Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 746
June 17, 2016
The Led Zeppelin “Stairway” trial is a Cameron Crowe movie just waiting to be made
The music-plagiarism trial over Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” taking place this week in a Los Angeles court, could have dead-serious implications for how popular music is made and performed in the future. Depending on how you see the similarities between the song and an instrumental called “Taurus” from the band Spirit, the decision could either endorse the stealing of songs or chill musical expression.
But the case is also, so far, something lighter: A Cameron Crowe movie waiting to happen. There are a number of elements that make it perfect as a sequel to the groupie-chronicle “Almost Famous.” Here are a few of the elements.
The case revolves around the king of all classic rock songs – one that’s now 45 years old – that involves two legends, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, taking the stand. In reality, it’s a bit strange that it’s taken so long for the suit to end up in court, but it gives the whole thing a great “Big Chill” quality. The visual possibilities of pony tails, ill-fitting bell bottoms, and flashbacks from 2016 to 1971 could be pure movie gold.
The case is brought by a representative of Spirit’s late songwriter Randy California, Michael Skidmore. The screenplay could imagine Skidmore – who is apparently a former music journalist – as a rock-loving die-hard who is not pursuing the case for the sake of money but as the world’s last hardcore Spirit fan, fighting for justice and for the legacy of a departed friend. And since he runs a trust that buys musical instruments for needy children – and it sounds like proceeds of the case will be sent there — he can be made out as the good guy in the trial for at least part of the film.
There’s at least some evidence that there’s a real heart to the case: Buried amid all the legalese in the original complaint (filed last year in Pennsylvania) is a charge of copyright infringement – which has a legal definition — and “falsification of rock n’ roll history,” which doesn’t. But it could make a great line in a movie. In fact, it could be the key line in a stirring “Jerry Maguire”-esque inspirational speech, or, with the right kind of enunciation, even a “Show me the money”-style catch phrase.
Here’s a great visual: The original plaintiff’s complaint is printed using the dramatic font that Zeppelin used for some of its albums. (This may be the Kashmir font, used on “Houses of the Holy.”)
The plaintiff’s lawyer, Francis Malofiy, needs to be cast very carefully: He’s been compared to both Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn, and has been on trial himself for smashing a beer bottle in the face of another patron of a Philadelphia bar. He’s also been called “abusive” by a judge. This comes from Matt Diehl’s reporting in Rolling Stone:
Entering the court with a briefcase made to resemble a Fender tweed-covered amp, Malofiy has the cover of Houses of the Holy ostentatiously glowing from his laptop and cracks his knuckles all through the day’s primary concern: jury selection. He’s a stark contrast to the patrician countenance of Zeppelin lawyer Peter Anderson and the seemingly bespoke suiting of his legal team. Indeed, as Malofiy fidgets, Page and Plant exude an almost zen calm, staring straight ahead without chatting or visibly reacting through the process; only towards the end before the lunch break does Page allow a wry smile to crack the facade.
Does the screenwriter contrast Malofiy’s toughness with a spirit of peace and love? The hippie origins of Spirit will this a great opportunity to explore the legacy of the ‘60s. “The song has an ethereal, district plucked guitar line and melody,” the complaint reads “Randy wrote the song as a tribute to his bandmates who he loved and cared for deeply—some of them sharing the astrological Taurus sign. “
How to put it all together? Maybe Patrick Fugit’s music-journalist character — Crowe’s own stand-in, of course — from “Almost Famous” grows into a disappointed old guy who’s lost his love of rock ‘n’ roll and wonders what it was all for now, in the era of downloading and failing magazines. He covers the case for The New York Times, and, inspired by the passion of a character like Mick Skidmore, the true-blue fan who never stopped fighting for the history of rock ‘n roll to be told right, realizes that music means everything to him it always has.
If the movie is successful — we could call it “Taurus,” sort of like David Fincher’s “Zodiac” – could there be another about the lawsuit over font plagiarism?
Given how starved for ideas movie studios seems these days, in an era of endless reboots and pointless sequels, the case over “Stairway to Heaven” could be the best thing to happen to Hollywood all year.
5 surprising cities where gentrification is displacing the poor
Walk down once-gritty neighborhood streets in many American cities and the telltale signs may be all around you. The coffee bar on the corner selling $5 latte macchiatos. The high-rise luxury condo building going up at record speed. The cocktail bar, the artisan pastry shop.
This is urban gentrification in action, the process by which middle- and upper-middle-class populations move into formerly lower-income neighborhoods, attracted by cheaper housing (and fleeing expensive housing in more affluent areas), transforming the area, driving costs up and forcing lower-income residents out. Nationwide, the percentage of rental increases have been double the percentage of wage increases, and according to a Macarthur Foundation report, renters are compensating by taking second jobs or running up debt by paying other expenses on their credit cards.
Surprisingly, a study in 2015 by Governing Magazine found that gentrification, as a national problem, is actually less pervasive than portrayed in the media. Focusing on neighborhoods whose median income and median home value from the 2000 Census was in the 40th percentile of all neighborhoods in the cities studied, results showed that only 8% of neighborhoods nationwide have experienced significant gentrification. A stroll down the less affluent streets of cities like Las Vegas, Rochester and El Paso would confirm that fact.
In nine out of 10 cities, gentrification has been almost nonexistent. Even in Detroit, where hipster artists are supposedly a vanguard of urban renewal, gentrification is not particularly widespread (less than 3% of the neighborhoods have gentrified).
However, the study did show that 20% of neighborhoods in America’s 50 largest cities were experiencing significant gentrification, with housing costs rising and poor residents being driven out. In these gentrified neighborhoods, the overall population has increased, and in particular, the white, non-Hispanic population has increased by an average of 4.3%. The poverty rate in these neighborhoods has declined. In comparison, non-gentrified neighborhoods have experienced lower overall populations, an increase in non-white residents, a decreased white, non-Hispanic population, and an increase in poverty by almost 7%. In stark terms, one in five neighborhoods is getting whiter and richer, while the majority of the studied neighborhoods are getting darker and poorer.
If there is a Ground Zero of American gentrification, Portland, Oregon would be the place. Already the whitest city in the United States, almost 60% of Portland’s lower cost neighborhoods have experienced gentrification since the 2000 Census. Northeast Portland in particular has been a destination for young professionals since the 1990s, and several formerly African-American neighborhoods have been transformed, becoming whiter and more affluent and forcing former residents to the fringes of the city. With incomes remaining flat over the last decade, and rents rising (more than 15% in 2015) as professionals flock to the city, a housing crisis looms in Portland, with a vacancy rate of only 3%, one of the country’s lowest. Houses too have increased in price, by 10% in 2015. Not far behind Portland in the gentrification race are Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Seattle, Atlanta, and Denver.
