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August 17, 2015

Paul Krugman: GOP candidates promise government by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent

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Published on August 17, 2015 05:12

Donald Trump is a professional wrestler: How the billionaire body-slammed GOP politics

The first thing you should know about me is that I am an unapologetic fan of professional wrestling -- of its outsize characters and operatic storylines, of its physical feats of strength and skill that even the biggest cynic, if they were honest, would have to grudgingly respect. While the sport's biggest stage, that of World Wrestling Entertainment, is often puerile and retrograde in its presentation, even that entertainment powerhouse is capable of staging moments of transcendent spectacle. I'm not alone in these affections, either: Donald Trump, the current Republican primary frontrunner, bomb thrower and nativist iconoclast, is an avid fan and student of pro wrestling, and a close friend and business associate of Vince McMahon, the owner and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. (Any familiarity with McMahon's paleolithic politics render these facts completely unsurprising.) Trump’s casinos have played host to two of the biggest events in WWE history, Wrestlemanias IV & V. He's a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. He even went so far as to perform at Wrestlemania 23, appearing ringside for a match dubbed -- wait for it -- "The Battle of the Billionaires." Of course, most Americans are probably now most likely to associate Trump with his maddening and ridiculous, yet unexpectedly ascendant, campaign for president. And yet, believe it or not, his time spent in the world of professional wrestling is invaluable for understanding the path he has cut through the GOP primary field -- because the playbook employed by Trump over the past several months bears an uncanny resemblance to the storytelling and character-building stratagem of professional wrestling. One could even be forgiven for concluding that Trump is directly calling on his knowledge and love of the performance art to create one of the most captivating -- and entertaining -- political stories of recent vintage. To understand why, we first need to establish a few key concepts. As a function of their origins in the classic dramatic form, the storylines in American professional wrestling revolve around the tension between a hero (a "babyface," in industry parlance, or "face" for short) and a villain (known primarily as the "heel"). In its most basic presentation, the babyface is a likable and honest character who wants to win the approval of the fans. He or she is an empathetic figure, one who remains stalwart and determined in their battles against a relentless opposition and overwhelming odds. The current standard bearer of the WWE, John Cena, is a consummate babyface -- touting the all-American values of "Hustle, Loyalty, Respect," and showing unqualified deference to the fans who make up the "WWE Universe." The heel, meanwhile, is the opposite of the face -- a duplicitous, unethical, often cowardly figure, who will cheat to win and who actively antagonizes the fans and his peers. The current champion of the WWE, Seth Rollins, is a quintessential "chickenshit" heel, a craven and bombastic figure who, in spite of his dazzling in-ring skill set and frequent bravura performances, appears incapable of winning big matches "clean," often requiring outside interference in order to maintain his grip on the championship. It's not hard to see how these roles translate into the world of politics. Narrative-building, whether in politics or in wrestling, both affect the structure and conventions of dramatic spectacle, wherein the depictions of conflict are engineered to magnify the intended emotional response in spectators. Any campaign's primary motivation is to elevate its own candidate -- to play the part of a babyface -- while convincingly depicting its opponent as the heel. To use the recent example of the 2012 presidential election, the Mitt Romney campaign, with an assist from Fox News, did its best to present the Republican candidate as a babyface -- the veteran businessman with a record of rescuing companies in distress, who could navigate America to a brighter future in the role of its chief executive. However, Romney was undermined by his own heelish tendencies, his patrician attitude and disconnectedness from the middle class experience, not to mention his actual record in private equity. The now-infamous "47 percent" video (what wrestling aficionados would call a "shoot promo," an unscripted speech that makes visible the artificiality of the spectacle) was his ultimate undoing, revealing as it did the apparent insincerity at the heart of his campaign's message. So there is the basic storytelling architecture: There is a face, and there is a heel, a good guy and a bad guy. Over time, alignments change: Good guys go bad, and bad guys become good. But there is always one of each, and these distinctions are meant to be crystal clear.

* * *

In his seminal essay on professional wrestling, Roland Barthes took special attention to performance of the heel archetype, which he describes as the "bastard," about which he wrote the following:

Each sign in wrestling is [...] endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles. As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Thauvin, a fifty-year-old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nicknames, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of the salaud, the 'bastard' (the key-concept of any wrestling-match), appears as organically repugnant. The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of signs: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter: the pallid collapse of dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, 'stinking meat'), so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from its judgment, but instead from the very depth of its humours. It will thereafter let itself be frenetically embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will conform entirely with this physical origin: his actions will perfectly correspond to the essential viscosity of his personage.

The ultimate goal of a successful professional wrestler is to elicit an emotional response from the audience. Heels want to be booed and hated. Faces want approval and cheers. They are both masters of manipulation and psychology, taking the audience on an emotional journey of highs and lows. However, as the storytelling formula of professional wrestling has morphed over time, it has expanded to include antiheroes and other characters who do not fit neatly into a simple binary of good or bad. (These figures are sometimes called "tweeners.") Heroes can sometimes act like bullies, straining our allegiance. And villains who consistently entertain crowds can come to command more respect and admiration than their benevolent counterparts, even in spite of behavior that could be characterized, from a normative standpoint, as contemptible. What happens then, when the villain, because of their charisma, speaking ability, physical talent, or some intangible becomes popular with wrestling fans? What if the villain receives more cheers than the hero? This brings us again to Donald Trump, because this is the exact situation that the Fox News media machine faces with the billionaire candidate. They gave him the spotlight, what is called a “monster push” in professional wrestling, and built him up as a hero. While it's unlikely that the network would ever have considered him a viable candidate for president, in the early days of the campaign Trump was invaluable, in particular for his ability to channel the aggrieved right-wing populism that has infected the Republican voting base. Thus he was built up as a hero, as a babyface -- until, that is, it became clear what a threat he was to do real damage to the establishment's preferred candidates. That was the state of play when, at the first GOP debate earlier this month, Fox News's panel of debate moderators, including Megyn Kelly, made a concerted effort to take Trump down a peg -- to turn him heel, for all intents and purposes. We all know how that turned out. One of the greatest fears of a professional wrestling owner or promoter -- the person ultimately responsible for "booking" storylines and shaping the narrative direction of the company -- has traditionally been that a champion would go AWOL, and make the choice to not lose a title match when instructed. This could potentially create mayhem. The role of a champion -- especially one who is a villain such as Donald Trump -- is to ultimately to lose to a challenger, thus anointing them as the new figure for the fans to support (or alternatively to hate). But instead of accepting the fact that his political career is a creation of the Fox News echo chamber, Donald Trump, at least to this point, seems to actually believe that he is a viable candidate for presidency in 2016. Fox News tried to “bury” Donald Trump earlier this month. And as has happened in professional wrestling on many occasions, this actually made Donald Trump even more popular among movement conservatives and other extreme right-wing elements. Somewhere along the way, the Fox News media machine forgot to let Donald Trump know that his so-called candidacy was all a “work,” a type of fictional dramatic performance intended ultimately to "put over" someone else. This episode reveals the greatest peril in the creation of a spectacle. Whether you're a wrestling promoter or a power broker, Vince McMahon or Roger Ailes, your power to dictate the narrative can only ever take you as far the audience will allow. In the meta-narratives of both wrestling and politics -- in the behind-the-scenes machinations that result, in the public eye, in a particular outcome -- there is an very particular element of hubris. A heel has the power to captivate audiences; such is the seductive pull of transgression. Having understood this particular ability in Trump, but also the ultimate desired outcome of the Republican nominating contest -- namely, a nominee that is not Trump -- shouldn't Roger Ailes have known better than to push him on audiences as a brash truth-teller? Did he really think he could control someone like that? (Especially given the lather into which the conservative base has been worked over the past half-decade, in particular by Fox News.) In wrestling and politics both, you reap what you sow. If you're a wrestling promoter, the solution to this conundrum is simply to change a popular villain's alignment, make them into a babyface, piggybacking off their success in order to make it your own. But if you're Roger Ailes, faced with the prospect of Donald Trump as a dominant force in Republican politics, is that really a solution you're willing to brook? Are you comfortable making him your hero in a general election? This is the impossible situation into which Fox News and the Republican Party have navigated themselves. Media pundits have been caught off guard by the resiliency of the Trump campaign, seemingly impervious as it is to the traditional rules of play. But maybe they shouldn't have been. If the commentariat wants to make sense of Donald Trump’s apparent political madness, all they need to do is watch professional wrestling.The first thing you should know about me is that I am an unapologetic fan of professional wrestling -- of its outsize characters and operatic storylines, of its physical feats of strength and skill that even the biggest cynic, if they were honest, would have to grudgingly respect. While the sport's biggest stage, that of World Wrestling Entertainment, is often puerile and retrograde in its presentation, even that entertainment powerhouse is capable of staging moments of transcendent spectacle. I'm not alone in these affections, either: Donald Trump, the current Republican primary frontrunner, bomb thrower and nativist iconoclast, is an avid fan and student of pro wrestling, and a close friend and business associate of Vince McMahon, the owner and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. (Any familiarity with McMahon's paleolithic politics render these facts completely unsurprising.) Trump’s casinos have played host to two of the biggest events in WWE history, Wrestlemanias IV & V. He's a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. He even went so far as to perform at Wrestlemania 23, appearing ringside for a match dubbed -- wait for it -- "The Battle of the Billionaires." Of course, most Americans are probably now most likely to associate Trump with his maddening and ridiculous, yet unexpectedly ascendant, campaign for president. And yet, believe it or not, his time spent in the world of professional wrestling is invaluable for understanding the path he has cut through the GOP primary field -- because the playbook employed by Trump over the past several months bears an uncanny resemblance to the storytelling and character-building stratagem of professional wrestling. One could even be forgiven for concluding that Trump is directly calling on his knowledge and love of the performance art to create one of the most captivating -- and entertaining -- political stories of recent vintage. To understand why, we first need to establish a few key concepts. As a function of their origins in the classic dramatic form, the storylines in American professional wrestling revolve around the tension between a hero (a "babyface," in industry parlance, or "face" for short) and a villain (known primarily as the "heel"). In its most basic presentation, the babyface is a likable and honest character who wants to win the approval of the fans. He or she is an empathetic figure, one who remains stalwart and determined in their battles against a relentless opposition and overwhelming odds. The current standard bearer of the WWE, John Cena, is a consummate babyface -- touting the all-American values of "Hustle, Loyalty, Respect," and showing unqualified deference to the fans who make up the "WWE Universe." The heel, meanwhile, is the opposite of the face -- a duplicitous, unethical, often cowardly figure, who will cheat to win and who actively antagonizes the fans and his peers. The current champion of the WWE, Seth Rollins, is a quintessential "chickenshit" heel, a craven and bombastic figure who, in spite of his dazzling in-ring skill set and frequent bravura performances, appears incapable of winning big matches "clean," often requiring outside interference in order to maintain his grip on the championship. It's not hard to see how these roles translate into the world of politics. Narrative-building, whether in politics or in wrestling, both affect the structure and conventions of dramatic spectacle, wherein the depictions of conflict are engineered to magnify the intended emotional response in spectators. Any campaign's primary motivation is to elevate its own candidate -- to play the part of a babyface -- while convincingly depicting its opponent as the heel. To use the recent example of the 2012 presidential election, the Mitt Romney campaign, with an assist from Fox News, did its best to present the Republican candidate as a babyface -- the veteran businessman with a record of rescuing companies in distress, who could navigate America to a brighter future in the role of its chief executive. However, Romney was undermined by his own heelish tendencies, his patrician attitude and disconnectedness from the middle class experience, not to mention his actual record in private equity. The now-infamous "47 percent" video (what wrestling aficionados would call a "shoot promo," an unscripted speech that makes visible the artificiality of the spectacle) was his ultimate undoing, revealing as it did the apparent insincerity at the heart of his campaign's message. So there is the basic storytelling architecture: There is a face, and there is a heel, a good guy and a bad guy. Over time, alignments change: Good guys go bad, and bad guys become good. But there is always one of each, and these distinctions are meant to be crystal clear.

