Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 246

Jeffrey Tambor under investigation for sexual harassment by Amazon

Jeffrey Tambor (Credit: Getty/Rich Fury)

Amazon Studios is currently conducting an investigation after a former assistant to actor Jeffrey Tambor accused him sexual harassment via social media, according to Variety.

In a private Facebook post, Van Barnes alleged that the actor engaged in inappropriate conduct. While it is unclear at this time what exactly what she accusing him of, Tambor has said the allegations are “baseless.”

“I am aware that a former disgruntled assistant of mine has made a private post implying that I had acted in an improper manner toward her,” Tambor said in a statement on Wednesday. “I adamantly and vehemently reject and deny any and all implication and allegation that I have ever engaged in any improper behavior toward this person or any other person I have ever worked with. I am appalled and distressed by this baseless allegation.”

Amazon Studios, which broadcasts “Transparent,” has begun the process of speaking with members of the show’s “production and Tambor personally, per the studio’s policy,” Variety reported.

This news comes just weeks after, Roy Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned following accusations of sexual harassment leveled by Isa Dick Hackett, producer of the Amazon show “The Man in the High Castle.”

Both of these reports come amidst the daily cascade of allegations attached to notable men in Hollywood for sexual misconduct following the October exposés detailing allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein. In the last month, charges against industry veterans such as Brett Ratner, James Toback, Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman and others have surfaced. Some of these allegations have precipitated firings. Some have spurred police investigations. None have, as of yet, led to indictments of any kind (though there appears to be at least one pending in Weinstein’s case according to some reports).

The winner of 42 industry awards, “Transparent” centers on a family dealing with dysfunction and the transition of its patriarch, played by Tambor, from a man to a woman. Tambor has taken home two Emmys and a Golden Globe for the role and the series itself has earned three GLAAD Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series. Tambor’s previous work includes “Arrested Development,” “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Hill Street Blues.”

In addition to working as Tambor’s assistant beginning in 2014, Barnes has also become visible in front of the camera. Herself a trans woman, Barnes has appeared in a minor role on “Transparent” and had turns on Caitlyn Jenner’s reality show “I Am Cait” and a documentary television series focused on transgender issues called “This Is Me.” She is also credited as the director, producer and star of the short film “You Will Never Ever Be a Woman. You Must Live the Rest of Your Days Entirely as a Man, and You Will Only Grow More Masculine with Each Passing Year. There Is No Way Out.”

 

Why you shouldn’t try to reason with Trump supporters

(Credit: Getty/Zach Gibson)

A year ago, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s stunning election win, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in the Rust Belt without hitting a Trump supporter who understood the president-elect’s flaws, but insisted on giving him a chance to follow through on his campaign promises. Over the next 365 days, reporters visited and re-visited so-called Trump country — even as support for him dwindled in those areas — searching for the reasons why people continued to pledge their support for making America great again.

A new Politico Magazine profile of die-hard Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pa — the heart of Trump country — suggests that Trump’s most fervent fans haven’t swayed in their support, even as the president continues to break (or forget) his promises. Here’s one Johnstown, Pennsylvania, native, telling a Politico reporter why he liked Trump.

“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

This is the Trump supporter in a nutshell: When confronted with facts, the topic changed. The sources they use to get their information on a daily basis are suspect: Friends, family and Fox News. The latter is, well, Fox News, but the former are the people who were absolutely certain that Obama was the antichrist.

In short, the Trump die-hards are not sound on policy or history — recent or otherwise. It wouldn’t be fair to say that they’re unfairly ridiculed, because they constantly wave their ignorance around like it’s a flag.

The modern Trump supporter is living in a state of downplayed disappointment — like a child taking a bite of black licorice thinking it was chocolate, feeling regret, then accepting the candy anyway. In a year, despite the president’s Twitter gloats, things aren’t really getting better in their town. They have essentially been forgotten about. But instead of screaming in anger, they’ve taken to rooting on the sidelines and overlooking the small slights that hint that Trump doesn’t care about them whatsoever.

Let’s head south for a brief detour, where, in Florida, an MSNBC correspondent revisited the Jacksonville-area town of Mayport. One woman said that she voted for Trump and was pleased with her choice. She was asked how things had improved since his election.

“A lot of more patriotism and everything like that,” she said.

https://twitter.com/jacobsoboroff/sta...

Adaptation is one of the core elements of humanity, but like certain parts of the Trump base, evolution doesn’t exist. Let’s go back to Johnstown, where, like much of Appalachia, they’re waiting for coal and steel to come back to their economically-depressed town.

Politico found that there are jobs opening up in the town, but the problem is that no one wants to work them.

Some of the later-in-life blue-collar workers who are still here can be loath to learn new trades. “We’ve heard when working with some of the miners that they are reluctant because they’re very accustomed to the mining industry,” said Linda Thomson, the president of JARI, a non-profit economic development agency in Johnstown that provides precisely the kind of retraining, supported by a combination of private, state and federal funding, that could prepare somebody for a job in Polacek’s plant. “They really do want to go back into the mines. So we’ve seen resistance to some retraining.”

And there’s the 500-pound gorilla in the room: Race. One can say that racism exists in America without necessarily seeing it in everything. But in Johnstown, there’s definitely a bit of racism.

Here’s what one woman had to say about the Mexican border wall, and Mexican people.

“I don’t care about his wall,” said Frear, 76. “I mean, if he gets his wall — I don’t give a s**t, you know? But he has a good idea: Keep ‘em out.”

And this exchange that a married couple had in front of a Politico reporter over one of the president’s cause célèbres — National Football League players protesting during the national anthem.

“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”

“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked. . .

“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say. . .

She looked at me.

The NFL?

“N***ers for life,” Schilling said.

“For life,” McCabe added.

And so, a year later, Nov. 8, 2017 America is pretty much the same as Nov. 8, 2016 America. Trump is still White America’s primal scream.

Paul LePage ignores Maine voters to block Medicaid expansion, marijuana legalization

Paul LePage (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

Despite overwhelming public approval of a ballot initiative to expand Medicaid in the state, Maine’s Republican Gov. Paul LePage was quick to announce his intentions to block the measure, proving yet again that the Republican party is drastically out of touch with the needs and wants of the American people.

The ballot initiative on Tuesday allowed voters to decide if they wanted to expand Medicaid to an estimated 70,000 residents. The measure passed with support from 59 percent of voters, while 41 percent opposed, according to NBC News.

The New York Times elaborated on the initiative:

The health law gives states the option of allowing any citizen with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level — $16,642 for an individual, $24,600 for a family of four — to qualify for Medicaid, which states and the federal government both pitch in to pay for.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government picked up the cost of new enrollees under Medicaid expansion for the first three years and will continue to pay at least 90 percent. States cover a significantly larger portion of the expenses for the rest of their Medicaid population.

In the past, LePage has already vetoed at least five attempts to expand Medicaid and has said the most recent attempt to expand the Obama-era program was “fiscally irresponsible.”

“Medicaid expansion will be ruinous to Maine’s budget,” LePage added, NBC reported.

“The truth is that Medicaid expansion will just give able-bodied adults free health care,” LePage said in a recent radio interview, according to the Times. “We don’t mind helping people get health care, but it should not be free. ‘Free’ is very expensive to somebody.”

LePage would find difficulty in blocking the measure, however, because he doesn’t have the power to simply veto it. Instead, LePage could delay the measure, the Times reported. The state legislature could make an effort to block the measure, but the state House is controlled by Democrats, and Republicans only have control over the Senate by one vote, so blocking such a popular measure would be a risk.

