Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 320

One person dies as Harvey rocks Texas and more “catastrophic” floods loom ahead

Flood water surround homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017, in Rockport, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) (Credit: AP)

The hurricane that slammed into the coast of Texas on Friday night was downgraded to a tropical storm on Saturday afternoon as it continues to move inland, but it left behind a path of destruction in its wake, and days of “catastrophic” rain and flooding loom ahead.

Originally a Category 4 hurricane, Harvey hit land at roughly 10 p.m. on Friday with winds higher than 130 mph, according to Yahoo. Damage reports consisted of “collapsed roofs and walls,” as roughly 230,000 homes and businesses do not have any power.

By Saturday, Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm sustaining winds of 70 mph. It has turned “into a deadly inland event” as days of flooding, tornadoes and intense rain are all expected to add to the already “widespread devastation,” CNN reported. At least one person was killed and at least 12 more were injured in a house fire during the storm the city of Rockport.

KEY POINT – despite the downgrades in #Harvey, several days of heavy rainfall and flash flooding possible today – Tue/Wed. https://t.co/ncXpay8kcH

— NWS San Antonio (@NWSSanAntonio) August 26, 2017

Tornadoes already touched down near Houston “leveling homes and destroying everything else in their wake,” the Huffington Post reported.

“Our biggest concern is between 20 and 30 more inches of rain in areas ranging from Corpus Christi over to Houston,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a press conference on Saturday, according to ABC News. “We want to do everything we possibly can to keep people out of rising water.

More pictures of damage out here in Katy, this business had flooding in the past…nothing like this. Tornado wiped it out #khou11 pic.twitter.com/pB8YOgNmvq

— Daniel Gotera (@DTGoteraKHOU) August 26, 2017

Heart breaking for this family. Bought home a year ago. Now victims of tornado. Just look at that damage. #KHOU11 #HurricaneHarvey pic.twitter.com/CWxT4HnOX8

— Marcelino Benito (@MarcelinoKHOU) August 26, 2017

The storm “barely moved for hours” but cleanup efforts as well as search-and-rescue missions have begun, ABC reported. The U.S. Coast Guard already rescued 17 people off the coast of south Texas.

CBS elaborated:

Two helicopters aircrews were dispatched to help ships near Port Aransas, Texas, earlier Saturday after receiving distress calls.

They rescued seven people from a tugboat near Aransas Pass, four people from the vessel Signet Enterprise and four others aboard the vessel Sandy Point.

The New York Times reported that it “may take days before the full impact of the storm is known,” and there have been gasoline shortages around Houston “where drivers have been waiting in long lines to fill up.”

Destroyed homes in Port Aransas, Texas #HurricaneHarvey #Harvey #HarveyStorm #stxwx #Texas pic.twitter.com/OuX9dBPhTK

— Gabe Hernandez (@callergabe) August 26, 2017

Devastating before-and-after footage shows buildings leveled in Fulton, Texas by Hurricane #Harvey https://t.co/Chn96PeBX0 pic.twitter.com/96r5gaukif

— ABC News (@ABC) August 26, 2017

 

“Desus & Mero”: Perfect late-night viewing for surviving Trump and the supremacy

"Desus & Mero" (Credit: Vice)

Everything about the “Desus & Mero” show is a sharp right turn from anything else you’ll find out there in the world of late night.

Desus, real name name Daniel Baker, and Mero, real name Joel Martinez, tape the series in a conference room in the VICE’s Brooklyn office. The hosts sit at a heavily graffitied table with prayer candles that frame them. There’s a large stuffed bear behind them, adorned in a New York Yankees fitted cap and wheat-colored timberland boots, a nod to a style, culture and perspective Desus and Mero embody.

Guests of the “Desus & Mero” show sit awkwardly between the two hosts, fielding questions and jokes from the right and left. It’s a unique a ping-pong format that Desus and Mero have pioneered and perfected in the short time the show as been on the air.

In less than a year on air, the comedic duo has taped 150 episodes and counting for Viceland, and interviewed some of the most formidable voices in the current political and cultural terrain: Diddy, Chris Hayes, Janet Mock, Joy Reid, Malcolm Gladwell, Issa Rae, Soledad O’Brien, Jesse Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, DeRay Mckesson and Larry Wilmore to name just a few. Just a few months in, Desus and Mero are joining that wave of voices as go-tos for not only comedy, but commentary.

On Monday, Viceland announced that “Desus & Mero” will be renewed for season 2, which is not surprising. After all, there’s nothing quite like it out there. It’s a refreshing take on and alternative to the familiar late-night blueprint from two Bronx natives unfiltered in their political commentary and totally original in their interview style. It’s also the only show of its kind entrenched in the now-dominant musical, visual and conversational culture of America today: hip-hop.

For example, one night last February, the hosts shifted seamlessly between discussing former press secretary Sean Spicer and rapper Future, before introducing the evening’s guest, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (“our girl R-Dow,” as Desus called her). The humor then, as almost always, was blunt, conversational, hilarious and fully, bitingly perceptive.

Desus and Mero, who first met on Twitter, officially entered the web-comedy world in December 2013, when Complex TV launched the podcast and web series “Desus vs. Mero.” The weekly show ran for a year before the comics appeared for a brief stint on various MTV comedy shows. But it was through their ongoing, live-recorded podcast “Bodega Boys” that their fans multiplied and their personas elevated. (Desus and Mero’s diehard fans even have their own name: the “Bodega Hive.”)

It seemed a sure fit when Viceland announced it would be producing a “Desus & Mero” TV show last year. Since the premiere of the first episode in October 2016, their shared star has only risen.

And yet, as obvious a choice as it may have been for Viceland, the news of a season 2 pickup is significant. Desus, the son of Jamaican immigrant parents, and Mero, born of Dominican parents, bring often unheard perspectives and voices to a genre almost completely dominated by white men. They also vehemently hold President Donald Trump and his administration accountable in ways that other late-night hosts seem scared to do.

After Charlottesville and Trump’s placing blame on “both sides” and calling some of the white supremacists “very fine people,” Desus responded accordingly: “Hey, do you guys have any friends that are unemployed? Because I know of a job opening. It’s at the White House.” He continued, “because we don’t have a real president. We have a white supremacist in office.”

