Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 788
May 6, 2016
Saudi Arabia faces collapse: America’s Middle Eastern ally may not survive this latest oil crisis
Saudi Arabia is in serious trouble. The Binladin Group, the kingdom’s largest construction company, has terminated the employment of fifty thousand foreign workers. They have been issued exit visas, which they have refused to honor. These workers will not leave without being paid back wages. Angry with their employer, some of the workers set fire to seven of the company’s buses.
Unrest is on the cards in the Kingdom. In April, King Salman fired the water and electricity minister Abdullah al-Hasin, who had come under criticism for high water rates, new rules over the digging of wells and cuts in energy subsidies. The restructured ministry was to save the Kingdom $30 billion—precious money for an exchequer that is spluttering from low oil prices. Eighty-six percent of Saudis say that they want the water and electricity subsidies to continue. They are not prepared to let these disappear. They see this as their right. Why, they say, should an energy rich country not provide almost free energy for its subjects?
When King Salman took over last year, he inherited a kingdom in dire straits. Saudi Arabia’s Treasury relies upon oil sales for over ninety percent of its revenue. The population does not pay tax, so the only way to raise funds is from oil sales. As oil prices fell from $100/ barrel to $30/barrel, oil revenues for the Kingdom collapsed. Saudi Arabia lost $390 billion in anticipated oil profits last year. Its budget deficit came to $100 billion—much higher than it has been in memory. For the first time since 1991, Saudi Arabia turned to the world of private finance to raise $10 billion for a five-year loan. That this country, with a vast sovereign wealth fund, needs to borrow money to cover its bills is an indication of its fragile fundamentals.
What does a country do when it enters a period of crisis? It calls the consulting firm McKinsey. That is precisely what Saudi Arabia did. McKinsey sent its crack analysts to the Kingdom. They returned—in December 2015—with Saudi Arabia Without Oil: The Investment and Productivity Transformation. This report could have been written without a site visit. It carries all the clichés of neo-liberalism: transform the economy from a government-led to a market-led one, cut subsidies and transfer payments, and sell government assets to finance the transition. There is not one hint of the peculiar political economy and cultural context of Saudi Arabia. The report calls for a cut in Saudi Arabia’s public-sector employment and a cut in its three million low-wage foreign workers. But the entire political economy of Saudi Arabia and the culture of its Saudi subjects are reliant upon state employment for the subjects and low-wage subservience from the guest workers. To change these two pillars calls into question the survival of the monarchy. A Saudi Arabia without oil, McKinsey should have honestly said, is a Saudi Arabia without a monarchy.
What would the McKinsey transformation produce? “A productivity-led transformation,” wrote the eager analysts, “could enable Saudi Arabia to again double its [Gross Domestic Product] and create as many as six million new Saudi jobs by 2030.”
The King’s son, Mohammed Bin Salman (MbS), took McKinsey at its word. He then copied and pasted the report in his own Saudi Vision 2030. Little of Prince MbS’s statement differs from the McKinsey proposal. The eagerness of the Prince shows his lack of experience. It is unlikely that he has read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, a full-scale assault on the idea of economic transformation. Even more unlikely that he has read Duff McDonald’s The Firm, an evisceration of McKinsey’s smoke and mirrors model. To base an entire country’s future on a McKinsey report seems reckless. But then Prince MbS has a streak of recklessness in him. He led the Saudi war on Yemen – and that has not turned out well at all. The peace talks over that war being held in Kuwait remain stalled. Saudi Arabia made almost no gains in Yemen. Should the man who led Saudi Arabia into humiliating failure in Yemen now be in charge of its economic transformation?
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy. Prince MbS has the King’s favor. His talents are measured by the King and not by the people. They will have to tolerate his shenanigans with the economy just as they have had to tolerate his failed war on Yemen.
What is Prince MbS’s Saudi Vision 2030? Despite the attempts to create some stability in the oil market, there is no indication that oil prices would be raised to safe levels anytime soon. If oil remains below $50/barrel, Saudi Arabia has to revise its own economic project. That means that Saudi Arabia will have to find new ways to create revenues. To shift from an oil-dependent economy to an industrial-tourism-finance economy will require a massive dose of investment. To secure that investment, Saudi Arabia plans to sell a small stake of its state-owned oil firm—ARAMCO. The plan is to raise at least $2 trillion from that sale and from the sale of other state assets. This money will bolster the depleted Sovereign Wealth Fund, which might otherwise run dry by 2017-2020.
The enhanced Sovereign Wealth Fund will be used to develop new industrial sectors such as petrochemicals, manufacturing at the medium scale and finance as well as tourism. Foreigners will be allowed to own property in the Kingdom and entrepreneurial activity will be encouraged by the state. How does all this happen by 2020 – the date proposed by Prince MbS—or even by 2030—the name of the Prince’s plan? Will Saudi Arabia be able to rapidly transform its population from being satisfied with receipts of oil revenues to being workers in an insecure market environment? History suggests a long period of dissatisfaction amongst the public during this kind of enormous transition. Can the Saudi royal family manage the level of anger and humiliation that this change will evoke?
The IMF’s director of Middle East and Central Asia—Masood Ahmed—is sure that the transition will work just fine. In fact, Ahmed believes that the McKinsey plan is perhaps a little too modest. What the Saudis need to do, said Ahmed, is to attract more private investment to help the diversification plan. Where will this private investment come from? Perhaps from China, which has already signed a large ($2.48 billion) nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is China’s largest oil supplier. China’s Sinopec, PetroChina and Yunnan Yuntianhua work closely with ARAMCO to build oil refineries in the kingdom and on the Chinese coastline. Chinese construction companies are building the Haramain railroad that will eventually link Mecca and Madina. China is the largest trading partner of Saudi Arabia. The Binladin group will mothball some of its cranes, but that does not mean that cranes will hang over the skyline of the kingdom. Chinese construction firms are prepared to build the new infrastructural base in Saudi Arabia. Washington, if it is paying attention, must see the drift of its old ally—either into social chaos or into the Chinese orbit. No other alternative exists.
7 ways Trump is about to turn the GOP into a national freakshow
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Darren Hauck)
Republicans across the country are swallowing hard and wondering what Donald Trump is going to be like as their presidential candidate—as if the answers are not clear enough.
Some are hoping he will dial down his vulgar mouth and start acting presidential, as if magically transformed by what mainstream media had been calling an “aura of inevitability.” You saw hints of that in his speech Tuesday night, where, in his typical swing of the pendulum style, he praised Ted Cruz after savaging him for days, even accusing Cruz’s father of consorting with John F. Kennedy’s assassin. Americans who have been paying attention already know more than enough about Trump, even if he has a showman’s gift to endlessly keep stunning and provoking. That is why two-thirds of
Americans not only tell pollsters they not only strongly disappove of him, but many are scared of him. Hillary Clinton’s negatives are high, but not like that.
There are open questions about the race as it enters a new orbit, such as how low will his ugly swipes go, or what scandals from Trump’s past will emerge, or how and when will Democrats hit back, and will they be able to stop him when all the Republican presidential hopefuls did not? The Democrats, and especially Hillary Clinton, have their playbook, while Trump’s political successes have come from throwing out the rules.
Here are seven things we know about Trump and what his candidacy will likely mean, even as the country heads into new territory led by a crazed super-celebrity billionaire.
