Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 708

A new heyday of horror: Why the scary movie just might save Hollywood from itself

Teresa Palmer in "Lights Out" (Credit: New LIne CInema)

Horror movies are taking over the summer.

This weekend’s “Lights Out” did something that startlingly few movies have done this year: It made its money back. The well-reviewed horror film, starring Maria Bello (“A History of Violence”) and Teresa Palmer (“Warm Bodies”), took in a strong $21 million during its first three days in theaters, four times its budget. The David F. Sandberg-directed movie, based off a Swedish short about a malevolent apparition that can only be seen in the dark, cost just $5 million to make.

The success of “Lights Out” is part of what’s been dubbed a watershed year for genre films: A number of horror movies are proving sleeper hits during one of the worst years for Hollywood in recent memory. While have studios released a string of costly flops (including “Alice Through the Looking Glass” and “The Huntsman: Winter’s War”), modestly-budgeted horror films continue to break out at the box office. Examples include “10 Cloverfield Lane,” the spinoff to J.J Abrams’ 2008 monster movie; “The Witch,” a years-in-development parable about the power of fear in colonial America; “The Purge: Election Year,” the most recent entry in the indestructible legalized murder franchise; and “The Shallows,” in which Blake Lively fends off a carnivorous shark in a barely-there bikini.

You might have also caught “The Conjuring 2,” the James Wan-directed follow-up to his 2013 smash. Although the film earned significantly less than its predecessor (a 26 percent dip), the sequel landed in the black due to its very slim budget—just $40 million. For reference, that’s less than a fifth of the mammoth $250 million sum Disney spent making “Captain America: Civil War.” The Wrap reported that, when factoring in production budget, “The Conjuring 2” was actually more profitable than “Civil War,” the second-biggest movie of the year in the U.S. (Note: When worldwide grosses are included, the Captain reigns supreme.)

This year’s five most successful horror movies (“The Conjuring 2,” “The Purge: Election Year,” “10 Cloverfield Lane,” “The Shallows, and “The Boy”) have earned $637 million globally, nearly seven times their combined budgets, which total just $92 million. That means that these movies—combined—cost about a third of what WB sunk into the abysmal “Batman v Superman.” Horror movies, however, aren’t just good business. At a time when studios have thrown the bulk of their resources behind superhero franchises, board game adaptations, and global brand synergy at the expense of smaller projects, a string of modestly budgeted, acclaimed horror films may help save Hollywood from itself.

The horror genre has long been extremely reliable at the box office. “Horror films are always bankable unless they’re flat-out awful,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at comScore, told The Wrap. What’s notable, though, is that while certain films earned poor reviews and remained profitable (e.g. “The Forest”), a great number of the horror hits from the last few years were championed by critics. “The Shallows,” whose racial politics are as distasteful as the film is thrillingly directed, has a killer 77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, tipped as a future cult classic. One critic even opined that it was better than “The Birds.” “The Witch” went over even better with critics, scoring a 91 percent.

A decade ago, when the genre was synonymous with the bottom of the barrel (e.g., “Jason X”), that sort of thing would have been unheard of. But in recent years, horror films like “The Babadook” and “It Follows” have brought the arthouse to the mainstream, telling small, personal stories in a popular genre. “The Babadook” deals with the primal terrors of being a parent, while “It Follows” is a terrifying parable of the HIV crisis, in which teenagers are stalked by a demonic presence that’s transmitted through sexual contact. The premise sounds ludicrous, but David Robert Mitchell’s impressive panoramic cameras make it unmissable and unforgettable.

There’s also “The Gift,” last year’s Joel Edgerton-directed stalker thriller that masterfully plays with its audience’s sympathies. Who is at fault, the loner (Edgerton, doing double duty) who just wants to be accepted by his high school classmate (Jason Bateman) and resorts to extreme measures? Or his former schoolmate, the class bully who continues to terrorize him? Marking the actor’s first time behind the camera, “The Gift” recalls the best of European suspense films, with shades of Michael Haneke (“Caché”) and Henri-Georges Clouzot (“La Diabolique”).

Should you find the ending of “The Gift” distasteful, you might prefer “The Guest” and “You’re Next,” both from the directing/screenwriting team of Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett. In “You’re Next,” the duo take the slasher thriller to its furthest possible limits, elevating the genre to a maximalist blood opera. The film, made with their usual tongue-in-cheek sensibility, is about a group of friends who stay in a secluded cabin for the weekend, where they are hunted by men in animal masks. There’s also “Goodnight Mommy,” the Austrian horror film about young boys who take their mother hostage, convinced she is an impostor. I found it repellent, but others thought the hostage tale was sadistically gripping.

The renewed interest in horror films recalls the genre’s heyday in the mid-’70s, when films like “Halloween” and “The Exorcist” showed that the often-derided form could be artistic and avant garde, even while making you want to pee your pants. “Suspiria,” the best-known of the Italian giallo films, suggests a blood-splattered Douglas Sirk, a shockingly scarlet ballet of ultraviolence. “Don’t Look Now,” adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel, brought those sensibilities to the mainstream. The Nicolas Roeg film is just as strange and chilling 43 years after its release.

The contemporary surfeit of strong horror thrillers, which also include “We Are What We Are,” “Housebound,” “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” is a product of two factors. The first should be obvious: America today is a profoundly unsettling place to live in. While mass shootings have become a daily reality in the United States, the current election season represents the biggest threat to our democracy in decades. The Republican nominee has threatened to expel millions of Latinos and put Muslims in a Nazi Germany-style registry if elected president. (At the current moment, he is even leading in the polls.)

But if filmmakers are returning to the horror genre to make fresh, innovative work, it’s not just a result of geopolitical unease. Mid-budget films, those that cost between $5 and $60 million, are practically an extinct species in Hollywood. In 1997, the average movie cost $60 million to make, a price tag that was—at the time—condemned as “disturbing”  in a New York Times report. “I’m horrified at these numbers,” Sherry Lansing, then the president of Paramount, told the Times. “They don’t make sense. We’re killing ourselves.”

Today, the average budget is well over $100 million—with studios betting increasingly bigger sums on a smaller number of movies. That prizes major tentpoles (“The Jungle Book,” “X-Men Apocalypse”) over the smaller films that used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter. Between 1997 and 2000, the top films of the year included “The Sixth Sense,” “Cast Away,” “As Good As It Gets,” “Contact,” “The Truman Show,” and “American Beauty,” all of which would have a difficult time getting made today by a major studio. Spike Lee, who made “Malcolm X” and “Do the Right Thing” at Universal, couldn’t even get financing for a sequel to “Inside Man,” a sizable hit that grossed $88 million at the American box office. His last film, “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” had to be crowdfunded.

In Jason Bailey’s must-read essay on the death of mid-budget films at Flavorwire, he spoke with Ted Hope, who produced the great “American Splendor” and Ang Lee’s “The Ice Storm.” An executive at Universal complained to Hope that his movies weren’t what the studio was looking for. “Ted, you need to give me movies that are theme park rides,” the exec said, as Hope recalls. This anecdote is tongue in cheek but remarkably prescient: Disney is enjoying record stock numbers because of its ability to turn its films into horizontal revenue machines. “Cars 2” sold over $1 million in merchandise, while California Adventure, formerly the company’s red-headed stepchild, was revamped as a mecca for Pixar fans.

Auteurs like Steven Soderbergh (“Traffic”), David Lynch (“Blue Velvet”), and John Waters (“Polyester”) have left the studio system, who have stopped producing the kinds of movies they make, but the horror genre may remain the last hope for mid-budget films and the filmmakers who produce them. Movies like “The Cabin in the Woods,” “Mama,” “The Visit,” “Green Room,” and the upcoming “Don’t Breathe” have proven that there’s still a demand for original ideas that grab audience interest, especially when the marketplace is dominated by sequels, reboots, and the next future rollercoaster.

“Lights Out” argues that the scariest thing is what’s lurking in the shadows, but as Hollywood proves, there’s nothing more terrifying than a world where “The Godfather” couldn’t exist. Next time, Coppola may just have to give Don Corleone a ouija board instead of a gun.

