Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 794

“Grief sedated by orgasm, orgasm heightened by grief”: Beyoncé, “Lemonade” and the new reality of infidelity

“Are you cheating on me?” Beyoncé asks in her visual album “Lemonade,” which premiered last weekend on HBO. She throws open a door, and water gushes forth—an apt metaphor for the flood of emotions that her question, and its implied answer, unleashes.

As a couples therapist, I’ve sat with hundreds of women, and men, in the turbulent aftermath of infidelity. For the past decade, I’ve been traveling the globe listening to tales of betrayal from every side. What struck me about Beyoncé’s album was both the universality of its themes and the unusual way in which it presented them. Whether autobiography or simply art, her multimedia treatise on unfaithful love represents a refreshing break with this country’s accepted narratives on the topic.

In the American backyard, adultery is sold with a mixture of condemnation and titillation. Magazine covers peddle smut while preaching sanctimony. While our society has become sexually open to the point of overflowing, when it comes to infidelity even the most liberal minds can remain intransigent. We may not be able to stop the fact that it happens, but we can all agree that it shouldn’t.

Another thing most Americans seem to agree on is that infidelity is among the worst things that can happen to a couple. The dialogue here is framed in terms borrowed from trauma, crime and religion: victims and perpetrators; injured parties and infidels; confession, repentance and redemption. As a European, I can testify that in other cultures, the betrayal is no less painful, but the response is more philosophical and pragmatic. Americans do not cheat any less than the supposedly lascivious French; they just feel more guilty about it, because the experience here is framed in moral terms.

As Brazilian couples therapist Michele Scheinkman has pointed out, the notion of trauma provides a legitimizing framework for the pain of betrayal, but it limits the avenues for recovery. This clinical approach denudes the pain of its romantic essence and its erotic energy—the very qualities that must be reignited if a relationship is to not only survive but thrive. Jealousy, rage, vengeance and lust are as central to the story as loss, pain and shattered trust—something European and Latin cultures will more readily admit than Americans. Infidelity is not just about broken contracts; it is about broken hearts.

These erotic aspects of the drama are unapologetically displayed in Beyoncé’s fierce performance. She does not present herself as victim, but as a woman invigorated and empowered by love. She even voices one of the great unspoken truths about the aftermath of affairs: the hot sex that often ensues. “Grief sedated by orgasm,” she intones, “orgasm heightened by grief.” Perhaps most strikingly, she is unashamed to announce to the world that she intends to remain Mrs. Carter. “If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious.”

Once upon a time, divorce carried all the shame. Today, choosing to stay when you can leave is the new shame. That’s not to say we don’t do it—research indicates that most couples will stay together after an infidelity​—but we do it stoically and silently. Betrayed women only get to sing songs of rage and retribution and wield baseball bats after they’ve walked out the door. Politicians’ wives stand mute beside their contrite husbands at press conferences, and they are judged for doing so. From nationally televised presidential debates to the privacy of the voting booth, Hillary Clinton continues to be held in contempt of the court of public opinion for choosing to stay when she was free to go.

There’s no question that the cultural conversation surrounding affairs reinforces some of America’s most deeply held values: love, honesty, commitment and responsibility—values that have been the cornerstones of our society. But the intensity of the reactions that the topic provokes can also generate narrowness, hypocrisy and hasty responses. The dilemmas of love and desire don’t always yield to simple answers of black and white, good and bad, victim and perpetrator.

Our current American bias is to privatize and pathologize infidelity, laying the blame on deficient couples or troubled individuals. Beyoncé counters this tendency to individualize sweeping social realities, placing her own story within the cultural legacy of black men, black women and the violence against both. Her lyrics are intensely personal, but she frames them with imagery and poetry that reminds us that historical forces shape our transgressions.

Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too the taboo against it. It has been legislated, debated, politicized and demonized throughout history. When marriage was an economic enterprise, infidelity threatened our economic security. Now that marriage is a romantic arrangement, infidelity threatens our emotional security—our quest to be someone’s one­ and­ only. Today, infidelity is the ultimate betrayal, for it shatters the grand ambition of love.

Yet infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy. Whether we like it or not, it seems to be here to stay. It happens in good marriages and it happens in bad marriages. It happens to our friends and neighbors, and it happens to international sex symbols and superstars—to the “most bomb pussy,” as Beyoncé puts it. It happens in cultures where it’s punishable by death and it happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. Even the freedom to leave and to divorce has not made cheating obsolete.

Given this reality, it’s time for American culture to change the conversation we’re having about infidelity—why it happens, what it means and what should or should not happen after it is revealed. The subject of affairs has a lot to teach us about relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. It forces us to grapple with some of the most unsettling questions: How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional and our erotic needs? Is possessiveness intrinsic to love or an arcane vestige of patriarchy? Are the adulterous motives of men and women really as different as we’ve been led to believe? How do we learn to trust again? Can love ever be plural?

These are uncomfortable dilemmas, but important ones. That’s what my work is dedicated to: generating conversations about things we don’t like to talk about. Infidelity is still such a taboo, but we need to create a safe space for productive dialogue, where the multiplicity of experiences can be explored with compassion. Ultimately, I believe, this will strengthen relationships by making them more honest and more resilient. I applaud Beyoncé for her courageous contribution to this conversation.

