Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 188

This slim portable battery keeps all your devices charged

The worst thing is to be out on the go when your (much-relied on) device happens to die. Make that an issue for 2017 with this Mophie Powerstation 8X Battery Pack, and keep all your devices fully charged once the new year hits.

The biggest problem with “portable” batteries is that they tend to be bulky, making them more cumbersome to haul around than to wait around for an outlet. But this Mophie Powerstation makes that a thing of the past — it’s thinner than your phone and packs a whopping 15,000mAh of power in a lightweight frame. It can even charge two devices at once with its massive output.

In fact, the battery is so highly efficient, it can recharge a smartphone up to eight times — and when your phone is finished juicing up, all you need to do is connect the battery pack to a power outlet, and it’ll automatically start to recharge itself. If you tend to be a little paranoid about being trapped without a charge, you can even use the Mophie Power app to monitor and manage the battery life of your phone as well as your Powerstation battery.

Make 2018 a year where no outlets are required — usually, this Mophie Powerstation 8X Battery Pack is $149.95, but you can get it now for $79.95, or 46% off the usual price.

“Crash” director Paul Haggis accused of sexual misconduct by 4 women, 2 claiming rape

Paul Haggis (Credit: AP/Dennis Van Tine)

Four women have come forward accusing filmmaker Paul Haggis, 64, of sexual assault. Two of the women allege that Haggis raped them, according to a report published Friday by the Associated Press.

The allegations started with a civil lawsuit filed against Haggis for rape in 2013. Subsequently, three additional women shared their own allegations of sexual misconduct against the filmmaker. One publicist says Haggis forced her to perform oral sex, then raped her. Another woman told the AP that Haggis tried to sexually assault her. “Another of the new accusers said Haggis held down her arms, forcibly kissed her on a street corner, then followed her into a taxi,” the AP wrote. “She said she later escaped his clutches.”

These women reported their accusations to the attorney of Haleigh Breest, Haggis’ original accuser. The AP said that Friday, “Breest’s attorneys filed an amended complaint that includes details of the allegations lodged by the three new accusers.”

Christine Lepera, an attorney for Haggis told the AP, “He didn’t rape anybody.” Haggis has also countersued Haleigh Breest, claiming that she and her lawyer attempted to extort him for $9 million in order to avoid legal trouble.

In light of the new round of accusations, Lepera said in a statement to Deadline: “No one has reached out to anyone on Mr. Haggis’ team other than the press to report this.” She added, “He views the fact that these reports appear to be spearheaded from the law-firm representing Ms. Breest, as a further tactic to try to harm him and continue their effort to obtain money. Mr. Haggis also questions whether Scientology has any role here, which he notes has been attacking him for years with false accusations.” (All of the women told the AP that they had no connection to Scientology.)

“We view Mr. Haggis’s claims against Haleigh Breest as ludicrous, and a further act of aggression. In our system of justice, those who have been wronged have the clear right to seek redress and hold those responsible accountable for their misconduct,” Breest’s attorney told the AP. “In an act of remarkable hubris, Mr. Haggis has the temerity to claim that he, not her, was the victim. It is a preposterous and transparent PR stunt that will not succeed. Ms. Breest will not be intimidated or deterred from seeking justice.”

In Breest’s lawsuit, she alleges that Haggis forced her to perform oral sex and then raped her after a film premiere in 2013. But the new set of accusations are equally as troubling. The AP reported:

In separate interviews with the AP, the three new accusers provided detailed accounts of encounters they say occurred between 1996 and 2015. The women were early in their careers in the entertainment business when, they say, the Hollywood heavyweight lured them to private or semi-private places under the guise of discussing productions or a subject of a professional nature.

They all said Haggis first tried to kiss them. In two of the cases, they said, when they fought back, Haggis escalated his aggression.

The other woman accusing Haggis of rape says the assault occurred when she was 28 and working as a publicist on a show he was producing in 1996. She says Haggis asked to come to her office to discuss work-related tasks. The woman, who remains anonymous, says everyone had gone home for the evening. When Haggis arrived, he insisted their conversation take place in a back office. Once there, she said, Haggis began kissing her.

“I just pulled away. He was just glaring at me and came at me again. I was really resisting. He said to me, ‘Do you really want to continue working?'” the woman told the AP. “And then he really forced himself on me. I was just numb. I didn’t know what to do.” Then, she said, he forced her to perform oral sex then “pushed her to the floor and raped her.”