* * *

In his seminal essay on professional wrestling, Roland Barthes took special attention to performance of the heel archetype, which he describes as the "bastard," about which he wrote the following:

Each sign in wrestling is [...] endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles. As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Thauvin, a fifty-year-old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nicknames, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of the salaud, the 'bastard' (the key-concept of any wrestling-match), appears as organically repugnant. The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of signs: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter: the pallid collapse of dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, 'stinking meat'), so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from its judgment, but instead from the very depth of its humours. It will thereafter let itself be frenetically embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will conform entirely with this physical origin: his actions will perfectly correspond to the essential viscosity of his personage.

* * *

In his seminal essay on professional wrestling, Roland Barthes took special attention to performance of the heel archetype, which he describes as the "bastard," about which he wrote the following:

Each sign in wrestling is [...] endowed with an absolute clarity, since one must always understand everything on the spot. As soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles. As in the theatre, each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant. Thauvin, a fifty-year-old with an obese and sagging body, whose type of asexual hideousness always inspires feminine nicknames, displays in his flesh the characters of baseness, for his part is to represent what, in the classical concept of the salaud, the 'bastard' (the key-concept of any wrestling-match), appears as organically repugnant. The nausea voluntarily provoked by Thauvin shows therefore a very extended use of signs: not only is ugliness used here in order to signify baseness, but in addition ugliness is wholly gathered into a particularly repulsive quality of matter: the pallid collapse of dead flesh (the public calls Thauvin la barbaque, 'stinking meat'), so that the passionate condemnation of the crowd no longer stems from its judgment, but instead from the very depth of its humours. It will thereafter let itself be frenetically embroiled in an idea of Thauvin which will conform entirely with this physical origin: his actions will perfectly correspond to the essential viscosity of his personage.

View more on Helen H. Moore's website »

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Published on August 17, 2015 05:00

Jeb Bush’s gigantic Iraq fail: Why he’s handling his brother’s toxic legacy in just about the worst way possible

Considering the level of clownish extremism in the Republican primary during these mangy dog days of August, it's probably inevitable that we would start to see headlines like this one from the Washington Post on Friday:

At Iowa State Fair, Jeb Bush plays the sober adult in a summer of anger

Ah yes, the proverbial "grown-ups are back" story from the beltway press. The last time they characterized Republicans that way they were talking about the mature, serious leadership of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. You remember, the president who engaged us in a decade-long war under false pretenses and the Vice President who said that waterboarding was a no brainer? Those adults. This time, however, the press seems to be indicating that "adult" means lifeless, dull and incoherent, at least as it pertains to the third in line for the throne, Jeb Bush. The article in question tells the story of Jeb's trip to the Iowa State fair, where he's just an "awe shucks" sort of guy hanging with the folks:

"I’m tired of the divides," the former Florida governor said. "I campaign the way that I would govern — out amongst everybody, no rope lines, totally out in the open." Then the fairgoers started asking Bush questions. They asked about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And his foreign policy adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of his brother’s Iraq war. And about the war itself. And about the Common Core educational standards that have become a lightening rod for Bush with conservatives. "The term Common Core is so darn poisonous I don’t even know what that means," Bush replied. "So here’s what I’m for: I’m for higher standards — state created, locally implemented where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum." Bush parried the questions with ease and energy, appearing to avoid the kind of gaffes that have plagued other candidates at the soapbox, which is sponsored by The Des Moines Register. In 2011, after all, Mitt Romney stood on the same stage and declared, "Corporations are people" -- a line that dogged him seemingly forever.

Can you see the problem there? First, let's get the Common Core thing out of the way. Bush has been a proponent of the program since its inception. His name is intimately associated with it. Perhaps it's not as big a gaffe as "corporations are people" but it's far more dishonest. Basically, he's disowning something that he's been in favor of for years without admitting it. But it's the other set of questions about using his brother's advisors and his current thinking about the Iraq war that are of interest. After all, there is no foreign policy decision more controversial in the last several decades than the decision to (virtually unilaterally) invade Iraq on a very thin legal pretext and based on intelligence that was dubiously obtained and disseminated. He was specifically asked about his repeated statement that he would call upon one of his brother's most dubious advisors, Paul Wolfowitz -- which, as I've written here at length, should be a problem for anyone running for president. Paul Waldman describes his ever evolving rationales about the current problems in Iraq in this piece and it's clear that Bush's understanding of what happened is either very rudimentary or he's being deliberately dishonest. Saying that getting rid of Saddam was "a good deal" is not going to smooth over the the searing reality that the region is in chaos, and blaming Obama for the fallout doesn't change the fact that the invasion was the most disastrous foreign policy decision in modern memory. Bush brushed off the question with an answer that should set off alarms in the minds of anyone who's been following politics for the past 30 years:

"I get most of my advice from a team that we have in Miami, Florida. Young people that are going to be ... they're not assigned, have experience either in Congress or the previous administration. "If they’ve had any executive experience, they’ve had to deal with two Republican administrations. Who were the people who were presidents, the last two Republicans? I mean, this is kind of a tough game to be playing, to be honest with you. I’m my own person."

Who were the last two Republican presidents, you ask? Well, they were both named Bush and they both temporarily experienced sky high approval ratings when they decided to wage war in the middle east and then both left office in disgrace, loathed by nearly everyone in both parties. Jeb's insistence that the only people with "any executive experience" already worked with his dad and his baby bro makes it seem like he has no choice in the matter, except to take advice from the guy who was arguing for invading Iraq on Sept. 15, 2001. Uh huh. The question is whether this issue is salient enough to hurt Jeb in the primaries. There are those, like liberal columnist Eugene Robinson who correctly observe that however much Jeb desires to cast off the smothering cloak of his brother's very recent failed record, his policy statements indicate that it's only campaign talk:

Bush says "we do not need ... a major commitment" of American ground troops in Iraq or Syria to fight against the Islamic State -- at least for now. But he proposes embedding U.S. soldiers and Marines with Iraqi units, which basically means leading them into battle. He proposes much greater support for Kurdish forces, which are loath to fight in the Sunni heartlands where the Islamic State holds sway. And he wants the establishment of no-fly zones and safe havens in Syria, as a way to battle both the Islamic State and dictator Bashar al-Assad. That all sounds like a "major commitment" of something. And none of it addresses the fundamental problem in Iraq, which George W. Bush also failed to grasp: the lack of political reconciliation among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Bush 43's vaunted "surge" was a Band-Aid that masked, but did not heal, this underlying wound.

This piece by Peter Beinert about the vaunted "surge" spells out the details of that to which Robinson alludes. Jeb (like all the other Republican candidates) pretends that Iraq was a rousing success, and everyone was living together in peace and harmony until the evil team of Obama/Clinton blew it all up. This, of course, could not be further from the truth. But this piece by Phillip Bump of the Washington Post blog The Fix, suggests this may not be the problem we might assume it would be, at least not on the Republican side of aisle:

There hasn't been a lot of recent polling on the public perception of the Iraq War, but there has been some. And that polling suggests that -- especially in a Republican primary election -- the war is not the toxic topic that it was in 2008. In June, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal included support for the Iraq War in a long list of questions about how people would view candidates who held particular positions. For 64 percent of respondents, having backed the Iraq War either didn't affect their view of the candidate or made them view the candidate more favorably. More telling is a survey the same month from Gallup. The polling agency compared the number of people who said the war was a mistake in February 2014 to the percentage saying that now, and broke out the results by party. Both Democrats and independents were more likely to say that the war wasn't a mistake than in the past -- but only 31 percent of Republicans thought it was a mistake at all. Leaving 69 percent with either no opinion or a favorable one. In a 17-person race, support from 69 percent of the electorate is surely more than welcome.

It was inevitable that the Republicans would find a way to make peace with the catastrophe in Iraq. They like war and they passionately backed that one at the time. It's very hard to reconcile the cognitive dissonance of having pushed that hard for war when forced to recognize the failure that followed. So, instead, they are rewriting history to show it as a thrilling victory that was reversed by the inexplicable decision by President Obama to bring the troops home. That's the kind of thinking that works for them. In my opinion, Bush has problems with the base, but I'd guess it has more to do with his membership in the family that continuously embarrasses them. They don't like having to make excuses for their leadership. (And they have to do it so often.) It's also a matter of his lackluster personality. The Republicans are looking for a crusading partisan warrior this time out, someone who will carry their banner both domestically and internationally. Jeb Bush is a hardcore conservative, but he just doesn't deliver a punch with any passion. Perhaps they'll settle for him when all is said and done. But he doesn't get their blood pumping and they really want someone who does. Bush's real Iraq problem comes in the general. If Clinton gets the nod, he will throw her war vote in her face and try to tie the chaos that exists there to her. And most Republicans will buy it. But it's hard to imagine that 50 percent plus 1 of this country will not see Jeb and think of that horrible period after 9/11 when the government invaded a country that had nothing to do with it. It's very hard for any Republican to get past the party's association with a blunder of that magnitude --- it's impossible for a man whose last name is Bush. And it sure seems as though somewhere deep down inside, Jeb knows it.Considering the level of clownish extremism in the Republican primary during these mangy dog days of August, it's probably inevitable that we would start to see headlines like this one from the Washington Post on Friday:

At Iowa State Fair, Jeb Bush plays the sober adult in a summer of anger

"I’m tired of the divides," the former Florida governor said. "I campaign the way that I would govern — out amongst everybody, no rope lines, totally out in the open." Then the fairgoers started asking Bush questions. They asked about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And his foreign policy adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of his brother’s Iraq war. And about the war itself. And about the Common Core educational standards that have become a lightening rod for Bush with conservatives. "The term Common Core is so darn poisonous I don’t even know what that means," Bush replied. "So here’s what I’m for: I’m for higher standards — state created, locally implemented where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum." Bush parried the questions with ease and energy, appearing to avoid the kind of gaffes that have plagued other candidates at the soapbox, which is sponsored by The Des Moines Register. In 2011, after all, Mitt Romney stood on the same stage and declared, "Corporations are people" -- a line that dogged him seemingly forever.

