Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 264

Bring on the “libertarian paternalism” diet

(Credit: Salon/Ilana Lidagoster)

I started smoking to impress a girl. She and her friends, all into the amoeba punk rock scene in my suburban hometown, smoked cigarettes in a parking lot across our high school every morning before the first bell. Casually approaching her to ask for a light seemed like the best move, considering that I was as punk as my favorite songwriters, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp.

One of my friends, an aspiring photographer who I met on the high school newspaper, smoked Camels. I asked if I could bum one, and he warned me that I might soon find myself addicted. I was sixteen. I didn’t care. There wasn’t any coughing or vomiting, only enjoyment. It seems that some people are natural smokers.

The plan worked, but only temporarily. It turned out that I had a better relationship with tobacco than I did with the punk rock girl. We dated for two months. I smoked for nine years.

Cigarettes were still a helpful accessory for my generation of men who wanted to look cool and attract girls. We saw ourselves in the tradition of the great smokers — James Dean, Paul Newman, as well as the older, hipper and tougher guys in town.

My 18- and 19-year-old students find smoking repulsive. The massive transformation in personal and social attitudes toward tobacco is largely the result of education and the “evils” of big government. With awareness campaigns in public schools, warning labels, taxes driving up the cost of packs and cartons, and indoor bans against smoking, the nanny state has successfully caused people to quit a lethal habit and prevented many more from ever starting.

In 2002, the year that I had my first cigarette, the smoking rate in the United States was 22.5 percent. It is currently 15 percent, and the Centers for Disease Control predicts that in 2020, it will drop to 12 percent. Over 40 percent of American adults were smokers between the years of 1970 to 1975.

It seems unlikely that candy bars, cans of soda and bags of potato chips will become glamorous, but countless Americans consume awful and poisonous food, apparently, without much concern for the consequences.

A new report from the CDC demonstrates that obesity is no longer just a problem in the United States. It is a raging medicinal and financial crisis. Nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese, and almost 20 percent of adolescents suffer from obesity. Given that an additional 30 percent of Americans are overweight, those in the healthy weight range are now a skinny minority.

Obesity is a contributing cause to five of the ten leading causes of death in the United States. It significantly reduces mobility, enhances pain and lowers quality of life, even for those who do not eventually have to deal with heart disease, stroke, or diabetes. It also amounts to a crushing weight on the American health care system. The estimated annual health care costs of obesity-related illnesses are $190 billion, $14 billion of which is a result of childhood obesity.

Despite the devastation of poor dietary choices and sedentary habits, the American people have proven themselves committed, with indignation and aggression, to the cause of their downfall.

Gore Vidal once said, “I love stupidity. It excites me.” Regular viewers of the world’s greatest reality television program — The United States of America — might remember the episode when conservatives reacted with rage and hostility to Michelle Obama’s campaign to convince public schools to adopt healthy standards for school lunches. Republicans in politics and the media would regularly claim that Mrs. Obama was “taking away our freedom.” The Trump administration has already “relaxed” the cafeteria regulations.

In Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, the county board recently passed a “soda tax,” levying an additional charge on all high-sugar beverages in grocery and convenience stores. Opposition to the tax was so swift and severe that the county board, likely for fear of their jobs, unanimously voted to repeal the tax only two months after its implementation.

On the radio and television, I often heard testimonials from angry Chicago residents describing their drive over the border into Indiana to buy cases of Coca-Cola. All politics and economics aside, it never seemed to occur to them to save themselves the time by trying another beverage — perhaps, one without 39 grams of sugar in every 12 ounce can.

Even if they ended poorly, Michelle Obama’s school lunch program and the Cook County soda tax represent the right approach to the governmental intervention now necessary to mitigate the social emergency of obesity.

Since many Americans appear unwilling to reconsider their unhealthy lifestyles, it is time to call the nanny to duty.

Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler coined a term to capture the best set of policies governments can follow to “nudge,” people, using the title of their book on the subject, into making better choices: “libertarian paternalism.”

The phrase might sound odd and contradictory, but its logic is sound and its record is strong. Adults should have the freedom to make their own choices, even when they are unhealthy, but, in the words of Sunstein and Thaler, “it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people’s behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better.”

Smoking is legal, but someone who is contemplating quitting might feel a nudge in that direction after observing that the cost of a carton has significantly increased, and that his favorite restaurants and bars no longer permit the indoor use of tobacco products.

Taxes on unhealthy food, government-sponsored educational programs, and policies as simple as placing healthy snacks at eye-level in the cafeteria, while making junk food hard to find, can create similar success stories in the struggle of the American diet.

Libertarian paternalism, most significantly, has the likelihood of shifting social norms. Just as it is no longer cool for a teenager to light a cigarette, as I did in my attempt at courtship, it might soon become out of fashion to slug Mountain Dew and eat Twinkies.

Predictable paranoia, roaring with comparisons to Orwell and Huxley, will ensue, but serious people have more pressing matters to consider, such as life and death.

How should I talk to my kid about sexy Halloween costumes?

(Credit: yandy.com)

Add the word “sexy” to pretty much anything and you have the inspiration for any number of women’s Halloween costumes. Sexy nurse, sexy cop, even sexy Olaf! It’s bad enough that party stores separate kids’ costumes into dated, strict gender roles (policemen for boys, princesses for girls). But when you get a costume catalog, go to the store, or do a Google search, you’re bombarded with the sexed-up versions of getups designed only for women.

At some point, your kids will start to notice that most of the options for women are ridiculously revealing. More than simply explaining that these disguises are for grown-ups, you can take the opportunity to help kids understand the sexy-costume phenomenon, how it sells women short, and how they can reject it and replace it with positive role models who communicate strength, intelligence — or anything else they want to be for Halloween (or in life).

Talk back. You’re not the only parent who’s fed up. Write the company selling this merchandise (like this mom did), and give them a piece of your mind. If your kids are old enough, encourage them to write letters.

Find positive role models. From Mayim Bialik to Mother Theresa, there are plenty of female role models for kids to dress up as. In fact, Halloween is a great time to really get into character. Look for inspiration from pop culture, history, books, and video games — the sky’s the limit.

Explain that some industries are behind the times. Just as many Hollywood movies reinforce dated stereotypes, mainstream Halloween costumes stubbornly refuse to see women for anything other than their potential for sexiness. Tell your kids that these ideas are limiting and insulting — and that your family doesn’t agree with them.

