Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 165

Crime is down, so why do most Americans believe the opposite?

(Credit: AP/Patrick Semansky)

On the subject of crime, there is good news and bad. Reports by both the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that crime has decreased in the past 25 years in the U.S. Violent crime fell between 48% and 74% since 1993, based on the agencies’ measures, respectively. Property crime has fallen sharply, too: the FBI estimates a drop of 48% between 1993 and 2016, and BJS reports 66%.

While the organizations have different parameters for measuring crime, their results show the same conclusion: Americans are safer than they have been in a quarter century. So why do Americans say crime is a bigger concern than ever before?

A study at Pew Research Center shows the juxtaposition between the reality of falling crime rates and Americans’ growing fear of crime. “In 17 Gallup surveys conducted since 1993, at least six in 10 Americans said there was more crime in the U.S. compared with the year before, despite the generally downward trend in national violent and property crime rates during much of that period.”

“Pew Research Center surveys have found a similar pattern. In a survey in late 2016, 57% of registered voters said crime in the U.S. had gotten worse since 2008, even though BJS and FBI data show that violent and property crime rates declined by double-digit percentages during that span.”

To view it differently, as Christian Science Monitor writes, “people became 62 percent less likely to become the victim of a violent crime between 1993 and 2014. The number of violent-crime victims per 1,000 persons age 12 or older dropped from 29.3 to just 11.1 in that period, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics.”

So why are Americans more fearful of crime than ever? There are two likely reasons: the over-reporting of crime by national and local news media, and politically motivated lies spread by conservative politicians.

The 24-hour television news media fills open-air time with salacious reports of violent crimes that are disproportionate to actual crimes stats. Experts confirm this: in their book Crime, Media, and Reality: Examining Mixed Messages About Crime and Justice in Popular Media, Venessa Garcia and‎ Samantha G. Arkerson write, “with the exception of weather and traffic, the media dedicate more time to crime than other topics, including sports.”

Crime stories get viewers and clicks like no other vertical, bringing in crucial vital advertising revenue. This has a direct impact on public perception. George Washington University professor Robert Entman and University of Illinois-Chicago professor Andrew Rojecki came to the same conclusion in their book The Black Image in the White Mind. As the Chicago Reporter summarizes, Entman and Rojecki “found that the excessive coverage of crime on television news tends to create a misperception among the public that crime is a bigger problem than it really is. Even in periods when reported crime actually is down.”

Race can’t be separated from conversations about how news media report on crime. A Media Matters report found that in New York, local news sites disproportionately report on crime stories featuring African American suspects. Over-reporting of crime contributes to many Americans’ racialized views of who commits crime, and where and why. As the Chicago Reporter writes, “Too often, according to Entman and Rojecki, that ‘B’ roll in TV news — the images that are used to show the story while the reporter in voiceover tells the story — tends to include images of African Americans or Latinos in prison settings. More specifically, according to a study by professor Travis Dixon of the University of California at Los Angeles, mug shots and orange jumpsuits are more likely to be shown in TV reports when the accused is a person of color.”

Much blame for the public’s misconception about crime rates also falls on Republican politicians who continually push the narrative that crime is a growing problem and that American cities are hotbeds of violence. While they’ve eased up on this line over the past few years, in light of growing awareness of the racial impact of mass incarceration, and some Republicans have distanced themselves from the “tough on crime” years, dinosaurs like Attorney General Jeff Sessions continue to push tough-on-crime measures like mandatory minimum sentencing laws, despite the fact that most Americans are against them.

It’s easy to see that they do this for political purposes. Take Trump and Paul Ryan’s insistence that banning immigration from Latin America will limit the presence of gangs like MS-13. Other politicians have caught on to the tactic of heightening crime stories to push for anti-immigrant policy; in New Jersey last year, gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno claimed in an attack ad that her opponent, now governor Phil Murphy, would safeguard rapists and criminals in his support of sanctuary cities. In Iowa, Congressman Steve King made the outrageous claim that undocumented immigrants who come from countries with high murder rates present a danger to Americans. And in the recent Virginia gubernatorial race, Ed Gillespie ran an attack ad accusing opponent and now-governor Ralph Northam of “letting illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13.”

Most people believe what they’re told. As long as mainstream news media and elected officials continue to push the narrative that crime is on the rise, many Americans will continue to fall for their fear-mongering.

Mark Twain’s adventures in love

(Credit: AP)

The year 2018 marks the 150th anniversary of one of the great courtships in American history, the wooing of an unenthusiastic 22-year-old Olivia Langdon by a completely smitten 32-year-old Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain.

As I first learned while visiting Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri in preparation for teaching “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the contrasts between the two were indeed stark, and the prospects for their eventual union exceedingly poor. Olivia Langdon, known as Livy, was a thoroughly proper easterner, while Sam was a rugged man of the West. Livy came from a family that was rich and well-educated, while Sam had grown up poor and left school at age 12. She was thoroughly pious, while he was a man who knew how to smoke, drink and swear.

