Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 782
May 11, 2016
George Zimmerman auctioning gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin to fund “fight” against Black Lives Matter
George Zimmerman (Credit: Reuters/Joe Burbank)
George Zimmerman says he is auctioning the gun he used to kill unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin, and using the money to “fight” the Black Lives Matter movement.
He announced the auction on Wednesday night in a newscast on Orlando’s local Fox affiliate, local media reported.
The online auction starts Thursday, with the opening bid set at $5,000.
Zimmerman said he got the gun back after being acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in July 2013.
“The firearm is fully functional as the attempts by the Department of Justice on behalf of B. Hussein Obama to render the firearm inoperable were thwarted by my phenomenal Defense Attorney,” he wrote in the description on the gun auction website.
Zimmerman said he is “proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds will be used to fight BLM violence against Law Enforcement officers,” using an acronym for the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement.
He said he will also use some of the money to challenge “Hillary Clinton’s anti-firearm rhetoric,” and to “ensure the demise of Angela Correy’s persecution career,” referring to the Florida state attorney who investigated the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman described the gun as “a piece of American History,” and claimed the Smithsonian Museum has expressed interest in buying and displaying it.
He concluded the product description with the Latin phrase “Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum,” meaning “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Explaining his decision in the Fox interview, Zimmerman maintained, “I’m a free American; I can do what I like with my possessions.”
When he was asked what he thought about those who might disapprove of the auction, Zimmerman replied, “They’re not going to be bidding on it, so I couldn’t care less about them.”
This is not the first time the shooter has sold something to raise money for right-wing causes.
In August 2015, Zimmerman raffled off a painting he made of a Confederate flag to help a Florida gun shop owner who declared his store to be a “Muslim-free zone.”
The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations civil rights groups sued the gun shop owner, and Zimmerman said he would use part of the money he raised to help pay the anti-Muslim man’s legal fees.
The two men teamed up to sell prints of the Confederate flag with the words “the 2nd protects the first” on it, referring to the First and Second Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Zimmerman killed Martin in a gated community in a Florida suburb in February 2012. He claimed the unarmed teen attacked him, and he shot him in self-defense. Zimmerman was later acquitted citing the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
Critics say this law has created a double standard in gun use. In one of several cases that illustrate this, Marissa Alexander, a black Florida mother, served three years in prison and remains under two years of house arrest after firing a warning shot into a wall in order to protect herself from her abusive husband.
In court, Alexander tried to use the same Stand Your Ground law to justify the warning shot, but originally faced up to 60 years in prison.
Appetite for destruction: White America’s death wish is the source of Trump’s hidden support
Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Charles Krupa)
Is an “October surprise” that could put Donald Trump in the White House already baked into the American electorate? That’s the frightening question one could derive from this week’s column by Thomas B. Edsall, one of the most useful (and least ideologically hypnotized) contributors to the New York Times. We can’t be sure how many people really support Trump, Edsall reports, since there’s considerable evidence that they aren’t telling pollsters the truth. Voting for Trump, it appears, is something white people do in the shadows. It’s a forbidden desire that is both liberating and self-destructive, not unlike the married heterosexual who has a same-sex lover on the down-low, or the executive who powers through the day on crystal meth and OxyContin. On some level you know the whole thing can’t end well, but boy does it feel good right now.
I have argued on multiple occasions that white Americans, considered in the aggregate, exhibit signs of an unconscious or semi-conscious death wish. I mean that both in the Freudian sense of a longing for release that is both erotic and self-destructive — the intermingling of Eros and Thanatos — and in a more straightforward sense. Consider the prevalence of guns in American society, the epidemic rates of suicide and obesity (which might be called slow-motion suicide) among low-income whites, the widespread willingness to ignore or deny climate science and the deeply rooted tendency of the white working class to vote against its own interests and empower those who have impoverished it. What other term can encompass all that?
Trump is the living embodiment of that contradictory desire for redemption and destruction. His incoherent speeches wander back and forth between those two poles, from infantile fantasies about forcing Mexico to build an $8 billion wall and rampant anti-Muslim paranoia to unfocused panegyrics about how “great” we will be one day and how much we will “win.” In his abundant vigor and ebullience and cloddish, mean-spirited good humor, Trump may seem like the opposite of the death wish. (He would certainly be insulted by any such suggestion. Wrong! Bad!) But everything he promises is impossible, and his supporters are not quite dumb enough not to see that. He’s a death’s-head jester cackling on the edge of the void, the clownish host of one last celebration of America’s bombast, bigotry and spectacular ignorance. No wonder his voters are reluctant to ‘fess up.
Normal public-opinion polls conducted by telephone, Edsall writes, have consistently shown Hillary Clinton well ahead of Trump in head-to-head trial runs, by a recent average of about nine percentage points. But online surveys compiled by YouGov and Morning Consult tell a different story, showing Clinton ahead by much smaller margins. The most recent YouGov/Economist poll of registered voters, for example, shows Clinton leading Trump by just three points (43 percent to 40 percent), well within the margin of error. Edsall quotes Kyle A. Dropp, who runs polling and data for Morning Consult, estimating that throughout the primary season Trump has gained a consistent advantage of eight or nine points in online polls versus old-fashioned telephone surveys.
