Lily Salter's Blog, page 970

Our new late-night wars: How Hillary, Bernie and the Donald are battling it out for bedtime TV dominance — and who’s winning so far

Politics, especially in the television era, is constantly mired in the tension between the endless detail of actual policy and the slick spin of good salesmanship. Policy stances are reduced to soundbytes; stump speeches are remembered for gaffes. Practicality, inevitably, wars with entertainment value. The political process is infused with showmanship—both in terms of making much of politicians’ successes and in terms of covering up, with spin or equivocation, the unpopular failures. American politics is always engaged in the effort of flattening its complexity and sanding down its edges to become TV-consumable. More often than not, it fails. The debates offer a venue for a frank discussion on policy, which occasionally yields moments of appreciable complexity; op-eds and discussions on Sunday morning shows might do some more. But in reality, the governing of the richest country in the world is a pretty difficult task, one that lots and lots of people take part in. It has a high barrier to entry, and requires a lot of targeted interest to understand. In near-complete contrast stands late-night television. The defining feature of late-night is that it is theoretically somewhat topical—but also that it is not too serious about any of those things. The format inherently lacks substance, from the quippy opening monologue to the second guest celebrity shilling a mid-tier movie. It’s late at night, and in all likelihood the audience is watching this while drifting off to sleep, with the remote falling out of one hand. There’s a reason late-night television is so predictable, so formulaic, so dominated by white men: It’s meant to be as nonthreatening and comforting as possible for a broad audience, which means hewing closely to the status quo. (Often, it feels like broadcast networks have a pretty limited sense of what the status quo is—or maybe are pitching programming to a status quo last measured in 1964—but that is its own separate issue.) The news is discussed to offer new material for the same jokes; the passage of time is marked by how many times a celebrity guest has dropped by for a 10-minute conversation. And altogether the audience, the show, and the topical material can enjoy an hour or so of low-impact togetherness. Because everything is so superficial, anyone at any level can pop in to see what’s up in America—what faces are on TV, what kind of jokes are being made, what sort of music gets played after the interviews. It’s the daily pageantry of mass culture, in a few slightly different iterations. So it is always a bit of an occasion, when unbearably light late-night television briefly shakes hands with unbearably heavy U.S. politics. It’s almost a microcosm of the event horizon of American voter apathy—somewhere between the consumerist fantasy of commercials, the empty comedy of a not-too-provocative host, and the repeated talking points of a careful politician. There are so many grand forces at play, forcing the moment into uneasy tidiness. Still, it is not all “Requiem For A Dream” around here. At its best, late-night television is where apathy and politics do not just stand in détente but can briefly shake hands. There is no fixing the strange, ossified bureaucracy of the military-industrial complex, but there is at least crisply acknowledging it. After all, we are drawn to these moments of proclaimed candor for just one reason—in the hopes that someone, anyone, will go off-script. Perhaps a candidate will really say something candid on stage; perhaps a host will really push for an answer to a tough question. And we hope this because we know that every now and then, it’ll happen. This is the promise of TV: you won’t believe what happens next. If there was ever a moment that promised unvarnished entertainment from presidential candidates, it is this one, when Donald Trump is high in the polls and has nearly as many late-night appearances scheduled as the current Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. Indeed, late night television has focused almost exclusively on the two New Yorkers, both in parody and in-person. (It’s a testament to Bernie Sanders’ rising profile that he just got his own non-cast member impressionist on “Saturday Night Live,” in the form of Larry David.) Trump is every comedian’s go-to target, for either the hair, or the wall, or the way the candidate says “huge.” Stephen Colbert, before he started as host of “The Late Show,” confessed to reporters that he was desperate to get in front of a camera and mock the candidate. Jimmy Fallon, on “The Tonight Show,” regularly impersonates Trump—going so far as to interview both Clinton and Trump himself as Trump. That second bit, “Donald Trump interviews himself in the mirror,” had echoes of a particularly self-aware “Saturday Night Live” sketch with Kate McKinnon talking to Hillary Clinton, as Hillary Clinton. (Clinton, meanwhile, played a bartender named Val. The results were thought-provoking.) Perhaps what is strange, then, is that while Trump’s appearance routinely spikes the ratings for any show he’s on, there is almost nothing there to be seen under the surface. This past week, Trump canceled on Jimmy Kimmel, meaning we have just two examples to go off of—his appearance on Colbert’s show, and his appearance on Fallon’s. Both were almost interchangeable, in terms of how little Trump was moved by either host—he still wants to build a wall, he still wants to cut government spending, he still manages to sound sort of nice and affable when he’s answering questions, as long as you don’t pay any attention to the actual words. Perhaps there’s truly no artifice to Trump. It’s more likely, though, that Trump is just always playing to the late-night audience, and doesn’t have to alter much of anything when he’s sitting on the guest-couch. Tellingly, none of the other Republican candidates have even attempted to make a play for the general audience. Meanwhile, Clinton herself keeps demonstrating more and more seemingly incongruous facets to her personality, in what has made for intriguing viewing. On “Saturday Night Live,” she was the bartender you could have a drink with; on Fallon, she was part obfuscating politician, part policy wonk, and part maternally concerned grandmother, commiserating with Fallon on his daughter going to preschool. Then her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” talking up her candidacy from the position of doting husband. This Tuesday, she herself will be on Colbert, and the following week, on Kimmel, in the run-up to the next round of primary debates. And lest we forget about her for a minute, she was on television for 10 hours on Thursday, leading to her exasperated, exhausted face meme-d and gif-ed everywhere, including on late shows like “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.” Clinton as candidate is ubiquitous and unavoidable, especially in the recesses of late night. McKinnon, on a recent “Saturday Night Live,” played Clinton like a automaton—dinging both Clinton’s oddly mannered persona and her assured triumph in the general election, or as we might as well call it, the inevitable robot revolution. In this election cycle, Clinton has revealed more warmth and competence than ever, though certainly not consistently, or on every topic. She’s lived in the public eye for so long that there’s a flattened, TV version of herself that is readily available to her, and also readily discarded, if necessary; her grinning during the Democratic primary debate, and that mic-dropped “no,” seemed quite at odds with the warmer, fuzzier Hillary we’re being sold for 2016. It happened to be quite welcome, at the time. But I wonder if Hillary’s strongest moments will be those rarely revealed moments of emotion—like the tears in New Hampshire in 2008. They hit a more controversial tone for the traditional notion of a president, yes, which is why her campaign keeps them so tightly in check. But in terms of reaching an audience, occasional hints of woman behind the machine make for far more interesting television. Sanders has been the newcomer to the TV cycle, so far. And so far, his two appearances—with Colbert, in September, and with Kimmel, this past week—have been surprisingly more thought-provoking. Colbert’s interview with Sanders was more combative than his interview with Trump—a bit surprising, considering Colbert’s politics, but not entirely so. Trump is a joke candidate to Colbert; Sanders is campaigning much nearer to Colbert’s heart. And so Sanders’ progressivism came under scrutiny, for impracticality—the host pushed him on tax rates, on the negative impact of the term “socialism,” and on refusing money from a superPAC, counseling, “Don’t bring a spoon to a knife fight.” It wasn’t Sanders that shocked anyone with his answers (except for those viewers who had never witnessed an American socialist before)—it was Colbert, with his questions, which were as close to hostile as the comedian gets. (Perhaps that was just because the audience, instead of chanting “Ste-phen! Ste-phen!” adopted “Ber-nie! Ber-nie!” for the evening.) Colbert remarked, with a little irritation, that his show was funded by huge corporate capitalism, and he raised the specter of an 80 percent tax rate for the wealthy. He played “capitalism’s advocate” against Sanders, clearly interested in crossing swords over what he sees is a fundamental tenet of the American way. He compared Sanders both to Trump and to Ralph Nader, for either tapping into rage or for splitting the liberal vote. There was a moment at the end where Colbert seemed to wish he could slip into his old persona, so he could hammer Sanders even further. It was a moment that indicated what the future might hold for the Sanders campaign, as even comedians who made their careers stoking liberal rage find themselves leaning conservative opposite him. And then there was last week’s appearance on Kimmel. Sanders—who is so true-to-type he walked right into David’s impersonation—tossed off a perfect Brooklyn “God forbid,” at the notion the Republicans might win. Kimmel picked up on that. “You say you feel culturally Jewish, but you are not religious. Do you believe in God, and if so, do you think that’s important to the people of the United States?” Sanders response was part Popeye, part brilliant: “I am who I am. And what I believe in, and what my spirituality is about, is that we’re all in this together.” Immediately beforehand, Sanders spoke at length about voter turnout in America, a topic he wrote on a year ago, as well. He spoke of disillusionment and disenfranchisement, and of big corporations and small individuals. And it was a strange moment, in the late-night-political-cycle-talk-show extravaganza, where the monster briefly became aware of itself. Sanders is so intent on making his point he sometimes forgets the applauding audience is there at all; the manufactured smoothness of live television somehow seems to not affect him. For the pre-cynical teen liberal who still lives in my brain, it’s too much to be true. Could this be American politics, in the era of godless television? Even President Obama slow-jammed the news! Well, I suppose we’re about to find out.

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We faked orgasms for Stephen Colbert: No, really! He asked us to!

