Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 268

Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, now faces his own sexual harassment allegations

Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein (Credit: Getty/Mark Von Holden)

Brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein may have somewhat more in common than originally thought (though Bob would really like you to think otherwise). According to a exclusive in Variety, a female showrunner has come forward with accusations against the second (and less visible) Weinstein, who has worked with and without his brother as an almost equally successful producer for decades, of sexual harassment.

Amanda Segel, an executive producer of an adaption of Stephen King’s “The Mist,” told Variety that Bob Weinstein continued to ask her to dinner and make “romantic overtures,” which Segel repeatedly declined or rejected, for nearly three months. They continued until her lawyer informed The Weinstein Company that she would leave the production if Bob Weinstein did not limit their contact to professional matters.

Much as with most cases of sexual harassment regarding power dynamics, the situation at hand began when Bob Weinstein invited Segel to dinner. She felt it prudent to accept “in an effort to establish a professional relationship with the head of the company.” Segel said that at that dinner, the younger Weinstein repeatedly implied that he expected to sleep with her and asked “highly intimate questions.” By the end of the night, she claims, Bob asked Segel to drive him back to his hotel and then join him upstairs, in a move that echoes most of the allegations against his older brother. Segel declined.

Following their evening together, Weinstein allegedly began sending unprofessional emails and asking that the two be friends. According to Segel, she continued to stand her ground and remind him that their friendship could be a possibility so long as it stayed platonic.

She claims that Weinstein continued to surpass friendliness, inviting her to a party at a rented house in Malibu. Segel, however, says she suspected it would not be a party, but in fact just the two of them. Again, it’s another mirror of allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

In another incident, Segel alleges that Bob invited her to another dinner. For cover, she apparently brought along another “The Mist” executive producer. Segel says Bob was unenthused. She claims that after that, their relationship turned aggressive and Bob later screamed at Segel for a production situation that was “out of her control.”

As Segel tells it, this was the point at which she brought her lawyer into the mix for a series of negotiations that resulted in the agreement that there would be zero interaction between Segel and Weinstein. Supposedly, Segel would remain on the show, but would never be in the same room or on the same phone call as Weinstein.

“‘No’ should be enough,” Segel told Variety. “After ‘no,’ anybody who has asked you out should just move on. Bob kept referring to me that he wanted to have a friendship. He didn’t want a friendship. He wanted more than that. My hope is that ‘no’ is enough from now on.”

Weinstein, for his part, vehemently denies these accusations. “Bob Weinstein had dinner with Ms. Segel in LA in June 2016. He denies any claims that he behaved inappropriately at or after the dinner. It is most unfortunate that any such claim has been made,” said his representative.

These allegations come in the midst of Harvey Weinstein’s own self immolation. After what may be three decades of sustained and abetted abuse, over 50 women have come forward with allegations against him, ranging from sexual harassment to rape, including at least 5 cases of assault. On Tuesday, “Game of Thrones” actress Lena Headey claimed she was sexually harassed by Harvey. That same day, Harvey formally resigned from the board of The Weinstein Company after Bob and the rest of the TWC board voted to ratify Harvey’s termination.

In an industry where women are at risk when faced against powerful executives, these allegations come as no surprise. However, it’s more concerning, and perhaps, frustrating, that they follow two weeks of Bob Weinstein throwing his brother under the bus to keep TWC afloat, acting as though the very thought of sexual harassment comes completely out of left field. He even went so far as to say that his brother’s actions have trapped him in a “waking nightmare.”

“I’m ashamed that [Harvey] is my brother, to be honest, and I am ashamed that these are his actions,” Bob Weinstein told The Hollywood Reporter. “I have a brother that’s indefensible and crazy. I want him to get the justice that he deserves.”

Now it appears as if Bob has much more to fear, and lose, than the simple tarnishing of his brother’s and his company’s reputations. As allegations often empower other victims to come forward, there’s a great possibility that Segel’s claims will be the first of many to come to light.

Marc Faber: “Thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks”

Marc Faber (Credit: CNBC)

Popular investor Marc Faber, author of the “Gloom Boom & Doom Report” newsletter, wrote in his most recent edition that he was glad the U.S. had been founded and ruled by white people rather than black people.

“And thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks. Otherwise, the US would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority,” Faber wrote in the newsletter, according to CNBC.

He added, “I am not a racist, but the reality — no matter how politically incorrect — needs to be spelled out.”

Faber, known as “Dr. Doom,” has been frequently featured on CNBC as a financial and stock market pundit, but the network has since said it will no longer book him for segments.

Faber resigned from the asset management company, Sprott, as an independent director of the board, effective immediately on Tuesday, CNBC reported.

When asked if he stood by his statements, Faber shamelessly refused to back down from them, but indicated he still believed they weren’t racist.

“If stating some historical facts makes me a racist, then I suppose that I am a racist. For years, Japanese were condemned because they denied the Nanking massacre,” he told CNBC in an emailed statement.

In his newsletter, Faber also praised the Confederate monuments that have become a national debate in the wake of the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Faber said the monuments were “statues of honourable people whose only crime was to defend what all societies had done for more than 5,000 years: keep a part of the population enslaved.”

6 reasons the State Department is a mess, according to a new Rex Tillerson profile

(Credit: AP/Ivan Sekretarev)

In nine months, the State Department went from a fine-tuned machine to an underfunded, chaos-driven free-for-all that exists not to promote democracy but to push President Donald Trump’s personal presidential brand, if not his agenda.

At the center of it all is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, whose rocky relationship with the president has taken center stage over the past few weeks. A New York Times piece published Tuesday delved into the genesis of the dysfunction. Here are the key takeaways:

1. Tillerson refuses to befriend Trump, and that’s causing much tension

The central contention splitting Trump and Tillerson is what their relationship should look like. Tillerson expected to come in and be a cold and methodical analyst who used his expertise in dealing with world leaders. As he explained to the Times:

I’m an engineer by training. I’m a very systems, process, methodical decision maker. He’s an entrepreneur. Different mind-set. He makes decisions differently. Doesn’t mean one is better than the other, but I’ve had to learn how he processes information and how I can help him process the information and how I can give him good advice that makes sense to him. So for both of us there’s a communication to be worked out.

But that’s not what Trump wanted. The president wanted friendly sycophants he could hang out with. According to one adviser, “Trump originally thought he could have a relationship with Tillerson that’s almost social. The way his relationships are with Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin.” That hasn’t worked out with Tillerson because the two have such different personalities:

But unlike Trump’s commerce and Treasury secretaries — plutocrats who, like Trump, are on their third, younger wives — Tillerson, who is 65 and has been married to the same woman for 31 years, has shown little interest in being the president’s running buddy; instead of Saturday-night dinners with Trump at his Washington hotel, Tillerson favors trips home to Texas to see his grandchildren or to Colorado to visit his nonagenarian parents.