In fairness, we don’t know which numbers come closer to the truth. There are valid reasons why many political scientists and statistics wonks believe telephone polling is more accurate in predicting actual voting, and Edsall doesn’t discuss those. But as he puts it, “an online survey, whatever other flaws it might have, resembles an anonymous voting booth far more than what you tell a pollster does.” Your computer won’t raise its eyebrows in microscopic disdain when you click the box for Trump; it won’t tell its friends after work about this person it met today who seemed normal but turned out to be a raging bigot. And the idea that “social desirability bias” — in English, the desire not to seem intolerant or unenlightened in someone else’s eyes — can distort poll results has a long history that may give the Clinton campaign some sleepless nights.
Social desirability bias, in its Trumpian context, is closely related to the “Bradley effect,” a polling problem frequently observed in elections where one candidate is white and the other isn’t. That name goes back to my youth and the California gubernatorial election of 1982, when Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, led in the polls throughout the campaign but wound up losing to Republican George Deukmejian. A significant subset of white voters (so the theory holds) told pollsters they were planning to vote for Bradley, but didn’t. Either they lied about their true intentions because they didn’t want to sound like racists in the supposedly liberal context of ‘80s California or they discovered, in the privacy of the voting booth, that they couldn’t pull the lever for a black man.
We don’t have that scenario to contend with this year, obviously, and many social scientists believe the Bradley effect has faded: Barack Obama’s actual support among white voters, during his two election campaigns, was pretty close to his poll numbers. Hillary Clinton’s likely status as the first female major-party nominee will clearly be an X factor in this year’s fall campaign, a positive for some voters and a negative for others. But the Trump-specific version of social desirability bias is different from those things in a subtle but powerful way: Voting for Trump can be understood as embracing something rather than rejecting it, even if that something is viewed as insane or repulsive by polite society. Turning your back on a candidate because he’s black is a negative, private act that’s likely to make you feel bad about yourself; embracing the jingoism and misogyny and small-mindedness of the Trump campaign is joining a movement.
It’s transparently unfair to compare Trump to Adolf Hitler (even though I’ve already done it), and it isn’t likely, in the context of the 21st century, that a Trump administration would actually resemble the Third Reich or provoke World War III. But here’s how they’re similar: Hitler cloaked the death wish in positive terms too. Nazism rolled the most noxious elements of German nationalism and European anti-Semitism into a package that seemed affirmative and optimistic, to a nation struggling with economic difficulty and an internal identity crisis. Trump has tried to do the same with his toxic package of racism, sexism and xenophobia, his thoroughly imaginary version of America built from white people’s despair and paranoia and self-loathing. We have underestimated its allure all along, and we still don’t know how deep it goes. Mainstream pundits and politicians in 1930s Germany made a similar mistake.
We didn’t need to drop the bomb — and even our WW II military icons knew it
A huge expanse of ruins left by the explosion of the atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 in Hiroshima. (Credit: AP)
When President Obama visits Hiroshima later this month, he might do well to reflect on the views of another President who was also the five-star general who oversaw America’s military victory in World War II. In a 1963 interview on the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima, President Dwight D. Eisenhower bluntly declared that “…it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Eisenhower was even more specific in his memoirs, writing that when he was informed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson the bomb was about to be used against Japan “…I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives…”
Eisenhower was not alone. Many of the top military leaders, mostly conservatives, went public after World War II with similar judgments. The President’s chief of staff, William D. Leahy–the five-star admiral who presided over meetings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–noted in his diary seven weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima: “It is my opinion that at the present time a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against future trans-Pacific aggression.”
After the war Leahy declared in his 1950 memoir: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender….My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children…”
Just a few weeks after the bombing, the famous “hawk” who led the Twenty-First Bomber Command, Major General Curtis E. LeMay, stated publicly that “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
It is possible to go down the line and find similar views among most of the top World War II military figures. Many of those who had access to secret intelligence showing Japan’s desperate attempts to end the war were deeply disturbed by the bombing. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet stated publicly two months after Hiroshima: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” “The atomic bomb,” he stated “played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan….”
A contemporaneous May 29, 1945 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy also shows that America’s top military leader, General George C. Marshall, “thought these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave—telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers…”
As the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima approached in 1985, former President Richard Nixon reported that “[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants…MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off…”
Modern debates over the decision to use the atomic bomb without warning against a predominantly civilian target would also do well to include reminders that President Truman was advised well before Hiroshima that a Red Army declaration of War against Japan, planned at U.S. request for the first week of August, together with assurances for the Japanese Emperor, would bring an end to the war long before even the first stage landing of an invasion might occur three months later on the Island of Kyushu (and long before any possible general invasion in the spring of 1946.) There was plenty of time to use the bombs if the recommended strategy failed (and it had already been decided in any case to keep the Emperor to help control Japan after the war.)
A poll taken in 1991 at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reported that roughly half of Americans surveyed felt that both sides should apologize for the respective acts which marked the beginning and the end of World War II—a morally important suggestion worthy of deep consideration, and one that President Obama might put forward as he prepares for his visit Hiroshima.
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Gar Alperovitz, former Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is the author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.
Beyoncé, Radiohead and FOMO: How sustainable is the era of the “insta-release?”