Ever since Stephen Colbert took over “The Late Show” there has been buzz over the newly designed show.  CBS spent three and a half months and $18 million renovating the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then Colbert hired jazz musician Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human—a move that promised to infuse the show with energy. Those would be reasons enough to want to attend a live taping of the show, but that’s only the beginning. The live audience gets an inside look at the artifice alongside a heavy dose of entertainment you can only see if you are in the theater. Tickets are free, but you have to plan ahead.  Right now the show tends to be booked about four weeks ahead. You can find tickets here.  If you are in Manhattan and want to try to see the show without planning ahead, try going standby.  Just show up at the theater by 1 p.m. and put your name on the list. If there is room, you will get in.  Often that depends on the day of the week and the announced guests. Once you get your tickets, though, that does not guarantee entry.  As was true with “The Colbert Report,” they always oversell the show.  Tickets state that you need to be in line by 3:15 p.m. When I went, I was in line by 1 p.m. and was still No. 68 in line.  Others have told me that they got there by 2:30 and were fine. The show seats 400—a big difference over “The Colbert Report –which only had seats for 150. Around 3 p.m. the staff will check your ticket (you can print it or have it on your phone) and your ID and give you a number, a stamp on your hand, and a time to return (between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.). Make sure to keep your number—that is now your ticket into the show. Once you get back, you should be prepared to stand in line again. After you go through security, you will wait in a line inside the theater lobby for about an hour.  There are screens showing Colbert clips, but it is not like the waiting area for “The Colbert Report” where the volume was loud enough to hear the clips and the lobby had more memorabilia. Eventually everyone is led into the theater.   There really are no bad seats in the house.  Some folks that sit up front may have visibility blocked by the cameras—so that is where getting in line later may be a smart move. The theater is really impressive and once you see it you will understand why almost every guest remarks on how beautiful it is. Before seeing Colbert, comedian Paul Mercurio comes out to fluff the audience and get everyone in the mood.  He’s pretty good at getting the audience to laugh, but I didn’t find him as funny as Pete Dominick, who did the same job for “The Colbert Report.”   Mercurio mostly gets his laughs by getting audience members to come up on stage so he can make fun of them. Dominick was more of a political comedian and he helped set the tone for the satire of “The Colbert Report.” A key part of the show is the live audience laughing. So both Mercurio and Colbert’s stage manager, Mark McKenna, who also worked on “The Colbert Report,” stress to the audience that the audience has a huge role to play in the taping.  Not only do we hear that we help encourage Colbert, but also that we play a role in affecting the viewers at home.  At “The Colbert Report” the audience was also told to laugh hard—and then we heard it would help Colbert beat Jon Stewart at the Emmys.  And while that is all true, it is weird to be told you have to laugh hard.  They literally test the volume on the audience and make you do it again and again until they are satisfied that you can be loud enough. Next up is Jon Batiste and his band.  Seeing them live is definitely a real treat and they walk the aisles and interact a lot with the audience.  One perk of being in the theater is that every time there is a commercial break, the band plays.  And on the night I was there Vance Joy accompanied them.  Not too bad. After all that it is time to meet Colbert himself.  He comes out to loud applause –we have, after all, been coached to be loud.  He then tells us that we have to prepare to greet him again for the actual taping.  “We will see how well you can fake an orgasm,” he says.  At least he gets how strange it all is. One of the best parts of seeing the show is getting the time with Colbert before the actual taping starts. That is when he lets the audience ask questions. Our night we got three in—and I was able to ask one about whether he had plans to do anything like the Super PAC for the next election cycle.  He answered that the Super PAC had been a spontaneous idea—so he couldn’t say for certain.  Then another audience member asked if he had a favorite restaurant for ramen. He replied that he could now afford meat—but the fun part was that later in the show he made a reference to ramen.  He will generally try to make some sort of inside joke like that—and the audience loves it. Colbert leaves to come right back out and the actual taping starts. Given that the new show has so many more guests than “The Colbert Report,” there is a good chance that there will be a guest or two that will also be exciting for you to see live.  The show tends to close with a musical act. After the musical act ends, he will need to reshoot any parts that didn’t work out. Our night he had two words he had to say again since they were unclear in the original taping.  We also learned that they would have to cut six minutes of footage in post-production. We watched him repeat the two words a few times—and the show was over.  We left the theater by 7 p.m. while the band played out in the lobby. Seeing a live taping is a somewhat surreal experience. Besides the ways that the staff pushes the audience to be loud and laugh, it is also unusual to see the process of creating the show.  Colbert’s reference to faking an orgasm is an apt metaphor – there is a sense of forced performance for the audience that can feel awkward. But it is not all about faking it. The audience gets the benefit of about twice as much entertainment –from the extra time with Colbert to the live glimpses of the theater and the extra music by the band.  Beyond that, though, the audience becomes an insider, part of the show itself and not just a passive viewer.  Part of that process means that the audience can no longer naïvely pretend that “The Late Show” just magically appears on their screens.  Having pulled back the curtain, they now have a real understanding of the work --and play --that goes into it every night.Ever since Stephen Colbert took over “The Late Show” there has been buzz over the newly designed show.  CBS spent three and a half months and $18 million renovating the Ed Sullivan Theater. Then Colbert hired jazz musician Jon Batiste and his band Stay Human—a move that promised to infuse the show with energy. Those would be reasons enough to want to attend a live taping of the show, but that’s only the beginning. The live audience gets an inside look at the artifice alongside a heavy dose of entertainment you can only see if you are in the theater. Tickets are free, but you have to plan ahead.  Right now the show tends to be booked about four weeks ahead. You can find tickets here.  If you are in Manhattan and want to try to see the show without planning ahead, try going standby.  Just show up at the theater by 1 p.m. and put your name on the list. If there is room, you will get in.  Often that depends on the day of the week and the announced guests. Once you get your tickets, though, that does not guarantee entry.  As was true with “The Colbert Report,” they always oversell the show.  Tickets state that you need to be in line by 3:15 p.m. When I went, I was in line by 1 p.m. and was still No. 68 in line.  Others have told me that they got there by 2:30 and were fine. The show seats 400—a big difference over “The Colbert Report –which only had seats for 150. Around 3 p.m. the staff will check your ticket (you can print it or have it on your phone) and your ID and give you a number, a stamp on your hand, and a time to return (between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.). Make sure to keep your number—that is now your ticket into the show. Once you get back, you should be prepared to stand in line again. After you go through security, you will wait in a line inside the theater lobby for about an hour.  There are screens showing Colbert clips, but it is not like the waiting area for “The Colbert Report” where the volume was loud enough to hear the clips and the lobby had more memorabilia. Eventually everyone is led into the theater.   There really are no bad seats in the house.  Some folks that sit up front may have visibility blocked by the cameras—so that is where getting in line later may be a smart move. The theater is really impressive and once you see it you will understand why almost every guest remarks on how beautiful it is. Before seeing Colbert, comedian Paul Mercurio comes out to fluff the audience and get everyone in the mood.  He’s pretty good at getting the audience to laugh, but I didn’t find him as funny as Pete Dominick, who did the same job for “The Colbert Report.”   Mercurio mostly gets his laughs by getting audience members to come up on stage so he can make fun of them. Dominick was more of a political comedian and he helped set the tone for the satire of “The Colbert Report.” A key part of the show is the live audience laughing. So both Mercurio and Colbert’s stage manager, Mark McKenna, who also worked on “The Colbert Report,” stress to the audience that the audience has a huge role to play in the taping.  Not only do we hear that we help encourage Colbert, but also that we play a role in affecting the viewers at home.  At “The Colbert Report” the audience was also told to laugh hard—and then we heard it would help Colbert beat Jon Stewart at the Emmys.  And while that is all true, it is weird to be told you have to laugh hard.  They literally test the volume on the audience and make you do it again and again until they are satisfied that you can be loud enough. Next up is Jon Batiste and his band.  Seeing them live is definitely a real treat and they walk the aisles and interact a lot with the audience.  One perk of being in the theater is that every time there is a commercial break, the band plays.  And on the night I was there Vance Joy accompanied them.  Not too bad. After all that it is time to meet Colbert himself.  He comes out to loud applause –we have, after all, been coached to be loud.  He then tells us that we have to prepare to greet him again for the actual taping.  “We will see how well you can fake an orgasm,” he says.  At least he gets how strange it all is. One of the best parts of seeing the show is getting the time with Colbert before the actual taping starts. That is when he lets the audience ask questions. Our night we got three in—and I was able to ask one about whether he had plans to do anything like the Super PAC for the next election cycle.  He answered that the Super PAC had been a spontaneous idea—so he couldn’t say for certain.  Then another audience member asked if he had a favorite restaurant for ramen. He replied that he could now afford meat—but the fun part was that later in the show he made a reference to ramen.  He will generally try to make some sort of inside joke like that—and the audience loves it. Colbert leaves to come right back out and the actual taping starts. Given that the new show has so many more guests than “The Colbert Report,” there is a good chance that there will be a guest or two that will also be exciting for you to see live.  The show tends to close with a musical act. After the musical act ends, he will need to reshoot any parts that didn’t work out. Our night he had two words he had to say again since they were unclear in the original taping.  We also learned that they would have to cut six minutes of footage in post-production. We watched him repeat the two words a few times—and the show was over.  We left the theater by 7 p.m. while the band played out in the lobby. Seeing a live taping is a somewhat surreal experience. Besides the ways that the staff pushes the audience to be loud and laugh, it is also unusual to see the process of creating the show.  Colbert’s reference to faking an orgasm is an apt metaphor – there is a sense of forced performance for the audience that can feel awkward. But it is not all about faking it. The audience gets the benefit of about twice as much entertainment –from the extra time with Colbert to the live glimpses of the theater and the extra music by the band.  Beyond that, though, the audience becomes an insider, part of the show itself and not just a passive viewer.  Part of that process means that the audience can no longer naïvely pretend that “The Late Show” just magically appears on their screens.  Having pulled back the curtain, they now have a real understanding of the work --and play --that goes into it every night.

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6 indoor pollutants that are making you miserable – and what to do about them

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Ricky Gervais returns to host the Golden Globes: The comedian’s biting humor is bound to raise eyebrows

While Chris Rock will be bringing his edgy brand of comedy to the Oscars, he's not the only controversial comic suiting up for an Awards Show gig this season. That's right, Gervais-heads (is that a thing? Should be): Ricky Gervais is returning as Golden Globes host. The polarizing British comic hosted the ceremony in the 2010-2012 pre-Poehler and Fey years, where his biting cringe-comedy managed to offend so many people that he renounced all future hosting duties. “I’ve told my agent to never let me be persuaded to do it again though," he said a few years back. "It’s like a parachute jump." Thankfully, it sounds like Ricky is ready to get back in that chute. “We’re excited to have Ricky Gervais back to host the most enjoyable awards show of the season in his own inimitable way,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement. “Disarming and surprising, Ricky is ready to honor — and send up — the best work of the year in film and television. Fasten your seats belts.”While Chris Rock will be bringing his edgy brand of comedy to the Oscars, he's not the only controversial comic suiting up for an Awards Show gig this season. That's right, Gervais-heads (is that a thing? Should be): Ricky Gervais is returning as Golden Globes host. The polarizing British comic hosted the ceremony in the 2010-2012 pre-Poehler and Fey years, where his biting cringe-comedy managed to offend so many people that he renounced all future hosting duties. “I’ve told my agent to never let me be persuaded to do it again though," he said a few years back. "It’s like a parachute jump." Thankfully, it sounds like Ricky is ready to get back in that chute. “We’re excited to have Ricky Gervais back to host the most enjoyable awards show of the season in his own inimitable way,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement. “Disarming and surprising, Ricky is ready to honor — and send up — the best work of the year in film and television. Fasten your seats belts.”While Chris Rock will be bringing his edgy brand of comedy to the Oscars, he's not the only controversial comic suiting up for an Awards Show gig this season. That's right, Gervais-heads (is that a thing? Should be): Ricky Gervais is returning as Golden Globes host. The polarizing British comic hosted the ceremony in the 2010-2012 pre-Poehler and Fey years, where his biting cringe-comedy managed to offend so many people that he renounced all future hosting duties. “I’ve told my agent to never let me be persuaded to do it again though," he said a few years back. "It’s like a parachute jump." Thankfully, it sounds like Ricky is ready to get back in that chute. “We’re excited to have Ricky Gervais back to host the most enjoyable awards show of the season in his own inimitable way,” said NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt in a statement. “Disarming and surprising, Ricky is ready to honor — and send up — the best work of the year in film and television. Fasten your seats belts.”