On Valentine’s Day, their story is a reminder of the true meaning of love. Despite many challenges, once united, they never gave up on each other and enjoyed a fulfilling 34 years of marriage.

The young Olivia

Olivia Langdon was born in 1845 in Elmira, New York to a wealthy coal merchant. Her father, Jervis Langdon, was deeply religious but also highly progressive: He supported Elmira College, which had been founded in 1855 as one of the first in the U.S. to grant bachelor’s degrees to women. He was also an ardent abolitionist who served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, which offered shelter and aid to escaped slaves from the South. He even offered sanctuary to a fugitive Frederick Douglass, one of America’s greatest abolitionists, who became a lifelong friend.

Her mother, also Olivia, was active in many civic organizations and served as a strong advocate for her children’s education. The younger Olivia suffered from a delicate constitution her whole life. As a teenager she was bedridden for two years after a fall on the ice.

Mark Twain and love at first sight

Born in 1835 and raised on the Mississippi River in Hannibal, the young Samuel Clemens worked as a typesetter, a riverboat pilot, a miner and a writer. His first national literary success came in 1865 with “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” a story about a frog and a man who would bet on anything.

He soon moved into travel writing, filing dispatches from Hawaii (then the Sandwich Islands) before embarking in 1867 for Europe and the Middle East aboard the steamship Quaker City. Clemens would later cobble together his dispatches from the voyage into a book that became a 19th-century bestseller, “The Innocents Abroad.”

It was aboard the Quaker City that Clemens first laid eyes on a photograph of Livy. Her younger brother, Charles, who would later add to his father’s coal fortune, befriended Clemens on the voyage and showed him a picture of his sister. Clemens later claimed that it was love at first sight.

Wooing the ‘dearest girl in the world’

Back in the U.S., Clemens accepted an invitation from Charles to visit his family in Elmira. Within days of meeting Livy in 1868, he proposed marriage. She rebuffed him. Clemens later wrote,

“She said she never could or would love me — but she set herself the task of making a Christian of me. I said she would succeed, but that in the meantime, she would unwittingly dig a matrimonial pit and end by tumbling into it.”

Although Livy refused Sam’s proposal, she did offer to enter into a correspondence with him as “brother and sister.” He wrote to her the very next day and kept on writing for 17 months, a total of over 180 letters. One of them reads as follows:

“Livy dear, I have already mailed today’s letter, but I am so proud of my privilege of writing the dearest girl in the world whenever I please, that I must add a few lines if only to say I love you, Livy. For I do love you . . ., as the dew loves the flowers; the birds love the sunshine; as mothers love their first-born . . .

P.S. — I have read this letter over and it is flippant and foolish and puppyish. I wish I had gone to bed when I got back, without writing. You said I must never tear up a letter after writing it to you and so I send it. Burn it, Livy, I did not think I was writing so clownishly and shabbily. I was in much too good a humor for sensible letter writing.”

Livy’s parents had good reason to be skeptical about the relatively uneducated and uncivilized Clemens, and they asked for references from his friends out west. As Clemens later reported, his friends did little to ease their mind, reporting that he was wild and godless, an unsettled rover “who got drunk oftener than was necessary.” But Sam had already told them as much, which seemed to confirm his honesty. Plus, he tried to reform himself, for a time giving up drinking and attending church regularly.

Marriage, lavish home and love’s travails

Despite the Langdons’ initial objections, Jervis Langdon took a liking to Sam, who soon won Livy’s heart. On the couple’s first outing together, they attended a reading by Charles Dickens, and in an effort to elevate her beau’s character, Livy began sending him copies of the sermons of one of America’s most famous preachers, Henry Ward Beecher.

They announced their engagement in February of 1869. A year later, they were married.

To Clemens’s surprise, his father-in-law provided lavishly for the newlyweds, purchasing for them a beautiful home in Buffalo, New York, staffed with servants. He also provided Clemens a loan with which to purchase an interest in a local newspaper. “The Innocents Abroad” was soon published, and Clemens rocketed to fame and fortune.

The Clemens’ life was not always happy, however. Soon after their marriage, Jervis Langdon died of stomach cancer, and their first child, a son, was born premature and died of diphtheria at 19 months. Years later, their daughter Susy died at age 24 of meningitis, and another daughter, Jean, died of epilepsy at 29. Only one daughter, Clara, survived. She married a musician and lived to age 88.

Clemens’s brilliance as a writer was nearly matched by his financial ineptitude. His enthusiasm for new technology led to investments in a money-losing typesetting machine. His publishing investments met initial success with the publication of the memoirs of Ulysses Grant, but soon failed. Eventually the family had to shutter their house and move to Europe. Finally he turned over control of his financial affairs to a Standard Oil baron who persuaded him to file bankruptcy before ensuring that his creditors were paid off.

A lasting love affair

Sam and Livy’s marriage was remarkable for its day, and perhaps any day. When they later built a mansion in Hartford, Connecticut — where they were next-door neighbors to another of the 19th century’s best-selling American novelists, Harriet Beecher Stowe — the deed was in Livy’s name. Clemens also transferred the copyrights to some of his works to Livy, to avoid seizure by creditors.