Somehow, Desus and Mero have found the middle ground between summarizing and commenting on a wide range of political issues while using niche anecdotes, jokes and language that is rooted in their Bronx upbringing — a fine balancing act. Perhaps most impressively, they’ve gotten a growing audience to care about all these things at the same time.

“We’re the neglected children of New York City. That comes through in everything we do,” Mero told The Fader. In the same interview, Desus said, “being from the Bronx, you know life is cheap. So you’re able to apply that to when you see ISIS videos and other people are like, ‘Yo, ISIS is out here chopping heads off. But for me it’s like, I could get my head chopped off at three in the morning in front of the bodega.”

There are few rules on “Desus & Mero,” but for sure, no one is allowed to disrespect the Knicks or the Bronx. Also, the comedians are only allowed to say “fuck” five times per show (which is five more than most late-night hosts). Pretty much everything else — race, culture, sex, music, bears in sports apparel — is on the table. Weeknights Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m., they prove it.

More than merely groundbreaking, the continued success of “Desus & Mero” is a challenge, one that demands that producers and executives move the creative, witty, piercing conversations seen in realtime on Twitter from our iPhones to our TV screens. It’s something that rarely happens, but “Desus & Mero” makes it look necessary (and makes today’s conventional late-night lineup seem like a thing of the past).

As the hosts once told a room full of advertisers and buyers in perhaps the best explanation of why people watch the show religiously, “We’re funny . . . and the other late night shows are corny AF.”

How Sleater-Kinney became heroes of rock

(Credit: AP/Bloomsbury Publishing)

The cover of Dig Me Out provides a lens into how Sleater-Kinney imagined themselves as the album was about to be released in April of 1997. At first glance, it’s a simple cover comprised of four photographs: three small portraits of the band members line the top and a larger close-up of a torso playing a guitar occupies the rest of the frame. The portraits are snapshots taken during a practice session in Weiss’s basement: Brownstein is looking up from her red SG Gibson, Tucker is looking away, and Weiss is drumming with headphones. In the portraits, each woman appears to have been caught in the middle of a thought, not having welcomed the photographer’s gaze; they seem almost annoyed to have been interrupted. Weiss took the large photograph that shows Brownstein’s headless body playing [producer John] Goodmanson’s Jerry Jones Danelectro guitar in the live room at John and Stu’s Place; a Black Sabbath poster peeks out in the back. The name of the band and the album crown the very top in all caps. At first glance, the cover simply declares that this is a group of musicians who prioritize playing over elaborate sleeve art and logos. It almost feels like a haphazard assemblage of image and text. But, as with so much else with Sleater-Kinney, nothing is arbitrary.

The cover of Dig Me Out makes a supporting claim in the band’s case against gender hierarchies implicit in music making. In its design, it’s a take-off of The Kinks’ 1965 album The Kink Kontroversy. The layouts are identical, with the exception that The Kinks had a fourth member and thus a fourth portrait lining the top. Weiss had thought of the idea. “The Kinks are one of my all-time favorite bands and they were revered,” she said. “It was fun to play with that idea of what makes a revered band. And we could be that, too!” On the cover of Dig Me Out, where in place of The Kinks they substituted their own portraits and their own guitars, Sleater-Kinney suggested that three women could embody a rock band (and play guitars and drums) all the same. While they had presented a similar challenge to rock stardom on Call the Doctor’s “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone,” the cover of Dig Me Out declared that Sleater-Kinney saw themselves as musicians on a par with The Kinks. “I liked toying with the idea that we didn’t have any limitations, that we could be that band, that people could talk about us like we matter, and that what we’re saying is important,” Weiss elaborated. “But the idea of being heroic is often not presented to women. Women are often seen as motherly and nurturing. We wanted to be heroic, scary, edgy, and challenging.” Heroism is important and, for Weiss, it’s a trait ascribed to the legions of esteemed rockers like The Kinks—most of them men. To place Sleater-Kinney among them was to question women’s exclusion from the canon, an exclusion that female musicians had long been pushing up against but that nevertheless continued to prevail in the 1990s.

But more than just the cover, Dig Me Out as a whole can be considered a rejection of the categories that were frequently imposed on female musicians. Nothing about the album nurtures or seduces the listener. “It was really intense, a very personal album that got at some of the things we faced as women in this band,” Tucker told me. Although women were certainly visible in popular culture in the late 1990s, performers like the Spice Girls and Celine Dion reinforced gender roles rather than dismantled them. There was little room for women who stepped outside brackets like “sexy” or “sentimental” or those who performed social defiance like their male counterparts. Performers who did were rarely taken seriously as musicians, as Sleater-Kinney found time and again when they interviewed with mainstream presses and toured across the United States. The riot grrrl movement had chipped away at the gendered conceptions of culture in the early 1990s, but the climate for women in music seemed just as grave in the second part of the decade.

When Dig Me Out was released in the spring of 1997, responses from fans reiterated just how desperate American audiences had been for a band like Sleater-Kinney. Many were hungry for female musicians who undermined gender hierarchies in music making—what Olympia’s space had provided for Tucker and Brownstein. “From the way people responded to it,” Weiss said, “I know that it had cultural weight as an important record. It seemed there was a feeling of necessity when it came out.” The immediate acclaim of Dig Me Out among listeners made the struggles it took to make the album seem worthwhile. “People lost their minds,” Julie Butterfield remembered. “They just loved the album.” Critics, too, loved the album and several heavyweights soon rallied behind the band.

The most important change set in motion by Dig Me Out was that Sleater-Kinney began to be revered as rock stars. When I spoke with John Goodmanson, he shared with me an interesting anecdote about the Jerry Jones Danelectro guitar that Brownstein is shown playing on the album cover. “When I show up with that guitar, people freak out and want to get their pictures taken with it,” he narrated. “When I was working with the Los Campesinos! guys—there’s a lot of them—they all had to get their picture taken with that guitar.” The myth of the Danelectro resembles the one of Abbey Road where The Beatles were once photographed for an album cover. Fans flock to Abbey Road to recreate the scene of the legendary crossing, just like they do to photograph themselves with the guitar that appears on the cover of Dig Me Out. Both of these signifiers capture the imagination of fans because they were once embodied by those perceived to be heroic. That’s to say that with Dig Me Out, Sleater-Kinney had breached a world where they could be heroes.