Professionally, Haggis is best known for writing, directing and producing “Crash,” which won both Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the 2006 Academy Awards. The previous year, “Million Dollar Baby,” which he also wrote and produced, earned four Oscars including Best Picture. He has remained active in filmmaking since, writing a script for “Casino Royale,” producing HBO’s “Show Me a Hero” and working on many other high-profile projects.

Haggis has also garnered significant attention for not only defecting from Scientology in 2009, but for an intense public crusade against the religion via a 2011 New Yorker article, an HBO documentary and a book.

In recent months, Haggis has held nothing back in his condemnation of producer Harvey Weinstein. “A lot of people are compromised by Harvey’s alleged actions,” he told the Guardian. “Although everyone thinks it is vile behaviour [sic], you have got to focus on those who may have colluded and protected him. For me, they are as guilty as he is and in some cases more so, if I can say that. I mean, he was a predator and a predator is a predator. But what about those who would rather look the other way?”

Democrats have become Jeff Sessions’ strongest defenders

(Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

In yet another example of how almost anything can happen with Donald Trump as president, congressional Democrats find themselves standing up for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a man who almost all of them said should not be attorney general just a year ago.

The Democrats’ flip appears to be in response to a new effort from some congressional Republicans to have Trump fire Sessions for not providing enough oversight to the independent Russian interference investigation. The get-Sessions movement is an outgrowth of the larger Republican effort to cast special counsel Robert Mueller (a long-time member of their own party) as an overzealous prosecutor out to get the president.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the sole Democrat to vote to confirm Sessions to his current position but the new threats against Sessions are getting many other Democrats to stand by his service as a means of protecting the Russia probe.

“I voted against Jeff Sessions and said he never should be there in the first place,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a news conference on Thursday. “My view now is very simple: nothing, nothing should ever interfere with the Mueller investigation.”

In March, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon had called on Sessions to resign. On Thursday, he reversed that call in an interview with CNN. “There was a time earlier in his tenure that I called him on to resign,” Merkley said. “At this point, I would have to determine the consequences knowing the president may be trying to obstruct justice.”

Trump has repeatedly hinted at his desire to fire the “beleaguered” Sessions for recusing himself from involvement in the Mueller inquiry so the new attacks on the attorney general are sure to meet with his approval.

Trump has repeatedly accused Sessions of being disloyal by not forcing the FBI and Mueller to end their investigations into connections between the president’s campaign and Russian nationals.

“I don’t want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama. Totally protected him,” Trump said during a Dec. 28 interview with the New York Times, referring to former attorney general Eric Holder’s relationship with his boss, then-president Barack Obama.

The new attacks on the “beleaguered”  attorney general are sure to meet with his approval.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to CNN’s Ana Cabrera: “This isn’t a news organization”

Dana Rohrabacher and Ana Cabrera on CNN (Credit: YouTube)

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., made an appearance today on CNN to discuss his opposition to Jeff Sessions’ marijuana policy. Yet his appearance quickly devolved into a shouting match with Rohrabacher berating news anchor Ana Cabrera.

The conversation began with Cabrera asking Rohrabacher if he thought Sessions should resign. Rohrabacher answered by saying that the American people are getting a “taste” of what “people in Washington” have known for the last year — that Sessions “betrays the people who have faith in him.” Rohrabacher said Sessions “had no real reason to recuse himself.”  

He didn’t answer Cabrera’s original question though, so she asked it again. Should Sessions resign?  

Rohrabacher stumbled on his words, said he couldn’t make the call, and added that “the president has a legitimate right to say he was betrayed.”

“This issue was supposed to be about cannabis,” he said.

Cabrera reassured him that they’d get to the cannabis discussion shortly and asked about a recent report in the New York Times that suggested that Trump obstructed justice, since it was the news of the day.

What happened next was a demonstration of how patriarchy functions. Rohrabacher accused Cabrera of interrupting him, then interrupted her and unapologetically took over the discussion.

“Maybe somebody who is your guest should be able to say a few words,” Rohrabacher said to Cabrera. “Your last interviews had nobody on the other side of the issue coming in to have the discussion with CNN. 

“Please, you might let me make my point before you interrupt me and try to refute me,” he said after Cabrera tried to add context. “This isn’t a news operation! This what is the president is upset about. He’s not getting a fair share from you and from the other media and things like this that will try to build into something sinister has happened.”

The sneering continued for a couple minutes until once again, Rohrabacher said to Cabrera, “it’s also not good to interrupt people when they’re trying to make a point when you’re a news person.” 

Cabrera apologized, and said, “I mean you no disrespect, sir.”

