Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 142

One of Trump’s most devious tactics to try to silence his critics

(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

It seems every week brings a new target of Trump’s wrath. He simply can’t let anything go. But when his grievances against his enemies are too severe simply to attack in a series of hateful tweets, you can count on Trump to take it to the next level: the courtroom.

Most recently, Trump has vowed to seek revenge on BuzzFeed for publishing the Steele Dossier almost a year ago. Now, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is suing BuzzFeed for defamation.

BuzzFeed stands by its decision to publish the dossier. Katie Rayford, a BuzzFeed spokesperson, told AlterNet: “The dossier is, and continues to be, the subject of active investigations by Congress and intelligence agencies. It was presented to two successive presidents, and has been described in detail by news outlets around the world. Its interest to the public is obvious. This is not the first time Trump’s personal lawyer has attacked the free press, and we look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.”

Trump loves both suing and threatening lawsuits over any perceived slight, whether it’s an artist who depicted the president nude with a micropenis, or an analyst who (correctly) predicted the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino would fail. The president has a long history of using bogus claims of libel and defamation to bully opponents and tie them up in court. The American Bar Association has called him a “libel bully,” but was afraid to make the claim public because its lawyers feared Trump might sue in retaliation. There’s even a nifty online counter tracking the number of hours since Trump last threatened a journalist or critic. According to the makers of the counter, he’s threatened to sue at least 45 times since the 1980s.

As outrageous as some of Trump’s claims are, being sued for defamation or libel is no laughing matter. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, not to mention the opportunity cost of time spent in court, plus the emotional strain and reputation damage that can occur during a complicated lawsuit. For someone as powerful as Trump, who can hand these burdens off to someone else, lawsuits are an easy way to threaten anyone who challenges him.

Here are some of the least credible and most obnoxious lawsuits Trump has followed through on in an effort to silence his opponents.

1. The Chicago Tribune

Back in 1984, Trump sued Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Gapp for a staggering $500 million after the writer mocked a proposed Trump buildingin the New York financial district. Gapp called the building plan unrealistic and “one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city” — and Trump was not having it.

The case was tossed out by a particularly sardonic judge, whose full statement is a delight to read. In Gapp’s defense, the building design was totally silly, as you can see below.

(Credit: Chicago Tribune)

2. Trump biographer Timothy O’Brien

In 2005, Trump sued his own biographer, Timothy O’Brien, for writing in TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald that the real estate mogul was worth only $150 to $250 million. Trump insisted he was worth at least $5 billion, and took the case to court. Seriously. A judge ultimately dismissed the case. After he lost, Trump bragged to the Washington Post: “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees but they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make [O’Brien’s] life miserable, which I’m happy about.”

3. Miss USA contestant Sheena Monnin 

In 2012, pageant contestant Sheena Monnin complained on Facebook that the Miss USA contest Trump oversaw was “fraudulent,” “trashy” and “rigged.” Trump sued her for $5 million in response and won an arbitration award. Trump attorney Michael Cohen later bragged that he and Trump had “destroyed” Monnin’s life.

4. The Daily Beast

Trump’s team sued the Daily Beast in 2015 after it published an article about Ivana Trump’s accusations of rape against her ex-husband. On that occasion, attorney Cohen, who headed many of these lawsuits, made it perfectly clear that the suit was intended to punish anyone who smeared Trump’s name.

“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know,” Cohen told the Daily Beast. “So I’m warning you, tread very f—ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. You understand me?”

“You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up . . . for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet . . . you’re going to have judgments against you, so much money, you’ll never know how to get out from underneath it,” he said.

5. Union workers at Trump Hotel Las Vegas

In 2015, Trump sued the Culinary Union and Bartenders Union at his own Las Vegas hotel for printing “misleading” flyers that suggested Trump himself did not stay at Trump Hotel Las Vegas because the rooms weren’t luxurious enough. At the time, employees at the hotel were in the midst of efforts to unionize.

A union spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter: “This lawsuit is an effort to distract from the unionizing effort . . . There are over 500 workers who are fighting for justice and respect at the Trump Hotel Las Vegas.”

6. Univision

Trump’s long and well-publicized feud with Univision has resulted in threats of several lawsuits, including one against programming chief Alberto Ciurana for posting an Instagram with Trump’s face spliced next to Dylann Roof’s. So basically, Trump threatened to sue over a meme calling out his blatant racism.

It’s no wonder Univision’s lawyers called Trump “thin-skinned” in response. Their memorandum to dismiss the suit nails Trump’s tactics of intimidation perfectly: “There is a rich irony to Trump’s cry that he is the target of an effort to ‘suppress [his] right to free speech,’ when it is Trump himself — a candidate for president — who is attempting to invoke the coercive power of the courts to punish a citizen’s speech.”

Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump to meet

(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/KRT)

It’s a twist to U.S.–North Korea tensions that few saw coming: just as the rhetorical heat has been ratcheting up between the two nuclear nation-states, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has invited U.S. President Donald Trump to a personal meeting. In return, Trump accepted the invitation.

Reportedly, the two will meet by May 2018.