2. The Trump-Tillerson relationship is actually really bad

The Times piece is filled with details about petty sniping between the Trump and Tillerson camps in the administration. One Trump adviser told the Times that Trump is “always saying, ‘Rex’s not tough,’ and ‘I didn’t know he was so establishment.'”

And the animosity goes both ways, according to the Times:

According to a former administration official, in private conversations with aides and friends, Tillerson refers to Trump, in his Texas deadpan, as the dealmaker in chief. And in meetings with Trump, according to people who have attended them, he increasingly rolls his eyes at the president’s remarks. If Trump disagrees with Tillerson, the official said, his secretary of state will say, “It’s your deal.”

Tillerson was apparently not really vetted for his position. While he was referred to the position by some very establishment names: Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and Stephen Hadley, the former Exxon CEO didn’t have any government experience. He was, however, clean-shaven, which, the Times reported, won him points over other contenders like former UN ambassador John Bolton — who sports a walrus mustache.

3. Staffing at the State Department has been slow because Trump values loyalty more than competence

The State Department seems to have been carved into separate factions, leaving little room for anyone but administration loyalists. Immediately purged were any potential staffers who were part of the “NeverTrump” movement. It also didn’t take much for potential hires to eventually land on the rejected pile:

According to a senior administration official, other potential hires were knocked out of consideration for sins as minor as retweeting some of Marco Rubio’s “little hands” jokes about Trump. “The hiring pool is very different from your normal hiring pool,” the official says. “The people the Senate would expect to confirm have all been taken off the table.”

There are factions in the West Wing that have been going against each other with regularity. The war between the White House turned the State Department into a battleground between them. That’s one of the reasons why the department is so understaffed.

In the early days of the administration, according to State Department officials, White House officials, especially Bannon, sent over many names for State Department posts. But Tillerson, after looking at their résumés and in some cases conducting interviews, felt he had no choice but to reject them. “They didn’t meet the qualifications for the actual jobs,” another senior administration official says.

4. Trump v. Tillerson is, in part, about Barack Obama

That insular approach started before Trump was even sworn in, and it made things really difficult for incoming UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who wasn’t even allowed to talk to State Department staffers who worked under President Barack Obama:

In December, Nikki Haley, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, set up a conference call with two senior State Department officials: Kristie Kenney, the State Department counselor, and Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management. Haley wanted to ask them questions about the logistics of her new job: basic matters like what her salary and benefits would be and where her family would live in New York City. Kenney and Kennedy told her about the federal employee health insurance plan and offered to send her floor plans of the U.N. ambassador’s apartment. When word of the call got back to Trump’s transition team, the two department officials were reprimanded by Glazer and told never to speak with Haley again.

5. There are two great theories about why Tillerson is still serving

Depending on who you ask, Tillerson’s exit before next year would either be costly or expensive. Trump staffers are worried that him being fired or resigning would look really bad:

The question among many people inside and outside the Trump administration is not necessarily what’s keeping Tillerson from resigning; it’s what’s stopping Trump from firing him. One Trump-administration official offered me a tentative theory: “Losing a chief of staff in the first year is a big deal, but losing a secretary of state is an even bigger one.”

Tillerson himself stands to lose a boatload of money if he leaves too soon:

Other [State Department insiders] speculated that Tillerson had asked to delay his exit until he’d been in his position for a year, in order to avoid a huge capital-gains tax hit on the stocks he had to divest from in order to take the job.

6. The White House’s press shop is sounding like a propaganda machine

Sean Spicer may no longer be around to tell us how large the president’s inauguration was, but the White House is still filled with experts who can deliver some fantastic lines about how great they are. Here’s what the White House had to say about the Times’ report:

The president has assembled the most talented cabinet in history and everyone continues to be dedicated towards advancing the president’s America First agenda. Anything to the contrary is simply false and comes from unnamed sources who are either out of the loop or unwilling to turn the country around.

Make sure to save that “unnamed sources” skepticism for the next time Trump’s White House gloats off the record.

Here’s Bill O’Reilly, proving his point about diminishing a president

(Credit: Getty/Ilya S. Savenok)

Bill O’Reilly accidentally stumbled over the truth Tuesday morning, in a candid tweet that proves the former Fox News anchor’s cognitive dissonance.

It just seems that anything President Trump says can & will be used to diminish him in the court of public opinion.

— Bill O’Reilly (@billoreilly) October 17, 2017

The intent of the tweet, presumably, was to defend President Donald Trump. Yet the fired Fox News host tried to undermine former President Barack Obama on a nightly basis.

Over the past eight years, O’Reilly slammed Obama for not “significantly improving” the economy, even though the president salvaged it from an an economic recession. He derided the Affordable Care Act as an “economic disaster,” even though the legislation improved the health care of millions and offered a better alternative to whatever Republicans were advocating at the time.

O’Reilly, in short, was Obama’s foil throughout his two terms in office. He audaciously used an interview with Obama before a Super Bowl game to berate the former president’s mishaps. He mocked and ridiculed Obama’s genuine accomplishes as if a Republican president would have done better.

But there’s another reason that O’Reilly’s tweet was so absurd. The media is not manipulating Trump’s words to damage him — or diminish him in the court of public opinion. Trump himself is doing the best job at undermining Trump.

The politically incorrect president often gets himself into trouble for offensive remarks about everyone. He lies like no other politician before him. And he draws ire for comparing himself to former President Barack Obama in blatant attempts to knock his predecessor.

Trump says the worst thing possible at any occasion, such as his comments on recovery efforts in Puerto Rico.

Now that a Republican president is in office, O’Reilly gets to witness firsthand — again — how difficult it is to run a country. And he somehow wants and expects the media to go easier on Trump.

I went undercover at a boot camp for young conservatives — here’s what I learned

(Credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

“I’m up at three in the morning, sweating, because the Fed isn’t destroyed yet,” proclaims Ivy El Zaatari, a wise-cracking young conservative standing before the classroom in a bright red dress. Outside, the sky and sea on this Santa Barbara Saturday are bright blue. But the lights are dim inside the small UC Santa Barbara room. The Powerpoint behind Ivy glows as she paces.

I’m seated in the back of the room, undercover in a blazer and pearls at the Leadership Institute, awell funded nonprofit geared toward college students like myself that proclaims to teach “conservative Americans how to influence policy through direct participation, activism, and leadership.” LI has been around since 1979, and offers a wide variety of trainings in-person and online.

