prominence, though, didn’t happen overnight, and his recently released collection of humor essays "Binge" discusses his Internet journey. It seems like a wave of YouTubers have been dropping books lately, but Oakley’s stands out, because his topics range from the silly “20 Things I’d Do If I Were Beyoncé for the Day” to the very serious such as his struggle with an eating disorder. To some, 26 might seem young to write a memoir or personal essay collection, but Oakley uses his unique perspective on YouTube to write a touching and timely book. In "Binge," already a New York Times bestseller, readers finds Oakley at his realest. In "Binge," you discuss how much work you’ve put into YouTube and social media accounts over the years. You’ve kind of created your own lane. I have been doing it for eight years now, but the first five years were just kind of a hobby that I loved. I’d come home from work or from class, and it was everything that I loved to do. When I graduated from college, I got a 9-to-5 traditional job doing social media for a company, and I’d spend all day long fighting with the system of getting things approved and the fact that social media has such a quick turnaround. Things had to be very reactive and instant. There had to be a level of trust between the company and social media manager. But back then it was still progressive to even have a social media manager in the first place. It was a battle every single day. Then, I’d come home and work on my own stuff, and I absolutely loved it because I was in charge of my own stuff. I was able to do what I wanted. When I first thought about leaving the traditional route of a 9-to-5 career to pursue full-time YouTube it was terrifying – not many people were doing it. The thought was I have to have money saved up, because this very likely might fail. From the start, I had to give it my all for it to work. If I didn’t, then I would be the only one to blame that it wouldn’t work as a full-time job. Since day one of trying to go full-time it’s been go, go, go, go, go. I think that mentality has just stuck with me, and even though things are going really well, I still haven’t let up the concept of who knows how long it could last. But it’s one of those things where who knows how any job could last? In my mind, it’s kind of just been an unprecedented type of career where who knows how this will go or what the next step is. I’ve always thought if I’m not full-throttle, 100 percent all the time, then it’s on me if it doesn’t work out. There’s this idea in the media that millenials are slackers, but you’re constantly producing stuff and putting it out there for a huge audience on the internet. Half of the perception is the millenial thing and half the perception of a YouTube star being a simple, lazy type of situation might be that people just don’t get it, which is fine. I know what I do. I feel what I do, so if they don’t want to see it, then that’s on them. Since my first experience with the Internet, I’ve been obsessed with it. There was the One Direction incident and that was a moment when I was like I don’t know if I still want to be on the Internet or if I should be doing what I do to the extent that I do. But my inclination is to always go back to the Internet, even if things are rough on the Internet. The Internet has changed so quickly in such a short time. When I was a teen, I was low-key in the Yahoo! chatrooms, because it was the only space I could find. Oh my God, same. I was talking to people when I was way too young to be doing that. Why are young, gay people so good at the Internet? People like you, Todrick Hall and Lohanthony have all found an audience. The Internet offers a younger generation of LGBTQ+ people a resource or a place to learn more about LGBTQ+ culture. They can also find a community that might not exist where they live. I think of my coming out experience – I was really fortunate and privileged to have a lot of supportive community. There were openly gay teachers and students at my school, and so many kids don’t have that. I think the Internet lends itself to a place where LGBTQ+ people can succeed, because they’re being sought out. They’re a disenfranchised voice in traditional media. I think it exists for not just LGBTQ+ people, but for all disenfranchised voices that maybe media is ignoring or not giving a platform to. I think those voices are good at it, because it’s fueled by the fact some people feel like they finally have a platform for their voice to exist. It is a phenomenon for sure – gay voices finding platforms on the Internet. How different was the process of writing YouTube videos for the internet and writing a physical book? The YouTube process has kind of been the most organic for me. I’ve just treated it like a diary, and I’ve never really written out a video – I’ll have bullet points like "don’t forget to talk about this" or "say this." But I’ve never scripted it, really. That’s kind of lent itself to the podcast [Psychobabble] which is very free and open and minimal edited. The first time I’ve been kind of more structured has been writing the book. That was a huge challenge for me. When I was first offered the book deal I was like I am not a writer. I haven’t practiced this. My approach has been completely stream-of-consciousness, and then edit down, because that’s been YouTube for me forever. When I first got the book deal – I didn’t know how I write – so I said no to it. I didn’t want to do it if I didn’t feel like it would be the correct way to go about it. After I said no, I started