Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 217

Why girls lose interest in STEM — and how to get them back

Suz Somersall and the KiraKira team

Suz Somersall has always been a maker and a self-described nerd who defied what others thought a girl was capable of. As a kid, she would repurpose the tops of her dollhouses into starship control panels. So it’s no surprise that she wanted to go to college for engineering.

But that’s when she made the first of many pivots in her life.

In my conversation with her for my podcast “Inflection Point,” Somersall recalled her first encounter with the engineering curriculum at Brown. “I just remember looking through the course catalog and being so uninspired by the content,” she said. “And also intimidated, if I’m totally honest. I was like, ‘oh that doesn’t sound like approachable’ or you know ‘I think I’m interested in engineering but that doesn’t sound exciting to me.’”

Instead of taking up engineering as she had planned, Somersall got her undergraduate degree in art and architecture. It took her several years — and several pivots in her educational track — to rediscover her love of engineering at Rhode Island School of Design.

“My first experience with using 3D printers and CNC milling machines and mechanical engineering software [was at RISD]. I used all these tools to make crazy pieces of artwork,” Somersall said.

Listen to my conversation with engineer-turned-artist-turned-entrepreneur Suz Somersall here:

Her introduction to a new way of approaching design made all the difference in terms of connecting the practical application of engineering to her creative sensibilities.

If it hadn’t been for RISD faculty encouraging Somersall to take an artistic approach to implementing engineering concepts, she might never have returned to what she believes is her true maker self.

Unfortunately, most girls don’t get a chance to revisit engineering from a new, creative angle. Despite a big push in schools to get more girls involved in STEM, a huge drop off in interest happens around 8th grade. And this lack of interest translates to a gender gap in the world of tech and the sciences, which contributes to an often hostile working environment for the few women seeking success in STEM fields.

Somersall observed the interest drop-off phenomenon first-hand when, as a startup founder and University of Virginia business incubator participant, some female students expressed interest to her in learning more about 3D printing.

“I had a lot of female undergrad students that had never taken engineering classes before who kept coming to me, and they knew that I knew how to use a 3D printer on campus and I was creating these interesting objects — interesting to them — and they wanted to make them, too,” Somersall told me.

But after she encouraged the students to take some intro classes in UVA’s prototyping lab, she was dismayed to discover that the girls quickly lost interest after taking the course. When she looked into the reason behind their disinterest, Somersall discovered “the way that engineering is being taught in many universities is very different from the way I learned how to use engineering tools and software at the Rhode Island School of Design.”

Somersall’s many career pivots following this discovery led her to founding KiraKira, an online learning program and design app geared to teaching girls how to make 3D designs and turn their interests in design and engineering into lifelong passions.

Is it necessary for women to make as many pivots as Suz Somersall has to find their own place in the world of STEM?

Sarah Huckabee Sanders attacks John Lewis, knows nothing about the civil rights movement

Martin Luther King Jr., his wife Coretta (right) and John Lewis (far right), lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, March 1965 (Credit: AP)

President Donald Trump’s attendance at the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum has understandably resulted in an outcry from would-be attendees — some of whom have backed out of appearing at the opening in protest against presidential policies that they believe undermine the ongoing struggle for civil rights. In a joint statement, Democratic Reps. John Lewis of Georgia and Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi said:

“President Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum. The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi. President Trump’s disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants, and National Football League players disrespect the efforts of Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, Robert Clark, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and countless others who have given their all for Mississippi to be a better place. After President Trump departs, we encourage all Mississippians and Americans to visit this historic civil rights museum.”

The White House responded, calling their protest “unfortunate” in a statement issued by Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “We think it’s unfortunate that these members of Congress wouldn’t join the President in honoring the incredible sacrifice civil rights leaders made to right the injustices in our history. The President hopes others will join him in recognizing that the movement was about removing barriers and unifying Americans of all backgrounds,” Sanders said in a press pool report.

Read that again. Sanders was upset that “these members of Congress” weren’t going to honor the “incredible sacrifice” of “civil rights leaders.” Does she know that one of “these members of Congress” was one of her aforementioned “civil rights leaders?” Rep. John Lewis is — along with Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins and A. Philip Randolph — one of the momentous “Big Six” civil rights leaders who organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, considered a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. As the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis organized sit-ins in the 1960s to protest segregation. He was also one of the Freedom Riders, a group of of black and white civil rights activists who rode on segregated buses through the South to challenge Jim Crow laws. Many were beaten, attacked by mobs, or sent to prison.

This isn’t a good look for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, nor the Trump administration. Though Huckabee Sanders seems to revel in issuing Orwellian, hypocritical statements that belie basic facts or history.

Likewise, there have been numerous instances where Trump has made public statements that were either openly racist or used white nationalist dog whistles. Moreover, it’s no secret that the president is disinterested in social justice (the travel ban and the wall are just a couple of examples).

Rather than supporting a civil rights leader’s right to protest, Sanders condemned him. Thus, an event that was meant to be celebration of civil rights gains has turned into another episode of the Trump Show.

Days after hitting record $13K high, Bitcoin surges even higher

(Credit: Getty/pictafolio)

Bitcoin, the best-known digital cryptocurrency, reached a new record high on Thursday: $16,000 for one Bitcoin. That’s nearly a 25 percent rise from its record high, $13,000, that made headlines when it happened just a couple days ago. In its earlier days, circa 2011, one Bitcoin could be purchased for less than one dollar. At the beginning of 2017, one Bitcoin could be purchased for less than $1,000.

To put this in perspective: There are many people who are sitting on hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars right now. If someone purchased $100 worth of Bitcoin in 2011, that person would now have $1.6 million in their CoinWallet — provided they sell today.

So, what’s driving this unprecedented surge? And is this sustainable in the long-run?