Separate “sex” from “sexism.” Sex between consenting adults is OK. And it’s natural for teens and even tweens to want to experiment with sexuality on a night when anything goes. Make sure older kids understand that you’re complaining about costumes that reduce women to the sum of their parts, not judging people for wanting to wear those costumes. And if your teen wants to be a little daring on Halloween, that’s a different conversation.

Explain how sex moves products faster. The Halloween selling season is short, about three months. In that time, costume companies need to make as much money as possible. The outrageousness of sexy Halloween costumes helps move merchandise quickly, since many folks choose to go all out on this night of all disguises.

From Mueller and Russia to Kaepernick and the NFL, “collusion” is so hot right now

(Credit: AP/Getty/Photo Montage by Salon)

Collusion is in the air. Everybody’s talking about it. For sports fans and concerned citizens, it’s nearly impossible to go a full day without reading or hearing the word.

That’s in part because the two most notable legal inquiries in the U.S. right now center around alleged collusion — cases so pivotal that they could bring down an entire presidency and humble even the most powerful sports league in the country.

Robert Mueller, appointed in May as a special counsel for the Department of Justice, has been investigating President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for possibly colluding with the Russian government. In a somewhat smaller corner of the legal world. Colin Kaepernick, the former 49ers quarterback who is out of the game after starting a protest movement in the NFL, has filed a grievance against the league and its 32 teams for colluding to keep him out of a job.

Unfortunately for Mueller and Kaepernick — and everyone else who wants to see either Trump or the league cowed by these charges — collusion can be a tricky issue to prove.

Mueller’s probe seems to be leading him through an odd labyrinth where everything from shady real estate deals to Moscow’s digital criminal underbelly lurk in the corners. To hash it all out, the former FBI director has assembled a legal dream team with expertise investigating acts that broadly fall under the umbrella of collusion.

Yet, as his team augers through all this, Mueller will have to overcome the problem that there is no specific statute for collusion. Acts of collusion could include campaign finance violations, conspiracy, bribery and fraud. But exactly what would constitute any of those is far from clear.

“The initial problem is, what’s collusion?” John Hueston, a former assistant U.S. attorney, told PBS. “It’s just a very broad, ambiguous term.”

To complicate matters, there’s further ambiguity in the evidence in statements Mueller’s team is wading through. While there have been some general indicators of collusion over the past five months, most of the relevant allegations against the Trump campaign and Russia are either circumstantial or unproven.

Even the item with the strongest suggestion of collusion — the emails Donald Trump Jr. sent regarding a meeting with Russians about Hillary Clinton — was not “slam dunk evidence,” according to one legal expert. “In short, the posted emails in and of themselves do not constitute ‘slam dunk evidence’ against all three men,” Stephen Schulhofer, a law professor at New York University, told Vox. “But they surely loom large as links in a chain of adverse circumstantial evidence.”

“Adverse circumstantial evidence” is of questionable value given that, in order to prove Moscow colluded with the Trump campaign, the investigation would have to provide clear evidence of intent, the hardest element to prove in any collusion case.

As well, Mueller isn’t even tasked to do that — his investigation is open ended and without an imminent directive. It’s a nebulous endeavor that Trump opponents are hoping will uncover a nebulous crime. Tricky.

For his part, Kaepernick will similarly have to confront just how tricky a clearly purposed collusion investigation can be.

For the quarterback to prove collusion by the NFL, he would need to show that two or more teams, or the league office and at least one team, conspired in some way to deny him an opportunity to play.

According to sports law professor Michael McCann, writing in Sports Illustrated:

Kaepernick needs more than mere supposition or belief that he has been victimized by a conspiracy. Perhaps he has an email, text, social media message, video, audio recording, hand-written note or sworn testimony from a witness. Maybe his agents, Jeffrey Nalley and Sean Kiernan, are in possession of such evidence. Regardless, the evidence must clearly show that two or more teams, or the NFL and a team or teams, conspired to deny Kaepernick of an opportunity to play in the NFL.

Fine. But unlike the web of Trump campaign operatives and hangers on, NFL franchises and the league offices are not populated by fools. It’s unlikely that a team or the league office left a paper trail indicating collusion. These are professionals, even if some of them work for the Browns.

Nevertheless, Kaepernick’s attorney, Mark Geragos, seems unreasonably optimistic that he will find a “smoking gun.” Indeed, he seems to feel that the general business intelligence of those involved will provide rather than hide it.

“I am going to predict right now that we will have a smoking gun,” Geragos told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during an appearance Tuesday night on “AC360.” “There are people who are not going to get into an arbitration proceeding and they are not going to lie. They are not going to lie. They are going to tell the truth and they’re going to say what happened. They were told no, you’re not going to hire him.”

Still, it seems a long shot.

One potential saving grace for the both cases is that Trump’s constant blustering tends to cough up incriminating evidence. Even Kaepernick might be able to rely on the president’s past statements in order to help show that the league blackballed him, Slate’s Jeremy Stahl speculated.

His argument: that the president “served as a go-between in pushing league owners” to blacklist the quarterback. Back in March, Trump hosted New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Air Force One. The next day, the president told his supporters at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky, “It was reported that NFL owners don’t want to pick [Kaepernick] up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that?”

If Kaepernick can find evidence that some of those NFL owners discussed the potential backlash Trump would unleash for signing him, then he might have a case after all. But as Mueller likely knows, even the most damning evidence in such cases might not be enough to nail down this slippery charge.

The (Boy) Scout I never was

(Credit: Salon/Ilana Lidagoster)

If you had asked me to boil gender down to its marrowy essence when I was in elementary school back in the ’80s, I probably would have said Thursdays. Thursdays, when Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts came to school in their uniforms and at three o’clock went to their den meetings. Thursdays, when I stood in line at the cafeteria, waiting to get my carton of milk, and eyed the badges and emblems and bits of string that adorned the blue and gold shirt of my friend Bryan. I really, really wanted epaulets. I wanted the belt with its shiny square buckle. I wanted even the stupid neckerchief, held together with a wolf-adorned slide just below where his Adam’s apple would one day bob. What I didn’t want was the stupid green sash of the Girl Scouts, which made them look as if they’d been rejected from Miss America and settled for some second-rate pageant. I didn’t want the starchy skirt that flared out around the knees and meant you shouldn’t dangle from the monkey bars or climb up to the top of the jungle gym.