"I get most of my advice from a team that we have in Miami, Florida. Young people that are going to be ... they're not assigned, have experience either in Congress or the previous administration. "If they’ve had any executive experience, they’ve had to deal with two Republican administrations. Who were the people who were presidents, the last two Republicans? I mean, this is kind of a tough game to be playing, to be honest with you. I’m my own person."

Bush says "we do not need ... a major commitment" of American ground troops in Iraq or Syria to fight against the Islamic State -- at least for now. But he proposes embedding U.S. soldiers and Marines with Iraqi units, which basically means leading them into battle. He proposes much greater support for Kurdish forces, which are loath to fight in the Sunni heartlands where the Islamic State holds sway. And he wants the establishment of no-fly zones and safe havens in Syria, as a way to battle both the Islamic State and dictator Bashar al-Assad. That all sounds like a "major commitment" of something. And none of it addresses the fundamental problem in Iraq, which George W. Bush also failed to grasp: the lack of political reconciliation among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Bush 43's vaunted "surge" was a Band-Aid that masked, but did not heal, this underlying wound.

There hasn't been a lot of recent polling on the public perception of the Iraq War, but there has been some. And that polling suggests that -- especially in a Republican primary election -- the war is not the toxic topic that it was in 2008. In June, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal included support for the Iraq War in a long list of questions about how people would view candidates who held particular positions. For 64 percent of respondents, having backed the Iraq War either didn't affect their view of the candidate or made them view the candidate more favorably. More telling is a survey the same month from Gallup. The polling agency compared the number of people who said the war was a mistake in February 2014 to the percentage saying that now, and broke out the results by party. Both Democrats and independents were more likely to say that the war wasn't a mistake than in the past -- but only 31 percent of Republicans thought it was a mistake at all. Leaving 69 percent with either no opinion or a favorable one. In a 17-person race, support from 69 percent of the electorate is surely more than welcome.

At Iowa State Fair, Jeb Bush plays the sober adult in a summer of anger

"I’m tired of the divides," the former Florida governor said. "I campaign the way that I would govern — out amongst everybody, no rope lines, totally out in the open." Then the fairgoers started asking Bush questions. They asked about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And his foreign policy adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, architect of his brother’s Iraq war. And about the war itself. And about the Common Core educational standards that have become a lightening rod for Bush with conservatives. "The term Common Core is so darn poisonous I don’t even know what that means," Bush replied. "So here’s what I’m for: I’m for higher standards — state created, locally implemented where the federal government has no role in the creation of standards, content or curriculum." Bush parried the questions with ease and energy, appearing to avoid the kind of gaffes that have plagued other candidates at the soapbox, which is sponsored by The Des Moines Register. In 2011, after all, Mitt Romney stood on the same stage and declared, "Corporations are people" -- a line that dogged him seemingly forever.

"I get most of my advice from a team that we have in Miami, Florida. Young people that are going to be ... they're not assigned, have experience either in Congress or the previous administration. "If they’ve had any executive experience, they’ve had to deal with two Republican administrations. Who were the people who were presidents, the last two Republicans? I mean, this is kind of a tough game to be playing, to be honest with you. I’m my own person."

Bush says "we do not need ... a major commitment" of American ground troops in Iraq or Syria to fight against the Islamic State -- at least for now. But he proposes embedding U.S. soldiers and Marines with Iraqi units, which basically means leading them into battle. He proposes much greater support for Kurdish forces, which are loath to fight in the Sunni heartlands where the Islamic State holds sway. And he wants the establishment of no-fly zones and safe havens in Syria, as a way to battle both the Islamic State and dictator Bashar al-Assad. That all sounds like a "major commitment" of something. And none of it addresses the fundamental problem in Iraq, which George W. Bush also failed to grasp: the lack of political reconciliation among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. Bush 43's vaunted "surge" was a Band-Aid that masked, but did not heal, this underlying wound.

There hasn't been a lot of recent polling on the public perception of the Iraq War, but there has been some. And that polling suggests that -- especially in a Republican primary election -- the war is not the toxic topic that it was in 2008. In June, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal included support for the Iraq War in a long list of questions about how people would view candidates who held particular positions. For 64 percent of respondents, having backed the Iraq War either didn't affect their view of the candidate or made them view the candidate more favorably. More telling is a survey the same month from Gallup. The polling agency compared the number of people who said the war was a mistake in February 2014 to the percentage saying that now, and broke out the results by party. Both Democrats and independents were more likely to say that the war wasn't a mistake than in the past -- but only 31 percent of Republicans thought it was a mistake at all. Leaving 69 percent with either no opinion or a favorable one. In a 17-person race, support from 69 percent of the electorate is surely more than welcome.

View more on Helen H. Moore's website »

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Published on August 17, 2015 04:59

The GOP’s apocalyptic Obama fantasies: Why Cruz & Walker’s economic fear-mongering makes literally zero sense

There's a super-colossal disconnect between how drastically the economy has improved since 2009 and how that improvement is discussed by congressional Republicans and the GOP presidential candidates. The usual suspects continue to praise the Reagan economic record, while likening Obama to the so-called "malaise days" of Jimmy Carter, as Rush Limbaugh did recently -- clearly because his zingers are so damn timely. Part of the disconnect has to do with the White House's ongoing inability to get the word out about how vastly improved the economy has been since the deepest recession since the Great Depression, which Obama and the Democrats were almost entirely responsible for ameliorating. However, the most obvious reason for the public's lack of understanding about our current state of economic stability and steady growth has to do with the only thing the Republicans are capable of successfully doing these days, which is marketing their bumper sticker slogans and engaging in coordinated disinformation campaigns. For instance, the GOP disinformation machine is the primary reason why 53 percent of Americans view Obamacare unfavorably even though, (1) it only impacts a very small percentage of Americans, 70 percent of whom love Obamacare, and (2) most Americans actually support the individual aspects of Obamacare by near-supermajority margins. (This is especially true Now, Republicans might cite the recent decline in the labor participation rate (briefly, the number of people looking for work). Deitrick explained that while Reagan's jobs numbers benefited from an active baby-boomer generation, Obama's poor participation numbers can be explained in part by the massive influx of retiring baby-boomers. Deitrick:

What’s now clear is that the Obama administration policies have outperformed the Reagan administration policies for job creation and unemployment reduction. Even though Reagan had the benefit of a growing Boomer class to ignite economic growth, while Obama has been forced to deal with a retiring workforce developing special needs. During the eight years preceding Obama there was a net reduction in jobs in America. We now are rapidly moving toward higher, sustainable jobs growth.

Notice that when you hear the Republicans screeching about the "labor participation rate" (see Jeb Bush above), they never mention the massive influx of retiring baby boomers leaving the workforce. Convenient. 2) The Obama Economic Expansion We can't really gripe about America "not making anything anymore." For the longest time, we've watched as manufacturing jobs were moved overseas to exploit cheaper labor. But during the Obama administration, Institute for Supply Management's Purchasing Managers Index reported, there's been 74 consecutive months of economic expansion, and 31 consecutive months of growth in the manufacturing sector. You'll never hear anything about this from the GOP. Someone should ask them about this -- perhaps during a nationally televised debate. 3) Wall Street Given how Reagan did have to contend with, again, the greatest recession since the Great Depression and a bottomless crash of the stock market, this chart should blow your mind.

During the Reagan years, your investments grew by 190 percent. That's a lot. Under Obama, however, the same dollar has yielded a 220 percent gain. That's a lot more. If you own shares in the company you work for, you're probably doing better. If you have a 401(k), you're probably doing much better. If you have an IRA, you're doing great. Overall, Dow has reached record highs under Obama -- over 17,400 -- not too shabby for a guy whose economic policies were considered to be the arrival of European socialism, or worse. 4) The Deficit Call me a blasphemer, but Reagan was comparatively terrible on government growth and spending, two areas where conservatism is supposed to rule the day. Reagan famously declared, "Government is the problem," vowing to reduce the size of government. Sorry. He really didn't. The deficit doubled and the debt tripled. Under Obama, the budget deficit has declined by more than a trillion dollars, according to the not-liberal Wall Street Journal. I repeat: the federal budget deficit has gone from $1.4 trillion when Obama took office to around $300 billion. And while government employment increased under Reagan, literally expanding the size of government, it's declined under Obama, much to the detriment of his overall employment numbers.

While we're here, we should nip something in the bud. Yes, Congress "controls the purse strings," and, no, "the president doesn't create jobs." But if you're going to credit Reagan or Clinton or whomever with the deficit or economic growth, then you have to credit Obama for the same. Likewise, if you're going to criticize Obama because you perceive a weak economy, then you have to give him credit when it's strong. You can't have it both ways. You can't blame him for a bad economy, then suggest improvements are the result of actions by someone else. Well, I suppose you can do that, but you're going to sound silly. Also, chew on this. A Democratic House during the 1980s, and its speaker Tip O'Neill, passed all of the spending bills during the Reagan years. As we all know, spending bills have to be signed into law by the president. So, then, which president signed all of those tax-and-spend liberal bills into law, ballooning the deficit and debt? Hint: not Obama. Along those lines, it's easy to stimulate huge economic growth via limitless deficit spending. Hence, the Reagan economy. Conversely, deficit spending has dropped precipitously under Obama and yet, 1) he's not being given fair credit for it, and 2) the economy continues to expand anyway -- the stock market is booming and unemployment is falling. This speaks volumes about the Obama record versus the gilded Reagan record. It also hints to the shift in economic policy between the parties. The Democrats are slowly embracing lower spending, while the Republicans are embracing increased spending on unnecessary wars and tax cuts. Republicans, especially under Reagan and George W. Bush, don't seem to mind swiping our national credit card down to a worthless nub. But you'll never hear this from Trump and the rest, who can't stop proverbially humping Reagan's leg while lying about Obama's truly noteworthy economic record.

