Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 797
April 26, 2016
12 ways the Sanders revolution has transformed American politics
When Bernie Sanders launched his presidential campaign a year ago with a brazen call for an American revolution in politics, economics and social justice, no one, not even the candidate himself, could have imagined what the campaign would bring.“The media likes to portray this as a fair fight on even footing,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said last week. “They seem to forget that when we started our campaign on April 30, we barely registered in the polls. We didn’t have a political organization. We didn’t have millionaires waiting in the wings. Quite frankly, we didn’t have a whole lot. And then millions of people came together in a political revolution.”
Sanders hasn’t just climbed from a 55-point deficit in national polls to being just 1.4 percent behind Hillary Clinton (who, counting her husband's, is waging her fourth presidential campaign); he has fundamentally changed the national political landscape for the better by reviving the very best progressive traditions and principles within the Democratic Party.
Here are 12 ways Sanders’ revolution has changed American politics.
1. Revived Democrats' progressive wing. Starting in the 1990s, before Bill Clinton was elected president, the Democratic Party leadership made a concrete choice to trade Main Street for Wall Street. You saw it in its national fundraising apparatus. You saw it in the bills pushed through Congress, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, and backtracking on social justice issues, such as punitive welfare reform and criminal sentencing laws. Sanders has flipped that script, railing against American oligarchs and resurrecting the New Deal economic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society safety net priorities of Lyndon Johnson. He’s sparked a wholesale revival of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and heritage.
2. Introduced a new generation to progressive politics. Sanders' overwhelming support from people under 45 is not just remarkable, it’s been extraordinarily instructive. Sanders' followers, who keep showing up at his rallies by the tens of thousands, have memorized his speeches, know his punchlines and recite them as if they are singing along at a concert. But these aren’t pop lyrics, they’re fundamental ideas, analyses and remedies for a more just political system and society. That’s unprecedented for any presidential candidate of either major party in recent memory.
3. Stopped socialist from being a dirty word. No one has to be reminded that being called a socialist by the mainstream media or defending socialism in the political system has, for years, been a kiss of death—even if recent polls find public attitudes changing. Sanders has rebranded the word in the American public’s mind, so it simply means greater democratic participation and sharing of economic rights and responsibilities. Among young people in college and in their 20s, polls last fall found majorities had a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism.
4. Showed grassroots, small-donor campaigns are viable. Sanders’ small-donor fundraising has been nothing if not remarkable, raising $182 million in the last year, according to analyses of federal campaign finance reports—the same sum as Clinton, though she had a $30 million headstart. He wasn’t the first presidential candidate to tap the power of small donations—Howard Dean did it and so did Jerry Brown—but Sanders has inspired millions of people across America who are averaging under $30 a pop. That’s come as the country has seen political campaigns dominated by a handful of superwealthy individuals or billionaires backing super PACs, which he doesn’t have though the Clinton campaign does. That contrast alone is significant, but there’s more to it. His campaign has disproved many of the political establishment’s longstanding precepts: that an engaged citizenry won’t support candidates; that candidates have to pander to the rich to fund their campaigns; and that small-donor public financing systems aren’t sufficient when it comes to the political big leagues.
5. Showed the public responds to principled politicans. Sanders has defied the cliché that good people who enter politics will eventually be corrupted and compromised because they have to sell out along the way to win. He’s proven that a candidate and officeholder who has been principled and consistent and is honest and treats the public with integrity can succeed. In months of polls, the public has consistently said that Sanders is more trustworthy than either Clinton or Donald Trump. The public knows when they are being lied to or played for fools, and nobody running in 2016 has been as forthright, straightforward or honest as Sanders.
6. Showed it’s possible to run without throwing much mud. Until last week’s heated New York primary, where his composure was tested and frayed, he has run an issue-oriented campaign almost entirely devoid of personal attacks. Clinton supporters will take exception to that, but it’s true—how does one compare and contrast one’s values and judgments with their opponents, if they are in it to win, without saying that they believe they are better qualified? The larger point is that the 2016 Democratic nominating contest has been waged as a war of ideas, accompishments and temperament. Politics isn’t for the meek, but it doesn’t have to be all mud all the time like the GOP’s nominating contest, and Sanders has shown that in state after state.
7. Shown Democrats what an engaged citizenry looks like. From rallies attended by thousands and thousands to the remarkably energetic efforts of legions of his grassroots supporters, the Sanders campaign has vividly reminded the Democratic Party what an engaged base and electorate looks like. Moreover, that outpouring of enthusiasm reveals a fervent desire to take more radical stances on issues and solutions than what the party’s Washington-based establishment wants to admit or embrace. It also sets the expectation that a Democratic presidency and recaptured Congress had better seriously try to deliver a bold new agenda, if that’s the outcome in November.
8. Brought America’s progressive organizers together. Sanders has given other progressive-minded Democrats running in 2008 room to take anti-corporate stances, such as candidates endorsed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, Working Families Party and others. He has also brought together the country’s progressive groups and the best organizers in the country, who have long worked on their issues in silos and are providing him with a fantastic campaign infrastructure. Democrats have typically relied on labor unions to provide needed volunteers. Labor is a big part of the Sanders campaign, but it’s part of a much wider coalition of like-minded people. That symbiosis is remarkable and raises the question of what will happen after the 2016 campaign concludes.
