Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 681
August 22, 2016
The scandalous truth about CEO severance: Philippe Dauman, Viacom, and the corporate trend of rewarding major failure with major payouts
Philippe Dauman (Credit: Reuters//Brendan McDermid/AP/Mark Lennihan/Photo montage by Salon)
Philippe Dauman’s ouster as president, CEO and chairman of media giant Viacom couldn’t have come sooner for investors who have watched the media company fail to keep up with the times. Amid a nasty battle for control over the empire that geriatric media mogul Sumner Redstone built, Dauman emerged as a potent symbol of poor corporate governance.
Despite Viacom’s failures to react quickly to young people’s embrace of online and mobile content, despite doing little while Netflix and Amazon emerge as content provider and creators, and despite Viacom’s eight-consecutive quarters of declining ad revenue, Dauman is walking away with a severance package worthy of a conquering hero-type CEO — one worth many tens of millions of dollars. His leap from Viacom with his golden parachute comes just months after Viacom announced layoffs at Paramount, MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon aimed at saving $250 million, or almost a third of the value of Dauman’s severance.
Let’s look at Dauman’s huge payout: He’s is set to receive a $72 million severance, not including $1.1 million worth of health and welfare benefits, life insurance, office space and a secretary, and $1.9 million in pension-plan related accrued interest, according to a regulatory filing from January 2016. And this comes on top of the $54 million windfall Dauman received in 2011 as a retention payment comparable in value to a CEO exit package and a 20 percent pay raise for the year — never mind that Viacom’s valuation dropped 45-percent over the same period of time.
Dauman’s “platinum parachute” once again raises the question of whether CEOs deserve to be rewarded when their leadership reflects poor company performance. His deal comes three months after Yahoo’s board approved a $55 million severance package for CEO Marissa Meyer should she be ousted in the wake of Verizon’s acquisition. Meyer’s deal comes as Yahoo’s shareholders have seen the struggling search giant’s stock fall by a third over the past year.
Ever since companies began compensating executives with stock option the assumption has gone that CEOs will performer better if their pay is linked to stocks. But a recent study from MSCI ESG Research shows no correlation between stock-based compensation and company stock value. Stock in companies that pay their CEOs at the lower end of the spectrum actually give up better returns than stock in companies with the highest-paid CEOs, the research concluded.
Last year, Dauman earned more than other more successful CEOs. Disney’s stock is up more than 200 percent over the past five years while Time Warner’s shares are up nearly 190 percent. Viacom’s growth in the same period of time? Under 3 percent.
“He [Dauman] was not only being paid a lot, he was paid $85 million last year, which is more than Bob Iger of Disney and Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner combined, and his performance was miserable,” Jeff Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of the Yale School of Management, told CNBC. “He not only missed the digital revolution but he was killing the great properties that he had.”
Sonnenfeld, who has studied CEO performance, estimates that as much as 15 percent of a company’s stock value can be attributed to the decisions and leadership skills of their chief executives.
“The principle of the golden parachute is a sound principle,” according to a 2012 Harvard Law School study of golden parachutes. But, “in our view, what went wrong was that the principles were applied too widely,” in the severance packages reviewed by the research.
The researchers concluded that so-called “Say on Pay” rules enacted under Dodd-Frank that went into law in 2010, which gives shareholders opportunity to express the concern over executive compensation, will help make board directors accountable to how they negotiate severance packages. But more than five years after the enactment of Dodd-Frank rules, CEOs are still walking away with immense severance packages despite poor performance. It’s going to take more than some disgruntled shareholders — and their non-binding annual votes on executive pay — to change that.
August 21, 2016
She’s a gamer, I’m not: How Pokémon Go helped my marriage
(Credit: Mr Aesthetics via Shutterstock)
“Slow down! Will you please just slow down,” my wife snaps, her fingers spread wide like a small child about to have a meltdown.
I look in the rear-view mirror to make sure no one will plow into us. I slow just a little. I could slow more, but I don’t.
“There was a Pokéstop right there!” she says.
My wife and I have been having communications issues. I blame a lot of it on the fact that she is glued to her iPhone day and night, skimming Twitter for the latest on everything. I seriously can’t keep up with the amount of data she absorbs. I skim my Twitter timeline reading just the headlines, unless there is a really good breaking news story.
Just this morning I hear about a new app called Pokémon Go. When I mention it to her, she says she’s already at level 5.
“I can’t just slow down,” I say. “You’re gonna get us hit.”
“Just drive slowly, then. If no car is behind us, just go slow.”
A Ford F350 barrels up behind me. She arches over her phone with her face an inch from the screen, breaking all kinds of ergonomic rules. She taps the screen repeatedly with her finger. I think, this is it — we are doomed never to communicate properly again because of this stupid technology and this dumb new game.
Before Pokémon Go captured her attention, it was Neko Atsume, the cat-collecting game. Before that, it was Angry Birds. And before that, SimCity.
I want to take the phone and toss it out the window.
She continues to tap.
“I need to take this gym,” she says the way someone in a business meeting might say I have to take this call.
I drive through the intersection with the flow of traffic anyway.
She gives me a sideways glance and turns off her phone. “Thank you very much. I missed a Pokéstop.”
We drive in silence, park, and then take a seat at the bar and stare up at the silent baseball game on a large screen. I feel like we should talk. Isn’t that what normal people in relationships do? I consider what I can share with her. My day at work has been uneventful. My mother called; her car died again. Who wants to hear about that? She looks bored and I feel I am to blame. Maybe her Pokémon Go avatar is a kind of virtual other woman — new and exciting, full of surprises.
“Okay. Tell me how you play,” I ask, and pull out my phone.
“This is how it works,” she says instantly. “You follow a digital map and search for creatures that surface at random. When a creature appears, you toss Pokéballs at it until it is subdued — it’s called augmented reality. Do you know that?”
“Yes, of course I know that. Everyone knows that.”
I didn’t know that.
We down our drinks and take the game out to the streets. My stylish, girlish avatar — KungfuMeow — walks the streets looking for creatures to subdue. Blue cubes appear in the distance and turn to circles as we approach.
“Now tap on them!” she says.
When I tap, an image of a colorful street sign appears within the circle. I look up. Above my head is a sign for a funky glassblowing shop. We’ve probably walked along this street 50 times and have never seen that sign before. A young guy works in front of a hot flame, reggae music playing in the background.
“Now, you have to catch the Pokémon.” She holds her iPhone in front of her as if she is taking a photo.
“Where?” I ask, following her. On the screen, a cute cartoon owl appears, crouching on the front lawn of the house directly in front of us.
“That’s pretty cool,” I admit, finally appreciating the game just a little bit.
“Now hit it with the Pokéball.”
“But it’s so cute,” I protest.
“Hit it!”
As she shows me all of the creatures I can collect, a car horn gives a delicate honk from behind to tell us to get out of the street.
“Let’s take a picture with you and the turtle,” she says.
