Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 275

Fox News host wants women to take advantage of their looks

Eboni K. Williams knows her new book, “Pretty Powerful: Appearance, Substance, and Success,” will be controversial.

In it, the Fox News host argues that having good looks and an interest in beauty should be an asset for professional women, not something that women feel makes them shallow or uninteresting — and certainly not anti-feminist.

She also rejects the idea that making this argument is perpetuating unfair beauty standards that leave out women who don’t have the physical assets to make conventional beauty work for them.

Williams says her views are simply realistic. “We look at society, I think, as we would like it to be. I’m someone who looks at society as it is,” she told me on “Salon Talks.”

“As much as I’d think we’d like to believe we’re progressing [beyond] appearance mattering as much,” she continued, “I would submit to you that with these cameras in front of us that we’re not progressing at all. In fact, I think it’s more important now what things look like than ever before.”

Williams says her book is “pro-feminist” because it encourages women to choose for themselves how they present themselves visually — a choice she says she experienced at Fox News, despite the network’s reputation for its beauty standards for on-air female talent.

“I’m also somebody who’s never been told what to wear on Fox News,” Williams said. “So I’ll wear anything from a V-neck to what amounts to a cocktail-slash-ballgown.”

While Williams describes herself as a “Southern glamour beauty queen” who likes eyelash extensions, she didn’t wear them for our interview because it was a rainy day. “You make the adjustments based on what’s viable, what’s reasonable, and what’s going to make the most sense. And really where you’re comfortable,” she said.

Watch our 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.

“All our jokes should have a purpose.”: Robin Thede lends late night new perspective

Robin Thede (Credit: Getty/Bennett Raglin)

On a Monday morning in late September, the staff of “The Rundown with Robin Thede” convened in a sunny, glass-walled conference room high atop a building on West 57th Street in Manhattan, to pitch sketches for a show that would never air. Thede, who has a strong jaw and piercing gray/blue eyes, shoulder length hair and was wearing a casual crewneck sweatshirt, sat at the head of a long conference table.

Prior to getting her own show, Thede was the head writer for “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.” She was the first black woman to hold that role for a late night show, and when “The Rundown” (BET) premieres on October 12, she will be the only black woman late night host on air. (She follows in the footsteps of Whoopi Goldberg, Wanda Sykes and Mo’Nique.)

For the past month, Thede’s staff, the majority of whom are women and people of color, have been building practice shows. After recapping a taped sit-down she did over the weekend with California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Thede asked her head writer, Wayne Stamps, who was sitting next to her, what they had for her.     

This was the Monday after President Trump called football players who protested racial injustice by kneeling for the national anthem “sons of bitches” and in which he disinvited Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry from visiting the White House. Stamps, who compared the show to “black twitter come to life,” glanced at a whiteboard on which ideas were scribbled in black marker. He told Thede that the favorite idea in the room involved her playing Stephen Curry’s five-year-old daughter, Riley.

The joke’s author elaborated. Thede, as Riley, would be in a press conference answering reporters’ questions about the incident. She could call the president a racial epithet. She could say that she just developed object permanence. Thede loved it. “We have to hit on the hypocrisy of white supremacy,” she said. “And contextualize the protests historically.”  

Other than Thede and Stamps, it was hard to tell who held what position within the room. When a premise was presented, the group of writers, researchers, producers and people in the film department resembled a memory of a good college seminar: Jokes bounced off ideas, ideas sprung from jokes. The atmosphere was jovial. From Riley Curry, the conversation turned back to the protests, and from the protests, the conversation turned to NASCAR (which Trump applauded for siding with him).   

Thede is from Davenport, Iowa, the daughter of Dave and Phyllis Thede. Her parents named her after Robin Williams. For most of her childhood, the family was poor. Dave was and is a teacher. Phyllis, who currently serves as a Democrat in the Iowa House of Representatives, worked for Headstart as a teacher’s aid, and in the library of Thede’s old middle school. They lived in a trailer park and were on food stamps. “I didn’t live in a house with a real door until I was a senior in high school,” Thede said.

The Thedes did have a few basic channels though, and Thede and her father would sometimes stay up late watching stand-up or “Saturday Night Live.” But it was Whoopi Goldberg and “In Living Color,” the ‘90s sketch show from the Wayans brothers, that were most formative. “I remember watching Whoopi Goldberg’s one woman show on VHS or PBS when I was a little kid, and I just remember being so blown away by her. She just did everything, and she does everything. And with ‘In Living Color,’ it was eye opening to me to see all those black people on television making me laugh.”

In assembling a staff, Thede was looking for people who had been underestimated in the rest of their careers. She wanted the staff to “resemble the fabric of America and not just be white dudes who went to Harvard.” She added: “I distinctly remember being in all male writer’s rooms and being referred to as ‘the girl writer.’ Or they would only let me speak if they had something for the girl character to do. So sure, as a woman or as a person of color, you feel like your opinions aren’t as valuable as other people’s. I think for me that has always been a motivator. I don’t feel like I’m a victim. I just feel like, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll just create my own things and make my own way.’”