The governor’s veto threat comes just days after he finally vetoed a measure passed by Maine voter during the 2016 election that would legalize the sale of recreational marijuana.

“The dangers of legalizing marijuana and normalizing its use in our society cannot be understated,” LePage wrote in a letter explaining why he overruled the voters of his state.

 

Tuesday’s ballot initiative still proved to be significant as similar progressive measures could land on ballots across the country in coming elections such as Utah and Idaho, according to Jonathan Schleifer, executive director of the Fairness Project.

“We need to end the conversation around repealing Obamacare and make it very clear, as we did last night, that folks want to expand it,” Schleifer told NBC. “We’re not waiting until 2020, we’re going to get as much of this done in 2018 as we can.”

The future of Medicaid expansion in Maine is still uncertain due to the threats to block the measure from LePage, but it falls in line with much of the Republican Party’s agenda.

Congressional Republicans miserably failed several attempts over the course of months to pass different variations of health bills that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Much of the votes didn’t land for the Republicans because the public made it clear that they wanted to keep their health care. While Obamacare certainly has its flaws, polls show that support for single-payer and a progressive outlook on health care is growing quite substantially in the U.S.

Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News contract was a license to harass

Bill O'Reilly (Credit: AP/Richard Drew)

Bill O’Reilly was mad at God in October, mostly over the accusations of sexual misconduct that cost him his job at Fox News.

“I wish I had more protection,” he said at the time. “I wish this stuff didn’t happen. I can’t explain it to you. Yeah, I’m mad at him.”

On Tuesday, it was revealed that he actually did have a certain measure protection, at least when it came to shielding his job from allegations of sexual misconduct.

As a director at 21st Century Fox, Jacques Nasser, revealed in testimony to the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority on Oct. 25 that O’Reilly’s Fox News contract contained a clause establishing that the host could not be fired on the basis of sexual-harassment allegations.

As Nasser noted during his defense of Fox’s bid to take over Sky Network, O’Reilly “could not be dismissed on the basis of an allegation unless that allegation was proved in court.” Thus, whenever O’Reilly or the network reached an out-of-court settlement with an accuser, it did not have any effect on the host’s employment.

As Lisa Banks, a partner at the employment law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks told the Washington Post, O’Reilly was functionally bulletproof, as his wealth allowed him to pay off anyone who was in a position to prove their allegations. “He would never let a claim go to trial where he would even have the slightest chance of losing,” she said.

Indeed, it appears that it was this clause that allowed O’Reilly to continue at Fox News past Roger Ailes’ dismissal under similar circumstances. It took until April 2017, when The New York Times revealed that the network had reached settlements attached to five sexual-harassment claims against the host dating back to 2002 and totaling over $13 million, for the hammer to come down. According to Nasser, it was the Times’ report, and not O’Reilly’s past history, that forced the network to dismiss him.

Nasser’s testimony also reveals that the board of Fox News was well aware of the problem O’Reilly presented. According to minutes of the proceedings, Nasser “confirmed that once Bill O’Reilly’s contract was ready for renewal, the board ensured that a clause was inserted to state that he could be dismissed on the grounds of an allegation against him without it having to be proved in court.”

Fox News confirmed this in a statement reading:

[O’Reilly’s] new contract, which was made at a time typical for renewals of multi-year talent contracts, added protections for the company specifically aimed at harassment, including that Mr. O’Reilly could be dismissed if the company was made aware of other allegations or if additional relevant information was obtained in a company investigation.

By April, O’Reilly was out at Fox News.

Since being fired, O’Reilly has repeatedly criticized The New York Times for reporting on the accusations. “I talked to them this time just to see the devil that I was dealing with,” he said to Sean Hannity on Fox News. “And I truly believe that these people at the New York Times are out to hurt people with whom they disagree. They don’t want me in the marketplace. That’s what this is all about.”

“The end game is, ‘Let’s link Bill O’Reilly with Harvey Weinstein,'” O’Reilly said.

In truth, news of O’Reilly’s contract provides a rather strong connection to Weinstein itself. As it turns out, both of these men who had been accused of multiple accounts of sexual misconduct had clauses in their employment agreements that insulated them from sexual allegations to one extent or another.

According to TMZ, the producer’s contract with the Weinstein Company stated that if he “treated someone improperly in violation of the company’s Code of Conduct,” he had to reimburse it for any resultant legal fees and settlements and would pay “liquidated damages of $250,000 for the first such instance, $500,000 for the second such instance, $750,000 for the third such instance, and $1,000,000 for each additional instance.”

There was no clause providing for Weinstein’s firing under any circumstances related to any such allegations.

Maryland investigating Kushner Companies’ real estate practices

Jared Kushner (Credit: AP/Alex Brandon)

The office of the Maryland attorney general is investigating the management practices at the many large apartment complexes in the state that are owned and overseen by Kushner Companies, the family company of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner.

A spokesman for Kushner Companies confirmed that the office of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, a Democrat elected in 2014, has been in contact with the New York-based company. “We have been working with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office to provide information in response to its request,” the company said in a statement issued by the spokesman. The statement concluded: “We are in compliance with all state and local laws.”

A spokeswoman for the attorney general, Christine Tobar, declined to discuss the matter. “We don’t confirm or deny investigations,” she said.

The suit follows a May 23 article jointly published by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine that detailed the Kushner Companies’ highly litigious dealings with the people who rent apartments in the 15 complexes it owns in the Baltimore area. The company, which shares ownership in some of the complexes with other partners but runs them all through its Westminster Management subsidiary, has brought hundreds of cases against current and former tenants in local courts.

Many of the cases involved former tenants who had moved out of the complexes several years before Kushner Companies bought them. The firm’s purchases began with the acquisition of 5,500 units in the Baltimore area as part of a $371 million deal in 2012, with several thousand more units added in the next few years. Some of the cases involved tenants who possessed clear evidence that they did not owe the money the company claimed, yet were pursued anyway for several years, with late fees and court fees piling on top of the original claims. The article also described shoddy conditions that many tenants contend with at the complexes, including mice, leaky roofs and mold.

In response to questions for the May 23 article, the Kushner Companies’ chief financial officer said that its approach when it came to pursuing tenants conformed with industry practices and that it had a fiduciary duty to its ownership partners to collect all money owed by current and former tenants. Jared Kushner, who was instrumental in the purchases, stepped down as the company’s CEO when his father-in-law won the presidency. Kushner has become one of Trump’s most senior advisers in the White House.

A subsequent report by The Baltimore Sun in August found Kushner Companies went to even greater lengths in some cases: Since 2013, corporate entities affiliated with the company sought the civil arrest of 105 former tenants at the company’s 17 Maryland complexes (it also owns two in the Washington suburbs) for failing to appear in court to face allegations of unpaid rent. Twenty former tenants were briefly detained, the Sun reported.

The Maryland attorney general’s investigation, which was first reported by CNN Money, is not the first fallout from the revelations about the complexes. Last month, lawyers from two Baltimore-area law firms and a legal advocacy center filed a class-action lawsuit against Kushner Companies on behalf of tenants at the complexes. The lawsuit alleges that Westminster Management and related corporate entities have been improperly inflating payments owed by tenants by charging them late fees that are often unfounded and court fees that are not actually approved by any court.

