Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 295

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Boston bombing movie “Stronger” tries to join divided America

Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman in "Stronger" (Credit: Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions)

David Gordon Green has directed 14 feature length movies and episodes of four television series’. His filmography is an eclectic mix of bro comedies (“Pineapple Express,” “The Sitter,” “Eastbound and Down”), small town human dramas (“George Washington,” “All the Real Girls,” “Snow Angels,” “Manglehorn”), thrillers (“Joe,” “Undertow”) and one political drama (“Our Brand is Crisis”). But out of everything he’s done in his 20-year filmmaking career, the most widely seen work is a Chrysler commercial that aired during halftime of the 2012 Superbowl.     

“That was one of the best jobs of all time,” he told The Independent last year. “It’s the only thing that I’ve ever done that 200 million people have seen.”

You might recall the commercial. It’s the one where Clint Eastwood walks through a dimly lit tunnel and in his gravelly “Gran Torino” voice tells America it’s “halftime” — both literally and as a metaphor for what Chrysler was framing as an inflection point for American industry and jobs. The commercial was ostensibly aimed at the nation at large, its message that we need to band together if we want to rally. But most everyone hated it. Karl Rove was upset that Chrysler and Clint Eastwood made what he considered to be a covert endorsement of the Obama administration’s auto industry bailout. And the left was upset that Chrysler altered frames of picketing workers to remove pro-union messages.    

These days, speaking to everybody is an easy way to alienate everyone, a lesson which Gordon Green apparently learned. His latest film (out Friday) is “Stronger,” a movie set around the Boston Marathon bombing that aims straight up the middle. “We have a great script, a great actor and our job is not to make it sentimental and cheesy,” he said in the same Independent interview. “You have to be smart, because there are a million different perspectives on that incident. I mean some assholes celebrated it. You are not going to make a movie that pleases everyone.”

The film is a small movie set around a big event. It’s an adaptation of Boston Marathon bombing victim Jeff Bauman’s 2014 memoir. Bauman, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, attended the Marathon to watch his girlfriend compete and he wound up losing his legs in the explosion; then, when he woke up, he helped police identify the Tsarnaev brothers. The explosion comes 15 minutes into the film; the movie is about the aftermath. It’s about Bauman coping with post-traumatic stress, the pressures of being cast as a national hero and the toll the injury takes on his personal relationships.

Though Gordon Green is probably right that “Stronger” won’t please everyone, it should. Between all the crying and yelling and the Boston accents, “Stronger” is an actor’s movie. Gordon Green’s touch is subtle. Foregrounded are the performances, which are great across the board, but especially so in the case of Gyllenhaal, Tatiana Maslany (as Jeff’s girlfriend, Erin Hurley) and Miranda Richardson (as Patty Bauman, Jeff’s mom). The film is heartfelt but also very funny (when Bauman wakes up he makes a Lt. Dan joke) and it doesn’t get too mawkish until the very last scene.

But “Stronger” also has something for everyone politically. The Bauman’s are a working class, beer-drinking, backyard barbequing family. Jeff works at Costco. But they exist within a major Northeast metropolis. And the film interrogates the angst and post-traumatic stress that might be induced through participation in American rituals, like throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game, while arguing for the symbolic importance of these rituals. It deftly articulates how someone can be a hero for being a victim. It’s patriotic but nuanced.

Like the 2012 Chrysler spot, “Stronger” is ultimately about American healing. But Gordon Green isn’t trying to sell you a car. And his film captures America in a past distant enough to lend perspective. Those factors, coupled with a compelling story, make a message about banding together easier to embrace. But controversy sells and the lack of a discernible one here likely means that this little human drama won’t find a Superbowl-size audience.

Shawn Colvin revisits her ’90s hits for “Salon Stage”

“People have asked me, ‘well what’s the secret?’ and I just say, it’s got to move you,” veteran singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin said on “Salon Stage” after performing an exclusive acoustic set.

It’s been 20 years since “A Few Small Repairs,” Colvin’s Grammy Award-nominated album with hits like “Sunny Came Home.” In light of the album’s anniversary, an expanded edition was released September 15, featuring seven unearthed live performances and new artwork and liner notes. Colvin will perform the album in its entirety on tour this fall.

“‘A Few Small Repairs'” was a big record for me, and it sold over a million copies,” Colvin said. “But then I had to make another record, and I couldn’t help it, I wanted to ride on my own coat tail.”

Colvin admitted that for several of the albums that followed, “it didn’t follow in the footsteps of its predecessor.”

But, Colvin did learn lessons in the process. When she stepped back and examined what made “A Few Small Repairs” successful and how her formula changed after the record’s success, she realized that it was the commercial pressure that held her back.

“On ‘A Few Small Repairs,’ we made the very best record we could make,” Colvin said. “So the record I made after ‘A Whole New You’ was called ‘These Four Walls,’ and I’m as proud of it as I am of anything I’ve ever done. I just relaxed back into it again.”

These days, Colvin strives to be authentic. “If it doesn’t move you, then you’re going down the wrong path,” Colvin said. “And hopefully that’ll make it move other people. That’s where my integrity lies.”

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.

Paul Manafort offered Kremlin-linked oligarch access to Trump campaign

Paul Manafort (Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

Paul Manafort, the second of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign managers, is in serious legal jeopardy. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that during his five-month control of the Trump campaign, Manafort offered a Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch multiple “private briefings” on the status of the U.S. election.

Less than two weeks before Trump clinched the GOP nomination, Manafort wrote an email to an intermediary of aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska to ask if the Basic Element founder would like to be regularly updated on the progress of the campaign. 

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote on July 7, 2016. Deripaska is reportedly among the 2-3 oligarchs Russian President Vladimir Putin turns to on a regular basis.