Betrayal runs deep but it can be healed. Some affairs are death knells for relationships; others will jolt people into new possibilities. When a couple comes to me in the aftermath of a newly disclosed affair I often tell them this: Today in the West, most of us are going to have two or three significant relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person. Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?

Moms deserve better than this: The shameless pandering of “Mother’s Day” is an argument for the death of “hyperlink” films

From a marketing perspective, “Love Actually” was such an ingenious idea that it’s a wonder film executives didn’t think of it sooner.

The 2003 film brought the ’70s disaster movie model—in which films like “The Towering Inferno” and “The Poseidon Adventure” amassed a litany of notable celebrities to narrowly avoid death—to the romantic comedy. Instead of Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen and Paul Newman fleeing a burning building, director Richard Curtis, previously known for writing the screenplays to “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and “Notting Hill,” offered audiences a montage of British actors falling in love just in time for Christmas. The cast list, featuring Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, was so massively expansive that the average moviegoer statistically had to like someone in it.

By its very design, “Love Actually” is made to appeal to everyone. The strategy appears to have worked: Upon the film’s release, it earned $246 million worldwide. It was the second-highest-grossing comedy of the year—behind Nancy Meyers’ latest ode to middle-aged white women standing in kitchens, “Something’s Gotta Give.” Since then, Curtis’ film has far surpassed its competition in cultural reach. “Love Actually” is one of the millennium’s more improbable cult phenomenons, a yearly staple of cable programming around the holidays. (Whether or not the film is actually any good appears to be another matter.)

There’s an old saying in Hollywood that no one wants to be the first to something, but everyone wants to be the second. That means that when a movie makes money, audiences are burdened with a series of carbon copies designed to cash in on its success, a strategy subject to increasingly diminishing returns. After “The Hunger Games” popularized the teen dystopia genre, there were the young adult adaptations “The Host,” “The Giver,” and “The Maze Runner.” The last iteration of the “Divergent” series, starring Shailene Woodley as yet another reluctant rebel fighting to topple a totalitarian regime, was the series’ lowest-grossing yet. “Allegiant” made less than half of what its first installment earned in theaters.

The rush to cash in on the box office fortunes of “Love Actually” went in two directions. First, there was the “Christmas in bulk” genre, epitomized by ensemble comedies like “The Family Stone” and the later “Love the Coopers.” The most successful entry was the poorly received “Four Christmases,” which is a cast list in search of a movie. Amazingly, the movie starred four Oscar winners: Robert Duvall, Mary Steenburgen, Sissy Spacek, and Reese Witherspoon. For the kids, there was Vince Vaughn, coasting on the success “Wedding Crashers,” and for Mom and Dad, two country superstars rounded out the impressive cast list: Dwight Yoakam and Tim McGraw. The movie took in $120 million domestically, more than twice what “Love Actually” made in the United States.

The holiday hyperlink rom-com, however, took the goal of packing as many A-listers as possible into one movie to its furthest possible extreme. Directed by Garry Marshall, these films span from 2010’s “Valentine’s Day” to this year’s “Mother’s Day,” starring Julia Roberts, Kate Hudson, Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston. Each of these films is more or less the same movie: A group of (mostly) white people must decide who they want to snuggle up with during this iteration’s festivity. In a memorable “30 Rock” parody, Emma Stone and Andy Samberg try to find a date for Martin Luther King Day. Samberg would ask his officemate out, but temporary circumstance would get in the way. “Too bad we’re just platonic friends,” he sighs.

This spoof follows an earlier send-up from “Saturday Night Live,” which reimagines 2011’s “New Year’s Eve” as “The Apocalypse,” in which famous people rush to find love before the world ends. If these films have become a punchline as the genre reaches its inevitable nadir, however, their ironic treatment masks how absurdly popular the holiday hyperlink movie was. Aside from the first “Sex and the City” movie, “Valentine’s Day” boasts the biggest opening weekend of any romantic comedy in history. Even the less successful “New Year’s Eve” still made back twice its budget.

The term “hyperlink cinema” was originally coined by Alissa Quart in an essay for Film Comment, describing Don Roos’ indie comedy “Happy Endings.” The term would be popularized by Roger Ebert in his review of Stephen Gaghan’s “Syriana,” to describe movies that feature interlocking stories woven together by a meditation on a central motif. In “Crash,” released the same year as these two features, writer/director Paul Haggis posits that Los Angelenos have to get into car accidents in order to “feel something”—and bring to the surface the city’s deep-seated racism. The use of parallel storylines was also explored in movies like “Nine Lives,” “Babel,” and most recently “Cloud Atlas,” although the trend has died out in recent years.

If an underlying morality is intended to unite these disparate plot threads, Curtis’ and Marshall’s movies only spell out their themes in the most basic of ways. In “Love Actually,” the film’s thesis is right on the label: The meaning of life is to love… actually. That’s admittedly difficult to square with the film’s more unsavory elements. One subplot follows Colin Frissell, a horny caterer who craves the flesh of nubile American girls. He procures a ticket to Wisconsin, where he meets a squad of bored, lonely supermodels (Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth and January Jones) and later absconds with them back to Britain. (They like his accent.) There’s very little question that when it comes to the fairer sex, romance is the last thing on Colin’s mind.

