Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 692
August 11, 2016
Salon Talks: America’s immigrant vetting process “is not only imperfect — it is broken”
Salon Talks hosts Carrie Sheffield and Josh Zepps sat down with Herb London, head of the London Center for Policy Research, to discuss the global refugee crisis on Wednesday.
Asked the prevalence of terrorists migrating as refugees, London noted the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California, referring to Tashfeen Malik, the female perpetrator who was first able to come to the United States via a fiancée visa in 2014.
London called Malik’s lack of refugee status “inconsequential.”
“Good policy is very much related to the way in which the public regards the policy,” he explained. “A good policy in a democratic society is very much related to what people are willing to accept.”
“When you talk about vetting these people, making sure that those who have terrorist activity in the past are not going to be permitted … we do not have that kind of vetting system now,” he continued. “It is not only imperfect — it is broken.”
Watch the video above.
August 10, 2016
Bathe in the self-indulgent broth of “Sausage Party,” most bro-tastic movie ever
There’s definitely something to be said for “Sausage Party,” a relentlessly lewd and crude animated skit blown up to feature-film dimensions that is both profoundly idiotic and surprisingly ambitious. That thing may be this: Why, dear God, why? An impressive array of comedy talent and a surprising amount of thought went into this CGI parable about a supermarket hot dog named Frank (voiced by producer and co-writer Seth Rogen), who learns the awful truth about what is likely to happen to him in the Great Beyond, after the enormous godlike beings with shopping carts take him out of the store. Whether it was worth it in some way — whether a juvenile, sex-obsessed cartoon that dips into existentialist philosophy and ultimately reveals itself to be a version of Plato’s cave allegory actually makes human life more bearable — well, that’s a complicated question.
OK no, I’m bluffing. I hated this movie; I wish I could unsee it and will it out of existence. But that’s not the same as thinking it’s worthless or corrupt or entirely inept. It’s more like a massively self-indulgent prank, inflicted on the world by some reasonably intelligent young men, which makes it the most bro-tastic project of all time. Mo’ bro than this, no es posible, amigos.
Like most of the voluminous comedy output from Rogen and his producing and writing partner Evan Goldberg (whose collaborations include the “Neighbors” movies, “This Is the End” and “Superbad”), “Sausage Party” has a stoned or unhinged quality that makes it seem less like a calculated commodity and more like the results of a late-night dare. You get the feeling that Rogen and Goldberg got baked on some seventh-generation Humboldt sinsemilla with Jonah Hill and James Franco and spent a long Hollywood evening challenging each other: You will not actually make a foulmouthed atheist cartoon featuring a same-sex interfaith relationship between bakery products! We will too! You will not have the “Jewish” bagel voiced by a non-Jew doing a circa-1971 Woody Allen accent (Edward Norton), and have the “Arab” lavash voiced by a Jewish actor (David Krumholtz)! Oh hell yeah, we will!
It tells you a lot about “Sausage Party” that the concept is so sloppy: Lavash is a flatbread eaten all over the Middle East, but is mostly associated with Turkey, which is a Muslim but not an Arab nation, and Armenia, which is neither. Never mind! Accuracy shmaccuracy, as Norton’s kvetching bagel would say! Rogen and Goldberg and their co-writers Kyle Hunter and Ariel Shaffir speed past all of that to give us the profane details of bagel-lavash sex, plus all their bickering about who’s occupying whose territory — in the supermarket aisle! Ha! Do you get it? Occupied territory … never mind. In case any viewer isn’t offended, we also get Krumholtz’s lavash expounding on his jihadi version of the afterlife in the Great Beyond, where he will be slathered with 77 bottles of extra-virgin olive oil. Wait, hang on — do you get that one? Want me to explain it?
See, much of the comic strategy at work in “Sausage Party,” if you experience it as comedy rather than simply as pain, is to pile up the offensive stereotypes so egregiously that we never quite notice that the story is really dark and has no place to go after its one big idea. Along the way to the Arab-Jewish homoerotic subplot we get eye-rolling detours through the Chinese and Indian aisles. Jars of sauerkraut have formed a fascist militia and want to exterminate “the juice.” Nope, not kidding. A Native American-ish bottle of “Firewater” (voiced by Bill Hader) dispenses fireside wisdom from his Vision Quest cave. Mr. Grits (Craig Robinson) is a jive-talking African-American. The fruit from, you know, the produce aisle are all big George Michael fans, if you take my meaning. Salma Hayek voices a sexy taco shell who feels forbidden urges directed at Brenda, the virginal bun played by Kristen Wiig. Bun! Get it? There is a formal and almost sculptural obsession with the female derriere at work in this film that goes immediately for the grotesque and stays there.
If you’re offended by some aspect of “Sausage Party” — and it seems like poor sportsmanship not to be, when they’ve worked so hard — then you reveal yourself as less cool and less irreverent than its creators, which is very likely the point. If you decline to be outraged because it’s simply not worth it, then the movie itself no longer has a point. Its observation that life is full of cruelty and there is probably no afterlife and we waste most of our lives consuming images of a reality we cannot fully apprehend is pretty much true, but neither novel nor amusing.