1. Trump won’t keep his mouth shut. Any notion of better behavior or a classier act has repeatedly shown itself to be a mirage. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has said that Trump will continue to be Trump, because he is “a person who tells it like it is.” That means building himself up by putting others down, whether it’s attacking Mexicans, Muslims, women who question him or his values, and anybody else for any headline-grabbing reason.
2. His persona is based on unpredictability. He bragged to the Washington Post’s editorial board that part of being a top negotiator was acting out and upsetting the other side’s expectations. And so he can be rabidly anti-choice to please evangelicals, yet come out for same-sex marriage, saying he’s known Elton John and his partner for years. Or within 24 hours he can trash Ted Cruz and then praise him. Trump believes this somehow is a magnificent virtue, not a liability for the person at the helm of national power. As Lewandowski said, Trump “has the ability to change the narrative at any moment,” as if that is a bedrock principle for governing. When Bill Clinton was president, he infamously said and believed whatever he wanted on TV all the time—facts be damned. But Trump is introducing a whole other level of dysfunction.
3. There will be no moderate makeover. That’s the old cliché; appeal to the purists and extremists to win primaries and caucuses, and come the General Election, tack to the political center because that’s where tens of millions of voters who didn’t take part in the nominating contests start paying attention. (In 2016, it looks like the primary and caucus turnout will be 30 percent of all voters next fall.) But there is no way Trump can pretend to be moderate, given everything he has already said and social media’s reach. There’s no denying that he exults in ranting and raging as has been seen on the campaign trail. There’s no undoing what he’s done and said ad nauseum for months.
4. He’ll split the party into factions. After Trump won Indiana, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus called for the party to line up behind the presumptive nominee. That will be much harder for Republican candidates running this fall, who, looking at their own futures, will have to decide if they’ll run with him, in spite of him, or against him. All those shades are already occuring, with many longtime party leaders saying never. These fissures are likely to cost the GOP its U.S. Senate majority.
Before Trump’s clinching the nomination, there were predictions the Senate was ripe for a Democratic takeover. Twenty-four of the 34 Senate seats in play this fall are held by Republicans. Democrats only need to pick up five for a majority. The party has strong candidates in states that turn out blue majorities in presidential years, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania. Trump not only weakens these GOP incumbents, his candidacy raises a question of what may happen in the House, though GOP gerrymandering after 2010’s redistricting still deeply favors House Republicans. Nonetheless, there’s little to suggest that Trump is about to become the great unifier, meaning Republicans could face a historic meltdown and defeat this fall.
5. His campaign will be marred by scandal. Most people—except for supporters who have fallen under his “make America great again” spell—know that Trump has issues with telling the truth. You can be sure there’s plenty of dirt behind however rich he really is. The country has yet to see his tax returns, which will be a Pandora’s box of slick moves to avoid taxes. There’s Trump’s four business bankrupties involving $4.7 billion in debt, where small business vendors at his casinos were partly paid, hurting the little guy. He has a little-known but extensive history with New York City’s mob, as he built and ran his casinos according to journalists who covered him for decades. And there is even his strange personal life, as pondered by the New Yorker’s new profile of a future possible first lady, Melania Trump.
6. Toss in the Supreme Court and it gets uglier. It is pretty easy to decode the game Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been playing doing everything he can to block President Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee. McConnell is going for broke, hoping somehow the GOP will not lose its conservative majority on the Court for decades, even if it loses the White House in the shorter run. But add that stonewalling to Trump’s raging and what emerges is a political season where Americans are going to have to decide if they’re ready to hand more power to people who want to upend many things in wholly untried and untested ways. Conservatives might say Bernie Sanders is also a bombthrower, but his remedies have substantial precedents in the 1930s New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt and 1960s Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. Not so with these Republican “leaders” and a Trump-led GOP.
7. A nasty race will get nastier. Trump has singlehandedly brought a dirtier level of gutter politics to presidential politics, embracing every smear in sight and enjoying his taunts, bullying and strongman act. He’s already gone after Hillary Clinton for playing the “woman card,” being incompetent, being a terrible person, accomodating her cheating husband, and more. Despite these juvenile antics, Democrats know what it means if they lose the media narrative to a headline-provoking stuntman. They are also well aware that Hillary’s unfavorable ratings in national polls are akin to Trump’s.
The Democrats will hit back and hit hard, but the question is not just when and how, but who? There are reports that Democratic super PACs are buying multi-millions in TV ads before the Republican Convention to shape impressions—as if that was needed (and might backfire by playing into his hands as being a target). Nonetheless, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, as many expect, will Bill step it up? Will the current president? Trump is not the only sharp-tongued politician in America. But
Don’t Worry, Be Happy Paul Manafort, an older Washington hand who was hired to be Trump’s Republican National Convention manager, told the Republican National Committee in its recent meetings in Florida that Trump has just been “playing” a part just to get the nomination and he will change once he starts campaigning for the fall.
Talking about saying anything that closes a deal! That’s like being told by the candidate himself to sit down, make yourself at home at one of his resorts, relax and have a drink, grab a meal, play some golf, grab a spa treatment and then get the super-sized bill.
It will be one thing to see Republicans pay the price for embracing Trump, and another for Americans who will be forced along for the upcoming ride. Perhaps the best thing that can be said about the coming Trump candidacy is that while he may be taking all of the country and the GOP into the gutter with him, if the past is prologue, there’s a chance Trump and his party will be left in the gutter for years to come.
May 5, 2016
What was so good about “The Good Wife”: After it ends this Sunday, there will never be a show like it again
Julianna Margulies in "The Good Wife" (Credit: CBS)
In 2014, when “The Good Wife” was coming off of its best season ever, CBS sent out mailers to Emmy voters with a cheeky little dig at other marquee dramas. The postcard had a little infographic on it, comparing the number of episodes “The Good Wife” produced for its fifth season compared to Emmy favorites like the final season of “Breaking Bad” and the penultimate season of “Mad Men.” Seeing it in black-and-white makes it a bit easier to appreciate the magnitude of what the CBS drama was accomplishing; the two AMC shows, combined, made for fewer episodes than just one season of “The Good Wife,” which clocks in at a hefty 22 episodes.
Most dramas that have come to define the Golden Age of television—and its successor, the Peak TV era we’re in right now—are slimmer cable dramas, fielding 13, 10, or sometimes even fewer episodes. The shorter length began to be an indicator of prestige, a signifier that a show didn’t have to hold itself to the strict guidelines of the broadcast television format—with its FCC censorship rules, frequent commercial breaks, and long season length. In 2014, the year of that mailer, even Netflix’s flagship drama “House Of Cards” and its hit comedy “Orange Is The New Black” produced just 13-episode seasons. The streaming service has, theoretically, an infinite amount of space to create any length of season it would like to. But the streaming platform was strategically eyeing the fan fervor and critical adulation of prestige drama. Those episode lengths sure bloated up, as James Poniewozik observes at the New York Times, but they opted for 13-episode seasons to look like the other cool kids.
But although those differences often help some showrunners create masterpieces—David Chase, David Milch, David Simon—they do not, in and of themselves, make a great television program. Similarly, while the broadcast television format doesn’t always create great dramas, it’s not a recipe for disaster, either. “Lost,” “The X-Files,” “24,” “The West Wing,” and even “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” excelled off of the broadcast model even as prestige dramas were booming on cable. Constraints like the larger number of episodes can be a burden, but they can also work to the show’s advantage—pushing the show’s writers to fit those constraints can result in fascinating material.