Chung Eui-yong, the South Korean official who delivered the news on Thursday, told reporters that Kim Jong Un is “committed to denuclearization” and that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear missile tests. He also said that Kim Jong Un “expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible.”

The White House has confirmed that Trump accepted his invitation.

“President Trump greatly appreciates the nice words of the South Korean delegation and [South Korean] President Moon,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in the statement, according to CNN. “He will accept the invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un at a place and time to be determined. We look forward to the denuclearization of North Korea. In the meantime, all sanctions and maximum pressure must remain, she said.

Trump tweeted there will be no nuclear tests by North Korea “during this period of time.”

Kim Jong Un talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze. Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time. Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2018

This news comes after South Korea met with North Korea this week, for the first time since Kim Jong Un assumed power in 2011. According to CNN, the meeting led to plans for an April summit in which Kim Jon Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will meet in the demilitarized zone.

While North Korea’s sudden invitation is a bright sign in rocky relations between North Korea and the United States, it is unclear if anything will come of the meeting of the minds. North Korea has promised to suspend its nuclear program before, and has failed to keep its promise. In 2012, the Obama administration forged the “Leap Day” deal, in which North Korea promised to halt operations at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. One month later, North Korea threatened to launch a satellite, which some in the west interpreted as provocation.

Alex Bell, the Senior Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, told Salon it was wise to remain cautious.

“There’s not a lot of reason to trust the North Koreans based on our previous experiences with them,” said Bell, who was also the Director for Strategic Outreach in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department under the Obama Administration.

Indeed, sources have reportedly alluded to CNN reporters that there may be an ulterior motive regarding Kim Jong Un’s invitation.

“The trucks coming from China have gone to almost none and it’s going to have a negative effect on North Korea’s economy in the coming months and years if the sanctions continue,”  CNN’s Will Ripley said. “There’s also the messaging from President Trump that he would be very willing to move to a military option, an attack on North Korea, if diplomacy doesn’t work.”

Ripley said sources told him Kim Jong Un is “taking a page from the Trump playbook.”

Of course, there’s only way way to find out.

“There is no way to know if this is a real and honest path to denuclearization of the Korean peninsula unless we try,” Bell told Salon.

If Pyongyang is serious about denuclearization, the process to obtaining a deal will be complicated and tedious.

“This is highly technical if we are actually talking about dismantling the North Korean nuclear program,” Bell added. “It would be the Iran deal times one hundred.”

Selling the monster: Fox finally airs “O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?”

O.J. Simpson (Credit: Getty/ Jason Bean)

It’s a miracle. More than 11 years after it was shelved, Fox is finally airing O.J Simpson’s 2006 interview with Judith Regan — just in time to siphon off viewers from ABC’s revival of “American Idol.” To think, if nobody had stumbled upon the tapes — found languishing in a box on the Fox lot, according to an IndieWire report — we might never have gotten to see Simpson’s creative musings on how the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson might have happened.

But somebody excavated this piece of misplaced arcana, and lo, now we’re getting “O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?” airing Sunday at 8 p.m. on Fox.  The network’s press release colorfully describes the two-hour special as a chance to witness a 2006-era Simpson offering “a detailed — and disturbing — description of what might have happened on that fateful night of June 12, 1994.”

Former CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien, who covered the Simpson case and trial extensively, hosts the special. In a tweet that posted on Wednesday O’Brien characterized her work on the special as the “most bizarre and insane interview I’ve ever been a part of.” She’s likely to have plenty of insight to offer, having recently hosted and executive produced a “Mysteries & Scandals” episode on the disgraced athlete, who was exonerated from the charges of murdering Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995.

O’Brien also will be joined by panel of analysts that includes attorney Christopher Darden; Eve Shakti Chen, who serves as a representative for Nicole Brown Simpson’s family; retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente; and anti-domestic violence advocate Rita Smith. And Regan, who originally conducted that 2006 interview. Fox plans to air the special with limited commercial interruptions and feature domestic-violence awareness public service announcements throughout its telecast.

In the year following the controversy, Nevada prosecutors hit Simpson with multiple criminal charges including kidnapping, robbery, burglary, assault, and conspiracy- and weapons-related counts, related to his role in a sports memorabilia heist that took place at a Las Vegas casino. He was found guilty in 2008 of those crimes, receiving a sentence of 33 years in prison.

Five months ago, on October 1, 2017, Simpson was released on parole. Footage of his emergence from prison showed the one-time NFL legend, Hertz spokesperson and movie star as a man deflated and ashen, but also smarmy and odious. It could be that prison and cable news cameras weren’t responsible for making Simpson look smaller than he seemed. The explosion of true crime trend achieves that.

The Simpson murder case and television trial gave rise to that genre, as we know. Recent reappraisals of that history, along with other criminal cases involving the rich and seemingly untouchable, have been examined from so many angles as to shrivel our estimation of perpetrators like him. Breaking down this darker side of Simpson’s biography, still unwinding before cameras, somehow further disempowers the man as he is now.