This, the lawsuit charges, sets in motion a vicious cycle in which tenants’ rent payments are partly assessed toward the fees instead of the actual rent owed, thus deeming the tenant once again “late” on his or her rent payment, leading to yet more late fees and court fees. Making matters worse, the 5 percent late fees are frequently assessed on principal that includes allegedly unpaid fees, not just the rent itself. The net effect, the suit alleges, is that the company’s late fees are exceeding Maryland’s statutory limits. Tenants are pressured to pay the snowballing bills with immediate threat of eviction, the suit alleges.

A spokesman for Kushner Companies declined to comment on the lawsuit when it was filed. “We will respond to the complaint at the appropriate time in the legal proceedings,” he said.

The original news reports on the complexes also prompted Maryland’s two U.S. senators and four of its House members, all Democrats, to send a letter to Kushner Companies in August asking for some of the firm’s records. The lawmakers noted that the complexes rely heavily on tenants with Housing Choice (Section 8) rental vouchers, and thus must comply with a host of Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations. The lawmakers demanded, among other things, all notifications from HUD, public housing authorities, inspection companies or local jurisdictions identifying defects in the complexes in the past three years; all complaints from residents about maintenance and repair issues over the past three years; and information regarding the role played by Jared Kushner.

The company has not produced the records requested by the lawmakers, which led one of them, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, to seek assistance two weeks ago from the committee chairman, Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina.

Do you have access to information about the Trump family’s businesses that should be public? Email alec.macgillis@propublica.org, or here’s how to send tips and documents to ProPublica securely.

Why social media may not be so good for democracy

(Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Recent revelations about how Russian agents inserted ads on Facebook, in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, present a troubling question: Is Facebook bad for democracy?

As a scholar of the social and political implications of technology, I believe that the problem is not about Facebook alone, but much larger: Social media is actively undermining some of the social conditions that have historically made democratic nation states possible.

I understand that’s a huge claim, and I don’t expect anyone to believe it right away. But, considering that nearly half of all eligible voters received Russian-sponsored fake news on Facebook, it’s an argument that needs to be on the table.

How we create a shared reality

Let’s start with two concepts: an “imagined community” and a “filter bubble.”

The late political scientist Benedict Anderson famously argued that the modern nation-state is best understood as an “imagined community” partly enabled by the rise of mass media such as newspapers. What Anderson meant is that the sense of cohesion that citizens of modern nations felt with one another — the degree to which they could be considered part of a national community — was one that was both artificial and facilitated by mass media.

Of course there are many things that enable nation-states like the U.S. to hold together. We all learn (more or less) the same national history in school, for example. Still, the average lobster fisherman in Maine, for example, doesn’t actually have that much in common with the average schoolteacher in South Dakota. But, the mass media contribute toward helping them view themselves as part of something larger: that is, the “nation.”

Democratic polities depend on this shared sense of commonality. It enables what we call “national” policies — an idea that citizens see their interests aligned on some issues. Legal scholar Cass Sunstein explains this idea by taking us back to the time when there were only three broadcast news outlets and they all said more or less the same thing. As Sunstein says, we have historically depended on these “general interest intermediaries” to frame and articulate our sense of shared reality.

Filter bubbles

The term “filter bubble” emerged in a 2010 book by activist Eli Pariser to characterize an internet phenomenon.

Legal scholar Lawrence Lessig and Sunstein too had identified this phenomenon of group isolation on the internet in the late 1990s. Inside a filter bubble, individuals basically receive only the kinds of information that they have either preselected, or, more ominously, that third parties have decided they want to hear.

The targeted advertising behind Facebook’s newsfeed helps to create such filter bubbles. Advertising on Facebook works by determining its user’s interests, based on data it collects from their browsing, likes and so on. This is a very sophisticated operation.

Facebook does not disclose its own algorithms. However, research led by psychologist and data scientist at Stanford University Michael Kosinski demonstrated that automated analysis of people’s Facebook likes was able to identify their demographic information and basic political beliefs. Such targeting can also apparently be extremely precise. There is evidence, for example, that anti-Clinton ads from Russia were able to micro-target specific voters in Michigan.

The problem is that inside a filter bubble, you never receive any news that you do not agree with. This poses two problems: First, there is never any independent verification of that news. Individuals who want independent confirmation will have to actively seek it out.

Second, psychologists have known for a long time about “confirmation bias,” the tendency of people to seek out only information they agree with. Confirmation bias also limits people’s ability to question information that confirms or upholds their beliefs.

Not only that, research at Yale University’s Cultural Cognition Project strongly suggests that people are inclined to interpret new evidence in light of beliefs associated with their social groups. This can tend to polarize those groups.

All of this means that if you are inclined to dislike President Donald Trump, any negative information on him is likely to further strengthen that belief. Conversely, you are likely to discredit or ignore pro-Trump information.

It is this pair of features of filter bubbles — preselection and confirmation bias — that fake news exploits with precision.

Creating polarized groups?

These features are also hardwired into the business model of social media like Facebook, which is predicated precisely on the idea that one can create a group of “friends” with whom one shares information. This group is largely insular, separated from other groups.

The software very carefully curates the transfer of information across these social networks and tries very hard to be the primary portal through which its users — about 2 billion of them — access the internet.

Facebook depends on advertising for its revenue, and that advertising can be readily exploited: A recent ProPublica investigation shows how easy it was to target Facebook ads to “Jew Haters.” More generally, the site also wants to keep users online, and it knows that it is able to manipulate the emotions of its users — who are happiest when they see things they agree with.

As the Washington Post documents, it is precisely these features that were exploited by Russian ads. As a writer at Wired observed in an ominously prescient commentary immediately after the election, he never saw a pro-Trump post that had been shared over 1.5 million times — and neither did any of his liberal friends. They saw only liberal-leaning news on their social media feeds.

In this environment, a recent Pew Research Center survey should not come as a surprise. The survey shows that the American electorate is both deeply divided on partisan grounds, even on fundamental political issues, and is becoming more so.

All of this combines to mean that the world of social media tends to create small, deeply polarized groups of individuals who will tend to believe everything they hear, no matter how divorced from reality. The filter bubble sets us up to be vulnerable to polarizing fake news and to become more insular.

The end of the imagined community?

At this point, two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from social media outlets. This means that two-thirds of Americans get at least some of their news from highly curated and personalized black-box algorithms.

Facebook remains, by a significant margin, the most prevalent source of fake news. Not unlike forced, false confessions of witchcraft in the Middle Ages, these stories get repeated often enough that they could appear legitimate.

What we are witnessing, in other words, is the potential collapse of a significant part of the imagined community that is the American polity. Although the U.S. is also divided demographically and there are sharp demographic differences between regions within the country, partisan differences are dwarfing other divisions in society.

This is a recent trend: In the mid-1990s, partisan divisions were similar in size to demographic divisions. For example, then and now, women and men would be about the same modest distance apart on political questions, such as whether government should do more to help the poor. In the 1990s, this was also true for Democrats and Republicans. In other words, partisan divisions were no better than demographic factors at predicting people’s political views. Today, if you want to know someone’s political views, you would first want to find out their partisan affiliation.

The reality of social media

To be sure, it would be overly simplistic to lay all of this at the feet of social media. Certainly the structure of the American political system, which tends to polarize the political parties in primary elections, plays a major role. And it is true that plenty of us also still get news from other sources, outside of our Facebook filter bubbles.

But, I would argue that Facebook and social media offer an additional layer: Not only do they tend to create filter bubbles on their own, they offer a rich environment for those who want to increase polarization to do so.