Most of the so-called plot is dispensable, and indeed would have been dispensed with in the eight-minute version of this movie that could have existed as a “Saturday Night Live” interstitial cartoon in 1991. Like any strapping young sausage, Frank yearns to get it on with Brenda the sexy bun. Oh, she likes him too, and they’ve fooled around a little at night, when the supermarket products come wiggling out of their packages and move around the store — a disturbing but convincing idea — but Brenda’s saving herself for their big moment of union in the Great Beyond. For supermarket products, it is culturally somewhere around 1957, and theologically more like 1887.
When a shopping-cart mishap sets Frank and Brenda free to pursue their own destiny (yes, sci-fi nerds, it’s roughly the same plot as “Logan’s Run”), they are pursued by an evil douche. No, he’s actually a douche, a garrulous feminine hygiene product voiced by Nick Kroll, and boy is all that stuff not funny at all. To no one’s surprise, James Franco, Jonah Hill and Danny McBride show up in “hilarious” cameo roles. (To be fair, Franco’s turn as a doomed human stoner is pretty good.) As for the actual animation, it has moments of cleverness but they feel recycled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon had seen “The LEGO Movie” and “Inside Out” and told themselves: Yeah, let’s do that, but make the universe a supermarket! At least everybody got stoned — a lot, I’m thinking. But if that lavash guy doesn’t come clean to his Jewish boyfriend that he’s not actually an Arab, I don’t feel OK about it.
Eat (like) the Rich: Why San Francisco is the best place in the country for the really, really wealthy to eat really, really well
San Francisco skyline; a dish of foraged foods made by Josh Skenes at Saison. (Credit: Andrey Bayda via Shutterstock/AP/Eric Risberg)
Earlier this year, payment processing company FirstData released their SpendTrend Restaurant report, which revealed that San Francisco’s dining scene is outpacing New York City’s, not only in terms of new establishments, but also in number of transactions and average price. While the City by the Bay is still loyal to it’s hyperlocal, seasonal, farm-to-table roots, it seems to have recently become unshackled by high-end earnestness and graduated to restaurants that serve up the kind of creativity seen in start-up culture. Restaurants like Benu, Manresa, and Saison are racking up Michelin stars and attracting crowds with inventive cuisine that’s more Alice in Wonderland than Alice Waters (think thousand-year-old quail eggs, sesame leaf ice cream, cheese candles and smoked quail with nasturtium). Last year, Bon Appetit even hailed San Francisco as “the best food city in America right now.”
You would think the city’s residents would be dancing around the ares’s dining rooms, taking a culinary victory lap. You would be wrong.
The problem is, they can only take advantage of this cutting-edge culinary scene if they can afford it. An op-Ed in the New York Times this weekend examined how newly minted tech millionaires are influencing restaurant prices in the Bay Area, and it’s not pretty. The influx of deep-pocket patrons is driving prices up to astronomical levels (this, in a city where real estate prices are already amongst the highest in the country, with average rent for a one bedroom around $3,000). And that clientele is clamoring for constant innovation or “concept” restaurants that capitalize on trends, forcing chefs to steer their careers towards becoming on-demand chefs for big tech companies’ “all day bacon and lobster roll and taco crowd,” as Gwyneth Borden of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association noted. “These restaurants must satisfy a venture-capital and post-I.P.O crowd, for whom a $400 dinner does not qualify as conspicuous consumption,” wrote former food critic Daniel Duane, before lamenting a dinner that set he and his dining companions back $1,200.
Such experiences are increasingly common in a city heavy on the tasting menu. A meal for two at a buzzy eatery like Saison will set you back over a thousand dollars, while Atelier Crenn will leave your wallet a mere $960 lighter (of course, you’ll be full of chef Dominique Crenn’s poetry-inspired French cuisine, so it might be worth it).
It’s not only Zuckerberg wannabes who are causing this price surge, however. In addition to real estate costs, San Francisco’s minimum wage has also been steadily increasing since last year and will reach $15 an hour by 2018. The recent trend of banning tipping has also inspired many Bay Area restaurants to establish a “service fee” that will often run as high as 20%. Alice Waters’ Berkeley mainstay Chez Panisse raised eyebrows when customers learned that there was a 17% service fee added to their bills and not a penny of it went directly into servers pockets (the restaurant has said that the money goes to a general fund meant to help employees though programs like paid vacation and health care). Now some early adopters are abandoning the tipless dining policy.
Still, nothing seems to be slowing the rising prices. In a never ending sea of start-up boy kings and starry eyed angel investors, the reservation books for high-end restaurants are continually full and mid-level establishments are succumbing to the mounting financial pressures — and eroding an important part of the culinary scene. According to Eater SF, 39 San Francisco restaurants closed this Spring alone, including the popular Nob Hill Grille and buzzy mid-century inspired Cadence. Time will tell if the restaurant bubble will inspire a Google bus-like backlash, but in the meantime, there’s always The Chairman, the Mao-themed food truck where a line of faithful frugal foodies wraps around the block, waiting for Steamed Pork Belly Bao that costs about $5 apiece — for now.