When, during the NASCAR discussion, someone pitched a sketch where Thede would play a NASCAR driver who can’t get around the track without being pulled over, everyone laughed. But after some enthusiastic riffing on the idea from the room, Thede weighed in. “You guys are going to hate me for saying this. But” — she paused — “it feels like the easy joke. Where we can do things high quality, let’s do it high quality.”  

In her gold-accented office after the meeting, Thede explained why she liked one joke and not the other. “Playing Riley Curry will enable me to say some really powerful stuff in a super silly way. But with the NASCAR thing, it’s like ‘Oh I get it, another black person got pulled over.’ It feels like an old joke. It feels like the first joke. It’s funny, but I’m not really saying anything. It comes back to a lesson I learned from ‘The Nightly Show,’ which is that all your jokes should have a purpose.”

When “The Nightly Show” was canceled in August of 2016, Thede was devastated. “It came out of nowhere,” she said. “I think we were really about to hit the next level with the election coming.”

But the experience made Thede think that she could host a similar type of show, and it put her in the position to do so. It also informed what she didn’t want to do: “I did not want to do a daily show. It’s too hard. It’s so much work. When it came to creating my own show, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, once a week.’ It’s why John Oliver and Sam Bee are so good — they get to spend time crafting the message and crafting what they’re going to say.”

Later that night, Thede proved to be more selective with her jokes than the most popular late night show in the country. In his “Late Show” monologue, Stephen Colbert made a version of the NASCAR joke that Thede rejected.

Where “The Rundown” will be tighter than the nightly shows, it will be different than other weeklies, like “Full Frontal” and “Last Week Tonight,” in that Thede will focus on politics and pop culture in equal measure, there will be more sketch and Thede will primarily cover issues that are relevant to black audiences.

In one of Thede’s most popular and memorable segments as a correspondent on “The Nightly Show,” she did a Women’s History Month report on “Black Lady Sign Language.” She parsed, for instance, the difference between a black woman doing a “double hand clap” and a “double hand clap on syllables” — the former being your standard congratulatory clap and the latter a furious demand.

The bit stood out to Rory Albanese, who was showrunner of “The Nightly Show” while Thede was head writer, as being funny and beyond the territory of most late night shows but also as being disarming.

“She took something where white guys might’ve been going, ‘Oh what the hell does that mean?’ and it was like, ‘Oh that’s awesome, that’s what that means!’” Albanese said. “That’s the nice thing about Robin’s whole approach, is it makes everyone feel welcome.”

In recent years, late night has been transformed as the internet has become the place where young audiences consume late night and Donald Trump’s daily newsmaking. These factors have arguably turned late night into a contest over the best take. The network shows will always have a ratings advantage over the cable shows, but come the next morning, anyone’s segment can go viral.

As the only black woman hosting a late night show, Thede is in a unique position. There are jokes that only she can tell and perspectives on issues that only she can convey. While seemingly every other host has a Donald Trump impression, Thede is the only host ready to roll out a Riley Curry impression. She can spin the camera and point a spotlight on angles and issues that are ignored by the other shows.

Albanese couldn’t think of anyone to compare Thede to comedically. “It’s not like people are going to watch her show and go, ‘Oh, this feels like Chris Rock’s standup, what the heck?’” — Rock, incidentally, is a producer of “The Rundown” — “or ‘This is like David Spade. She really has her own style and her own vibe, and I think that that’s what kind of makes it special.”

But while Thede will have space to differentiate herself from the mostly white, male competition, she also anticipates that being a black woman will be a turnoff to some viewers. “If anything, there’s a hill to climb. Because people are like, ‘Well, what is she going to have to say that matters to me?’”

There’s also the issue of audiences confusing a single voice for a singular voice. “I certainly do not represent every black person,” Thede said. She hoped that audiences would not mistake her views for those of an entire race or gender. But she also was quick to recognize the special position she would be in. The conversation turned to tragedies; at this point addressing the nation in the aftermath of a tragedy is part of a late night host’s job. So, when a tragedy occurs —  when, for instance, an unarmed black man is killed by the police — how does she process that?

“For me it’s sadness, and then it’s mobilization,” Thede said. “And yeah, it’s a weird thing to be like, ‘I wish I had a show to talk about this.’ But I know that I am in a place of privilege. Literally every other black woman in the country does not have that option but me. That’s crazy now that I think about it.”

Will anyone be kneeling Sunday? NFL commissioner moves to make every player stand

Member of the San Francisco 49ers kneel during the playing of the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts, Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017, in Indianapolis. (Credit: AP/Michael Conroy)

On Tuesday NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a letter that while the league respects the individual rights of players, he believes everyone should stand for the national anthem, and that he would be meeting with team owners next week to discuss a plan moving forward.

