Lily Salter's Blog, page 991

A double standard in enforcing prostitution laws: “It’s economically advantageous to have [high-end sex work] going on”

Maddy has a “date” Friday evening in Washington, D.C., with a high-ranking government official who saw her ad on eros.com, a popular website for escort ads. The hazel-eyed twenty-six-yearold from North Carolina (whom I met at the Desiree Alliance conference) is staying at a boutique hotel in Dupont Circle, and she has agreed to meet with me before her date. We decide to rendezvous at Kramer’s, a popular bookstore and eatery a few blocks from her hotel. Earlier in the day, she had called to move up our meeting because her client was thinking of booking extended time with her. So I rush over to Dupont Circle on the Metro, and as soon as I walk into Kramer’s, I get a text from her: “The timing didn’t work out so there’s no need to rush.” I text her back saying I’m already at Kramer’s and will wait for her here. What better place than a bookstore for dawdling? Ten or fifteen minutes later, I get another text from Maddy: “I’m here.” A minute later, I discover her bent over behind a table of stacked books, changing from flats into high-heeled black pumps. She straightens up and grins. “You caught me in the act,” she says. Maddy, it seems, takes her persona as an enticing escort seriously. We grab one of the few unoccupied tables in the back room at Kramer’s, but Maddy orders only a coke. “I have serious food allergies,” she says. “But that’s okay. I’ll have a soda.” She is dressed casually, in a light-pink tailored shirt and tight-fitting blue jeans; a gauzy white scarf is wrapped loosely around her neck. She is wearing no makeup, and she has tied back her flyaway blond hair in a loose braid. Even so, she looks model-fresh and exquisite, like a porcelain doll that could easily break. Maddy says she comes to Washington, D.C., about once a month to see clients. Most of her clients are corporate executives and top government officials who have seen her ads—one recent ad she wrote described her as a “sharp wit in a soft body.” “This guy I’m seeing in a few hours, he found my ad a few months ago and finally got around to getting in touch,” she says. “According to a survey done by eros.com, most gentlemen will peruse a lady’s website five times before they actually contact her.” Once a client contacts her, Maddy does her due diligence. “I never see clients I haven’t screened,” she says. “I find out where they work, and I can verify that they actually are who they say they are.” This evening, Maddy will meet her gentleman caller at the boutique hotel where she is staying and spend two hours with him (for a set fee of $1,200), fulfilling any fantasies he might have. Going to a sex worker, she says, “is a safe place for [clients] to explore their desires, such as cross-dressing or getting fucked in the ass. I use a strap-on with a lot of my clients.” (A strap-on is a dildo that Maddy can strap around herself.) Many married men choose to go to an escort rather than risk endangering their marriages with an affair. “We’re not going to call them, we’re not going to disrupt their marriage or their family,” Maddy says. “They love their wives, but they have physical needs.” After her business engagement, Maddy plans to have a late dinner and a “foursome with two men and another woman,” all three of whom she is friendly with. “These are all people I enjoy,” she says. They know what she does for a living and are not at all bothered by it, she adds. Even though she has been working as an escort (on and off) for nine years, Maddy has never come close to being arrested. “I’m very careful. I never discuss money and I never count my money. I just leave it there until after the appointment is over,” she says. “I won’t compromise my safety.” As a stylishly dressed white woman catering to upper-class clients whom she has carefully screened, Maddy does in fact face little risk of being arrested. She herself is acutely aware that there is a double standard in the United States when it comes to enforcing the laws against prostitution. While the D.C. police routinely arrest streetwalkers and raid massage parlors in poor and mixed-income neighborhoods, they tend to leave high-end independent escorts like Maddy alone. Abolishing laws against prostitution would benefit streetwalkers the most, if only because they bear the brunt of law enforcement. “The practice is not to prosecute what isn’t seen,” Maddy says. “It’s economically advantageous to have [high-end sex work] going on.” Maddy believes that many companies and government agencies are less likely to hold major conferences in places where prostitution laws are strictly enforced. And indeed, several gentlemen’s clubs (a euphemism for private clubs where men can drink, obtain lap dances, and meet sex workers) are openly advertised right next to the restaurant listings in Where magazine, one of the free publications on display in my Marriott Hotel room. “[Going to an escort] is so prevalent among the upper level of government that if they really prosecuted it, it would collapse the government,” Maddy says, giggling. “My client list alone would be enough to put the country on hold for a few days.” The woman sitting at the table next to us is staring at her; it’s likely that she has overheard parts of our conversation. Maddy feels the intensity of her gaze and flushes. “I’m going to have to talk more quietly,” she says. “I have a loud voice.” Like many other sex workers, Maddy doesn’t understand the distinction that society makes between men like Donald Sterling (the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers) who have a trophy girlfriend and pay all their expenses and then some, and men who spend a few hours with an escort like herself in exchange for compensation. “That is the only thing where two consenting adults can engage in something, but because money is involved, it’s suddenly illegal,” she says, her eyebrows drawn together into a dark-blond line. “What’s the difference between this and maintaining your younger girlfriend in an apartment?” Four blocks to the west of Kramer’s, the sex industry assumes a decidedly different cast. A passerby would never know that on the fourth floor of a narrow building on Connecticut Avenue hides the office of FAIR Girls, the nonprofit organization that serves sexually exploited girls and young women. There are no signs outside or in the lobby announcing the organization’s presence. A prearranged appointment is required, and the door to the suite is locked. When the door is opened, I walk into a brightly lit room buzzing with young women; there are no men on the premises. Three young African American women are sitting around a conference table; they look up and smile at me brightly. A twenty-something woman rushes over and introduces herself as Teresa, the director of FAIR (Free, Aware, Inspired, and Restored) Girls. Teresa guides me through another room, containing a blanket-strewn sofa, a chair, and a small refrigerator, to a back office where Executive Director Andrea Powell is typing intently on her laptop. She looks up briefly and asks me to wait a few minutes until she finishes. She too looks young and is slender, with long blonde hair and bare legs under a short skirt. Two necklaces of brightly colored beads hang around her neck, made (I later learn) by the girls her organization helps. FAIR Girls provides services to girls and young women, age eleven to twenty-four, who are “survivors of sexual trafficking and labor exploitation,” Powell explains. “The average age of our clients is sixteen, and the average number of years they’ve been trafficked is four years.” FAIR Girls provides emergency housing, clothes, and food, along with counseling and legal support. It also helps its clients find jobs or schooling and teaches them the skills they need to become independent. Powell founded FAIR Girls in 2004, a few years after she first stumbled across the problem of sexual exploitation, while doing a junior year abroad in Germany. In a German class, she met a sixteen-year-old Bosnian Muslim girl who had been sold by her family into servitude as the fourth wife of a much older man. The relationship had become abusive, and Powell and her new friend made plans for her to escape, but before they could put the plan in motion, the girl disappeared. “I traveled to Bosnia to find her, and while I was there I saw a lot of girls and young women engaging in what you could call survival sex—this was not long after the Yugoslav war,” which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, Powell says. “I also saw what I think was some trafficking.” She never did find her friend. After Powell returned to the United States and graduated from Texas State University, she started FAIR Girls in Boston, initially working with young women who had been trafficked to the United States from abroad. But when she moved to Washington, D.C., she started hearing more about domestic youth being exploited. “We now serve upwards of 125 to 150 girls a year,” Powell says. “Over 90 percent are American citizens.” Most of the girls have run away from abusive situations at home or in foster care. The work Powell and her employees do involves everything from helping their charges get their records expunged—laws in many states now allow sex workers to get convictions expunged from their records if they can prove they have been trafficked—to getting them back home or into school. FAIR Girls also runs an “empowerment” program that teaches the girls how to make jewelry. “They earn a small amount of money, but more importantly, their self-esteem goes through the roof,” Powell says. “We have an annual gala, and the girls sell the jewelry they made. Fesha, the young woman from Kenya, made a necklace that Rose [DeLauro], the congresswoman from Connecticut, bought. That made her feel so great.” Powell works closely with local police, since they are the ones who often refer clients to her organization. But she doesn’t think sex workers of any age should be arrested, and her organization (along with others that work with exploited youth) is currently pressing for the passage of a bill, known as Safe Harbor, that would prohibit the arrests of minors involved in commercial sex in Washington, D.C. Safe Harbor laws have already been passed in other states, including New York, Washington State, and Illinois. “Criminalizing those who are being sold is just retraumatizing the victims and pushing them further underground,” Powell says. Like other nonprofits, FAIR Girls finds that working with law enforcement can be a double-edged sword, since many teenagers from dysfunctional families have had run-ins with the law and don’t trust the police. Powell, who is now thirty-four and married, says she can also do without the teasing from some cops. “I have a standing fight with one detective, who calls me ‘Rescue Barbie,’” she says. “I tell him I know how to tweet and he doesn’t, and one of these days something I say about him is going to go viral.” Unlike some antitrafficking proponents, Powell recognizes the difference between trafficking and prostitution. “Prostitution is a crime in which a person is selling sex on their own and there’s not any force, fraud, or coercion,” she says. But then she adds, “If the majority of our clients were between thirteen and twenty-four when they first got coerced into [sex work], the concept of choice gets pretty blurry.” For that reason, she supports laws that would criminalize buyers, particularly those who have sex with underage girls and boys. “Someone who buys sex from a sixteenyear-old and does it more than once, that’s not a john, that’s a serial child pedophile,” Powell says. “They need to be held accountable.” Sex workers’ rights advocates agree that it should be illegal to buy or sell sex involving underage prostitutes. However, several studies have found that blanket laws criminalizing the buyers of sex from adult prostitutes only expose sex workers to greater violence and make it more difficult for them to practice safe sex.1 For that reason, many academics who study the sex industry are opposed to overly broad laws that make it illegal to buy or sell sex. Researchers, antitrafficking groups, and sex worker advocates all agree that sanctions against violent pimps and coercive traffickers should be increased but diverge widely on the definition of a trafficker and on the question of who should be subject to criminal penalties. Many states currently criminalize anyone who lives off the earnings of a prostitute, which means that a nonabusive boyfriend or husband or even a roommate can be arrested and charged with pandering, pimping, or trafficking. Some researchers say such overly broad laws should be repealed because they make it more difficult for sex workers to work safely with people who know when and where they are selling sex and who can be summoned if help is necessary. “Punishment should be restricted to those who are violent or coercively exploitative—for example, forcing a person to work at certain times, to earn a certain amount of money before she or he can leave work, to perform disliked sex acts, and so on,” says Ronald Weitzer, the sociology professor at George Washington University who has studied the sex industry for years. Weitzer and other respected researchers favor a relatively open system that decriminalizes sex work but also subjects it to some restrictions, akin to New Zealand’s approach. Such a hybrid system of semiregulation would permit the licensing of both large, corporate-run brothels (like Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada) and smaller, cooperative brothels, where a number of sex workers could band together, rent an apartment, and hire a manager to screen calls and make appointments for them. The brothels themselves would be licensed and taxed, but individual workers would not be required to register. “Escorts want to be able to work just like any other business, but they don’t want to go through any kind of licensing,” says Barbara Brents, the sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has written several books about prostitution. “And when you’re working the streets to escape an abusive husband and feed your kids, who wants to register?” In countries where prostitution is legal and individual sex workers are required to register (for example, Germany), many refuse to do so and continue to work illegally, which defeats the purpose of decriminalization. Instead of a requirement that individual sex workers register (and be exposed to public stigma), researchers who study the issue say that brothels and other venues (for example, massage parlors and private clubs) should be licensed, taxed, and inspected regularly, like any other business. And if such businesses violate the law (by hiring minors or illegal immigrants or exploiting their workers), they should be shut down. Even though independent sex workers like Maddy should not have to get licensed, they should still be required to pay taxes and could list their occupation as escort. (Maddy already pays taxes now, but on tax forms, she lists her occupation as a model and translator.) Like many other sex workers, Maddy supports decriminalizing prostitution but is adamantly opposed to a legal approach that permits only the kind of heavily regulated prostitution found in Nevada’s brothels. “If it’s heavily regulated, we’ll be targeted and further marginalized,” she says. “We’d be relegated to red-light districts, to strip clubs that are in the poorest, most crime-ridden areas.” Or to brothels in the desert that are an hour away from any urban centers. Some researchers agree. As Weitzer notes in his 2012 book, “the less onerous and costly the regulations, the smaller the illegal sector [of sex workers],” and he points out that the latter is virtually nonexistent in New Zealand. Taking another page from New Zealand’s bold experiment, researchers suggest that policy makers take into account the voices of sex workers themselves as well as the views of local residents, who know what may be best for their neighborhoods. “The fear is that the politically savvy men who make the laws are listening to the voices of people with a lot of capital and resources instead of listening to people who actually do the work,” Brents says. If federal and state prohibitions against adult consensual prostitution were removed, it would be up to local municipalities to decide how they want to regulate the commercial sex trade. “Every area might come up with something a little different,” Brents says, again echoing the approach in New Zealand and the Netherlands of putting control in the hands of local counties or municipalities. All municipalities would probably prohibit sexually oriented businesses from locating near schools and playgrounds, and some might also ban street prostitution, as Amsterdam has done. Adopting New Zealand’s hybrid approach to regulating prostitution would bring millions of dollars into local government coffers in licensing fees and taxes from brothels, massage parlors, and escort services. Much as the legalization of marijuana in a growing number of states has done, it would take money away from the criminal element (in this case, exploitative pimps and traffickers) and put it into the hands of sanctioned businesses, individual women, and regulatory agencies. A recent study in Britain suggests that legalizing and taxing brothels and other places of prostitution would boost that country’s gross domestic product by at least $8.9 billion. When New Zealand removed prohibitions against adult consensual prostitution, the same legislation officially recognized sex work as legitimate work, thus according its participants the rights and protections available to workers in other occupations. As a result, sex workers Down Under can sue brothel owners for harassment or exploitation, and have done so successfully. Weitzer suggests that the United States remove such prohibitions as well, so that sex workers can better protect themselves from exploitation and the pressure to practice unsafe sex. Indeed, during the period when Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution, the state saw a steep decline in reported rapes and cases of gonorrhea. Experts also suggest that local government encourage safe sex practices and regular health exams, but not mandate them (as currently required in Nevada’s brothels). “Compulsory testing for sexually transmitted infections stigmatizes sex workers, tests are not always accurate, and testing clean on a certain day may give the false impression that a person is sexually healthy afterward,” Weitzer says. Instead, he recommends that local health officials conduct safe-sex outreach education with sex workers and clients and encourage regular exams and free testing, as they do in the Netherlands and New Zealand, which don’t mandate testing and have very low rates of HIV infection. Mandatory testing may actually increase the danger of sexually transmitted disease transmission, according to some. As Lenore Kuo, the professor of women’s studies and philosophy at California State University, Fresno, writes:

In reality, medical exams simply force prostitutes who are infected to work in an illegal venue, where they are often more likely to infect their clients due to the related difficulties of practicing “safe” sex. In Nevada, as in other jurisdictions, there is a common tendency for many men to offer prostitutes bribes not to use condoms. Regulations requiring medical testing of prostitutes are only likely to increase this tendency because they lead to the false expectation that the prostitute is disease-free. It is quite possible that a prostitute has been exposed to an STD [sexually transmitted disease] since her most recent test. . . . There is therefore no clear value in such tests but significant danger in encouraging clients to believe that prostitutes are disease-free.