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The gift of privacy: How Edward Snowden changed the way I parent

(Credit: Poike via iStock)

My son is 14 today and for his birthday—in addition to a bicycle, a basketball, and a T-shirt with an obscurely offensive image—I am giving him the gift of privacy. And I am giving him this gift because of Snowden.

That’s right. Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower and hero to some, traitor to others, has changed not only the way I view privacy but also the way I view my teen’s privacy and the way I safeguard it—from myself.

When Snowden’s revelations about mass government surveillance made headlines in 2013, I—like many other Americans—was shocked and disturbed. The PRISM program, in which the communications of millions of Americans were collected and stored by the government, without warrant or probable cause, seemed to violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits warrantless search and seizure. The argument that the innocent should have nothing to fear from such programs rang hollow to me and many others in post-McCarthy-era America.

Then in March, as part of research on another story I am writing, I listened to a live conversation on privacy between Snowden, constitutional lawyer and co-founder of The Intercept Glen Greenwald and historian and linguist Noam Chomsky.

While the conversation between these three thought leaders fascinated me, it was the remarks of 33-year-old Snowden that affected me most profoundly. “Privacy,” he asserted, “is the right to self…. Privacy is the right to a free mind.” He went on to explain that “privacy is what allows us to determine our beliefs without being influenced by others, subject to peer pressure, or judged before those beliefs are fully formed. Without privacy,” he added “at no time are you permitted to have a space that is only just for you.”

Consider that statement for a moment: “Without privacy, at no time are you permitted to have a space that is only just for you.”

Greenwald reinforced this idea when he explained that people secure their homes and rooms with locks and their email and social media with passwords in part “to ensure that there is a place they can go in the world to think and reason and explore without the judgmental eyes of other people being cast upon them.… When we lose privacy,” he went on, “we lose a really critical part of what it means to be an independent and free individual.”

All of this was relevant to the research I was doing for my story, but as I listened I realized it was equally relevant to my role as a parent. Like many other parents in the digital age, I have adopted and imperfectly enforced various rules regarding my son’s use of media. In fact, it is an issue that has dominated my thinking about parenting and my conversations with other parents. Kids’ media use is the subject of numerous studies, books, and articles.

When my son spent the summer mowing lawns and pet sitting so that he could purchase his first smart phone at the age of 13, I asserted the right to randomly monitor his online activity and communications. I demanded his passwords, followed him and his girlfriend on Instagram, and periodically checked his search history and read his text messages. I strictly forbade the use of Snapchat.

Likely this was appropriate to his age at the time. It certainly was in keeping with conventional wisdom—if there can be such a thing when the technologies involved are so new.

An informal poll of parents in my middle-class, progressive neighborhood suggests that many parents are fairly vigilant about monitoring social media, reading texts, and setting up parental controls on all electronic devices. And their reasons for doing so are valid and related to concerns for their children’s safety. Here are just a few of the fears that dog 21st century parents: adult predators, cyber bullying, porn addiction, and legal liability for teens caught sexting. In short, we monitor our kids’ online behavior for the same reason we make them wear bicycle helmets—to protect them.

I cannot help but notice, however, that this is exactly the same reason the NSA and other federal agencies give for mass surveillance programs like PRISM and Stellarwind. They are protecting us! Since 9/11, terrorists have replaced communists as public enemy No. 1, and the War on Terror has made the Cold War look like a polite game of chess. Warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens is necessary to keep us safe, we are repeatedly told.

Yet as many have pointed out, statistically speaking, we have little to fear from terrorism. I am much more likely to be killed by my own furniture than by a terrorist. This fact makes me wonder if our fears for our children’s online safety are equally unfounded.

Statistics are difficult to come by, but my own experiences monitoring my son have revealed a few frightening online incidents—the stuff of digital parenting nightmares.

For instance, one night when he was sleeping over with a friend, I checked his Instagram page and noticed that an image he had posted of himself had attracted more than 200 mostly derogatory comments—and the insults and threats were still coming. These included bullying and name-calling on the part of high school boys threatening to beat up my middle-school-aged son. My first instinct was to intervene immediately. Here was exactly the kind of situation that I’d read about and dreaded. As I monitored the comment thread, however, I saw that my son was standing up for himself and holding his own. I saw that his friends had his back. In short, I saw that he was handling it and did not need my help.

On another occasion I read a text message in which a friend offered to send my son a “nekid pic” of a girl they both knew. His texted response? “Hell, no!”

I felt reassured. Nonetheless, my policy of random surveillance remained in place. Without warning or probable cause, I could and did read his private communications, check his search history and monitor his social media use.

Normal, prudent, and part and parcel of my responsibility as a parent in the digital age, right? Perhaps. But consider these parenting policies in light of the following passage from George Orwell’s “1984”:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You have to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

I have been acting, in effect, as the Thought Police in my son’s life.

Now consider the developmental task of the adolescent, who is deep in the alchemical process of creating a unique self and personality—developing personal beliefs and a value system. In light of this, Snowden’s words struck me like a revelation and resonated with a recent experience in which I had intruded and intervened in one of my son’s relationships.

In light of this, Snowden’s words struck me like a revelation and resonated with a recent experience in which I had intruded and intervened in one of my son’s relationships.

I had opened his laptop to discover a message exchange between him and his girlfriend that disturbed me. I spoke to him about it, reminding him to always treat women respectfully. Yet despite the fact that I was imparting an important message about respect, I felt uncomfortable. Was I being completely respectful of my son and his girlfriend? After all, as I had seen in the message exchange, she was perfectly capable of standing up for herself and did. Furthermore, I had invaded the most private of spaces—communications between partners in a romantic relationship, however young they might be. I sensed that both of them respected and trusted me less, rather than more, after this exchange.

And so today, on his fourteenth birthday, I am giving my son the gift of privacy. I will no longer monitor his private communications or online behavior or history unless I have probable cause. By probable cause, I mean reasonable suspicion that he is in danger or involved in criminal activity. And I have told him so. And yes, I secured my son’s permission before publishing this essay.

I am giving him the gift of privacy because if I have not taught him what he needs to know to navigate the world with his own moral compass by now, there is little chance that doing something that sets the needle in my own compass spinning will help. I am giving him the gift of privacy because trying to protect my son from every injury or harm deprives him of the opportunity to learn for himself that fire burns and some dogs bite. I am giving him the gift of privacy because the Golden Rule dictates that I treat others as I would like to be treated. And, finally, I am giving my son the gift of privacy because of Edward Snowden.

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Debbie Wasserman Shultz out: Chairwoman’s resignation from DNC makes for a rocky start to the convention

Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky)

On the heels of a tumultuous Republican convention, Hillary Clinton arrives in Philadelphia eager to show off a forward-looking Democratic Party united behind her steady leadership. To do that, she must overcome lingering bitterness among supporters of defeated rival Bernie Sanders and clean up a resurgent political mess of the party’s own making.

The resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee made for a rocky start on Sunday, as the Florida congresswoman heeded Sanders’ longstanding call to leave as party chief. Her departure comes a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails, which Sanders said confirmed his belief the national party played favorites for Clinton during the primary.

“The party now needs new leadership that will open the doors of the party and welcome in working people and young people,” Sanders said.

Wasserman Schultz’s abrupt departure was undoubtedly an effort to keep the Democrats’ gathering from devolving into the tumult that marred last week’s GOP meeting, when runner-up Ted Cruz pointedly and publicly refused to endorse nominee Donald Trump. As he demanded Wasserman Schultz’s resignation, Sanders made clear he wants to see Clinton in the White House.

“I’m going to do everything I can to defeat him, to elect Hillary Clinton and to keep focusing, keep focusing on the real issues facing the American people,” Sanders said on CNN.

Clinton and President Barack Obama both quickly praised the departed party chief, hoping to move past the ugliness and onto Monday’s launch of an optimistic celebration featuring high-powered elected officials and celebrities who will try to re-introduce Clinton to a general election audience.

Never one to miss an opportunity to poke at his rivals, Trump appeared to relish the Democratic chaos Sunday, writing on Twitter: “The Dems Convention is cracking up.” His campaign chief, Paul Manafort, went further and called on Clinton to drop out of the race altogether.