Simpson’s trajectory is more widely known than others, thanks to recent award-winning examinations via ESPN’s Oscar-winning documentary “O.J. Simpson: Made in America” and FX’s multiple Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” both released in 2016. Those works distinguished themselves by placing the case and Simpson himself in the context of our problems with race, class and gender in America.

Before those works came into existence, however, Simpson was grim punchline material for edgy comedians, an all-purpose bogeyman referenced in stories of domestic abuse. FX’s miniseries and ESPN documentary contemplate him as a symbol of the criminal justice system’s asymmetrical favoritism of the wealthy, along with examining the ways that race, along with a woman’s image and choices can be twisted to ensure her voice isn’t considered as heavily as her male counterparts. Each is an allegory revealing how far our culture hasn’t progressed despite long-held illusions about a post-racial and more equal America.

Conversely airing this special now makes us contemplate what has changed since 2006, and specifically how time and the popularity of true crime have somehow made palatable a thing formerly considered obscene.

When the interview at the center of “O.J. Simpson: The Lost Confession?” was first produced, Fox was in the height of the Mike Darnell era of trashy reality. Darnell is the network’s former alternative entertainment executive responsible for such memorable diversions as “Skating with Celebrities,” and “The Simple Life,” a show that made celebutantes Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie pop culture fixtures. To be fair, he’s also the man who armed Fox with the very weapon this special exists to counter, “American Idol.”

Regan, as the former editor and publisher of the now-defunct ReganBooks, published page turners created to capitalize upon the hoi polloi’s hunger for tabloid tripe.  Memorable products include Jenna Jameson’s “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” and Jose Canseco’s “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits & How Baseball Got Big.” At its height ReganBooks was a money maker for then-owner News Corporation, which also owned Fox.

The publisher’s announced release of “If I Did It” in November 2006 became the imprint’s undoing, effectively ending Regan’s career. She was pushed out in December 2006 after a very public outcry and alignment of forces against her within News Corporation’s own ecosystem. Bill O’Reilly slammed the planned special on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Geraldo Rivera declared, “I will bash this project every minute I have the opportunity to bash this project.”

The #MeToo era has since called those men to account, felling one of them. The recently-fired O’Reilly may stand as a greater symbol of patriarchal privilege running amok than Simpson these days. And Rivera is a running joke — then again, when was that not the case?

Even so, in 2018 Simpson still symbolizes. . .something. Perhaps this special will help those still fascinated by the story and the man to verbalize what that is.

A 1997 civil court judgment found Simpson responsible for both murders and he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in restitution to the victims’ families. Part of that restitution involved the Goldman family securing the publishing rights to “If I Did It,” released with a cover designed to make the word “if” barely visible next to the “I DID IT” portion of the title, displayed in gigantic red letters.

David Cook, who has been representing the Goldmans, renewed the civil court judgment in 2015 at $57 million, to account for interest. Now the amount owed sits around $70 million. The criminal courts may have rendered a “not guilty” verdict, but the victims’ families are dedicated to making Simpson pay. This divided result reflects the prevailing public sentiment about the man, and explains why that supposedly “lost” confession is airing now. A lot of us are fairly certain that he did it.

Advocacy groups fight for your right to do magic mushrooms

(Credit: Shutterstock/Getty)

Perhaps recreational marijuana really is a gateway drug — or rather, a gateway to legalizing other drugs, like psilocybin mushrooms.

Pro-psychedelic drug activists in various states are pushing make psilocybin, the psychedelic drug’s scientific name, more accessible to the public. Indeed, in Colorado — a state that legalized marijuana in 2014 — members of Colorado for Psilocybin met with Denver city officials earlier this week to gather signatures on a measure to decriminalize magic mushrooms.

According to Colorado Public Radio, the proposed measure in Denver City would forgo felony charges for those in possession of the mushroom. Instead, anyone holding more than two ounces of dried mushrooms, or two pounds of uncured “wet” mushrooms, would be subject to a citation of less than $99 (for the first offense), and it would increase in increments of $100 for following offenses. A citation would never be issued for more than $999 (that would be expensive trip, but it might be better than jail time).

Currently in Colorado, possession of psilocybin is a criminal offense; the penalty largely depends on how much a civilian is in possession of, and what the intent of the person is (intent to distribute usually comes with a higher fine). Jail time and a hefty fine exceeding $2,000 are realistic consequences though.

The push to decriminalize magic mushrooms isn’t purely driven by hedonism though; it’s political, too. The Denver chapter of the Psilocybin Decriminalization Initiative — known as the Psychedelic Club at the University of Colorado Boulder — claims on their website that “drug laws ruin lives.”

“People should have the right to use psychedelic substances for medical, intellectual, spiritual, and recreational purpose,” the website reads. “The War on Drugs criminalizes millions of innocent people each year for usage. As a result, psychedelic substances are stigmatized in our society.”

Many of the organization’s activists are vocal about their stories and experiences about how psychedelics have changed their lives.

Xi, an MIT grad, started microdosing  on psilocybin mushrooms “as a source of creative inspiration for app development.”  She’s  now in prison for possession and distribution after a business competitor tried to take her down by revealing she was microdosing, according to the Psychedelic Club’s profile of her.