9. Pushed Hillary Clinton to the left. There is no doubt that Sanders has pushed the Democratic establishment’s heir apparent further to the left, making her take stronger and less ambiguous stances on many issues, such as promising not to roll back Social Security as part of any grand-bargain federal budget deal or new benefit-calculation formula. Should Clinton get the 2016 nomination, the open question is, how long will she stay to the left? He’s also made her a better candidate, forcing her to clarify and defend her positions, which she arguably might not do unless pressed by as vigorous a debater as Sanders.
10. Challenged everyone on free tuition. There are a number of issues where his agenda has put ideas and solutions before the country that mainstream political America hasn’t wanted to acknowledge or embrace. One is the need for public universities to be tuition-free, just as K-12 education is. As important, Sanders has proposed how to pay for that step, which is an increasing necessity in today’s global economy, by imposing a transaction tax on high-volume Wall Street traders. That kind of thinking, which would help millions of households, can no longer be called fringe.
11. Called out Wall Street’s purpose and business model. Everybody knows that Sanders is no friend of America’s largest corporations, which in field after field have near-monopoly control of goods, services and pricing. But he has especially gone after the financial sector, saying its business model is built on private greed and has a more than questionable public purpose. By identifying the culprits in decades-old wage stagnation and an undermining of the American middle and working classes, Sanders is reminding everyone that being in a democracy comes with rights and responsibilities, such as taking care of the vulnerable and pushing for racial and social justice.
12. Showed a Jew can call out Israel. For decades, American politicans, like a great many Jewish Americans, have faced great pressure never to criticize anything Israel does and reflexively to blame the Palestinians for the area’s ongoing violence. Sanders doesn’t make a big deal of his Jewish heritage—like many Jews, he is a living example of faith’s secular humanist tradition. Before the New York primary, he said that Israel’s military response to the last attacks from Gaza was unnecessary and disproportionate, prompting the ire of the Israel lobby. But his comments were cut from a larger foreign policy cloth that values restraint and prioritizes seeking political solutions.
A Revolution or New Normal?
Sanders supporters and political observers will surely cite more examples, but what stands out to progressives about many aspects of Sanders’ campaign and agenda is that what he is calling for isn’t revolutionary at all—it’s sane, and if anything, overdue. The passion and public purpose of his campaign has struck deep and wide notes precisely because of that. More than anything, Sanders has reminded vast swaths of the country that his democratic socialist agenda is exactly what they want America to be—a fairer and more dignified, tolerant, responsible and conscientious country. And he’s reminded the Democratic Party that its most engaged and visible base wants substantial change, even if those remedies seem radical to the Washington status quo.
When Bernie Sanders launched his presidential campaign a year ago with a brazen call for an American revolution in politics, economics and social justice, no one, not even the candidate himself, could have imagined what the campaign would bring.“The media likes to portray this as a fair fight on even footing,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said last week. “They seem to forget that when we started our campaign on April 30, we barely registered in the polls. We didn’t have a political organization. We didn’t have millionaires waiting in the wings. Quite frankly, we didn’t have a whole lot. And then millions of people came together in a political revolution.”
Sanders hasn’t just climbed from a 55-point deficit in national polls to being just 1.4 percent behind Hillary Clinton (who, counting her husband's, is waging her fourth presidential campaign); he has fundamentally changed the national political landscape for the better by reviving the very best progressive traditions and principles within the Democratic Party.
Here are 12 ways Sanders’ revolution has changed American politics.
1. Revived Democrats' progressive wing. Starting in the 1990s, before Bill Clinton was elected president, the Democratic Party leadership made a concrete choice to trade Main Street for Wall Street. You saw it in its national fundraising apparatus. You saw it in the bills pushed through Congress, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, and backtracking on social justice issues, such as punitive welfare reform and criminal sentencing laws. Sanders has flipped that script, railing against American oligarchs and resurrecting the New Deal economic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Great Society safety net priorities of Lyndon Johnson. He’s sparked a wholesale revival of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and heritage.
2. Introduced a new generation to progressive politics. Sanders' overwhelming support from people under 45 is not just remarkable, it’s been extraordinarily instructive. Sanders' followers, who keep showing up at his rallies by the tens of thousands, have memorized his speeches, know his punchlines and recite them as if they are singing along at a concert. But these aren’t pop lyrics, they’re fundamental ideas, analyses and remedies for a more just political system and society. That’s unprecedented for any presidential candidate of either major party in recent memory.
3. Stopped socialist from being a dirty word. No one has to be reminded that being called a socialist by the mainstream media or defending socialism in the political system has, for years, been a kiss of death—even if recent polls find public attitudes changing. Sanders has rebranded the word in the American public’s mind, so it simply means greater democratic participation and sharing of economic rights and responsibilities. Among young people in college and in their 20s, polls last fall found majorities had a more favorable view of socialism than capitalism.
4. Showed grassroots, small-donor campaigns are viable. Sanders’ small-donor fundraising has been nothing if not remarkable, raising $182 million in the last year, according to analyses of federal campaign finance reports—the same sum as Clinton, though she had a $30 million headstart. He wasn’t the first presidential candidate to tap the power of small donations—Howard Dean did it and so did Jerry Brown—but Sanders has inspired millions of people across America who are averaging under $30 a pop. That’s come as the country has seen political campaigns dominated by a handful of superwealthy individuals or billionaires backing super PACs, which he doesn’t have though the Clinton campaign does. That contrast alone is significant, but there’s more to it. His campaign has disproved many of the political establishment’s longstanding precepts: that an engaged citizenry won’t support candidates; that candidates have to pander to the rich to fund their campaigns; and that small-donor public financing systems aren’t sufficient when it comes to the political big leagues.
