Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 161

Trump blames democrats for not passing gun control laws

(Credit: Getty/Mandel Ngan)

Donald Trump took to Twitter to blame democrats amid demands from survivors and parents for gun control reform following the high school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that took 17 lives on Feb. 14.

“Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!” Trump tweeted on Saturday evening.

Just like they don’t want to solve the DACA problem, why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House & Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2018

The Parkland, Florida, shooting marked the 18th school shooting in the U.S. in 2018. Trump’s comment follows his remarks from earlier this week when he suggested that the alleged shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, was “mentally disturbed” and that these signs should have been reported.

“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump tweeted on Feb. 15. “Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!”

However, as Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior Emma Gonzalez boldly said on Saturday at a Florida rally: “We know that they are claiming mental health issues, and I am not a psychologist, but we need to pay attention to the fact that this was not just a mental health issue. He would not have harmed that many students with a knife.”

Trump casting blame on democrats is insensitive and inappropriate, considering he has yet to address his own responsibility in the matter. Indeed, in February 2017 Trump signed an executive order to reverse an Obama-era regulation which would have required the Social Security Administration to submit quarterly documentation of those with mental disorders to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System which is the database used to determine if someone can buy a firearm. The ACLU did oppose this regulation, but not because it wanted more guns in America, but because the organization believed “adding more innocent Americans to the National Instant Criminal Background database because of a mental disability is a disturbing trend.”

However, former President Barack Obama strongly advocated for gun reform during his presidency, and vigorously after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. In 2016, Obama addressed Congress urging for stronger restrictions, calling out gun lobbyist.

“So the gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now, but they cannot hold America hostage,” Obama said in his speech. “We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom.”

Some Twitter users are responding to Trump’s tweet that blamed democrats, telling him he can still do something.

And what the hamburger are YOU DOING Trump with full GOP control of the government? NOTHING!

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) February 18, 2018

Others are pointing out his hypocrisy.

YOU killed DACA, @realDonaldTrump

YOU killed Obama’s restrictions on the mentally ill purchasing firearms

YOU may not have pulled the trigger on the 17 victims of the #ParklandSchoolShooting, but

YOU put the gun in the killer’s hands https://t.co/yLgfmEmQXh

— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) February 18, 2018

FDA head vows to tackle high drug prices and drugmakers “gaming the system”

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he will do everything “within my lane” to combat high drug prices and that he sees drug companies “gaming the system to try to block competition” in a multitude of ways in the marketplace.

In a wide-ranging interview with Kaiser Health News on Thursday, Gottlieb also said that he wants to speed up the U.S. approval process for generic and “biosimilar” versions of biologic drugs, which are drugs comprised of living organisms, such as plant or animal cells.

“Where we see things that we can address, we’re going to take action,” Gottlieb said, adding that he is most bothered when brand-name companies use tactics to block makers of generics and biosimilars from developing drugs. He deflected questions about whether the FDA approves drugs of questionable value that carry exorbitant prices.

“I think we should have a free market for how products are priced,” Gottlieb said. A free market “provides proper incentives for entrepreneurs who are going to make the big investments needed to innovate. But that system is predicated on a premise that when patents have lapsed you’ll have vigorous competition from generic drugs.”

The FDA, Gottlieb said, worked with the White House on a proposal to bring generics to market faster by ensuring that a 180-day exclusivity period isn’t used by drugmakers to block competition. He said there are “situations where you see deals cut” in which a drugmaker will get the 180-day exclusivity and then be persuaded to sit on it without ever selling the drug — essentially delaying the brand drug from facing generic competition.

Currently, generics makers must buy large quantities of the brand-name product in the U.S. to run their own clinical trials. But the companies that make brand-name medicines, in some cases, are making it very difficult for makers of generics to purchase their drugs, he said.

“They are adopting all kinds of commercial restrictions with specialty pharma distributors and wholesalers” to prevent sales to generic companies, Gottlieb said, adding that not every branded company is using the tactic, but it is “going on across the board.”

To come up with a generic, a drugmaker needs 2,000 to 5,000 doses for testing, Gottlieb said. He said the companies were willing to pay sticker price but are being blocked in other ways.

The FDA is now exploring whether generics makers could buy the drugs they need in the less-expensive European market without having to do additional work to prove the biologics from Europe are the same — even though the American and European versions are often manufactured in the same plants. Gottlieb wants to get rid of such tests, known as “bridging” studies.

“I have lawyers now looking at this,” Gottlieb said. The FDA has been exploring the issue for a couple of months, he said, and he thinks it may be “hard for us to get there without legislation, but we’re not done yet looking at this; we’re still pressing on this.”

Last fall, Gottlieb said that he wanted to “end the shenanigans” that interfere with competition in the marketplace. Since then, the FDA has released a steady stream of action plans and new guidance that tinkers with the drug development system.

“All of these steps are going to have an impact, and I don’t think there’s one silver bullet,” Gottlieb said. “If anyone [thinks] there is one thing you can do with policy intervention that is going to dramatically change drug prices, that’s not true.”

Instead, he said, there are “layers of things that we can do to try to make sure the system is working.”

The agency has been approving drugs at a fast clip: The FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved a record 46 new drugs in 2017, including treatments for sickle cell disease and Batten disease and new cancer therapies. The list doesn’t include landmark gene and cellular therapies and vaccines that are regulated as biologics.

That rate of approvals has raised concerns about the value and quality of drugs being approved. Specifically, criticism of the FDA’s handling of cancer drugs has increased in recent years.

Although some patient advocates want the FDA to approve new drugs more quickly, others charge that the agency greenlights mediocre cancer drugs that do little to prolong survival or improve quality of life. A 2014 study found that the cancer drugs approved from 2002 to 2014 extended survival by an average of just 2.1 months. For many cancer drugs, there is no evidence showing theyprolong life.

Once drugs are on the market, companies can charge whatever the market will bear; prices for cancer therapies now routinely top $100,000 a year.

But Gottlieb said it’s not his job to help insurance companies or government programs decide which drugs to cover. Health systems and insurers “have a difficult time saying no,” Gottlieb said, “so they want to put the regulator in the position of saying no.”