Little more than a year later, Manafort’s Virginia residence was raided by the FBI in the predawn hours. CNN reported earlier this week that the FBI also secured a secretive order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to wiretap Manafort’s phone in Trump Tower both during and after the election.

In another email shortly after his appointment as Trump’s second campaign manager, the Post reported, Manafort asked, “How do we use to get whole?” While the Post reports that the “notes appear to be written in deliberately vague terms,” several emails were sent after Manafort attended a Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. to entertain a Russian offer to help the Trump campaign.

Perhaps even more puzzling than a seasoned political operative’s decision to offer campaign secrets to a close ally of Putin in writing is the excuse provided to the Post by Manafort’s spokesperson.

“It’s no secret Mr. Manafort was owed money by past clients,” Jason Maloni said, dismissing the email exchanges as an “innocuous” effort to collect past debts.

But in a 2015 court complaint filed in Virginia, Deripaska claimed Manafort owed him $19 million related to a failed investment in a Ukrainian cable television business. Both Manafort and Deripaska have confirmed that the Russian businessman paid Manafort as an investment consultant. Manafort was a lobbyist for Ukrainian President Viktor  Yanukovych through early 2014, and has long been a big investor in the former Soviet republic.

Manafort used his Trump campaign email account to correspond with a Ukranian associate who has previously been reported to have suspected ties to Russian intelligence, Politico reported Wednesday. His emails have been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators. Manafort, who has been the subject of an FBI investigation for three years, has denied ever “knowingly” communicating with Russian intelligence operatives during the election.

Transgender veterans build community in Kansas

Activist Brenda Way (Credit: LaRissa Lawrie)

Wichita, Kansas may not seem like a city that hosts pride parades complete with rainbow flags, balloons and banners. Kansas is traditionally known for its conservatism, not for people working on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender rights. But activists Brenda Way and Elle Boatman are working on challenging those notions, one resource at a time.

Brenda Way is in her fifties and moved to Wichita Kansas in 2005 to help a family member run a restaurant. Way is a green-eyed blonde who’s fond of wearing pink polka dot sunglasses. Her friends describe her as bubbly — a mother to them. Way’s fellow activist, Elle Boatman, is also her roommate. Boatman is a brunette in her thirties and stands several inches taller than Way. Boatman’s known among friends and acquaintances for a distinct humor and being genuinely funny. 

The two women met during difficult times in both of their lives and bonded over their joint experiences. Way has dealt with three failed marriages, while Boatman’s spouse asked for a divorce over the phone on her birthday.

Each woman has experienced the horror of homelessness and trouble finding housing. Both have also battled depression and survived suicide ideation and attempts. 

But, before they found themselves on south-central Kansas streets, both of them have experienced battlefields before. Way was a Quartermaster in the Army for four years during the Granada conflict in the early 1980s.

Way said that she was court martialed and discharged for homosexual activity after being raped and left for dead by a fellow soldier.

Boatman, a Staff Sergeant in the United States Air Force who served in Kuwait and Japan, also experienced trying times while in the military. She battled depression and alcoholism before being discharged after her 10-year career.

“Joining the military was an opportunity for me to try to prove to myself and everybody else that I could be a successful man,” Boatman said.

It was not until later in life that something became clear for both of them. They both made the decision to start being themselves.

For Way that meant finding the right vocabulary to verbalize how she had always felt.

“I always felt like a lesbian stuck inside a man,” Way said. “Growing up, I didn’t know what ‘trans’ was — my father was a minister and I grew up in an era when that sort of thing didn’t get talked about. We didn’t have the vocabulary to do so.”

The realization that they were transgender was a difficult journey for both women.

In July, Boatman wrote in a viral Facebook post that “[Transitioning] cost me everything. It cost my family. It cost my career. It still threatens to cost my life in routine ways every day.”

Each woman went through transitioning and learning about the transgender community on her own.

“When I went to transition, it wasn’t like I wanted to transition in Wichita. But I couldn’t afford to move and I couldn’t afford to not transition.” said Boatman. “It was incredibly difficult to find resources. I found a therapist who would treat me by googling and seeing a footnote in an article online. She was the only resource that I had.”

Meanwhile, Way remembers that after her transition,“As happy as I was that I was Brenda, I got depressed because I had no friends. I made a noose and was ready to step off the toolbox I was standing on when I heard my computer ping. I decided to see what the message said and stepped down. It was someone who wanted to meet me on Monday. Suddenly I had something to do; I had to wait. That kept me alive that weekend.” 

The near suicide gave Way a purpose. She has made it her goal to make sure that transgender individuals in Wichita have a meeting to look forward to, by creating a community that didn’t exist yet, and she asked Boatman to help.

In April of 2015, they founded Wichita Transgender and Community Network (WiTCoN), an organization that provides social, legal, medical, educational and transitional support for the local transgender community. Way and Boatman say that the aim is to create a loving network, because many transgender individuals lose friends and family when they come out.

Since the inception of WiTCoN, both women have been outspoken about educating the greater community about what it’s like to be transgender and advocating for transgender rights.

Boatman’s work, in particular, has had a significant impact on Debbie Ojeda-Leitner, a doctoral student studying community psychology at Wichita State.

“It is not easy, especially in a state like Kansas, to be out and open about your gender identity. It is a dangerous place to be when you are an open trans activist, especially in a state where transgender rights are not protected,” Ojeda-Leitner said. “Elle’s work has impacted me tremendously. I am a social scientist, and a lot of the research that I do involves LGBT health equity, and she’s been a strong role in my understanding of gender identity.”

Their advocacy has resulted in progress, but the journey has not been easy.

Way can no longer compete in disc golf tournaments since transitioning, a hobby she spent years perfecting.