Beyoncé, Thom Yorke (Credit: Reuters/Marko Djurica)
If 2016’s blockbuster releases have taught us anything, it’s that a protracted promotional period is unnecessary. This trend kicked off in early March with Kendrick Lamar, who unveiled “untitled unmastered” several weeks after debuting a new song at the Grammys. Beyoncé entered the fray in a massive way with the April-released “Lemonade,” a video album announced with both a one-hour HBO special and a digital release. That record featured U.K. electro-R&B artist James Blake, who himself unleashed a studio album, “The Colour In Anything,” on Friday, May 6. Two days after that, Radiohead digitally released “A Moon Shaped Pool,” in the wake of a brief promotional period featuring social media disappearing acts and a mysterious video for the song “Burn The Witch.”
None of these albums were surprises, per se—but they did arrive without the months of pre-release rigmarole that once preceded huge records. In the modern era, this trend dates back to Radiohead’s 2007 album, “In Rainbows,” which was released with 10 days’ notice as a pay-what-you-want download. The following year, Nine Inch Nails went one step further and self-released two separate projects, “Ghosts I-IV” and “The Slip,” via their website, with only two weeks of advance warning. In the coming years, manufacturing instant urgency around an impending release became a preferred marketing tool and a way to grab the attention of the hyper-speed online news cycle. Naturally, this gimmick tended to work best with high-profile albums and digital music platforms: U2’s “Songs Of Innocence” was dropped into people’s iTunes accounts in 2014, while Beyoncé also used iTunes to unveil the music and videos from her 2013 self-titled album.
All of these acts have the luxury of a loyal fanbase, name recognition and built-in demand: No matter when they release something, people will listen. And no doubt this release method is a reaction to the propensity of albums leaking early, as well as a proactive measure to prevent promos from circulating. But when outliers drop into an already-crowded new release schedule, it’s exacerbating the listener whiplash that’s become an increasingly troublesome phenomenon. As fans, it’s difficult to focus, engage and actually savor the music that’s already out there when there’s always something shiny to absorb—a problem present even without the added consideration of no-lead-time releases. “I used to really know so much about contemporary music, because I was an avid reader of the music press and I really knew my shit,” Shirley Manson said last year when she spoke to Salon. “And now it’s too much. I’m just overwhelmed by it. I don’t even see a jumping in point without spending hours and hours and hours of my day trying to figure it all out and give everything a listen. It’s just impossible.”
The potential consequences are disheartening: more surface relationships with albums and artists; difficulty keeping on top of new releases, even by favorite bands; a propensity to reach for what’s familiar, since discovery is overwhelming; and sheer listening fatigue. When every week brings a FOMO situation, the path of least resistance looks more and more appealing. But on a pragmatic scale, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to catch up on a listening backlog or keep up with the number of new bands out there. To keep up with new music is to be in a defensive position, where even an anticipated release often needs to be put on the back burner in favor of something bigger, more popular or simply newer. This phenomenon trickles down to the critical level, too. Coverage-wise, something has to give to make room for unexpected albums by bigger names—and the collateral damage is often other worthy releases that week, which might be downgraded or not covered at all. The repercussions of that are even more disheartening in an age of shrinking word counts (and number of publications).
From a critical standpoint as well, having to immediately form an opinion on something is an experience fraught with anxiety akin to a “Jeopardy!” question countdown. Listening to an album and turning around a cognizant, coherent review within hours isn’t easy—it’s an approach to criticism and thinking about music that’s less about soul-searching and more about impulsive reaction. In a perfect world, these knee-jerk snap judgments would reflect the most primal, emotional responses to a record, and highlight the most heart- and brain-grabbing moments. In reality, as Amanda Petrusich recently examined a The New Yorker piece, “The Music Critic In The Age of the Insta-Release,” the “drawbacks to precipitous, hysterical judgment are obvious. Good art often takes time to make, and it often takes time to understand, too. It doesn’t feel unreasonable to suggest that perhaps the very first thing a person should do when faced with some nascent creation is not frantically and qualitatively assess its value.”
Yet letting an album sink in over time is a luxury that most writers don’t have these days. No website or publication wants to be seen as being behind a news story or trend, whether from an economic or perception standpoint. Chances are, the powers-that-be—whether that’s an editorial team or someone higher in a company—will be expecting written commentary about a new release as soon as humanly possible. Although there are many ways to measure online audience engagement or impact, the antiquated mindset that “being first = more clicks” lingers. It’s not necessarily an incorrect assumption: Ask any web editor, Beyoncé is a huge online traffic-driver. However, ensuring a news hook garners a site pageviews is a permanent shadow over online editorial departments. And sure, no writer is being forced to participate in the review rat race—but for those whose livelihood is tied to staff jobs or freelance checks, dropping everything to have an opinion is a smart move. (Full disclosure: I’ve reviewed both “Lemonade” and “A Moon Shaped Pool” very quickly in recent weeks, and enjoyed doing so.)
The paradoxical wrinkle is that long-lead-time album promo campaigns are becoming equally tiresome. Every aspect tied to a new record—release date, track list, album art, lyric videos, regular videos, full-album stream—is now divided into a bite-sized chunk ripe for an exclusive premiere or online reveal. This laborious rollout makes the record’s actual release day feel anticlimactic, if not obfuscated: When an album is constantly in the news, it’s easy to forget that it’s not available yet. There’s a big difference between instant and delayed gratification, but the net effect from each is that albums aren’t immune from being lost in the shuffle.