The aforementioned cities have been routinely cited as major centers of gentrification, but there are some surprising entrants in the gentrification race, urban centers where housing costs are also creating a crisis for poor residents. If you are thinking of moving here, you may want to make sure the bank account is solid.
1. Austin, Texas
While it is not entirely surprising that the bar-laden, rock ‘n rollin’ college town of Austin would be a destination for an affluent segment of the population, the numbers are pretty staggering. Between 2000 and 2010, the African-American population around the city’s historically black Huston Tillotson University has fallen by 60%. The Latino population has declined by 33%. Meanwhile the white population has increased by a whopping 442%. Fred McGhee, an urban and environmental anthropologist, told the Texas Observer, in regards to Austin urban planning, “The drop in African Americans was not an accident. The number one gentrifier in the city is the city itself.” Once literally known as the Negro District, the area is now 40% white, and the black residents are being increasingly priced out of the market. Condos and apartment buildings are popping up everywhere, driving up rents and house prices as developers cash in on the area’s trendiness. Rents in Austin are up by 7.5% year to year, averaging now around $1200 a month. Millennials relocating to the city are taken aback. “They arrive expecting to apples-to-apples between a city like Denver and Austin, and it’s an eye-opener and reality check,” Jim Gattis, a real estate agent, told the Austin American-Statesman. “At first they want to live in Central Austin, and then it’s ‘Holy cow, I can’t afford anywhere in Austin.’”
2. Sacramento, California
Thirty percent of Sacramento’s poor neighborhoods are gentrifying, and black neighborhoods like Oak Park are seeing the effects. Businesses catering to African-American residents are being replaced by places like Capital Floats, where you can float in a flotation tank for an hour for $65. Health bars, coffee shops and high-priced boutiques are peppering the neighborhood. A two-bedroom apartment can now cost $1500 a month, and some houses over $400,000. While true that urban blight is being removed, chain link fences replaced by white picket fences, so to speak, and home sales are increasing (by 10% last year), higher prices are threatening to price out the longtime residents. “If you stand on 35th and Broadway, you see the renaissance of a community. You see everything that sends a signal that this is a community in transition,” former NBA star and current Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson told the Sacramento Bee. “On one hand that’s a great thing. On the other hand, we can’t be a victim of our own success.”
3. Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, the country music capital of the world, has long taken pride in its small-town persona. Ask any Nashville native and they will tell you they have no desire to become another bloated Atlanta. And yet, beginning around 20 years ago, Nashville started becoming just that. As entertainment and health care industry money flows into the city, highways, stadiums and convention centers have sprouted up, and with these have come wealthy newcomers, alerted to the city by the media, who have dubbed Nashville the It city. Houses that 10 years ago sold for $40,000 can now fetch over half a million dollars, and developers have been buying small houses and replacing them with McMansions. Pricing wars have seen houses sell for above asking price. Meanwhile, in downtown Nashville, teachers and artists, who once flourished, can no longer afford to live there. The once mostly black 12South neighborhood, close to both public housing and to major universities like Vanderbilt and Belmont, has seen home prices rise by 269% between 2000 and 2012. Almost 60% of the black residents there have been driven out by the cost, and in their place, a hipster paradise has blossomed complete with boutiques, restaurants, coffee bars, and the like. Meanwhile, low wages and lack of affordable housing has, ironically, in a mirror opposite of “white flight,” resulted in a migration of the low-income black population to the suburbs. NashvilleNext, a major Nashville-Davidson County government initiative and report adopted in June 2015, refers to this as the “suburbanization of poverty.”
4. Charleston, South Carolina
White millennials have flocked to Charleston, South Carolina, drawn by the boom in the city’s tech sector and its high salaries. So many, in fact, that Charleston has, for the first time in six decades, become a majority-white city. Unsurprisingly, the real estate developers have followed. With the influx of tech workers, along with students from the College of Charleston, downtown Charleston has seen median rent prices go up more than much larger cities. A one-bedroom can cost $1600, higher than in Atlanta or Chicago. House prices have doubled in the past few years, up more than $50,000 just in the past year. And like other cities struggling with gentrification, the non-white population has suffered the most. In some Charleston neighborhoods, nearly half of the African-American residents have left, as even in areas riddled by higher crime rates, four-bedroom apartments are renting for up to $3000 a month, with students snatching them up. Meanwhile, struggling families, many working in low-paying food or hospitality services and forced to depend on federal help for housing costs, are limited to section-8 housing voucher maximums of just $1026 for a three-bedroom. As longtime Charleston resident King Grant-Davis told the Charleston City Paper, “Gentrification in itself may not be bad, but the part of pricing racial or ethnic groups out, making accommodations too expensive for them because of their economic status, that’s bad.”
5. Portland Maine
Portland, Maine, the “other” Portland, is a desirable city to live in if you don’t mind the chilly winters. It shows up on a lot of lists: Most Livable Cities, Hippest Cities, Healthiest Cities, Foodie-est Cities, etc. And that makes it a desirable location for the well-to-do to relocate. The problem is that there is only a limited housing stock to accommodate the incoming hordes of affluent people seeking to live in the attractive oceanside city. The result is that newcomers battle longtime residents for housing, and housing costs go up. Among the largest 100 metropolitan areas, Portland, Maine had the second largest rise in rental rates in the U.S. Rents rose 17.4%, the median rent in Portland rising to $1582, more than much larger Philadelphia and Chicago. With many hundreds of new families relocating to the city every year, a housing shortage has worsened, and the rent increases have driven the working class out of town in droves. Portland’s vacancy rate is near zero. Meanwhile shelters for the homeless are overflowing with citizens unable to compete with newcomers who consider the $1600 rents cheap by their former standards. The city has been struggling to come up with workable options to increase affordable housing without impacting Portland’s “livability.” Meanwhile, as rents have increased 40% in the past five years, Mayor Ethan Strimling has acknowledged that there was a $500 gap between what people make in Portland and what they can afford to pay for housing.
June 16, 2016
Dark times ahead in Litchfield: “Orange Is the New Black” returns with its most challenging season yet
Jessica Pimentel and Taylor Schilling in "Orange Is The New Black" (Credit: Netflix)
Nobody in their right mind wants to go to prison. But if you absolutely had to do time in your choice of fictional lockup, you’d be sane to choose a prison like “Orange Is the New Black’s” Litchfield Penitentiary.
Life inside Litchfield’s minimum security “camp” looks damn fun at times, especially in comparison to the clinks featured in HBO’s “Oz” or Fox’s far more ridiculous “Prison Break.” Compared to actual prisons – those violent, depressing boxes on display in MSNBC’s “Lockup,” Spike’s “Jail,” or A&E’s “60 Days In” – it might as well be a day spa.