Communities share and create social realities. In its current role, social media risks abetting a social reality where differing groups could disagree not only about what to do, but about what reality is.

Gordon Hull, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Director of Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of North Carolina – Charlotte

American hyper-capitalism breeds the lonely, alienated men who become mass killers

(Credit: STILLFX via Shutterstock)

Economically, he was one of the growing millions without a secure, meaningful, socially approved, well-paid job. He had previously amassed money by buying and selling real estate, but had no ongoing job. He lacked the relationships that flow from working with others to accomplish a shared goal where each person has a part to play. The stability of a daily job and the people to whom that job connects you are bulwarks against loneliness and mental instability.

Stephen Paddock’s last family contact was with one of his brothers whom he telephoned three years before the shooting. He had not contacted other family members for 20 years. He and his live-in girlfriend kept their blinds closed. They socialized with no one.

Paddock had been told throughout his life that the U.S. was a special place, an exceptional place. Each generation, if its members studied and worked hard, would live better than the one before. Progress and prosperity awaited him. He would raise a family and provide his wife and children with more than had been provided to him and to his family of origin. Both of his marriages soon ended in divorce.

As millions of secure jobs disappeared, especially after the 1970s, Paddock became unemployed often for long periods. He became a real estate dealer buying and selling buildings for profit. He amassed some wealth, an American dream most men do not achieve, but it did not connect him to other human beings. Paddock had failed to achieve the promised dream of the connections and family that money was supposed to accompany. He lost his moorings.

Even when he managed an activity that brought him money, it tended to be in areas not associated with hard work in connection with others. From making money speculating in real estate he moved on to solitary gambling at casinos. He had no place in the socially approved work and life images he had grown up to value, expect and seek as markers of his success as a human being.

Mental health can be likened to a table resting on four legs. One leg is an intimate relationship with a partner, friend or relative to whom one can intimately connect when the need arises. A second leg is a wider circle of people with whom one shares friendly connections. They may be work colleagues or a circle of casual friends or relatives whose company you enjoy. It may even be close Facebook friends, but you see them less frequently than your intimate connection(s). A third leg is a group to which you connect in a limited but shared activity. That may be a team sport, a volunteer effort, a PTA, or political organization whose members develop the solidarity of working together. A fourth leg is connection to one’s nation and the world through political activity, engagement with media covering major current events, and sharing opinions, ideas or petitions online. A table can be sturdy and stable with at least three strong legs, but only two or one does not suffice.

Americans have become frighteningly disconnected and alone. There are fewer Americans active in any group than there were in bowling leagues alone in 1970. The many millions of loners accumulating in the U.S. since the ’70s tend to experience and define their disconnection as personal. Many think it is their fault that they cannot occupy a happy place of connection in the America they imagine is still there. They imagine that other people continue to find ways to connect. They feel adrift. They can come to resent those from whom they are slipping away.

American white men once received two wage supplements in what was a sexist and racist labor market. One wage supplement was for whiteness and the other for maleness. With the resulting “family wage” generally paid to white men, they could support a woman working full time at home, providing full maid service, sexual labor, child care, and the emotional labor of making social connections to engage the whole family with friends and relatives. With white men’s family wage now largely gone, most women are now employed outside the home. They cannot, in addition, do all the housework, childcare, etc., that they did before. They want their men to share emotional and domestic burdens in the home. Yet many men want extra services at home to compensate them for their lower pay and lower status outside the home. Household tensions rise. Women are abandoning those men who cannot support them yet still demand a range of household services that employed women cannot and do not want to perform. American white men have been disempowered. They are hurting.

The family wage for white men evaporated as modern jet travel and telecommunications enabled U.S. capitalists to relocate production overseas where wages are much lower. Simultaneously, computers enabled an intensification of automation. Capitalists stopped worrying about living, no less family, wages, safety standards, benefits, or ecological safety measures. Where once capitalist profit-seeking produced a family wage, post-1970s profit-seeking took it away.

Gender plays its own role in white men’s pain and their coping mechanisms. Men’s emotions are constrained. They have to “man up” even in the face of devastating, real losses. Sex remains a key need allowed both for and within a widespread male stereotype. Likewise, anger remains an emotion permitted and often celebrated as manly and powerful.

Many men look to recoup their lost powers. They become especially vulnerable to advertisements for products promoted as conveying power. Nothing illustrates this better than some ads for Bushmaster automatic weapons. They ask, “Does your wife or girlfriend make more money than you? Revoke your man card. Do you prefer tofu to meat? Revoke your man card.” After such questions, the Bushmaster automatic rifle is celebrated with the statement “Reinstate your man card.” That ad was pulled after many protested and after the Bushmaster was used by Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook mass shooting that killed 20 elementary school children and six staff members.

In stark gender contrast, women often find primary feminine identity in close friendships with other women or in connection to relatives and children. Their identity allows a wide range of vulnerable needs and emotions. Women are far less frequent gun users. Women also do not appear on the roster of mass shootings.

Often, disempowered people — particularly white men — are tempted to search for and find scapegoats to blame for their disenfranchisement and loneliness. Cues from political leaders seeking votes can point them to certain social groups. For example, Trump and many Republicans make none too subtle negative comments about immigrants, women, minorities and a government they denounce for privileging those groups at the expense of white Americans, etc.

The liberal U.S. media often blame angry, disempowered white men and their spokespersons for being politically incorrect and boorish. Those media rarely if ever analyze the role of capitalism in denying white men their family wages and the American dream. Capitalism — the profit system — is thereby rendered innocent while angry white workers are deplorably prejudiced. Men versus women, white against non-white, immigrant against native: a divided mass of people (mostly employees) get caught up in conflicts as while capitalists accumulate wealth and capitalism evades criticism.

Americans do not have a mass party or organized voice to help people understand that capitalist profiteering motivated those who took their family wages and jobs. Many are thus left with hatred for other people. That seldom works to overcome or end loneliness.

Americans have found still other ways to cope with their loneliness and disconnection: they medicate themselves against personal pain with alcohol and painkilling drugs. Self-medicating is a now an epidemic. Fully 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016. In this drug refuge, capitalist profit also shows its hand. Most U.S. drug deaths are caused either by opiates (natural substances like heroin) or opioids (synthetic painkillers like Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percocet and Fentanyl). Doctors are paid well to keep prescribing by the supremely profitable pharmaceutical industry. Alcohol is legal and also affords a personal escape from the misery of losing family wages. An estimated 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually. Food is also a comfort for loneliness. One in three American adults and at least one in ten U.S. children are obese. Loneliness is an epidemic in America.

Work is a central activity for most adults. The more speedup is installed by employers, the more employees are prevented from connecting at work. The less people are employed together, the lonelier they are. As the gig economy and part-time and temp work situations multiply, so does loneliness. Most men’s only emotionally close relationships are tied to their work or sex partnerships. With work relationships ever more fragile and temporary, much the same happens to sexual connections. Meanwhile, marriages are being undermined by that same erosion of the family wage. For the first time in U.S. history, a majority of people 35 and under are now unattached.

One out of four Americans has no one to talk to even in the worst emergencies. Most of those people are men. For deeply disconnected and resentful men, social norms can fade; angry shooting at random others becomes possible. This is an especially American phenomenon. In 2017 so far, we have had 152 mass shootings. No other developed nation has had anything remotely like that. Why? One reason is that all other developed nations have gun controls and none have an unchecked gun industry that relentlessly equates guns with manhood. Another reason is that other developed nations have powerful unions and political movements that direct people’s anger about the pain in their lives toward its social causes and especially the inequality and instability of capitalist systems. They connect people to change those social and economic conditions together.