Ivy (a Die Hard [sic] Liberty Activist and Baby Lover) is the director of LI’s Youth Leadership School, a “two-day, comprehensive campaign activism training” for which I, and a roomful of other college students, forfeit a beautiful weekend in exchange for the promise that each of us will be “provide[d] the tools to be an effective youth leader for conservative candidates and causes.”

Basically that translates to two days of bootcamp, after which you are theoretically prepared to be the Youth Director on a pre-existing conservative campaign.

LI makes you feel like you’re capable, and the “faculty,” comprised of a few conservative twenty-somethings, make it clear that after the training they’re happy to connect you to a community of conservative support to help you achieve your political dreams. Though Ivy and the other faculty members are about the same age as the students in the room, they seem, in their position of relative authority, a little older, and they are nice. They’re like, really, really nice. They want to help you out. They really, really want you to come work for a gubernatorial campaign, come to more trainings, and apply for their internship program!

Online and in-person, LI is accessible because the trainings are both frequent and affordable. To give you a better picture of their funding, LI is an “associate” of State Policy Network, the right-wing, $83 million conglomerate of tax-exempt organizations with 153 members in 49 states, Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., Canada and the United Kingdom and close ties to the Koch brothers, among others. This is in part what makes it possible for the Youth Leadership School to cost students only $30, including all meals and the nearby hotel where they put you up for two nights. Yes, the food is admittedly less on the gourmet side, and more on the fast-food-and-candy-bars level. But still, they take care of you, and of course, the training to help you make your politician win is, like Ivy, hardcore.

I signed up with LI because I am really curious about young conservatives. Republicans — especially young Republicans! — are mysterious to me. I grew up in some pretty liberal places: Berkeley, Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon. And as a New York University student, I continue to exist in almost exclusively progressive environments. I am (pretty) sure there are conservatives lurking in the corners of Bobst Library, but I am yet to knowingly encounter any. I’m also pretty sure this makes me what a conservative might call “acoastal elite.” I’ve gone all 21 years of my life without hearing unbridled conservative outpourings, and I badly want to know what is said by these people behind closed doors. What on earth are these young conservatives thinking? What are they exposed to that causes them to think that way? Are they real? Are they for real?

So, I sign up with my second last name that I don’t normally use, do my best playing dress-up, and to get into character, binge-watched The American Bible Challenge on Netflix which I found on a list of most popular TV shows for Republicans. On the drive down Highway 1 from Berkeley to Santa Barbara, I practiced laughing at things I usually find upsetting (this turns out to maybe be my most helpful prep work). As I try to catch up on the Top 40 of Christian hits so I can relate to my imagined future peers, I run through scenarios of my liberal identity being exposed in the middle of the weekend. However, in the two jampacked days and nights, no one has time or cares to cross-examine me. Mostly, I just smile and sit in the pearls my Republican grandmother bequeathed to me, which I superstitiously convince myself will act like a protection charm. I commit to playing the part, nodding along, laughing at all the right points. And no one ever questions me. Not once.

One of the first things I realize at conservative camp is that conservatives are just like us liberals! Except not really. There are about 20 students, and like a lot of the liberal kids I know, many of the staunch conservatives in the room are really fed up with “The Fed,” as Ivy and others refer to it. Okay, so maybe a disheartened Bernie Bro wouldn’t put it exactly like that. But there are a lot of young (and old) liberals who have lost faith with the U.S. government, who want a complete restructuring, who express similar fantasies like many of my peers at the Youth Leadership School. What that restructuring would look like is just different. While many in this room bemoan Big Government, many of my progressive pals are cuddling up at night to a sweet dream of a socialist United States.

Needless to say, “anarchism” is not a dirty word in this room, but rather an identity many attending the institute wear proudly. Neither is “activist,” another self-proclaimed title by many in the group, including Ivy and the rest of the “faculty.” Feminism, however, is a bad word. One of my favorite examples of “two sides of a debate” that I jot down simply reads: “feminism versus normal Americans.” Off of the activist agenda are: racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and many other forms of discrimination.

But surprisingly, given the casual bigotry and white supremacist rhetoric, the group is not as homogeneously straight, white and male as you might imagine. The group I attended training with had a few women in the mix, was not all white, and as my gaydar indicated, not all straight. Instead, the positioning and the subsequent catharsis that can occur over common ground comes when the question, “Who has ever been called a fascist?” is posed.

Every hand in the room shoots up. They all laugh, and I do my best to laugh along inconspicuously. Then they rattle off a long list of insults, cataloging who has been called what, with students and faculty likewise contributing, freely calling out: “Racist! Xenophobic! Transphobic! Nazi! Neonazi! Literally Hitler! Privileged!” (To the Hitler name-calling, someone retorts: “Maybe they’re literally Hitler and just projecting on you.”)

Another joyful release for this group is when we are asked to give examples of conspiracy theories. The exercise starts off relatively innocuously: JFK assassination theories, 9/11 was an inside job, and so on. Things 180 when a student shouts out: “The wage gap!”

This exclamation is met with belly laughter, applause, and a collective list-off of other “conspiracy theories.” The energy flips from bored to boisterous, and my classmates are bubbling with ideas, each met with affirmations and other indications of approval from the group, including the following (in order):

“52 genders and 32 ways to identify yourself!”
“And it’s all fluid!” another voice chimes in, with a chortle.
“The world is controlled by a few bankers!”
“The 1%!”
“The Prison Industrial Complex!”

These exclamatory vignettes might sound like a Trump rally, but in fact the training is thorough, rigorous and inordinately draining. After 14-plus hours of scheduled trainings, I crawl into bed and pass out after a polite discussion of the biblical theory on which my roommate is writing an essay for her Christian college. She squints in suspicion of my ignorance on the subject matter — Sodom and Gomorrah — but answers my questions anyway. She tells me solemnly about the sins of group sex as we prepare to share a bed. She also tells me she believes in Objectivism and is an Ayn Rand fan; that she takes the Bible literally. Black and white thinking is the only thing that makes sense for her, she says, so it’s all or nothing with the Bible. And she is taking all.

The first day we are lectured on canvassing techniques, mock elections, political theory, recruitment strategy, how to write a press release, how to spot and train potential leaders, and more. Then the next day there are more Powerpoints and videos to watch, but is devoted largely to getting up on our feet and putting our training into practice. We break off into teams in order to solve hypothetical crisis situations or make IRL memes on posterboard which are then presented and judged.