I was among the many at my elementary school who were neither a Boy Scout nor a Girl Scout. For some, I’m sure, money was a factor — those neckerchiefs weren’t cheap. For others, it was one more meeting that their parents would have to schlep them to and from, a hassle that couldn’t be accommodated. Maybe some kids weren’t actually interested. My family had a more intricate ambivalence.

As a child, I didn’t understand it. We spent lots of time hiking, camping, gardening and canoeing. My brother and I learned to shoot guns (and bows and arrows) when we were young; it was a task that my father ranked next to splitting wood as something any human should be able to do. On paper, he seemed to hold a lot in common with the ideals of scouting, but he openly scoffed at it.

Now, I think I get it. Both my parents were involved in the Vietnam War protests, both of them had a hearty skepticism towards the military-industrial complex, and both of them viewed the Scouts as part of the supply chain of that complex.

All that said, at some point my brother whined and wheedled and pleaded his way into the Cub Scouts. I think he was around eight and all of his friends belonged and could he please, please join? My parents relented and permitted him to go to a meeting after school. I waited for him at home, ready to curl up with jealousy at the sight of his neckerchief. But when he arrived home, it was without a uniform and with a split lip and a black eye. It had taken all of ten minutes before a fight had broken out — a fight in which, my brother assured me, he had gotten the best of the other boys. He never went back for another meeting. (I was almost as jealous of the black eye as I would have been of the uniform.)

My parents probably would have let me join Girl Scouts if I’d asked to. But my friends at school had told me enough about what the Girl Scouts did to make me feel certain that I knew it all and didn’t really care. My mother ran a parallel curriculum to my father’s gun-shooting and wood-chopping (though my brother didn’t partake in her instruction) in which I learned to sew and iron and bake and cook and wax the kitchen floor. From what I could tell, this was mostly what the Girl Scouts did, only in larger, gigglier groups. No, thanks.

So I watched scouting from afar. From across the cafeteria table, I read the patches on Bryan’s uniform and checked them off against an internal list: I could make a fire, I could use an ax, I had no idea how to tie any knot other than in shoelaces. He traded the blue and gold of the Cub Scouts for the khaki and green of the Boy Scouts, and my jealousy burned brighter. I wanted a uniform. Even now, this yearning for a uniform persists in some weird way and is deeply tied to gender for me. Uniforms are the great mask, the best disguise, the ultimate in masculine gender presentation.

By high school, scouting and I had gone our separate ways. At the boarding school I attended, I joined the “Outing Club” (not as gay as it sounds) and went hiking and camping and canoeing. Thursdays no longer meant an influx of uniforms at the lunch table, and the one boy who talked about his Eagle Scout project was something of a pariah. It was here, at this school, that I came out, first as a lesbian and then as transgender. It was here, at this school, that I began living as a boy. (This process involved a uniform of sorts – at the time, boys still had a strict dress code of coat and tie they had to wear to class, while girls had no dress code at all. So, when I came out, I traded my flannel shirts for a navy blue blazer, white Oxford shirt and striped tie . . . it wasn’t a neckerchief but it was close.)

Oddly, it was coming out as transgender that brought me back in contact with the Scouts. When I turned 18 (by that time I had been out as transgender for a year), I went to Probate Court in Maine to legally change my name from Alice to Alex. The judge was skeptical; he had a lot of questions about who I was and why I wanted to change my name. He reminded me repeatedly that male impersonation was a crime in Maine. He asked me what I intended to do with my new name. This question baffled me. What does one do with a name? I intended to live my life. This was not an adequate answer. Eventually, he supplied more specific instructions: If he was going to grant this name change, I had to agree to certain conditions. Principally, I could not use my name to gain access to institutions or clubs that were intended for men only. As examples of what I should not do, he said that I shouldn’t apply to the Citadel. And I should not try to join the Boy Scouts.

I hadn’t, since coming out, thought about any such action. In fact, I had avoided all-boy spaces — they made me feel less safe; when I was with all boys, I felt the most vulnerable, the most likely to be detected as not really a boy. But when the judge mentioned the Boy Scouts, I felt a surge of something — hope, desire, that not-quite-gone jealousy. But I solemnly promised the judge that I would not try and join the Scouts.

It is now 22 years after that day in court. This past summer, the Boy Scouts said they would allow transgender kids to join; they said they would allow gay boys to be out. And now, as of last week, they have said they will allow girls to join the Boy Scouts.

Even amid the coverage that makes it clear that these policies are meant to be public relations measures or are intended to help a financially faltering organization, I felt and feel a sort of hope, a relief at the idea of acceptance, an optimism that institutions can change, that progress is being made.

And then I catch myself.

I wonder: Would the Girl Scouts accept a boy?  No, no. That’s not the question. The question is: Will there come a day when the Girl Scouts are so desirable and compelling that a boy would want to join?

In short, I find myself thinking about patriarchy and misogyny.

This is a topic I have often faced as a transgender guy. It started when I first came out, in the responses from my lesbian friends, particularly the butch lesbians. They wanted to know why I couldn’t “hack it” as a woman, why I had to take the “easy route” and be a man. And even after we got over these stumbling blocks, after long conversations about the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, they would still insist that I was getting access to male privilege, that it was easier to be a transgender guy than a lesbian. They were and are right about the access and privilege; they were and are wrong that this was why I “decided” to live as a trans guy.

And I felt it even more from the cisgender, straight people I came out to. I’ve had so many people, especially straight, cisgender men, say I understand why you’d want to live as a guy. But the other way around? That’s just weird. In short, within our patriarchal society my transition makes sense. What I’ve done is a “step up.” What girl doesn’t, on some level, want to be a boy? Or rather, what girl doesn’t want what boys have – if not the body, then at least the power, the freedom, the independence.

That’s what I feel is at the heart of this move from the Boy Scouts. It isn’t about acceptance or changing gender norms. And it is certainly not about equality. It’s about the fact that, long after we have supposedly jettisoned the idea that women are just imperfect men, we still hold a deep belief that boys have it better.

Tori Amos: Anti-sexual abuse crusader

Tori Amos (Credit: Paulina Otylie Surys)

“This time has to be different,” Tori Amos told Salon’s Amanda Marcotte on “Salon Talks.”