“The Good Wife” is testament to the continued power of the broadcast model, even as that model has created flawed story arcs and mediocre characters. When it’s good, “The Good Wife” is a crackling character drama and legal procedural, with more formal experimentation and scintillating performances than other shows can achieve in their lifetime. The problem is that hasn’t really been good, except in brief flares of brilliance, since the end of season five. The same challenges that prompted the show to create its stellar fifth season also ended up defanging the sixth and seventh seasons, both of which struggled to get off the ground.
This is to say that “The Good Wife” could both used as an argument both for and against the 22-episode season, because while it succeeded at times, it flopped at others. On the whole, it succeeded more than it failed, and on the whole, its failures were mostly just the plateau of mediocrity. But as CBS’ mailer did in 2014, the show’s anticlimactic series finale this Sunday night after seven seasons on the air raises some interesting questions about how we measure success in this television landscape. “The Good Wife” didn’t have an antihero or progressive politics, like either “The Sopranos” or “The Wire.” It wasn’t a special-effects filled genre show that has taken root on broadcast networks—shows like “The Flash” and “Hannibal,” for example.
Instead, to the average viewer flipping through channels, “The Good Wife” was just another legal procedural, with plenty of courtroom scenes and dramatic objections. Its appeal precisely was that it took the staid old model of a lawyer show and shook it up with an appealing mix of ethical quandaries and corporate backstabbing, all while recreating what life as a high-powered corporate lawyer might really be like (expensive fundraisers, local politics, years-long relationships with rival counsel and hostile judges, and of course, the difficulties of choosing furniture for your associate’s office). Twenty-two episodes per season gave the showrunners, Robert and Michelle King, a lot of space to play with. Short-run cable series have a kind of laserlike focus, a narrative intensity that draws the viewer in for a specific length of time as the story could go, seemingly, anywhere. Broadcast dramas, by contrast, are more likely to set a certain status quo in place and then allow its characters to evolve within that framework. You don’t have to watch all 22 episodes of each season to drop in and know, more or less, where you are with “The Good Wife”; meanwhile, dropping in on something like “Game Of Thrones” is absolutely unfathomable.
What Robert and Michelle King did with “The Good Wife” was work very hard to make it both an excellent drama and a program that fulfilled every expectation of the broadcast format—whether that was the long season or standards and practices about sex scenes. It was an ambitious, impossible task, as Noel Murray explains at the A.V. Club, because every subverted expectation made the next one that much harder to earn. It was also, by all available accounts, a very difficult pace and time investment for its actors. The Kings and Margulies sat down and spoke to the New York Times about it, and when asked what it would take for her to commit to another 22-episode-per-season show, Margulies replied: “There’s no amount of money in the world.” She added:
>…it’s not just a commitment of time on set. I’d come home at the end of a 14-hour day, I have a family to tend to, and then I have nine pages of dialogue to learn. So it just never ends.
Josh Charles, who was one of the show’s pillars, departed during season five, citing similar reasons. “It’s a very long season doing a network television show, and somewhere in year 4, I kinda felt burnt out.” Behind-the-scenes tensions also led to the bizarre sidelining of Emmy-winner Archie Panjabi, and though the details of that feud are still tantalizing secrets, long hours on set can’t have helped.
One of the most interesting things about “The Good Wife” is how much the behind-the-scenes narrative of the show became a part of the show itself, as the narrative swiveled around Panjabi and Margulies’ apparent feud, wrote a swansong to Charles’ character, and then skipped and jumped through hoops to get one great guest star or another on the show for four episodes at a time. (A partial list of incredible guest or recurring actors on the show: Michael J. Fox, Maura Tierney, Jill Hennessey, Matthew Perry, Carrie Preston, Anika Noni Rose, Nathan Lane, Dylan Baker, Vanessa Williams, America Ferrera, Matthew Goode… the list goes on and on.)
The pressures of broadcast and the ambition of the showrunners meant that every bump in the road somehow ended up visible on-screen, even if, as in the case of Charles’ departure, it made for a beautiful wrinkle. For its fans, “The Good Wife” had a bit of the sensibility of a beloved band with a lot of creative energy but also interpersonal drama; there was always something happening there, and it was an exciting show to keep tabs on.
We’re not making shows like this anymore. The network drama is less profitable than ever, as users move to streaming and bingeing and away from watching live. It’s not gone completely—there’s “Empire,” of course, to break the curve—but the shows that do draw those huge same-day viewers are shows with big twists, whether that’s “Empire” or “Game Of Thrones.” “The Good Wife”’s subtler, smoldering burn isn’t quite suited for broadcast’s current trend, but the show was also quintessentially network in its sensibility, content, and format. It’s time has ended. Margulies will go on to be talented and radiant in another show; the guest stars will go back to their Broadway and off-Broadway productions. And the Kings? They’ve signed on to do a new show at CBS—a 13-episode run, naturally.
How “Purple Rain” found its anthem: “We both knew we needed to find just the right song”
Albert Magnoli was the director, co-writer and editor of “Purple Rain,” the 1984 hit movie that launched Prince into super-stardom. In tribute to Prince, Albert agreed to share with Salon some of his memories of that special experience. (This interview was lightly edited for clarity.)
Albert, let me begin in a non-traditional manner by opening up the floor here and handing you the microphone to say anything whatsoever.
I’m sorry. I have no words to say. The magnitude of the loss is overwhelming.
Yes, it is. I’m sorry. Let me take you away from today and let’s go back to a different time and another world, back to the early 1980’s when Prince was just emerging. Prince’s latest album, “1999,” had been a hit, and now Prince was seeking to make a movie. What were you doing back then?
I was in Los Angeles. I had recently graduated from the Film School at the University of Southern California, and I was completing my work as the editor of the 1984 film, “Reckless.”
So how did you get involved with Prince and “Purple Rain?”
At the time, Prince’s talent manager in Los Angeles, Bob Cavallo, was shopping a script around Hollywood for a film starring Prince, but he was frustrated because he couldn’t find a director to helm the film. They all kept passing on the script. I met Cavallo at an early screening of “Reckless,” and shortly thereafter he asked me why no one would direct his script. So I agreed to read it.
Cavallo called me the next day for my assessment. I explained that the script needed to be authentic about the real lives of these musicians in Minneapolis. I told him that a writer-director should be sent to Prince’s city of Minneapolis to research these musicians, observe them, learn about them, and understand them. The script should genuinely reflect their lives.
Fine, Cavallo said. But what is the STORY?!
I was not expecting his question. I thought my role was simply to explain to Cavallo why his script was not attracting a director. So I was silent for a moment while I gathered my thoughts. Then I launched into a story. I spoke for about 10 minutes and I described a three-act storyline. This is basically the story that is now portrayed in “Purple Rain.”
Cavallo was taken aback. He was quiet for a few moments. He was processing what I had just laid out. Then he broke the silence.
That’s a great story, he said. What are you going to do about it?
I was not expecting this question either. So I thought about it for a moment. Then I said, put me on a plane to Minneapolistomorrow night. I’ll meet with Prince and I’ll tell him this new story. If he likes it, we’ll make a film. If he doesn’t, you’re out nothing more than the cost of a plane ticket.
