Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 252

The art of remembering the dead

(Credit: Shutterstock/I. Pilon)

Vanessa Gould, a documentary filmmaker, grew close to one of her subjects, Eric Joisel, a master of origami. “He was at the height of his creative output,” Gould said. “He was doing work that really was breaking boundaries.”

Gould eventually released her documentary on Joisel. Two years after the film’s release, the artist died at 53 years old.

“When he passed away,” Gould said, “what I didn’t anticipate was the feeling of the void that was left artistically in his absence. How would his ideas and all the art he’d created be remembered? He was a pretty reclusive, solitary man, living outside of Paris in a barn without many resources. So I felt this instantaneous fear that his legacy would evaporate pretty quickly with time and that there was nothing in the universe that was in place to help us remember him and what he had contributed to the world.”

Vanessa took it upon herself to try and memorialize her friend, and in the process she was drawn toward another art form, one that would become the subject of her next documentary film, “Obit.”

“I contacted probably two dozen newspapers around the world,” Gould said, “with a brief biography of him and some photographs of his work. The only newspaper that wrote me back was The New York Times.”

The paper of record, The New York Times, writes about 1,000 to 1,200 obituary articles per year. If you’re one of the selected few to have an obituary article written about you, it’s free for your family because it’s news. If you’re not one of the select few, it can be expensive. That’s true for most obituaries — unless you die in Iceland.

In Iceland, obituaries are printed free of charge in the popular newspaper Morgunbladid. They once had no word limit, and it’s not unusual to have several obits for the same person appear in the same issue. In addition to basic biographical information, people remember the dead with specific memories. In Iceland, public obituaries are an art form. After the newspaper loosened their rules for obituaries, the art form changed and a new approach to grieving emerged.

The tradition of Icelandic obituaries is tied to a deep connection to the past, but the tradition has changed as Iceland balances the past with the present and a collective history with the personal one.

“I would say 15 years ago we decided that the lengths had become an obstruction because there were so many obituaries that we couldn’t print them all,” says Karl Blöndal, Morgunbladid’s deputy editor. “It used to be that these were simply articles where people would talk about the career of the deceased and the deceased family tree. The thing was that you had the person who took care of the obituaries and that person retired and the one who took over just decided to relax the rules a bit.”

The obituaries became far more emotional in content and language. The paper had never received obituaries written in this kind of way before.

To hear the story of how the Icelandic obituary changed, listen to “Letters to the Dead.”

Corey Feldman names actor he alleges sexually abused him

Corey Feldman (Credit: Getty/Stuart Wilson)

Corey Feldman, a popular teen star of the 1980s who appeared in such films as “Stand by Me” and “The Lost Boys,” acted today on a promise he’d made last year to name the abuser who he claims preyed on him when he was a child.

“I would love to name names,” Feldman told the Hollywood Reporter in a 2016 interview. At the time, Feldman claimed that predatory men in the film industry had been “grooming” teenage or preteen actors — including himself — at lavish Hollywood parties. He also alleged that his frequent acting partner and friend, Corey Haim, had been raped at age 11 — a claim that Haim’s mother, Judy Haim, has previously denied.

“We’re not talking about huge executives and directors that I am aware of that were involved in this,” Feldman, now 46, said in 2016. “The people that I knew doing it were publicists, they were photographers for teen magazines, things like that.”

In an appearance today on the nationally-syndicated talk show “Dr. Oz,” Feldman openly  one man who he alleges molested him: actor John Grissom. “I believe that I can also bring down, potentially, a pedophile ring that I’ve been aware of since I was a child,” Feldman told Dr. Oz. Then, live on air, Feldman proceeded to call the Los Angeles Police Department and report Grissom.

A Hollywood Reporter story revealed that Grissom had previous related charges on his record, including a “a 2001 arrest for child molestation charges.” Despite Grissom having been found guilty in 2003, the Reporter noted that he had not registered as a sex offender with the state of California, in violation of state law. Dr. Oz’s legal counsel elaborated on the legal details in a Facebook segment.

Grissom is not a well-known actor, and only has only two credits on his IMDb page: “License to Drive” (1988) and 1989’s “Dream a Little Dream.” Both films also starred Feldman and Haim. At the time those films were made, both Feldman and Haim would have been between 16 and 18.

Recently, Feldman has been an outspoken advocate for victims of child sexual abuse like himself. In a video monologue posted on Dr. Oz’s website, Feldman said that he wanted to “find out exactly who these people are, where they’re located, and hopefully bring them to justice and bring them into light.” Feldman then said he was trying to raise money to fund a feature film so that he could “tell the story in great detail.” “It’s important for people to actually grasp and understand the feelings and emotions of what I went through as a child and what it’s like to face these kinds of fears, and to have the kind of pressure of alienation and degradation I’ve had to face,” Feldman added.

Feldman has suggested he will reveal more names of abusers after receiving financing for a self-produced film on the subject. In October 2017, Feldman initiated a crowdfunding campaign called “Corey Feldman’s TRUTH campaign.” In the Youtube video accompanying the crowdfunding campaign, Feldman said, “right off the bat, I can name six names, one of whom is still very powerful today.” Feldman added that he hoped to “break the dam of silence” by producing a film that would be “the most honest and true depiction of child abuse ever portrayed, by telling my own story.” “Everybody wants the answer. Who did this? Who’s responsible,” Feldman said in the video. He added that he hoped his film would “let the truth be told” and “let justice be served.”