At the Republican convention, Trump cast himself as the law-and-order candidate in a nation suffering under crime and hobbled by immigration, sticking to the gloom-and-doom theme. As he accepted the Republican nomination, Trump said: “The legacy of Hillary Clinton is death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.”

In return, Clinton seized upon what she called the “fear and the anger and the resentment” from Trump and Republicans, dismissing Trump’s declaration that only he could fix the problems that afflict the nation.

“Donald Trump may think America’s in decline, but he’s wrong. America’s best days are still ahead of us, my friends,” Clinton said during a campaign event Saturday in Miami.

Sanders will address the convention Monday night, and Obama will speak on Wednesday night. Other high-profile speakers include first lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden.

They will try to overcome party disunity that seems certain to also be a factor in Philadelphia, given Wasserman Schultz’s departure and the general unhappiness among many Sanders supporters intensified by both the emails and by Clinton’s pick of Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia to be her running mate.

“If they think they can win without half the party, let them lose,” said Andrew Fader, 27, of New York, who was wearing a “Bernie” T-shirt on Sunday near the Liberty Bell. “And I’ll move to Canada.”

Norman Solomon, a delegate who supports Sanders, said Wasserman Schultz’s removal was unlikely to soothe those who back the Vermont senator. He said there is talk among Sanders’ delegates of walking out during Kaine’s acceptance speech or turning their backs as a show of protest. Sanders’ supporters believe Kaine is not liberal enough.

Sanders endorsed Clinton two weeks ago after pressing for the party platform to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage, debt-free college and an expansion of access to health care.

Liberal Sanders supporters pushed for changes to the party nominating process at a meeting of the convention rules committee Saturday. They did not succeed in passing an amendment abolishing superdelegates, but they did win a compromise deal with the Clinton camp – a “unity commission” that will review the overall procedures and will seek to limit the role of superdelegates in future elections.

Away from the convention proceedings, thousands of demonstrators walked Philadelphia’s sweltering streets on Sunday, marching down the city’s famed Broad Street, cheering, chanting and beating drums – and chanting, “Hell no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hillary”

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hillary’s orchestrated collusion cheated thousands of honest Americans, who have invested enormous amounts of money and personal time for real change,” said one of the marchers, Dan Haggerty, 54, an electrician from California.

Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, tried to shift blame for the email hack away from DNC officials and onto “Russian state actors” who, he said, may have breached DNC computers “for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” the Republican presidential nominee.

How the emails were stolen hasn’t been confirmed.

“It was concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian,” Mook said.

Party wrangles aside, Clinton is within just days of her long-held ambition to become the party’s official presidential nominee.

After the DNC released a slightly trimmed list of superdelegates – those are the party officials who can back any candidate – it now takes 2,382 delegates to formally clinch the nomination. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count. Sanders has 1,893.

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The irrelevancy of checks and balances: Why you can’t count on Congress to rein in a President Trump

Dion (Credit: Reuters)

This piece originally appeared on BillMoyers.com.

Donald Trump has made many promises on the campaign trail about things he will fix (a broken immigration system), change (the way trade deals are negotiated) and build (a wall on the southern border) if elected president. Those who do not support Trump, regardless of political party, comfort themselves with the constitutional reminder that our government includes three co-equal branches designed to protect against the accumulation of too much power in too few hands. Those checks and balances aside, could President Trump accomplish any of his stated objectives through unilateral actions?

Scholars of the presidency and political pundits alike have noted the expanding presidential powers during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Each relied on executive action (executive orders, agreements, proclamations and signing statements) to implement and at times to bypass Congress on policies both foreign and domestic (particularly regarding war powers in the fight against terrorism since 9/11). This trend is not new, as the expansion of presidential power has often occurred during times of political crisis. Revered presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt all relied on broad interpretations of their constitutional powers to shape government policies, guided by the theory that the “silences of the Constitution” did not deter bold presidential action. Both the Vesting and Take Care clauses found within Article II of the Constitution provide broad guidelines for inherent and implied powers, but do little to specifically define how and when “executive power” should be exercised.

Since Trump has spent his entire career in the corporate world, it is not hard to imagine that his leadership style as president would be similar to that of a CEO — a take-charge, top-down, uncompromising approach to getting the job done. Presidents do have discretion over the implementation of policies within the executive branch, and Trump has already promised to rely on executive orders to take action on immigration, energy and environmental regulations, trade issues, tax policies and numerous foreign policy matters. He has also promised to undo many of Obama’s executive orders, which is not that uncommon when a new president from the opposite party takes over.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about executive power is that there is nothing to stop a president from initiating action, even if unconstitutional. The consequences — whether legal or political — come after the fact. If Trump issued an executive order to ban Muslim immigrants, the directive would stand unless and until checked by Congress or the courts. Congress can pass legislation to overturn an executive order, or through its power of the purse, it can refuse to provide funding. Federal courts can place an injunction on an executive order (as was the case earlier this year regarding Obama’s executive order to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation), or declare a presidential action to be unconstitutional. Public opinion can also turn against a president, as can support within the president’s party, and both can have electoral consequences.

Would any of this be enough incentive to give President Trump pause before taking action? An accurate prediction would be difficult, but aggressive action by Trump regarding key issues on his policy agenda would not be shocking. Of course, the constitutionality of executive power is often in the eye of the beholder. For those who support Trump, bold executive action would confirm their choice for president. For Trump’s detractors, it would probably initiate calls for impeachment. The bottom line: the definition of executive power can be fluid, especially in the context of changing political and social circumstances as well as partisan motivations. As a result, the legislative and judicial branches need to remember their roles in providing the checks and balances of the constitutional structure.

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How “UnReal” really went wrong: The reality-TV satire lost its moral high ground

Shiri Appleby in "UnReal" (Credit: Lifetime)

Writing at Slate, Sam Adams delves into the abrupt and devastating decline of critical darling “UnReal,” offering behind-the-scenes tension as a possible explanation for the sudden drop in quality. Listing off a litany of construction issues with the season thus far, Adams calls out in particular its shoddy treatment of race, meant to play a more dominant role. He also notes the unfortunate primacy of the female protagonists’ romantic relationships, which he partially attributes to pressure from the network, and the flat nature of this season’s minor characters.

In the past, the progressive brilliance of “UnReal” was the contrast between how contestants on the “Bachelor”-inspired fictional dating show “Everlasting” were portrayed on the show-within-the-show and who they really were. As I’ve written before, by highlighting the extent to which the characters were manipulated, “UnReal” implicitly undermined stereotypes casually reinforced by entertainment like “The Bachelor.”

During the season two premiere, when Quinn listed off the female contestants who’d be vying for the suitor’s attention, referring to them as the caricatures they were doomed to become, I perked up. Based on last season, I assumed we’d get to learn each of their complex backstories, and that they’d be humanized. This season, the contestants have been used largely for comic relief. Soon, it was easy to predict who’d be eliminated each week: as soon as we got to know anything about a contestant, she’d be sent home. When a Muslim contestant, for example, was pressured into doing several shots too many, she stormed off during the elimination ceremony, rightly observing that producers had made a joke out of her. The fictional audiences of “Everlasting” would know her only as the Muslim girl who got drunk and made an ass of herself. The problem is that that’s all the actual audience of “UnReal” knows about her, too. And it’s all we’ll ever find out. “UnReal” is now casually reinforcing the same stereotypes it used to undermine.

But more has been lost than social consciousness. There used to be a sadistic deliciousness in watching Rachel, Quinn and the other producers at work. They were brilliant at latching onto contestants’ weaknesses and exploiting them gently and subtly over the course of several episodes, until contestants erupted in deeply unflattering ways. Part of the issue with shifting focus from the contestants to the producers has been that, in watching younger producers come into their own, the job has been made to seem somewhat easy. Having gotten rid of Rachel’s untalented foil from season one, the lack of a conscience seems to be the only real qualification for the job. The contestants are too pliable, the manipulations crass and easy.

Adams is right to call out the primacy of romantic relationships as another issue with this season. But it’s not just the relationships themselves, but their stereotypical nature, that is truly grating. Both Quinn and Rachel are in relationships with male superiors. Though they seem to have genuine feelings for their boyfriends, they are both clearly aware of the career benefits these relationships stand to provide. “Money. Dick. Power.” was put forth as their guiding motto in the opening moments of this season, a statement of their priorities. Quinn, in particular, seems mainly interested in the second as a way to recapture the third.

