Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 735
June 28, 2016
WATCH: CNN anchor rips Trump’s lawyer for celebrating GOP’s Benghazi report by accusing Hillary Clinton of murder
(Credit: CNN)
Curiously, Donald Trump’s Twitter account has suddenly gone dark.
While the two year, multi-million dollar Republican-led investigation into the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, offered little in the way of new information, according to the GOP’s report released Tuesday, it did provide Trump yet another opportunity to bash former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Instead of firing of a tweet rehashing his “Crooked Hillary” line, as Gawker noted, Trump hasn’t used his favorite social media platform in over 30 hours.
Instead, Trump organization legal counsel Michael Cohen took to Twitter to accuse Clinton of murdering Ambassador Chris Stevens. Cohen tweeted a new NBC/WSJ poll with a meme depicting Clinton, saying, “This picture says it all!”:
NBC/WSJ poll has @realDonaldTrump beating #CrookedHillary on #Honesty & #NationalSecurity. This picture says it all! pic.twitter.com/E9YKIgoqnV
— Michael Cohen (@MichaelCohen212) June 28, 2016
The crass tweet was enough to cause one CNN anchor to lose her cool.
On “Legal View,” host Ashleigh Banfield called the tweet “libel.”
“This show is called Legal View because we know a thing or two about the law,” Banfield explained. “And Michael Cohen is a lawyer. That there is libel to suggest that a woman murdered an ambassador.”
“Let’s just be really frank here, people. Don’t call someone a murderer of an ambassador for God sake!,” she shouted. “It’s offensive to Americans who really want the truth on what’s going on in politics.”
“Please give us a break! Campaigning!”
Banfeild went on to point out that Cohen once had a much more favorable opinion of Clinton:
Watch the video below, via CNN:
June 27, 2016
Yet another white lady in jeopardy: “The Shallows” and Hollywood’s empathy gap
Blake Lively in "The Shallows" (Credit: Columbia Pictures)
How many brown people have to die so that Blake Lively can live?
That question is explored in “The Shallows,” the new carnivorous shark B-movie from schlock maestro Jaume Collet-Serra (“Orphan”) that’s like “Open Water” with more posterior shots. Collet-Serra so favors Ms. Lively’s backside that he appears to be moonlighting as her proctologist. In “The Shallows,” the former “Gossip Girl” starlet dons a skimpy bikini to catch some waves in Mexico, where she quickly discovers that there’s trouble in these waters. A shark attacks her, severely injuring her leg. Resourceful protagonist Nancy (a medical student, of course) makes a suture out of her earring while she takes shelter on a rock and waits for rescue.
Collet-Serra, the Spaniard who also directed the Liam Neeson thrillers “Unknown” and “Non-Stop,” knows his way around this material. “The Shallows” is ingeniously constructed, projecting the image of Nancy’s stopwatch on screen at key moments to build suspense; Nancy calculates the distance to the nearest buoy to see how much time she has before the shark catches up to her. Collet-Serra often films in different styles, jumping between lush aerial panoramas of the breathtakingly clear waters and manic handheld shots through the use of a GoPro.
But while the film is elevated by its director’s skill and a surprisingly strong physical performance from Lively, “The Shallows” is yet another in a string of movies that amount to white survival porn—in which the trials of Caucasian tourists are treated as more important than the suffering of the people of color around them. Collet-Serra’s thriller foregrounds the suffering and the fragility of whiteness, while the brutal killings of local Latinos (many of whom attempt to save Nancy) go unmourned and are little remarked upon. While Nancy has agency and a backstory, none of brown people who perish in the harsh sea are granted the same compassion. It’s yet another reminder that in Hollywood, only white lives matter.
There are five people of color in “The Shallows,” and for the purposes of this essay, we will assume they are Mexican, because we are given next to no information about their lives. Nancy is given a ride to a secluded beach by Carlos (Óscar Jeanada), a local who lives near the shore. “The Shallows,” which was written by Anthony Jaswinski, isn’t terribly interested in Carlos’ life. During their car ride, Nancy spends the trip complaining about the friend who got too drunk to accompany her on the excursion. Carlos’ only character trait is that he has a young son. (Spoiler: He will come to Nancy’s aid at a pivotal moment.)
When Latinos aren’t cast in a servile position—around to chauffeur wealthy white people—they are shark bait. After Nancy becomes trapped on the aforementioned rock, she notices that a man passed out on the beach overnight. He’s the town drunk, depicted with an empty liquor bottle seemingly fused to his hand (ala Ellen Barkin in “Drop Dead Gorgeous”). She awakens him by screaming for help. Rather than coming to her rescue, the inebriated fellow steals her stuff: her backpack, her wallet, and her phone. Not yet satiated by looting her, he even tries to make off with her surfboard.
Because this is a horror movie, you can probably guess what happens: He is killed before he can get away. The encounter takes place offscreen, a wise choice on Collet-Serra’s part. But while there’s a nonjudgemental passivity to Nancy’s injuries, the shark reserves a special wrath for the looter, severing him in half. After he is attacked, the man still tries to claw his way to safety, even though he’s missing his legs and trailing his intestines behind him.
This gruesome treatment of Latinos is par for the course. When Nancy first arrives at the beach, she meets two Mexican surfers, who depart just as our heroine is first besieged by the shark. Nancy tries to stop them but to no avail. Luckily for her, the two come back again to surf the next day—but are killed trying to intervene. While Lively gets to play something resembling an actual human being, these men are nothing more than ciphers. They have little dialogue and no depth or dimensionality; you never learn their names. The film’s IMDb page is strangely unhelpful in this regard: The characters aren’t even listed.
There’s, of course, a reason for that. The lives of these Latinos are merely props in the story of a privileged white woman learning an Important Lesson. Nancy has recently decided to drop out of school following the death of her mother from cancer. “Some people just can’t be helped,” she explains to her father over the phone. He argues that Nancy’s mother was a fighter and would have wanted her daughter to keep, well, fighting. (The movie repeatedly stresses this point.) In facing down death, Nancy regains that scrappy spirit.
Such were also the lessons of Juan Antonio Bayona’s “The Impossible,” which tells the story of Maria Belón and her family, who survived the devastating tsunami of 2004 while vacationing in Thailand. Much attention was paid to the film’s casting: In real life, Belón and her family are Spanish. Naomi Watts and Ewan MacGregor, who are Australian and Scottish, respectively, were cast to play the couple instead.