 

Danny Masterson under fire for allegedly raping four women

Danny Masterson (Credit: Getty/Anna Webber)

Following a series of accusations and exposés leveled at multiple powerful men in the field of entertainment, “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson may be undergoing renewed scrutiny for allegedly raping four women.

The charges against Masterson, 41, come from currently unnamed women whose claims date back to the 2000s. Even before the exposés covering Harvey Weinstein’s reputed pattern of sexual abuse surfaced, these accusations were under investigation by Los Angeles authorities. However, in this rapidly shifting media atmosphere, a report on the progress of those investigations written by Yashar Ali and published on HuffPost may see Masterson facing increased scrutiny.

According to Ali, “A monthslong investigation into multiple allegations of rape against actor Danny Masterson has inexplicably stalled, despite the Los Angeles County district attorney having compelling evidence in the case, multiple sources told HuffPost.”

Ali’s sources “inside and outside the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office” remain anonymous, but reportedly tell him that the evidence against Masterson includes “audiotapes, emails sent to and from [The Church of] Scientology officers at the time the alleged rapes happened, forensic computer evidence and a threatening handwritten letter Masterson sent to one of the alleged victims, according to two people with knowledge of the evidence in the district attorney’s possession.”

In Ali’s words, “Masterson is a longtime member of the Church of Scientology, an organization that has a history of covering up allegations of misconduct leveled against the organization and its members. At least three of the women who have accused him of rape were also Scientologists and reported the incidents to the Church of Scientology at the time.”

Ali posits a conspiracy on the part of the Church to suppress information about these alleged incidents, painting a picture of codes of silence and internal police documents mysteriously disappearing. He does not provide any fully sourced, substantial evidence to support those claims.

Still, Ali alleges that:

One of Masterson’s accusers filed a police report in 2004 saying that she was raped in 2003, but the case didn’t move forward after the Church of Scientology intervened and submitted over 50 affidavits from Scientologists who denied the woman’s account. According to a report filed with the Los Angeles Police Department, the woman said Masterson raped her while she was “passed out,” and when she awoke and realized he was raping her, she struggled with him until he choked her and she passed out again.

The accusation above has been circulated before, but detailing the extent of the investigation surrounding and suggesting a conspiracy is a rare move by a mainstream publication. These are very much the sort of things limited to the website of consistent Church of Scientology critic Tony Ortega, who has been reporting on the legal wrangling around Masterson since at least 2016.

The Church of Scientology has long denied any accusations of wrongdoing or mistreatment within its ranks and has constantly contested Ortega’s work. It has not, as of yet, responded to Ali’s article in the HuffPost.

White student arrested after allegedly contaminating her black roommate with bodily fluids

University of Hartford student Brianna Brochu, charged with smearing body fluids on her roommate's belongings. (Credit: West Hartford Police Department)

A white student at the University of Hartford in Connecticut has been charged with criminal mischief and breach of peace after she posted an Instagram message bragging about how she terrorized her black roommate for over a month. The student under arrest, Brianna Brochu, 18, was also expelled from the university.

The since deleted post read:

After one and a half months spitting in her coconut oil, putting moldy clam dip in her lotions, rubbing used tampons on her backpack, putting her toothbrush places where the sun doesn’t shine, and so much more, I can finally say goodbye to Jamaican Barbie

Authorities said they arrested and charged Brochu after she turned herself in. Brochu has already confessed to charges of third-degree criminal mischief and second-degree breach of peace, each of which carry a maximum sentence of six months in prison. On Wednesday, police announced they were requesting that Brochu also be charged with intimidation based on bigotry or bias, a felony crime, The New York Times reported.

Chennel Rowe, who goes by “Jazzy” on social media, posted the allegations to Facebook in a video, spurring the hashtag #JusticeforJazzy. In the video, Rowe claims that since she moved into college, she began to get sick.

“It started with throat pain. I thought maybe because it’s colder up here, I’m just probably catching a cold,” she said. “It got to the point where I had extreme throat pain that I couldn’t sleep, to the point where I couldn’t speak.” Rowe says she went to the campus health center, which conducted three tests and prescribed her antibiotics.

Rowe said things were so uncomfortable between her and her roommate that she decided to move out, because she felt “unwanted in my own room.” She described being both ignored and disrespected. Rowe said if she was in the room trying to do work, her roommate would come in and turn off all the lights.

During the moving process, two RAs alerted Rowe to Brochu’s Instagram post. They also sent her screenshots of pictures allegedly documenting what Brochu did to her belongings. These images included photographs of bloodstains on Rowe’s backpack.

University of Hartford president Gregory S. Woodward condemned Brochu’s actions in a statement. “Let me be clear: the accused student’s behavior was reprehensible and does not reflect the values of our institution. Let me also be clear that I am confident the University has taken all steps to pursue this matter seriously, and will continue to do so,” he wrote.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2009 found that young and old people alike think “the younger generation is more racially tolerant than their elders,” adding, “more than two decades of Pew Research surveys confirm that assessment.”

But this incident proves that bigotry is unlikely to simply die out as older generations pass (though such a belief has certainly been used to minimize young people of color’s experiences with racism in higher-learning institutions nationwide). Stories such as the one above suggest that a passive approach to abolishing racism, waiting it out, may be insufficient. Indeed, believing that bigotry will simply pass with time and patience may serve instead to preserve it.

After all, white people across all economic, education, gender and age groups supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, despite his hateful rhetoric or, in some cases, because of it.