Gottlieb acknowledged that it can be difficult for insurance plans to decide which drugs they should include on their drug list. But insurance plans “ought to have the confidence to make [such decisions] and not say, ‘Well, it’s the job of the federal government to make those decisions for us.’”

Gottlieb defended his agency’s approval of drugs that help the average cancer patient live just two or three extra months, noting that some patients do much better than average on cancer drugs — perhaps living months or even years longer than expected. He also said it would be wrong to make cancer patients wait years to try a drug that has a chance to help them.

“We’re ultimately going to learn why some patients respond really well and some don’t,” he said. If you “try to have all that information upfront when you approve a drug, [you’ll] end up having a development process that is very long and very costly and a lot fewer products will be developed.”

Gottlieb maintains that the FDA sets a high standard for approving drugs.

“It is important that we have a rigorous bar” for approval, he said, “but a bar that doesn’t impede these products from coming to the market.”

KHN’s coverage of these topics is supported by Laura and John Arnold Foundationand John A. Hartford Foundation

VA secretary’s staffer departs following inspector general investigation

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2017 file photo, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin speaks in Washington. Federal authorities are stepping up investigations at Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers due to a sharp increase in opioid theft, missing prescriptions or unauthorized drug use by VA employees since 2009, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File) (Credit: AP)

On Friday, the Office of Veteran Affairs released a statement announcing that Peter O’Rourke will take on the position as the VA’s permanent chief of staff “effective immediately.” The change in guard follows reports that the former chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, fabricated an email so that the VA chief David Shulkin’s wife, Merle Bari, could accompany him on a trip Europe—and be reimbursed by the government.

“Effective immediately, VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Executive Director Peter O’Rourke will serve as VA’s permanent chief of staff, ensuring that the department works closely with the White House going forward,” the statement said. “He will continue to serve as OAWP executive director until a successor is named.”

According to Politico and USA Today, the top aide “retired.” Recall, on Wednesday a report released by the Veteran Affairs Office of Inspector General found that Vivieca Wright Simpson altered an email, and that Shulkin improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets in 2017.

The report incited one Republican lawmaker to question Shulkin’s moral authority.

“He’s really part of the culture of corruption that too often defines this organization. I just don’t think that he has the moral authority to clean it up,” Colorado Republican Mike Coffman said in a statement.

Yet CNN reports that Shulkin’s aide might be the only one to be implicated by the IG allegations. Shulkin told CNN on Friday that he wasn’t asked to resign, following a meeting he reportedly had with Chief of Staff John Kelly.

“I’m not going to let the politics of what’s going on distract me from doing the job that I came to Washington to do,” Shulkin told CNN on Friday.

According to the IG report, the “Chief of Staff made false representations to a VA Ethics official and altered an official record, resulting in VA improperly laying for Dr. Bari’s air travel”—which was more than $4,000. The fabrication happened in an email exchange between a program specialist and Simpson, and made it look like Shulkin was going to receive an award in Denmark.

The VA’s Office of Inspector General launched the investigation after receiving an anonymous tip alleging a misuse of the funds. The estimated total cost of the trip was $122,334 for all who attended the 11-day excursion last summer.

Researchers find no strong link between prenatal ultrasounds and autism

(Credit: bart78 via Shutterstock/Salon)

Suspicions of a link between prenatal ultrasound scans and autism spectrum disorder are nothing new. The technology has exploded in recent decades, giving expectant parents more detailed images of their developing offspring than ever before. And as ultrasound use has sharply increased, so too have diagnoses of autism — prompting questions about a potential relationship.

A rigorous new study examining the association between ultrasounds during the first or second trimester of pregnancy and later development of autism spectrum disorder, however, delivers some good news. The study, which analyzed the medical records and ultrasound details of more than 400 kids who were born at Boston Medical Center, found there was no increase in the number of prenatal scans or duration of ultrasound exposure in children with autism compared with kids with typical development or separate developmental delays. In fact, the group with autism had less average exposure time during its first and second trimesters of development than individuals without autism did. The finding adds weight to earlier studies that suggested such scans — which use high-frequency sound waves to create an image of the fetus, placenta and surrounding maternal organs — are not a powerful enough environmental risk to cause autism on their own.

But the new study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, did leave one question unanswered: Does the depth of the actual ultrasound scan make a difference? The work found the children with autism were exposed to prenatal ultrasounds with greater penetration than the control group: During the first trimester, the group with autism had scans with an average depth of 12.5 centimeters compared with 11.6 centimeters for the control group. And during the second trimester the group with autism had scan depths of 12.9 centimeters compared with 12.5 centimeters for the typical development control group. Ultrasounds may not be uniform for reasons including the position of the fetus in the womb.

Perhaps, the authors wrote, greater ultrasound depth could result in more harmful exposure to energy emissions — potentially causing damage to the developing fetuses’ cells and brains. Yet the authors themselves cautioned there is not enough evidence in humans to draw that conclusion and that further, larger studies should be launched to explore that relationship. Moreover, they noted, a variety of elements including the mother’s body mass index, gestational diabetes and aspects of ultrasonographic exposure — including depth — might be intertwined.

Sara Jane Webb, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, wrote in an accompanying editorial in JAMA Pediatrics that she is not convinced the deeper ultrasound wave penetration is a concern. On balance, she told Scientific American, the increased depth would likely not be significant enough to outweigh the fact that the group with autism had less ultrasound exposure time. “We think there are probably fetuses vulnerable to autism due to genetic errors and environmental factors,” she says. “But this study does not provide any additional support for ultrasound being a single cause.”

I am a “MasterChef” survivor

Gordon Ramsay on "MasterChef" (Credit: FOX/Greg Gayne)

If you take 300 people and push them to an extreme stress level, some of them will die under the pressure. I believe producers of reality shows know this is true. There are no former reality show contestants who will candidly discuss the process of casting and filming a major reality show because the contracts contestants sign contain nondisclosure agreements in addition to frank threats against their family and friends. And, elements of reality show casting are horrific enough to deserve a transparent discussion. Full of dangerous, dirty secrets; no one can talk about the full details except me, an unlikely candidate from the start. The only explanation I have is that my interest was accelerated by a desire to please, an insensate understanding of pop culture and a pathological curiosity.