Boatman was a victim of doxing in July. Someone publicly posted in a Facebook comment where she worked, after she spoke out against the proposed ban on transgender individuals in the military.

“My gender identity seems to take precedence over my status as a veteran or anything else, and it can be incredibly frustrating,” Boatman said.

Way believes that the struggle has been worth it and that education and support are the best ways to move forward as a society. The sentiment is shared by Jackie Carter, the Senior Pastor at Metropolitan Community Church in Wichita that works closely with WiTCoN.

“The bigots and the people who hate are afraid of something they do not understand; once you bring it out and humanize it, it becomes more difficult to hate. Once people begin to see the person, it’s much more difficult to hate. And Brenda is so good at telling her story and accomplishing that,” Carter said.

The ultimate goal of WiTCoN is to expand into a larger community center that is open to everyone regardless of race, nationality, gender identity and sexuality. Their vision is of a community center that serves as a unifier of the LGBT+ community and the rest of Wichita.

“I’m so thankful to have discovered my purpose and that I’m not alone anymore,” Way said. “I just want the people that use WiTCoN to know that I’m here to help save their lives, but they all have helped save my life. They all matter to me.”

Uninsured rate falls to record low of 8.8%

Three years after the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion took effect, the number of Americans without health insurance fell to 28.1 million in 2016, down from 29 million in 2015, according to a federal report released Tuesday.

The latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau showed the nation’s uninsured rate dropped to 8.8 percent. It had been 9.1 percent in 2015.

Both the overall number of uninsured and the percentage are record lows.

The latest figures from the Census Bureau effectively close the book on President Barack Obama’s record on lowering the number of uninsured. He made that a linchpin of his 2008 campaign, and his administration’s effort to overhaul the nation’s health system through the ACA focused on expanding coverage.

When Obama took office in 2009, during the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, more than 50 million Americans were uninsured, or nearly 17 percent of the population.

The number of uninsured has fallen from 42 million in 2013 — before the ACA in 2014 allowed states to expand Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides coverage to low-income people, and provided federal subsidies to help lower- and middle-income Americans buy coverage on the insurance marketplaces. The decline also reflected the improving economy, which has put more Americans in jobs that offer health coverage.

The dramatic drop in the uninsured over the past few years played a major role in the congressional debate over the summer about whether to replace the 2010 health law. Advocates pleaded with the Republican-controlled Congress not to take steps to reverse the gains in coverage.

The Census numbers are considered the gold standard for tracking who has insurance because the survey samples are so large.

The uninsured rate has fallen in all 50 states and the District of Columbia since 2013, although the rate has been lower among the 31 states that expanded Medicaid as part of the health law. The lowest uninsured rate last year was 2.5 percent in Massachusetts and the highest was 16.6 percent in Texas, the Census Bureau said. States that expanded Medicaid had an average uninsured rate of 6.5 percent compared with an 11.7 percent average among states that did not expand, the Census Bureau reported.

More than half of Americans — 55.7 percent — get health insurance through their jobs. But government coverage is becoming more common. Medicaid now covers more than 19 percent of the population and Medicare nearly 17 percent.

How the Pentagon tried to cure America of its “Vietnam syndrome”

(Credit: Wikimedia/Deptartment of Defense)

In August 1965, Morley Safer, a reporter for “CBS News,” accompanied a unit of U.S. marines on a search-and-destroy mission to the Vietnamese village of Cam Ne. Using cigarette lighters and a flamethrower, the troops proceeded to burn down 150 houses, wound three women, kill one child and take four men prisoner. Safer and his crew caught it all on film. The military command later claimed that the unit had received enemy fire. But according to Safer, no pitched battle had taken place. The only death had been the boy, and not a single weapon had been uncovered.

In describing the reaction, Safer would later say that the public, the media and the military all began to realize that the rules of war reporting had changed.

The New Yorker’s Michael Arlen dubbed Vietnam the “living room war.” The images of the war — viewed on evening news shows on the country’s three networks — enabled the public to understand the war’s human costs. In this sense, media coverage contributed to the flow of information that’s vital to any functioning democracy, and pushed Americans to either support or oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict.

However, in the country’s myriad military conflicts since Vietnam, this flow of information has been largely transformed, and it is now more difficult to see the human consequences of military operations. Despite a digital revolution that’s created even more opportunities to transmit images, voices and stories, the public finds itself further removed from what’s really happening on the front lines.

A false narrative exposed

Issues of truth, representation, interpretation and distortion lie at the core of the media’s presentation of war. So do power and control.

Governments aren’t always afraid to show the public what war looks like. During World War II, journalists were subject to censorship. Yet in September 1943, President Roosevelt and the War Department allowed Life magazine to publish George Strock’s moving photograph of three dead American soldiers sprawled on Buna Beach in the Pacific.

That decision pointed to the administration’s confidence that the public would continue to support the military, even after being brought — as the accompanying Life editorial noted — “into the presence of their own dead.”

But Vietnam destroyed the assumption that the public would always support their government’s military policies, and the images accompanying the conflict were partly responsible.

In Safer’s case, after a heated debate among CBS officials, the footage of American troops setting fire to a Vietnamese village was shown on “The CBS Evening News” with Walter Cronkite.

The government seemed to recognize the power of this footage: It reacted swiftly — and from the top.

The next morning, President Lyndon B. Johnson called CBS president Frank Stanton to berate the network for airing the footage.

“You know what you did to me last night?” Johnson asked.

“What?” Stanton replied.

“You shat on the American flag.”

The Pentagon was also furious because the story challenged their own narrative — that enemy troops had died, and that American troops were able to distinguish the Viet Cong from the local population.

Safer’s images would resonate in American culture. Torching a village or field came to be called a “Zippo mission,” while scenes of setting villages on fire appeared in many Vietnam War films.