She is eager to have me pose with it, and directs me to move this way and that — a little to the left, a little lower, so that my hands appear to be holding its small green and yellow body. It’s like the time in Paris when we took the photo of the Eiffel Tower sitting in the palm of my hand.
On the way home, the servers for Pokémon Go go down and the game becomes temporarily unavailable.
“That’s it,” she says. “If they can’t get their act together, I’m done with it.”
“You lie,” I tell her, although I wish she wasn’t.
But I notice that I feel a little lighter and less tense. Has the game temporarily freed us from the arduous effort of trying to communicate with each other? I have to admit it was fun walking in the quiet neighborhood, just chatting and being silly.
“You should play it on campus tomorrow. It’ll be so cool,” she suggests. “You’ll run into all these kids playing it. They’ll give you a knowing look. Except you’ll be like their grandmother.”
“I’ll look like some crazy old lady. I’ll just creep them out,” I say. “No thanks.”
I see where this is leading. In the past, I tried other games she played so I wouldn’t be left out. I gave Neko Atsume a try until I found us too often side by side in bed feeding our virtual cats while our two live kitties looked on. And then there was the totally disengaged period when we both sat together in restaurants, in cars and on commuter trains — not talking, but trying to kill a bunch of Angry Birds.
“That was fun,” I tell her. “But I don’t want to get caught up in it.” I want us to stick with our usual pastime of riding bikes together. It’s what we have always done; it’s what we do.
“We’re not gamers,” I joke.
“Speak for yourself,” she says.
I feel like one of those clichéd housewives from old movies — the bored ones flipping through magazines as their husbands talk excitedly about doing something new. I always wanted to shout at those women: Get up! Don’t be such a dud!
Over the weekend, we visit friends who have two boys, ages 8 and 11. They are sweet and thoughtful boys. I sit next to them on the couch and try my best to talk to them about things I think they might be interested in like pets, bikes, the cookies on the kitchen table. They nod politely, but I feel I am invading their space and sense they’d really like me to stop with all the questions. My wife sits down and shows them Pokémon Go. Instantly, they slide next to her, touching her arm to look at the screen as she explains how to play.
I watch and listen to how she easily communicates with them — never talking down, never condescending. When we go to the ice cream shop later in the afternoon, they follow her around like puppy dogs. We sit and eat our ice cream and she hands over her phone to let them play alone. They touch the screen with their sticky fingers, and I marvel at her composure — I know how much she hates a smudged screen. On the walk home, their mother turns to me and says, “You know, she made their day.”
She wasn’t even trying — she was just being her youthful, curious, totally authentic 56-year-old self. And it hits me: I am a bit of a dud wife. I could be better.
At lunch the next day, I give Pokémon Go a try. I wander the University of California-Berkeley campus where I work, holding my iPhone out in front of me. I find the first Pokéstop, a wooden bench with a checkerboard tabletop just outside of my building. Two students are nearby. I hear the recognizable Pokémon Go zapping and firing sounds.
“Poke players are here,” I text her.
“Any knowing looks?” she asks.
This is the aspect of the game — the idea of strangers quietly acknowledging one another — that intrigues her. Like thieves caught in the act, she explains.
Two students, each holding a phone, walk toward me and stop in front of the bench. “Pokémon Go,” I raise my phone to show them that I, too, am playing the game. They offer reluctant, polite smiles, the way kids do with overly friendly old people. But they see me. Most days, I feel completely invisible on campus.
Now in the evenings, we walk to our favorite restaurants. We never take the direct route. There is always a gym she wants to take over, or another Pokéstop to visit. She talks about the candy and stardust she wants to collect. I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about, but I like the sound of it.
She’s explaining Pokémon evolution to me, how some Pokémon can evolve into a stronger Pokémon, but usually they evolve up through being caught.
“It means growing up for some, but to others it just means becoming another kind of creature. Do you get that?” she asks me as we walk along, the sky turning pink as the sun sets. Yes, I think I get that.
A comedian walks into a “mob”: “Inside Amy Schumer” writer’s rant against antirape culture deserves a backlash
Amy Schumer (Credit: AP/John Salangsang/reductress.com/Salon)
This week comedian and “Inside Amy Schumer” writer Kurt Metzger took a stand against a common target of modern ire, the much-reviled social media mob. Metzger wrote a series of posts on Facebook and Twitter denouncing the decision of Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), the influential improv comedy organization, to bar a male comedian — whom multiple women had accused of rape — from performing. To Metzger, the banning of this comedian’s performance was the result of an unacceptable form of “social mob justice.”
Metzger has taken much heat for his behavior, prompting Schumer to denounce the writer’s recent outbursts during a week when she should have been happily promoting the release of her new book, “The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo.” Schumer, who also attempted to shift things away from Metzger, suggested in an appearance on “Charlie Rose” that people focus less on taking him down and instead have a conversation about the issue of sexual assault.
It’s worth pointing out that the reactions from Metzger and others to the UCB decision prompted humor site Reductress to compile a skillful satire series skewering rape culture — a reminder that the broader conversation is not being ignored.
But because Metzger’s attitudes are shared by so many others, they provide as good a place as any for the start of a larger conversation, too. In the wake of his initial controversial post, Metzger claimed that people were hung up about the “tone” of his argument rather than engaged with its “substance.” But his purposely inflammatory style amounted to more than the occasional linguistic tic. It is a substantive claim to diminish women’s attempts to seek support from their social networks in the wake of a trauma. It is a substantive claim to suggest that women who disagree with someone deserve scrutiny about their face, hair and bodies. It is a substantive claim, amid an emotional and particularly vitriolic public meltdown, to assert that these women are driven by “emotion” not “logic.” The extent to which these claims are gendered (read: sexist) is a matter of substance, not tone.
Metzger now has claimed that his beef was never with rape victims and their post-assault comportment but with bloggers whose sense of solidarity he perceives as self-serving and exploitative. But some of his Facebook status posts were directly addressed to victims (“you”), whom he urged to go to police. He further suggested that victims who do not have no right to complain about the backlog in rape-kit orders or police-mishandling allegations. This is a common line of reasoning and a faulty one. People show trust in government institutions that have proved themselves as trustworthy. It’s not a citizen’s obligation to put his or her blind faith in agents of the state, often undergoing additional trauma in the process, if he or she has no reason to believe it will do any good.
It’s a shame for those who are interested in a nuanced, substantive, logical conversation about this matter because underneath some of Metzger’s entitled rage and hyperbole lie glimmers of coherent points. An incredibly generous reading of Metzger’s past assertion that sexual violence is no different than other forms of assault is that much of the trauma surrounding the former can be attributed to well-meant expressions of solidarity (“The attacker ruined her life!” “She is broken!” “She will never be the same!”) and that some of the conversation about the seriousness of sexual assault relies upon the narrow-minded perception that a woman’s sexual purity is central to her worth. Of course, “she will never be the same!” is, in a sense, strictly true, in that all a person’s experiences define who she is. But victims of sexual assault, particularly if they engage in the kind of self-care that Metzger has dismissed as a trivial distraction, can go on to be happy and healthy people while their assailants might lead lives of pathetic sociopathy.