To which Rohrabacher responded, “No disrespect? But I’ve got no respect. No disrespect? You don’t respect Trump, you don’t respect people who disagree with you politically, and that’s why the news media, which has an agenda, drives special prosecutors.”

New documentary reveals major coverup and corruption in Las Vegas Police Department

Metro Police officers block Las Vegas Boulevard South at the scene of an officer-involved shooting on Friday, Jan. 22, 2016 in Las Vegas. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Capt. Matt McCarthy said officers responded to reports of a man walking in and out of Strip traffic waving a gun and pointing it at passers-by. Arriving officers approached the suspect, who did not obey their commands, McCarthy said. Officers fired on the man, who was not hit. (Mikayla Whitmore /Las Vegas Sun via AP) LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT (Credit: AP)

Unanswered questions still surround the mass shooting in Las Vegas on October 1 this year. Days after shooter Stephen Paddock killed 59 people and injured over 500, confusing details emerged. Journalists sparred with police at press conferences, grappling for missing details. The security guard who discovered Paddock in his hotel room with 24 guns and was shot by Paddock later disappeared, only to reemerge as a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. To shed light on this confusion, a new film, “What Happened in Vegas,” explores the role of the Las Vegas Police Department after the mass shooting. In short, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest coverups and corruption, as well as repeated police brutality within the force.

At the root of the problem, the film explains, is that the LVPD is run by a sheriff elected in large part by donations from MGM, the corporation that runs the Mandalay Bay hotel. According to the documentary, Las Vegas police changed their story multiple times on the timeline of the shooting. One important detail the police lied about in several instances is the timing of Paddock’s shooting of security guard Jesus Campos. Why? It’s likely that the LVPD wanted to help the casino’s legal case, and if they claimed Campos was killed while trying to prevent Paddock’s rampage, as opposed to during or after, it could help the casino’s lawyers later claim that the Mandalay Bay had taken sufficient action to stop him. At least seven news organizations have since sued the LVPD for failing to release all the information from the night of the shooting, including the New York Times, the Associated Press, ABC, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

The documentary also suggests that if the police and casino had acted differently, the mass shooting might have been avoided. An exclusive clip, below, reveals a little-known piece of the story of what happened in Las Vegas earlier this year.

As Stephen Stubbs, an attorney working on behalf of the victims, explains, casinos like the Mandalay Bay have a “special back number” to a private wing of the police department which they use to alert the police of possible criminal activity within their casinos involving high rollers. Paddock was a regular at the casino, and known to be a highroller by the hotel’s staff, so the Mandalay Bay didn’t call 911 when Paddock shot Campos. They called the back line instead, and the operator didn’t link the shooting of Campos to the cascade of bullets pouring out of Paddock’s hotel window onto the Route 91 music festival.

“If they would’ve called 911, the 911 operator could have linked the two quicker, and the police would have gotten there quicker,” Stubbs said. “Less people would have died, and less people would have been shot, if the Mandalay Bay didn’t treat their high rollers differently, and if the LVPD didn’t allow casinos to treat high rollers differently. This is the truth that [Sheriff] Joe Lombardo doesn’t want to come out.”

As for the still unanswered question of why Paddock chose to murder so many people that day, Stubbs has a theory. “From what I understand, Stephen Paddock did this because he wanted to hurt these casinos financially, and this was the best way he knew how.” But culpability still points to the corrupt special relationship between the MGM and the Las Vegas Police Department. “It didn’t have to be this bad, if they would have treated him like anyone else.”

In addition, the documentary explores numerous instances of police misconduct and several incidents in which police needlessly shot and killed suspects. There’s the story of Trevon Cole, who had been selling small amounts of marijuana on the side and whose wife was several months pregnant when he was shot and killed by a police officer. The police secured a warrant for his arrest (in reality, they lied to the judge and provided evidence against an entirely different man named Trevon Cole), and an officer went to his apartment and shot him in the head. When the LVPD was criticized for Cole’s death, they launched a smear campaign that tried to promote a false image of Cole as a dangerous drug dealer. It’s a tactic the Las Vegas police often resort to, the documentary suggests. “Often a dead person is vilified, and they release negative details to the media,” says the father of one victim of police violence. “They tried to turn my son into some kind of a druggie. Erik was a West Point graduate … he was a very effective, popular platoon leader.”

Of the high-profile police shootings in Las Vegas in recent years, the Cole family’s attorney Andre Lagomarsino says, “all three situations could have been avoided if the LVPD de-escalated the situations, instead of escalating them.”

The entire documentary is available for viewing online.