There’s even less of a connective thread in Marshall’s films. “Valentine’s Day,” the best reviewed of the director’s holiday trilogy, is like a collection of short stories that are less driven by narrative than the inevitable end goal of finding each of its characters happiness. For Sean (Eric Dane), a closeted pro football player, his quest for fulfillment entails coming out in order to keep his partner (Bradley Cooper) from leaving him. Liz (Anne Hathaway) is a phone sex operator who meets the perfect guy (Topher Grace), except for one catch: He doesn’t approve of her career. If the theme seems to be that love conquers all, that doesn’t quite extend to its director’s taste for conventionality. Like “New Year’s Eve,” the movie is so syrupy that it’s practically brought to you by Log Cabin.

As “Mother’s Day” proves, the reason that these movies exist isn’t for the sake of art. They are an act of well-orchestrated corporate synergy, designed as a product to get butts in the theater on a given day each year. Marshall’s most recent effort makes this embarrassingly clear. In the song’s introduction, the ubiquitous Meghan Trainor sings “Mom,” a pandering ode to the mothers in the audience. Take these choice lyrics: “You might have a mom, she might be the bomb/ But ain’t nobody got a mom like mine/ Her love’s ’til the end, she’s my best friend/ Ain’t nobody got a mom like mine.” Never one to let sap go to waste, Marshall actually recycles the number for the closing credits.

Aside from its shameless mommy-pandering, “Mother’s Day” is a clever bit of marketing designed to appeal to every possible demographic. Throughout the film, Marshall shoehorns people of color into the background, giving the picture an air of diversity and inclusion. Loni Love, who you might remember from VH1’s “I Love the 90s” series, appears as the token black friend to Bradley (Jason Sudeikis), a handsome gym owner grieving the loss of his wife. There’s also Max (Cameron Esposito) and Gabi (Sarah Clarke), a lesbian couple who build a womb float for a Mother’s Day parade. “Where in the world has such a gathering ever existed?” one might ask. The movie might be quietly radical if it made even a lick of sense.

Marshall’s films have always struggled to transcend their holiday-themed premise, but “Mother’s Day” is perhaps his most desperate effort yet. The film’s lowest moment entails Sudeikis’ character getting injured in a “hip-hop related accident” in order to have a meet-cute in the hospital with Sandy (Jennifer Aniston), a frazzled super mom whose son is having an asthma attack. When the two lock eyes, Sandy has her arm trapped in a vending machine, struggling in vain to free herself from its clutches. “Mother’s Day” no longer needs “Saturday Night Live” to lampoon its formula, now well past the expiration date. The movie is practically its own parody, except that no one appears to be in on the joke.

“Mother’s Day” is getting savaged by critics, and as tracking suggests, the film will become its director’s lowest-grossing film in recent memory. But if its failure symbolizes the final nail in the coffin of the holiday hyperlink movie, Marshall’s film is nothing if not a perfect symbol for today’s cinema. In the 13 years since the release of “Love Actually,” movies are increasingly driven by horizontal integration, corporate spectacles that appeal to both everyone and no one. The holiday hyperlink movie might be a punchline, but the template these films popularized is increasingly the norm. After all, “Mother’s Day” is nothing but “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” for women.

Staring down another decade of superhero mashups (see: “Justice League”) driven by the same business model, “Mother’s Day” is the end of an era, but it’s also the terrifying beginning of a new one.

From “sob sister” to badass: Lois Lane’s long, amazing journey out of Superman’s shadow

Lois Lane has been around as long as Superman, but she hasn’t had as easy a time. While the Man of Steel has had his difficulties—including his current ridiculous portrayal in Zack Snyder’s movies—ol’ Kal-El hasn’t been defined by ludicrous love stories, treated like an annoying pest who should be spanked, and killed repeatedly just to make another character sad. As recounted in Tim Hanley’s excellent recent book “Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of the Daily Planet’s Ace Reporter,” Lane’s ups and downs have been numerous and cyclical, and they mirror the struggles of real women. Tellingly, the biggest strides for this character have taken place outside the boys club of comics entirely, especially in Gwenda Bond’s young adult novel “Fallout,” which focuses entirely on Lane and has a sequel, “Double Down,” coming out May 1.

The progress of Lois Lane as a character should sound familiar: one step forward, three steps sideways, two steps back, a giant leap now and then, etc. As Hanley describes in his extremely well-researched book, her journey is a zigzag through almost 80 years of American history, involving a parade of comic book editors and creators—nearly all male. Her first appearance back in Action Comics #1 (also the first appearance of Superman) showed ambition and intelligence, but she spent years as a damsel, buzzkill and plot device. While Lane started as a sob sister (an actual title for a writer who responded to letters from the “lovelorn”) and gradually made her way to the front page of “The Daily Planet,” it was much harder for the character to get her own spotlight. Even when there was a Lois-centric comic, it had a diminishing title, like “Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane.”