More importantly, she became proofreader and editor of all his manuscripts. Without her, he believed, his most important works, such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” would never have been written. Of her role he recalled,

“I never wrote a serious word until after I married Mrs. Clemens. She is solely responsible — to her should go all the credit — for any influence my subsequent work should exert. After my marriage, she edited everything I wrote.”

At home their children would listen as their mother read his stories. When she came to a passage that she thought needed more work, she would turn down the corner of the page. Clemens later claimed that he occasionally inserted passages to which he knew she would object simply to enjoy her reaction.

Sam and Livy remained deeply devoted to one another throughout their marriage, which ended only with Livy’s death in Italy in 1904 from heart failure. Clemens himself lived until 1910, devoting his last years to his autobiography. When the uncensored version was finally published — at his request, 100 years after his death — it sold unexpectedly well, making him the author of best-sellers in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

After Livy’s death, Sam found it difficult to live. One of the chroniclers of their lifelong love affair finds perhaps his most poignant testimony in 1905’s “Eve’s Diary,” in which the character of Adam says at Eve’s graveside,

“Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.”

Richard Gunderman, Chancellor’s Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University

“Black Lightning”: How Marvin Jones III makes a villain a hero

Marvin "Krondon" Jones III as Tobias in "Black Lightning" (Credit: CW/Richard Ducree)

Rarely does the mere presence of an actor on television qualify as a small example of revolution. That’s a weighty word, revolution. But how else would one describe the significance of Marvin Jones III on The CW’s “Black Lightning?” As the season’s central villain, Tobias Whale, Jones commands a room with his booming baritone and can be convincingly terrifying without raising his voice. In the way of all sinister heavies, he’s at his most dangerous when he smiles and pays his quarry a compliment.

Both the character and Jones are African American men who live with albinism, a genetic predisposition characterized by the decreased or complete absence of melanin in the skin and hair pigmentation, as well as issues with vision. This places Jones and Tobias Whale in a curious and tense space within their communities, whether real and fictional.

By virtue of his series regular status on “Black Lightning,” currently airing its first season Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW, Jones also makes history as the first major TV antagonist with albinism, one with a significantly developed backstory, screen time and, hallelujah, lots of dialogue.

“The actor that has albinism has always been pigeonholed and restricted to no-speaking roles that have a bit of supernatural and or villainous air to then, in the history of film and television that I have studied, as an African American actor with albinism,” Jones told Salon in a recent interview. “That’s why it is such an honor, a pleasure, and a privilege to play the role of Tobias Whale.’”

Tony Isabella created “Black Lightning” for DC Comics in 1977, making Jefferson Pierce one of the first African American superheroes in comics and writing Tobias Whale, his nemesis, as a man with albinism. “I don’t even know if Tony even knew how much that would ripple into the future of society, as it is now,” Jones observed. “Here we are in 2018, when I have a character who is very much a villain, he’s a bad guy, but he’s also very human. There’s nothing supernatural or ‘meta,’ necessarily, about him at this point.”

On The CW’s “Black Lightning,” Jefferson Pierce (series star Cress Williams) is as much at battle with ignorance, fear and a deficit of respect in his community as he is with the very real gangsters intimidating civilians. This leads series creator Salim Akil to design Jones’ character as an embodiment of the corrosive peril posed by self-hatred and disunity while also addressing intra-community ills including colorism, the divisive idea that having a darker complexion is less desirable than lighter skin, or the reverse.

In this way, Tobias also represents the experience of people who move through the world with albinism, who endure a lifetime of “othering” due to their condition — comments, ignorant assumptions, exclusion. African Americans born with albinism often face another level of discrimination, not only from a dominant culture that assigns prejudiced traits to people based on the visual cue of skin color, but from within their own community.

To that end Jones’ portrayal channels many of the demons plaguing the community of Freeland. Tobias represents the antithesis of the series’ obvious themes of pride and self-respect, traits that echo the main thrust of the series’ predecessor on Netflix, “Marvel’s Luke Cage,” as well as reverberating with the culture-wide anticipation for the theatrical release of “Black Panther.”

Importantly, however, while Tobias’ albinism plays a role in his deep well of anger it is not the root cause, as we witness scenes of his abusive childhood, an all-too-common tragedy that shapes many.

“He’s very relatable to every element inside of us that is a villain, or roots for the bad guy,” Jones explained, “You can line him up with all of your favorite villains, whether it’d be Lex Luthor, the Kingpin, the Joker, and so forth.  It’s just an added that he has albinism and he has the story behind him, and uniqueness. But he is very much real and relatable and even, you know, put on in a pedestal.”

Tobias Whale is a crime lord content to exist in the shadows for reasons strategic as well as physical. And like other comic book villains, Tobias is the dark result of years of frustration, consistently thwarted ambition and twisted talent. How he’s treated due to his appearance, then, is just one of many factors.

An exchange between Tobias and an underling that raised a few eyebrows within the opening episodes of the series lays all of this out with burning clarity. “Damn, boss,” the man says, “You really do hate black people. “

“No, I love black people,” Tobias responds. “I hate incompetent, thick-lipped, scratch-where-it-don’t-itch Negroes like you.”