5. Showed the public responds to principled politicans. Sanders has defied the cliché that good people who enter politics will eventually be corrupted and compromised because they have to sell out along the way to win. He’s proven that a candidate and officeholder who has been principled and consistent and is honest and treats the public with integrity can succeed. In months of polls, the public has consistently said that Sanders is more trustworthy than either Clinton or Donald Trump. The public knows when they are being lied to or played for fools, and nobody running in 2016 has been as forthright, straightforward or honest as Sanders.
6. Showed it’s possible to run without throwing much mud. Until last week’s heated New York primary, where his composure was tested and frayed, he has run an issue-oriented campaign almost entirely devoid of personal attacks. Clinton supporters will take exception to that, but it’s true—how does one compare and contrast one’s values and judgments with their opponents, if they are in it to win, without saying that they believe they are better qualified? The larger point is that the 2016 Democratic nominating contest has been waged as a war of ideas, accompishments and temperament. Politics isn’t for the meek, but it doesn’t have to be all mud all the time like the GOP’s nominating contest, and Sanders has shown that in state after state.
7. Shown Democrats what an engaged citizenry looks like. From rallies attended by thousands and thousands to the remarkably energetic efforts of legions of his grassroots supporters, the Sanders campaign has vividly reminded the Democratic Party what an engaged base and electorate looks like. Moreover, that outpouring of enthusiasm reveals a fervent desire to take more radical stances on issues and solutions than what the party’s Washington-based establishment wants to admit or embrace. It also sets the expectation that a Democratic presidency and recaptured Congress had better seriously try to deliver a bold new agenda, if that’s the outcome in November.
8. Brought America’s progressive organizers together. Sanders has given other progressive-minded Democrats running in 2008 room to take anti-corporate stances, such as candidates endorsed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, Working Families Party and others. He has also brought together the country’s progressive groups and the best organizers in the country, who have long worked on their issues in silos and are providing him with a fantastic campaign infrastructure. Democrats have typically relied on labor unions to provide needed volunteers. Labor is a big part of the Sanders campaign, but it’s part of a much wider coalition of like-minded people. That symbiosis is remarkable and raises the question of what will happen after the 2016 campaign concludes.
9. Pushed Hillary Clinton to the left. There is no doubt that Sanders has pushed the Democratic establishment’s heir apparent further to the left, making her take stronger and less ambiguous stances on many issues, such as promising not to roll back Social Security as part of any grand-bargain federal budget deal or new benefit-calculation formula. Should Clinton get the 2016 nomination, the open question is, how long will she stay to the left? He’s also made her a better candidate, forcing her to clarify and defend her positions, which she arguably might not do unless pressed by as vigorous a debater as Sanders.
10. Challenged everyone on free tuition. There are a number of issues where his agenda has put ideas and solutions before the country that mainstream political America hasn’t wanted to acknowledge or embrace. One is the need for public universities to be tuition-free, just as K-12 education is. As important, Sanders has proposed how to pay for that step, which is an increasing necessity in today’s global economy, by imposing a transaction tax on high-volume Wall Street traders. That kind of thinking, which would help millions of households, can no longer be called fringe.
11. Called out Wall Street’s purpose and business model. Everybody knows that Sanders is no friend of America’s largest corporations, which in field after field have near-monopoly control of goods, services and pricing. But he has especially gone after the financial sector, saying its business model is built on private greed and has a more than questionable public purpose. By identifying the culprits in decades-old wage stagnation and an undermining of the American middle and working classes, Sanders is reminding everyone that being in a democracy comes with rights and responsibilities, such as taking care of the vulnerable and pushing for racial and social justice.
12. Showed a Jew can call out Israel. For decades, American politicans, like a great many Jewish Americans, have faced great pressure never to criticize anything Israel does and reflexively to blame the Palestinians for the area’s ongoing violence. Sanders doesn’t make a big deal of his Jewish heritage—like many Jews, he is a living example of faith’s secular humanist tradition. Before the New York primary, he said that Israel’s military response to the last attacks from Gaza was unnecessary and disproportionate, prompting the ire of the Israel lobby. But his comments were cut from a larger foreign policy cloth that values restraint and prioritizes seeking political solutions.
A Revolution or New Normal?
Sanders supporters and political observers will surely cite more examples, but what stands out to progressives about many aspects of Sanders’ campaign and agenda is that what he is calling for isn’t revolutionary at all—it’s sane, and if anything, overdue. The passion and public purpose of his campaign has struck deep and wide notes precisely because of that. More than anything, Sanders has reminded vast swaths of the country that his democratic socialist agenda is exactly what they want America to be—a fairer and more dignified, tolerant, responsible and conscientious country. And he’s reminded the Democratic Party that its most engaged and visible base wants substantial change, even if those remedies seem radical to the Washington status quo.
April 25, 2016
Charles Koch goes full Tyrion Lannister: His threat to back Hillary hints at the brothers’ devious game of thrones
In a tactical maneuver worthy of Machiavelli — or perhaps of Tyrion Lannister, the manipulative dwarf-genius played by Peter Dinklage on “Game of Thrones” — billionaire businessman Charles Koch hinted this weekend that he and his brother are so unhappy with the current implosion of the Republican Party that they might support Hillary Clinton instead. When asked during an ABC News interview whether Clinton might be preferable as president to either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Koch said, “Let me put it that way: It’s possible.”