This is not to forget the fact that the place is crumbling around the women serving their sentences there, that it nearly closed, and has seen its share of violence. But Litchfield’s inmates often achieve moments of transcendence too, magical circumstances like the mass jail break in season three’s finale. A hole in the fence surrounding the facility inspires the inmates to joyfully slam through en masse, disregarding the feckless guards who fail to stop their stampeding toward a nearby lake.
Their goal was not escape but rather to steal a few moments of pleasure. Together they laugh and splash, all personal and tribal tensions washing away for few minutes under the sun.
Black Cindy (Adrienne Moore) used the lake to receive the ritual of tevilah, completing her conversion to Judaism. Poussey (Samira Wiley) and Soso (Kimiko Glenn), two outsiders, found one another and floated together. Suzanne, also known as “Crazy Eyes,” (Uzo Aduba) discovers she’s the object of a crush, which is a first – usually, it’s the other way around.
Elsewhere, meanwhile, Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) was being strangled by a hitman, and 100 new prisoners, women not used to such a convivial atmosphere behind bars, were arriving on buses.
Each joyful interlude in Litchfield is purchased by several slops of messy, harsh reality, and that balancing is part of what makes “Orange Is the New Black” feel genuine, if not completely realistic. That sense of honest connection with the drama’s characters and their stories lead many of us to blow through new episodes as quickly as possible.
But the decidedly different emotional space explored in season four, particularly in comparison to previous seasons, could make some viewers take a little more time with it. This new season is more challenging to experience than it ever was, bigger and messier.
This is not to imply that season four is joyless. There’s plenty of absurdity to be found in a place with zero privacy, where maxi-pads are suddenly rare items of value and where, say, the freshly converted Cindy is thrust into close quarters with a devout African American Muslim. And Litchfield is still home of conspiracy theorist Lolly (Lori Petty), who builds a cardboard time machine in the laundry room that becomes a very popular getaway.
Above all of this, the prison’s new corporate overlords are speeding up efforts to increase their bottom line, which means more bodies in the prison bunks without any corresponding increase in resources to manage and care for them.
Naturally, tempers flare and new alliances arise: Moments after everyone returns from the lake, Dayanara’s mother Aledia (Elizabeth Rodriguez ) takes one look at the situation and sums up the situation perfectly: “It’s sardine time, bitches. We a for-profit prison now. We ain’t people no more. We bulk items.”
Up to this point, “Orange Is the New Black’s” phenomenal success has been rooted in its effective usage of Litchfield as a closed society consisting of tribes, “families” who maintain peace by adhering to an established set of rules. This is a not a series built around the standard seasonal arc with linking subplots; rather, its engine is fueled by vivid diverse personalities, and the intimacy with which they connect to one another and to the viewer.
The size of “Orange’s” ensemble demands that approach. Netflix lists 19 actors in the main cast on its season four informational press release—19 stories the writers must service so we can better relate to what these women are doing and where they’re going. That number doesn’t include the names of a number of familiar faces and key new players.
As such, fans flip through each season as if it’s a beloved album of family photos, savoring each character’s life developments as if they’re slideshows. If you think about it, that’s the typical concept of how doing time works: in one-day, one-hour, one-minute frames.
When “Orange” began, series creator Jenji Kohan used Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) to guide us through Litchfield by bungling her way through every interaction. A WASPy graduate of Smith, Piper soon learned to exploit her crisp elocution and prim manners to wheedle special treatment out of correctional officers like the pathetic, misogynistic Sam Healy (Michael Harney) or Joe Caputo (Nick Sandow), who were partly charmed by her ladylike presentation, and partly just wanted to bang her.
Piper was never more interesting than the characters who surrounded her; the fact that they orbited her like bees circle a flower was an uncomfortable flaw in those opening episodes.
But Kohan and her writers have been gently sidelining Schilling’s character since the end of season one. In this fourth season, as much as Piper still wants to believe she’s the center of Litchfield’s universe – “I’m gangsta. Like, with an ‘A’ at the end,” she hilariously informs a fellow inmate in the premiere — her white girl problems are blessedly less central to the tale than they’ve ever been.
Yet it’s Piper’s egomania and greed that sparks a significantly detrimental transformation in Litchfield’s heretofore friendly ecosystem. If you didn’t hate her before, you just might now.
“Orange Is the New Black” has always been an ensemble dramedy, but this season’s grimmer tone allows the writers to definitively feature the other actors more prominently, beyond simply servicing the audience favorites like Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Dayanara (Dascha Polanco), Crazy Eyes and Poussey with expository flashbacks.
As the inmates desperately searched for something to believe in last season, Caputo was frantically doing what he could to prevent the prison from shutting down. To save it, he facilitated its privatization, and the company that took over, MCC, proved itself to be more concerned about the bottom line than caring for the prison population. Litchfield’s seasoned guards were the company’s first casualties.
MCC’s reaction to a hate crime committed against transgender prisoner Sophia Burset (Laverne Cox) heralded this new way of handling problems: It placed her in solitary, one of the worst fates a prisoner can endure. In this corporate culture, it’s easier to disappear an issue than to solve it.
Worse developments arise immediately. A new cadre of guards from the max, led by the uncompromising Desi Piscatella (Brad William Henke), created a charged, tense atmosphere. Soon after, MCC hires several armed forces veterans who take advantage of lax managerial oversight to dehumanize and degrade the women for their entertainment.
Immune from all of this is Litchfield’s celebrity inmate, lifestyle maven Judy King (Blair Brown). Corporate’s concern over keeping her safe and comfortable grants her special perks that grow increasingly ridiculous.
Fortunately Judy is so beloved, famous and rich that the other inmates are content to even get a glimpse or an audience with her; celebrity is still something of an inoculant against woe here. The only person who doesn’t swoon at her feet is Red (Kate Mulgrew), once the prison’s top matriarch and now dethroned by MCC’s invasion.
This new “upstairs/downstairs” dynamic spurs another a power shift: there are now far more Latino prisoners than black or white, and with more hardcore prisoners joining Litchfield, the place’s overall sense of caring for one other decreases with each passing day.
Other series have touched upon discussions of white privilege and the Black Lives Matter movement; in season four we see these concepts play out in real time as the new guards institute invasive, exploitative practices that break down Litchfield’s fabric.
Caputo and the less seasoned guards, then, are caught between this clash of the new order and the old ways. Caputo has long been obsessed with being a good guy, and he wants to leave a legacy of doing right by the women and men in his care. Problem is, toeing the company line wins him more perks like company travel and fine suits. As he cares less, he grows careless.
Thus the fourth season also becomes an interesting study in the destructiveness that corporate hegemony inflicts upon a flawed- if-relatively stable community.