Both Weitzer and Kuo make persuasive arguments that criminalizing prostitution is a failed and dangerous strategy. It doesn’t reduce the prevalence of sex work, and it clearly harms the women who do it. Arresting prostitutes heightens their isolation and estrangement from family and friends and makes it very difficult for them to seek other types of employment. Kuo notes that “criminalization also strengthens the prostitutes’ dependence on pimps, who will post bail, arrange child care, and obtain legal counsel when they do get arrested.” Women who are not sex workers are also threatened by a culture that allows sexual predators to kill with impunity and views prostitution as something dangerous and forbidden. Kuo argues that “women will never be normalized, will never cease being ‘other’ until sex and sexual activity are normalized. And sex and sexual activity will never be normalized until the sale of sexual activity is normalized (and vice versa).” On a more pragmatic level, decriminalizing adult consensual prostitution would allow law enforcement to focus on violent crimes and what both sex worker advocates and antitrafficking proponents consider a priority: prosecuting pimps who exploit underage youth and traffickers who force illegal immigrants into the sex trade. Many researchers argue that decriminalization would make it easier for victims and clients to report abuse to the police without the fear of being arrested themselves. “Sex workers would be much more likely to come forward if you just talk to them than if you arrest them,” says John Lowman, the criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “If there’s an adversarial relationship between prostitutes and the police, they’re not going to solve anything.” * Back at Kramer’s Bookstore, Maddy is getting restless. Earlier in the interview, watching me scribble away in a notebook, she admitted, “I’m a little nervous talking to you.” Now, in response to my questions about her future, she says she won’t be doing sex work for much longer. “The work I do is a wonderful fit, but it’s not forever,” she says. “It’s like modeling or sports.” At the time of the interview, Maddy was about to complete a bachelor’s degree and had already been accepted into several M.B.A. programs. She tells me that when she starts graduate school, she will probably stop doing sex work. “The economy has tanked, so there’s less of a demand for luxury goods,” she says, implying that this may be a good time for her (as a luxury item) to get out of the business. She bends over and changes back into her flats. Then she abruptly stands up. “I really have to go,” she says and, with a quick wave of her hand, flies out the door. Excerpted from "Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law" by Alison Bass. Published by ForeEdge, an imprint of University Press of New England. Copyright © 2015 by Alison Bass. Used with permission of University Press of New England.Maddy has a “date” Friday evening in Washington, D.C., with a high-ranking government official who saw her ad on eros.com, a popular website for escort ads. The hazel-eyed twenty-six-yearold from North Carolina (whom I met at the Desiree Alliance conference) is staying at a boutique hotel in Dupont Circle, and she has agreed to meet with me before her date. We decide to rendezvous at Kramer’s, a popular bookstore and eatery a few blocks from her hotel. Earlier in the day, she had called to move up our meeting because her client was thinking of booking extended time with her. So I rush over to Dupont Circle on the Metro, and as soon as I walk into Kramer’s, I get a text from her: “The timing didn’t work out so there’s no need to rush.” I text her back saying I’m already at Kramer’s and will wait for her here. What better place than a bookstore for dawdling? Ten or fifteen minutes later, I get another text from Maddy: “I’m here.” A minute later, I discover her bent over behind a table of stacked books, changing from flats into high-heeled black pumps. She straightens up and grins. “You caught me in the act,” she says. Maddy, it seems, takes her persona as an enticing escort seriously. We grab one of the few unoccupied tables in the back room at Kramer’s, but Maddy orders only a coke. “I have serious food allergies,” she says. “But that’s okay. I’ll have a soda.” She is dressed casually, in a light-pink tailored shirt and tight-fitting blue jeans; a gauzy white scarf is wrapped loosely around her neck. She is wearing no makeup, and she has tied back her flyaway blond hair in a loose braid. Even so, she looks model-fresh and exquisite, like a porcelain doll that could easily break. Maddy says she comes to Washington, D.C., about once a month to see clients. Most of her clients are corporate executives and top government officials who have seen her ads—one recent ad she wrote described her as a “sharp wit in a soft body.” “This guy I’m seeing in a few hours, he found my ad a few months ago and finally got around to getting in touch,” she says. “According to a survey done by eros.com, most gentlemen will peruse a lady’s website five times before they actually contact her.” Once a client contacts her, Maddy does her due diligence. “I never see clients I haven’t screened,” she says. “I find out where they work, and I can verify that they actually are who they say they are.” This evening, Maddy will meet her gentleman caller at the boutique hotel where she is staying and spend two hours with him (for a set fee of $1,200), fulfilling any fantasies he might have. Going to a sex worker, she says, “is a safe place for [clients] to explore their desires, such as cross-dressing or getting fucked in the ass. I use a strap-on with a lot of my clients.” (A strap-on is a dildo that Maddy can strap around herself.) Many married men choose to go to an escort rather than risk endangering their marriages with an affair. “We’re not going to call them, we’re not going to disrupt their marriage or their family,” Maddy says. “They love their wives, but they have physical needs.” After her business engagement, Maddy plans to have a late dinner and a “foursome with two men and another woman,” all three of whom she is friendly with. “These are all people I enjoy,” she says. They know what she does for a living and are not at all bothered by it, she adds. Even though she has been working as an escort (on and off) for nine years, Maddy has never come close to being arrested. “I’m very careful. I never discuss money and I never count my money. I just leave it there until after the appointment is over,” she says. “I won’t compromise my safety.” As a stylishly dressed white woman catering to upper-class clients whom she has carefully screened, Maddy does in fact face little risk of being arrested. She herself is acutely aware that there is a double standard in the United States when it comes to enforcing the laws against prostitution. While the D.C. police routinely arrest streetwalkers and raid massage parlors in poor and mixed-income neighborhoods, they tend to leave high-end independent escorts like Maddy alone. Abolishing laws against prostitution would benefit streetwalkers the most, if only because they bear the brunt of law enforcement. “The practice is not to prosecute what isn’t seen,” Maddy says. “It’s economically advantageous to have [high-end sex work] going on.” Maddy believes that many companies and government agencies are less likely to hold major conferences in places where prostitution laws are strictly enforced. And indeed, several gentlemen’s clubs (a euphemism for private clubs where men can drink, obtain lap dances, and meet sex workers) are openly advertised right next to the restaurant listings in Where magazine, one of the free publications on display in my Marriott Hotel room. “[Going to an escort] is so prevalent among the upper level of government that if they really prosecuted it, it would collapse the government,” Maddy says, giggling. “My client list alone would be enough to put the country on hold for a few days.” The woman sitting at the table next to us is staring at her; it’s likely that she has overheard parts of our conversation. Maddy feels the intensity of her gaze and flushes. “I’m going to have to talk more quietly,” she says. “I have a loud voice.” Like many other sex workers, Maddy doesn’t understand the distinction that society makes between men like Donald Sterling (the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers) who have a trophy girlfriend and pay all their expenses and then some, and men who spend a few hours with an escort like herself in exchange for compensation. “That is the only thing where two consenting adults can engage in something, but because money is involved, it’s suddenly illegal,” she says, her eyebrows drawn together into a dark-blond line. “What’s the difference between this and maintaining your younger girlfriend in an apartment?” Four blocks to the west of Kramer’s, the sex industry assumes a decidedly different cast. A passerby would never know that on the fourth floor of a narrow building on Connecticut Avenue hides the office of FAIR Girls, the nonprofit organization that serves sexually exploited girls and young women. There are no signs outside or in the lobby announcing the organization’s presence. A prearranged appointment is required, and the door to the suite is locked. When the door is opened, I walk into a brightly lit room buzzing with young women; there are no men on the premises. Three young African American women are sitting around a conference table; they look up and smile at me brightly. A twenty-something woman rushes over and introduces herself as Teresa, the director of FAIR (Free, Aware, Inspired, and Restored) Girls. Teresa guides me through another room, containing a blanket-strewn sofa, a chair, and a small refrigerator, to a back office where Executive Director Andrea Powell is typing intently on her laptop. She looks up briefly and asks me to wait a few minutes until she finishes. She too looks young and is slender, with long blonde hair and bare legs under a short skirt. Two necklaces of brightly colored beads hang around her neck, made (I later learn) by the girls her organization helps. FAIR Girls provides services to girls and young women, age eleven to twenty-four, who are “survivors of sexual trafficking and labor exploitation,” Powell explains. “The average age of our clients is sixteen, and the average number of years they’ve been trafficked is four years.” FAIR Girls provides emergency housing, clothes, and food, along with counseling and legal support. It also helps its clients find jobs or schooling and teaches them the skills they need to become independent. Powell founded FAIR Girls in 2004, a few years after she first stumbled across the problem of sexual exploitation, while doing a junior year abroad in Germany. In a German class, she met a sixteen-year-old Bosnian Muslim girl who had been sold by her family into servitude as the fourth wife of a much older man. The relationship had become abusive, and Powell and her new friend made plans for her to escape, but before they could put the plan in motion, the girl disappeared. “I traveled to Bosnia to find her, and while I was there I saw a lot of girls and young women engaging in what you could call survival sex—this was not long after the Yugoslav war,” which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, Powell says. “I also saw what I think was some trafficking.” She never did find her friend. After Powell returned to the United States and graduated from Texas State University, she started FAIR Girls in Boston, initially working with young women who had been trafficked to the United States from abroad. But when she moved to Washington, D.C., she started hearing more about domestic youth being exploited. “We now serve upwards of 125 to 150 girls a year,” Powell says. “Over 90 percent are American citizens.” Most of the girls have run away from abusive situations at home or in foster care. The work Powell and her employees do involves everything from helping their charges get their records expunged—laws in many states now allow sex workers to get convictions expunged from their records if they can prove they have been trafficked—to getting them back home or into school. FAIR Girls also runs an “empowerment” program that teaches the girls how to make jewelry. “They earn a small amount of money, but more importantly, their self-esteem goes through the roof,” Powell says. “We have an annual gala, and the girls sell the jewelry they made. Fesha, the young woman from Kenya, made a necklace that Rose [DeLauro], the congresswoman from Connecticut, bought. That made her feel so great.” Powell works closely with local police, since they are the ones who often refer clients to her organization. But she doesn’t think sex workers of any age should be arrested, and her organization (along with others that work with exploited youth) is currently pressing for the passage of a bill, known as Safe Harbor, that would prohibit the arrests of minors involved in commercial sex in Washington, D.C. Safe Harbor laws have already been passed in other states, including New York, Washington State, and Illinois. “Criminalizing those who are being sold is just retraumatizing the victims and pushing them further underground,” Powell says. Like other nonprofits, FAIR Girls finds that working with law enforcement can be a double-edged sword, since many teenagers from dysfunctional families have had run-ins with the law and don’t trust the police. Powell, who is now thirty-four and married, says she can also do without the teasing from some cops. “I have a standing fight with one detective, who calls me ‘Rescue Barbie,’” she says. “I tell him I know how to tweet and he doesn’t, and one of these days something I say about him is going to go viral.” Unlike some antitrafficking proponents, Powell recognizes the difference between trafficking and prostitution. “Prostitution is a crime in which a person is selling sex on their own and there’s not any force, fraud, or coercion,” she says. But then she adds, “If the majority of our clients were between thirteen and twenty-four when they first got coerced into [sex work], the concept of choice gets pretty blurry.” For that reason, she supports laws that would criminalize buyers, particularly those who have sex with underage girls and boys. “Someone who buys sex from a sixteenyear-old and does it more than once, that’s not a john, that’s a serial child pedophile,” Powell says. “They need to be held accountable.” Sex workers’ rights advocates agree that it should be illegal to buy or sell sex involving underage prostitutes. However, several studies have found that blanket laws criminalizing the buyers of sex from adult prostitutes only expose sex workers to greater violence and make it more difficult for them to practice safe sex.1 For that reason, many academics who study the sex industry are opposed to overly broad laws that make it illegal to buy or sell sex. Researchers, antitrafficking groups, and sex worker advocates all agree that sanctions against violent pimps and coercive traffickers should be increased but diverge widely on the definition of a trafficker and on the question of who should be subject to criminal penalties. Many states currently criminalize anyone who lives off the earnings of a prostitute, which means that a nonabusive boyfriend or husband or even a roommate can be arrested and charged with pandering, pimping, or trafficking. Some researchers say such overly broad laws should be repealed because they make it more difficult for sex workers to work safely with people who know when and where they are selling sex and who can be summoned if help is necessary. “Punishment should be restricted to those who are violent or coercively exploitative—for example, forcing a person to work at certain times, to earn a certain amount of money before she or he can leave work, to perform disliked sex acts, and so on,” says Ronald Weitzer, the sociology professor at George Washington University who has studied the sex industry for years. Weitzer and other respected researchers favor a relatively open system that decriminalizes sex work but also subjects it to some restrictions, akin to New Zealand’s approach. Such a hybrid system of semiregulation would permit the licensing of both large, corporate-run brothels (like Sheri’s Ranch in Nevada) and smaller, cooperative brothels, where a number of sex workers could band together, rent an apartment, and hire a manager to screen calls and make appointments for them. The brothels themselves would be licensed and taxed, but individual workers would not be required to register. “Escorts want to be able to work just like any other business, but they don’t want to go through any kind of licensing,” says Barbara Brents, the sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has written several books about prostitution. “And when you’re working the streets to escape an abusive husband and feed your kids, who wants to register?” In countries where prostitution is legal and individual sex workers are required to register (for example, Germany), many refuse to do so and continue to work illegally, which defeats the purpose of decriminalization. Instead of a requirement that individual sex workers register (and be exposed to public stigma), researchers who study the issue say that brothels and other venues (for example, massage parlors and private clubs) should be licensed, taxed, and inspected regularly, like any other business. And if such businesses violate the law (by hiring minors or illegal immigrants or exploiting their workers), they should be shut down. Even though independent sex workers like Maddy should not have to get licensed, they should still be required to pay taxes and could list their occupation as escort. (Maddy already pays taxes now, but on tax forms, she lists her occupation as a model and translator.) Like many other sex workers, Maddy supports decriminalizing prostitution but is adamantly opposed to a legal approach that permits only the kind of heavily regulated prostitution found in Nevada’s brothels. “If it’s heavily regulated, we’ll be targeted and further marginalized,” she says. “We’d be relegated to red-light districts, to strip clubs that are in the poorest, most crime-ridden areas.” Or to brothels in the desert that are an hour away from any urban centers. Some researchers agree. As Weitzer notes in his 2012 book, “the less onerous and costly the regulations, the smaller the illegal sector [of sex workers],” and he points out that the latter is virtually nonexistent in New Zealand. Taking another page from New Zealand’s bold experiment, researchers suggest that policy makers take into account the voices of sex workers themselves as well as the views of local residents, who know what may be best for their neighborhoods. “The fear is that the politically savvy men who make the laws are listening to the voices of people with a lot of capital and resources instead of listening to people who actually do the work,” Brents says. If federal and state prohibitions against adult consensual prostitution were removed, it would be up to local municipalities to decide how they want to regulate the commercial sex trade. “Every area might come up with something a little different,” Brents says, again echoing the approach in New Zealand and the Netherlands of putting control in the hands of local counties or municipalities. All municipalities would probably prohibit sexually oriented businesses from locating near schools and playgrounds, and some might also ban street prostitution, as Amsterdam has done. Adopting New Zealand’s hybrid approach to regulating prostitution would bring millions of dollars into local government coffers in licensing fees and taxes from brothels, massage parlors, and escort services. Much as the legalization of marijuana in a growing number of states has done, it would take money away from the criminal element (in this case, exploitative pimps and traffickers) and put it into the hands of sanctioned businesses, individual women, and regulatory agencies. A recent study in Britain suggests that legalizing and taxing brothels and other places of prostitution would boost that country’s gross domestic product by at least $8.9 billion. When New Zealand removed prohibitions against adult consensual prostitution, the same legislation officially recognized sex work as legitimate work, thus according its participants the rights and protections available to workers in other occupations. As a result, sex workers Down Under can sue brothel owners for harassment or exploitation, and have done so successfully. Weitzer suggests that the United States remove such prohibitions as well, so that sex workers can better protect themselves from exploitation and the pressure to practice unsafe sex. Indeed, during the period when Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution, the state saw a steep decline in reported rapes and cases of gonorrhea. Experts also suggest that local government encourage safe sex practices and regular health exams, but not mandate them (as currently required in Nevada’s brothels). “Compulsory testing for sexually transmitted infections stigmatizes sex workers, tests are not always accurate, and testing clean on a certain day may give the false impression that a person is sexually healthy afterward,” Weitzer says. Instead, he recommends that local health officials conduct safe-sex outreach education with sex workers and clients and encourage regular exams and free testing, as they do in the Netherlands and New Zealand, which don’t mandate testing and have very low rates of HIV infection. Mandatory testing may actually increase the danger of sexually transmitted disease transmission, according to some. As Lenore Kuo, the professor of women’s studies and philosophy at California State University, Fresno, writes:

In reality, medical exams simply force prostitutes who are infected to work in an illegal venue, where they are often more likely to infect their clients due to the related difficulties of practicing “safe” sex. In Nevada, as in other jurisdictions, there is a common tendency for many men to offer prostitutes bribes not to use condoms. Regulations requiring medical testing of prostitutes are only likely to increase this tendency because they lead to the false expectation that the prostitute is disease-free. It is quite possible that a prostitute has been exposed to an STD [sexually transmitted disease] since her most recent test. . . . There is therefore no clear value in such tests but significant danger in encouraging clients to believe that prostitutes are disease-free.

