Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 152

Rick Springfield: From “Jessie’s Girl” to “God, the devil and sex”

Rick Springfield (Credit: Getty/Kevin Winter)

If you’re wondering what Rick Springfield has been up to since his unanswered crush on “Jessie’s Girl”  become a pop classic in 1981, first check the numbers: The 69-year-old has his name on four platinum albums and 17 Top 40 songs and still plays around 100 concerts a year. Give ten minutes to the 2012 documentary “An Affair of the Heart” about his relationship with his fans who annually attend dozens of those shows or 10 pages to his 2010 autobiography “Late Late at Night” which Rolling Stone named one of the Top 25 greatest rock memoirs of all time. Or turn on the TV and catch him lately as Meryl Streep’s bandmate/boyfriend in the 2015 film “Ricki and the Flash,” a psychiatrist on Season 2 of “True Detective” or Lucifer on “Supernatural.” Find yourself wondering what Springfield has been up to and the answer probably doesn’t lie with him, but you.

Rick Springfield will be touring this winter and spring in support of his newly-released 17th studio album “The Snake King.” We spoke to him over soba noodles and green tea before an appearance at San Francisco Sketchfest about the timing of fame, an Australian’s sense of humor and the real identity of Jessie, whose girl he once wished he had.

Your new album “The Snake King” is a blues-rock album. Where did the idea for this approach come from?

For the lyrics I was writing, I thought a blues-based sound would lend itself better to them than pop rock. And I love blues, I was raised with blues.

If blues musicians were baseball cards, who is in your all-star pack?

Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King. Robert Johnson, Little Walter. I love Blues Harmonica. I had a great blues harmonica player named Jimmy Z who played on the album.

Did the title “The Snake King”” have something to do with [Doors lead singer] Jim Morrison calling himself The Lizard King?

No, I wasn’t aware of that. Or I had forgotten about it by the time I was writing. The album has to do with God, the devil and sex. A guy named The Snake King was an appropriate character to talk about those things.

You said you wrote the lyrics first for this album?

For this album, they came together. The words guided which way I went musically, which is unusual. But I wrote them together.

The album’s last song “Orpheus in the Underworld” is twice as  long as the other songs on the album.

Four times as long. A lot of people fill out a long track with instrumentals. I just felt I had something to say so I kept writing until I felt like I’d done it. I was surprised it was that long. If you’re doing a long track, you can’t be just noodling.

Economy is kind of a hallmark of the songs you’re famous for. And at the same time, you like to tease, build up to a guitar solo, by having a shorter version of it come first before the whole solo kicks in.

Keith Olsen, who produced “Jessie’s Girl,” taught me a lot about editing a song, keeping it interesting and not jerking off for your own sake. Maybe I dropped that a little on this album because I wanted longer solos.

I hate empty bars. We have a joke: “If we have spare tracks, put a guitar on it.” It’s probably just part of a natural path I take when I write. If you’re writing a three-minute song, you don’t have a second to waste.

You were already 30 years old when “Jessie’s Girl” came out and was your first and biggest hit. What was it like having fame at 30 instead of 20?

I was famous in my 20s for releasing albums that didn’t sell, for getting my picture in teen magazines and for being on a soap opera when I really saw myself primarily as a musician, not an actor. Gloria Stavers, who was in charge of 16 Magazine at the time, became my champion, telling anyone who would listen that I was more than a pretty face. But really I was famous for nothing. Or at least that’s how I saw it.

I wouldn’t have gotten this far if “Working Class Dog” had come along when I was 21 instead of 31. My dad had died right when “Jessie’s Girl” came out. I’d already made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of growing up.

I’m real glad it worked out that way. Being successful at the age of a teen idol would have been a giant thing to live down.

Did I read in your autobiography that you weren’t really interested in Jessie’s girl?

No, I was very interested in her. She was part of a couple in a stained-glass class I was taking. But her boyfriend’s name was Gary and “Gary’s Girl” just didn’t sound right. The name “Jessie” came from a Ron Jessie Los Angeles Rams T-Shirt I had at that time.

The documentary “An Affair of the Heart” seems to be about a certain kind of fame, enough to have fans who have supported you for decades but not so much that you’re say, going to get assassinated by having a close relationship with them.