More dramatic images emerged from the war, many of which remain familiar today. There’s Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phoc fleeing her napalmed village; Eddie Adams’s shot of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executing a Viet Cong on a Saigon street; and Ronald Haeberle’s devastating pictures of the 1968 My Lai massacre.

Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon.

Eddie Adams/AP Photo

They didn’t automatically create public backlash. But viewers couldn’t ignore the chaos that seemed to be emerging from the battlefield. And this had the net effect of debunking the government’s claim that the military was making significant progress in Vietnam. A growing number of critics outside — and, significantly, inside — the administration argued the war could not be won.

A new media strategy emerges

On balance it would seem that more skepticism when it comes to judging the need to go to war is a good thing.

Not everyone, however, would agree. In the years after Vietnam, some members of the political and military establishment wanted to be able to use military force without feeling hamstrung by the possibility of public opposition.

To them, public exposure to bloodshed and the resulting aversion to going to war had become a major problem. They even had a name for it — the “Vietnam syndrome” — and it required a new media strategy.

One solution involved imposing strict control over the movements of journalists. The government could no longer afford to allow — as it had in Vietnam — enterprising reporters to run around the battlefield, going wherever they wanted and speaking with whomever they pleased.

During Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War, they organized journalists into small “pools” that had tightly controlled access to the battlefield (if at all).

Even with these restrictions in place, the Pentagon bristled at CNN’s dramatic broadcasts of the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm. It’s not as if the cable network was even criticizing the attacks; it was the very images of U.S. aircraft bombing a major city that defense officials found so unsettling. The soundtrack alone — the thump of high-yield explosions, the sirens of emergency vehicles, the staccato of anti-aircraft fire — ran counter to the administration’s preference for their own soundless footage of smart bombs being smoothly guided to their military targets.

CNN broadcast live footage of coalition forces bombing Baghdad in 1991.

Entertain — but don’t inform

Some journalists started to complain about the pool system and tried to strike out on their own. By the 1990s, the most astute media managers within the Pentagon realized that censorship and other efforts to directly control the media were likely to incite criticism and public backlash.

So other strategies emerged. Instead of denying access to the battlefield, they hoped to shift what journalists would report from the battlefield. The war would become localized through human interest stories, told by “embedded reporters” attached to units. Behind this was a communication strategy to make reporters more inclined to describe the daily lives of soldiers, rather than the broader military and political objectives. Quiet heroism would replace loss; hometown celebrations would replace critical reviews of policy and strategy.

At first glance, the Pentagon’s preference for “embedded reporting” evokes the Vietnam-era practice of allowing journalists to work among combat soldiers. But in Afghanistan and Iraq there was a key difference. Vietnam provided an approximate window to the consequences of combat. In Iraq, journalists were close to the fighting but provided a very different type of drama.

Viewers back home were treated to green-hued images from night scopes and the shaky footage from hand-held cameras. The jumpy videos created tension, but didn’t bring the audience any closer to the pain of war. Viewers understood war through powerful but distracting footage, rather than through the visceral images of destruction, chaos and tragedy that the media was able to capture during the Vietnam era.

Embedded Associated Press reporter Chris Tomlinson, right, eats at a temporary camp about 100 miles south of Baghdad in March 2003.

John Moore/AP Photo

Furthermore, government officials discovered that they could enjoy more sympathetic reporting from those who became an accepted member of a “band of brothers.” At the same time embedded reporters offered a kind of credibility that government spokespeople didn’t possess. Pictures and stories of troops providing food, medical aid, and other forms of assistance to Iraqi civilians — and even to wounded Iraqi soldiers — emerged easily.

But the pain of the battlefield — the physical and psychological repercussions — remained remote. It wasn’t even possible to see pictures of returning body containers until the Obama administration reversed the policy in 2009.

There are exceptions. Some excellent journalists did manage to communicate the costs to America’s military and to the local population. In some cases, revelations emerged from the proliferation of new media outlets.

Today, “the living room war” is now a distant memory. The public no longer receives all of its information from the same three channels. Instead, there are thousands of media outlets all covering the same conflicts, from different perspectives — with some war coverage veering into entertainment and even celebration.

“Let the atrocious images haunt us,” Susan Sontag once wrote.

It’s an invocation to not turn away from the dramatic images of battle, no matter how painful or disturbing. Going to war is arguably one of the most important decisions a country can make; for this reason, access to the true sacrifices, costs and horrors should not be restricted.

Paul Joseph, Professor of Sociology, Tufts University

Only two countries think Trump is doing a better job than Obama did

(Credit: Getty/Ron Sachs/Joe Raedle/Photo montage by Salon)

Global public opinion of President Trump and the United States has plummeted in 2017—and that was before Trump lectured global leaders at the United Nations Monday, saying the UN was a bloated and ineffective bureaucracy and suggesting American financial and military support was not a given.

“In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement,” Trump said at a forum on “reforming” the UN. “To honor the people of our nations, we must ensure that no one and no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden, and that’s militarily or financially.”

However, when it comes to being ineffective and mismanaging leadership, global public opinion has shown both confidence in Trump and favorable views of the United States have bottomed out to levels not seen since President George W. Bush launched a war of choice in Iraq—although confidence in Trump has taken the biggest hit.

“Since Trump took office, confidence in the president has gone down further, on average, than favorability toward the U.S.: Confidence dropped 47 points; U.S. favorability just 13 points,” wrote Gus Werezek and Andrea Jones-Rooy, at FiveThirtyEight.com, in a piece that parsed the findings in annual surveys of global opinion by the Pew Research Center. Each year, Pew surveys roughly 1,000 people in five to 40 counties.

Only two countries had improved views of President Trump compared to his predecessor: Russia and Israel. Only two nations had relatively unchanged views of U.S. favorability: Israel and Poland. Not surprisingly, the countries with the sharpest declines in confidence in the president and in American government are those that are our closest allies.