Okay, Cavallo said, that’s a deal I can live with.
Wow. Had you ever met Prince before?
No.
Did you know anything about Prince? Were you familiar with his music?
Not much. But about six months before, I was sitting in my apartment working at my desk with the radio playing in the background, and Prince’s song “1999” came on. It captured my attention. I stopped what I was doing just to listen to the song. It was captivating. And I remember thinking to myself that this song itself was a film. So it was a bit ironic that only a few months later I found myself reading a script for a Prince film that I would eventually write, direct, and edit.
So off you go to Minneapolis. Do you remember your first meeting with Prince?
Yes. This was in June or July of 1983. My meeting with Prince was scheduled for midnight. His people drove me to a hotel in downtown Minneapolis where we waited in the lobby, but I was off to the side by myself. At precisely midnight, the doors to the elevator opened and out walked Prince. He was alone. He was wearing a long dark trench coat and high-heeled boots. He spotted his people and began heading toward them, but I was off to the side and he didn’t know who I was so I remember just watching him walk across that large lobby.
Any first impressions?
My first impression was distinct. Prince was shy, soft-spoken, and vulnerable. He was careful, as if he were protecting himself.
We sat down together, Prince, two people from his team, and I. Prince asked me what I thought about the script.
I told Prince that I had not come to talk about that script. Instead, I was there to talk about a new story. Prince was surprised. Well, okay, Prince said, let’s hear it.
I then launched into my story and laid it out for Prince, basically in the same manner that I had told it to his manager the day before. It took me about 10 minutes and everyone just listened.
When I finished, Prince was quiet. Then Prince said to me, let’s keep talking, just you and me. How about a drive? Sure, I said. So Prince’s people departed, and Prince and I hopped into his blue BMW. Prince liked to drive. We drove through farmland in the night, not saying a word.
“Do you know me?” Prince finally asked from behind the wheel.
“No,” I said.
“What do you know?” he asked.
“I heard your song ‘1999’ last year,” I told him.
“Well, how is it, then,” Prince continued, “that you came here and in 10 minutes you told me my life story?”
I replied that if he was willing to commit to this storyline, then we could create something special. He was willing, so we agreed to work together to make the film.
No wonder you remember your first meeting with Prince — that’s where it all began, right there that night in his car. Okay, so at this point you and Prince are a team, but did you have financing for the movie?
We did. The arrangement was that Prince’s management team would put in $500,000, and Prince would put in another $500,000. This gave us a total budget of $1 million to make the film.
This was not a big budget by Hollywood standards, but I was thrilled with this arrangement because it meant we had complete freedom to make the film that we desired. No movie studio would be involved to exert control. It was just us.
Okay, so you have Prince and you have the financing. Did you dive right in and get to work?
Yes. I moved to Minneapolis in August of 1983 and starting living out of a hotel there in order to immerse myself in the local music scene and to start really getting to know Prince and the band members, because, after all, they were my characters. I went to their practices. I went to their gigs. And I interviewed them extensively.
My days consisted entirely of the Minneapolis music scene and the film. During the day I worked on the logistical aspects of producing the film. In the early evening I joined Prince and the band for their practices. Later in the evening I went to their performances. And then I would return to my hotel room and work on the screenplay until the early morning hours based upon what I had absorbed during the days and evenings.
How did this movie go from being an independent movie to a major Hollywood movie?
After I completed the new script in September, I shared it with Prince and his team, and everyone liked it. Unbeknownst to me, Prince’s manager back in Los Angeles, Bob Cavallo, began shopping the script to Hollywood studios, and it turned out that the studios liked it too.
I received a call from Cavallo saying that he needed me back in Los Angeles to join him in meetings that he had set-up with several studios who were interested in the film.
I told Cavallo no. I wasn’t going. I told him that involving a studio could jeopardize the authenticity of the script because a studio would likely seek to control and fundamentally change the story. But Cavallo was looking at it from his role as a talent manager. He said that involving a studio was preferable because the studio would provide the financing to make the film and thus Prince would then not need to expend his own funds.
I really didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles. Cavallo said he would come to Minneapolis and kidnap me. I said I’d hide and he would never find me.
Ha! But it’s hard to be incognito when you’re hanging-out with Prince. So did you finally relent?
I did. I understood what he was after. Financing. So I got on a plane back to Los Angeles.
Our first meeting was with the Warner Brothers movie studio. The studio executives were telling us how excited they were about the script and the potential film. They said they had a wonderful idea for improving it. Just imagine, they said, how great the film would be by having John Travolta play the Prince character.
Are you kidding me?
No. These studio executives actually proposed that we get rid of Prince, and replace him with John Travolta.
This, of course, was absurd. But it was the sort of thing I expected, and it was the reason I didn’t want to involve a studio in the project.
I let their suggestion sink in, and then I slowly looked over at Cavallo and his colleagues. They were stunned. Their faces were ashen.
I told the Warner Brothers executives that this was out of the question. I explained that this was a Prince film, and it was crucial for me to depict the actual environment where the music had originated. The film needed to be authentic, and having Prince and the other musicians appear as themselves instead of hiring actors would make it so.
We encountered similar experiences at the other studios as well. They all wanted to change the tone of the film and the storyline so it would become a “PG-13” rated film instead of an “R” rated film. I was not interested in that.
That’s insane. And what courage you showed — here you were fresh out of film school and a first-time director, and you were telling a major Hollywood studio to go pound sand.
I just had a clear vision about what the film should be.
Didn’t Warner Brothers actually produce this movie in the end?
I was preparing to return to Minneapolis at the end of the day when we received a call from Warner Brothers. They said hold on, don’t leave town yet. Come back tomorrow, we’d like to talk with you again. We went back in to Warner Brothers the next day. They said they really did like the script, and they decided we could make the film our way.
The business people worked out a deal, and a few days later Cavallo called me and said that Warner Brothers agreed to give us a $7 million budget and a 42-day shooting schedule.
You must have been thrilled to now have a huge budget.
Well, $7 million was not a huge budget. It was quite modest actually. The average film at the time was being made for around $9-12 million I believe, so this was still a conservative budget. But yes, it certainly gave us much more room to work with, especially since we had been planning to make the picture for only $1 million.
So back you go to Minneapolis to continue making the movie you envisioned. Did Warner Brothers leave you alone, or did they interfere later in the process?
No, Warner Brothers left us alone. I must give them a lot of credit for that. They left us alone to make the film throughout the shoot and the entire process. One reason they left us alone was because the winter in Minneapolis was harsh – 20 degrees below zero with 8 feet of snow. They were not inclined to visit us.
And what about control by Prince? Did you and Prince tussle at all over creative control of the movie?
No. Working with Prince was excellent. We collaborated very well right from the start. Prince was the musician, and I was the filmmaker. Prince wanted the film to be executed professionally, and he expected me to make this happen. So our roles were naturally delineated and we worked together seamlessly.
What was your relationship like with Prince?
We had an excellent connection with each other. We had a lot in common, especially when it came to the intellectual and emotional ideas underlying the music and the film. This began on Purple Rain. We talked a lot about the motivations behind his character in the film, and about Prince’s songs and their meanings and how they interrelated with the film and the characters. And we talked about how Prince’s music and career in real life related to the film.