One reason why rape differs meaningfully from other forms of assault, however, is that context alone can separate it from another activity that is a natural and fundamental part of being a human adult — one that occurs with regular frequency. People don’t often hand over their belongings to strangers in alleyways voluntarily. But people do go out and drink and return home with acquaintances whom they trust — and ought to be able to do so — to engage in a consensual, mutually pleasurable, private experience. When someone violates that trust, it is sometimes not just difficult, but impossible, to prove definitively that coercion occurred and that what happened was rape, not sex.
In our society, “legal justice” is defined as a mechanism by which ideally, the community incurs the risk of letting a guilty person go free to mitigate the risk of finding an innocent person guilty. Progressives tend to view this as a feature, not a bug. And, believe it or not, victims of sexual assault have their ideology and are capable of making rational, principled decisions! A victim might not go to the police because she knows that ultimately the question of what transpired behind closed doors will come down to a matter of who is perceived as telling the truth. It’s possible to simultaneously be the victim of a sexual assault and to be someone not wanting to live in a society whose criminal justice system simply takes victims at their word.
This is a sad and painful reality that is also a side effect of a fundamentally sound — and often horribly executed — American ideal. The result is that, even if the criminal justice system were to operate seamlessly, as Metzger apparently trusts it does despite rampant evidence to the contrary, some rape victims would never see their assailants found guilty in court. Metzger’s strange definition of “rapist” — as only someone who has had the title bestowed upon him by a police officer, prosecutor and jury — is not just illogical but deeply weird.
Luckily, social networks and voluntary associations don’t operate like courtrooms. Friends and professional acquaintances are entitled to formulate opinions of people even if they have not been convicted of a crime. Given the low probability of a rape allegation being false, it is logical to assume that people are being honest when they claim they have been assaulted, particularly if multiple individuals have accused the same alleged perpetrator. Organizations are then entitled — and morally obligated — to prioritize the safety and comfort of some members over one person’s. No one owes Kurt Metzger receipts.
The most important takeaway from this incident extends beyond the realm of rape culture: the danger of dismissing those who disagree with you as a “mob” and the importance of thoughtfully considering substantive critiques, even (especially) when the exercise is unpleasant. Schumer still seems reluctant to do so. And though sympathetic to those offended by Metzger, she didn’t seem to appreciate why her professional ties to him were relevant. “People want to burn him at the stake! They want Kurt’s head!” she told Rose in addressing her working relationship with Metzger.
I can appreciate the importance of wanting to have a broader discussion about sexual assault. And indeed “Inside Amy Schumer” has contributed daringly to that cause. Yet rape culture isn’t an abstract issue. It isn’t just about prevention but also accountability. If social media mobs are left demanding the latter, it’s because the official channels haven’t proved up to the task.
Trump should reconsider his tax plan: Architect of Reagan tax cuts on why it’s a mistake
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)
This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.
In a speech outlining his plan to “jump-start” the economy last week, Donald Trump unveiled new proposals that would dramatically cut taxes. It would be, he said, the “biggest tax revolution since the Reagan tax reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.”
The man who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan revolution, Bruce Bartlett, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the tax cuts Trump has proposed are “not the medicine the economy needs.”
Taxes were too high in 1981 and needed to be cut — including for the rich.
Trump’s proposal, which is based on the House Republicans’ tax plan, would reduce income taxes on all Americans, but would especially benefit the rich as the highest tax rate would be cut to 33 percent from 39.6 percent right now. An analysis of the House Republicans’ tax plan by the Tax Foundation found that after-tax income for the richest 1 percent of Americans would increase by 5.3 percent at the reduced tax rate.
While Trump’s new tax cuts are less severe than those he originally proposed, the plan is still likely to “add substantially to the debt,” according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). They estimated his preliminary tax plan would cost roughly $9.25 trillion over the course of a decade. In the coming weeks, CRFB said it will release new estimates based on Trump’s new tax plan, which would also slash corporate taxes from 35 percent to 15 percent and wipe out estate taxes.
The GOP nominee has not yet explained how he would pay for these cuts (Trump calls himself the “king of debt,” so we shall see), which would cut government revenues at a time when the cost of benefit programs, led by Social Security and Medicare, are on the rise as Baby Boomers leave the workforce.
In his op-ed, Bartlett lays out why the 1981 Reagan tax law that he helped design made sense at the time, but not so today. He writes:
Tax rates were very high when Reagan proposed cutting them — much higher than today. The high tax rates from the World War II era had been only partly cut by John F. Kennedy, and the top income-tax rate was 70 percent. Inflation was pushing workers into higher tax brackets when they received cost-of-living pay raises.
According to the Tax Policy Center, the average federal income-tax rate on a family of four with the median income rose from 9.1 percent in 1972 to 11.8 percent in 1981. The marginal tax rate — the tax on the last dollar earned — rose from 19 percent to 24 percent in the same period.
By contrast, the average tax rate on the median family in 2014 was just 5.3 percent, and the marginal rate was 15 percent. Inflation is nonexistent, and no one is being pushed into higher tax brackets by it. In short, taxes were too high in 1981 and needed to be cut — including for the rich.
Bartlett goes on to explain why the Reagan tax cut played “only a secondary role in the 1980s boom,” which he says wasn’t actually “much of a boom” at all and reminds us that “Reagan cared about deficits” and supported a number of tax increases during his tenure, taking back half of the 1981 tax cut.
In this clip from his 2012 interview with Bill Moyers, Bartlett — who served as a senior policy analyst to Reagan and a top treasury official to President George H.W. Bush — talks about the negative short- and long-term impacts of lowering taxes under the two presidents, as well as the “600 pound gorilla” in the debate.
When asked about the newly announced Trump tax plan and the deficit, Bartlett told us by email that all Republican tax cuts “are designed to lose revenue” and “create deficits,” despite any statements made to the contrary.
“Then when deficits emerge, they must always be dealt with only by cutting spending,” Bartlett writes. “If tax increases are necessary they will be in the form of sales taxes paid largely by the poor.”
He points to Kansas as a textbook case of just that. Last year, Kansas increased its sales tax to 6.5 percent from 6.15 percent — which are applied to groceries in the state — and raised cigarette taxes to help avert a deficit, which resulted in part from cutting income taxes. (In some magical speaking, Gov. Sam Brownback denied that the tax increases were actually tax increases, but that’s another story.) So why were income taxes cut in the first place?
Brownback slashed personal income taxes after he was elected in 2011 on the promise that the deep cuts would be the “shot of adrenaline” the state’s economy needed.
It hasn’t worked and “the state budget has been in crisis ever since,” writes the Associated Press. This led the governor to reduce funding to universities, delay contributions to pensions for school teachers and community college employees and reallocate by $750 million funds originally allocated for highway projects.