“Like many of our fans, we believe that everyone should stand for the national anthem,” the letter to NFL chief executives and club presidents said. “It is an important moment in our game. We want to honor our flag and our country, and our fans expect that of us. We also care deeply about our players and respect their opinions and concerns about critical social issues. The controversy over the anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress on the underlying issues. We need to move past this controversy, and we want to do that together with our players.

But Goodell also said that the plan moving forward would allow “an in-season platform to promote the work of players” on social issues, “and that will help to promote positive change in our country.”

 

JUST IN: In letter to NFL owners, Roger Goodell says: “We believe that everyone should stand for the National Anthem.” pic.twitter.com/iveGOQgJnz

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 10, 2017

The news comes just days after Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said he would bench any player that disrespected the flag, which honored the words of President Donald Trump who has repeatedly concerned himself with the inner workings of the NFL and said that any player who didn’t stand should be fired.

It’s unclear what conclusion the NFL and its owners will come to following their meeting next week, however, the league has already quietly issued a subtle change to its policy on standing for the national anthem, as Deadspin reported.

The policy — not a rule — stems from the game operations manual, formally known as the “Policy Manual for Member Clubs.” Who reminded Jones of the manual? None other than Trump himself.   

Jones emphasized NFL game ops manual several times and then this: “You know who reminded me about the game ops policy? Donald Trump.”

— Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) October 10, 2017

“Indeed, the only current portion of the document publicly available is the short anthem-related portion the league has been feeding to various sources for several weeks,” Deadspin reported.

But here’s the catch: the policy was worded differently as recent as 2014. The entire game operations manual was made available through court records during the Tom Brady scandal over his possible knowledge of deflated footballs.

Deadspin elaborated:

The 2014 policy reads that failure to be on the field by the start of the national anthem may “result in disciplinary action from the League office.” The version currently being promulgated by the NFL revises this to read “result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violation of the above, including first offenses.” That’s a pretty big change for two reasons: They’ve added a lot of punishment, and they’ve removed the language that punishment would come from the league office. We don’t know when the change was made; its language did not appear on the web at all until two weeks ago, and questions sent to an NFL spokesperson have yet to be answered.

Whether the NFL can actually punish players for refusing to stand during the national anthem remains to be seen, but there are speculations on what that would look like, and what could happen. The NFL is known as a private employer, meaning protections on speech are vastly restricted and could result in an employer taking action.

However, as The Root pointed out, there are legal complexities that should be considered, including whether or not the NFL should be considered a private employer.

The NFL receives plenty of public funding, specifically taxpayer funds for new stadiums, as well as copious exemptions. As The Root noted, “Couple this with the substantial tax breaks the NFL receives due its laughable non-profit designation it’s not unfathomable that some NFL teams,” could be considered “public actors.”

At this time, not many players have made statements about the developments, but NFL player Martellus Bennett, brother of NFL player Michael Bennett, made his feelings known.

“@nflcommish really bruh? It’s hard trying to play both sides of the fence when it comes down to injustice and your money huh?”

@nflcommish really bruh? It’s hard trying to play both sides of the fence when it comes down to injustice and your money huh?

— Martellus Bennett (@MartysaurusRex) October 10, 2017

There will likely still be players who kneel in protest on Sunday, however, it’s still unclear when or if the league will do something about it.

Why we need sanctuary states

(Credit: AP Photo/Haven Daley)

California lawmakers have just passed “sanctuary state” legislation – the first state since Oregon, which 30 years ago passed a law preventing state agencies from targeting undocumented immigrants solely because of their illegal status.

Other states should follow California’s and Oregon’s lead.

Since January, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered immigration authorities to target “public safety” threats, federal arrests of undocumented immigrants have increased by over 37 percent. California is home to an estimated 2.3 million unauthorized immigrants.

California’s law limits the authority of state and local law enforcers to communicate with federal immigration authorities, and prevents officers from questioning or holding people depending on their immigration status or immigration violations. But it still allows federal immigration authorities to enter county jails to question immigrants, and allow police and sheriffs to share information on people who have been convicted of serious crimes.

This is a fair balance. Sanctuary protections like these make sense because:

1. Under them, undocumented immigrants are more likely to come forth with information about crime when doing so won’t put them at risk of deportation. This improves public safety and builds trusts with law enforcement.

2. By contrast, turning state and local police into immigration agents invites more crime because it diverts limited time and resources to rounding up undocumented immigrants.

3. Undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens, so it makes even less sense for local and state police to spend their precious time and resources rounding them up.

4. A dragnet aimed at finding and deporting all of America’s 11 million unauthorized immigrants is cruel, costly, and contemptible. It turns this country into more of a police state, breaks up families, and hurts the economy.

We must resist Jeff Sessions and his dragnet. Help make your state a sanctuary.

Nationwide, progressive candidates are leading and winning

(Credit: AP)

This year might not be a big election year, but since all politics is local, progressives are shaking up the establishment in elections nationwide.

Down south in Alabama, Randall Woodfin was elected mayor of Birmingham last week, unseating incumbent William Bell. Woodfin had backed Hillary in the 2016 primary, but received the Bernie Sanders-backed Our Revolution’s endorsement. Birmingham’s incumbent mayor was projected to win easily, with polls showing him in the lead as recently as August.