Prince and I became close friends and creative partners. Our relationship formed during Purple Rain, and it extended well beyond that for many years. I toured with Prince. And we worked together at Paisley Park on the soundtrack for the 1989 movie “Batman” directed by Tim Burton. Watching Prince recording music at his mixing board at Paisley Park was a privilege.
He was a consummate professional and an exceptional artist and this has tragically ended too soon.
Why was Prince such a private person, almost reclusive? Why did he never open-up in interviews and answer questions?
He was simply a very private person. Once he knew you and trusted you, he would open-up. But yes, he was shy, and sensitive, and vulnerable.
Prince was all about the music. He wanted his music to speak for itself. And he was successful in this because his music speaks volumes.
Why did Prince want to make a movie in the first place? Was he possessed by a raging ego to become a movie star?
No. Prince was all about the music. He was a musical being. The film gave him another way to communicate his music to a wider audience.
Well, it worked. “Purple Rain” was by far Prince’s greatest selling record album. Was Prince driven by fame and money? Did he create all his controversial lyrics and looks to manufacture publicity in order to sell more records? Was it all a contrived act?
No. Prince never calculated or schemed to make money. Prince was about creating music. He was an artist first and foremost, and he wanted to create his music his way regardless of the artistic and business consequences.
Prince’s music contains such a wonderful sense of humor. This humor also appears in the movie. How did this happen?
This was part of our overall approach. We worked to be authentic. Humor and pathos were part of the journey.
Music was an enormous part of the movie. How were the songs selected?
Remember that first night in the car when Prince and I decided to work together? Well, I told Prince that we would need about 12 songs for the film. The very next day Prince handed me 100 songs that were already fully produced and recorded. I asked Prince for the lyrics, and then it was my job to go through all of these songs and select the ones that would work best for the film. The music needed to be integrated into the story, and the story needed to find itself in the music.
When it came time to shoot, what was the atmosphere like on the movie set? Was there a lot of partying with all of these rock n’ rollers?
No. There was no partying. An important element in preparing for the shoot was that the musicians would need to transition from their nocturnal, rock n’ roll world into the daylight world of making a film.
In the music world, sometimes their gigs wouldn’t even begin until midnight or later, they would play all night, and then they would sleep all day. In the film world, however, they needed to get up at 5 a.m., get to the set, and we would work all day until around 9 p.m.
This wasn’t an easy transition, but they did it. They were all very professional. There were never any incidents on the set.
The “Purple Rain” movie was such a magical creation. Did you know while you were working on it that you had a smash hit on your hands?
No, I didn’t. No one did. We just worked hard and did our jobs.
Think about it. I was suddenly on a plane to meet Prince around July 1st, 1983, and we wrapped shooting the entire film in mid-December that same year. It all happened, start to finish, in about 5 months. This is an incredibly condensed period of time to conceive, write, finance, organize, and shoot a musical motion picture.
When did you realize that you had a huge hit?
The first real indication came when Warner Brothers tested the picture. Cavallo and I had been telling them from the start that the film had the potential to cross-over to a wider, more mainstream audience. But they didn’t believe it. They simply did not know what they had. They were envisioning a small release – 200 screens – and mainly in the urban areas of the country. They felt they had a short run of only one or two weekends in the theaters.
We disagreed. So Warner Brothers screened the film for a test audience and the results were outstanding. People loved it. Warner Brothers thought that maybe this was an anomaly so they tested it again, and the results were the same – excellent, with a high 90s score. They tested it a third time with an all-white demographic, and again it tested in the high 90s. The film had achieved its objective of crossing over.
At this point, Warner Brothers realized that they had something special. They changed their strategy and agreed to launch the film on a national basis on 900 screens and give it a decent run.
That strategy worked because it was a big hit. “Purple Rain” became the #1 movie in the country, the album was #1 for 24 weeks straight, and multiple singles were hits, including two at #1. The movie soundtrack also won for Prince his sole Oscar Award, and his very first two Grammy Awards.
How did “Purple Rain” become the title song?
The song “Purple Rain” was not included among the 100 songs that Prince initially gave me.
As I was going through the 100 songs and identifying ones for the film, I was constantly seeking a special song to serve as the climax at the end of the film. Prince and I discussed this and we both knew we needed to find just the right song for this – an anthem.
Prince was playing a benefit concert at the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue, which was the club that was featured in the film and where we shot the performance scenes. Prince would often try out new material there. On this particular night, August 3, 1983, Prince played the song “Purple Rain” for the very first time ever. I was in the audience in the balcony. I knew instinctively that this was the song.
After the show I said to Prince that this was the song we were looking for, and he agreed. He said it was named “Purple Rain,” and Prince asked if the film itself could also be named “Purple Rain.” It was perfect. The title was born.
Where do you think this name came from?
I’m not sure, but if you have ever been to Minneapolis, you know that the weather can be quite extreme, and they have very dramatic, torrential downpours. Just before a fierce storm, clouds would begin to churn and roil. Prince would grab me and take me outside. We would stand together in a field just looking up at the sky. It would change color from dark gray to blue, and finally to purple. And then the sky would open-up and down came the rain.
These memories will be with me forever.
Whit Stillman returns: “Sometimes it’s good to blow through all your deadlines”
Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale in "Love & Friendship" (Credit: Amazon Studios)
Whit Stillman is the director still best known for “Metropolitan,” the 1990 film about young members of what one of the film’s characters called “the urban haute bourgeoisie.” The ghost of Jane Austen has hovered over nearly all of Stillman’s work, so it seems appropriate that he has finally paid direct homage to her with not one but two new projects.
The first is a movie, “Love & Friendship,” based on Austen’s obscure early novella, “Lady Susan.” The second is a novel, also called “Love & Friendship,” in which Stillman rewrites the novella – which is told in letters and was never finished – as a more traditional narrative. In the film, the lovely and slightly desperate young widow Lady Susan (Kate Beckinsale) arrives at an English manor house hoping to land a new husband: She’s charming but at least a little bit conniving. In the novel, Stillman tells the story from the point of view of her nephew, who aims to clear her name. (This is a very early work of Austen’s, written and set in the 18th century.)
Both movie and book are much funnier than they sound in a brief description.
We spoke to Stillman by phone from Los Angeles, where he has attended a screening of his film. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
It seems like it was just a matter of time before you got to Jane Austen. What drew you to her and what kind of impact has she had on your films and your life?
I wrong-footed Jane Austen; I was in a total funk as a college sophomore and read the wrong book. I read “Northanger Abbey.” I’d never read a Gothic novel and had no idea what she was making fun of and parodying.
I suppose I read “Sense of Sensibility” first, and then “Pride and Prejudice”; and yes, they made a big impact once I was old enough and got the right books in my hands, when I was 23 or 24.
I remember when I was trying to do “Metropolitan,” in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser.
When you read Austen, did she seem to be describing the world you knew and the one you’d known, or was it an exotic kind of world you wanted to live in?
There were authors I was reading in that period who were describing a world with a social fabric; that was very attractive. Coming out of college, back to New York, where I didn’t really know that many people, I thought our world was very atomized. One of the wonderful things about “War and Peace” is the idea that all these people knew who they were and they knew the parents – it’s the same thing you get in Jane Austen’s world. It’s very attractive to us.
As you get older, and as you get old, you see there is social texture, but there’s much less social fabric than there was then.