Social media companies should ditch clickbait, and compete over trustworthiness

(Credit: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Social media websites and online services, created to profit from connecting people and encouraging global conversations, have a deep and troubling dark side. Malicious users have exploited these forums for free speech in ways that weaken shared norms of civility, trust and openness. This includes not just bullying and shaming of individuals, but also dealing significant damage to society as a whole.

Americans — and people around the world — will spend much of 2018 discussing how to handle the problem of Facebook, Twitter, Google and their ilk reaping massive profits while threatening democracy and undermining trust in public discourse. As scholars of public accountability and digital media systems, we suggest these companies could find a new way to compete that promotes trust and accuracy, bringing both private profits and public benefits.

Social media’s original sin

Many problems have arisen because of how social media companies began, and how their power has grown in society. Like most Silicon Valley startups, Google, Facebook and Twitter were incubated in a libertarian, free market environment. These conditions reward people and companies who best provide powerful and convenient ways for people around the world to connect. Yet, they are engineered for the benefit of their private stockholders, not their public stakeholders.

From Google’s search algorithm to Facebook’s news feed algorithm, the processes that shape our online experience are not only complex and secretive, they are intentionally opaque. That is, in fact, their primary business model.

Think about it: If everyone knew exactly how Google’s algorithms worked, then unscrupulous websites could hack their way to the top of search listings, rather than earning a high ranking by improving their products and services — or by paying Google for their ads to appear alongside search results. Similarly, if Facebook revealed the method by which it selects items to appear on users’ news feeds, brands and content providers would no longer need to pay the company tens of billions of dollars per year to reach their own customers on the platform.

These companies have become massive, with billions of users spending hours a day on their systems. Business is booming — but their lack of transparency and accountability is increasingly understood as a threat to civil society.

Polluting the public sphere

The erosion of civility, trust and respect for truth in U.S. society is what economists call a “negative externality.” That is a cost of a product or service that is paid by society at large, rather than the company that supplies it or the customer who buys it. A common example is industrial pollution, when manufacturing companies don’t pay the costs of health and environmental problems that their plants’ pollution causes.

Social media companies earn extraordinary profits by collecting personal information and selling ads targeted with algorithms. This has allowed the rise of new kinds of social pollution: fake news, purposely divisive messages distributed by fake identities — even the creation of real-world political events based on these false and anti-social messages.

Just as society expects oil companies to take moral and legal responsibility for environmental pollution if they spill in the oceans and aquifers, we believe social media companies must help fix and fight the social pollution that their platforms have enabled.

Accountability and transparency are key

In our view, social media companies need to move beyond their “free market” foundations. Like any other set of institutions essential to our social infrastructures and economies, they should develop methods to provide the transparency and public accountability necessary to address the social ills their platforms have enabled.

Transparency is the best way to drive out hate speech and fake news. Without it, customers won’t have confidence in the quality of the information they receive, or the goodwill of information providers. Social media companies need to be more responsive to the needs of society as a whole, and accept responsibility for monitoring the integrity of their own platforms. They must be held publicly accountable for their platforms’ capacity to be used in ways that undermine our civil society and political institutions.

This is not a simple proposition, nor a change that social media platforms can make with a mere flip of a switch. But in our view, it’s necessary.

Facebook has begun this process, allowing users to identify all ads a particular page buys across the site, regardless of how the ads were micro-targeted. Twitter has taken similar steps. But these are only initial efforts in what should be a much longer process.

A new business opportunity

If these companies don’t change, the very societies that provide their economic lifeblood will diminish and fail. Reform is in their own interest — and everyone else’s too.

In the short term, social media companies should make their algorithms, and the data they analyze, more transparent to the public. One possibility could be developing centralized websites where people can check the sources of content and funding for advertisements. A promising approach, currently under way at some companies, involves adapting algorithms to reduce the prominence of fake news posts in users’ feeds. Yet, despite their benefits, these initiatives don’t fix the contradiction at the heart of social media: Their obscurity-based business models conflict directly with their increasingly central role as platforms for public discourse and the democratic process.

In the longer term, major internet companies will need to rethink their strategies entirely. This means developing business models that privilege transparency over obscurity, accessibility over secrecy, and accountability over accounting. Though this is a tall order, we propose that social media enterprises could pivot and expand into the business of verification and certification.

What does this mean, exactly? Facebook, Twitter, Google and others like them should start competing to provide the most accurate news instead of the most click-worthy, and the most trustworthy sources rather than the most sensational. Once these companies understand that maintaining a healthy public sphere pays better than aiding social pollution, they — and society as a whole — can begin to clean up the mess we’ve made together.