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The Trey Gowdy/Hillary Clinton conspiracy: The real Benghazi scandal only chairman Noam Chomsky would uncover

There are few groups more skilled in missing the forest for the trees than the Republican Party. The GOP has an absolutely uncanny ability to ignore what is right before its very own eyes in its dogmatic quest to fabricate scandals where there aren't any. Nowhere is this more evident than in the American Right's bewilderingly impassioned obsession with the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi -- a fanatic fixation that verges on the unhinged. There have been seven official investigations into Benghazi -- more than there have been into any other actual scandal in recent history -- and yet the GOP has still called for more. This deranged fanaticism culminated in an Oct. 22 hearing in which Republicans grilled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for eight long hours. After all of this work, after years of investigations, after however many millions of dollars poured down the drain, the GOP has not found the controversy it was looking for. Ironically, its efforts have precipitated numerous actual controversies -- most notably Clinton's potentially illegal use of private email servers, among others -- but not the particular smoking gun it insists is there. In its laser-like probing into the Benghazi tree, however, Republicans have ignored the much larger forest: The U.S. destruction of Libya. In 2011, the U.S. led a NATO coalition that bombed Libya for over seven months, destroying the government and leaving behind a political vacuum, large parts of which have been filled by extremist groups. Today, downtown Benghazi is in ruins, and chunks of the city are under the control of Ansar al-Sharia, an extremist Salafi Islamist militia that is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. As for the rest of Libya, much of the land is now controlled by rival warlords. The country is divided into four major regions. The internationally recognized government in the east is caught up in intractable conflicts with fascistic ISIS affiliates, which control the city Sirte and a sliver of the north; more moderate Muslim Brotherhood-aligned rebels known as Libya Dawn, which control the city of Tripoli and the northwest; and tribal militias, which control the southwest; not to mention the vast array of smaller militant groups fighting throughout the country. No end is in sight for Libya's civil war, which has already dragged on for many months, leaving thousands of people dead. Because chaos reins in large swaths of the country, there is no official figure for the deaths. The project Libya Body Count, which simply compiles media reports, and is thus conservative in its estimates, has documented over 4,000 fatalities since 2014. This violent chaos has furthermore sparked a flood of refugees, exacerbating what is already the worst refugee crisis since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Libyan civilians have been forced to flee, often on dangerous smuggling boats. As of December 2014, the U.N. estimated there were over 370,000 displaced Libyans. The number is likely higher today, a year later. Mere hours after Clinton's day-long Republican interrogation, at least six Libyans were killed and dozens more were wounded when militants in Benghazi fired rockets at a protest against a U.N. proposal for a unity government. Benghazi the city, ignored by the Benghazi conspiracists, remains roiled in violence. In the words of AP, the city is "shattered." As The New York Times describes it:

"Random shells sometimes fall out of the sky in various parts of the city. Trash piles up in the streets. Rolling power blackouts can last for five or 10 hours and sometimes engulf the entire city.

Fighting in the farmland around the city has created a shortage of vegetables. An influx of those displaced from war zones has overcrowded the safer neighborhoods, straining tempers. Public schools remain closed, and children have nothing to do.

The Islamist militias appear to be welcoming foreign fighters into their ranks and there are reports of suicide bombings."

A Benghazi man told The Times "I don’t see anyone smiling... The city we grew up loving is not the one we see today." This is the real Benghazi scandal. Yet it is being ignored. There is no dearth of actual Middle Eastern scandals the Republicans could go after. There is the Obama administration's drone program, which has left thousands dead, including hundreds of civilians. Or its $90 billion of arms deals with oil-rich repressive theocratic Gulf monarchies in just four years. Or its expansion of the disastrous war in Afghanistan, where it has bombed hospitals. Or its steadfast support for the Saudi-led coalition that is raining bombs down upon Yemeni civilians. The list goes on. The destruction of Libya is just another crime to add to this ever-growing list. Yet the reason Republicans are not concerned with any of these actual scandals, of course, is because they support all of these policies. Foreign policy is the area in which both dominant U.S. political parties overwhelmingly agree. Hillary Clinton was one of the leading voices in support of the disastrous war in Libya. In late 2011, the Washington Post indicated that Clinton was a "strong advocate" for and played a "pivotal role" in the NATO bombing. The Post noted that the "coalition air campaign has emerged as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration and its most famous Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton." Clinton and the Obama administration may consider the bombing a "success," but try telling that to Libyans now fleeing a bloody civil war. When Libyan dictator Mu'ammar Qadhafi was killed at the end of the NATO campaign in October 2011, Clinton, ever eager to flaunt her hawkish tendencies, infamously quipped "We came, we saw, he died." On her official website, Clinton still today boasts of the bipartisan consensus backing the Libya bombing, lifting up the military intervention that destroyed a north African country as a victory for her political record. A small handful of voices were outspoken critics of the war effort. Both parties, for the most part, supported the bombing, yet leftists, anti-war activists, and figures like independent democratic socialist senator and current presidential candidate Bernie Sanders warned that the NATO intervention would be a disaster. History showed them to be correct: The NATO bombing of Libya has proven disastrous in virtually every single way. The situation on the ground today in Libya is nothing short of catastrophic. One does not need to defend Qadhafi's dictatorship to recognize this. Mu'ammar Qadhafi was repressive and corrupt. He brutally crushed all opposition and lived like a king, with access to billions upon billions of wealth. This, naturally, did not stop the soi-disant democratic West from supporting him. U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair worked with the dictator to imprison Libyan dissidents. He penned letters to Qadhafi, writing "Dear Mu'ammar" and signed "Best wishes yours ever, Tony." Moreover, Qadhafi participated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, helping the U.S. detain and torture militants. Yet NATO turned on Qadhafi, who, since the 1990s, had largely abandoned his former anti-imperialism, instead warming up to the Washington consensus and implementing large-scale neoliberal policies. But Qadhafi's rhetoric -- although often in contradiction with his actions -- was still fiery, and he had never become an obedient ally. It should not go unnoticed, too, that Libya sits on enormous oil reserves and, before the bombing, was one of the world's largest oil producers. It also has -- or, rather, had -- many billions of dollars in gold reserves. In its bombing campaign, NATO did more than kill Qadhafi nevertheless; it destroyed the Libyan government. Parallels to the U.S. war in Iraq are constructive. As was the case in Iraq, the U.S. did not just overthrow the draconian Saddam Hussein; it completely dissolved his government. Al-Qaeda entered the country amid the mayhem and, now, large swaths of Iraq are controlled by ISIS. In an interview with Vice, an Iraqi man lamented that the "worst thing America has done to Iraq and Iraqis is this: They made a dictator look like an angel, in comparison to what we have right now." Similarly, as prominent Libyan activist Hend Amry put it, "Was life more stable under Gaddafi? Well, yes. Your head stays very still when a boot is pinning it to the ground." Later she added "now there are many boots instead of one." Today, many of these many boots are extremist in nature. ISIS, Ansar al-Sharia, and other Salafi groups are carving out parts of Libya through vicious violence and even ethnic cleansing. Where is the widespread outrage over this, the real Bengahzi scandal? It is not to be heard in the halls of Capitol Hill, because handing the Middle East over to extremist groups has, whether wittingly or not, been U.S. bipartisan policy now for decades. Where are the hearings on this, the real Benghazi scandal? There never will be one, because such a hearing would have to be overseen not by Chairman Gowdy, but rather by Chairman Chomsky. Where are the several official inquires into this, the real Benghazi scandal? They will not be conducted, because, to the U.S. political establishment, the tragic deaths of four Americans is worth infinitely more attention than the deaths of thousands of Libyans and the destruction of a country. Watch highlights from the 11-hour hearing: [jwplayer file=" http://media.salon.com/2015/10/Bengha..." image=" http://media.salon.com/2015/10/Bengha...] [image error]

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Don’t panic, bacon lovers: Why the new report on cancer and processed meats doesn’t mean a total pork ban

It’s been a tough day for meat eaters, as a report by an international World Health Organization describes the relationship between processed food in specific and red meat in general and various kinds of cancer. The headlines, of course, have been blunt. CNN Money phrases it this way: “Processed meat causes cancer, says WHO." The Guardian offers a blunt headline as well “Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes – WHO.” The story goes on to say

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco. The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

Are we destined to bounce between reckless hedonism and alarmist headlines about our health choices? Do we really need to swear off bacon? Salon spoke to Timothy Caulfield, a heath researcher at the University of Edmonton and the author of "Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty, and Happiness." The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. The first thing I’m wondering is, What did this study tell us that we didn’t already know? Didn’t most people suspect that eating a lot of bacon or processed food or red meat wasn’t great for them? I’ve been following this for a long time, and often when I give public lectures I use bacon as example… Everyone seems to love bacon so it’s a great starting point. There have been some conflicting stories about bacon and red meat in general and its health value. What I think this allegedly does – they looked at over 800 studies and tried to come to some kind of consensus about the actual risks associated with cancer. That’s why it’s gotten so many headlines… I don’t think anyone eats bacon because they think it’s good for them. They eat it because they love it. But it sounds like you are saying it’s an important study and worth taking seriously. Yeah – and keep in mind, it’s more than a study, it’s a group of experts looking at the available evidence. It really did resonate with people. They said, Yeah, it really is bad for us. I don’t know if they were holding out hope that it was okay. But the headlines have been incredibly alarmist. So my message is to look beyond the hype and ask, What is this study really saying? And the message for me is really a story of moderation. We don’t all have to ban bacon from our kitchens. On the contrary, it probably shouldn’t be your go-to meat product. The study made some claims not just about processed meat but about red meat – the claims were not quite as pronounced. One thing about this study: We have to be careful about not mixing up relative risk and absolute risk. If you’re looking at an increased chance of getting colon cancer of 17 percent – that sounds really grim. But, it’s one of the more common forms of cancer, your chance of getting it over the course of a lifetime is about three or four percent. So you’re talking about an increase of a relatively rare event. So it’s a 17 percent increase on three or four percent? Yes – often these are read as, “That means there’s a 17 percent chance we’re gonna get it.” No, it’s not that at all. So often that’s left out of news stories, and it confuses thing. It’s a nice message – eat healthy, eat in moderation, whenever possible try to eat real food. This feels like part of a pattern of health scares. What are the most garishly distorted or misinterpreted study or report? A case where a scientific study came out and the media or general public took it wrong. Oh God, there are so many. You get, “Red wine is good for you.” Then, “You know what? Maybe antioxidants aren’t so good for you.” Or, “Eggs are terrible for you.” Then, “Maybe eggs aren’t so terrible for you.” The one I love is chocolate – “Chocolate is good for you.” Often you get studies that are correlation studies that suggest something that is either good or bad for you, and that study is blown up to a truism. We do it with macronutrients too. In general, when you’re talking about nutrition, you should be very skeptical toward anything that demonizes a certain food group, or makes any kind of food a super food. There are no super foods. I’m fascinated at how this is all presented. The fact that this study has resonated so much. How have you seen the report be misread and how do you think it will continue to be misinterpreted in the media? The headlines have [mostly]been extremist: “Bacon causes cancer.” That is an over-interpretation of the conclusions. Keep in mind: Everything causes cancer. You look at that World Health Organization list, and it’s long, and it has a lot of things on it we’re exposed to throughout the day. It’s not that bacon causes cancer – it’s that bacon has been associated with cancer. The other thing to follow going forward is how the information will be polarized. You’ll get the vegan and vegetarian community using this in their arsenal of why we should avoid meat. And to be fair, there are more arrows in that quiver. And you’ll see people who love their meat and love their bacon cherry-picking, saying it’s all just one study. It will be interesting to see that polarization, because it’s certainly happened in the past. What should the informed person take from this report? It’s the boring story of moderation. This is more evidence that eating a lot of processed meat is probably not a good idea. But it doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether. This increasingly suggests we should view it as a treat, and it looks like that’s increasingly true of red meat. But look, red meat has nutrients in it – it’s not a completely unhealthy product. And moderate means what, a burger once or twice a week? Yeah I think that’s fair to say. And also probably leaning toward meat that’s not as processed. But you can watch this story unfold. Look, nutrition research is really hard. That’s why we get these conflicting stories. You get these big cohort studies, they’re almost always association studies, and it’s often very hard to control for all the variables that are relevant. Some people have criticized this study and the alcohol-is-good-for-you study that they are really proxies for living a different kind of lifestyle. So if you eat a whole bunch of processed meat, there’s probably some other stuff going on in your life. And if you are drinking two glasses of red wine a day, maybe that’s a market for living a moderate lifestyle. It’s really hard to control for all those variables. So you’ve got to look at the whole body of evidence. These experts have tried to do that. And they’ve come to the conclusion – taking in all the biases – and come to the conclusion that bacon and processed food probably is associated with cancer to some degree. Finally, how does this distortion and panic fit in with the celebrity-worship you describe in your book? Does the cult of Gwyneth and other health-and-lifestyle gurus contribute to this kind of problem? For sure that’s the case. Pop culture generally serves as a polarizing source. They use these studies to promote whatever kind of lifestyle they’re promoting, whether eating raw food, or promoting whatever kind of product or agenda a celebrity is pushing. But I always say, There is no magic lifestyle. It’s all about the sensible stuff we’ve long known. So don’t believe the hype – don’t believe these messages that tend to flow out of celebrity culture. There is no magic diet. We’ve long known that lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts… It’s the stuff in general that most of us have known for a long time, and the research continuously backs that up. This study just confirms that – it really us about moderation.It’s been a tough day for meat eaters, as a report by an international World Health Organization describes the relationship between processed food in specific and red meat in general and various kinds of cancer. The headlines, of course, have been blunt. CNN Money phrases it this way: “Processed meat causes cancer, says WHO." The Guardian offers a blunt headline as well “Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes – WHO.” The story goes on to say