This was pointed out by some as yet another instance of Hollywood whitewashing—the tendency to erase non-white people from their own stories by casting Caucasian actors in place of people of color. Recent examples include the Scarlett Johansson-starring “Ghost in the Shell” (in which she plays Japanese) and Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” featuring Joel Edgerton and Christian Bale as Egyptians. The Belóns are European, so the case is a bit different. But what received less scrutiny who wasn’t represented in the film: The thousands of non-white victims who died in the horrific tragedy, nearly all of whom are reduced to background actors and props in their own story.
As The Guardian’s David Cox explains, few of the those who actually died in the tsunami were white. “The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 killed at least 227,898 people,” Cox writes. “Around a third of these were children.” Just 10 percent of those who died in the tsunami were Caucasian, a far cry from Naomi Watts’ assertion that half the victims were tourists. “Holiday paradise Thailand, with its 5,400 deaths, was actually at the margins of the tragedy,” Lee continues. “Indonesia alone suffered 130,700 deaths, largely of low-income Acehnese people; the figure for the U.K., whence [the film’s] family appears to hail, is 149.”
The movie’s treatment of its non-white characters is distressingly similar to “The Shallows.” If the Latinos in Collet-Serra’s film exist to serve and save white people, “The Impossible” exhibits the same racial power dynamics. “Virtually everyone shown suffering after the tsunami is a European, Australian, or American tourist,” the New York Times’ A.O. Scott writes. “At one point Maria and Lucas are cared for by residents of a small village and later they are helped by Thai doctors, but these acts of selfless generosity are treated like services to which wealthy Western travelers are entitled.”
If Scott claims that the fact that “the vast majority of the dead, injured and displaced were Asian never really registers,” why do Hollywood movies keep making these mistakes? After all, these issues were replicated in John Erick Dowdle’s “No Escape,” in which Lake Bell and Owen Wilson play an American couple who relocate their family to a unnamed South Asian country (hint: it’s probably Cambodia) on the eve of violent revolution and must flee the tumult. The rebels are depicted like zombies, a mass horde that craves the flesh of innocent Westerners. But instead of eating brains, they hack their victims to death.
The little humanity afforded to people of color is a product of a Hollywood that privileges the stories of white folks above all else; this is a system in which white actors are considered “bankable,” while even A-list black actors are treated like second class citizens. Since nearly winning an Oscar for “The Help,” Viola Davis has struggled to find roles on film worthy of her, scoring thankless parts in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” and “Ender’s Game.” Kerry Washington has yet to find a breakout role in cinema to match her work on “Scandal” and HBO’s “Confirmation.”
But if Hollywood devalues people of color, this is also indicative of how the lives, experiences, and even the pain of non-white people aren’t recognized in general. A groundbreaking 2013 study from the University of Milano-Bicocca described what researchers called an “empathy gap” along racial lines. When white people are shown images of both white folks and people of color being harmed, such as receiving a prick on the skin, the survey found that the respondents perceive non-white people as feeling less pain.
There have been a number of theories as to why that is. A separate study suggests that it has to do with privilege: Because respondents assume that people of color have experienced greater hardship, they unconsciously assume these subjects are accustomed to pain and can better deal with the occasional poke or pinch. But perhaps the more pertinent reason is that white people still struggle to relate to people of color at all; in Hollywood lingo, their struggles aren’t “universal.” A 2012 study from Indiana University found that the more black actors a movie stars, the less likely white viewers are to want to see it.
It’s telling that the costar who receives the most screen time in “The Shallows” isn’t one of the Latino actors eaten by a shark but a seagull with a broken wing who hides out on the rock with Nancy. She nurses him back to health, popping his dislocated shoulder back into place so he can fly away. He’s still too weak to escape, so Nancy pushes him to shore on some debris. No one would dare wish harm to an injured animal, but it would have been nice if “The Shallows” cared about the pain of people of color as much as it does a bird.
How Chicago lost the George Lucas museum: A cautionary tale
(Credit: AP/Denis Poroy)
“Star Wars” reflects several fundamental and even universal themes in politics, religion, philosophy, and technology. It even raises a controversial question: “Who shot first, Han or Greedo?” The creator of “Star Wars,” George Lucas, deserves credit for inspiring millions of people to explore profound topics, and his epic space opera will certainly be culturally significant for generations to come. Lucas wants to build a museum to solidify his legacy. However, after years of legal entanglements, there is a question of galactic proportions: Where will it be built? Chicago has been the primary candidate for two years, but legal proceedings have prevented it from happening. Chicago’s failure to get the museum is symptomatic of today’s political climate. The entire affair involves as many political questions and philosophical themes as “Star Wars” itself. The controversy is reflective of today’s political climate just as “Star Wars” reflects the time period when Lucas first wrote it.
For years Lucas has been trying to build a multimillion-dollar museum dedicated to his collection of art and movie memorabilia. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be a museum about visual storytelling with a focus on narrative painting, photography, film, and digital art. The museum will include Lucas’ private art collection, and to the delight of dedicated fans, it will include authentic “Star Wars” props. According to the website, the museum will feature “popular art from illustration to comics, an insider’s perspective on the cinematic creative process, and the boundless potential of the digital medium.” It will have three movie theaters, lecture halls, a library, a restaurant, and an education center. Lucas is 72 years old, and he wants to see his “passion project” completed within his lifetime.
There have been a few potential host cities. The selection process is reminiscent to bids made to the International Olympic Committee to host the Olympic Games. The city that offers the best location, will get the museum. Each possible city has a connection to the “Star Wars” creator. Los Angeles wanted the museum near Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and the University of Southern California. This site made sense because Lucas graduated from USC, and he has donated millions of dollars to its film school. L.A. is also the filmmaking capital of the world. Oakland was a possibility because of its waterfront sites, but many see the city as a less glamorous destination. In 2010, Lucas approached San Francisco to be the site of his legacy museum. This is the location of his television production company, Lucasfilm. The museum was nearly built in the Presidio in 2014, but after four years of unsuccessful land negotiations, Lucas decided to find a different host city.
In June 2014, Lucas officially selected Chicago, where he and his wife, Mellody Hobson, live part time. Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered to accommodate Lucas by offering him prime real estate—lakefront property. Chicago first proposed land on Lake Michigan that is currently a parking lot just south of Soldier Field, where the Bears play their home games, and within walking distance of three other museums. The Chicago Park District promised to lease the property to the museum for $1 a year, and Lucas would have personally financed the project for over $740 million. The museum would be a 300,000-square-foot building on 17 acres of lakefront property.