Get ready for “The Get Down”: Baz Lurhmann’s valentine to hip-hop and the 1970s Bronx is overstuffed, but finds its brilliant beat
"The Get Down" (Credit: Netflix)
Nearly the close of “The Get Down’s” first episode, the heroic Shaolin Fantastic (Shameik Moore) takes his new crew, led by a poet he nicknames Books (Justice Smith), to the roof of his Bronx hangout. From there, he reveals to them the Three Kingdoms: to the West, the Land of DJ Kool Herc. To the South, the domain of Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulus. And under their feet, the land of Grandmaster Flash.
Those names are legend to people who know hip-hop’s history — they’re the true originators of the genre. Considering that this moment plays out in the Bronx of 1977, Shaolin’s description may seem odd. History reminds us that 1977 was the year that a blackout in New York resulted in widespread looting and violence; films portray the city as blighted by crumbling structures and terrorized by gangs — not at all like the mystical land Shaolin speaks of.
Unless, that is, you view that scene with a youth’s perspective. Rooftops are magic to a city kid; they allow the experience of rising above the claustrophobic clutter and clang of street-level life. Impatient car horns and human tension sound miles away when you’re halfway up to the sky.
That moment and others like it — Shaolin leaping over cars to escape gangbangers, or jumping between tall, burning buildings — lend “The Get Down’s” story an epic quality, buoyed by comic book heroism and aspirations of martial arts-style mastery. All of this is as series creator Baz Luhrmann intended.
“The Get Down” also happens to be Luhrmann’s first dive into serialized entertainment, and it shows. The premiere clocks in a few seconds shy of an hour and 33 minutes long, the length of your average cinematic feature.
That would be fine if the director made defensible use of every second of that debut, and even then, it’s a risky way to an introduce a 12-chapter first season. (Netflix is airing season one in two parts, with the first six episodes dropping Friday and the second making its streaming debut in 2017.) This is not the case.
In fact, an hour and 12 minutes pass before the main players connect, propelling the plot definitively forward from there. That’s also the point at which we first hear the titular phrase. “The Get Down” is a party, Shaolin explains, where skillful DJs lord over wild, sweaty dance mobs, and the first MCs proved their worth. This also is where we meet Grandmaster Flash (Mamoudou Athie), Shaolin’s sensei and master of turntable alchemy.
A tangle of personalities and plot threads also unintentionally illustrates “The Get Down’s” secondary meaning as a turntablist’s device: the short, beat-heavy music sample DJs mined from within a disco or R&B track, isolated and looped between turntables. “The get down,” Flash explains, is that few seconds of rhythmic bliss the B-Boys rock to, a beat that goes on and on and on.
The rest — the lyrics, chorus, the soul-stirring vocals — is dismissed as “the wackness.”
Following that philosophy, there’s about 20 minutes of “get down” in the structurally cumbersome premiere.
Filtered through Luhrmann’s baroque style, and with the guidance of veteran music journalist Nelson George serving as supervising producer, “The Get Down” is a valentine to the ragged-edged Bronx of the late ‘70s.
It’s a setting steeped in economic decline that also happens to be a close-knit community filled with young African-Americans and Latinos hungry to create, rise and make their mark. Disco rules this brown-skinned paradise, and the overarching paradigm is informed by kung fu films and cartoon heroes.
Leading us into the story is Ezekiel Figuero, a gifted poet lovesick for his friend Mylene (Herizen Guardiola), daughter of a conservative minister (Giancarlo Esposito). But Mylene is an extraordinary vocalist with aspirations of becoming the next Donna Summer, and has no time for Zeke’s romantic overtures.
Pulling Zeke in a different direction are the philosophical Dizzee (Jaden Smith), a graffiti artist who paints under the name Rumi 411, as well as brothers Ra-Ra (Skylan Brooks) and Boo Boo (Tremaine Brown Jr.). The boys are enjoying a carefree summer when a fateful night connects their paths with Shaolin Fantastic, a mysterious b-boy legend due to his stealth, speed and artistic skills.
Elsewhere, trouble is brewing at the local disco hangout Les Inferno, homebase for local gangster Cadillac (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), son of crime queen Fat Annie (Lillias White) – who is also Shaolin’s employer.
Fat Annie runs the drug game in the Bronx, but another unscrupulous business man and politician, Francisco “Papa Fuerte” Cruz (Jimmy Smits) has aspirations to revitalize the neighborhood, even if it means getting his hands dirty to do so. Mylene also happens to be his niece.
Colorful dance numbers, soaring musical interludes and gunplay are only part of what viewers are tasked to sort within that first 93 minutes. Luhrmann also zips though character development via quick cuts between street scenes, apartment soliloquys, back alley confrontations and club numbers, often within a single sequence. It’s overstuffed, in other words.