Like many economic bubbles, the reason for the the insane surge in Bitcoin — the cryptocurrency now has an estimated circulation of $250 billion — may not necessarily be based on rational behavior. Last week, a market analyst told The Guardian that the fluctuations in Bitcoin’s value epitomized “the madness of crowds.”

Yet some experts believe Bitcoin’s sky-high exchange rate has a lot to do with the influx of investors and increased interest from established financial institutions, which give the currency a patina of mainstream legitimacy. Starting on December 11, traders on the floor of Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) will be able to openly trade Bitcoin under the ticker symbol “XBT.”

“Given the unprecedented interest in bitcoin, it’s vital we provide clients the trading tools to help them express their views and hedge their exposure. We are committed to encouraging fairness and liquidity in the bitcoin market. To promote this, we will initially offer XBT futures trading for free,” Ed Tilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CBOE Global Markets, said in a press release.

CBOE will be the first of three U.S. markets to introduce the cryptocurrency to its trading floor. On December 18, CME Group, shorthand for Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade, will add it to its portfolio. Likewise, it’s been reported that NASDAQ will follow suit in 2018. The digital currency has been validated by international markets in Japan and China, too.

Despite its growing appeal, it is unclear what rules and regulations Bitcoin will face. A Federal Trade Commission spokesperson told Salon that they had “no comment to make on the surge in Bitcoin value… Also the agency would not want to speculate on what it may or may not do in the future.” 

While the Bitcoin party hasn’t ended yet, some experts are sounding the alarms, warning that the Bitcoin surge may be a financial bubble that could pop anytime.

In an interview with Bloomberg, economist Joseph Stiglitz was asked if Bitcoin could still be “viable” if it were regulated. Stiglitz was doubtful it would be, as he believes the lack of regulation surrounding the cryptocurrency is its main appeal. Bitcoin is “successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight,” Stiglitz said.

 

Man denied marriage license by Kim Davis will try to unseat her in 2018

Kim Davis (Credit: AP/Timothy D. Easley)

Local elections are heating up, including one for Rowan county clerk in Kentucky. The position, currently held by gay marriage opponent Kim Davis, is being challenged by one of the men to whom she denied a marriage license in 2015. This continues a trend of everyday people defiantly challenging incumbents with whom they have personal scores to settle, which began in the Virginia elections this November.

David Ermold formally announced his plans to run against Davis Wednesday, and submitted the documents directly to Davis.

It’s official. I’m in! I am proud to announce my entrance into the race for Rowan County Clerk! I am running to restore the people’s confidence in our clerk’s office. Please visit my campaign website at https://t.co/Vm2myvRgIV where you can learn how to support our mission.

— David Ermold (@DErmold) December 6, 2017

Ermold, a professor and activist, married David Moore in 2015, despite Davis’ attempts to block the couple’s marriage. Though the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage was protected under law, Ermold and Moore’s attempts to get a marriage license were denied multiple times. Davis’ refusal to sign the license drew national attention to the enforcement of Supreme Court decisions on a local level, as well as the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ equality against the religious right.

Kim Davis is seeking re-election (she changed parties and is now a Republican) and has stayed busy since 2015, including her brief time in jail after refusing to grant the marriage licenses, and a recent trip to Romania to speak out against gay marriage. Ermold is one of four Democratic candidates looking to obtain the nomination and run in 2018. There was attention paid to his speculative run in November, especially on Twitter after he shared content about his run and also tweeted:

Apathy in life is not an option. If we don’t stand for something, we stand for nothing. #RowanCounty — David Ermold (@DErmold) November 10, 2017

According to his website, Ermold’s platform is based on leadership, fairness and responsibility, and he’s focused on issues relating to voting accessibility and the fact that the “county clerk’s office has been in the hands of the same family for almost 35 years.” As the Lexington Herald Leader reported, Davis previously worked for her mother while she was county clerk, and Davis’ son is also employed in the office.

Ermold said in a statement, “We must recommit ourselves to embracing the diversity within our community, and we must stand strong against those who have turned their backs on our people to pursue the divisive agenda of outside politicians and organizations.”

One of the bright spots of 2017 politics has been local elections in which people are standing up to those who oppose their values. This includes women who have won races against GOP members who opposed the Women’s March and reproductive justice, like Ashley Bennett who unseated Atlantic County Freeholder John Carman. Carman shared a sexist meme on Facebook about the Women’s March early in 2017, and this, plus Carman’s failure to apologize at a meeting, pushed Bennett to run. In Virginia’s state legislature race, Danica Roem, a transgender woman, won against incumbent Bob Marshall, a leader of Virginia’s discriminatory bathroom bill.

It’ll be a long road to election day 2018 for David Ermold, especially in a county Trump won with more than 50 percent of the vote. However, as Ermold told Newsweek, “I just cannot sit by and just let her take that seat without a fight.”

Moore is less: Alabama, Senate and nation will suffer

Roy Moore (Credit: Getty/Jonathan Bachman)

Amid all the craziness surrounding Roy Moore’s race for the US Senate and the seeming willingness of Alabama’s likely voters to send a man of such dubious merit and morality to Capitol Hill (where, admittedly, the bar already is pretty damned low), I keep thinking of a line from the Randy Newman song “Rednecks.”

It’s the lead piece on his classic ’70s album Good Old Boys, and begins with a Southern man lamenting how the north-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line media types make fun of former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, the arch-segregationist notorious for using an ax handle to threaten those who tried to integrate his fried chicken restaurant.

“Well, he may be a fool but he’s our fool,” Newman sings, and yep, there’s the upcoming Alabama election in a nutshell. Outsiders are resented and tribalism reigns, no matter how irrational or destructive to self-interest.