Accepting millions of dollars to turn a parking lot into a world-class museum seemed like a realistic goal, especially if George Lucas paid for it and it costs the city nothing. The mayor, the city council, the Chicago Park District, and many Chicagoans wanted the museum built. However, there was a major problem: Building on lakefront property violates a city ordinance designed to protect the land.
A small band of rebels, called Friends of the Parks, did everything in its power to prevent construction on Lake Michigan. Friends of the Parks, a nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve and promote the use of parks in Chicago, filed a lawsuit in November 2014 against the city to prevent construction on public land. The group asserted that the city of Chicago overreached its authority by offering lakefront property to Lucas, and it suggested that Lucas build the museum anywhere in the city but the lakeshore. Doing so would violate a public trust doctrine, which was created a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away …).
The doctrine has existed since the 1800s, virtually preserving the land and resources for public use. According to the Friends of the Parks, building the Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts on the lakeshore would have spoiled Chicago’s lakefront property and ultimately benefited Lucas more than the citizens of Chicago.
On February 4, 2016, a judge ruled that the lawsuit filed could proceed, which prevented construction pending a decision. The ruling would take longer than Lucas was willing to wait, so he sought alternative host cities, including Los Angeles for the second time, as well as the original proposed city, San Francisco. This was San Francisco’s second serious attempt to win the project, first to the Presidio and now to Treasure Island. If only a Death Star could misfire this many times.
Yet in April 2016, Mayor Emanuel made a “Hail Mary” play by proposing a second site on the lakefront where part of the city’s convention center, McCormick Place, currently lies. The plan involved demolishing a section of the convention center, McCormick Place East, and replacing it with the museum. The cost of tearing down one building and constructing another would have been $1.17 billion, and involved various tax extensions and creative political maneuvering by the mayor. Emanuel also pushed for an accelerated timeline for the legal proceedings. This would have sent the federal court decision into light speed by tossing out the suit before Lucas found another city.
On June 17, 2016, after months of court proceedings that have put construction on hold, and after serious threats by Lucas and his wife to find another host city, Friends of the Parks offered to make a deal. They announced they would drop their lawsuit for promises that other park projects in the city were funded in the future, among other concessions.
This attempt was apparently too much for Lucas. One week later on June 24, 2016, Lucas announced that Chicago is no longer a potential site for the museum. He will instead move to California. Unless a bounty hunter from Ord Mantell changes his mind, Chicago has lost the museum.
Imperial Corruption
The entire endeavor leaves us more confused than young Luke Skywalker learning the ways of the Force. Luke’s journey to become a hero was pretty cut and dry, but the Lucas Museum’s journey is much more complicated. The inability of the museum, Friends of the Parks, and Chicago to reach an agreement is symptomatic of a larger political context. It is reflective of today’s political climate of sharp ideological differences and the refusal to compromise. The result is a political system more paralyzed than Han Solo frozen in carbonite. The entire establishment is unable to accomplish anything at the national, state, and local level.
It starts with the federal government. Lawmakers are unwilling to compromise on the most trivial matters, so vital issues, like creating budgets, are virtually impossible to navigate. At the state level, Illinois is experiencing a budget crisis, and a political stalemate in Springfield has done little to solve it. Subsequent funding cuts have decimated social services and universities. Chicago State was forced to lay off over one-third of its staff, and Governor Bruce Rauner wants the state to take control of the Chicago Public Schools to allow the district to file for bankruptcy. The school district is experiencing a $1 billion budget deficit and mass layoffs. Teachers have been working without a contract, and they were forced to take unpaid furlough days. The Chicago Teacher’s Unions threatened to strike many times during the 2015-2016 school year, and a possible strike looms for the fall.
Mayor Emanuel has also been under intense public scrutiny for his handling of high murder rates and police misconduct. Massive civil unrest erupted following the release of a dashcam video of the killing of Laquan McDonald, who was shot sixteen times by police. The mayor was criticized for keeping the video a secret and for releasing it under suspicious circumstances. Some suggested that the mayor attempted a cover-up. The fallout led directly to the firing of then-Police Chief Gary McCarthy in December 2015, and activists demonstrated their electoral power by defeating Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez in the Illinois primary election in March 2016. This was due impart to grassroots efforts organized by Black Lives Matter.
Negotiation is Our Only Hope
Chicago has apparently lost one of the largest philanthropic gifts of the 21st century. But as of this writing, Lucas has not officially found another location for his museum. Negotiation is our only hope to bring it back to Chicago.
A difficult political climate makes it easier to build a Death Star than a museum. It comes down to this: A billionaire filmmaker wants to build a museum on Chicago’s most sacred land. What is the moral imperative? Should billionaires be allowed to do whatever they want, regardless of good intentions? Does preserving the environment mean preventing a world-class museum from being built on a parking lot? Should the mayor divert resources and political capital away from critical issues to focus on a museum? The answers are not black and white. “Star Wars” teaches us about the struggle between good and evil; it is a story of good guys and bad guys, but the real world is much different. We must make room for negotiation—and common sense.
First, while there should be special protection for shoreline property, there should be room for compromise. This is not a fight for Chicago’s lakefront; it is a fight for a small piece. Building a museum does not automatically give a green light to build on the entire shoreline. No one wants private condominiums along the shore, but a small compromise would bring one building—a state-of-the-art museum.
The lakefront is a unique destination that offers more than just a natural setting. It is already home to some of Chicago’s world-class museums. The Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Adler Planetarium are all located on the museum campus. These institutions draw millions of visitors each year and add cultural and economic value to the city. The Lucas Museum is estimated to bring an additional $2 billion to $2.5 billion in tourist spending, and it will generate $120 million to $160 million in new taxes. The chief executives of the top museums in Chicago offered their support to the Lucas Museum with an open letter, writing that “the museum [would be] a long-term investment in our city that will continue to pay returns for generations to come.” They wrote that the new museum would make Chicago a “more creative, more prosperous and more dynamic city.”
A point of contention involves building the museum in another location in the city, perhaps in an underdeveloped neighborhood. Lucas is not interested in this; he wants the lakefront close to the other museums. Critics say he is egotistical and that he does not truly care about Chicago. This is unfair criticism.
Indeed, building the museum somewhere else would make it more accessible to some people; however, it would also inadvertently make it inaccessible to others. Clustering museums together, like other major cities do, create “museum campuses” that are catalysts for the tourist industry, which increases economic benefits to a city. Likewise, the educational impact of any museum is dependent on its location and school accessibility, which is why museums go to extraordinary lengths to provide bus scholarships and even free admission to students. Thus, concentrating museums in one area widens and strengthens their influence in a city.