Amos is referring to the piling accusations against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and the culture of sexual violence against women that permeates every single industry in this country. This cycle of sexual misconduct is something both deeply important to Amos, as well as familiar.

She wrote the song “Me and a Gun” in 1991, which recounts her own rape experience. It was a powerful single from her debut album “Little Earthquakes.” Three years later, Amos founded the rape crisis hotline Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), as a way to connect survivors to support and aid the feeling of helplessness that often looms when perpetrators are routinely not held accountable for their actions.

While Hollywood is just beginning to grapple with the ways sexual predators are protected and shielded from responsibility, Amos has solutions.

“We have to demand a protocol to be put into place in the workplace,” Amos said. Because “there will be pervy CEOs, and there’ll be pervy office people, and pervy musicians, and pervy actors and directors, and pervy presidents, in all places,” she continued.

In Amos’ words, you cannot control “what’s in the mind of someone, but you can have boundaries and protocols in place so that there are consequences if people behave inappropriately.”

If the allegations against Weinstein are a launching point for addressing the pervasiveness of sexual violence, then as Amos said, “We cannot rest now.”

Amos’ new album “Native Invader,” her fifteenth studio album, is out now.

Watch the full “Salon Talks” conversation with Amos on Facebook.

Tune into Salon’s live shows, “Salon Talks” and “Salon Stage,” daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on Salon and on Facebook.

The documentary “George Michael: Freedom,” examines the troubled years after “Faith”

George Michael (Credit: AP/Petr David Josek)

At the end of October, George Michael’s “Faith” turns 30 — a milestone anniversary that now feels bittersweet, as it comes less than a year after his unexpected death. Still, fans of the late pop star can expect several new releases in the coming weeks.

A long-awaited documentary, “George Michael: Freedom,” premieres on Showtime on Saturday, October 21. Narrated by Michael himself — and featuring commentary from, among others, Elton John, Cindy Crawford and Mary J. Blige — the film “will focus particularly on the tumultuous period leading up to and following the release of his sophomore album, ‘Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,'” Billboard notes.

The documentary just so happens to coincide with the release of a long-delayed reissue of “Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1.” Originally released in 1990, the record sold only two million copies in the U.S. and found Michael exploring more sophisticated and mature sounds. ”I think it’s against the tide in many ways,” Michael told The New York Times. ”But I didn’t feel I had any choice. I’ve never made an album that sounded like the one before. If I’d made ‘Faith 2,’ it would have been unsatisfying for me.”

Such boldness is admirable, and indicative of Michael’s commitment to following his own vision. After all, it would’ve been taking the easy route to write another “Faith,” an album whose combination of marbled funk, sleek pop and piercing soul (rightfully) dominated the latter half of the ’80s. But a fresh listen to “Listen Without Prejudice” reveals a deeply personal record that’s interested in defining itself by introspection and progress.

Of course, Michael intuitively realizes that new beginnings can be messy. In some cases — the anti-war “Mother’s Pride,” the cynical romantic commentary “Cowboys and Angels” (“Why should I imagine that I was designed for you?”) — moving forward leads to heartbreak. At other times, progress is impeded by internal barriers: “Waiting for That Day” interpolates the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and features the lyric, “Something in me needs this pain.” And, at other times, songs are optimistic that starting over involves reconciling the past. “Heal the Pain” encourages someone to get over emotional damage, and “Something to Save” is a plea for a second chance.

However, with the nonchalant dance-funk of “Freedom! ’90” — a pedestal-detonating manifesto on which he announces “I don’t belong to you/And you don’t belong to me” — Michael takes pleasure in ripping up his playbook. That same mindset informs the music of “Listen Without Prejudice,” which is lush and romantic. Save for “Freedom! ’90” (and, to a lesser extent, the gorgeous, acoustic- and strings-driven “Something To Save”) the record lacks upbeat numbers.

“Cowboys and Angels” is laid-back and jazzy, while the humid “Soul Free” similarly boasts funky flutes and a falsetto detour, and acoustic guitars and warm harmonies give “Heal the Pain” a Beatles-esque feel. The Stevie Wonder cover “They Won’t Go When I Go” is even more mesmerizing, as it centers minimal piano, gospel-inspired backing vocals and one of Michael’s most powerful and wrenching performances, while the hit “Praying For Time” is the kind of smoldering, hushed ballad at which Michael excelled.

”No event inspired the song, just life in general,” he said of the song in The New York Times. ”It’s my way of trying to figure out why it’s so hard for people to be good to each other. I believe the problem is conditional as opposed to being something inherent in mankind.

“The media has affected everybody’s consciousness much more than most people will admit. Because of the media, the way the world is perceived as a place where resources and time are running out. We’re taught that you have to grab what you can before it’s gone. It’s almost as if there isn’t time for compassion.”

As this quote implies, “Listen Without Prejudice” is more timeless than it might appear. In hindsight, the record is a departure mostly in the sense that the record demands listeners’ undivided attention and is best absorbed all at once. There isn’t an accessible entry point, at least in the same way “Faith” had any number of singles to hook listeners.

But it’s also a record on which Michael reaffirms his musical influences and approach, despite changing times and trends. “[The album title] ‘Listen Without Prejudice’ would to some people infer that I was talking about prejudice towards me,” Michael told MTV. “And I’m not really talking about prejudice towards me. I’m talking about prejudice in general, and talking about the fact that many, many people are using music — sometimes unwittingly, but in general they know what they’re doing — to kind of draw the lines, I think, between white and black right now.

“Five or six years ago, you think how hip it was and how commercial it was to be considered an artist that was making black and white crossover music,” he continued. “In 1990, you’re supposed to know who your audience is, black or white, and you’re supposed to play directly to them — whether it be in terms of video or music or advertising.

“Rock ‘n’ roll and soul music supposedly broke down a lot of those barriers, and I think it’s quite disturbing to see that the same industries are kind of rebuilding the walls with both hands, as quickly as they can. And it seems to be profitable for them, but I think it’s very very alarming to see music used almost as a weapon that way. So ‘Listen Without Prejudice’ really means listen with an open mind.”

