Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 747
June 16, 2016
Kim Kardashian: Taylor Swift “totally gave the okay” to Kanye’s “Famous”
FILE - In this May 5, 2016 file photo, American reality-show star Kim Kardashian gets into a classic American car next to her husband, rap singer Kanye West and their daughter North West, in Havana, Cuba. Artists, writers and intellectuals who believe deeply in Cubas opening to the world are questioning their governments management of an onslaught of big-money pop culture. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File) (Credit: AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)
On Thursday, GQ published a lengthy profile of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” co-star Kim Kardashian. Surprisingly, the profile offers insights into the Kimye and Kardashian family dynamics that haven’t already been offered ad nauseam by reality television and tabloid media.
1. Beneath the veneer of “power couple” grandiosity, Kim and Kanye are just two normal people with normal people problems.
“Sometimes a designer will e-mail Kim a sketch of an ensemble and Kanye will request to see it; on occasion Kim forgets to forward the e-mail, so Kanye must ask again and again. This drives him crazy.”
2. Kim has three mobile apps — “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” “KIMOJI,” and “Kim Kardashian West Official” — and she could buy and sell you if she wanted.
“Together these apps generate revenue projected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars—money that dwarfs Kim’s E! paycheck.”
3. But Kanye appreciates his wife for who she is and what she has.
“‘Even though I’m an ass girl, Kanye always says my boobs don’t get as much credit as they deserve,’ Kim explained.”
4. Kim maintains that Taylor Swift was consulted beforehand about Kanye’s infamous “I made that bitch famous” lyric from Life of Pablo track “Famous.”
Kim said Swift, “totally gave the okay. Rick Rubin was there. So many respected people in the music business heard that [conversation] and knew … I don’t know why she just, you know, flipped all of a sudden.”
5. Kanye films the production of his albums for posterity.
Thus his phone conversation with Swift was filmed — something she knew. Which is why, according to Kim, Swift’s attorney sent a letter saying, “Don’t ever let that footage come out of me saying that. Destroy it.”
Read the full profile over at GQ.
Trump’s madness is the GOP’s: Republicans have long called Obama a terrorist sympathizer
Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Star Max)
Of course Donald Trump went there. But should anyone be surprised?
In the wake of the terror attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee seemed to suggest that President Obama isn’t waging a war on terror because he doesn’t want the terrorists defeated; because Obama somehow sympathizes with their cause.
“He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. “We’re led by a man that either is, is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind.” Trump added, “People cannot — they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the ways he acts and can’t even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable.”
Suggesting Obama won’t defend the homeland or try to keep Americans safe ranks among the most reckless allegations a politicians can make. What would the Democratic equivalent be, just in terms of pure shock value? It would be like if Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 campaign claimed President George W. Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 terror attacks. It’s hard to even comprehend what the corresponding conspiracy claim would look like. And it’s unthinkable that a Democratic nominee would campaign on it.
But if Trump’s thinly veiled suggestion about Obama’s allegiance today has produced shock among political reporters and pundits, and if anyone in the media is surprised that a major party nominee would sink to such depths on the campaign trail, they shouldn’t be.
The sad fact is the right-wing media has been wallowing in this fever swamp for a very long time. (And yes, the press has mostly looked away from the radical turn.) Trump’s now just borrowing their hare-brained allegation suggesting Obama can’t be trusted to defend the American way of life because Obama doesn’t really endorse it, and he’s using the attack line as a general election talking point. (Candidates traditionally use surrogates if they want to lob dark, unseemly allegations against their opponent. Not Trump.)
Recall that Trump himself was a central protagonist in the birther charade of 2011 when he was going on Fox News and suggesting Obama was hiding his birth certificate “because maybe it says he is a Muslim.”
Following widespread criticism, the Trump campaign is trying to walk things back with implausible explanations. Via spokeswoman Hope Hicks, Trump sent a statement to Bloomberg claiming he was “referring to the fact that at times President Obama seems more in support of Muslims than Israel.” (Trump also announced he was revoking The Washington Post’s press credentials for reporting on his comments yesterday.)
But his comments on Fox & Friends weren’t even the first time Trump has made bizarre insinuations about President Obama’s allegiances. Trump told right-wing radio host Michael Savage that perhaps Obama “doesn’t want to get rid of the problem” of Islamic terrorism. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on.” (Savage, for his part, thinks “someone” in the White House “is playing for the other side.”)
As Right Wing Watch reported, at a rally last November, Trump said about Obama’s handling of the alleged threat from Muslims, “We can’t close our eyes. I don’t know what’s wrong with Obama, he wants to close his eyes and pretend it’s not happening. Why is he so emphatic on not solving the problem? There’s something we don’t know about. There’s something we don’t know about.”
And it’s not just Trump who’s been wallowing in that outrageous rhetoric this election cycle. After the Paris terror attack last year, Ted Cruz claimed Obama “does not wish to defend this country.” (A Cruz advisor claimed Obama had “switched sides” in the war against terror.)
Today there’s a certain irony in Trump trying to mainstream this ugly attack, considering Obama’s enjoying some of his highest approval ratings in years, confirming that the terrorist-sympathy claim resides on the fringes of American politics.
The disconcerting nonsense all stems from a failed, eight-year campaign by the right-wing media to portray Obama as foreign and an other, as not like you and me; to depict him as untrustworthy because he supposedly doesn’t subscribe to American values. It’s a claim that’s been embraced as the gospel among Fox News and GOP faithful.
“Barack Obama does not have the will of the American people, Americanism in his soul,” Fox News’ Keith Ablow once declared.
Obama haters have been told for years that not only does the president not love America, and doesn’t “give a shit” about protecting it from terror, but it’s probably because he tilts toward terrorist sympathies.
The day after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, when Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly wondered why Obama refused to condemn radical Islam, radio host Bill Cunningham suggested “maybe his middle name is a clue, as well as the fact that he spent his childhood practicing the Muslim faith.”
Later that year when President Obama orchestrated the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, Fox News’ Ablow denounced the move andspeculated it happened because the commander-in-chief “doesn’t affiliate with patriotism” and “wants out of America.”
Last November, O’Reilly regular guest Dennis Miller claimed Obama wouldn’t get “nasty” with ISIS because the president has “Islamic sympathies,” while O’Reilly stressed, “he certainly doesn’t want any part in the war on terror.”
And then there was Benghazi.
In the hours after the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Libya in September 2012, then-Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney staged a late-night press conference to attack Obama [emphasis added]:
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” he said. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Candidate Romney only toyed with that premise in 2012. But for years, the fervent idea of Obama’s questionable sympathies became a strong undercurrent of the right-wing media’s Benghazi obsession. The churning, man-made controversy allowed Obama’s haters to project their ugliest fantasies and depict the president as a traitor who chose to let Americans die in Libya at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
And it fed the flames of the ugly allegations about Obama being a Manchurian Candidate who let Americans die in Benghazi and “sacrificed American lives for politics.”