Up in Minneapolis, where the mayoral election will happen November 7, Our Revolution-backed candidate Ray Dehn won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party convention (DFL, the state’s Democrats), while incumbent mayor Betsy Hodges received less than a quarter of the votes. Rather than vote to give Dehn the endorsement, Hodges and other Dems voted to adjourn the meeting. It was backroom finagling that according to witnesses at MinnPost “played into Dehn’s message — that he’s the outsider taking on a party establishment frightened by the incursion of new activists.”

Out West in New Mexico, Brian Colón, state Democratic Party chair, lost spectacularly in a run-off election for mayor of Albuquerque, despite out-raising his Our Revolution-backed opponent Tim Keller, with over $800,000 in his campaign coffer. The final run-off election will be on November 14.

And in Atlanta, Georgia, Vincent Fort is making a strong bid for mayor, on a platform of civil rights and reducing inequality — in the most unequal major city in the country. That election will be on November 7.

So what is going on? Why are these progressive candidates winning?

It could be a perfect mix of a population tired of out-of-touch politicians and ready — even desperate — to try something new.

In Minneapolis, incumbent Hodges, despite having a plethora of standard party endorsements, including the SEIU, Senator Al Franken and David Wheeler, president of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation, isn’t doing too well, and her campaign seems to be a prime example of what the voters are fed up with: Wheeler’s endorsement reads like typical Democrat Party backslapping: “I supported her first campaign … Four years later she supported my election to the Board of Estimate and Taxation …”

In the wake of Justine Damond’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police, Hodges went to Los Angeles to fundraise. (The hoity-toity event included a kombucha tasting with Garrison Keillor.) Despite the effort, she’s falling short with over $75,000 in debt and nearly $25,000 in unpaid vendor bills. In April, her campaign manager and organizing director both resigned. In September, six of her campaign staffers also jumped ship, including her director of communications.

Unlike Hodges, challenger Dehn is not the kind of politician you meet every day: In the wake of Damond’s — and Philando Castile and Jamar Clark’s — deaths by police shooting, the Minneapolis mayoral candidate is calling for a disarming and de-militarization of the Minneapolis police force. He also supports the elimination of systematic inequities and the generation of community wealth.

“I don’t believe all cops should carry guns all the time,” he told us over coffee near the Mall of America. “One, it’s not necessary … In no way should an unarmed person be shot. We have people in our community who won’t call the cops because they are afraid, afraid for themselves, and afraid for the person committing the crime.”

In Atlanta, Fort, also backed by Our Revolution, has a long history of fighting the establishment. As a member of Occupy Atlanta, he was arrested in 2011 when term limited-out mayor Kasim Reed shut the camp down. As a state senator, he passed a law that may have protected Georgia from the fallout of the mortgage crisis, were it not gutted by Republicans. When it was, his activism won settlements for local homeowners. Affordable housing and the decriminalization of marijuana are two of his top issues, along with a living wage, expanded public transit, investing in the arts, and police accountability.

In Albuquerque, Keller champions investing in local economy, especially small businesses. He also says he has a “long history of fighting subsidized sprawl” and insists on engaging the community. Like Woodfin, he doesn’t seem all that radical, just different, with an ear for his constituents, and with the backing of Our Revolution.

That backing is proving to be key. In Woodfin’s Birmingham race, Our Revolution mobilized with the Working Families Party to coordinate massive get-out-the-vote efforts. Together, their volunteers contacted tens of thousands of voters by voice and text message.

Yet of these candidates, Dehn and Fort seem to hit the ball closer to the working-class home, resonating across racial lines: “I believe that when people in the community do well, and the small businesses do well, it lifts the whole community, and those people stay in the community as it does better,” Dehn says. Their personal wealth, he explains, rises with the community. “It keeps them in their homes,” and prevents displacement and gentrification.

If Dehn seems like an unusual candidate, that’s because he is. A former felon who received a full pardon and became a state representative, one of the first things he did in office was get a bill passed that removed the question on criminal record from employment applications. “Every morning when I shave, I see a white man who has privilege, who can do many things because I’m white,” he tells us. “The people I left behind in prison … That’s why I run for office.”

When it comes to politics, Dehn is candid about his style, saying he’s “not a fan of negotiating to the middle. I think it’s a lazy way of negotiating.” When you understand what the other side is doing, he says, “It empowers you to get more in the end.”

While New Mexico is swimming in complaints and negative campaign ads, and Reed is outspoken against Fort, Dehn isn’t talking about Hodges, or the other contenders for the position. “I’m not an attack kind of guy,” he says. “You win with dignity by talking about your campaign.”

Minnesota’s ranked choice ballots seems to make this strategy more palatable, as candidates don’t want to leave any voter with a bad taste in their mouth.

What all these candidates have in common — along with many more nationwide, besides Our Revolution approval — appears be a strong belief in representing their constituencies.