In 2014, according to research by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 1 million Americans over the age of 18 were users of hallucinogens.

The next step for Denver activists will be to submit petition materials for review with the Denver Elections Division, then they can begin to gather signatures.

Meanwhile, activists in California are pushing a similar measure.

The California Psilocybin Mushroom Decriminalization Initiative could appear on the ballot if it gathers 365,000 signatures by April 30, 2018. The initiative also seeks to decriminalize use, possession, sale, transport, or cultivation of psilocybin (a hallucinogenic compound) by those over the age of 21.

“Not only is this important for California. residents, it would set the tone for future states wishing to follow in California’s progressive footsteps,” Kitty Merchant, a spokesperson for the California Psilocybin Legalization Initiative, tells Salon. “This could transform medicine and mental health protocols, as well as alleviate pressures on law enforcement and the courts. Taxes from psilocybin sales could be used to fund drug treatment and help us put an end to this opiate epidemic.”

Merchant says the California initiative endorses the Denver proposal.

Magic mushrooms aren’t purely recreational drugs; they have medicinal functions too. Studies have shown that psilocybin mushrooms could treat depression. In a study published in Lancet Psychiatry in 2016, treatment with psilocybin markedly reduced depressive symptoms in one week in patients who experienced depression. Improvements in anxiety and anhedonia were also recorded.

The California Psilocybin Legalization Initiative produced its own trippy YouTube video to tout the initiative, which you can watch below:

“TV is like an empathy machine,” that’s why, says Joy Press, women have been stealing the show

(Credit: Kieran Press-Reynolds)

When author Joy Press began writing “Stealing the Show: How Women Are Revolutionizing Television,” in 2015, we were already in the midst of a watershed era for females in popular entertainment. But Press couldn’t have predicted how the 2016 election and the 2017 groundswell of the #MeToo movement would shape the narrative even more. 

Drawing on both cultural context and interviews with groundbreaking show runners like Diane English, Jill Soloway and Shonda Rimes, the result is a work that’s part oral history, part analysis and part guidepost for where we go from here. It’s also a truly entertaining peek backstage into some of the greatest television shows of the past 25 years.

Salon spoke recently to Press about culture wars, female anti-heroes and how Shondaland brought “vajayjay” into the lexicon. 

You begin the book with “Murphy Brown,” which feels incredibly full circle given that now “Murphy Brown” is coming back. And you end it with “Transparent,” and you have to say, “Oh, by the way, Jeffrey Tambor.”  How did you manage writing this while so much was unfolding in real time?

There’s a moment you have to stop. And the world wasn’t stopping. There was only so much I could do to keep it current. The world just keeps going on, and it certainly is in terms of women. It’s proceeding in all kinds of interesting and exciting directions.

People have said, “Oh, you’re so prescient that you saw all this coming.” I certainly didn’t see all of this coming. But there was very much something changing in terms of female creativity on television. That has only been borne out with more and more shows and more and more creative female showrunners and gender non-conforming showrunners.

“Murphy Brown” and “Roseanne” felt like a very important [starting] mark for me. It felt like a moment in which two extremely strong female characters and female creative forces had shaped the conversation in television in a way that very few had done before — and since — in history of female television.

Then when the 2016 election happened, I was personally knocked for a loop. I was supposed to have finished the book by then, and I thought, I need to rethink this whole thing. What am I doing? What do these shows mean? I started to feel like, “Oh, actually, this really takes on a very different meaning.”

As Trump took office, a lot of the rhetoric was the same. I saw those things that I had found in the period of my research on the nineties culture wars. It was eerie.

It was funny reading the first chapter and being thrust back into that moment when the idea that the White House could care about a TV show seemed both huge and also absurd. 

It is very weird. The thing about “Murphy Brown” is that it goes back to a moment where everybody was watching the same thing. “Murphy Brown” and “Roseanne” were hugely popular. You have these very seemingly inflammatory figures. Yet, they were very, very popular. A huge swath of America loved those shows. The vice president of America basically pointed to Murphy Brown as responsible for the downfall of the American family, and Americans watched. 

I also want to talk about where we are now. With shows like “Orange is the New Black” and “Transparent,” it’s been women who have revolutionized the way that we watch television. It has been women who have been the driving forces behind the changeover in platforms like Netflix and Amazon, overwhelmingly. You go down the litany of these shows: “Fleabag,”   “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” These shows that are driven by women both in front of and behind the cameras transformed the way we watch television. 

A lot of the most exciting, innovative shows in the last five years have been created by women and been created by people of color, because there are voices that have been largely shutouts. I think television was largely guarded traditionally by male gatekeepers. It was fairly hard for women to get their vision on the air.

Jenji Kohan was a veteran TV writer and had not really managed to make anything work on network. She had various pilots. She had a show that didn’t really take off. She just didn’t seem to work within that system. When she created “Weeds,” this was a moment when HBO was ascending with all of these very macho dramas. She set out to create a female anti-hero. So she created this great series based on a soccer mom who was dealing weed.