“Thank God for Mississippi” is the old joke: No matter how bad things were in Alabama, there always was a state right next door where things were often worse. Alabama is the third “hungriest” state in the nation, with 18 percent of its population food insecure, behind Louisiana and, yes, Mississippi. It’s the sixth-poorest state, with some 18.5 percent living in poverty, and the third-highest state when it comes both to murders and the number of citizens behind bars per 100,000 members of population. According to the Centers for Disease Control, opioids are prescribed in Alabama more than in any other state, and a Center for Health Statistics report notes that Alabama’s rate of overdose deaths from opioids has doubled since 2011.

But no, instead of campaigning about how to get the federal government to help his state pull itself from the clutches of such poverty, hunger and addiction, Roy Moore acts like a crackpot false prophet, preaching Islamophobia, homophobia and the dominance of “God’s law” over the Constitution; denying the allegations of the many women who say he assaulted or harassed or stalked them when they were teenagers (on Tuesday, a Moore spokesperson described the accusers as “criminals”) and all the time hammering away at his Democratic opponent Doug Jones on abortion.

Moore wants all abortion to be illegal and supports the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Jones has declared he is against “anything that is going to infringe on a woman’s right and her freedom to choose,” but also has said that he supports “current law” that restricts abortion after 20 weeks unless pregnancy threatens the health of the mother.

Moore’s wife has attacked Jones for supporting “full-term” abortion, which is wildly and deliberately misleading. What’s more, the website AL.com reports, “An examination of statistics compiled by the Alabama Department of Public Health shows that late-term procedures are almost nonexistent in the state. Three out of 6,642 abortions performed in Alabama in 2016 occurred after 20 weeks, according to the agency.”

Admittedly, I write all this as one of those Northern media types, but also as one with a Southern mother and at least one great-grandfather from Alabama. Not that it grants me much immunity, if any, from my innate damn Yankee-ness, but I put it out there just to suggest that genetically at least I may not be a total hostage to Eastern seaboard prejudices and pointy-headed intellectualism.

Besides, these symptoms of self-righteous bigotry and callousness hardly are limited to Alabama. This knee-jerk tribal impulse that afflicts so much of the state’s politics is just a pure, concentrated and poisonous microcosm of the Republican Party’s Trumpism, right up to and including the race and gender prejudice, religious bias and sheer chutzpah, although that’s not a word one imagines in Moore’s Jesus-wants-me-for-a-sunbeam vocabulary.

And let’s not forget opportunism. National Republicans pay far more heed to poll numbers than Moore’s Ten Commandments. That’s why we’ve witnessed the appallingly cynical backflips on his behalf from Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican National Committee (RNC) as Moore’s percentages seem to have bounced back from an initial drop after the first allegations of his unchristian-like behavior with teenagers.

And so you have a morally compromised president who now shouts “Go get ‘em, Roy,” to a fellow misogynist and birther, as well as an RNC that has resumed cash transfusions for the Moore campaign. You have a woman governor in Alabama, Kay Ivey, who says, “There’s never an excuse for or rationale for sexual misconduct or sexual abuse” but who will vote for Moore anyway because “we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to… make major decisions.”

Then there’s Tully Borland, philosophy professor at a Baptist university in Arkansas, convolutedly writing in The Federalist that relations between older men and teenage girls are “not without some merit if one wants to raise a large family,” but adding, “Moore was a dirtbag and is currently lying about his actions rather than confessing the truth and asking for forgiveness.” And then adding, “That being said, I don’t think it’s wrong to vote for Moore.” As they used to say on Monty Python, “There! I’ve run rings around you logically.”

No wonder my head hurts. Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin recently wrote that the GOP contortions are “the final result of years of win-at-all-cost politics in which no evil (Child molestation? Murder?) compares to the ‘evil’ of electing a perfectly competent, patriotic member of the other party to office.”

… Republicans will tell you they support Moore and Trump as vehicles to policy goals. That assumes (falsely) that their policy goals are noble when they are actually unrealistic, unpopular, inconsistent and unconservative… In truth, the goals these Republicans care about, if they ever did, have long ago been sublimated (they certainly changed them entirely) to the goal of holding power, of winning. When that is the highest calling they’ll vote for alleged child predators, racists and just about anyone else with an “R” next to his or her name.

According to Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, Democrats are planning to publicly hold Republicans responsible for supporting Moore. GOP Senate candidates will be asked if they agree with the decision and whether they’re willing to serve with Moore if he wins. Well-clad feet will be held to fires.

But it could be too late. Sargent suggests Trump’s behavior may already have degraded all of our politics beyond the point of no return. And he has given right-wing Republicans the chance they’ve sought for years: trying to gut every social policy achievement of the last eight decades while further enriching the oligarchs (including the Trump clan) as he distracts the rest of us with his unhinged, oafish behavior.

He may be a fool but he’s our fool. Trump and his many accomplices, including and especially Roy Moore, only succeed if we keep letting them.

When envisioning the future of TV, think of a shopping mall

(Credit: Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

One of the biggest media industry stories this year is Disney’s announcement that it will launch its own internet-distributed television service in 2018.

There’s a lot we don’t know. The price is up in the air. And Disney — a company that owns everything from Star Wars to Marvel to ESPN — hasn’t clearly signaled how it will divvy its major franchises and brands across two or more services.

But much of the prognosticating — especially those betting on a battle between Disney and Netflix — reveals a misunderstanding of the marketplace.

Don’t assume internet-distributed video will be dominated by a single service, or that all video services compete against each other. Instead, Disney’s new streaming service points to the growing range of offerings consumers will be able to choose from in the coming months and years.

There’s room for multiple winners

Disney, for example, recently suggested one of its new services would include only family-friendly content and would be priced “substantially lower” than Netflix.

But is that service a threat to Netflix, as some have suggested? Of course not.