To be fair, Friends of the Parks, and anyone who advocates for public parks and the environment, are not rebel scum. It is unwarranted to denounce a small advocacy group who has filed a lawsuit based on a public trust doctrine. Chicago’s Lakefront Protection Ordinance forbids any development east of Lake Shore Drive. The doctrine is design to provide special protection to lakefront land. Anyone can file the suit. It is not fair to attack people who are dedicated to protecting the environment and beautiful spaces. Any resident or tourist of Chicago will affirm that Lake Michigan’s shoreline is the city’s most sacred land. Most major cities do not have undeveloped waterfront property. This has helped preserve Chicago’s eighteen-mile lakefront trail and added unparalleled cultural, historical, and recreational value to the city.
However, while it may be wrong to criticize Friends of the Parks for trying to protect public land, it also seems unreasonable for them to not allow any construction at all. One building does not destroy the entire shoreline.
One can speculate that the vast majority of people who enjoy the lakefront do so with no intentions of environmental protection whatsoever. One does not have to be an environmentalist to enjoy Chicago’s lakefront. It is home to running paths, skate parks, Navy Pier, the Bears, and various other recreational amenities that have little to do with nature. Preserving open space does not categorically involve environmental intentions. A museum would increase recreational value.
The first proposal site in Chicago would have put the museum on what is now a parking lot used by Bears’ fans to tailgate. It is not exactly an environmentally friendly space. The museum would replace tailgating spots and add additional greenspace. The second proposed site where the convention center is currently located would have also added greenspace with an ecofriendly park that naturally filters stormwater.
Finally, it is easy to understand why people are suspicious when a wealthy individual wants to build on public land. After all, millionaires and billionaires do not necessarily serve the public while securing private profit. Rising inequality and privatization leaves us with fewer public spaces, and the new prospect of offering naming rights and donor recognition for national parks leaves people skeptical of how the government raises money. Furthermore, our entire political system is held hostage when special interests of the super-rich undermine the government, leaving the rest of us with inefficient social services, budget cuts, and crippling debt. Should a billionaire be allowed to build an investment on public land?
The government has the power to seize land with certain limitations. This is how it builds roads, sewer lines, and schools, but so-called eminent domain becomes problematic when land is seized for private profit. However, building a museum is not a lucrative endeavor. Perhaps a toxic political environment blinds us from seeing goodwill when it is clearly present. Lucas wants to gift millions of dollars to the city in the form of a museum. This will certainly have far-reaching economic and educational implications.
Lucas made $4 billion dollars by selling “Star Wars” to Disney, but he donates much of his wealth to philanthropic causes. In 2010, he signed The Giving Pledge, a promise by billionaires to donate their wealth to good causes. He created the George Lucas Educational Foundation and Edutopia, and in Chicago he donated $25 million to the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and another $25 million to After School Matters, a nonprofit organization that offers after-school and summer programs to Chicago teenagers. His wife, Mellody Hobson, is the chair of the board. He says, “The whole point of this museum is to stimulate the imagination…to open eyes to the possibilities of creating art.” Why can’t we take him for his word? Our lack of faith is disturbing.
Bringing the Lucas Museum to Chicago would undoubtedly have a positive impact on the educational and emotional lives of millions of people. I have worked at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago for almost nine years. I develop and teach hands-on science labs for school-aged students. I can speak with first-hand experience about the educational impact museums have on teachers and students. I see it every single day. Museums expose students to history, science, art, culture, and a wide range of other topics they may not experience at home or school. Museums offer unprecedented teacher professional development courses and after-school programs. It does not matter where one lives or how much money one has — museums are places everyone can go to learn and be inspired.
The controversy surrounding the museum reflects today’s toxic political environment, which leaves little room for compromise. The challenge is overcoming a political climate that makes it difficult to satisfy the needs of the people. A land ordinance that protects lakefront property benefits the city, but so too would a brand new museum. These should not be in conflict.
The purity of driven work: Bill Cunningham, model for a committed creative life
Bill Cunningham (Credit: AP/Mark Lennihan)
A good friend of mine wears a fedora. He does so without irony, jaunting the hat on his head for runs to the bodega or gambols through the used record shop or sits on the sofa with a book. The fedora is his most enduring sartorial affectation. He is somewhat of a Bohemian, and he was at his most Bohemian several years ago when he lived in New York City. Blond, giraffe-limbed, laser-eyed, my friend is a poet, a painter, a photographer, and I can’t help thinking all that artistic energy must’ve been emanating from him when Bill Cunningham took his picture.
I’m not sure if my friend was wearing the fedora when the legendary New York Times photographer caught him on camera, though I like to think he was. Cunningham, who died yesterday at the age of 87, was a master of sighting the stories daily, out-and-about style told. In a short video about his method, Cunningham said, “I let the street speak to me …You’ve got to stay out there and see what it is.”
“Stay out there and see what it is” might be a perfect epitaph for the man behind the Times’ columns On the Street and Evening Hours. A Harvard dropout who came to New York for a job in advertising, Cunningham’s almost biological response to the aesthetics of clothing led him to open a millinery shop (William J) and work in fashion journalism before he started taking pictures in 1966, what he dubbed “the real beginning” in a 2002 recollection of his life.
That recollection is worth reading and Richard Press’s 2010 documentary “Bill Cunningham New York” is worth watching even if you’re not a fashion blogger (bow down) or a stylista, a New Yorker by zip code or a nascent journalist looking to take a page from Cunningham’s vulgate of decency. His singular eye aside, what makes the photographer a compelling character is not just the subject of his work but his unflagging commitment to it. The way Cunningham lived—industriously, ascetically, single-mindedly—gives us, the people he photographed, something to which we might aspire.
***
What makes driven, productive people so fascinating? They become for us poles of creative and artistic commitment. They inspire us. They are enviable and brilliant, responsible and ethical. There’s something pure and animal about the resolute, the dedicated. The desire to make and make, to do and do is akin to a long squirreling away of nuts for the inevitable winter.
And yet the worker—no matter how beautiful the work nor how beloved the pursuit—can be antisocial or hermetic, a cousin to the obsessive doomed by repetition-compulsion to march on (in ugly, broad strokes, Freud’s notions of the death drive). A hoarder, a compiler, or as Cunningham self-identified, “a record keeper,” “a collector.”