When my husband Billy and his daughter Lila moved in with me and my children in 2008, they brought with them a riot of  pop culture we had never been exposed to. As I sorted through the novel offerings I understood two things almost immediately: I hated video games the most and liked cooking shows the best. We had watched “Hell’s Kitchen” for two years already when  “MasterChef” began its run in 2010. Billy got me hooked in the first season. I dug into the sort of anxiety that resolves deliciously at the end of each season and enjoyed recreating and embellishing the food in my own kitchen. We watched season 2 but, really, I watched Billy watch the second season. He liked watching it, and I wanted to be the thing he liked watching.

Even with my limited knowledge of reality shows, I knew that real people became unreal characters. I’d long understood that the caveat to my lifelong atheism was that though there is no one creator god, all gods are real, because people create them through belief. Once made, gods take on their own power. It’s not just mental illness that causes a person to think a god voice has spoken to them. It’s also that the god has been brought into existence as a character with a measure of his or her own free will. Same with reality show contestant fame. Did I want my husband to see me on television as a kitchen goddess creature brought into existence for a moment? Yes, I did. I wanted to be more special than a person. That impulse alone is both questionable and problematic for a person weighing the odds of a dangerous decision. And I imagine it’s a feeling shared by most people wanting to be reality stars.

The casting process that no one is allowed to talk about occurs in multiple stages. Most contestants send a video, then go and prepare a “signature dish” in person at various tryouts around the country (I drove to Seattle to do mine), at which point the “signature dish” is graded by subcontracted cooking school judges in secret. If they pass you on, the next step is filling out reams of paperwork that end up coaxing a TV-ready backstory and a streamlined brand where, before, there was simply a person.

For other contestants there is a different path. Quite a few of the “kooky” contestants, the ones with puppets and spells and flying falcons, are recruited, but for comic relief rather than a quick advance to the finals. They are Hollywood eccentric staples. Christine Ha, however, the winner of season 3, was recruited based on her Blind Chef cooking blog. Luca, winner of season 4, was recruited after an unsuccessful tryout with me in season 3. For me, this raised the question: Do they choose the winner before the first tryouts? 

For us regular schlubs, once you pass the next few rounds of casting online, you get to fly to LA (which you pay for yourself). You gather with some of the other contestants in a nondescript meeting room at The Doubletree Hotel in Culver City and you all complete a two-hour-long personality psych test reminiscent of the somewhat outdated Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The test is analyzed by a computer while you wait and the results are then given to a psychiatrist who meets with each potential contestant. You do not get to see the results. It seemed to me that the point of the test is to judge what dramatic traits each person has that could be harvested later for a plot twist.

I filled out the questionnaire carefully, consistently, and not at all truthfully. “You’re a real rule follower, hmm?” asked the tall, fit examiner, who looked as if he could be a psychiatrist out of central casting himself. “I suppose so,” I answered blandly. I knew that tests with multiple similar questions asked in different ways are testing for lies. But, I think I beat it. The doctor figure asked a lot of other questions about mental health and what I guessed were follow-up questions for: hypochondriasis, hysteria, psychopathic deviation and hypomania, among other conditions. More generally, the test was an attempt to predict behavior in various situations. Or, what TV producers would call plotlines. Over the course of the 15-minute interview I peppered posed naïveté with sassy, authentic eye contact, thus maintaining the brand I had created without breaking character. Had he worked for other shows, I asked? My voice pitched higher than usual. “Yes!’” he said, “‘The Biggest Loser,’ ‘American Idol,’ all the Fox shows.”

I was too pissed at the thought of his sadistic prying into the vulnerable psyches of the idiots who would want to go on reality TV to maintain my “PNW Organic Mom 2.0” profile. “What about that First Do No Harm clause in your medical training?” I asked, my eyes narrowing now. I never imagined I would actually get to say that to a doctor in real life. I wanted to make him uncomfortable.

“We’re done here,” he said, opening the door. “Go see the private investigator now.”

The experience with the “MasterChef” detective felt just as invasive. No, I never modeled underwear for softcore porn. I don’t think? I’m sure I did many worse things he didn’t ask about, though, and I sweated guilt. He must have known I was guilty. I can’t remember what he looked like or how long I was in his office. Was I ever arrested? I don’t remember. What will the financial credit report, arrest records, residential history and historical reports he ordered dig up? Because I’ve done nothing. Right?  

I flew back home to Portland, Oregon, the same day I left and felt wild, violated and alive. The blood and pee samples I had to send to them from the lab after I got home felt like no big deal after the professional interrogation. Submit. Submit your blood, they said. Yes, sir. I did.

I passed the next round of casting and they sent me the final multiple contracts by email and I sent them back 17 bulleted questions about the details because oh my god, they were unbelievable documents. Any part of myself that desired to please got trampled by the part that liked to win.

In the “MasterChef” contract, which a casting director later told me was essentially identical to those of most reality competition shows, they asked me to agree to be subjected to physical and mental distress, to agree to have my medical history used in any way that they wanted and to use it in perpetuity, to agree that my family would likely not be contacted in the case of an emergency. They asked me to release the show and its employees from liability for any injury to myself from risks both known and unknown. They asked that I release them from liability from the social and economic losses that could result and to please note that the consequences could be substantial and could permanently change the future for me, my family, friends and significant others.

They asked for a clause that could have kept me from working at my own media publicity company and to remove my own company website on their request.

They asked me to agree to pay a 15 percent “management fee” to a company called One Potato Two Potato (OPTP) owned by . . .  Gordon Ramsay. This fee would then apply to any income or even gifts I received in any context potentially related to the show. I asked if OPTP would do any other career management. No, they said.

Despite the huge number of questions I asked, and despite the lawyers that they undoubtedly employed along with the detectives and psychiatrists, somehow someone missed that I never sent back the signed contract. I promised nothing.

The day before all the contestants arrived, the casting department called to say I had made the cut. I was a contestant. They were flying me out to LA the next day. Clearly, I was a replacement for someone else who dropped out at the last minute and I figured, fuck it. I never signed anything waiving any of my rights and as the daughter of a journalist, I’m genetically hardwired to be curious. It was the most perfect setup for a pathologically inquisitive, masochistic exhibitionist that ever was. I couldn’t wait to get there.