The writers also seem to be caught up in a fairytale of sorts, and are relying on some unfortunate clichés. The men on the show are all positively smitten with one or the other. Their boyfriends are both, objectively, catches, and as Quinn and Rachel’s behavior becomes increasingly deplorable, their relationships increasingly strain the imagination. Quinn’s transparent power grab, like the producers’ manipulations of contestants, isn’t especially deft, but her billionaire mogul boyfriend either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Adam, last season’s bachelor who Rachel humiliated live on national television, should loathe her. Instead, he desperately wants to rekindle their romance for reasons that remain unclear. The only way this male desperation makes any sense is if it’s a power play as well, and the manipulatee is really the manipulator. But I’m not entirely sure, as a viewer, that I’d relish watching Quinn or Rachel get screwed in the non-literal sense of the word.

More likely, based on what “UnReal” has showed us so far, the show seems to be sending the message that Quinn and Rachel’s intelligence and ambition alone make them rare outliers in a world filled with beautiful bimbos. The narrative is a dangerous one, turning a male character flaw – questionable taste in romantic partners – into a female one. Wealthy and powerful men don’t actively seek out relationships with less intelligent, less formidable women; there are just so few intelligent, formidable women out there? It’s the precise message “UnReal” used to challenge, but each week it inches closer toward the very genre it lampoons.

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Sanders delegates in Philly: There may be protests thanks to Clinton’s VP pick, but we’ll have to wait and see

Hillary Clinton (Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Hillary Clinton announced her pick for vice president, Tim Kaine, on Friday night, and Sanders delegates have taken to organizing among themselves to respond at next week’s Democratic Convention.

The highest-profile decision made by the Clinton campaign recently has been the VP pick, and Sanders’ 1,900-member delegation has already made its opinion heard. Prior to Clinton making the announcement, one self-organized group, the Bernie Delegates Network, has been in contact with more than 1,000 delegates and found, among the several hundred who responded to their poll, that the great majority would loudly reject a pro-corporate running mate like Kaine.

“By last Sunday, a survey of Bernie delegates showed that less than 3 percent of delegates considered Sen. [Tim] Kaine as an ‘acceptable’ Democratic vice-presidential running mate, while 88.5 percent responded ‘not acceptable,’” a Thursday release said. “Nearly 200 delegates said that if Hillary Clinton chose a corporate-oriented running mate deemed unacceptable, they would ‘seriously consider participating’ in an action nonviolently and emphatically protesting in the convention hall during Clinton’s acceptance speech.”

Northern California’s Norman Solomon, who helped create the network, said the press release “vastly understates the interest in protest action on the floor because it says 200 people, but that’s in ratio to less than 300 people who did the survey — if you follow me. So if you looked at percentage, it’s a very high percentage of delegates, more than half, who are willing to vocally denounce or want to protest.”

The vice-presidential choice is not the only likely trigger for protests or other attempts at floor action. Yesterday, the party’s Rules Committee met to consider two changes that matter deeply to the Sanders delegation. The first is ending the Democratic Party’s system of superdelegates, which account for about one-sixth of the delegates nominating their presidential candidate. The second is requiring state parties to hold open presidential primaries, meaning that any registered voter, not just those registering as Democrats, can vote.

Last week, Sanders held a nationwide conference call with his delegates in the evening after he endorsed Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Sanders said he did not think their stances that did not win a majority at the platform hearings could become party policy. But he did say there was some support for eliminating superdelegates and closed primaries.

What’s unclear is just what podium moderators will allow to unfold during next week’s convention. It is very possible that Sanders delegates will want to try to amend platform stances, such as specifically opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, or have a wider debate on party rules that pertain to superdelegates and primaries. In recent decades, the party hasn’t allowed anything resembling that kind of debate and vote at a national convention. Instead, it’s been a parade of speakers, almost all officeholders from around the nation, talking about their party and its nominee.

What the Bernie Delegate Network is doing, against this backdrop, is trying to play a role akin to what used to be called a floor whip, which was to facilitate or coordinate audience responses. Solomon said more than 400 Sanders delegates took part in a conference call Tuesday, where among other things, they agreed to text each other as events unfold.

“The Bernie Delegates Network is not trying to tell anybody what to do, but we’re doing something that nobody else had done — no other group, the news media, the campaign — which is to survey people… and we will continue to do that in the next few days and then turn it around and let everybody know,” he said. “As I said to people in our call, we want to provide almost real-time information, so delegates are not reliant on their own silos, state delegations or the corporate media. We have information across the delegation about what people’s basic outlooks are, what options they are looking at, what actions they’re seriously considering on the floor and elsewhere.”

Not just organizing protests

But interviews with other Sanders delegates revealed that there are a wide range of opinions about the best way to have an impact next week.

What many Sanders delegates seem to share in California and other states, Sacramento’s Karen Bernal said, is that “people are upset about the TPP and also about fights regarding amendments to the rules over primaries, the superdelegates, even voter registration requirements for the primary — all the things that we know were a source of complaints during the primaries.”

“The idea of contemplating direct action is out there — there is a common desire, I think, that’s one that a few states share, not just California,” she said. “I have heard of people walking out, especially on Thursday when Clinton gives her speech… But if you see expressions of, say, disapproval or dissent, it is going to be of a sort that is perhaps visual or perhaps audible, but it is not going to cross a line, because they want to keep their credentials.”

Yet Bernal was quick to say that many delegates want to make progress on specific issues and aren’t looking at protests or confrontational approaches.

“There are some plans, in terms of trying to advance some sort around the TPP, by trying to do some things that quite frankly are unsexy, like reaching out to Clinton counterparts with positive statements like, ‘Hey, 85 percent of the Democratic base is against the TPP, would you join us in taking a picture saying you are against the TPP?’” she said. “And doing things like that, which isn’t scorched earth, but very much about being unified in a message. There are plans like that.”

Bruce Jones, another Sanders delegate from California, is taking that approach. He wants to make sure that climate change is front and center in the party and has proposed creating a permanent “climate council” in the Democratic National Committee.

“We have a grassroots effort that started in California district 14,” he said. “It was my idea and then Gus Peterson, my co-delegate, when we saw the official schedule of events, we didn’t see a climate council on it. We just started pushing around, seeing if we could get space and form one. The DNC has actually helped us to reserve space at the Philadelphia Convention Center. We’ll have sort of a climate council roundtable. We will have our list of speakers and it may be more of a pass-the-microphone thing. And we formed a Facebook group, Climate Change Delegates.”

Jones said his priority is to have a lasting positive impact, especially after seeing the way the Republican Party ignored climate change at its convention in Cleveland. “I’m watching the Republican Convention right now and I’m noticing that West Virginia is all about ‘Trump digs coal.’ And Alaska is all about ‘free our acreage so we can pump oil out of it,'” he said. “Nobody there is talking about the fact that 2016 is the hottest year mankind has ever seen.”

Does he think the DNC is taking this initiative seriously enough?

“I am at the moment trying to be very positive,” he replied. “My plan as a Bernie delegate is not to be protesting. My plan is to be working with the DNC to formally recognize a climate committee and eventually have a motion for this and everything. I don’t know — they don’t tell me their plans. I am not in those discussions about how next week’s events will go. But I assume the goal is to nominate a presidential candidate and to successfully tell the story about elevating that candidate. And they’re going to include what they will to increase the number of people to vote for our candidate.”

The differing comments from Solomon, Bernal and Jones underscore that there’s a wide range of temperaments and strategies about what to do in Philadelphia.

“Bernie led with integrity on issues and found a bunch of principled people that would like to make principled progress,” Jones said. “And do it in a way that brings trust back to government. I am proud of that and that is why I am in this. I wasn’t declared to any party four months ago. Bernie woke me up and I’m trying to make progress on what I think is the most important issue to humanity, which is climate change. And I think it is absolutely criminal that people are trying to continue the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of our grandchildren or children. I see it daily, when I watch the news, I see death by climate change.”