The glint of madness in the mirror we hold up to compulsive workers’ methods is part of their appeal. The industrious are on their own course, often one to which we ourselves may have aspired. In his review of “Bill Cunningham New York,” the himself-prolific Roger Ebert wrote, “Ever since reading Thoreau’s Walden, I have been teased by the notion of leading a life with only the bare essentials and peacefulness. I lacked the nerve to find that little cottage and plant those rows of beans. Bill Cunningham lives a life as pure and idealistic as Thoreau’s, and he does it in the middle of Manhattan.”
Like any good film, Bill Cunningham’s life—as depicted in Press’s documentary, as memorialized by friends and subjects and colleagues and fan—seemed comprised largely of training scenes. Add to Rocky pounding the Philadelphia pavement and Kevin McAllister booby-trapping his home with Micro Machines the octogenarian cycling about Manhattan, clad not in a gray sweat suit or a puffball cap but his iconic French blue jacket.
The process of preparing for a fight or practicing one’s craft or even doing what one loves rarely feels so heroic in real life as it looks on film, set to music and careening by on the wings of montage. The worker’s tools become signatures, metonyms. As Oscar de la Renta admitted of Cunningham: “I don’t know anything about his life, except his bicycle.”
The industrious fascinate us because of their penchant for distillation. Later in his review of Press’s film, Ebert wrote: “[Cunningham] has invented an occupation he does better than anyone else ever has, he has simplified his life until nothing interferes with that vocation.”
That simplification coupled with an indelible artistic and editorial output tinges the most mundane habits with glamour. We love the drudgery upon which the art, the pleasure, the passion is built: “To make money, I worked at a corner drugstore,” Cunningham wrote in his 2002 reflection. “At lunchtime, I’d stop making hats and run out and deliver lunches to people. At night, I worked as a counterman at Howard Johnson’s. Both jobs provided my meals, and the dimes and nickels of my tips paid for millinery supplies.”
Chores become routines become traits. We cherish Cunningham’s preferred diner breakfast (egg, sausage, cheese) and his utilization of a shared bathroom (“Who the hell wants a kitchen and a bathroom?” he says in the documentary); we admire his monkish slumber amidst filing cabinets of negatives; we revere his abstention from movies and TV for how they complete his character and cement his commitment to “[standing] for two hours without knowing whether somebody [is] coming out … the surprise of finding someone.” We like that “most of [his] pictures are never published”—not for the onslaught of those images—but for what that trove represents about its collector. Think of Prince keeping safe the code for his Paisley Park vault, where rumor suggests there’s enough music to release a new album once a year for the next century.
***
“I do everything, really, for myself,” wrote Cunningham in 2002. Perhaps what our fondness for productive, creative people like Cunningham and Prince most expresses is our desire to not only live but thrive on a self-determined code, Thoreau at Walden, an Emersonian state of self-reliance.
Perhaps Cunningham’s unwillingness to accept champagne at galas and his reluctance to join the staff of The Times (only for health insurance), like Prince’s close-grip on his catalogue, gives us a glimpse into the economy of lives governed by principles. Cunningham, the man who didn’t recognize Farrah Fawcett (“I never bothered with celebrities unless they were wearing something interesting”), wasn’t concerned with fame, but artistic freedom: “That’s why my files wouldn’t be of value to anyone.”
In his book, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” Stephen King offers his own spin on the well-worn adage “write what you know.” “Write what you like,” says King, “then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do.”
I’m not sure it’s such a mystery. I believe we’ll continue to revere Cunningham and Prince and other people who die and leave behind not just legacies of work but of working for their lives’ power to model multifaceted, even competing, human ideals: beauty, creativity, responsibility, perseverance, independence, self-possession, integrity. Work ethic doesn’t involve perfect pitch or an eye for patterns. When we see people prospering, blissed-out by their duties, we can say: I want to be like them.
This week also brought the death of filmmaker Paul Cox. Cox’s films, like Cunningham’s photographs, focused not on labeling seismic trends but showing or seeing the value in the small ruptures in our interpersonal plots. In their obituary, The Times quoted an interview with Cox. The director and writer said, “I’m not a filmmaker out of ambition … It’s pure compulsion. I have no option.”
Passion for creation and passion for process are what make the labors of the worker appealing, and passion is what makes the worker’s end—when it comes—such a wallop. If the compulsive worker had the option, the worker wouldn’t quit. It is painful to think of Cunningham having to stop. After all, it was only the other day, in a recent On the Street titled Duality, that his love of fashion was as understatedly gushing, as personable and joyous and succinct as always: “Hey, I never saw it as good as this in the 1950s.”
Judge in Brock Turner rape case handed El Salvadoran immigrant 3 years for similar crimes, report says
Activists hold signs calling for the removal of Judge Aaron Persky from the bench, San Francisco, California, June 10, 2016. (Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam)
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky — the judge who, on June 2, sentenced Stanford rapist Brock Turner an unprecedentedly light six-months for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman — is facing due criticism for handing a three-year sentence to an El Salvadoran immigrant for similar crimes.
Raul Ramirez, 32, pleaded guilty in March to sexually assaulting his then-roommate in 2014. According to a Guardian report, Ramirez admitted to sexually assaulting his victim “for about five to 10 minutes against her will … and stopped only when she started crying.” (Turner similarly admitted to assaulting his victim, though said he “remembered consent” in his “drunken state.”)
Court documents detailed in the report indicate “Ramirez, like Turner, has no criminal record of convictions for serious or violent felonies.”
“Persky could have approved or helped negotiate a bargain in which Ramirez only pleaded guilty to the lesser of two charges he was facing – assault with intent to commit rape,” the Guardian said. “If the more serious charge was dropped – as was the case with Turner, who had two rape charges dropped – Ramirez could have potentially avoided prison.”
Read the full report over at The Guardian.
Scalia’s ghost haunts SCOTUS decision: Pro-choice victory prompts grave-dancing over his absent outraged dissent
Antonin Scalia (Credit: Reuters)
If only Antonin Scalia were alive to see this day. Although this would probably kill him.
When the controversial Supreme Court justice died in February after thirty years on the bench, it set off a frenzied political battle for his now-vacant seat and one brief poetic moment when he almost got in his honor. And now, his presence and his legacy in two areas near and dear to his heart are reminding us this week exactly how he will forever be remembered.