Barbara Romzek, Professor of Public Administration and Policy, American University and Aram Sinnreich, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication

Did Dave Chappelle go too far?

Dave Chappelle in "Dave Chappelle: Equanimity" (Credit: Netflix/Mathieu Bitton)

Last year, Dave Chappelle signed a $60 million comedy deal with Netflix. His first two specials, “Age of Spin” and “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” debuted in March to mixed reviews from critics. Admittedly I jumped the gun, calling him a genius after watching the first two. Now, I have to admit that Dave appeared rusty back in the spring. He had been out of the game for a long time, and used some language that offended a lot of his fans, especially in dealing with LGBTQAI culture.

But I didn’t realize how off the first two Chappelle specials were until he dropped “The Bird Revelation” and “Equanimity” on New Year’s Eve. Now I can say with all of my heart that Chappelle is truly back. The first two specials felt like when Michael Jordan returned to the NBA in 1995, wearing number 45 — rusty, but still showing glimpses of greatness. Then Jordan switched back to 23 and became bigger than he was when he left. There was something incomplete about Jordan in that 45 jersey­ ­— his timing was off, the game had changed, and he needed to recalibrate and adjust his approach. Chappelle readjusted by going back to his vintage formula: a cocktail of slapstick, history and masterful storytelling blended into an effort to land the perfect joke.

One can argue that in that pursuit, Chappelle has made a habit out of crossing lines — to both acclaim and outrage. This time around, he acknowledges the criticism of jokes he made about transgender people but rejects responsibility for fans interpreting them as permission to hate. “If I’m on stage and I tell a joke that makes you want to beat up a transgender, than you are a piece of shit and don’t come to see me.”

In “The Bird Revelation,” he wastes no time walking up to the line, first by boasting that he’s so good at telling jokes that he gets to the punchline first: “And so I kicked her in the pussy.” That’s a punchline that would offend anyone, especially anyone sensitive to jokes about violence toward women. The crowd was so shocked they could do nothing but laugh. Chappelle then takes the audience on a journey back to the punchline. He pivots to how people think he’s from the projects, but he’s really not; he envied poor kids growing up because they shared a common ground­. Chappelle’s family, he says, had just enough money to be broke around white people. He tells the story of the first time he was invited to eat dinner at a white friend’s house. He didn’t want to go, because he’d been taught that white people can’t cook. His friend tells him that his mom was making Stove Top Stuffing,  a product all kids knew from TV commercials. So he gets excited about eating white-people dinner, until his friend’s mom says that she didn’t know he was going to stay over, and there wasn’t going to be enough food for him­­. So he . . . “kicked her in the pussy.”

Yes, it’s a shocking line, and no, he’s not advocating for women to literally be kicked in the genitals — he’s on his way to making an unexpected connection.

When Chappelle asks the crowd, “how many of you guys are not originally from America?” he’s not changing the subject. He launches into the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi in the summer of 1955, when he allegedly whistled at a white woman. A few days later, a group of white men, including the woman’s husband, broke into his family’s house, beat Till to death and threw his body in the river. Three days later Till’s body was discovered, bloated and mutilated beyond recognition­­.

Chappelle’s audience falls silent; at that moment, it doesn’t feel like a comedy show. But he presses on, explaining that Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, made the decision to leave her son’s casket open for the world to see what had been done to him. Photos of Emmett Till in his coffin helped the Civil Rights movement gather nationwide momentum.

Then Chappelle turns to the subject of Carolyn Bryant, the woman whose accusation that Till had flirted with her had caused her husband and his friends to kidnap, torture and murder the young boy (crimes for which they were acquitted, but to which they then later admitted). Last year, a 2007 interview surfaced (included in Timothy Tyson’s book “The Blood of Emmett Till”) in which Bryant admitted that she had lied about Till’s actions. Her lie led to a grisly murder which inadvertently fueled a movement that eventually brought us closer together than we ever have been. Chappelle says he feels something similar is happening in America right now, that he never feels more American than he does when we all get together and collectively hate on Trump. So he says he forgives Carolyn Bryant, because he sees the bigger picture. If she was at the show, however — and here Chappelle lands his punchline again.

The magic lies in his ability to use an offensive phrase like “kick her in the pussy” to get a laugh from the crowd about the difficulty of being being black in white spaces, and then connect it to an even more complex and dangerous related issue — a racist white woman lying to or about a black boy and expecting to be believed, and how the deadly implications for black boys and men of this larger historical pattern. He’s tricking his audience into seeing how America really operates, and the shock of the punchline is just one tool he uses.