Link strengthens between adolescent pot smoking and psychosis

(Credit: AP Photo/Haven Daley)

BERLIN — Society’s embrace of cannabis to treat nausea, pain and other conditions proceeds apace with the drive to legalize the plant for recreational use. Pot’s seemingly innocuous side effects have helped clear a path toward making it a legal cash crop, with all of the marketing glitz brought to other consumer products. But that clean bill of health only goes so far. Marijuana’s potentially detrimental impact on the developing brains of adolescents remains a key focus of research — particularly because of the possibility teenage users could go on to face a higher risk of psychosis.

New findings may fuel those worries. At the World Psychiatric Association’s World Congress in Berlin on October 9, Hannelore Ehrenreich of the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine presented results of a study of 1,200 people with schizophrenia. The investigation analyzed a wide range of genetic and environmental risk factors for developing the debilitating mental illness. The results — being submitted for publication — show people who had consumed cannabis before age 18 developed schizophrenia approximately 10 years earlier than others. The higher the frequency of use, the data indicated, the earlier the age of schizophrenia onset. In her study neither alcohol use nor genetics predicted an earlier time of inception, but pot did. “Cannabis use during puberty is a major risk factor for schizophrenia,” Ehrenreich says.

Other studies, although not all, support the thrust of Ehrenreich’s findings. “There is no doubt,” concludes Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatry at King’s College London, that cannabis use in young people increases the risk of developing schizophrenia as an adult. Speaking at the Berlin conference, Murray — one of the first scientists to research pot’s link to the disorder — cited 10 studies that found a significant risk of young cannabis users developing psychosis. He also mentioned three other studies that identified a clear trend but had a sample size that was too small to reach statistical significance. “The more [cannabis] you take — and the higher the potency — the greater the risk,” he contends, warning this makes the increasingly potent new strains of marijuana especially concerning.

In an interview Murray said his research with users in London has shown that high-potency cannabis — approximately 16 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) — was involved in 24 percent of all cases of a first episode of psychosis. (New laws permitting recreational pot use do not make it legal for teens to consume cannabis, but that has not impeded access.)

Interpretations of these new findings are hardly likely to receive universal acceptance. Questions about the cannabis–psychosis link have persisted for years. “The available data on this subject is far from definitive — particularly with regard to any potential cause-and-effect relationship,” notes Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a U.S. organization that advocates marijuana legalization for adults. “For instance, increased cannabis use by the public has not been followed by a proportional rise in diagnoses of schizophrenia or psychosis.”

In 2015 the Toronto-based International Center for Science in Drug Policy issued a report — “State of the Evidence: Cannabis Use and Regulation” — that detailed this discrepancy. It cited a British study that estimated the significant rise in pot use should have produced, between 1990 and 2010, a 29 percent increase in schizophrenia cases among men and 12 percent among women. But according to other data, during the time when usage was thought to have grown most (1996 to 2005), the number of new schizophrenia cases remained stable or declined. “These findings strongly suggest that cannabis use does not cause schizophrenia,” the center’s report notes.

Another speaker at the Berlin conference — Beat Lutz, a neurochemist at the University of Mainz — described the mechanisms by which the drug might produce deleterious effects in a young person’s brain. The main psychoactive compound in marijuana, THC, disrupts the normal flow of signals among brain cells—a process normally regulated by chemicals called endocannabinoids.

These compounds occur naturally in the body and activate a type of cellular docking site (called the cannabinoid type 1, or CB1, receptor) to “act like a circuit breaker,” Lutz says, keeping the brain’s level of signaling activity or “excitation” within a normal range. Too little endocannabinoid signaling results in excessive excitation of the nervous system, and this can promote anxiety disorders, impulsivity and epilepsy. Too much activity has the opposite effect and can promote depression, for example. Upsetting the information flows regulated by the endocannabinoid system has also been linked to psychosis.

THC acts differently from endocannabinoids. It does not break down rapidly in the body the way natural endocannabinoids do, Lutz says, noting this sustained activation causes serious wide-ranging disturbances in the brain. Low doses of THC may reduce anxiety but high doses can heighten it, and chronic overstimulation of CB1 receptors by THC shuts down the body’s natural endocannabinoid signaling system by eliminating the CB1 receptors from neurons, Lutz adds. In addition, new research reveals mitochondria — the organelles within cells that generate energy for cellular metabolism — also have CB1 receptors. THC inhibits mitochondrial activity, reducing the cells’ vital energy supply, he says, citing a 2016 paper published in Nature. Perhaps most critically, he believes THC’s disruption of endocannabinoid signaling in the early teen brain can hinder key neurodevelopmental processes that involve the CB1 receptors, thereby impairing brain communication permanently.

Recent research on marijuana is starting to address the type of questions that might ordinarily be revealed via lengthy clinical trials during the development of a pharmaceutical. This process is occurring as the legalization bandwagon picks up speed. Marijuana is increasingly taking a place alongside Johnny Walker and Yellow Tail on the credenza — no longer stashed away in a drawer within. In the U.S. marijuana use among high school seniors is more common than smoking cigarettes. The researchers at the Berlin conference discussed the need to alert the public about worrying new findings. “As physicians, we need to say clearly what is happening and what is not,” says Peter Falkai, a psychiatrist at the Munich Center for Neurosciences at Ludwig Maximilian University. “Looking into the data, clearly yes, the data show increasing risk of psychosis.”

Walls like Trump’s destroy the past and threaten the future

(Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

History teaches us that walls don’t work.