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Published on August 17, 2015 04:58

5 worst right-wing moments of the week — Christmas hysteria comes early for Elisabeth Hasselbeck

1. True nutcase Ben Carson makes absurd pronouncements that now have to be taken seriously. In a normal world, no one would have to take anything Dr. Ben Carson says seriously. The man has a well-documented history of saying certifiably insane things, notably that Obamacare is worse than slavery and that homosexuality must be a choice because people are raped in prison and come out gay. But ours is not a normal world. Ours is a world in which a billionaire dick with a combover and a fourth-grade vocabulary is the frontrunner in the Republican primary, and a nonsense-spouting TV neurosurgeon ranks in or close to the top five, depending on which poll you believe. So, when Ben Carson declared this week that he absolutely stands by his assertion that abortion is the number one killer of black people—not heart disease as that left-wing conspiracy the Centers for Disease Control has firmly established — there was only one logical response. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! OK, we’re calming down now. Breathe. Breathe. "It brings up a very important issue and that is, do those black lives matter?" Carson told one of Fox News’ indistinguishable stooges. "The number one cause of death for black people is abortion. I wonder if maybe some people might at some point become concerned about that and ask why is that happening and what can be done to alleviate that situation. I think that's really the important question." He also accused Planned Parenthood and its founder Margaret Sanger of practicing eugenics on black populations, by placing some clinics in poorer neighborhoods. (We are deep into deranged Alex-Jones territory now.) The word Planned Parenthood uses for what it does is healthcare, and allowing all women, including black women, to have a measure of control over when they have children. Details, details. But Carson’s a contender, and so NPR did a little factcheck on his, errr, facts. Shockingly, they proved to be total lies and distortions. Again, aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh! 2. Donald Trump accidentally says something very, very true. It’s Trump’s world, we’re all just paying exorbitant rents in it. This became abundantly clear this week when the Republican frontrunner bullied Roger Ailes into directing Fox anchors and so-called “journalists” not to be mean to the Donald ever again or he will take all his toys elsewhere. Back on her heels, Trump-confronter Megyn Kelly announced she’s taking an unscheduled two-week vacation, and the image of the prostrated Ailes begging Trump’s forgiveness has permanently replaced the former Republican operative-turned-media exec's tough guy image. The Donald emerged very happy—why wouldn’t he? The world continues to work exactly as it should. You get "very rich" (or are born rich, whatever) and your money buys you access to politicians; you throw a hissy fit, even admitting you’re a “whiner” in the midde of it; and an entire network kisses your feet and throws its supposed darling under the bus. You say deeply offensive things about blacks, Mexicans and women, making these utterances abundantly clear despite your limited vocabulary, and you lead the Republican polls week after week after week. Then you do an interview with Newsmax about what will happen when Kelly returns, and say confidently, “She’s going to be fair and good. I’m sure that will happen, and I’m sure Roger will make it happen.” Because that is the way it is, and the way it is supposed to be. Roger will do that, because Donald told him to. Rest assured, Donald Trump sleeps very well at night. 3. Fox Five helps publicize hilariously true ‘Funny or Die’ video about Planned Parenthood’s fantastic services and tries feebly to criticize it. No fair, Kimberly Guilfoyle said in effect after she and her bone-headed colleagues at Fox Five viewed this hilarious, spot-on "Funny or Die" spoof of the recent undercover Planned Parenthood video the right is so trying to make hay out of. Kimberly Guilfoyle said she was speechless after viewing the clip in which women talk about the “pure horror” of dealing with an organization that answers all their questions thoroughly and gives them needed medical care. But she was not speechless. Incoherent, yes, but not speechless. “I don't think it’s okay to make a mockery about women’s health,” Guilfoyle said, clearly not understanding that it is she and her colleagues who harm women on a daily basis. Like this bozo: Gregg Gutfeld: “I mean, what can they do?” he said, readying his zinger. “They are in bed with the devil. It’s called ‘Funny or Die’ but fetuses don’t have that choice because they’re already dead.“ That sounded really good when he composed it in his head. “It’s a shame ‘Funny or Die’ didn’t exist generations ago because they would have been great propagandists for Stalin.” Seriously, who comes up with this guy’s material? It’s fabulous! 4. Elisabeth Hasselbeck gets a jump on fretting about the War on Christmas. It’s August. It’s a gazillion degrees outside. Cars are melting in Europe. But it's never too early to bemoan the War on Christmas. Elisabeth Hasselbeck got a huge jump on her nutty Fox colleagues in firing the season’s first salvo in this non-existent war this week. She was able to do this, because the “War on Christmas” is now defined as any attempt to challenge a state-sanctioned religious display, also known as the separation between church and state. (Another way the War on Christmas and Christians is waged is by not letting people discriminate against gay people, and criticizing lawmakers who try to pass “religious freedom” laws that give patriots the right to discriminate.) So, yeah, the War on Christmas is now a year-round pastime for evil liberals and atheists. Hasselbeck was deploring the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s attempt to have the city of Belen, New Mexico remove a nativity scene on government property, which, like the War on Christmas, is on display year-round. The mayor of Belen is very upset because, as he points out, Belen is named after Bethlehem, birthplace of the baby Jesus. Hasselbeck gave him a sympathetic ear, and encouraged him to fight the good fight. She allowed that this was a case of the War on Christmas comes early, but said he had educated her by showing how it isn’t “just a seasonal issue.” Isn’t that jolly? 5. Right-wing film critic celebrates fact that Jimmy Carter has cancer. Here’s a lovely lady, whose film criticism we’ll be sure to start reading. Her name is Debbie Schlussel, and upon hearing that the 90-year-old ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner is gravely ill, the sometime-film critic, sometime-right-wing political commentator tweeted this out:

Click to enlarge. Yes, she did. She even tried to make it a trending topic. It failed to trend. When the twittersphere reacted with some hostility and called her names, she was really upset. After all, she did not use vulgar language. How could they do that to such a nice gal?

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Published on August 17, 2015 04:46

August 16, 2015

I was a compulsive masturbator

I was watching a squirrel eating trash through a window one day in middle school when I learned what masturbation was. A school counselor handed out a piece of paper with a list of terms related to sex, and their most basic, textbook definitions — the best version of sex education they could muster at the Christian school I’d ended up attending due to a grand miscommunication with my parents. I started examining the list, which thus far was the most interesting part of the presentation. Herpes: “hmm, okay definitely want to avoid that one.” Condom: “yeah, I think I’ve heard of those.” Vagina: “got it.” And then I got to “Masturbation: The act of pleasuring oneself.” I read it three, four times. While the counselor went on rambling about chastity, purity, God and abstinence, I was gleefully reading the word “masturbation” over and over in my head thinking, “That’s what I’ve been doing!”

I started masturbating abnormally early, around the age of four.

More from Narratively: "The Day My Therapist Dared Me to Have Sex With Her"

I don’t remember how it began, just that it became a habit around preschool. I was constantly on the hunt for new techniques, new tools. My first was probably the bathtub. I would sit with what my parents had named my “petunia” underneath the faucet until the water was too deep for it to have an effect anymore. Occasionally, if I knew my mother was definitely preoccupied, I’d drain the whole thing and start over. I would slip my legs through the slats in my parents’ footboard, and casually hump a panel while I watched cartoons. I eventually discovered my mother’s neck massager, which became both my favorite, and most dangerous tool, as there was no hiding what I was up to with that one.

Whenever I was “playing alone” — which was the best I could think to call it, having no idea that the world had gone above and beyond with creative monikers for this activity — I wasn’t really thinking about anything in particular. I did not have orgasms. I never touched myself with my hands. I just liked the way it felt when I came in to contact with other things. Much like how if you give a kid sugar, I didn’t care if I wasn’t supposed to — I was going to sneak a goddamn cookie.

More from Narratively: "I'm a Straight Man, and He's My New Sugar Daddy"

Rather than being blissfully unaware of what I was doing, I was acutely in tune with the fact that it should be a secret. I don’t really know how I knew that, but it consumed me nonetheless. My best guess is that since I was taught to keep my petunia covered, I probably knew I wasn’t supposed to be fiddling with it. I knew I shouldn’t whisper to my childhood best friend, “hey try this,” and I knew even better that to be caught by my parents would be an embarrassment I would not come back from, tarnishing the rest of my life with my perversion. I envisioned my future ballet and piano recitals ruined, my parents watching through cracked fingers in horror as their little weirdo gave “Ode To Joy” her best shot. I expected it would get around our condo complex, and the neighbors would stop inviting me over to pet the new kitten or have a piece of cake.

I was not exposed to any explicit forms of sexuality early in life. I didn’t know what sex was. No one had molested me or been inappropriate with me. In fact I didn’t even connect what I was doing with sex. As I grew older and started to get tidbits of very wrong information from other children about what your genitals might be for, where babies come from, etc…, like we all did, I still never thought any of that had anything to do with my playing alone. And I still didn’t even have a word for it.

* * *

I had one of those bad-influence friends who was a couple of years older than me. Let’s call her Julia. Julia’s parents had gotten divorced when she was a baby, and she liked to act out, not that the two were explicitly related. Her confidence in everything from singing Spice Girls out loud to stealing snacks from the teacher’s cabinet made it so I never questioned her. Julia told me a story about “Mr. Dingy Dong,” one day at daycare after school. Commanding my attention like she was telling a ghost story at summer camp, I hung on every word about a serial killer who went around cutting off cheating men’s penises. Where in the world she got the story, I will never know. Regardless, I went home and told my parents, and that was the end of my friendship with Julia.

Similarly, one day in kindergarten during reading circle, the wily kid who was best known for his bad-word repertoire, pulled out his penis and showed it to me. Both incidents horrified me, but I never connected them with anything having to do with my petunia.

One of the most sacred outings I shared with my father was going to Blockbuster every weekend. I was allowed to get whatever I wanted, within reason, even if I wanted to rent “Charlie’s Angels” for the fifth time in a row. My dad was patient, never rushing me as I’d walk down every single aisle before I was confident I’d made the right choice. One trip, while rounding the corner of the classics, I came face to face with a homeless man furiously masturbating. He did not approach me, but he did not stop either. I ran to my dad, told him I was ready to go, clinging to what I was not yet sure was the right choice of movie, but this time I didn’t care. I sat cow-eyed, stiff and afraid to move the whole ride home, until my dad finally got out of me what was wrong. Enraged, we got home and he called the store. The man had already left, but my dad was still insistent they check the cameras and call the police, “for God’s sake, there are children in there.” I continued to be shaken up, but never correlated what that man was doing in public with what I was doing in private.

There were a few times that I got caught. Once my mom opened the door to the bathroom while I was in the middle of my bathtub ritual. She very calmly told me to “stop running water on your hoo-ha,” and proceeded to pretty much always leave the door open after that. I was mortified that my mom had seen me in my darkest of hours, but even more devastated that I’d lost a whole third of my resources. From that point on I became convinced that my mom knew everything, and was perpetually about to catch me. It seemed that the neck massager was always on a shelf higher up in the closet, or in a different part of the house. When I asked her recently about the whole charade though, she was baffled. She said she vaguely remembered the bathtub, but it wasn’t something that stuck out, because it seemed innocent enough. The neck massager was news to her. What I perceived as a hide and seek routine between us, was more likely the normal way anyone wouldn’t pay that much attention in putting something so innocuous back in the same place every time.

Because it was never directly addressed — And why would it be? No parent would eagerly have a sex talk with such a young child — I developed a deep, internalized guilt. I didn’t just think I was dirty, I knew it. There was something wrong with me, and I resigned myself to just living with it — until I accidentally ended up at a Christian school.

* * *

The public school I was supposed to attend through the sixth grade announced late in my fifth-grade year that from the next school year on they would be adopting the newer K-4 model. This left my parents in a last-minute dash to figure out where I would go next. The school I’d been attending was an anomaly of public schooling, with various forms of cultural enrichment and liberal families. The public middle school, however, was notorious for violence and ill-equipped teachers, so my parents decided it was time to go private.