The contestant minders were called wranglers. They were all gorgeous. Perry was the lead wrangler but her official title was Contestant Coordinator. There were quite a few wranglers and in my memory they run together into one attractive, fit, amoral blur. All of the contestants stayed in a hotel for the first two days and, pelted with questions, the wranglers told us some things and would not tell us other things. It was hurry up and wait and whisper and guess. We spent all the time asking what was happening and where we were going and when we were eating. They got direction through earbuds which would then be transmitted to us.

There was an odd assembly where a producer (who appeared to be an actor) assured us that all the contestants had the same chance of winning or he would get in trouble with some official body and we should try our hardest. Then a member of the “official body” came on stage and shook his finger at the phony-looking producer and the producer pretended to be scared. It was like watching a psych version of WWF.

Everyone there besides me seemed like they were OK with believing whatever they were told. The contestants applauded and shrieked like initiates in a revival tent. Each one was a winner. They all just knew it. I was almost jealous. I missed out on the orgy of emotion and faith that the reality show congregants trampled over each other to prove.

We contestants were each interviewed during the first two days in front of a production set of fake produce, a regular horn of plenty, where I refused to be filmed holding the Walmart bag. We weren’t allowed out of the hotel room unless we were with the wranglers, who would take us on one or two outings, either to the hotel pool or a burger place, where we would share enormous confidences with one another. Explosive familiarity bloomed in these small portions of time we were able to see other people, strangers, who were all equally anxious to unfold their shininess to other shiny strangers after the stress of staying hours in a hotel room with antagonists and no phones. Because the wranglers made a huge deal out of telling us our roommate selections were random. And because that appeared impossible.

Everything the wranglers said seemed a pretty obvious setup to me to add intensity and create plotlines. I could see it from the outside (I kept a notebook, of course) and the artifice was fascinating and well done. From the inside it felt . . . gross. They had asked me about religion; Atheist, I said. And food: all local and organic! So I was roomed with a devout Evangelical Christian woman who used sugar, Rice Krispies and food coloring to make statues of the judges’ heads, which she brought with her from Texas. The Palestinian and the Israeli were roomed together (the Israeli contestant dropped out before the end of the weekend). The short, anxious, possibly gay man and the bully banker. The flamboyant opera singer and the dead-eyed animal tracker. Contestants chosen for the producers’ raw accessibility to stereotyped plotlines. Locked in together for hours. Fascinating. Cruel. Effective. More than any other experience in my life, the wranglers exemplified the ideology of “just following orders.”

Once filming started we had 14-hour days on set while contestants took turns cooking, then either failed or made it through to the next round. Our clothing was assigned the first day and cleared with costume and we wore the same thing each day as the musky people smell increased and slept-in hairstyles were prodded back to center. As the people who didn’t get an apron left each day, the remaining contestants’ relationships grew more intense. The man with the puppets who read handwriting samples, the pastor’s wife from Detroit, the witch who tried to put a spell on the judges and the vegan bread maker who was shocked (shocked!) to hear that yeast was alive left fairly quickly. The Jamaican Marine cooking peas and rice; the Italian cook who came back to win season 4; the gentle Hawaiian man whose parents promised to kill me a pig; the fabulous, black, Christian opera singer; the racist, alcoholic redneck, they mostly stayed till the end of the week.

The shiniest people were obvious from the beginning. The star power of Felix Fang, the technique and focus of Becky Reams, the staggering capability of blind contestant Christine Ha and the hugely tall, kind, food lover and former Army Corps of Engineers contract specialist Josh Marks outshined the rest of us, as we all stretched our powers of charisma.

My tryout was at the last part of the last day of the weeklong tryouts. The only people left were the ones who were continuing along to the next episode and the set was quieter than the days before. My dad (the journalist), my husband, my brother and his wife (pop culture enthusiasts), our three kids and my brother’s daughter flew down to California to watch while I cooked.

That morning, I left my wallet in the hotel room and future finalist Josh Marks noticed I was desperate for some coffee. “I got it!” he said. I blushed. I hate accepting things from people I don’t know well. “I’ll get you back when you’re famous,” I said. As if I didn’t care. “Absolutely,” he answered cheerfully. But I didn’t get the chance to buy Josh Marks a cup of coffee. No one has been able to do that for several years now.

On set through the day, the pressure mounted. I am not generally fazed by strangers trying to stress me out, but the wranglers and interviewers are pros. They also try out for the job that they have and the skill is being able to set people off balance. When contestants talk into the camera in a reality show, they are answering questions that have been carefully and tactically worded to create an interestingly uncomfortable moment. I was surprised to find myself flustered. I burned the goddamn garlic. Why did I decide to use a Japanese mandolin when I had never used one before? Because I wanted to know how it worked just like I wanted to know how a reality TV show worked. But, it turns out solving puzzles with a clock running down while people try to destabilize you is less satisfying on set than in real life.

Like the scene from “The Wizard of Oz,” I walked slowly past the crowd pushing a cart with my signature dish on in through the black curtain darkness with all of the videographers and wranglers dressed in black, motionless, watching me and suddenly: there I was in a cavernous room. Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot and Joe Bastianich were elevated on a stage in front of me, brightly lit god-men.

They each asked me about the dish (it’s an egg frittata with California asparagus and goat butter Hollandaise! All sourced within five miles of the warehouse and all organic!). Branding myself as “Portland Locavore” was a no-brainer. They each walked down from the stage one at a time and tasted; then, an airplane flew over the warehouse. “Damn, that ruined the ambience,” said Graham. I started cracking up. “OK, again,” said one of the interviewers. I regained my lack of awe.

“Beauty shot,” said the cameraman. “We want to take a long still of your plate.” I backed off obediently and then realized they were filming me, not the plate. That was how they got those odd shots of people nervously waiting right before a commercial break. I stared back at the camera, eyes as flat as possible. Fuck. No.

“No,” said Joe. “Yes,” said Graham. Then I remembered — they had already interviewed me about this — “which judge’s ‘yes’ vote would be most important and emotional for you?” I had told them, well, Graham will say yes, Joe will say no, so Gordon’s the swing vote. Which is how they wrote it. So that I would react.