It came from meeting a lot of them. I couldn’t meet them in the ’80s because I might have lost an arm or a leg or something. Now you hear of people who’ve grown up with you, who have lives, who have families — judges, doctors, dog wranglers, people who have lived their life. And it hits me when I hear I’ve become a part of that life. I get it. I’m a fan of people like that too, who’ve been with me my whole life. It can make you a bit of a diva or it can make you very humble. I’ve chosen [to let] it make me humble.

Your autobiography is a lot more brash than that. And a lot of owning up to past mistakes.

I tried not to image-polish. It’s kinda warts and all.

It feels like there are two very different sides of the same person. Your book  is “I did a lot of crazy stupid stuff and I hurt a lot of people.” The documentary seems to be about generosity.

They [filmmakers Sylvia Caminer and Melanie Lentz-Janney] took a tack with the film that it be about the fans. I’ve done a 180 on that for sure. I initially thought they were there to serve me. It took me a while to realize I’m there to serve them. That’s how a career is built.

The autobiography does go chronologically more or less, and lists a lot of young dumb stuff. The documentary was about understanding that shift, that it was about them and not about me.

The autobiography ends before you reach that point in life.

Yeah, I guess so. Where I am mentally now would come in the second installment. People ask me, “Hey, are you gonna write another autobiography?” I need to leave a few years before that.

We’re in the middle of an ’80s pop culture revival with “Stranger Things” and “The Goldbergs” and soon, “Ready Player One” in movie theaters. You’ve obviously benefited some from this.  What’s your thoughts?

Everyone wants to be current. But I’m really OK if you see me as a memory from childhood. We all like music from that time. It’s comforting. And mostly people who listened to me back then have been willing to come along with what I’ve done more recently.

What are you listening to now?

A newer band called Porcupine Tree. An English band from more my era called Be-Bop Deluxe. I really like the Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age. And the music from when I was growing up in Australia like the Easybeats still makes me happy.

What’s the most Australian thing about you?

My self-deprecating sense of humor. Aussies don’t want to know what a fucking big shot you think you are. Tall Poppy Syndrome — think you’re big, you get your head chopped off.

“Atlanta” returns to FX with its “robbin’ season”

Lakeith Stanfield and Donald Glover in "Atlanta" (Credit: FX/Guy D'Alema)

Given the elevated acclaim for the two most outwardly comedic episodes of FX’s “Atlanta,” “B.A.N.” and “Juneteeth,” one could almost forget series creator Donald Glover’s driving premise of the show. He always wants people to be a little bit scared while watching the show, he told TV journalists in 2016, because “that’s how it kind of feels to be black.”

Glover and his brother and fellow executive producer Stephen accomplish that by maintaining a consistent tension throughout every episode, even during the goofiest sequences. This edge of anxiety didn’t necessarily have to be connected to violence; just as often the discomfort had to do with financial worries, class-related discomfort or racism, whether externally inflicted or internalized.

The black entertainment network parody “B.A.N.” and the sideway commentary on pride, identity appropriation on display in “Juneteenth” embraced all of these concepts in their own way while leading with howl-inducing exchanges and scenery.

But season 1 opened with a parking lot confrontation punctuated by gunshot for a reason. The Glovers and director Hiro Murai, another executive producer on the series, construct “Atlanta” around a framework of fear in order remind the audience that every moment of these character’s is tenuous.

Never do we forget the half-hour’s sense of danger, established yet again in the second season’s opening moments. In an impressive fashion the premiere,  debuting Thursday at 10 p.m,  lulls the viewer in fog of confusion and safety at first, starting a ride-along with two friends casually trash talking each other while playing video games. What comes next explodes out of nowhere and delivers a shock to the system. And this is even before we drop in on Earn and the rest to see where they’ve landed since last we saw them. Sixteen months have passed between the first season finale and the debut of season 2, allowing time for Glover to take part in the production of the “Star Wars” film “Solo,” in which he’s playing a young Lando Calrissian.

Back in “Atlanta,” the struggles endured by Glover’s Earn Marks, his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), better known as the rising rap star Paper Boi, their friend Darius (Lakeith Stanfield) and Earn’s on again, off again love Van (Zazie Beetz) aren’t all that different. This is as true even as Alfred gains a higher profile in the music industry and Earn, his manager, begins to reap the rewards of his blossoming success. Fame doesn’t change the fact that they’re still black and poor, and it doesn’t do much to mitigate the ways in which that factor installs invisible deadbolts onto doors of opportunity.