A million gleeful, puzzled or outraged social-media posts followed. Was the GOP’s best-known bankroller, half of the two-faced Sun King at the tippety-top of the 1 percent, merely being “facetious,” as a Guardian story put it? Was Chuck trolling his so-called friends and sworn enemies with an idle jest? Was it simply frustration talking? Was he, mirabile dictu, being sincere about preferring a more or less known quantity to the Pennywise-the-Clown horror-show of a Cruz or Trump presidency? I don’t know and it doesn’t much matter; one can only gape in admiration.
I’m completely serious. Even by Kochian mind-control standards, that was a mini-masterstroke, sowing terror and confusion in all directions. Who were the Koch brothers seeking to undermine with this seemingly bizarre pronouncement, and who were they trying to help? Was this meant to make the surviving Republican candidates come crawling back, or was it an ass-backward false-flag attack on Clinton, designed to boost Bernie Sanders’ fading campaign? Is this the beginning of a fateful alliance of former foes that will sweep its way to the throne, with the Kochs jointly playing Tyrion and Hillary Clinton as Daenerys Targaryen, the fearsome Mother of Dragons?
One can hypothesize, but it’s like medieval scholarly debates about the physical substance of angels or the omnipresence of God: Human language fails to capture the all-encompassing essence of the thing in question. One answer might be that the current state of reality displeases the Kochs, and they have set out (yet again) to reshape it to their desired coordinates. Another interpretation is that they were simply reminding us that they remain in power no matter who wins, and no matter what that person may have said to get elected.
One payoff arrived almost immediately, when Clinton felt compelled to issue a statement assuring us she had no intention of riding into town on a Koch-fueled dragon. She was, she tweeted, “not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.” I am not devoid of empathy for the Clinton campaign in this context, which was the veritable definition of a no-win situation. To begin with, spurning the support of any super-rich people can only be painful, and runs deeply counter to the Clinton Way of Knowledge.
Clinton had no choice, of course, but the cloudy strangeness of that tweet, a non-sentence with no clear subject or object, is the result of Kochian black magic at work. Some unspecified person does not want the endorsement of unspecified others, for these specific reasons. Are those the only reasons a candidate should reject the Kochs’ backing, or even the main ones? Does that imply that if the brothers took a more enlightened view of climate change and the Voting Rights Act, Clinton would be happy to make friends?
I don’t claim any of that will make a significant difference in the Democratic race, or that the campaign ads Bernie Sanders’ team is no doubt constructing from that material at this moment can sway many hearts and minds in Connecticut and Maryland and Pennsylvania and the other Northeastern states that vote on Tuesday. But that indirect and terrified Clinton tweet is like a million unforced errors in one; phrased more honestly, and perhaps more effectively, it would say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It should serve notice that even when it looks like the Kochs have lost their ability to control political outcomes, they still have the power to cloud men’s minds, like the mysterious hero of the old radio serial “The Shadow.” Women’s minds too!
When I say that the left has persistently underestimated the political agility and ideological commitment of the Koch brothers and continues to do so, I don’t mean activists or political opponents who have directly struggled with the range and depth of their strategy. But I think too many commentators and too much of the left-liberal public fall back on lazy stereotypes: A couple of greedy rich guys who aren’t all that bright and whose motives are transparent, seeking to safeguard their giant piles of money and reward their friends while corrupting the political process.
I believe that’s wrong on every level. The Kochs are intelligent men driven by complicated but entirely sincere ideological convictions that go far beyond self-interest. Their strategy is highly sophisticated and has multiple valences, and they genuinely believe that their Citizens United vision of a capital-dominated, quasi-libertarian pseudo-democracy is the best bet for ensuring American prosperity and social order over the long term. They are not racists or xenophobes, at least not in the Trump-Cruz pandering fashion. One can certainly argue that the economic policies they advocate have pernicious social effects that are amplified by racial disparities, but that’s a different question.
If anything, the Kochs have actively sought to decouple the Republican brand from the politics of whiteness, which they (correctly) perceive as toxic to the party’s long-term electoral health. The Charles Koch Institute, one of the brothers’ dozen or so nonprofits, has devoted significant resources to exploring criminal justice reform, and has worked with many individuals and institutions far outside the conservative comfort zone, including the ACLU, the MacArthur Foundation, Van Jones, and Black Lives Matter activist turned Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Similarly, the Kochs are not much interested in the GOP laundry list of troglodyte social issues, and have sought to steer the party away from such obsessions. David Koch spends much of the year in Manhattan and is perhaps the city’s most prominent balletomane; New York City Ballet’s home in Lincoln Center now bears his name. Do you suppose he has some major personal problem with gay people?
If the Kochs were really and truly driven by greed, they wouldn’t have bothered spending all that money in all those directions. They could do what most really rich people do, which is what Donald Trump did for years: Spread the money around in politics, and make sure you don’t miss the winners. They are driven by a desire for power, but not purely for its own sake (another difference from Trump). They want power because they believe they are uniquely enlightened and uniquely qualified to wield it, and it suits their cause just fine if you and I convince ourselves they’re nothing more than rich and obvious rubes.