I knew I wouldn’t get an apron because I was a replacement contestant from the start, plus I wouldn’t hold the Walmart bag. As I watched during the week, I learned that the food had little to do with moving past the first round. The tryout round was to watch contestants for telegenic qualities, one-liners and quick responses on camera and potential plotlines between contestants. The second round knocked out all of the contestants who had compelling, touching backstories but not much cooking experience and/or not enough plotline potential.

“Daaamn. Shame,” Gordon said in his thick British accent. He didn’t like my frittata (burned garlic).  “But the goat butter Hollan-dez is rally qu-white good.”

“Thanks!!” I couldn’t help being excited by the verbal pat on the head. I knew that on top of the other egregious actions sustained by the “MasterChef” contestants, Gordon’s management company was waiting to siphon off future earnings from winners. But he was awfully charismatic in person. I think it was season 3 winner Christine Ha who said he smells incredible. I didn’t get close enough and I wasn’t going to be one of those people who asked for a hug in the first round.

There was a dramatic pause in which I felt zero anxiety. “No,” he said. Because I knew he would. I can’t deny a bit of disappointment, though, as much as I would like to. So I didn’t win at not caring entirely, but I gave it my all.

I walked back through the door with no apron and everyone made sad sounds for the camera. I looked at my husband — let’s get the fuck out of here. “Stop. Exit interviews,” said the wrangler.

She wasn’t the wrangler I had been led around by all week and she wasn’t Perry, queen of the wranglers, but she was enough of a voice of authority that I stopped rather than diving through the open door like I wanted to. It might have been Carter. Or Angelic. It’s possible this next part is a stress memory, but I’m nearly certain that the exit interview took place in an elevated boxing ring. Although there’s no good reason there would be a boxing ring in the warehouse. Maybe the ring was there so I wouldn’t contaminate the winners with failure. Losers were very strictly not allowed to speak with other contestants. Once you failed, you no longer belonged.

I rushed through the interview quickly and was so close to the industrial backdoor when another gorgeous anonymous wrangler told me I had to see the psychiatrist again. No, not the same doctor. “Do you harbor any thoughts of killing any of the judges or yourself?” he asked.  “No . . . .” said I. They finally let me go.

When I got home I was a little screwed up. Despite knowing that they were messing with me, it worked, probably because I thought I was immune. Anxious, neurotic, easily startled and sobbing off and on for the next week, I was mortified that I could have inadvertently exposed my children to a bout of my depression (self-imposed, no less). I hid as much as possible and it passed in a week or so. The children steadfastly pretended not to notice.

I learned later from speaking with a number of the runner-up cooks that every round longer that a contestant stayed in the competition, the symptoms of traumatic stress appeared more intense when they returned home. Many of the runners-up from each season appear quite damaged. Some are unable to hold jobs, have difficulties with explosive anger. The winners fare somewhat better but not always. I’m still friends with many of them on Facebook and there are secret Facebook groups to talk about all things reality, though interest for most contestants dies off over the years other than blatant self-promotion, fundraising and talk of appearances on other cooking shows.

Despite thinking most of the people who decided to sign that contract were total rubes, the contestants of season 3 were some of the most interesting people I ever met and I don’t doubt that they all had their own reasons for submitting to the abuse. It was a group formed by a casting department for intentionally created, attractive diversity: telegenic people from as many walks of life as they could come up with, who would do practically anything for attention and who loved food. I wouldn’t have traded that part of the experience. But it’s impossible to discuss the experience of being a short-term reality show contestant without noting that some don’t emerge from the experience unscathed.

The week the season finished filming, after he lost the finale to Christine Ha, Josh Marks, the self-titled “gentle giant,” was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He struggled with psychosis. Josh got into several conflicts, including a fight with cops, and heard voices in his head. Police said he claimed he had been possessed by Ramsay. It’s not hard to imagine the god that Gordon Ramsay became through Josh’s deep faith actually manifested.  The week before he took his life, Josh was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I met this man’s family. I met his mother, who struggled to find adequate mental health resources for him in Chicago. Josh was kind and decent and excited about his future and starting a restaurant on Martha’s Vineyard and I mourned his death.

All three of our kids told me that reality TV was stupid and that on-set filming was boring. I think they were still annoyed that I tried to leave them for a month. My husband and I never really watched cooking shows again until the “Great British Bake Off” years later. I felt bad about it in a topical way — we had to start watching something else, so thank god for “True Blood.”

An activity I thought would be partially a lark and partially an unprofessional investigation became something else: an experiment in power and submission and subversion over which I had no control. I knew there would be danger, but I thought the danger would give me energy, that it would excite me creatively where a happy marriage and a calm few years had left me feeling  dull and soft without the potential for danger. But instead of feeling like a warrior surviving a crucible, I left feeling I had failed to protect the tender people. Eccentric, charismatic strangers, yes, but these fragile egotists couldn’t have completely known the results of professional abuse. Being violated is something that can make people feel alive. But that doesn’t make it safe.

A month after I returned home I got a chatty note from the casting director. “Oh, could you send me those final forms, it seems we don’t have your signed contract.”

“I’m really not at all wild about that idea,” I wrote back.

More forcefully she wrote back: “I’m having legal call you to straighten this out.”

“Feel free to email.”

They never contacted me again.

A murderous autocrat is now quoting members of Trump’s inner circle verbatim

(Credit: AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

Earlier this week, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte made headlines for ordering his country’s armed forces to shoot female communist rebels in the genitals. He later added that without their reproductive organs, the women would be “useless.”

Duterte’s latest outburst is hardly novel. As Adrian Chen documented in the New Yorker, the strongman has a long history of misogynist invective, once asking a political reporter how his wife’s genitalia smelled, and separately, calling President Barack Obama a “son of a whore.”

What’s new about his remarks is the way they’re being couched by Philippine officials. Here’s what presidential spokesman Harry Roque told reporters before Gabriela, a woman’s group with representation in the Congress of the Phillippines, called Duterte “the most dangerous macho-fascist in government”: “I have been saying again and again, do not take the president literally but take him seriously.”