The winners of these competitions are rewarded the same way people who answer the verbal quiz questions we are given throughout the lectures are: with books thrown at them. These Read to Lead books cover a wide range of political philosophy, from Ronald Reagan biographies to “Atlas Shrugged” to “Rules For Radicals,” all presented with the caveat that “political theory is neutral.” You get to choose what book you want and you get to keep it, which is pretty cool. Though I play too meek to win any.

Above and beyond the most requested prize is “Rules For Radicals.” Ivy introduces the book by saying, “Hillary Clinton wrote her thesis on this. We need to read what they know.” Turns out I’m not the only young person curious about what the other side thinks and why.

Those illustrations of group outpourings around name calling and so-called conspiracy theories may also give you the wrong idea in that they illustrate this weekend’s Youth Leadership School group as a cohesive set of individuals who share a common core set of beliefs, when that is also far from the case. In reality, the room is comprised of young people who represent many sects of the fractured conservative identity: Trumpers, Neocons, Libertarians, Rand Paul devotees, self-described “hardcore tea partiers,” more traditional Grand Ol’ Party Republicans, and little ol’ undercover me.

And even within these micro groupings of Conservatives there are notable splits, and further divisions from there on individual issues from abortion to foreign policy to unions.

Blearily at 8 a.m. on Saturday before the first training, I walk in a group with some LI classmates, hoping desperately not to run into anyone I actually know who goes to UCSB, to get coffee. Some not-so-jokingly talk of a Trump family monarchy emerges on our way over. Several of the young Trumpers are behind the idea and others delight in the suggestion, quick to get on board. One Trumper defects, though, noting almost innocently: “But, then, this wouldn’t be a democracy.” “Exactly!” someone replies, and I bark a laugh of amazement.

For this group of LI students it’s not clear what conservatism means, or what a conservative future might look like. Ivy differentiates deftly when she says, “I’m talking about Conservatives, not Republicans. [..] They talk about their Bibles as much as their Constitution.” But the students’ divisions and doubt go deeper than mere defections from the Republican parties. Kevin Shaw, a contrarian, one of my LI classmates, and actively involved in a lawsuit against his community college over free speech, at one point wonders out loud if he is really conservative at all. Maybe, he muses, he just likes to argue whatever the opposing viewpoint is. The classroom responds in glaring silence.

Back at the crunchy granola cafe by the UCSB campus I make conversation as we wait for our coffee by asking this little group what they think of Tomi Lahren, and walk right into the uneven terrain of of pro-choice, pro-life debates. Oddly only the boys in this small sub grouping know who Lahren is. They express sympathy at her firing and indifference to the larger debate. These guys claim they believe in individual freedom of choice. And momentarily I wonder, standing in the sea breeze in a black blazer, watching a beautiful girl skate by, her dreads swaying as she swerves down the smooth cement, passively listening to a gaggle of sorority sisters gossiping as they sip smoothies, if libertarians are kind of chill. Maybe, I think in a temperate and temporary delusion, they really do want to stay out of your business and for you to stay out of theirs.

This laughable fantasy is dispelled almost immediately by others in the bunch spewing exceedingly hate-filled, pro-life rhetoric, including, later, Ivy.

Foreign affairs are another particularly fraught area for the LI group. The only thing they can seem to agree on is Israel, universally loved. ”Israel is our greatest ally ever,” says one student. “Ever?” questions another. “Yeah!” Chims in a third. “It’s like America’s little baby,” says the first. “Baby in the Middle East,” the third affirms. There is no further dissent in the room.

Unions are a funny point of controversy, and maybe envy. Are all unions bad, or just some? Teachers’ unions are definitely bad. But some propose auto unions are good. An undercurrent of jealousy waves through the lecture that first morning on how unions mobilize liberal activists. We learn that conservatives rely more heavily on volunteers, because they don’t have the galvanizing force of unions like the Left does.

Later we’re told: “homeschoolers are the Right’s version of a union.” A big plus, or so the lecture goes, is that homeschoolers are very principled. A distinction is made from “unschoolers” however, who we are warned against, as they are generally lazy liberals who won’t work hard for your cause, if at all.

I keep referring to Ivy by her first name, because, in case you didn’t notice at the top of this article, that is my first name too, and there is something about it that delights and disgusts me. I am being indoctrinated by a kind of counterpart, Conservative-Ivy, who both does and doesn’t reflect myself back to me. At one point she comes up to me, taps me on the shoulder and jokes, “I love your name.” Her delivery is so charming, I find myself giggling. A rush of affection towards her flows through me. Yes, we have vastly different backgrounds and beliefs, as the last line in her faculty biography states: “Originally born in Lebanon, Ivy has been a strong advocate for the Constitution and Conservative philosophy.” But still, she stands before me about the same height and same age: the person I maybe could be, could have become, could still become. A photographer comes to take the group picture and Ivy requests one of the two of us, and there we stand together Ivy and I. Ivy and Ivy.

Part of my preparation work is some extensive internet stalking of Ivy El Zaatari before I leave, the kind of online sleuthing that they later advocate for to spot potential recruit for clubs and causes on campus. I find all of Ivy’s social media. I read every tweet on her once-public Twitter @IvyinLiberty, look at every post on her once-public real Instagram, @ivynina, and a quickly abandoned, now deleted fitness account called @ivyfitgirlchallange. My favorite was posted in the lead up to Valentine’s Day: “Looking for a Valentine to whisper sweet nothings of: Taxation is Theft to…” A few days later, a GIF of a swooning woman captioned: “When he says taxation is theft.” This is my first exposure to that slogan, or #ProLifeGeneration, or a lot of other conservative rhetoric aimed at millennials. The virtual contact with Ivy before I meet her, intimate and one sided, lingers. Knowing this much about her I feel indescribably close to her. I can’t take my eyes off of her now, as she stands before me, my teacher Ivy, and I, Ivy, her duplicitous pupil.

But sometimes Ivy too seems like she’s operating in a realm of double-speak and it’s a little difficult for me to parse. My main stumbling block is over her use of the word “philosophy.” This is the same word that pops up on the LI site: “Conservatism tends to focus on the power of ideas [..] philosophy is very important.” Frequently during the trainings Ivy says things like “the Republican party is philosophical and the Democratic party is issue-based.” At one point she makes the claim that “Bernie Sanders finally gave the Democratic Party a philosophical base when the Democrats had to ask ‘Are we Socialists or Democrats?’” Of course both the Democratic and Republican parties have philosophies that guide their politics, and both parties push for specific issues — so what is “philosophy” codeword for?