This is nasty, vile right-wing media stuff. And now the Republican Party is championing it during an election year.
June 15, 2016
Appetite for destruction: Glorifying gun violence on screen despite the sobering reality
David Spade and Adam Sandler in "The Do-Over" (Credit: Netflix)
Whether you know his name or not, you probably know the work of photographer Joe Rosenthal. Rosenthal was the AP reporter who captured one of the 20th century’s most iconic images: five Marines raising an American flag on Mount Suribachi. “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” won Rosenthal a Pulitzer and remains, as the Prize committee described the image in 1945, a “frozen flash of history.”
Today, Rosenthal’s photograph is part of the entertainment industry’s response to the sickening tragedy at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, a tragedy that has made history as both the nation’s most deadly mass shooting and targeting of the LGBT community. The producers of “Hamilton” removed muskets from their televised performance on the Tony Awards. TNT’s “The Last Ship” (“Find a cure. Stop the virus. Save the world”) postponed the planned premiere of its third season, which begins with a nightclub shooting. And, prompting reactions from more than 130,000 people, on his Facebook page, actor/writer/director James Franco posted a revision of Joe Rosenthal’s 1945 photo. Captioned with #prayfororlando, Franco recasts Rosenthal’s shot with four muscled men (three bare-chested, one tank-topped) hoisting a rainbow flag atop an ambiguous mountain.
While some of those 130,000 reactors laud Franco’s support of the LGBT community, others are incensed (and perhaps uninformed, conflating Rosenthal’s photo with the whole of the American military):
“I hate this,” one commenter wrote. “This isn’t right. This picture is supposed to be supporting veterans and those who have fallen. Not the gay pride flag. It was a tragedy i [sic] agree. But, this is a little much.”
That comment, by the way, had 327 likes as I scrolled through the thread. In the wake of horrific tragedy, it seems, Americans are eager to talk about what the shooting in Orlando does or doesn’t signify (terrorism, an attack on the LGBT community, an attack on our American freedoms), and, not surprisingly, less inclined to interrogate our culture—and, especially our entertainment industry’s—obsession with guns.
***
Recently, I watched my first Netflix original film, “The Do-Over.” A buddies-who’ve-gotten-old comedy starring Adam Sandler and David Spade, the movie is typical Happy Gilmore-style humor—except with hit men and automatic weapons.
That movies are becoming more violent is not news. Reports on the effects of violent programming on viewers nearly always situate the concern in a historical context dating back to the inception of television. But with the amount of film and television content consumed by viewers reaching new heights (as Netflix recently reported in their taxonomical investigation of binge-watching, “subscribers who finish the first season of a show generally do so in a week … They watch about two hours a day”) has viewer sensitivity fallen by the wayside?
Has the war on violent content been lost so thoroughly that the entertainment industry is no longer even trying?
That’s what I thought, I’ll admit, when those first shots were fired in “The Do-Over.” Frankly, I was turned off. This was last week, when the tragedy in Orlando was nothing more than a possibility—albeit a frighteningly real possibility, especially for those of us who fear mass shootings. My feelings about the violence in “The Do-Over” stemmed mostly from a recent article I’d read about the rash of gun violence in Chicago (Memorial Day weekend, 64 people were shot).
A mass attack against the LGBT community is not the same as a string of shots fired over the course of three days, but we shouldn’t belittle the magnitude of anyone’s pain. I’m conflating things, I know, but in the aftermath of so much carnage, it’s hard not to do some conflating, some head-shaking at the well-worn statistics maxim: correlation does not imply causation. Fine. Here is what is common: Guns are nearly always the weapons of choice by men committing heinous crimes.
Something needs to change.
***
I’m hesitant to go so far as to encourage censorship. Like many people who grew up in the aftermath of the Tipper Gore-spearheaded Parents’ Music Resource Center, I harbor serious ambivalence about trigger warnings. You might remember the Parental Advisory stickers from your own CD collection, and you have Tipper to thank. Gore, incised by the lewd lyrics she heard in her daughter’s copy of Prince’s “Purple Rain”, rallied the real housewives of Washington D.C. and called for the labeling of music (like “porn rock”) that may contain sexual, violent, or derogatory lyrics.
Yet as wrong as I believe it is to limit artistic freedom, I believe it’s just as wrong to create without considering context—or without considering the lives and half-lives of our creations.
Call a movie or a television show an ad: nine times out ten, I won’t argue. If we look to the example of the London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, banning ads that promote unhealthy or unrealistic body expectations, ads that “[pressurize people] while they travel on the Tube or bus, into unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies,” we might see one manner by which potentially damaging imagery can be mitigated. (Okay, but what about people who want to be body-shamed, the contrarian in me wonders.) Of course, Khan’s decision isn’t perfect—just a start.
Yes, there’s a difference between an ad with which one is unwittingly confronted on the subway and a movie or a television program that one chooses to watch, but the effects of these media are not dissimilar. As a writer, with friends who are writers and artists, I accept that when one makes art one is often educating inadvertently: people read into their favorite novels, viewers emulate the affects of their favorite characters, groups of people adopt the values they collectively witness.
This isn’t inherently dangerous: think of how “The Puppy” episode changed viewers of Ellen DeGeneres’ eponymous sitcom in April 1997. What we’re talking about is simply what the Surgeon General’s 2001 report Youth Violence calls “observational learning.” While succinctly noting, “Risk factors [for youth violence] usually exist in clusters, not in isolation,” the Surgeon General also emphasizes that, coupled with “social interactions … observational learning is a powerful mechanism for acquiring social scripts throughout childhood.”
Have we become acculturated to mass violence that we’re willing to ignore the obvious? In a 2007 hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Dr. Dale Kunkel, one of the authors of 1998’s exhaustive National Television Violence Study, stated:
[T]he cumulative nature of children’s exposure to thousands and thousands of violent images over time … constitutes the risk of harmful effects. Just as medical researchers cannot quantify the effect of smoking one cigarette, media violence researchers cannot specify the effect of watching just a single violent program. But as exposure accrues over time, year in and year out, a child who is a heavy viewer of media violence is significantly more likely to behave aggressively. This relationship is the same as that faced by the smoker who lights up hour after hour, day after day, over a number of years, increasing their risk of cancer with every puff.
Is the need to be entertained so great we’re willing to stuff ourselves with violent imagery? Are we willing to risk growing callous and hurtful? After all, an ever-growing body of research now indicates that, like violence in television and films, “violent video games can cause people to have more aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.” We know sheer exposure can contribute to an entire spectrum of hostile, real-life manifestations (manifestations, by the way, which I will not attempt to rank or judge as lesser or more benign)—and yet we entertain ourselves with smarmy depictions of violence flaunting more “fetishistic close-ups on bullet-riddled foreheads” than ever. Might this be called playing with fire? We’re teaching ourselves—actually, we’re buying tickets and paying for subscriptions that teach us—how to cultivate savagery, barbarism, brutality, and rage.