Yet U.S. President Donald Trump is continuing to push on with his plans to construct a 3,000-kilometre barrier along the United States-Mexico border. There are eight border wall prototypes being built in San Diego, with an Oct. 26 deadline rapidly approaching to complete construction.

Archaeologists all over the world are deeply concerned by the destruction of heritage and the folly of constructing such a monumental barrier.

Given the length of the proposed wall, cultural heritage experts expect that hundreds of historic and ancient sites will be destroyed. By some estimates, when the infrastructure to build the wall is included, the project will actually amount to 15,000 kilometres of road and wall. A project of this scale substantially increases the threat to those sites.

Some have suggested it could be good for archaeology. After all, there are regulations for heritage protection in development projects in the United States as there are in Canada, and this would mean an increase in employment in the cultural resource management fields.

Not so.

An earlier construction in 2008 through the land of the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona suggests that such laws are easily circumvented by the U.S. federal government. That project was overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, which waived laws meant to protect archaeological sites, resulting in fragments of human remains being spat out by the treads of backhoes.

Walls going up everywhere

An extension of these walls would run through more Indigenous land and contravene the rights of people associated with it.

Trump’s wall is not the only mammoth barrier being constructed. They’re going up globally at a dizzying pace, and scholars from a number of fields are examining the reasons for, and implications of, border walls.

As an archaeologist who conducts research in the rural landscapes of the South American Andes, I excavate, map and think about walls often, including large-scale hilltop fortification walls. Archeologists like me have a long-term perspective on their successes.

Large-scale walls certainly act as monumental markers, highlighting on the landscape where cultures have clashed. But our work and that of colleagues around the globe suggests — despite what politicians might have us believe — that walls are no deterrent.

This point was recently explored by Cornell archaeologist Adam Smith. Smith discusses a wall in the city of Ur in modern-day Iraq in the third millennium BC, Hadrian’s wall in the UK in the first century AD and the Great Wall of China in the 14th century AD. While these walls were all impressive constructions, as no doubt Trump’s wall would be, they were also, in Smith’s words, “spectacular failures.”

Smith points out that walls are porous and can always be circumvented. As more recent walls, such as those of the West Bank or Berlin demonstrate, people will go to extremes to escape persecution, to find economic security or to reconnect with loved ones.

Crosses memorialize those who died trying to go over the Berlin Wall in this 1989 photo.

(Creative Commons)

The case of the existing infrastructure on the U.S.-Mexico border already proves this. This is a landscape peppered with hundreds of tunnels circumventing the existing fences and walls, and people are getting through.

The strongest existing deterrent to illegal migration is the landscape itself, as shown by Jason De León and his Undocumented Migration Project out of the University of Michigan. Like the best archaeologist, De León works to “make the invisible visible,” and he focuses attention on the movements of migrants along the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona.

His 2015 book, “The Land of Open Graves,” he draws on forensic science, linguistics, ethnography and archaeology to examine the impact of the federal government’s “Prevention Through Deterrence” program. De León follows the material remains scattered across the desert to examine the human cost of such policies, which has resulted in 2,771 deaths between January 2000 and September 2014.

Will a wall truly stop movement?

Certainly, legal and illegal population is an issue across the globe, from internal movements within African countries to the terrifying effects of the conflict in Syria.

In a year where we’ve seen legal visa holders stuck at borders, and migrants nervous about Trump crossing our own borders amid difficult conditions, it seems even more important to carefully think about the material impact of fear and xenophobia.

Archaeology may have some insight into those issues. Adam Smith reminds us politicians have long turned to walls to solve problems, yet De León and other anthropologists and archaeologists working with contemporary migration issues demonstrate that the costs of such walls can have long-term unintended consequences, including an increase in violence and insecurity. Even as walls come down like they did in Berlin, the ramifications can be long-lasting.

There are no simple answers. But if American taxpayers are going to pay for the approximately US$25 billion wall — and with the current prototypes going up, it appears that money will indeed be spent — it’s perhaps worth a more considered discussion.

Will a wall check movement in North America? Or will it simply create a temporary illusion of deterrence, while destroying both historic sites and the lives of people living in the present?

Andrew Roddick, Associate Professor of Anthropology, McMaster University

What to make of Weinstein’s “young female assistant” who aided his sexual assaults

Harvey Weinstein (Credit: AP/Richard Shotwell)

If Hollywood were to make a movie about Harvey Weinstein, the roles of villain and victims are clearly already cast. But one compelling character in the still developing story has remained somewhat in the shadows. More than 50 women have publicly accused Weinstein of sexual assault and harassment, all following the same general themes (i.e., she was a rising actor/model/filmmaker; he invited her to his hotel room and asked for a massage; he made not quite vague threats about ruining her career). But this particular shadowy character appears over and over in their accounts — a mysterious female assistant who escorted Weinstein to the women he was about to prey on.

Take Brit Marling’s description in the Atlantic:

“…a young, female assistant there who said the meeting had been moved upstairs to his suite because he was a very busy man…”

Or Lupita Nyong’o in the New York Times:

“I met a female assistant when I arrived there. I was expecting that it would be a group of us, as it had been for the reading, but she informed me it would just be Mr. Weinstein. She would sit with me until he arrived. She seemed on edge, but I could only imagine how stressful it was to work for a man who had so much going on.”