Jones said he doesn’t want to end up as a “30-second soundbite” on the evening news that will soon be forgotten. But other Sanders delegates, like Solomon, who has previously run for Congress, say the signal sent by the vice-presidential choice cannot be underestimated, especially if it is a politician with a pro-corporate resume.

”That’s where the Clinton people and their choice will be critical,” Solomon said, “because you can bullshit all you want as a candidate or an operative, but who they choose will tell us a huge amount. And we’re ready, we’re ready to protest, if they make the choice that it seems like they are going to make.” And we know now that Clinton did make that choice.

Bernal, however, did not think a majority are going to Philadelphia to be disruptive.

“It’s a minority, still, so far,” she said. “A lot is going to depend on what happens from the end of the Rules Committee going all the way through up to Thursday, depending how the Bernie delegates feel they were dealt [with]. If they feel they were dealt a crappy hand, or a less than ideal hand, I think you will see some discontent. But I don’t think the average Bernie delegate is looking to go in there to just pick a fight. I think what they are doing is kind of a wait and see.”

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The fall of “Divergent”: The final film will bow on TV — here’s why it matters

Shailene Woodley in "DIvergent" (Credit: Lionsgate)

“Ascendant” won’t be coming to a theater near you. The final installment in the “Divergent” film series, starring Shailene Woodley as yet another lovelorn rebel fighting totalitarianism (and her hormones), is heading straight to television. The YA dystopian flick will reportedly premiere as a TV movie—with the hopes of spinning it off into a series.

This may spell trouble behind the scenes. When asked about the film’s new distribution plan at Comic-Con, Woodley said she was on a plane when the news broke and was shocked. Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter speculates that many actors from the once-popular series—including Naomi Watts, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Theo James and Jeff Daniels—may skip out on the finale should it be TV-bound. In order to sign them for a television movie, their contracts (which are exclusively bound to theatrical releases) would have to be renegotiated. Elgort and Teller, who starred in “The Fault in Our Stars” and “Whiplash,” respectively, are much bigger stars than they were when the series debuted. They’re likely to ask for too much money.

The humbling of “Ascendant” mirrors the fate of the YA genre as a whole, which has been experiencing diminishing returns in recent years. “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” kicked off the craze of adapting young adult books into potential film franchises in 2001 when it debuted to a then-record $90 million, unthinkable at the time. (In 2016, it almost feels quaint.) The genre, however, hit its peak in 2013, when “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” took in $424 million in the U.S., the best-ever sum for a film based on a young adult bestseller.

“Catching Fire,” directed by Francis Lawrence, was both a smashing success and a harbinger of doom. Like a bad magician at a roadside carnival, Lionsgate decided to saw the last two movies in half. The trick had worked well for “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” and makes sense from a financial perspective: By doubling your movies, you theoretically double your profits. Instead, the distributor ended up with two flailing, bloody stumps. “Mockingjay—Part 1” tapped out with $90 million less at the global box office than its predecessor. “Part 2,” which debuted at the end of the YA craze, finished with another $100 million less than that.

The “Divergent” series followed a similar trajectory. The first film debuted with a promising $150 million back in 2014, signaling the start of what could have been another leggy franchise for Lionsgate. (The “Twilight” series earned $3.34 billion for Summit, which was acquired by Lionsgate in 2012.) Subsequent films, which received increasingly negative reviews, failed to live up to the box office potential of Veronica Roth’s book series, which imagines a post-apocalyptic future in which teens divide into factions for survival. “Insurgent,” released the following year, ended with less money domestically than its predecessor, while “Allegiant” outright tanked. It took in an anemic $66 million. That’s just $14 million more than “Divergent” earned in its opening weekend.

Since 2014, just two YA adaptations outside the “Divergent” and “Hunger Games” series have earned over $100 million: “The Fault in Our Stars” and “The Maze Runner.” Lightning has yet to strike twice in either case. “The Scorch Trials,” the sequel to “Maze,” offered yet another disappointment for the YA genre, taking home 20 percent less domestically than its forerunner. “Paper Towns,” starring Nat Wolff and the inescapable Cara Delevingne, was adapted from a John Green novel, like “Stars.” The film’s fortunes were less than heavenly, plummeting to earth with $32 million.

The trouble with YA adaptations is that they’re awfully samey. How many times can you watch teens topple dictatorships, wistfully battle cancer, romance the undead, or discover that they have very special powers that mark them for a greater purpose? In “The Host,” an Angela Chase-lite teen with a chronic case of internal monologue (Saoirse Ronan) must save the human race from parasitic aliens. Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Moretz) also fights for survival in the face of an extraterrestrial takeover in “The Fifth Wave.” Lena (Alice Englert) discovers she is a witch in “Beautiful Creatures,” while the awkwardly named Clary Fray (Lily Collins) learns she is a descendant of half-human, half-angel warriors. To think, some girls go to band camp.

None of these movies finished as box office successes. Altogether they earned just $112 million in the U.S., slightly more than what “The Secret Life of Pets” earned in a single weekend. Misfires like “The Giver” ($44 million), “I am Number Four” ($55 million), “Seeker: The Dark Is Rising” ($8 million), “Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant” ($13 million), “Vampire Academy” ($7 million), and “Ender’s Game” ($61 million) fared little better.

This might appear to be a case of “good riddance to bad rubbish,” but there’s a depressing downside to the demise of young adult adaptations: These films are some of the few blockbusters each year that feature women in lead roles. YA movies are dominated by female protagonists, from the good (Hazel Lancaster) to the participation ribbon-worthy. Tris Prior, a blatant Katniss clone, has always felt like an egregious waste of Shailene Woodley’s immense gifts. The actress emerged as one of the most promising talents of her generation after her acclaimed turns in “The Spectacular Now” and “The Descendants,” the latter of which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. She deserves better than a knockoff.

But if Woodley seems destined for bigger things, Hollywood hasn’t figured out what that is. This summer, very few mainstream films will feature a female protagonist. There’s “Ghostbusters,” which debuted last weekend after months of men complaining that it would ruin their childhoods, and the James Wan-produced “Lights Out.” “Me Before You” stars Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) in a right-to-die romance about a caretaker who falls in love with her patient (Sam Claflin). Otherwise, we’re left with “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” “Finding Dory,” “Bad Moms,” and “Rogue One,” the “Star Wars” spinoff starring Felicity Jones. (It’s perhaps telling that the highest-grossing female-led movie of 2016 so far stars a forgetful cartoon fish.)

Woodley has “Snowden,” Oliver Stone’s biopic about the NSA whistleblower, waiting in the wings, while Chloë Moretz has been tapped for Disney’s live action remake of “The Little Mermaid.” Saoirse Ronan will star in the most recent adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” later this year. Their male counterparts, however, have the ability to balance out smaller projects with big-budget tentpoles that affirm their A-list status: When Chris Evans isn’t doing “Snowpiercer” and “Fracture,” he has Captain America. Chris Pratt, who starred in “Her” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” has three franchises: “Jurassic World,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and the rumored “Indiana Jones” reboot, to which he’s been attached.

This isn’t just about giving talented actresses a chance to topline their own films. It’s also about telling women’s stories, which may prove difficult if Hollywood decides that teenage girls are no longer interested in seeing themselves represented on screen. YA adaptations like “Looking for Alaska,” based on yet another John Green novel; “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” which will be directed by Tim Burton; and “A Wrinkle in Time,” adapted from the beloved Madeleine L’Engle novel, represent an important test for an industry that’s reticent to make any movie about a woman, let alone one with a budget.

It’s important not to take the wrong lessons away from the death of YA. The ongoing #OscarsSoWhite campaign showed that there’s an incredible demand for a diversity of voices to be heard in the industry, including historically marginalized groups like people of color, women, and queer audiences. If Hollywood learns anything from the “Ascendant” fracas, it’s perhaps that these groups should be allowed to be in diverse types of movies—rather than repeatedly milking the same genres until their inevitable expiration date.

Young women like Tris and Katniss have proved that girls can save the world from fascism, but maybe it’s time to let them do other things, too.