“Obviously from what you’ve seen already, he’s dealt with prejudice, bias and ignorance amongst his own people in regards to who he is and his genetic difference,” Jones said. “The ignorance gets compartmentalized to those who may be from the outside looking in, and not necessarily from people from the inside looking out — meaning close friends, family members, neighbors . . . who may have a level of intelligence about a lot of things, but then when it comes down to genetic disposition, and in particular albinism, may be completely ignorant.

“It’s OK to be ignorant about certain things, I think,” he added. “But to be insensitive, that creates a whole other layer of hurt.”

In Tobias this manifests as a simmering rage that’s exploited by his boss Lady Eve (Jill Scott). In a chilling moment during the episode titled “Black Jesus,” she coos, “Did you know that in Africa some people believe albinos are magical? People actually kidnap random albinos, cut them up, grind their bones and sell it as magic dust.”

Her cruel speech is based in fact, not merely in the stuff of comic books. Men, women and children with albinism in countries including Malawi, Tanzania and Burundi have been hunted and butchered for their body parts.

“Lady Eve used a truth about Africans with albinism to poke and point at Tobias’s likeness, and I think his intelligence, too,” Jones said. “I think that she wanted to see if he was aware of who he was in perception to the ignorant world over. That’s just one perspective. It’s a truth, and to utilize that when speaking to Tobias as a poke means that you see it as something that’s derogatory, negative and heinous. Which it is.

Jones went on to praise the writers of ‘Black Lightning’ for touching on that issue. “It isn’t looked at enough, in my opinion,” he said. “I say that not just because I’m an African American with albinism, but because I’m a human being and, and my concern is about humanity.”

In the United States, an estimated one in every 17,000 people live with some form of the condition, and here, the main concern is discrimination and uninformed curiosity. As a member of the West Coast hip-hop group Strong Arm Steady (whose membership once included Xzibit) Jones performs under the moniker Krondon and, in that capacity, has been a visible part of the music scene for well over 15 years. And he’s also saddled with constantly answering questions about his skin, albeit not as sinister as Lady Eve’s.

I wondered if that must get tiresome for Jones, especially given the recent elevation of his profile. But he answered, quite sanguinely, “honestly, I’m inspired by it.

“This role was given to me — and even my role as a hip hop artist who has some kind of notoriety, popularity, that’s also a responsibility — to be a representative for those that don’t necessarily always have a voice, you know?” he said. “Who else is gonna do it for that kid at the high school in Wisconsin, or in New Orleans or Atlanta or New York or L.A. —because they’re out there — or that kid in London or in Africa who is going, ‘wow Lady Eve’s talking about me’?”

“Now,” he added, “there is a representative who competently and hopefully with style and grace as well as skill and ability, is representing a side of humanity that isn’t always represented in a medium like this.”

Baltimore’s notorious dirty cops case: An end to the “all police are heroes” myth?

Daniel Hersl, Evodio Hendrix, Jemell Rayam, Maurice Ward, Momodu Gando, Wayne Jenkins and Marcus Taylor, the seven police officers who are facing charges. (Credit: AP/Salon)

One of the most notorious gangs in American history is being prosecuted right now and no one is taking about it. A few national media outlets have touched on this disturbing case, but no one is really giving it the attention it deserves.

Some of the charges include fraud, extortion, armed robbery, stealing guns, selling guns, falsifying testimony and narcotic distribution. Strangely, Detective Sean Suiter, a homicide cop in Baltimore who once had ties to this group of criminals and was set to testify against them, was murdered right before their trial began, and still no one is talking about it.

Why the silence? Probably because the group mentioned above — the gang members — were all Baltimore City Police officers: members of the city’s elite Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), plainclothes cops responsible for getting weapons off the streets and targeting the community’s most violent criminals. Instead, they used their badges to become the most dangerous gang in the city.

A total of eight Baltimore city police officers were indicted on federal racketeering charges. Six officers pleaded guilty and four have cooperated with federal prosecutors. Two entered pleas of not guilty. Yesterday, Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor were convicted of charges of racketeering, robbery and fraud. The investigation and trial included cops ratting each other out in court while making excuses for their disgusting actions, blaming any and every one except themselves for the hundreds of thousands — maybe even millions — of dollars they stole, along with countless other crimes they committed, over the past decade.

It’s crazy how every national media outlet ran to Baltimore when a few cars were torched and a couple of buildings got tossed in protest after Freddie Gray died in police custody. The all-cops-are-heroes’ narrative in this country is ridiculous and dangerous. An innocent man died in police custody, and cop lovers and apologists still found a way to blame the victim for his own death.

State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby bravely brought charges against the officers involved in Gray’s killing in a time when holding crooked cops accountable for their crimes might as well be illegal itself. You’d think that the good cops would champion her determination, but of course they remained silent on the matter, or loudly supported their fellow officers. In the end, none of the cops involved in Freddie Gray’s death were convicted of any charges. Some would argue against the tactics prosecutors used, blaming them for allowing the officers to walk; however, I don’t think it would have mattered what the prosecution did. The all-cops-are-heroes-narrative sucked up Grays’s family’s chances of receiving justice.