Interestingly, this season of “Orange” also brings the clashes roiling the outside world — conversations about race, class and economic inequality — inside the prison walls. When a maltreated underclass has had enough, and its collective rage boils over, chaos is sure to follow…and on its heels, tragedy.
How effectively “Orange Is the New Black” explores these conversations is questionable, and mining this territory comes at the cost of developing the stories in which we’ve become invested. Perhaps due to the sheer size of the cast, the smaller stories within the larger conflicts receive less focus, and few of the newer characters, particularly a trio of white supremacists, are written thinly as tissue.
But these new episodes also prove there’s room for evolution in this series, particularly demonstrated by Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning)’s efforts to process an assault endured last season and her attempts to adopt a measure of self-respect.
It would be easier for “Orange is the New Black” to time hump its ways back to that first season, when many viewers were a bit more naïve about the prison system, and the myriad ways that human beings are treated as both chattel and cattle. Doing so, however, would make the show feel less brave and special.
Though this season ends on a darker, uncertain note that could make sentimental viewers wish we could all return to that sunny lake where anything seemed possible, there’s no question that Litchfield, and the show itself, still retains a measure of magic.
Coming out saves lives: The deadly potential of internalized homophobia is all too real
(Credit: Reuters/Mike Blake)
Omar Mateen was the guy at the bar, drinking alone in the corner. Those who describe him as a regular at Pulse, a nightclub located in Orlando, Florida, say that he was prone to making a scene. Ty Smith, who saw him there frequently, told the Orlando Sentinel, that “he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent.” Patrons remember him not as violent but kind of pathetic, a gloomy character prone to long rants about his father—that is, when he wasn’t offering to buy other men drinks.
Mateen wasn’t just the saddest guy to ever hold a martini. He may have also been gay.
Reports suggest that Mateen, married with a wife and young son, had profiles posted on several hookup websites that cater to gay and bisexual men, including Grindr and Jack’d. (Neither company has been able to confirm if he used their service.) Mateen didn’t go home with the men he chatted with. He was the kind of guy who would only say “Hi,” lurking but never really engaging. More than one man who claims to have chatted with Mateen describes his behavior as “creepy.” Cord Cedeno, who also was a regular at Pulse, told MSNBC that he had to block Mateen on the app. The 29-year-old was wearing a dress shirt and tie in his profile photo.
On Saturday night, that bar erupted in gunfire. Mateen, carrying a SIG Sauer MCX, the kind of semi-automatic, high-capacity assault-type rifle that has become an emblem of American violence, killed 49 people, wounding 53. Six of those shot remain in critical condition.
Seddique Mateen, the shooter’s father, denies that his son’s sexuality had anything to do with the crime, nor does he believe that his son had homosexual leanings. “He wasn’t gay,” he told the Advocate. “I know 90 percent, 95 percent.” Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, disputes that claim, stating that his father not only suspected that his son was gay but routinely berated him for it, yelling at Omar repeatedly in front of Dias. Seddique, though, looks at the bloodshed as the ultimate proof of his son’s heterosexuality. “If he was gay, why would he do something like this?” Mateen asked an interview with The Palm Beach Post.
The fact that Omar Mateen was responsible for unspeakable atrocities against the LGBT community is not, however, evidence that he could not have been gay. Internalized homophobia is a brutal, deadly force, one that is responsible some of the worst anti-gay violence in our nation’s history. When UpStairs Lounge caught fire in 1972, killing 32 people, the arsonist was not a stranger to the establishment. He’d been kicked out of the New Orleans gay bar the same evening.
When it comes to the gay community, some of the most profound hate grows at home.
Dionte Greene of Ferguson, Missouri was murdered two years ago by a man he began chatting with online. According to a report from the Guardian, the assailant was initially ambivalent about the encounter; he was in the closet and reticent about risking exposure by meeting in person. “But something changed,” the Guardian’s Zach Stafford writes, “and the ‘trade’ agreed to meet up that night.” The encounter would end with Greene dead in his car, shot in the face by his attacker. He was just 22.
Gay hookup apps and dating websites have made it easier for men struggling with self-loathing to meet up with men they intend to harm. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Grindr issues warnings to users that the person they’re chatting with “may be posing as LGBT to entrap you.”
This, though, is not a modern phenomenon. Although Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy are often described as “gay killers,” what drove them to murder innocent people was both a desire for other men and a fear of those very sexual impulses. As a 2011 report from the Wisconsin Gazette argues, Dahmer’s 15 young male victims were not only targets of the killer’s own “internalized homophobia” but also the virulent bigotry in the state’s police department.
The police were notified when 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone was trying to escape Dahmer, drugged and “running naked and bleeding down a street.” Dahmer told authorities the boy was drunk and that the two were having a “lovers’ quarrel.”
The police declined to do a background check on Dahmer or get involved. They even helped the serial killer usher his victim back home. That was not because they trusted Dahmer or were concerned for Sinthasomphone’s well-being. “It was later revealed in police transcripts that while Dahmer was killing the boy, the responding officers were making homophobic jokes and talking about getting ‘deloused’ after coming into contact with gays,” the Gazette reports.
Ted Haggard didn’t eat people. Haggard, an evangelical pastor who formerly preached anti-gay hate from his pulpit, was exposed in 2006 for leading a double life: He was accused of using methamphetamines with a male prostitute whose services he frequently solicited over a three-year span. In the documentary “Jesus Camp,” Haggard stated that his views on queer people were a no-brainer: “We don’t have to debate what we should think about homosexual behavior. It’s written in the Bible!”
“I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war,” Haggard would later say on the subject.
The anti-gay conservative barricading his closet with Old Testament-style hate is one of the oldest clichés in the book, but it’s a cliché because it is so often true. These cases are often anecdotal, but they are many—from Randy Boehning to former New York City mayor Ed Koch, whose long-standing sexuality rumors even made it into his CNN obituary as part of criticism of his handling of the AIDS crisis.
As an Idaho Senator, Larry Craig frequently legislated against the rights of the LGBT community—voting against including sexual orientation in hate crime laws twice (in 2000 and 2002) and workplace protections for LGBT employees. He also supported an amendment to the state constitution in 2006 that would define marriage as between a man and a woman.
A year after voting to ban same-sex unions in Idaho, Craig was caught in an airport bathroom attempting to solicit sex from the man in the stall next to him, who happened to be an undercover police officer.
It’s always the ones who say they have nothing to hide who have the most buried away.
The connection between outward virulent homophobia and living in the closet was supported by a 2012 study from Richard and William Ryan. The researchers showed that men who identify as “highly straight” were disproportionately likely to “indicate some level of same-sex attraction.” The Ryans compared their findings to what Freud called the “reaction formation,” which they describe as “the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled.” (A 2015 study on internalized homophobia came to similar conclusions.)