He may not have been as effective when attempting to explore the issue of sexual assault and harassment in Hollywood.  Chappelle has also been getting a ton of negative feedback for joking about the #MeToo movement and the ways in which our country deals with rape culture. Many viewers are upset specifically over a bit in “Equanimity” about Louis CK’s habit of masturbating in front of women in comedy.

“Louis was like the turning point,” Chappelle says. “All these allegations were terrible — I shouldn’t say this — but his allegations were the only ones that made me laugh. When you think about it, he’s jerking off — he’s surprising people.”

“I picture all the comics in comedy reading it like, ‘Word!’ It’s terrible, I’m sorry ladies, you’re right. At the same time, Jesus Christ, they took everything from Louis,” he says. “It might be disproportionate, I can’t tell, I can’t tell.”

Chappelle then addresses the women Louis harassed with comments that have been widely criticized. “Show business is just harder than that. Them women sounded like, I hate to say it, they sounded weak. I know it sounds fucked up and I’m not supposed to say that, but one of these ladies was like, ‘Louis C.K. was masturbating while I was on the phone with him.’ Bitch, you don’t know how to hang up the phone? How the hell are you going to survive in show business if this is an actual obstacle to your dreams? I know Louis is wrong, I’m just saying, I’m held to a higher standard of accountability than these women are.”

To those who are angered by some or all of those lines, I would point out that he also calls these men wrong over and over again, between every punchline. I’d never belittle or discredit anyone’s struggle or victories, but he is right to say that firing some abusive executives like Harvey Weinstein will not change the fundamental problem of misogyny in America — just like getting rid of a few rogue cops won’t stop police brutality.

Let’s not forget that this is a man who walked away from $50 million and a successful TV show because of the racism he encountered in Hollywood. Now he’s back, and I hope women who might have backed away from comedy projects because of Louis CK’s abusive behavior will also return, and be welcomed back. How can we change these systems if we aren’t connected to the culture?

Many people crying foul on this bit don’t seem to have a problem with how he makes fun of African-American men, including President Barack Obama, Katt Williams, Kevin Hart, O.J. Simpson, and his own son. Critics and activists often pick and choose what they want to be mad about. If we are going to fight for one group, why not fight for them all? Chappelle is a member of a grossly oppressed group in this country which he mercilessly mocks every time a camera is in his face. I’m a black man and he has offended me plenty of times; however, I accept that those jokes are part of his larger body of work challenging society as a whole, and they often help me see things from another perspective.

Chappelle is a part of a strong tradition of black comedy that birthed guys like Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney – the harshest truth-tellers in history. It’s a style that stems directly from the poorest black communities in America. Nobody is safe. Even your grandma can get railed on — and you better be careful, because her comebacks can make you cry. Humor, church and storytelling have numbed the pain of oppression for generations of black people in America, and if you’ve spent time in one of those environments, you’ll get it.

“The Four: Battle for Stardom”: Fox’s post-“Idol” swing

Judges Charlie Walk, Meghan Trainor, Sean “Diddy” Combs and DJ Khaled in "The Four: Battle for Stardom" (Credit: FOX/Ray Mickshaw)

Not too long ago every broadcast network executive that didn’t work at Fox feared January’s arrival because of a two-word title that needed no introduction: “American Idol.”

At its apex, “Idol” attracted an audience so gigantic that it forced every other network to recalibrate their ratings expectations for their series, particularly new ones. Audience numbers for scripted dramas sharing the singing competition’s timeslot collapsed against the juggernaut. New comedies barely registered. One critic dubbed “Idol” television’s Death Star, and no reasonable person could disagree with that.

Just lending a smidge of context as we stare down the premiere of “The Four: Battle for Stardom,” Fox’s six-episode event series kicking off Thursday at 8 p.m.

The legacy of “American Idol” exists across television, film and the music industry. “Idol” winners Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood are established top-40 hitmakers. Runners up Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert are pop idols. Another, Jennifer Hudson, is an Oscar winner. And its host, Ryan Seacrest, has since partnered with Kelly Ripa on “Live with Kelly and Ryan” in addition to creating a media empire that includes syndicated radio programming and hosting any number of specials.

“Idol” proves an unspoken rule of the small screen, which is television makes its stars, not the other way around. When it began, Paula Abdul was the only judge whose name was familiar to audiences; most people had no idea who Randy Jackson or Simon Cowell were until the talent on the stage made us care.