“Atlanta” confronts these barrier time and again, and in its new season the writers do so with less stealth and a heightened comedic confidence. These new episodes comprise what the writers have dubbed the “Robbin’ Season,” referring to an actual time period in the city right before the holidays, when people have more gifts arriving on porches and presumably more cash in their wallets.

In the first three of the comedy’s latest episodes this idea plays out in ways tangible and metaphorical — and always, always surrounded by a mist of unreality. Each installment is informed, in some fashion, by somebody getting something lifted off of them. It could be in a deal gone wrong. The perpetrator might be the proprietor of a business, or an adorable white girl riding the coattails of a rapper’s fame, or the music industry at large.

Alfred and Earn strive to get a foothold in the music business but must decide whether their desire to maintain their dignity is greater than appeasing and impressing the industry’s white male gatekeepers, for example. And in one scene a slack-jawed Alfred realizes that, in a very real way, this translates to engaging in what is basically a private minstrel show.

Everybody experiences robbin’ season in some variety. The only change from moment to moment, and episode to episode, is who is getting robbed and who is doing the robbing.

The so-called “Robbin’ Season” has the characters confront stranger obstacles, and this gives the writers fresh opportunities to venture into places no other comedy on television can, or is brave enough to attempt. The tone in “Atlanta” flips from moment to moment without warning, and without alienating viewers who are presumed to understand, by this point, that flashes of terror can be ridiculous and infuriating and pants-wetting all at once. That hysterics can be a side-effect of intense amusement as well as a reaction to stress and trauma.

I can’t think of another show that finds a way to wring laughter and physical humor out of a character having a gun shoved in his face. Or that ably surfs the line between laughter and furious annoyance at witnessing a depressing truth about how having money doesn’t translate to better treatment for a black man who doesn’t look like someone who came by his cash legitimately and simply wants to take his girl out on a nice date.

It’s also telling that, according to the executive producers, season 2 is influenced by a “Tiny Toons Adventures” movie titled “How I Spent My Vacation.” This may only seem peculiar to people unfamiliar with the intentional weirdness of the writers’ approach to story in this show. As Donald and Stephen Glover explained in January at industry conference in Pasadena, the concept was to approach each episode as an individual vignette that appears to stand on its own but, when viewed in sequence, hangs together with a cinematic continuity to it.

And there is a cartoonish craziness to these new episodes that can be mind-boggling even while incorporating honest commentary about the reality of living in today’s America.  One season premiere plot involving Earn’s eccentric uncle (an inspired cameo by Katt Williams) and an alligator. A scene designed to resemble urban legend ties a distinct bow on the story with an image incongruous to the show’s urban setting, and that establishes the kind of undiluted oddity to expect out of these new half-hours.

That “Tiny Toons” influence isn’t merely structural, you see. It’s also thematic. Hunger and the threat of being murdered and/or eaten are the threads linking each “How I Spent My Vacation” short, and that’s also true here, as “Atlanta” returns – with a tougher hide and a wide smile full of razor-sharp teeth.

Madam C.J. Walker wasn’t the first African American millionaire

Madam C. J. Walker (Credit: Wikimedia)

Every year during Black History Month, African American pioneers and luminaries like Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King are celebrated with pride in African American households and taught by teachers in classrooms throughout the country. When it comes to noting the historical achievements of Blacks in business during the month of February and throughout the year, the most frequent name to come up is often Madam C.J. Walker, who is credited as the first black millionaire in the U.S.

Walker’s life story is an incredible rags-to-riches tale. She went from poverty as a sharecropper in Louisiana, the unofficial capital of Dixie when she was born there in 1867, to living in replete luxury in a New York City brownstone during adulthood. She was routinely spotted shopping on Fifth Avenue in 1916 after her business took off, a rarity for most New Yorkers during that time, let alone African Americans in the economic upheaval of the Progressive Era.

For African Americans well aware of how our ancestors struggled against segregation, poverty, and racial violence after Emancipation, Walker’s excess during a horrific era is a powerful aspirational symbol.

Walker, however, was not the first black millionaire, a title which is often attributed to her. In fact, it was an earlier black millionaire named Annie Malone who gave Walker her start. In 1903, Annie Malone, the proprietor of the top black hair care product company in the country, gave Walker a job as a sales associate. After a year working for Malone, Walker started her own company marketing similar products.

So why has Walker been remembered this way, and who were the first black millionaires?

The actual first black millionaires lived during the Antebellum and Reconstruction Eras, just before and after Civil War, a time where black codes in Free states and the Fugitive Slave Act made being high profile, wealthy and black dangerous. When Frederick Douglass’ first book, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” became a hit in 1845, he left the country for Ireland, partially out of fear he would be recaptured and re-enslaved because of his notoriety.