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco. The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

Are we destined to bounce between reckless hedonism and alarmist headlines about our health choices? Do we really need to swear off bacon? Salon spoke to Timothy Caulfield, a heath researcher at the University of Edmonton and the author of "Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty, and Happiness." The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. The first thing I’m wondering is, What did this study tell us that we didn’t already know? Didn’t most people suspect that eating a lot of bacon or processed food or red meat wasn’t great for them? I’ve been following this for a long time, and often when I give public lectures I use bacon as example… Everyone seems to love bacon so it’s a great starting point. There have been some conflicting stories about bacon and red meat in general and its health value. What I think this allegedly does – they looked at over 800 studies and tried to come to some kind of consensus about the actual risks associated with cancer. That’s why it’s gotten so many headlines… I don’t think anyone eats bacon because they think it’s good for them. They eat it because they love it. But it sounds like you are saying it’s an important study and worth taking seriously. Yeah – and keep in mind, it’s more than a study, it’s a group of experts looking at the available evidence. It really did resonate with people. They said, Yeah, it really is bad for us. I don’t know if they were holding out hope that it was okay. But the headlines have been incredibly alarmist. So my message is to look beyond the hype and ask, What is this study really saying? And the message for me is really a story of moderation. We don’t all have to ban bacon from our kitchens. On the contrary, it probably shouldn’t be your go-to meat product. The study made some claims not just about processed meat but about red meat – the claims were not quite as pronounced. One thing about this study: We have to be careful about not mixing up relative risk and absolute risk. If you’re looking at an increased chance of getting colon cancer of 17 percent – that sounds really grim. But, it’s one of the more common forms of cancer, your chance of getting it over the course of a lifetime is about three or four percent. So you’re talking about an increase of a relatively rare event. So it’s a 17 percent increase on three or four percent? Yes – often these are read as, “That means there’s a 17 percent chance we’re gonna get it.” No, it’s not that at all. So often that’s left out of news stories, and it confuses thing. It’s a nice message – eat healthy, eat in moderation, whenever possible try to eat real food. This feels like part of a pattern of health scares. What are the most garishly distorted or misinterpreted study or report? A case where a scientific study came out and the media or general public took it wrong. Oh God, there are so many. You get, “Red wine is good for you.” Then, “You know what? Maybe antioxidants aren’t so good for you.” Or, “Eggs are terrible for you.” Then, “Maybe eggs aren’t so terrible for you.” The one I love is chocolate – “Chocolate is good for you.” Often you get studies that are correlation studies that suggest something that is either good or bad for you, and that study is blown up to a truism. We do it with macronutrients too. In general, when you’re talking about nutrition, you should be very skeptical toward anything that demonizes a certain food group, or makes any kind of food a super food. There are no super foods. I’m fascinated at how this is all presented. The fact that this study has resonated so much. How have you seen the report be misread and how do you think it will continue to be misinterpreted in the media? The headlines have [mostly]been extremist: “Bacon causes cancer.” That is an over-interpretation of the conclusions. Keep in mind: Everything causes cancer. You look at that World Health Organization list, and it’s long, and it has a lot of things on it we’re exposed to throughout the day. It’s not that bacon causes cancer – it’s that bacon has been associated with cancer. The other thing to follow going forward is how the information will be polarized. You’ll get the vegan and vegetarian community using this in their arsenal of why we should avoid meat. And to be fair, there are more arrows in that quiver. And you’ll see people who love their meat and love their bacon cherry-picking, saying it’s all just one study. It will be interesting to see that polarization, because it’s certainly happened in the past. What should the informed person take from this report? It’s the boring story of moderation. This is more evidence that eating a lot of processed meat is probably not a good idea. But it doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether. This increasingly suggests we should view it as a treat, and it looks like that’s increasingly true of red meat. But look, red meat has nutrients in it – it’s not a completely unhealthy product. And moderate means what, a burger once or twice a week? Yeah I think that’s fair to say. And also probably leaning toward meat that’s not as processed. But you can watch this story unfold. Look, nutrition research is really hard. That’s why we get these conflicting stories. You get these big cohort studies, they’re almost always association studies, and it’s often very hard to control for all the variables that are relevant. Some people have criticized this study and the alcohol-is-good-for-you study that they are really proxies for living a different kind of lifestyle. So if you eat a whole bunch of processed meat, there’s probably some other stuff going on in your life. And if you are drinking two glasses of red wine a day, maybe that’s a market for living a moderate lifestyle. It’s really hard to control for all those variables. So you’ve got to look at the whole body of evidence. These experts have tried to do that. And they’ve come to the conclusion – taking in all the biases – and come to the conclusion that bacon and processed food probably is associated with cancer to some degree. Finally, how does this distortion and panic fit in with the celebrity-worship you describe in your book? Does the cult of Gwyneth and other health-and-lifestyle gurus contribute to this kind of problem? For sure that’s the case. Pop culture generally serves as a polarizing source. They use these studies to promote whatever kind of lifestyle they’re promoting, whether eating raw food, or promoting whatever kind of product or agenda a celebrity is pushing. But I always say, There is no magic lifestyle. It’s all about the sensible stuff we’ve long known. So don’t believe the hype – don’t believe these messages that tend to flow out of celebrity culture. There is no magic diet. We’ve long known that lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts… It’s the stuff in general that most of us have known for a long time, and the research continuously backs that up. This study just confirms that – it really us about moderation.It’s been a tough day for meat eaters, as a report by an international World Health Organization describes the relationship between processed food in specific and red meat in general and various kinds of cancer. The headlines, of course, have been blunt. CNN Money phrases it this way: “Processed meat causes cancer, says WHO." The Guardian offers a blunt headline as well “Processed meats rank alongside smoking as cancer causes – WHO.” The story goes on to say

Bacon, ham and sausages rank alongside cigarettes as a major cause of cancer, the World Health Organisation has said, placing cured and processed meats in the same category as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco. The report from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said there was enough evidence to rank processed meats as group 1 carcinogens because of a causal link with bowel cancer.