Because children don’t typically have community juice mixers, my social circle had pretty much been exclusive to school. But I did have a small handful of friends I’d attended a couple of summers of YMCA camp with. I was not raised with religion. I wasn’t discouraged from participating in it, and if I’d come home and said I wanted to become Jewish or Hindu, I’m sure my parents would have embraced it. But as it was I set myself on a path towards atheism. The YMCA camp was of course a little Christian, with occasional “our god is an awesome god” sing-a-longs. But they had climbing towers and water skiing, so neither I, nor my working parents cared. But my few friends from the camp were very Christian, and went to a Christian private school. I insisted on going to school with them, and my parents said if I got in they would let me attend. By some grand miscommunication, I didn’t realize that it was a Christian school; I just knew that my friends went there. I think my parents assumed I knew, and didn’t want to shun the idea if it was what I wanted.

So there I was. Already set back by my buck teeth, scrawny limbs, and complete lack of understanding of private-school prepy-ness, I was now also surrounded by kids who deeply believed in a god that I didn’t. I quickly became an outcast. I got in trouble for bringing my Destiny’s Child CD to school. The principal, who was basically Ronald Reagan, said it was inappropriate, but I think what he meant was, “that black music scares us like the Devil.” I did not live in the ticky tacky suburbs, but the big, bad city. It was like if Cher from “Clueless” had to spend a day with Harriet from “Harriet The Spy,” but for a year.

Every morning we’d go to our assigned homeroom for prayer. The teacher would take requests, and the kids would excitedly pipe up complaints about paper cuts, or making sure the soccer team got a parking spot close to the field for the bus before the game. I got in trouble for doodling during prayer time so often they told me to leave my notebook and pens in my locker. The bright side was that at least they didn’t expect me to write that shit down. Occasionally the teacher would prod me, “Chloe is there anything you’d like to pray for?” I’d just let out a big sigh. Eventually I started putting my head down on my desk, hoping they would just think I was praying extra hard.

One day around mid-year, if anyone had been unsure, I finally gave them what they needed to cement my reputation as the biggest freak in school. I’d spent the past semester going home in tears. I didn’t have friends, and it was as if the kids learned their bullying tactics from an episode of “Prison Break.” One girl told me that her mother checked her backpack every day for makeup. I responded with a casual, “oh, you have strict parents.” To me it was the same as “oh, your mom drives a Toyota,” a casual comparison of our living conditions. Apparently calling her parents “strict” was the same as if I’d called her mother the Whore of Babylon, and this girl saw to it that I was punished. Her pièce de résistance came on picture day. Because the school was so conservative, it wasn’t the ‘show up and smile’ event it had been in public school. Everyone came in quite literally their Sunday best. Before my class had our photos taken, we had gym class, where of course we wore uniforms. My tormentor took the opportunity to pretend to be sick, retreat to the locker room and hide my nice clothes. No administrator seemed to care, and so I took the picture, and spent the rest of the day crying, in my gym clothes.

My parents were already applying to move me to a liberal private school, the same one they’d initially suggested, and the one that I would ultimately graduate from. They were disgusted with the administration’s lack of reaction to any of the bullying I went through, and just tried to help me hang in there through the end of the year when it would all be over. So on that day, I had nothing left to lose. The prayer requests were flooding in, for crushes, for summer vacation to come quicker, for pizza at lunch. I snapped. I raised my hand and stood up. I proceeded to go on a rant about how 5,000 children under the age of five died every day in Africa; how people were starving; how many children never had new things. I pleaded that they please end this useless pageantry of praying for meaningless things. I was swiftly sent to the principal’s office for the rest of the day.

* * *

Then hope came one day that spring in the form of their version of sex education. In true faith-based fashion, there was no science involved. We were separated by gender and a counselor came to address us. Let’s call her Cindy. Cindy was one of those younger school administrators who managed to come off as cool. She wore faith-inspired jewelry like the rest of them, but hers was always the chunky, edgy kind. She wasn’t afraid of heels and a flared hip-hugger pant. She looked like the main demographic at a Creed concert. But she was just like the rest of them underneath her Christian-chic wardrobe. She wrote “abstinence” on the board, and underlined it. She explained to the class that you should not have sex before you were married, because it was not what God wanted. God did not want you to think about it. God did not want you to almost do it. She then wrote the word “chastity” on the board and said, “get it?”

The last five minutes of class were reserved for private inquiries about any of the terms on that fated list that finally gave me a word for my secret. The rest of the girls, in true middle school fashion ran out, balking at the idea of engaging with the topic further. Hindsight is 20/20 though, and from the intel social media has afforded me, those girls really should have taken a second to inquire further about condoms and chlamydia. As for me, my questions had been answered. I’m sure if I’d said anything to Cindy she would have found a way to turn it into a miracle. My deviance was being divinely intervened, and I’d learn the name for my demon for the express purpose of expelling it from me like they’d thrown away my CD. But her lesson had the opposite of the intended effect. She had shown me that my sexual exploration was actually normal; something other people did, too. Maybe it was some kind of miracle, because for the first and only time in my tenure there, I sat and quietly thanked God.

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Published on August 16, 2015 17:00

My home on the Island of Daydreaming Girls — with Michael Fassbender, Marlon Brando, and Tom Hardy at my side

For Christmas a few years ago, a friend got me a pillowcase screen-printed with Michael Fassbender’s face. Fassbender was my man of the moment: My Facebook wall ornamented with brooding movie stills and meta-commentary on my lust for all things Fassy that was alternately self-effacing and comically defiant. Yes, I was in my (early) 30s, with a writing career and a day job with a decent title—but there was still a picture of Fassbender pinned to the corkboard of my desk.

My friend and I, like most of the other women I’ve come to know, bonded over our fantasy men, the teen dreams who adorned our bedroom walls and the current crushes that many a boyfriend or husband would graciously (jokingly) “allow”— only I had no significant other. I was my own woman, “allowed” whatever I wanted: a hotel room to write away the weekend/sleeping late/eating that caramel swirl ice cream—all of it. I was free to Fassbender it up to my heart’s content.

So, when I opened the box, I let out a loud, brassy laugh to show that I’m a good sport. But I heard the tin rattle inside that brass: My dance card is filled with men who might as well be imaginary—Fassbender and Tom Hardy, Marlon Brando and Idris Elba. The blue screen of laptop or TV blazing late into a darkened room has been my lantern on many nights; it leads me to a place where I’m not overworked and under-slept, where I’m never too loud, too fat, and too sarcastic—where I’m always cherished. To paraphrase the patron saint of ladies who live in romantic fantasy: I have always depended on the kindness of manly dreamboats.

As I put Fassbender back in the box, I wondered if I wasn’t 31 going on 13—my heart held in an amber shell, always arrested at the moment when I should have started on the path that all heterosexual women are expected to tread: coltish fumblings becoming boyfriends, boyfriends becoming fiancés, fiancés becoming husbands, and husbands becoming co-parents. Waking up beside my Fass-pillow every morning would only call attention to the emptiness in the bed below it. Or maybe my crushes are a cane, something steady to lean on, because some breaks will never knit 100 percent whole; there will always be a bit of scar tissue, and I will never walk down that expected path with an even step—assuming that it’s even my path at all.

Romantic fantasy has been more than a hiding place, it’s been a burrow: a snug, dry space where I could dream away peacefully, a place where James Dean or Matt Damon would never let me down. I tell a friend that I’d do better in the Hunger Games than on Match.com, and the joke is barbed with truth. I spent my teen years pining after the smart, artsy boys who liked my drawings, but weren’t quite enlightened enough to fancy me over the thinner girls; and my 20s playing sexual bumper cars with a handful of one-night-stands and guys who, like, “just weren’t into labels.” As a thirtysomething, I’ve built a (relatively) calm, solitary life: I go to a day job, then I come home and I write; I spend my weekends with friends. Every so often, I attempt an online dating profile—which soon becomes like the gym in late February, a dead zone haunted by the ghosts of good intentions.

My life of the mind has always been rich in passion: As a teenager, I papered my lockers with Leo DiCaprio and “Good Will Hunting”-era Matt Damon, Angel from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (before my switch to Team Spike), Jordan Catalano (er, I mean, Jared Leto) and Brad Pitt (but only in “Interview with a Vampire,” “Legends of the Fall” and “Fight Club,” because my fledgling libido was very specific). And, of course, there were the photo shrines to my first crush: Marlon Brando, the beautiful rebel who wanted to make his mark on the world and the cynical bruiser who wanted to take what he could from it.

Under the comforter with my magazines and biographies and certain cinematic moments on a loop in my head—a wink and a nod; the sweet, soft-eyed smile before a kiss that was anything but sweet or soft; a ripped shirt bearing a ripped torso—I was cocooned from the crackle of my father’s rage, the constant awareness of some dark, roiling force waiting to erupt in a thunderclap called maleness, the terror of fist and belt. As a child, I watched my mother build her life to suit his moods. But I was so young, and so curious. I found a neighbor boy who stirred up feelings that were shockingly new to me, and still as ancient as human bodies: I had an urge to chase him, to kiss him. He would run, not too fast and not too far, always tripping and falling (accidentally on purpose) so I could catch him. Our ages were not yet in the double digits, and all we knew of kissing was a puppyish romp, all lips and noses, no tongue.

His older brother knew of darker, more adult touches, touches that mimicked the most intimate gestures of love, which only made them more brutal and confusing. Every day, after school, my mother would baby-sit my crush and the older brother (a boy nearly in his teens). The older brother would wait until my mother went upstairs to watch TV, and he would breathe hotly into my ear as his fingers slid me open, slid inside. My body, still breast-less and baby-fatted, years away from its first period, would dampen and flush in ways I couldn’t understand; it became a car with cut brake-lines careening down a hill. This went on for two years. After the wreck, I could not stand to be touched, at least not in that way. All I had known of men’s hands was violence, whether it was blunt and brute or came cloaked in some pretend tenderness. Those hands many not have smothered my desire, but they did leave bruises around its throat.

I found my new loves in the movies. Cinema was life writ large in my living room; it evoked a tidal swell of feelings—so powerful and large, but only for a moment. The film ends. The wave breaks. On-screen, the men I was draw to could be valiant and mean, nimble and brutish, tender and broken (sometimes in the same scene)—but they could never hurt me. They were paper dolls I could cut and color into a shape and shade of masculinity that suited me. Whenever I closed my eyes, my crushes were waiting for me: our imaginary courtships could be as gentle or intense as I needed them to be. I could be Stella from Streetcar, carried up the stairs, or I could be Judy from “Rebel Without a Cause,” my new love’s head in my lap. Every night on the town—tripping with laughter; making out against walls; hands up skirts or on belt buckles; hands in hair, fingertips sweeping or pulling hard—was blocked and choreographed.