The earliest known African American to achieve a net worth of a million dollars was William Liedesdorff. He lived free in New Orleans in the early 1840s, passing as a white man and working as a naval merchant. When he was outed as a black man, he migrated to California, then a Mexican territory populated with Native Americans and mixed-race Mexican nationals. In California, he acquired over 30,000 acres of land, which turned out to be laden with gold, just before the 1849 gold rush.

A few years later, Mary Ellen Pleasant, a free black woman from Massachusetts, also migrated to California. Pleasant got rich investing in silver and operating boarding houses for the rich bachelors of San Francisco. She used some of her money to help fund John Brown’s famous raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1857. When John Brown was captured, she went into hiding in fear for her life.

Robert Reed Church, a former slave, typifies the risks encountered by early black industrialists. Church escaped slavery during the Civil War and opened a pool hall, tavern and nightclub in Memphis just after the war ended in 1865. His business was the most prominent black business in Memphis, and during the Memphis race riots of 1866, a white mob targeted him for assassination.

In July of 1866, late on the evening as it had just started to rain, a dozen or so white men dressed in police uniforms shot Church from the street outside his business and stormed the store, emptied the cash register and took a few casks of liquor. As they looted, Church lay on the ground bleeding from the head. The men then set fire to the store and left Church to die.

Miraculously, Church survived that night. He rebuilt his pool hall and expanded his real estate holdings into an empire; becoming the first known black millionaire in the South. He never forgot that fiery night in 1866. From then on, Church used his money to assist African Americans, giving financial support to Ida B. Wells and other anti-lynching activists. He lobbied the Republican party to protect voting rights. He also did his best to stay out of the crosshairs of the “good ‘ol boys” and the KKK in Memphis, but just in case he couldn’t, he kept a gun at his side at all times.

As I write about in my book “Black Fortunes,” the mythologizing of Walker as the first black millionaire is largely a result of earlier millionaire industrialists like Bob Church, Mary Ellen Pleasant and William Leidesdorff being unassertive about their wealth and avoiding the spotlight, as they faced an often-violent racial backlash for their success.

Walker was the opposite of modest. She summered in a mansion in Hudson Valley where she threw galas. She proudly placed stories in black newspapers about her high-end lifestyle and publicized her donations to charity. Because of her celebrity and conspicuous consumption, Walker was eulogized as the first black millionaire after she died in 1917. In reality, she was worth at most $300,000, according to a biography written by her granddaughter A’lelia Bundles, “On Her Own Ground.” According to my research, she was preceded by half a dozen African American millionaires at least. Nonetheless, her status as a pioneer found its way into history books and became a source of racial pride for decades.

Walker never wanted to be deemed the first black millionaire, in fact. “I have been mistaken for a rich woman which has caused scores of demands for my help,” she once told Booker T. Washington in a letter. She inherited the legacy largely because of the racist backlashes her predecessors encountered, making it necessary for them to maintain a low profile, causing their extraordinary legacies and lives to be overlooked.

Today, we are witnessing another milestone: the first generation of black billionaires, which includes Oprah, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Robert Smith, and Michael Jordan. Looking back on the lives of the first African American millionaires, like Mary Ellen Pleasant who funded John Brown and the Underground Railroad, and Bob Church who helped fight lynching and backed early black politicians, today’s black elite don’t face the same obstacles their predecessors did, and owe them a debt for the path they blazed. Hopefully, today’s Black one percenters will seize this opportunity and use their wealth to aid their communities just as those who came before them.

Latest appeals court ruling a victory for LGBT activists — and a blow for Trump’s Justice Department

(Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

The latest ruling by a federal appeals court in Manhattan, in which the court determined that firing employees over their sexual orientation is a variation of illegal sex discrimination, is being hailed as a victory for the LGBT community.

In the case in question, Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc., skydiving instructor Donald Zarda was allegedly fired by his employer because of his sexual sexual orientation. The Justice Department intervened unexpectedly in July 2017, and argued against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claiming that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which defines workplace discrimination as that of “race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” didn’t protect gay employees.

However on Monday, the second U.S Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does.

“Sexual orientation discrimination — which is motivated by an employer’s opposition to romantic association between particular sexes — is discrimination based on the employee’s own sex,” Judge Robert Katzmann wrote, according to the New York Times.