My parents were divorced and my father went off without my mother and we lost sight or him. When I’d be going to parties, in the lobbies of these Eastside buildings, parental-generation people would be coming out and they would have known my father from college, or the Navy or something. That always pleased me – that there were these generations that knew each other.
Tell us a little about the way the film and the novel relate to each other.
Sometimes it’s good to blow through all your deadlines. I was supposed to write the book before I did the movie, but before you make a movie there are a million things you have to do. So I didn’t really start the book until we started picture editing, in post-production… There’s not much you can do [at that point]. So I started to work on the book and tried to trick Little, Brown to get more time – using all kinds of ruses. It’s due on a Monday — can I have until Friday? And Friday isn’t really until 11:59… Can I turn it in Sunday night? Christmas was coming up, and I said, “I’ve had so much luck turning in finished work on Christmas day – it’s such an odd thing…” Then it was, “You know – New Years… New Year’s Day…”
The book is sort of a rewriting of the Austen, right?
It’s sort of the counter-narrative – with the absurd thesis that the Lady Susan was wonderful and everyone else was bad.
This is something I’ve discovered a lot in life. There is always an insult that goes with the injury. If someone’s going to injure you – someone’s going to do some wrong to you – and then, to justify the injury, they’re going to malign you terribly. So let’s say, a woman marries an affluent man, and she wants to divide his family so none of them get a dime… And then, to make up stories about them – that’s the insult added to the injury.
It’s been a while since the big Austen boom in the ‘90s, but there have been a lot of adaptations. Did you feel you had to do something different than what we’d seen so far?
I thought it was wonderful that this hasn’t been done. I’d had discussions with people about doing other Austens… My thesis is I had three pretentious autobiographical tales, and then after that I wanted to find new material. To me, the idea was that this wasn’t reducing a masterpiece to a 90-minute film but was rounding out something she had left midway through…. In this case it’s pretty evident she hadn’t finished her full process. Though in 1805 she did a beautifully clean copy that is the now the only full Austen manuscript. It’s in the Morgan Library; you can actually look at it on online.
What interests you about the 18th century?
The 18th century generally?
Yeah.
If you’re sort of interested in politics, but sort of upset about contemporary politics, it’s kind of wonderful to read about periods who were very eloquent and admirable – generally. People are articulating ideas you can sympathize with, or understand both sides of. Or at least feel like one side is saying the right things.
So I’m actually a Rockingham Whig – that is my political ideology. Rockingham wasn’t terribly effective, so we had the War of Independence. The War of Independence was a civil political conflict between Whigs and Tories, and it was passionate and virulent in England and it was violent, and war, in the United States. But [Edmund] Burke and those who allied with him were passionately on the side of the American Whigs who were rebelling.
The other 18th century things were painting – Joshua Reynolds – and music. I sort of like an earlier period of music than the 1790s, the period in the film that we’re portraying. Horse-drawn carriages were much better than. Movies weren’t as good, it’s true.
You mentioned politics. Do they seem as crazy today as they’ve ever been?
Oh it’s a very scary time. We haven’t seen anything like this. It’s pretty terrible. I know how people in Europe, with these movements that are very scary.
In the 18th century, was there any parallel to Donald Trump?
Fortunately, not. It’s sort of a 1930s thing, isn’t it. And Europe in the last 30 years. But it hasn’t been a major party nomination.
What’s next for you?
I hope to get back to the script for “The Cosmopolitans,” the TV series that Amazon let me do. But this film kind of got in the way of that.
6 times famous performers told Donald Trump, “Stop Using Our Music!”
R.E.M. performs on NBC's "Today" in New York's Rockefeller Plaza, Tuesday, April 1, 2008. (Credit: AP/Jason DeCrow)
Choosing the playlist for political campaign rallies is a tricky business. First and foremost, candidates need to make sure their musical picks inspire feelings of patriotism, optimism and positivity. They also need to make sure the artist behind the song doesn’t disavow their campaign entirely.
During the long history of presidential campaign songs—and particularly since politicians made the switch from songs created specifically for their campaigns to pop-tunes licensed from top-chart artists—candidates have drawn the ire of performers who don’t align ideologically with their campaigns. In 2000, Tom Petty famously threatened to sue GOP candidate George W. Bush over the use of his song “I Won’t Back Down.” To drive the point home, Petty even played the jam at rival Al Gore’s home after the Democratic candidate conceded the election.
In the years since, several rockstars have expressed anger over candidates using their music to promote causes they’re less-than-keen on. But no campaign in recent history has piqued the protests of pop superstars more than Donald Trump, whose flagrant misogyny, racism and xenophobia are not exactly the message international artists are thrilled to endorse.
Here are six recording artists who told Trump to stop playing their songs.
1. The Rolling Stones
Following his primary victory in Indiana, Trump played the Rolling Stones’ hit song “Start Me Up” as he exited the stage. The presumptive Republican nominee also rocks out to other classics by the legendary British rock band during his rallies, including “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Sympathy for the Devil.”
According to a Trump spokesperson, the campaign did not ask for permission to use the songs, but noted the candidate culled his rally himself. Unfortunately for Trump, the Rolling Stones are not as enamored with him as he seems to be with them.
A spokesman for the group told Time, “the Rolling Stones have never given permission to the Trump campaign to use their songs and have requested that they cease all use immediately.”
Apparently, you can’t always get what you want.
2. Adele
Earlier this year, the English singer Adele released a statement insisting Trump did not have her permission to use “Skyfall” and “Rolling in the Deep” at his campaign events, though she stopped short of renouncing the candidate altogether.
“Adele has not given permission for her music to be used for any political campaigning,” spokesman Benny Tarantini told CNN. “We have no further comment.”
3. Twisted Sister
Despite originally giving permission to Trump to use their rebellious rock anthem at his campaign rallies, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider told CBC Radio last December that the band was “not gonna take” Trump playing their tune anymore.
“What’s going on now is really making me question allowing the song to continue to be used,” Snider said in an interview with host Shadrach Kabango, referring to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Snider, who befriended Trump during a stint on “Celebrity Apprentice,” said he was upset to see the public persona put forth by the Republican candidate. “My Donald Trump is a Democrat,” Snider said. “My Donald Trump is pro-choice. He is what they called a ‘Northeastern Republican’—socially liberal but fiscally conservative.”
“When you have white supremacy groups aligning with you, and you don’t denounce them, you don’t say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m not with these people here,’ and draw some clarity, that’s a problem for me,” the rockstar added.
4. Neil Young
When Trump failed to ask Neil Young permission to use his hit song “Rockin’ in the Free World,” the singer released an extensive analysis of the state of politics in the U.S., noting that, politically speaking, he preferred Bernie Sanders over the Republican frontrunner.
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“Music is a universal language. So I am glad that so many people with varying beliefs get enjoyment from my music, even if they don’t share my beliefs,” Young said in a statement. “But had I been asked to allow my music to be used for a candidate, I would have said no.”
The singer, whose 36th studio album “The Monsanto Years” tackled corporate greed and environmental destruction, said he hopes “speak truth” to economic powers.
“I do not trust self-serving misinformation coming from corporations and their media trolls,” Young said. “I do not trust politicians who are taking millions from those corporations either. I trust people. So I make my music for people—not for candidates.”
“Keep on rockin’ in the free world,” he added.