In this way, I was no different from the other girls my age whose fathers didn’t put their fists into walls. Crushes were the great equalizer: Though I was the odd girl out through most of high school, my lab partner could look at the photo of Matt Damon slipped under the plastic sleeve of my binder and confess that she liked him better than Ben Affleck because he seemed like he’d be a better boyfriend (recent events suggest that we were, in fact, correct). I bonded with other girls over conversations about our leading men, who they were off-screen, what it would be like to love (and be loved by) them.

At some point, though, my friends started talking about the boys in their classes, boys who started noticing them back, boys who became boyfriends, first kisses and first times, first fights and first delicious make-ups. They got their passports stamped to leave the Island of Daydreaming Girls, loading their steamer trunks with everything they’d learned from fantasy: all the costumes and accoutrement of so many dress rehearsals—tastes and preferences, maybe even burgeoning kinks; images to insert in the sad, stale moments they’d share with their flesh-and-blood beloveds. I waved to them from the shore with my ever-expanding harem of movie boyfriends.

There is an idea (perhaps given to us by the movies) that a real love, with its promise of a family, can sweep away the shards of a sad and lonely past like the white cells that swallow up the bits of a shattered bone. So my friends’ faces fall ever so slightly when my answer to “What’s new?” is just “the usual. Writing. Working. Seeing some movies. Watching TV.” My friends have sat across from me in diners as I cried over the handsome alcoholic whose easy charm was matched equally by a pull toward chaos; bemoaned the tedium of one-and-done dates who spoke in single-word answers or performed breathless self-centered soliloquies; and cursed out the long-distance Casanova who wrote me gorgeous, passionate emails but wouldn’t hold my hand in public once we were in the same ZIP code. And yet, somehow, in their minds, being “out there” and “exploring my options” with guys like these is healthier than spending my nights with Netflix.

I know that their disappointment is really a muffled fear that I’m just smiling through my solitude, that someday, if not already, I will feel the profundity of what I’ve lost—or, not even what I’ve lost, what I haven’t even tried for. The word crush may evoke images of collapsing something in on itself, destroying it by making it smaller, but my Hollywood crushes have expanded my world—despite the scripting and the make-up, the digital trickery and the boost of a perfectly-timed power ballad, these men stoke an urge toward connection that could’ve gone ashen and cold. As I’d gotten older, my fantasies changed: There were still scenes of sheet-drenching passions, but my scripts had become more invested in quiet, powerful moments of intimacy: It’s easier to sit on a sofa with Michael Fassbender and tell him about my father and the neighbor boys, about the hands that folded me in on myself.

Unlike the flesh-and-blood guys who’d watched me flush and stutter through my story, Michael Fassbender wouldn’t pat me on the head and say, “shit, that sucks”; Michael Fassbender wouldn’t look at me like I was a family heirloom that had fallen off the shelf and shattered, something he had no real attachment to but felt obliged to repair; Michael Fassbender wouldn’t get sick of me and fuck my intern. He would know what to say and how to hold me because he was, ultimately, an extension of me—with none of the messiness, the humanness, of a real man who has problems of his own. I could never touch him, but he could never hurt me. Like all of my crushes, he gave me a daily jolt of male beauty and emotional succor. My burrow is not a tomb. It’s an incubator, slowly but steadily growing the notion that someday I could want to be wanted.

I’m hardly alone in living vicariously through my celluloid sweethearts. Even the most casual scroll-through on BuzzFeed is sure to yield quizzes about which Disney prince or male stripper from "Magic Mike XXL" is your soul mate, or listicles of “Twenty-six Celebrity Men Who Want to Spend the Day in Bed with You.” The Fassbender pillowcase was gifted to me in this spirit—after all, crushes are fun. Many of our current pop cultural juggernauts—especially the ones crafted by, and for, women—feature a tug-of-war between Team Hot-Brooding-Guy-Who-Really-Loves-You-But-Can’t-Show-It and Team Hot-Totally-Emotionally-Available-Guy.

The conventional narrative: Women settled into the comfortable plush of married life seek the sharpness of a Christian Grey or Edward Cullen; their daughters live vicariously through Katniss’ choice between Gale’s white-hot fire and Peeta’s gentle warmth. In choosing Jake over Fitz, McSteamy over McDreamy, or (if you’re a geekier sort) young Professor X over young Magneto, you’re not just slaking a thirst, you’re defining yourself through what you desire: Crave stability over spontaneity (or vice versa)? A brainy charmer with a diamond-sharp wit, or a silent type who can cut you to the core with one look? Do you want to be adored or undone? Or do you want everything, all at once? Of course you do.

Whenever I’m describing the guys I like—the Brandos and Fassbenders, and, my latest crush du jour, Tom Hardy—the woman I’m talking to will smile wryly and remark that I “certainly have a type.” Coupling the neurotic, intellectual woman with the blue-collar bruiser is a time-worn trope: from the garishly-painted covers of drugstore paperbacks to Rocky Balboa calling for his Adrian, and of course, the moment that turned my adolescent heart into a bird wing, beating until it filled my blood, my being, with heat and air: Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, breaking down the door to Edie Doyle’s apartment—a moment of violence, yes, a terror that feels old and familiar to me, and yet there is something new at the end of that terror: the promise of pleasure (and on the woman’s terms). Edie has been a nebbish, a nerd, only really alive when fighting for her murdered brother, but now, in Terry’s powerfully-muscled arms, under Terry’s strong, purposeful hands, she is lit from within, resplendent and blazing with fulfilled desire.

Real life, of course, is rarely so safe let alone perfect. Perhaps I was hard-wired for a fantasy of taming the brute heart that could bite my pretty red heart in two—my whip and my chair the dagger and the shield against the gnashing teeth of male violence. Crushing gives me a sense of power, a way to feel in control—everything I didn’t have as a little girl who tried to hide in the closet but never quite made it in time, everything I don’t have now as a grown woman who isn’t sure how to drink coffee across from a lover, fingertips touching as we pass the sugar. Clinging to the Brandos and the Deans, the Fassbenders and the Hardys might not lead me to the altar, but they do lead me to continually explore my feelings for and about men—a series of small steps, in increments of millimeters, but at least a movement forward.

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Published on August 16, 2015 17:00

“Show Me a Hero”: David Simon’s new miniseries uncovers the human heart in local politics

It’s hard to explain what “Show Me a Hero” is about. The HBO miniseries debuting this Sunday is technically about the controversy over a federal affordable housing policy being enacted in Yonkers, New York, in the late 1980s. It is specifically about Yonkers Mayor Nick Wasicsko, the youngest mayor in America, who—through a mix of opportunism and luck—became the figurehead of that debate. It is more broadly about American race relations, and how the life of a city hinges completely on its citizens’ willingness to respect and acknowledge their neighbors. It is about the relationship people have to their homes; the investment people have in their communities. But the takeaway as a whole is not about American civic life—that sounds musty and academic, and “Show Me a Hero” is anything but. The stories are human and the characters are textured. True to the trademark of co-writer and producer David Simon, the miniseries’ emotional depth draws from the little things: the specific accent of a Yonkers city councilor who grew up in an Italian family; the way a white woman would scrutinize the coffee-and-tea manners of a black neighbor; that a single mother would buy a set of “good” pots and pans that she keeps in a box until they move somewhere nicer. And through six episodes of interlocking stories—which all attempt to re-create real people and real events—“Show Me a Hero” builds the story of a community divided against itself, dogged by racism, poverty and fear. It’s quietly brilliant, as we have come to expect from Simon, who in addition to this miniseries created “The Wire” and “Treme” for HBO. Simon’s background as a journalist with the Baltimore Sun makes him highly attuned to details, authenticity and scene-setting; combined with fellow former Sun reporter William F. Zorzi, who last worked with Simon on “The Wire,” the results are explosive. Academy Award-winner Paul Haggis—who told me that as soon as he heard David Simon was looking for a director, he signed up to the project sight-unseen*—also does some of his best directing work on “Show Me a Hero,” opting for intimate angles and slightly obscured shots that make the viewer feel as if they are just another resident of Yonkers. In some ways, that is the miniseries’ greatest alchemy. There is not very much that is cool or hip about Yonkers; it is not a financial capital or an arts haven or a manufacturing powerhouse. It’s just a small city where people live, and most people who live there do not think too much about why they live where they do. In 1987, it is a faded city—as so many cities were in that era. It’s not so difficult to imagine being a part of that nameless community, where you might only vaguely know your neighbors while you save enough money to move somewhere else. Situated as it is just on the outskirts of New York City, caught somewhere between urban and suburban, between entirely isolated and being in the mix. Yonkers is your backyard, or mine; politics not on the national or state level, but literally on the block-by-block level. “Show Me a Hero” is ultimately the story of how this community grows up—how the people of Yonkers weathered the struggle between being a sleepy small town and an epicenter of social change. It is not easy. Yonkers faced massive fines over its refusal to build Section 8 housing on the east side of Yonkers, and it’s Wasicsko who finally urges compliance, so as to prevent the city from going bankrupt. But the response of many of the white citizens of Yonkers is frothing, unrestrained venom; racism, as manifested in housing policy. They shout through meetings, spit on Wasicsko, and send him death threats; they will not hear any argument except one that keeps the housing out of their neighborhood. To “Show Me a Hero’s" credit, it does not try to villainize its racists (more than they villainize themselves, anyway). That comes to bear primarily in Oscar-nominated Catherine Keener’s Mary Dorman, a woman with her dream home—a brick house on St. Johns Avenue—who cannot stomach her neighborhood turning into the chaos of the Schlobohm housing projects. The miniseries does not trivialize her fears when facing 200 families from public housing moving into her neighborhood. But also to its credit, it does not try to pretend that this is a reaction that is more than just racism. It merely allows the woman to be racist, and then watches what happens next. Meanwhile, there are the women and children living in Schlobohm, trying to find a better life. Single mothers went right to the top of the waiting list for the project, meaning that many of our main characters are women trying to take care of their children. And because parenting all on your own is rather time-consuming, most are dimly if at all aware of the political wars being waged around and about them—just as the politicians and organizers campaigning for or against the new Section 8 housing have little conception of the lives of the people who actually live in them. Some of “Show Me a Hero’s" most wonderful moments are about these women, struggling to succeed against odds that are perpetually stacked against them. Everyone involved in “Show Me a Hero” brought their A-game: From the heretofore unknown actors like Natalie Paul, Carla Quevedo and Ilfenesh Hadera to the all-star cast doing a very good job of blending into the scenery of Yonkers: Winona Ryder, Jim Belushi, Alfred Molina, and, of course, Oscar Issac. Isaac—who raked in accolades for his breakout role in “Inside Llewyn Davis”—is, as usual, incredible as Nick Wasicsko; he is the embodiment of a force of change, galvanized by his own natural energy, his privileged status as a white man in politics, and his incredible youth (he’s just 28 when the miniseries starts). As the person most invested in this culture clash, he will become the person most damaged; if “Show Me a Hero” has any specific point, it is to ask why we live in a world that punishes people for doing the right thing. And to illustrate—in addition to how far we’ve come at living in a just world—how far we have left to go. * We'll run our interview with director Paul Haggis on Monday, Aug. 17, after parts 1 and 2 air Sunday night.