The Philippine labor movement is beginning to turn against authoritarian rule

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks to the Filipino community in Singapore on Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) (Credit: AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

The people of Manila have always struggled to survive day to day, but now they’re cheating death every night. The vices and bandits that usually roam the streets are being eclipsed by a crueler menace: the foot soldiers of President Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian regime.

This week, Duterte brought another summer nightmare to the region, with 32 “drug personalities” slaughtered in 67 police operations, deployed in a series of raids on the provincial outskirts of the city.  The massacre capped a year of thousands of killings in a hyper-militarized drug war, which seems to be growing bolder following Duterte’s recent expansion of military rule.

The formal imposition of martial law has shown that much of the president’s working-class base remains loyal. Banking on promises of stability and development, many are still lured by the political deal he proudly campaigned on — trading democracy for “law and order” — even as his administration robs them of both. His brazen populism and incendiary rhetoric is now undermining the labor movement that helped bring him to power, as the government continues to fail to protect workers from exploitation.

But dissent is brewing among some allies on the left, who have supported him since his days as a renegade mayor of Davao. Late last month, the left-wing Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) Labor Center set up a street encampment to protest martial law and demand labor reforms.

“Poverty, hunger and oppression among workers have worsened under Duterte’s continued promotion of cheap, contractual and repressed labor,” the group declared in its July 24 manifesto, denouncing the president’s economic policy as “subservient to the neoliberal dictates of the U.S. and China.”

Breaking from labor’s general tolerance of Duterte’s hardline tactics, the group contended that martial law was “merely being used to curtail civil liberties and suppress workers’ and people’s legitimate demands and struggles.” At the same time, the military crackdown on a rebellion on Mindanao island, Duterte’s home region and long a site of communal conflict, “has served as a threat to other workers asserting their demands for regular jobs and living wages,” they write.

The chaos that Duterte generates is providing justification for bludgeoning the insurgency and tightening his grip on the urban core. Capitalizing on a strongman persona, his scorched-earth policing agenda has led to mass imprisonment and extrajudicial slaughter with virtually no due process, according to internationalhuman rights authorities.

But disillusionment with Duterte’s image as a “voice of the people” is spreading among the rank-and-file. Old labor alliances have bristled at the Labor Ministry’s ongoing failure to address systematic abuses of worker rights, neglect of longstanding union demands for stronger regulation of subcontracting and refusal to implement meaningful land reform. With an estimated 24 million irregular contract workers nationwide, girded by a highly unequal tiered wage structure, unemployment and social disenfranchisement fester amid state oppression and neoliberal free markets.

The parallels between Duterte’s reign of terror and Trumpism go beyond the optics of nationalist bravado and vulgar soundbites. Both figures have mastered the art of manipulating media and social anxieties to distract the public from the root causes of social dysfunction.

In reality, political insurrection from militants on the country’s marginalized outskirts, along with the war on drugs, both reflect the abysmal social inequality and deprivation that his regime has inherited and perpetuated. The chief victims of Duterte’s drug wars, after all, are the jobless, disenfranchised youth who have been trapped for generations in a maelstrom of corruption and exploitation. Yet mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings and rampant police-led brutality continue in a crackdown that rights advocates have condemned as a “war on the poor.”

Amnesty International observed in February that police-led and vigilante street violence “have overwhelmingly hit the urban poor. And the police and paid killers have built an economy off extrajudicial executions. Witnesses and family members repeatedly told us how the police stole money and other valuables from their homes, and wedding rings off the fingers of the deceased.”

The police and vigilante aggression unleashed by Duterte’s anti-crime campaigns, now steeled by  martial law in Mindanao, has provoked tense backlash from faith groups and human rights advocates who fear a return to the dictatorship days under Marcos. An opposition prosecutor has even tried to get Duterte charged at The Hague, apparently with little impact on domestic politics. But Duterte’s grip on civil society will only be broken when he loses the faith of his working-class followers, the vast majority of whom support his drug war policies, although most express concern aboutextrajudicial murder impacting them or someone they know.

Nonetheless, militant workers might be crystallizing a grassroots opposition.

Following the protest camp action in late July, KMU Chair Elmer Labog stated via email that the campaign was one of several mass uprisings across the country that month, largely driven by frustration with dismal wages, the exploitation of precarious subcontracted workers and pervasive state violence under martial law.

Labog, nonetheless, acknowledges the challenges of organizing under authoritarianism, arguing: “Once again these are dangerous times for organizers and mass leaders, but we had survived the worst attacks under Marcosian rule. We have learned a lot from our experiences during those dark days under martial law.” While some “yellow unions” are still standing by Duterte, Labog notes, “They would eventually be isolated by supporting anti-people and anti-worker policies of the U.S.-Duterte regime.”

Partido Manggagawa, a labor-left opposition party, expressed solidarity with KMU’s protest camp, but also pointed out that KMU remains somewhat compromised—indirectly tied to the regime through key cabinet posts held by party affiliates “who are serving in Duterte’s cabinet have not resigned, so there is an ambivalence.”

Partido Manggagawa, meanwhile, has joined a national federation of leftist labor groups, Nagkaisa, to sign a collective opposition statement to Duterte’s oppressive policies. The coalition linked the fate of working people to the need to disinvest in violent and repressive institutions, and to focus instead on social remedies that actually raise the quality of life, rather than fuel more bloodshed. At the heart of labor’s demands are issues of basic welfare: fair taxation of the rich, stable family-supporting jobs and rehabilitation for youth and communities trapped in the drug crisis.

The group cautioned, “It will be very unproductive [for Duterte] to spend his remaining years in office for this costly war.  War is both destruction and political distraction. It neither creates nor equally redistributes social wealth that is now concentrated in the hands of oligarchs.”

The statement also denounced regime’s militarization of society when there was “a better war to wage and win against contractualization, low wages and high prices of basic goods and services. If you want peace, Mr. President, build social justice and economic inclusion first.”

Echoing a long legacy of oppressive administrations, Duterte has built power by aggravating social divisions. Finding common ground among all the communities under his grip, however, can sow real populism — if a critical mass can rise again against authoritarian rule.