That’s the thought behind Drs. Douglas A. and J. Ronald Gentile’s conceptual analysis “Violent Video Games as Excellent Teachers,” published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. In the study, Gentile and Gentile look at how violent video games “use many of the best-practice principles of learning and instruction” to acculturate and educate players to both game rules and violence. They observe that violent video games are designed to utilize “seven of the pedagogical techniques…educational psychologists know make for excellent learning. It should therefore be no surprise that video games are excellent teachers, both of educational content (e.g., Murphy et al. 2001) and of violent content (e.g., Anderson et al. 2007).”
***
The viewing and gaming habits of perpetrators of violent crime sometimes come to public attention (think Adam Lanza’s 83,000 online kills in his favorite video game, “Combat Arms”), but sometimes they don’t. We don’t yet know what relationship Omar Mateen had with entertainment; we don’t even yet know the extent of his affiliation with the Islamic State, to which he pledged allegiance before and during his horrific attack. We do know, though, that he kept a gun at his home; that he threatened his ex-wife with a gun; and that he stole the lives of dozens of innocent victims with guns.
What we also know is that our screens are conduits for violent imagery—imagery at total odds with James Franco’s revision of Joe Rosenthal’s photo. Couldn’t Adam Sandler and David Spade’s “The Do-Over” been equally entertaining without the guns? We can identify and analyze the hell out of the excessive sexual violence of “Game of Thrones”—but we’re still watching. And we’re still lusting for dystopian futures where the human race has been nearly eliminated. That’s the premise of TNT’s “The Last Ship,” by the way. In a dystopian future, a nightclub might be terrorized—and, since dystopias often take a part of our current landscape and exaggerate it into the whole, maybe we ought to stop celebrating the most violent parts of our culture in such a ubiquitous, big-budget way.
Perhaps one way to stop celebrating violence is to treat it with the gravity with which it’s met on the individual-level in real-life. One film that successfully does this is 2003’s “Mystic River.” In the Clint Eastwood-directed drama, a Massachusetts community is rocked by the murder of a teenage girl, the daughter of a local ex-con. Violence creates not entertainment but pain, confusion, indecision, indecency, and anger; characters splinter and betray one another, longstanding bonds rupture. There is nothing glossed with the deflective patina of irony or hyperbole; the violence comes with consequences.
Is there a point when the cultural context in which we create art impels us to adjust our attitudes and our appetites for what we consume? We don’t play the Holocaust for ironic laughs or gratuitous, bombastic displays of masculine bravado; to do so would be to deny the magnitude and horror of history. We don’t glorify child abuse, either (though I can think of at least one Adam Sandler movie that, before the protagonist gets his comeuppance, does at least flirt with juvenile negligence).
To inform our thinking about this, one needs only turn to winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, Maggie Nelson. In her 2011 book, “The Art of Cruelty,” Nelson says of artist Paul McCarthy’s short film, “Family Tyranny”:
On the one hand, this transparent attitude toward fakery makes the work bearable … on the other, the obvious artifice also makes the piece more insidious.
Nelson may be writing about avant-garde video art (that depicts, coincidentally, a grotesque pantomime of child abuse) but her insight speaks to the polar opposite; blockbuster action movies, superhero spectacles, any of the mass-marketed, montages of violence—all those insidious artifices capable of grossing millions in a single, opening weekend.
Well, gross is the word. Gross is how we might describe the violence—gross as in gruesome, disgusting, repugnant. But gross is also an apt descriptor of body count—think of the French grosse douzaine (“large dozen”). Gross was once the currency of movies that repelled audiences (“Pink Flamingos,” “I Spit On Your Grave”—even Cannes-premiered “Irreversible,” with its painstakingly long rape scene, found viewers booing and leaving the theater); now, gross is de rigueur.
The counterargument does not escape me: Shouldn’t artists be entitled to accurately reflect the environment in which they live? Shouldn’t—to be historically accurate—“Hamilton” contain muskets? 6,800 men lost their lives in the Revolutionary War, after all. What makes a depiction of violence sophisticated or justifiable or in the name of art?
Sometimes, wisdom comes from Maggie Nelson; if you prefer to fight fire with fire, that wisdom can also come from “Jurassic Park” (it grossed more than a billion dollars). I couldn’t help thinking about a scene in the 1993 film, before the stampeding begins and the velociraptors do their dirtiest teamwork. In this exchange rockstar mathematician and ardent proponent of chaos theory Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) balks at what grandfather, John Hammond (Richard Attenborourgh), has created in his Jurassic Park, which, per Malcom, evinces the old man’s utter lack of hubris:
The lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh… staggers me … Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun … If I may… Um, I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox … You’re selling it, you wanna sell it.
***
And so to the source material of lunchboxes and blockbuster movies we turn. Spiderman’s Uncle Ben brings us this familiar adage: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
If we want to change the attitudes, habits, beliefs, lines-of-thinking, rhetoric, power structures, interpersonal and internal and external coping mechanism that spur on gun violence then we, as viewers, need to recognize our great power. We, as viewers, can pushback. We can vote—by not watching, by not showing our children, by not letting violent programming play in the background at the businesses we own or in our kitchens. This has always been in our arsenal. We’ve been cognizant of how depictions of violence in entertainment help us hurt one another for decades. Now we need to change.
Is this change a nod to ethics? Decency? Reverence for human life? Common sense? Maybe it’s something more earth-shattering: excavating, like a mosquito trapped in amber, our moral compass.
Beatlemania and the Bangles: Susanna Hoffs explains how “our obsession with the Beatles” brought the iconic ’80s group together
The Bangles (Credit: Karen Filter)
The Bangles may be one of the most underrated bands of the ’80s. Although known for hits such as “Walk Like An Egyptian,” the Prince-written “Manic Monday” and the Simon & Garfunkel cover “Hazy Shade of Winter,” the group has a depth-filled undercard — to name a few, the pogo-jangle “Hero Takes A Fall”; the brisk rave-up “Tell Me”; the ominous, “Nuggets”-styled “In A Different Light”; and a kicky Rachel Sweet co-write, “Crash And Burn.” In fact, when the Bangles formed in L.A. in the early ’80s, co-founding members Susanna Hoffs and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson bonded over their love of ’60s rock and pop (especially the Beatles), and a predilection for bewitching multi-part harmonies.
At this time, being a band of musicians heavily influenced by the Fab Four was somewhat of a rarity. “I mean, the Beatles were always revered, but you didn’t necessarily find a lot of 21-year-olds at that time who were going, ‘Yeah I’m obsessed with the Beatles. All I want to do is learn how to play their songs,’ or ‘They’re my favorite,'” Hoffs says. Still, this helped the Bangles sound unique among L.A. bands — check the “Taxman”-like rhythmic strut of “I’m In Line” — and ensured even initial tunes had a timeless quality.