In the case of Mateen, these stifled feelings were compounded by his family life, including his Muslim father’s conservative religious views on LGBT people. Seddique Mateen has referred to homosexuality in interviews as “not an issue that humans should deal with.” He continued, “God will punish those involved in homosexuality.”
Media reports have focused on the red herring of Omar Mateen’s pledged allegiance to ISIS, even though Matten apparently didn’t know the difference between the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah. An extreme fundamentalist interpretation of the Qu’ran may have played a part, but his moral education was informed as much by internalized stigma as it was religion. Mateen’s father reports that shortly before the shooting, his son became outraged after witnessing same-sex affection in public. “They were kissing each other and touching each other, and he said: ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that,’” he said.
It’s difficult to speculate what was going on his mind when he saw others enjoying the love he denied himself. Did he think about a dream deferred, as Langston Hughes once wrote? We don’t, however, really need to speculate; we have research. Numerous studies have shown that living in the closet can be extremely detrimental to one’s mental health, leading to an increased risk for anxiety, depression, harming yourself, or even harming others.
Harvey Milk once argued that it was important for LGBT people to come out—because in doing so, we give others a chance to know us. It’s far more difficult to legislate against people who are your friends, neighbors, and family members. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, an overwhelming amount of people have been opening up about their sexuality on sites like Facebook and Twitter—or posting their stories to the LGBT subreddit. Former child actor and author Mara Wilson, known for her roles in “Matilda” and “Mrs. Doubtfire,” came out as queer in a series of tweets.
Following a week of unimaginable grief and tragedy, coming out has a completely different meaning: It potentially makes the world a safer place.
In fiction, anyone can be a protagonist: “I don’t understand this desire to only read about people who are like oneself”
Kaitlyn Greenidge (Credit: Syreeta McFadden)
Whenever I meet someone for the first time, I sometimes imagine what their parents must be like: the features of their face, the force of their personality. I think about the million micro-pressures exerted day after day by siblings and aunts and uncles, a vast network of love and guilt and expectation–all of it printing into the amalgam in front of me. Kaitlyn Greenidge’s debut novel, “We Love You, Charlie Freeman” captures that same fullness of family — its blemishes, its cracks, the tiny betrayals and the ties that bind.
Full disclosure: Kaitlyn and I have been friends since graduate school. We’ve spent many hours, cackling together in the corners of dark bars. From the start, her writing has been easy to fall in love with: simple, elegant, and possessing an immense tensile strength. Under a clumsier author, the story of a black New England family moving to the Berkshires to teach sign language to a chimp might read like a setup to a hateful joke, but in Greenidge’s hand, she reveals a profound understanding that the things that damn us may also save us.
Each family member feels so distinct and yet completely a part of each other. Whats your approach to writing families in fiction?
I wanted to write about a family that fundamentally can’t communicate with each other. There is a disconnect. I was just at a book club yesterday and someone said something like, “So many problems would be solved in this book if a family member just asked more questions.” They seemed surprised that this did not happen, but I think that’s probably more common in families than not–you don’t really want to know more about your family members, sometimes, because it is too painful or it brings up your own stuff. So you don’t ask. You go do something else, or you do something that at the time doesn’t make sense but you realize is really just your body trying to force the questions your conscious mind could not.
The book gives the story to Charlotte, the eldest. Why her as opposed to Callie or their mother Laurel for example?
I actually think the book is about Callie, the 9-year-old sister. Charlotte is the dominant voice, but Callie is, arguably, the daughter that survives. I liked writing in Charlotte’s voice, the voice of a teenaged girl–such a disparaged figure, especially in literary fiction. I liked forcing readers to take her emotions and observations seriously. But the book belongs to Callie.
How does Callie survive?
She stays emotionally open to something. It’s not clear what–I still don’t know what. I don’t want to give too much away but Callie can imagine a future in the way that the rest of the family maybe can’t.
Is that a virtue?
It is incredibly hard, incredibly wounding to stay open emotionally. It’s why very few people make it to adulthood truly doing so. I mean, really, really open: not just in moments when it serves you well or when you can already guess the outcome. I know very few adults who are able to live like that–probably only two or three.
I read Callie as a character that drifts in and out of delusion. But. We have this tendency in our culture to distrust emotional honesty and especially to distrust optimism. We make the assumption that the cynic is the truth-teller, telling us all the things we are too scared to face. Sometimes that is true, but not nearly as often as people think.
Cynicism is a very, very easy out. And it does not contain any greater truth than optimism does. Not really. There are many reasons, in this particular historic moment, why cynicism is touted as some great truth serum. But ultimately, that viewpoint is false and destructive. There’s nothing “realer” about pessimism. It is not a better lens for viewing the world.
Near the end of the book, Charles talks about wanting to talk about his love for something. This was a particularly poignant moment for me — to resist cynicism or hopelessness with a stubborn love. Can you talk more about that choice for this character?
I didn’t know how to write men. Or, I was intimidated writing a male character who was not a jerk or completely useless. All the other men in the book are straight-up emotional predators. I wanted to try to write a male character who did not operate from that place. Charles began to make sense to me when I realized he was a character who, as you put it, “resists cynicism or hopelessness with stubborn love.”
One of the repeating thematic ideas in the book is self-restraint. Nymphadora’s restraint as a Star, Charlotte’s restraint in, among other things, keeping her mother’s secret. Charles’ restraint when he’s teaching the school. What role does self-restraint play in your characters’ lives, and how they practice family, friendship, or race?
There is a feeling, when you are in a marginalized position, that if you just act really, really good and nice, the dominant group won’t hurt you. And acting good and nice is dependent upon how the dominant group defines those terms. That’s very real: it can ensure you don’t get killed sometimes. But only sometimes.
At a certain point, there’s no amount of respectable behavior you can engage in — the dominant group still views you as a little (or often more than a little) less than human. And the internal toll of constantly moderating your behavior like that — I wanted to explore that. When you are not allowed to publicly express yourself, and you police yourself to make sure you do not display the full human concert of emotions…what does that do to your internal life?
What does it do to your internal life?
From my experience? It screws with your emotional reactions to everything. It can seep into your intimate relationships, if you aren’t careful. You lose the ability to emotionally react in a natural way, or you are constantly second guessing your reactions, or your reactions can only be expressed in one tone — sadness, or anger or passive aggression. You cannot have authentic emotional interactions after a bit. Or, it becomes significantly harder.
Callie’s turn toward magic is an interesting one, especially given the hard scientific influences that surround her living in the institute. How does her use of mysticism and magic define her role within the book and in her family?