Trump issues Friday night pardon for Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Joe Arpaio; Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Mary Altaffer)

Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County who infamously forced inmates to live in sweltering, uninsulated outdoor tent cities and wear pink underwear to humiliate them, was pardoned Friday evening by President Donald Trump, multiple outlets reported.

The former sheriff had been found guilty of criminal contempt of court back in July 2017. The 85-year-old sheriff was sued for racial profiling and was ruled to have violated a court order “to temporarily cease making immigration-related arrests after he was sued for racial profiling,” as Matthew Sheffield reported for Salon in July.

Arpaio was widely seen as the face of far-right attitudes towards crime and criminality, and he was renowned for using the Maricopa County sheriff’s office as a tool for targeting and illegally detaining undocumented immigrants. As Ryan Gabrielson wrote in ProPublica:

[Arpaio]’s office had spent the previous year carrying out a constitutionally dubious dragnet search for undocumented immigrants. Patrol deputies became expert at inventing pretexts for stopping the “load cars” that ferried immigrants through the county to points across the nation. Sheriffs descended on neighborhoods where day laborers waited for people willing to pay for their work. Voters repeatedly re-elected Arpaio as he carried out his pledge to transform the sheriff’s office into “a full-fledged anti-illegal immigration agency.”

In the past few years, Arpaio had become obsessed with the “birther” conspiracy. In 2016, Arpaio claimed that his investigation of Barack Obama’s birth certificate definitively proved that it was a “fradulently created document.” Many critics, including Chauncey DeVega of Salon, have argued that birtherism is “conspiracy theory fare mated with white supremacist invective.” “For birthers, Obama is a black usurper and ‘affirmative action’ candidate whose life accomplishments are unearned and unwarranted,” DeVega writes. “To that end, in the birther imagination Obama was not qualified to attend Columbia University and is a fraud who somehow conned or was given unearned special dispensation and privileges.”

Arpaio and Trump both adhered to the birther conspiracy, which made them allies early on in Trump’s political career (though Trump later, begrudgingly, admitted he believed Obama was born in the U.S.). Likewise, their shared anti-immigrant rhetoric may have bonded them. During Trump’s rally in Phoenix earlier this week, the president hinted that he was going to pardon Arpaio. “I won’t do it tonight because I don’t want controversy,” Trump said.

Many pundits believed that a pardon of Arpaio was either ill-advised, legally questionable or politically impossible, or perhaps all three. Writing in the New York Times opinion pages, Martin H. Redish argued that because Arpaio was “convicted of violating constitutional rights,” pardoning him would “signal that governmental agents who violate judicial injunctions are likely to be pardoned, even though their behavior violated constitutional rights, when their illegal actions are consistent with presidential policies.” Redish continued:

[I]f the president signals to government agents that there exists the likelihood of a pardon when they violate a judicial injunction that blocks his policies, he can all too easily circumvent the only effective means of enforcing constitutional restrictions on his behavior. Indeed, the president could even secretly promise a pardon to agents if they undertake illegal activity he desires. […]

While the Constitution [r]ecognizes the very practical need for an executive, that doesn’t mean its framers feared the growth of tyranny any less. The Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of neutral judicial process before deprivation of liberty cannot function with a weaponized pardon power that enables President Trump, or any president, to circumvent judicial protections of constitutional rights.

 

Despite declarations to the contrary, black people watch “Game of Thrones”

(Credit: HBO)

Long ago, in a time before time was counted . . . on portable phones . . . identifying as a black nerd or geek used to be one of the surest paths to social banishment. T’was a fate common to many nerds and geeks, but for nerds and geeks of color, harboring a love of swords and sorcery ran the risk of effectively placing oneself on the outer edges of the ostracized. It meant hearing, over and over again, that what we were into was some white people sh*t.

HBO’s “Game of Thrones” fits into this category purely based on visual evidence. Its focus on Westeros, a land author George R. R. Martin modeled upon Europe. The main characters are played by white actors. Characters played by actors of color hail from Dorne, the Westerosi version of Andalusian Spain and southern Italy, and Essos, viewed as an exotic land filled with silks and spices and brothels and legalized slavery.

This is a common reason given by people of color for not watching “Game of Thrones,” and it’s understandable. But as the show’s popularity has exploded over the past couple of seasons, and especially in the wake of the #NoConfederate controversy, I’ve been asked by other black people as well as a few “woke” white folks how I can be a fan of a series that has very few deeply developed characters of color.

My answers are simple, and straight, and deeply complex all at once. I watch because it’s a tremendously entertaining, visually seductive work that inspires conversation on multiple levels, both with regard to its successful aspects and it myriad flaws. I watch because those dragons are extraordinary, and there’s a thrill in seeing a woman command and ride them. I watch because I’ve grown emotionally attached to many of its characters.

The most obvious reason I watch is because I love television. And as a minority, part of loving television is recognizing the truth that TV is a medium that has long favored the stories of white people.

Besides, contrary to offhanded assertions some people have made (including radio host Tom Joyner) plenty of black folks watch “Game of Thrones.” There’s an active viewership devoted to communal viewing and conversation percolating under the Twitter hashtag #DemThrones. In fact, more people are watching “Game of Thrones” in season 7 than ever before; episodes draw an average audience of 29.3 million, a count that includes the audiences for their broadcasts on the HBO channels as well  as DVR replays, on-demand viewing and streaming viewership. (The most recent episode, “Beyond the Wall,” drew 10.2 million viewers in its 9 p.m. time slot, making it the second-most-watched episode in the series’ history.)

Famous black folks watch it too, notably “Saturday Night Live” cast member Leslie Jones, who lends her commentary to the “Late Night with Seth Meyers” recurring segment titled “Game of Jones.”

Not everyone watches it religiously, mind you. “I’m not, like, a ‘Game of Thrones’ fanatic,” said hip hop icon and “NCIS: LA” star LL Cool J when the question was put to him at a recent CBS event. “That’s just the honest truth. But for me to go in knowing it’s fiction drives me” to watch, he explained, “because then it becomes about somebody else’s point of view. That’s a little challenging but it’s pretty interesting, it’s pretty cool.”