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Trump’s killed the GOP: He erased covert racism from the party’s platform — by being overtly racist

Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

The modern Republican Party is dead and Donald Trump killed it. He did so by extracting its heart, a large group of voters who joined the party because of their views on race but who disagree with the GOP’s economic positions.

What replaces the modern Republican Party? That’s still anyone’s guess.

Major American political parties go through eras, sometimes changing policies, sometimes even dying.  Take the GOP. It was born in significant part from the ashes of the Whig Party when the Whigs could not keep their pro and anti-slavery factions from splitting apart. The Republican Party when it formed had at its core opposition to slavery. Internal debates changed GOP identity and membership repeatedly over its 162-year history. At the beginning of the 20th century, the party fought over tariffs and the busting up of monopolies. It then swung to being the party of railroads and big business until its policies were largely blamed by the American people for the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

The most recent incarnation of the GOP, what I will call the Modern Republican Party, has been around for the last five decades. It combines conservative economic policies with a dog whistle to white voters concerned about race and demographic change.

Enter Donald Trump, a candidate who did not fit the traditional mold favored by “mainstream conservatives.” He easily dispatched the allegedly “best field ever” of candidates for the Republican nomination. Nine governors, five senators, a brain surgeon and a tech CEO all fell quickly to Trump.

Trump’s opponents, representing the economic, religious and libertarian wings of the GOP, accused Trump of not being a real Republican.  Jeb Bush’s super-PAC ran an odd ad of Donald Trump as an ice sculpture melting away before declaring, “If Trump wins, conservatives lose.”  A Ted Cruz ad had children playing with a Trump action figure that “pretends to be a Republican.”

This did nothing to curtail Trump’s obliterating the field. How can this be? It’s simple. Donald Trump played the race card. Again and again and again. Proving that more than any current GOP leader, he truly got the Modern Republican Party.

When Trump announced his candidacy, he proclaimed:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Here is a Trump retweet about Jeb Bush’s Mexican-American wife:

#JebBush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.

Asked to respond to an attack by two supporters who beat and urinated on a Latino man, then told police that “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” he said:

I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.

A Trump campaign press release included the following:

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.

What Trump understands is that appeals to race are an essential organizing element of the Modern Republican Party.  Let me get out of the way that I am not saying all Republicans or conservatives are racist.  What I am saying is that the Modern Republican Party was built beginning in the mid-1960s to harness a large group of voters for whom race trumps other economic and social issues.

It is quite possible to hold racist views and yet have your progressive positions on climate change or labor unions drive your vote.  Or put more simply, there are certainly racists in the Democratic Party.  On the other hand, there are voters who are anti-racist yet vote Republican because they oppose abortion rights or side with the party because of some other deeply held view.  To distinguish the specific group of voters in the GOP for whom their views on race dominate their other interests, I will describe these voters as “race-motivated.”

Race-motivated voters within the Republican Party strongly supported Donald Trump over other GOP candidates.  In a March Washington Post – ABC News poll, 54% of Trump voters said that whites are losing out because of preferences for African-Americans and Latinos.  No more than 37% of any other GOP candidate’s supporters held this view.  Similarly, recent research that reviews American National Election Survey Data indicates that Trump supporters have significantly worse views of African-Americans, Latinos and Muslims than Republicans that supported other candidates.

While Trump supporters are more race-motivated, they also are on average quite a bit more liberal on economic issues than supporters of other Republican candidates.  According to the RAND American Life Panel, which consistently polls 6,000 U.S. adults, the more supportive a GOP primary voter is of raising taxes on the rich, the more likely they are to support Trump.  Similarly, the more positive a GOP primary voter is in their impression of labor unions, the more they favor Trump.

Key to Trump’s success is that elements of economic liberalism are actually quite popular among a large number of Republican primary voters. RAND found that a majority (51%) of Republican primary voters strongly or somewhat favor increasing taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year, while 38% have a favorable or very favorable opinion of labor unions. These voters strongly supported Trump over other Republican candidates.

I am not indicating here that Trump actually is liberal on economic issues, only that he is perceived as more liberal than other Republicans by Republican voters.  In fact, Trump has been all over the map.  In November he said that that wages are too high in the United States, then later in May he said they were too low.  His positions on trade and protecting the American worker are often along the lines of “do what I say, not what I do,” as Trump companies have regularly shipped work overseas and corporations he is affiliated with like Trump University and Trump Institute are widely accused of defrauding working people.

It is primarily Trump’s position on two federal entitlement programs — Social Security and Medicare — that distinguish him as more left-leaning on economic issues than Republican colleagues. Huffington Post reports that Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan that any reduction in Medicare or Social Security benefits would be both morally wrong and a political mistake. Trump has made this case repeatedly from the very beginning of his campaign. Ryan, it should be noted, has led GOP efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.

What Trump understood from the outset is that racially biased positions in combination with more liberal economic policy would easily win the Republican primary.  This is because the Modern Republican Party hosts a large number of voters who agree with the Democratic Party on economic issues but do not vote for Democrats because they disagree with them on matters of race.  Race is simply more important to these voters than their economic interests.  Trump ensured that these voters did not have to choose — they could vote for a candidate who espoused their racial and economic views.

Cruz, Bush, et al. didn’t stand a chance.

Trump’s approach has an ugly precedent. Prior to the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, the South was largely a one-party region, controlled by the Democrats. Southern Democratic congressmen and senators from states where African-Americans were denied the vote helped deliver New Deal jobs programs, Social Security and major public works projects. At the same time, they brought Jim Crow to Congress, ensuring for instance that the old-age benefits and unemployment insurance made possible by the Social Security Act of 1935 did not extend to African-American agricultural and domestic workers.

Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Republican Party appealed directly to working-class white voters who had been a core Democratic constituency for a century.  To win these voters, the GOP did not liberalize its economic prescriptions (which actually got more conservative and less worker friendly over time) but did fully abandon any connection to Civil Rights. Nixon came out against busing to end school segregation. Reagan went so far as to kick off his campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, declaring “I believe in States Rights,” just a few miles from where Civil Rights workers Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were murdered by supporters of those same “States Rights.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, ending affirmative action programs for people of color in state college admissions became a central theme for Republican governors and legislators. And as the Latino population grew, Republicans drove anti-immigrant and anti-Latino laws like Proposition 187 in California in 1994 and SB 1070 in 2010 in Arizona. In doing so, they drummed up white support for each state’s GOP.

One of the architects of the GOP’s devolution on race — from a largely pro-civil rights party to one that embraced race-motivated campaigning — was Lee Atwater. He served as senior campaign advisor to both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and was also chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1989 to 1991. In an interview in 1981 he explained the strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

This strategy had the effect of delivering to the race-motivated white voter a Republican Party that shared their concern about the growing numbers and power of African-American and Latino voters.  However, that same GOP moved an economic agenda that was very different than that of the 1950s Southern Democrat.  The Modern Republican Party worked to lower taxes for both wealthy individuals and corporations, most visibly with the Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts.  The theory was that this “supply side” or “trickle down” economics would boost investment and create jobs, thus broadening wealth.  Exactly the opposite happened.  Since the 1970s, wealth has become increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of individuals and wages for the working and middle classes have stagnated and actually gotten worse for low-wage workers.

Enter Trump, the economic populist and unapologetic racist.  He describes some of the economic policies of Republican elites as bad ideas that will hurt working people.  He also speaks in language that is no longer the coded dog-whistle words of “opposing affirmative action” or “addressing immigration enforcement” through workplace rules like E-verify.  Instead, he calls to keep out all Muslims and describes Mexican immigrants as rapists.  He insinuates President Obama is really Kenyan and not American born.  He says Latinos and Muslims cannot be fair federal judges.  He ridicules Asians with broken English while he retweets white supremacists.

No longer will the GOP be able to keep race-motivated voters in line by offering dog-whistle racism while forcing them to swallow economic policies that do nothing to benefit them.  Trump has shown a way forward for himself and other candidates who will embrace economic populism and much more direct racially biased appeals.

And just as there are race-motivated voters who swallow GOP economic policy, there are current Republican voters who will leave the party because of Trump’s explicit appeals to race.  This potentially large group of current GOP voters have no desire to be associated with racist or bigoted attacks and morally oppose the raising of these views to a central role in the Republican Party. Their departure will shrink the GOP base and further increase the dominance of the race-motivated voter in the GOP.