That stands out on the forthcoming (June 24) Omnivore Records-released compilation of early material, “Ladies And Gentlemen…The Bangles!” The album includes songs when the Bangles were still a trio known as the Bangs (and playing scrappy, surf-garage music with punk-inflected verve), as well as the band’s debut EP, “Bangles,” which was recorded with producer Craig Leon (Ramones, Suicide). In addition, “Ladies And Gentlemen” boasts a selection of choice covers: Love’s “7 & 7 Is,” the Turtles-popularized Warren Zevon composition “Outside Chance” and Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Steppin’ Out.” The collection is exuberant and well-crafted (especially songs such as “The Real World,” “Call On Me” and “Want You”) and reveals how solid the Bangles’ chemistry was from the start.
Hoffs recently spoke with Salon about the enduring nature of the compilation, what else she and the Bangles might have in the vaults, and her love of cover tunes. The musician also reveals she has “lots of new, creative projects that i’m getting close to be able to really talk about more in depth” involving new music and writing.
What was the initial impetus to compile and release this collection?
We realized that it wasn’t really available to people, because it had only come out on vinyl and I think maybe cassette. Some of these songs have never been heard by the world. We dug deep into our archives and found demo tapes and some rare early recordings and even a couple ads that we had done, one for NO Magazine and a promo for a radio station. Just some real kind of obscure stuff. Vicki, Debbi, and I have a great affection for our earliest songwriting efforts and those songs, and just having the opportunity to have worked with Craig Leon, iconic record producer of the first Ramones record.
We had this sense it would be worth pulling something together so people could hear it. It’ll be available on CD and also in the fall, I think in November, on vinyl, which is really exciting. We’d been playing these old songs, and it just brings us back to the beginning full circle from where we are now some 30 years later. There’s a freshness to that material that just hasn’t gone away. If anything, I think the three of us feel in some ways the most connected to those songs, so it’s worth putting it out there so people have access to it.
That’s what I noticed listening to it: There’s just such an effervescence to the music. It’s infectious that way.
Yeah, I think that’s a good word for it, effervescence. It feels that way, honestly, when we perform those songs. And it’s strange, because you find over the years when you do shows that there’s always that thing where the songs that got played on the radio seem to connect with audience members in a kind of very immediate way. But, bizarrely, even people who haven’t heard those early songs, they get a great reaction when we perform them. So this will give access to that material. But because we love playing it so much, it’s nice to have the actual recordings on the internet or wherever people want to find them.
As you were looking for stuff to put on there, was there anything you knew you had but that you couldn’t find?
I’ve just been digging through my old storage units and I’ve just come upon a treasure trove of old….well, definitely live recordings, I mean everything was on cassette. It’s incredible we live in such a time of technological advances that you can’t even keep up with it. But I think there’s probably another record of rarities somewhere between all of our dusty boxes of tapes, if the tapes haven’t degraded too much. Amazingly, they seem to hold up.
I can’t think offhand. I mean, I have some really early recordings of when I was partnered up with David Roback, who ended up doing the Rain Parade and then Mazzy Star. I’m really curious to kind of archive those and see what was there. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Rainy Day record. Do you know that record?
Yeah!
Oh, great! Well, some of the cassettes that I know I have in my dusty box are the precursors to the kind of stuff that David and I did on the Rainy Day record.
The problem is I’m sort of so into being in the present and moving forward and creating new stuff, but at the same time I’m so curious to look back and hear some of these things. But with the tapes, you don’t want to play them too much because you want to archive them the first time you play them because they do degrade. But I know there’s more stuff in the treasure trove, for sure.
It sounds like you could have an archival release a year.
We could, if we put the time into it.
What also struck me is just how connected the style of music is to so much of what’s still going on in L.A. today, with the surf-punk and garage scenes there, and what goes on with Burger Records.
Yeah, I wonder if that’s just something about the zeitgeist of L.A. that is sort of embedded in the landscape here. There just seems to be something that’s a California sound — as you said, the surf-punk thing. We have such a deep history of that, and there’s such a cool history of the California sound, however you want to interpret that, whether you’re thinking of the Byrds or the Mamas and the Papas — even though they came from the East Coast, they’re associated with that — the Beach Boys, the harmonies, the jangly guitars, the surf influence, the punk influence, the particular L.A. brand of punk influence. It’s cool that you’re connecting it to the now, because it was definitely bringing all those elements together that was part of the original Bangles sound. We really wanted to bring four-part harmonies into garage rock, which is kind of a contrast, but that’s partly why we found it exciting.
What do you remember most from working with Craig Leon?
Oh God, it was magical. It was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I mean, it was a long time ago, but I’ll tell you, he was just a very merry person. He had a wonderful energy and spirit, and he just was very joyful. I do remember at the end of one of the songs, it might be “I’m In Line,” he said, “Oh, the last strum of this chord, you should use a quarter instead of a pick.” I don’t know why that memory comes back into my mind. And he was referencing some cool band from the ‘60s that I worshipped that had used a quarter or some kind of coin instead of a pick. It was probably some British band, so it would have been a British coin, to get this sort of extra-jangly sound. And we did everything really fast and low-budget with Craig, but it was just so exciting for us. It was our first real experience working with a producer, so we couldn’t have been more lucky to be able to connect with him and have him be our first producer.
It’s rare that a band has such a good first experience. You always hear so many horror stories.
Oh, it was so great working with Craig Leon. He has this kind of infectious excitement about things. That’s one of the things I remember. Obviously we were a young band, it was our first real recording for a label, it was Faulty Products at the time, which was Miles Copeland’s smaller label. It was a smaller subsidiary of I.R.S. Records, so it was like super-indie. But to be able to get the guy who had done Blondie and the Ramones, I mean, it was kind of mind-blowing, I have to admit.
You’ve played some of these old songs at recent shows. Do you plan to work up any more for the late-summer tour dates you’re doing?
Oh, we’ll probably play all the EP songs, because we love playing them and it’s nice that the music will be available now. We haven’t really discussed yet exactly what our set will be, but I know the EP songs will be in there. It’s fun. We haven’t toured for a little while, so we have to powwow on that. I’m really excited about it.
Looking at some of your recent setlists, they’ve varied quite a bit. You kind of never know what’s gonna pop in there, which is refreshing. With some bands you can predict exactly what they’re gonna do, but with you guys there’s always some rarity thrown in there.
Yeah, we kind of honed the band’s sound by playing covers in the old days. Like “Hazy Shade of Winter,” for example. We were all still working our day jobs. I was working in a ceramics factory in this very gloomy, dark, windowless room, alone, sanding these little ceramic things that were being used as jewelry. It was a very ‘80s kind of thing, they were little pins but they were ceramic. [Laughs.] I know, it’s crazy. That was my job, and it was just me and the radio, that was my only access to humanity. It was very bleak, but having just hours to listen to the radio station, it was an oldies station, I had access to all these songs that I’d never heard. As big of a Simon & Garfunkel fan as I was, I didn’t know “Hazy Shade of Winter,” so that was a cover that we did early on. We did “Pushin’ Too Hard” by The Seeds.