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Published on August 16, 2015 15:00

How to spot a fake: Art forgery’s secrets revealed

Can you tell if someone’s lying? There are scientifically proven traits that most people exhibit when they’re cooking up a lie. Sweaty palms. Dry throat. Tight collar. Fidgety movements. Right-handed people tend to look up and to the left when thinking up a lie, and up and to the right when trying to recall a truth—the opposite for lefties. But can you tell if an object is lying? If it is not what it appears? You sure can. Studying how forgers have successfully pulled the wool over our eyes offers some revealing clues as to how to avoid being fooled in the future. There are some surprising characters in the pantheon of art forgers. Before he was a household name, Michelangelo began his career forging ancient Roman sculpture. He created a new sculpture out of marble, then intentionally broke it, buried it in a garden, and dug it up, declaring it to be a lost Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it grew suspicious after a few years, and demanded his money back from the dealer who had sold it to him. But the dealer was happy to accept because, by then, Michelangelo had made his famous Pieta and was the hottest new artist in Rome—the sculpture was sold on for a fortune, now as a Michelangelo original. Many of the most famous forgers are more prankster than gangster: part illusionist, part admirable artist, part charming rogue, and all ingenious, often depicted by the media as harmless Robin Hood types, duping only wealthy and elitist individuals and institutions. They are often failed artists who turn to forgery to show up the art world that rejected their original creations and that they feel deserves to be shown up. Those who are caught, sometimes after decades of success, are found out through some accidentally inserted error or anachronism. Shaun Greenhalgh had a 17-year career as the most diverse forger in history, passing off everything from ancient Egyptian sculpture to 19th century watercolors. He was entirely self-taught, buying books from which he copied works and styles, and simply ordering materials off the Internet, while he turned his garden shed into his forgery studio. He was caught when, on what was supposed to be a 7th century BC Assyrian relief sculpture, he accidentally misspelled a word in cuneiform. But not all anachronisms were accidental. Lothar Malskat forged medieval frescoes that he supposedly found during a church restoration. They were so admired that the German government ordered the printing of 4 million postage stamps featuring a detail from them. Such a success is a private one—only the forger himself knows the truth, and sometimes that’s not enough. Malskat wanted notoriety for having pulled off this fraud, but no one believed him, so he took the unusual step of suing himself, in order to have the public, official platform to explain that he really was the forger. He was disbelieved until he pointed out two “time bombs,” anachronisms in his work that he had intentionally inserted, just in case he was not believed. He had painted a turkey into the fresco—indigenous to North America, there were no turkeys clucking around medieval Germany. And he’d also inserted a portrait of Marlene Dietrich—who was definitely not clucking around medieval Germany. Time bombs can be visual, like Malskat’s magical medieval Marlene Dietrich, or material. Otto Wacker was brought to trial when the world’s two leading van Gogh experts couldn’t agree on the authenticity of several paintings he had sold. A Dutch chemist named Martin de Wild was called in to break the tie. In an episode from "CSI: Art Crime," he found pulverized lead and resin in the Wacker “van Goghs,” which would have been added to make the oil paint dry faster—something van Gogh never did. Wolfgang Beltracchi, who was recently released from prison, used titanium white in a forgery that was meant to have been made a decade before the pigment was developed. (One of his forgeries was eventually acquired by the actor Steve Martin.) The inclusion of a material that should not have existed when a work was supposedly made can give away the game, but requires testing. What fools the eye can rarely fool forensics. But artwork is rarely subject to forensic tests. There is no good reason as to why this is—it’s a part of the sociologically bizarre organism called the art world. It is neither prohibitively expensive nor necessarily invasive to test the work. But the weird culture of the art trade revolves around gentleman’s agreements and a certain etiquette, and it’s just not the done thing, to rock the boat. If the artwork looks reasonably good, and, more important, if the story behind the work is convincing, then it is very unusual for it to be tested scientifically. The key to passing off forgeries is in the provenance, the documented history of the object: contracts, references to the work in archives, catalog entries, receipts and so on. If this is compelling, then most art dealers are satisfied and don’t feel the need to look deeper. After all, the dealer benefits only if the work in question is authentic (and was not stolen), so there is little incentive to look gift horses in the mouth. You might learn that you’re dealing with a forgery, or a stolen work, and not only lose your commission, and possibly lose face, but could also wind up in court. It’s easy enough for an expert to claim that they were fooled, as in the recent, high-profile case of Manhattan’s storied Knoedler Gallery, which sold forged works—the question was whether the gallery was tricked by a clever fraud scheme, or if it knowingly sold forgeries. Art authenticity is all about perception. If the world thinks a work is authentic, then it is authentic. But forgers know that a convincing provenance is actually more important than an aesthetically perfect forgery or one that would fool forensic tests. Imagine a character who appears in a history book, but is actually an invention of the author, a personage nestled into real historical events. The more detail about the character’s biography, the more convincing the character. Provenance is the biography of an artwork, but provenance, like art, can be forged. John Myatt’s paintings looked pretty good, but any expert worth his salt should have been able to see that they were painted with acrylic paints, when the original artists he aped, like Monet and Giacometti, would have used oils—but the “experts” never noticed, because the provenance was so convincing. But Myatt’s accomplice had made fake documents and inserted them into real archives, to be “discovered” by researchers, in order to prove the authenticity of Myatt’s forgeries. "The Vinland Map," acquired by Yale University and purportedly the first map of North America, made in the 15th century, was found to have 20th century synthetic materials in its ink. But despite this fact, some scholars still think it’s authentic, because of the bizarre story of its arrival at Yale, gifted alongside an entirely authentic 15th century manuscript that seemed to have been cut out of the same book as the "Map." The history of forgery is full of surprising stories and larger-than-life, ingenious characters, but it also provides real lessons in how famous forgers have succeeded—and how we can avoid being fooled in the future. What can you keep an eye out for if you are buying art, whether you’re dropping seven figures or three, to help ensure that what you’re buying is genuine? Here are five tips to avoid being a forger’s next victim. Look at the back of paintings and the bottom of sculptures. There is often a wealth of information there, like old auction labels or owner stamps. Lazy forgers make the front of works look good, but might not bother with the parts that are not on view, so you may be able to identify something fishy going on by looking where the forger hopes you won’t. Ask for provenance documentation. This is a no-brainer and is actually required, in order to avoid potentially getting into legal trouble if a work you buy turns out to have been stolen: you need to be able to prove “due diligence,” that you checked to make sure the work was legal, and that you bought it in “good faith,” with the true belief that it was all above board. Double-check the provenance. Make sure that the provenance really does go with the object in question (and was not borrowed from some other object, in an art version of Don Draper), and that it was not forged. Be suspicious of provenance that is impossible to confirm with a phone call (if all the galleries listed as having displayed the work in the past are out of business, for instance, this might be a reason to probe further). Buy from reputable dealers with a good track record. Famous dealers and auction houses get fooled, of course, but they are much more likely to deal in authentic works. Buying online especially is asking for trouble—if you can’t see a work in person, look a dealer in the eye and ask questions, then…good luck. Request forensic test results, or the option to have a work tested yourself. This is not the least bit standard in the art trade, but it should be. If a dealer refuses, be prepared to walk away. Would you buy a car that a dealer refused to allow your mechanic to look over? Artworks often cost much more than a car, but we still tend to buy them based on the opinion of experts, who may have ulterior motives, or may be less “expert” than they claim. Can you tell if someone’s lying? There are scientifically proven traits that most people exhibit when they’re cooking up a lie. Sweaty palms. Dry throat. Tight collar. Fidgety movements. Right-handed people tend to look up and to the left when thinking up a lie, and up and to the right when trying to recall a truth—the opposite for lefties. But can you tell if an object is lying? If it is not what it appears? You sure can. Studying how forgers have successfully pulled the wool over our eyes offers some revealing clues as to how to avoid being fooled in the future. There are some surprising characters in the pantheon of art forgers. Before he was a household name, Michelangelo began his career forging ancient Roman sculpture. He created a new sculpture out of marble, then intentionally broke it, buried it in a garden, and dug it up, declaring it to be a lost Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it grew suspicious after a few years, and demanded his money back from the dealer who had sold it to him. But the dealer was happy to accept because, by then, Michelangelo had made his famous Pieta and was the hottest new artist in Rome—the sculpture was sold on for a fortune, now as a Michelangelo original. Many of the most famous forgers are more prankster than gangster: part illusionist, part admirable artist, part charming rogue, and all ingenious, often depicted by the media as harmless Robin Hood types, duping only wealthy and elitist individuals and institutions. They are often failed artists who turn to forgery to show up the art world that rejected their original creations and that they feel deserves to be shown up. Those who are caught, sometimes after decades of success, are found out through some accidentally inserted error or anachronism. Shaun Greenhalgh had a 17-year career as the most diverse forger in history, passing off everything from ancient Egyptian sculpture to 19th century watercolors. He was entirely self-taught, buying books from which he copied works and styles, and simply ordering materials off the Internet, while he turned his garden shed into his forgery studio. He was caught when, on what was supposed to be a 7th century BC Assyrian relief sculpture, he accidentally misspelled a word in cuneiform. But not all anachronisms were accidental. Lothar Malskat forged medieval frescoes that he supposedly found during a church restoration. They were so admired that the German government ordered the printing of 4 million postage stamps featuring a detail from them. Such a success is a private one—only the forger himself knows the truth, and sometimes that’s not enough. Malskat wanted notoriety for having pulled off this fraud, but no one believed him, so he took the unusual step of suing himself, in order to have the public, official platform to explain that he really was the forger. He was disbelieved until he pointed out two “time bombs,” anachronisms in his work that he had intentionally inserted, just in case he was not believed. He had painted a turkey into the fresco—indigenous to North America, there were no turkeys clucking around medieval Germany. And he’d also inserted a portrait of Marlene Dietrich—who was definitely not clucking around medieval Germany. Time bombs can be visual, like Malskat’s magical medieval Marlene Dietrich, or material. Otto Wacker was brought to trial when the world’s two leading van Gogh experts couldn’t agree on the authenticity of several paintings he had sold. A Dutch chemist named Martin de Wild was called in to break the tie. In an episode from "CSI: Art Crime," he found pulverized lead and resin in the Wacker “van Goghs,” which would have been added to make the oil paint dry faster—something van Gogh never did. Wolfgang Beltracchi, who was recently released from prison, used titanium white in a forgery that was meant to have been made a decade before the pigment was developed. (One of his forgeries was eventually acquired by the actor Steve Martin.) The inclusion of a material that should not have existed when a work was supposedly made can give away the game, but requires testing. What fools the eye can rarely fool forensics. But artwork is rarely subject to forensic tests. There is no good reason as to why this is—it’s a part of the sociologically bizarre organism called the art world. It is neither prohibitively expensive nor necessarily invasive to test the work. But the weird culture of the art trade revolves around gentleman’s agreements and a certain etiquette, and it’s just not the done thing, to rock the boat. If the artwork looks reasonably good, and, more important, if the story behind the work is convincing, then it is very unusual for it to be tested scientifically. The key to passing off forgeries is in the provenance, the documented history of the object: contracts, references to the work in archives, catalog entries, receipts and so on. If this is compelling, then most art dealers are satisfied and don’t feel the need to look deeper. After all, the dealer benefits only if the work in question is authentic (and was not stolen), so there is little incentive to look gift horses in the mouth. You might learn that you’re dealing with a forgery, or a stolen work, and not only lose your commission, and possibly lose face, but could also wind up in court. It’s easy enough for an expert to claim that they were fooled, as in the recent, high-profile case of Manhattan’s storied Knoedler Gallery, which sold forged works—the question was whether the gallery was tricked by a clever fraud scheme, or if it knowingly sold forgeries. Art authenticity is all about perception. If the world thinks a work is authentic, then it is authentic. But forgers know that a convincing provenance is actually more important than an aesthetically perfect forgery or one that would fool forensic tests. Imagine a character who appears in a history book, but is actually an invention of the author, a personage nestled into real historical events. The more detail about the character’s biography, the more convincing the character. Provenance is the biography of an artwork, but provenance, like art, can be forged. John Myatt’s paintings looked pretty good, but any expert worth his salt should have been able to see that they were painted with acrylic paints, when the original artists he aped, like Monet and Giacometti, would have used oils—but the “experts” never noticed, because the provenance was so convincing. But Myatt’s accomplice had made fake documents and inserted them into real archives, to be “discovered” by researchers, in order to prove the authenticity of Myatt’s forgeries. "The Vinland Map," acquired by Yale University and purportedly the first map of North America, made in the 15th century, was found to have 20th century synthetic materials in its ink. But despite this fact, some scholars still think it’s authentic, because of the bizarre story of its arrival at Yale, gifted alongside an entirely authentic 15th century manuscript that seemed to have been cut out of the same book as the "Map." The history of forgery is full of surprising stories and larger-than-life, ingenious characters, but it also provides real lessons in how famous forgers have succeeded—and how we can avoid being fooled in the future. What can you keep an eye out for if you are buying art, whether you’re dropping seven figures or three, to help ensure that what you’re buying is genuine? Here are five tips to avoid being a forger’s next victim. Look at the back of paintings and the bottom of sculptures. There is often a wealth of information there, like old auction labels or owner stamps. Lazy forgers make the front of works look good, but might not bother with the parts that are not on view, so you may be able to identify something fishy going on by looking where the forger hopes you won’t. Ask for provenance documentation. This is a no-brainer and is actually required, in order to avoid potentially getting into legal trouble if a work you buy turns out to have been stolen: you need to be able to prove “due diligence,” that you checked to make sure the work was legal, and that you bought it in “good faith,” with the true belief that it was all above board. Double-check the provenance. Make sure that the provenance really does go with the object in question (and was not borrowed from some other object, in an art version of Don Draper), and that it was not forged. Be suspicious of provenance that is impossible to confirm with a phone call (if all the galleries listed as having displayed the work in the past are out of business, for instance, this might be a reason to probe further). Buy from reputable dealers with a good track record. Famous dealers and auction houses get fooled, of course, but they are much more likely to deal in authentic works. Buying online especially is asking for trouble—if you can’t see a work in person, look a dealer in the eye and ask questions, then…good luck. Request forensic test results, or the option to have a work tested yourself. This is not the least bit standard in the art trade, but it should be. If a dealer refuses, be prepared to walk away. Would you buy a car that a dealer refused to allow your mechanic to look over? Artworks often cost much more than a car, but we still tend to buy them based on the opinion of experts, who may have ulterior motives, or may be less “expert” than they claim.