“The Four,” conversely, launches on the might of its star power and little else. The judges are a “super team” consisting of DJ Khaled, pop star Meghan Trainor, record label executive Charlie Walk and Sean “Diddy” Combs, with one-named wonder Fergie as its host. Diddy is an ace salesman, which is why if he declares this show to be “disruptive” — even though it certainly look a lot like NBC’s “The Voice,” not to mention “American Idol,” the show that started it all (and is returning on another network, ABC) — one can understand why executives may be inclined to believe him.

On the other hand, there are a lot of “Idol” clones bopping around.

This does not scare Diddy, who executive produced “Making the Band” for several seasons on MTV, and added Da Band and Danity Kane to the musical firmament as part of that TV stint. Those bands may not have made a dent in our culture, but the exposure was pretty good for Diddy.

As the artist formerly known as Puffy explained to industry reporters gathered in Pasadena for the Television Critics Association Winter press tour, the main different with “The Four” is that it begins with a talent quartet the judges deem to be the best performers they could find. But their spots in the winners circle is not assured: they have to defend their positions. The combative nature of the competition isn’t hidden backstage and off-camera. It’s the point of the show.

“In the drop of a second, you could lose your seat,” he explained, going on to add, “It’s kind of simple: It’s like ‘Game of Thrones’.”

The winner receives career mentorship and support from the judges, all of whom will work to make that person into star, starting with being named an iHeartRadio “On The Verge” artist.

Essentially, then, the yet-to-be-named “Four” victor will become a wagon hitched to the Diddy train. That’s not necessarily the worst position to be in. Indeed, the distinct formula of “The Four” acknowledges how much the starmaking process has changed since “Idol” launched in 2002.  That show’s ratings decline late in its initial 15-season streak accelerated as social media became a more viable celebrity generator than reality television — that us, unless one’s last name happened to be Kardashian. YouTube, SoundCloud and other platforms are where singers are created these days.

The “Idol” tumble also coincided with a late-in-the-game injection of mega-celebrity juice, namely Jennifer Lopez, Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Urban. Those final seasons did much more for their respective profiles than it did for their winning contestants, and that’s the part the “super team” is leaning on. Diddy’s no dummy.

Having said all that, “The Four” is a six-episode January experiment, although if it works you can count on stumbling upon a lot more of it. But much of its success is riding on how much people want to spend time with Diddy and Fergie and the rest. We’re going to be seeing much more of Khaled, by the way, since he’s signed on as a new Weight Watchers spokesperson.

Provided this reality competition genre isn’t already overly saturated, it could work. Or, people may choose to wait until February 26 to spend time with Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Miley Cyrus and — oh, look there’s Jennifer Hudson again, joining the others on “The Voice.”

The bigger bet may be on ABC’s revival of “Idol” on March 11, with Seacrest returning as its host and Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie serving as judges. But again, as “Idol” runner-up Clay Aiken pointed out to Salon last May, the excitement generated around these midseason returns may be more about the already famous people passing judgment from behind those exclusive tables, or in those swiveling chairs, as opposed to the unknowns taking their shot.

Referring to NBC’s “The Voice,” Aiken laments, “It’s about those damn chairs. It’s not about the singers . . .The point is to allow the kids onstage to be the stars.”

And it could be that this is our bag these days, that our idea of real entertainment is in marveling at the antics and pronouncements of fame’s gatekeepers as opposed to the dreamers knocking on its sparkling front door. We handed the keys of global power off to a reality celebrity deemed trustworthy because of his commanding television presence, after all. Allowing a guy who used to call himself Puffy and others name the next pop star has far lower stakes.

Besides, what else are we going to watch on Fox in January?  The network has to fill its airtime with something now that the Death Star has been diminished and warped off to another network.

Prepare to calibrate your tolerance and enjoyment of Sean Combs — and Fergie, for that matter — as TV personalities as opposed to witnessing the birth of a pop star. Regardless of what Diddy and the rest say, that is the true point of reality talent competitions in the age of fame worship.

College alone isn’t closing the gender wage gap

Photo courtesy of Nancy Niemi

Women are surpassing their male peers in college graduation rates. That’s a good thing for gender equality, right?

Well . . . it’s complicated.

According to Nancy Niemi, director of faculty teaching initiatives at Yale and my recent guest on “Inflection Point,” women are earning more degrees out of necessity, just to to catch up with men.

“Not only do we need college degrees, we need more college degrees just to be equal in pay to men who don’t get college degrees,” Nancy told me.

Can we just stop for a minute and contemplate what this means?

The conventional wisdom is that education is the great equalizer. Nonprofits and schools have been striving to give girls all around the world access to the same quality of education that boys get, precisely so girls can have the same advantages and go on to earn and achieve at the same level.