For 150 years from 1820 to 1970, every generation of families led by white men did better economically than the generation before them. Even in the Great Depression of the 1930s prices fell faster than wages; employed men even then earned more than their predecessors. That historical process of improvement stopped in the 1970s. The belief in American exceptionalism did not stop with the changed reality. That left American white men with self-blame for their economic difficulties and the resulting psychic pains. Worse still, it left them with the idea that they could individually overcome their intolerable situations.

What we need in order to stop the carnage of mass shootings is a social movement that articulates a social analysis of America’s problems and is unafraid to put the capitalist system at the core of those problems. We also need a social movement committed to social changes that include going beyond the capitalist system. If people could join together, face that their lives are plundered in order for capitalists to increase profit, and face that gender stereotypes distort our shared humanity, then together we can change the conditions of despair, rage, and loneliness that generate mass shootings.

Has Larry David officially curbed our enthusiasm?

Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (Credit: HBO)

Larry David’s tale about his desperate days before “Seinfeld” is woven into his myth by now, not to mention one of his favorite bits. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three times I’ve either heard him tell the story in person or read it in a published profile, usually linked to the resumption of a season of his HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

David told it on “60 Minutes” in 2004, and he told it to Charlie Rose in 2015. He used it to open the now-famously terrible monologue he delivered as the host of November 4th’s “Saturday Night Live.” Since “Curb” first premiered in 2000 he’s probably told the story so many times that he can probably mumble it verbatim in his sleep (potential dates, beware). Although the delivery varies the basic version goes something like this:

“When I was living in New York and didn’t have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I’d think, that’ll be good, that’ll be a good spot for me when I’m homeless . . . I was planning on my future as a homeless person. I had a really good spot picked out.”

From his own reporting, the man who co-created one of the most influential series in the history of television was a breath away from sleeping under yesterday’s newspapers in Manhattan.

David’s frequent return to his own rags to riches legend serves several purposes, topmost being its usefulness as a tool used to establish empathy with his audience. Sure, he has an estimated net worth in the ballpark of $500 million, according to Rose’s 2015 report, but that ragtag story is his way of reminding us that he’s still slob like the rest of us, albeit one who happened to stumble upon Easy Street.

It played well in 1998, when “Seinfeld” went out on what producers hoped would be a high note.  But a lot has happened in the two decades since, including drastic cultural, social and political shifts within the last two years alone. Meanwhile David’s schtick, embodied in the ninth season of “Curb” currently airing Sundays at 10 p.m., has barely changed at all. His fictionalized self remains a solipsistic nightmare who stomps on polite conventions that would be simple enough to observe if only to keep the peace. He’s a callous, inconsiderate ultra-rich mansion dweller who can’t be convinced that he’s wrong. He doesn’t leave his immaculately landscaped enclave if he can help it, and when he does, he ends up offending just about everyone with whom his path crosses.

While there’s a case to be made for such a character being perfect for an era dominated by aggressive narcissism and violent rebellion against political correctness, as David’s “SNL” performance showed us, whether it works depends on the material and the delivery.

The retelling of this origin tale on “Saturday Night Live,” and every flaccid attempt at topical humor that followed — his out-of-tune attempt to riff on the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the #MeToo movement, his deeply unfunny attempt at Holocaust humor in an era when antisemitism is surging in the United States — are further examples of performer who is out of his depth and out of his time.

This has been on display for weeks on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which returned in early October following a six-year absence imposed, somewhat impishly, by David himself. You can’t blame the man from giving HBO and the critics what they asked for; ever since the eighth season ended, David has fielded the question of when he’d bring the show back. He’d squawk an ambiguous one-liner response and that would be that.

But in those six years a number of series that could be thought of as descendants of “Curb” rose to prominence. In the realm of so-called “cringe” comedy, “Broad City,” “Girls” and “Difficult People” stepped in to fill the void while modernizing and mold the discomfort David in which trades to suit current sensibilities. Its characters, like David’s Larry, thrill viewers with comedy that springs from a stunning lack of awareness and utter selfishness. Unlike Larry, they all live in the world the majority of its audience shares.

The best David can to is attempt to get us to recall our affection for ancient observational humor without exhibiting an intimate awareness of the world we’re living in right now. Not only does it make him seem out of touch, it’s just lazy. Take the opening bit in the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode that debuted after the “Saturday Night Live” debacle: Larry misses his plane by seconds, but scores an aisle seat on the next flight. He’s demonstrably upset that he can’t get a seat in First Class, even though it’s clearly empty, and brays at this injustice as he jockeys for a spot for his luggage in overhead bin.

Then he must suffer the indignities of having accommodate passenger taking up too much space in the center seat. She claims to have an overactive bladder, so he switches with her. You can guess where it goes from there: She proceeds to file her nails, brush her hair and cough.

Many of us are familiar with the horror stories in coach. Many more may never sit in First Class. But a worse crime than the classist undertones in Larry’s bit, which we’re asked to find funny, is the fact that a version of this scene has been done countless times on numerous of series with greater success — including past episodes of “Saturday Night Live.”

Depending on the context, however, the “Curb” conceit still works. Larry’s inadequate condolences offered to his friend Richard Lewis in a recent episode, regarding the death of Lewis’ parakeet, stuck the landing splendidly.

I don’t even have to recreate the scenario for you to envision why that turn was a winner. All that’s required to relate is a quiet sense of being fed up with the rise of “furry baby” coddling, that tendency for Westerners (and Americans in particular) to anthropomorphize their pets and to demand the same level of emotional regard from others. That nonsense gotten out of control fairly recently, certainly within the six years that passed between the eighth and ninth seasons of “Curb,” and is a ripe plum ready to be sliced and ridiculed.

However, this is one bit in a series that lost its urgency to innovate years ago.

Admittedly David has fans who are likely to scoff at this opinion of his style and “Curb.”  The new season enjoyed enthusiastic acclaim from critics upon its return, and has an impressive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  Who am I to argue with the TomatoMeter?

The ratings tell something of a different story; the weekly Nielsen ratings for “Curb” have dropped by more than 45 percent season to date since its ninth season premiere. The new season is averaging just shy of 1.1 million viewers, in comparison to the eighth season’s average of 1.99 million (It’s also still drawing a larger average audience than “Veep” and “Silicon Valley” did during their most recent seasons).

Asking a performer to be something that he’s isn’t is completely fair, I’ll admit. David has constructed his career and wealth portfolio out of writing curmudgeons and behaving like one, beginning with his “Seinfeld” stand-in George Costanza and shuffling, even now, through “Curb” and the movie he did during its hiatus, “Clear History.” But even Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander, the actor who sold George to audiences, have presented different versions of themselves to audiences while remaining true to the core of who they are as performers. They move with the times in ways that David does not, and his refusal to do so rusts the edge of his wit.

“You tolerate me!” he jokes at the top of his “SNL” episode. “You really, really tolerate me!”

Maybe. But for how much longer?