trying to write and figuring out what my voice was written. It kind of followed the same path of YouTube. I tried to write as much as I could and knew that nobody had to see it but me, then edit it down from there. It seems like you work so much and go after opportunities, so I’m surprised you waited to write the book. With everything that I’ve done with YouTube and podcasts for so many years it’s been: you can record it, edit, and then upload that day. With the book and documentary, it’s been such a longer process. YouTube has a more reactive nature to it. It’s been productive to be more reflective and take my time with things and not do things as quickly as possible just because that’s the nature of my job. There were so many topics I was nervous to share in YouTube videos or podcasts, but I started to feel more comfortable sharing them, because I had taken a chance to write them down in the first place. Do any of those things happen to be the "Binge" essays about Grindr hookups? You made a point in "Binge" that straight people talk about Tinder in everyday conversations. Oh my God [laughs]. Tinder is so common – it’s in movies and in sitcoms. Grindr is usually the butt of the joke or it’s some type of naughty thing that you can’t discuss. But it’s the same thing. That was easier for me to write. I think everyone else was more nervous about those things. The things I was more nervous about were relationships or coming out, body image issues, or about anxiety or feeling pressures or sadness. The more serious things were what I had a challenge with writing. The sex stuff, I was like whatever, who cares. I’ve been talking about hookups on YouTube for a while, so I’m like who cares. It was fun for me. There were some things that didn’t make the book, because everyone was like this is too far. But now having seen the response to it, I’m so ready to write more. How has your family and other people you wrote about responded to seeing it in print as opposed to your YouTube life? I don’t think anyone in my life has gone about their relationship with me and thought oh, someday he might write about this. But I guess that’s a thing that will be on their mind in the future. Almost 99 percent of people in the book have responded to it saying, "you know what that’s a pretty fair assessment of what happened." For example, the boyfriend of mine that is in the chapter “The One That Got Away” and I had dinner after the book was out. He had been hearing some things from friends who read it. We got to really talk through everything. It was nice. He was like we both look like idiots at times, we both look fine at times, but it was really honest. Regardless if they are happy or not, if the response is, "Well, it’s pretty accurate," that’s all I could ever ask for. I love a good breakup essay, and I think that essay “The One That Got Away” is really relatable. When you’re in love for the first time you don’t know how to act. I’m so happy I took a lot of time to write that. It’s the same with a lot of chapters. Had I taken the initial book deal, I would have still been in the middle of things in the chapters. Now that I waited a long time, and I took a long time to write it and wasn’t really on someone else’s deadline, it was like I actually got to find conclusions that didn’t exist yet. I wrote something really similar to “The One That Got Away” in college – I think a year or two after the relationship ended. And I was still going through it. I needed to give myself time to actually process it. With Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, people curate their personas. Your documentary "Snervous" is about to come out and people will see you going through it all. This is the first time I’ve really given up control of my own edit. As a YouTuber, you’re very lucky to be in charge of how you’re perceived. You get to put out what you want. The documentary was the first time when I was not at all a part of the process – I wasn’t filming. The camera was around and along for the ride for the better part of this entire year. A lot of the times I would forget it was even on or I would be very conscious that it was on and be like can we please turn this off, because it was a less flattering or uncomfortable moment. Luckily, the director, Amy [Rice], was so incredible, and I was so comfortable with her that I was just happy to give up the control. The documentary was the first time I gave up control, and when I saw the first cut of it I was like there is so much in this that I would literally never put out there. To have somebody else’s eyes on my life or situation to give a very different angle of what it’s really like was exciting and terrifying. Even now there are parts of the movie I can’t watch, because I would never want to have this out there. But it’s about to be out there. Yeah you tweeted the first trailer like right before this interview. I just changed my Twitter picture, and I just changed my banner. An era is changing over. I’m going from "Born This Way" to "Cheek to Cheek." I hope people like the trailer. I hope certain people aren’t pissed about the book in the trailer. I hope people like the book. So much of these bigger projects are driven by numbers and charting and this and that – things that as a YouTuber I haven’t really been perceptive of. It’s always been more about I hope people like it, and now it’s about I hope the numbers do well or whatever. I’m still so much about I hope people see me for what we’re putting out there, and it’s not misinterpreted. I just hope people get me.