And the home that she was able to find for it was very much nipping at HBO’s appeal but had not managed to really make a mark with serious drama and with serious quality original programming. Showtime took a chance on “Weeds” and Jenji Kohan, and really built their slate of shows around shows created about women. They had “Nurse Jackie,” “The Big C.”

And then Kohan did the same thing with “Orange Is The New Black” when she signed Netflix. They really didn’t exist yet as the network for original programming. “Orange Is The New Black” helped make Netflix this binging sensation.

When it hit everywhere, everyone was tweeting about it and obsessively talking about it. And that was exactly what they wanted. Women have benefitted from the fracturing of the network model, as more streaming platforms have occurred. You also have a lot of women come in through side doors. “Broad City” created their own content; Issa Rae created her own YouTube show. 

There’s been a way in which the exclusion of women from really being able to get their voices into mainstream network television benefitted them to make the shows they want to make, make them really original and weird and get a really strong sense what their vision. It’s sort of kind of like, “Well, I might as well just do what I’m going to do.”

But then let’s talk about Shonda and what she’s done for television, because she has also really transformed it and in a very mainstream way. She has transformed our classic appointment, sit down on a Thursday night with my girlfriends television.

Shonda is a really singular figure. Looking at how it unfolded, it almost feels like a stealth attack on television. She was a successful screenwriter. She studied at USC and she had done some very successful movies and she wanted to get into television and was developing some shows for ABC. But “Grey’s Anatomy” was not a show that ABC had high expectations for. It seems like it was just one of a bunch of shows that they had on their back burner. And it was an incredible hit.

Shonda was very much aware of what she likes and what she hadn’t seen on TV and was really kind of determined to do that as a pushback. She was clearly very, very strategic with her partner Betsy Beers. I just couldn’t believe what she was having to fight for on a daily basis, just basic things about being a woman in the world, being a sexual woman in the world, being a sarcastic woman, being ambitious. Every step, there were these crazy battles, having to fight to use the word vagina or to use anatomically correct words for woman’s body when these were supposed to be doctors and gynecologists.

Which is how we wind up with the vajayjay.

Vajayjay, yes. The birth of the word vajayjay was just, “Okay, we’re just going to come up with something so silly.”

It was a combination of this very creative strategy and just fantastically watchable television that was a huge hit. What you find in television is that money talks. If the show is successful, as with “Murphy Brown,” as with “Grey’s Anatomy,” then you have leeway. You have a lot of room to play. Shonda continued to use that to break new ground without it feeling like something different was happening. It just was entertaining. There were certainly the people watching it maybe seeing things they hadn’t seen before, and identifying things that they’ve experienced that they had never seen on television.

But it wasn’t shouting at you saying, “Look at me! I’m creating a revolution in television.” It felt like a dramatic show that you had to watch and everyone wanted to talk about. Rimes really built an enormously powerful empire on the quality and watchability of her shows. In the background, she was clearly aware every step of the way of how much she had to fight for these little moments, including the questions of female ambition and having characters who didn’t want to get married, who didn’t want to have babies, whether it was on “Scandal” or “Grey’s Anatomy.” It was so unnatural for a female heroine to choose a job or a work or herself rather than have the focus of the story of the romantic happy ending. I think those are the shifts that she is constantly pushing for on her shows.

Which is a recurring theme in your book. We have stories about things that half of us live through, and yet have to be fought for again and again and again and again and again and again.

I didn’t realize how many things I hadn’t seen until I saw them. It’s invisible until we make something visible. And then you say, “Wow, how was it possible that this has never been on television before? How was it possible that this has never been depicted? Or depicted in this way?” So many clichés in television and on pop culture, so many things that we’ve seen over and over again and yet, there’s a crazy range of experiences.

I think that also puts an awful lot of pressure on the creators of these shows. I saw that a lot in the way that people talked about something like “Girls,” where they wanted to see it represent everyone. I see it to some degree with something like “Insecure.” There is so much hope and expectation placed on these shows because there aren’t enough of them. We’re hungry to see more and not just to see our own experiences, to see different experiences.

What you’re talking about is the intentional female gaze. When you see it, it is so shocking. When I see these films and television shows that are created by women, it just feels like coming home after a really, really, really long day.

There was a moment that I talk about briefly in the book, in “Transparent.” There’s a middle-aged female mom character, and she’s just come home from a school function and she’s just exhausted and she stands at the refrigerator naked, tired and fed up.

It’s startling when you see it because it is a concrete moment when you think, “I really don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman of that age in something that feels so real.” It feels really revelatory and at the same time it feels really upsetting to realize how blinkered what we absorb from television is.

What’s been happening in this #MeToo conversation has had a similar effect, where all kinds of experiences that women have bottled up have come out and that moves into the public domain. It’s the same thing. You start to realize the things that have not been publicly talked about and how much had been suppressed and how universal it is.

It’s the same kind of feeling when you see something on television and you think, “I’ve never seen a woman look like that. I’ve never seen a sexual experience quite like that. I’ve never seen a woman thinking to take it that way.” It’s really comes down to the feeling that a tiny fraction of human experience has really been put out there for us. TV is like an empathy machine; it opens the door to experience and walks in other people’s shoes.