The ruling was made in the majority of a rare en-banc court composed of 13 judges. Three judges dissented. Typically, three-judge panel rulings are made in an appeals court.

Advocacy groups are celebrating the ruling.

“Today’s ruling is the latest victory affirming that employees should be evaluated only on their work ethic and job performance – not on who they are or who they love,” said Masen Davis, CEO of Freedom for All Americans in a statement. “Courts across America are increasingly in agreement that who a person loves has no impact on what they produce in the workplace, and no one should be singled out because of their sexual orientation.”

Zarda first sued Altitude Express in 2010, over an incident that occurred while he was working as a skydiving instructor for a client named Rosanna Orellana. Orellana was accompanied by her boyfriend, David Kengle. According to the case document, Zarda generally disclosed his sexual orientation to female clients when they were accompanied by a partner, to reduce any awkwardness from the closeness of being strapped together. After skydiving, the couple reportedly discussed their individual experiences which is when Kengle learned that Zarda told Orellana he was gay. Kengle reportedly called Altitude Express to complain about Zarda; he was shortly fired after.

Zarda died in a skydiving accident in 2014, but his relatives continued with the case.

“I think this would have meant the world to him. I think he would have been very excited and very encouraged,” Zarda’s sister, Melissa, told Bloomberg. “I feel strongly that in the workplace employees should be evaluated based on their job performance and by their work ethic and never by who they love.”

Saul Zabell, who represented Altitude Express, told Reuters he agreed with the 2nd Circuit’s ruling, but that the company didn’t fire Zarda because of his sexual orientation.

Far-right minister insists Melania Trump had Obamas’ “voodoo” relics cleansed from White House

Melania Trump (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

A side-effect of the Religious Right’s ardent embrace of serial adulterer Donald Trump is that many of the movement’s leaders have felt the need to construct their own narratives of how the president is supposedly a different man now. Many of them claim that, as a candidate, the former strip club and casino owner had been “anointed” by God.

Long-time Christian nationalist fixture James Dobson has claimed that Trump has experienced a religious conversion and should now be regarded as a “baby Christian.”

Inevitably, such tales are offered as justifications for why a group that spent decades claiming that “character counts” in political leaders are now interested in supporting a man who has publicly boasted about walking into teenage girls’ dressing rooms.

Occasionally, Trump fans have claimed that his wife, Melania, is the inspiration for his turnaround. She hasn’t spoken much publicly about her faith or much of anything else, so it’s tough so say how interested she is in religion.

But according to doomsday minister Paul Begley, Melania has been waging a spiritual battle of her own. Earlier this month, he claimed that the First Lady made sure that the White House was “completely exorcised” before she would move into the presidential residence, since former president Barack Obama had left the place littered with “idols” and other “demonic” artifacts.

In a podcast interview last week that was first reported by Right Wing Watch, Begley claimed that on Inauguration Day last year, the incoming First Lady ordered a massive physical and spiritual cleansing of the White House.

“During that five hours when they were ripping out carpets and changing drapes,” Begley told his host, Sheila Zilinsky. “Melania Trump said to her husband, ‘I’m not going to go into that White House unless it has been completely exorcised.’”

He continued:

“There were people in there packing up every idol. The only thing that was left, Sheila, was one cross on one wall. They cleansed the White House. They had people in there anointing it with oil and praying everywhere.”

The First Lady’s office denied the story in a response to the Associated Press, calling it “not true in any way,” but in a subsequent interview also reported by Right Wing Watch, Begley stood by his claim.

Speaking with fellow doomsday Christian propagandist Doug Hagmann, Begley insisted that his tale was true and that the media were lying by claiming the First Lady had denied it. Instead, he argued, people needed to parse very carefully what the White House had said.

“The lamestream, mainstream fake news media tried to say that that was fake news or that there was no—I think they said the White House, Melania Trump’s spokeswoman said there was no ‘exorcism’ in the White House,” Begley said.

“There may not have been a, quote, ‘exorcism’ in the White House, but they didn’t say that they didn’t remove all of the idols, all the relics, all the witchcraft, all the voodoo, all of the things that were in there. They are not going to tell you those weren’t removed because, believe me, they were.”

The far-right pastor claimed that his story was accurate based on the word of an anonymous person he claims was “involved” with the objects’ removal.