The most preposterous of many preposterous things involving Lane may have been when a slew of letter writers in the early 1960s called for Superman to spank the pesky reporter. Yes, you read that correctly: actual letters were written demanding a “super-spanking” for an adult woman. As Hanley points out, it’s not just that Superman readers were jerks who infantilized women: the stories themselves put her in a position where readers would be annoyed by her, mostly because of her repeated attempts to prove Superman was really Clark Kent. Lois did get spanked by Superman indirectly at one point—by one of his robots—but the real culprits were oblivious writers.

Many advances for the character seemed to happen by accident, as Hanley recounts. Strong portrayals on TV and in movies, by Phyllis Coates and Margot Kidder, respectively, made a difference. Since Lane was constantly putting herself in danger, often for a story, she became defined by her bravery. Also, as the Sixties progressed, DC began to embrace serialization, getting away from single-issue stories and building longer plots similar to those of rival Marvel. This led to some positive changes for Lois, since in a heavily serialized story there has to be some progress, even if the reset button gets hit in the end. Superman started treating Lois with more respect, and since he stopped infantilizing her, readers stopped calling for her to be super-spanked.

A perfect example of the continual progress/regression of Lois Lane was the brief tenure of Dorothy Woolfolk as editor of DC’s romance line in 1971. This included the Lois Lane solo comic, and Woolfolk pushed Lois and her world in the direction of feminism. Instead of being hamstrung by the boys club of the Daily Planet, Lane went freelance. She was surrounded by other strong female characters; this might be the first era of superhero comics that would pass the Bechdel test. Woolfolk was fired for supposedly being frequently late, but as Hanley explains, there’s no evidence of her being bad at her job, and it’s more likely she lost her job due to “her take-charge, staunchly feminist attitude not sitting well with the old boys’ club that ran DC.” The real-life DC office appears to have been even less women-friendly than that of the Daily Planet.

Lois Lane has survived World War II, the Vietnam War and 9/11, but it’s been harder to escape the shadow of Superman. While her journalistic career has gotten progressively more successful, she’s also had a tendency to die: By Hanley’s count, Lane died eight times during a six-year-period in the early 2000s, proving a perfect example of Gail Simone’s “women in refrigerators” idea, in which female characters perish so male characters can suffer. Fittingly, Lane has made the most progress in a totally different medium: the young adult novel. Gwenda Bond’s 2015 novel “Fallout” reinvents Lane as an Army brat and Metropolis newbie who doesn’t have to stand in the shadow of any doofus in a cape.

While “Fallout” is in many senses a departure, it’s also consistent with the Lois Lane who’s been present (and repressed) since the beginning. As Hanley notes, “She was tough, she was ambitious, she was fearless, and she had very little respect for authority. Through every reboot and adaptation, these basic facts have remained the same.” In fact, Lane retains these qualities even when she’s been transformed into another character entirely.

One of the better recent Lois Lane stories in comics isn’t even about Lois Lane. Over the years, there have been many Superman analogues meant to pay homage to or satirize Superman—these include Hyperion, Apollo, Omni-Man, the Homelander—and Supreme. Supreme wasn’t much of a character when he was created by Rob Liefeld, but he became a celebration of everything great about Superman during a run by Alan Moore. Recently, in the series “Supreme Blue Rose” by Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay, Supreme is barely there; it’s all about Diana Dane, the Lois Lane analogue. This Lane-like character is a journalist and investigator, and everything is seen through her eyes (and the gorgeous art of Lotay). It’s a refreshing series that DC could learn from, and maybe they will; as part of their umpteenth reboot, “Rebirth,” there will be a new “Superwoman” series starring Lane.

Long-running characters like Lois Lane have a life of their own. Comics writer Grant Morrison has made some points about Batman that apply to Lane as well: “I love the fact that you can delve into a fictional character like this and get so much depth and so much history. He’s kind of alive. He’s been around longer than me and he’ll be around when I’m long gone, so he’s kind of more real than me.” In the same way, Lois Lane is more real than you or me, which is oddly comforting. She’s had to deal with a lot of crap, but she’s a survivor who might do anything in the future.

E.U. forcing refugees into “concentration camps” as economic crisis fuels far-right, warns Greek ex-finance minister

Greece’s outspoken former finance minister says the European Union is putting refugees in what are essentially “concentration camps,” and warns the festering economic crisis is exacerbating the xenophobia, fueling the rise of far-right movements.

In the past two years, hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have landed in Greece, hoping to find asylum in Europe.

Yanis Varoufakis, the ex-minister and longtime economics professor, said in an interview on Democracy Now this week that the E.U. has been exerting “tremendous” pressure on Greece, forcing it “to, effectively, intern the refugees.”

Meanwhile, the far-right is on the rise “everywhere in Europe,” and there are chilling signs of the return of fascist ’30s-era politics, Varoufakis cautioned.

Many of the refugees and migrants trying to enter Europe are fleeing war, violence or repression in the Middle East and South Asia. Most are coming from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The E.U. has been overwhelmingly hostile to their arrival, even while it fuels and intervenes in some of the conflicts they are fleeing.

Europe has setup “hotspot” registration centers for refugees in Greece. Varoufakis says, “When you see the word ‘hotspots,’ just translate it to ‘concentration camps.’ It’s very simple.”

“George Orwell would be very, very proud of Europe and our capacity for doublespeak and creating new terms by which to hide the awful reality,” he added.