That might mean different things in different places, but for the establishment, it means the two dominant parties may need to make some sincere changes, and fast. But given the apparent success of the underdogs this season — and the dramatic loss politics as usual cost in 2016 — would that really be a bad thing?

Memo to Tillerson about the moron

(Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

I can understand why you feel Washington is a place of “petty nonsense,” as you said Wednesday when you called a news conference to rebut charges that you called Trump a moron last summer after a meeting of national security officials at the Pentagon.

I’m also reasonably sure you called him a moron, which doesn’t make Washington any less petty. You probably called him a moron because almost all of us out here in the rest of America routinely call him that.

But you’re right: There are far more important issues than the epithet you likely used to describe your boss.

On the other hand, your calling him a moron wouldn’t itself have mushroomed into a headline issue – even in petty Washington – if there weren’t deep concerns about the President’s state of mind to begin with.

I bet every cabinet secretary has from time to time called his boss a moron. I was a cabinet secretary once, and although I don’t recall ever saying Bill Clinton was a moron, I might have thought it, especially when I found out about Monica Lewinsky. But Bill Clinton was no moron.

The reason your moronic comment about Trump made the headlines is that Trump really is a moron, in the sense you probably meant it: He’s impulsive, mercurial, often cruel, and pathologically narcissistic. Some psychologists who have studied his behavior have concluded he’s a sociopath.

Washington is petty, but it’s not nonsensical. It latches on to gaffes only when they reveal something important. As journalist Michael Kinsley once said, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”

Face it. You are Secretary of State – the nation’s chief diplomat – under a president who’s dangerously nuts.

Last weekend, for example, Trump publicly said you were wasting your time trying to open talks with North Korea. Does he have a better idea? Any halfway rational president would ask his Secretary of State to try to talk with Kim Jong-Un.

And there’s Iran. You and Defense Secretary James Mattis have both stated the nuclear agreement should be retained. That, too, is only rational. The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has been honoring the agreement. Without it, Iran would restart its nuclear program.

But Trump is on the verge of decertifying the agreement in order to save face (in the 2016 campaign he called it an “embarrassment to America”) and further puncture Barack Obama’s legacy. His narcissism is endangering the world.

You tried to mediate the dispute between Qatar and its Arab neighbors. That, too, was the reasonable thing to do.

But then Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner sided with the United Arab Emirates, where they have business interests. Less than one hour after you called for a “calm and thoughtful dialogue” between Qatar and its neighbors, Trump blasted Qatar for financing terrorism. That was also nuts.

You are rightly appalled at Trump’s behavior. I can understand why you distanced yourself when Trump blamed “both sides” for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And why you were horrified when Trump gave a wildly partisan speech to the Boy Scouts of America, which you once headed.

Given all this, I’m not surprised to hear that you’ve talked about resigning, but that Mattis and John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, have talked you out of it.

I urge you not to resign. America and the world need sane voices speaking into the ear of our Narcissist-in-Chief.

As Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee said recently, it’s you, Mattis, and Kelly who “help separate our country from chaos.” I don’t think Corker was referring to chaos abroad.

Let Trump fire you if he wants to. That would further reveal what a moron he is.

But if you really did want to serve the best interests of this nation, there’s another option you might want to consider.

Quietly meet with Mattis, Kelly, and Vice President Pence. Come up with a plan for getting most of the cabinet to join in a letter to Congress saying Trump is unable to discharge the duties of his office.

Under the 25th Amendment, that would mean Trump is fired.

Which stimulus is better: tax cuts or spending?

Economist John Maynard Keynes.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to boost the economy both by cutting taxes and investing more money in infrastructure.

Usually, however, politicians and policymakers have favored one type of stimulus over the other. Conservatives like tax cuts, while liberals favor more spending.

In the Trump administration, tax cuts appear to have won the argument for now. Republicans unveiled the blueprint of a major tax overhaul, which White House officials predict will boost economic growth to more than 3 percent a year. In the meantime, infrastructure investment remains on the back-burner.

Did they make the right choice pushing for tax cuts before infrastructure spending? Are tax cuts more likely than new spending to prod companies to produce more, encourage more consumer spending and grow the economy at a faster rate?

Or put another way, which provides the biggest bang for the buck?

Spending versus tax cuts

British economist John Maynard Keynes was the first to suggest in the 1930s that an economy’s ills could be traced to the misalignment of what he called aggregate demand, which is made up of consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. So if there’s trouble in the economy, a government could try to move the needle by spending more (or less) money or by adjusting tax rates to spur consumers or businesses to buy more (or less) stuff.

For decades, from the 1940s through the 1970s, the U.S. mainly relied on manipulating government expenditures rather than tax cuts to goose the economy. Many politicians and academics interpreted Keynes to favor government spending as the best way to right the economic ship, but he also suggested tax policy could do the job of boosting demand.

In the past few decades, however, beginning with President Ronald Reagan and the advent of supply-side economics in the 1980s, governments have increasingly toyed with tax cuts to change aggregate demand in part because they are more likely to have an immediate effect on consumer and business expectations and incentives.