All of which is to say that the Koch brothers are almost always more dangerous than they look, even in a state of apparent dejection and defeat. Do they have transcripts or tapes documenting whatever the hell Hillary Clinton said to all those Wall Street bankers? (I didn’t even think of that until just now.) One could apply much the same formula to Tyrion Lannister: Those in Westeros who have fallen afoul of his devious and far-reaching intelligence have learned to appreciate it (however briefly), but to much of the realm he remains a ridiculous little man driven by greed and envy. Whether this weekend’s Koch-Clinton dance of dragons is a premonition of scourging fires ahead I couldn’t tell you. But the Koch brothers, as usual, are several moves ahead of us in the game of thrones.In a tactical maneuver worthy of Machiavelli — or perhaps of Tyrion Lannister, the manipulative dwarf-genius played by Peter Dinklage on “Game of Thrones” — billionaire businessman Charles Koch hinted this weekend that he and his brother are so unhappy with the current implosion of the Republican Party that they might support Hillary Clinton instead. When asked during an ABC News interview whether Clinton might be preferable as president to either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Koch said, “Let me put it that way: It’s possible.”
A million gleeful, puzzled or outraged social-media posts followed. Was the GOP’s best-known bankroller, half of the two-faced Sun King at the tippety-top of the 1 percent, merely being “facetious,” as a Guardian story put it? Was Chuck trolling his so-called friends and sworn enemies with an idle jest? Was it simply frustration talking? Was he, mirabile dictu, being sincere about preferring a more or less known quantity to the Pennywise-the-Clown horror-show of a Cruz or Trump presidency? I don’t know and it doesn’t much matter; one can only gape in admiration.
I’m completely serious. Even by Kochian mind-control standards, that was a mini-masterstroke, sowing terror and confusion in all directions. Who were the Koch brothers seeking to undermine with this seemingly bizarre pronouncement, and who were they trying to help? Was this meant to make the surviving Republican candidates come crawling back, or was it an ass-backward false-flag attack on Clinton, designed to boost Bernie Sanders’ fading campaign? Is this the beginning of a fateful alliance of former foes that will sweep its way to the throne, with the Kochs jointly playing Tyrion and Hillary Clinton as Daenerys Targaryen, the fearsome Mother of Dragons?
One can hypothesize, but it’s like medieval scholarly debates about the physical substance of angels or the omnipresence of God: Human language fails to capture the all-encompassing essence of the thing in question. One answer might be that the current state of reality displeases the Kochs, and they have set out (yet again) to reshape it to their desired coordinates. Another interpretation is that they were simply reminding us that they remain in power no matter who wins, and no matter what that person may have said to get elected.
One payoff arrived almost immediately, when Clinton felt compelled to issue a statement assuring us she had no intention of riding into town on a Koch-fueled dragon. She was, she tweeted, “not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.” I am not devoid of empathy for the Clinton campaign in this context, which was the veritable definition of a no-win situation. To begin with, spurning the support of any super-rich people can only be painful, and runs deeply counter to the Clinton Way of Knowledge.
Clinton had no choice, of course, but the cloudy strangeness of that tweet, a non-sentence with no clear subject or object, is the result of Kochian black magic at work. Some unspecified person does not want the endorsement of unspecified others, for these specific reasons. Are those the only reasons a candidate should reject the Kochs’ backing, or even the main ones? Does that imply that if the brothers took a more enlightened view of climate change and the Voting Rights Act, Clinton would be happy to make friends?
I don’t claim any of that will make a significant difference in the Democratic race, or that the campaign ads Bernie Sanders’ team is no doubt constructing from that material at this moment can sway many hearts and minds in Connecticut and Maryland and Pennsylvania and the other Northeastern states that vote on Tuesday. But that indirect and terrified Clinton tweet is like a million unforced errors in one; phrased more honestly, and perhaps more effectively, it would say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It should serve notice that even when it looks like the Kochs have lost their ability to control political outcomes, they still have the power to cloud men’s minds, like the mysterious hero of the old radio serial “The Shadow.” Women’s minds too!
When I say that the left has persistently underestimated the political agility and ideological commitment of the Koch brothers and continues to do so, I don’t mean activists or political opponents who have directly struggled with the range and depth of their strategy. But I think too many commentators and too much of the left-liberal public fall back on lazy stereotypes: A couple of greedy rich guys who aren’t all that bright and whose motives are transparent, seeking to safeguard their giant piles of money and reward their friends while corrupting the political process.
I believe that’s wrong on every level. The Kochs are intelligent men driven by complicated but entirely sincere ideological convictions that go far beyond self-interest. Their strategy is highly sophisticated and has multiple valences, and they genuinely believe that their Citizens United vision of a capital-dominated, quasi-libertarian pseudo-democracy is the best bet for ensuring American prosperity and social order over the long term. They are not racists or xenophobes, at least not in the Trump-Cruz pandering fashion. One can certainly argue that the economic policies they advocate have pernicious social effects that are amplified by racial disparities, but that’s a different question.
If anything, the Kochs have actively sought to decouple the Republican brand from the politics of whiteness, which they (correctly) perceive as toxic to the party’s long-term electoral health. The Charles Koch Institute, one of the brothers’ dozen or so nonprofits, has devoted significant resources to exploring criminal justice reform, and has worked with many individuals and institutions far outside the conservative comfort zone, including the ACLU, the MacArthur Foundation, Van Jones, and Black Lives Matter activist turned Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Similarly, the Kochs are not much interested in the GOP laundry list of troglodyte social issues, and have sought to steer the party away from such obsessions. David Koch spends much of the year in Manhattan and is perhaps the city’s most prominent balletomane; New York City Ballet’s home in Lincoln Center now bears his name. Do you suppose he has some major personal problem with gay people?