“Instead of treating them like human beings in need of support, in need of food, in need of medicine, in need of psychological assistance, they are going to be treated, according to Brussels, as illegals, aliens, that are going to be enclosed in those hotspots, concentration camps,” Varoufakis said in the interview.

“The Greek government, which is, of course, fiscally completely and utterly impecunious, is being told, ‘The only way you are going to get money is if you intern them. So if you let them free and loose, even within Greece, you’re getting not a penny in order to help feed them.'”

Varoufakis also blasted the “ponzi austerity” scheme he says the E.U. and International Monetary Fund are imposing on Greece, while banks rake in billions and the Greek people suffer.

The former finance minister says this “cruel, self-defeating, irrational, inefficient, mind-blowingly inane austerity” is also preventing the Greek government from helping refugees.

While he applauded the “magnificent array of NGOs and volunteers who are looking after the refugees,” Varoufakis noted the “Greek state is in a state of disarray, because it just can’t afford even to look after the Greeks, who are suffering a seven year-long great depression.”

“The Greek state is trying to do something, but is being pushed by Europe to treat inhumanely those refugees,” he said.

Earlier this month, the E.U. began to deport refugees and migrants en masse to Turkey, in a plan that human rights experts say likely violates international law.

NATO also announced a new plan this week to impose a blockade on Libya, five years after bombing the country and essentially destroying the government in the oil-rich North African nation, in order to prevent refugees and migrants from entering Europe. A Human Rights Watch official told Salon this plan also likely violates international law.

In the meantime, far-right groups like Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party are growing in popularity.

And “it’s not just Golden Dawn,” Varoufakis warned. “It’s everywhere in Europe.”

“We have a neofascist government in Hungary. We have Marine Le Pen, who’s going to top the presidential race next year in France. I mean, you just have to state this to panic,” he said.

“You have UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party, in Britain. You’ve got Austria; in Vienna, the beautiful city of Vienna, 42 percent voted for a neofascist party in the last municipal election,” Varoufakis continued.

He said the reasons behind the rise are “very simple: Great Depression, national humiliation—put them together, like in the 1920s and ’30s in Germany, and you end up with the serpent’s egg hatching.”

Varoufakis argues there is an alternative to these detention camps, mass deportations and blockades, but Europe is not willing to take it.

“This should not be a problem. Europe is large enough. It is rich enough. We should be able to handle this refugee crisis humanely, efficiently, without this even being something we discuss,” he said on Democracy Now.

After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Varoufakis pointed out that Greece, a country of 10 million people, accepted 1 million refugees within a few months.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked. “Nothing. It was all fine. They still live there. Their kids come to the university where I teach. They are amongst some of my best students.”

“Greece has become enriched. Our culture has become stronger. Our food has become even better,” Varoufakis added.

“And if a small, middle-, lower-middle-income country like Greece can accept a 10 percent influx of refugees in a few months and do quite well out of it and actually be stronger as a result of that, Europe, which is aging pathetically, should accept these refugees, like Angela Merkel initially said in September, October.”

Varoufakis concluded the interview warning that Europe is seeing the terrifying signs of a resurgence of fascism.

“The European Union is disintegrating under its postmodern 1930s,” he said. “This is what we’ve been experiencing the last 10 years due to the economic crisis.”

“Ponzi austerity” scheme imposed by E.U. and U.S. bleeds Greece dry on behalf of banks, says ex-finance minister

The former finance minister of Greece says the European Union and international financial institutions are imposing unjust “ponzi austerity” on his country, while banks rake in billions and the Greek people suffer.

For years, Greece has faced enormous economic hardship. In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, the country plunged into a debt crisis. In return for large loans, the Troika — which consists of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — has demanded that Greece impose harsh austerity measures, cutting social services, slashing government programs and privatizing state assets.

Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister and longtime economics professor, says Europe is “confusing butchery for surgery” by continuing to demand crippling austerity policies, also known as structural reforms.

“Greece is being trampled upon,” he said in an interview on Democracy Now. Varoufakis accused the Troika of trying “to turn Greece into a desert” and condemned the past three bailouts as money-making opportunities for German and French banks.

He also slammed the Obama administration for continuing to support this “cruel, self-defeating, irrational, inefficient, mind-blowingly inane austerity.”

The effects of austerity on Greece have been nothing short of catastrophic.

From 2008 to 2013, Greeks became on average 40 percent poorer. More than one-third of Greeks, 36 percent of the population, are at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Poverty is worse in Greece than it is in Latvia, and among the worst in the eurozone, surpassed only by Bulgaria and Romania.

One out of every four Greeks is unemployed, the highest unemployment rate in the E.U. Among Greeks under age 25, the problem is even worse, with roughly one out of every two people unemployed.

Despite this dire situation, in negotiations this week, international creditors demanded that Greece impose further austerity measures. The International Monetary Fund is ordering the Greek government to cut pensions and eliminate income-tax exemptions.

“A great depression, with no end in sight”

Varoufakis argues this is all part of a “Ponzi austerity” scheme.

After the financial crash in 2008, “there was a cynical transfer of private sector, private bank losses onto the shoulders of the weakest of taxpayers, the Greeks,” he said on Democracy Now.