The Modern Republican Party faces a classic party collapse. The race-motivated voter now knows he or she represents the dominant Republican constituency and Trump has shown them that it is no longer necessary to tolerate GOP attacks on Social Security or Medicare. Candidates now know they can win Republican primaries by appealing to this dominant constituency, so we will soon find candidates at all levels acting a lot more like Trump. Economic populism and outright racism will forever more trump trickle-down economics and dog whistles. Before it dies, the Modern Republican Party will shrink, wither, and almost certainly become uglier.

We do not know what will rise in place of the Modern Republican Party, but something will. We have seen great political parties fall before and witnessed political realignments within parties even while their name stayed the same. Within an election cycle or two we will once again likely have two national parties. But the Modern Republican Party is dead.

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Hari Kondabolu: America’s smartest and funniest “mainstream comic”

Hari Kondabolu (Credit: YouTube)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

On his new album, “Mainstream American Comic,” comedian Hari Kondabolu is as on-point as ever, firing off wry observations about presidential candidates in the running.

“Looks like Hillary Clinton is going to be the first female president of this country,” he says to a chorus of boos from the Oregon audience. “I think it’s very exciting! I think it’s great. Finally, the illuminati has picked a female puppet.”

He then almost — almost — resists the temptation to make a joke about Donald Trump’s hair (“looks like it was drawn by a child… while sneezing”), before delivering the funniest condemnation of the potential president and walking Superfund site of this election season so far: “The only thing Donald Trump has done to liberate women is divorce them.”

This is why Kondabolu has become a favorite of people who love politics and comedy in equal measure — he doesn’t sacrifice humor to make a point. Uncomfortable truths on a range of topics, from empty pro-life platitudes, to what makes Bobby Jindal terrible, to the dumbness of “All Lives Matter,” are taken apart and somehow rendered as hilarious and necessary takedowns. He is consistently sharp, incisive and clever.

In the last few years, Kondabolu has been increasingly visible, making appearances on late-night talk shows, releasing his fantastic first album, “Waiting for 2042” and writing for the brilliant but canceled “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.” He’s inadvertently become a regularly cited voice in progressive circles, with one of his quotes becoming a frequent sight at protests around the country.

A few weeks ago, Kondabolu and Bell reunited for a seriously great podcast series called Politically Re-Active, which has already featured guests like Robert Reich and Kathleen Hanna shooting the shit about politics. It’s easily one of the most binge-worthy things I’ve listened to in recent memory, and already a runaway hit, landing among the top 15 podcasts in the country in its first two weeks.

I chatted with Kondabolu by phone last week in anticipation of his brand-new album, and ended up discussing his surprise at becoming required reading in college courses, his upcoming documentary “The Problem with Apu” and how all observational comedy is political.

As I’m sure you know, Portland’s kind of become a signifier of lots of different things. I was just curious why you decided to record the new album there.

A lot of reasons. One, I felt like because the first album was [recorded in] Oakland, I wanted to go where I thought was liberal, but diametrically opposed, and that seemed to be Portland. Two, I love performing in the Northwest and I have a great base in Portland. People always seem to show up and are excited that I’m there. Kill Rock Stars, the indie label that I’m on, is based out of Portland, so there’s some convenience there. [Portland’s] Mississippi Studios is a great venue, and they’ve recorded other comedy albums over the last couple years, so I knew it would be done well.

I think recording there in some way seems almost cliche, but one thing I love about this record is I take as many jabs at Portland as possible and they’re not all about them being quirky. A lot of them are about race. A lot of them are about the issues I have with that city. I mean they aren’t like full swings, but they’re jabs. They’re certainly being really aggressive about the things I’m aggressive about in that city. I think that was all part of my thinking.

Even beyond Portland, you’re always sort of willing to poke lighthearted fun at progressives. There’s a joke on the new album that ends with you saying, “I’m a hypocrite, but I’m self-aware. That’s how liberalism works.” You make fun of hashtag activism on Twitter, even on your own part.  In another interview you said that the goal of standup isn’t to be righteous, it’s to be funny. I feel like peppering your set with those sorts of things keeps it from being what might be dubbed “soapbox humor.”

You have to keep everybody on edge a little bit, you know what I mean? I don’t like the idea that we can’t call ourselves out. I don’t want everything to be swipes at the right. There are a lot of moments where it’s basically that, but we have to check ourselves as well.

I poke a little bit at Hillary — I poke a little bit at Bernie Sanders. I think that was important to me. Like the Hillary thing — it’s acknowledging the moment while still acknowledging the content of it. I think that’s a part of comedy — to throw people off. And I think being self-aware is also really important.

I watched your conversation with bell hooks at St. Norbert College. There’s a section where you both talk about how your humor gets labeled political, while there are comics who are doing really hacky racist or sexist or homophobic jokes, yet they don’t get labeled political, right? I want to talk a little bit about that idea, particularly as it ties into your decision to call the album “Mainstream American Comic.”

I called the record “Mainstream American Comic” because I believe the ideas I’m talking about should be part of the mainstream discussion. Whether it’s the experience of immigrants, the experience of people who are first generation in this country, a critical discussion of what justice is, about race, about sex, about racism, sexism, homophobia. Whatever it is, that should be part of the mainstream conversation. I think for too long, especially in progressive circles, we label things as socially conscious, as activist. We label things in such a way that people are repelled by them.

Whenever I use that term, I assume it’s gonna suck. Because there’s enough conscious or progressive or activist art that has messages that are righteous and that I appreciate, but it’s not good art. That person doesn’t know how to play their instrument, that person is not a great poet, that person is not funny. What is the point of you doing your art form ineffectively? I want this to be a funny record, and I believe these things that I’m talking about are mainstream things. Justice is a mainstream idea, and when we put labels on it, we separate ourselves from a lot of people who also believe in justice, but they might not like the words. If you talk about activism and social justice to a lot of people they’re repelled by it. Like, “I don’t know what that means,” or “This is some kind of liberal crap.”

If you ask them, Should your kids have access to good public schools? Should your streets be taken care of? Should people be paid fair wages? Whatever the list of things are, they would probably agree more than you think, and all these things are about justice and fairness and equality. Basically these are all things that, when you break them down and find ways to communicate them, are things a lot of us can agree on. That was a big part of why I called [the album] that.

The other thing is, I would argue that observational comedy is political and political comedy is observational. I mean, political comedy is already a shitty way to [describe it]. I don’t even like calling myself that. When I see things, I see them through the lens of race or justice. It’s not a lens I put on — it’s a core part of how I view everything in the world. To say that’s political again takes it out of the realm of normal. Out of the realm of something that is a very basic observation that we could make.

Also in terms of observational comics, the choices are also political. What are they revealing and what are they not revealing? The choice not to engage with something is a political choice as well. I think it’s important for us to stop putting certain labels on things, because it takes away from the point of the work. I don’t make this stuff to change people’s minds or influence people. I make this stuff because it’s my honest point of view and I want to share my point of view through art. I understand the idea you wanted to be labeled something so you can explain it to your friends. I just hate the fact that I’m talking about things that affect many people and it’s seen as niche. Why is justice niche? Why are people of color niche? We’re not niche.

I think the proof it’s not niche is having watched your career and seeing you in more and more places. And not just on different late-night shows or anything, but watching the way your comedy has become infused with this moment. Your voice has become part of this much bigger conversation.

It’s very resonant for a lot of people who find you funny, but also find you’re saying something really important. I wanted to talk to you about that generally, and if you’ve been surprised at how your voice has been used beyond just people enjoying it for its humor.

Yeah, it’s always been surprising. I don’t think I expected my first album, “Waiting for 2042,” to be on college and high school curriculums and to be used in various grad school classes. That’s not why I put out a standup record. I think I assumed that students and people who are interested in social work or justice or human rights would find it, but I don’t think I ever thought it would be part of a curriculum. That wasn’t really the goal. I mean that’s great, but certainly that’s always a surprise.