Countless TV shows, movies and novels have for years pushed stories of honorable police officers who use their badges only in the service of good, and many of us, who have not had those experiences with police officers, just can’t relate. African Americans and other oppressed groups have been complaining about cops like this for years, even before the Gun TraceTask Force investigation and the Gray killing, but we were ignored or written off as crazy.

We are not crazy.

Take a walk through any poverty-stricken neighborhood and ask a resident to tell you some stories about police officers. Their bad experiences will always outweigh the good. Even officers who hail from those neighborhoods quickly assimilate to the established culture of law enforcement, and do little or nothing to create any changes in the system. And so the cycle continues.

The cops-as-heroes myth is one likely reason why the Gun Trace Task Force case has been grossly underreported, despite its lurid details. Showing America the convictions of and the plea deals from this collection of crooked cops will, hopefully, change that narrative permanently.

It is now time to break this vicious cycle. Let’s start by acknowledging the real bad guys, because we should all know their names.

Evodio Hendrix and Maurice Ward.

Daniel Hersl and Marcus Taylor.

Wayne Jenkins, Thomas Allers, Jemell Rayam, Momodu Gondo.

This is what real corruption looks like. Say their names, acknowledge their crimes, and understand that the problems may run even deeper that this case has shown. We’ll continue to follow the fall-out of this investigation here at Salon.

The little-known history of America’s first black celebrity, Richard Potter

Details of broadsides advertising performances by Richard Potter and his mentor (Credit: Historic Northampton, Massachusetts/American Antiquarian Society)

Excerpted from “Richard Potter: America’s First Black Celebrity” by John A. Hodgson (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Reprinted by permission of University of Virginia Press.

All his adult life, Richard Potter demonstrated a mastery of misdirection. He was a showman, so first and foremost he needed to call attention to himself: hence the flowing robe, the wig and costumes, the fine carriage and handsome matched horses, the life- sized, carved wooden human figures standing on pillars before his house, the fastidious dress and exemplary manners. But he was especially a magician and a ventriloquist—a sleight-of-hand, sleight-of-voice man—so he also needed to direct attention elsewhere: you were to see or hear what he could do, but you were not to understand how he did it.

He was very, very good at what he did. For many years he was the foremost ventriloquist in America, and the most celebrated magician as well. Indeed, he was the most famous American entertainer of any kind: there was no actor or vocalist or musician in the country who could even come close to Richard Potter’s renown. It wasn’t just secondhand fame, either, the kind that could be spread by stories from the daily newspapers of the large East Coast cities and republished as entertaining filler in the weeklies of remote little towns, rumors from a wonderful world that the provincial readers were unlikely ever to experience—George Frederick Cooke taking the stage in the role of Iago, the sea serpent again appearing off Cape Ann, the Pig of Knowledge doing arithmetic. While Richard Potter always made his home in New England, his tours took him across the length and breadth of the nation. Wherever you lived in America, even if you had not yourself attended at least one of his exhibitions, you probably knew people, perhaps even many people, who had. When he died, in 1835, he had become a national icon.

Fame comes in various flavors, of course. As a showman, Richard Potter could not expect to achieve the kind of recognition traditionally reserved for prominent politicians, military leaders, or eminent writers. Moreover, even the formal theater at this time still suffered some degree of disrepute across wide swaths of American culture; more populist forms of entertainment, like Potter’s, incurred that kind of cultural condescension and disapproval to an even greater degree. Many Americans disapproved of such amusements in and of themselves, associating them with dissipation, frivolity, and “juggling” (knavish trickery), and many others who openly enjoyed them nevertheless felt that their professors were not entirely respectable. But enjoy those entertainments people certainly did; and Richard Potter himself contributed enormously to the long, gradual process of making American showmanship respectable. . . .

The Grand North American Tour, 1819– 1823

In Mobile, there occurred a few episodes, never reported in Potter’s lifetime, that remind us how fundamentally risky his touring could be and how particularly vulnerable he himself always was. These anecdotes came from Goodwin’s inquiries about Potter in Andover in 1875 and were reported by Silas Ketchum in his seminal 1878 sketch of Potter: “He was once turned out of a hotel in Mobile, while Thompson of Andover traveled with him, by a landlord who would not entertain a ‘nigger.’ Potter did not deny the charge, removed to another hotel, performed twelve nights in the town, and carried off $4,800 in silver, in a nail cask, as the net result. Learning that there was danger of being waylaid, he gave out that he was going to a certain place on a certain day, and departed the night previous in the opposite direction.” The picaresque qualities of these stories—shrewd, honest protagonist outwits nasty antagonists and profits at their expense—should not blind us to the very real dangers of the threats—racial discrimination and subjugation, highway robbery—that they suggest.

The incidents in Mobile changed nothing for Potter; they simply served to remind him forcefully of concerns that he always needed to keep in mind in any case. But significant change, nonetheless, was already coming, even as he traveled east across Alabama toward the coastal states.