The straight-washing of “Ben-Hur”: Remake of the ’59 epic drops gay subtext — and beefs up religious themes
Charlton Heston; Jack Huston in "Ben-Hur" (Credit: Warner Bros./MGM)
Judah Ben-Hur’s sexuality has been hotly debated for decades, but a new film is pushing him firmly back into the closet. A new remake of the 1959 William Wyler-directed swords-and-sandals epic “Ben-Hur,” which starred Charlton Heston in the title role of a nobleman turned slave who defeats an empire, is playing down the character’s subtextual homosexuality. Toby Kebbell (“Fantastic Four”), who takes over for Stephen Boyd as Messala, told press at the film’s premiere that such themes were no longer necessary to unpack.
“In 1959, the gay context was very important,” he said. “They need a voice. You shouldn’t have to hide in the dark about something you feel and you’ve grown with. That was their own thing they wanted to portray and we didn’t need to.”
The new version, from director Timur Bekmambetov (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), plays up the religious themes of the film. Whereas Jesus of Nazareth was a minor character in the 1959 edition, he’s a major figure in the remake. Played by Rodrigo Santoro (“Lost”), he inspires an uprising among the “zealots” of Jerusalem — those who dare to follow him and question Roman rule. One of his followers attempts to assassinate Pontius Pilate (Pilou Asbæk), the prefect who presided over Judaea. Rather than implicate the man responsible, Ben-Hur takes the fall — forcing his enslavement and his family’s imprisonment. Messala, who has since left home to join Caesar’s army, gives up his longtime companion.
That’s a stark contrast from the 1959 version of the story, in which the culprit was a shoddy roof — an accident, sure, but hardly anything to break up a family over. To explain why Messala would betray his best friend (upgraded to an adoptive brother in the 2016 version), the filmmakers had to get creative. That’s where things get really interesting.
Gore Vidal, who was contracted by MGM and producer Sam Zimbalist to do a touch-up of Karl Tunberg’s screenplay, had believed that the only way to explain the animosity between the two men is if it were the result of a lover’s quarrel. In Vidal’s version, Messala comes home from war attempting to reignite a romance with Ben-Hur, but his friend is no longer interested. “I told Wyler, ‘This is what’s going on underneath the scene — they seem to be talking about politics, but Messala is really trying to rekindle a love affair,’” Vidal said.
Vidal outed Ben-Hur in Vito Russo’s “The Celluloid Closet,” a documentary in which he alleged that Boyd was supportive of the change but Wyler urged him not to tell Heston, famous for his conservative politics. “Don’t say anything to Chuck because he will fall apart,” Vidal recalled the director as saying. (When asked to verify the claim, Wyler offered a polite nonanswer.)
Unsurprisingly, Heston violently denounced Vidal’s account as hogwash in a furious 1996 letter to the L.A. Times. “Vidal’s claim that he slipped in a scene implying a homosexual relationship between the two men insults Willy Wyler and, I have to say, irritates the hell out of me,” Heston wrote. He added that Vidal, who he alleged had been on set for only three days as a “trial run,” made minor contributions to the film and none of his ideas were retained for the finished version of the script. Christopher Fry, one of the film’s four uncredited writers, took over the reins after Vidal’s tenure concluded.
Vidal’s version of events, though, appears to hold up to scrutiny. In a response to Heston, also published in the Times, he quoted a letter from Morgan Hudgens, a publicist for the film. Hudgens credited an affectionate scene between the two men as the writer’s handiwork, using a pejorative nickname given to Heston on set. “The big ‘cornpone,’” he wrote, “really threw himself into your ‘first meeting’ scene yesterday. You should have seen those boys embrace!”
These facts might appear to be just Hollywood gossip, but they are a crucial part of the gay canon from an era before queerness was allowed to be openly acknowledged onscreen. After all, the word “homosexuality” was not spoken on-screen until 1961, when it was uttered in the British thriller “Victim,” one of the few sympathetic portrayals of gay men from the era. Even today LGBT people are routinely straight-washed and written out of their own stories. Erasing Ben-Hur from gay cinematic history amounts to the continued erasure of our stories and lives.
***
“Ben-Hur” wasn’t the first time directors skirted censorship in order to suggest the unspoken longings between two characters.
William A. Wellman’s “Wings,” the first movie to win Best Picture, is a wartime romance about two men (Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen) who compete for the love of a beautiful woman, which was played by cinema’s inaugural “it girl,” Clara Bow. When David is fatally wounded during World War I, it becomes clear who was the object of Jack’s interest all along. Jack comforts his dying comrade, passionately caressing his face. “You know there is nothing in the world that means so much to me as your friendship,” he coos before the two share cinema’s first gay kiss. It’s a peck on the cheek but so perilously close to the mouth that it’s difficult to misread.
This is how gay life operated on-screen during the early years of cinema — through a coded language of suggestion and insinuation in which queer audiences became fluent. “It’s amazing,” says feminist author Susie Bright in “The Celluloid Closet,” “how if you’re a gay audience and you’re accustomed to crumbs, how you will watch an entire movie just to see somebody wear an outfit that you think means that they’re homosexual.”
Popular examples from the era include gender-bending icons like Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, who both were rumored to be bisexual in their private lives. Josef von Sternberg, Dietrich’s lover and frequent collaborator, cast her in 1930’s “Morocco,” in which the German goddess plays — as she so often did — a nightclub singer. The film’s most famous scene features Dietrich in a gentleman’s tux, complete with a top hat and cigarette. To complete the subversion, she lays a big wet one on a female member of the audience during a performance.
In “Queen Christina,” Garbo played the titular role, the 16th-century ruler of Sweden. The real-life monarch’s lesbianism could only be alluded to Rouben Mamoulian’s film. When the chancellor reprimands her for being single and warns that she may die an old maid, Christina replies, “I have no intention to, chancellor. I shall die a bachelor!”
“Call Her Savage,” again featuring Clara Bow, was the first film to take audiences to a gay bar. The establishment was filled with a type commonly referred to as “sissies,” subtextually queer characters whose sexualities were neutralized through their flamboyant effeminacy. “Sissy characters in movies were always a joke,” said Quentin Crisp in “The Celluloid Closet.” “There’s no sin like being a woman. When a man dresses as a woman, the audience laughs. When a woman dressed as a man, nobody laughed. They just thought she looked wonderful.”
Even if the sissy was the butt of a joke, the character was often an affectionate one, created by gay directors like George Cukor. Best known for fizzy screwball comedies like “The Women” and “The Philadelphia Story,” Cukor cast Tyrell Davis as Ernest in the 1933 social class satire “Our Betters.” Based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham, Davis played a character to which he became accustomed in the days of Hollywood before the Motion Picture Production Code, a limp-wristed dance instructor whose lips appear to be perpetually pursed. Ernest is gifted with what is perhaps the film’s most memorable line: “What an exquisite spectacle! Two ladies of title, kissing one another!”
The Motion Picture Production Code, which went into effect in 1930 and became known colloquially as the Hays Code, imposed new standards on morality during an era when Communism threatened to take over Hollywood, and these overt displays of camp became verboten. Homosexuality, referred to as “sex perversion,” was banned on screen. And if homosexual characters were included at all, they had to be punished.