But you’d be wrong dismiss the rest as wackness.
Once “The Get Down” finds its beat, it achieves creatively transcendent peaks both stylistically and through an engaging, optimistic story informed by a sense of destiny, love and devotion — to hip-hop, to community and to art. Many of those moments stand out in the two subsequent episodes first made available to critics, neither of which were directed by Luhrmann, that demonstrate the value of an economic plot structure.
Also aiding “The Get Down’s” emotional poignancy is a narrative device that frames each episode with scenes from a glitzy Madison Square Garden concert in 1996 starring, in a foreshadowing move, an emcee named Mr. Books (played by “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs), spitting lyrics written by Nas, an executive producer.
Later episodes also spotlight the cast’s rousing performances. Those of Justice Smith, Moore and Abdul-Mateen in particular are moving enough to make slogging through the drama’s excesses worthwhile. Some sequences are devastating in their beauty, particularly during the famed blackout — which was crucial to the birth of hip-hop, since most DJs looted equipment they could not have afforded otherwise.
In that scene, vocals and lyrics softly merge while chaos breaks out in the streets, marking that important moment in time with moving visuals and an unforgettable soundtrack. Moments like these demonstrate “The Get Down’s” great promise.
Some viewers may nevertheless find it impossible to overcome a tonal disconnect between “The Get Down’s” gritty tale and its fantastical, color-saturated visuals. That’s understandable. But as the narcotic seduction of disco’s melodies melt into the sweat funk of the show’s breakbeats, it becomes clear that something special is simmering in this drama, regardless of its overly-gilded elements.
To quote a phrase from Rumi that’s spray-painted in glorious hues on a passing subway, “where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” “The Get Down’s” introduction may be a bit of a wreck, but there’s enough gorgeousness to earn the viewer’s patience. Keep digging through the rubble — we promise there’s some brilliance buried under there.
“Ocean’s Eight” tests the limits of the gender-flip reboot formula
Cate Blanchett; Mindy Kaling; Helena Bonham Carter (Credit: Reuters/Adrees Latif/Danny Moloshok/Stefanie Loos)
If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in gender-driven reboots, Wednesday has offered a mix of good news and bad news.
Here’s the bad part first: Paul Feig’s all-female “Ghostbusters,” which was the target of so much sexist you-stole-my-childhood criticism and nearly as much reflexive defense even before anyone had seen a finished version, has tanked at the box office. Or at least, given how expensive mainstream movies (and their marketing costs) have become, the $180 million the film has earned worldwide is not enough to bring it even close to breaking even. Either way, if you were hoping for a sequel, you’ll have to rent “Ghostbusters 2” and imagine Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones in the roles: With losses expected to be in the neighborhood of $70 million, this reboot that was supposed to create a whole new “Ghostbusters” universe seems to be, instead, closing one off.
By contrast, the announcement of casting for “Ocean’s Eight” has been greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm online. Without question there’s an enormous amount of talent when you put Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Mindy Kaling, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Helena Bonham Carter, and rapper Awkwafina in the same film. (Details remain to be worked out and not all of these actresses are officially attached.)
But at least two things about the description are disturbing. First, this is more evidence that Hollywood can’t seem to come up with original material that doesn’t come from a comic book or a film from the past. We’ve gotten so comfortable with reboots now that reboots of a reboot are what we have to look forward to?
Second, the casting seems both random and formulaic. These seven names cover a lot of ground, it’s nice to see some racial diversity, and Blanchett is among the best actors of our day. But is there any chemistry here? Any sense that these figures belong together?
Neither the original 1960 “Ocean’s 11” nor the Steven Soderbergh-directed remakes that began in 2001 were great movies. They’re not even all good movies. But they had chemistry. The original, a Vegas heist film directed by Lewis Milestone, starred Frank Sinatra along with his Rat Pack — Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey Bishop. There were other actors in the film, of course, but with this core of actors who’d worked together well, “Ocean’s 11” made sense at least some of the time.
Soderbergh has done far better work, but he cast his “Ocean’s Eleven” intelligently. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon made sense in a neo-Rat Pack kinda way, and Don Cheadle, Julia Roberts, and several of the others in the film had worked with the director before. The stakes for his movies were not high, but the team of thieves, at least, was convincing.
There’s always the chance that “Ocean’s Eight,” directed by Gary Ross, will get things right. But it’s hard to imagine these women having much in common. And while Kaling, for instance, can be a hilarious and disarming comic, a little of her goes a long way: How will her neediness and intensity work out at movie length? And how will, say, Blanchett’s usual restraint fit with the more extroverted actors she’ll be surrounded with? By contrast, the cast of the rebooted “Ghostbusters” seems like a model of teamwork.