Callie is the only family member who stays emotionally open. She has a willingness to believe in good. I wanted to explore that belief. She’s not old enough to be self-conscious about it or to think of it as a detriment yet. I wanted her to have a space that let her push a belief in good to an extreme and a desire to dabble with the metaphysical and the supernatural seemed like a good place.
Does being the youngest play a role in that? In what ways do your characters’ roles in the family influence the person they become?
Oh, the birth order question. I don’t know how much that plays into it. I wanted a character who was optimistic, who would stay optimistic despite the evidence, and see what mental gymnastics that character engages in to do that.
You’re one of three sisters. How do you think that’s informed the way you see things?
There are always three versions of an event. It has been that way all my life: there is the thing that happened, and then everyone’s interpretation of it. My family exists in an unending re-enactment of “Rashomon.”
It used to drive me crazy when I was a kid: particularly because my sisters, not much older than I, insisted on their version being the truth. I’m old now. Now, no one in my family is so silly as to believe their version contains the whole truth. But there are still those moments when we will be talking about something and the conversation will run aground. It really does feel like that, like the bottom of a swift canoe suddenly scraping against a sandy river bottom. And we will have to stop and say “I remember that this way.” “Well, no, I remember that this way.” “Well, I don’t remember that at all. That wasn’t even on my radar. What I cared about then was this.”
It’s incredibly frustrating but I’m glad I grew up that way. It’s given me a healthy skepticism of dominant narratives, of anyone trying to say “My story is the only possible truth.”
How do you view fiction in connection with history?
I love both. Fiction, though, allows for imagination on the part of the reader. It is not didactic. It lets the reader form their own conclusions. It hopefully is not trying to convince you of anything. It’s magic. History is trying to convince.
Convince us of what?
History is trying to convince the reader of a certain version of events. Fiction, good fiction, leaves events up to interpretation. Most history is in the service of something other than itself: a nation, or a despot or the suppositions, prejudices and biases of the author. Fiction is also in the service of its author, but it only works if it seduces the reader into believing that the text is up to interpretation, that the reader is drawing her own conclusions, and that there is a certain mystery when you close the book. It’s that James Baldwin quote: “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”
In graduate school, you talked about wanting to write the book that you yourself would want to find and read at the library. Have you done that? What does it mean to you to have done that?
Yeah, that’s a Toni Morrison quote. I mean, as I wrote the book, on the days that I was more optimistic, I though “I can’t wait till it exists and I can read it.” A 13-year-old just tweeted at me that she got this book for her birthday and that honestly makes me so, so excited. It’s not like I am home right now, reading this book at my leisure. But I’m excited that it is out in the world.
So what’s the book that doesn’t exist yet, but needs to?
So many books. A book about what it is like to be educated in our current broken system. A book about what it’s like to grow up poor in an African country that’s being colonized by China. A book about what it’s like to watch our world literally melt away while nobody cares. And about existences I don’t even know about yet because I don’t know to know about them. I don’t understand this desire to only read about people who are like oneself. That makes no sense to me. Why open a book? Or only to read books where you feel inspired by the characters or want to be their friends. I don’t get that, either. That’s what is so lovely about fiction: unlike movies, anyone can be a protagonist. Movies: maybe one out of a thousand will have someone other than a middle-class, reasonably attractive white person in their twenties as the hero. Books, it can be anyone.
President Obama keeps focus on guns in Orlando: “Why it is they think our liberty requires these repeated tragedies”
At a makeshift memorial in honor of the 49 victims of the worst shooting in modern U.S. history, President Obama relayed a simple message from the surviving families after meeting with them and first responders on Thursday.
“They pleaded that we do more to stop the carnage,” Obama told reporters in Orlando, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden at his side.
“We can’t wipe away hatred and evil from every heart in this world. But we can stop some tragedies,” he argued “We can save some lives.”
“This debate needs to change,” Obama said of the federal inaction on gun control during his terms in office. “It’s outgrown the old political stalemates. The notion that the answer to this tragedy would be to make sure that more people in a nightclub are similarly armed to the killer defies commonsense.” Pulse nightclub had an armed guard when 29-year-old Omar Mateen opened fire early Sunday morning.
“Those who defend the easy accessibility of assault weapons should meet these families and explain why that makes sense,” the president demanded.
“I truly hope that senators rise to the moment and do the right thing,” Obama said.
“We’re all going to have to work together, at every level of government, across political lines, to do more to stop killers who want to terrorize us,” Obama said.
WATCH: President Obama’s full remarks after meeting with #Orlando shooting survivors and families of victims. https://t.co/qkyc0gPb3N
— ABC News (@ABC) June 16, 2016
Conservatives, furious with the president’s persistent focus on gun violence as he visits with the families of victims of a mass shooting for the 14th time, lashed out on Twitter:
President Selfie Stick is on my tv saying shit. It's on mute. Is he yelling at us again?
— Rick (@StrokesofCandor) June 16, 2016
WOW! Pushing your agenda on the very spot people died. What a douchebag. https://t.co/SEPIxiSHhT
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) June 16, 2016
Will leftists never tire of standing on the graves of victims to push their political agenda? https://t.co/unEu9DYYuq
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 16, 2016
This isn’t an argument, it’s emotional blackmail and it’s beneath contempt. https://t.co/3RS4ALelNK
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 16, 2016
america's 1st bathroom president now wiping his ass on the graves of orlando victims
— Nino (@baldingschemer) June 16, 2016
The President of the United States willfully shoved his head up his own ass and it's not coming out, ever. #Orlando https://t.co/ZGQukOWhIU
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) June 16, 2016
Reminder: We’re in this position of defending ourselves in clubs because this president didn’t contain the threat abroad.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 16, 2016
Obama – right now – Proving he is Domestic Enemy of Const USA: "gut one of the Bills of Rights, w/o regard to The People, The Law" WARNING.
— Jay Severin III (@Jay_Severin) June 16, 2016
If Zeppelin did steal “Stairway”: “It would be like finding out the Beatles didn’t write ‘Sgt. Pepper’”
Led Zeppelin (Credit: Reuters/Fatih Saribas)
Is Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” plagiarized from an obscure instrumental by the band Spirit? A court in Los Angeles is trying to work that out this week, with testimony by Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page as well as Spirit’s Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes. The trial will turn on legal definitions and precedents, which include cases involving songs by George Harrison and Robin Thicke. But the trial impact will be in the world of music, and it could be substantial.
To put the trial in context, Salon tracked down veteran music journalist Ira Robbins, who ran the Trouser Press magazine and its books on alternative rock ‘n’ roll. We spoke to Robbins from his office in New York; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
So what was most interesting about the second day of the case?