This unnamed assistant appears in so many accounts of Weinstein’s unwanted pursuits, the perpetual enabler of his crimes, the benchwarmer before the victim’s arrival. Who is this woman (or multiple women, most likely)? It’s not as important to know her actual identity. We know she was ambitious, aware to some extent of what her boss was doing, as so many were at the Weinstein Company, involved directly in the act of handing fresh meat over to him. Yes, Weinstein is an undoubtedly evil figure, as is R. Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, and others like them. But some may ask: Who could do such a thing to her fellow women?

Instead, we should consider the unhappy fact that this young female assistant was forced to assist Weinstein in the first place.

As details of Weinstein’s serial sexual assaults emerged, the right wing was quick to blame Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda — literally any woman they could think of to take the blame for his crimes. Shaming Kellyanne Conway for blaming Hillary Clinton for enabling Harvey Weinstein … it’s a dizzying, sickening, never-ending cycle, and it distracts from the real issue at hand. All we can do is wonder why the bystanders in and outside of Hollywood who knew what Weinstein was up to participated indirectly in his acts. Their silence certainly may have perpetuated and helped to cover up his crimes. But they did not commit those crimes, and that’s a crucial distinction to make.

It is true that generally, under our patriarchal system, we women are not very good at sticking up for or protecting one another. But there is no definitive rule to follow about assigning blame to enablers. Real life is much murkier than the movies. Throughout history, figures who have been forced into the role of extreme enabler have taken some of the blame for the crimes of others. Think of the house slave or the kapo. While they participated in a system of violence, these roles would not have existed without the truly powerful people at the helm giving instructions.

In the case of the young female assistant, a recent example is more helpful in understanding her actions: the 53 percent of white women who voted for Donald Trump. We can endlessly probe the reasons behind this vast betrayal of their fellow women, although many claim not to care about or believe the women who have accused Trump himself of sexual assault: Are those 53 percent of white women masochists? Were they scared, or under the false notion that the cause of feminism does not serve their best interests? Or did they knowingly throw other women under the bus because, as a species, women have so deeply internalized millennia of patriarchal oppression that they simply lash out at each other? Are any of these valid reasons for Weinstein’s assistant opening the door for more women to be hurt by him?

Or, could the (arguable) complicity of Weinstein’s young female assistant be explained in some other way? It’s not hard to believe, given all the stories we’ve heard over the past few weeks about the sexism, objectification and de facto sex trafficking built into “making it” in Hollywood, that the young female assistant was simply a person who was given a great opportunity in a highly competitive industry and was reluctant to offend the man who offered it to her. This is what several of Weinstein’s victims have said about why they didn’t speak up, why they eventually gave him what he asked for. The young female assistant is a victim herself, and was just as deeply trapped in the system of violence as the women she helped to ensnare in it.

Saying she is complicit is a different kind of victim-blaming than what we see done in similar cases of sexual assault. Call it “enabler-blaming.” Megyn Kelly has accused a female PR person of assisting powerful men at Fox News to commit their own sexual crimes. It’s important to call her out on her role, but it’s even more important to recognize that a sick culture existed at Fox News for years, and the ones who benefited the most were Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly. They created the system of oppression, and undoubtedly, female employees had to participate in it or find somewhere else to work.

We must put in perspective the vast array of victims Weinstein ensnared in the web he created, ranging from the actresses he abused, to the assistants he used as bait, to the journalists accused of allowing it to happen … the list goes on. Weinstein is the spider at the center of it all, and the web is one of his making. He fed on the fear, the sexism in Hollywood, the competitive nature of the film industry and amplified it to sustain his appetite for sexual abuse.

Blaming the young assistant, Hillary Clinton, Jane Fonda, or anyone else actually obscures a key point. The Times journalists, the Weinstein Company employees, the enabling PR person, all reveal the state of human fragility. Not all of us, faced with a terrible choice, can choose the noble thing, or the self-sacrificial thing. We are hardwired to survive, and our highly developed brains help us to justify the unappealing consequences. It’s what allows us to keep on living. The young female assistant is a reminder that many, many women carry out and participate in oppression by men.

It’s appalling that Harvey Weinstein coerced his young female assistants into betraying their fellow women in this way. Weinstein promised them and his victims that he would boost their careers if they tolerated and enabled his perversions. Faced with no other compelling choice, they bought into this false hope. This manipulation is what allowed Weinstein to sustain his power for so long. So let’s think twice before assigning blame to the “young female assistant” or anyone else — it distracts from the depravity of the crime-doer himself.

Mueller indictments beg the questions: why Manafort? Why Papadopoulos? Why now?

Robert Mueller; Paul Manafort; Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/AP/Salon)

Events of this week are making clear that the Spring of 2016 was a pretty important time in American politics. Let’s take a trip back in time and have a look at what we knew back then – and moreover, what we didn’t know.

By the Spring of last year, Donald Trump had survived the interminable string of clown-car Republican primary debates despite so-called slip-ups such as referring to the size of his dick. He had not only survived the early primaries, he had won most of the races in March and April. By May, he was the presumptive Republican nominee. Without a normal campaign staff or state campaign organizations,Trump had completely confounded the experts. He delivered unhinged performances at debates — and won them. He delivered one unhinged speech after another at rallies on the campaign trail — and got what the New York Times called $2 billion in free media for his troubles. He had exactly one endorsement from a congressional Republican, Jeff Sessions, and only one prominent supporter with any national security experience, retired general Michael Flynn. All that stood between him and the nomination was the Republican national convention. That’s what we knew about Trump in the Spring of 2016.