It helps to think of new television streaming services as specialty stores like the Gap, Chico’s or Justice. All sell clothing, but they compete minimally with one another because each targets consumers of different ages.

Likewise, while a department store such as Macy’s might compete a bit with each of these stores, they’re primarily concerned with other retailers that house many goods under the same roof — Target, Walmart and J.C. Penney. Even in a world of online retailers, there’s a huge variety among specialty sellers and Amazon’s one-stop shopping.

When it comes to streaming services, they might all deliver the same thing — video — via an internet connection. But it’s important to understand that all video services are not in competition. Many are quite complementary. Most offer completely different libraries of content and instead compete with cable and satellite packages. A Disney service would replicate only a small part of Netflix’s library, and would likely include much of the content offered on the Disney Channel.

Consumers with young children may decide that they need only a service with content for kids. Or they may decide they want a single library with content for both adults and children. Or they may decide that each provides enough value to subscribe to both.

Internet-distributed television simply offers much more flexibility; it’s up to consumers to assess what they want and how much they want to spread their spending.

In addition to differences based on the type of content these services offer, their revenue models are also distinct. Contrast YouTube and Netflix. YouTube — like other social media platforms — has low content costs because users create and upload most videos. Without substantial program costs, YouTube can develop a business supported through advertising.

In contrast, Netflix offers a deliberately curated library of content that it either pays to license or creates. It provides a library valued enough by some to pay a monthly fee for access to it. Because of the difference in their revenue models and the content those models allow, Netflix and YouTube are far more complementary than competitive.

The breakdown of channel bundles

For decades, U.S. television viewers could choose from only two or three options: broadcast signals, an expensive cable or satellite bundle, or a bigger, even more expensive cable or satellite bundle.

People frustrated with bundles (“Why would I want all of these channels?”) used to call for “à la carte” cable: the ability to select individual cable channels for which they hoped to pay less than the high amount for a bundle with many channels they never viewed.

Of course, there was a reason companies didn’t let customers pay less for fewer channels — the bundles are the result of a business strategy intended to maximize profits.

But even though traditional cable remains bundled, more and more entertainment companies — like Disney — are offering their content at a standalone fee, allowing consumers to cobble together a customized menu of services. When viewers decide whether to subscribe to Disney’s new service, they’ll think about how this added cost relates to what they’re already paying, and whether it’s worth it.

We’re still in the early days of this new way of delivering television and film. For every headline announcing a service shutting down, new ones are launching. And FCC plans to eliminate net neutrality will likely change this landscape tremendously.

It’s all part of the process of companies figuring out how much consumers want and how much they’re willing to pay. The new services offering content geared to a brand, franchise or genre — Disney, WWE Network (wrestling), Shudder (horror) — never plan on being in every home in the way CBS and NBC once were.

Just as we sometimes choose the one-stop shopping of Target, services such as Netflix offer convenience. But the trade-off for convenience is product choice — do you want to select among two sweaters or the 20 you’ll find at Old Navy?

Services that fail don’t portend the viability of all internet-distributed television. Nor do the successes. Rather, they simply offer lessons on particular value propositions.

The future likely includes a mix of specialty and multifaceted services.

Flynn indictment exposes collusion with Israel, not Russia

Michael Flynn (Credit: Getty/Kevin Hagen)

When Congress authorized Robert Mueller and his team of lawyers to investigate “links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” opponents of the president sensed that sooner or later, hard evidence of Trump’s collusion with the Russian government would emerge.

Seven months later, after three indictments that did little, if anything, to confirm the grand collusion narrative, Mueller had former National Security Council advisor Michael Flynn dragged before a federal court for lying to the FBI. The Russia probe had finally netted a big fish.

As the details of the Flynn indictment seeped out into the press, however, the bombshell was revealed as another dud. To the dismay of many Trump opponents, nothing in Flynn’s rap sheet demonstrated collusion with Russia. Instead, the indictment undermined the Russiagate narrative while implicating another, much more inconvenient foreign power in a plot to meddle in American politics.

According to plea agreement Flynn signed with Mueller, Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about a phone call he placed to the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, during the transition period between the election and inauguration — not during the campaign. Flynn’s first order of business with the Russian diplomat was to beseech him not to retaliate for sanctions imposed by Obama on Russia for still-unproven allegations that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the Democratic National Committee. In other words, Flynn was caught trying to influence Russia, not the other way around.

The only area where Flynn proposed any form of coordination with Russia was in defeating ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria. The Trump administration’s attempts to collaborate with its Russian counterparts in Syria have been the target of relentless sabotage from an opportunistic media and Obama era national security officials who considered the catastrophic semi-covert operation to arm Syrian insurgents a part of their legacy. Thanks to stifling Cold War atmosphere these elements have cultivated in Washington, the US has been reduced to an impotent bystander while Russia, Iran, and Turkey have joined together to impose an end to the proxy war that has ravaged Syria for the past five years.

To be sure, Flynn indictment did contain a stunning revelation of collusion between Team Trump and a foreign state. But it was not the country that the national media has obsessed over for the past year.

Flynn was found by the FBI to have lobbied Kislyak to exercise Russia’s veto against the passage of a United Nations security council resolution condemning the growth of Israel’s illegal settlements. And he did so under orders from Jared Kushner, the presidential son-in-law and Middle East fixer, who was himself acting on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Thanks to Flynn’s indictment, we now know that the Israeli prime minister was able to transform the Trump administration into his own personal vehicle for undermining Obama’s lone effort to hold Israel accountable at the UN. A clearer example of a foreign power colluding with an American political operation against a sitting president has seldom, if ever, been exposed in such glaring fashion.