There’s another way the movie could be great, and that’s if the re-gendering leads to some funny or politically interesting moments. The forthcoming rebooted “Splash,” with Channing Tatum standing in for Daryl Hannah’ mermaid, at least provokes a kind of crooked smile at just how the gender-bending might work. But in 2016, “female thieves” is not a particularly innovative idea. It’s up to Ross and his cast to prove to us that it’s, at least, an entertaining one.
Hillary Clinton responds to Trump’s Second Amendment insinuation: “Words matter, my friends”
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks to medical professionals after taking a tour of Borinquen Health Care Center, in Miami, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2016, to see how they are combatting Zika. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, Wednesday afternoon, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton addressed her Republican opponent, Donald Trump’s controversial “Second Amendment people” insinuation.
“Words matter, my friends,” Clinton told the crowd. “And if you are running to be president, or are president of the United States, words can have tremendous influence.”
At a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Tuesday, Trump suggested “Second Amendment people” could influence Clinton’s Supreme Court nominations. Critics are — at their mildest — alleging Trump incited violence against his opponent.
“Yesterday we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that cross the line,” she continued. “His casual inciting of violence … shows us that Donald Trump simply does not have the temperament to be president and commander-in-chief of the United States.”
Find Clinton’s full statement regarding Trump’s Second Amendment comment below:
Clinton responds to Trump's 2A comments yesterday: "Words matter, my friends." h/t @albamonica @ergold pic.twitter.com/DyKskW0vxq
— Ali Vitali (@alivitali) August 10, 2016
Backlash against Texas prosecutor: Devon Anderson under scrutiny after jailing rape victims
Devon Anderson (Credit: AP/Pat Sullivan)
It’s been a tough few weeks for Devon Anderson, the district attorney for Harris County in Texas.
Appointed to the position by Gov. Rick Perry, Anderson began her term in September of 2013, following the death of her husband, who held the position until he succumbed to cancer in August of that year.
On Nov. 4, 2014, voters elected Anderson to continue in the role. She is up for reelection this November, and is currently facing a lawsuit for the unjust incarceration of a rape survivor in order to compel her testimony in a rape trial.
In July, Houston’s KPRC-TV reported on “Jane Doe,” a 25-year old rape survivor who was jailed after suffering an emotional breakdown as she testified in the trial of her rapist. The woman, who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, spent 10 days in the hospital recovering from the emotional ordeal, and then, under a witness bond, was held in the Harris County Jail. Prosecutors led by Anderson say that Jane Doe was homeless at the time and was jailed to ensure that she would be available to testify again against the man charged with raping her.
Before any arguments about jailing the homeless woman instead of finding her safe accommodation at the taxpayer’s expense, we should note that it costs Harris County $75 per day, per person to house inmates. Surely, for that cost, accommodations could be found for a traumatized young woman in need of medical care. The young woman has filed a lawsuit for the civil rights violations she endured by being held in the jail’s general population, the same place the rape suspect was held, and where she says she suffered additional assault by other inmates and guards. Jane Doe’s mother fought for 27 days to get her daughter released from jail, and in that time her calls to the D.A.’s office went unanswered. Jane Doe’s attorney, Sean Buckley, disputes the claim that his client was homeless at the time she was incarcerated, telling investigative reporter Jace Larson that, “She has to know that is (a) false statement because her investigators were the ones who went there to pick Jane Doe up at her apartment and bring her to Houston to testify.”
In lieu of taking questions from the media and community, Devon Anderson took to YouTube to make her case. She looked into the camera and asked, “How were we to assume that a homeless, mentally ill victim of an aggravated sex assault would return to testify at the trial of her rapist when that victim was going through a life-threatening mental health crisis and had expressed her intention not to testify?” Is jailing the survivor the only solution that Anderson and her office can come up with? If that’s the best they can do, can they at least ensure that the survivor is safe while in their custody? Anderson looks right into the camera, points her finger and asserts, that “this was an extraordinary circumstance.” Yet last week, the ongoing investigation into the DA’s policies and conduct, concluded that another rape survivor was being held in jail so that Harris County prosecutors could ensure she would testify against the man being charged with rape.
In this second case, the rape survivor was serving a six-month sentence in an unrelated drug-possession case, and was brought to the Harris County Jail to make it possible for her to testify in the case of her rapist. The term of her drug-possession sentence was completed during this time, but she was held in Harris County for an additional two months. Ms. Anderson had little to offer by way of explanation, saying, “We bench warranted her back from state jail to talk about rape case and while she was in jail her sentence expired and she ended up spending two extra months in the Harris County Jail that she shouldn’t have spent. We are looking into it.”
Stevens Orozco, a member of the local organization Truth2Power and one of the activists behind the#ByeDevon Campaign geared at ousting the D.A., told Salon that this is another in a long series of civil rights violations perpetrated by Anderson’s office. “People who weren’t paying attention before are paying attention now,” he said, highlighting a gang injunction issued by the D.A.’s office that would have prevented 46 black men from entering a 2-mile area in which many of them live. After facing pressure from activists and attorneys, Harris County dropped the injunction in June. The #ByeDevon campaign has a long and growing list of complaints against the D.A.’s office and is encouraging Harris County voters to remove her from office this fall.