Here is what we didn’t know. We didn’t know that in February of 2016, lobbyist and former Republican campaign operative Paul Manafort began making moves to join the Trump campaign. By late March, he was on board as Trump’s delegate wrangler for the convention, along with his long-time aide and business associate Rick Gates. We didn’t then know about Manafort’s long association with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. We didn’t know that in 2005, Manafort had signed a $10 million contract with billionaire and Putin-pal Oleg Deripaska to “greatly benefit the Putin Government” with a U.S.-based lobbying campaign. We didn’t know that Manafort would offer to provide “personal briefings” on the Trump campaign to his friend Deripaska. We didn’t know that Manafort would engineer the removal of the so-called “Russia plank,” which was critical of Russia’s seizure of Crimea, from the Republican party platform at their July convention. We didn’t know that Manafort and Gates had received as much as $75 million from their various business contacts in Ukraine and Russia and had been laundering that money through front-companies and banks in Cyprus.

We didn’t know that in early March, a 30 year old “energy consultant” by the name of George Papadopoulos was named by Jeff Sessions to Trump’s foreign policy advisory council, along with another “energy consultant” specializing in Russian oil and gas deals by the name of Carter Page. We didn’t know that Carter Page had been recruited in 2013 in New York by a Russian spy named Victor Podobnyy, who was recorded by the FBI telling another Russian spy, Igor Sporyshev, about a meeting he had with Page concerning the Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom: “I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am,” Podobnyy said. “He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up.” Podobnyy and Sporyshev fled the United States to avoid espionage charges. Another Russian spy, Evgeny Buryakov was convicted and sent to Federal prison by New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who Trump fired from his job soon after he took office.

We didn’t know that after he joined the Trump campaign team, Papadopoulos would run into a London-based “Professor” by the name of Joseph Mifsud in Italy.  We didn’t know that this obvious agent of Russian intelligence calling himself “Professor” Mifsud would show great interest in young Papadopoulos as soon as he learned he was part of the Trump campaign. We didn’t know that in late March, Papadopoulos would be introduced by Mifsud to a Russian woman he described as a “niece” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. We didn’t know that Mifsud would introduce Papadopoulos to another Russian who had close ties to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, and that Papadopoulos would, with the knowledge of the Trump campaign, try try to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We didn’t know that over breakfast in London, Mifsud would tell Papadopoulos he knew some Russians who had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton and thousands of her emails. We wouldn’t know until July 22 what those emails contained, when WikiLeaks released them in an attack on Clinton’s candidacy for president.

We didn’t know that senior campaign officials told Papadopoulos to go ahead and set up a trip to Russia for a “low level” campaign official or to travel there himself. We didn’t know that the other Russia-connected foreign policy adviser to Trump, Carter Page, (according to an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC) would be copied on the email exchanges within the Trump campaign, and that Page would take just such a trip to Russia in July to give a speech to the New Economic School, where he would be reported to have met with Igor Sechin, the Russian oligarch close to Putin who is the head of the Russian state oil company Roseneft. We didn’t know that the FBI and U.S. intelligence were so shocked by Page’s behavior in Moscow that they would open a counterintelligence investigation of him and obtain a FISA warrant in an attempt to learn about his contacts with Russian government officials.

We didn’t know that on June 9, a meeting would take place at the Trump Tower headquarters of the Trump campaign between Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and four Russians who had been advertised as having negative information to share with them on Hillary Clinton. We didn’t know that one of the Russians at the meeting would be a lawyer by the name of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and that she would present a memo to the assembled Trump campaign officials that contained language about Russian sanctions that Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, had shared with California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher two months previously.

We didn’t know that members of the Trump campaign, including Campaign manager Manafort and chief foreign policy adviser Jeff Sessions, would attend an event at the Republican National Convention and meet with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the first of a series of contacts between the Trump campaign and transition staff and Kislyak that would extend through the end of 2016 and into 2017.

In fact, way back in March, April, May, June, and July of last year, we didn’t know a thing about all of these contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and so many Russian citizens. We also didn’t know that not once did anyone from the Trump campaign pick up the phone and call the FBI and report that Russians were offering them material they had stolen from the Democrats.

We didn’t know any of this stuff about the Trump campaign and Russians last year, here is what Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller knows this year.

He knows what’s in the tax returns of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, because he’s seen them. If Mueller suspects anyone else of money laundering, he will subpoena their tax returns and examine them, too.

There was nothing in the charges against Papadopoulos about who he told about the “dirt” and “thousands of emails” the Russians had on Hillary Clinton. But Mueller knows the names of those in the Trump campaign Papadopoulos told about the stolen emails, because the former Trump foreign policy advisor is cooperating with him.

Donald Trump Jr. described the meeting with Russians at Trump Tower as “such nothing . . . a wasted 20 minutes.” Jared Kushner claimed he was so bored he got up and left early. Campaign manager Manafort claimed he just ducked into the meeting as a courtesy. But Special Prosecutor Mueller knows why the meeting was a bust. Everyone from the Trump campaign already knew the Russians had the Democrat’s emails because Papadopoulos had told them. They knew the Clinton and Podesta emails would soon be released. They took the meeting with the Russians because they were looking for new dirt on Hillary. Mueller knows  they quickly brought the meeting to a close because the dirt they were being offered wasn’t new.