Oh my God, we used to do songs from the movie “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” which is just an iconic, classic B-movie. I don’t even know what you would call it, it’s like an art movie but it was also sort of a B-movie. Anyway, it was a big influence on us. We used to pull covers from that soundtrack. We did so many cool covers back then. So, you never know, we may throw some of those into the set. I think it would be fun, in the spirit of re-releasing these rare tracks and the EP, which were our first recordings, to go back and pull out some of those old covers we used to do. It was almost like we were scoring ourselves as a band by playing the music that we loved. It was a way to hone our craft.
As a fan, the covers are great because they allow you to learn about those bands. Your “September Gurls” cover was one of the early introductions I had to Big Star. You hear something and kind of go backwards and say, “What is that?”
That was so great, discovering Big Star. I’m pretty sure David Roback turned me on to Big Star. But yeah, there are just so many great covers, almost too many to choose from. I really like that the touring that we do really focuses on playing in smaller venues. It’s absolutely my favorite environment to perform in. It’s just really intimate and really connecting with the audience. We might even do a thing where we just put up something online taking requests or something; that could be fun. I’m really looking forward to it. I like to mix it up. I think we all do. We like to keep it fresh, so it’ll be interesting to see how the setlist comes together.
This year is also the 30th anniversary of “Different Light,” an album from which I imagine a lot of people would want to hear some tracks.
That’s a great, great idea. I keep forgetting these anniversaries are coming, it’s almost like, “Really? Is it that long?” But it’s true. Is it the 30th anniversary?
Yeah, it came out early in ’86.
Oh my God. I have friends that aren’t even 30. [Laughs.] It’s so weird to think. I think that’s such a cool idea. That’s a really good idea, because some of those album tracks we haven’t played in probably 30 years. I think that would be really fun.
It’s a nice way of reconnecting with die-hards. I see Cheap Trick quite a bit live, and they always pull out a rare album cut from an early ’80s record.
I love Cheap Trick. Oh my God. They’re so good. I think Matthew Sweet and I covered “I Want You To Want Me.” [Editor’s note: Sweet and Hoffs have released a series of decade-themed covers albums, called “Under The Covers.”] I’m not sure it ever made it on the record. I’m dying to get some of those unreleased tracks. Talk about love of covering songs: I could just spend my whole life covering songs. I just love doing it. I think this is true for a lot of musicians, but we all start out as crazy music fans, so it starts with [being] addicted to our favorite music and then it’s kind of like, “Oh, maybe I’ll pick up a guitar and try to write a song,” and then coming full circle back to discussing all these songs I love that other people wrote. It’s fun. I have to say I’m very happy to have this as my main job.
It’s crazy, too, because the expanded reissues of the work you did with Matthew Sweet just came out in Europe. There’s just so much in the archives for those releases.
As soon as Matthew comes up for air from his thing that he’s working on right now, which is his own record, I really want to get in there, back in the studio with him, and mix some of the buried treasures we did. We recorded so many songs, just because we couldn’t stop ourselves.
We were just crazy mad for recording. like especially the ‘70s record which, at one time, we thought it might be a double album to go, thematically, with the ‘70s. So we have so many that really all they really need is to be mixed, honestly. We have a whole, I would say easily, Volume 4. Not necessarily doing the ’90s, since we’re up to the ’90s, but just volume four could be a hidden buried treasure kind of thing.
Is there any band or a song that you’ve never done a cover of that you’d like to?
Oh there’s so many. Well, that’s one of those questions that there’s so many that my mind suddenly just goes blank. There’s too many to say but if I think of a good list I’ll send it to you. There’s so many. I could just spend a good chunk of time recording Big Star songs, just off the top of my head. There’s such an incredibly catalog of material within Big Star’s history.
You and Belinda Carlisle did a show together earlier this year, and it looked like you guys had a lot of fun performing together and doing each other’s songs. I know you co-wrote a song for her debut album [“I Need A Disguise” on 1986’s “Belinda”], but how much have you guys crossed paths over the years? What was the most gratifying thing for you doing that show?
Well, we have crossed paths several times over–I mean quite a bit–over the years. And we did hang out in the ’80s, a lot. I’ve actually now done three shows with her. And, it’s just the most fun. First of all, I’m a huge Go-Go’s fan. So to be able to sing those iconic Go-Go’s songs with her and create duets out of them–it’s just pure joy for me. And I think if you asked Belinda, she would agree that it was just massive fun. So I hope we can do a little expanded version of what we did at Largo in L.A. where we did those three shows. It’s something on the to-do list; it’s just a question of nailing down her schedule and my schedule to see how we could make that happen.
Not only is there the shared experience of having been in L.A. in the ‘80s, in an all-girl band–there weren’t that many all girl bands happening at that time–but we have that kind of shared history and just the bond of friendship that’s lasted 30 years, so it’s been really fun. Even though the press always kind of pitted the two bands as rivals against each other somehow, that never was the case.
I was doing some research, and that’s where all the links I found were doing, pitting the two bands against each other–articles like, “Who’s better?” Can’t you like both bands? What’s the problem with that?
We’re so different. In certain ways we’re really quite different. I think that’s what makes it a lot of fun to sing together. Because she really enjoys doing Bangles songs with me, or my songs with me, and I like doing her stuff and the Go-Go’s stuff, so it’s really fun.
I just watched this CNN special on ’80s music, and you were actually interviewed in it, commenting on Cyndi Lauper and on Prince. And you also talked about how there was a perception in the ’80s that the Bangles “played pretty good for chicks,” that gender was always a consideration. How much did that kind of overshadow you guys in the ’80s? How pervasive was it?
It was pretty pervasive, I have to admit. We spent a lot of time talking about the fact that we were girls making rock and roll music or in a band. It was always part of the conversation. I alluded to this, or addressed it head-on in the CNN interview, but it was sort of like… it’s just sort of bizarre, actually, because we didn’t really see that it was such a novel thing. To us, it wasn’t novel.
There was such a long history of great female artists, so it struck us as odd that it was such the topic of conversation, above and beyond other things. But I think there is still something novel to people about all-female bands. I don’t know why; maybe there just haven’t been as many as I thought there would be. As I said, we were always linked to the Go-Go’s, and I see the similarities in the music–there are some–but it just was something we were always up against. I guess, for us, doing what we did, it was just so natural — it was never something that seemed like it was a manufactured or a novelty thing.
Absolutely. Has that gotten better then over the years?
I think so. I don’t think that people focus on that as much anymore, from my perception. But maybe it’s because I’m sort of on the sidelines now. We just kind of do our thing when we feel like it. I don’t really feel like I’m, in quotes, “in the music business” right now. [Laughs.] I’m kind of just off to the side in my little studio making art projects. That’s kind of how I feel day-to-day. During the sort of tide we were riding, the momentum of what was happening–being on a big label and traveling the world and having songs on the radio, I think it put us in a, God, in a different light at that time. [Laughs.] I didn’t want to use that pun. We were more part of what was happening in music at the time, having records that were charting and videos on MTV and that kind of thing.