“Some of the biggest declines have been in countries with whom the U.S. has a collective defense agreement, such as NATO members and Japan, especially when it comes to confidence in the president,” FiveThirtyEight.com said. “Mexico, unsurprisingly, also saw a big public opinion drop on both questions. On the other hand, public favorability toward the U.S. has gone up in Russia, and public confidence in the president has gone up in both Israel and Russia since Trump took office.”

Two years before Trump took office, approximately 65 percent of the thousands of foreigners polled by Pew had a favorable view of the U.S. That average is now 50 percent. In 2015 and 2016, the global public opinion’s confidence in President Obama was 63 percent and 73 percent, respectively. For Trump, that average is 27 percent.

Some of the biggest drops in foreign public confidence in Trump come from global hotspots, starting with South Korea—near the North Korean dictator who keeps testing missiles and nuclear weapons. In 2015, 88 percent of South Koreans had confidence in the U.S. president. Today, that figure is 17 percent. Other major allies that have little confidence in Trump include Germany (11 percent) and Mexico (5 percent).

These levels essentially have erased the goodwill that the Obama administration built up after George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

“Overall, though, Trump has brought a return to George W. Bush-era levels of favorability for the U.S. and the presidency,” wrote FiveThirtyEight.com.

Pew’s research asked foreigners between March and June 2017 about five specific Trump policies: withdrawing from international climate change agreements; building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico; withdrawing from the nuclear weapons agreement with Iran; withdrawing from major trade agreements; and restricting travel from some majority Muslim countries.

On climate change, a majority in only one country, Indonesia, approved of Trump’s actions. On building a Mexican border wall, the most-approving three countries were Israel, Indonesia and Russia. On withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal, only a majority in Turkey supported Trump. No country supported withdrawing from trade agreements. But Russia, Israel and South Korea supported the Muslim travel ban.

“Foreign publics generally do not approve of any of the five policies, but the idea of withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran agreement drew the least approval, at an average global net approval of -15.7 percent,” FiveThirtyEight.com said. “Trump’s plan to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and to withdraw from major trade agreements were almost universally disliked (average net approval of -50.5 and -49.7 percent, respectively).”

Trump’s brief comments at the UN on Monday—he spoke for four minutes—did not directly mention any of these issues. The closest was deriding its peacekeeping missions, where he said, “We also ask that every peacekeeping mission have clearly defined goals and metrics for evaluating success.”

One can speculate about what Trump’s audience of foreign leaders thought of his remarks. But if they are at all similar to their countries’ citizens, most of the world sees Trump for what he is and they are not impressed.

Jordan Klepper’s “The Opposition”: A “Colbert Report” for the Infowars era

The Opposition with Jordan Klepper (Credit: Comedy Central)

Jordan Klepper is stepping into a slot made possible for him by the establishment, the liberal media and a series credited as the originator of the “fake news” label. The former correspondent for “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” is well aware of the expectation that comes with taking the 11:30 p.m. post-“Daily Show” slot, a place originated by Stephen Colbert and “The Colbert Report” and held for a very short time by Larry Wilmore and “The Nightly Show.”

Klepper’s predecessors were very much creations of their time, though perhaps “Nightly” was a bit too uncomfortably attuned to the social strife it attempted to laugh at.

As such, he’s attempting to continue that tradition in a way that’s apt and in his wheelhouse with “The Opposition w/ Jordan Klepper,” airing on Comedy Central Mondays through Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. beginning on September 25. It, too, is a series hooked into the culture’s distillation of current events, albeit reflective of misinformation and hyperbole as opposed to fact and data, a parody of a newsmagazine constructed around a feeling of “alt-“ and “anti-“

And for Klepper, “The Opposition” is a perfect fit for the times and for who he is as a comedian. As the host of his show Klepper will play an outsized parody of himself, much as he did on “The Daily Show,” “somebody who is a little bit of a know-nothing, but wants to make some amount of change,” Klepper said in a recent interview with Salon. “We’re taking that and we’re adding just 10 times more paranoia to it and giving him a platform.”

So basically he’s Alex Jones, except taller, gawkier and slightly more eloquent, right?

“This isn’t a one-to-one to InfoWars or Breitbart, but there is a point of view that is out there that is an outsider who is anti-progress or was anti-mainstream culture and media,” Klepper explained, adding that he hopes “The Opposition” will speak to the reality gap that exists right now in America. “We’re not understanding some of the reference points people have, and we’re not understanding where some of this information is both created and distributed and how some of these ideas gestate.”

Over the summer Comedy Central granted Klepper something of a test run with his hour-long special “Jordan Klepper Solves Guns.” By now, Klepper’s vision has gelled enough for Comedy Central to reveal the team of self-described “Citizen Journalists” surrounding Klepper, a group of newcomers comprised of  Tim Baltz, Laura Grey, Aaron Jackson, Josh Sharp, Kobi Libii and Niccole Thurman. The fact that Klepper has a staff of correspondents already differentiates “Opposition” from what Stephen Colbert previously did on “The Colbert Report,” although right off the bat Klepper weathered a few knocks for adopting a similar tactic of playing a right-wing version of himself.

Klepper diplomatically paid homage to his predecessor when he was asked about it. “Colbert showed us that creating a character and filtering a show through a point of view is something that was sustainable and you could do it,” he said. “But what we’ll see this as, is that these characters have completely different worldviews.

“The world has changed dramatically even since the time Stephen was on and the time we’re on. Things like Bush, O’Reilly and neocons, the Tea Party, those things have now either been fired, they’ve been shamed and one of them is oil painting in a bathtub,” Klepper continued. “Donald Trump has shifted the landscape and the feeling. The patriotism that existed in perhaps an O’Reilly type doesn’t exist in Alex Jones. There’s a nationalism there.”