Mueller knows that the claims by Trump that there was “no collusion” are hollow because he already has evidence of that collusion and the crimes that flow from it. He knows that Papadopoulos informed the Trump campaign about the emails Russia stole from the Democratic Party. He has a long list of the dozens of times Trump talked about the stolen emails in his campaign. Mueller knows what crimes were committed as a result of this collusion, and he is looking to prosecute somebody for them.

Mueller knows that charging Manafort and Gates with serious crimes that carry sentences of 20 years in Federal prison will incentivize them to reveal what they know about the Trump campaign’s connection to Russians. Mueller knows that announcing the deal he made with Papadopoulos will send a signal to all of those named and not named by Papadopoulos that he is coming after them, and he’s serious.

Mueller knows the contents of all of the other documents he has subpoenaed so far. Mueller knows what was said in the interviews with other witnesses he has conducted. And he knows the answer to the biggest question of them all. He knows why he didn’t charge Michael Flynn.

There are only two reasons Mueller didn’t charge Michael Flynn on Monday. The first is that he hasn’t finished with his investigation and he’s going to charge him at some point in the future. The second is, like he did with Papadopoulos, he has already arrested Flynn, charged him and made a plea deal. It’s known that Flynn failed to register as a lobbyist for foreign powers, a charge that Mueller has already brought against Manafort and Gates. It’s known that at the time Sally Yates reported him to the White House for lying to the Vice President about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Flynn lied to the FBI, a charge Mueller has already brought against Papadopoulos.

Michael Flynn spent more time with candidate Trump last year than anyone. Michael Flynn was the cut-out Trump used to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Michael Flynn was in the meeting at Trump Tower between Jared Kushner, Kislyak, and Sergey Gorkov, the head Vnesheconombank, the Russian state bank currently under U.S. sanctions. Michael Flynn knows everything there is to know about Trump and the Russians.

I think Special Counsel Mueller already knows what Michael Flynn knows. When it comes to Trump and the Russians, Robert Mueller knows what happened.

A welcome update of “S.W.A.T.” debuts on the heels of a grim diversity report on TV writers rooms

Shawn Ryan; Aaron Rahsaan Thomas (Credit: Getty/Dia Dipasupil)

CBS’s reboot of “S.W.A.T.” is debuting at either an auspicious point in the season and the current headline cycle, or at a most unfortunate time. It all depends on your point of view.

The modern version of the 1975 police drama, debuting Thursday at 10 p.m., comes to us a month after a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left the nation shaken, days following a terrorist attack in New York, and in the midst of a widespread tense debate over the disproportionate level of police brutality suffered by African Americans.

Understandably then, a number of viewers may see Shemar Moore’s casting as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson, a role originated by Steve Forrest in the ‘70s, as a cynical and placating move. Moore’s casting makes him the only lead of color in CBS’s lineup of new series for 2017-2018 which, given the network’s less-than-stellar diversity track record is worth pointing out as an improvement for the network and an indicator that it has many miles to go.

But the show’s pedigree behind the camera adds something extra to this story. The revival is executive produced by Shawn Ryan, the creator behind such series as “The Shield” for FX and “The Chicago Code” for Fox. Ryan previously produced “The Unit” for CBS, a series that also featured a lead of color in Dennis Haysbert.

Ryan also is partnering with Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, with whom he originally worked on Netflix’s “The Get Down” before exiting the project.

In separate conversations I had with Ryan and Thomas prior to the fall season’s launch, each stressed the importance of taking the network’s tried-and-true procedural format and presenting a team of cops who are not an emotionally removed, militaristic force but a group of people who know the men and women in the area they police.

“Whereas on another show, the focus may be on forensics or solving crimes using computer science, we’re dealing with people in the community in every episode,” Thomas told Salon. “That’s how we solve our mysteries.”

Thomas and Ryan share showrunner duties for “S.W.A.T.,” which adds a vital perspective to the drama’s approach that I’ll expand upon in a bit.

Originally this article was going to be a straight feature on Ryan’s and Thomas’ approach to “S.W.A.T.” and the way that their modernized take on the series stands apart from other CBS programming by design.

Then on Wednesday, racial justice organization Color of Change released Race in the Writers’ Room: How Hollywood Whitewashes the Stories That Shape America. The report, written by  UCLA dean of social sciences and professor of sociology and African American studies Darnell Hunt, examined 234 broadcast, cable and streaming scripted series from the 2016-17 season.

Foremost among its findings? Black writers comprised a mere 4.8 percent of the 3,817 of the writing staffs on these shows. Two-thirds of the dramas and comedies examined had no black writers in their rooms.

Most of the series employing black writers were led by a black showrunner (Less than 10% of shows across 18 networks are led by showrunners of color, according to the report). And those series had five or more black writers at the table in addition to white writers. Meanwhile, among the writers room headed by a white showrunner, more than 69 percent hired black writers at all.

In an industry environment where over 90% of showrunners are white, it’s no mystery that, as the report indicates, “the ultimate result of this exclusion is the widespread reliance on Black stereotypes to drive Black character portrayals, where Black characters even exist at all — at best, ‘cardboard’ characters, at worst, unfair, inaccurate and dehumanizing portrayals.”

CBS is far from the only offender here. The report calls out AMC, Amazon, Hulu, Showtime and others. However, in the report’s foreword, Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson specifically cited the network.

“CBS, once the champion of Norman Lear’s record-breaking lineup of successful shows, including ‘All in the Family’, ‘The Jeffersons’ and ‘Maude,’ as well as the home of shows like ‘M*A*S*H,’ is now digging in its heels to defend writers’ rooms that systematically exclude non-white people, and target white audiences with regressive ‘white shows’ in which people of color do not exist in a meaningful way,” Robinson writes.