Two members of Spirit has testified, and [Jimmy] Page testified. The case seems to be leaning on a circumstantial connection, proving Page’s familiarity with Spirit and their music. Apparently there were a couple times Zeppelin played a medley that included “Fresh Garbage,” which is a Spirit song. What they’re trying to do, from what I can tell, is create an environment in which you come to think that Zeppelin was pretty familiar with Spirit’s music, and if there’s an audible similarity that there’s a reasonable belief that that could have been the source.
They’re also asking Page about the nights when Zeppelin played on the same bill as Spirit, and whether Page owned any Spirit albums.
After 40 years, that seems like a very hard case to make… Page apparently said he didn’t remember playing the album “Taurus” was on. It hardly seems like there was a smoking gun there, you know?
Let’s go back to the history of this sort of thing. The most famous early trial was about the George Harrison song “My Sweet Lord.” How did that work out, and what kind of impact did it have?
Harrison was eventually found guilty of plagiarizing “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons; I think the words they used was “unconsciously plagiarized” or “subconsciously plagiarized.” If I were Harrison, I would be more upset at that adverb than I would at the monetary cost to him, which was apparently quite substantial. You’re talking about somebody who’s a veteran musician, who’s learned and played thousands of songs – saying that when he sat down and wrote a song, that when he sat down to write a song, he heard something that sounded good and didn’t sound familiar. They didn’t even say he set out to steal that song. Certainly there have been plenty of cases of that – a lot of people have been dinged for clearly rewriting somebody else’s song. I think the Beach Boys got done for at least one Chuck Berry song [“Surfin’ U.S.A.” and “Sweet Little Sixteen”], and there was a hubbub last year for Sam Smith and Tom Petty [over “Stay With Me” and “I Won’t Back Down.”]
I think the idea there is you’re asking an awful lot of musicians to clear their heads of everything they know when they write a song. The tradition in rock music, and in blues and a number of other forms, is that it’s okay to take bits and pieces from here and there, and to cite things. There seems to be an enormous double standard here. There are a lot of songs where, say, the bass riff of “Day Tripper” is used, kind of a nod of appreciation. On the other hand, Hootie and the Blowfish quoted like seven words from a Bob Dylan song, and they had to pay for it, and Dylan got a co-writing credit. So it does sort of meander all over the highway, as far as what you can do, what you can’t do, when it’s okay and not okay. Obviously there are precedents, but I don’t see any clear-cut morality that speaks to the creative issues here.
Does it seem an improvement that after all this inconsistency, we’re seeing more cases that may eventually codify the issue more strictly?
I guess it would be if it gave artists a sense of what was okay and what was not okay. It’s like the copyright rule when it comes down to fair use. You and I, when we sit down to quote something in an article, have a pretty good idea of what’s acceptable. And we know we can’t take a paragraph from a book and put it in your book without quoting it. You can say, “This comes from so-and-so’s book from 1927, which says this.”… Songs don’t have that luxury of being formal that way. You can say so-and-so co-wrote that song; that’s what a lot of sampling credit is about. You arrange it in advance and you make a deal.
It’s not gonna help anyone who’s ever written a song that the rules have now been codified and they’re suddenly guilty. That’s gonna bring calumny down on thousands of songwriters who don’t deserve it.
There was a lot of apprehension after the “Blurred Lines” verdict – that it was going to chill musicians writing songs that might have a resemblance to anything that came before. And this case wasn’t about a chord progression or the melody, but the “feel” of the song. Did that seem like a dangerous precedent to you?
I don’t know that it’s had an impact: What goes on in the heads of songwriters around the world is entirely up to them. It certainly seemed at the time to be incredibly justified – a dead great artist [Marvin Gaye], who had no ability to defend himself, had been largely hijacked for the benefit of a pop single that made no acknowledgment of his role. One was clearly inspired by the other. But the law has its own mindset… I would have slapped Robin Thicke, but I’m not sure I would have taken $7 million from him.
Does it seem like the “Stairway” case will have a broad impact on popular music?
Well, they’ve been in court before…. I wonder if the plaintiff’s attorney will list the way Led Zeppelin has been accused of stealing songs over the years.
And the judge has said that is not admissible as evidence.
That’s really interesting. I think a salient issue is Zeppelin finding things they like and putting their songwriting credit to it.
Seems relevant to me!
One of my objections to Led Zeppelin, over the years, is their high-handed belief that if they want something, it’s theirs. Which goes along with their once-upon a time legendary bad behavior. The kind of people who might smash a hotel room are also the kinds of people who might say, “We want that song.”
I think the biggest issue with this is the song itself – the most-played classic-rock song of all time. It would be like finding out the Beatles didn’t write “Sgt. Pepper”… So what happens to this case is going to have a huge a huge impact because it’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
So what kind of echo effect will it have? Do you imagine lots of trials being spawned? What will its influence on music be?
I imagine there will be lots of ambulance chasers as a result. I’d think if Led Zeppelin could lose a case over “Stairway to Heaven,” then a lot of people who thought that that song by Van Halen sounded a lot like what they were playing at a bar in Tarzana in 1979… It doesn’t matter legally speaking if it’s true enough. If you can raise a case, there will be lawyers out there ready to work on spec, who may be able to make it stick.
I suspect you will see a lot of people rushing to try their luck at the same thing.
So much for Hugh Hewitt’s plan to defeat Donald Trump: “The GOP can’t afford to abandon a Trump candidacy,” the pundit now says
Hugh Hewitt (Credit: Wikimedia/Gage Skidmore)
Last week, conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt urged Republicans to stage a coup at the national convention in July to thwart Donald Trump.
Whether affected by the weekend’s attack in Orlando or GOP nominee Trump’s campaign’s threat to ban him from the convention, Hewitt is reversing his position and urging Republicans to rally around Trump because presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton presents “the real risk.”
“The tragedy in Orlando shifted the nation’s attention back to the enormous threat posed by radical Islam, and Trump demonstrated that unlike Clinton and Obama, he understands the magnitude of the crisis,” Hewitt wrote in a Washington Post Op-Ed Wednesday. “What is happening in real time is a return by Trump to a sharp focus on national security and immigration reform — a focus that brought him victory after victory in the fall. If he stays on those themes, and the über-theme of shoving aside political correctness, Trump’s appeal will steady and then climb.”
“Because ticket-splitting has dropped to all-time lows, the GOP can’t afford to abandon a Trump candidacy,” he continued. “Without him, Republicans risk low voter turnout in November and losses in statehouses across the country — scuttling the chance to advance conservative priorities at the state level, regardless of what Trump does while in office.”
Read the full Op-Ed over at The Washington Post.