Orozco says that their campaign, modeled after a similar campaign in Chicago to remove State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez from office, is picking up momentum. There is a petition to call for Ms. Anderson’s resignation, reinvigorated by these recent stories of the incarceration of rape survivors.
This practice of compelling the testimony of survivors falls apart under the slightest scrutiny if the goal is to ensure the well-being of a person who has suffered the trauma of rape. Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, also up for reelection this fall, said the recent events “seemed like an unfortunate circumstance.” But Mr. Hickman’s hands aren’t exactly clean — he too is being sued by “Jane Doe” for his complicity in allowing her to be jailed and not advocating to have her held in the mental health unit of the jail instead of general population, where she was sent. Hickman is also under fire from community advocates for his role in this matter as well as his office’s practice of incarcerating those who cannot afford their bail fees.
Anderson expressed outrage about both incidents in her YouTube commentary and emphasized her commitment to prosecuting rapists. And yet, we know the abysmal rate at which rape is prosecuted. In a statement, Rebecca White, President of the Houston-area Women’s Center, said, “We appreciate the importance of doing all we can to hold perpetrators accountable, but also believe that respecting the dignity of survivors and providing full support are paramount.” Ms. White added that the group was “concerned that sexual assault is already underreported and that this may further deter survivors from coming forward.” Out of every 1,000 rapes, only 344 are reported to the police. Of those 344, 63 lead to arrest, 13 get referred to prosecutors, 7 lead to a felony conviction, and 6 are incarcerated. Of every 1,000 rapes, 6 result in incarceration.
Let’s take a moment to imagine what might happen to those rates of reporting if we begin to incarcerate the survivors. The National Violence Against Women Survey found that survivors listed, among many reasons for not reporting their rape to the police, fear of retaliation from the rapist; shame and embarrassment; believing that the rape isn’t a major enough incident to warrant police involvement, and worry that prosecutors and police would question their veracity and credibility. Among survivors of color, there is a deep-seated mistrust of police that results in even lower rates of reporting. The same is true of those survivors experiencing mental health issues. What might happen to these incredibly low rates of reporting and confidence in the criminal justice system if we allow this kind of treatment of survivors to go unpunished?
Who will survivors of rape feel safe turning to? Certainly, it seems that Harris County D.A. Devon Anderson is not in the number.
13 music memoirs we’d like to read in 2017 by women and artists of color
Stevie Nicks; Mariah Carey; Fiona Apple (Credit: AP/Reed Saxon/Reuters/Eduardo Munoz/Mario Anzuoni)
Although Elvis Costello’s autobiography and Tom Petty’s fully sanctioned biography received well-deserved kudos in 2015, it’s safe to say that women dominated last year’s crop of musician memoirs. Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Patti Smith, Sara Bareilles, Grace Jones, Jewel and Chrissie Hynde all released well-regarded, well-written, engaging books. That trend is reversed for fall 2016: Save for Laura Jane Grace’s highly anticipated “Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout” and a memoir from songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, the forthcoming musician autobiography release schedule is dominated by men.
Classic rock is especially well-represented this autumn, starting with Bruce Springsteen’s long-gestating “Born To Run,” Phil Collins’ “Not Dead Yet” and a pair of dueling Beach Boys memoirs: Mike Love’s “Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy” and then, a month later, Brian Wilson’s “I Am Brian Wilson.” The Band’s Robbie Robertson is also entering the fray with “Testimony,” while Rush drummer Neil Peart has a third travelogue out in September. Fans of ’80s alternative music are also in luck: Johnny Marr, the Cure’s Lol Tolhurst, Spacemen 3/Spiritualized bassist Will Carruthers, and New Order’s Peter Hook all have books due, as do electronic music/technology pioneer Thomas Dolby and Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris. Crooner Tony Bennett, Earth Wind & Fire’s Maurice White and Tool’s Maynard James Keenan round out the major memoirs due just in time for the holidays.
That’s a mighty strong list, which ensures my never-ending nightstand book stack will no doubt grow that much more precarious. Still, there are dozens more musicians with intriguing backstories and histories that are begging for the autobiography treatment. Some wish list memoirs seem like they will come to fruition: Early 2017 is apparently bringing an autobiography from Alanis Morissette, “Perpetual Becoming,” while a recent New York Times piece casually mentioned that Barbra Streisand has been “researching a memoir.” However, here are 13 more artists we’d love to see tell their life stories sooner rather than later.
1. Tori Amos
In 2008, Amos and journalist Ann Powers teamed up for a thoughtful, insightful memoir called “Tori Amos: Piece By Piece.” Since that book was published, the fiery pianist has dabbled in musicals and classical compositions, and spoken even more frankly about feminism and motherhood. A sequel delving into these topics would no doubt be smart and inspiring.
2. Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple was (and is) a hero to legions of music fans, who identify with her wise-beyond-her-years poetry and ability to be simultaneously tough and vulnerable. Although it’s perhaps too early for Apple to pen her autobiography, there’s no doubt her take on the music industry, career pressures and the creative process would be a must-read.
3. Erykah Badu
It’s probably too soon for Erykah Badu to release a memoir as well—after all, the activist and musician is always charging ahead, not looking back. However, when the soulful hip-hop icon does decide to take stock of her life and music, it’ll no doubt be pure poetry.
4. Mary J. Blige
Although a book about her music appeared earlier this year, Blige’s own story is just as enthralling. The Bronx native’s resiliency in the face of a tough childhood, subsequent ascension to the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” and penchant for empowering music—not to mention chart success—make her an appealing candidate to tell her life story.
5. Mariah Carey
Carey’s glamorous life and soulful performances have long made her an adored pop star and fashion icon. Plenty of people have tried to control the narrative around her over the years—but hearing the juicy gossip, unvarnished truth and personal triumphs in her own words would be a fabulous, glittery romp. A book would make a great tie-in for her upcoming docu-series “Mariah’s World.”
6. Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre’s evolution from innovative SoCal rapper and producer to tech trend-setter and philanthropist has been interesting to watch from the outside, and “Straight Outta Compton” detailed his rise to fame with N.W.A. An insider memoir lacing together studio recollections and musical memories with lessons he’s learned as an entrepreneur—and how he’s dealt with his violent past—would be a perfect complement to the prevailing narrative.
7. Debbie Gibson
A musical wunderkind who was the youngest female to ever write, produce and sing a chart-topping single—that would be “Foolish Beat”—Gibson has always been a frank, honest interviewee. Three-plus decades removed from her mall-pop days, a book delving into the sexism, ageism and discrimination she no doubt faced then—and how she’s navigated growing into a successful adult artist—is a story begging to be told.
8. Kathleen Hanna
The Julie Ruin frontwoman is a no-holds-barred, take-no-shit conversationalist—whether she’s interacting with crowds, doing interviews or making speeches—which immediately makes her the perfect candidate to write a memoir. Not only is she incisive when discussing her wildly inventive, powerful music and role as a feminist icon, but her life story full of twists and turns—from her “violent alcoholic” dad to her recent battle with Lyme disease—that would make for compelling reading.
9. Ms. Lauryn Hill
Ms. Lauryn Hill made the news in 2013 for all the wrong reasons (e.g., a prison sentence for tax evasion). Still, her life has been somewhat of a mystery in the last two decades. Although she was a prominent part of the “What Happened, Miss Simone?” soundtrack and occasionally tours, her profile is nowhere near as high as it was in the ’90s. A book filling in the blanks has the potential to be illuminating.
10. LL Cool J
Speaking of career evolutions: Early hip-hop superstar LL Cool J has grown into a beloved multi-threat entertainer known as much for his acting prowess and stints hosting the Grammys as his music. A biography in which LL traces how he got here from there would no doubt be a good read, especially if it honed in on the early NYC rap and hip-hop communities.
11. Stevie Nicks
The witchy icon no doubt has plenty of amazing stories up her shawl sleeve. Sadly, we may not hear these tales until much, much later. As she told Billboard in 2014, “loyalty to…people that I love” is stopping her from putting pen to paper. “I wouldn’t be able to tell the whole truth,” she says. “The world is not ready for my memoir, I guarantee you. All of the men I hung out with are on their third wives by now, and the wives are all under 30. If I were to write what really happened between 1972 and now, a lot of people would be very angry with me. It’ll happen some day, just not for a very long time.”
12. Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Raitt has had a long, interesting life: The Radcliffe-educated musician was raised Quaker and has spent her life surrounded by social and political activism—when she hasn’t been collaborating with practically every big musical name out there. In other words, the renowned guitarist likely has a boatload of stories and narratives that will (hopefully) someday result in a memoir.
13. Nile Rodgers
In 2011, Rodgers released a memoir, “Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny.” However, in the years since, he’s battled cancer into submission—a journey he chronicled on his riveting “Walking on Planet C” blog—nabbed a No. 1 hit and become an even more ubiquitous musical presence than he was in the ’70s and ’80s. A book compiling his online blogs, as well as ruminations on his recent career surge, would be fascinating.
Damning new DOJ report lays bare systemic racism among Baltimore Police Department officers
Police advance toward protestors during unrest following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, April 27, 2015. (Credit: AP/Patrick Semansky)
Wednesday morning, the Department of Justice officially released its investigation into the Baltimore Police Department. The report paints a damning portrait of the state of policing in the city and contains statistic after statistic backing up what groups like Black Lives Matter have been saying all along.
The report includes more than a few stats that unequivocally show just how biased and racist the police department is:
BPD made roughly 44 percent of its stops in two small, predominantly African-American districts that contain only 11 percent of the City’s population. Consequently, hundreds of individuals—nearly all of them African American—were stopped on at least 10 separate occasions from 2010– 2015. Indeed, seven African-American men were stopped more than 30 times during this period …
… African Americans accounted for 91 percent of the 1,800 people charged solely with “failure to obey” or “trespassing”; 89 percent of the 1,350 charges for making a false statement to an officer; and 84 percent of the 6,500 people arrested for “disorderly conduct.”