For many, that was difficult, because “Faith” was such a culture-dominating blockbuster that overshadowed Michael’s career. You could say “Listen Without Prejudice” was a victim of the “Thriller” effect. Anything Michael Jackson released after his 1982 supernova would be unfairly compared to this peak — and considered a disappointment — even though there was no way he could match the success. George Michael too knew that “Faith” was a career rarity, and so pre-emptively decided to go in a different direction.

“My main objective in making this album was just to make an album which was completely my own, in a sense,” Michael said at the time. “I think until now, there’s always been some compromise, because I’ve always felt that I’ve wanted to move from one place to another. I mean, very definitely with ‘Faith,’ I had to move away from what the public perception of me was with Andrew [Ridgeley] in Wham!”

Later in the same interview, Michael again spoke of perception: “If you write a song, you want to feel that it’s not going to be bypassed because of people’s perceptions of you. I think people have to be ready for you.” As it turns out, people weren’t necessarily ready for Michael to release “Listen Without Prejudice.” But he believed in the record and its message — after all, it’s no accident that the forthcoming documentary focuses on this time — and clearly wanted the record and this era be given a second chance for appraisal. After all, deluxe versions of the “Listen Without Prejudice” reissue also feature audio of 1996’s “MTV Unplugged” and various remixes, obscurities and b-sides.

Still, it’s important to remember that “Listen Without Prejudice” wasn’t a commercial disaster. Although album sales lagged behind “Faith,” the record spawned three top 40 U.S. singles, including the No. 1 hit “Praying For Time”; landed at the top of the U.K. album charts; and sold eight million copies globally. The record’s extras are just as intriguing and inventive; take “Fantasy,” which Michael reworked with Nile Rodgers before his death into a taut, disco-inspired dance number.

“Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1″ was supposed to have a sequel (“Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. II,” natch) that Billboard reported at the time was to have five live tracks — including Michael’s duet with Elton John, “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” — and seven studio songs. That never materialized — and a lawsuit derailed Michael’s next few years. In fact, he released only three more solo studio albums during the next quarter-century, with the last being 2004’s “Patience.”

Still, it makes sense why the “Listen Without Prejudice” reissue exists and why the documentary focuses on his ’90s period. The era deserves a second look (and more respect than it gets) for showcasing Michael’s gifts as a composer and interpreter. Take one of the more remarkable moments from 1996’s “MTV Unplugged.” Early in the set, he unleashes a stunning, blue-eyed soul version of the Bonnie Raitt-popularized “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” His voice trembles on the line “Just hold me close, don’t patronize/Don’t patronize me.” It’s aching and vulnerable, and reveals the kind of stunning emotional depth that Michael exuded throughout his entire career.

Chris Brown’s actions are inexcusable, but what he says about male violence is vital

“Chris Brown: Welcome to My Life” (Credit: Gravitas Ventures)

Singer Chris Brown’s documentary “Welcome to My Life,” released via Netflix this month, is a retelling of his rise to fame and the controversy that mired it. It seems, even by its packaging, that it’s a bid to complicate and add nuance to the unfavorable headlines and numerous courtroom dates that have defined Brown’s career as much as his music has over the last eight years.

“I’m tired of giving people something to talk about,” he says at the beginning of the film. “They should be talking about how I’m the baddest motherfucka onstage, instead of I’m the baddest motherfucka in the courtroom.”

Overall, the documentary feels distant. There’s too much footage of celebrities such as Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Lopez, DJ Khaled and Usher offering glowing praise for the superstar — talking-head advertorials with no real depth. While media, including myself, reported on the snippet released this spring, in which Brown opened up about his 2009 assault of Rihanna publicly for the first time, the most profound moments in “Welcome to My Life” come when Brown talks about the physical abuse he witnessed growing up.

Chris Brown’s mother, Joyce Hawkins, describes the night where he turned Rihanna’s face black, blue and bloody, as the worst day of her life. “My heart just dropped,” Hawkins says. “That was the worst day of my life and probably his life, because I just saw that he was a broken person.”

This moment in the film is eerie, as Hawkins shares what is was like to look at her son after such a brutal incident.

Brown offers another reason as to why this moment may have been so deeply painful for Hawkins. “I seen my mom deal with that firsthand,” he says. He then goes on to chronicle his mother’s abusive partner, a man Brown hated as much as he feared. “He was a monster, an animal, pure evil,” Brown says. “I’m terrified of this man.”

Brown says that when he was six, his mother’s partner shot himself in the head, but did not die. The gunshot blinded him, the physical impairment only adding to his rage. His mother’s partner took his anger and frustration out on Hawkins.

“I had to hear my mom get beat up every night,” Brown says. “I’d pee on myself, just scared to even walk out into the hallway, because I didn’t want to see nothing.”

Brown then brings it back to his own actions. “It’s learned behavior,” he continues, “so me, having to see my mom look at me through that light, I just saw him.”

While Brown’s description of his childhood and the abuse against women he witnessed does not absolve him of his terrible actions, it underlines the way male violence can be taught and passed down from generation to generation.

According to the Childhood Domestic Violence Association, “Children of domestic violence are three times more likely to repeat the cycle in adulthood, as growing up with domestic violence is the most significant predictor of whether or not someone will be engaged in domestic violence later in life.”

According to the group, children who grow up in homes where domestic violence is present are also 74 percent more likely to commit a violent crime.

Speaking to this, Brown’s violence has not been confined to just women. He shattered a window after an appearance on “Good Morning America” in 2011, after host Robin Roberts asked about the status of his domestic violence case. He got into a bar brawl with rapper Drake and his entourage in 2012, another verbal and physical incident with singer Frank Ocean in 2013, and Brown plead guilty to a felony assault charge in 2013 after he punched a fan for trying to take a photo with him. These are just a few examples in a long history of violent, oppositional behavior.

It has been this ongoing history of violence towards women (and towards anyone), that has long stopped me from enjoying Brown’s music, even though, as Refinery29 writes, “Not even the harshest Chris Brown critic can deny his talent.” 

Yes, “Welcome to My Life” provides a fuller picture of the specific circumstances Brown emerged from and how violence against women, in his words, can be “learned.” Watching it also draws attention to the ways in which male violence started in the home frequently becomes public.

When the news came out that the Las Vegas mass shooter, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, verbally abused his girlfriend, feminist author Mona Eltahawy tweeted: “As long as women are not safe from male violence at home, why do you so arrogantly assume anyone else is safe from male violence publicly?”