Moreover, in explaining why practicing inclusion in the writers’ room is necessary to make a positive impact on culture, he pointed to the network’s bread and butter.

“Crime procedurals greatly miseducate the public about both Black people and Black family and community life,” Robinson writes. “ . . . We know this shapes both what people think about Black people in real life and the public policies and political rhetoric they do or do not support.”

This bring us back to the new “S.W.A.T.” As I’ve previously written, CBS’s inclusive revival of “S.W.A.T.” doesn’t absolve them of the longstanding practices of excluding leads of color from their primetime line-up. But it is a positive step and, better still, the show has a good story to tell behind the camera with the partnership of Ryan and Thomas.

Ryan is a producer with a positive industry track record who recognizes he has the power to be part of the solution, and is acting on that. In our interview he recalled attending another network’s diversity event, which was set up to feature showrunners. “The conversation led to the power of television and sort of the power of seeing yourself represented on television. And how those representations that we may not think about can really affect a 13 year old or a 15 year old out living their life.”

Understand, most of the problems described in these reports and the sluggishness of change can be explained by the simple fact that the people who score these jobs hire their friends, people they know. This happens at the corporate level, and impacts casting as well as production staffing. CBS in particular has a longstanding reputation of going to the same talent well over and over again.

To that end Thomas — like “S.W.A.T.” star Moore — came up in the CBS system. He’s an alumnus of the CBS Writers Mentoring Program and got his start as a writers’ assistant on Showtime’s “Soul Food: The Series.” He’s also has writing credits on “Friday Night Lights,” “Numb3rs” and “CSI: NY.”  But although that placed him better circumstances than most, his partnership with Ryan on this series makes the difference in the tone driving “S.W.A.T.”

Thomas was encouraged to bring his experience of growing up in Kansas City to the table: he mourned the killing of a good friend by cops, but also knew and liked a cop who lived on his street. Thomas’ idea was to make Hondo a character who understands the viewpoint of Black Lives Matter while also resonating with the concerns of his brethren in blue.

Part of the Color of Change report’s finding is that having one writer of color in the room doesn’t necessarily guarantee an improved portrayal of minorities on series. Here, Ryan and Thomas consciously strive to ensure that it does. The L.A. portrayed in “S.W.A.T.” reflects the city’s ethnic diversity as opposed to expressly portraying the wealthy and mostly white version of  Los Angeles typically reflected in prime-time. The series debut follows a case centered in Hondo’s neighborhood, for example. Future episodes set the team in the Latino-dominant Boyle Heights neighborhood as well as pursue narratives centered upon the city’s Muslim, Armenian and the Filipino communities.

“I don’t want to oversell how much a TV show or how much a CBS drama can change things,” he said, cautiously going on to add, “very naively and optimistically, I’m just wondering if the way we’re portraying or going to portray the police and Hondo as trying to be different, maybe that could have an effect in some way. It’s naïve on my part to think so, but it’s fun to go to work and try.”

Thomas seconded this. “These things go on fits and starts in Hollywood. But we look at is as we have an opportunity to help the conversation continue to move forward as much as possible. So we hope our show can be a part of that.”

Tennessee’s inmate birth control scandal shows eugenics is still a danger

(Credit: Getty/Instants)

As recently as six months ago, White County, Tennessee inmates could get a lesser jail time if they voluntarily forfeited their reproductive rights. A standing order signed by General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield on May 15 allowed inmates to receive 30 days off their time incarcerated if they underwent a birth control procedure. That order has since been rescinded.

Women who volunteered to participate in the program could get a free Nexplanon implant in their arm, which helps prevent pregnancy for up to four years. Men who voluntarily participated in the program received a free vasectomy from the Tennessee Department of Health, which permanently prevents pregnancy.

“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement about the program. “Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.”

Government-funded coerced sterilization has been used throughout America’s history to control populations of immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers, disabled people and mentally ill people in 32 states during the 20th century. This practice is better known as eugenics, or the “science” of “improving” a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into public disfavor after the its doctrines were espoused by the Nazis.

In 1932, the Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” a study to record the natural history of syphilis in hopes of justifying treatment programs for black men.

The study initially involved 600 black men, 399 with syphilis and 201 without, and was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent. The men received free medical exams, meals and burial insurance.

Researchers told the men they were being treated for “bad blood,” a local term used to describe several ailments, including syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. However, they did not receive the proper treatment needed to cure their illness. The study was originally planned to just take six months, but it ended up lasting 40 years.

A 1972 Associated Press story about the Tuskegee Study spurred a public uproar, and the an ad hoc advisory was created to investigate the study. The panel found the Tuskegee Study was “ethically unjustified,” or the knowledge gained was minimal compared to the perilous side effects the subjects could face. The panel advised stopping the study in October 1972, and a month later, it did.

The order rescinding Benningfield’s previous order was filed on July 26. It states the Tennessee Department of Health indicated to the General Sessions Court of White County it will no longer provide free birth control procedures to the inmates.

“To the individual faced with these collateral consequences of time spent behind bars, a choice between sterilization or contraception and a reduced jail sentence is not much of a choice at all,” the ACLU said in a statement about the rescinding of Benningfield’s previous order. “The judge’s order crossed a constitutional line and we are pleased that he rescinded it.”

When reached out to for this story, Benningfield would not comment.