As Ivy paces the room lecturing on Conservative “philosophy” on the last day, I notice for the first time on the back of her ankles, in cursive above her black leather pump, two tattoos: “send” on the left, and “me” on the right. I’m evidently no biblical scholar, but I think this is referencing Isaiah 6:8.

This is when I realize that what Ivy means is that Conservatism appeals to people on a level above facts: religion. Conservatives are skipping right over the whole logic bit and get straight to the good stuff. Ivy is hinting around about “philosophy,” because, like she said, “I’m talking about Conservatives, not Republicans. [..] They talk about their Bibles as much as their Constitution.” Sell ‘em a fantasy, and one with a moral, religious backing as well. Ivy has been trying to get it through our heads that the fear of God is how you can get people to vote against their best interests.

Which is when I also realize that the religious elements to the Conservative crash course I made for myself to prepare for this weekend, though crucial, were not nearly enough. A TV show and some tunes are not going to get deeply ingrained Christian ideals into your heart, soul, and brain. While Democrats might be trying to get nominally or significantly better health care plans passed and other “issues,” Republicans are appealing to voters by preaching. Way more fun.

I couldn’t tell for sure if they ever suspected that the girl taking copious notes in pearls and espousing very few personal beliefs was in fact a liberal journalist.

At several moments I thought I had fooled them for sure. During the training at various times Ivy mentioned they could use someone like me in Virginia or somewhere else in the country. Another time she says, “we’re already recruiting” and winks at me.

But actually, Ivy might consider what I believe in my heart might be entirely beside the point. After all, what LI callsthe Sir Galahad approach to politics — the belief that one is going to win because one’s heart is pure — LI says doesn’t work. They want someone to stand up and profess whatever the the dogmatic conservatism du jour is, deliver it well, whether or not they believe that. And, in my undercover persona, I quickly found myself doing just that; churning out Men’s Rights Activism memes as the clock ticked and then enthusiastically presenting them to the larger group.

If I’m being honest, though I stayed seated and silent, a part of me wanted to jump at the chance of joining Ivy in Virginia or wherever else they could use someone devoting their time to recruiting young conservatives. Something or someone inside me, maybe not my pseudo-conservative persona per say, but not exactly not-her, wanted to say: “Yes!” And go in deeper into whatever this odd rabbit hole is of shifting young conservative beliefs, personas and values that are part of the quickly-morphing Republican Party.

Which is to say, I would attend the hellish and heavenly bootcamp that is the Youth Leadership School all over again if I could. Nothing like the sweet, sweet nausea of a completely unfamiliar and somewhat traumatic environment to scar you into learning and cartwheel you through moments of empowerment, horror, and inspiration. The training that LI gives — especially if you think your skin is thick enough to put up with some offhand, disturbing xenophobic remarks from your peers — is quite incredible, likely conveniently located near you, and cheap. And, if you participate a little more actively than yours truly, you’ll probably get some good books out of it as well. Perhaps LI really said it best when they they wrote that “any student who wants to be active in the political process should attend this school.”

Sleeping on your back increases risks of stillbirth

(Credit: images72 via Shutterstock/Salon)

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness day on Oct. 15, 2017 draws our attention to a bleak statistic — an estimated one in four pregnancies end in a loss. Many of these are early miscarriages. But in Canada about one in 125 pregnancies end in a stillbirth — that is, the death of a fetus in utero after 20 weeks gestation.

Countries such as Korea and Finland have much lower rates of stillbirth, so we know that there is more we can do to prevent it. There is research on the risk factors that increase the chances of a stillbirth. Yet many pregnancy guides do not give enough information about stillbirth, in the belief that women do not want to be frightened about pregnancy loss.

Information about how to prevent stillbirth needs to get into the hands of women who need it, even if it leads to an uncomfortable conversation. As a medical librarian, my job is to connect people to trusted information about their health. When dealing with a taboo topic, such as stillbirth, this is even more challenging as both health care providers and women might be afraid of increasing anxiety, rather than improving health.

We also want to ensure that women who have had a stillbirth in the past and may have slept on their back do not feel guilt over doing so. I know, because I myself have had a stillbirth. With the passage of time, I cannot honestly answer how I might have slept that night when my twins died, but it is still something that worries me.

While some risk factors are not things most pregnant women can change, there are two very simple things women can do, to lower the odds.

1. Count the kicks

There are two methods described in the medical literature about how to count your baby’s kicks: the Sadovsky method and the Cardiff method. In the Cardiff method, you count 10 movements and record how much time it takes for you to reach 10. In the Sadovsky method, you are asked to count how many movements you feel within a specific time frame, usually 30 minutes to two hours. In either case, the most important consideration is that you should be aware of your baby’s normal movements.

Any decrease in fetal movement should prompt a phone call or visit to your health care provider immediately. We don’t shame people for seeking medical advice when they have chest pains. Reduced fetal movements are similar to chest pains — a warning sign that something could be wrong. See your doctor or midwife and don’t delay or feel guilty for taking up their time!

2. Don’t sleep on your back

At last month’s International Stillbirth Alliance conference, several researchers presented information to show that back sleeping increased the risk of stillbirth.

In the first study, researchers in New Zealand put 10 pregnant women who were otherwise healthy into MRI scanners, to see if they could see changes in blood flow when they were lying on their backs or on their left side. They found that cardiac output (how efficiently the heart pumps blood) was the same in both positions.

However the blood flow and diameter of the inferior vena cava were reduced when lying on their backs. This affects how blood flows back to the heart from the body. The researchers speculate that this might contribute to stillbirths in some instances.

The second study, also from New Zealand, placed 30 pregnant women in a sleep lab. They monitored their breathing and position throughout the night to see if there was a relationship between lying on their backs and measured breathing. While none of the women met the criteria for sleep apnea, they didn’t breathe in as deeply when they were lying on their backs.

Lastly, researchers in the UK interviewed over 1000 women about their sleep practices before pregnancy, during pregnancy and the night before their stillbirth (for those who had suffered one) or the interview (for women who had not suffered one). The women who had gone to sleep on their backs while pregnant were twice as likely to have had a stillbirth then women who had gone to sleep on their left side.

All of this was a follow up to earlier research which had proposed the same hypothesis, that sleeping on your back increased the risk.

Women need accurate health information

Delivering timely information to prevent stillbirth is important, and withholding information out of a fear you’ll frighten women is patronising at best and potentially dangerous at worst.