Kushner’s deep ties to the Israeli right-wing and ethical breaches

The day after Kushner was revealed as Flynn’s taskmaster, a team of researchers from the Democratic Super PAC American Bridge found that the presidential son-in-law had failed to disclose his role as a co-director of his family’s Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation during the years when his family’s charity funded the Israeli enterprise of illegal settlements. The embarrassing omission barely scratched the surface of Kushner’s decades long relationship with Israel’s Likud-led government.

During the 1990’s, a teenaged Jared Kushner was forced to vacate his own bedroom so Netanyahu had a place to stay when he was in New York City for business. Since at least 2006, the Kushners have donated at least $315,000 to the Friends of the IDF, the American fundraising arm of the Israeli military, and tens of thousands of dollars to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, from Beit El to Gush Etzion.

The Kushner family foundation has even donated to the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, a West Bank-based Jewish religious institution that has served for a base of radical settler terror attacks against Palestinian villagers. The yeshiva has been led by a pair of rabbis who produced a genocidal tract that the Israeli newspaper Maariv described as “230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew.”

To orchestrate his futile attempt to scuttle a diplomatic imperative of the Obama administration, Netanyahu drew on these deep ties to the Kusher family. There are troubling indications that his intelligence agencies shared material that it gathered by spying on the US with Kushner and the Trump transitional team.

Eli Lake, a neoconservative columnist for Bloomberg who frequently relies on sources from both Trump and Netanyahu’s inner circles, reported that Israel’s “envoys shared their own intelligence about the Obama administration’s lobbying efforts to get member states to support the [UN] resolution with the Trump transition team.”

The subtext here was clear: Israel, a country that surveilled American diplomats during Iran deal negotiations in 2015 and which is notorious for its espionage across the West, had spied on the Obama administration during the lead-up to the UN vote and shared its “intelligence” with the Trump team. Once again, collusion has seldom been demonstrated as clearly or disturbingly as this.

A Clinton mega-donor defends Kushner’s collusion

So why isn’t this angle of the Flynn indictment getting more attention? An easy explanation could be deduced from the stunning spectacle that unfolded this December 2 at the Brookings Institution, where the fresh-faced Kushner engaged in a “keynote conversation” with Israeli-American oligarch Haim Saban.

“You’ve been in the news the last few days, to say the least. But you’ve been in the news about an issue that I personally want to thank you for, because you and your team were taking steps to try and get the United Nations Security Council to not go along with what ended up being an abstention by the US,” Saban remarked to Kushner. “As far as I know there was nothing illegal there but I think that this crowd and myself want to thank you for making that effort.”

Kushner nervously scanned the room, mumbled “thank you” to his host and forced an uncomfortable smile.

Saban’s political background lent special significance to his robust defense of Trump’s son-in-law. Having earned his fortune in television and the Israeli telecom industry, he has become one of the Democratic Party’s most generous individual donors. Saban’s millions funded the construction of Democratic National Committee’s headquarters and filled the campaign coffers of Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2012, as a reward for Saban’s handsome Super PAC donations to Obama, the president nominated the billionaire’s wife — a former Playboy “Disco Queens” model and children’s fashion designer with no diplomatic experience — as special US representative to the United Nations general assembly.

The spectacle of a top Democratic Party money man defending one of the Trump administration’s most influential figures was clearly intended to establish a patina of bipartisan normalcy around Kushner’s collusion with the Netanyahu government. Saban’s effort to protect the presidential son-in-law was supplemented by an op-ed in the Jewish Daily Forward headlined, “Jared Kushner Was Right To ‘Collude’ With Russia — Because He Did It For Israel.”

While the Israel lobby ran interference for Kushner, the favorite pundits of the liberal anti-Trump “Resistance” minimized the role of Israel in the Flynn saga. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who has devoted more content this year to Russia than to any other topic, appeared to entirely avoid the issue of Kushner’s collusion with Israel.

There is simply too much at stake for too many to allow any disruption in the preset narrative. From the journalist pack that followed the trail of Russiagate down a conspiracy infested rabbit hole to the Clintonites seeking excuses for their mind-boggling campaign failures to the Cold Warriors exploiting the panic over Russian meddling to drive an unprecedented arms build-up, the narrative must go on, regardless of the facts.

Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and the award-winning author of Goliath, Republican Gomorrah, and The 51 Day War. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels. Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal.

I’m in the media elite, and you’re not

Charlie Rose; Matt Lauer; Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Getty/Salon)

Peconic Bay scallops are in season again out here in Sag Harbor. We wait all year long for the bay men to take to the water in their skiffs and dredges, returning to shore with a bounty that’s unique to this region. Sautéed with a little butter and lemon, these pearly little pillows actually do melt in your mouth like bursts of sea foam. The word delicacy doesn’t quite do the tender morsels justice. But bay scallops are only one reason we live out here on the east end of Long Island.

Another reason we live out here is because we’re in the Hamptons, famed for its sandy beaches, acres of potato fields, hedge lined drives, shingled mansions and acres of Ralph Lauren boutiques. Striding along the brick sidewalks of East Hampton or Southampton, you pass at least one of the things on every block. And liberals. You pass lots and lots of liberals out here in the Hamptons. I should know, because I’m one of them. I passed Matt Lauer on the street not long ago, but that was before . . . ooops, I’m getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, I pass liberals like me every day because there are almost as many of us as there are Ralph Lauren boutiques.

Yet another reason we live out here is because the Hamptons are as close as you can get to a headquarters of the elite media establishment. It’s why we need so many Ralph Lauren boutiques out here, so we can buy our plaid lumber jack shirts and artfully distressed blue jeans and pre-aged scuffed leather jackets and Indiana Jones fedoras and blend in with the rest of America out there to the west of us in what is described as “flyover country,” because you actually have to fly over it in order to get to L.A. or San Francisco or Seattle, where there are also lots and lots of Ralph Lauren boutiques and all the liberals you would expect to go along with them. And elite media to boot — L.A. is home to the motion picture and television industries, after all, and San Francisco houses the crème de la crème of the digital media world, and Seattle is of course the headquarters of Amazon, owned by liberal ninja Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, famed as a bastion of the elite media, and Bill Gates of Microsoft, who is busy using his tens of billions to solve world hunger and AIDS and Sudanese poverty and whatever other problems we liberal media types believe are out there being ignored by the rest of the world, most especially, by conservatives.