The last word on Twin Peaks by David Lynch’s co-creator Mark Frost

Mark Frost

“I’ll see you again in 25 years,” murdered homecoming queen Laura Palmer warbles to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in the eerie, extra-dimensional Black Lodge, her lips curved into a knowing grin. The scene unfolds toward the end of “Beyond Life and Death,” the finale of “Twin Peaks” season 2, which aired June 10th, 1991 on ABC. And that bit of dialogue — seemingly just fodder for geeky water cooler debate, at worst a dreamlike narrative dead-end — wound up way more prescient than writer/showrunner/co-creator Mark Frost ever could have imagined.

In September 2015, acclaimed filmmaker/Frost’s co-conspirator David Lynch began filming “Twin Peaks: The Return,” a Showtime limited series that continues the surreal story of Agent Cooper (often under the guise of Dougie Jones – long story) and his evil doppelgänger, along with the quirky denizens of the fictional, titular Washington town. Oh, and given that this is a Lynch-Frost production, there’s also a messy FBI investigation, an atomic explosion, terrifying hobo “woodsmen,” a mysterious glass box that traps a demon-like figure, a horrifying arm-wrestling match, a chirping woman with no eyes, and a mutant frog-moth, among dozens and dozens of other mind-boggling mysteries and plot threads.

Frost already had his hands full co-writing “The Return,” which he and Lynch originally started conceptualizing in 2012. But in an effort to build on their momentum, he decided to expand the Twin Peaks canon with a pair of novels: last year’s “The Secret History of Twin Peaks” and the newly released “Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier.”

“I’d been nurturing and thinking about [“The Secret History”] all the way back to when the series was on the air — going back in time and telling the whole history of the region, folding in all these different streams of information and mythology that informed the show and expanded the universe of the place where the show exists,” he says.

“The Final Dossier” — framed as a series of FBI documents compiled by agent/Blue Rose Task Force recruit Agent Tammy Preston — is less sprawling in scope but equally essential for fans, expanding on some of the lingering mysteries from both The Return and the original series.

Frost spoke to Salon about “The Return‘s” most left-field scenes (like the “119” girl), his writing process with Lynch, Agent Cooper’s innate heroism, the possibility of a fourth season, and how the “Twin Peaks” canon is sort of like The Beatles’ “White Album.”

You and David wrote the The Return together, and you left after that to start work on “ The Secret History of Twin Peaks .” I also know that David did some additional writing after that point. Then, of course, you also wound up writing this new book, “ The Final Dossier .” Could you help straighten out that timeline? And what was your ultimate goal in writing these books?

It coincided with the making of the show. We’d finished the shooting scripts in the spring of 2015, and my plan all along was to try to do a couple books in conjunction with the show. I knew [“The Secret History”] was going to come out before the series aired, so I also wanted to follow it up with a book that was able to answer, to some extent, a lot of the questions people might’ve had that had been unaddressed by the series, and then to build a little on what the new series had done narratively. So that’s why I split them into two. The second book was written after production — the first six months of this year. I was writing the first book in conjunction with production. I was there about 40 percent of the time for production, but the rest of the time I had a hard deadline I had to meet. Obviously it was a pretty big book, so that took a lot of time and effort.

I’d like to talk about how your books fall into the “ Twin Peaks” canon. David obviously wasn’t involved in either of them, but did you have any discussions with him about what subjects you would — and perhaps could  — cover? Did he just say, “Do whatever you want?”

It was a clear division of labor. I certainly didn’t want the first book to give away anything that was pertinent to enjoying the series. That’s why the two-book structure was gonna work. We gave each other creative license to do whatever we wanted: him with directing and me with writing the books.

You were the showrunner of the original “ Twin Peaks ,” and you’ve arguably had more influence over this franchise than anyone. But should David’s non-participation affect how fans approach the books? There’s obviously some room for debate on this, but what are your thoughts? Should we consider the books an equal part of “ Twin Peaks” universe?

Look, they are to me. [laughs] Lynch-Frost Productions did the series, but I wasn’t involved with “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” [Lynch’s critically panned 1992 film prequel], and frankly, David wasn’t that involved with most of season 1 — he was off making [his 1990 film] “Wild at Heart.” I think the analogy I would use is, “This is like the Beatles’ “White Album.” There are Paul songs; there are John songs; there are Beatles songs.” But they’re all ultimately on the album. That’s how people should think about it.

As I understand it, David continued to write scenes for “ The Return” after you two finished the script, but he always sent over the material to get your approval before shooting. Is that correct?

Yeah, that’s a very good description of how it happened. He would send me things, and I’d give him some feedback, and we’d leave it at that. You have to respect your partner’s ability to do their work. The scenes were good, and it worked out fine.

I know one of the things you loved about writing “ The Secret History” is getting to apply some of your novel-writing skills toward “ Twin Peaks .” Since you’d already stretched that particular muscle with the last book, was it a bit easier for you to write “ The Final Dossier ?”

I don’t think I could have written the book 25 years ago. That’s really when I began my career in publishing, and 13 or 14 books later I felt I was really ready to take that on — both from a form and content point of view. It was a real challenge, and it was one that I really enjoyed. Also I think having the narrative voices of those characters more firmly in my head made it a little easier [on “The Final Dossier”].

In “ The Final Dossier ,” you write about Cooper’s obligation toward saving women in jeopardy — and his troubled mother, who suffered mental and physical abuse. Is that an element of his character you’d had in mind all along, even throughout the show — Cooper’s “white knight syndrome”?

That was referenced in the book we did the first time around [1991’s “The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes,” written by Frost’s brother Scott, who also penned two Twin Peaks episodes]. That book did a lot, probably more than any other single thing, in establishing Cooper’s psychological history. I just took a little thread and elaborated on it [in “The Final Dossier”]. In looking at him, that’s a fundamental part of this character that’s present in almost every action we see him take. It makes psychological sense, and that’s ultimately what you’re looking for.

Agent Preston is one of the most significant new characters in “The Return,” and she’s even more crucial to both “ The Secret History”  and “ The Final Dossier .”

She was created in the scripts first, and I felt that, given the ground I wanted to cover in the new book, and given her relationship to Cole and the fact that she’s new to the whole narrative and the Blue Rose team, it made the most sense for her to be the person to learn as she goes and be the stand-in for us, as it were, without bringing a lot of preconceptions to what she’s discovering.

In the show, we’re never 100 percent clear on objectives of Cooper’s evil doppelgänger, better known as “Evil Cooper.” We know he doesn’t want to be pulled back into the Black Lodge; we know he wants to find Philip Jeffries and Major Briggs; we know he wants to know about Judy; we know he wants coordinates. He also carries around that playing card with the evil symbol on it. In the book, Agent Preston seems to suggest a couple loose theories about where he’s headed, and they’re pretty intriguing. Should we follow her instincts?

Remember: Those are all written from her perspective in the story. She’s part of the FBI unit that’s trying to piece this together. Just to hold the logic, you’ve gotta go back and recreate, when she was writing the dossier, “What did she know and when did she know it?” And the audience is privy to things about Evil Coop that the FBI agents themselves haven’t figured out yet. Everything is limited by her perspective and what they know by that point. They might discover things later on that don’t fall within the purview of the moment in which she’s writing this. It doesn’t mean she’s correct. She’s just doing her job by running scenarios and trying to make sense of a very puzzling situation. In this case, the audience is actually ahead of her.

While there’s still room for interpretation, the book gives us some extra closure on Audrey’s fate. In a situation like that, where you elaborate on a really crucial scene from the show, is that something you and David discussed? Did you just decide you wanted to run with your own interpretation?