In the adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ “Suddenly Last Summer,” Sebastian Venable is eaten by a pack of savage male lovers near the ruins of a temple, a clear allusion to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sebastian’s behavior is considered so depraved that his face is never shown onscreen. The folks at the Production Code Administration, though, did give filmmakers the permission to depict Sebastian, if they wished.
“Since the film illustrates the horrors of such a lifestyle,” the office wrote, “it can be considered moral in theme even though it deals with sexual perversion.”
If gay characters weren’t used as vehicles to introduce a morality lesson, they were villains — as in Otto Preminger’s “Laura” and Hitchcock’s “Rope.” Both classics of the period in spite of their politics, these films portray gay men as skilled sociopaths. In “Rope,” Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) come to believe themselves “Supermen,” capable of carrying out the perfect murder. Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) seeks to control Laura (Gene Tierney), the title character of Preminger’s film, and when he can’t, he tries to destroy her. (These characters were all played by gay men, which, looking back, hardly seems accidental.)
But more common, gay themes were cut out of cinema altogether, as in the film adaptations of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “The Lost Weekend.” In Charles R. Jackson’s novel, the demon haunting Don Birnam is his repressed homosexuality (which the character shared with the author). But in the film, it’s merely writer’s block that plagues him. When Williams’ 1955 play made it to the big screen in 1958, Brick’s homosexuality was absent.
If the new “Ben-Hur” didn’t break that pattern, it’s allegedly unintentional. One of the screenwriters behind the recent remake, Keith R. Clarke, told Vanity Fair that the reason Ben-Hur’s sexuality got left on the cutting room floor was that the Paramount release was based directly on Lew Wallace’s 1925 novel, “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,” as Warner Bros. owns the rights to the 1959 film. Scenes like the one where Ben-Hur holds a dying Messala, key to the film’s queer subtext, were off-limits.
But if Clarke didn’t fight to stay true to the character’s sexuality, that’s just as likely a matter of funding as copyright: “Ben-Hur” was produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey. You likely know Burnett as the producer of “Survivor” and Downey from her role on “Touched by an Angel.” But the husband-and-wife team have also been behind the faith-based adaptations “Son of God” (in which Downey appeared as the Virgin Mary) and “The Bible” miniseries. Before its release, “Ben-Hur” was screened for religious audiences, in the hope of reaching the same evangelical market that made “Passion of the Christ” and “Heaven Is for Real” hits.
When asked about Ben-Hur’s gay beginnings, Downey argued that he had always been straight. “I don’t even know if that was true in that film,” the actress-producer said. “Here we have two brothers. They love each other. They’re raised in the same household and it’s so tragic to see their family just ripped apart.”
The real tragedy of “Ben-Hur,” though, is that it’s yet another example of gay narratives being straight-washed for popular consumption at a time when LGBT representation is worsening. Although the “X-Men” comics feature characters with a diverse range of sexual preferences, the ongoing series has yet to allow characters like Mystique — who is portrayed as bisexual in the source material — to explore same-sex relationships. Bryan Singer’s film series casts her as an exclusively heterosexual femme fatale. The filmmakers of “Dallas Buyers Club” thought that the story of Ron Woodruff, a bisexual Texan who contracted HIV in 1985, would sell better if he were a straight homophobe. Matthew McConaughey won an Oscar for the performance.
These myriad acts of silencing are what make films like “Ben-Hur” so important, as well as relevant to today’s Hollywood. It’s just a shame that nearly 60 years after the original film debuted, the closet door is still firmly locked.
Free money is not so funny anymore: Confessions of a (former) skeptic of basic income
Getting a tire replaced seems easy to me. I’d just go to the nearest tire place and get it fixed. But Jayleene was living from paycheck to paycheck and didn’t have $110 to spare. She couldn’t get to work, and her boss fired her. She couldn’t make her rent and was soon out on the street — all because she needed $110 at the right time.
Jayleene told me her story during my volunteer shift at a soup kitchen. Her experience was the final straw that convinced me to support the idea of providing a basic income, the notion of giving people an unconditional living wage, which has been backed by conservatives and liberals alike. The concept of basic income is becoming increasingly popular around the world, with Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada experimenting with it.
So is the United States. A study is planned for Oakland, California, that will be funded by the well-known Y Combinator. “In our pilot, the income will be unconditional,” Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, said. “We’re going to give it to participants for the duration of the study, no matter what. People will be able to volunteer, work, not work, move to another country — anything.”
Added Altman: “We hope basic income promotes freedom, and we want to see how people experience that freedom.”
Skeptical of the idea of extending a basic income to all? I had been pretty skeptical when I first heard about the basic income plan. Sure, I care about people and don’t want anyone to starve, be homeless or lack medical care. But nonprofits and government programs have been designed to take care of these needs. I volunteer at a soup kitchen and run fundraisers for food banks. Why give people money to do whatever they want with it?
I had these two major concerns: I simply didn’t trust poor people to manage their money well and thought they would spend it on things like alcohol, drugs and tobacco. And I imagined that people would stop working and do whatever they wished, as opposed to being productive members of society.
More and more evidence, however, appeared to contradict my initial way of thinking. A number of studies have shown that people who have been given cash did not spend it on tobacco, alcohol or similar “vice” products. Other studies have demonstrated that those given a cash transfer did not do less work. Instead, the evidence indicated that people who have received cash transfers improved their income and assets and have experienced better psychological and physical well-being.
Now, I couldn’t wait for more research such as the Oakland study or another upcoming one, to be done by GiveDirectly. This nonprofit, highly rated by the best charity evaluator in the world, GiveWell, focuses on cash transfers to poor households in East Africa. GiveDirectly has decided to run one of the largest studies of basic income to date, using $30 million to cover the basic living costs of poor East Africans for a decade to settle questions about the long-term impact of such an approach. I could even try to reasonably predict the future and conclude that these new experiments will show results similar to previous ones.
Hearing Jayleene’s story proved the clincher. I decided to bite the bullet, confess that my perspective was wrong and update my beliefs based on evidence.
Freed of these limiting beliefs, I realized that the notion of basic income has other benefits. First, it’s simpler to provide basic income than to fund many overlapping welfare agencies, and a country could save many billions of dollars by simply giving money to the poor. Second, basic income provides people more dignity and creates less hassle for them than the current system. Third, poor people like Jayleene are more aware than the government of what they truly need.
For all of these reasons, I am coming out publicly to renounce my skepticism of basic income and share how this evidence convinced me to change my mind.
Plenty of questions about basic income remain unresolved, such as how to fund a transition to this method and away from using a massive system of inefficient programs. Yet that’s a question of “how,” not “if.” I hope that sharing my story as a former skeptic of basic income will encourage a conversation about the next steps related to the question of “how.”