On Sunday, as Pride marches celebrated love all over the country, we also marked the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, and marriage equality for all. It was a fitting day to also recall Scalia’s memorable dissent, in which he fumed that “One would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie,” and angrily vowed that if he ever agreed with the Court’s majority opinion, “I would hide my head in a bag.”
Then on Monday, the Court proved yet again that it’s now up to Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to be the designated angry foes of social progress, when the Court handed down a decisive victory for reproductive freedom. In a 5-3 decision, the Court struck down the 2013 Texas law that aimed to shut down most of the state’s abortion providers on the blatant lie that it was for the sake of women’s safety. In her opinion, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg asserted firmly that “It is beyond rational belief that H.B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions.’ When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners… at great risk to their health and safety.”
And it’s moments like this that really make a person sentimental thinking about the epic fit Scalia would have pitched over this one. Clarence Thomas, after all, could only croak out a grumpy, “As the Court applies whatever standard it likes to any given case, nothing but empty words separates our constitutional decisions from judicial fiat.” The ghost of Scalia must be so disappointed. He, after all, was a man who called the Affordable Care Act “jiggery-pokery” and once asked, with a straight face, “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?” Imagine the word salad he’d have tossed on this auspicious day.
That loss was felt acutely on social media, where Scalia was widely remembered on Monday. Mentioning him in my own Twitter timeline quickly brought forth responses like, “I hope hell exists just so I can hope he is burning in it” and “He’s one zombie I hope to decapitate in the coming apocalypse.” Elsewhere, Tom Ceraulo mournfully observed that “It’s a shame Scalia wasn’t alive for today’s decision, since his vote wouldn’t change the outcome & his dissent would employ Dr. Seuss words,” while Parker Molloy similarly daydreamed, “Kind of wish Scalia was around so we could bask in what would have certainly been a colorful, angry dissent. #pureapplesauce #jiggerypokery.” Iron Circus Comics, meanwhile, wrote, “*Gently gyrates on the fresh earth of Scalia’s grave* STILL GLAD.” But looking on the bright side, Mark Harris noted, “With the death of Scalia, it’s been heartening to see Clarence Thomas come into his own as one of the worst justices in SCOTUS history,” while John Fugelsang reassured, “At least we know that right now Justice Scalia is in Heaven, telling the Virgin Mary what she can and can’t do with her body.”
He worked tirelessly to stand in the way of women’s reproductive rights, and he would have no doubt never stopped doing likewise. He didn’t get the chance Monday in the Supreme Court. And with every step the Court takes that doesn’t drag women into back alleys, it’s clear that Scalia continues to cast a long shadow. For years to come, we’ll look at Supreme Court rulings that affect the health and well-being of women and know exactly how he’d have decided, and how frighteningly different their lives would have been because of it.
Right-wing Brexit leaders retract false promises as racist nationalism explodes
Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage (Credit: Reuters/Mary Turner/Michael Kooren/Photo montage by Salon)
The situation in the U.K. is nothing short of chaotic. The country voted to leave the European Union last week and has since plunged into disarray.
Amid the turmoil, the right-wing leaders of the movement for a British exit from the E.U., or Brexit, have quickly begun to retract the promises they made to their supporters.
Brexit advocates previously insisted leaving the E.U. would allow the country to better fund social services, strengthen the economy and control immigration. Now, they claim their promises were misunderstood, or were not even promises at all.
Meanwhile, racist incidents have exploded as far-right nationalists have been empowered to threaten Britons of color, Muslims and immigrants, intimidating them and telling them to leave the country.
“A lot of things were said in advance of this referendum that we might want to think about again,” former Conservative minister Liam Fox, who campaigned for the U.K. to leave the E.U., admitted in a candid moment on the BBC.
Perhaps the most disingenuous claim of Brexit leaders was that, by leaving the E.U., Britain could provide more funding to its National Health Service, or NHS, the U.K.’s very popular and successful system of socialized health care.
This claim was odd from the get-go, given that many of the right-wing leaders making this promise in fact support privatization and other neoliberal economic measures, yet cynically exploited the popularity of the NHS for political gain.
Perhaps uncoincidentally, then, mere hours after the successful Brexit vote, these leaders started walking back their pledge.
Boris Johnson, the right-wing former London mayor who spearheaded Brexit, campaigned heavily on the promise that the £350 million the U.K. sends the E.U. every week would instead go to funding the NHS. He even traveled around the country in a bus with this promise emblazoned on it.
For starters, the £350 million figure was itself misleading. This is the gross total that the U.K. sends to the E.U.; it does not consider the amount of money the U.K. gets back from the E.U. in return.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right U.K. Independence Party, made even more egregious claims just weeks before the vote, nonetheless. In a BBC interview on June 9, Farage boldly declared, “Can we just get to the truth of this — £350 million a week is wrong, it’s higher than that.” He asserted the actual figure is £55 million per day day, and maintained, “We should spend that money here, in our own country, on our own people.”
Yet, a few hours after the successful Brexit vote, Farage had suddenly changed his tune. He called the £350 million claim a “mistake,” and told the BBC that he can’t guarantee that any of this money would go to the NHS.
Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservative Party who pushed for the U.K. to leave the E.U., also backtracked on the promise.
Adding to this broken promise is the economic turmoil Brexit supporters insisted would not ensue. The British pound sterling has plummeted in recent days, to the lowest level against U.S. currency that has been seen in 31 years. On the night of the vote, when the results were still being counted, the currency had already tanked at least 8 percent.
Brexit leaders claimed the British economy would flourish. It was only the regulations of the bureaucratic E.U. that was holding the U.K. back, they argued.
Yet the neoliberal policies that led to the financial crisis in 2008 and have only persisted since then have left the global economy fragile to such sudden changes.
“The shock waves are being felt across the globe at a time when economies are still fragile from the 2008 economic crisis, interest rates are close to zero and central banks have fewer tools than normal to revive demand if countries enter recession,” Reuters reported.
As the The New York Times put it, “With financial markets in turmoil, a big drop in the pound and the prospect of further chaos, some supporters of Brexit are backpedaling on bold pronouncements they made just a few days earlier.”
Far-right leaders have persistently blamed Europe’s economic woes on immigration, not on the neoliberal policies that led to these problems. Like Donald Trump in the U.S., politicians like UKIP’s Nigel Farage distract from how crippling austerity measures, the gutting of social services and the deregulation of powerful corporations have hurt the standards of living of millions of working people, and instead scapegoat migrants and refugees.