As listeners, it’s certainly difficult to complain about an abundance of new music. But at the end of the day, it’s becoming more difficult to discern whether these dropped-in-our-lap albums are worthy of the fanfare and hype. As Amanda Petrusich noted in her The New Yorker piece, “How much time is enough time to responsibly assess a concept already as odd and pliable as ‘merit’? How does art figure into a life? How long will it take until we really know what a song or record means, how it works on us, how it works on others, what it does, if it might endure, and why? Who hasn’t lived with a record for weeks, only to wake up one morning and find that it has suddenly unlocked a whole new suite of rooms deep in one’s subconscious?” Finding out which albums have staying power after the buzz fades is one of the toughest things for a music fan today. Carving out time for such discernment is perhaps even more of a challenge.
Celebrity baby worship is insane: Good for Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling for saying “no, thanks”
Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling (Credit: AP/Evan Agostini/Jordan Strauss)
Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling have pulled the biggest coup in Hollywood: According to reports, the couple gave birth to their second child in April—with no one the wiser. Tabloid media titan TMZ reports that Mendes gave birth to Amada Lee Gosling at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on April 29. TMZ, who managed to obtain a copy of the child’s birth certificate, claims that the pair named the newest addition to their family after Mendes’ grandmother.
In age of Internet-fueled obsession with every aspect of a woman’s pregnancy—from the initial baby bump to the all important post-baby weight loss—it’s amazing that the couple managed to keep the news a secret for so long. People magazine only reported that Mendes was expecting at all less than a month ago, when the outlet reported that the 42-year-old actress “hasn’t ever wanted anyone beyond her close friends and family knowing more than they had to.” Call it a win for privacy in the digital age, but even more than that, it’s heartening to see parents opt out of the toxic culture of celebrity baby worship that demands constant updates about famous offspring. Every single one of us should follow their lead.
This is an industry that treats children like corporate mergers, fashion icons, and objects of an almost religious devotion before they can even walk or talk, let alone sign an endorsement deal. When Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony gave birth to twins in 2008, they pulled in what was then a record sum for the first photos of a celebrity couple’s children: $6 million. That total would be eclipsed within months. Knox and Vivienne, the fraternal twins of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, would quickly become household names from the moment they were born. Their debut into the limelight—courtesy of People magazine—netted $15 million. That’s more than most movies make in their opening weekend.
But no financial impact was more massive than the Royal Baby, an infant whose coming was such a media sensation that Prince George’s July 2013 birth was estimated to generate $400 million in revenue for the U.K. economy. For celebrity news websites, the young royal’s birth signaled a boom time after a long drought: According to the New York Times, US Weekly had the biggest traffic day in its website’s history on July 23, the day that new mother Kate Middleton finally vacated the hospital with her “bundle of baby joy.” The same was true for People’s site, which reported a nearly 50 percent boost in traffic on the very same day. The magazine’s print publication on the royal birth was its biggest-selling of the year.
At the time, the editor of the gossip website Hollywood Life, Bonnie Fuller, predicted that Prince George would remain a cash cow for tabloid publishers. “The royal baby will become a regular beat, just like Shiloh and Suri were the babies of six years ago,” Fuller told the New York Times, also referring to Suri Holmes-Cruise, the now 10-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. “The two babies that Hollywood Life audiences are going to be obsessed with are going to be Prince George and Kim Kardashian’s baby, North West.” US Weekly editor Mike Steele called it the “royal baby boom.”
It’s astute that Fuller notes the presence of Holmes-Cruise in this discussion, whose April 2006 birth would signal the oncoming shift in how we treat the children of celebrities. The famous blog “Suri’s Burn Book” satirized the obsession with the newborn, treated as an influential media presence simply for the fact of her existence. The blog’s creator, Allie Hagan, reimagined Holmes-Cruise as a diabolical queen bee and the world as her minions. In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Hagan described this relationship as a “very new phenomenon.” “The example I like to give is that Michael J Fox was one of the biggest celebrities in America in the ’90s,” she said. “He has four kids and I don’t even know their names. People just didn’t care that much.”
Although many cite Demi Moore’s Vanity Fair photoshoot, in which the pregnant actress posed nude on the magazine’s cover as the celebrity baby tipping point, it likely wasn’t until 2008—when a number of famous couples all gave birth at the exact same time. In addition to the aforementioned couples, there was Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, Christina Aguilera and Max Liron, Nicole Richie and Benji Madden, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz, and Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry. The difference between then and 1991 was the presence not only of sites like TMZ but also social media, which made every aspect of these couples’ lives public fodder.
Many celebrity parents — like Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, who have demanded that paparazzi refrain from photographing their kids — have pushed back against this culture in notable and important ways. After Suri Holmes-Cruise was born, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes notably kept their newborn daughter out of the media spotlight for the first few months of her life. As Entertainment Weekly’s Dalton Ross notes, that blackout led to intense speculation that there had to be something wrong with her. “I’d constantly hear about what freaks they were for keeping their baby in hiding and how Suri must have four eyes and no nose,” he wrote. But the decision was natural: Who wouldn’t want to keep their child from the absurd scrutiny of a harsh public?
Her eventual debut and the massive attention that followed indicated how inevitable the baby craze would become. The Examiner called her influence the “Suri Cruise effect,” when children became expected to be brands. “Four out of 10 children are dressed in designer clothes by the age of two, and there are even blogs especially dedicated to analysing the wardrobes of Suri Cruise and Harper Beckham,” the outlet’s Louise O’Neill writes. “Of course, much of what they wear is beyond the reach of the average family, with Suri photographed carrying her own £11,000 Hermes bag, or wearing a £1,300 Dolce & Gabbana trench coat with a pair of £500 miniature Marc Jacobs heels.”