What’s more, witholding information does little in an era where most people can get online and are not always equipped to evaluate what information is useful and how to put it into context. Health care providers can do more to partner with librarians on delivering evidence-based information to their patients. This is certainly true with information about pregnancy, but also in many areas of health where the information that needs to be delivered is complex, and requires more time to be evaluated than is available to most doctors.

Women deserve better communication about their health and the health of their babies when pregnant. While counting kicks and sleeping on your left side aren’t a guarantee that you’ll have a safe and healthy pregnancy, they are easy, low cost ways to reduce the risk.

Amanda Ross-White, Health Sciences Librarian, Nursing and Information Scientist, Queen’s University, Ontario

Daniel Ellsberg warns of nuclear dangers in the era of Trump

For most people, Daniel Ellsberg is known mainly for — or only for — the Pentagon Papers he leaked in 1971. And that’s plenty. It set in motion a landmark First Amendment case and led to shifts in public opinion that helped quicken the US withdrawal from Vietnam and the end to that war. Ellsberg was back in the public eye recently in relation to the epic 10-part PBS series on Vietnam, which included a lengthy segment on the Pentagon Papers — but his absence from the series as an interview subject drew criticism. Coming up: a movie drama on the Papers directed by Steven Spielberg.

But, for me, the name Ellsberg does not immediately evoke “Vietnam” but rather “anti-nuclear.” And now he has written a book titled The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, to be published by Bloomsbury in December. In it he reveals that the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers that he copied from his office at the Rand Corporation in 1969-70 were only “a fraction” of what he had borrowed from office safes. Much of the rest amounted to the “other” Pentagon papers — secret documents on US nuclear war plans and capabilities.

In Doomsday Machine — the title taken, of course, from Dr. Strangelove — he discloses that he intended to release all of these copies at the same time but became convinced that it was vital to first concentrate on a war already raging rather than on one that was even more deadly but not at hand (although the threat certainly was). His story of what happened to the nuclear papers is almost worth the price of the book, as they are hidden in a compost pile, then at a garbage dump, before the outer fringes of a hurricane scatter them to history. Ellsberg has since obtained some of them again via FOIA requests and other means.

While I wrote about the Pentagon Papers in the early 1970s, my close connection with Ellsberg began only in the 1980s after I became the editor of Nuclear Times magazine. Ellsberg, then (and still) living in the San Francisco area, had started appearing at antinuclear protests — the “freeze” campaign was in full swing across the country. Naturally I wanted him to write an essay for the magazine on this subject but I was warned that while he often tried to write articles he “never finishes them.” When he completed a column for us, it drew wide attention as his first published piece in many years.

And so began our friendship. His anti-nuclear activism only increased, leading to his arrest at numerous protests, including at the Nevada test site, over the next decade. Most of the world still knew him only for the Papers, but he had become a hero in anti-nuclear circles. We had long talks, in person or over the phone, about nuclear issues and about Hiroshima, a subject I had written about for dozens of newspapers and magazines after my visit there in 1984. He took particular interest in the book I was writing with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, and attended with me several of the annual gatherings at Lifton’s summer home in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. At those retreats he would talk about his anti-nuclear civil disobedience and grow quite emotional discussing his little-known work on nuclear war plans that preceded his months in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. But he had not written widely about that.

In recent years, Ellsberg has been hailed by many and decried by some as “the world’s most famous whistleblower,” often interviewed for his early support for WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. But his passion — and my own — surrounding nuclear threat has never faded. I wrote a book, “Atomic Cover-Up,” on the US suppression of film footage from Hiroshima that he deeply appreciated.

In my current book, “The Tunnels,” peak nuclear dangers during the Cold War play a key role as I cover escapes under the Berlin Wall and how the Kennedy White House tried to kill US television coverage of them. This happened in 1962, at a time when Ellsberg was intimately involved in nuclear theorizing and “game” play. One reason JFK did not support tunnel escapes and publicity about them, was fear that it might spark a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. He managed to scuttle Daniel Schorr’s CBS coverage and delay an NBC primetime special, “The Tunnel”, but when the latter finally aired it would stand as a landmark in TV history and profoundly influence a generation of broadcast journalists (including Bill Moyers).

So, for all these reasons, I was particularly pleased to read Ellsberg’s upcoming The Doomsday Machine, already hailed in blurbs by everyone from Edward Snowden to Arundhati Roy.

Ellsberg, now 86, wrote an autobiography about 15 years ago, but this is his first book tracing his full encounter with nuclear weapons. It goes back to his teen years in the postwar 1940s when he read John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”, which would inform his nuclear views for the rest of his life. In the book, even though I thought I knew Dan well, I was surprised to read that he belatedly learned that his father, a builder, had top-secret clearances and refused to work on the hydrogen bomb project on principle — and cited Dan introducing him to the Hersey book as a turning point.

Part I of the book, making up about two-thirds of the pages, is titled “The Bomb and I,” and kicks off with the chapter, “How Could I: The Making of a Nuclear War Planner.” We follow his early career, which included stints in the US Marines and at Harvard, to Vietnam and to Rand, with nuclear risk always in the background, if not the foreground. I was surprised to learn that as an avowed Cold Warrior he had played a key role in drafting one of the key documents in my “Tunnels” book, the official, step-by-step US war plan for initiating a first-strike nuclear attack. Then his book moves on to two subjects at the heart of my “Tunnels”: the Berlin crisis and the Cuban missile showdown.

On Cuba he reveals in a straightforward fashion his intimate involvement as an adviser to White House insiders before and during the October 1962 episode. Ellsberg was in the “dovish” camp, advising those around Kennedy to first try blocking Soviet shipments to Cuba instead of following the Joint Chiefs’ urgings to bomb and/or invade the island. We all know the happy ending to that crisis, but in the following chapter Ellsberg covers what he, and the public, did not know at the time: the full extent of how close we came to World War III, not because of actions by Soviet or American leaders but the dangers posed by trigger-happy Cubans manning anti-aircraft batteries and Soviet officers in submarines. But, as in so much of the book, it’s not merely “history” but a warning for today with many of the same technological — and human — elements still holding sway.

In the final third of the book, Ellsberg goes beyond his personal experiences to tackle the track record and philosophy of what he calls “bombing cities,” “burning cities” and “killing a nation” before concluding with the real driving force of this book, and why it’s so significant today: a close study of US “first-use” policy. Yes, no matter the president, from Truman and Ike to Obama and Trump, it has been American policy to launch a nuclear first-strike even if we have not yet been attacked.

It is Ellsberg’s belief that multiple presidents have used nuclear weapons in threatening other nations since Nagasaki. He presents a long list of such moments, and along with many, he is particularly worried about Trump’s recklessness toward North Korea. He recalls Trump asking an adviser about nuclear weapons, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?” Trump also wondered if our allies, Japan and South Korea, should consider designing their own nukes.