If those words sound familiar, that’s because they are. Two weeks before the 2016 election, right-wing billionaire and Republican donor Peter Thiel predicted a Trump victory, claiming American voters took the Republican nominee “seriously but not literally.” Former CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski later echoed Thiel’s remarks during a talk at Harvard University in which he excoriated the mainstream media for “taking everything that Donald Trump said” at face value. (Lewandowski briefly served as Trump’s campaign manager before being charged with misdemeanor battery for assaulting a female Breitbart reporter.)

Duterte is a brutal autocrat linked to the extrajudicial murder of at least 1,400 drug users, petty criminals and street children. While Duterte denies commanding death squads as mayor of Davao, Reuters reports that he has repeatedly condoned their activities, if not openly endorsed them. On at least one occasion, he has compared himself to Hitler.

During a trip to Asia in November, Trump skirted questions of Duterte’s human rights abuses, asserting his admiration for the Philippine president. Roque’s latest statement suggests the feeling is mutual.

“Coffee powers human dreams”: Meet Dave Eggers’ “Monk of Mokha” muse

Author Dave Eggers and Mokhtar Alkhanshali (Credit: Jeremy Stern)

Just a few years ago, San Francisco native Mokhtar Alkhanshali was working as a doorman. Today, he’s still opening doors, but this time as the leader behind Port of Mokha, a coffee company unlike any other. 

Taking his family’s own Yemeni heritage as inspiration, Alkhanshali turned his passion into a project that would change — and risk — his life. Alkhanshali was on a business trip to Yemen in 2015 when “overnight, the country went to war,” and the U.S. offered no evacuation strategy for Americans trapped there. After a daring escape, Alkhanshali went — almost directly — to a coffee conference in Seattle, with beans he’d carried in his suitcase.

Today, Port of Mokha coffee is a thriving business, and Alkhanshali’s foundation is transforming lives for the workers who cultivate the coffee beans back in Yemen. Alkhanshali’s remarkable story has served as inspiration for author Dave Eggers, who’s turned the larger-than-life tale into “The Monk of Mokha,” a new book about hope, resilience and the power of a good brew to bring people together.

Salon spoke to Alkhanshali via phone earlier this month about his journey, and his new role as a literary protagonist.

You have a really strong commitment to encouraging females in your business.

Well, especially in Yemen, 75 percent of farmers are women. I think, globally, in the world of coffee, the future is with women. When I first started working, it was mostly men. It was very stagnant quality. One of the first things that I did was I initiated that half of the members had to be women in the cooperatives. The quality literally changed overnight. 

You hadn’t even had a really a single-origin cup of coffee until five years ago. Is that right?

Absolutely. It’s funny how something small can have a huge butterfly effect that changes your life. As I started researching and learning this amazing history of coffee, I walked into a coffee shop. It was Blue Bottle right in SF. This coffee was was $4.75, which I thought at the time was very expensive for a cup of coffee. I drank it right away. It tasted like blueberries and honeysuckle, and it had this very sweet, lingering aftertaste. I didn’t know that coffee could taste like that. I started talking to the barista. In my case, it was a very nice barista. What really stuck to me was that he said how how because of their direct relationship with the producing community, that the farmers have this quality of life. To be able to use coffee as a vehicle for social impact, I was like, “I want to do something with this.”

I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I had this epic business model plan. I don’t have an MBA. But I felt that this was my calling more than a career. I took this leap of faith and I went. I made a lot of mistakes, and still do. Luckily, I had really good teachers.

You were someone who had been waiting and watching and wondering what to do, and then it started to click into place. That this was also tied to your childhood memories, it’s like you found not just your future but your past in this.

I felt that moment I had that cup of coffee is that moment that my past and future collided, and it took me on this journey. Also, for me, it’s like knowing where you come from to help you understand where you’re going in your life. Knowing my history as a kid picking coffee cherries with my grandmother, or my ancestors who were the first to pick this coffee drink and make it, it definitely had an impact on me.

I didn’t know when I went into this book this role that Yemen plays in this thing that billions of us consume every single day of our lives.

It is amazing, this port of Mokha. That’s a city in Yemen, a port, and that changed the world. It was what fueled Europe’s enlightenment. The coffee houses that came out in London, Vienna, Paris, where all these amazing ideas flourished, was because of this fuel called coffee. I always tell people that oil powers factory’s machines, and coffee powers human dreams, and I mean it. I think the book really does a good job telling about the importance of direct trading, and why as consumers we have such an important role to play in how we impact the world.

You came into this business with so much heart and curiosity of learning the craft, of learning the business, and you went to Yemen and it was not a coffee capital in the world at all. You can’t really get coffee because the chief product at that point is something else.

Yeah, this thing called qat, this drug that picks up 32 percent of Yemen’s water resources. It’s to the point where the capital of Yemen is poised to be the first city to run out of water as early as this year. For every one coffee farm, there are seven of these drug farms. My idea was if I can get coffee to star quality, I can find the right buyers and I can have people be paid more in Yemen. That way they will have it as an alternative. That was my dream and what I was focused on. 

Then, you wound up having to make this escape. I was also surprised reading about this moment because I didn’t know that the United States wasn’t helping people get out, wasn’t helping people like you. 

Other countries, like India and China and Russia, were taking out hundreds of people. The state department just told me, “We can’t help you right now. What we can do is we relay your messages to your loved ones via our website.” I felt abandoned. It was hurtful. We even had a website called stuckinyemen.org, where several hundred Americans who were stuck there signed up. I really needed to attend this conference, so I had to take things into my own hands. When you’re in that situation, you don’t have many options. I took that leap of faith, went on that boat and, well, I’m here with you.

Then you went back to the U.S. and you were the toast of Seattle, pretty much the next day.

When I got to the airport in Seattle, I was in the Uber going to the conference and I heard myself on the BBC Radio. It was so surreal. I remember the Uber driver was like, “This guy is pretty amazing just helping these farmers, but he’s crazy.”

I was like, “Yeah, he’s nuts.” It was unbelievable. The coffee, it had the highest score in world in blind tastings. That was something that meant a lot because I wanted people to respect the work of the farmers, because in this blind tasting, no one knows where the coffees are from.

In your business, your enterprise and also the foundation, you are really making this about a product that you care about. But it’s not just a product because it’s tied to the soil, it’s tied to people’s lives. How do you do that?