Both Weitzer and Kuo make persuasive arguments that criminalizing prostitution is a failed and dangerous strategy. It doesn’t reduce the prevalence of sex work, and it clearly harms the women who do it. Arresting prostitutes heightens their isolation and estrangement from family and friends and makes it very difficult for them to seek other types of employment. Kuo notes that “criminalization also strengthens the prostitutes’ dependence on pimps, who will post bail, arrange child care, and obtain legal counsel when they do get arrested.” Women who are not sex workers are also threatened by a culture that allows sexual predators to kill with impunity and views prostitution as something dangerous and forbidden. Kuo argues that “women will never be normalized, will never cease being ‘other’ until sex and sexual activity are normalized. And sex and sexual activity will never be normalized until the sale of sexual activity is normalized (and vice versa).” On a more pragmatic level, decriminalizing adult consensual prostitution would allow law enforcement to focus on violent crimes and what both sex worker advocates and antitrafficking proponents consider a priority: prosecuting pimps who exploit underage youth and traffickers who force illegal immigrants into the sex trade. Many researchers argue that decriminalization would make it easier for victims and clients to report abuse to the police without the fear of being arrested themselves. “Sex workers would be much more likely to come forward if you just talk to them than if you arrest them,” says John Lowman, the criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. “If there’s an adversarial relationship between prostitutes and the police, they’re not going to solve anything.” * Back at Kramer’s Bookstore, Maddy is getting restless. Earlier in the interview, watching me scribble away in a notebook, she admitted, “I’m a little nervous talking to you.” Now, in response to my questions about her future, she says she won’t be doing sex work for much longer. “The work I do is a wonderful fit, but it’s not forever,” she says. “It’s like modeling or sports.” At the time of the interview, Maddy was about to complete a bachelor’s degree and had already been accepted into several M.B.A. programs. She tells me that when she starts graduate school, she will probably stop doing sex work. “The economy has tanked, so there’s less of a demand for luxury goods,” she says, implying that this may be a good time for her (as a luxury item) to get out of the business. She bends over and changes back into her flats. Then she abruptly stands up. “I really have to go,” she says and, with a quick wave of her hand, flies out the door. Excerpted from "Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law" by Alison Bass. Published by ForeEdge, an imprint of University Press of New England. Copyright © 2015 by Alison Bass. Used with permission of University Press of New England.

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“The Affair’s” real-estate porn: Class politics, twisted perspectives and New York’s torrid romance with real estate

The pilot episode of Showtime’s self-indulgent character drama “The Affair” makes prominent use, in the first few scenes, of On Prospect Park, a 15-story glass building designed by celebrated architect Richard Meier. It’s difficult to miss—an incongruously geometric pile of aquamarine glass on the stately oval of Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, which is otherwise populated by brick-and-stone buildings. For a filmmaker, I imagine the Meier building is too captivating a subject to ignore, especially as Dominic West’s character Noah is engaged in the thematically appropriate hobby of swimming in his first scenes—the Eastern Athletics directly next door to the condominium tower has a pool, which is a rare enough commodity in New York City. “The Affair’s" opening credits offer a sensuous, atmospheric view of moving water and roiling surf, so the show had to start with Noah swimming in his cramped, confined, citified pool, before he breaks away from Brooklyn to the wild shores of Montauk, where the waitress Alison (Ruth Wilson) captures his heart. And what, was “The Affair” really going to film Dominic fucking West at one of the city’s (numerous, affordable and indispensable) YMCAs? No, indeed, it must be the Meier building, with the implications of any glass house: transparency, perspective, fragility. Noah will go on to shatter his own carefully constructed home life with a few devastating blows. The characters of “The Affair” are pent up in lush interiors or confined to intimate, exclusive social spaces; their experience of New York City is as ostentatiously singular as the Meier building itself. And just as the building has drawn fascination for its defining characteristic—which is that neighbors and passersby can see right into every unit of the building—so too are the private lives of Noah, Alison and their spouses, Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson), exposed entirely to us, the audience. In my cynicism about the class politics of television—and as a Brooklynite who lives not far from the Meier building—I am inclined to dismiss at least some of “The Affair’s" luxury as the television version of Catalog Living. Especially on premium cable networks, who know exactly who is paying for their programming, shows about the mundane neuroses of rich white people take up a lot of space—and Noah and Helen are so rich that they barely seem to live in the harried, money-conscious, waiting-on-line New York City that most of its 8 million residents live in. Their lack of daily worry for things like parking tickets and cab fare—and the conspicuous lack of public transit—is as much a signifier of their privilege as their vacation plans to go to the family summer home in Montauk. This is exacerbated by the storytelling problems of the show, which splits each episode into two halves, and then tells the same events from the point of view of another character. In the first season, those perspectives were split between Noah and Alison, and took place almost entirely in Montauk over one summer. In the second, Noah and Alison have moved to Cold Spring, on the Hudson Valley, while Noah and Helen negotiate the terms of their divorce. Helen now has a perspective, which adds a lot of necessary depth (and gives us the added benefit of seeing Tierney do more things on-screen, which is never a bad thing). But the show is paralyzed by its own vision, at times; the problem with making a show about singular perspectives is that those people are necessarily self-absorbed. So it’s been hard to tell if Noah feels entitled to his wife’s money, or stifled by it; it’s hard to tell if Noah and Helen are effortlessly rich, or just perceive of themselves that way. “The Affair” has used this ambiguity, these necessarily isolate perspectives, as a lens for examining romantic relationships. Lurking in the background, though, is far more interesting subtext about the politics of gentrification. The leads in “The Affair” are both the gentrifiers and the gentrified; Helen, who owns their brownstone through her trust fund and grew up on the Upper East Side, is diametrically opposed to bicycle-riding Alison who picks up catering shifts for wealthy visitors. Montauk, in the mid-2000s, was the subject of its own hand-wringing about gentrification, as the ostentatious wealth of the Hamptons crept all the way to the lonely little fishing village all the way at the end of Long Island. (It got to the point that there was even a Montauk branch of the Momofuku Milk Bar, though that is now apparently closed.) Property is a primary concern for Alison and her husband, Cole, in Montauk; they’re broke, but they own their house, and the influx of new money means they could sell it for a lot of money. It’s a point of contention in the first season, complicated by the years-ago death of their son, nearby family, and a collapsing marriage. Meanwhile, Alison becomes entangled with Noah, who is a novelist who can only afford his modicum of success and four children because Helen bought their brownstone in Brooklyn with her trust fund and her parents fund the kids’ private-school tuitions. Helen herself is as a result constantly beholden to her overbearing parents, who use money as a way to infantilize and manipulate her. And in the opening of Season 2, as Noah and Helen start the grueling process of dividing their worldly assets, we find that he and Alison have decamped to a small apartment in Cold Spring, N.Y., on the Hudson Valley, which itself has been the target of a renewal effort for decades. The space is being lent to themby publishing friends who own it while Noah and Alison figure out their finances. The romantic perspectives of “The Affair” might be distorted and unrealistic, but the demographics of real estate acquisitions are eerily on-target. Indeed—the romantic machinations of the show have ceased to interest me at all. The relationships with real stakes in “The Affair” are the characters’ confrontations with their environment. In one of the season premiere’s more wrenching scenes, Helen tries to manufacture romantic interest for a man who is interested in her. They are in a hotel room with floor-to-ceiling glass, again; the view from the room is staggering. She is entirely disengaged from it, despite staring out the window so that she doesn’t have to look at him. The height and view give the bed the impression of being perched in the sky. In the background, the wannabe-beau (Josh Stamberg) rattles on about acquiring the hotel being a big move for his clients, the Greenpoint Hotel Group—Greenpoint being another controversial hotbed of glass-building development in what was a middle-class neighborhood. He stops nattering, finally, observing that he is being boring. She shakes her head, as if to disagree, but she’s clearly beyond caring about it. And yet she, and he, and the rest of the characters, are inexorably bound up in the class politics of the city; it burbles on in the background, molding their lives, while they stumble through romantic ups and downs. The problem that “The Affair” has, consistently, is how limited it is by its unhappy characters. The show is fixated on interiority—going so far as to film New York City, an incredible, dense city with extraordinary public spaces, primarily in interiors. They’re well-appointed and lush, but empty—even the production design yearns for connection. (I marked a scene in Washington Square Park as one of the first that used a New York City public space. It’s the grittiest the show has gotten. The character in question, naturally, started vaping in public, without even a stifled fear of being caught doing something illegal.) There is something brilliant about “The Affair’s" understanding of New York City’s—and the broader world’s—socioeconomic politics. But it’s hard to push characters who are so stuck in their own spaces to come to broader conclusions about the world. Indeed, one of the sad truths of “The Affair” is that its leads are rather too wrapped up in themselves to see the shape of the world they’re creating; maybe that is the show’s most political statement of all.

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The bad mother’s last refuge: Smashing the cult of mommyhood

The ambivalence of motherhood is a touchy subject that violates one of our greatest taboos: not liking your children. It’s a topic of conversation that rises to the surface of our social consciousness when we gawk at horrors like Andrea Yates murdering her children, or the trial of Casey Anthony. Since society has no use for bad mothers except as scapegoats, these conversations are often didactic and are repressed often as soon as they begin. But in fiction, we can examine with empathy that which horrifies us in real life. Thus, novels become the purgatory of problematic mothers, where the guise of fiction acts as a protective shield. Take the central relationship in acclaimed fiction writer Claire Vaye Watkins’ debut novel "Gold Fame Citrus," set in the dry, dystopian desert of future California where the aquifers are dry, resources depleted and most of the population has been evacuated. All that remains are the criminals, the mystics, the holdouts and the native Mojave. They struggle to survive, living in the empty shells of L.A.’s splendor, or sent to internment camps in the mountains. Luz Dunn is a Mojave, who was once heralded as Baby Dunn, the child of the desert, the symbol of the conservation effort. Newspaper clippings from her childhood promise, “…there will be fresh water for drinking, irrigation and recreation waiting for Baby Dunn and her children…” None of those promises held true. Luz becomes a model and is raised by the ambivalent world of fashion—which both embraces her body for its beauty, but rejects it for not being beautiful enough. Later in her career, Luz becomes a simulacrum of other more beautiful models, chosen for low-budget campaigns. Her body is often photographed bound and gagged—a symbolic rape that has resonance in references to the sexual abuse in the fashion industry. The novel opens with Luz, now 25, living amid the parched splendor of an abandoned Hollywood mansion with her partner Ray. At a rain festival in downtown L.A., Ray and Luz find a child, Ig, who lives with a violent band of scavengers. Caught in a surge of maternal desire, Luz kidnaps the child and together the three of them try to escape the confines of L.A. to find something better. Ray is AWOL from the military and Luz is a Mojave, and together they don’t qualify for emigration. So, they seek out refuge in a colony rumored to live on the edges of a vast sand dune. Luz, whose own mother died when she was young, is an ambivalent mother figure to Ig. She both sacrifices for Ig’s survival and resents her neediness. When Luz and Ig are rescued by the colony, Luz is torn between her own passions and perceptions and Ig’s all-consuming needs. Though Luz has forced herself into the role of mother, she closely identifies with Ig — both are motherless, children of the land, who are raised in tribes dominated by Messianic figures of men. In the end of the novel (this is a major spoiler, so stop reading now if you can’t bear it), Luz chooses to give up Ig to the colony—an Abrahamic sacrifice with devastating consequences. By writing Luz as a reluctant maternal figure, Watkins has tapped into the lean but vital tradition of fictional ambivalent mothers. In her 2010 book "The Monster Within," Barbara Almond explores maternal ambivalence through psychological case studies and, most notably, fiction. Almond explains that she turned to novels because they offer a rich look at a topic so often brushed under the rug of domestic anxiety. Almond’s goal, as she states, is to “recognize that however problematic this ambivalence may be, it is part of the human condition.” Yet, with few exceptions, maternal ambivalence even in fiction is rife with horror—"Frankenstein," "Rosemary’s Baby," "We Need to Talk About Kevin," "Beloved" and "The Fifth Child" all explore the shadows of motherhood as a terrifying realm of murder, love and loss. While these books are satisfying for maternal Id, rarely is the ambivalence of everyday motherhood so dark. The reality of this conflicted state is more like Elisa Albert’s "Afterbirth," where the main character, Ari, has the thought that her infant son is “Still a baby… of which even the best are oppressive fascist bastard dictator narcissists.” Or, as the poet Adrienne Rich described it a little less directly: “My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves and blissful gratification.” While many authors have grappled with the conflicts of motherhood, what is significant about Watkins is that her discussion of maternal ambivalence takes place in a dystopian landscape—a genre that up until the 1970s had been largely shaped by the pens and minds of literary men. In her 1972 essay “What Can a Heroine Do? Or Why Women Can’t Write,” Johanna Russ, herself an author of dystopian literature, wrote that women writers are often stuck with male myths and male protagonists. The solution for Russ was to write a new future: “Women cannot write—using the old myths. But using new ones?