Maybe geography explains it — everybody in the elite media establishment wanting to live on the coasts, to be close to Peconic bay scallops and Dungeness crabs and Pacific Northwest salmon — not to mention the beaches and hedge lined drives, and out here in the Hamptons, all those acres of neatly groomed lawns where we can go to each other’s lawn parties. Attendance at the right lawn parties is absolutely essential to maintain your status in the elite media.

I know this, because during my early years in the elite media establishment, I used to be invited to these lawn parties. Back then, I knew columnists for major newsweeklies who broke down sobbing when they found themselves dropped from a place at the table at one of Nora Ephron’s dinner parties, or left off the list of invitees to Ben Bradlee’s and Sally Quinn’s annual banned-books party over in East Hampton at their meticulously renovated estate which had once been Big and Little Edie Bouvier Beale’s Grey Gardens.

East Hampton, after all, is where Hillary Clinton is said to have spent three weeks last August raising money at liberal lawn party fund raisers – three weeks during which Donald Trump barnstormed the country, bellowing at stadiums full of red-hatted supporters screaming “build that wall” at one rally after another, and apparently gathering votes.

That’s one of the problems, isn’t it? The seductiveness of it all — the grassy expanses of candle-lit Hamptons backyards, padding along Beverly Hills palm-fronded pool-sides, evenings atop Nob Hill with the Golden Gate peeking out of the fog, cocktails in minimalist modern great rooms overlooking Lake Washington and the Space Needle. Remember that line out of the old Mel Brooks movie – “It’s good to be the king”? Well, I can tell you from 50 years as a card-carrying member, it’s been good to be in the elite media establishment.

Until it’s not.

Last year — and this year, too, for that matter — we in the elite media find ourselves reviled by a significant part of the American public out there in fly-over land. A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 65 percent of the public think that there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media, including 80 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of Democrats. A September Gallup poll found that only 32 percent of Americans have a “great deal or fair amount of trust in the media,” the lowest level of trust in the media in Gallup poll history. The same poll found only 14 percent of Republicans trust the media, while 51 percent of Democrats do. Another Gallup poll illustrated the gap in trust in the media, with only 14 percent of Republicans believing the media gets the facts right versus 62 percent of Democrats. An October poll by Politico found that almost half of the public, 46 percent, believe the media makes up stories about President Trump, with 71 percent of Republicans holding this view, versus only 20 percent of Democrats.

That’s why Trump was able to hit the hustings last year and weaponize the mainstream media as a campaign issue. Distrust of the media was out there waiting for him in auditorium after auditorium, state after state. I watched last April in an old Grumman aircraft hanger in Bethpage, Long Island, as Trump whipped the crowd into a frenzy right there in the mainstream media’s backyard. He stood up there bellowing that they couldn’t trust the “lying media,” denouncing “fake news,” singling out NBC’s Katy Tur in a fenced-off press enclosure which had been erected to isolate Katy and the rest of us as a target. “Look over there at Little Katy Tur,” Trump bellowed. They roared.

But why? What had Katy Tur, or any of the rest of us for that matter, done to earn such derision? Certainly not falsifying stories and making up sources, as Trump claimed. That would have cost anyone in that press enclosure their jobs. Then what was it?



The truth is, we didn’t have to do a thing. They already hated us. And just look at the reaction out there in flyover land as one elite media standard bearer after another bit (and will continue to bite) the dust in the fallout from the sexual harassment scandals. They were preceded by the downfall of conservative media standard-bearers like Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes. Bill and Roger weren’t the ones Trump had in mind when he railed against the elite media last year, even though they rode around in very elite black cars and flew on marvelously elite private corporate jets and sucked down exceedingly elite multi-million dollar fortunes from their perches at Fox News, owned by the mega-elite billionaire media kingpin Rupert Murdoch.

No, Trump had others in mind — people like NBC’s Katy Tur, his convenient female target on the campaign trail, and his nemesis The New York Times, and the hated Washington Post, and of course the cable news shows on MSNBC and CNN and the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC. The audiences at his campaign rallies knew exactly who he was talking about when he excoriated the elite mainstream media. Their distrust had been fed by two decades of propaganda on Fox, by thousands of hours of screeching by Rush Limbaugh, by digital page after page after page of Drudge and Breitbart and Red State posts.

But there was something else out there bothering them as well, not as loud, not as obvious, but there just the same: an imperiousness that was summed up perfectly by the way “Saturday Night Live” used to announce its “Weekend Update” news segment in its early years. “Good evening. I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not,” the SNL cast member would intone with mock seriousness, before lampooning the way that the nightly news was presented on the major networks. It was a pitch-perfect takedown of the high and mighty attitude of the news anchors of that time, and could be applied just as accurately — and bitingly — to any of the elite talking heads taking up airtime on the networks today, cable, major or otherwise.

That’s the thing about elites. They are “elite” for two main reasons — because there can, as a practical matter, be only a limited number of them, but mainly because they act like elites. Watching Charlie Rose on his blacked-out set was an exercise in witnessing the “I am, and you’re not” attitude writ large. The furrowed brow. The deep, dulcet tones of questions presented so seriously they practically dripped in gravitas. And who did Charlie have on his show again and again? Why, he invited his elite media pals, that’s who! Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time and chairman of CNN, currently ensconced as president of the Aspen Institute, from which perch he can invite his friends — like Charlie Rose — to all-expense-paid summer sojourns to, yes, Aspen, where they can intone seriously on serious panels discussing such serious topics as World Peace, and Whither the Middle East.