5. Steven Tyler
Tyler’s objection to Trump’s use of his rock classic “Dream On” wasn’t so much about politics. Instead, the Aerosmith lead singer was infuriated over the campaign’s lack of compensation for the song.
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“My intent was not to make a political statement, but to make one about the rights of my fellow music creators,” Tyler wrote in an essay for the Huffington Post.
“Big changes are happening right now in copyright reform as a result of massive technology changes and with the way fans pay for music and consume music,” Tyler wrote. “These changes can be a good thing for songwriters and up-and-coming artists, if we are paid fairly by those who make money using our work.”
“Everyone deserves to be able to pay their bills, support their families, and do the work they love,” the singer added.
6. R.E.M
“It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” was an obvious choice for Trump, whose well-documented fearmongering plays right into the song’s main theme.
But R.E.M was not interested in being the anthem for Trump’s candidacy. “Go fuck yourselves, the lot of you—you sad, attention grabbing, power-hungry little men,” lead singer Michael Stipe said. “Do not use our music or my voice for your moronic charade of a campaign.”
In a Facebook post addressing the matter, R.E.M wrote, “While we do not authorize or condone the use of our music at this political event, and do ask that these candidates cease and desist from doing so, let us remember that there are things of greater importance at stake here.”
“The media and the American voter should focus on the bigger picture, and not allow grandstanding politicians to distract us from the pressing issues of the day and of the current presidential campaign,” the band wrote.
One of the earliest societies to realize music’s powerful effect on people—and thus, politics—were the ancient Greeks. “When modes of music change,” Plato said, “the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.” That may be so, but Trump is finding out that there’s one fundamental law that isn’t likely to change anytime soon, no matter what tune is playing: copyright law.
Rob Reiner voices the frustration of millions, calls out media coverage of Donald Trump on “Morning Joe”
Rob Reiner
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezenski may still be a little raw from the brutal burn they received at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner from comedian Larry Wilmore, but less than a week later they were given an epic tongue lashing from another Hollywood celebrity criticizing their sycophantic coverage of Donald Trump.
“‘Morning Joe’ has their head so far up Trump’s ass they bump into Chris Christie,” Wilmore quipped to a silent crowd at the Washington, D.C. Hilton and thunderous applause in living rooms nationwide Saturday.
Channeling the same sense of viewer frustration on Thursday, “Being Charlie” director Rob Reiner called out the media for failing to hold the reality TV star turned “presumptive” Republican presidential nominee accountable for the lies he repeatedly tells.
“He’s not pinned down,” Reiner argued. “We have to hold these people accountable.”
The news is presented more like Hollywood entertainment, Reiner argued, a point made evident by Fox News’ Chris Wallace on Wednesday’s edition of “The Five.” Calling it a “vicious cycle” or “virtuous cycle” depending on one’s view of Trump, Wallace admitted that television news appeared to oversaturate Trump coverage because “every time we did, it spiked the ratings. We were in a sense following what the ratings were.”
“Who cares” about ratings, Reiner demanded. “What we have to care about is, ‘What does this man say?!'”
“Since the late 60s, when ’60 Minutes’ became a hit, all of sudden networks realized there was a profit center in news,” Reiner explained. Reiner told the “Morning Joe” hosts that their three hour political gabfest is “a talk show” and “not hard news,” pointing out that “the show part of it is getting bigger and bigger — where show business and news have blurred.”
“We have to ask those tough second, third and fourth tier questions,” the comedian insisted of the hosts.
A frustrated Brezenski quickly shot back: “Maybe I should stick my heel down [Trump’s] throat and tell him he’s not answering my question. Would that make you feel good? What planet am I on?”
“Chris Matthews held Trump accountable on his position on abortion. He didn’t let him up. He kept going at it and it was the most revealing thing that happened this entire campaign season, ” Reiner argued.
“If Donald Trump was not a celebrity,” Reiner posited, “the words that come out of his mouth, you’d see a guy, a lunatic in the park on a soapbox and you’d walk right by him.”
“If he is held accountable and the press do their due diligence,” Reiner argued, “he will lose. Because there is nobody in America that would agree that we should ban all Muslims from America.”
In an earlier segment, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. appeared to allude to Trump’s racist appeal without explicitly calling out Republican voters’ racial animus, only for Scarborough to hijack his argument and insist that Trump is actually just making a simple economic argument to disillusioned working class voters. Reiner, however, did not hesitate to specifically call it out as racism.
“There are a lot of people who are racists in this country,” Reiner stated matter-of-factly when co-host Willie Geist asked about Trump’s appeal.
“Oh my god,” an incredulous Scarborough let out. “Did you just say that?”
“Well, that’s true,” Reiner repeated as Brezenski looked on, mouth agape.
Watch the rest of the interview to see how the “Morning Joe” set dealt when faced with the feelings of frustrated viewers as vocalized by Rob Reiner:
We are now fact-checking Donald Trump’s lunch: Trump tweets patronizing Cinco de Mayo image, reporters rush to confirm if Trump Tower serves taco bowls
(Credit: Twitter)
As if it isn’t bad enough for Mexican-Americans that the man who denounced all recent immigrants into the U.S. from their homeland as “rapists” and “criminals” clinched the Republican Party’s presidential nomination the week they commemorate Mexican resistance to foreign intervention, Donald Trump celebrated the occasion with a wholly patronizing tweet that included the hollow claim, “I love Hispanics,” and a cheesy plug for one of his business ventures:
Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics! https://t.co/ufoTeQd8yA pic.twitter.com/k01Mc6CuDI
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2016
Perhaps the worst part of Trump’s tweet (after realizing we’ll be subjected to these for at least the next six months) was watching the reaction it drew from some in the media. Instead of reactions of horror that the “presumptive” presidential of one of America’s two major political parties is using the term Hispanics as a stand-in for peoples from any Latin American country, reporters scrambled to fact-check Trump’s take on where exactly the best taco bowls are made.
“Donald Trump’s taco bowl, explained,” offered Vox minutes after Trump tweeted:
Setting aside Trump’s dubious claim that he loves Hispanics (and the fact the feeling is not mutual), there are a few problems with Trump’s tweet.
For one, it does not seem like the Trump Tower Grill actually serves taco bowls. But the Trump Café does serve them as beef tacos. We can assume that’s what he meant.
Never mind the obvious factcheck: Taco bowls aren’t Mexican.
Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski wasted little time grilling employees of Trump Grill to determine if Trump’s tweet was a stunt — a pet industry Kaczynski’s done very well in creating:
Just got off phone with Trump Grill, says they don't serve taco bowls. It's not on the menu online.
— andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) May 5, 2016
Unfortunately forKaczynski, the team at ThinkProgress blew a hole in his theory:
For the record, Trump Tower does have a taco bowl on its menu (HT: @JuddLegum) https://t.co/BBP5WxMCmP pic.twitter.com/ghWkE2ItH7
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) May 5, 2016
Independent Journal Review’s Benny Johnson did a close examination of Trump’s tweet to discover this relevant bit of information:
Donald Trump is eating a taco salad on top of a bikini-clad photo of his ex-wife, Marla Maples. pic.twitter.com/sW2itGBAOK
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) May 5, 2016
It’s been a long and exhausting campaign cycle, and the real bit is only about to begin….