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Published on November 15, 2015 12:00

The dog ate my vote: How Congress explains its absences

On a Monday afternoon in October 2011, West Virginia Democrat Nick J. Rahall II waited at the Charleston airport for a 4:50 p.m. U.S. Airways Express flight to Washington. If the plane left on schedule, the roughly 80-minute flight would allow him to get to the Capitol in time for votes in the House of Representatives that evening. Things did not go according to plan. The flight didn’t leave Charleston for another four hours, giving Rahall, then the top Democrat on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, plenty of time to “boil over,” as he later wrote. When he finally arrived in Washington, having missed three votes, he lambasted the airline’s handling of the delay in a statement in the Congressional Record: “At moments, the arrival/departure information was so confused that the airplane would have had to violate the laws of physics in order to abide by the airline schedule,” Rahall’s statement read. “Needless to say, all passengers were inconvenienced and the airline’s explanations were wholly unsatisfactory. This flight delay prevented me from carrying out my Constitutional duty to represent the people of southern West Virginia: I feel I owe them and this body an explanation about why that was not possible last night.” Voting is one of the most important duties of a lawmaker, and most miss very few votes. Yet voting attendance has become a topic of discussion in the Republican presidential primary, as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has missed about a third of all votes this year, by far the most in that chamber. In the House, unlike the Senate, lawmakers are given a chance to provide “Personal Explanations” to explain missed votes. These entries filed in the Congressional Record say not only how a Representative came to be absent, but also how they would have voted though they don’t have the effect of adding or changing a vote. The custom has been in place since at least 1845, according to a 2008 Congressional Research Service report. In a telephone interview, Rahall said he wanted it on the record that he would have voted in support of the three bills the House considered that day — a measure to convey federal land in Utah to the state, another changing the rules for granting ski area permits on national forest land and a third granting submerged land surrounding the Northern Mariana Islands to the American territory — if only to prevent political opponents from using the missed votes against him. “They could end up as a 30-second sound bite in a campaign,” he said. (Rahall was defeated in 2014 by Evan Jenkins, a Republican). ProPublica has collected all of the Personal Explanations filed since 2007 — some 5,058 in all, covering 21,176 votes — and created a database that lets readers look up their representatives’ missed votes, as well as their explanations. These statements are by no means required — only one in six absences are explained — but they document a little-discussed aspect of the lives and work of lawmakers, and provide hints at the competing priorities and difficulties of a system that, to many, seems chronically dysfunctional. The reasons lawmakers cite most for missing votes range from the mundane (travel delays, often due to weather, or remaining in their districts for job fairs) to more personal (the birth of a child or a graduation ceremony or illness). Lawmakers have missed more than 2,000 votes for medical reasons, and thousands more for personal and family reasons. The record is full of stories documenting the working lives of Representatives: Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio, missed a 2008 House vote because she was searching the Capitol for high school students visiting from her district. Jeff Landry, a Louisiana Republican, “completely lost track of time” and missed two votes in 2011. For Ben Ray Lujan, Democrat of New Mexico, an “operational issue” with a House voting machine meant that a 2012 vote wasn’t recorded. For some, avoiding a vote is a sign of defiance. In 2012, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois was one of 108 Democrats who declined even to vote on a resolution holding then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. She was the only one, though, to insert a statement in the Record saying she would have voted no: “I would not participate in what I strongly believe was an abuse of power by the majority.” Although many explanations are short, lawmakers can be more expansive when a key issue is at stake. When J. Randy Forbes, a Virginia Republican who has missed less than 3 percent of votes since 2007, was absent for a January 2015 vote on a bill to ban federal funding for abortion, his explanation provided no reason, but emphasized his stance on the issue: “I am and always have been pro-life, and throughout my tenure in Congress will continue to be a strong advocate for the unborn.” The Rules of the House say that “Every Member shall be present within the Hall of the House during its sittings, unless excused or necessarily prevented, and shall vote on each question put, unless having a direct personal or pecuniary interest in the event of such question.” Lawmakers routinely say that they take their voting responsibilities seriously, and in general attendance records bear that out: most lawmakers participate in the overwhelming majority of votes held. Democrats have missed more votes than Republicans since the beginning of 2007, but they account for an even greater share of the explained missed votes: two of every three since the beginning of 2013. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, has missed nearly one in six votes this year, according to voting records, one of the highest rates among current members of the House. He has been absent for 15 percent of all votes since the beginning of 2007, often due to his work on immigration policy, which frequently has him on the road. “Congressman Gutierrez prioritizes constituent case work and spending time in the District in Chicago,” said Douglas G. Rivlin, a spokesman for Gutierrez, in a statement emailed to ProPublica. “He also devotes a great deal of time to traveling all over the country to build support for immigration reform. As a national figure, his time is in great demand. He rarely misses substantive votes and when he does, it is because he cannot be in two places at once.” Gutierrez sporadically explains his absences — a statement for the Record in July gave a clear reason for one: He was attending oral arguments in a federal court case over immigration policy. He also missed votes due to a family medical issue, meetings at the White House and, in 2011, “my participation in a peaceful rally and protest against the current Administration’s enforcement policies against immigrant students and the families of U.S. citizens.” Representatives’ schedules are hardly overstuffed with days spent in the House chamber. In 2014, the members of the House spent only 29 weeks in session, each of which was bookended by long weekends spent doing district work, fundraising or running for re-election. The House is not scheduled to be in session for a five-day week this year. As lawmakers balance their duties, not every vote is created equal. Both ProPublica’s analysis and research by Eleanor Neff Powell, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, found that lawmakers miss more lopsided votes than ones that are important to either political party. There have been 20 times when the number of explained missed votes exceeded the final margin of approval or defeat. Half were on amendments. One, a 2011 amendment to a spending bill about labor agreements on federal construction projects was approved by a single vote and had eight explanations from the 25 House members who did not vote, including three Republicans opposed to the amendment. Bills that have widespread bipartisan support often are considered “under suspension of the rules,” which means they are debated fairly quickly, sometimes in a few minutes, and must have the support of two-thirds of those voting. About four in 10 personal explanations occur on these so-called suspension votes, which often are scheduled on the first day of the week that the House is in session, when travel delays could make it more likely for a member to miss votes. Absences (explained or not) on suspension votes account for 36 percent of all House votes missed between 2007 and October 2015. If personal explanations are optional, why do representatives use them at all? Often, to indicate to constituents that just because they didn’t vote doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion. “It shows that you care about what they’re asking about,” said Powell. For lawmakers facing tight re-election contests, missed votes can be part of a political balancing act. Opponents are quick to make use of a poor voting record. Missing a vote can be a graceful way to dodge votes designed to put lawmakers on the spot. Explanations, in turn, can provide a way to miss the actual vote and still claim that they would have voted the way constituents might have preferred. In 2013, Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat, voted against a Republican spending bill that also delayed the individual health insurance mandate created by the Affordable Care Act. The next year, he missed a vote on a bill to delay the individual mandate but explained that, had he been there, he would have voted in favor of delaying the mandate, as he did on a similar bill in July 2013. Schneider lost his seat in 2014 to Bob Dold, a Republican former congressman who voted against the health care law while in the House, in a race where the health insurance law figured prominently. He is running against Dold again in 2016; Schneider’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Missing potentially controversial votes, then submitting explanations is an example of what researcher Powell calls “strategic abstention”: when a member skips a vote on which her party’s position is incompatible with her constituents’ views. Rather than disappoint either, the Representative can simply miss the vote, later explaining that she would have voted the way her constituents would have wanted, without actually doing so and creating a rift with her party. The ProPublica analysis, which covers a different time period than Powell’s, found some evidence of this: there were 128 votes on bill passage in which a member who missed the vote later registered opposition to his or her party’s majority position. Fifty-six of those contained no clear reason for the absence. Lawmakers’ explanations cover not only missed votes, but mistaken ones as well. It’s not common — explanations attempting to correct a wrong vote or saying that a member tried to vote but could not — number about 320 during the past eight years. But more than one in five current lawmakers has done it at least once since the beginning of 2007, with John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and the chamber’s longest-serving member, claiming 12 incorrect votes. The official record of a 2011 vote on an bill to expand offshore oil and gas leases shows Conyers voting in favor, when he meant to vote against the bill. Conyers, who at 86 is also the House’s oldest member, did not respond to several requests for comment made through his office. A handful of other lawmakers have reported voting incorrectly at least four times, including Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who is the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee. On at least one of those occasions, on a vote that occurred at 1:53 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2011, Smith voted for an amendment and later explained that he should have voted no. Rebecca Bryant, a spokeswoman for Smith, said that in that case the congressman “had some misinformation” on the nature of the amendment that was only clarified the next morning. “The key thing is transparency,” said Bryant of the vote explanations. “We wanted to articulate how the congressman felt.” Occasionally, lawmakers change their minds after a vote and submit a personal explanation about it. In 2008, the House voted to censure Charlie Rangel, a New York Democrat, over ethics violations, and Texas Republican Lamar Smith voted in favor of doing so. Later, in a statement in the Record, Smith reconsidered his vote: “Members had no advance notice of the vote, and I did not familiarize myself with the substance of the motion as much as I would have liked. If the vote were taken again, I would vote present rather than ‘aye’.”