Lord John Maynard Keynes, center, represented the U.K. at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, which established the International Monetary Fund and post-war monetary system.

AP Photo

An investigation

The question of whether tax cuts or spending has a greater economic impact — as well as the inverse — remains a major subject of discussion among economists and policymakers. With the help of my graduate students in a finance class I taught for three decades, I have tried to help shine some light on the answer.

The following analysis grew out of a series of research projects assigned to them in the past several years. Putting them together produced some insight on the questions I raised at the outset.

To compare the effects on the economy of increases in regular government spending with those of tax cuts, we compiled data on gross domestic product, government expenditures and average tax rates for households divided into five different income groups, or quintiles, from 1968 to 2010. We did that because a tax cut for someone who’s rich will be different than one for someone who spends most of what she earns. While the former might invest the extra cash, the latter is more likely to spend it, immediately stimulating the economy.

We focused on the middle three income groups because incomes among the top 20 percent are too disparate and the tax rate for the bottom is close to zero, making them very hard to measure.

We then tried to determine how much each variable — spending and tax rates of each quintile — correlated to a change in GDP. Our findings showed that US$1 in tax cuts for individuals making $20,001 to $61,500 a year in 2010 dollars (the second and third quintiles) was correlated with an increase in GDP more than double that of a rise in spending by the same amount. A tax cut for those in the fourth quintile earning $61,501 to $100,029 didn’t have as great effect but still correlated with a boost in GDP 1.4 times that of new spending.

These results are consistent with those conducted by economists David and Christine Romer in their study on the economic impact of changes in taxation, which also found that tax cuts correlated with more growth than spending increases.

What it means

So do these results answer our original question and show that tax cuts are always better?

Not exactly, although these results should appeal most to those who champion tax cuts for the middle class. For too long, ideology has dominated this debate and obscured the real answer if the goal is stronger economic growth: an appropriate mix of the two, well-tailored tax cuts for middle-income earners and effective government spending.

In addition, our analysis represents a relatively simplified take on a complicated topic. The last word on how tax cuts affect economic growth has yet to be written.

The real advantage of tax cuts is that they’re quick — taxpayers immediately have more money in their paychecks and companies often begin investing before the cuts have taken effect — while the impact of infrastructure or other spending takes much longer, even years, to work its way through the economy. But they both have their place in good economic policy.

Very often those advocating significant tax cuts claim that the cuts will pay for themselves in terms of ultimate tax revenues. That, of course, is an empirical issue but it misses the point. No one ever claims that expenditure increases pay for themselves (in terms of future tax revenues). The relevant point is how much does each encourage economic growth.

Dale O. Cloninger, Professor Emeritus, Economics & Finance, University of Houston-Clear Lake

Marvel’s “Runaways”: The next big show for the Trump resistance

Marvel's Runaways (Credit: Hulu/Paul Sarkis)

The success that Marvel has had in adapting its comics to movies and TV shows is such that it’s not a surprise that the company has started to dig past some of its bigger superhero characters, like Captain America or the Avengers, and is looking towards some of the smaller cult favorites to adapt. Still, it felt serendipitous that “Runaways,” a minor 2003 title whose initial run only ran for 18 issues, was one of the Marvel properties that was the talk of the 2017 New York Comic Con.

“Runaways,” which was started by Brian K. Vaughan before he became an indie darling with “Saga” and “Y the Last Man,” is coming back in a big way this year. Young adult novelist Rainbow Rowell and artist Kris Anka are relaunching the comic series for Marvel, and Hulu is launching a TV series based on the original run, the pilot of which premiered to great fanfare at New York Comic Con.

The story is a dark one. Warning, there are spoilers ahead: A group of high school students (and one 11-year-old girl) discover that their parents are part of a demonic cult called The Pride, which meets every year to sacrifice a teenager to their otherworldly masters in exchange for the financial and professional success they enjoy. Rather than live with this evil in their lives, the kids go on the run, eventually developing some superhero skills of their own that they use to battle their parents.

But while that sounds very romantic, Vaughan went to great lengths to portray the experience of the teenage runaway with surprising realism for a superhero comic. The kids start off as hyper-privileged, college-bound and moneyed, but swiftly have to learn to live with no money and on the margins of society, trying to survive without jobs, benefits or even a safe place to sleep much of the time. They go from lives of comfort, obsessed largely with high school kid problems, to living in terror all the time. Their old lives start to feel like a silly dream.

It’s a story that feels incredibly timely in the age of Donald Trump, a wealthy wannabe who indulges in fascist behavior to shore up his personal power, who is only out for himself and is utterly indifferent to the sufferings he inflicts on the rest of the country. Even the theme of generational conflict feels relevant. The majority of people under 45 voted for Hillary Clinton, after all, and their parents betrayed them and their futures by voting for Trump.