For any itinerant performer hoping to find large and receptive audiences in the South Atlantic states, the cities of Savannah and especially Charleston were the preeminent attractions. Not only were they populous; they were also prosperous, with a growing leisure class, and had long-established traditions of support for theater and tolerance of entertainers at a time when many or most New England communities were still persecuting strollers and enforcing antitheatrical laws. James Rannie, Potter’s mentor in ventriloquism, had spent several months in Charleston and Savannah in the winter and spring of 1802–3; and then John Rannie, Potter’s first instructor in magic and first American mentor, had spent a full year in and between the two cities in 1807–8. Both men thus knew both cities well and had developed extensive networks of contacts among the theater managers, entertainers, and hoteliers there. Potter’s ropedancing mentor, Signior Manfredi, had performed with his family troupe in Charleston for over a month, too, in 1808, and may have shared information about the city as well. So Richard Potter would have been well briefed on both these venues, and they would have beckoned as enormously important destinations for him as he journeyed across the unsettled scrublands of southern Alabama and the Creek Indian territory of southwestern Georgia. Very simply, it is almost inconceivable that Richard Potter, after enduring the long, hard overland slog from New Orleans to the Atlantic Seaboard, would not have planned to perform at least in Charleston and probably in both cities, and for a considerable period of time.

Doubtless such was Potter’s intention when he left New Orleans. In the summer of 1822, however, the social climate in Charleston, and indeed throughout the Tidewater region of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, significantly and even drastically changed. In May of that year, the city fathers of Charleston were stunned and alarmed by reports of a planned slave uprising. They quickly initiated militia patrols, arrests, and secret inquisitions; by the end of June they had arrested more than thirty blacks, both slaves and freemen, and in July they arrested one hundred more. Six of the initial detainees, including the presumed ringleader of the plot, a free black carpenter named Denmark Vesey, were quickly executed, on 2 July. Twenty- nine more were executed later that month or early in August, and another 31 were transported.

Initially the Charleston newspapers had almost nothing to say about these events, although brief stories about the sentencing and swift execution of Vesey and several other conspirators (all slaves) for “an attempt to raise an Insurrection in this State” did appear. But wild rumors and intense alarm about the planned uprising spread rapidly and widely, along predictable lines: for example, a letter from a Charleston resident to a friend in New York which was published there in July reported, “It is said that they [the arrested conspirators] have, or that some of them have, acknowledged their object to have been the murder of the white males, the taking of the ladies for their wives, and the plunder of the city.” Consequently, on 10 August the governor of South Carolina published and widely distributed a circular about “the Negro Plot.” This document, which was republished by many newspapers, acknowledged that, since June, “the public mind was agitated by a variety of rumours calculated to produce great excitement and alarm” concerning “a very extensive conspiracy.” It aimed to counter those “gross and idle reports, actively and extensively circulated, and producing general anxiety and alarm” by assuring citizens that the conspiracy had been limited, fully uncovered, and thoroughly stifled—and that it had been in any case doomed from its inception by the incapacity, folly, and “dastardly dispositions” of slaves (“Servility long continued debases the mind, and abstracts it from that energy of character which is fitted to great exploits”).

The report went on to make clear that free blacks, such as the ringleader Vesey, were quite dangerous because of their easy and influential interactions with slaves; that blacks who could read and write, such as Vesey and coconspirator Monday Gell (“He could read and write with facility, and thus attained an extraordinary and dangerous influence over his fellows”), were particularly dangerous; and that one of the main conspirators (a third “principal,” along with Vesey and Gell), Gullah Jack, was very dangerous because, as a native Angolan “conjuror and physician,” he had great influence over other blacks (“Vesey, who left no art or power unassayed, seems in an early stage of his design, to have turned his eye on this Necromancer, aware of his influence with his own countrymen, who are distinguished both for their credulous superstition and clannish sympathies”).

Richard Potter was a free black man, a literate man with a remarkable gift of gab, and a conjuror—the very “Emperor of Conjurors,” by his own claim. Were he to present himself publicly, not to mention advertise his particular gifts and abilities, in Charleston, South Carolina, in the fall of 1822, he would certainly have blazoned himself to a great many of its citizens as indisputably the most dangerous man in the city.

The Augusta (GA) Chronicle published a long, three-part account of the Charleston slave insurrection in consecutive issues running from 29 August to 5 September 1822, and indications are that Potter reached Augusta (another town where James Rannie had once performed, in April 1803) in early September, so he would have been able to read the story then, although probably he had already been hearing rumors about it along his way. It was now abundantly clear that he would not, after all, be exhibiting in Savannah or Charleston, nor indeed in any other area of the Deep South, where slaves were numerous and slave owners agitated. Instead, Potter headed straight to Raleigh, North Carolina (probably on the Fall Line Road, which would have taken him through Columbia, Camden, and Cheraw, South Carolina), and made good time doing it. He probably did not exhibit or even lodge in Columbia: William Garner, one of the main insurrection conspirators, had been traced to and captured near Columbia in late July.