—” Watkins’ world is both new and unfamiliar. It is not a radical reimagining of gender roles, like many feminist utopian or dystopian novels, but where it does subvert the paradigm is in the reversal of a tale of the land as a male story. The landscape of Watkins' novel is undeniably female, not only in its symbols—Luz, her mother and Ig— but in Watkins' phantasmagoric imaginings. The light and color are ever-shifting and -changing. Attempts to understand and control this world are futile. The landscape is both victim and victimizer—like an angry Medea, satisfied with nothing but a total obliteration. The land is then the ambivalent mother—it gives and betrays, nurtures and devastates. The fates of women in this novel are closely intertwined with the land. Luz is Baby Dunn, the symbol of the desert—dirt fills her eyes, the crevices of her body, and her very identity— that when the water comes, Luz, like the land, is consumed by it. But here there are no sainted mothers. Luz gives Ig to the colony, which they believe is what the land wants. But in this act, Luz is no Mary giving her Jesus up to save the world. She is relieved to be rid of Ig, and so is Ray. They are afraid of the child, of her wounds and her difference. The sacrifice is also problematized by the colony and their Messianic leader—is he an inspired diviner or a cruel scavenger? Is the colony a tribe with a special connection to the land? Or are they drugged-up cult members? Is what Luz has done good or selfish? Is she a survivor or a victim? “What is?” Ig asks in her baby talk throughout the novel, “What is?” Her question could be the reader’s. The dissonance created is as unsettling as the landscape and relationships that Watkins has created. But like in so many maternal relationships, the mother is also the child. Luz is chided for her childishness, which makes her cling first to Ray and then to the leader of the desert colony. The earth, too, seems almost like an angry toddler, mid-tantrum, an “oppressive fascist bastard dictator narcissist” who cares for nothing and no one but herself. Almond explains that through their identification with their mother, children often end up replicating their relationships, sometimes inverting them so that their children become the mothers and they stay the child. Whatever the dynamic is, Almond states, we cannot run from these maternal ties. Even those who remain childless must struggle against their hold. This is evidenced in the novel when, as Ray struggles through the sand dune in search of Luz and Ig, he embraces the ambivalence of the landscape: “Instead of terror he grasped what made these dunes a sea, and for the first time he felt the serenity of that.” Ultimately, this condition of maternal ambivalence in Watkins' novel is not just a female question. The earth is both the monster child and the angry mother; everyone must reckon with her. Everyone must cleave to her, beg of her, and everyone is party in destroying her. It is precisely because of this flesh and earth ambivalence that all characters struggle with the monster they made and the dry dust that made them. The clawing hold of the landscape over the events of the novel mirror the cyclical nature of the maternal—from mothers we are and to mothers we will return. This is the power of Watkins' novel, which casts an unforgiving sun on our conflicted nature with nature. The ambivalence of creation and creators. Watkins offers no answers. But I’m not sure there are answers to be had. In her book, Almond quotes Swiss psychoanalyst Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, who felt “that the knowledge of the shadow side can stabilize female identity…” Mothers can be monsters, children can be, too. In the horror that created us, there are islands of love that bind us to our mothers. In the seas of love, there are squalls of sheer horror that push us away. In a society that fetishizes motherhood and our earth, while both systematically undermining and destroying them, this discussion of ambivalence is an important part of creating the new myths that we will one day write from.The ambivalence of motherhood is a touchy subject that violates one of our greatest taboos: not liking your children. It’s a topic of conversation that rises to the surface of our social consciousness when we gawk at horrors like Andrea Yates murdering her children, or the trial of Casey Anthony. Since society has no use for bad mothers except as scapegoats, these conversations are often didactic and are repressed often as soon as they begin. But in fiction, we can examine with empathy that which horrifies us in real life. Thus, novels become the purgatory of problematic mothers, where the guise of fiction acts as a protective shield. Take the central relationship in acclaimed fiction writer Claire Vaye Watkins’ debut novel "Gold Fame Citrus," set in the dry, dystopian desert of future California where the aquifers are dry, resources depleted and most of the population has been evacuated. All that remains are the criminals, the mystics, the holdouts and the native Mojave. They struggle to survive, living in the empty shells of L.A.’s splendor, or sent to internment camps in the mountains. Luz Dunn is a Mojave, who was once heralded as Baby Dunn, the child of the desert, the symbol of the conservation effort. Newspaper clippings from her childhood promise, “…there will be fresh water for drinking, irrigation and recreation waiting for Baby Dunn and her children…” None of those promises held true. Luz becomes a model and is raised by the ambivalent world of fashion—which both embraces her body for its beauty, but rejects it for not being beautiful enough. Later in her career, Luz becomes a simulacrum of other more beautiful models, chosen for low-budget campaigns. Her body is often photographed bound and gagged—a symbolic rape that has resonance in references to the sexual abuse in the fashion industry. The novel opens with Luz, now 25, living amid the parched splendor of an abandoned Hollywood mansion with her partner Ray. At a rain festival in downtown L.A., Ray and Luz find a child, Ig, who lives with a violent band of scavengers. Caught in a surge of maternal desire, Luz kidnaps the child and together the three of them try to escape the confines of L.A. to find something better. Ray is AWOL from the military and Luz is a Mojave, and together they don’t qualify for emigration. So, they seek out refuge in a colony rumored to live on the edges of a vast sand dune. Luz, whose own mother died when she was young, is an ambivalent mother figure to Ig. She both sacrifices for Ig’s survival and resents her neediness. When Luz and Ig are rescued by the colony, Luz is torn between her own passions and perceptions and Ig’s all-consuming needs. Though Luz has forced herself into the role of mother, she closely identifies with Ig — both are motherless, children of the land, who are raised in tribes dominated by Messianic figures of men. In the end of the novel (this is a major spoiler, so stop reading now if you can’t bear it), Luz chooses to give up Ig to the colony—an Abrahamic sacrifice with devastating consequences. By writing Luz as a reluctant maternal figure, Watkins has tapped into the lean but vital tradition of fictional ambivalent mothers. In her 2010 book "The Monster Within," Barbara Almond explores maternal ambivalence through psychological case studies and, most notably, fiction. Almond explains that she turned to novels because they offer a rich look at a topic so often brushed under the rug of domestic anxiety. Almond’s goal, as she states, is to “recognize that however problematic this ambivalence may be, it is part of the human condition.” Yet, with few exceptions, maternal ambivalence even in fiction is rife with horror—"Frankenstein," "Rosemary’s Baby," "We Need to Talk About Kevin," "Beloved" and "The Fifth Child" all explore the shadows of motherhood as a terrifying realm of murder, love and loss. While these books are satisfying for maternal Id, rarely is the ambivalence of everyday motherhood so dark. The reality of this conflicted state is more like Elisa Albert’s "Afterbirth," where the main character, Ari, has the thought that her infant son is “Still a baby… of which even the best are oppressive fascist bastard dictator narcissists.” Or, as the poet Adrienne Rich described it a little less directly: “My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves and blissful gratification.” While many authors have grappled with the conflicts of motherhood, what is significant about Watkins is that her discussion of maternal ambivalence takes place in a dystopian landscape—a genre that up until the 1970s had been largely shaped by the pens and minds of literary men. In her 1972 essay “What Can a Heroine Do? Or Why Women Can’t Write,” Johanna Russ, herself an author of dystopian literature, wrote that women writers are often stuck with male myths and male protagonists. The solution for Russ was to write a new future: “Women cannot write—using the old myths. But using new ones?—” Watkins’ world is both new and unfamiliar. It is not a radical reimagining of gender roles, like many feminist utopian or dystopian novels, but where it does subvert the paradigm is in the reversal of a tale of the land as a male story. The landscape of Watkins' novel is undeniably female, not only in its symbols—Luz, her mother and Ig— but in Watkins' phantasmagoric imaginings. The light and color are ever-shifting and -changing. Attempts to understand and control this world are futile. The landscape is both victim and victimizer—like an angry Medea, satisfied with nothing but a total obliteration. The land is then the ambivalent mother—it gives and betrays, nurtures and devastates. The fates of women in this novel are closely intertwined with the land. Luz is Baby Dunn, the symbol of the desert—dirt fills her eyes, the crevices of her body, and her very identity— that when the water comes, Luz, like the land, is consumed by it. But here there are no sainted mothers. Luz gives Ig to the colony, which they believe is what the land wants. But in this act, Luz is no Mary giving her Jesus up to save the world. She is relieved to be rid of Ig, and so is Ray. They are afraid of the child, of her wounds and her difference. The sacrifice is also problematized by the colony and their Messianic leader—is he an inspired diviner or a cruel scavenger? Is the colony a tribe with a special connection to the land? Or are they drugged-up cult members? Is what Luz has done good or selfish? Is she a survivor or a victim? “What is?” Ig asks in her baby talk throughout the novel, “What is?” Her question could be the reader’s. The dissonance created is as unsettling as the landscape and relationships that Watkins has created. But like in so many maternal relationships, the mother is also the child. Luz is chided for her childishness, which makes her cling first to Ray and then to the leader of the desert colony. The earth, too, seems almost like an angry toddler, mid-tantrum, an “oppressive fascist bastard dictator narcissist” who cares for nothing and no one but herself. Almond explains that through their identification with their mother, children often end up replicating their relationships, sometimes inverting them so that their children become the mothers and they stay the child. Whatever the dynamic is, Almond states, we cannot run from these maternal ties. Even those who remain childless must struggle against their hold. This is evidenced in the novel when, as Ray struggles through the sand dune in search of Luz and Ig, he embraces the ambivalence of the landscape: “Instead of terror he grasped what made these dunes a sea, and for the first time he felt the serenity of that.” Ultimately, this condition of maternal ambivalence in Watkins' novel is not just a female question. The earth is both the monster child and the angry mother; everyone must reckon with her. Everyone must cleave to her, beg of her, and everyone is party in destroying her. It is precisely because of this flesh and earth ambivalence that all characters struggle with the monster they made and the dry dust that made them. The clawing hold of the landscape over the events of the novel mirror the cyclical nature of the maternal—from mothers we are and to mothers we will return. This is the power of Watkins' novel, which casts an unforgiving sun on our conflicted nature with nature. The ambivalence of creation and creators. Watkins offers no answers. But I’m not sure there are answers to be had. In her book, Almond quotes Swiss psychoanalyst Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, who felt “that the knowledge of the shadow side can stabilize female identity…” Mothers can be monsters, children can be, too. In the horror that created us, there are islands of love that bind us to our mothers. In the seas of love, there are squalls of sheer horror that push us away. In a society that fetishizes motherhood and our earth, while both systematically undermining and destroying them, this discussion of ambivalence is an important part of creating the new myths that we will one day write from.