Are we destined to bounce between reckless hedonism and alarmist headlines about our health choices? Do we really need to swear off bacon? Salon spoke to Timothy Caulfield, a heath researcher at the University of Edmonton and the author of "Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything? How the Famous Sell Us Elixirs of Health, Beauty, and Happiness." The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. The first thing I’m wondering is, What did this study tell us that we didn’t already know? Didn’t most people suspect that eating a lot of bacon or processed food or red meat wasn’t great for them? I’ve been following this for a long time, and often when I give public lectures I use bacon as example… Everyone seems to love bacon so it’s a great starting point. There have been some conflicting stories about bacon and red meat in general and its health value. What I think this allegedly does – they looked at over 800 studies and tried to come to some kind of consensus about the actual risks associated with cancer. That’s why it’s gotten so many headlines… I don’t think anyone eats bacon because they think it’s good for them. They eat it because they love it. But it sounds like you are saying it’s an important study and worth taking seriously. Yeah – and keep in mind, it’s more than a study, it’s a group of experts looking at the available evidence. It really did resonate with people. They said, Yeah, it really is bad for us. I don’t know if they were holding out hope that it was okay. But the headlines have been incredibly alarmist. So my message is to look beyond the hype and ask, What is this study really saying? And the message for me is really a story of moderation. We don’t all have to ban bacon from our kitchens. On the contrary, it probably shouldn’t be your go-to meat product. The study made some claims not just about processed meat but about red meat – the claims were not quite as pronounced. One thing about this study: We have to be careful about not mixing up relative risk and absolute risk. If you’re looking at an increased chance of getting colon cancer of 17 percent – that sounds really grim. But, it’s one of the more common forms of cancer, your chance of getting it over the course of a lifetime is about three or four percent. So you’re talking about an increase of a relatively rare event. So it’s a 17 percent increase on three or four percent? Yes – often these are read as, “That means there’s a 17 percent chance we’re gonna get it.” No, it’s not that at all. So often that’s left out of news stories, and it confuses thing. It’s a nice message – eat healthy, eat in moderation, whenever possible try to eat real food. This feels like part of a pattern of health scares. What are the most garishly distorted or misinterpreted study or report? A case where a scientific study came out and the media or general public took it wrong. Oh God, there are so many. You get, “Red wine is good for you.” Then, “You know what? Maybe antioxidants aren’t so good for you.” Or, “Eggs are terrible for you.” Then, “Maybe eggs aren’t so terrible for you.” The one I love is chocolate – “Chocolate is good for you.” Often you get studies that are correlation studies that suggest something that is either good or bad for you, and that study is blown up to a truism. We do it with macronutrients too. In general, when you’re talking about nutrition, you should be very skeptical toward anything that demonizes a certain food group, or makes any kind of food a super food. There are no super foods. I’m fascinated at how this is all presented. The fact that this study has resonated so much. How have you seen the report be misread and how do you think it will continue to be misinterpreted in the media? The headlines have [mostly]been extremist: “Bacon causes cancer.” That is an over-interpretation of the conclusions. Keep in mind: Everything causes cancer. You look at that World Health Organization list, and it’s long, and it has a lot of things on it we’re exposed to throughout the day. It’s not that bacon causes cancer – it’s that bacon has been associated with cancer. The other thing to follow going forward is how the information will be polarized. You’ll get the vegan and vegetarian community using this in their arsenal of why we should avoid meat. And to be fair, there are more arrows in that quiver. And you’ll see people who love their meat and love their bacon cherry-picking, saying it’s all just one study. It will be interesting to see that polarization, because it’s certainly happened in the past. What should the informed person take from this report? It’s the boring story of moderation. This is more evidence that eating a lot of processed meat is probably not a good idea. But it doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether. This increasingly suggests we should view it as a treat, and it looks like that’s increasingly true of red meat. But look, red meat has nutrients in it – it’s not a completely unhealthy product. And moderate means what, a burger once or twice a week? Yeah I think that’s fair to say. And also probably leaning toward meat that’s not as processed. But you can watch this story unfold. Look, nutrition research is really hard. That’s why we get these conflicting stories. You get these big cohort studies, they’re almost always association studies, and it’s often very hard to control for all the variables that are relevant. Some people have criticized this study and the alcohol-is-good-for-you study that they are really proxies for living a different kind of lifestyle. So if you eat a whole bunch of processed meat, there’s probably some other stuff going on in your life. And if you are drinking two glasses of red wine a day, maybe that’s a market for living a moderate lifestyle. It’s really hard to control for all those variables. So you’ve got to look at the whole body of evidence. These experts have tried to do that. And they’ve come to the conclusion – taking in all the biases – and come to the conclusion that bacon and processed food probably is associated with cancer to some degree. Finally, how does this distortion and panic fit in with the celebrity-worship you describe in your book? Does the cult of Gwyneth and other health-and-lifestyle gurus contribute to this kind of problem? For sure that’s the case. Pop culture generally serves as a polarizing source. They use these studies to promote whatever kind of lifestyle they’re promoting, whether eating raw food, or promoting whatever kind of product or agenda a celebrity is pushing. But I always say, There is no magic lifestyle. It’s all about the sensible stuff we’ve long known. So don’t believe the hype – don’t believe these messages that tend to flow out of celebrity culture. There is no magic diet. We’ve long known that lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts… It’s the stuff in general that most of us have known for a long time, and the research continuously backs that up. This study just confirms that – it really us about moderation.

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David Vitter lurches toward a humiliating defeat: A record of scandal and hypocrisy finally catches up to him

I wrote a few weeks ago that Louisiana, a solidly red state, was primed for Democratic victories thanks in part to Bobby Jindal’s tragic tenure. While the initial results of this weekend’s election were mixed, it appears the political winds are indeed shifting. This is especially true of the gubernatorial race, which pitted frontrunner David Vitter against two other Republicans as well as the Democratic candidate, John Bel Edwards. Louisiana employs a peculiar election system known as a jungle primary, which means all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, compete on a single ballot. If no one gets a majority, the top two candidates compete in a runoff election. On Saturday, Edwards carried 40 percent of the vote to Vitter’s 23 percent (almost a complete reversal of the polling data from a year ago). This means the Edwards will face Vitter in a runoff next month. And Edwards, depending on whom you ask, is now the favorite. For months, David Vitter was the prohibitive frontrunner. He has name recognition, political clout, a plethora of cash, and a state whose demographics increasingly favor conservative Republicans. But this is a unique political climate. Jindal, one of the worst governors in the history of the state, has made toxic everything he touched, including the Republican brand. Running as a Republican gubernatorial candidate after Jindal was always going to be tricky. In addition to that, Vitter, as James Carville told Salon recently, is “one of the most flawed candidates in American politics.” Calling Vitter “flawed” borders on charitable, in my view. The man’s political resume is shot through with sin. There’s the famous D.C. Madam Scandal of 2007, which exposed Vitter's extramarital peccadillos with sex workers (an unfortunate finding for a family values conservative). Miraculously, Vitter managed to recover from this and was poised to win the governorship. But things have spiraled out of control for Vitter in the last month so, with one fiasco after another, and now his entire campaign has cratered. First there was a story published by Jason Berry, an investigative reporter who writes for the blog, American Zombie. Berry interviewed Wendy Ellis, a former prostitute in New Orleans, who claims to have serviced Vitter between 1998 and 2000. She also alleges that Vitter requested that she have an abortion after he impregnated her, a claim Vitter vehemently denies. Berry’s story has since unraveled, but there’s enough smoke to sway voters, particularly those who are familiar with Vitter’s philandering past. Vitter’s follies continued last week when a private investigator his campaign hired, a man named Robert Frenzel, was caught clandestinely recording a conversation between a local sheriff, a state senator, and a lawyer with ties to the Democratic Party. The PI was promptly arrested, after which Vitter released a vacuous statement about his intent to spy on the lawyer, not the sheriff. However you spin it, writes Lamar White, a prominent Louisiana blogger, it seems “David Vitter hired and paid someone $130,000 to spy on John Cummings, a private citizen, because David Vitter is absolutely terrified about what John Cummings knows.” No one knows for sure what Cummings knows, but it’s not hard to imagine what it’s about (hint: prostitutes). On the same day his PI was arrested, Vitter was involved in a minor car accident. What’s interesting, though, as Manny Schewitz first reported yesterday, is that the driver of Vitter’s vehicle was Courtney Gaustella Callihan, a woman linked to Vitter’s Super PAC. Schewitz writes:

The driver was 36-year old Courtney Gaustella Callihan, the wife of Bill Callihan, a director at Capital One Bank. Their home address is also listed as the address for Fund for Louisiana, the Super PAC backing Vitter…So it would make sense that David Vitter would want to leave the scene, due to the fact that Mrs. Callihan is possibly connected to a Super PAC that is supporting his gubernatorial campaign. News reports list her name as Courtney Guastella, but fail to mention her married name which ties her to her husband.

This matters because, if it’s true, Vitter may be in violation of federal election laws. Regardless, though, it’s more of the same from Vitter, a man now irremediably tainted by scandal and hypocrisy. Trying to predict what will happen in the runoff election is difficult. Bob Mann, a columnist for The Times-Picayune in Baton Rouge, LA, thinks Edwards has the advantage:

Edwards should start this runoff with a floor of about 43 percent or 44 percent of the vote, maybe a point higher. That means he must pick up only an additional 6 or 7 percentage points from the combined 34 percent of Angelle and Dardenne [the two Republicans who didn’t make the runoff] – I’m already giving him about 4 points of that vote, i.e. the Democrats who supported the two other Republicans. If a fourth to a third of Angelle and Dardenne voters are truly unwilling to vote for Vitter (a not-unreasonable assumption), Edwards may have all the votes he needs.

Mann’s assumptions are more than justified. Mike Henderson, a researcher at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, analyzed the favorability numbers of Angelle and Dardenne and found that a majority of their supporters are unsure about Edwards, the Democrat, but positively dislike Vitter. Edwards can easily swing enough Republicans to win the runoff, in other words. It’s possible that Vitter could still win the race, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. Bobby Jindal didn’t help, but much of this is about Vitter, whose record – personally and politically – is now so objectively awful that Republican voters are running away from him. An Edwards victory won’t make Louisiana a blue state, but it’s a step in the right direction for Louisiana Democrats, many of whom have suffered long enough under the confused and corrupt leadership of unaccountable Republicans.I wrote a few weeks ago that Louisiana, a solidly red state, was primed for Democratic victories thanks in part to Bobby Jindal’s tragic tenure. While the initial results of this weekend’s election were mixed, it appears the political winds are indeed shifting. This is especially true of the gubernatorial race, which pitted frontrunner David Vitter against two other Republicans as well as the Democratic candidate, John Bel Edwards. Louisiana employs a peculiar election system known as a jungle primary, which means all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, compete on a single ballot. If no one gets a majority, the top two candidates compete in a runoff election. On Saturday, Edwards carried 40 percent of the vote to Vitter’s 23 percent (almost a complete reversal of the polling data from a year ago). This means the Edwards will face Vitter in a runoff next month. And Edwards, depending on whom you ask, is now the favorite. For months, David Vitter was the prohibitive frontrunner. He has name recognition, political clout, a plethora of cash, and a state whose demographics increasingly favor conservative Republicans. But this is a unique political climate. Jindal, one of the worst governors in the history of the state, has made toxic everything he touched, including the Republican brand. Running as a Republican gubernatorial candidate after Jindal was always going to be tricky. In addition to that, Vitter, as James Carville told Salon recently, is “one of the most flawed candidates in American politics.” Calling Vitter “flawed” borders on charitable, in my view. The man’s political resume is shot through with sin. There’s the famous D.C. Madam Scandal of 2007, which exposed Vitter's extramarital peccadillos with sex workers (an unfortunate finding for a family values conservative). Miraculously, Vitter managed to recover from this and was poised to win the governorship. But things have spiraled out of control for Vitter in the last month so, with one fiasco after another, and now his entire campaign has cratered. First there was a story published by Jason Berry, an investigative reporter who writes for the blog, American Zombie. Berry interviewed Wendy Ellis, a former prostitute in New Orleans, who claims to have serviced Vitter between 1998 and 2000. She also alleges that Vitter requested that she have an abortion after he impregnated her, a claim Vitter vehemently denies. Berry’s story has since unraveled, but there’s enough smoke to sway voters, particularly those who are familiar with Vitter’s philandering past. Vitter’s follies continued last week when a private investigator his campaign hired, a man named Robert Frenzel, was caught clandestinely recording a conversation between a local sheriff, a state senator, and a lawyer with ties to the Democratic Party. The PI was promptly arrested, after which Vitter released a vacuous statement about his intent to spy on the lawyer, not the sheriff. However you spin it, writes Lamar White, a prominent Louisiana blogger, it seems “David Vitter hired and paid someone $130,000 to spy on John Cummings, a private citizen, because David Vitter is absolutely terrified about what John Cummings knows.” No one knows for sure what Cummings knows, but it’s not hard to imagine what it’s about (hint: prostitutes). On the same day his PI was arrested, Vitter was involved in a minor car accident. What’s interesting, though, as Manny Schewitz first reported yesterday, is that the driver of Vitter’s vehicle was Courtney Gaustella Callihan, a woman linked to Vitter’s Super PAC. Schewitz writes:

The driver was 36-year old Courtney Gaustella Callihan, the wife of Bill Callihan, a director at Capital One Bank. Their home address is also listed as the address for Fund for Louisiana, the Super PAC backing Vitter…So it would make sense that David Vitter would want to leave the scene, due to the fact that Mrs. Callihan is possibly connected to a Super PAC that is supporting his gubernatorial campaign. News reports list her name as Courtney Guastella, but fail to mention her married name which ties her to her husband.