As long as women are not safe from male violence at home, why do you so arrogantly assume anyone else is safe from male violence publicly?

— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) October 3, 2017

A slew of mass murderers in the United States had well-documented histories of fine-tuning such terror in their homes, first. In turn, many of these killers were themselves victims of emotional or physical abuse at a developmental age. Everytown, an organization concerned with reducing gun violence, found that 54 percent of mass shootings between 2009-2016 were related to domestic or family violence in one way or another.

For this, and other reasons, researchers of domestic violence urge society and authorities to treat it as a global public health problem. Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of World Health Organization told the Boston Globe that she considered it a crisis of “epidemic proportions,” that, like the plague, is contagious.

It is important to see this as a viral problem, but until authorities and the criminal justice system evaluate domestic violence as a serious and dangerous crime, until we create stronger, more holistic approaches to identification, intervention, treatment and prevention, these rippling effects for women and the public at large will not stop. There is no magic cure for the greater phenomenon of domestic violence, but we must work to treat and contain it. Many, many lives are on the line.

Like him or not, “Welcome to My Life” makes it clear that Chris Brown was looped into this cycle of violence and infected since childhood. “I felt like a fucking monster,” Brown says of himself, circling back to the same language he used to describe his abusive stepfather. “I was the one thing I was running from.”

But when will this track that Brown found himself on — a course that is both known and predictable — be broken once and for all? Both those on the track and the system around it need to get serious about changing the direction men are running here, for all our sakes.

How “American Vandal” becomes more than a dumb punchline

Tyler Alvarez and Jimmy Tatro in "American Vandal" (Credit: Netflix/Tyler Golden)

For a lot of us, our entry into a culture that reduces a person’s value to the desirability of their body parts begins in a very simple place: dirty jokes. We start hearing and repeating them in elementary school, often without the full awareness of what, exactly, they mean. All we need to know is that they’re naughty.

These whispered jests take on a new meaning as we mature and come to understand that the parts starring in the punchlines are meant to be hidden and protected. Hence the catch-all term “privates.” To expose them or depict their exposure is an obscene act of aggression. A crime. Or simply dumb.

Understandably, knowing that Netflix’s “American Vandal” is essentially a four-hour dick joke masquerading as a mockumentary immediately erects a barrier to entry. Even those of us who enjoy raunchy humor are likely to balk at the notion that such a sophomoric concept can be sustained over eight episodes without the assistance of pharmaceuticals.

Somehow “American Vandal,” currently streaming on the service, more or less succeeds in its mission to transform a story and a project that begins with an idiotic jape into an examination of the power that camera and genre have to manipulate both director and subject. And strange though this may seem, binging Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault’s series at end of 10 days of being tea-bagged by a news cycles awash in tales of assault, abuse and structural sexism feels . . . what’s the word I’m searching for? Therapeutic, maybe.

The coverage of the rampant abuse of power in Hollywood is about a structure built to favor white males above others, a caste system based on gender politics and not specifically about the physical member associated with that gender.

Of course, untold numbers of human beings walk around with said part and somehow find a way to refrain from using it as a reason to discriminate against or debase others. They acknowledge that it has several biological purposes. The secure among them would also admit they’re weird looking enough to form the foundation of an entire brand of bawdy humor.

“American Vandal” leads with that second idea in order to lampoon the true-crime genre — yes, the very thing Netflix played a key role in popularizing. Only here, the stakes are much lower than those laid out in “Making a Murderer” or “The Keepers.” The mystery concerns finding the culprit responsible for spray-painting scarlet dicks on 27 economy cars in the faculty parking lot of Hanover High School, home of the Humpbacks.

This lends an innocent humor to a series that welcomes snickering at the immature double entendres laced throughout dialogue that’s delivered with documentary-appropriate gravitas. Even scenes that pick apart a witness’s credibility by way of establishing whether a hand-job actually occurred methodically build to a forehead-slapping denouement.

This cannot be emphasized enough: If infantile humor isn’t your thing, “American Vandal” is not for you. But if you’re the kind of person who still gets a giggle out of flatulence, it offers a return to the enjoyment of simpler inanities. Initially, anyway.

Yacenda and Perrault teamed up previously for work featured on Funny or Die and CollegeHumor. Previous to this their largest claim to fame was a dead-on “30 for 30” parody of the big game in “Space Jam” that went viral in 2013.

In the way of many mystery documentary series, “American Vandal” reveals its worth in layers. It opens with a basket of dick jokes, and Yacenda, Perrault and showrunner Dan Lagana revere and revel in every true-crime trope in establishing the story. From the boxy computer graphic recreations of scenarios to the slow zoom-ins on subjects meant to underscore the gravity of each ridiculous clue, no flourish is left unused.

But the dunderheaded jokes only obscure the story’s true intent for a short time. Through the earnest sleuthing of adolescent documentarians Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck), “American Vandal” quickly morphs into an allegory of perception and assumption. Eventually the pair also must reckon with the impact the project has on their subjects, and on themselves.

From the series’ outset the principal, faculty and student body are certain the perpetrator is Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro), the aggressively doltish teen terror of oceanside, California. Dylan’s raison d’etre is pulling pranks at school and around town, dedicating an entire YouTube channel to stunts he pulls with his equally dopey pals in a group called the Wayback Boys. Among their masterpieces is video of Dylan casually strolling up to babies in strollers or unsuspecting toddlers, farting in their faces and running away.

As a soloist, Dylan is a veritable Keith Haring of schlong, drawing outlines of penises on every surface that accepts ink. He’s the bane of most teachers, especially the no-nonsense Ms. Shapiro. Given that he’s none too bright, and a witness comes forth to implicate him in the dick spectacle, he’s expelled.

But Peter and Sam aren’t so sure. Plus, digging into the case makes for a worthy high school journalism project. Peter is the more inquisitive of the two; Sam is initially skeptical until Peter cites the first hole in the faculty’s case, a damning discrepancy involving pubes.

The forensic-driven mystery spirals outward from there, ensnaring fellow students, members of the faculty, employees, and parents and eventually taking on a bizarre life of its own. As the plot progresses, “American Vandal” become less about the easy lulz, veering into a relatively sincere examination of the documentarian’s oft-cited mandate to “tell the truth” and the injudicious level of trust filmmakers can place in their subjects.