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I always give you my money: How many times will I buy the same Beatles records, over and over again?

The other day I threw out my first Beatles album — which is akin to throwing out one of the only photos of a dead relative, a perfectly good organic burrito or a $20 bill. Beatles albums have been discarded before, but mostly by crazies and Klansmen back in early March ’66, when dubiously contextualized quotes from John claimed that “Christianity will vanish and shrink…” and that “We’re (The Beatles) more popular than Jesus now.” That was 49 years ago, three years before I was born. On Friday, I turned 46. And instead of taking some kind of inventory (I'm saving that for 50), I began to think about my relationship with the Beatles, who were still together when I was born (take that, Y and Z Generations!). And my relationship to them, unlike that with just about everyone else in my life after nearly half a century (friends, family, women, pets, the government, R.E.M.) is more or less the same: pure love. I am the human equivalent of Ringo’s peace fingers, and have been since I first began playing with the LPs that my mother and father gave me to play with because I was an  early-depressed child. Some of those wonderful objects had posters, and lyrics, and these four beautiful men with sparkling eyes on their covers. Others had dyed vinyl, red and blue. They were much better than TV. John Lennon was still alive. So was George. It was Camelot in suburbia, with perfect pop music coming out of faux wood-grain speakers and later, an 8-track player made of white plastic and shaped like a diver’s helmet. But that’s when things began to turn. I could no longer stay on the floor in the den with the turntable; I had to gather around the weird-ass 8 track. It’s like that scene in "2001" when the vegan apes live peacefully with the tapirs until the monolith appears and that one ape realizes he can use tools — cut to lots of dead tapirs. And war. I should say that throwing out, say, the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack might be one thing, but the LP that I binned was "Revolver." And I did it because it was the wrong "Revolver"! There is a "Revolver" that exists in my head — the mono "Revolver," the music that changed everything, even Don Draper. This wasn't it. I bought this version on eBay and soon realized it was mixed, or remixed, all wrong. George Harrison’s cough at the beginning of “Taxman,” and the background vocals chiding “Uh, uh, Mr. Wilson… Uh uh, Mr. Heath,” were buried in the mix. You can remix Lou Reed or Pavement all you want and I’m good, but the Beatles I am orthodox about. How did I end up with this screwy "Revolver," and could there be people who actually prefer it? Should I have found one of them? Placed it back on eBay and lied about its merits in my sales description? My need to always have every Beatles album from "Please Please Me" to "Let It Be" at my fingertips 24 hours a day no matter where I am superseded the horrible sight of that Klaus Voorman cover going into the trash with the chicken bones and the pizza boxes, but it had to happen, or I risked losing my tether to the first time I heard “For No One” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” To paraphrase Supertramp, which I like to do as much as possible, the question of what, exactly, is a perfect and complete personal Beatles collection runs too deep for such a simple mind. Since the start of their recording career, the LPs, and later the cassettes and other updated media, have been released by Parlophone in the U.K. and Capitol in America. Not that I realized this at 10 years old. I just bought what was on sale in hopes that I would one day have everything, and kept doing so almost reflexively as the U.K. versions became easier to acquire, which is basically akin to shoving a 10-bob note up your nose. "Beatles for Sale," for example, was called "Beatles ’65" in my collection and it had “She’s a Woman” on it (one of Paul’s grooviest early songs). There was an album called "Hey Jude," which was not the only way you could get "Hey Jude," not that I would know that before buying it. I thought it was a Beatles album I’d missed, but most of those songs were already on the blue album. Did Parlophone and Capitol count on people like me to be stupid, anxious, Pavlovian? I drew certain lines. I didn’t buy the interview albums, although I was tempted. There was an album called simply "Rock and Roll Music," which had songs from the White Album (aka "The Beatles"), but I bought it because I didn’t own a copy of “I’m Down,” and as with “She’s a Woman,” I needed it. There was an album called "Love Songs" with a shit-brown cover that was easy to dismiss, but I welcomed it into my collection and pretended it was a catch, even though it for some reason considered “She’s Leaving Home” a love song — seriously. When I got my first car, I made sure I had every Beatles album on cassette, because you can’t play “Magical Mystery Tour” on vinyl in an ’87 Toyota Tercel as you speed down Sunrise Highway. When I went off to college, CDs had just come out. The first CD I bought was “Diamond Life” by Sade, and the next dozen were Beatles albums. Soon my 8-tracks and cassettes and LPs went… wherever. I got into drugs (like the Beatles did, man!) and went a bit slack in keeping everything neat and organized (it was the ‘90s). I chopped out a lot of drugs off the jewel box of “Rubber Soul,” with that swirly lensed shot of the lads, but even as addicted as I was by the ‘90s, if you told me I had to choose between my scorched CD or, well, drugs, I would have chosen “Rubber Soul.” I even liked “Run for Your Life,” which John purportedly hated, even though he wrote the fucking thing (I suppose I’ve written things I’ve hated, too… ). But do enough hard drugs and cold turkey will get you on the run. You will end up selling a lot of shit so you can keep doing drugs — you don’t need to be Maxwell Edison to figure that one out. I moved to Hollywood after college to try to write movies as good as “Caveman” and “Give My Regards to Broad Street.” I did more drugs. I sold my car for $500 and had nowhere to play the cassettes I managed to keep track of (“Revovler!”). I sold my CDs and my CD player. And the reason I knew that I was truly lost was that for the first time in a quarter of a century, if I woke up in the middle of the night and needed, actually needed for my sanity and wellness, to hear “Flying” or “Wild Honey Pie,” or regular “Honey Pie,” I was shit out of luck. You couldn’t call up a radio station and request it like you could have in the ‘70s. You couldn’t ask your roommate to play it for you on his upright bass and sing it (in his Georgian accent). You went through withdrawal. One of the first things I did when I got clean was re-buy all the Beatles albums on vinyl… again. Every last one, from “Please Please Me” to “Let It Be” and back — British versions, not a mote of dust on them. And then they came out on iTunes. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the appeal for someone with this kind of relationship to their music of having every song at my fingertips on a machine that was, at the time, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. They got me, hooked me the way I was supposed to get hooked, the way they demonstrated someone like me actually getting fishhooked in some boardroom — just a stick figure with the word “Beatle fan” and an arrow pointing to my long hair. I sold the vinyl on Bleecker Street, bought an iPod, and one by one, loaded it with every Beatles album plus “Past Masters One” and “Two,” because say I fall in love with a German film star and she needs to hear “Sie Liebt Dich” while we are making strange love, or an Andrea Feldman-like mental case who only wants to do it to “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number”)? Steve Jobs not only fixed the world, he fixed my Beatles problem for good. For good! And I wasn’t even 40. I couldn’t even lose the Beatles if I wanted to. They lived in The Cloud, which was probably a lot like the Sea of Holes in “Yellow Submarine.” Even if I lost the iPod itself — and I did — the albums were still there. But what if I lost my Cloud password, and my computer crashed, and I got fired from my job as a reasonably well-paid rock writer? And I lost another iPod (a Nano this time, because I was trying to be fiscally wise) and another after that (left behind at a particularly depressing DJ gig)? What if I couldn’t wring them out of the Cloud at 4 a.m.?  What then, John? Paul, George, Ringo? Brian Epstein? Some days ago, an announcement appeared on the official Beatles Twitter and elsewhere, promising a major development. I am no longer even close to being the optimist and the dreamer I was back on that brown shag carpet, but somewhere there was a damp flicker that wondered, “Hey, maybe they cut a deal with Spotify?” Free Beatles music forever, for the low, low price of giving Facebook all my personal info and things that I enjoy! (The fucking Beatles.) Of course, I’d have to upgrade to the premium service, because nobody is shuffling Beatles album fucking sequences on me. Nobody! Instead, as all fans now know, it was yet another version of their hit No. 1 album, this time with videos. And once again I find myself, as I did as a prepubescent, building a vinyl collection of Beatles albums. I don’t go out as much as I used to, I reason. It will be nice to hear them on Sunday mornings with coffee and the paper.  No need to travel with them. This is it. And there’s eBay — I don’t even have to go to a record store, which is fortunate because there are no more fucking record stores (apologies to all still living record stores). The first one I bought? “Revolver.” The best one. The perfect one. The one that’s probably better than “Blonde on Blonde” and “Pet Sounds” and “What’s Going On.” The one that makes me happy like a drug, like sunshine, like really good soup. When it’s in, it hits you in the face with its greatness. That cough at the beginning of “Taxman.” So, the other day I threw away a Beatles album. I guess I could have given it to a neighbor or just left it on the stoop.  Someone would have taken it, but I didn’t want to pass on my disease. I’m 46. If I live, say, another 40 years (that’s being incredibly optimistic — let’s say 25), how many more ways will arise to entice me to purchase the same music I’ve been buying over and over again for my entire life? Will I need to own a “With the Beatles” (not “Meet the Beatles,” mind you) hologram? Will I have to abide by George singing “Don’t Bother Me” in my bedroom? Will there be volunteer programs where the catalog is simply uploaded into your brain, and you will never lose it? You will literally meld organically, cybernetically, with the Beatles catalog? And if so, how much will it cost? Should I begin saving now? The Best Things In Life Are Free, But These Ain’t: A short list of complete Beatles audio for the obsessive fan to purchase over and over again in various different formats (Warning to Fab completists and correctors: It’s a “short” list. Please no “you forgot” comments. We didn’t forget. The Yesterday and Today’s 1966 “Butcher” album, for example, is not here, because a near-mint version probably costs the same as a used Lexus SUV at this point, and the Cirque Du Soleil album is not here because French clowns are a bummer.) LPs Please Please Me – UK — 1963 With The Beatles – UK – 1963 Meet the Beatles – US – 1964 The Beatles Second Album – US – 1964 A Hard Day’s Night – soundtrack – 1964 A Hard Day’s Night – LP – 1964 Something New – US – 1964 Beatles For Sale – UK – 1965 The Early Beatles – US – 1965 Beatles ’65 – US — 1965 Help! – ’65 – US – Soundtrack — 1965 Help! – ’65 – LP – 1965 Rubber Soul – US/UK – 1965 (first 8-Track Tape release) Revolver – US/UK – 1966 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – US/UK — 1967 Magical Mystery Tour – US/UK — 1967 The Beatles (White Album) – US/UK — 1968 Yellow Submarine – US/UK – 1968 Abbey Road – US/UK – 1969 First Beatles cassettes issued in US Hey Jude – US/UK – 1970 Let It Be – US/UK – 1970 1963 – 1966 US/UK (Red Album) – 1973 1967 -1970 US/UK (Blue Album) – 1973 Live At The Hollywood Bowl – 1977 (actually pretty great) Rock n’ Roll Music – 1976 Love Songs – 1977 Full Beatles UK discography – CD release – 1987/88 Past Masters Volume One – 1988 – Available on CD Past Masters Volume Two – 1988 – Available on CD Anthology 1 – Multi format – 1995 Anthology 2 – Multi format  — 1996 Anthology 3 – Multi format – 1996 1 – US/UK – Multi Format – 2000 Let It Be… Naked – 2003 Beatles Stereo Box Set – 2009 The Beatles in Mono – 2009 2010 – The Beatles catalog comes to iTunesThe other day I threw out my first Beatles album — which is akin to throwing out one of the only photos of a dead relative, a perfectly good organic burrito or a $20 bill. Beatles albums have been discarded before, but mostly by crazies and Klansmen back in early March ’66, when dubiously contextualized quotes from John claimed that “Christianity will vanish and shrink…” and that “We’re (The Beatles) more popular than Jesus now.” That was 49 years ago, three years before I was born. On Friday, I turned 46. And instead of taking some kind of inventory (I'm saving that for 50), I began to think about my relationship with the Beatles, who were still together when I was born (take that, Y and Z Generations!). And my relationship to them, unlike that with just about everyone else in my life after nearly half a century (friends, family, women, pets, the government, R.E.M.) is more or less the same: pure love. I am the human equivalent of Ringo’s peace fingers, and have been since I first began playing with the LPs that my mother and father gave me to play with because I was an  early-depressed child. Some of those wonderful objects had posters, and lyrics, and these four beautiful men with sparkling eyes on their covers. Others had dyed vinyl, red and blue. They were much better than TV. John Lennon was still alive. So was George. It was Camelot in suburbia, with perfect pop music coming out of faux wood-grain speakers and later, an 8-track player made of white plastic and shaped like a diver’s helmet. But that’s when things began to turn. I could no longer stay on the floor in the den with the turntable; I had to gather around the weird-ass 8 track. It’s like that scene in "2001" when the vegan apes live peacefully with the tapirs until the monolith appears and that one ape realizes he can use tools — cut to lots of dead tapirs. And war. I should say that throwing out, say, the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack might be one thing, but the LP that I binned was "Revolver." And I did it because it was the wrong "Revolver"! There is a "Revolver" that exists in my head — the mono "Revolver," the music that changed everything, even Don Draper. This wasn't it. I bought this version on eBay and soon realized it was mixed, or remixed, all wrong. George Harrison’s cough at the beginning of “Taxman,” and the background vocals chiding “Uh, uh, Mr. Wilson… Uh uh, Mr. Heath,” were buried in the mix. You can remix Lou Reed or Pavement all you want and I’m good, but the Beatles I am orthodox about. How did I end up with this screwy "Revolver," and could there be people who actually prefer it? Should I have found one of them? Placed it back on eBay and lied about its merits in my sales description? My need to always have every Beatles album from "Please Please Me" to "Let It Be" at my fingertips 24 hours a day no matter where I am superseded the horrible sight of that Klaus Voorman cover going into the trash with the chicken bones and the pizza boxes, but it had to happen, or I risked losing my tether to the first time I heard “For No One” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” To paraphrase Supertramp, which I like to do as much as possible, the question of what, exactly, is a perfect and complete personal Beatles collection runs too deep for such a simple mind. Since the start of their recording career, the LPs, and later the cassettes and other updated media, have been released by Parlophone in the U.K. and Capitol in America. Not that I realized this at 10 years old. I just bought what was on sale in hopes that I would one day have everything, and kept doing so almost reflexively as the U.K. versions became easier to acquire, which is basically akin to shoving a 10-bob note up your nose. "Beatles for Sale," for example, was called "Beatles ’65" in my collection and it had “She’s a Woman” on it (one of Paul’s grooviest early songs). There was an album called "Hey Jude," which was not the only way you could get "Hey Jude," not that I would know that before buying it. I thought it was a Beatles album I’d missed, but most of those songs were already on the blue album. Did Parlophone and Capitol count on people like me to be stupid, anxious, Pavlovian? I drew certain lines. I didn’t buy the interview albums, although I was tempted. There was an album called simply "Rock and Roll Music," which had songs from the White Album (aka "The Beatles"), but I bought it because I didn’t own a copy of “I’m Down,” and as with “She’s a Woman,” I needed it. There was an album called "Love Songs" with a shit-brown cover that was easy to dismiss, but I welcomed it into my collection and pretended it was a catch, even though it for some reason considered “She’s Leaving Home” a love song — seriously. When I got my first car, I made sure I had every Beatles album on cassette, because you can’t play “Magical Mystery Tour” on vinyl in an ’87 Toyota Tercel as you speed down Sunrise Highway. When I went off to college, CDs had just come out. The first CD I bought was “Diamond Life” by Sade, and the next dozen were Beatles albums. Soon my 8-tracks and cassettes and LPs went… wherever. I got into drugs (like the Beatles did, man!) and went a bit slack in keeping everything neat and organized (it was the ‘90s). I chopped out a lot of drugs off the jewel box of “Rubber Soul,” with that swirly lensed shot of the lads, but even as addicted as I was by the ‘90s, if you told me I had to choose between my scorched CD or, well, drugs, I would have chosen “Rubber Soul.” I even liked “Run for Your Life,” which John purportedly hated, even though he wrote the fucking thing (I suppose I’ve written things I’ve hated, too… ). But do enough hard drugs and cold turkey will get you on the run. You will end up selling a lot of shit so you can keep doing drugs — you don’t need to be Maxwell Edison to figure that one out. I moved to Hollywood after college to try to write movies as good as “Caveman” and “Give My Regards to Broad Street.” I did more drugs. I sold my car for $500 and had nowhere to play the cassettes I managed to keep track of (“Revovler!”). I sold my CDs and my CD player. And the reason I knew that I was truly lost was that for the first time in a quarter of a century, if I woke up in the middle of the night and needed, actually needed for my sanity and wellness, to hear “Flying” or “Wild Honey Pie,” or regular “Honey Pie,” I was shit out of luck. You couldn’t call up a radio station and request it like you could have in the ‘70s. You couldn’t ask your roommate to play it for you on his upright bass and sing it (in his Georgian accent). You went through withdrawal. One of the first things I did when I got clean was re-buy all the Beatles albums on vinyl… again. Every last one, from “Please Please Me” to “Let It Be” and back — British versions, not a mote of dust on them. And then they came out on iTunes. I’m sure I don’t need to explain the appeal for someone with this kind of relationship to their music of having every song at my fingertips on a machine that was, at the time, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. They got me, hooked me the way I was supposed to get hooked, the way they demonstrated someone like me actually getting fishhooked in some boardroom — just a stick figure with the word “Beatle fan” and an arrow pointing to my long hair. I sold the vinyl on Bleecker Street, bought an iPod, and one by one, loaded it with every Beatles album plus “Past Masters One” and “Two,” because say I fall in love with a German film star and she needs to hear “Sie Liebt Dich” while we are making strange love, or an Andrea Feldman-like mental case who only wants to do it to “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number”)? Steve Jobs not only fixed the world, he fixed my Beatles problem for good. For good! And I wasn’t even 40. I couldn’t even lose the Beatles if I wanted to. They lived in The Cloud, which was probably a lot like the Sea of Holes in “Yellow Submarine.” Even if I lost the iPod itself — and I did — the albums were still there. But what if I lost my Cloud password, and my computer crashed, and I got fired from my job as a reasonably well-paid rock writer? And I lost another iPod (a Nano this time, because I was trying to be fiscally wise) and another after that (left behind at a particularly depressing DJ gig)? What if I couldn’t wring them out of the Cloud at 4 a.m.?  What then, John? Paul, George, Ringo? Brian Epstein? Some days ago, an announcement appeared on the official Beatles Twitter and elsewhere, promising a major development. I am no longer even close to being the optimist and the dreamer I was back on that brown shag carpet, but somewhere there was a damp flicker that wondered, “Hey, maybe they cut a deal with Spotify?” Free Beatles music forever, for the low, low price of giving Facebook all my personal info and things that I enjoy! (The fucking Beatles.) Of course, I’d have to upgrade to the premium service, because nobody is shuffling Beatles album fucking sequences on me. Nobody! Instead, as all fans now know, it was yet another version of their hit No. 1 album, this time with videos. And once again I find myself, as I did as a prepubescent, building a vinyl collection of Beatles albums. I don’t go out as much as I used to, I reason. It will be nice to hear them on Sunday mornings with coffee and the paper.  No need to travel with them. This is it. And there’s eBay — I don’t even have to go to a record store, which is fortunate because there are no more fucking record stores (apologies to all still living record stores). The first one I bought? “Revolver.” The best one. The perfect one. The one that’s probably better than “Blonde on Blonde” and “Pet Sounds” and “What’s Going On.” The one that makes me happy like a drug, like sunshine, like really good soup. When it’s in, it hits you in the face with its greatness. That cough at the beginning of “Taxman.” So, the other day I threw away a Beatles album. I guess I could have given it to a neighbor or just left it on the stoop.  Someone would have taken it, but I didn’t want to pass on my disease. I’m 46. If I live, say, another 40 years (that’s being incredibly optimistic — let’s say 25), how many more ways will arise to entice me to purchase the same music I’ve been buying over and over again for my entire life? Will I need to own a “With the Beatles” (not “Meet the Beatles,” mind you) hologram? Will I have to abide by George singing “Don’t Bother Me” in my bedroom? Will there be volunteer programs where the catalog is simply uploaded into your brain, and you will never lose it? You will literally meld organically, cybernetically, with the Beatles catalog? And if so, how much will it cost? Should I begin saving now? The Best Things In Life Are Free, But These Ain’t: A short list of complete Beatles audio for the obsessive fan to purchase over and over again in various different formats (Warning to Fab completists and correctors: It’s a “short” list. Please no “you forgot” comments. We didn’t forget. The Yesterday and Today’s 1966 “Butcher” album, for example, is not here, because a near-mint version probably costs the same as a used Lexus SUV at this point, and the Cirque Du Soleil album is not here because French clowns are a bummer.) LPs Please Please Me – UK — 1963 With The Beatles – UK – 1963 Meet the Beatles – US – 1964 The Beatles Second Album – US – 1964 A Hard Day’s Night – soundtrack – 1964 A Hard Day’s Night – LP – 1964 Something New – US – 1964 Beatles For Sale – UK – 1965 The Early Beatles – US – 1965 Beatles ’65 – US — 1965 Help! – ’65 – US – Soundtrack — 1965 Help! – ’65 – LP – 1965 Rubber Soul – US/UK – 1965 (first 8-Track Tape release) Revolver – US/UK – 1966 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – US/UK — 1967 Magical Mystery Tour – US/UK — 1967 The Beatles (White Album) – US/UK — 1968 Yellow Submarine – US/UK – 1968 Abbey Road – US/UK – 1969 First Beatles cassettes issued in US Hey Jude – US/UK – 1970 Let It Be – US/UK – 1970 1963 – 1966 US/UK (Red Album) – 1973 1967 -1970 US/UK (Blue Album) – 1973 Live At The Hollywood Bowl – 1977 (actually pretty great) Rock n’ Roll Music – 1976 Love Songs – 1977 Full Beatles UK discography – CD release – 1987/88 Past Masters Volume One – 1988 – Available on CD Past Masters Volume Two – 1988 – Available on CD Anthology 1 – Multi format – 1995 Anthology 2 – Multi format  — 1996 Anthology 3 – Multi format – 1996 1 – US/UK – Multi Format – 2000 Let It Be… Naked – 2003 Beatles Stereo Box Set – 2009 The Beatles in Mono – 2009 2010 – The Beatles catalog comes to iTunes

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So wait, millennials aren’t the enemy? From “The Intern” to “Grandma,” the threat of looming intergenerational war has been greatly exaggerated