This matters because, if it’s true, Vitter may be in violation of federal election laws. Regardless, though, it’s more of the same from Vitter, a man now irremediably tainted by scandal and hypocrisy. Trying to predict what will happen in the runoff election is difficult. Bob Mann, a columnist for The Times-Picayune in Baton Rouge, LA, thinks Edwards has the advantage:

Edwards should start this runoff with a floor of about 43 percent or 44 percent of the vote, maybe a point higher. That means he must pick up only an additional 6 or 7 percentage points from the combined 34 percent of Angelle and Dardenne [the two Republicans who didn’t make the runoff] – I’m already giving him about 4 points of that vote, i.e. the Democrats who supported the two other Republicans. If a fourth to a third of Angelle and Dardenne voters are truly unwilling to vote for Vitter (a not-unreasonable assumption), Edwards may have all the votes he needs.

Mann’s assumptions are more than justified. Mike Henderson, a researcher at the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, analyzed the favorability numbers of Angelle and Dardenne and found that a majority of their supporters are unsure about Edwards, the Democrat, but positively dislike Vitter. Edwards can easily swing enough Republicans to win the runoff, in other words. It’s possible that Vitter could still win the race, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. Bobby Jindal didn’t help, but much of this is about Vitter, whose record – personally and politically – is now so objectively awful that Republican voters are running away from him. An Edwards victory won’t make Louisiana a blue state, but it’s a step in the right direction for Louisiana Democrats, many of whom have suffered long enough under the confused and corrupt leadership of unaccountable Republicans.

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One man’s junk is another man’s paintbrush: Meet Pricasso, the world’s foremost penis artist

Tim Patch, a British artist living in Australia, has been painting exclusively with his penis, testicles and buttocks for several years now. Pricasso, as he’s known in professional circles, has recently been invited to perform at London’s Sexpo this November. It will be the first time he’s had the opportunity to showcase his work in his home country. Though portraits are his specialty, Patch also dabbles in pottery and poetry, having created thoughtful verses like “Blow Up Doll” and “Sex Change.” As expected, Patch is a bit of an eccentric. On his official site, you can find photos of him stark nude, save a pair of bright, hightop boots and a top hat to match. He also has a permanent tattoo of his website on his upper back. When he’s not participating in major lifestyle exhibitions, Patch is available for private parties, club performances and most other events (kid's birthday parties are probably off the table). “You can hire me…for the same cost as a stripper but when I leave you will have as many portraits as you want with their own DVD of them being painted. I will also travel, just buy me a flight and I'll be there and can easily paint 20 portraits per day,” he writes on his site.

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My life in the cult: How “serving God” unraveled into sex abuse, child neglect and a waking nightmare

I left the Children of God in the early 2000s. It took a long time to come out of the haze of those 30 years, but when I did, I was appalled by my former self. One of the most common questions people ask is: How could you be part of such a thing? And how could you stay? For years — as I came to grips with my own guilt, remorse and shame — I asked myself the same things. In 2003, my eldest son, then an adult, sent me a link to a thorough three-year investigation into the COG as part of a child custody case filed with the High Court in England in the early 1990s, and I learned that, according to these court records, I was not alone in the horrors I'd experienced. 

I grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., the youngest of seven children in a comfortably middle-class Catholic home. We must have looked like the perfect family. My parents were leaders of the Charismatic group at their large church. Our house was clean – almost sterile. “Rake the rug after you walk through the living room to clear your footprints. Put a sheet on the sofa before you sit down,” my mother would chime. After my older siblings left home, I felt lost and alone. At 16, I fell into anorexia and depression. I spent my summer lifeguarding, swimming and dabbling in drugs.

Perhaps that’s why I began my spiritual quest, or perhaps it was just a symptom of the times. I was looking for meaning to life, to belong to something larger than myself. In my junior year of high school, I saw a friend reading a Bible at school. She had recently met the COG, and gave me one of their publications to read. I found it a bit strange, but it touched something in me. I went with her to meet the COG after school that day.

I was trying to find my path in life, and I thought this might be it. Here was a group of dedicated Christian young people determined to return to the pure roots of Christianity by living communally and sharing all things. I felt loved and accepted, and was welcomed into the fold as a new “babe” in Christ. Born again. I didn’t see this as a “cult”; I saw it as a chance to live an honorable life of service to God and others. And I was so young. What did I know about how the world worked? It would be another nine years before my frontal lobe was completely developed, the portion of the brain involved in decision-making that allows us to envision long-term consequences. I had no idea I was walking into a nightmare. I couldn’t see past the utter joy of the overwhelming love and acceptance I felt.

I took a new name. I cast off my belongings. If this abrupt change hurt my friends, I was blind to it. I lost contact with them. I was completely swept up in my zeal. In the atmosphere of the ’60s and early ’70s, when hippie communes were popular, shucking off your conventional life was an appealing idea. My mother took a hard stand: “Do NOT visit the COG commune.” But teens have a way of doing what they want to do. On my 18th birthday, I moved in to the local commune. What could they do?

I had no idea what a costly decision it would be — to burn bridges with everyone I’d been close to, to give up the only world I had known. Like St. Francis of old, I saw myself as a committed follower of Christ. I saw this as my “new family.” A lot of what happened next could probably be explained by my need to justify this stunning, impulsive first move — once I jumped into the deep end, I had to prove to myself that I could swim.

Life in the commune was tightly scheduled. Proselytizing took up most of our time, but I still fulfilled the daily requirement of reading two to three hours from the Bible as well as the group’s publications. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book on the mind, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.” Back then, I only knew it as my daily routine. We read thousands of Mo Letters, rambling talks written by the group’s founder, David Berg, and named after his pseudonym, Moses David.

Life was said to be “fair” and God “just.” Therefore if anything bad happened, we were to search for the reason it occurred. “Nothing happens by accident to one of God’s children,” we were taught. “Caught a cold? Seek the Lord and see why he is dealing with you,” we were admonished. “Then write a confession and ask for united prayer for deliverance.” The natural extension of this belief in a “just world” is conspiracy theories, of which COG publications were rife. The Illuminati were pulling the strings of world events behind the scenes, and evil persecutors were always after Berg and us, so we must be constantly vigilant about our security and he and his top leaders must live in utter secrecy.

We were taught that anything we heard had to be measured against “the Word” before we could accept it. Doubting was considered sinful, so if we ever had suspicions about anything in the group, we dared not mention them.

Take, for instance, the time David Berg prophesied the end of life as we know it in the U.S. He warned, “You in the U.S. have only until January [1974] to get out of the States before some kind of disaster, destruction or judgment of God is to fall because of America’s wickedness!”

Then nothing happened. But Berg, like all the other self-proclaimed prophets whose prophecies inevitably failed, found a way to both rationalize it and inflate his group’s importance. Comparing himself to Jonah in the Bible, he said nothing happened because the people repented. Since God’s children had done such a good job of warning the world to turn from their wickedness, God didn’t have to destroy America – yet. That was still to come.

It’s an awkward moment when a prophet has to explain his failed doomsday prophecy. I remember glancing around the room thinking, “Are you guys all OK with this?” But when everyone else seemed to accept the reasoning, I figured it must be all right.

I’ve since learned about the principle of social proof, in which people surreptitiously check to see what others are doing and then align their behavior accordingly, figuring those people know more about correct behavior than we do. That was the modus operandi in the cult. The sad truth is that in many cases, those other people were just as clueless as I was.

In 1976, I was taking care of the children of COG “Archbishops” in a secret Commune in Pennsylvania. In response to yet another one of Berg’s frightening prophecies of soon-coming nuclear holocaust and antichrist world takeover, we moved to “safer” third-world countries. I ended up in a country in the tropics. The heat, the poverty, the grime, the roaches – what a shock it was to me.

After a year of constant fundraising and childcare, the green light was given to all COG members to begin to “live the Law of Love,” which until then was only practiced in secret by the top echelons of COG leaders. This stated, “Anything done in love is perfectly lawful in God’s eyes.” Free sex was now the norm in Communes (as long as it was done with “sacrificial love” as its motive), and sex with outsiders – Flirty Fishing (ahem, prostitution) – was now the preeminent “witnessing tool.”

When I joined the COG, there was a strict rule against sex before marriage; suddenly that was turned upside down. But I swallowed my “old bottle” ways (COG term for those who don’t embrace the new teachings) and soldiered on. At 20 I lost my virginity Flirty Fishing a Middle-Eastern gentleman – all for the cause of Christ, of course.

Not long after, I was invited to help care for another leader’s children, this time in a secret Commune. These leaders were unlike anyone I had met before in the group. Gone was the veneer of righteousness and spirituality. These people were funny, good-natured and kind. Since their Commune was secret, they had little contact with other COG members – a safe haven from the rampant sexual promiscuity.

I stayed with this family for over four years, caring for and schooling their children, cooking, cleaning and falling in love with all of them.

To fulfill the duty of “caring for the [sexual] needs” of the people in his home, the man of the house spent time with me every few months – with his wife’s blessing. When I got pregnant with his child, I wondered if God was telling us I was now part of their family. (“Everything happens for a reason,” you know.) A man with two wives was not at all unusual in the COG – Berg had a harem.

When my son was a toddler, though, the family was abruptly whisked away to live with Berg, and I was left to join the mainstream group, emotionally shattered and never to see my son’s father again.

In contrast to my former quiet room with peaceful, well-behaved children, I now found myself sharing a large bedroom with many children and a newly “mated” couple. (“Mate” was the preferred COG nomenclature for “marry.”) Their big double-bed can be referred to as nothing if not the centerpiece of the room, with the children’s and my beds arranged around the sides. This couple thought nothing of having uninhibited sex daily during our mandatory “quiet time” (two hours of rest after lunch), and I wanted nothing more than to escape the cringe-worthy awkwardness of the situation.

I would take my son for walks around the neighborhood as much as I could to get away from that overcrowded, oversexed home. Hopeless, deserted and alone, that was my time to cry.

Should I have left then? But what would I have done? In the COG, we were not permitted to hold jobs. We were told any future planning was taboo and considered a lack of faith in God’s power of provision. What would my skills be? Where could I go? My parents had both died of cancer shortly after I left for the commune. I felt alone in the world — but I was still not going to “turn my back on God’s work.”

By the following year, desperate for companionship and desperate to have a father-figure for my son, I met a rare single man in the group, and within six weeks we were “mated.” After the initial two months of newlywed bliss, I felt he had lost all attraction for me. Clinging desperately to what we initially had, I persevered for years, hoping in vain he would be the man I believed him to be. (I can only imagine the stress he must have felt living with me.) We never outright fought, but rather played passive-aggressive games. Our poor children.

The much-feared “persecution” of the COG came. The leader I worked with was among those named as cult leaders in a front-page newspaper story. We needed to move immediately. We fled to a new country. Once again, culture shock. Our unvaccinated children came down with whooping cough, and then later measles, rubella and mumps. After months of quarantine to contain the spread, the leader moved her children away. During more than six years with them, she had become my pseudo-mother figure, and overnight she was torn away from me along with her children, whom I dearly loved. More emotional damage.