That makes sense. You were sort of swept up in it.
Do you think that female artists, today, that that’s something that comes up when you are interviewing? Do you think it’s just something that the world can’t let go of? What do you think?
I think it depends. On the one hand, I think people are a lot better in terms of how they interview. They’re not necessarily asking gendered questions: “So what’s it like to play and be a girl in a band?” But people still get asked that. And I don’t know if it’s just ignorance, or if the question comes from a good place, and they’re not meaning any malice behind it. It’s hard to say. I’m really hyper-aware of it, just because as a woman, as a journalist, I don’t want to ask people that question, because I feel it’s really insulting. But a lot of people just don’t see it. I can’t tell if it’s getting better or worse.
I don’t have a great perspective on it either. I think I touched on it in the CNN interview, in the sense that, I just feel that I have always been driven to create this work. I mean, there’s a female voice in it, because that’s my experience. That’s the lens through which I’ve lived my life, and so that informs what I do and how I write.
But yeah, I think, particularly in the ‘80s, our band–good, bad or otherwise, it’s just the way that it was–was viewed as somewhat of a novelty. And we fought really hard to kind of break down that perception. Does that make sense? We got together as a band because we shared a vision of what we wanted to say and do, and the sound that we created just as four people when you put us in a room together and we start playing music. So that was maybe less to do with our femaleness and just our taste.
I mean, one of the things that really brought me and Vicki and Debbi together–we’re in 1980 or 1981 at this point–was our connection to ‘60s music. In some ways, that was way more important than the fact that we were girls. [It] was just kind of interesting to be in an all-girl band as an added benefit, that we had this identity through our female lens that informed everything.
I don’t mean to over complicate it, but if that makes sense, it was kind of the fact that we could sing in harmony and it just fell into place. Those were the things that were so magical about me meeting up with them. We just fell into that so quickly. Overnight! You know, the first time we ever played a song together it was just like, “Oh wow! that sounds like something.” That was the thing.
And that’s the way it should be. Basically, you meet people and you become friends or collaborators because of your record collections. That’s such a simple thing. How many stories do you hear of people being, like, “I saw someone wearing this band T-shirt, and I knew we’d be friends”?
Exactly! With us it was really our obsession with the Beatles. To really pinpoint it, that was one of the things. But beyond the Beatles, just British invasion music, all ‘60s music, ‘cause we all had access to that as young kids. You find that somehow there are certain kids that are really, really in tune with music early on. For whatever reason, there’s that connection.
Vicki and Debbi’s parents woke them up in the middle of the night to watch [the Beatles on] “The Ed Sullivan Show.” That’s what they remember. My mom’s best friend worked at Capitol Records, so we got these early vinyl records, we got the albums. So when I was like four and five years old, my mother was obsessed with the Beatles, so I got it through my parents, too. But we weren’t teenagers at that point–we were toddlers and little kids. Vicki, Debbi, and I had that shared childhood thing with the Beatles. And it wasn’t that easy to find other people in 1981 who just wanted to talk about the Beatles nonstop.
There was a lot of other stuff happening in music. I was obsessed with the Sex Pistols, Patti Smith, the Ramones, the Talking Heads and Blondie, and so many cool things that were happening in 1981. But, that said, that was the glue between Vickie, Debbi and I on that first night when we met and decided to be a band on that night. That was it.
Surprise, surprise: Sen. John Cornyn is using Orlando to call for increased warrantless FBI surveillance
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, talks about a criminal justice reform bill during an interview with The Associated Press in his office at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan.21, 2016. The legislation includes reductions in mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offers, while also increasing minimums for interstate domestic violence. A widening Republican rift over revamping the nations criminal justice system is dashing hopes for overhaul despite strong bipartisan support and a concerted effort by Cornyn. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (Credit: AP)
As congressional Democrats push for stronger gun control measures in the wake of last weekend’s mass shooting in Orlando, some Republican lawmakers are using the attack as a pretext to call for an expansion of the FBI’s warrantless surveillance powers.
On Monday, Texas Sen. John Cornyn renewed his call to increase scope of electronic intelligence available for use in FBI investigations without judicial oversight, Bloomberg Politics reports. Cornyn, who serves as Majority Whip, said that the Senate could vote on the issue as soon as this week and implied that such expanded capabilities could have enabled the FBI to prevent Orlando shooter Omar Mateen from killing at least 49 people at a gay nightclub early Sunday morning.
“Those sort of additional surveillance tools could have provided the FBI more information, which would have allowed them to identify this guy as the threat that he obviously was,” Cornyn said.
He explained, “They could go and get additional information, like metadata, who he’s e-mailing, the websites he’s accessing. Not content.”
Despite Cornyn’s pronouncement, it’s not clear that expanded FBI surveillance powers would have stopped the Orlando attack. FBI Director James Comey told reporters on Monday that the Bureau had investigated Mateen in two separate probes in the years preceding the shooting.
Comey said that while the FBI is still in the process of examining its performance, it did not appear that missteps during the investigation allowed the attack to occur. “Based on what I see so far, it looks like this was done well,” he said.
During the investigation, Comey explained, the FBI used informants to contact Mateen, recorded his conversations, and reviewed “transactional records from his communications.” Comey did not expand on the nature of the “transactional records” the FBI collected from Mateen, but in the past the FBI has used the broad term to encompass “browsing history, email header information, records of online purchases, IP addresses of contacts, and more” — many of the same data types Cornyn referred to in his call for expanded surveillance.
Comey gave no indication that increased intelligence capabilities might have produced a different result in the Orlando case, as Cornyn implied. And as Marcy Wheeler points out at Emptywheel, Comey’s account suggests that the FBI had access to the very information Cornyn claimed could have stopped the attack, and that investigators obtained such data while operating within the bounds of the existing legal structure that Cornyn would like to change.
Wheeler writes:
John Cornyn wants to give FBI the authority to obtain what they obtained (presumably via a subpoena), promising that obtaining the same records via a parallel authority somehow would have tipped the FBI that he was a threat when the very same [electronic communication transactional records] didn’t do so obtained via subpoena.
Based on the facts currently available, it doesn’t appear that John Cornyn’s proposal would have had any tangible impact on the Orlando shooting. It seems as though Cornyn, a former judge and prosecutor, either didn’t listen to the FBI’s own account of the investigation into Mateen or he’s engaging in a rather transparent effort to remove judicial safeguards designed to protect citizens’ privacy and prevent overreach on the part of the FBI.