“Time passes. That’s for sure,” reads the pithy Eileen Myles epigram that launches "Grandma," Paul Weitz’s latest feature. Based on typical Hollywood fare, it could be hard to tell; unless one happens to be Meryl Streep or Richard Gere, life ends after 60, and if you happen to lack a Y chromosome it would seem to stop at least a decade earlier. But some of this might be changing. "Grandma," starring Lily Tomlin, 75, and Nancy Meyers' "The Intern," with Robert De Niro, 72, are making serious box office buck, drawing in audiences a third their age. Even odder is that neither film pivots around the trials of getting older or the fruits of late coupledom—rather, both focus on the relationships between those of a certain age and those considerably younger, part of a handful of recent movies eschewing traditional plots to tackle the tensions between traditionalists, baby boomers, Generations X, Y and Z. Why the shift? Perhaps the fact that now more than ever we are likely to have to deal with those much older and younger than ourselves. Partly due to rising longevity and falling retirement rates, in 2015, for the first time in history, all five generations could potentially share a workspace. For those of Generations X, Y and Z, delayed marriage and childbearing means that it’s not uncommon for a single 32-year-old to socialize with those five to 10 years older, to compete for internships with applicants fresh out of college. We are entering an age of the pan-generational mashup, and we need to learn how to listen. Widely lauded for cynical character-driven dramas ("The Squid and the Whale," "Greenberg"), Noah Baumbach released two films in 2015 that seem cheery by comparison, both inviting anyone under 50 to sort out what they have in common. In "While We’re Young," Gen Xers Josh and Cornelia—played by Ben Stiller, 49, and Naomi Watts, 47—befriend millennial hipster couple Jamie and Darby, played by Adam Driver, 31, and Amanda Seyfried, 29. All childless, the four bike across Brooklyn, frequent bougie artisanal restaurants and puke into shared ayahuasca buckets. This cozy cultural crochet joining X and Y eventually unravels—Jamie and Darby aren’t nearly as earnest or ebullient as they seemed, and Josh and Cornelia ultimately opt to become parents—but both couples plainly gain more than they lose in the process. "Mistress America," Baumbach’s late summer comedy, studies the bond between 30-year old Brooke, played by the unsinkable Greta Gerwig, and Tracy, her soon-to-be stepsister, a college first-year played by Lola Kirke. Brooke and Tracy go dancing, attend spinning class, visit bars that proffer complimentary hot dogs. The climax of the film follows a road trip from Manhattan to suburban Connecticut to beg Brooke’s married ex-fiancé (an amusing Michael Chernus) for a serious loan. In a hatchback packed with college kids and one feckless millennial, the transition from youthful insouciance to settled-down banality couldn’t be more explicit. Inevitably, Brooke and Lola “break up” as friends, and just as inevitably, they get back together, in the film’s final scene sharing Thanksgiving dinner in an East Village diner. Tracy boosts Brooke’s flagging confidence as a dreamer who hasn’t gotten her start yet, and Brooke grants self-conscious Tracy a sense of her own distinct appeal. As said in one of the film’s most memorable voice-overs, “Her beauty was that rare kind that made you want to look more like yourself and not like her." "Grandma" and "The Intern" feature an even broader age range—from 5 to 75—poking holes in presumptions of what it means to get old, feel young or (not so) simply grow up. In "Grandma," a kind of “every-wave” feminism unites Elle, an unorthodox matriarch played by Tomlin, her daughter Judy (Marcia Gay Harden), and teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) when facing an unplanned pregnancy. As Ben, “senior intern” to CEO Jules, played by Anne Hathaway, De Niro becomes a grandfatherly confidant—to his boss, office colleagues and practically everyone else with whom he comes into contact. Though differing markedly in tone, style and budget, both films suggest that getting older can lead to a sense of fearlessness and resilience that the young are missing out on. Many have dubbed "Grandma" another “abortion film,” in the spirit of "Obvious Child," but the film’s real focus is on the clashes between the generations already born and blundering. “The gravity of the choice doesn’t elude us,” said Tomlin in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival—and in this film the gravity of the choice brings three generations of women together, quite literally, in a clinic waiting room. At the film’s start, Elle has just broken up with her much younger girlfriend Olivia (played by a very believable Judy Greer), and is soon after visited by her panicked granddaughter. The drama unfolds over the course of a single day, and throughout Tomlin wears her own clothing and drives her own 1955 Dodge Royal Lancer. It’s not surprising that Weitz wrote the role with only Tomlin in mind. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine "The Intern" with anyone but De Niro, who tempers predictable gentle paternalism with a progressive take on working moms and the glass ceiling in a way that seems surprisingly sincere. But it’s harder to take the cross-generational gusto seriously in a context of unlimited fiscal resources (or springy safety nets) for every character involved. Ben’s enviable Brookyn pad sports a kitchen island and walk-in closet. He’s interning not because he needs the money (it’s never even clarified that he’s paid at all) but because, as confessed in voice-over at the beginning of the film, “There’s a hole in my life, and I need to fill it.” In ways, "The Intern" seems to suggest that the remedy to senior depression is simply to “put ‘em to work!” even if that work involves menial labor and instantaneous deference to employers decades younger than you. "Grandma" is less utopian about the state of the economy, as Elle’s financial hardships leave her with a ramshackle L.A. bungalow and little else to live on (a mobile of cut-up credit cards twirls above her patio). Reminiscent of the 40 percent of American baby boomers with nothing saved for retirement, Elle’s hard up for cash, and the ensuing hunt for $600 prompts many of the film’s funniest moments: haggling over the value of first-edition feminist tomes at a womyn’s coffee shop, stealing weed from Sage’s boyfriend only to offer it for a price to an old flame (a wizened Sam Elliott). But Weitz doesn’t shy from the real anguish experienced by a woman at 70. Elle mourns the loss of her life partner, Violet, who has died a year earlier; she rues the literary margins at which her poetry has been cast; she breaks down at the thought of losing Olivia, coldly dubbing her a “footnote” to her life before bawling in the shower alone. It is for this reason—Elle’s very raw and tangible pain—that her undaunted solitary sojourn away from the camera during the film’s final scene turns out so deeply moving. By contrast, loss occasions only levity in Meyers’ film—a funeral home becomes a spot for a quirky first date between Ben and the office masseuse (a sultry Renee Russo), its innocuous petal-pink walls matched by the petal-pink cheeks of the affluent dearly beloved. Ben’s daily pill regimen suggests that he may have health troubles, but the brief scene in which his blood pressure seems to rocket is played more for laughs than concern. But then again, it’s a Nancy Meyers film; while "Grandma" leaves behind the high of a hand-crafted cocktail (something strong, a little bitter, with a cherry at the bottom), "The Intern" bestows the lingering headache of too many cheap Cosmos (sips syncopated to a soaring string accompaniment). There are currently more than 100 million adults in the United States over the age of 50, and until this year, baby boomers outnumbered every other generation in the United States. Generation X, the “neglected middle child,” has been compared to a “low-slung, straight-line bridge between two noisy behemoths,” by Paul Taylor, author of "The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown." Millennials and Generation Z seize most current media attention, but often not in a good way, often derided for their detachment from organized religion, dependence on social media, or even inability to form enduring romantic bonds. Baumbach’s recent features engage these subtler gulfs in generational values—how, despite any shared zest for craft beer or Bikram yoga, smaller age differences can be a beast to breach in daily life; when we speak of intergenerational conflicts, we rarely discuss those between people who aren't so far apart in years that one could be the other’s parent or child. "The Intern" and "Grandma" take a more obvious route, pairing septuagenarians with those decades younger, but thankfully resist full-blown nostalgia for the good old days in which their heroes came of age. And for each of these cases, there is something to be said for a Hollywood film that shows that there is life after 40—and before 20, and even past 70!—that age may be a matter of fact, yet never the object of pity. “Time passes. That’s for sure,” reads the pithy Eileen Myles epigram that launches "Grandma," Paul Weitz’s latest feature. Based on typical Hollywood fare, it could be hard to tell; unless one happens to be Meryl Streep or Richard Gere, life ends after 60, and if you happen to lack a Y chromosome it would seem to stop at least a decade earlier. But some of this might be changing. "Grandma," starring Lily Tomlin, 75, and Nancy Meyers' "The Intern," with Robert De Niro, 72, are making serious box office buck, drawing in audiences a third their age. Even odder is that neither film pivots around the trials of getting older or the fruits of late coupledom—rather, both focus on the relationships between those of a certain age and those considerably younger, part of a handful of recent movies eschewing traditional plots to tackle the tensions between traditionalists, baby boomers, Generations X, Y and Z. Why the shift? Perhaps the fact that now more than ever we are likely to have to deal with those much older and younger than ourselves. Partly due to rising longevity and falling retirement rates, in 2015, for the first time in history, all five generations could potentially share a workspace. For those of Generations X, Y and Z, delayed marriage and childbearing means that it’s not uncommon for a single 32-year-old to socialize with those five to 10 years older, to compete for internships with applicants fresh out of college. We are entering an age of the pan-generational mashup, and we need to learn how to listen. Widely lauded for cynical character-driven dramas ("The Squid and the Whale," "Greenberg"), Noah Baumbach released two films in 2015 that seem cheery by comparison, both inviting anyone under 50 to sort out what they have in common. In "While We’re Young," Gen Xers Josh and Cornelia—played by Ben Stiller, 49, and Naomi Watts, 47—befriend millennial hipster couple Jamie and Darby, played by Adam Driver, 31, and Amanda Seyfried, 29. All childless, the four bike across Brooklyn, frequent bougie artisanal restaurants and puke into shared ayahuasca buckets. This cozy cultural crochet joining X and Y eventually unravels—Jamie and Darby aren’t nearly as earnest or ebullient as they seemed, and Josh and Cornelia ultimately opt to become parents—but both couples plainly gain more than they lose in the process. "Mistress America," Baumbach’s late summer comedy, studies the bond between 30-year old Brooke, played by the unsinkable Greta Gerwig, and Tracy, her soon-to-be stepsister, a college first-year played by Lola Kirke. Brooke and Tracy go dancing, attend spinning class, visit bars that proffer complimentary hot dogs. The climax of the film follows a road trip from Manhattan to suburban Connecticut to beg Brooke’s married ex-fiancé (an amusing Michael Chernus) for a serious loan. In a hatchback packed with college kids and one feckless millennial, the transition from youthful insouciance to settled-down banality couldn’t be more explicit. Inevitably, Brooke and Lola “break up” as friends, and just as inevitably, they get back together, in the film’s final scene sharing Thanksgiving dinner in an East Village diner. Tracy boosts Brooke’s flagging confidence as a dreamer who hasn’t gotten her start yet, and Brooke grants self-conscious Tracy a sense of her own distinct appeal. As said in one of the film’s most memorable voice-overs, “Her beauty was that rare kind that made you want to look more like yourself and not like her." "Grandma" and "The Intern" feature an even broader age range—from 5 to 75—poking holes in presumptions of what it means to get old, feel young or (not so) simply grow up. In "Grandma," a kind of “every-wave” feminism unites Elle, an unorthodox matriarch played by Tomlin, her daughter Judy (Marcia Gay Harden), and teenage granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) when facing an unplanned pregnancy. As Ben, “senior intern” to CEO Jules, played by Anne Hathaway, De Niro becomes a grandfatherly confidant—to his boss, office colleagues and practically everyone else with whom he comes into contact. Though differing markedly in tone, style and budget, both films suggest that getting older can lead to a sense of fearlessness and resilience that the young are missing out on. Many have dubbed "Grandma" another “abortion film,” in the spirit of "Obvious Child," but the film’s real focus is on the clashes between the generations already born and blundering. “The gravity of the choice doesn’t elude us,” said Tomlin in an interview at the Sundance Film Festival—and in this film the gravity of the choice brings three generations of women together, quite literally, in a clinic waiting room. At the film’s start, Elle has just broken up with her much younger girlfriend Olivia (played by a very believable Judy Greer), and is soon after visited by her panicked granddaughter. The drama unfolds over the course of a single day, and throughout Tomlin wears her own clothing and drives her own 1955 Dodge Royal Lancer. It’s not surprising that Weitz wrote the role with only Tomlin in mind. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine "The Intern" with anyone but De Niro, who tempers predictable gentle paternalism with a progressive take on working moms and the glass ceiling in a way that seems surprisingly sincere. But it’s harder to take the cross-generational gusto seriously in a context of unlimited fiscal resources (or springy safety nets) for every character involved. Ben’s enviable Brookyn pad sports a kitchen island and walk-in closet. He’s interning not because he needs the money (it’s never even clarified that he’s paid at all) but because, as confessed in voice-over at the beginning of the film, “There’s a hole in my life, and I need to fill it.” In ways, "The Intern" seems to suggest that the remedy to senior depression is simply to “put ‘em to work!” even if that work involves menial labor and instantaneous deference to employers decades younger than you. "Grandma" is less utopian about the state of the economy, as Elle’s financial hardships leave her with a ramshackle L.A. bungalow and little else to live on (a mobile of cut-up credit cards twirls above her patio). Reminiscent of the 40 percent of American baby boomers with nothing saved for retirement, Elle’s hard up for cash, and the ensuing hunt for $600 prompts many of the film’s funniest moments: haggling over the value of first-edition feminist tomes at a womyn’s coffee shop, stealing weed from Sage’s boyfriend only to offer it for a price to an old flame (a wizened Sam Elliott). But Weitz doesn’t shy from the real anguish experienced by a woman at 70. Elle mourns the loss of her life partner, Violet, who has died a year earlier; she rues the literary margins at which her poetry has been cast; she breaks down at the thought of losing Olivia, coldly dubbing her a “footnote” to her life before bawling in the shower alone. It is for this reason—Elle’s very raw and tangible pain—that her undaunted solitary sojourn away from the camera during the film’s final scene turns out so deeply moving. By contrast, loss occasions only levity in Meyers’ film—a funeral home becomes a spot for a quirky first date between Ben and the office masseuse (a sultry Renee Russo), its innocuous petal-pink walls matched by the petal-pink cheeks of the affluent dearly beloved. Ben’s daily pill regimen suggests that he may have health troubles, but the brief scene in which his blood pressure seems to rocket is played more for laughs than concern. But then again, it’s a Nancy Meyers film; while "Grandma" leaves behind the high of a hand-crafted cocktail (something strong, a little bitter, with a cherry at the bottom), "The Intern" bestows the lingering headache of too many cheap Cosmos (sips syncopated to a soaring string accompaniment). There are currently more than 100 million adults in the United States over the age of 50, and until this year, baby boomers outnumbered every other generation in the United States. Generation X, the “neglected middle child,” has been compared to a “low-slung, straight-line bridge between two noisy behemoths,” by Paul Taylor, author of "The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown." Millennials and Generation Z seize most current media attention, but often not in a good way, often derided for their detachment from organized religion, dependence on social media, or even inability to form enduring romantic bonds. Baumbach’s recent features engage these subtler gulfs in generational values—how, despite any shared zest for craft beer or Bikram yoga, smaller age differences can be a beast to breach in daily life; when we speak of intergenerational conflicts, we rarely discuss those between people who aren't so far apart in years that one could be the other’s parent or child. "The Intern" and "Grandma" take a more obvious route, pairing septuagenarians with those decades younger, but thankfully resist full-blown nostalgia for the good old days in which their heroes came of age. And for each of these cases, there is something to be said for a Hollywood film that shows that there is life after 40—and before 20, and even past 70!—that age may be a matter of fact, yet never the object of pity.

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Big Coal’s disgusting cash grab: Miners are being victimized all over again

This story was co-published with The Daily Beast. There was plenty in the complex deal to benefit bankers, lawyers, executives and hedge fund managers. Patriot Coal Corp. was bankrupt, but its mines would be auctioned to pay off mounting debts while financial engineering would generate enough cash to cover the cost of the proceedings. When the plan was filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in Richmond last week, however, one group didn’t come out so well: 208 retired miners, wives and widows in southern Indiana who have no direct connection to Patriot Coal. Millions of dollars earmarked for their health care as they age would effectively be diverted instead to legal fees and other bills from the bankruptcy. As coal companies go bankrupt or shut down throughout Appalachia and parts of the Midwest, the immediate fallout includes lost jobs and devastated communities. But the Indiana case stands out as an example of how financial deals hatched far from coal country can also endanger the future safety net. At issue is health insurance promised to people who worked for the Squaw Creek Coal Company in Warrick County, Indiana, near Evansville, who, like other retired union miners, counted on coverage after they turned 55. “We were assured as miners we would have lifetime health-care benefits — no one ever envisioned that we would have to worry about these other things that were going on,” said Bil Musgrave, 59, one of the retired miners in Indiana. “A lot of them depend entirely on this.” Secure health insurance has been one casualty of the wave of bankruptcies. Companies in decline are seeking to offload those obligations onto taxpayers, putting more stress on an already-strained federal safety net. An effort is underway in Congress to protect at least some families facing a loss in benefits because of the industry’s turmoil, but its prospects are unclear. Squaw Creek, where Musgrave started working almost 40 years ago, opened as a joint venture between Alcoa, and Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company. The unionized surface mine in Warrick County, Indiana, near Evansville, powered Alcoa’s huge aluminum plant nearby. The venture mostly petered out by the late 1990s, though mining has since resumed in the same area, using non-union miners. Under their union contract, miners who worked at least 20 years at Squaw Creek were entitled to a pension and to health care coverage once they reached 55. For many of those who are still under 65, this coverage is what they rely on; for those who are on Medicare, it offers a supplement to cover the extensive health care costs many of them now face. Some suffer from black lung disease, while others, including Musgrave, have fought cancers they believe are linked to industrial waste dumps at Squaw Creek. The Squaw Creek miners thought little of it when, in 2007, Peabody passed what remained of its Alcoa venture — some environmental reclamation work at the mine — to an offshoot called Heritage Coal, a subsidiary of a new entity Peabody created called Patriot Coal. The health care obligation for the retirees was assumed by Alcoa, which paid Patriot to administer the benefits. The United Mine Workers of America estimates this has been costing Alcoa about $2 million per year to cover the 208 miners, wives and widows. But here’s where the financial engineering got complicated and ultimately threatened those benefits: Peabody also transferred to Patriot 13 percent of its coal reserves, and about 40 percent of its health care liabilities — the obligations for 8,400 former Peabody workers. A year later, Patriot was loaded up with even more costs when it acquired Magnum Coal, a subsidiary of the country’s second-largest mining company, Arch Coal. This left Patriot with responsibility for another 2,300 retirees, and, by 2012, total liabilities of $1.37 billion. It looked as if Patriot had been set up to fail, and in 2013 it in fact did, seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Patriot emerged from bankruptcy later that year after getting an investment stake from a New York hedge fund called Knighthead Capital Management. Patriot also reached a deal with the mine workers union to have it take over responsibility for the health care of those nearly 11,000 retirees, with a promise of about $310 million from Patriot to help cover the cost. Still, the deal wasn’t enough to keep Patriot healthy. With the industry contracting even further amid competition from natural gas, tougher environmental regulations and declining coals reserves in Appalachia, Patriot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yet again earlier this year. This time, its assets are being auctioned off. Back in Indiana, there was no reason for the retired Squaw Creek miners to think their benefits were at risk from the Patriot bankruptcy, since they were being paid by Alcoa, a thriving company with $24 billion in annual revenue. But last week, Patriot’s lawyers, from the firm Kirkland & Ellis, made two filings at the bankruptcy court in Richmond that caught the union and the retired miners by surprise. In the filings, the lawyers informed the court that Patriot (or technically, its subsidiary Heritage) had negotiated a $22 million payment from Alcoa to assume the outstanding health care obligations for the Squaw Creek workers. The deal offers savings to Alcoa, given that the actuarial cost of the benefits is $40 million. But here’s the catch: Patriot is not putting the $22 million toward the Squaw Creek health care benefits. According to the court filings, only $4 million will go toward that purpose — $1 million for the benefits of former salaried managers at the mine, and $3 million for the rank-and-file miners. The rest of the money from Alcoa — $18 million — is going to cover the costs of the bankruptcy. This includes the fees for Kirkland & Ellis, which has at least four attorneys from New York and Chicago on the case, and the Washington, D.C. restructuring advisory firm _Alvarez & Marsal. The agreement with Alcoa, one filing states, “allows the Debtors [that is, Patriot] to obtain cash in the amount of $22,000,000, which will be critical for funding the Debtors’ costs associated with emerging from chapter 11.” In other words, the cash for health care benefits guaranteed to miners who never worked for Patriot Coal — who live in a state far from Patriot’s base in West Virginia — is now being used to pay the bills of lawyers and other professionals overseeing the break-up of Patriot Coal. The Kirkland & Ellis lawyers on the case either did not return calls and e-mails or declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Patriot said the company “has no further comment” beyond the filings. An Alcoa spokeswoman said that company also had no comment. Knighthead, the hedge fund behind Patriot, did not return calls. Under Patriot’s agreement with Alcoa, the Squaw Creek workers will be added to the larger pool of retirees covered under the union’s 2013 agreement with Patriot. The people in that pool, who now number about 12,000, get health insurance from the union-supervised Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association. But Patriot’s $3 million contribution to the beneficiary fund will only cover about 18 months of benefits for the Squaw Creek miners — putting more stress on a fund that is already expected to run dry in a few years. The union is pushing legislation in Congress that would put the 12,000 Peabody/Patriot retirees into yet another fund that has since 1992 been covering union retirees from shuttered mines. That fund was for years fed by the interest from fees coal companies were paying to restore abandoned mines, but since 2006 it has been buttressed by $490 million per year in taxpayer money. The bill has 54 co-sponsors, but is still awaiting a hearing in the House. Meanwhile, Patriot’s deal with Alcoa, and its plan to put most of the money toward bankruptcy costs, goes before the bankruptcy court Monday in Richmond for approval. “What we’re seeing here is a very shady deal to deprive 200-plus elderly and working Americans of the benefits they’ve earned so that these lawyers can put money in their pockets,” said union spokesman Phil Smith.

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Kershaw gets 300 strikeouts, 1st pitcher to do it since 2002

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers recorded his 300th strikeout of the season, becoming the first major league pitcher in 13 years to do so.

Kershaw had seven strikeouts in 3 2-3 innings Sunday against the San Diego Padres, leaving with a 2-0 lead. He reached the 300-mark with a swinging strikeout of Melvin Upton Jr. to end the third.