The focus placed on these young children can also be a dangerous double-edged sword. The public, watching their lives unfold behind the safe distance of a computer screen, has a way of treating these offspring like fully-formed adults and celebrities in their own right—not people who are only famous by virtue of what their parents do for a living. After North West was born, The Daily Beast reported that she “was the subject of nearly half a million tweets” in the week after the news broke. When the young girl made her debut at Paris Fashion Week in 2014, West was treated like a starlet walking the red carpet, ready to be picked apart. The child wore a black sheer dress to the event—of which Twitter vehemently disapproved. It was deemed “too mature.”
That criticism, of course, was more lobbied at West’s mother than the child herself, but if society has a way of treating pregnant women like public property—especially famous ones—the same appears to be true of their children. When Kim Kardashian was pregnant, she was subjected to harsh Internet trolling about her weight gain, even though her body did precisely what it was intended to do when there is a life growing inside it: grow along with it. That ownership, however, does not end with the child’s birth; they will be treated as a public good throughout the course of their entire existence. Should they become a cautionary tale, the child will become a listicle. If they manage to be well adjusted, they will be applauded for doing so despite the odds.
That’s a gamble that many parents may be unwilling to take, and a growing number of celebrities are asserting their right to reveal information about their children’s lives on their own terms. After actor Edward Norton and his wife, producer Shauna Robertson, had their first child, they didn’t reveal his name to the press for two years. (Did you even know Norton was married?) It might not help People’s bottom line—which has been devoting increasing amounts of its coverage to celebrity baby news in recent years—but it’s best for everyone when we back off and allow kids to be kids. Growing up is hard enough as it is. Would you really want to do it with 300 million people watching?
“Tomorrow we carry on his work”: Journalists, activists mourn death of human rights lawyer Michael Ratner
Michael Ratner (Credit: Reuters/Alex Grimm)
Legendary human rights lawyer Michael Ratner passed away of cancer on Wednesday at age 72.
Ratner was the president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal organization that has challenged the U.S. war on terror, detention without trial at Guantánamo, corporate human rights abuses, civil rights violations, attacks on whistleblowers and more.
He also served as the lead attorney for whisteblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, and was an outspoken supporter of whisteblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
“From Attica to Assange, Michael Ratner has defended, investigated, and spoken up for victims of human rights abuses all over the world,” the CCR wrote in a statement.
“For 45 years, Michael brought cases with the Center for Constitutional Rights in U.S. courts related to war, torture and other atrocities, sometimes committed by the U.S., sometimes by other regimes or corporations, in places ranging from El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Guatemala, to Yugoslavia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iraq and Israel.”
WikiLeaks shared its condolences for Ratner on Twitter, referring to him as a “guardian, mentor and true friend.”
Michael Ratner, WikiLeaks lead lawyer, has died. Guardian, mentor & true friend. In perpetuum frater ave atque vale. https://t.co/6kMRmjACdv
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 11, 2016
Good overview of Michael Ratner's work prior to representing WikiLeaks 1) https://t.co/RgtbJUPC3E 2) https://t.co/s1RZKFQZfk
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 11, 2016
In a Spanish-language tweet, it described Ratner as a lawyer who defended people around the world, “from Cubans to Palestinians, from indigenous Guatemalans to WikiLeaks.”
Un abogado de USA que defendió desde cubanos hasta palestinos, desde indígenas guatemaltecos hasta @wikileaks. Hasta siempre amigo @justleft
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 11, 2016
Ratner’s name trended on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, in the wake of his death.
An array of prominent journalists and activists mourned his passing.
We have lost one of the great rebels, fighters and friend to the poor and oppressed. RIP Michael Ratner. You made this word better by being.
— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) May 11, 2016
RIP, @justleft: who used his law degree, integrity and skills for the greatest possible good.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 11, 2016
Michael Ratner, a giant in the fight for human rights, has passed, but his spirit remains alive in all of us.
— Juan Gonzalez (@juangon68) May 11, 2016
Michael Ratner pursued justice fearlessly. He understood there are no lost causes, only causes waiting to be won. We will miss him.
— Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) May 11, 2016
Sad to hear about the passing of Michael Ratner, "radical attorney and human rights crusader." Exemplary human. https://t.co/ZnxFpCIAfp
— Nancy Kricorian (@nancykric) May 11, 2016
Here is Michael Ratner, defending truth tellers and truth telling — as he always did so ardently and so well.https://t.co/najN1oy899
— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) May 11, 2016
Here's Michael Ratner speaking at the @CAIRLA banquet from a few years ago on Islamophobia/Civil Rights – Sad loss.https://t.co/zhZIgCxtIp
— Imraan Siddiqi (@imraansiddiqi) May 11, 2016
Heartbroken by the loss of Michael Ratner, lawyer for justice everywhere & JVP advisory board member. Love & condolences to his family
— JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) May 11, 2016
Michael Ratner did so much for men held in Guantanamo Bay. If you don't know, you should know: https://t.co/0lxetbDHJG
— indrani (@indranibala) May 11, 2016
Ratner was also a longtime supporter of independent media.
Leading independent news program Democracy Now created a segment on Ratner’s life. He frequently appeared on the show.
In his final years, Ratner was a regular contributor to independent left-wing news outlet The Real News, where he sat on the network’s board.