But he also argues that accidental nuclear war is a real threat, and that the final decision to fire weapons may be delegated to subordinates in the US and Russia and probably in other nuclear nations. Vital information about all things nuclear, meanwhile, has been kept from the public for decades: “Like discussion of covert operations and assassination plots, nuclear war plans and threats are taboo for public discussion by the small minority of officials and consultants who know anything about them.” Few in Congress even know much about them.

This “systematic official secrecy, lying and obfuscation” guarantees that “most aspects of the US nuclear planning system and force readiness that became known to me half a century ago still exist today” and are “as prone to catastrophe as ever.” Ellsberg calls this “the hidden reality” he hopes to expose in his book — and in my view, he succeeds at that.

At a time when nuclear dangers grow, along with activism to combat them — elevated just this week by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons receiving the Nobel Peace Prize — Ellsberg’s book is a timely reminder of the nuclear threat and essential reading in the Trump era.

Can humans really live past 115? A new scientific debate erupts

(Credit: Getty/PeopleImages)

Humans have long dreamed of living forever, and as life expectancy has increased throughout the past century, it seemed as if immortality— or at least, unprecedented longevity — were within grasp. Yet a new study has, yet again, dashed collective hopes for eternal life.

Scientists from the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands used statistical methods to analyze the Dutch population over a period of 30 years to answer three main questions about life expectancy. The first one was whether there was an unbreakable wall of age, or if you can always get one year older. If there is such a limit, can it change over time? And most importantly, how old can we get?

The researchers found that there was indeed a limit to human longevity, and it was, on average, 115.7 years for women and 114.2 years for men. For some, it could be as high as 125 years because of fluctuations. Surprisingly, this age limit didn’t change over time, and remained steady over the whole study period.

The study was a response to another line of research performed by Xiao Dong, Brandon Milholland, and Jan Vijg, the results of which appeared in Nature last year. Their study, “Evidence for a limit to human lifespan,” reported that the “maximum lifespan of humans is fixed and subject to natural constraints,” as they wrote in the abstract. Dong, Milholland and Vijg’s study garnered heavy criticism, much of it questioning the validity of the statistical method used.

“One complaint was that Vijg’s analysis partitioned the data into two time periods – before and after 1995 – on the back of a visual inspection that appeared to show a leveling off around this year. When the two underlying trends were calculated, the period after 1995 had a flat gradient, appearing to confirm the hypothesis,” wrote the Guardian.

To make up for this mistake, the Dutch researchers used Extreme Value Theory, a subfield of statistics that deals with the so-called tails of distribution. “If you talk about the end point of a distribution, like how old people can get, or how fast people can run, then you are not interested in the average people but in the people who are very good in something, and in this case, very good in getting old,” explains John J.H. Einmahl, a Statistics professor at the University of Tilburg, and one of the study’s co-authors. This seemed to be the proper method of dealing with such questions.

Einmahl and his team also found a similar limit to the human lifespan, with one difference: Vijg’s research showed that at first the lifespan increased, and then decreased.

“The picture was like a roof where you see a house from the side you have the roof that goes up, and then it goes down. And we found that this was not the case. We found that it’s more or less flat,” Einmahl told Salon. This is a substantial difference; Vijg’s results suggested that the oldest people die earlier than they used to, while Einmahl was able to show that the oldest people died at the same age as they did before.

But what defines aging in the first place? “There seems to be consensus that over time your cells degenerate. Damage accumulates (including DNA mutations) that lead to diseases, such as cancer, and loss of function. Those who are lucky and have good genes that help to protect them against wear and tear may live longer. But we still are far from sure what these genes are,” said Jan Vijg, a molecular geneticist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and one of the co-authors of the aforementioned Nature study.

“Aging is the process that limits life (apart from violence, accidents, or early disease). Aging is considered normal and not a disease,” he added.

Telomeres are stretches of DNA at the end of chromosomes, which have been equated with the plastic caps at the end of our shoelaces. They make it possible for our cells to divide, but each time they do so, they get shorter until they can no longer function properly. That’s why telomeres act as aging clocks for our cells.

Life expectancy, on the other hand, is “essentially the average lifespan of a population, which is determined by the conditions under which you live, sheer luck and of course to some extent by aging.” Some people age faster than others,” Vijg told Salon, “which can be due to bad habits, bad living conditions or bad genes. But everybody ages.”

That could change in the future. Vijg suggested that “you should never rule anything out. So, yes, we may find interventions that block some of the ultimate causes of aging and therefore increase our current 115-year limit above and beyond that.”

The drug metformin, usually prescribed for type 2 diabetes, has shown some promise in slowing down the aging process, though the jury isn’t out on this one. In 2010, Harvard scientists were able to reverse aging in mice by preventing telomeres from getting shorter.

While it could take a long time, it’s possible that in the future, we may live longer than 115 years. Vijg says that it “may in fact already be happening.”

Ron Livingston: Hollywood needs “a sea change”

(Credit: Salon/Peter Cooper)

“There’s tough stuff coming to light in Hollywood that has always been there,” actor Ron Livingston told Salon’s Alli Joseph on “Salon Talks.”

Livingston is known for roles in “Sex and the City” and “Office Space,” and stars in a new series called “Loudermilk,” which premieres Tuesday on Audience. The show centers around drug counselor and recovering alcoholic, Sam Loudermilk, (played by Livingston) as he balances fixing his own life with those around him.

Livingston starred in the 1996 film “Swingers,” which was distributed by Miramax, the company co-founded by Harvey Weinstein. He spoke candidly with Salon about sexual misconduct in Hollywood.

“It’s going to be there until we change it and get rid of it,” Livingston said. “And that’s going to take a sea change, and my hope is that now is the time that everybody’s going to get on board with that.”

Livingston is adamant that to move forward, the onus of sexism and sexual violence in Hollywood can’t just be confined to the accused. “It’s easy to pile on the pariah once he’s the pariah, now it’s safe to pile on the pariah,” he said. “The real question is where were the rest of us?”

“I think, and myself included, have been guilty of saying, well I didn’t create that,” Livingston continued. “But I’m not really in a position to change it.”

As allegations against Weinstein reveal, there was a web of people around him, including his employees, including the media, who were well-versed in how to keep such accusations quiet. Livingston says that line of separation cannot be used as an excuse any longer.