The lonely life of the writer

(Credit: Getty/Rawpixel)

The greatest aims of literature were, according to the late David Foster Wallace, to connect, to challenge, and to make us feel less alone.

The act of writing, though, is a solitary one. As another great writer, Ernest Hemingway, said at his Nobel banquet speech in 1954, writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

Will Chancellor’s first novel, “A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall,” was published in 2014.

“When I wrote it, I was living in Pittsburg, Texas, this little town in Northeast Texas,” he told “The Lonely Hour” podcast. “This is a house that no one had lived in in something like seven years, and it was run down, in the middle of the woods . . . I would go to the grocery store in the middle of the night. There was a Piggly Wiggly that was open until 10:00 p.m., and I would go at 9:30 so I wouldn’t see anyone. There was an old rotary phone so I could talk to my parents every week or so. But [otherwise] I was really cut off.”

“I was 22 years old, and I was just like, ‘Look, I’m going to write this book, and I need to be cut off in order to do it.’ The upshot of this is I’ve never been happier in my life.”

Next we talk to Andrew Friedman, who has made a career out of chronicling the lives and work of some of the world’s best chefs. He’s penned over 25 cookbooks, numerous articles on kitchen culture, and, an avid tennis fan, he also coauthored the New York Times bestselling memoir, “Breaking Back,” with American tennis star James Blake.

“A lot of writers do their best writing after 11:00 or 12:00 at night, because all the static has fallen by the wayside,” he told us. “They’re not getting texts from people saying, ‘Let’s grab lunch.’ They’re not getting emails from editors and friends. They’re not even really getting junk mail at that hour. The social media stuff has died down. There’s not really anything good on television. All these things that could pull your attention during they day, they fall away.”

Carolyn Murnick is a senior editor at New York Magazine whose memoir, “The Hot One,” about her childhood best friend who was murdered 17 years ago, came out last summer. “The Lonely Hour” spoke to Murnick in 2016, as she was working on the manuscript.

“I have always been pretty conscious and actually worried about getting too far into this loner, writer headspace,” she said. “I live alone, as well. I have always prioritized trying to have social time and physical activity . . . I don’t think I ever canceled plans, because I need to push myself to see people.”

“I’ve always had a sense that it’s not the healthiest to stay inside for three days writing, because then when you go out into the world, you feel a little out of sorts. In the same way it takes some time to get into the writing headspace, it’ll take you a while to get back into the space of being with people.”

Listen to the entire episode on solitude and the writing life:

British judge upholds Julian Assange’s warrant for arrest

Julian Assange (Credit: Getty/Carl Court)

British authorities are waning in their toleration of programmer and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since being granted asylum to Ecuador in 2012. On Feb. 13, Judge Emma Arbuthnot upheld Assange’s arrest warrant for the second time in a week.

“[Assange] is a man who wants to impose his terms on the course of justice,” Arbuthnot said. “He wants justice only when it’s in his favor.”

Assange tweeted that he and his legal team were surprised by the ruling, and hinted at a repeal.

“We are surprised,” Assange said. “Judge went well outside what the parties presented in court. This seems to have led to many factual errors in the judgment. US DoJ confirmed to Reuters again yesterday that its case is ongoing. There are 3 months to appeal judge’s decision.”

Statement on ruling: We are surprised. Judge went well outside what the parties presented in court. This seems to have led to many factual errors in the judgment. US DoJ confirmed to Reuters again yesterday that its case is ongoing. There are 3 months to appeal judge's decision.

— Julian Assange ⌛ (@JulianAssange) February 13, 2018

On Feb. 6, Judge Arbuthnot refuted a claim that the warrant was void. This news came after the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a United Nations coalition, “considered that the detention should be brought to an end and that Mr. Assange should be afforded the right to compensation.”

Assange said via the Wikileaks Twitter that if the UN ruled against him he would have accepted arrest by British police.

Assange: I will accept arrest by British police on Friday if UN rules against me. More info: https://t.co/Mb6gXlz7QS pic.twitter.com/mffVsqKj5w

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 4, 2016

Judge Arbuthnot dismissed the coalition’s finding.

Arbuthnot wrote in the ruling:

“The Working Group considered Mr Assange’s stay in the Embassy as a “prolongation of the already continued deprivation of liberty that had been conducted in breach of the principles of reasonableness, necessity and proportionality” (paragraph 90). I do not consider the 550 days on conditional bail to be a period of deprivation of liberty 6 but a restriction to Mr Assange’s freedom. I consider the same in relation to his decision to live in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

This move means Assange could still be detained if he leaves the embassy of Ecuador in London. The judge could have nullified the arrest warrant; it is unclear if Assange would have left if that was the case.

Assange has been living at the embassy for over five and a half years.

In 2011, Sweden requested that Assange be extradited because he was facing allegations that he had sexually assaulted two women. Assange claimed that the allegations were political, and feared Sweden would hand him off to the United States.

Israeli police recommend prime minister be indicted for bribery charges: report

Benjamin Netanyahu (Credit: AP/Ronen Zvulun)

In what may be a major disruption in Israeli politics, Israeli police have recommend that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be charged with bribery and fraud following a yearlong graft investigation, according to multiple reports.