And recent evidence has proven that even Colbert himself isn’t immune to the siren lure of Hollywood and the mainstream.

On Emmys night, the telecast’s emcee Stephen Colbert brought former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer onto stage for a gag that lasted all of 10 seconds and set off a frenzy of criticism that’s lasted for days. Following the telecast the host of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and an assortment of celebrities smiled brightly for photos with Spicer, a man who spent months badly selling bald-faced lies to the American people.

This is a move more suitable for the character Colbert created for “The Colbert Report,” but it’s doubt even he could have gotten away such a thing. And it’s a fascinating coincidence that Klepper is stepping in the slot that old Colbert dug out and paved for him and for Wilmore.

But it’s Wilmore’s cancellation that haunted Klepper, somewhat, when his show was originally announced. And in that sense, Klepper had a bit of practice in creating a measure of separation occurring between the performer and his character.

“I understand that I’m a white guy hosting a show,” Klepper said. “Jordan Klepper the person knows that to do that, you have to have diversity of points of view and to speak form them. Jordan Klepper the character thinks that’s great and thinks that in America, the white male is somebody who has been in the minority for too long, even though they’re in the majority and in control of most things. That’s going to be fun to play with. That’s happening out there and I think the frustration that people might have to see me named there comes from that place. I’ll get to play with somebody who also doesn’t see why it’s such a big deal. But Jordan Klepper the person understands why it is.”

The greater risk that “The Opposition” may have to surmount is the risk of pilling anxiety, anger and negativity on top of the existing mountain of frustrations viewers deal with during the day. But Klepper is hoping that even as his show lampoons and inflates the sense of paranoia created by alt-right pundits and outlets, it will serve a positive purpose.

“What is great and what is fun about this engine is these alternative sites and mindset really sees itself as only in America, and also exposing the things that people don’t want to talk about,” Klepper said. “For us, it’s great, because I do think there’s a lot of stuff out there, really infuriating stories that people aren’t talking about.

“We get the fun engine and the mask of, ‘These are our stories, these are our American stories and the media doesn’t have the guts to tell you!’” he added. “But through that hopefully we can get real issues, real people, real Americans or stories that people just aren’t talking about it. We’re excited about exploring that.”

It’d probably be silly to wonder at this point how long the content that’s inspired “The Opposition” will continue to dominate the culture, if only to speculate how long Klepper’s angle can be relevant. Sadly — or depending on how one sees it, happily — it looks like he’ll be able to get a few seasons out of this take, if not longer.

“I would love for us to be able to sit down and see both sides of an argument and move forward in a bipartisan manner. I hope that happens tomorrow,” Klepper said.  “But I don’t think we are getting closer and closer to talking to one another. I think we are getting farther and farther away. If we do reach that point where we can come together and the world completely shifts, hallelujah, great news.”

Until then, he’ll have no shortage of content to parody and “oppose.”

Famous men accused of sexual abuse are all over the headlines, but will that change anything?

Charles Payne; Roger Ailes; R Kelly; Bill O'Reilly (Credit: Getty/AP/Salon)

The last 48 hours has been filled with narratives, stories and headlines all pointing back to the violence men enact on women. I’m not sure if the sheer volume is amplifying the voices of the survivors or deadening them, but it hurts either way.

There’s the political commentator Scottie Nell Hughes, who told the New York Times allegedly that she was raped twice by Fox Business anchor Charles Payne, and as of Monday is suing the network.

There’s former Fox host Bill O’Reilly who has now adopted a “victim” posture after being fired over accusations of sexual harassment. He defiantly declared on Sean Hannity’s radio show that he would clear his name.

There’s the woman who accused R. Kelly of statutory rape, and who delved into her alleged assault on “The Real,” detailing how she says Kelly physically assaulted her and another woman “trained” her and other young girls how to sexually please the singer.

There’s Fox co-founder Roger Ailes who was memorialized during the 69th Emmys Sunday, despite the upwards of 20 sexual harassment allegations that forced his resignation from the network last year.

It feels as if headlines like these are coming more and more frequently of late — though it’s more likely that we’re starting to see the magnitude of the sexual abuse and harassment that women experience on a daily basis reflected in the news than it is due to an uptick in this behavior. Really, all these numerous accusations are simply part of a culture of sexism, misogyny and violence that exacts little to zero accountability on the part of men than they are anything out of the ordinary. It’s only that the dynamic is heightened when the accused or the accuser is someone of stature.

Given the coverage, given the ways we absorb and react to it, there’s an argument to be made that the media and the public may be more inclined to listen to women now than before. Yet, in a system where the burden of proof in acts of violence against women — sexual or physical — falls on the victims, are we starting to actually believe them?

It seems social media has made a new space for female victims of violence to be heard; maybe even to be believed. It provides an independent platform and the ability for survivors to share and distribute their stories on their own terms. A great example is former Uber employee Susan J. Fowler who exposed the company’s alleged culture of sexism and harassment towards woman in a blogpost published to her website. Many attribute the forced resignation of Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick to Fowler’s testimony. Yet, while the unshamed Kalanick may not have a job, Uber is still making him a billionaire, and the company continues to engage in offensive and sexist practices.

What is deeply frustrating is that it is not at all clear whether the newfound reach and exposure of harassment stories and accusations have or will deliver any substantial consequences or cultural transformations.

Brock Turner raped a woman who was unconscious, who has said publicly that she will likely be traumatized for the rest of his life. He spent a mere 92 days in jail. Hughes alleges that Payne raped her and forced her to continue a sexual relationship against her will, and then was blacklisted from Fox after she finally reported her claims. Payne, who was suspended pending investigation, was cleared by the network and reinstated on television this month. Then, of course, the holy grail example: a businessman who was accused again and again of sexual harassment and assault, essentially admitted to doing so on tape, and then went on to become president of the United States.