WATCH: Utah’s GOP Lt. governor tearfully apologizes to LGBTQ community, admits “my heart has changed” following Orlando attack
(Credit: AP/Rick Bowmer)
While there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the attack in Orlando has done much to boost the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s standing in the polls, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States has managed to move at least some elected Republican officials (and even a Fox News anchor).
Utah’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox delivered a moving speech to a vigil in honor of the 49 people gunned down in a gay Orlando nightclub earlier this week, apologizing for his past attitude and political stance against the LGBTQ community.
“First, I recognize fully that I am a balding, youngish, middle-aged straight, white, male, Republican, politician,” Cox began to lighten the mood at the somber event in Salt Lake City, Utah, Monday night.
“I am probably not who you expected to hear from today,” he acknowledged, before explain that the tragedy in Orlando compelled him to speak out.
“I’m here because those 49 people were gay. I’m here because it shouldn’t matter,” Cox told the crowd. “But I’m here because it does”:
I am not here to tell you that I know exactly what you are going through. I am not here to tell you that I feel your pain. I don’t pretend to know the depths of what you are feeling right now. But I do know what it feels like to be scared. And I do know what it feels like to be sad. And I do know what it feels like to be rejected. And, more importantly, I know what it feels like to be loved.
Cox, who is Mormon, then apologized to the crowd gathered in Utah, to the LGBTQ people he has hurt in the past, and the LGBTQ community at-large:
I grew up in a small town and went to a small rural high school. There were some kids in my class that were different. Sometimes I wasn’t kind to them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I know now that they were gay. I will forever regret not treating them with the kindness, dignity and respect — the love — that they deserved. For that, I sincerely and humbly apologize.
“Over the intervening years, my heart has changed. It has changed because of you,” Cox said, his voice quavering. “It has changed because I have gotten to know many of you.”
“You have been patient with me,” Cox said, directly addressing the LGBTQ community. “You helped me learn the right letters of the alphabet in the right order even though you keep adding new ones,” Cox, an outspoken supporter of Utah’s 2015 law prohibiting housing and employment discrimination against LGBTQ people, said. “You have been kind to me.”
Watch the moving speech below:
Strangers on a train: “Diverse group” of bystanders stop ranting racist from harassing Muslim women on New York City train
An F train in New York City, Jan. 23, 2016. (Credit: AP/Frank Franklin II)
An “unidentified white man” on the Manhattan-bound F train Monday was harassing two women wearing hijabs when a “diverse group of passengers” interjected.
“The man insisted that the two women go back home and take their bombs with them,” recalled one of the harassed Muslim women, Amaira Hasan, in a Facebook post.
Hasan told NY Daily News that the harasser also yelled “Donald Trump is right” and “railed against the welfare system and undocumented immigrants.”
Among the diverse group who came to Hasan’s defense, she said, was “A black man, a Romanian, a gay man, a bunch of Asians, and a score of others.”
“This is New York City,” One defender reportedly said. “The most diverse place in the world. And in New York, we protect our own and we don’t give a fuck what anyone looks like or who they love, or any of those things. It’s time for you to leave these women alone.”
And, with that, the man was subdued a bit and “This royal douche got off the train to the sound of cheering.”
Read Hasan’s full post below:
Trump tweets Breitbart article to prove President Obama is an ISIS sympathizer
Barack Obama, Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/AP/Chris Carlson/Photo montage by Salon)
Even while a majority of Americans say they disapprove of Donald Trump‘s response to the mass shooting in Orlando over the weekend, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is doubling down on some of his most ludicrous conspiracy theories — and ridiculously citing discredited right-wing websites as evidence.
In an attempt to defend his controversial suggestions that President Obama somehow allowed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history to occur because he is secretly a “Radical Islam” terrorist sympathizer, Trump took to his favorite social media platform to share “proof” from the right-wing website Breitbart.com
The Breitbart story cites “a newly discovered SECRET classified memo” that purportedly proves Obama’s terrorist sympathies. The memo shows, Breitbart claimed, that the Obama administration, specifically Hillary Clinton’s State Department, backed ISIS in Syria when it equipped and trained Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar Assad:
Hillary Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State.
The memo made clear that Al Qaeda in Iraq was speaking through Muhammad Al Adnani, who is now the senior spokesman for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Western and Gulf states were supporting the terrorist group to try to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who was being propped up by the Russians, Iranians, and Chinese.
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
But, as ABC News points out, Breitbart’s explosive memo is actually “neither secret nor does it demonstrate the administration’s support for ISIS or any other policy”:
Indeed, it’s a recently declassified and heavily redacted intelligence field report from August 2012 about the worsening security situation in Iraq, obtained by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Breitbart falsely concludes that because the memo mentions that al Qaeda in Iraq (a precursor to ISIS) is fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration therefore supports ISIS.
To be sure, the Obama administration has struggled to secure reliable allies not tied to extremists in the conflict zone, suspending a program “train and equip” up to 3,000 rebel soldiers in Syria after training only 150.
Kids coping with trauma around them: UNICEF’s #EmergencyLessons campaign says close friendships are key
Tom Hiddleston
I’ve had the same best friend since I was twelve years old, Natalie. We met in middle school and immediately bonded over mutual crushes on high school boys. We developed a bond that would be challenged, encouraged and life-changing, somewhere between shopping for our first pair of “sexy” lingerie and riding to school together so the other one wouldn’t be alone. As adults, we’ve been there for each other through the deaths of family members, the loss of beloved pets and relationships we never expected to survive let alone overcome. Not only has Natalie been a part of my life for the last 15 years, but she’s been foundational to influencing the woman I’ve become. A good best friend will do that.
UNICEF has noticed the impact of a best friend on the development of children and adolescents, and is encouraging the very special system of support to flourish in times of trauma through education. #EmergencyLessons, launched in May, is a campaign that aims to support the education of school-aged children during times of crises and conflict.
Celebrities including Tom Hiddleston and Robert Downey Jr. have joined the campaign, and are raising awareness to the public by sharing embarrassing photos of themselves as children. Additionally, Hiddleston posted a video yesterday describing his best friend from school, Joey, who’s remained his bestie well into adulthood.
Like Malak & Rapu, my best friend at school was very important to me. Give yours a shout-out! #EmergencyLessonshttps://t.co/Gz6hLqsw11
— Tom Hiddleston (@twhiddleston) June 14, 2016
Friendship, according to Aristotle, is a sure refuge during times of misfortune. We’ve come to a point where conflict and crisis are common, and the Orlando massacre only highlights this country’s dire need for reform.
How do we talk to children about mass shootings? Terror attacks? War? How do we frame atrocities that we can’t make sense of ourselves in such a way for kids to understand?
Inevitably there’s going to be a certain degree of confusion, anger and sadness in younger generations as they become increasingly privy to news issues. Parents must do their best to keep children psychologically anchored, but support systems at school and on the playground are also important.
UNICEF’s campaign encourages students to implore educators and policymakers to support programs that teach skills to use during times of crisis.