I would just say that what’s in the book is just me responding to what’s in the scripts. And I’ll leave the rest to the reader.

Annie Blackburn appears in the book, and we learn a lot more about her story. She didn’t however, appear in the show. Did you and David just not find a natural way to include her in the script, or did you want to save her for the book?

I think it’s kind of a combination of both those ideas. She just kinda didn’t come up in a lot of the conversations about where we needed to get to. And I felt a sort of narrative responsibility to answer the question that people have been asking for 25 years. [laughs]

In The Final Dossier , we learn that Laura Palmer’s murder was never solved, and everyone’s memory about the case is very fuzzy. In the show, Cooper appears to rescue Laura from her own death, an act that creates this altered reality with Richard, Linda, and Carrie Page. So “Laura”‘s murder was never solved, which means Laura exists — but clearly not the same Laura.

I don’t want to take you by the hand here and lead you to what it meant. Here’s the point to take from it: The actions that Cooper takes have consequences, and they’re unforeseen and unanticipated, and they open the door to all other sorts of strange and perhaps enigmatic things taking place.

You can’t blame me for trying, right? It’s not every day I get to grill the co-creator of “ Twin Peaks .”

[laughs] I don’t blame you at all, believe me.

The coordinates are one of the running plot threads throughout the new season. In “Part 17,” Evil Coop is transported from Jack Rabbit’s Palace to a room inhabited by The Fireman – a space some fans have speculated could be the fabled “White Lodge.” Is that an accurate label?

I don’t want to over-interpret it for people, but if they’re theorizing leads them there, that’s certainly a valid point of view.

Obviously you and David share a core creative sensibility, but you also diverge a lot too — and that’s part of the beauty of the show. Your narrative strengths balance out his surrealism. Were there any plot threads that you vetoed, or vice versa? Did you feel 100 percent comfortable with the final script by the end of it?

I was 100 percent comfortable. In the end, what matters is that people found a lot to like and a lot to intrigue them and a lot to mull over and consider. That’s what you wanna do. You always want to leave people thinking and talking and considering what it is they’ve seen.

“What year is this?” feels destined to become one of those iconic final lines from a series, right up there with “Where’s Annie?” Did you guys have to bat that one around much?

That was always the final line. That was in the script, and that was, I think, a great place to end it. But I think it isn’t until you see a line like that onscreen that you know it makes perfect sense and that it’s really the perfect place to leave it.

Even days after it aired, “Part 8″ was already being hailed as one of the greatest TV episodes of all-time. Did you have any sense when you were writing it that it would be a game-changer?

Yeah, absolutely. [laughs] The idea obviously — or, well, not obviously — was that we’d never done anything close to what you might describe as a “Twin Peaks” origin story, [showing] where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from. On the page, we wrote it in great detail. I think it was maybe 12, 15 pages. But as we were putting down the descriptions, I knew David was going to take that as the blueprint for something extraordinary. He ran with it and elevated it to a whole other level.

I think a lot of fans would love to check out that script and see how much detail was on the page. There are things like the atomic explosion that goes on 10-15 minutes at a time.

Yeah, the atomic explosion was probably half a page as written, but I knew that, in David’s hands, it could run as long as 10 or 12 minutes, and it would be riveting. It was certainly a narrative departure from what we had done before. There was no question about that. But it needed to stand apart, and it needed to blow your mind. So mission accomplished.

That episode really helps deepen the mythology by expanding on the woodsmen and the convenience store. Did you spend a lot of time figuring out the mythology beforehand, or did those kinds of ideas evolve naturally as you wrote?

I would say it evolved as we wrote it. Now some of those things were part of the mythology that David introduced in “Fire Walk With Me.” The woodsmen and the convenience store first appeared there, and it became a way of folding those into the overall mythology of the show. And I think there’s a mutual enriching that took place with those scenes and the way they bleed into the world we’re presenting. They expand the scope of the show mythologically. A lot of our discussions had to do with things like that – the things we talked about before we started writing. Goodness, we spent almost a year talking about stuff before we even wrote the first line.

I think a lot of fans were shocked at how crucial “ Fire Walk With Me”  — and, in particular, David Bowie’s character from the film, Phillip Jeffries — became to the show. Did you spend a lot of time developing his story before you started writing?

Yes, and obviously he plays a huge role in unlocking the mysteries at the end. When you have such an indelible personality as David Bowie playing the part, I was very enthusiastic about helping to articulate exactly he meant to the overall narrative.

I know David sought out Bowie’s approval to expand on the character.

Exactly right. I can’t remember if David spoke to him directly or if it was done through emails, but he got Mr. Bowie’s blessing to recreate the character and have somebody try to personify him vocally. [Lynch told Pitchfork that Bowie granted him permission to use his footage from “Fire Walk With Me,” but he insisted they re-dub his lines with a voice actor. “I think someone must have made him feel bad about his Louisiana accent,” the director said. “But I think it’s so beautiful.”]

It’s a shame, of course, that he was too sick at that point to reprise his role, but it’s amazing how you managed to work around the casting issue by using archival footage, voice dubbing, and, well, turning Jeffries into a machine that sort of looks like a tea kettle.

David found a fascinating way to do that visually, and I thought that was pretty cool. I have to tip my hat to David as a director. He’s incredibly resourceful when shooting at responding to things as they happen and making the most of them. It’s the hallmark of any great director, and David is particularly adept at that.

He also found a creative way to re-cast “The Arm” after original actor Michael J. Anderson declined to participate. In that case, did he just have to jump that creative hurdle after you’d finished writing?

David was responding with both of those instances to events that happened long after the scripts were finished. Certainly he ran the ideas by me, but I trusted his ability implicitly to make something extraordinary happen there, and he certainly crossed that threshold pretty easily.

In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, David said that he came up with the character of Freddie — and his magical green gardening glove — “a long time ago” and just decided it worked in this story. A lot of people have criticized that storyline and character — it’s definitely bizarre to have BOB defeated by this random guy who drops by at the last minute. In “The Final Dossier,” Agent Preston writes, “Don’t even get me going right now on that oddball Cockney kid with the green glove” — almost as if she too is criticizing that plot element.

I haven’t seen any of the feedback, but I’ll just give you a three-word answer: “deus ex machina.”

Can you comment at all on why that random woman from “ The Return” shouts “119”?

Uhhhh…no. [laughs]

I’m a member of this “ Twin Peaks: The Return” Facebook group — I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but there are thousands of members, and the “119” woman seems to fascinate people.

I’m not aware of it. I actually cancelled my Facebook account after the events of the last year, but give them my best regards. [laughs] I’ll give you one possible thing to think about [with the “119” woman]: The people who have one foot in the other world have a pronounced tendency to speak backwards.

We know Evil Cooper was trying to catch this entity in the glass box in New York City, but there’s a lot mystery surrounding this creature. We saw it credited as “The Experiment,” but it also looks almost identical to “Mother,” the creation floating around after the nuclear explosion. It seems there is a direct correlation between these creatures and “Joudy”/Judy. Are we on the right track there?

I would say continue that line of thinking.

Hawk goes into the woods in episode 2, and it appears he’s hunting for The Black Lodge, but that scene feels a bit random after what we’d seen so far. Was this a flash-forward? Was it written in that spot of the script?

That was written. To sum it up, it just says, “Hawk is on the case.” You have to remember that he’d been to that place before 25 years ago, so maybe he’s refreshing his memory.