For so many of us, we have walked in white men’s shoes for so long they feel like our own. And then when we actually walk in our own shoes, it’s like, “Oh my god, this is what shoes are supposed to feel like!”

White straight men are the default. That’s not to say that no straight white man ever created great female characters. They have. And they have mentored female showrunners. But I think in this case, I feel really strongly that the culture does need a wider range of voices.

I do feel optimistic at this moment. It feels like a really interesting moment when women are extremely conscious, and are making everyone around them extremely conscious. When I would ask people why there’s such a small proportion of female showrunners and female directors and female leads, and the answer seemed to be unconscious bias. They’re working with people they feel comfortable with and they’re buying shows that seem interesting to them. That just happens to be about the characters that remind them of themselves when they were young. I think those biases are now conscious and out in the world.

You don’t know what you’re missing until you see it in front of you. So now we’re starting to see it. We’re seeing like traces of it and we have characters like Mindy Lahiri and Hannah Horvath and Issa. And it’s like, “Well, okay, so now we know what we’ve been missing. We know we have a little trace of a sense of what’s possible.” I can’t imagine how we put that genie back in the bottle.

This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Scientist says bones found on Pacific island likely belonged to Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart (Credit: AP)

A new study claims there is a 99 percent chance that an assortment of lost bones found on a South Pacific island are the remnants of aviator Amelia Earhart, the woman icon who disappeared in 1937 while attempting to fly around the world.

What exactly happened to Earhart and her navigator Frederick Noonan has largely remained a mystery. Earhart, Noonan and the plane were never found. All that is known is that they disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

“The data revealed that the bones have more similarity to Earhart than to 99 percent of individuals in a large reference sample,”according to a statement from the University of Tennessee Knoxville reported in NPR. The findings were published by anthropologist Richard Jantz in the journal Forensic Anthropology on Wednesday.

In 1940, three years after Earhart’s disappearance, the bones were discovered on the island now called Nikumaroro, which is located 400 miles south from a planned stop on her itinerary. A physician in Fiji had originally determined that the bones belonged to a man.

But now, after reanalyzing the bone measurements – the original bones are lost – Janz claims they actually belonged to a woman and more likely than not to Earhart herself. “I think we have pretty good evidence that it’s her,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.

Jantz compared the bone measurements to dimensions of Earhart, which he garnered from photographs with scalable objects in them and her clothing from the George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers at Purdue University.

“The bones are consistent with Earhart in all respects we know or can reasonably infer,” the study says. “Her height is entirely consistent with the bones. The skull measurements are at least suggestive of female. But most convincing is the similarity of the bone lengths to the reconstructed lengths of Earhart’s bones.”

Of world’s top 100 billionaires, only eight are women

Laurene Powell Jobs (Credit: Getty/Steve Jennings)

The gap between the rich and the really rich continues to grow as fortunes sky-rocket to new heights. The world’s richest people now have an average combined net worth of $9.1 trillion – a huge 18 percent increase over 2017, according to Forbes.

There are now 2,208 billionaires in the world, hailing from 72 countries and territories. But only eight women made the top 100 list. Here they are, in order of net worth:

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers

Bettencourt Meyers and her family own 33 percent of L’Oreal – the world’s largest cosmetics manufacturer. The granddaughter of L’Oreal’s founder, Bettencourt Meyers is the richest woman in Europe. She runs her family’s company as chairwoman and has written three books, including a five-volume study of the Bible.

Susanne Klatten

Klatten, the richest woman in Germany, owns 19.2 percent of the automobile company BMW. The economist helped change her grandfather’s chemical company, Altana AG, into a world renowned pharmaceutical and speciality chemical corporation. She is the sole owner and deputy chairman of Altana.

Jacqueline Mars

The well-known philanthropist owns one third the world’s largest candy manufacturer Mars, whose brands include M&M’s, Skittles and Snickers. In addition to running the candy company, Mars serves on six boards, including the National Archives and the Smithsonian.

Yang Huiyan  

The Chinese property developer owns 57 percent of Country Garden Holdings, a real estate development company. Her shares were largely transferred to her by her father, Yeung Kwok Keung, in 2007. She holds a degree from Ohio State University.

Laurene Powell Jobs

Powell Jobs is the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. She founded and heads the Emerson Collective, a non-profit organization named after Ralph Waldo Emerson that is dedicated to social justice initiatives and providing education to needy students. She also founded College Track, a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged students prepare for and graduate from college. In addition, Powell Jobs has made a $100 million commitment to “XQ: The Super School Project,” a nationwide competition-turned-movement to reform high school curriculum across the country.

In 2017, the investor and philanthropist bought a majority stake in The Atlantic magazine and website for an undisclosed price.

Gina Rinehart  

Rinehart is Australia’s richest citizen and a mining mogul. Her wealth is built on iron ore. The daughter of high profile iron-ore explorer Lang Hancock, Rinehart took over her late father’s bankrupted estate and transformed it into something much bigger. The largest piece of her fortune comes form Hope Downs, an iron ore mine. She is also Australia’s third-largest cattle producer, with 23 properties across the country, according to Forbes.