This is hardly the first time that Obama’s right-wing critics have caricatured him by attempting to associate him with paganism or non-Christian religions. Usually, however, these sorts of caricatures arrive via racist jokes or cartoons. Begley just might be the first person to actually assert that Obama believes in voodoo.

In a May 2016 survey, two-thirds of respondents who supported Donald Trump said they believed that Obama was a Muslim.

Trump claims he would have fought off Parkland shooter without weapon

(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump mused that if he had been present at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when suspect Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students, Trump would have fought off the shooter — even if he were unarmed.

“I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon, and I think most of the people in this room would have done that too,” he told the nation’s governors during a White House event Monday. Trump’s comments arrive after it was revealed that an armed guard at the high school declined to enter when the shooting began, and that the Broward County Sheriff’s office failed to act on multiple warnings about Cruz’s alleged danger.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders just clarified that when President Trump said earlier that he'd have run into the school with the active shooter, he didn't really mean that he'd run into a school with an active shooter but rather that he'd "be a leader"

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) February 26, 2018

During the press briefing Monday, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to confirm Trump’s assertion that he’d run into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and stop the shooter. She replied: “I think he was just stating that as a leader he would have stepped in and hopefully been able to help,” indicating that no, Trump would not have battled the shooter, rifle to hand.

It is a clarification that seems more in line with his medical history and own comments on blood and injury.

At the height of the Vietnam War, when hundreds of thousands of men were being drafted and deployed to Southeast Asia, Trump was diagnosed with bone spurs in his feet, which resulted in his exemption from military service.

And, in an interview with Howard Stern in 2008, Trump described his own queasiness at the sight of blood, telling listeners, “I’m not good for medical. In other words, if you cut your finger and there’s blood pouring out, I’m gone,” as HuffPost reported. Trump then described an incident during a charity event at Mar-a-Lago where a man fell off the stage. “He was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. . . he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible,” he said. “You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red.”

Trump’s remarks Monday follow his proposal to arm certain teachers in schools as a way to curb America’s school shooting epidemic, a point he underscored during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Friday. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened,” Trump said.

Once again, don’t trust Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck (Credit: Getty/George Frey)

Glenn Beck, the controversial right-wing commentator and conspiracy theory peddler, thinks we need to listen to each other more.

That’s what he told CNN’s Brian Stelter on “Reliable Sources” Sunday. The two reflected on Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., comments about America’s current political and social divisions at CNN’s recent town hall where Parkland students and other community members had the opportunity to challenge and question elected officials, along with NRA spokeswomen Dana Loesch, about legislation.

“We are a nation of people that no longer speak to each other. We are a nation of people who have stopped being friends with people because who they voted for in the last election,” Rubio said. “We are a nation of people who have isolated ourselves to only watch channels that tell us that we’re right.”

Beck suggested that the “best way” to bridge America’s divides is “to read Martin Luther King.”

“He talked about reconciliation and not winning,” Beck said. “Both sides are just trying to win.”

Beck is the founder of the conservative outlet TheBlaze, though before that he made a name for himself offering vehement conservative opinions that were often seen as divisive and conspiracy theory-laden on both Fox News and CNN’s Headline News. He was especially scornful of former President Barack Obama, whom he described as “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

But in the last few years, Beck has tried to atone for that era of rhetoric, walking back some of his fringe theories and repenting for his role in “helping tear the country apart,” as Beck told Megyn Kelly in 2014. He’s since reiterated this statement many times, including on CNN Sunday.

“I tried to win for a long time. ‘I’m right, I’m right, I’m right,'” he said. “We need to start looking to reconciliation. Winners creates losers. And with everybody trying to just win and be right, we stop listening to each other. And we come to this place where we think the other side doesn’t have anything to teach me, so I’m not even going to listen to them.”

“We have to start looking to heal,” Beck added. “We are vastly two different countries. We can’t read only the things we agree with. We have to have conversations, calm conversations that make us uncomfortable. We have to have that.” He acknowledged that there would be people who wouldn’t be able to perceive this message because of the rhetoric and theories he used to spread.

Beck also said that CNN “made things worse” with their recent town hall with Parkland students, describing the event as “despicable and grotesque” because of the crowd size and the charged emotion in the room. “Let’s have that conversation in a small room without the cheering crowds,” he said.

Beck may well have evolved from the hateful and harmful rhetoric he pushed on Fox, but his desire to see the two sides of CNN’s town hall come together to converse calmly implies that both sides bring equally valid points to the table. But teenaged victims and survivors of gun violence, along with their families and teachers, don’t have equal institutional power to the lawmakers and NRA leaders who profit from a robust gun industry.