We are sad to report that our longtime friend and board member @TheRealNews, Michael Ratner, passed away today. @justleft #RIP
— The Real News (@TheRealNews) May 11, 2016
“Seeking to hold Bush administration officials accountable for torture, he turned to filing cases under the principle of Universal Jurisdiction in international courts — in Germany, Spain, Canada, Switzerland and France,” the CCR wrote in a statement.
“Michael dedicated his life to the most important fights for justice of the last half century.”
The CCR continued: “When Michael decided to take on U.S. policies of indefinite detention at Guantanamo in January 2002, it was not a popular position. With Michael, the Center for Constitutional Rights was the first human rights organization to stand up for the rights of Guantanamo detainees, and Michael was a founding member of the Guantanamo Bay Bar Association, a group that grew to over 500 attorneys from all over the country working pro bono to provide representation to the men at Guantanamo that has been called the largest mass defense effort in U.S. history.”
Ratner would go on to win the first Guantánamo case in the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Today we mourn. Tomorrow we carry on his work" CCR on the sad passing of Michael Ratner: https://t.co/Tz0uTfbcY0 pic.twitter.com/jXEEGc7IhS
— The CCR (@theCCR) May 11, 2016
“As an attorney, writer, speaker, educator, activist, and as the President of the Center for Constitutional Rights for so many years, Michael Ratner’s passion was not just for the law but for the struggle for justice and peace,” the legal organization wrote.
“Michael’s work on Central America, Haiti, surveillance, WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, whistleblowers, war powers, and Palestine will not soon be matched.”
The CCR added: “Michael’s leadership and generous spirit have shown the way for new generations of social justice lawyers. He helped found the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, bringing CCR’s style of lawyering, which he helped shape, to Europe, where the legal culture was less familiar with public interest lawyering and filing suits to press for social change.”
“Today we mourn. Tomorrow we carry on his work.”
Nominating Clinton risks “disaster simply to protect the status quo” Sanders campaign says
Bernie Sanders (Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)
Bernie Sanders is not giving up. He is still in this to win, and his campaign is ramping up its rhetoric.
In an email sent out on Wednesday, Bernie 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver declared plans to push for a contested convention in Philadelphia in July.
By nominating Hillary Clinton, Weaver insisted, the Democratic Party would be risking “disaster simply to protect the status quo” in the U.S.
“We’re going to have a contested convention where the Democratic Party must decide if they want the candidate with the momentum who is best positioned to beat Trump, or if they are willing to roll the dice and court disaster simply to protect the status quo for the political and financial establishment of this country,” he wrote.
The U.S. political and financial establishment has long made it clear that Clinton is its preferred candidate.
Wall Street has overwhelmingly backed Clinton, an extremely hawkish multimillionaire. Financial executives, including many of those who previously backed GOP presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have poured millions of dollars into Clinton’s campaign in order to help her defeat Trump.
Many have come out in support of Clinton, calling her “far preferable to Trump” and even “the conservative hope.”
In the latest Sanders campaign email, Weaver cited three polls released on Tuesday that show Clinton facing a potential tough race with Trump in a national election.
A Quinnipiac University poll of crucial swing states found Clinton narrowly winning Florida and Pennsylvania, but losing to Trump by 4 percent in Ohio. Sanders would more comfortably win all three, according to the poll.
“This is pretty scary,” the Bernie 2016 campaign manager said. He posed Sanders as the biggest threat to Trump.
“For months, Bernie Sanders has out-polled Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, and often by extraordinarily large margins,” Weaver wrote.
He blasted the Democratic establishment for using right-wing talking points to criticize Sanders’ left-wing policies.
“We’ve been told our goals for the future are Utopian, and that our plans would raise taxes on middle class families. We just never thought those attacks would come in a Democratic primary,” Weaver said.
“Yet somehow we keep winning,” he added.
Sanders has won 19 states in the primary — more than Clinton. Hillary, however, has won many of the more populated states, giving her more delegates.
Clinton has 1,716 pledged delegates, or 54 percent of the total, whereas Sanders has 1,433, or 46 percent.
The undemocratic superdelegate system has, in particular, given Clinton an unfair edge. She has repeatedly lost states by double digits, but still come out on top with more total delegates, because the unelected party elites who serve as unpledged delegates have overwhelmingly thrown their weight behind her.
Joe Scarborough, host of the popular MSNBC program “Morning Joe” joined countless frustrated Americans in pillorying the “rigged” electoral system.
“Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths? This system is so rigged,” Scarborough exclaimed in a segment in April.
Sanders is mathematically unable to win with pledged delegates alone, however, so his campaign has recently changed course and begun trying to woo superdelegates to his side.
The Bernie 2016 campaign has asserted that it is still in this win, and sees a contested convention as the way forward.
“Because we must do everything we can to defeat Trump in November our mission is to win as many pledged delegates as we can between now and June 14th,” Weaver wrote.
He closed the latest email with an expression of solidarity.
“We are the best chance to defeat Trump because people united can never be defeated,” the message concluded. “That is why we must keep fighting.”