Abigail Johnson

Johnson owns an estimated 24.5 percent stake in Fidelity Investments, a mutual fund giant that has more than has $2.3 trillion in assets. Her grandfather, Edward Johnson II, created the company. She joined it the company after receiving an MBA from Harvard University in 1988. She took over from her father as CEO in 2014 and as chairman in 2016.

Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken  

The English businesswoman owns 23 percent of Heineken, the Dutch brewing company. The beer heiress serves as the company’s executive director. She inherited the fortune in 2002 from her late father, longtime CEO Freddy Heineken.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s workout routine is your gift for International Women’s Day

Ruth Bader Ginsburg in "RBG" (Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Institute/Claudia Raschke)

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a pioneering feminist and an inspiration to women across the country (and world). And as Justice Ginsberg has been fighting for gender equality for decades, it’s likely no coincidence that the official trailer for the upcoming documentary film about her, titled “RBG,” was released on Wednesday.

Appropriately timed for International Women’s Day, the trailer previews an intimate and inspiring look into Ginsberg’s continuous fight for human rights, what it was like pursuing a career in a male-dominated field, and how she became the second female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I ask no favor for my sex; all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks,” she says.

Ginsburg was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. Prior to serving on the Supreme Court, she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980. In the 1970s, she served as the director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. She also taught Rutgers University Law School and at Columbia University, where she became the first woman tenured professor.

“I became a lawyer when women were not wanted by the legal profession,” Ginsburg says in the trailer clip. “I did see myself as kind of a kindergarten teacher in those days because the judges didn’t think sex discrimination existed.”

The trailer alternates between clips of Ginsburg working out — lifting weights and doing planks —  to signing autographs to showing her in various other situations outside of the Supreme Court. Viewers are treated to shots of esteemed women’s rights activists praising her accomplishments.

“When you come right down to it, [she’s] the closest thing to a superhero I know,” feminist icon Gloria Steinem says.

In the trailer, there are clips of Ginsburg talking about her personal life too and relationship with her late husband Martin David Ginsburg.

“I’ve had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation,” Ginsburg says in the documentary clip. “He was the first boy I ever knew who cared that I had a brain”

At age 84, Ginsburg indeed is unstoppable — and still passionate about her work and career. Her fame almost seems comical to her though.

“I’m 84 years old and everyone wants to take a picture with me,” Ginsburg jokes.

The film will be released on May 4.

 

Here’s what International Women’s Day is all about

Women protest on International Women's Day in front of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. (Credit: Getty/Joe Raedle)

March 8 marks International Women’s Day — a global celebration and annual acknowledgement of the cultural, economic, political and social accomplishments of women. The day also serves as a stark reminder that while women can now do a lot of the things they once could not — such as vote, get a credit card and attend an Ivy League school — there is still much progress that needs to be made in order to achieve full equality among the genders.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been observed since the early 1900s, when women were becoming more vocal and active in demanding change. In 1908, tens of thousands of women took to the streets of New York to campaign for better pay, shorter hours and the right to vote.

To mark IWD, allies are encouraged to wear green, purple and yellow. Green symbolizes hope, purple stands for dignity and justice, while yellow represents a “new dawn” in progressive contemporary feminism.

Following the World Economic Forum’s 2017 Global Gender Gap report which concluded that it would take more than 200 years for women to reach “gender parity,” or equality between men and women, it seems there has never been a more crucial time for activists to remain motivated. Recently fueled by social movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, there is huge global momentum to strive higher.

Today, women around the world are responding to the call with a global women’s strike that advocates for legislation and policies including paid family leave, reproductive freedom and LGBTQ rights. The strike comes one year following “A Day Without a Woman,” which saw women across the country boycotting work and domestic chores to highlight the unparalleled influence of women on society.

In honor of IWD, companies like McDonald’s are letting their consumers know that they, too, care about women and are participating in the celebration. To do this, the fast-food chain flipped its golden arches.

Today, we flip our Golden Arches to celebrate the women who have chosen McDonald's to be a part of their story, like the Williams family. In the U.S. we’re proud to share that 6 out of 10 restaurant managers are women. https://t.co/6z88OhjXpO pic.twitter.com/hXfOi3wWQf

— McDonald's (@McDonalds) March 8, 2018

Buzzfeed producer Jesse McLaren had some reservations about the gesture, however. “If McDonald’s really wants to make a statement, they should change their dollar menu to 78 cents,” he said, referring to the gender pay gap factoid.

If they really want to make a statement they should change their dollar menu to 78 cents. pic.twitter.com/2ZwuYuXM9Y

— Jesse McLaren (@McJesse) March 7, 2018

Spotify, the music streaming service, is amplifying women’s voice with a special playlist titled “Women of the World.”

Celebrate the creativity, strength and resilience of women from across the globe with our Amplify: Women of the World playlist, curated for Women's History Month and #InternationalWomensDay https://t.co/IFzw0qj42w pic.twitter.com/yuCKv0CELM

— Spotify (@Spotify) March 8, 2018

And the Simpson’s shared a photo of Lisa Simpson sitting in the Oval Office along with the caption: “The future is bright,” which alluded to the fact that the U.S. has still never had a woman president, although it recently came close.

https://twitter.com/TheSimpsons/statu...