Brexit’s staunchest advocates promised that leaving the E.U. would allow them to stop or at least drastically curtail this migration. Yet, after the successful vote, Brexit leaders now appear to have broken this promise too.
The Times pointed out that “migration was the cornerstone of the Leave campaign.” Many migrants from eastern and southern states in the E.U. moved to the U.K. for work. For years, many people from South Asia, which was formerly brutally colonized by Britain, have also come to the country in search of better economic opportunities.
Boris Johnson’s campaign was predicated on the argument that the E.U. did not allow Britain to control its immigration policies.
Michael Gove, the Conservative justice secretary who also campaigned for the leave camp, insisted Brexit would “bring down the numbers” of immigration by 2020.
Farage fear-mongered about refugees and the possibility of Turkey joined the E.U.
Yet Conservative parliamentarian Daniel Hannan, a key pro-Brexit figure, later admitted to the BBC, “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the E.U., they are going to be disappointed.”
In the meantime, racist intimidation has rapidly increased. The Guardian noted that Polish immigrants have been harassed with cards reading, “Leave the E.U. No more Polish vermin.”
One Polish woman was told to get off a bus and “get packing.” A Polish man at an airport was told he “shouldn’t still be here, that we had voted to be rid of people like him.” And a Polish coffee shop worker was told “you’re going home now.”
Sayeeda Warsi, the former chair of the Conservative Party, lamented that people of color who have lived in the country for multiple generations are being stopped in the street and told “it’s time for you to leave.” Warsi had previously supported Brexit, but later changed her mind, calling the campaign “divisive and xenophobic.”
There have been wide reports of Muslim Britons being shouted at with hateful chants like “get out, we voted leave.” In another publicized incident, a white man at a grocery store shouted, “This is England now, foreigners have 48 hours to fuck right off. Who is foreign here?”
A widely shared photo on social media showed a white man wearing a shirt reading, “Yes we won! Now send them back.”
Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he will be resigning, and the country is preparing to have a new leader by the beginning of September. Boris Johnson, the right-wing former London mayor, is the front-runner to replace Cameron.
Many people are calling for snap elections to vote for a new prime minister. The neoliberal Blairite wing of the Labour Party has tried to oust popular leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn, although he has stood strong. A petition expressing a vote of confidence in Corbyn after Brexit received more than 200,000 signatures in just a few days.
Another petition calling for the British government to hold a second referendum on E.U. membership has received more than 3.5 million signatures.
Brexit could hammer British culture: Here’s what it could mean for movies, music and visual art
Amy Winehouse (Credit: AP/Matt Dunham)
Many in the United Kingdom are still scratching their heads over Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. Life will change in all kinds of ways there, especially for Europeans working in Britain and Northern Ireland. And many are made uncomfortable by the xenophobia that drove at least part of the vote, which could signal a once-cosmopolitan country turning in on itself. The very tone of life, the self-conception of the country, could change in unpleasant ways.
But some concerns are more tangible: What will happen to British culture, which has been on something of a roll for the last decade or two?
It’s impossible to know any of this for sure, but it’s possible to speculate that it will not, on the whole, be good for British artists or for audiences interested in their work.
Some of the complaining about the EU from the Leave crowd came from the money the UK paid Europe. But the EU funded all kinds of things for Brits. A number of important films, for instance, benefited from EU money.
”Amy,” for instance, the grim and powerful documentary on soul singer Amy Winehouse, received money for distribution from Europe. “The King’s Speech,” the movie in which Colin Firth portrayed King George VI overcoming his stutter, received almost $1 million toward distribution from the EU. “Shaun the Sheep,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” and Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake,” winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, all received help with either distribution or production from the EU.
And it wasn’t just famous movies. All in all, the EU’s MEDIA program shifted about $180 million to British films between 2007 and 2015. By the standards of a Hollywood superhero movie, that’s not much. But since these tend to be smaller, artier films, that’s real money. And the relationships that allow Britain to be a player in European cinema have just gotten a lot complicated, according to Michael Ryan, who heads the Independent Film & Television Alliance. This comes from his statement:
“The decision to exit the European Union is a major blow to the U.K. film and TV industry. This decision has just blown up our foundation — as of today, we no longer know how our relationships with co-producers, financiers and distributors will work, whether new taxes will be dropped on our activities in the rest of Europe or how production financing is going to be raised without any input from European funding agencies. The U.K. creative sector has been a strong and vibrant contributor to the economy — this is likely to be devastating for us.”
With the exception of a few chapters like its Angry Young Man and its kitchen-sink realist periods, Britain doesn’t have the kind of deep connection to film culture that some European countries have. Much of its success with movies is more recent. But with rock music, Britain is, next to the United States, far and away the most important nation on earth, and one that’s depended on an international audience since the day of the Beatles. Many of the nation’s musicians are furious, including Damon Albarn, who announced at the Glastonbury Festival that “Democracy has failed us.”
Britain’s bands don’t need subsidies as badly as they need to be able to smoothly tour the continent – which is increasingly important in an era where bands typically make very little from their recordings.
And this is where things could get ugly. The British pound has already plunged in value, meaning that British bands performing outside the country will have to spend more to do everything – whether to fill their tour bus with gas or buy food on the road. But the logistics of touring could be even more vexing.
“I think the nature of touring is going to change massively,” Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches told the BBC News. “The summer we’re looking at right now is just hopping from country to country within Europe and in order to do that when we’re not part of the European Union, we would presumably need to go to a different embassy for every different country and apply for a visa for us and everybody in our crew.”
Her bandmate Martin Doherty added: “We also employ mainland Europeans within our crew, and they will struggle to get work permits and continue under the employ of our band. It’s all very complicated.”
Arts groups that survive through European festivals and international tours — theater companies, dance troupes — will have similar challenges.
The situation in the visual art world is equally uncertain, as the weakened pound and a possible Brexit-fueled recession could dampen a British art market that’s been on fire in recent years. The silver lining: Americans looking to pick up a Francis Bacon may find they need fewer dollars than they used to.
5 areas the pro-choice movement needs to focus on now that Texas’ abortion law has been overturned
Demonstrators celebrate at the U.S. Supreme Court after it struck down a Texas law imposing strict regulations on abortion doctors and facilities, June 27, 2016. (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt, which struck down a Texas law aimed at regulating legal abortion out of existence, was a resounding victory for the reproductive rights movement. But while everyone should take a day to celebrate this win, the sad fact of the matter is that, after decades of abuse at the hands of the religious rights, the state of reproductive health care is not even close to what it should be in the United States.