I appreciate that some of our stories of surviving violence are getting attention, that they aren’t being swept under the rug as if they never happened (as they were in years past). But when will it start to matter? When will things actually start to change?

Being believed is one step; a mighty step, especially when you remember that for every 1,000 rape cases filed, only 13 are referred to a prosecutor, and only about half of that number result in convictions, according to RAINN. But there’s still so much more to be done. It’s just not enough that the media is finally embracing our stories. The problem is not that we aren’t reacting, it’s that the men clearly aren’t getting it. When almost every woman I know doesn’t have personal experiences of sexual harassment or assault then maybe I’ll talk about progress.

There is, at least among us women, a rising solidarity with survivors. More and more, we are acknowledging the scope of assault and, increasingly, refusing to share the blame for it (no matter how much men try to shame us into thinking we do). Right now, as it has always been, this conversation among us is important but insufficient: it’s the men that need to change.

George Takei: Political resistance is a “silver lining in a very ominous dark cloud”

George Takei and cast members of 'Allegiance' (Credit: Matthew Murphy)

In his 80 years of living, George Takei has been a Starfleet officer and a regular on “The Howard Stern Show,” a dedicated advocate and activist, and a self-deprecatingly entertaining social media star. And in 2015, he made his Broadway debut in “Allegiance,” a musical inspired by his own childhood experiences in America’s Japanese interment camps during World War II.

Two years later, the show, with its themes of resilience in the face of racial profiling, feels more relevant than ever. In February, “Allegiance” begins a new run in Los Angeles, and on December 7, Fathom Events is bringing the show back into movie theaters for a one-night event to commemorate the anniversary of the bombing on Pearl Harbor.

Salon recently spoke to the legendary actor by phone about the show, about history repeating and why he still has hope.

“Allegiance” is so alarmingly topical in a way that it was not just a few years ago when the show was in its earliest incarnations. How do you feel about that?

It’s always been, in my mind, a very important chapter of American history that too many Americans don’t know about. If you don’t know your history, you don’t get the lesson that history teaches. It’s been my mission in life to raise the awareness on this subject throughout my life. I’ve been on speaking engagements — initially throughout Los Angeles, and then throughout the United States and now throughout the world.

I’m the last of the generation that experienced that imprisonment. I was five years old at the time. We didn’t want the story to die out with those people that experienced it dying out. We founded a museum called the Japanese American National Museum, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian. It’s educating people on that chapter of American history.

But to really reach a mass of people, profoundly, we thought, yes, a Broadway musical does it. It’s so profoundly reaching. It moves people and reaches down to their hearts. We were doing “Allegiance” in 2015 when the Presidential nomination campaign was going on. During that campaign, Donald Trump made the statement, “We need a complete and total shutdown of Muslims from coming into this country.” And the echo of that mentality from 75 years ago was so chilling in that statement.

I’ve done “Celebrity Apprentice.” I knew Donald Trump. So I sent him a personal invitation to come see “Allegiance,” because I felt that he would learn something. Not only did I give him a personal invitation, I made it very public. I went on the morning talk shows, the afternoon talk shows and the evening talk shows to share the information that I had sent an invitation to Donald Trump to come see “Allegiance” because he clearly doesn’t know that history. And he was running for an office where that knowledge is vitally important. He never showed.

I am absolutely delighted that now we can tell the story we told on the Broadway stage on the big screen in almost 500 theaters throughout the United States. It’s a wonderful way to reach people — to reach not just their minds but their hearts.

One thing that you have done so consistently throughout your career has been to combine your role as an entertainer with your role as an advocate, as someone who is trying to instruct and inform.

I have been blessed in that “Star Trek” gave me a significant amplification of my voice. I’m able to reach more people as an actor. I had studied to be an architect. I was an architecture student at UC Berkeley. But an architect speaking at architecture forums or at universities wouldn’t reach as many people as an actor’s voice does — particularly, an actor whose career is strongly related to a show like “Star Trek,” which has grown in popularity over 52 years. “Star Trek” shared that common mission on the sci-fi level and galactic level. But the message is constant. “Star Trek” used science fiction as a metaphor for issues of the time. In the 1960s, when “Star Trek” first came on, we dealt with issues like the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, or the Cold War, which was threatening the entire planet. The message of “Star Trek” is very much in keeping with the message that I’m trying to convey as a social activist.

For example, right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor — we’re Americans of Japanese ancestry, my mother was born in Sacramento, my father was a San Franciscan. They met and married here in Los Angeles, and my brother, and sister and I were born here. We’re Americans. But suddenly we were looked at with suspicion, and fear and outright hatred, simply because of our ancestry.

We’re Americans. Yet because of our race we were seen as the enemy. Then the President of the United States signed Executive Order 9066, which characterized all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast as potential threats to our national security. We were summarily rounded up and put in the barbed wire prison camps. Donald Trump’s characterization of Muslims, the sweeping characterization of the people of Muslim faith as potential terrorists, is the exact same thing. Or how he characterized Mexicans coming from south of the border as rapists and drug dealers, and that we need a wall on our border. That same mentality, all in the name of national security. That hysteria, totally irrational. And yet, it moves a nation. Seventy-five years ago when that happened, we didn’t learn that lesson. Here we are repeating it over and over again. . . .

We’re doing everything we can to raise the awareness of that chapter of American history that happened 75 years ago. We have been succeeding, although it’s repeated itself again. When Donald Trump signed that executive order earlier this year, the Muslim travel ban, massive numbers of Americans rushed to the airports all across the country to protest that executive order. Attorneys rushed to the airports to help foreigners to pass through customs and enter the United States. The Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Sally Yates, refused to defend that executive order. This is a silver lining in a very ominous dark cloud. We have made some progress, in that we have Americans now that are aware of the use of national security to terrorize innocent people because of hysteria.