It didn’t matter that Walter never had an original idea, that every time he opened his mouth something straight from the editorial page of The New York Times issued forth. Nor did it matter that Charlie’s other pal, Jon Meacham, former editor of Newsweek and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Andrew Jackson, carried his “on the one hand” this and “on the other hand” that “analysis” of the Major Questions of Our Day to new heights of inanity in Charlie’s darkened lair. What mattered was that he was Charlie, and you weren’t. Walter was Walter, and you weren’t. Jon was Jon, and you weren’t. And you were expected to treat the dithering that issued forth on the Charlie Rose Show as if their words were being delivered on stone tablets from Mount Charlie.

Charlie Rose was such an exemplar of all that was good and noble about the elite media that his talents couldn’t be tucked away in his dark studio forever. No, the elite media powers that be in New York brought Charlie into the sun of “60 Minutes” and an anchor slot on “CBS This Morning.” All of this was before it was revealed in recent weeks that Charlie was fond of exposing himself to young female staffers he sought out at work while “mentoring” them.

But it’s not the sexual peccadillos of either Charlie Rose or Matt Lauer that Donald Trump was playing off of last year as he campaigned for president on a platform consisting mainly of building that wall and bashing the media. He didn’t even have to say it out loud that these guys, and other elite media figures, were being presented to the great unwashed masses out there in flyover country as Serious People — the kind of figures you should Respect and Hold in High Regard. I don’t know what Charlie Rose was getting paid — I’ve seen figures as high as $2.5 million, and that seems about right — but Matt Lauer is said to have had a contract worth more than $20 million for his genius turn on NBC’s “Today” playing the avuncular co-host and learning to flip omelets. The money alone sent the message. We’re Charlie and Matt, and you’re not. And who were they, really? Well, behind the scenes, we now know that in addition to being sexual predators, they were short-tempered arrogant bullies and prima donnas. So was Mark Halperin, who served as a “news analyst” on “Morning Joe” until he was found to be one of the elite media’s sexual harassers. So were Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes. In fact, you could have identified the sexual abusers and harassers very easily by who screamed at subordinates at work and generally acted like a privileged asshole. O’Reilly: abuser? Check. Screamer? Check. Privileged asshole? Check. Ailes: abuser? Check. Screamer? Check. Privileged asshole? Check. Rose: abuser? Check. Screamer? Check. Privileged asshole? Check. And so on.  

The resentment and anger against media elites Trump has been able to exploit was out there long before Trump, and it’ll remain there after he’s gone. The elite media has done little to earn the love of the masses out there in flyover country, other than simply doing its job and getting the facts right. But apparently, that’s not sufficient anymore. In the age of Trump, just being part of the elite is enough, and there’s very little we can do about that, is there? After all, I’m Lucian Truscott, and you’re not. That’s a fact, and a problem, for us all.

History stumbles with “Knightfall”

Tom Cullen as Templar Knight Landry in "Knightfall" (Credit: History)

Truth often makes for a better story than pure fiction. But when it comes to making up stories based in history, especially for a scripted series airing on History, sometimes massaging the truth leads to a renewed interest in discovering the facts. Sometimes.

“Vikings,” the channel’s first scripted hit, proves this. Nobody in their right mind would write a dissertation about the Norsemen in the Dark Ages based on the action in this show, but creator Michael Hirst stays true enough to the outlines of fact to lend weight to the story and conveys a sense of legitimacy in its examination of Viking society, politics and religion. “Vikings” also has a stupendous cast bringing the character’s various adventures to life, and the show’s potent way of connecting story to personality seems to have piqued renewed interest in the actual history of era and its actors.

But television loves a good story above all else, records be damned. The prevailing mystery shrouding the Knights Templar, the stars of History’s “Knightfall,” debuting 10 p.m. Wednesday, is more provocative than what experts believe to be the truth of what they were so, somewhat to the drama’s detriment, the producers decided to ride the legend further into the ground, if that’s at all possible.

“Knightfall” spins drama out of the events leading to the end of the Templars, traced to Friday the 13th, 1307 (said to be the roots of the common superstition) when King Phillip IV of France ordered the arrest en masse of the Order’s French members. Many would go on to be tried and burned at the stake.

At least we can expect a devastating series finale, I guess.  But in piecing together the why and how of the Templars’ decline showrunner Dominic Minghella and his writing team lazily paste together a collage of conceits familiar to any sword and/or sorcery fan — and many of those films did a better job at selling such a story.

From the virginal maiden fair as assault bait to the conflicted, righteous hero torn between his vows and carnal desires, it’s all here. Sleepy battles are unnaturally drawn-out with cheeseball slow-motion sequences, and the stiff dialogue made me yearn for the zest and subtlety of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

And to be clear, if the drama’s embellishments were fresh or surprising in any way, “Knightfall” would earn a pass. Honestly, most accounts of what the Knights Templar actually did are nowhere nearly as interesting as the fiction. Experts depict them less as an elite fighting force in their waning decades than a powerful and wealthy financial entity, speculating that Phillip likely orchestrated their destruction to wipe out the debt he owed to the Order. Call me crazy, but a 10 episode adventure about one of the Medieval Europe’s most powerful banking organizations probably wouldn’t sell.

Ten episodes about the last crusaders’ desperate quest to find the Holy Grail, a mission that’s inspired a number of heroes from King Arthur to Indiana Jones to Robert Langdon, sounds like something a channel can work with. Fair enough, but in its realization, half-baked at best. This is what can happen when a concept goes straight to series largely on the strength of a name: “Knightfall” is partly executive produced by Jeremy Renner, and before you even ask: nope, he did not suit up for this.