“The original story is very much about the teen characters realizing that everything that they could count [on] and everything that they trusted and all the people that they thought were good were in fact behaving very selfishly and did not have the fate of the world in mind,” Rowell told me in an interview last week. “They thought their parents were great parents, but really, their parents were plotting to destroy humanity.”

The series premiere, screened in full to a crowd of about 1,000 eager Marvel fans at New York Comic Con, certainly felt like it could be the superhero show for the Resistance. The incredibly efficient pilot updates the already pretty progressive comic in a few significant ways. Molly is now Latina instead of white (and older, though that is likely more to avoid audience discomfort with having an 11-year-old be a runaway). Gert’s feminism is more explicit. Both Chase’s questioning of toxic masculinity and Karolina questioning her own sexual orientation are injected into the story a lot sooner than we get in the original comics.

The overriding theme of “Runaways,” which the show looks set to bring forth from the comic, is how little guidance the kids have. They are adrift with few tools and no authorities to reach out to. There’s no guidebook and no one is around to save them. They have to do this themselves, and they have no idea what they’re doing. But even with that all hanging over their heads, they plunge ahead anyway, because the other option is to give up your moral center — and that’s something the Runaways are unwilling to do.

It remains to be seen if the show, which premieres November 21 on Hulu, will become more explicit about the parallels between its fictional story and the very real horrors of Trump’s America. But even if it’s not, there’s a lot of emotional resonance there for those of us on the other side. We, too, are adrift with no guidance and no greater power to save us. We have no idea if we’re going to win and little idea of how. We’re operating every day with the sick feeling that half our country has betrayed our deepest values. It’s easy to want to give up, but it’s critical that we do not.

The premiere we were shown at New York Comic Con had a lot of promise, and as long as the show follows the basic parameters of the original Vaughn-penned run of “Runaways,” it’s hard to imagine the showrunners will steer wrong. While only one issue of the new run of “Runaways” is out, Rowell’s plan to reunite the original group of kids also shows promise. The story was always about how this particular group of kids, who don’t have much in common besides their faith that fighting back is the right thing to do, finds that is enough to hang together. It’s a message and a story that has a lot of power these days.

Why Harvey Weinstein’s sex advances are all about power

“Frankly, I don’t think it’s about sexual gratification, it’s power and control,” Mark Lipton, author of “Mean Men: The Perversion of America’s Self-Made Man,” said of Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men accused of sexual misconduct, during a roundtable on “Salon Talks.”

Lipton, who is also a graduate professor of management at The New School, and Jess McIntosh, executive editor of ShareBlue, joined Salon’s Amanda Marcotte to discuss the recent New York Times story exposing 30 years of sexual assault and harassment accusations against Weinstein. The Hollywood producer was terminated from the film studio he founded Sunday.

“I think Harvey’s got some serious psychiatric stuff going on,” Lipton added, “and that’s how he’s exercising and acknowledging to himself in a pretty malignant, narcissistic way, ‘I can move mountains here and look what I can do to these women and get away with it.'”

If it is about power and control, then “there must be so many men in Hollywood that are doing similar things and are being shielded by the same machine,” Marcotte said. “How do we overcome that? How do we fight that kind of power?”

“We can’t, ourselves. This is where we need the guys,” McIntosh responded. Because women are already speaking out.

Academy Award-winning actor Meryl Streep came forward this morning condemning Weinstein’s alleged misconduct as “inexcusable.”

McIntosh said, “In the same way that you would never tell a group of black Americans that it was up to them to fix racism, women are not able to alone, topple this. . . . Men know what’s happening. Men know their friends who are engaged in this stuff.”

“So we really need those guys to start talking about it, to start talking publicly, to start saying it’s not okay, to stop working with this people and certainly to stop using them as leaders in their industries.”

Although, McIntosh explains that men are a crucial component in abdicating sexual misconduct, so is the increased presence of women in governing positions. “Put more women in rooms,” she said. “There needs to be multiple women at every level of the decision making process.”

Watch our 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.

Wolverine and Judge Dredd walk into a bar . . .

At the Molly Wee Pub on Saturday night, October 7, bartender Sean has established a casual rapport with Judge Dredd and his three, 30-something-year-old friends. They’ve come from outside of Morristown, New Jersey to spend a night at the Riff Chelsea hotel so they can hang out in the city post-New York Comic Con.

Judge Dredd is no longer wearing his costume. Now, he’s Alex, a 31-year-old man who’d done “the Dredd buzz” on his beard so he could look more like the futuristic cop played by Sylvester Stalone in the 1995 movie. His friends, who are looking for another place to keep up the party post-Comic Con, attest that he was the only Judge Dredd at the convention this year.

Meanwhile, bartender Sean is bopping around the dimly lit, moderately crowded bar, smiling and asking patrons wearing Comic Con lanyards where they’re from. “Everybody’s cool,” he says of the Comic Con crowd. “No problems, no hassle.” This is opposed to citywide events like SantaCon, which Sean, in a pleasant, Irish accent, describes as a “fucking disaster.”