Elizabeth Warren responds to “hormonal” Donald Trump’s latest attack with another glorious Twitter takedown: “Your free ride is over”
(Credit: AP/REUTERS)
While vowing to do everything in her power to stop Donald Trump from becoming the next president of the United States, Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren warned last week that no matter what the blustery businessman throws her way, “we won’t shut up. We won’t back down,” during one of her now signature Twitter rants against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
The notoriously thin-skinned candidate predictably lashed out at Warren, bestowing the goofy nickname of “goofy Elizabeth Warren” upon the popular progressive, and a tired attack on her ancestral background during an on Fox News Tuesday and also on his preferred vehicle of communication, Twitter, Wednesday:
Goofy Elizabeth Warren didn’t have the guts to run for POTUS. Her phony Native American heritage stops that and VP cold.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
If the people of Massachusetts found out what an ineffective Senator goofy Elizabeth Warren has been, she would lose!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
“Really? That’s the best you could come up with? Come on,” Warren remarked during a with Mic.com. “I thought Donald Trump said he was a guy who was good with words.”
Responding to Trump’s latest attack that she lacked “the guts” to run for president, the go-to Democratic Trump slayer took to Twitter to, , cut the wannabe bully down to size.
“We get it, Donald Trump,” Warren tweeted to her nearly 400,000 followers on Wednesday. “When a woman stands up to you, you’re going to call her a basket case”
We get it, @realDonaldTrump: When a woman stands up to you, you’re going to call her a basket case. Hormonal. Ugly.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
Do you think you're going to shut us up, @realDonaldTrump? Think again. It's time to answer for your dangerous ideas.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
You care so much about struggling American workers, @realDonaldTrump, that you want to abolish the federal minimum wage?
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
You feel so much for people with college debt, @realDonaldTrump, that you raked in millions scamming students with Trump University?
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
You're so concerned about Wall Street, @realDonaldTrump, that you say you’d “absolutely” repeal Dodd-Frank?
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
When asked what gov should stop doing, @realDonaldTrump said overseeing banks! How can you be tough on Wall Street by letting them off?
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
.@realDonaldTrump: Your policies are dangerous. Your words are reckless. Your record is embarrassing. And your free ride is over.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) May 11, 2016
Of course, Trump displaying the adroit debating skills of a child, simply doubled down on his gendered attack in a tweet to his 8.1M followers:
Goofy Elizabeth Warren is now using the woman’s card like her friend crooked Hillary. See her dumb tweet “when a woman stands up to you…”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Our Native American Senator, goofy Elizabeth Warren, couldn’t care less about the American worker…does nothing to help!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Isn’t it funny when a failed Senator like goofy Elizabeth Warren can spend a whole day tweeting about Trump & gets nothing done in Senate?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2016
Joe Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot” is a great idea — with some glaring weak spots
Joe Biden (Credit: AP/Diego Corredor)
You know that feeling, when they do a generation-later reboot of your favorite TV show or your favorite directors take over a franchise you were pretty “meh” about? That feeling of hope and excitement and also the dread of, please, Lord, do not screw this one up? That’s how I feel about Joe Biden and the ambitious, well-intentioned — and still needs a lot of work — cancer moonshot initiative.
I think you will find my credentials as a Stage 4 cancer veteran who’s alive today thanks to immunotherapy are in order. You’ll also see that my Leslie Knope-level Joe Biden worship also checks out. So when the vice president — who has been stunningly open in his experience of grief for his son Beau, who died one year ago of brain cancer — announced he was directing his energies toward leading a new $1 billion “moonshot” initiative to “to eliminate cancer as we know it,” my main response was, go get it, Joe. After all, despite decades of research and billions of dollars spent on many of the most common forms of cancer, the needle has not moved significantly enough.
Promising research — especially for rarer cancers — has often stalled at the gate, and drug development has languished. People of color are all but ignored in cancer research trials. Meanwhile, as Peggy Orenstein noted back in 2013, “Only an estimated .5 percent of all National Cancer Institute grants since 1972 focus on metastasis” — meaning that frequently, the patients in most dire need of treatments are still being wildly underserved. You want to change things? Great, where do I sign up?
But as Biden been moving forward with his task force, it’s been harder to feel confident that this is a team that’s doing its best to speak to the needs and concerns of those of us most invested in the endeavor — the people directly affected by cancer.
On Wednesday, Biden appeared on “Good Morning America” to discuss the project and its progress, saying, “I’ve gone around the country. I’ve met now with… almost 300 oncologists.” (Last month, he also swung by the Vatican to discuss stem cell research.) And he took on the significant problems of funding and red tape, vowing “I’ve committed, and I promise before we leave we will mow down any of the impediments that exist bureaucratically in the federal government that slow up the process” of furthering their work. That’s an incredible undertaking, and one doctors and scientists desperately need — it’s hard to go about the crucial work of investigating treatments and working directly with patients when you have to devote an excessive amount of time to writing grant proposals.
On Wednesday, the veep also announced a new Cancer Moonshot crowdsourcing platform on Medium, for sharing news and personal stories. And in his own essay on Medium, National Cancer Institute acting director Douglas Lowy discussed both the Moonshot’s Blue Ribbon Panel and its “wide net” Cancer Research Ideas site for index exchanging knowledge and information.