If the Kochs were really and truly driven by greed, they wouldn’t have bothered spending all that money in all those directions. They could do what most really rich people do, which is what Donald Trump did for years: Spread the money around in politics, and make sure you don’t miss the winners. They are driven by a desire for power, but not purely for its own sake (another difference from Trump). They want power because they believe they are uniquely enlightened and uniquely qualified to wield it, and it suits their cause just fine if you and I convince ourselves they’re nothing more than rich and obvious rubes.
All of which is to say that the Koch brothers are almost always more dangerous than they look, even in a state of apparent dejection and defeat. Do they have transcripts or tapes documenting whatever the hell Hillary Clinton said to all those Wall Street bankers? (I didn’t even think of that until just now.) One could apply much the same formula to Tyrion Lannister: Those in Westeros who have fallen afoul of his devious and far-reaching intelligence have learned to appreciate it (however briefly), but to much of the realm he remains a ridiculous little man driven by greed and envy. Whether this weekend’s Koch-Clinton dance of dragons is a premonition of scourging fires ahead I couldn’t tell you. But the Koch brothers, as usual, are several moves ahead of us in the game of thrones.
A million gleeful, puzzled or outraged social-media posts followed. Was the GOP’s best-known bankroller, half of the two-faced Sun King at the tippety-top of the 1 percent, merely being “facetious,” as a Guardian story put it? Was Chuck trolling his so-called friends and sworn enemies with an idle jest? Was it simply frustration talking? Was he, mirabile dictu, being sincere about preferring a more or less known quantity to the Pennywise-the-Clown horror-show of a Cruz or Trump presidency? I don’t know and it doesn’t much matter; one can only gape in admiration.
I’m completely serious. Even by Kochian mind-control standards, that was a mini-masterstroke, sowing terror and confusion in all directions. Who were the Koch brothers seeking to undermine with this seemingly bizarre pronouncement, and who were they trying to help? Was this meant to make the surviving Republican candidates come crawling back, or was it an ass-backward false-flag attack on Clinton, designed to boost Bernie Sanders’ fading campaign? Is this the beginning of a fateful alliance of former foes that will sweep its way to the throne, with the Kochs jointly playing Tyrion and Hillary Clinton as Daenerys Targaryen, the fearsome Mother of Dragons?
One can hypothesize, but it’s like medieval scholarly debates about the physical substance of angels or the omnipresence of God: Human language fails to capture the all-encompassing essence of the thing in question. One answer might be that the current state of reality displeases the Kochs, and they have set out (yet again) to reshape it to their desired coordinates. Another interpretation is that they were simply reminding us that they remain in power no matter who wins, and no matter what that person may have said to get elected.
One payoff arrived almost immediately, when Clinton felt compelled to issue a statement assuring us she had no intention of riding into town on a Koch-fueled dragon. She was, she tweeted, “not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.” I am not devoid of empathy for the Clinton campaign in this context, which was the veritable definition of a no-win situation. To begin with, spurning the support of any super-rich people can only be painful, and runs deeply counter to the Clinton Way of Knowledge.
Clinton had no choice, of course, but the cloudy strangeness of that tweet, a non-sentence with no clear subject or object, is the result of Kochian black magic at work. Some unspecified person does not want the endorsement of unspecified others, for these specific reasons. Are those the only reasons a candidate should reject the Kochs’ backing, or even the main ones? Does that imply that if the brothers took a more enlightened view of climate change and the Voting Rights Act, Clinton would be happy to make friends?
I don’t claim any of that will make a significant difference in the Democratic race, or that the campaign ads Bernie Sanders’ team is no doubt constructing from that material at this moment can sway many hearts and minds in Connecticut and Maryland and Pennsylvania and the other Northeastern states that vote on Tuesday. But that indirect and terrified Clinton tweet is like a million unforced errors in one; phrased more honestly, and perhaps more effectively, it would say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It should serve notice that even when it looks like the Kochs have lost their ability to control political outcomes, they still have the power to cloud men’s minds, like the mysterious hero of the old radio serial “The Shadow.” Women’s minds too!
When I say that the left has persistently underestimated the political agility and ideological commitment of the Koch brothers and continues to do so, I don’t mean activists or political opponents who have directly struggled with the range and depth of their strategy. But I think too many commentators and too much of the left-liberal public fall back on lazy stereotypes: A couple of greedy rich guys who aren’t all that bright and whose motives are transparent, seeking to safeguard their giant piles of money and reward their friends while corrupting the political process.
I believe that’s wrong on every level. The Kochs are intelligent men driven by complicated but entirely sincere ideological convictions that go far beyond self-interest. Their strategy is highly sophisticated and has multiple valences, and they genuinely believe that their Citizens United vision of a capital-dominated, quasi-libertarian pseudo-democracy is the best bet for ensuring American prosperity and social order over the long term. They are not racists or xenophobes, at least not in the Trump-Cruz pandering fashion. One can certainly argue that the economic policies they advocate have pernicious social effects that are amplified by racial disparities, but that’s a different question.
If anything, the Kochs have actively sought to decouple the Republican brand from the politics of whiteness, which they (correctly) perceive as toxic to the party’s long-term electoral health. The Charles Koch Institute, one of the brothers’ dozen or so nonprofits, has devoted significant resources to exploring criminal justice reform, and has worked with many individuals and institutions far outside the conservative comfort zone, including the ACLU, the MacArthur Foundation, Van Jones, and Black Lives Matter activist turned Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Similarly, the Kochs are not much interested in the GOP laundry list of troglodyte social issues, and have sought to steer the party away from such obsessions. David Koch spends much of the year in Manhattan and is perhaps the city’s most prominent balletomane; New York City Ballet’s home in Lincoln Center now bears his name. Do you suppose he has some major personal problem with gay people?