Our unplanned pregnancy rate is still high and access to abortion and other reproductive health care simply isn’t what it should be. Ending Texas’ draconian abortion law is just the beginning. There’s a lot more work to be done before the pro-choice movement can rest on its laurels.
1) End the Hyde Amendment. Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has banned abortion from being covered by federal funding, except in the rare instances of rape or a threat to the health of the mother. That means no federal employees, service women, veterans or women on Medicaid have access to coverage for abortion. These are often the women who can least afford to pay out of pocket in the event of an unplanned pregnancy that they need to terminate.
The effects of the Hyde Amendment have been devastating. One out of four women on Medicaid who wants an abortion simply isn’t able to get one, resulting in forced childbirth. Of those women who do get an abortion, raising the money often results in major hardship for the family. The $300-$500 that an abortion costs pinches a middle-class budget, but for those who live in poverty, that often means having to sell things off, borrow money from relatives, or choose between getting the abortion and other life necessities. Women on Medicaid often delay the abortion at least 2-3 weeks in order to raise the money.
Servicewomen face many of the same barriers, with the additional problem of often being unable to even see a doctor who offers abortion, since military hospitals are barred from doing them. Research shows that many of these women consider unsafe black market methods.
Repealing the Hyde Amendment would go a long way towards making sure that every woman, no matter her job or income, can get an abortion is she needs one.
2) End laws restricting private insurance coverage of abortion. On top of the Hyde Amendment, many states have laws, some tied to Obamacare and some not, that restrict or even ban private insurance plans from covering abortion. These laws are less well-studied than the Hyde Amendment, but it’s reasonable to assume they create similar burdens for women on private insurance seeking abortion.
3) Expand access to affordable contraception. Under Obamacare, women are supposed to be getting copay free contraception through their insurance. Unfortunately, as many women are finding, the insurance companies are using red tape, throwing up so many confusing rules between women and their free birth control that many women just give up. There needs to be an effort to force these companies to make free birth control not only available, but easy t0 understand and get without having to spend hours on the phone with customer service people to figure out exactly what you’e entitled to get under what elaborate bureaucratic rules.
4) Protect Planned Parenthood and other non-profit women’s health care centers. The anti-choice movement has already moved beyond the efforts to regulate abortion out of existence and now has an eyeball on a juicier target: The non-profit health care infrastructure that helps women find quality reproductive health care at an affordable cost. Planned Parenthood and clinics like it offend the right because they make contraception both cheap and easy to get, which allows the women they like the least — young women and low income women — enjoy the same access to sexual autonomy as older, wealthier women have in our country.
Right now, there’s a targeted movement of Republicans aimed directly at destroying these clinics. The pretext is “abortion” or lies about “selling baby parts”, but the focus is on ending the funding for contraception services, as well as medical care like STI testing that makes sex safer and easier for women. The pro-choice movement was able to expose the bad faith behind the Texas law, and hopefully that will free up even more energies to expose the bad faith behind the anti-Planned Parenthood movement.
5) Improve our sex and contraception education system. Sex ed in this country is a disaster. Many states continue to push failed abstinence-centric curricula that is based on the utterly ridiculous pretense that students can and will refrain from having sex until they’re married. Even more comprehensive programs still fail to address important issues like consent and the diverse options for contraception.
The pro-choice movement can and should demand a standardized system of sex education in this country, where every junior high and high school student is taught about STI prevention, contraception, and consent. Contraception education should be expansive, educating students not just about condoms but about methods like the IUD, which are known for having an exponentially lower failure rate than condoms. Teenagers are already using contraception more effectively than ever before, suggesting that they are educating themselves about their options through the internet. If our school system helped them out, we could get our teen birth rates to the low levels experienced in other Western nations that do offer better forms of sex education.
Trump lashes out at Elizabeth Warren after she joins forces with Hillary Clinton: “I think she is a racist”
(Credit: Indian Country Today (Getty))
At a raucous rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, Monday, popular progressive Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren laid to rest any doubts about her commitment to defeating Donald Trump after refusing to endorse Hillary Clinton during a protracted Democratic primary battle, forcefully and enthusiastically taking on the presumptive Republican nominee alongside his direct rival.
“Hillary has brains, she has guts, she has thick skin and steady hands, but most of all, she has a good heart. And that’s what America needs!” Warren declared, with a beaming Clinton standing beside her in a matching blue pantsuit.
“When Donald Trump says he’ll make America great, he means make it even greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump. Great for the guys who don’t care how much they’ve already squeezed from everyone else. Great for the guys who always want more.”
Repeating her riff against Trump that he is a “small, insecure, money grubber,” Warren continued to assail the controversial candidate before eventually introducing Clinton.
“You know I could do this all day, but I won’t,” she half-jokingly insisted.
When Clinton took the mic, she smiled as she admitted that she indeed relishes in Warren’s attacks getting under Trump’s notorious thin-skin. And boy, has it ever?
"She exposes [Trump] for what he is: temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president." —Hillary on @elizabethforma
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 27, 2016
Trump initially delivered a more subdued response to the Clinton-Warren tag team after sending out a preemptive attack on Twitter earlier in the day:
Crooked Hillary is wheeling out one of the least productive senators in the U.S. Senate, goofy Elizabeth Warren, who lied on heritage.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2016
His official campaign statement titled “Sellout Warren” was released shortly after the campaign event ended and stayed away from name calling to hit Warren on the issues:
Warren is also campaigning for the author of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal she has routinely slammed … This is a trade deal that Clinton has expressed support for in over 45 public speeches. Warren’s campaigning for Clinton stands in stark contrast to the liberal ideals she once practiced.
But only moments later, Trump reportedly called NBC News reporter Hallie Jackson and personally unleashed on Warren, repeating his attacks on her claims of Native American heritage. (More on this particular line of attack here.)
“Elizabeth Warren is a total fraud. I know it,” Trump told Jackson. “She made up her heritage, which I think is racist. I think she is a racist, actually because what she did was very racist.”
“We call her Pocahontas for a reason,” Trump insisted.
In a press call following Warren’s appearance on the campaign trail Monday, Trump surrogate and former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, who lost his seat to Warren, suggested she take a DNA test to put Trump’s attacks on her heritage to rest:
Scott Brown challenging Elizabeth Warren to take a DNA test to prove her native american heritage.
— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) June 27, 2016
Scott Brown, on RNC call, says Warren could get Harvard to release records or “take a DNA test” to prove she’s part Native American.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) June 27, 2016