Orlando Jones, a man who earned geek ambassador status due to his work in “American Gods” and “Sleepy Hollow,” watched the series as part of his job, having worked in the past with “Game of Thrones” star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and because he admires Peter Dinklage’s work.

“I came to ‘Game of Thrones’ going, it has the perfect murders-to-beheadings ratio,” Jones joked. “I’m like,’OK! Bare breasts, beheadings, breasts! So that’s what they’re watching.’ That was my initial instinct.”

He added, “If I started discluding content solely based on its underlying, shall we say, lack of sensitivity to disenfranchised groups — of which I am one, but I’m not the only group that they have literally no sensitivity to — I would have to disqualify way too much content to be in the entertainment business.”

On the other end of the “Game of Thrones” fan spectrum is Aisha Tyler, co-host of “The Talk,” the voice of Lana on FX’s “Archer,” and proud geek. “Human stories are human stories. And ‘Game of Thrones’ isn’t set in any part of the Earth as we know it. It’s a fantasy show,” declared the geek khaleesi. “If you decided not to watch a TV show unless it was completely devoid of racial tropes, you’d have about one show to watch.”

As a rebuttal to the critique of the whiteness of “Game of Thrones,” Tyler recalled the prominence of Salladhor Saan (Lucian Msamati) the wealthy pirate for hire who lent his ships to Stannis Baratheon’s cause in the doomed attack on Blackwater. He had considerable power, she pointed out.

That’s true. The series also cast a black actor, Nonso Anozie, as Xaro Xhoan Daxos, a self-made nobleman in Qarth, and DeObia Oparei as Areo Hotah, the head bodyguard of Prince Doran Martell. The Dornish contingent is represented by actors hailing from a variety of countries, including Chile, Sudan and Australia, claiming descendance from Indian, Singaporean and Maori culture.

Those characters are all dead, by the way.

Nevertheless, “I don’t think that it promotes racial tropes any more than a lot of other shows, which are much more relevant to our current situation on the planet today, because ‘Game of Thrones’ is some made-up sh*t,” Tyler said.

Michael Harriot might beg to differ with that opinion. Harriot covers culture for The Root and authored “The Black Person’s Guide to Game of Thrones,” a widely-circulated humorous breakdown that speaks to all of the series’ racially fraught depictions as well as spelling out its appeal.

“’GOT’ is basically an all-encompassing analogy for white America and should be studied in the same way seventh-grade English teachers make their students dissect ‘Animal Farm’ or ‘Lord of the Flies’ to understand society,” Harriot observes in the piece.

He admitted in a recent phone call that while he’s always been a nerd, he didn’t go full “only black person at ye olde Renaissance Faire” like yours truly.

However, if an aversion to swords and wizards and other fantasy tropes is indeed a black thing, he has a theory about that. “Part of the idea of fantasy and the notion that it’s always been a white thing, is because the imagination that engenders it has to be cultivated by a mind that doesn’t have to really worry about real world sh*t,” he said. “ . . . If you have to worry about the economy and employment and racism and prejudice and going to school and discrimination, there’s little space in your mind left for fantasy and imagination. Even the little space there is, it usually doesn’t wander as far off.”

There’s also the factor that the majority of the fantasy genre’s greatest hits — “The Sword and the Stone,” J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” franchise, C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” — are influenced by medieval European myths and legends, which have been typically interpreted by Hollywood as populated by white people.

“Game of Thrones” represents the height of fantasy’s mainstreaming — more than the likes of the “Harry Potter” franchise or Peter Jackson cinematic adaptations of Tolkien’s work. Those examples actually demonstrate how conventional these one-time outsider genres have become. Reading J.K. Rowling’s books was trendy for all ages just a few years ago, whereas in the 1980s or even the 1990s, being a black girl caught with your nose in “The Two Towers” was as good as a hanging a sign around your neck that read, “Why Yes, Do Stuff Me Into an Open Locker of Your Choosing.”

So cemented are the classic concepts about what these imaginary worlds look like, whether in Martin’s brain or HBO’s televised manifestation of his story, that breaking the wheel of cultural depiction does not occur to most of the writers and directors of such series.

That was clear from the very beginning of the series, when Daenerys Targaryen’s wedding to her Dothraki warlord husband Khal Drogo was marked by what can only be described as a National Geographic-themed nightmare. Dothraki weddings, Ser Jorah explains to the horrified khaleesi, are exciting affairs celebrated by drunken brawls to the death and animalistic screwing. These are the first images of brown people seen in the series, and it turned my stomach.

I viewed those troubling  images and every one afterward, processing what each one signifies. The Unsullied, for example, are elite warriors, feared across Essos and famously relieved of their genitalia at a young age. In the series, they’re depicted by black and brown men, and led by a commander named Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson).

Grey Worm’s lover is Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel), also a former slave. She also speaks many languages and is the diplomatic interface between Daenerys and much of the world. Daenerys, played by Emilia Clarke, is quite literally the whitest white woman in this world — pale skin, white hair and possessed of a Louise Linton level of confidence and entitlement, albeit with 100 percent more empathy for the poor and exploited. The first faces she shows to those who would stand against her, her vanguard, are black and brown ones.

Of course, there are positive and negative ways to interpret that view. Missandei is a partner to Daenerys. She’s also subservient, only now by choice.

Taking all of that into account, Jones also pointed out that in the larger scheme of things, “’Game of Thrones,’ frankly, is the least of my issues when we start to talk about representation — how women, how people of color are treated and frankly, how 20 percent of the population is treated. And by that I mean people who are disabled.”

In that sense, Jones credits Martin and “Game of Thrones” for its rounded rendering of Tyrion Lannister. “Peter Dinklage is not a second-class citizen in that show,” the actor pointed out. “His story is about his second-class citizenship in his family, and those elements. But Tyrion is a full-blown character . . . you’ve got to give ‘Game of Thrones’ a pass on some level simply because of that.”

This is essentially how fandom works for any minority viewer — or, really, any viewer connecting to entertainment. We absorb what’s presented not without question but at least with a level of engagement that maintains our awareness of problematic elements. It frustrates and fascinates us and even in that way, it connects us to worlds and views beyond our individualized screens.

“If you’re frustrated about diversity in casting, tell people not to watch ‘The Affair,’” Tyler deadpanned, adding, “Live your life.”