Varoufakis opposed the bailouts, which he described simply as “typical extend-and-pretend loans.”

He explained: “A second predatory loan is enforced upon the Greek government in order to pretend that it is making its payments for the first loan, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. And the worst aspect of it is that these loans, which were not loans to Greece, were given, extended, on condition of stringent austerity that shrunk our incomes.”

“So we entered a debt deflationary cycle, a great depression, with no end in sight.”

Varoufakis blasted the distortions “peddled by the mainstream media.” Many media reports claim the negotiations between Greece and its creditors have stalled because the Greek government is resisting structural reforms. Varoufakis said “nothing could be further from the truth.”

“The fact of the matter is that the Greek government last summer, in July of 2015, surrendered to the creditors,” Varoufakis explained. Since then, Greece “is simply told what to do. And it’s trying to do it. It is trying to implement it.”

“This is why I’m no longer the finance minister,” he added. Varoufakis stepped down in July when the Troika refused to budge on austerity.

The left-wing Syriza party was elected by a landslide in January 2015 on an anti-austerity platform. Varoufakis, who served as its first finance minister, says Europe and financial institutions refused to allow the Greek government economic autonomy, forcing it to continue implementing harsh austerity measures.

In July, Greeks held an historic referendum, voting overwhelmingly against austerity. Europe ignored this referendum, effectively overriding the democratic will of the Greek people.

In a statement explaining his resignation in July, Varoufakis noted that eurozone finance ministers were frustrated with his firm opposition, and heavily pressured him to leave.

“I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride,” Varoufakis wrote at the time.

Unsustainable debt

Today, Varoufakis says the reason there is another impasse in the negotiations is because the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the German government “can’t see eye to eye.”

The IMF is frustrated with Germany, Varoufakis says, because — although it frequently supports austerity programs — it at least acknowledges that Greece’s debt is ultimately unsustainable.

“They know that the numbers that the European Commission, on behalf of Germany, is imposing upon Greece are numbers that will explode, they will fail,” Varoufakis explained. “In six months’ time, we’ll have another failure of the program, like we’ve had in the last six years.”

The IMF wants Greece to devalue labor and pensions, to close down small businesses and replace them with large corporations, but understands that this would shrink Greece’s national income, making it impossible to repay the gargantuan debt.

“They’re like a quasi-numerate villain, who wants to turn Greece into a desert, call it peace,” Varoufakis remarked.

Germany, on the other hand, does not want to talk about the debt, because it would then have to admit that “the so-called bailout loans for Greece were not loans for Greece. They were loans, bailout loans, for German and French banks,” Varoufakis added.

The records of an internal meeting released by whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks show IMF officials asking themselves what it will take Europe to recognize that Greece’s debt must be cut. They conclude that some kind of even, another crisis, is needed.

“The elephants in the room are tussling, and the little pipsqueak mouse, Greece, is being trampled upon,” Varoufakis said. “It’s got nothing to do with the Greek government stalling on structural reforms.”

“By the way, there are no structural reforms in question,” he added. “Cutting down pensions is not reform. It’s like confusing butchery for surgery. It’s not the same thing.”

U.S. support for “Ponzi austerity”

The U.S. has joined in pressuring Greece to continue to implement the crippling austerity measures.

After President Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters “we’re very supportive of the efforts that members of the E.U. have made to deal with the financial challenges posed by Greece’s finances.”

The White House insisted Greece must follow “through on a number of structural reforms,” stressing “Greece has a responsibility to do that.”

In his interview on Democracy Now, Varoufakis criticized President Obama.

“We have, yet again, this typical disconnect in the American administration,” he said. “It’s quite astonishing and saddening.”

Obama publicly claims he opposes harsh austerity, Varoufakis explained, yet, at the same moment, “his spokesman comes out and supports cruel, self-defeating, irrational, inefficient, mind-blowingly inane austerity.”

Varoufakis calls this “Ponzi austerity.”

A Ponzi scheme is a scam in which a business pretends to grow its income by taking on more and more unsustainable debt.

In a similar fashion, the Troika has continued to impose more and more debt on Greece, which can only be used “to pretend to repay the previous debts.”

Austerity then “continuously reduces national income, because when you reduce pensions, when you reduce investment, when you reduce all the determinants of aggregate demand, income of the nation shrinks.”

“And you keep tightening that belt through more pension cuts, more reductions in public health and so on, and public education, and you keep on taking new unsustainable loans in order to pretend that you’re not insolvent,” Varoufakis explained. “That’s Ponzi austerity for you.”

Bailout for the banks

Varoufakis still has hope that things can be turned around, but not from within. He emphasized that much of the German people stands with Greece in opposing harsh austerity measures. Rather, it is the German government that is so insistent on continuing down the same path.

In 2015, Varoufakis launched the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, a pan-European political movement that warns “The European Union will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!”

The former finance minister insists the bailouts have not just been bad for Greece; they have also been bad for Germany.

“The problem is not that Germany has not paid enough. Germany has paid too much, in the case of the Greek bailout,” Varoufakis explained on Democracy Now. “We had the largest loan in human history. The question is, what happened to that money?”