In fact, several popular studies that were out when Niemi pursued her Ph.D. 15 years ago claimed that in the rush to get girls engaged in higher education, boys had become disadvantaged academically and would likely go on to earn less than their female peers.

“I thought, ‘Hmm. I’m not seeing that,’” Niemi said. “And I spent a whole year observing students and seeing how boys and girls interacted, how teachers interacted and I could sum that work up by one sentence, which one young woman said.”

What was that?

“She said, ‘I could do all that boys do, but being smart isn’t going to make me a man.’”

How is it that women who graduate from college don’t make as much as men who didn’t graduate from college?

And is anyone else enraged over the amount of time and expense women invest in achieving academic success and breaking into exclusively male fields only to be told, essentially, “sorry, but it’s still not good enough?”

Niemi’s research, which is summed up in her new book, “Degrees of Difference,” shows that the shifts in power and cultural norms work in tandem to change the value of the work that women do.

“A lot of men gravitate towards that ethos of ‘I want to be successful’, ‘I want to be rich’, ‘I want to own my own business’ . . . and women, by cultural understanding, don’t.”

According to Niemi, there’s a strange cultural phenomenon that happens the moment women enter a profession.

“It’s happened in family medicine, in clinical work in many fields, particularly in law, in veterinary medicine . . . whenever women come to dominate a field, the field is diminished in value by pay and status.”

Nancy cited the field of psychology, which has shifted from majority male to majority female in the span of 40 years. Meanwhile, the more specialized “scientific” — read “higher paid” — roles within the field, like neuroscience, continue to be dominated by men.

“We have to keep [earning even more] degrees in order just to make it as far as men who have little to no college education might be making it in terms of salary, and in terms of status and in terms of impact and power.”

Okay. As a Vassar-educated progressive, this is getting depressing. Is she really saying that getting a higher education is NOT a path to achieving equality?

“If we step back and think about it, why would it be?” Nancy said. “We don’t all come into higher education . . . as blank slates. We don’t come in with an absolutely clean and equal background at any level of education, from kindergarten on up. So why would we come in and think our college education was going to make us equal?”

So should women even go to college?

Nancy says an emphatic “yes!” But she does want us to be realistic: “When we get the degree, we need to be wide-eyed that that alone isn’t going to gain women the power that we think it will. We’ve got to still look at the other messages in the other places like law and politics — and all of the power that comes from those . . . then manifest it in making changes in those places too, because they all work in tandem to create equity.”

Listen to the full conversation:

For more conversations about how women rise up, subscribe to “Inflection Point” on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and RadioPublic.

Despite being in D.C., Trump appears at press conference via pre-taped video

Donald Trump during Press Briefing with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders (Credit: YouTube/The White House)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders stood in front of journalists and announced there would be a “special guest” during the Jan. 4 press briefing — then turned their attention to the two screens behind her. Lo and behold, Donald Trump appeared.

In a pre-recorded video, he delivered a message about the flawed tax cut bill he signed into law right before Christmas.

“Thank you for being with us today. The historic tax cut I signed into law just two weeks ago, before Christmas, is already delivering major economic gains,” he said on the screen. “Hundreds of thousands of Americans are seeing larger paychecks, bigger bonuses, and higher pension contribution, and it’s all because of the tax cuts and the tax reform.

He went on to thank AT&T, Bank of America, and Comcast, among others, alleging that their workers are already receiving bonuses “of $1,000 or more.”

Sanders then thanked the pre-taped video version of the president. While Trump’s words were untruthfully superlative as usual, more surprising is that Trump chose to appear in the White House briefing room on a screen. According to Trump’s public schedule, he was in town, likely walking distance from the White House briefing room.

So, why didn’t he make an in-person appearance? One year into his presidency, Trump has yet to make a public appearance and field questions from journalists at a press briefing — something former presidents would do occasionally. (Trump has fielded public questions from journalists, but never at a press briefing.)

Yes, the East Coast is currently facing a “bomb cyclone” that may be affecting his travel plans, yet it’s not like the Oval Office is far from the press briefing room — according to the White House website, they’re both on the ground floor. Could it be that Trump simply wanted to avoid questions regarding Michael Wolff’s new tell-all book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which Trump is clearly incensed over? Or is it because Trump is afraid of saying something to the media that would dig him into a deeper hole?

Whatever the case may be, his appearance in the press briefing room was odd, and left us with more questions than answers. Strange, too, was the president’s squint — which seemed to be more pronounced in one eye than the other. Take a look at his speech and behavior in the video below.