Meet the Rozsa Rule: Here’s how to weed fake facts out of political debates

(Credit: Getty/mediaphotos)

Political rhetoric is so superheated these days that, when creating the Rozsa Rule for Fair Debate, I decided it would be best to avoid taking shots at any particular ideology or point of view. As anyone who reads my work already knows, I am what my friend Brian calls “left of left-of-center” in my own ideology. (For example, I believe Michael Dukakis would have been one of America’s greatest presidents). That said, these rules are designed to stop bad actors from my own side just as much as those with other philosophies.

The goal here is to end bad arguing tactics during in-person political debates.

The main difference between in-person political debates and the ones held online is that it’s much more difficult to sift through the other person’s sources in a face-to-face conversation. Both I and other people I know have expressed frustration at the ease with which their acquaintances can persuade listeners with faulty arguments based on shoddy research and biased commentary passing itself off as detached analysis (particularly if the evidence in question is linked in any way to YouTube or Reddit).

That is why I’ve come up with the Rozsa Rule. It contains three stipulations, all of them linked by a common theme: If someone wants their position to be taken seriously in an in-person debate, then anything they say about the opposing side must be substantiated by a neutral source that backs up their position. To ensure this happens, there are three requirements:

1. If video exists that one side says supports its argument, that party must show that video to all other parties in the debate. The footage must always (a) contain at least 60 seconds of unedited footage, meaning there can be no cuts and no interruptions from third-party commentary (either from other participants in the debate or within the video itself) during that span; or (b) must contain the entire clip, again unedited and uninterrupted, if the original source footage is less than 60 seconds long.

2. If text exists that one side says supports its argument, that party must provide one full page of such text (say, 500 words or so) and allow all other parties to read it without edits, abridgment or third-party commentary from either the printed text itself or other debate participants. If the original text is less than one page or about 500 words, they must be allowed to read the entirety of it within the aforementioned unaltered form.

3. Whenever a participant in the debate wants to express his or her point, they should be allowed 30 seconds in which to do so without interruption, but should not continue not beyond 60 seconds. If another party interrupts them during the first 30 seconds, the clock automatically resets; if they go beyond 60 seconds, they can be interrupted and/or cut off.

One purpose of these rules is to identify straw man arguments — that is, when one side misrepresents the positions taken by another in order to “win” the discussion. These can be especially tricky to call out in an in-person conversation, since realistically, no one engaged in those discussions is going to spend a lot of time watching unfiltered original sources. This is why YouTube political videos and other forms of designed-to-be-viral polemical media are so popular — they conveniently slice, dice and spice up the speeches, studies, reports, political articles and editorials (like the ones I write for a living) and other original sources that both sides will use to prop up their own positions and tear down those of their opponents. Even worse, they can engage in these distortions for minutes on end in a fashion that is entertaining and, for that reason, persuasive.

More often than not, though, these sources are at best biased and at worst outright deceptive. That’s why the Rozsa Rule was designed to force people who try to win arguments by using these types of bad sources to allow other debate participants to see the original material themselves. Because it is unlikely that people engaged in a face-to-face conversation are going to want to read or watch source material for an extended period, the 60-second or one-page rule was applied. Better still, it forces participants who rely on propaganda to confront the weakness of their own reasoning. If you can’t rebut what an opponent has to say without allowing them even one minute or one page without interference, then you are almost certainly not arguing in good faith.

In addition to weeding out straw-man arguments, the Rozsa Rule is meant to force everyone engaged in a debate to play fair. One of the worst things about the talking heads we regularly see bickering with each other on mainstream news networks is that, by constantly cutting each other off, they send the message that the person with the loudest and most persistent set of vocal chords is somehow the “winner” in their discussions. People don’t always behave like that for that reason — certainly I have interrupted people in the heat of the moment out of passion rather than sinister intent — but that doesn’t make it okay. The third stipulation in the Rozsa Rules is meant to ensure that no party is able to give off the appearance of “winning” simply by being the loudest instead of the smartest. Just as important, it guarantees that people who are reluctant to voice their opinions because of the likelihood of being shouted down will have their own voice.

I won’t pretend that these rules are foolproof. If nothing else, that assumption would underestimate the tenacity and creativity of fools. But when I’ve insisted that they be applied in my own in-person political discussions, I have invariably found that they elevate the quality of the exchanges and helped all parties feel that they were allowed to participate. If you have an ideology worth following, there is no good reason to oppose these common-sense guidelines.

If you find them objectionable, on the other hand, maybe that’s a sign that your point of view isn’t as defensible as you think.

Meet “It” boy Harris Dickinson of “Beach Rats,” the woke hunk you’ve been waiting for

Harris Dickinson in "Beach Rats" (Credit: Neon)

As Frankie, a dudebro on the down-low, Harris Dickinson gives a breakout performance in “Beach Rats.” Writer and director Eliza Hittman’s astonishing sophomore feature has the aimless, working class Brooklynite, Frankie, hanging out with his buddies, engaging in a tentative relationship with Simone (Madeline Weinstein) and secretly cruising for sex and drugs on gay chat rooms.

His assignations with a series of men — at night and often on the beach — along with his continuous efforts to get or stay high, provide Frankie with his only outlets from a stifling home environment and a go-nowhere life.

For some viewers, “Beach Rats” — which debuts in select theaters today — may serve as an apt complement to “Moonlight,” in its presentation of inchoate masculinity and a central character grappling with identity issues in lower-class circumstances with a lack of positive role models. Granted, the element of black life is missing here, but there are easy parallels nonetheless.

Frankie’s story unspools in the Coney Island environs of smoke, skin, sand and waves. The palpable longing Frankie has for wanting to be his true self in a world that may not understand him gives Dickinson’s performance indelibility and his career as an actor, promise. Dickinson immerses himself so fully into the role that most viewers may be surprised to learn he’s British.

Salon caught up with the sure to-be-in-demand actor to talk about making “Beach Rats,” his identification with and portrayal of Frankie and his very particular idea of what constitutes romance.

Most viewers will be seeing you for the first time in “Beach Rats.”  Can you talk a little about your background and how you came to make the film?