“It wasn’t money for Greece. It was money for the banks. And the Greek people took on the largest loan in human history on behalf of German and French bankers, under conditions that guaranteed that their income, our income in Greece, would shrink by one-third.”

According to Varoufakis, 91 percent of the first bailout and 100 percent of the second bailout went to German and French banks. The money did not end up in taxpayers’ pockets; it ended up in bankers’ pockets.

“That is ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ John Steinbeck material,” Varoufakis quipped. “One-third of national income, poof, disappeared.”

Elizabeth Warren lashes out at Trump: “He wears the sexism out front for everyone to see”

Elizabeth Warren has largely shied away from the spotlight so far in this election cycle. But the Massachusetts senator publicly excoriated Donald Trump on Thursday after he attacked Hillary Clinton for “playing the woman card.”

“Donald Trump clearly feels threatened by Secretary Clinton’s qualifications to be president so he’s attacking Hillary Clinton for being a woman,” Warren told the Boston Globe. “That’s what weak men do. It is an old story, and I don’t think the American voters will fall for it.”

“If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump said on Wednesday, spurring Warren’s comments.

“She is a woman, she is playing the woman card left and right,” Trump said of Clinton. “Frankly, if she didn’t, she would do very poorly. If she were a man and she was the way she is, she would get virtually no votes.”

Warren didn’t take kindly to Trump’s insults. “We need someone in the White House who isn’t afraid to fight for equal rights for women,” Warren told the Globe. “That person is not Donald Trump.”

When the Globe staff didn’t ask Warren a question she had prepared for, she took it upon herself to deliver the sound byte she had teed up.

“I hoped you were going to ask me if I thought he was a sexist,” Warren said. “That’s like asking if he has bad hair. He wears the sexism out front for everyone to see.”

This week, Donald Trump reminded us of something very important: His disdain for women oozes from his pores

Donald Trump claims that he “loves” women, “cherishes” women, and that as president he will be great for women.

But this obligatory campaign rhetoric does not seem to match his actual beliefs.

Trump’s genuine views about women are not difficult to discern. He reveals them in all sorts of ways as he rattles on and on. He can’t help it. His true beliefs seep out of him and become obvious.

This was on full display in his latest victory speech after he swept all five primaries on Tuesday.

Trump declared that Hillary Clinton does not possess the “strength” or the “stamina” to be a good president. And he repeated these two words, “strength” and “stamina.”

On what basis does Hillary lack strength or stamina? Well, of course, Trump offered no basis whatsoever. And this is because there is no basis. The truth is that Hillary has been a tireless public servant for many years and has demonstrated her extraordinary endurance, far more than has Trump.

In only her first three years as secretary of state, Hillary broke the record for the greatest amount of travel. She was on the road for 351 days, covered 850,000 miles, and visited at least 102 countries. On a single trip alone, Hillary completed an epic 13-day diplomatic journey of 27,000 miles, which exceeded the circumference of the earth. And at the end, she joked that she was ready for more.

She has been a veritable whirlwind in her career. She endured a prior full presidential campaign in 2008, she served as a U.S. senator from New York, and, of course, she relished all of her initiatives as first lady for eight years, including leading an enormous undertaking to reform the health care system, which blazed the trail for the eventual passage of Obamacare.

Just thinking about Hillary’s accomplishments alone is exhausting.

And yet Trump accuses her of lacking “strength” and “stamina.” In the absence of any basis in fact, the answer seems apparent. It must be because she is a woman. These are code words revealing Trump’s inner beliefs that women are not as strong and sturdy as men. So a woman is not equal to the task of being president.

Hillary “will not be good for the military,” Trump declared. “She will not be good for protecting our country.”

Again, no basis whatsoever.

Ironically, and apparently unbeknownst to Trump, Hillary is actually regarded as being very strong on the military as a so-called hawk, even to a fault. In fact, various Republican military hawks have themselves said that Hillary is stronger on the military than Trump.

Yet in his own head, Trump is stuck on the idea that Hillary is weak. Again, the answer seems apparent. Hillary is a woman. And to Trump, women are inferior to men because they are weaker than big strong alpha-males like the image Trump fancies of himself.

If that weren’t enough, his disdain for women just kept oozing out of him.

“If Hillary Clinton were a man,” he said, “I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote.”.

What Trump is saying here is that Hillary is completely devoid of substance. The only reason she is currently a candidate is because she is a woman and politically correct people are so desirous to see a woman in the White House that they are willing to abandon all standards and vote for any female candidate no matter how qualified.

“The only card she has is the woman’s card,” Trump asserted. “She’s got nothing else going.”

Hillary is widely regarded as technically the most qualified candidate in the entire race. In fact, her qualifications far surpass anything that Trump has to offer. Now, of course, it is fine to disagree with her policies and positions, but to say that Hillary has nothing going for her except the fact that she is a woman is utterly preposterous. It again reveals Trump’s inner views. A woman cannot possibly be qualified to be president, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Women see right through Trump’s nonsense about how he loves and cherishes women. A recent Gallup poll shows that a whopping 70% of women have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.

“I’ll do more for women than Hillary Clinton will ever do,” Trump proclaimed in his victory speech.

It’s no wonder that many women just don’t believe it.