Dredd and friends had tried to attend Comic Con’s “official after party,” as it’s described in a bright pink flyer featuring a pretty woman dressed as Harley Quinn, one of the more prevalent costumes at New York Comic Con 2017. When they arrived, the party at the Rosewood Theater right across from the Javits Center was “dead,” and the person running coat check had told Alex he’d have to pay $5 per piece to stash his elaborate costume.

The “party,” which had started at 5 p.m., was set to end at 8 p.m., and by 7:45 p.m., the lounge’s maze of leather booths held just 25 to 30 of Comic Con’s nearly 200,000 attendees. Filling the void left by this lack of after party are the many Irish-style pubs surrounding New York’s massive Javits Center by the Hudson River on West 34th Street.

Another bartender with an Irish accent, Mick, works at McGarry’s on 9th Avenue between 34th and 33rd Streets. The classic pub serves Smithwick’s Irish Ale — though the tap was broken on Saturday night — and has a delightfully sticky, wooden bar that breaks up two seating areas, one outdoors in the back. A woman dressed as a sheriff — “That’s from ‘Walking Dead,’ dude,” my friend tells me — sits at a table near the entrance across from Wolverine. At the bar, two enthusiastic young men cosplay “Naruto.”

The “Naturo” guys had come to Comic Con from Connecticut, where they’ll head back later tonight. They scroll through pictures from their day over glasses of hard liquor, proudly showing us the various “Rick and Morty” costumes they’d seen, along with what looks like a conga line of “Deadpools.” They leave by the time Mick starts describing his highlight from Comic Con 2016.

“Last year there was a Robert Downey Jr., so good I thought he was the real one,” says Mick, who has gray hair and laughs when I ask if he’s the manager (he isn’t). Anyway, Robert Downey Jr. was checking out a woman dressed as Superwoman — “she was good looking”— and his wife noticed, told him to stop. He said he was only looking at Superwoman because she was talking shit about her, his wife. So the wife went over and clocked Superwoman in the face. Robert Downey Jr. eventually had to jump in to intervene.

Though Mick says the bar is tamer this year, McGarry’s experiences a “200 or 300 percent increase” in traffic during Comic Con over the weekend, mostly because more people work in the area than live there, so patrons usually come during the week. Compared to the regular weekend guests, Mick says the Comic Con people are “great — they’re all out to have a good time, and every other night I’m here all my customers are here because they’re not having a good time.”

There are fewer costumed Comic Con goers this year, Mick noticed, which Anton, the bartender at Rocky’s on 34th and 10th Ave, echoes. He, too, says Comic Con crowds got rowdier in 2016. This time last year, Rocky’s was “packed with people dancing,” but this year convention goers, some wearing full white and black suits (cosplaying? — it’s hard to tell), sit in small groups at tables scattered around the bar and grill, which has a big oven surrounded by pizza boxes on one end and a rectangular, granite bar at the center.

Foot traffic at Rocky’s increases “like 70 percent” during Comic Con, with “a lot of people from Texas, Tennessee, everywhere, ya know?” says Anton in a tough to pinpoint accent, leaning his chiseled face in close over the bar.

In San Diego, home of the country’s original Comic Con founded in 1970, Robert Yumul, general manager at a cocktail bar called The Lion’s Share right near the city’s convention center, says “business increases twofold” during the Con, which took place this year in July. This includes private events held by attendees ranging from “the lawyers for the Batman intellectual property” and a group from the image sharing company Imgur. “Any sort of pop culture, including memes, is fair game,” says Yumul of Imgur’s booth at the convention.

“We had someone dress up as what everyone thought was Sailor Moon, but it was actually Sakura from ‘Street Fighter,’” Yumul says. “There were lots of obscure outfits . . . I’m far removed from the gamer, comic book, geek world, so I’m just looking around like I have no idea what these people are.”

At a cocktail bar, you’d imagine loud, costumed guests clash with average patrons, but that’s not the case during Comic Con at The Lion’s Share, which has two money signs on Yelp and a peacock mounted on the wall next to surreal artwork. “It’s a pretty relaxed vibe in here, nothing weird and crazy,” Yumul describes. “My favorite celebrity sighting the last two or three years, we had the pleasure of having Aisha Tyler [the voice of Lana in adult spy cartoon “Archer”]. We all know it’s her, and we kinda geek out . . . but we leave her alone, and that’s why she keeps coming here.”

In New York, the sheer number of bars makes it harder to keep tabs on Comic Con’s celebrity guests. As it gets later on Saturday night, Comic Con goers migrate downtown, and many out-of-towners leave, since Sunday is “kids day” at Comic Con. Adults who’ve had their fill of the convention tend to skip it. Lots of attendees have flocked to Barcade on 24th Street and 7th Ave at this point, but in the tight space lit by ’80s arcade games, it’s hard to tell who came from Comic Con and who didn’t — but not impossible. One man shoulders a Captain America shield and others still wear their Comic Con passes on lanyards around their necks.

Alex, aka Judge Dredd, is at the bar ordering beers for his friends. He’s finally found the ideal Comic Con after party.