If the Kochs were really and truly driven by greed, they wouldn’t have bothered spending all that money in all those directions. They could do what most really rich people do, which is what Donald Trump did for years: Spread the money around in politics, and make sure you don’t miss the winners. They are driven by a desire for power, but not purely for its own sake (another difference from Trump). They want power because they believe they are uniquely enlightened and uniquely qualified to wield it, and it suits their cause just fine if you and I convince ourselves they’re nothing more than rich and obvious rubes.
All of which is to say that the Koch brothers are almost always more dangerous than they look, even in a state of apparent dejection and defeat. Do they have transcripts or tapes documenting whatever the hell Hillary Clinton said to all those Wall Street bankers? (I didn’t even think of that until just now.) One could apply much the same formula to Tyrion Lannister: Those in Westeros who have fallen afoul of his devious and far-reaching intelligence have learned to appreciate it (however briefly), but to much of the realm he remains a ridiculous little man driven by greed and envy. Whether this weekend’s Koch-Clinton dance of dragons is a premonition of scourging fires ahead I couldn’t tell you. But the Koch brothers, as usual, are several moves ahead of us in the game of thrones.In a tactical maneuver worthy of Machiavelli — or perhaps of Tyrion Lannister, the manipulative dwarf-genius played by Peter Dinklage on “Game of Thrones” — billionaire businessman Charles Koch hinted this weekend that he and his brother are so unhappy with the current implosion of the Republican Party that they might support Hillary Clinton instead. When asked during an ABC News interview whether Clinton might be preferable as president to either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, Koch said, “Let me put it that way: It’s possible.”
A million gleeful, puzzled or outraged social-media posts followed. Was the GOP’s best-known bankroller, half of the two-faced Sun King at the tippety-top of the 1 percent, merely being “facetious,” as a Guardian story put it? Was Chuck trolling his so-called friends and sworn enemies with an idle jest? Was it simply frustration talking? Was he, mirabile dictu, being sincere about preferring a more or less known quantity to the Pennywise-the-Clown horror-show of a Cruz or Trump presidency? I don’t know and it doesn’t much matter; one can only gape in admiration.
I’m completely serious. Even by Kochian mind-control standards, that was a mini-masterstroke, sowing terror and confusion in all directions. Who were the Koch brothers seeking to undermine with this seemingly bizarre pronouncement, and who were they trying to help? Was this meant to make the surviving Republican candidates come crawling back, or was it an ass-backward false-flag attack on Clinton, designed to boost Bernie Sanders’ fading campaign? Is this the beginning of a fateful alliance of former foes that will sweep its way to the throne, with the Kochs jointly playing Tyrion and Hillary Clinton as Daenerys Targaryen, the fearsome Mother of Dragons?
One can hypothesize, but it’s like medieval scholarly debates about the physical substance of angels or the omnipresence of God: Human language fails to capture the all-encompassing essence of the thing in question. One answer might be that the current state of reality displeases the Kochs, and they have set out (yet again) to reshape it to their desired coordinates. Another interpretation is that they were simply reminding us that they remain in power no matter who wins, and no matter what that person may have said to get elected.
One payoff arrived almost immediately, when Clinton felt compelled to issue a statement assuring us she had no intention of riding into town on a Koch-fueled dragon. She was, she tweeted, “not interested in endorsements from people who deny climate science and try to make it harder for people to vote.” I am not devoid of empathy for the Clinton campaign in this context, which was the veritable definition of a no-win situation. To begin with, spurning the support of any super-rich people can only be painful, and runs deeply counter to the Clinton Way of Knowledge.
Clinton had no choice, of course, but the cloudy strangeness of that tweet, a non-sentence with no clear subject or object, is the result of Kochian black magic at work. Some unspecified person does not want the endorsement of unspecified others, for these specific reasons. Are those the only reasons a candidate should reject the Kochs’ backing, or even the main ones? Does that imply that if the brothers took a more enlightened view of climate change and the Voting Rights Act, Clinton would be happy to make friends?
I don’t claim any of that will make a significant difference in the Democratic race, or that the campaign ads Bernie Sanders’ team is no doubt constructing from that material at this moment can sway many hearts and minds in Connecticut and Maryland and Pennsylvania and the other Northeastern states that vote on Tuesday. But that indirect and terrified Clinton tweet is like a million unforced errors in one; phrased more honestly, and perhaps more effectively, it would say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It should serve notice that even when it looks like the Kochs have lost their ability to control political outcomes, they still have the power to cloud men’s minds, like the mysterious hero of the old radio serial “The Shadow.” Women’s minds too!
When I say that the left has persistently underestimated the political agility and ideological commitment of the Koch brothers and continues to do so, I don’t mean activists or political opponents who have directly struggled with the range and depth of their strategy. But I think too many commentators and too much of the left-liberal public fall back on lazy stereotypes: A couple of greedy rich guys who aren’t all that bright and whose motives are transparent, seeking to safeguard their giant piles of money and reward their friends while corrupting the political process.