The duty to shoulder the action and controlling share in any interest the series may generate falls instead of Tom Cullen, who portrays a devoted knight named Landry, with Jim Carter playing Pope Boniface VIII and Julian Ovenden stepping in the moustache-twirling villain role, manifesting here as William De Nogaret, the scheming lawyer and advisor to the well-meaning but effect King Phillip (Ed Stoppard). You may have noticed that all of those actors previously starred in “Downton Abbey.” If you did, I assure you that “Knightfall” will make you miss “Downton Abbey.”

King Phillip is man who does very little to stoke the loin fires of his wife Queen Joan of Navarre (Olivia Ross), and that proves to be a problem. Much of the conflict in each episode involves De Nogaret channeling Littlefinger and twisting what he knows about a number of player to achieve his own nefarious ends, whatever those may be.

Landry’s motivation, on the other hand, is boringly clear — he’s tasked with finding the Holy Grail, which he believes to be closer than originally presumed. The series opens with the fall of the Order’s last stronghold in the Holy Land, the Acre, during which the Grail appeared to be lost. Why do they need the Grail? Because, I mean, it’s the Holy Grail. Cup o’ Christ. What other argument is there?

Said battle, by the way, brims with imagery that plays out like a right-winger’s dream/nightmare, as caramel-skinned Islamic hordes overwhelm the brave Europeans fighting their way out of the Seaport. “Knightfall” does little to disrupt the ongoing fantasy of an entirely white Europe, even during the Crusades. The script even fails in its portrayal of Jewish characters and the indignities and discriminations they faced at the time, especially with regard to a thinly-written character played by Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, who mostly seems to have been incorporated to allow the audiences to draw parallels between the Templar legend and “Robin Hood.”

In the end, the main achievement of “Knightfall” may be its effectiveness in reminding the viewer of better films and more exciting versions of stories influenced by the group’s myth. The Order’s mystery casts a lengthy shadow indeed, perhaps more now than in previous decades. This knowledge presented “Knightfall” a significant opportunity to enthrall the audience in addition to empowering it with knowledge. A demanding quest, for certain, and one it fails to fulfill.

 

How I became fake news: Roy Moore, a hoax story and me

Fiona Dourif (Credit: Getty/Dave Kotinsky)

I am fake news.

Recently, to my surprise, I woke up to a bizarre article on Facebook linked to my name. The headline read, “Second Roy Moore accuser works for Michelle Obama right now!” The story was incoherent at best, but I was able to get the gist of it: According to this account, Fiona Dourif, an actress on “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” and the “Chucky” movies — that’s me — had accused Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual harassment. This is not true; I have not accused Roy Moore of anything. Nevertheless, the article claimed “my” accusation was verifiable fake news.

The story begins:

Liberals sure are afraid of Roy Moore. Not only did they push a woman in front of the cameras to cry and lie about some stuff that allegedly happened 35 years ago she’s just now remembering to mention (we refuse to repeat the salacious allegations because they are 100% verifiable fake news) but when the fake 14-year-old didn’t work for them, the Democrat Party did something even worse: they doubled down on the story, introduced a new actress, and had her tell an even more horrible lie.

Fiona Dourif says she was 11 years old when Moore “groped her in the alley behind the” church they both attended in 1957. “It was the most horrifying moment of my life,” she told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Friday night. She then described the series of events that allegedly happened, including the obviously false allegation that he baited her into the alley with candy. “Roy Moore definitely did all of those things and more,” she said looking into the camera, dry-eyed.”

The article included a picture of a person they claimed was Fiona Dourif, that was actually a photo of University of Alabama law professor Joyce White Vance. Yet, my acting credits were listed correctly. Then the article claimed I am also Michelle Obama’s former housekeeper:

This (housekeeping) information was uncovered by Gateway Pundit’s Charles C. Johnson, who notes in his report that “Dourif is paid extremely well according to public documents, which report a $250,783.33 annual salary for Dourif.”

If this sounds confusing, it’s because it is. The article’s claim is that Fiona Dourif is an actress, somehow also Michelle Obama’s housekeeper, and is lying about 60-year-old allegations of sexual harassment by Roy Moore.

To be perfectly clear, I have never worked for Michelle Obama (I wish), met Roy Moore or Rachel Maddow, nor was I alive in 1957. I am, however, the actress Fiona Dourif.

The next day the article, along with the website LastLineOfDefense.org, disappeared. [Editor’s Note: As of publication, LastLineofDefense.online is still operational, as is a Facebook page promoting the site’s work.]

It took an afternoon of research to figure out what happened. Apparently my career as a housekeeper and Roy Moore accuser was created by Christopher Blair, some dude in Maine who describes himself on his Facebook profile as a “paid liberal troll.” He runs America’s Last Line of Defense and several other faux right-wing sites designed to fool conservative voters into sharing stupid stories on Facebook. His fictional posts are accompanied by an elaborate disclaimer, but are often picked up and shared without any mention of it. Amy Sherman of Politifact has done excellent research into Blair and how he is incentivized by social media to create fake news. “I discovered Facebook following plus blog plus ads equals income,” Blair told Politifact in May.

In the end, there is little anyone he chooses to write about can do to disassociate themselves. Though the original article has been removed, several publications trying to expose fake news now appear linked to my name in search results, with headlines like “Second Roy Moore accuser did not work for Michelle Obama” and “Second Roy Moore Accuser is Fake News.” At first glance, these articles are of little help: Did Fiona Dourif accuse Roy Moore? Does she simply not work for the Obamas? I would prefer headlines like “total nonsense goes viral created by some random dude in Maine who is improperly incentivized by social media.”

Just a suggestion.

As for now, it seems I will have to get use to being the subject of fake news about fake news. I’ll let my grandmother know everything is OK with me; it’s America that’s gone awry.