“If you have a 10 foot pit with spikes in the bottom in your front yard, and kids are falling in it every week, you don’t get to say, ‘well that was here when I bought the house, I didn’t design that,'” he said. “No, that’s yours, you had the keys, you own it, clean it up.”

Watch the  full “Salon Talks” conversation 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.

As female rappers step to hip-hop’s front, Rapsody leads the pack

Rapsody (Credit: Chris Charles)

When’s the last time a rapper made you rewind the track? The rhymes were too sharp and complicated to hear it just once. The cadence made you dizzy trying to untangle the double and triple entendres compounded into two lines. You had to stop and rewind it just to make sure you heard it right.

That’s how Rapsody does it all day long, making music that, as she says, “sticks to people’s ribs.”

Rapsody, born Marlanna Evans, released her sophomore album “Laila’s Wisdom” (named for her Grandmother) on September 22. On it, she’s a griot, expertly spinning out stories of love, resilience, female empowerment and gun violence over production arresting and layered. “Laila’s Wisdom” is a no-brainer inclusion in the best rap albums of the year, even during a crowded season.

But Rap legend Busta Rhymes argues its quality goes much beyond the span of 2017. On Instagram, he describe “Laila’s Wisdom” as “the best album I’ve heard not only from a female MC but in Hip hop period” in the past decade.

Now, reviewers and even her fans have been quick to point out that Rapsody towers as a female rapper. One guesses they mean that as a compliment. Her discography, however, reveals the reductive, sexist absurdity of that label. Just check the list of artists she’s enlisted for songs in the past: Black Thought, Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes, Big Daddy Kane, Raekwon. It clearly takes a colossal and secure male rapper to feel comfortable delivering a verse next to Rapsody’s.

She was also the only feature on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterstroke, “To Pimp A Butterfly.” Rapsody’s not a towering ‘female’ rapper. She’s one of the best rappers out there, period.

Rapsody’s sheer talent is also reflected by the people who surround her. For “Laila’s Wisdom,” there are four executive producers: 9th Wonder, Young Guru, Terrace Martin and Rapsody. As the distinguished hip-hop website DJ Booth explains, that lineup “is like Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, and Gregg Popovich all on one court coaching and giving tips to a promising basketball star.”

Rapsody’s sound has garnered her props from one of her idols, Jay-Z (who is also technically one of her bosses, now that’s she’s signed to his label Roc Nation.) There’s only one other artist whose approval would mean the world to Rapsody: Lauryn Hill. But after seven projects and the master class and depth that is “Laila’s Wisdom,” it’s easy to guess the legend is already listening.

Despite Rapsody’s enormous support by hip-hop giants, her journey has been one of work, passion and perseverance. There’s been a whole lot of “rap camp,” as she says of her early days with 9th Wonder, where the super producer gave her classic hip-hop albums to study like “Doggystyle” by Snoop Dogg, “Midnight Marauders” by A Tribe Called Quest and “The Black Album” by Jay-Z.

But it’s not just music informing her work. “I use to write poetry, spoken word, and I read a lot of Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni,” Rapsody says. Her research into the art of rhyme and the way rappers inflected their words, moved her writing from a place of poetry to hip-hop.

Rapsody also cites actors  and  as influences. For her, it’s all about how they “carry themselves; the class, the roles that they played and how they always portrayed strong black women,” Rapsody says. “That really resonated with me.”

Rapsody sees her purpose as much the same: to inspire young black girls and to champion women in general. No small feat in hip-hop where for almost a decade, Nicki Minaj has been the only face on commercial platforms, and every aspiring or returning female rapper since has been pitted against her. 

“I don’t believe in that. I didn’t grow up on that,” Rapsody says of the dynamic. “I listened to MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, Salt-N-Pepa, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim and Lauryn Hill, and I loved and respected them all the same. They use to work with each other and they got along. I know it can be that today.”

Rapsody exudes this solidarity in the way that she makes space for women to see themselves in hip-hop and by challenging and defying the stereotypes women rappers are typically confined to.

And it’s in the music, too. “Sassy,” the gorgeous, funky, upbeat dance track on “Laila’s Wisdom,” reimagines Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” in its writing and message. Rapsody’s voice stretches and harmonizes like an instrument of its own: “Diamonds ‘tween my kneeees/ Oil wells in thighhhs/ Does my sassiness upset you?/ Oh, you mad cuz I survived?!” It’s empowering as hell.

Like “Sassy,” others stories of womanhood on the album also deal closely with endurance. It’s illustrative of the determination required to have a career in music, never mind be a black woman in the industry. “When they told me my chances of losing was higher than divorces,” Rapsody spits on the album’s opener and title track.

The brave and soulful “Black & Ugly,” assisted by gifted R&B crooner BJ the Chicago Kid, is a testament to Rapsody’s tenacity, a rejection of the pressures for women in hip-hop to be sold and consumed strictly through their image and sex appeal. “Talking appearance ain’t no diss to me,” Rapsody rhymes confidently. The themes of beauty standards and blackness is also a continuum from her verse on Kendrick Lamar’s “Complexion.”

“It was something that I had been holding in for a long time,” Rapsody says. “There was a time when my self confidence was shaken.” But the song has been praised as one of the album’s strongest, which Rapsody finds humbling. She says it’s incredible to see how the track makes women “feel powerful, and how that makes them put their fist in the air, and then smile a little bit bigger, like ‘yeah I’m black and beautiful.'” After all, it is why Rapsody got into music in the first place, and it is what music has always given back to her.

It’s a significant moment for women in hip-hop right now. As the genre is officially number one in the country, rapper Cardi B’s breakout single “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” tops the Billboard chart for its third week. It is the first solo rap single from a woman to hit number one since 1998 and now, officially, the longest running in history. Women have always rapped, but women in hip-hop are finally being pushed on major platforms again.

“I’m excited,” Rapsody says, “I think it’s dope that she’s hitting number one at this time and this album that I put out is doing so well, because we’re two totally different artists, and people can like us and listen to us at the same time.”

There’s still much progress to be made, but Rapsody is making it, as are women rappers across the country. All with wildly different sounds, content, rhymes and styles, they’re proving that women can be many things within hip-hop. The only through line with this new crop is a certain camaraderie and a focus on prowess. No one’s trying to be the next Nicki, they’re just trying to be their best, most authentic selves. With this range, it means girls and women can see themselves represented in ways they never had before.

“My whole thing has just been about balance,” Rapsody says. “It’s dope to see what being a woman looks like in many forms. To have a Nicki and a Cardi B, but to also have a Rapsody and an Ill Camille and a Dreezy and a , and all these other artists.” She continued, “I think that’s important, for especially young girls to see, you have these options.”