WATCH: Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis march in support of rebels, Saudi-led coalition bombs presidential palace
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis rally to support rebels and oppose U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition bombing in the capital Sanaa on August 20, 2016 (Credit: Reuters/Khaled Abdullah)
Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis marched on Saturday in support of Houthi rebels and their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Beirut-based outlet U-News published what it says is drone video footage of the enormous protest.
The march in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, was in support of a new combined governing council the rebels and Saleh announced in late July, but which was immediately rejected by the internationally recognized Saudi-backed government and the United Nations.
On the same day as the massive demonstration, the coalition bombed the presidential palace in Sanaa and other areas in the city, leaving an unknown number of casualties, security officials said.
Yemeni political analyst Hisham al-Omeisy, who lives in Sanaa and attended the rally, told the BBC, “Suddenly the Saudi jets started circling on top of us, and as always, we thought they would just fly by, just trying to scare the crowd.”
“Suddenly they started bombing and the crowd started running. I basically bolted out of the area. People started screaming,” he continued. “Because everybody’s very well armed, they started shooting their AK-47s and their machine guns into the sky.”
Al-Omeisy posted video footage of the aftermath of some of the air strikes on YouTube.
He also tweeted photos after the air strikes.
Saudi bombs homes, schools, hospitals, & now demos protesting their bombing. But #Yemen is resilient. Today's pics ✌ pic.twitter.com/lwVGLRUG9a
— Hisham Al-Omeisy (@omeisy) August 20, 2016
“These are people who are fed up,” al-Omeisy said of the crowd. “Even though a lot of people don’t really agree with the Houthis or the ex-regime, they are there because they all agree that the Saudis need to stop the war.”
“This is exactly why they showed up coming from all parts of Yemen to the capital,” he added.
Huge anti Saudi/pro High Political Council demo in Sana'a now. Can pro Saudi #Yemen gov in exile get such crowd ;) pic.twitter.com/1ErAQ2Mxmv
— Hisham Al-Omeisy (@omeisy) August 20, 2016
There was little media coverage of the immense demonstration and the air strikes in Western media outlets.
Yemen’s war pits troops and militiamen loyal to the government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against the rebels and Saleh loyalists. The Houthis captured Sanaa in 2014, and the U.S.-backed coalition began its offensive against them in March 2015.
Former President Saleh was forced to step down in 2012, amid Arab Spring protests, after more than three decades in power.
Peace talks collapsed on Aug. 6. Immediately the next day, the Saudi-led coalition resumed heavy airstrikes throughout Yemen.
From Aug. 7 to Aug. 15, the U.S.-backed coalition killed more than 60 Yemeni civilians, in air strikes on a hospital, school, civilian home, food factory and market.
On Aug. 15, the coalition bombed the fourth Doctors Without Borders hospital it has destroyed in the war. The U.N. condemned the attack, and the international medical humanitarian group withdrew its staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen in response.
Many of these attacks have also gotten little coverage in English-language news outlets.
“Unless a Yemeni kid washes up on the shores of Europe, nobody is going to pay attention to the Yemeni suffering,” al-Omeisy lamented in his interview with the BBC.
Saudi authorities also accused the Houthi rebels of abuses. Saudi Arabia’s civil defense directorate said that the Houthis had launched a missile over the border into the Najran region, killing a Saudi and wounding five Yemenis and a Pakistani who were residents there.
In Oman, one of the locations used for peace talks, Houthi negotiators said that Saudi forces were preventing them from returning to Yemen by blocking international flights to Sanaa’s airport.
All officials spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists.
(Some of this reporting was done by Ahmed al-Haj at the Associated Press.)
A tale of two TV shows: “Rectify,” “Lethal Weapon,” and the Battle to Be Seen in the Age of Peak TV
Clayne Crawford in "Rectify" and "Lethal Weapon" (Credit: Sundance/Fox)
To begin to grasp one of the major challenges facing networks as we head into the new TV season, let’s contemplate the example of Clayne Crawford.
Crawford, an experienced actor, is not a household name. That could change shortly, as he is appearing in two series on the fall schedule. One, “Rectify,” kicks off its fourth and final season on Oct. 26 on Sundance. The other, Fox’s “Lethal Weapon,” premieres at 8 pm on Wednesday, Sept. 21.
In “Rectify,” Crawford shines as a member of the supporting cast. In “Lethal Weapon,” he’s one of the leads, reprising the role originated by Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs, alongside Damon Wayans as Roger Murtaugh, who was first portrayed by Danny Glover.
“Lethal Weapon” is brand spanking new — or, we should say, a new television series based on the famous 1987 action film and the franchise it spawned.
“Rectify,” in contrast, still remains a mystery to most viewers after three seasons of airing on Sundance. Never heard of it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. At a recent Television Critics Association panel for “Lethal Weapon,” it was fairly apparent that Crawford’s new bosses, executive producers Matt Miller and McG, hadn’t seen it either.
“Rectify” receives near universal acclaim from critics. It’s also a Peabody Award winner. Its third season averaged around 160,000 viewers per episode.
Here’s where we get to fall TV’s big quandary: Statistics show that a significant portion of the audience is more likely to watch a show like “Rectify” than most series debuting this fall. We’re not talking millions upon millions here, but Sundance’s great little drama could gain a few new viewers before other freshman series find their audience.
Does this mean people are suddenly listening to critics and the television connoisseurs in their lives? Maybe. But the approval of tastemakers has little to do with “Rectify’s” improved chances.
No, if “Rectify” has even a slightly larger audience for its final run, it will be because its first three seasons are streaming on Netflix.
Behold one of the champagne problems in the age of Peak TV: There’s simply too much worthy content to consume, and fewer reasons to sample the worthiest of them as they air in their timeslots.
Let’s begin with statistics recently cited by FX’s president John Landgraf. After his network’s researchers counted up the number of series that have debuted and are expected to debut in 2016, Landgraf expects the total number of adult English language scripted premieres to land somewhere between 430 and 450 by year’s end. Again, that’s only scripted and only English language.
In 2017, viewers may have as many as 500 shows to sort through.
Before Landgraf dropped that bomb, NBCUniversal’s president of research and media development, Alan Wurtzel, revealed that 54 percent of viewers they surveyed won’t start watching a show if they don’t have access to prior episodes. No wonder! “That’s a big deal,” Wurtzel told critics. “And I think that everybody in the business has to take heed of that [number] because it’s a huge issue.”
Wurtzel’s research team gleaned his data from a July study that targeted 18- to 64-year-olds who watch at least one hour a week of TV programming on any device.
For the networks and producers premiering new shows over the next few months, that number, 54 percent, presents an additional headache on top of the already existing challenge to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
The odds of survival for any new television series are perilously slim to begin with. Once the numbers were crunched on the 2015-2016 season, for example, the failure rate came in at between 52.3 percent and 61.4 percent.
Now factor in the idea that the audience might just be waiting to sample a few episodes before committing to your show and… well, if “Lethal Weapon” were to bow to “Rectify’s” numbers, it would be off our screens quicker than Riggs can count “one, two, three.”