CNN reports that the police announced they have found evidence of Netanyahu “accepting bribes, fraud, and breach of trust.”

Among the allegations: Netanyahu allegedly received expensive gifts from various businessmen, and allegedly negotiated for favorable coverage from newspaper Yediot Aharonot in exchange for his support of a bill that would decrease circulation for one of the publisher’s competitors.

While it’s unclear if Netanyahu will actually face indictment charges in court, the Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will examine evidence as the next step in due process, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The Jerusalem Post also reports that Netanyahu isn’t required to resign just yet because, as they write, “the law says that only after a peremptory Supreme Court verdict (meaning after an appeal was submitted and rejected), the prime minister must resign from office.”

Netanyahu has consistently defended himself throughout the corruption probe, claiming “it is not illegal to accept gifts from friends.”

Indeed on Feb. 7, Netanyahu penned a Facebook post regarding the allegations, lashing out against the police before their recommendation was expected to be made.

“Any decent person would ask how those who say such surreal things about the Prime Minister can question him objectively, and recommend his case without bias?” he said on Facebook, writing in Hebrew. “A great shadow is cast over police investigations tonight.”

It appears as if the Israeli police don’t agree — perhaps a consequence of the continuous evidence that stacked up against him. Recall, in January, reports surfaced that Netanyahu’s son, Yair Netanyahu, was recorded boasting to Ori Maimon, the son of Israeli tycoon Kobi Maimon, about how Netanyahu’s father’s policies had directly profited the Maimon businesses, Haaretz reported. The Netanyahu family released a statement about the recording and denied any connection between the prime minister and Kobi Maimon.

In December, 20,000 protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to protest Netanyahu and his alleged corrupt wrongdoings.

Heritage Foundation: Republicans are “bankrupting the country”

Paul Ryan (Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)

The conservative Heritage Foundation accused the Republican-controlled Congress of “bankrupting the country and robbing future generations of Americans to pay for it.”

In an op-ed for Th Hill, The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas Binion wrote that a “debt crisis, and all the terrible economic effects of that, are looming.” While he went on to claim that “both parties are guilty,” both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans and have been since 2015.

“The Bipartisan Budget Act is 652 pages long. The bill increases spending by $386 billion over two years and nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years. It also suspends the debt ceiling until after the next election.”

President Donald Trump and the Republican party indeed unveiled a budget plan that knowingly increases the deficit, despite their phony concern for the deficit in recent decades. Except the Heritage Foundation is attempting to spin this on all of Congress, obscuring the role of the ruling party.

“Most Republicans are concerned about a real crisis of readiness in the U.S. military and are focused on getting the Pentagon the resources they need. After months of stalled spending negotiations, those Republicans are desperate and frustrated, and Democrats extracted a ransom,” Binion wrote.

The reality is, the Republicans never actually cared about the deficit, and never have.

“Democrats didn’t even bother to make the case for any increase in domestic spending. They demonstrated not one single reason to increase domestic spending,” he continued. “They don’t even have a private justification for the spending they wanted. They just named a price they thought they could get — and they got it.”

But the deeply unpopular GOP tax plan, which was projected to increase budget deficits by roughly $1.5 trillion over the next decade, was fully supported and touted by the Heritage Foundation.

So now, the conservative think tank is only looking to sound the alarm on both the national debt and deficit by proposing that the federal government slash spending entirely. This is somewhat of a dream for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who vowed to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security before the tax plan even reached President Donald Trump’s desk.

If Republicans or conservative think groups are truly concerned about the deficit, why are there no measures to increase taxes on the nation’s wealthiest, who pay next to nothing, if anything, in federal income tax? Why did the Bush administration launch two wars that have only expanded and have cost trillions of dollars? Instead, they’d rather pass austerity economic measures that include halting federal spending, and a tax plan that disproportionately favors the rich, while cutting programs for low-income and working-class Americans.

Freudian slip? Sessions remarks on “Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement”

Jeff Sessions (Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster)

In his speech to an audience of law enforcement officers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions made eyebrow-raising comments about the history and function of law enforcement in the United States, comments that seem to profess that the history of law enforcement is a means of reinforcing white supremacy.

As NBC reported on Monday:

“The office of sheriff is a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement. We must never erode this historic office. I know this, you know this, we want to be partners, we don’t want to be bosses, we want to strengthen you and help you be more effective in your work,” Sessions told the National Sheriffs’ Association.

Sessions is more accurate than he realizes. As Dr. Victor Kappeler, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University, writes, “The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing.” Kappeler continues:

 Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.

After an initial outcry, the DOJ attempted to walk back Sessions’ comments late Monday in a statement to CNN. A spokesperson for the DOJ said that the term “Anglo-American law” is commonly used by legal scholars.

It seems probable that the Justice Department was aware of the potential for Sessions’ remarks to stir outrage. The evidence for that stems from the fact that the version of the speech that the Justice Department initially released on Monday redacted the words “Anglo American,” as NBC noted.