Kershaw concluded the regular season with 301 strikeouts, joining former Arizona teammates Randy Johnson (2000-02) and Curt Schilling (2002) as the only pitchers since 2000 to record 300.

He joined mentor Sandy Koufax as the only Dodgers to reach the mark. Koufax last did it in 1966.

Kershaw received a standing ovation from the crowd in his final tuneup before the Dodgers open the NL Division Series at home against the New York Mets on Friday.

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The pope’s billionaire entourage: How the 1 percent embarrassed themselves before the pontiff

Many of you know the words: “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” So sayeth Jesus in the New Testament’s Book of Matthew, Chapter 19, Verse 24. The pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. But if you were taking a close look at and giving a careful listen to some of those surrounding Pope Francis during his visit here in New York last week, you could practically hear joints pop and muscles groan as the superwealthy contorted themselves to thread the needle and purchase their way into the pontiff’s good graces. Camels? These wealthy dromedaries gave a new meaning to Hump Day. Notwithstanding his encounter with notorious, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, the pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. In fact, since before the Reformation, when the Catholic Church sold indulgences – pre-paid, non-stop tickets to heaven for affluent sinners –there has not often been such a display of ecclesiastic, conspicuous consumption and genuflection. All of which, of course, is more than ironic when you think about the things Pope Francis has said and written about the rich and poor, some of which he expressed during last week’s papal tour. Back in November 2013, the pope wrote that, “While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.” Ideas like that got Kenneth Langone, billionaire founder of Home Depot and major political bankroller of New Jersey’s Chris Christie, a little hot under the collar. You may remember that last year he created a stir when he told Politico that he hoped a rise in populist sentiment against the one percent was not working, “because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” A year before, in 2013, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan had enlisted the DIY plutocrat to help raise $175 million to restore the grand and elegant St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, but in an interview Langone gave to the money network CNBC, he said one of his high rolling potential donors was concerned that the pope was being overly critical of market economies as “exclusionary” and attacking a “culture of prosperity… incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” So Langone complained to Cardinal Dolan, and this is how the cardinal says he replied: “‘Well, Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father’s message. The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people…’ So I said, ‘Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We’ve gotta correct to make sure this gentleman understands the Holy Father’s message properly.’ And then I think he’s gonna say, ‘Oh, OK. If that’s the case, count me in for St. Patrick’s Cathedral.'”

“Oh, OK?” Oh, brother. Wonder how Pope Francis would have responded to that bit of priestly pragmatism? After all, Francis is the one who wrote, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

But sure enough, there in the exclusive crowd at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue Thursday night, hanging out as the Vicar of Christ celebrated Vespers, was Kenneth Langone, soaking it all in. There, too, reportedly, were a couple of other crony capitalists and St. Patrick’s fundraisers – Frank Bisignano, president and CEO of First Data Corp., and Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of Bank of America. Bisignano, known as “Wall Street’s Mr. Fix-It” used to work for Citigroup and for Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and reportedly received annual compensation at First Data to the tune of $9.3 million. Moynihan was paid $13 million for 2014, down from $14 million in 2013. Last year, Bank of America, the second largest in the country – but the most hated — made a record-breaking $16.65 billion settlement with the Justice Department to pay up for allegations of unloading toxic mortgage investments during the housing boom. Nice. But of all the fat cats suddenly in the thrall of the People’s Pope, one was the most impressive. Watching Francis on television Friday afternoon as he met with kids up in East Harlem at Our Lady Queen of Angels primary school, I noticed a well-dressed man hovering near the pontiff. A politician, a government or Vatican official, I wondered? Nope, it was none other than Stephen Schwarzman, head of the giant private equity firm Blackstone. He was paid a whopping $690 million last year and last week, he and his wife donated $40 million to pay for scholarships to New York City’s Catholic schools. A generous gift for sure, but as Bill Moyers and I wrote in 2012, this is the same Stephen Schwarzman “whose agents in 2006 launched a predatory raid on a travel company in Colorado. His fund bought it, laid off 841 employees, and recouped its entire investment in just seven months — one of the quickest returns on capital ever for such a deal.” “To celebrate his 60th birthday Mr. Schwarzman rented the Park Avenue Armory here in New York at a cost of $3 million, including a gospel choir led by Patti LaBelle that serenaded him with ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ Does he ever — his net worth is estimated at nearly $5 billion.” As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Armory’s entrance [was] hung with banners painted to replicate Mr. Schwarzman’s sprawling Park Avenue apartment. A brass band and children clad in military uniforms ushered in guests… The menu included lobster, baked Alaska and a 2004 Louis Jadot Chassagne Montrachet, among other fine wines.” It must have seemed like Heaven to some. And what makes this billionaire’s proximity to the pope all the more surreal is that just the morning before, Francis had spoken to Congress in reverent tones of two outspoken, radical, New York Catholics; activist and organizer Dorothy Day – co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement — and Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton, each of whom embraced poverty, social justice and resistance. “We believe in an economy based on human needs rather than on the profit motive,” Day wrote, and Merton worried about “the versatile blandishments of money.” Day wished the church’s bounty to be spread among the needy and not spent on cathedrals and ephemera. And Merton wrote, “It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God’s will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you, try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God’s will yourself.” Whether the irony struck Stephen Schwarzman is unknown. He himself was probably in too much of a hurry for contemplation. After East Harlem, he rushed off to the White House and that state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. His plus-one was Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager who infamously told employees they should be like hyenas stalking wildebeest: “It is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and the interest of the greater system… because killing and eating the wildebeest fosters evolution (i.e., the natural process of improvement).” There you have it. In the Bible – right before the camel and the eye of a needle, Jesus says, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Masters of the Universe like Dalio and Schwarzman prefer the Law of the Jungle, buying proximity to holiness and assuaging guilt with cash, all the while upholding savage nature red in tooth and claw. By the way, Schwarzman’s wife gave the White House dinner a pass. She had a better deal: an excellent, paid in advance seat at the pope’s mass in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden. Many of you know the words: “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” So sayeth Jesus in the New Testament’s Book of Matthew, Chapter 19, Verse 24. The pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. But if you were taking a close look at and giving a careful listen to some of those surrounding Pope Francis during his visit here in New York last week, you could practically hear joints pop and muscles groan as the superwealthy contorted themselves to thread the needle and purchase their way into the pontiff’s good graces. Camels? These wealthy dromedaries gave a new meaning to Hump Day. Notwithstanding his encounter with notorious, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, the pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. In fact, since before the Reformation, when the Catholic Church sold indulgences – pre-paid, non-stop tickets to heaven for affluent sinners –there has not often been such a display of ecclesiastic, conspicuous consumption and genuflection. All of which, of course, is more than ironic when you think about the things Pope Francis has said and written about the rich and poor, some of which he expressed during last week’s papal tour. Back in November 2013, the pope wrote that, “While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.” Ideas like that got Kenneth Langone, billionaire founder of Home Depot and major political bankroller of New Jersey’s Chris Christie, a little hot under the collar. You may remember that last year he created a stir when he told Politico that he hoped a rise in populist sentiment against the one percent was not working, “because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” A year before, in 2013, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan had enlisted the DIY plutocrat to help raise $175 million to restore the grand and elegant St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, but in an interview Langone gave to the money network CNBC, he said one of his high rolling potential donors was concerned that the pope was being overly critical of market economies as “exclusionary” and attacking a “culture of prosperity… incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” So Langone complained to Cardinal Dolan, and this is how the cardinal says he replied: “‘Well, Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father’s message. The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people…’ So I said, ‘Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We’ve gotta correct to make sure this gentleman understands the Holy Father’s message properly.’ And then I think he’s gonna say, ‘Oh, OK. If that’s the case, count me in for St. Patrick’s Cathedral.'”

“Oh, OK?” Oh, brother. Wonder how Pope Francis would have responded to that bit of priestly pragmatism? After all, Francis is the one who wrote, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

But sure enough, there in the exclusive crowd at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue Thursday night, hanging out as the Vicar of Christ celebrated Vespers, was Kenneth Langone, soaking it all in. There, too, reportedly, were a couple of other crony capitalists and St. Patrick’s fundraisers – Frank Bisignano, president and CEO of First Data Corp., and Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of Bank of America. Bisignano, known as “Wall Street’s Mr. Fix-It” used to work for Citigroup and for Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and reportedly received annual compensation at First Data to the tune of $9.3 million. Moynihan was paid $13 million for 2014, down from $14 million in 2013. Last year, Bank of America, the second largest in the country – but the most hated — made a record-breaking $16.65 billion settlement with the Justice Department to pay up for allegations of unloading toxic mortgage investments during the housing boom. Nice. But of all the fat cats suddenly in the thrall of the People’s Pope, one was the most impressive. Watching Francis on television Friday afternoon as he met with kids up in East Harlem at Our Lady Queen of Angels primary school, I noticed a well-dressed man hovering near the pontiff. A politician, a government or Vatican official, I wondered? Nope, it was none other than Stephen Schwarzman, head of the giant private equity firm Blackstone. He was paid a whopping $690 million last year and last week, he and his wife donated $40 million to pay for scholarships to New York City’s Catholic schools. A generous gift for sure, but as Bill Moyers and I wrote in 2012, this is the same Stephen Schwarzman “whose agents in 2006 launched a predatory raid on a travel company in Colorado. His fund bought it, laid off 841 employees, and recouped its entire investment in just seven months — one of the quickest returns on capital ever for such a deal.” “To celebrate his 60th birthday Mr. Schwarzman rented the Park Avenue Armory here in New York at a cost of $3 million, including a gospel choir led by Patti LaBelle that serenaded him with ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ Does he ever — his net worth is estimated at nearly $5 billion.” As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Armory’s entrance [was] hung with banners painted to replicate Mr. Schwarzman’s sprawling Park Avenue apartment. A brass band and children clad in military uniforms ushered in guests… The menu included lobster, baked Alaska and a 2004 Louis Jadot Chassagne Montrachet, among other fine wines.” It must have seemed like Heaven to some. And what makes this billionaire’s proximity to the pope all the more surreal is that just the morning before, Francis had spoken to Congress in reverent tones of two outspoken, radical, New York Catholics; activist and organizer Dorothy Day – co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement — and Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton, each of whom embraced poverty, social justice and resistance. “We believe in an economy based on human needs rather than on the profit motive,” Day wrote, and Merton worried about “the versatile blandishments of money.” Day wished the church’s bounty to be spread among the needy and not spent on cathedrals and ephemera. And Merton wrote, “It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God’s will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you, try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God’s will yourself.” Whether the irony struck Stephen Schwarzman is unknown. He himself was probably in too much of a hurry for contemplation. After East Harlem, he rushed off to the White House and that state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. His plus-one was Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager who infamously told employees they should be like hyenas stalking wildebeest: “It is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and the interest of the greater system… because killing and eating the wildebeest fosters evolution (i.e., the natural process of improvement).” There you have it. In the Bible – right before the camel and the eye of a needle, Jesus says, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Masters of the Universe like Dalio and Schwarzman prefer the Law of the Jungle, buying proximity to holiness and assuaging guilt with cash, all the while upholding savage nature red in tooth and claw. By the way, Schwarzman’s wife gave the White House dinner a pass. She had a better deal: an excellent, paid in advance seat at the pope’s mass in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden. Many of you know the words: “And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” So sayeth Jesus in the New Testament’s Book of Matthew, Chapter 19, Verse 24. The pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. But if you were taking a close look at and giving a careful listen to some of those surrounding Pope Francis during his visit here in New York last week, you could practically hear joints pop and muscles groan as the superwealthy contorted themselves to thread the needle and purchase their way into the pontiff’s good graces. Camels? These wealthy dromedaries gave a new meaning to Hump Day. Notwithstanding his encounter with notorious, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, the pope’s visit to the United States last week was a success, with millions turning out to get even a glimpse of him. But some had much better views than others. In fact, since before the Reformation, when the Catholic Church sold indulgences – pre-paid, non-stop tickets to heaven for affluent sinners –there has not often been such a display of ecclesiastic, conspicuous consumption and genuflection. All of which, of course, is more than ironic when you think about the things Pope Francis has said and written about the rich and poor, some of which he expressed during last week’s papal tour. Back in November 2013, the pope wrote that, “While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few… A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.” Ideas like that got Kenneth Langone, billionaire founder of Home Depot and major political bankroller of New Jersey’s Chris Christie, a little hot under the collar. You may remember that last year he created a stir when he told Politico that he hoped a rise in populist sentiment against the one percent was not working, “because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” A year before, in 2013, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan had enlisted the DIY plutocrat to help raise $175 million to restore the grand and elegant St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, but in an interview Langone gave to the money network CNBC, he said one of his high rolling potential donors was concerned that the pope was being overly critical of market economies as “exclusionary” and attacking a “culture of prosperity… incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.” So Langone complained to Cardinal Dolan, and this is how the cardinal says he replied: “‘Well, Ken, that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father’s message. The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people…’ So I said, ‘Ken, thanks for bringing it to my attention. We’ve gotta correct to make sure this gentleman understands the Holy Father’s message properly.’ And then I think he’s gonna say, ‘Oh, OK. If that’s the case, count me in for St. Patrick’s Cathedral.'”

“Oh, OK?” Oh, brother. Wonder how Pope Francis would have responded to that bit of priestly pragmatism? After all, Francis is the one who wrote, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

But sure enough, there in the exclusive crowd at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue Thursday night, hanging out as the Vicar of Christ celebrated Vespers, was Kenneth Langone, soaking it all in. There, too, reportedly, were a couple of other crony capitalists and St. Patrick’s fundraisers – Frank Bisignano, president and CEO of First Data Corp., and Brian Moynihan, chairman and CEO of Bank of America. Bisignano, known as “Wall Street’s Mr. Fix-It” used to work for Citigroup and for Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and reportedly received annual compensation at First Data to the tune of $9.3 million. Moynihan was paid $13 million for 2014, down from $14 million in 2013. Last year, Bank of America, the second largest in the country – but the most hated — made a record-breaking $16.65 billion settlement with the Justice Department to pay up for allegations of unloading toxic mortgage investments during the housing boom. Nice. But of all the fat cats suddenly in the thrall of the People’s Pope, one was the most impressive. Watching Francis on television Friday afternoon as he met with kids up in East Harlem at Our Lady Queen of Angels primary school, I noticed a well-dressed man hovering near the pontiff. A politician, a government or Vatican official, I wondered? Nope, it was none other than Stephen Schwarzman, head of the giant private equity firm Blackstone. He was paid a whopping $690 million last year and last week, he and his wife donated $40 million to pay for scholarships to New York City’s Catholic schools. A generous gift for sure, but as Bill Moyers and I wrote in 2012, this is the same Stephen Schwarzman “whose agents in 2006 launched a predatory raid on a travel company in Colorado. His fund bought it, laid off 841 employees, and recouped its entire investment in just seven months — one of the quickest returns on capital ever for such a deal.” “To celebrate his 60th birthday Mr. Schwarzman rented the Park Avenue Armory here in New York at a cost of $3 million, including a gospel choir led by Patti LaBelle that serenaded him with ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ Does he ever — his net worth is estimated at nearly $5 billion.” As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The Armory’s entrance [was] hung with banners painted to replicate Mr. Schwarzman’s sprawling Park Avenue apartment. A brass band and children clad in military uniforms ushered in guests… The menu included lobster, baked Alaska and a 2004 Louis Jadot Chassagne Montrachet, among other fine wines.” It must have seemed like Heaven to some. And what makes this billionaire’s proximity to the pope all the more surreal is that just the morning before, Francis had spoken to Congress in reverent tones of two outspoken, radical, New York Catholics; activist and organizer Dorothy Day – co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement — and Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton, each of whom embraced poverty, social justice and resistance. “We believe in an economy based on human needs rather than on the profit motive,” Day wrote, and Merton worried about “the versatile blandishments of money.” Day wished the church’s bounty to be spread among the needy and not spent on cathedrals and ephemera. And Merton wrote, “It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as God’s will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe you, try to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as God’s will yourself.” Whether the irony struck Stephen Schwarzman is unknown. He himself was probably in too much of a hurry for contemplation. After East Harlem, he rushed off to the White House and that state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. His plus-one was Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager who infamously told employees they should be like hyenas stalking wildebeest: “It is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and the interest of the greater system… because killing and eating the wildebeest fosters evolution (i.e., the natural process of improvement).” There you have it. In the Bible – right before the camel and the eye of a needle, Jesus says, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.” Masters of the Universe like Dalio and Schwarzman prefer the Law of the Jungle, buying proximity to holiness and assuaging guilt with cash, all the while upholding savage nature red in tooth and claw. By the way, Schwarzman’s wife gave the White House dinner a pass. She had a better deal: an excellent, paid in advance seat at the pope’s mass in Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden.