Of those arrested for things like loitering and trespassing, the arrested person was often not warned that they were engaged in unlawful activity — as is required by the Constitution.
While the Constitution requires individuals to receive pre-arrest notice of the specific conduct prohibited as loitering or trespassing, BPD officers approach individuals standing lawfully on sidewalks in front of public housing complexes or private businesses and arrest them unless the individuals are able to “justify” their presence to the officers’ satisfaction.
Effectively, police have been presuming guilt, rather than innocence.
Baltimore has one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation, and the police department was attempting to use all those loitering arrests to curb the violent crime rate, also known as broken windows policing.
A current BPD sergeant recently endorsed this approach to policing, posting on Facebook that the “solution to the murder rate is easy. Flex cuffs and a line at [Central Booking]. CJIS code 2-0055.” CJIS 2-0055 is the offense code entered for loitering arrests.
One of the main talking points of BLM has been that when police are involved in incidents with whites, they manage to deescalate the situation, but when blacks are involved, they do the opposite. This, too, was confirmed by the report: “Officers frequently resort to physical force when a subject does not immediately respond to verbal commands, even where the subject poses no imminent threat to the officer or others.”
Perhaps one of the most shocking things in the report is the frequency with which the BPD conducts strip searches.
Strip and cavity searches are commonly understood as “degrading” which means police officers have to have extra cause to conduct one, and as such, strip searches “are never permissible as part of a pre-arrest weapons frisk,” and “courts have ‘repeatedly emphasized the necessity of conducting a strip search in private.'”
The DOJ’s investigation found “BPD officers frequently ignore these requirements and strip-search individuals prior to arrest, in public view, or both.” In one example, a woman was stopped for a broken tail-light. The officers ordered her out of the car, onto the sidewalk, and to strip:
The woman asked the male officer in charge, “I really gotta take all my clothes off?” The male officer replied “yeah” and ordered a female officer to strip search the woman. The female officer then put on purple latex gloves, pulled up the woman’s shirt and searched around her bra. Finding no weapons or contraband around the woman’s chest, the officer then pulled down the woman’s underwear and searched her anal cavity. This search again found no evidence of wrongdoing and the officers released the woman without charges.
The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, made it clear that the city was already working on solutions, and has been for some time.
“We have not been standing still while this inquiry was underway,” she said. “Much remains to be done. Change will not happen overnight. But our efforts have started the necessary process of change. They re-affirm this City’s commitment to a Police Department that both protects our citizens and respects their rights.”
NRA launches new ad following Trump’s “second Amendment people” comment: Hillary Clinton wants you “defenseless”
NRA's "The Hillary Standard" ad. Published July, 28, 2016 (Credit: NRA via YouTube)
Following perhaps his most swiftly and thoroughly condemned comments, the National Rifle Association is rushing to Donald Trump’s defense with a new ad attacking rival Hillary Clinton as an elitist gun-grabber.
“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina Tuesday afternoon. “By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
The Secret Service is aware of the comments made earlier this afternoon.
— U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) August 9, 2016
Wednesday morning, the NRA rushed to Trump’s rescue as backlash came from all corners, launching the biggest single ad buy for Trump of this entire campaign cycle –$3 million. As Politico points out, no other major political group is even spending money on the Republican nominee.
.@RealDonaldTrump is right. If @HillaryClinton gets to pick her anti-#2A #SCOTUS judges, there’s nothing we can do. #NeverHillary
— NRA (@NRA) August 9, 2016
“She’s one of the wealthiest women in politics. Combined income: 30 million dollars,” the ad’s narrator states. “Tours the world on private jets. Protected by armed guards for thirty years. But she doesn’t believe in your right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.”
“An out-of-touch hypocrite, she’d leave you defenseless,” the 30-second ad, which will air on cable in battleground states, concludes.
“If elected Hillary Clinton will appoint an-anti-gun Supreme Court Justice to overturn our fundamental right to self-protection,” Chris Cox, chairman of NRA’s Political Victory Fund, told USA TODAY. “That is what this election is about: protecting our individual right to keep a firearm in our home for protection and making sure that there isn’t one set of rules for political elites like Hillary Clinton and a different set for the rest of us.”
.@HillaryClinton is a hypocrite who will leave you defenseless. That is a fact. #HypocriteHillary #2A pic.twitter.com/L6xTrBfvfj
— NRA (@NRA) August 9, 2016
In another recently released ad, Cox bashes Clinton for her receiving protection from the secret service.
“For 30 years she hasn’t taken a walk, a nap, or a bathroom break without a good guy there with a gun to protect her,” Cox says of Clinton’s secret service detail in the ad titled “The Hillary Standard.”