 

Republicans attacking Obamacare, one more time

Mitch McConnell; Paul Ryan (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite/Getty/Mark Wilson/Salon)

Republicans in Congress spent much of 2017 seeking to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. After repeated attempts failed, they celebrated a victory with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. While the tax bill left most of the ACA intact, it included the repeal of the ACA’s individual shared responsibility penalty, the penalty imposed on individuals who fail to purchase qualified insurance coverage.

That means the so-called individual mandate remains in the ACA but, beginning in 2019, individuals will no longer face a financial penalty if they choose not to purchase health insurance.

Health policy experts agree that this will destabilize the individual insurance market. With the ACA allowing people with pre-existing conditions to purchase health insurance at the same price as others, the individual mandate was a necessary counterbalance that encouraged healthy people to purchase insurance and stabilize premiums.

Emboldened by the legislative success of GOP tax reform, 20 states led by Texas and Wisconsin have renewed efforts to weaken and undo the ACA.

We study health policy and health care law and have watched the attacks on the law. We believe this latest legal challenge will likely fail but can still damage the ACA and insurance markets by exacerbating the uncertainty sown by actions of the Trump administration as the states-led suit meanders through the courts over the next years.

Death by a thousand cuts

The ACA has been under attack since it was enacted, but these attacks have intensified since the Trump administration took office and even more since congressional Republicans failed to repeal the ACA.

Cumulatively, the attacks have significantly weakened the law. Yet the law has persisted for almost eight years. And the most recent polls indicate that the ACA has never been more popular.

The Trump administration reduced outreach and advertising. It also ended cost-sharing subsidies in October. The administration also cut the number of days for enrollment to 45, significantly shorter than the first open enrollment. And, the website was down many Sundays, a popular day for enrollment.

But still, almost 12 million people enrolled during the most recent open enrollment period.

Major previous lawsuits

Since its passage in March 2010, the ACA has seen dozens of legal challenges. The very day the ACA was signed into law by President Obama, 26 states and others initiated the first major challenge to the ACA.

That lawsuit directly challenged the constitutionality of two core components of the ACA: the expansion of the Medicaid program and the requirement for individuals to purchase insurance or be subject to a fine.

Joining the court’s four liberal justices, Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the constitutionality of the individual mandate as a tax. However, he agreed with the plaintiffs that mandatory Medicaid expansion was unconstitutional.

The verdict, on June 28, 2012, damaged but preserved the ACA. Americans would be required to purchase insurance or face a penalty.

The expansion of the Medicaid program was left to the discretion of the states.

The next lawsuit took issue with the ACA’s requirement to provide certain forms of contraception to women. The Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby, Inc. in June 2014.

The court ruled that the ACA’s entire contraception mandate placed a substantial burden on closely held religious corporations. Various similar cases have been consolidated in Zubik v. Burwell. That case was sent back the lower courts in 2016 and is still pending.

King v. Burwell and Halbig v. Sebelius challenged the legality of premium subsidies for individuals purchasing insurance coverage through the federal insurance marketplace.

On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration in upholding the subsidies in a 6-3 decision.

Finally, in late 2014, the U.S. House of Representatives filed suit against the Obama administration over delays implementing the employer mandate and the payment of so-called cost-sharing reductions. These are reimbursements for insurance companies for payments they are required to make under the ACA to assist qualified individuals purchasing insurance in the insurance marketplaces for their out-of-pocket expenses.

The courts only allowed U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell to move forward with regard to the cost-sharing reductions. However, the issue has become moot as the Trump administration has refused further payments to insurance companies.

Relitigating the individual mandate

With the repeal of the shared responsibility payment, the state attorneys general argue in their suit that the individual mandate is no longer a tax, and thus no longer constitutional.

The heart of the issue is what legal scholars call severability. When part of a law is deemed unconstitutional, courts must consider what should happen to the rest of the law – must it also be struck down or can it stand alone?

The Supreme Court previously was faced with this exact issue in the lawsuit filed in 2010. In its June 2012 ruling, the court rejected the Medicaid expansion as unconstitutional but still upheld the rest of the ACA.

This will be a critical question as courts hear this new legal challenge. If the individual mandate is now unconstitutional, then would Congress have still have wanted the remaining pieces of the ACA to persist? Alternatively, are there parts of the ACA that cannot stand without the individual mandate? This particularly applies to the insurance market reforms that came along with the individual mandate, like the requirements to sell insurance to all comers and at the same rates.

When the Roberts Court decided to uphold the remainder of the ACA while making the Medicaid expansion optional, the court stated that “we have no way of knowing how many States will accept the terms of the expansion, but we do not believe Congress would have wanted the whole Act to fall, simply because some may choose not to participate.”

We believe this has particular resonance with the current legal challenge. It seems clear to us that Congress would not have wanted the whole law or its protections to fall for everyone just because some Americans would choose not to participate.

Simon F. Haeder, Assistant Professor of Political Science, West Virginia University and Valarie Blake, Associate Professor of Health Law, West Virginia University