Yet the project still seems to be searching for its focus and its voice. During the “Good Morning America” segment, interviewer Robin Roberts — herself a cancer survivor — added a personal note, telling Biden, “I don’t like when people say somebody ‘lost’ their battle to cancer. [Beau] didn’t lose. I just want to say to you, your son’s journey was no less valiant though the outcome wasn’t what many had prayed for.” Biden is under no obligation to agree with Roberts, but I wish he’d considered that possibility before publishing his own essay on Medium, in which he shared the story of how “I spoke with Wendy from Bay Village, Ohio, who’s currently battling breast cancer.” The White House also shared the audio of his interview with her, describing her likewise as a woman “battling breast cancer.” Many, many of us who’ve experienced cancer — as well as many who work in cancer treatment — reject that outdated “battle” metaphor. Would it have been so very hard to come up with a different word, instead that cliché?
Biden also wrote, “Even before the President officially tasked me with heading up a new national mission to double the rate of progress toward a cure for cancer, something remarkable had already begun to happen. Americans from all around the country, from all walks of life, had begun, simply, to tell me how this horrible disease has touched their lives.”
It honestly baffles me how someone who has spoken now to countless doctors and patients can use this misleading language on such a critical platform. This is the kind of vague and inaccurate terminology one might expect from a half-assed celebrity magazine story about a movie star doing a fun run for “the cure,” but it is so not what you want to read from the guy entrusted with making a serious impact.
So here you go, Joe. Cancer is not “this disease,” like it’s polio or measles. That’s Cancer Basics 101. There are over one hundred different kinds of cancer, and they behave differently from each other, and from person to person. That’s why, for instance, when an interviewer asked me recently why I hadn’t “needed chemo,” I explained that my late stage melanoma would likely not have responded to it. The insidious nature of cancer means that breakthroughs are rarely across the board successes, and that a protocol that works well on one form may not do much for another. That’s also why, in case you hadn’t guessed where we’re going with this, there isn’t “a cure” and there likely never will be. Cancer research will evolve via expanding the variety of options, and moving treatment away from ineffective cookie cutter models to personalized medicine. I am considered cancer free today thanks to two effective drugs. But they’re not “the cure” for cancer.
Mr. Vice President, must know this on some level. You did write, “The goals of this effort — this ‘Moonshot’ — cannot be achieved by one person, one organization, one discipline, or even one collective approach.” Why, then, did you get so much else wrong?
And while this part isn’t about science, I do wonder if your no-doubt heartfelt statement that “The truth is that this disease spares no one. It doesn’t care about how much money you make, what your profession is, or how many loved ones surround you” might have been more fully informed if you’d ever spent time on any of the crowdfunding pages of people struggling to pay their bills and pay for treatment. “This disease,” as you mistakenly refer to it, may spare no one, but cancer sure as hell has a big advantage when it strikes the underpaid and the uninsured. And if you say cancer is “truly a bipartisan issue,” can you see what you can do about getting conservatives to back off Planned Parenthood?
Like our vice president, I have spent the past few years grieving for people I loved who cancer took away. I am angry about that and I want better odds for more people. I have also experienced firsthand the dramatic possibilities of cutting edge science, and am full of hope that we are on the brink of a revolutionary era. But I want those leading the charge to get the story right, for the sake of all us — all of us who are not battling, who do not fall under the umbrella of a single disease, and will not survive thanks to any single “cure.”
Woody Allen rape joke opens Cannes: French comedian burns Allen with scathing Roman Polanski reference
FILE - In this July 15, 2015 file photo, director Woody Allen attends a special screening of "Irrational Man", in New York. Amazon said Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016, that it will distribute Allens currently untitled film in a traditional theatrical release this summer, followed by a streaming release through its subscription service, Amazon Prime. The romantic comedy, shot last summer in New York and Los Angeles, stars Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell and Parker Posey. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) (Credit: Evan Agostini/invision/ap)
A French comedian dared to go where few entertainment reporters have dared to go with iconic Hollywood director Woody Allen, cracking a rape joke about the director at the opening night gala screening of his latest project, “Cafe Society.”
“You’ve shot so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the U.S. you haven’t even been convicted of rape,” the Hollywood Reporter quoted Cannes opening night master of ceremony Laurent Lafitte as saying in front of a stunned crowd that included Allen Wednesday night. Variety had a slightly different translation: “It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the U.S..”
“The joke drew gasps from the audience, who suspected he was alluding to director Roman Polanski,” Variety reported. Polanski, another acclaimed filmmaker who’s premiered several works at Cannes, escaped extradition to the U.S. to face charges of sexual assault late last year. He has been living in exile since his 1977 indictment for the rape of a 13-year-old girl.
“Thank you for coming tonight sir,” the master of ceremonies continued to Allen in French. “Although it’s the least you could do. Your film isn’t even in competition. What’s the worst that could happen? …. Or that it’s not as good as ‘Manhattan.”
In a Hollywood Reporter column posted online a little less than an hour before Allen’s news conference to promote“Cafe Society” at Cannes Wednesday, Allen’s son, Ronan Farrow, blamed the news media for failing to ask Allen about longstanding allegations of sexual assault, citing his father’s vaunted public relations machine for fending off the media.
“There will be press conferences and a red-carpet walk by my father and his wife (my sister). He’ll have his stars at his side — Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Steve Carell, Jesse Eisenberg. They can trust that the press won’t ask them the tough questions. It’s not the time, it’s not the place, it’s just not done,” Farrow predicted.
“Cannes is an extraordinary festival, I see so many people I know and the audience always responds well,” Woody Allen, his father, would go on to say at a friendly Cannes press conference where international journalist, once again, failed to ask about him about the sexual assault allegations. “I like Hollywood, seeing friends there but I couldn’t live there.”