You know, it’s funny. People ask me, is this political art? Do you feel like you’re really raising consciousness? And I’m like, I don’t know. You’re not going to play my album at a rally, you know what I mean? I’ve said that for years and then all of a sudden, I get an email saying a group of students had a sit-in and they played my jokes while they were occupying an office. During Occupy Wall Street, some people were playing my clips in the cold and laughing. One of the quotes from my first album has been used on protest signs, especially protesting police brutality.

It’s incredible that in all these different cities, people send me these pictures of my words on a piece of cardboard at a rally. I got one recently that was in Spanish — I think it was from Colombia. It’s a privilege, but certainly none of this stuff was the plan. I want to make people laugh at as many venues as possible. I suppose that’s fairly simple, but that’s what every comedian wants. I want the same thing.

Can we talk a little about your new podcast, Politically Re-Active, with comedian W. Kamau Bell?

It’s been great. I’m surprised, to be honest. I knew it would be good, but I’m surprised so many people are listening to it. We’re already number 15 out of all the podcasts in the country. We’re number two right behind “Serial” in the news and politics section. I’m like, this has been going on for two and a half weeks. How is this happening all of a sudden?

And I know you’re working on “The Problem with Apu,” about the Simpsons character of the same name.  

Yeah, I’m making it with a network called TruTV. The character has always been very strange, since he was the only Indian American character regularly on TV for me growing up. We started to get something [more] with Kal Pen and Asif Mandvi and then even Mindy [Kaling], but for a long time he was it. He’s probably still the most famous American Indian character in the world, but he’s voiced by a white guy.

He’s like a minstrel character, and somehow we’ve allowed it for this long. I think it’s interesting to learn why this has been acceptable, why it was acceptable to people back then, why things have changed, the effect a character like that has on a community. The effect that minimal images — not being to control your images — could potentially have on a community. As well as the history of the name, the history of the voice. To me, it feels like an opportunity, through something I love, which is the Simpsons, to discuss a lot of bigger things. It’s going in directions I did not expect it to go. I want it up sooner than later, but I want to make sure we do the best job possible with it. We’re hoping to get into film festivals this year and eventually air it on TV.

I just wanted to mention, I love when you tweet or mention in your standup funny things your mom has said. She’s hilarious. Has she heard the record yet?

No. I don’t think she heard the first one, either. I’ll ask my mom, “Have you seen this clip?” or, “Have you read this article that somebody wrote about me?” She’ll either say, “Yeah dad showed me,” or “Son, we have real jobs.” I mean, my mom isn’t a fan, she just loves her kids.

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Can we escape the no-win choice of Jihad & McWorld and reclaim democracy?

(Credit: erhui1979 via iStock)

The day after the British voted to leave the European Union, the New York Times led with a story on how “Populist Anger Upends Politics on Both Sides of the Atlantic.” Like other establishment media, the Times has been alarmed by both the Donald Trump campaign and the “Brexit” vote and has struggled to understand the spreading “populist backlash.”

Political scientist Benjamin Barber’s mid-90s book, “Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World,” provides a useful framework for understanding what is going on. In Barber’s account, “McWorld” represents the globalizing culture of capitalism. “Jihad” refers to reactions to the spread of this culture, not only Islamist extremism but all forms of ethnic nationalism or racist xenophobia.

Barber maintained that the two forces feed off each other, and the corporate media play a crucial role in this process.  As he put it, “Jihad not only revolts against but abets McWorld, while McWorld not only imperils but re-creates and reinforces Jihad.” Whereas Jihad is fed by emotion, often reflecting yearning for a mythical past, McWorld offers the “rationality” of the market and illusions of a universal, just future. From the perspective of the market, Jihad is irrational and dangerous. From the perspective of Jihad, McWorld threatens one’s sense of place, one’s religious beliefs and traditions, even one’s identity.

Crucially, Barber argues, Jihad and McWorld interact to undermine civil society and the democratic institutions of the nation-state. That is the issue we face today: can we escape the no-win choice of Jihad & McWorld and reclaim democracy?

In this framework, Donald Trump and “Brexit” represent Jihad, and Hillary Clinton and the EU and British establishment represent McWorld. Trump has tapped into angry frustrations among sectors of the population who have long felt the world is leaving them behind. He has used vitriolic attacks against the alleged threat of immigrants and Muslims as key elements in his campaign pitch, but what is crucial is the way he has presented himself — as a bombastic, tell-it-like-it-is guy willing to throw away the conventions of civil politics. His angry outbursts express and legitimize what his constituents feel — anger that they’re losing out. For decades, people drawn to Trump have been told that they are victims of the liberal establishment and its “Big Government.”

Ironically, however, Trump succeeds because of a foundational McWorld institution: the entertainment medium of television news, which spreads the culture of drama, personalities and conflict that grab our attention and play on our feelings. This is a world of images and sound bites, not sober political realities. Trump’s recent attacks on NAFTA or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) resonate well with people whose economic security has been shattered by these so-called “free trade” agreements.

In the context of Great Britain, similar dynamics are at work. The “Leave” campaign emphasized the loss of Britain’s control within the European Union, highlighting the fear of growing hordes of immigrants from the Middle East and elsewhere. Clearly voters were angrily disenchanted with the self-serving rhetoric of political elites in Britain and Europe, and clearly they feel they’ve had enough.

The alternative we are presented in both cases is a defense of the institutions of McWorld — ultimately the investment markets and the globalization of capital. Not surprisingly, McWorld also sells itself to voters via fear — most fundamentally the fear of economic and political instability.

In the case of Hillary Clinton, her campaign rhetoric promised “progressive” solutions because, as she put it, “I believe in progress” — thereby emptying the term of its historical and political meaning. To demonstrate her progressive credentials, she spoke out against the TPP. However, the central drive for many pro-Hillary voters is fear of — you guessed it — the “Jihadist” Trump.

Not surprisingly, the Clinton campaign has already undercut most of the progressive challenges coming from the Bernie Sanders’ camp, to say nothing of reversing some of Clinton’s own campaign rhetoric. In a June 27 piece in Politico, platform-drafting committee delegate Bill McKibben described how the Clinton delegates voted en masse to defeat amendments that challenged the TPP, called for a ban on Fracking, opposed Israel’s occupation of Palestine, supported Medicare for all and were instrumental in the defeat of five amendments to combat climate change. Conclusion: if you fear her opponent enough, empty rhetoric that disguises business-as-usual becomes acceptable.

Ditto with Brexit. The panic in the world’s markets and dire warnings of spreading economic recession in the pages of the New York Times, Britain’s Guardian, and other establishment media play on our fears, while exaggerating the benefits of McWorld. Again, the day after Brexit, the Times warned that Brexit would weaken the institutions and alliances that have “helped guarantee international peace and stability for 70 years” (conveniently ignoring the fact that the United States has been at war for 40 of those 70 years). Meanwhile, secret negotiations continue on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

The two fatal flaws of Jihad vs. McWorld are: 1) neither provides a path to a livable world for all humans, and 2) their dynamic interaction spreads the belief that there is no alternative.

Yet, as the left economist Robin Hahnel once put it in reference to a vast range of problems we face, “Only progressives, nobody else, has solutions.” In Britain and elsewhere around the globe, many voices on the left have articulated a vision of democratic globalization, responsive to the needs and aspirations of all people. In the United States, candidate Sanders articulated a vision that could lead us toward that alternative and far more democratic world — if we joined the “political revolution.”

That revolution won’t occur until the people come together. Despite Bernie Sanders’ best efforts, we are still deeply fragmented responding in our separate enclaves to leaders who express our anger or seem to respect how we identify ourselves. Embracing Trump’s rhetoric about keeping out immigrants or banning Muslims won’t improve the lives of his supporters one iota. Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s gender and her rhetoric obscure ways in which neoliberal policies and American wars — both of which she has advocated — have a disproportionately damaging impact on women and children, while Bill Clinton’s rhetoric and campaigns on behalf of African Americans has obscured ways in which his policies contributed to the massive incarceration of African Americans.

As recent events remind us, getting to unity, or at least solidarity, requires that we converse with each other to reduce the fear-spawning propaganda that comes through our corporate media so we can begin to find common ground as fellow human beings. Perhaps only then will we begin to see our mutual interest in a sustainable world, a just and democratic economy and an end to militarism and imperialism.

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