I think storytelling is the most powerful medium that exists. When you talk about coffee, you can talk about varietals, elevation, but that’s not a story. I think my story is one that talks about coffee, a kid who had a dream. And different people, I hope, can find themselves in it.

It is also because food and drink are the things we share with each other. There’s the communion of harvesting the food, of cultivating it. Then, there’s the communion of experiencing it together.

Absolutely. It crosses borders, and cultures. What would connect a farmer from the northwestern mountains of Yemen with someone from Bushwick, beside the beards? I think coffee is such a powerful force to build bridges. We’ve been in a rat race, always running around. I think coffee is about slowing down, and being present, and understanding that it’s an experience, not just the effects of caffeine that you want to take in for your busy day. I always tell people the shortest distance between two people is a cup of coffee.

In any industry, when you buy something you have an opportunity to uplift someone or exploit them. When decide to go cheap on things, someone will pay the consequence of that.

Going through everything you’ve gone through, you must have had moments where you thought, “You know what, no, I think maybe I need to do something else.”

At the beginning, it was a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it for me.

Any entrepreneur, it’s not easy. You’re finding yourself in these little hard moments, arguing my decisions. I think you would just stick close to your principles, your vision, and what you want. Your passion, that’s the only thing that can keep you going. It will help you move mountains, and cross oceans. It helped me cross my ocean. But otherwise, when things get rough and things don’t make sense, if you don’t have some passion inside of you, you won’t be able to keep pushing.

We are now at this moment in our culture, in our country, where we are also talking about trying to build connections. We’re also talking about building walls. We’re also, as an administration, targeting specific groups of people from specific countries, whether or not they pose a threat to the United States. This is very personal for you.

It is. Some friends of mine have a company called the Department of Brewology and they have this poster that says, “Filter coffee, not people.”

I have family members who are stuck in countries like Djibouti, and Egypt, and Jordan. You have bombs that are being dropped in Yemen, but they’re not made in Saudi Arabia, they’re made in the U.S. But I think my story is a unifying narrative in these divided times, and we need to push back against all the hate and divisiveness. This is very personal. I hope that people can see something in the book that reminds them of our humanity, and when they buy that cup of coffee, they’ll look at that journey that it took to get to them and they can honor those farmers, and the baristas and the roasters. I think we should definitely build bridges, not walls.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Survivor Emma Gonzalez demands stricter gun laws at Florida rally

Emma Gonzalez delivered an emotional and powerful speech on Saturday at a rally demanding that U.S. lawmakers take action and impose stricter gun control laws. The senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—who survived the shooting on Feb. 14 that claimed 17 lives—demanded a ban on guns, called out politicians who have received donations from the National Rifle Association, and said a focus on mental health is not enough to prevent mass shootings in America.

Here are a couple highlights from the transcript of her powerful speech via CNN:

“If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association.

You want to know something? It doesn’t matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. And divided by the number of gunshot victims in the United States in the one and one-half months in 2018 alone, that comes out to being $5,800. Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump? If you don’t do anything to prevent this from continuing to occur, that number of gunshot victims will go up and the number that they are worth will go down. And we will be worthless to you.

To every politician who is taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.”

Later in the speech, crowd chanted “We call BS” to politicians that claim gun reform won’t prevent mass school shootings.

“The people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. And us kids seem to be the only ones who notice and our parents to call BS.Companies trying to make caricatures of the teenagers these days, saying that all we are self-involved and trend-obsessed and they hush us into submission when our message doesn’t reach the ears of the nation, we are prepared to call BS. Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say tougher guns laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS. They say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. We call BS. They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS. They say no laws could have prevented the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred. We call BS. That us kids don’t know what we’re talking about, that we’re too young to understand how the government works. We call BS.”

Gonzalez is one of many teens and parents demanding gun control reform following the shooting. The Florida Moms Demand Action chapter said they will keep pushing to pass a legislation that will keep guns out of children’s hands too.

Meanwhile, Donald and Melania Trump paid a visit to victims on Friday. Trump told reporters following the visit that it was “very sad something like that could happen.” While he keeps claiming he’s working “with Congress on many fronts,” there’s been no indication that gun control reform laws have been addressed.

Watch Gonzalez’s powerful speech here:

“The Who Sell Out”: Dadaism + smashed guitars

(Credit: Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)

In 1965, Pete Townshend told a reporter from the English pop music weekly Melody Maker “[The Who] play pop art with standard group equipment. I get jet plane sounds, Morse code signals, [and] howling wind effects.” These nonmusical elements, commonly referred to as noise, when inserted into a pop song, create an aural collage (collage being an approach to fine art favored by many pop artists and dadaists) that challenges and disrupts order. Although he would not publish these words until 1977, French theorist Jacques Attali articulated a similar sentiment reflecting pop artists’ contention that theirs was a lived experience, one that included music: “Music is more than an object of study: it is a way of perceiving the world; a tool of understanding . . . [it is] thus necessary to imagine radically new theoretical forms, in order to speak to new realities. Music, the organization of noise, is one such form. It reflects the manufacture of society; it constitutes the audible waveband of the vibrations and signs that make up society. An instrument of understanding, it prompts to us to decipher a sound form of knowledge.” I have no way of knowing if Jacques Attali ever listened to “The Who Sell Out” (I’m assuming he didn’t), and I’m guessing that 60s pop art was not on his mind as he wrote, but both he and Townshend, each in their own discursive way, argue that music as pop art is commodity, spectacle, and ritual. But whenever pop music is relocated into a different position within this cultural discourse, a new discourse is created and a different message is conveyed. Townshend said as much to a reporter from the Observer in 1966: “From valueless objects—a guitar, a microphone, a hackneyed pop tune, we extract new value. We take objects with one function and give them another. And the auto-destructive element adds immediacy to it all.”