The need for dialogue has been promoted endlessly since President Donald Trump’s political rise, as if comfortable, peaceful conversation will mend systematic inequalities and government neglect. But teenagers won’t stop bringing assault rifles to school because the GOP and Parkland students sit down and talk calmly. Dialogue without action and policy is meaningless. The Parkland students know this, and it’s time for Glenn Beck to acknowledge this, too.

Georgia Republicans retaliate against Delta after airline severs ties with NRA

In this July 12, 2016, photo, a suitcase rides a carousel after being unloaded from a Delta Air Lines flight at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport in Linthicum, Md. Delta Air Lines is rolling out new technology to better track bags throughout its system. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) (Credit: AP)

American politics have become so warped that Republicans are suddenly against corporate cronyism and for using the tax code to target political opponents.

Georgia’s Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle announced on Twitter Monday that he “will kill any tax legislation that benefits” the airline corporation Delta “unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with” the National Rifle Association.

I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA. Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.

— Casey Cagle (@CaseyCagle) February 26, 2018

GOP State Sen. Rick Jeffares also went after Delta on Monday, after the carrier dropped its discount program with members of the NRA.

I stand with the NRA & support our 2nd Amendment rights. Delta Airlines is now seeking $40 MILLION TAX BREAK from the GA Legislature. I’m leading the charge to let Delta know their attack on the NRA and our 2nd Amendment is unacceptable. #StandWithJeffareshttps://t.co/YQ16VcGch2 pic.twitter.com/1x256htX9u

— Rick Jeffares (@RickJeffaresGA) February 26, 2018

The Georgia Senate, on Monday afternoon, then blocked a bill that would have given Delta a hefty tax break, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

Obviously, this is a threat that goes against core Republican principles such as free-market capitalism.

In the weeks since the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 dead, companies have severed ties with the gun advocacy group that holds major influence over Washington, as Salon has previously reported.

Meanwhile, Trump has floated various minor proposals to help prevent future gun violence but said that the NRA is “on our side,” Politico reported. “Don’t worry about the NRA. They’re on our side,” Trump said during an address on Monday. He has also repeatedly called for arming teachers and faculty, but it’s still unclear how or if Congress will act, when tasked with handling gun reform legislation.

“You guys, half of you are so afraid of the NRA. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Of course, it’s easy for the man who has a $30 million relationship with the NRA to deem them as altruistic actors. The reality is that they aren’t by default and have refused to back even the modest proposals the president has suggested. It’s unlikely that a group that lobbies for the gun industry would back legislation that could potentially harm profit margins.

Senator Amy Klobuchar: Social media sites should be fined if they can’t discard bots

Senator Amy Klobuchar (Credit: AP/Alex Edelman)

Some elected officials are advocating for regulation to ensure mercenary bot networks and foreign agents don’t try to spread disinformation on social media ever again.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press”  this weekend to support the Honest Ads Act — a bill to ensure transparency in online political advertising — and said that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter should be fined if they can’t get rid of automated bots.

“These are the most sophisticated companies in America,” Klobuchar said. “They have brilliant people working there. They’ve got to put more resources — maybe it means making less profits off of ads and other things — but they’ve got to put the resources into Facebook and Twitter to stop these bots from dominating the accounts.”

Chuck Todd of “Meet the Press” asked if they should be fined, to which she responded, “I think that would be a great idea.”

“But then you need a Congress to act and there are too many people who are afraid of doing something about this because we know these sites are popular,” she said. “Everyone loves putting recipes, cat videos, it’s a great thing.”

Klobuchar continued to explain that a financial penalty makes sense as a retributive punishment akin to what companies in other industries face.

“There’s an ugly side of this. And someone once said that these systems were set up without alarms, without locks, and big surprise, bad guys are coming in and manipulating people,” Klobuchar said. “The idea of a fine is like when a company dumps toxic waste, makes a Superfund site, they’re on the hook financially for the damage they cause.”

As details have unfolded into the role bots played in meddling in the 2016 election — most recently in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals — social media sites have been gradually taking steps to combat trolls and bots of the kind that were implicated in Russia’s attempt to manipulate public opinion in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Twitter announced last week it will be terminating services of those who control multiple accounts that tweet the same content, follow users en masse, and perform simultaneous Retweets or likes to steer public opinion. The social media platform has also been quietly purging bots from its platform, a logistical decision that has rankled some right-wing opinion leaders whose followers included thousands of fake accounts.