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Published on August 16, 2015 13:00

TV beyond the binge: What we lose when we gain the entire story at once

On the surface, the state of television – especially high-end cable and streaming television – has never been better. Even with “Mad Men” gone, we’ve got “Veep,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “House of Cards,” “The Americans” and plenty of other smart fare coming back in the fall. “Game of Thrones” recently started filming and will be back in the spring. If you’re into zombies, forensic crime-scene investigations, or insane housewives, there’s never been more available. Even Amazon – a company a lot of us hate – is producing strong “content” like Jill Soloway's acclaimed "Transparent." There are worse problems to have than to be overwhelmed with good and great television. But it’s overwhelming just the same. If you’re like me, you juggle catching up with old programs – I just finished the first season of “The Affair” – with new stuff like David Simon’s “Show Me a Hero” and Jon Stewart’s farewell run on “The Daily Show” and the closing of the second season of “True Detective.” And trying to get time for the half-dozen or so series I’ve fallen behind on -- among them “Masters of Sex” – and series I’m overdue to check in on, like “Mr. Robot.” Today we have so many ways to watch something that the experience is starting to scatter: You can blink, and fall behind on a show and the discussion around it. Looking forward to the “Wet Hot American Summer” series? So was I, but by the time I had the free screen time, the whole thing had dropped, everyone I knew who was interested had watched it, the recapping was over, and it was yesterday’s papers. So this is why the news that more networks are releasing entire seasons all at once – perfect for binge-watching, not so good for a more measured engagement with a fictional world and its characters – has me shouting, Please, no more. You don’t have to be a hardcore Proustian – someone who sees life as shaped by the passage of time and delights in the pleasure of anticipation – to want this stuff to come out a little at a time. (Though it sure helps.) In a Hollywood Reporter piece on the binge phenomenon, Lacey Rose writes:

Amazon, NBC and now Starz (with Da Vinci's Demons and new miniseries Flesh and Bone) are among those employing the all-at-once launch strategy for key shows, while networks such as Fox, ABC and Hulu — perhaps the most surprising of these, given that it competes with the other streamers — are steadfast in their commitment to the weekly rollout. "We value the shared experience and the joy of the watercooler experience that is television," said Hulu head of content Craig Erwich, acknowledging an about-face for a company that had experimented with binge-style releases for comedies Deadbeat and The Hotwives of Orlando a year earlier.

Now, there’s been a debate for a while now about how real the watercooler effect really is. Some think it’s already dead. In any case, it was important to the way television eclipsed film as the dominant media for a cultural conversation in the English-speaking world: If everyone you knew was talking feverishly about the latest episode of “Breaking Bad” – and every newspaper or website you read had a recap -- it became hard to think that that movie you were still hoping to get to was as important as it had seemed last weekend. The situation is clearly in flux. But those of us who have some version of a life -- or family and friends we want to spend time with, or books we want to read or movies we want to watch or plays we want to see -- should unite and try to push back against the everything-all-the-time nature of whole-season releasing and stand up for the weekly rollout. And if you agree with me, we’re gonna have to push pretty hard. “Nowadays, around 75 per cent of TV viewers admit to binge-watching TV, according to a recent survey,” Business Insider reports, “and many of us can gladly reel off the box sets we've binged on -- and what's next on our ‘to watch’ list. Another study found that the ritual is the ‘new normal,’ with 61 per cent of Netflix subscribers admitting to regular binges.” It's also worth remembering that while it sounds cutely defiant these days, there was a reason why the term "binge" once carried an unpleasant connotation. And not just for overindulgence in food and drink. In January, a colleague's story pointed out that "there’s a strong link between depression and loneliness and the amount of television we binge on in single sittings." A research team at the University of Texas "found that the more lonely and depressed you are, apparently, the more likely you are to down an entire season of 'Game of Thrones' in one fell swoop." Even if isolation doesn't drive it, my own attempts to consume several episodes at one sitting because of journalistic deadlines have shown me that bingeing is rarely the best way to get a full sense of a show and its emotional life. (I'd also rather sip a good whiskey than pour it down my throat.) One of the ways we can protect the integrity of the weekly show (and our own bodies and souls) is if a lot of consumers simply resist and effectively boycott the binge watch. But it’s crucial to have executives at the networks and streamers – like Hulu’s Erwich -- commit to traditional rollouts. FX’s CEO John Landgraf drew headlines recently when he spoke about television programming moving into “the late stages of a bubble.” He also spoke about the all-at-once issue. From THR again:

Though Landgraf bemoaned the crowded landscape and its challenges, he, too, has no plans to roll out his series all at once. "I like the sustained conversation that a television show uniquely can create," he tells THR. "And while I think that sustained conversation is fracturing naturally, I don't want to help it fracture."

Is this a losing battle? Maybe. But bingeing on TV is no healthier – for our lives or for the way the medium works – than sitting on the couch and downing a case of beer and a box of chocolate cookies.On the surface, the state of television – especially high-end cable and streaming television – has never been better. Even with “Mad Men” gone, we’ve got “Veep,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “House of Cards,” “The Americans” and plenty of other smart fare coming back in the fall. “Game of Thrones” recently started filming and will be back in the spring. If you’re into zombies, forensic crime-scene investigations, or insane housewives, there’s never been more available. Even Amazon – a company a lot of us hate – is producing strong “content” like Jill Soloway's acclaimed "Transparent." There are worse problems to have than to be overwhelmed with good and great television. But it’s overwhelming just the same. If you’re like me, you juggle catching up with old programs – I just finished the first season of “The Affair” – with new stuff like David Simon’s “Show Me a Hero” and Jon Stewart’s farewell run on “The Daily Show” and the closing of the second season of “True Detective.” And trying to get time for the half-dozen or so series I’ve fallen behind on -- among them “Masters of Sex” – and series I’m overdue to check in on, like “Mr. Robot.” Today we have so many ways to watch something that the experience is starting to scatter: You can blink, and fall behind on a show and the discussion around it. Looking forward to the “Wet Hot American Summer” series? So was I, but by the time I had the free screen time, the whole thing had dropped, everyone I knew who was interested had watched it, the recapping was over, and it was yesterday’s papers. So this is why the news that more networks are releasing entire seasons all at once – perfect for binge-watching, not so good for a more measured engagement with a fictional world and its characters – has me shouting, Please, no more. You don’t have to be a hardcore Proustian – someone who sees life as shaped by the passage of time and delights in the pleasure of anticipation – to want this stuff to come out a little at a time. (Though it sure helps.) In a Hollywood Reporter piece on the binge phenomenon, Lacey Rose writes:

Amazon, NBC and now Starz (with Da Vinci's Demons and new miniseries Flesh and Bone) are among those employing the all-at-once launch strategy for key shows, while networks such as Fox, ABC and Hulu — perhaps the most surprising of these, given that it competes with the other streamers — are steadfast in their commitment to the weekly rollout. "We value the shared experience and the joy of the watercooler experience that is television," said Hulu head of content Craig Erwich, acknowledging an about-face for a company that had experimented with binge-style releases for comedies Deadbeat and The Hotwives of Orlando a year earlier.

Though Landgraf bemoaned the crowded landscape and its challenges, he, too, has no plans to roll out his series all at once. "I like the sustained conversation that a television show uniquely can create," he tells THR. "And while I think that sustained conversation is fracturing naturally, I don't want to help it fracture."