Mitigating the voyeuristic discomfort of “American Vandal” is the knowledge that it’s entirely fictional, although Tatro so accurately embodies the role of a mouth-breathing dumbass that it may be difficult for him to score parts with multisyllabic dialogue for some time.

“American Vandal” also gives the audience a concentrated view of high school life and the gossip, secrets and boasts that are its social glue. This keeps its tone from getting too serious until the last episode, which, in the way of many true-crime tales, ends the story on a note of ambiguity.

Whether this turn adds depth to “American Vandal” or deflates the fun of it is purely subjective, but in either case if you’ve reached that point the creators have stuck the landing; they’ve employed childish comedy to sneak in a few smart points about blame, belief and culpability. That takes balls.

A rundown of the Kelly-Trump-Sanders-Wilson phone call scandal

Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent Friday afternoon’s press briefing playing defense, sparring with frustrated reporters questioning the facts around President Trump’s consolation — or lack thereof — of the family of late Sergeant La David Johnson. Most egregiously, when reporters asked Sanders about John Kelly — who had lied about the contents of a speech given by congresswoman Frederica Wilson in an attempt to discredit her— Sanders brushed off their questions. Her reasoning? Any criticism of “a four-star marine general” would be “highly inappropriate.”

Thus ended a whirlwind 48-hour period of back-and-forth that showed the White House’s penchant for making grand accusations — which often contradict public knowledge — that conveniently happen off-camera in front of witnesses unknown. But how did we get here, you ask? Strap in, folks.

The call that started it all

It began with (what should have been) a routine phone call to the family of deceased Sergeant La David Johnson, a call that any capable leader could have carried out with dignity and respect. Sgt. Johnson was one of four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger during an ISIS ambush on October 4th, 2017 — an operation has been called “Trump’s Benghazi” by many, including Representative Frederica Wilson (D – Fl.). The Department of Defense formally launched an investigation into the ambush on Tuesday of this week. By the time the bodies of the fallen soldiers were on U.S. soil, Trump was already under fire for failing to call the families of the deceased. When questioned about it by reporters, Trump retorted that former President Obama never called families of fallen troops during his time in office (which was patently untrue).

“If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls — a lot of them didn’t make calls. I like to make calls when it’s appropriate,” Trump said. Within the day, former Obama-era aides and officials took to Twitter to debunk the President’s claim.

 

that’s a fucking lie. to say president obama (or past presidents) didn’t call the family members of soldiers KIA – he’s a deranged animal.

— Alyssa Mastromonaco (@AlyssaMastro44) October 16, 2017

 

Stop the damn lying – you’re the President. I went to Dover AFB with 44 and saw him comfort the families of both the fallen military & DEA. pic.twitter.com/HhE4KbTBkJ

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 17, 2017

 

POTUS 43 & 44 and first ladies cared deeply, worked tirelessly for the serving, the fallen, and their families. Not politics. Sacred Trust. — GEN(R) Marty Dempsey (@Martin_Dempsey) October 17, 2017

 

In the same Rose Garden news conference, Trump said, “I will, at some point, during the period of time, call the parents and the families, because I have done that, traditionally.”

Finally, Trump made the phone call heard round the world. On Tuesday of this week, Trump attempted to console Sgt. Johnson’s pregnant widow, Myeshia Johnson. But according to Representative Frederica Wilson (D-Florida), who was in the car with Johnson at the time, Trump’s consolation was anything but. Trump told Ms. Johnson, “[her husband] knew what he signed up for … but when it happens, it hurts anyway.”

Enter Wilson

After Sgt. Johnson’s mother confirmed Rep. Wilson’s claims — and further stated that Trump “did disrespect my son and my daughter, and also me and my husband” — eyes turned to the congresswoman, whom Trump has fervently accused of lying (and unjustly “listening in”), with “proof” to match.

Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2017

When Wilson came forward with claims of what Trump had said, she set off a national firestorm. Not only had Trump allegedly said “he knew what he signed up for,” but according to Wilson, “He never said his name because he did not know his name. So he kept saying, ‘Your guy. Your guy. Your guy.’ And that was devastating to [Ms. Johnson].”

In a meeting later on Wednesday, Trump told a room of senators, “I didn’t say what that congresswoman said. Didn’t say it at all, she knows it.” Sanders echoed this sentiment in a press briefing, telling reporters, “to try to create something from that, that the congresswoman is doing, is frankly appalling and disgusting.”

Since being accused of “fabricating” the phone call, Wilson has called Trump “a liar,” telling Politico that four other witnesses were in the car at the time, the phone being on speaker.

Proof or no proof?

Trump alleges he has some form of proof to back up his version of events, though he neither specified in what form it came, nor if he would release it. However, Sanders later said that a tape of the call did not exist. To emend Trump’s faux pas, Sanders then claimed General Kelly was among some White House administrators on the call with Trump and Ms. Johnson. Perhaps, Trump conflated having witnesses with a concrete form of evidence such as a recording. Later, Trump then went back on what Sanders had said, telling reporters, “let her make her statement again and then you’ll find out.”

To confuse matters further, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, contradicted Sanders and said that transcripts do, in fact, exist. Once again, Sanders did damage control and told reporters in a Friday press briefing that no such transcript exists as Lara Trump described.

General Kelly attempts a rescue

General Kelly made a seemingly unrehearsed and emotionally charged speech at Thursday’s daily press briefing to defend Trump and lash out at Rep. Wilson for publicizing the call. “It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation — absolutely stuns me,” Kelly said.

Rather than knowing “what he signed up for,” Kelly says Trump talked about Sgt. Johnson doing what he loved and what he wanted to do. “That’s what the President tried to say to four families the other day,” Kelly said.

Kelly then turned the conversation to Wilson, calling her an “empty barrel making the most noise.” From there, Kelly told an anecdote about Rep. Wilson in an attempt to paint her in a negative light.

General Kelly’s fable about Rep. Wilson

Kelly homed in on a 2015 speech that Rep. Wilson had given at the dedication of a new FBI building that was dedicated to two slain FBI agents. Politifact quoted General Kelly as claiming that Wilson

“stood up there … and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money — the $20 million — to build the building. And she sat down.”

Kelly believed that this speech illustrated Wilson’s lack of respect for fallen soldiers and agents. “We were stunned — stunned that she’d done it,” Kelly remarked. “Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned.”