John McCain follows Trump’s lead: President Obama is “directly responsible” for Orlando shooting
John McCain, Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Lucas Jackson/Photo montage by Salon)
While President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with the families of the 49 victims, first responders and the survivors of Sunday’s mass shooting at a gay Orlando nightclub, one-time rival and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain was joining with his party’s new leader, Donald Trump, in accusing the president of being “directly responsible” for the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
McCain made the comments to a gaggle of reporters in a Senate hallway in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. Responding to a question about the gun-control debate that has flared on Capitol Hill, the senator lashed out at the president for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq too soon and allowing for the rise of ISIS.
“Barack Obama is directly responsible for it, because when he pulled everybody out of Iraq, al-Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and ISIS is what it is today thanks to Barack Obama’s failures,” McCain said, according to the Washington Post.
When asked to clarify his comments, McCain, currently locked in another tough primary battle, reportedly doubled down.
“He pulled everybody out of Iraq, and I predicted at the time that ISIS would go unchecked, and there would be attacks on the United States of America,” McCain said of the president, conveniently leaving out any mention of the Status of Forces Agreement that President Bush signed agreeing to a troop removal date with the Iraqi government.
“It’s a matter of record,” McCain argued. “So he is directly responsible.”
JOHN MCCAIN's full "directly responsible" comments, via @frankthorp pic.twitter.com/AahJ0ijEWL
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 16, 2016
McCain also made similar comments on Wednesday, arguing that “the cause of terror is the failures of the Obama administration to address this issue seriously.”
“This is what the president called the JV (junior varsity) that just caused the deaths of 49 people in Orlando,” McCain said, laying blame for the attack squarely on the president’s foreign policy.
Of course, McCain’s comments come one day after Trump tweeted a dubious Breitbart article to essentially making the exact same argument to prove that President Obama is responsible for the attacks in Orlando.
An: Media fell all over themselves criticizing what DonaldTrump "may have insinuated about @POTUS." But he's right: https://t.co/bIIdYtvZYw
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s office was quick to slam McCain’s comments on Thursday.
McCain’s “unhinged comments are just the latest proof that Senate Republicans are puppets of Donald Trump,” spokesman Adam Jentleson told the Associated Press.
“there is no daylight between Senate Republicans and Donald Trump.”
In contrast, however, Arizona’s freshman senator, Republican Jeff Flake, joined with other prominent Republicans to forcefully rebuke Trump’s response to the attack in Orlando earlier this week.
“That’s beyond the pale,” Flake said of Trump’s suggestion that President Obama is any way linked to the shooting in Orlando. “I mean really, just particularly, particularly disgusting to imply that that the president was hiding something,” Flake said.
After several national outlets reported on McCain’s comments, he attempted to “clarify” his remarks:
To clarify, I was referring to Pres Obama’s national security decisions that have led to rise of #ISIL, not to the President himself
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) June 16, 2016
“I did not mean to imply that the President was personally responsible,” McCain said in a statement, claiming he “misspoke.”
“I was referring to President Obama’s national security decisions, not the President himself. As I have said, President Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 led to the rise of ISIL. I and others have long warned that the failure of the President’s policy to deny ISIL safe haven would allow the terrorist organization to inspire, plan, direct or conduct attacks on the United States and Europe as they have done in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and now Orlando.”
Left-wing lawmaker shot dead by nationalist shouting “Britain first!”, as far-right is on rise in Europe
Jo Cox (Credit: Reuters/Yui Mo)
A left-wing lawmaker was fatally shot and stabbed by a British nationalist on Thursday, reports say, as tensions flare mere days before the U.K. votes on whether or not to leave the European Union.
This attack comes at a time when the far-right is on the rise throughout Europe, fueling extremist violence.
Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who opposes an exit from the E.U., was slain outside of a library in Birstall, West Yorkshire on Thursday afternoon. Eyewitnesses, according to reports, say she was shot three times and stabbed several times.
Multiple witnesses say the alleged killer repeatedly shouted “Britain first!” as he attacked her. This could potentially be a reference to Britain First, a far-right, anti-immigrant party that supports Brexit, a British exit from the E.U.
Britain First, however, strongly denies any involvement, and issued a statement saying it “could have been a slogan rather than a reference to our party.” The far-right party’s leader, Paul Golding, condemned the attack and said the shooter could have actually shouted, “It’s time to put Britain first!”
Four hours after the attack, Cox was declared dead.
British officials arrested the suspected attacker, 52-year-old Tommy Mair .
Cox, 41, was a mother of two children, ages 3 and 5.
The U.K. will vote on Brexit on June 23. Polls show that Britons will likely vote to remain in the E.U.
The Labour Party, led by insurgent, longtime socialist activist Jeremy Corbyn — who has been described as the British Bernie Sanders — opposes Brexit.
Far-right political parties such as Britain First and the U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP, hope to leave in order to cut down on immigration and push back against refugees. They see the E.U. as a bureaucracy that curtails the sovereignty of their country.
Britain First insists it is not a racist party, instead identifying itself as “loyalist.” Its founder, Jim Dowson, left the party 2014, however, warning that it was full of “racists and extremists.”
The extreme anti-Muslim party has “Christian patrols” that stage “invasions” of British mosques. It has applauded Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for proposing a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.
When the Labour Party’s Sadiq Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani descent who was born in the U.K., was elected mayor of London, Britain First’s leader Paul Golding expressed extreme disapproval, turning his back to TV cameras as Khan gave his victory speech.
The nationalist attack on the left-wing lawmaker is by no means the only incident of its kind in Europe.
In October, a neo-Nazi attacked a leading candidate in the mayoral race in Cologne, Germany. Henriette Reker, who supports admitting refugees, was stabbed in the neck by a right-wing extremist who opposed accepting Muslim asylum-seekers. Reker survived, and won the election.
As Salon has reported before, a persistent economic crisis and unpopular austerity measures that gut social spending, in conjunction with the mass influx of refugees, have given rise to ultra-nationalist and even neo-fascist movements in Europe.
This increasing right-wing extremism has fueled violence, which is often linked to anti-refugee sentiment.
In Germany, more than 1,100 attacks on refugee shelters and asylum-seekers were registered with the government in the first five months of 2016.
In May, police in Austria arrested a suspected neo-Nazi who allegedly threatened to massacre refugees seeking asylum in the country.
Nearly 1 million refugees and migrants passed through Austria on their way toward Germany and Scandinavia in 2015. Germany accepted more than 1 million refugees, although it is now deporting some to Turkey in a deal that the U.N. and human rights experts say is likely illegal.
Most refugees are fleeing Western-backed wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and more.
This influx of refugees has increased support for far-right parties like Britain First and UKIP. It has also fueled the anti-Muslim Pegida movement, which was founded by a man who dresses up like Hitler for fun, and which now has branches throughout Europe.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière warned in May that there has been a “brutalization” of society.