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros quietly pulled from daytime show over contract “issues”

Andrea Tantaros has been absent from her post as one-third of Fox News’ “Outnumbered” hosting panel since Monday, starting chatter about a possible departure.

According to a Fox News statement, first issued upon request from TVNewser, “Issues have arisen regarding Andrea’s contract, and Fox News Channel has determined it best that she take some time off. She is still under contract with the network.”

Regular readers might remember Tantaros from that time she called campus rape a “war on boys”; or maybe that other time when she said Hillary Clinton lured Trump into saying women should be punished for getting illegal abortions; what about that other other time she claimed public school health initiatives give kids “mental problems?”

Tantaros’s new book, “Tied Up in Knots,” became available Tuesday. Some are speculating her promotion of the book conflicted in some way with her Fox contract.

Read the full report here.

Progress on Oklahoma’s awful rape law: Backlash prompts pledge to have loophole “fixed next week”

It’d be great if we could get to the point of putting in place a procedure for victims of sexual assault to obtain justice without a huge social outcry first. But in the meantime, I guess we’ll take whatever measure of progress we can get. So thanks, Oklahoma!

The state’s been in the spotlight lately after news reports came to light of a shocking recent ruling in a sexual assault case involving two teens. A 17 year-old boy was accused of assaulting a 16 year-old girl he’d been drinking with in a Tulsa park after he offered to give her a ride home. Witnesses said the girl had to be carried into his car; she later woke up in the hospital in the middle of a sexual assault exam. Her blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit and “indicative of severe alcohol poisoning.” A DNA test revealed the boy’s semen on her leg and around her mouth. The boy said that what had happened between them was consensual; she asserted she had no memory of leaving the park.

But here’s the funny part — it didn’t matter anyway. As the boy’s lawyer confidently asserted, “There was absolutely no evidence of force or him doing anything to make this girl give him oral sex other than she was too intoxicated to consent.” And yes, being “too intoxicated to consent” has been a legitimate legal leg for alleged assailants to stand on in the great state of Oklahoma. The case ended with the court of appeals unanimously affirming the state’s stance that “forcible oral sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious as the time of the sexual act of oral copulation.” That, however, may be changing very soon.

Weirdly, the state does already acknowledge that a person who is unconscious cannot consent, and that lack of consent constitutes sexual assault — as long as the sexual assault is vaginal or anal. Attorney Jennifer Gentile told the Guardian this week, “There are still gaps in the ways laws are written that allow some cases to fall through the crack. This case – because it did not involve vaginal rape but an oral violation – seems to be one of them.” Yes, if you’re in Oklahoma and you’re going to be sexually assaulted, make sure it’s in the right location in your body. You can see why the Oklahoma story drew shocked responses from victim rights advocates across the country.

Now, Scott Biggs, a former prosecutor and current state representative, is aiming to fix this revolting loophole. In a statement this week, he said, “I am horrified by the idea that we would allow these depraved rapists to face a lower charge simply because the victim is unconscious.” He has announced plans to rush a change to the law through legislature. “I think the judges made a grave error,” he says. “But if they need more clarification, we are happy to give it to them by fixing the statute. Unfortunately, legal minds often get stuck on questions of semantics, when it is clear to most of us what the intent of the law is.”

In a Facebook post Thursday, Biggs said, “I was appalled to learn about this ruling, the lack of justice for this young woman is shocking. HB 2398, a bill that I authored earlier in the session, has been amended in conference committee. We should have this court created loophole fixed next week. While I can’t find the words to express my deep sorrow for the victim and her family, I can guarantee them this will be fixed.” And you’ve got to appreciate that he’s currently in the trenches of the FB comments, citing legal precedent via previous sodomy convictions.

A clarification of the law won’t undo what’s already happened to this young woman. But perhaps she can have some measure of satisfaction knowing it’ll be easier for the next girl in her shoes to press forward with her case. And it’ll tell Oklahoma what any sentient human already knows — that if it’s not consent if happens vaginally or anally, it’s actually not consent either if happens orally either.

“She wrote lines that stung & hummed”: Patton Oswalt honors his late wife, Michelle McNamara

Actor and comedian Patton Oswalt commented publicly on Friday morning for the first time since his wife, the writer Michelle McNamara, unexpectedly died last week.

“She wrote lines that stung & hummed. 13 years in her presence was happily humbling. #RIPMichelleMcNamara,” Oswalt tweeted to followers.

McNamara died suddenly in the couple’s Los Angeles home last Friday at age 46. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said the cause of her death will likely not be known for months due to a backlog of cases in the medical examiner’s office. According to the Hollywood Reporter, McNamara was not known to have been in poor health.

McNamara was best known as the founder of the website True Crime Diary, where she wrote about cold cases and other unsolved crimes. Before her death, McNamara was in the process of writing a book about The Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and murderer that committed a series of violent crimes in California in the 1970s and 1980s and was never apprehended.

Oswalt’s statement about his late wife was in response to another tweet urging well-wishers to make a donation in McNamara’s honor to 826LA, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting children in developing creative writing skills.

She wrote lines that stung & hummed. 13 years in her presence was happily humbling. #RIPMichelleMcNamara https://t.co/bSYWFFD8NY

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) April 29, 2016