Auto-destruction was the physical manifestation of the Who’s pop art music, not to mention an intellectually palatable euphemism for smashing up equipment. The oft-told story is that it began as a one-off—a pissed-off Townshend, unable to control the feedback emanating from his Rickenbacker, and egged on by some friends from art school, banged the guitar against a low ceiling, accidentally breaking the neck. Instead of shock and dismay, Townshend’s reaction was to finish the job. “I had no recourse but to completely look as though I meant to do it, so I smashed the guitar and danced all over the bits. It gave me a fantastic buzz.” (Marsh, 1983) Though Lambert initially opposed the idea for practical reasons—constantly replacing gear was bloody expensive—it made for great publicity and cemented the band’s reputation as the most exciting (and potentially dangerous) live act in England. “It was like seeing a piece of pure energy, pure raw energy,” Roy Carr enthused, “if you could get just pure energy and put it in a form and operate it—that was the Who.” (Barnes, 1982) Even Gustav Metzger, who’d introduced Townshend to the concept of auto-destruction and the outré works of the Gutai Association, became a fan, often asking the band to perform at Ealing. Townshend and Lambert gave it a pop art spin and, as Dave Marsh notes, were able to meaningfully contextualize what seemed to be wanton excess: “[Auto-destruction was] the fury of rock and roll’s attempt to exorcise the world of all of its impurities. In this sense, guitar-smashing was not just an exercise, it was the climactic moment of what the Who’s stage presentation was all about—probably the only appropriate one conceivable.” While such an analysis mollified the art school crowd, to Keith Moon it was all a bit of fun, an old-fashioned, Shepherd’s Bush knees-up: “I don’t know why we do it. We enjoy it—the fans enjoy it. I suppose it’s just animal instinct.”

When the Who released their maximum R&B, proto-punk debut album “My Generation” in December 1965, mod was, for all practical purposes, drawing its last breath. Thoroughly co-opted by the mainstream culture industry, it had gone from subcultural phenomenon to marketing strategy, a fashion impulse sold to those who could afford the look. A year later, when “A Quick One” was released, the Who, while still retaining some modish inclinations, had been transformed into a full-blown, ear bleeding, auto-destructing, rock and roll pop art experience. And while “A Quick One” suffers a bit from well-intentioned artistic democracy (Daltrey’s and Moon’s contributions proved they were negligible songwriters), Townshend’s songs (especially the title track and the dazzling “So Sad About Us”) indicated that at 21, he was rapidly maturing into one of England’s most expressive and audacious rock artists. More importantly, the album’s release unequivocally stated that the Who rejected complacency and embraced change, not simply to follow trends, but rather to accommodate Townshend’s considerable breadth of ideas. There was not another band like them, but they were not the only ones testing the limits of rock songwriting and performance. The Beatles and Stones, still the benchmarks by which virtually every English band was judged, were always upping the ante, as were the Kinks, but the landscape now included Pink Floyd and Cream, bands more concerned with artistic expression and instrumental virtuosity than mere chart success. There was also Jimi Hendrix, who’d arrived in the UK from America in the fall of 1966, debuting to rapturous acclaim, seriously threatening the Who’s hard-earned reputation as England’s most impressive live act. Further problematizing the band’s plans for world domination was that their American record label, Decca, was preternaturally dense not only about the Who, but rock and roll in general. In January 1966, Chris Stamp flew to New York to whip up a little enthusiasm for the band amongst label management, only to be greeted with a lack of interest, commitment, and direction. Worse still, was the situation with Shel Talmy, the American recording engineer/producer of My Generation with whom Kit Lambert had struck the Who’s first (and worst) contract. Seeing himself as the second coming of Phil Spector, Talmy treated artists as puppets through which he would channel his “formidable” production skills. Lambert and Stamp, with considerable help from powerful music entrepreneur Robert Stigwood, finally extricated the Who from Talmy’s death grip, but at a cost. For the next five years he would receive a five percent royalty on all Who recordings, a period of time that would see the release of both “Tommy” and “Who’s Next.”

From mod to pop art music to the emergence of psychedelic bohemianism (all part of a burgeoning rock and roll-oriented, youth-driven culture industry), London was, from 1966 through 1967, in a near-constant state of flux. It was a time of intense creativity and cultural instability, when the city went from black and white to color and was poised on the cusp of the “Great Leap Forward in terms of the extension of the power of the imagination into myriad cultural realms.” It was under these circumstances that the Who made their great leap forward, touring America and recording “Sell Out.”

Google within rights to fire engineer over anti-diversity screed, NLRB lawyer says

James Damore (Credit: YouTube)

Google’s decision to fire engineer James Damore over his authorship of an unconvincing anti-diversity memo—which criticized Google’s  “politically correct monoculture” — did not violate labor laws, the National Labor Relations Board lawyer, Jayme Sophir, concluded in a letter.

In the letter, Sophir says Google was within their rights to fire the former Google engineer.

“We conclude the memorandum included both protected and unprotected statements, and that the Employer discharged the Charging Party solely for [redacted] unprotected statements,” the letter states.

The unprotected speech, the letter implies, was tied to harassment.

“The Employer determined that certain portions of the Charging Party’s memorandum violated existing policies on harassment and discrimination,” Sophir’s letter reads. “Later that evening, the employer terminated the Charging Party’s employment.”

According to the letter, Google made it clear to Damore that it was “absolutely fine” for him to have “different political views,” but “advancing gender stereotypes” was not acceptable.

Damore filed a class-action complaint in January after causing chaos in August when he wrote a 10-page memo criticizing Google for its diversity policies, which led to his dismissal from the company.

The manifesto, titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” was posted in its entirety on Gizmodo in August 2017, and stated that the problem with Google’s diversity initiative was that women weren’t cut out to work in tech like men. The memo also claimed that women were more neurotic than men, less capable of negotiating for salaries, and that men had a “higher drive” for status than women.

“We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs,” Damore’s memo read. “These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life.”

Damore’s firing led to him becoming a martyr to right-wing websites such as Infowars, which claimed Google’s firing violated free speech. Many conservatives painted Damore as a hero.

“Google fires guy who said Google has no tolerance for ideological diversity, thereby completely proving his point,” Paul Joseph Watson, the editor-at-large of Infowars, tweeted while sharing an article from a libertarian site defending him.

Christina Sommers, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, called Damore a “truth-teller.”

Despite Damore and his followers’ best efforts though, this is one battle he isn’t going to win.

“Accordingly, the Region should dismiss this charge, absent withdrawal,” Sophir’s letter concluded.