You were a very small boy when you went through your own experience of internment. I imagine seeing people coming t0 aid each other is heartening. But at the same time, we’re still fighting these same battles that we fought 70 years ago.

Well, 75 years ago the climate here in the United States was totally different. We had an attorney general in the state of California, the top attorney, who was an ambitious man. He wanted to run for governor. He saw that the single most popular political issue in California was the “lock up the Japanese” movement. I’m using the long word for Japanese. It was an ugly three letter word. This attorney general who knows the Constitution decided he’s going to get in front of that issue to enhance his candidacy for governor. He made an amazing statement. The attorney general of California said that they had no reports of spying or sabotage or fifth column activities by Japanese-Americans. And that is ominous, because the Japanese are inscrutable . . .  We don’t know what they’re thinking. So, it would be prudent to lock them up before they do anything.

For this attorney, the absence of evidence was the evidence. He became an outspoken advocate for locking us up with no charges, with no trial, no due process, simply because we are “inscrutable.” He ran for governor on that platform. He was elected, and he was re-elected twice. Then went on to be appointed the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. You might recognize his name. Earl Warren. The so-called liberal chief justice of the Supreme Court. But I like to think that he was “liberal” because it was guilt and conscience that drove him.

He ignited this grass fire all across the country and got the president of the United States to sign an executive order ordering all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast — approximately 120,000 of us — to be rounded up and placed in ten barbed wire prison camps, in one of the most hellish desolate places in the country: the blistering hot desert of Arizona, the humid swamps of Arkansas, or the desolate wasteland of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and two of the most desolate places in California. These great leaders of the United States were the spearhead for it. You don’t need to be reminded, but we were at war with Germany and Italy at the same time. But Italian-Americans, thank God, they weren’t imprisoned. Nor were the German-Americans in the wholesale way that we were. They did round-up some and detain some Italian-Americans and German-Americans who were activists for the Nazi movement or the Fascist movement in Italy, but not the wholesale rounding up as we were. That was because we looked different. We were racially different.

“Allegiance” takes fictional liberties with real events. but it’s based on very true things and real experiences. Do you find that audiences are surprised that this really happened? That these kinds of things went on in our country within living memory?

Well, as a matter of fact, during the Broadway run of “Allegiance,” the ushers would tell us that there was a heated discussion going on during intermission in the lobby, people saying, “This is fiction, this didn’t happen in the United States,” and others saying, “Yes, it did. It did actually happen.” People that come to see this musical are still unbelieving of it. I’m sure that by the time it ended, the tears were flowing like the rest of the audience. It’s a human story. People ultimately will identify and share the tragedy and the heartbreak.

At the same time, it’s a musical. I don’t want it to just focus on the historical side. This is historic. But my father was a block manager in both camps that we were in. We were first taken to a camp in the swamps of Arkansas called Rohwer. Then after a year and a half transferred to another camp in Northern California called Tule Lake. It was my father that told me when I was a teenager and curious about internment. He said, “Fortitude and resilience isn’t all teeth gritting, bone biting strength. It’s also the strength to be human, to see beauty under harsh condition and to find joy, fun.” Our barracks in the Arkansas camp was just across from the mess hall, and every couple of months the camp authorities allowed the teenagers to stage their dances after dinner. After dinner, the tables were cleared out and benches were brought to the side of the mess hall, and the teenagers had their dance.

Because my brother, sister and I were young, my mother put us to bed. But I remember going to sleep hearing the big band sound of Tommy Dorsey or Benny Goodman wafting across the night air, hearing the laughter. People had fun at those dances, and some fell in love and got married and had children. That’s also part of the fortitude of resilience. We incorporate those joyous moments in musical numbers like the camp dance. My father felt that in order for us to survive, we have to become a community. We had to gain strength from each other. My father organized a baseball team. We were next to the undeveloped part of the camp and so he got volunteers and he built a baseball playing field, a diamond. I remember seeing baseball games there. That became another production number. I got to get in the game.

It is so difficult right now, again, at this moment, to keep our spirits up and to keep our hope up. I’m sure you are hearing directly from so many people who are genuinely afraid right now, in your role as an advocate, also for the LGBT community. Do you see evidence of people fighting hatred and fear with joy, and with music, and with games and with dance?

If you follow the news. you see all the demonstrations and marches. I’ve been working with Muslim Public Affairs Council, and I’ve been going to their fundraisers. They get a thousand people on to those fundraisers. There’s dancing. But that’s a very strong, forceful speechifying as well. People are there working in concert and expressing their opposition to what’s happening. America is different today than 75 years ago. It is a dramatic difference. People are rushing to the airports when the president signs an executive order and echoing the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans. We have progressed. I’m an optimist. Yes. We have people like Donald Trump, and we have people like the neo-Nazis and the KKK. But they are the small minority. We are making progress. We see it in those demonstrations; we hear it in their chanting in front of the White House. It is a different America.

The showing of the film version of “Allegiance” is an example of that. We first screened it last year; we broke the record that Fathom Events has, and they’ve been around for 20 years, I think. Presenting the operas and the rock concerts and other one-night-only events. We broke all the records that they had. And in February we are reviving “Allegiance” as a stage musical here in Los Angeles, my hometown, where I was born, and where we have the largest number of people that actually experienced the internment or their descendants, their children and grandchildren. I’m confident that we’re going to have another successful run here in Los Angeles in February of 2018. We will keep going on. We’re going to keep on keeping on.

Portions of this conversation have been edited and condensed for clarity. The Fathom Events presentation of “Allegiance” will be in theaters December 7.