Naked Islamophobia in the U.K.: Inside London’s disgusting mayoral smear campaign
Sadiq Khan (Credit: Reuters/Hannah McKay)
Today, people across Britain are voting in a string of local and regional elections in what’s been dubbed “SuperThursday.” Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t attract much interest beyond the borders of the UK. So it was somewhat surprising to see the Drudge Report leading its site on Thursday with a splash about one of those elections—the race to decide who will be the next mayor of London.
“Somewhat” is the key word there, because, as Drudge’s headline made clear, the London election has been dominated above all by one thing. The headline read “FIRST MUSLIM MAYOR OF LONDONISTAN.” British politics doesn’t travel far, but Islamophobia? That’s a different matter.
It’s true: if the polls prove correct, London is about to elect a Muslim, Sadiq Khan, to be its next mayor, despite a campaign against him that has been so nakedly Islamophobic that it would make Donald Trump proud.
Khan is actually a fairly standard member of the Labour Party. He’s kept the party’s leftist leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at arm’s length. His opponent, Zac Goldsmith, had developed a reputation as something of a maverick Tory, a passionate environmentalist who often caused trouble for his party leadership. So it surprised just about everyone when Goldsmith and his party began openly painting Khan as a friend of Islamic fundamentalists and tried to turn London’s non-Muslim Asian communities against him.
In one attack, Goldsmith, along with Prime Minister David Cameron, condemned Khan for sharing a platform with Suliman Gani, an imam in Khan’s constituency who Cameron claimed “supports” ISIS. It turned out that Gani supports the Tories and has met with many Conservative politicians, including Goldsmith, but no matter. Cameron escalated his feverish attacks on Khan week after week.
Goldsmith also sent leaflets to Tamil and Hindu communities, warning them that Khan would tax their jewelry and other family possessions. Many who received these letters reacted to them with revulsion.
In perhaps the culmination of his smear campaign, Goldsmith wrote a piece for the Daily Mail attacking Khan’s abilities to defend the city’s safety. “If Labour wins on Thursday, we will have handed control of the Met, and with it control over national counter-terrorism policy, to a party whose candidate and current leadership have, whether intentionally or not, repeatedly legitimised those with extremist views,” he wrote. The Mail helpfully included a picture of the 7/7 terrorist attacks along with the article.
Many Conservatives have pronounced themselves disgusted by the campaign. Columnist Peter Oborne called it “the most repulsive I have ever seen as a political reporter.” Former Tory candidate Shazia Awan said that it reminded her of the days of Enoch Powell, who notoriously warned in 1968 that immigration to the UK would bring “rivers of blood” with it.
Fortunately, the assault appears not to have worked. If Khan is elected, he will not only be London’s first Muslim mayor. He will also have by far the biggest personal mandate any Muslim has ever received in Britain, and possibly in a huge swath of the Western world. There could be no more fitting rebuke to the poison his rivals have attempted to stir up. It will also be a lovely little rebuke to the Donald Trumps and Drudges and Bill Mahers of the world, who have all-but-openly declared that Muslims cannot be a legitimate part of modern democratic society. Hopefully, American voters in November will reject that point of view just as decisively.
IDF general compares Israel to Nazi Germany, then walks back comments after right-wing backlash
Yair Golam
“It’s scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here,” said Israeli Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan in a Holocaust Remembrance Day speech in Tel Yitzhak, Israel on Wednesday.
The prominent Israeli military official made parallels between Israel today and Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the Israeli media reported.
“The Holocaust should bring us to ponder our public lives and, furthermore, it must lead anyone who is capable of taking public responsibility to do so,” Golan said.
“Because if there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe – particularly in Germany – 70, 80 and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016,” he added.
Golan, who is deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, known as the Israel Defense Forces, or the IDF, later walked back these remarks, after facing backlash from within his government.
In his speech, however, he had warned: “There is nothing easier and simpler than fear-mongering and threatening. There is nothing easier and simpler than in behaving like beasts, becoming morally corrupt and sanctimoniousness.”
Holocaust Remembrance Day is “a day of national soul-searching,” Golan said, stressing that, on this day, “it is worthwhile to ponder our capacity to uproot the first signs of intolerance, violence, and self-destruction that arise on the path to moral degradation.”
Later, amid heated criticism from right-wing politicians, he told Israel’s Army Radio “I had no intention of comparing the IDF and the State of Israel with things that went on during the Nazi period.”
“The comparison is absurd and lacks any foundation, and there was no intent to draw such a parallel or to criticize the civilian leadership,” Golan insisted.
Other prominent Israeli figures have warned of the same “abhorrent processes” about which Golan cautioned, nonetheless.
Far-right Israeli lawmaker Miri Regev proudly proclaimed in a TV interview that she is “happy to be a fascist.” Regev, a former brigadier-general in and spokesperson for the IDF, is now Israel’s minister of culture.
As Salon has reported before, renowned Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has warned Israel is witnessing the rise of fascism — and he does not use the term lightly.
Levy was an outspoken critic of Israel’s destructive 2014 war in Gaza, for which leading human rights organizations accused the IDF of war crimes, as the U.S. State Department has acknowledged. The journalist received daily death threats for his criticisms, and hired a body guard to protect him.
The columnist for the leading Haaretz newspaper warned at the time that he saw the “first signs of fascism” in Israel.
Since then, Levy says things have gotten even worse. The year 2015, he wrote, “heralded the start of blatant and unapologetic Israeli fascism.”
Israel’s right-wing — like the right-wing in much of Europe and the U.S. — is increasingly extreme, and overtly racist. Fascistic Israeli groups like Lehava march throughout the streets and chant “death to Arabs,” while organizing anti-miscegenation squads.
Benzi Gopstein, the ultra-right-wing leader of Lehava, was in April cleared of assault charges for attacking two left-wing Jews. He claimed he was acting in “self-defense” because he said he thought the men he attacked were Arabs. An Israeli court accepted Gopstein’s argument, before the right-wing extremist made further threats against the Jewish leftist activists.
Gopstein has previously called Christians “vampires and blood suckers” who must be expelled from Israel.
A widely circulated photo taken by Reuters on April 19 shows an Israeli at a protest holding up a sign reading “KILL THEM ALL,” effectively calling for the genocide of Palestinians.
The right-wing extremist Israeli was at a demonstration in support of Sgt. Elor Azaria, an IDF soldier who killed an incapacitated Palestinian assailant in the illegally occupied West Bank.
A video of the extrajudicial execution was published by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, leading to widespread coverage of the incident.
In response to international outrage, Israeli authorities charged the soldier with manslaughter. Israel’s increasingly extreme right-wing, nevertheless, has demanded that Sgt. Azaria is a hero and should go free.
Gen. Golan mentioned the incident in his Holocaust Remembrance Day speech. “Improper use of weapons and violating the sanctity of arms have taken place since the IDF’s founding,” he acknowledged, while applauding the judicial process.
“The Holocaust, in my view, must lead us to deep soul-searching about the nature of man,” said the IDF deputy chief of staff in his speech. “It must bring us to conduct some soul-searching as to the responsibility of leadership and the quality of our society. It must lead us to fundamentally rethink how we, here and now, behave towards the other.”
“Most of all, we should ask how it is that we are to realize our purpose as a light unto the nations and a model society,” Gen. Golan added. “Only this kind of remembrance can serve as a living and breathing monument for our people – a worthy monument, a monument of truth.”