I was working in a bar and I was auditioning a lot. I’d done theatre and TV, but I’d not done a feature film or played a character that was this demanding. It intrigued me that this working-class character was going through a sexual identity struggle. It’s a tragic story, but it’s also very interesting as an actor to portray. I’m obviously not from that area, so it was enjoyable for me to [sink] my teeth into that and do that youth culture justice.

As someone removed from his experience, how did you identify with Frankie?

Frankie was recognizable in that it was that toxicity that builds inside a person when you suppress feelings — what’s prohibited in your upbringing, friendship groups and society. I identified with that inability to communicate or comprehend it, that inarticulation, and being lost as a teen. I think everyone has this.

What did you struggle with as a teenager?

Many things. Nothing I want to talk about publicly.

How did you see Frankie? He is obviously conflicted about his same-sex desires, unable to say he wants to see a guy’s dick but physically able to perform when he meets guys for sex. He says he does not think of himself as gay. How do you see him?

I think the film frames his life where he’s on the brink of discovery. It’s hard. He says, “I don’t know.” He struggles to say the words. It’s so drilled into him that [being gay] is wrong, and the fear is so present. He’s letting these emotions surface, but the moment he’s happiest is when he’s acting on these desires. It’s interesting to intellectualize. I can’t unpack it.

How did you calibrate your performance? Frankie reveals so much without saying much. He seems comfortable in his own skin at times but generally full of anxiety and conflict. Can you talk about that aspect of representing him?

I think so much of the script was kind of unwritten, with parenthetical descriptions. We found much of it on the day [shooting]. These vital, unspoken moments are when you see the character’s psychology the most. He’s watching something — but I think I was able to capture that, because I was going through the motions in my head, and understood his psychology.

The film is a very intimate observational character study. Rather than articulate it in lengthy dialogue, Eliza created a film that can be narratively driven by being played in those moments. There’s a moment with Frankie in the car with Jeremy [Harrison Sheehan] and it was so difficult to play, because there’s this huge weight piling on Frankie with the anticipation of what’s going to happen. He wants to say something and cry out for help. It’s all unspoken desperation.

Yes, that’s what makes the film so exciting and dangerous! What can you say about the various bad decisions Frankie makes?

I think it’s easier for Frankie to be self-destructive. Everything he does feels like punishment, and against his true emotions. I’ve seen it in peers. So much of it is misguidance and having no direction in their lives, and zero passion. It also became a numbness; self medicating and morally choosing to do the wrong thing. He dances on the line of being unlikable.

I didn’t think he was unlikable. I understood him, because of your internalized performance. That early scene where Simone wants to have sex, and Frankie says he’s wasted to get out of it . . .

That scene where he can’t get it up, that insecurity and embarrassment leads him to be vindictive. It’s a teenage coping mechanism in social situations.

Yes! The film beautifully presents the juxtaposition between Frankie’s homosocial world with his buddies and the world of the gay chat room, sex in the sand dunes and the motel. Can you talk about how you portrayed these two sides of his life?

We get introduced to Frankie’s friends in a very casual way, and they’ve been friends for a while. They hang out, and it’s a very masculine and hetero-driven world, but it crosses over to his secrecy in the basement and his porn chat rooms. These worlds merge, and Frankie allows them to clash in the hope that maybe the friends will accept it. He’s constantly testing the waters, like when he asks Simone if two guys kissing is sexy. He’s trying to figure out what’s right in his own head.

Frankie has four assignations with guys (and three with Simone). Can you discuss the different sex scenes, which really informed Frankie’s persona, given how he is active or passive with his partners?

I think it’s interesting that the scene after the boat party, which is very self-destructive and part of his downward spiral, leads to him giving head at the beach. That is an aggressive encounter and not at all enjoyable for Frankie. When we see him [earlier] with the older guy, it’s quiet, and he’s embarrassed. It’s dark on the beach. It’s all about the quick sexual pleasure. The hotel scene is the first time he’s really enjoying it and slowly felt at ease, and it’s shot beautifully, and the pace is tranquil. The sex scenes certainly contrast and have their definitive notions and say a lot about his psychology at the time.

What can you say about filming on Coney Island and capturing the realism of that place, how the local color, e.g., playing handball, informed how you played Frankie?

I got there about a month before shooting. I was playing handball. I spent time in the area, talking to a lot of people and exploring the locations and digesting them, and the accents, and meeting people and just absorbing every nuance I could. I scrambled around with guys on the beach. That was fundamental in creating the film’s authenticity.

“Beach Rats” is a sexy film but it’s not a romantic one, so let me ask you a question the characters ask Frankie: What is your idea of romance?

[Laughs]. My idea of romance . . . is . . . Okay. I have an idea . . . I think my idea of romance is tailor-made pleasure. Whether it is food, or a sexual encounter, it’s tailored to your own desires. That makes it more romantic. It’s selfishly pleasurable.

Roy Moore is out-Trumping the president: Will Republicans in Alabama reject Trump’s endorsed Senate candidate?

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore testifies during his ethics trial before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary at the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery, Ala., on Wednesday Sept. 28, 2016. He is accused of encouraging judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling legalizing gay marriage. (Mickey Welsh/Montgomery Advertiser via AP, Pool) (Credit: AP)

Roy Moore’s brand of politics was in many ways a forerunner for President Donald Trump. Loud, opinionated, and without a care as to whom he may offend, the former state judge has been a political figure in Alabama for decades, famous for his desire to post a giant Ten Commandments diorama in his court room and his refusal to obey the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Moore’s Christian nationalist cultural populism is going to enable him to become the GOP’s choice in a special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

With Republican voters primed by Trump to embrace a white Christian identity politics, Moore’s old-time blend of preaching and politicking looks like it has more power than the president’s endorsement of Moore’s rival, Luther Strange, the man who was appointed to fill the seat temporarily until the general election in November.

Moore has led most polls throughout the race. In the Aug. 15 first round of the primary, he finished with 39 percent of the vote, 8 points higher than Strange. The race is headed into a second round of balloting Sept. 26 because Moore was unable to win more than 50 percent of the vote.

During his election night party, Moore delivered an explicitly religious message.

“We need to go back to the recognition that God’s hand is still on this country and on this campaign,” he said. “We must be good again before we can be great. And we will never be good without God.” The former judge has been twice removed from the bench by ethics courts for his refusal to obey higher court rulings.