That twitter attack on conservatives hit me too last night. I was deemed “ineligible” to use twitter ads and had followers purged. @twitter should ashamed, we have to organize a response. #TwitterLockOut pic.twitter.com/1Df4jY3Vv6

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) February 21, 2018

Facebook has reportedly been cooperating with Congress, too, and taking action to discard bots. “We’ve taken down fake accounts and Pages by the Internet Research Agency and have shared this information with Congress,” the company claims in its help center. They’ve also built a tool to help users see if they had previously liked or followed accounts associated with Russian intelligence’s disinformation campaigns.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly been doing soul-searching in wake of the news of the critical role Facebook played in the alleged Russian meddling. According to a Washington Post report on Feb. 21, the company is trying to figure out how to provide users with genuinely informative news, but internal disagreements could be keeping Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook from moving forward.

In any case, the concept of doling out financial penalties — as Klobuchar suggested — raises questions about the line between government intervention and corporate responsibility. Facebook and Twitter weren’t built to perpetuate political propaganda, but their technology was well-suited to those with corrupt intentions. Are they at fault? Perhaps the bigger question is: Is it wishful thinking to believe propaganda can ever be contained?

The right wing has falsely accused activists of being “paid protesters” for 50 years

Students participate in a protest against gun violence February 21, 2018 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Credit: Getty/Alex Wong)

Right-wing conspiracy theorists are raging against a bunch of teenagers. Even Donald Trump Jr. liked one such tweet on Twitter, and a since-fired aide of Florida State Rep. Shawn Harrison has claimed that the student activists decrying lax gun regulations that allowed a massacre to take place at their high school are actually “actors that travel to various crisis when they happen.” The impact of these outrageous accusations can’t be dismissed; one video claiming 17-year-old David Hogg is a paid actor was the number-one top trending link on YouTube Wednesday and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times before YouTube removed it. As right-winger conspiracy theorists continue to spread their lies, it’s worth noting that the right has used this tactic repeatedly at other divisive moments in history.

As historian Kevin Kruse pointed out on Twitter, in 1967 the NAACP actually had to respond to outrageous accusations that the Little Rock Nine were paid protesters funded by the civil rights advocacy group.

When nine black teenagers integrated Central High School in Little Rock, many segregationists insisted they were paid protesters who had been imported from other states.

 In a response, historian Heather Richardson said the trend goes back much further. “Actually, this trope goes all the way back to Reconstruction,” she wrote on Twitter. “African Americans demanding equal accommodations under the 1875 Civil Rights Act were… you guessed it… paid by agitators trying to cause trouble for law-abiding folks.”

In recent history, some on the right have resorted to this accusation time and time again. This line of attack popped up in 2005 after Cindy Sheehan made headlines for vocally protesting the Iraq war, in which her son, a soldier, had been killed. Conservatives dismissed Sheehan, called her a liar and planted the seed that she was being paid for her activism. The conservative weekly newspaper Human Events called Sheehan a “professional griever” who was “in perpetual mourning for her fallen son.”

We last saw the refrain of “paid protesters” during 2017’s healthcare town hall blowups. Breitbart News regularly published articles accusing George Soros of funding the protesters who challenged GOP lawmakers on their efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Family Research Council CEO Tony Perkins claimed, without evidence, that Soros was “shipping” protesters in from out of state.

It’s a line that fits nicely into the right-wing narrative framing progressive players as “outside agitators” to delegitimize their concerns, and has become a regular conservative talking point in the Trump era. Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, claimed last year that protesters demonstrating around the time of Trump’s inauguration were paid $1,500 per day. Now we can barely go a week without some new nutty theory about a Soros-funded protest. All have been debunked, and spokespeople for Soros’ Open Society Foundations continue to explain that the organization freely and legally invests in progressive activism, but does not pay individuals on the ground for the express purpose of protesting.

The notion that progressives are being paid to protest has inspired many good jokes on the left. But these accusations must be taken seriously and understood in a political-historical context. Conspiracy theorist and provocateur Alex Jones rose to national fame thanks to his outrageous falsehood that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. Since then, he has taken full advantage of his amplified platform to spread more hateful lies. Now other would-be Joneses are trying to mimic his time-tested strategy, and in a climate of widespread antagonism toward credible news agencies that is frequently stoked by Donald Trump, they will undoubtedly garner some believers.