Berg’s “law of love” had given license for all manner of lechery, as well as abuse of children through severe corporal punishment, which he promoted (“spare the rod, spoil the child”), as well as sexual abuse heaped most abundantly on those nearest to him. The new push of enormous “School Homes” began to perfect the physical punishment of children, especially adolescents, through spankings and “silence restriction,” where a child would be made to wear a sign warning others not to speak to them.

We were to treat the children in the group as all “our children,” according to Berg’s teaching in his Letter “One Wife.”  If ever a parent tried to come to the defense of their child, they were labelled as “favoring their children” — a serious sin in the cult. Many teens also lived away from their parents – some lived on opposite sides of the world. I did my best to protect my children, but mainly I lived in denial. I thought abuse happened elsewhere, not where we lived. It was easy to remain in the dark. We lived in a vacuum, after all: No books, no TV, no magazines and of course, no Internet.

Meanwhile, the desperation of the average member brought on by scarcity and poverty drove a constant scramble for survival. Members were either out on the streets selling pamphlets or cult products, approaching businesses for donations of money or goods, or taking care of the ever-growing number of children, as free sex and no birth control were seen as the only way to please the Lord. No time was allowed for thought. If things ever began to ease up, a new “push” would inevitably come in the next directive from Berg, and our “witnessing” hours would increase, putting the children’s already scanty education further onto the back burners and increasing stress all-around.

The stress, the constant submission, the daily struggle, the lack of meaningful mental input – it was as if I had undergone a spiritual lobotomy. I was effectively brain-dead.

Berg died in 1994 and his mistress, Karen Zerby, took over the leadership of the COG. Although Ff'ing was no longer allowed, new strange doctrines arose to take its place. We were to “make love to Jesus,” i.e., pretend Jesus was our partner when we had sex with someone and say words of endearment to him.

Then came the innumerable spirit helpers and guides. These imaginary ghosts provided all sorts of services. Many people received “stories” from them; some even wrote whole novels supposedly channeled from great authors of the past.

This all was getting a little hard to swallow. I don’t know which was more offensive — the poorly written novels, or the bizarre “spiritual truths” that Zerby was proclaiming.

But I’d put so many years into the group. Longing to stay true to my initial commitment to “serve the Lord,” I continued clinging to my delusion. Loss aversion is very powerful. But eventually, even that fear can be overcome.

When my eldest son reached adulthood living far from home, he left the group. He told me he thought Zerby was a lunatic and sent me a link to the custody case with the High Court in England. Reading that opened my eyes. The group I had devoted 30 years of my life to was a house of horrors.

I left immediately.

My mind was in a fog. What a psychological jolt! All the regret and apologies I can muster will never turn back the clock. My older children’s childhoods can never be relived. Since then, I’ve struggled to understand what allowed me to remain so gullible in the first place. The more I read about cults, the more I realize how universal the experience, from Jonestown to ISIS. Isolated and alone, in unfamiliar surroundings, members’ sense of “normal” behavior gradually becomes more bizarre, and even morally repugnant. Stanley Milgram, who conducted famous experiments on obedience in the 1960s, summed it up well when he wrote, ”Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

Now that I am old, it is all-too-easy for me to replay with deep remorse the horrors of those wasted years. Nevertheless, I am heartened by the forgiveness shown to me by my children and other young people whom I taught in the group.

As for me, I still have hope. Having missed out on years of learning, there are not enough hours in the day for all there is to learn. I study all that I can about neurology, psychology and behavioral economics. I listen to courses on history, science, language. I want to keep traveling and learning. I’m interested in most everything – except Christianity and new age groups. I’ve had my fill of those.

I left the Children of God in the early 2000s. It took a long time to come out of the haze of those 30 years, but when I did, I was appalled by my former self. One of the most common questions people ask is: How could you be part of such a thing? And how could you stay? For years — as I came to grips with my own guilt, remorse and shame — I asked myself the same things. In 2003, my eldest son, then an adult, sent me a link to a thorough three-year investigation into the COG as part of a child custody case filed with the High Court in England in the early 1990s, and I learned that, according to these court records, I was not alone in the horrors I'd experienced. 

I grew up in suburban Washington, D.C., the youngest of seven children in a comfortably middle-class Catholic home. We must have looked like the perfect family. My parents were leaders of the Charismatic group at their large church. Our house was clean – almost sterile. “Rake the rug after you walk through the living room to clear your footprints. Put a sheet on the sofa before you sit down,” my mother would chime. After my older siblings left home, I felt lost and alone. At 16, I fell into anorexia and depression. I spent my summer lifeguarding, swimming and dabbling in drugs.

Perhaps that’s why I began my spiritual quest, or perhaps it was just a symptom of the times. I was looking for meaning to life, to belong to something larger than myself. In my junior year of high school, I saw a friend reading a Bible at school. She had recently met the COG, and gave me one of their publications to read. I found it a bit strange, but it touched something in me. I went with her to meet the COG after school that day.

I was trying to find my path in life, and I thought this might be it. Here was a group of dedicated Christian young people determined to return to the pure roots of Christianity by living communally and sharing all things. I felt loved and accepted, and was welcomed into the fold as a new “babe” in Christ. Born again. I didn’t see this as a “cult”; I saw it as a chance to live an honorable life of service to God and others. And I was so young. What did I know about how the world worked? It would be another nine years before my frontal lobe was completely developed, the portion of the brain involved in decision-making that allows us to envision long-term consequences. I had no idea I was walking into a nightmare. I couldn’t see past the utter joy of the overwhelming love and acceptance I felt.

I took a new name. I cast off my belongings. If this abrupt change hurt my friends, I was blind to it. I lost contact with them. I was completely swept up in my zeal. In the atmosphere of the ’60s and early ’70s, when hippie communes were popular, shucking off your conventional life was an appealing idea. My mother took a hard stand: “Do NOT visit the COG commune.” But teens have a way of doing what they want to do. On my 18th birthday, I moved in to the local commune. What could they do?

I had no idea what a costly decision it would be — to burn bridges with everyone I’d been close to, to give up the only world I had known. Like St. Francis of old, I saw myself as a committed follower of Christ. I saw this as my “new family.” A lot of what happened next could probably be explained by my need to justify this stunning, impulsive first move — once I jumped into the deep end, I had to prove to myself that I could swim.

Life in the commune was tightly scheduled. Proselytizing took up most of our time, but I still fulfilled the daily requirement of reading two to three hours from the Bible as well as the group’s publications. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book on the mind, “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.” Back then, I only knew it as my daily routine. We read thousands of Mo Letters, rambling talks written by the group’s founder, David Berg, and named after his pseudonym, Moses David.

Life was said to be “fair” and God “just.” Therefore if anything bad happened, we were to search for the reason it occurred. “Nothing happens by accident to one of God’s children,” we were taught. “Caught a cold? Seek the Lord and see why he is dealing with you,” we were admonished. “Then write a confession and ask for united prayer for deliverance.” The natural extension of this belief in a “just world” is conspiracy theories, of which COG publications were rife. The Illuminati were pulling the strings of world events behind the scenes, and evil persecutors were always after Berg and us, so we must be constantly vigilant about our security and he and his top leaders must live in utter secrecy.

We were taught that anything we heard had to be measured against “the Word” before we could accept it. Doubting was considered sinful, so if we ever had suspicions about anything in the group, we dared not mention them.

Take, for instance, the time David Berg prophesied the end of life as we know it in the U.S. He warned, “You in the U.S. have only until January [1974] to get out of the States before some kind of disaster, destruction or judgment of God is to fall because of America’s wickedness!”

Then nothing happened. But Berg, like all the other self-proclaimed prophets whose prophecies inevitably failed, found a way to both rationalize it and inflate his group’s importance. Comparing himself to Jonah in the Bible, he said nothing happened because the people repented. Since God’s children had done such a good job of warning the world to turn from their wickedness, God didn’t have to destroy America – yet. That was still to come.

It’s an awkward moment when a prophet has to explain his failed doomsday prophecy. I remember glancing around the room thinking, “Are you guys all OK with this?” But when everyone else seemed to accept the reasoning, I figured it must be all right.

I’ve since learned about the principle of social proof, in which people surreptitiously check to see what others are doing and then align their behavior accordingly, figuring those people know more about correct behavior than we do. That was the modus operandi in the cult. The sad truth is that in many cases, those other people were just as clueless as I was.

In 1976, I was taking care of the children of COG “Archbishops” in a secret Commune in Pennsylvania. In response to yet another one of Berg’s frightening prophecies of soon-coming nuclear holocaust and antichrist world takeover, we moved to “safer” third-world countries. I ended up in a country in the tropics. The heat, the poverty, the grime, the roaches – what a shock it was to me.

After a year of constant fundraising and childcare, the green light was given to all COG members to begin to “live the Law of Love,” which until then was only practiced in secret by the top echelons of COG leaders. This stated, “Anything done in love is perfectly lawful in God’s eyes.” Free sex was now the norm in Communes (as long as it was done with “sacrificial love” as its motive), and sex with outsiders – Flirty Fishing (ahem, prostitution) – was now the preeminent “witnessing tool.”

When I joined the COG, there was a strict rule against sex before marriage; suddenly that was turned upside down. But I swallowed my “old bottle” ways (COG term for those who don’t embrace the new teachings) and soldiered on. At 20 I lost my virginity Flirty Fishing a Middle-Eastern gentleman – all for the cause of Christ, of course.

Not long after, I was invited to help care for another leader’s children, this time in a secret Commune. These leaders were unlike anyone I had met before in the group. Gone was the veneer of righteousness and spirituality. These people were funny, good-natured and kind. Since their Commune was secret, they had little contact with other COG members – a safe haven from the rampant sexual promiscuity.

I stayed with this family for over four years, caring for and schooling their children, cooking, cleaning and falling in love with all of them.

To fulfill the duty of “caring for the [sexual] needs” of the people in his home, the man of the house spent time with me every few months – with his wife’s blessing. When I got pregnant with his child, I wondered if God was telling us I was now part of their family. (“Everything happens for a reason,” you know.) A man with two wives was not at all unusual in the COG – Berg had a harem.

When my son was a toddler, though, the family was abruptly whisked away to live with Berg, and I was left to join the mainstream group, emotionally shattered and never to see my son’s father again.

In contrast to my former quiet room with peaceful, well-behaved children, I now found myself sharing a large bedroom with many children and a newly “mated” couple. (“Mate” was the preferred COG nomenclature for “marry.”) Their big double-bed can be referred to as nothing if not the centerpiece of the room, with the children’s and my beds arranged around the sides. This couple thought nothing of having uninhibited sex daily during our mandatory “quiet time” (two hours of rest after lunch), and I wanted nothing more than to escape the cringe-worthy awkwardness of the situation.

I would take my son for walks around the neighborhood as much as I could to get away from that overcrowded, oversexed home. Hopeless, deserted and alone, that was my time to cry.