“Young people understand better than anyone how important education is to their lives today and to their futures,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake in a press release. “Who knows better than they that their tomorrows depend on what they learn today? Who, better than today’s youth, can demand that the world provides them with the skills they will need to build a better world? Their future, and ours, depends on it.”
Part of providing these programs to younger generations involves encouraging discourse on difficult topics, another area where best friends come in. Let’s use Natalie and myself as another example. She was the first person I confided anything in while in high school because she was my closest peer and I felt she understood me. Dealing with melodramatic high school antics, or more serious issues, was easier once I bounced my thoughts off her. Together we’d come up with a plan to explain to my parents, or make sense of whatever it was that was bothering me. I suspect kids still operate in a similar manner.
The influence of a best friend during childhood and adolescent development is undeniable. We learn social cues from people our age, and many of our first relationships are shaped by how we interact with our friends. It’s unfortunate that younger generations are coming of age in an era where the terms “mass shooting,” “massacre,” and “victims” are among the most ubiquitous headlines and search words. It’s important for us to realize the emotional and psychological toll these events will have on the daily lives of our country’s youth, and we need to do what we can to educate and promote the skills necessary to handle crisis and conflict. By encouraging burgeoning friendships, we help establish a support system for kids who’ll go on to influence policy and hopefully support one another.
There’s opportunities to learn in every situation, and children learn effectively through their best friends. I know I still do.
Orlando shooter said attack was revenge for U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, survivor recalls
Omar Mateen (Credit: AP)
The gunman who massacred 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida on Sunday said the attack was meant to get “Americans to stop bombing” Afghanistan, according to a survivor who witnessed the attack.
Patience Carter, who was inside the Pulse club during the shooter’s three-hour hostage standoff, said during a news conference that, on his call with a 911 dispatcher, the gunman made his motivation clear.
“Everybody who was in the bathroom who survived could hear him talking to 911, saying the reason why he’s doing this is because he wanted America to stop bombing his country,” Carter said.
The shooter, 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was born in the United States, but his parents were from Afghanistan.
According to Carter, Mateen also spared black hostages, who he said have already “suffered enough.” Carter recalled the shooter asking the hostages in the club’s bathroom if anyone was black. When someone said yes, he replied, “You know I don’t have a problem with black people.” Carter said Mateen then added, “This is about my country. You guys suffered enough.”
Mateen reportedly said that he would not stop the attack until the U.S. stopped bombing Afghanistan.
“The motive is very clear to us who are laying in our own blood and other people’s blood, who are injured, who were shot,” Carter recalled. “He wasn’t going to stop killing people until he was killed, until he felt like his message got out there.”
The FBI also says that, during his 911 call from the club, the gunman referenced the Boston Marathon bombers. As The Washington Post noted, Mateen’s “claim that he carried out the shooting to prevent bombings echoed a message the younger Boston attacker had scrawled in a note before he was taken into custody by police.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the younger of the two brothers behind the Boston bombing, said his attack was meant in retaliation to U.S. bombing of Muslims too. “The U.S. Government is killing our innocent civilians but most of you already know that,” he wrote.
“I can’t stand to see such evil go unpunished, we Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all,” the Boston bomber added. “Now I don’t like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam but due to said … it is allowed.”
Mateen shot more than 100 people in the attack, killing 49 and wounding 53 more. The number of deaths could rise, as some of the survivors are in critical condition.
The attack was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The majority of the victims were LGBT Latinos. Pulse is a prominent gay club, and it was holding a “Latin Night.”
Further complicating the story are claims that the shooter may himself have been gay. Numerous witnesses said he had visited the nightclub numerous times before. Others said they saw him on gay dating apps.
The boyfriend of Sitora Yusufiy, the Orlando shooter’s ex-wife, told reporters that Yusufiy had described Mateen as having “gay tendencies.” She reportedly said that Mateen’s dad had called him gay in front of her.
As Gawker noted, Yusufiy’s boyfriend also told reporters that U.S. federal investigators told the shooter’s ex-wife not to tell certain facts to the media.
Yusufiy told the FBI that her ex-husband was unstable and was likely not part of a terrorist group, the boyfriend recalled.
“The FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media,” he added.
According to the FBI, Mateen pledged allegiance for ISIS in the 911 call. A recording of the 911 call has not been released.
Law enforcement officials also say that Mateen made another call during the standoff, to an acquaintance from Florida.
The FBI claims that Mateen had supported conflicting Islamist groups, including ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, all of which are fighting each other. Hezbollah, a Shia militia, and ISIS, a Sunni fascist group, are mortal enemies in particular.
FBI Director James Comey said at a press conference that the shooter’s past comments about Islamist groups were “inflammatory and contradictory.”
“Officials have not publicly said what they believe may have motivated him to open fire inside Pulse,” The Washington Post noted.
After the attack, ISIS claimed Mateen as a member. But President Obama stressed that there is no evidence that the shooter was materially linked to any Islamist groups.
He described the gunman as “an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized” by “extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet.” Obama called it a case of “homegrown extremism.”
“We see no clear evidence that he was directed externally,” the president added. “It does appear that at the last minute, he announced allegiance to ISIL. But there is no evidence so far that he was in fact directed by ISIL, and at this stage there’s no direct evidence that he was part of a larger plot.” ISIL is another name for ISIS, or the Islamic State.
Mateen told the hostages in the bathroom that he had “snipers outside” the club.
The witness, Patience Carter, told reporters, “It sounded as if he was communicating with other people who were involved with it…. Maybe he was just deranged, maybe he’s just talking to himself, but I honestly feel like I don’t think he was able to pull that off all by himself.”
Orlando police say rumors that multiple shooters were involved in the attack are not true. Mateen was the sole gunman, authorities say.
Mateen had worked for nine years with the global mercenary corporation G4S, the world’s largest private security company. When he was hired in 2007, Mateen received a firearms license issued by the state of Florida and a security officers’ license.
Most of the political response to the attack has gone in one of two directions.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and far-right pundits like internet conspiracist Alex Jones have blamed the attack on immigration, even though the shooter was born in New York in 1987.
Democratic lawmakers have called for greater gun control measures. Mateen bought both of the guns he used in the attack legally, approximately a week apart, roughly 10 days before the shooting. One of the weapons he used was a Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein called on U.S. authorities to adopt “robust gun control measures.”
“It is hard to find a rational justification that explains the ease with which people can buy firearms, including assault rifles, in spite of prior criminal backgrounds, drug use, histories of domestic violence and mental illness, or direct contact with extremists — both domestic and foreign,” said the U.N. human rights official in a statement.
There appears to have been little political discussion of the U.S. bombing and foreign policy that allegedly inspired Mateen to carry out the attack.
The U.S. war in Afghanistan will soon enter its 15th year, and civilians in the country continue to bear the brunt of the violence. Millions of Afghans have been displaced and hundreds of thousands have been killed. Meanwhile, violence and displacement are progressively getting worse in Afghanistan, not better.