But a video of the dedication ceremony later uncovered shows Kelly misrepresented Rep. Wilson’s speech. Though Wilson did take credit for “securing approval of the naming of the building,” she spent much of her speech praising the FBI agents slain in the line of duty.

Before this incident, Kelly’s son had become something of a political football: Trump claimed Obama had not called Kelly when his son, Second Lt. Robert Kelly, was killed in Afghanistan in 2010. General Kelly did not comment on the matter during the press briefing.

Playing the blame game at a Friday debate

Friday afternoon’s White House press briefing came of as more of a defensive who-said-what brawl than a normal Q&A, echoing the days of Sean Spicer’s tenure as press secretary. It has thus far been easy for the White House to go up against a Democratic congresswoman (and a woman of color inherently critical of Trump) and treat her as their political enemy; many Trump devotees have fallen in line to attack Wilson. More challenging for the Trump machine, however, has been the task of debunking and delegitimizing comments made by Sgt. Johnson’s mourning family. When Press Secretary Sanders was asked why the Johnson family said Trump’s comments were “disrespectful,” Sanders turned the blame back on them, and said Trump’s comments were being misrepresented and mischaracterized.

“Certainly if the spirit of which those comments were intended were misunderstood, but as the president has said, as General Kelly has said — who I think has a very deep understanding of what that individual would be going through — his comments were very sympathetic,” Sanders remarked. “That was the spirit in which the president intended them. If that was taken the other way, that’s certainly an unfortunate thing.”

Continuing to point fingers, Sanders brought to the defense that Trump’s Twitter fingers were an answer to the press, the only ones “talking about it a lot.”

Diverting attention from “the issue at hand”

The White House has dogmatically insisted that President Trump’s heart was in the right place, that the spirit of his comments had respectful and admirable intent. All the while, the controversy surrounding the ambush in Niger itself remains a mystery. Sanders continued to ward off questions about Niger, and said that the investigation simply cannot be discussed in detail.

Yet perhaps the public’s attention is misdirected. Yes, Trump’s attempts to deflect and redirect criticism are egregious. But The Atlantic’s David A. Graham argues that the entirety of the phone call controversy — from failing to reach out, to Obama, to Wilson — has been a grand diversion from what started it all.

Why were the soldiers in Niger, and why hadn’t he spoken about it sooner? This is a pattern with Trump, in which he manages to say something so inflammatory, or so untrue, or both, that it obscures the central question…The broader question, of what the soldiers who were killed were doing and what went wrong, remains unaddressed by the president, and Trump’s jab at other presidents may, unfortunately, help to keep it that way.

The elusive manner in which Sanders has discussed Niger, and Trump’s damn near failure to do so, makes one thing clear: Niger was an accident waiting to happen, and we need answers. Trump can manipulate the media into focusing on PhoneCallGate, but the public is waiting.

Trump signs executive order to draft retired pilots back into military service

(Credit: US Air Force)

Citing emergency powers, President Donald Trump signed an executive order late in the day on Friday that would allow retired military pilots to be recalled to active duty.

But the broad wording of the executive order seemed to imply that the executive branch would have the power to call up retired military officers and force them back into service for any reason, as the “emergency” Trump used to justify the executive order was extremely vague: “the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.”

This executive order is officially an amendment to Executive Order 13223, signed by George W. Bush in September 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump’s executive order claimed to be “in furtherance of the objectives of Proclamation 7463… which declared a national emergency by reason of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Stay with me, because this gets confusing. So Trump basically wrote an amendment to Bush’s 2001 executive order. All Bush’s executive order really said, though, was that an emergency existed and the president had authorization to use a variety of statutes in the federal code. It then listed those statutes, of which there are many; let’s just say they mostly involve the executive abilities to send the military around the world and limit troops’ ability to retire.

In any case, Trump’s executive order specifically invoked two of the sections of the United States Code. Here’s what Trump’s order says specifically:

Section 1 of Executive Order 13223 is amended by adding at the end: “The authorities available for use during a national emergency under sections 688 and 690 of title 10, United States Code, are also invoked and made available, according to their terms, to the Secretary concerned, subject in the case of the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, to the direction of the Secretary of Defense.”

So he’s referencing Bush’s executive order, and then referencing sections 688 and 690 of the United States Code. If you go to those codes, you’ll see that title 10, section 688 of the United States Code says

Under regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense… a [retired member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or Reserve]  may be ordered to active duty by the Secretary of the military department concerned at any time. …  The Secretary concerned may, to the extent consistent with other provisions of law, assign a member ordered to active duty under this section to such duties as the Secretary considers necessary in the interests of national defense.

Section 688 (d) then states that certain retired officers — specifically, those who retired on “selective early retirement basis” — may not be ordered to active duty by the “Secretary of the military department.” Furthermore, in section (e), the code notes that members “ordered to active duty” under this code will be limited to 12 months of active duty.

But then, the final section of 688 states that the aforementioned two exclusions are “waived” in “periods of war or active emergency” — which is exactly what Trump has just affirmed exists right now.

This means that this executive order is a bit of a “micro-draft”: It allows the military to recall  retired officers to active duty. A USA Today article about this executive order (or rather, this amendment to an existing executive order) noted that the Air Force has been particularly crucial in military operations against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Moreover, the Air Force has had a pilot shortage brewing for over a decade. In September 2017, military leaders interviewed by United Press International (UPI) that the military was in a crisis. “We’re 1,500 pilots short, and if we don’t find a way to turn this around, our ability to defend the nation is compromised,” Gen. David L. Goldfein, Air Force Chief of Staff, told UPI. Likewise, a report by the RAND corporation, a think tank, stated that the shortage was partially because “employment opportunities are excellent in the private sector.”

There has been little media coverage of the executive order as of Friday evening, beyond the aforementioned USA Today piece. Around the internet, some social media users were alarmed at the nonspecific nature of the term “national emergency,” which seemed to hint at executive overreach. In the /r/Military subreddit, a nonpartisan US military forum with many veterans and enlisted officers, debate raged over the ramifications of the order. “Can someone convince me this isn’t a prelude to war in Korea,” wrote one user with the handle “NotARandomNumber.” Others were less conspiratorial. “My guess is that this is the most deficit neutral way to maintain Air Force staffing in the face of upcoming tax cuts. At least that’s what I hope,” wrote user “TheBigRedSD4.”