Trump appears to have endorsed Strange as a favor to the GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, but with the president embroiled in a public war against Republican congressional leaders all bets are off as to what Trump may do next. On the first night of voting, the president took the unusual measure of congratulating both Moore and Strange, despite the fact that he had endorsed Strange.

Congratulation to Roy Moore and Luther Strange for being the final two and heading into a September runoff in Alabama. Exciting race!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017

Hours afterward, presumably after receiving some panicked calls McConnell, Trump tweeted out what he should have said initially.

Wow, Senator Luther Strange picked up a lot of additional support since my endorsement. Now in September runoff. Strong on Wall & Crime!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2017

Moore has also been explicitly running against McConnell, arguing, as many conservative activists have claimed for many years, that the GOP leader suppresses far-right policy ideas. Despite McConnell’s consistent skill at foiling Democrats in the upper chamber, many conservative voters and activists believe him to be ineffective and cowardly. After Senate Republicans gave up on repealing the Affordable Care Act, Trump seems to have embraced this critique.

For his part, Strange has been caught in the middle of the two men. In an advertisement, he tried to paint himself as one with Trump.

“Others attack our president,” Strange said in the message. “I’m fighting with him to drain the swamp and repeal Obamacare.”

The winds may be shifting even further in Moore’s favor. On Thursday, former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, still a favorite among Christian nationalists, announced that she was endorsing Moore. She joins several hardcore conservative groups who are seeking to defeat Strange as a blow to McConnell.

On Tuesday, far-right radio host Mark Levin told his audience called McConnell a “mob boss” who deserved to be brought to his knees.

“Mitch McConnell may think he’s a mob boss, but we don’t have mob bosses in the United States Senate, in the greatest Republic on the face of the earth,” Levin said. “It’s time that we make this mob boss heel! It’s time that we bring him to his knee, like Kaepernick!”

Friday afternoon, the Washington Post reported that Trump is now considering pulling back from the race, not rescinding his endorsement of Strange but becoming less of an active participant than he had been in the first round of the primary when he had recorded a voice message that was sent to Alabama voters via telephone on Strange’s behalf.

During his own campaign, Trump was generally uninterested in appealing to conservatives, even saying several times that he did not consider himself one but since taking office, he has strongly tried to adhere to the concerns of base Republican voters. With Palin going her own way and Moore continuing to hold the lead, there’s a strong indication that Trump may decide to cut back so as to distance himself in the event that Strange loses the race.

The InfoWar for Donald Trump’s mind

(Credit: Infowars)

Thanks to the routine crises that President Trump provokes by his freelance morning tweets and unscripted rants, there is one thing that can be said about this administration: It is perhaps the most transparent administration ever.

A huge part of the reason for this is that Trump seems to base his opinions on whichever person he spoke with most recently. The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips documented this rather well in April. Journalists talking to administration officials have reported this as well.

This chaotic decision-making process only became worse for Trump once he assumed the presidency. Under his first chief of staff Reince Priebus, the Oval Office became the place where any number of senior aides were able to waltz in whenever to shoot the breeze or to drop off suggested reading materials. Given the close ties that some Trump family members and aides have had to conspiracy websites, idiotic nonsense has long been a part of the president’s media diet. Staffers have also literally given him deliberately fabricated stories without knowing they were fake.

Under Trump’s new chief of staff John Kelly, however, some of that is beginning to change. There is now an infowar on for the president’s mind, according to Politico’s Eliana Johnson and Nancy Cook:

In a conference call last week, Kelly initiated a new policymaking process in which just he and one other aide — White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a little-known but highly regarded Rhodes scholar who overlapped with Jared Kushner as an undergraduate at Harvard — will review all documents that cross the Resolute desk.

The new system, laid out in two memos co-authored by Kelly and Porter and distributed to Cabinet members and White House staffers in recent days, is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports and even news articles that haven’t been vetted. Kelly’s deputy, Kristjen Nielson, is also expected to assume an integral role.

The keystone of the new system is a “decision memo” that will — for each Trump policy — integrate the input of Cabinet agencies and policy councils and present the president with various options, as well as with the advantages and drawbacks of each one.

Kelly’s more disciplined media regimen is proving frustrating to some of the conspiracy-oriented websites that have become favorites of Trump fans across the country.

“I’m scared that the military complex is taking over the formerly populist White House,” Lucian Wintrich, a writer for the right-wing Gateway Pundit blog told BuzzFeed.

https://twitter.com/lucianwintrich/st...

According to pro-Trump conspiracy-monger Jack Posobiec, White House interns have been threatened with firing if they share posts from Infowars, the website operated by radio host Alex Jones that has moved from catering to UFO theorists to reporting on politics.

“The news will undoubtedly bolster complaints emanating from Trump’s base that he has been isolated and surrounded by globalists who have no interest in furthering Trump’s ‘America first’ message,” Paul Joseph Watson, the editor-at-large of the site wrote on Friday.

Kelly’s efforts to contain intellectual flotsam within the White House may ultimately be doomed, however, given that some Trump family members will still have direct access to him. As the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported, the president’s wife Melania and his daughter Ivanka will still be able to meet with Trump without having to make an appointment. Some pro-Trump media outlets also seem unconcerned that their access to the president’s brain since they can count on his eldest son, Donald Jr. to forward their articles and videos.

“If it’s good enough, Don Jr. will give it to him,” Mike Cernovich, an Infowars contributor and chief promulgator of the Pizzagate conspiracy, boasted to BuzzFeed.

https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/...

Of course, there is also the president’s television addiction, particularly his devotion to “Fox and Friends,” the dim-witted morning infotainment show that has become famous for influencing Trump. He appears to be addicted to it, even recording it so he can watch it later in case he misses it live. Within Fox News, the program and its hosts have long been regarded as an embarrassment according to multiple sources. But given Trump’s dedication to the program, it is quite likely the most influential single media outlet in the world right now.

Unlike the feckless Reince Priebus, John Kelly seems much better suited to being chief of staff. Despite his best efforts to decrease the flow of conspiracy news to the president, however, it seems unlikely that he will succeed. And that’s assuming this arrangement can last more than a few weeks given how much Trump hates the perception that he’s being controlled by his staff.