But Crawford and his new co-workers have one thing going for them: brand recognition. Not because they’re on Fox, but because they’re starring in a show based on “Lethal Weapon.” Even if you’ve never seen a single Murtaugh and Riggs adventure, you have a working idea of its central “buddy cop” premise, right?
It follows, then, that the average viewer may be more likely to at least check out “Lethal Weapon’s” introductory episode than, say, ABC’s terrific new comedy “Speechless,” which debuts during the second half-hour of Murtaugh and Riggs redux’s very first primetime adventure. I don’t have to tell you what “Lethal Weapon” is about. “Speechless,” on the other hand, requires a little more explaining and critical justification.
Fox is similarly relying on your familiarity with the plot of “The Exorcist,” and your curiosity to see Geena Davis in the television remake, to attract plenty of eyes to its Friday primetime lineup, starting with that show’s premiere on Sept. 23.
And Fox isn’t alone in employing the tactic of spinning new television out of old movies. Mind you, we’re guessing few viewers saw the 1973 film that HBO’s sci-fi drama “Westworld” is based on. But anticipation for that one is sky-high.
Elsewhere, The CW is banking on at least a dim memory of the 2000 film “Frequency” to bring people to the television version of it.
Among the film-to-TV titles coming in midseason are NBC’s take on “Taken,” ABC’s serialized version of “Time After Time,” and a TV version of “Training Day” on CBS.
Want to factor in reboots of classic TV franchises, just for fun? Here are the new versions of old shows that will soon be joining the TV schedule: “MacGyver” is joining CBS on Sept. 23. Fox’s “Prison Break” and “24: Legacy” are due in the new year. It’s enough to make a perfectly healthy brain glitch! (In fairness, we actually are excited about “Star Trek: Discovery,” premiering in midseason on CBS All Access.)
Of course, having a recognizable film or TV title doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. Indeed, it may bring on a backlash. Witness last season’s demise of “Rush Hour” on CBS, the speedy failure of Fox’s “Minority Report,” and ABC’s cancellation of “Uncle Buck.” A viewer can’t help but be bothered by this overreliance on recycled ideas, and how it may speak to the accelerating creep of creative impoverishment.
Even if those series were known by other names, there’s no getting around the fact that they weren’t particularly exciting or even all that good.
Then again, being of decent quality didn’t save CBS’s “Limitless,” although by most any other network’s measuring stick it was worthy of survival. The show attracted a respectably sized audience and enjoyed critical support, neither of which was enough to earn it a second season on America’s Most Watched Network.
And yet… witness the lasting fandom for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” a series whose legacy far surpasses that of the movie that preceded it. Remember that CBS’s reboot of “Hawaii Five-O” was one of TV’s bigger hits in its first season, and is weeks away from surfing into season six.
Which brings us to the questions upon which Crawford’s continued employment on “Lethal Weapon” ultimately depend.
One: What if the show is actually worthwhile? Having seen the pilot, I can assure you it is a nimble, serviceable action hour that’s bound to win over a number of viewers. If Fox allows it to find its audience — NBC’s “Blindspot” and CBS’s “Survivor” offer hefty timeslot competition — it may have a shot at success. Similarly, “The Exorcist’s” premiere also passes the sniff test.
Two: Does my or any other critic’s opinion sway the viewer’s decision as to whether they’ll check on out new series any more than the viewer’s knowledge about and a familiarity with a title? According to Wurtzel’s research, possibly. Forty-seven percent of viewers say they will wait until they’ve heard enough positive buzz about a show before they’ll watch. “What we interpret that as saying is, people kind of want… a guarantee that if they try a show, they’re likely to like it,” he told critics. “… That puts a pretty big burden on us to essentially get people to kind of sample a program.”
This is not news. Every critic knows his or her persuasive powers are limited.
So.
If I tell you that in Fox’s “Lethal Weapon,” Crawford does justice to the role that gave Gibson’s film career a second wind, that might matter. Maybe. Perhaps you’re a “Lethal Weapon” fan, and you were going to watch anyway — or, just as likely, you’ve made up your mind to avoid it.
If you are part of that 54 percent that needs to sit through a few episodes of a series before you can commit to it, binge your way through an introduction to Crawford’s work in “Rectify” on your favorite SVOD service. Then — and this is important — show up for the final season on Sundance when it premieres in October. People who value great television, and the Crawford clan, will thank you.
Clinton isn’t the “perfect GOP nominee,” but she is the conservative option for 2016
Maureen Dowd; Hillary Clinton (Credit: AP/Steven Senne/Reuters/Mary Schwalm/Photo montage by Salon)
Clintonites could hardly contain their fury on Monday after the snarky New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote an editorial calling Hillary Clinton the “perfect G.O.P. nominee.”
Republicans, wrote Dowd, “already have a 1-percenter who will be totally fine in the Oval Office, someone they can trust to help Wall Street, boost the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, cuddle with hedge funds, secure the trade deals beloved by corporate America, seek guidance from Henry Kissinger and hawk it up — unleashing hell on Syria and heaven knows where else. The Republicans have their candidate: It’s Hillary.”
Nothing that Dowd wrote was particularly dishonest or unreasonable. Clinton does indeed have many troubling ties to Wall Street and big business (from her $225,000 speeches for Goldman Sachs to her top career donors being various Wall Street banks), a history of supporting trade deals “beloved by corporate America” and a disturbing relationship with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man who perfectly embodies the Machiavellian approach to statecraft, with a history of supporting brutal third-world dictators and having a hand in crimes against humanity (“Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state,” wrote Clinton in a Washington Post review of Kissinger’s book “World Order”).
Thus, it was rather unsurprising when most of the infuriated Clintonites chose to attack the author with ad hominem insults — questioning her mental health and calling her names like “dudebro” — instead of trying to refute any of her points.
“Maureen Dowd uses her NY Times perch to do the GOP’s dirty work, spouting false and filthy anti-Hillary talking points in the futile hope of tearing down the woman she envies with all-consuming intensity,” wrote an apoplectic Peter Daou at Blue Nation Review — a website that was purchased by an investment vehicle formed by David Brock last November (for those who don’t recall, Brock is the leader of various Hillary Clinton Super PACs), and has since become a propaganda arm for the Clinton campaign.
Ironically, Dowd wasn’t using “filthy” GOP talking points against Clinton; she was making a very valid point that the Democratic presidential candidate is more of a “conservative” than the actual Republican candidate, Donald Trump — which is hardly something that Republicans would go around spouting. Of course, Dowd’s article would have been more aptly titled “The Perfect Conservative Nominee.” After all, the modern Republican Party is no longer conservative, but utterly reactionary.
Clinton, who is arguably more conservative than progressive on economic and foreign policy (disregarding her 2016 rhetoric), would have been much better suited as a Republican nominee in the 1970s, for example, when “Rockefeller Republicans” were still dominant players in the party (politically, Clinton is very much a Rockefeller Republican — i.e. fiscally conservative/center-right, socially liberal/center-left and rather hawkish on foreign policy).