There are all kinds of random visual things — possibly continuity errors or deliberately disorienting edits — that occur throughout the show. One that picked up a lot of buzz happened at the very end of “Part 13,” with the glitch in Big Ed’s reflection as he’s drinking coffee and eating soup.

I heard about that, and I have to admit I didn’t notice it. I’m not sure what fans are referencing there, to be honest. All I’ll say is that might be a literal tempest in a teacup. [laughs]

Another weird moment: In “Part 7,” Bing — played by David’s son, Riley Lynch – storms into the Double R and asks, “Has anyone seen Billy?” After that moment, the customers in the diner change completely. Do you know if that was intentional?

I do, and I’d say that’s a question for David. I don’t know what the intention was there.

Now the important question: Did Albert Rosenfield find true love with Constance, the coroner? Was it real?

We’ll never know. It might have been true love. It might have been a passing fancy in a midnight dream. But at least he got to dream.

“The Final Dossier”  obviously wraps up some loose ends and gives fans some narrative closure, while obviously still leaving some mysteries up in the air. Do you feel like you’ve closed a door on “ Twin Peaks” in some way?

I didn’t really think of it like that. You sort of don’t think of it that way. You just say, “Here’s what I know. I hope it adds to your interest and appreciation of the world we created, and you take it from there.”

It took you and David years to put this latest season together. And we all know that if there’s going to be any continuation of this — whether it’s another season, a movie — that it’ll probably be awhile. But have you and David had any discussions at all about what form it would take or whether you’d want to do it at all?

I think the best answer here is “no comment.”

A chameleon-like artist has created the best damn Trump satire

Cover detail of "The Unquotable Trump" (Credit: Drawn & Quarterly/R. Sikoryak)

Trump Exhaustion Syndrome is real, and it can extend to anti-Trump articles and comedy. I’m sure Colbert and company are producing fine work in dark times, but I can’t bear to stay up and watch that stuff. It just feels like watching more news. Even Alec Baldwin’s immortal impression is wearing thin.

But however serious your case of Trump overload, there’s a satire worth checking out. Cartoonist Robert Sikoryak — who goes by R. Sikoryak and makes a career of parody — has mashed-up classic comic-book covers with the insane rants of Trump in “The Unquotable Trump” from Drawn & Quarterly. The results are a beautiful celebration of comic-book art and a spectacular satire of President Evil.

Sikoryak began the project last November as a blog and mini-comic, but Drawn and Quarterly’s version is treasury-sized: bigger than magazine size, creating a sumptuous art book. The format is a nod to a 1970s trend at Marvel and DC, when massive editions such as Neal Adams’ “Superman vs. Muhammad Ali” and Jack Kirby’s adaptation of “2001: A Space Odyssey” took up a lot of shelf space. The massive size is likely the only aspect of this book Trump would enjoy.

Sikoryak explained the origin of the project in a phone interview, describing some relatable feelings from last year: “I was getting nauseated and distressed . . . by everything Trump said, basically.” Sikoryak’s previous work gave him the tools to attack Trump with his own words. In “Masterpiece Comics,” Sikoryak retold classic literature in the style of various comic artists, such as “Crime and Punishment” via Dick Sprang’s Batman and Dr. Faustus mashed with Garfield. He was also parodying specific pages of artists alongside existing text in “Terms and Conditions” (more on that book in a few paragraphs). So it seemed natural to mix Trump’s “long, rambling, aggravating words” with classic comic-book covers featuring The Fantastic Four, Richie Rich, The Walking Dead and others.  

Sikoryak only uses Trump quotes from speeches and interviews — never the tweets. On each huge page, Sikoryak amplifies and undermines the quote with the perfect cover. Trump’s obsession with his electoral count of 306 is a natural for a parody of Frank Miller’s “300.” In “Trumpsformers” — “Rich Guys in Disguise” — Sikoryak mimics a 1994 Transformers cover by Derek Yaniger, featuring a massive, robotic Trump wielding two guns and stomping on the head of another robot. Trump’s real-life words pair well with this absurd image: “I am more for the military . . . I am the most militaristic person in this room.” It’s easy to believe Trump imagines a similarly intimidating sight when he looks in the mirror.

“Giant Size Super-Leader Team-Up” takes aim at one of Trump’s most questionable traits: his disturbing man-crush on Vladimir Putin. This cover is based on a Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-up cover from 1975 by Gil Kane and Al Milgrom. Full of kinetic energy, Trump and a shirtless Putin pummel anonymous goons. The quotation shows that flattery gets you everywhere with Trump: “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.” They say everyone is the hero of their own story: this cover exposes the macho tough-guy connection he fancies sharing with Putin.

Sikoryak’s reimagined covers create a cumulative portrait of Trump that remains accurate today, though many quotes are from the 2016 campaign. Trump’s issues with women are on display in “Cat Pussy,” which shows a leering Trump gesturing toward a leather-clad, whip-carrying Catwoman as he spews his laughable debate line, “Nobody has more respect for women that I do.” Sikoryak nails Trump’s ongoing war with the media via a Superman comic from 1960 redubbed “Supersad.” Taking the place of Titano the Super-Ape in the original cover, Trump is a monstrous, King Kong-like giant attacking the Daily Planet building, firing Kryptonite eye beams at Superman, whose S insignia is replaced with the word “Sad.” This cover captures Trump’s relentless attempts to crush journalism by making the crushing literal.

Sikoryak has made a career out of parody and homage, which he took to new extremes in another 2017 book: “Terms and Conditions.” In this insane book, Sikoryak turns the exquisitely boring text of Apple’s Terms and Conditions into a sprawling graphic novel, with each page illustrated in the style of a different creator, including Steve Ditko, Roz Chast, H.G. Peter, Lynda Barry, Harvey Pekar, R. Crumb, Carl Barks and Alison Bechtel, plus dozens of others artists. Sikoryak’s skill in mimicking these styles is extraordinary.

If you ever wondered what Mad Magazine would be like if edited by John Cage, Sikoryak’s body of work is the answer. His main influences are Art Spiegelman, Mad (well-known for its parodies), and conceptual artists such as Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Marcel Duchamp. With “Terms and Conditions,” Sikoryak also has something in common with poet/conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith, who famously turned everything he said for a week into “Soliloquy,” along with other forms of what he calls “uncreative writing.” But Sikoryak doesn’t just present the mundane as art: with his versatile artistic skills, he creates inspired juxtapositions. If Goldsmith does uncreative writing, Sikoryak does creative uncreative comics.

Sikoryak said his favorite artist to mimic is Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, whose work he grew up on: “I’ve been looking at it my whole life . . . I know it in my bones.” He said the trickiest element of imitation isn’t always drawing the characters, but getting inside the thought process of the artist. How do they pace their comics? What’s their mode of storytelling? For this reason, he said Dilbert was “deceptively difficult.” Despite the crude cartooning, Sikoryak found Scott Adam’s storytelling rhythm “very peculiar.” A far different challenge is posed by the intricate, hyper-detailed art of Winsor McCay.

Sikoryak was coy about future projects but did say he’s working on a sequel to his impressive “Masterpiece Comics” and an adaptation of “Moby Dick.” He’s unsure about doing more Trump covers, but let’s hope he continues this hilarious and revelatory project, if the poor guy can stomach Trump any more. This mash-up of comic book art and real-life horror is smart, silly, incisive and hilarious — and 25 percent of proceeds will go to the ACLU. From the size of the book to the scope of the accomplishment, “The Unquotable Trump” is bigly all the way.