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Ben Carson slanders Islam: Here’s exactly why his claims about Muslims are dead wrong

In his recent anti-Muslim crusade, Ben Carson promoted a disturbing form of religious segregation, claiming that a Muslim should only be president if he or she “renounces the tenets of Islam.” Sadly, just as racial segregationists long garnered votes by promoting fear of black Americans, religious segregationists such as Carson today garner votes by promoting fear of Muslim Americans. In fact, Carson’s anti-Muslim intolerance has advanced his polling numbers and dramatically increased his campaign fundraising. In the process, Dr. Carson has helped promote and sustain frighteningly high levels of anti-Muslim sentiment. A recent PPP survey in North Carolina reported that 72 percent believe a Muslim should not be allowed to be president of the United States. Likewise, 40 percent seek to ban Islam altogether. Under Dr. Carson’s crusade of religious segregation, some Americans appear to have forgotten the First Amendment’s fundamental religious freedom guarantee, and likewise Article VI of the Constitution, which forbids religious tests for any government office. Like his racial segregationist predecessors, Dr. Carson demonstrates that the Constitution is suddenly meaningless when influential politicians use fear and hate to advance their agenda. Undeterred from his myopic comments on CNN and the resulting blowback last week, Carson advanced his religious segregationist views in a recent email to his constituents, claiming that “Under Shariah law, women must be subservient and people following other religions must be killed.” Dr. Carson defends these claims by arguing that he “hate[s] political correctness. It’s dangerous.” More dangerous, however, are his patently false claims about women in Islam, and Islam’s view of non-Muslims. If Dr. Carson is correct—and unfortunately his rising poll figures indicate that enough Americans believe he is correct—then America’s 3 million Muslims are obliged to make America’s 170 million women subservient and likewise kill the nation’s 330 million non-Muslims. Both concepts are beyond absurd and wholly unfounded in Islam. For example, far from Dr. Carson’s claim that in Islam women are subservient, Islam gave women equal rights in 610 that our own United States haven’t given even in 2015. To this day America has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Meanwhile the Quran 33:36 emphatically declares the equality of men and women:

“Surely, men who submit themselves to God and women who submit themselves to Him…God has prepared for all of them forgiveness and a great reward.”

Carson’s parents divorced when he was 8—a right American women didn’t have until the 19th century. Meanwhile, Islam was the first religion to give women the right to choose to marry or to divorce, the right to own property, to become secular or religious scholars, the right to inherit, or to run a business—all in the 7th century. Ayesha, wife of Muhammad, is recognized as one of the foremost legal scholars in Islamic history. Meanwhile, American women finally earn legal recognition as lawyers in the late 1800s. While women of color in 2015 America continue to lag behind white women in terms of college graduation rates and access to financial resources, Fatimah al-Fihri, an African Muslim woman scholar, used her inheritance from her father to establish the world's first University, al-Qarawiyyin University in 859 C.E. Prophet Muhammad repeatedly declared, “It is incumbent upon every Muslim male and every Muslim female to attain education.” Dr. Carson’s second claim, that Shariah requires killing people of other faiths, is highly objectionable to both the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. In truth, the Qur’an only permits fighting in self-defense, or to protect “churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques” from attack. Prophet Muhammad issued numerous charters with Christians, Jews, and pagans to affirm his commitment to universal religious freedom and equal human rights for all people regardless of faith. Throughout history non-Muslim historians have praised Muhammad for his pluralism and tolerance. While extremists have no doubt attempted to malign true Islam, Dr. Carson should recognize that a president’s role is to build bridges of peace and understanding—not fear and intolerance. Just as the George Wallaces of Dr. Carson’s childhood are remembered with disdain for their racial segregationist views, Dr. Carson risks a future where our children remember him in disdain for his religious segregationist views. America was founded on the ideal of religious pluralism, not religious segregation. It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to realize this fact. Actually, I take that back. Qasim Rashid, Esq. is the national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal School of Islamic Studies. His forthcoming book Talk To Me is due out December 15. Follow him on Twitter @MuslimIQ. In his recent anti-Muslim crusade, Ben Carson promoted a disturbing form of religious segregation, claiming that a Muslim should only be president if he or she “renounces the tenets of Islam.” Sadly, just as racial segregationists long garnered votes by promoting fear of black Americans, religious segregationists such as Carson today garner votes by promoting fear of Muslim Americans. In fact, Carson’s anti-Muslim intolerance has advanced his polling numbers and dramatically increased his campaign fundraising. In the process, Dr. Carson has helped promote and sustain frighteningly high levels of anti-Muslim sentiment. A recent PPP survey in North Carolina reported that 72 percent believe a Muslim should not be allowed to be president of the United States. Likewise, 40 percent seek to ban Islam altogether. Under Dr. Carson’s crusade of religious segregation, some Americans appear to have forgotten the First Amendment’s fundamental religious freedom guarantee, and likewise Article VI of the Constitution, which forbids religious tests for any government office. Like his racial segregationist predecessors, Dr. Carson demonstrates that the Constitution is suddenly meaningless when influential politicians use fear and hate to advance their agenda. Undeterred from his myopic comments on CNN and the resulting blowback last week, Carson advanced his religious segregationist views in a recent email to his constituents, claiming that “Under Shariah law, women must be subservient and people following other religions must be killed.” Dr. Carson defends these claims by arguing that he “hate[s] political correctness. It’s dangerous.” More dangerous, however, are his patently false claims about women in Islam, and Islam’s view of non-Muslims. If Dr. Carson is correct—and unfortunately his rising poll figures indicate that enough Americans believe he is correct—then America’s 3 million Muslims are obliged to make America’s 170 million women subservient and likewise kill the nation’s 330 million non-Muslims. Both concepts are beyond absurd and wholly unfounded in Islam. For example, far from Dr. Carson’s claim that in Islam women are subservient, Islam gave women equal rights in 610 that our own United States haven’t given even in 2015. To this day America has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Meanwhile the Quran 33:36 emphatically declares the equality of men and women:

“Surely, men who submit themselves to God and women who submit themselves to Him…God has prepared for all of them forgiveness and a great reward.”

Carson’s parents divorced when he was 8—a right American women didn’t have until the 19th century. Meanwhile, Islam was the first religion to give women the right to choose to marry or to divorce, the right to own property, to become secular or religious scholars, the right to inherit, or to run a business—all in the 7th century. Ayesha, wife of Muhammad, is recognized as one of the foremost legal scholars in Islamic history. Meanwhile, American women finally earn legal recognition as lawyers in the late 1800s. While women of color in 2015 America continue to lag behind white women in terms of college graduation rates and access to financial resources, Fatimah al-Fihri, an African Muslim woman scholar, used her inheritance from her father to establish the world's first University, al-Qarawiyyin University in 859 C.E. Prophet Muhammad repeatedly declared, “It is incumbent upon every Muslim male and every Muslim female to attain education.” Dr. Carson’s second claim, that Shariah requires killing people of other faiths, is highly objectionable to both the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. In truth, the Qur’an only permits fighting in self-defense, or to protect “churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques” from attack. Prophet Muhammad issued numerous charters with Christians, Jews, and pagans to affirm his commitment to universal religious freedom and equal human rights for all people regardless of faith. Throughout history non-Muslim historians have praised Muhammad for his pluralism and tolerance. While extremists have no doubt attempted to malign true Islam, Dr. Carson should recognize that a president’s role is to build bridges of peace and understanding—not fear and intolerance. Just as the George Wallaces of Dr. Carson’s childhood are remembered with disdain for their racial segregationist views, Dr. Carson risks a future where our children remember him in disdain for his religious segregationist views. America was founded on the ideal of religious pluralism, not religious segregation. It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to realize this fact. Actually, I take that back. Qasim Rashid, Esq. is the national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal School of Islamic Studies. His forthcoming book Talk To Me is due out December 15. Follow him on Twitter @MuslimIQ. In his recent anti-Muslim crusade, Ben Carson promoted a disturbing form of religious segregation, claiming that a Muslim should only be president if he or she “renounces the tenets of Islam.” Sadly, just as racial segregationists long garnered votes by promoting fear of black Americans, religious segregationists such as Carson today garner votes by promoting fear of Muslim Americans. In fact, Carson’s anti-Muslim intolerance has advanced his polling numbers and dramatically increased his campaign fundraising. In the process, Dr. Carson has helped promote and sustain frighteningly high levels of anti-Muslim sentiment. A recent PPP survey in North Carolina reported that 72 percent believe a Muslim should not be allowed to be president of the United States. Likewise, 40 percent seek to ban Islam altogether. Under Dr. Carson’s crusade of religious segregation, some Americans appear to have forgotten the First Amendment’s fundamental religious freedom guarantee, and likewise Article VI of the Constitution, which forbids religious tests for any government office. Like his racial segregationist predecessors, Dr. Carson demonstrates that the Constitution is suddenly meaningless when influential politicians use fear and hate to advance their agenda. Undeterred from his myopic comments on CNN and the resulting blowback last week, Carson advanced his religious segregationist views in a recent email to his constituents, claiming that “Under Shariah law, women must be subservient and people following other religions must be killed.” Dr. Carson defends these claims by arguing that he “hate[s] political correctness. It’s dangerous.” More dangerous, however, are his patently false claims about women in Islam, and Islam’s view of non-Muslims. If Dr. Carson is correct—and unfortunately his rising poll figures indicate that enough Americans believe he is correct—then America’s 3 million Muslims are obliged to make America’s 170 million women subservient and likewise kill the nation’s 330 million non-Muslims. Both concepts are beyond absurd and wholly unfounded in Islam. For example, far from Dr. Carson’s claim that in Islam women are subservient, Islam gave women equal rights in 610 that our own United States haven’t given even in 2015. To this day America has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. Meanwhile the Quran 33:36 emphatically declares the equality of men and women:

“Surely, men who submit themselves to God and women who submit themselves to Him…God has prepared for all of them forgiveness and a great reward.”

Carson’s parents divorced when he was 8—a right American women didn’t have until the 19th century. Meanwhile, Islam was the first religion to give women the right to choose to marry or to divorce, the right to own property, to become secular or religious scholars, the right to inherit, or to run a business—all in the 7th century. Ayesha, wife of Muhammad, is recognized as one of the foremost legal scholars in Islamic history. Meanwhile, American women finally earn legal recognition as lawyers in the late 1800s. While women of color in 2015 America continue to lag behind white women in terms of college graduation rates and access to financial resources, Fatimah al-Fihri, an African Muslim woman scholar, used her inheritance from her father to establish the world's first University, al-Qarawiyyin University in 859 C.E. Prophet Muhammad repeatedly declared, “It is incumbent upon every Muslim male and every Muslim female to attain education.” Dr. Carson’s second claim, that Shariah requires killing people of other faiths, is highly objectionable to both the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad. In truth, the Qur’an only permits fighting in self-defense, or to protect “churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques” from attack. Prophet Muhammad issued numerous charters with Christians, Jews, and pagans to affirm his commitment to universal religious freedom and equal human rights for all people regardless of faith. Throughout history non-Muslim historians have praised Muhammad for his pluralism and tolerance. While extremists have no doubt attempted to malign true Islam, Dr. Carson should recognize that a president’s role is to build bridges of peace and understanding—not fear and intolerance. Just as the George Wallaces of Dr. Carson’s childhood are remembered with disdain for their racial segregationist views, Dr. Carson risks a future where our children remember him in disdain for his religious segregationist views. America was founded on the ideal of religious pluralism, not religious segregation. It doesn’t take a neurosurgeon to realize this fact. Actually, I take that back. Qasim Rashid, Esq. is the national spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal School of Islamic Studies. His forthcoming book Talk To Me is due out December 15. Follow him on Twitter @MuslimIQ.

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Parental rights for rapists? You’d be surprised how cruel the law can be

In 2009, Jaime Melendez raped and impregnated a 14-year-old girl in Massachusetts. He pleaded guilty, was sentenced to lengthy probation, and was ordered to pay child support. Then he pulled a familiar, and perfectly legal, maneuver: He demanded visitation rights, and offered to drop his demand if he no longer had to pay child support. A few years earlier, a North Carolina woman became pregnant as the result of rape and placed the baby for adoption. To complete the process, she was required to get permission from the father – who was in jail awaiting trial for the rape. He told her he would agree to the adoption if she didn’t testify against him at the trial. “What do I do?” she later asked. “Protect society or protect the adoption?” The law provided no answer. For the one-third of rape victims who become pregnant and carry their pregnancies to term, the law can be cruel indeed. A father’s right to be an active parent is no less hard-wired into the law than that of a mother. Rape victims are often forced to consult with their assailants on matters such as schools, summer camps and religious practices, and also to share custody. In about 15 states, rape victims have no legal protection against decades of intimate ties with the men they least want to associate with. Other states provide only minimal remedies. A woman’s decision to keep the child can thus bring years of manipulation, harassment and intimidation, as well as interference with her efforts to recover from her rape. Women still have the right to terminate pregnancies that result from rape, but many victims’ religious, moral or other beliefs make that simply not an option. As expressed by attorney-advocate Shauna Prewitt about her pregnancy, “My body – a body which felt so dead after my rape – had not only created life, but was nurturing life, and I was amazed … I chose to raise my rape-conceived child.” It took years of court battles with Prewitt’s attacker before his parental rights were finally cut off. “I got lucky,” she wrote. About 35 states allow courts to terminate the parental rights of rapists, but most of them require that the men first be convicted. However, given that less than one-fifth of rapes are even reported, and only about 5 percent of those result in convictions, these laws might just as well not exist. About nine states don’t require rape convictions, including Wisconsin, which also allows the mother to seek the termination of the father’s parental rights without first notifying him. In May, after years of dithering, Congress passed the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act (RSCCA), which pledges money for states that pass laws denying parental rights to men if the mothers show (usually in family courts) that they have been raped. Notably, the victims need only prove that the rape occurred by “clear and convincing” evidence -- not the tougher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal courts. So far so good: Yet another gaping hole in rape law is starting to close and victims can now look forward to the day when their decisions to keep their children do not bring the ongoing presence of the rapist himself. What can possibly be wrong with that? In fact, several things, each of which shows why rape remains such a confounding area of the law, and why even the most well-intentioned measures can cause more problems. In the first place, it’s ill-advised to conduct rape trials in the family courts, which are clogged to the rafters and not set up to handle such complex cases. True, family courts can cut off parental rights in contexts such as child abuse, but resolving the subtleties of rape claims without the “machinery or protections” of criminal courts is a formula for bad results. We are already seeing the chaos – and the lawsuits -- that result when universities try to adjudicate rape cases, particularly when the accused claims he didn’t get a fair trial. In July, in a closely watched case, a California court threw out a University of California San Diego hearing panel’s penalties against a male student for sexually assaulting a female classmate. The court found that the entire process was botched and unfair. No one is happy with the criminal courts in rape cases, but shifting such cases to less-equipped forums could compound the problem. Second, easy as it is to say that “rape is rape,” not all cases are the same. The predatory stranger, husband or acquaintance does not equate, for example, with a man who had consensual sex with a minor. Statutory rape cases come up all the time, particularly when the female is underage, the male a young adult, and the girl’s parents are hopping mad about the relationship. While the sex may technically be illegal, the accused man may still be ready and willing to fulfill his duties as a father. In these circumstance, it may well work an injustice – particularly to the child -- to bar the father from his child’s life, regardless of whether the mother (or, more likely, her parents) wishes he would just go away. Too often lost in the discussion about rape-conceived children are the voices of the children themselves. Who speaks for them when, as infants, their fates are being decided? Nowhere in the RSCCA is there a requirement that they be represented by independent counsel. And what if they later wish, despite everything, to have contact with their fathers? Assuming that a father is able to have, for example, supervised contact with the child, is it right for the mother to block the relationship? In these circumstances, the mother’s well-founded desire to avoid contact with the father may not coincide with the child’s best interests. Of course, abortion is not in the child’s best interests either, but as Prewitt points out in a brilliant law review article, the readiness of most pro-life advocates to embrace a “rape exception” implicitly expresses the view that a rape-conceived child is a “wicked product” of a crime and less deserving of life than other children. “After all,” Prewitt writes with a heavy dose of irony, “What raped woman would willingly choose to give birth to her ‘rapist’s child’? What raped woman would choose to continue the victimization of her rape?” I am staunchly pro-choice, but once one takes the pro-life position, there should be no room for a rape exception. The issue of rapists’ parental rights highlights a key, and uncomfortable, flaw in the mainstream pro-life argument. If life begins at conception, then the unborn child of a rapist must be valued equally with one conceived through consensual sex. And once the child is born, its interests may well diverge from the desires of the mother. Clearly, we need reliable mechanisms to prevent rapists from using their parental rights (and the paucity of court convictions) to continue their torment of their victims. In many circumstances, fathers should be barred from exercising parental rights for some period of time. But once rape victims choose not to terminate their pregnancies, then their own needs must be balanced against what is best, in the long term, for the children. In the end, the welfare of the child must prevail. Eric Berkowitz is a San Francisco-based human rights lawyer and the author, most recently, of "