The former Secretary of State has herself made the point before that her politics are grounded in conservatism; therefore it is hardly a controversial allegation to make. “I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with,” said Clinton in a 1996 interview. “I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that’s afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. I’m very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl.”
As I have pointed out in past columns, the Republicans have become increasingly reactionary and extreme over the past four decades and are no longer conservative in the traditional sense. Clinton, meanwhile, is very much a centrist — leaning to the left on some issues and to the right on others, while frequently changing her positions once the campaign season comes to an end — which makes it difficult to say with certainty how she will govern (on foreign policy, however, it is safe to say that she will be to the right of President Obama, as she was one of the most hawkish members of his cabinet).
Of course, Clinton’s selection of Tim Kaine — a centrist Democrat who, as David Dayen writes in the New Republic, has shown a “troubling willingness to advocate for the interests of donors whenever asked—even if those interests clash with progressive priorities” — as her running mate does not bode well for progressives.
Nevertheless, the quasi-fascist Republican ticket of Donald Trump and Mike Pence is infinitely worse, and there should be no question about this in the minds of progressives. Unlike Trump, Clinton is sane and competent, and her reign will be similar to that of Obama’s — which another New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman (a fierce supporter of Clinton), has previously called moderately conservative. In many ways, the Democratic Party is America’s modern conservative party, while the GOP is the 21st century’s Know Nothing party.
Progressive may reclaim the Democratic Party in the years ahead — and the Sanders campaign was a promising sign for this — but there can be no doubt that, come November, the conservative option for president will have a D by her name.
When I published my book about Palestine, I learned how death threats and abuse became normalized
A Palestinian woman walks past a wall with graffiti depicting a gunman
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
Ben Ehrenreich’s critically acclaimed book, “ The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine ,” was published in June 2016.
Earlier this August, Donald Trump dragged American political discourse to what most pundits agreed was a new low by suggesting that “Second Amendment people” would know what to do if Hillary Clinton were to impose rigorous controls on gun ownership. The threat was implicit but very clear. Americans were duly outraged — threats of violence, the consensus has it, should have no place in our political discourse. Writing in The New York Times, Tom Friedman made the link to the only mildly subtler smear campaign against Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the months before his assassination by a right-wing extremist. A week later, Rabin’s son appeared on CNN to urge American politicians to show “restraint,” because, as he put it, “Words do kill.” What neither he nor Friedman mentioned was that in one contested corner of American political discourse — the conversation about Israel’s occupation of Palestine — threats and intimidation have long been the norm.
I learned this through the conventional method: by speaking out until the threats poured in. I spent most of June traveling the country and talking about my book, “The Way To The Spring,” which compiled my reporting from the West Bank, where I lived in 2013 and 2014, and where I had been working since 2011. I was encouraged: nearly every venue was full and my audience was enthusiastic. More than anything, I was heartened by the mood of the people I encountered. Despite a rash of recent attempts on American college campuses to shut down critical discussions of Israeli violations of human rights, and to tar a nonviolent boycott movement as antisemitic, it was abundantly clear that people all over the United States were ready — hungry even — for the kind of critical and honest conversation about Israel that has for too many years been absent here.
Not all of my interlocutors agreed with me about everything, but we were in almost every case able to speak and listen to one another with openness and respect. You don’t have to pay close attention to debates on Israel and Palestine in this country to know how remarkable that is. It meant that despite everything I know about the grim situation in the Middle East, I was able to end every talk I gave on a note of optimism that was sincere — the fact of our conversation, of people’s eagerness to participate, demonstrated that it was becoming more and more possible to discuss the undiscussable. That alone gave me genuine hope. As a nation, it seemed, we had quietly turned a corner.
But some realities have not gone away. On the question of Palestine, we still let extremist scare tactics define the contours of the mainstream. I cannot think of anyone in the United States, whether Jewish or Palestinian or neither, who has written critically about Israel who has not been publicly smeared as an antisemite and an apologist for terror. And I have met no one who has achieved any prominence while speaking out against injustices perpetrated by the Israeli state who has not received death threats. Out of stoicism, stubbornness or shame, very few talk publicly about the threats they receive, but intimidation of the crudest sort forms the backdrop to the entire conversation about Israel and Palestine in U.S. media. It marks and enforces the boundary line of what is permissible to say. If anyone does not know where that boundary lies, they swiftly find out. Any serious attempt to represent Palestinian realities is met with unrelenting threats and defamations. They represent a consistently brutal attempt to intimidate opposition into silence, and they are effective.
The crazy thing is that this is normal, and has been for years. In the chapters of my book in which I wrote about the West Bank city of Hebron, I spoke about the strange idea of normalcy that reigns in that city, where having rocks and worse thrown into your home by settlers counts as “normal,” where beatings in the street by Israeli soldiers are entirely “normal” too. I referred to the city half-seriously as “Planet Hebron” because the norms of behavior there are so alien to the usual terrestrial expectations. But this twisted sense of normalcy extends far beyond the extremist settler enclaves of Hebron, to Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, any place where critical political discourse can be counted on to be met with naked threats and campaigns of intimidation.
In the past week, I was called a Jew-hater more times than I can count, as well as a terrorist and a murderer. It was suggested to me that I should, and may, suffer a terrorist attack. I was told that “sick, twisted people” like me “should not be allowed to write” and informed that I will “someday” answer for the acts of terror I allegedly support. I was wished a painful death and promised that I will “get what is coming” to me.
I am not complaining; I knew what I was getting into. Others have endured, and will continue to endure, far worse harassment than this. But these tactics must be exposed. The climate of fear that they create must not be allowed to stand.
It’s not just crazies on social media. Efforts to intimidate critics of Israeli policies lately often bear official stamps. The governing body of the University of California recently attempted to categorize opposition to Zionism as a form of hate speech. Professors assigning Edward Said or Noam Chomsky to their students or inviting Palestinian speakers to campus would have risked their jobs and reputations. In a March speech before AIPAC, Hillary Clinton associated the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS — an explicitly nonviolent campaign to exert economic pressure on Israel in order to end the occupation — with global antisemitism and “efforts to malign…the Jewish people.” Many of BDS’ strongest supporters, it must be said, are Jewish.
This did not stop New York Governor Andrew Cuomo from signing an executive order in June that would punish any group that shows support for BDS, effectively creating a blacklist of companies and organizations forbidden from doing business with the state. The New York Civil Liberties Union described Cuomo’s order as “an affront to free expression.” Similar bills are pending in more than a dozen other states. They should be seen for what they are: not brave attempts to combat antisemitism, but a desperate and futile effort to silence valid criticism.
The truth is that in a real sense we have turned a corner. The daily injustices of the occupation are too grave and too widespread to conceal. Our government’s continued support for them is too hypocritical to be sustained. I feel quite safe in predicting that, like Trump’s crudely veiled threat, these efforts at intimidation — both official and freelance — will not be met with passivity. They will not work anymore. Too many of us refuse to be silent.