Should I have left then? But what would I have done? In the COG, we were not permitted to hold jobs. We were told any future planning was taboo and considered a lack of faith in God’s power of provision. What would my skills be? Where could I go? My parents had both died of cancer shortly after I left for the commune. I felt alone in the world — but I was still not going to “turn my back on God’s work.”

By the following year, desperate for companionship and desperate to have a father-figure for my son, I met a rare single man in the group, and within six weeks we were “mated.” After the initial two months of newlywed bliss, I felt he had lost all attraction for me. Clinging desperately to what we initially had, I persevered for years, hoping in vain he would be the man I believed him to be. (I can only imagine the stress he must have felt living with me.) We never outright fought, but rather played passive-aggressive games. Our poor children.

The much-feared “persecution” of the COG came. The leader I worked with was among those named as cult leaders in a front-page newspaper story. We needed to move immediately. We fled to a new country. Once again, culture shock. Our unvaccinated children came down with whooping cough, and then later measles, rubella and mumps. After months of quarantine to contain the spread, the leader moved her children away. During more than six years with them, she had become my pseudo-mother figure, and overnight she was torn away from me along with her children, whom I dearly loved. More emotional damage.

Berg’s “law of love” had given license for all manner of lechery, as well as abuse of children through severe corporal punishment, which he promoted (“spare the rod, spoil the child”), as well as sexual abuse heaped most abundantly on those nearest to him. The new push of enormous “School Homes” began to perfect the physical punishment of children, especially adolescents, through spankings and “silence restriction,” where a child would be made to wear a sign warning others not to speak to them.

We were to treat the children in the group as all “our children,” according to Berg’s teaching in his Letter “One Wife.”  If ever a parent tried to come to the defense of their child, they were labelled as “favoring their children” — a serious sin in the cult. Many teens also lived away from their parents – some lived on opposite sides of the world. I did my best to protect my children, but mainly I lived in denial. I thought abuse happened elsewhere, not where we lived. It was easy to remain in the dark. We lived in a vacuum, after all: No books, no TV, no magazines and of course, no Internet.

Meanwhile, the desperation of the average member brought on by scarcity and poverty drove a constant scramble for survival. Members were either out on the streets selling pamphlets or cult products, approaching businesses for donations of money or goods, or taking care of the ever-growing number of children, as free sex and no birth control were seen as the only way to please the Lord. No time was allowed for thought. If things ever began to ease up, a new “push” would inevitably come in the next directive from Berg, and our “witnessing” hours would increase, putting the children’s already scanty education further onto the back burners and increasing stress all-around.

The stress, the constant submission, the daily struggle, the lack of meaningful mental input – it was as if I had undergone a spiritual lobotomy. I was effectively brain-dead.

Berg died in 1994 and his mistress, Karen Zerby, took over the leadership of the COG. Although Ff'ing was no longer allowed, new strange doctrines arose to take its place. We were to “make love to Jesus,” i.e., pretend Jesus was our partner when we had sex with someone and say words of endearment to him.

Then came the innumerable spirit helpers and guides. These imaginary ghosts provided all sorts of services. Many people received “stories” from them; some even wrote whole novels supposedly channeled from great authors of the past.

This all was getting a little hard to swallow. I don’t know which was more offensive — the poorly written novels, or the bizarre “spiritual truths” that Zerby was proclaiming.

But I’d put so many years into the group. Longing to stay true to my initial commitment to “serve the Lord,” I continued clinging to my delusion. Loss aversion is very powerful. But eventually, even that fear can be overcome.

When my eldest son reached adulthood living far from home, he left the group. He told me he thought Zerby was a lunatic and sent me a link to the custody case with the High Court in England. Reading that opened my eyes. The group I had devoted 30 years of my life to was a house of horrors.

I left immediately.

My mind was in a fog. What a psychological jolt! All the regret and apologies I can muster will never turn back the clock. My older children’s childhoods can never be relived. Since then, I’ve struggled to understand what allowed me to remain so gullible in the first place. The more I read about cults, the more I realize how universal the experience, from Jonestown to ISIS. Isolated and alone, in unfamiliar surroundings, members’ sense of “normal” behavior gradually becomes more bizarre, and even morally repugnant. Stanley Milgram, who conducted famous experiments on obedience in the 1960s, summed it up well when he wrote, ”Often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.”

Now that I am old, it is all-too-easy for me to replay with deep remorse the horrors of those wasted years. Nevertheless, I am heartened by the forgiveness shown to me by my children and other young people whom I taught in the group.

As for me, I still have hope. Having missed out on years of learning, there are not enough hours in the day for all there is to learn. I study all that I can about neurology, psychology and behavioral economics. I listen to courses on history, science, language. I want to keep traveling and learning. I’m interested in most everything – except Christianity and new age groups. I’ve had my fill of those.

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Deliver me from “Deliverance”: Finally, a Hollywood movie gets Appalachian people right

When the film "Big Stone Gap" premiered earlier this month, it did something no other movie ever has: showed Appalachia as a place of both diversity and intelligence. This certainly flies in the face of how most folks are used to seeing this place and its people. Less than a year after I was born, the film "Deliverance" premiered in the summer of 1972 and has had a profound impact on my life ever since. The first time I realized this I was 18, when my family and I made our first trip to the beach. There, in a store where we were buying floats and sunscreen, a teenaged cashier overheard our mountain accents and remarked to another clerk: “Watch out, boy, you shore do have a real purdy mouth.” She was paraphrasing a famous line from "Deliverance" uttered by a nasty, toothless mountain man as he prepares to rape a city-slicker tourist. The implication, of course, was that since we were clearly from Appalachia, then we were most likely similar to that character: the violent, stupid, subhuman products of inbreeding. She didn’t even have enough respect for us to say any of this under her breath. People all over the world think they know something about Appalachia because they’ve seen "Deliverance," which is a well-made but terribly stereotypical thriller portraying hillbillies as soulless, illiterate and mean-hearted villains. And Appalachians have been judged by these standards ever since. "Deliverance" may have had the biggest impact, but it is certainly not the first or only perpetuation of Appalachian people as horrific or backward. In fact, some of the earliest films were explorations of this misunderstood place, and they proved to be popular. Hits of the silent film era—from 1904’s "The Moonshiner" and 1905’s "Kentucky Feud" (1905) to 1916’s "Mountain Blood"—all reveal common “hillbilly tropes” that still have power today: feuding, illiteracy, oversexualization, laziness, fear of the outside world. These stereotypes have remained constant for more than a hundred years and Hollywood has laid them on as thickly as possible. In 1989’s "Next of Kin," contemporary Appalachian people—embroiled in a bitter feud, of course—are shown wearing clothing of the late 1800s; children play with wooden toys and guns; a man slaughters a deer and stores its carcass in his kitchen refrigerator. In 2003’s "Wrong Turn" and its four sequels, the last of which appeared in 2012, the Appalachians are inbred cannibals intent on nothing more than devouring the flesh of city people. When it premiered last month, Eli Roth’s film "The Green Inferno," about a group of social justice activists who are eaten alive by an Amazonian rainforest tribe, was met with boycotts and much controversy. Yet none of the many Appalachian-exploitation films have received any organized protest. The outcry doesn’t exist because for many people the words “Appalachia” and “poverty” are synonymous. And for even more, poverty equals powerlessness. Apparently, it’s okay to make fun of and dehumanize Americans who don’t have power. That’s certainly always been the case with film. Two of the first novels to sell more than a million copies in our nation were about the region and written by John Fox Jr. His novels "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" (1904) and "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1908) are now considered fairly sentimental portrayals of the Appalachian people, but the books’ film legacies are perhaps more ingrained in the public consciousness. At least four films were made of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine," one of them by Cecil B. DeMille, and each showcases mountain people as illiterate, violent and in need of an urban savior. Ironically, Fox lived most of his life in the same Virginia coal-mining town that is now giving its name to the film that is revolutionizing how Appalachian people are portrayed on film. "Big Stone Gap," a new movie adapted from the bestselling novel by Adriana Trigiani, stars Ashley Judd as a middle-aged Appalachian woman whose quiet life is disrupted by a death and a sudden revelation. The film features an African-American woman who is neither servant nor Magic Negro, a gay man who is not ostracized once he comes out, and a main character who is not only Italian, but also intelligent and even bilingual. In fact, many of the characters—including a lovable librarian and a tough coal-miner—love to read. References are made to "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights." Michelangelo is quoted. The film even showcases a couple of Melungeon characters, a tri-racial isolate that most Americans don’t even know exist because they’re rarely taught anything about this region’s culture or history. Furthermore, the film is set in 1978 and the characters actually dress like it’s 1978 — not as if they’re 30 years behind in fashion and lifestyle. These may seem like small victories, but for Appalachian people, this portrayal is revolutionary. Even in our best films we are rarely shown as diverse, intelligent, or modern. "Coal Miner’s Daughter" is one of the region’s most beloved films because it showcases Loretta Lynn, a hero to many Appalachian people because of her pluck, determination, and authenticity. Yet even this complex portrayal of the region is not without fault. Lynn herself had complaints, among them that her mother was portrayed as always wearing dowdy gingham dresses and a haggard expression when, in fact, she “was anything but drab,” according to Lynn, who insisted that her mother wore “bloodred lipstick” and blue jeans in the 1950s. Over and over, Appalachians have been made to be representative of the past on film. Of violence and illiteracy. In 2004, a three year-old child was killed when a half-ton boulder was pushed off an illegal mining operation and crashed through three walls to stop atop his body—just a few miles from the town of Big Stone Gap. The media barely blinked; in fact, there was no national coverage of the event. I believe that’s because to most people, Appalachians are invisible. We’re throwaway people. Films have led us to believe that Appalachians—like my family on that beach trip—are so backward, mean and toothless that they’re not worthy of respect. Last year, when the water supply for more than 300,000 West Virginians was contaminated by a chemical spill, it was one of the worst drinking water disasters in history. Several people told me the people there “deserved it” because they were “stupid hillbillies.” When county court clerk Kim Davis became internationally famous because of her backward thinking on marriage equality, her stance was most often blamed on where she was from instead of what she believed in, despite the fact that polls showed that most Kentuckians did not agree with her. Movies have taught us that all rural people are racist, homophobic and misogynistic. Films play a large part in the way the wider world views a culture, and they’ve done quite a number on my homeland. In a world riddled by public massacres in our schools, movie theatres and churches, this may seem like a small problem. In a world frightened of ISIS and other forms of religious fundamentalism, these complaints may seem unimportant. But one of the fundamental problems in our world today is a lack of respect for others. Unfair stereotypes lead to that kind of widespread negation of an entire people and their way of life. Appalachia isn’t the only place that is stereotyped on film, of course. Native Americans, African-Americans, Asians, even New Yorkers and those from Fargo, North Dakota, all have specific stereotypes that have been created by films. But few other cultures have been so consistently portrayed in this way with so few examples of getting it right. Luckily, "Big Stone Gap" does. I hope that that Myrtle Beach cashier—20 years older now—will see it and learn something new.

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