I believe that’s wrong on every level. The Kochs are intelligent men driven by complicated but entirely sincere ideological convictions that go far beyond self-interest. Their strategy is highly sophisticated and has multiple valences, and they genuinely believe that their Citizens United vision of a capital-dominated, quasi-libertarian pseudo-democracy is the best bet for ensuring American prosperity and social order over the long term. They are not racists or xenophobes, at least not in the Trump-Cruz pandering fashion. One can certainly argue that the economic policies they advocate have pernicious social effects that are amplified by racial disparities, but that’s a different question.
If anything, the Kochs have actively sought to decouple the Republican brand from the politics of whiteness, which they (correctly) perceive as toxic to the party’s long-term electoral health. The Charles Koch Institute, one of the brothers’ dozen or so nonprofits, has devoted significant resources to exploring criminal justice reform, and has worked with many individuals and institutions far outside the conservative comfort zone, including the ACLU, the MacArthur Foundation, Van Jones, and Black Lives Matter activist turned Baltimore mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Similarly, the Kochs are not much interested in the GOP laundry list of troglodyte social issues, and have sought to steer the party away from such obsessions. David Koch spends much of the year in Manhattan and is perhaps the city’s most prominent balletomane; New York City Ballet’s home in Lincoln Center now bears his name. Do you suppose he has some major personal problem with gay people?
If the Kochs were really and truly driven by greed, they wouldn’t have bothered spending all that money in all those directions. They could do what most really rich people do, which is what Donald Trump did for years: Spread the money around in politics, and make sure you don’t miss the winners. They are driven by a desire for power, but not purely for its own sake (another difference from Trump). They want power because they believe they are uniquely enlightened and uniquely qualified to wield it, and it suits their cause just fine if you and I convince ourselves they’re nothing more than rich and obvious rubes.
All of which is to say that the Koch brothers are almost always more dangerous than they look, even in a state of apparent dejection and defeat. Do they have transcripts or tapes documenting whatever the hell Hillary Clinton said to all those Wall Street bankers? (I didn’t even think of that until just now.) One could apply much the same formula to Tyrion Lannister: Those in Westeros who have fallen afoul of his devious and far-reaching intelligence have learned to appreciate it (however briefly), but to much of the realm he remains a ridiculous little man driven by greed and envy. Whether this weekend’s Koch-Clinton dance of dragons is a premonition of scourging fires ahead I couldn’t tell you. But the Koch brothers, as usual, are several moves ahead of us in the game of thrones.
Beyoncé’s radical invitation: In “Lemonade,” a blueprint for black women working through pain
Beyoncé just shared her testimony through the ministry of song. Saturday night on HBO, Queen Bey took us through the visual anthology of her highly-anticipated album “Lemonade,” a narrative of grief, told in stages — intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation and forgiveness. Watching her acknowledgement of this inner battle unfold is like witnessing a Black Girl Magic Super Bowl — it’s that powerful.
Interspersed between new songs are visceral monologues by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. One minute you’re cheering, yassss come through! as fierce bat-wielding Beyoncé slays in a yellow gown, and the next you’re tearing up as mothers of sons killed at the hands of police officers show pictures of their children. Beyoncé also gives us an autobiographical sketch of her Houston, Texas, upbringing, complete with footage, and video of Jay Z’s grandmother making a speech on her 90th birthday: “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
“Lemonade” is Beyoncé’s personal story as much as it is ours as African American women (sorry, Becky). She did this one for us. Her story is one of resilience, pushing past pain with superwoman strength. At the same time, she signals she’s done wearing the “I’m good” façade — it hurts, and we’ve done it for too long. Instead, Beyoncé gives us a play-by-play on how she has coped with pain, and how we might be able to as well. It’s more than having sister-girl venting sessions — it’s being really present with ourselves and allowing one another to be confident with our own emotions. It’s important that we affirm in one another that there is nothing wrong with being angry, sad and being completely over everything, but we also have to understand that we can’t stay down in that place. As Beyoncé sings about the burden of her grief, she doesn’t shy away from unpacking her historical self. She flashes between present and past shots to bring historical context to her visuals, just as she did in her black power anthem “Formation.”
In the opening, she lays the foundation for the message and tone of the album. We find Beyoncé kneeling down in front of a red curtain with a black hoodie on, as she explores the role intuition plays in reading the signs, or rumors, of infidelity. She questions whether or not the man in her narrative — widely interpreted by fans as commentary on her husband, Jay Z, and rumors about his alleged infidelity — is cheating and attempts to affirm that there is no way this could happen: “They don’t love you like I do, and they don’t love you like I do.” While she’s trying to self-affirm, we see her drowning in the waters of her own self-doubt.
She goes through everything that she went through in order to regain her sense of self-worth and identity, from reading the Bible to changing the way she looked in the first track. So many of us can relate to the idea of looking for our identity in men, even if the relationship is dysfunctional—we always go back to ourselves and attempt to fix some aspect of ourselves in order to appease a man’s perceived wants and needs.
Beyoncé moves into the chapter of denial as she comes through smashing the windows out of cars with a bat and driving a monster truck over a line of parked cars. The women witnessing Queen Bey’s aggression react with both shock and head-nodding approval. Once she’s done denying everything, we see angry Beyoncé in the next chapter, “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She’s still not over the betrayal. This time around though, she’s brought her girls along with her.
In the words of Shire, whose poems become monologues in “Lemonade”:
We see a group of women all wearing white and joined together in a circle; she understands that her story could be any of ours. Black women bear the burden of invisibility politics, being the mule, but never being acknowledged. It’s been an ongoing struggle throughout history for proper representation — whether a voice in the political arena or the proper representations of our fly in the media, without the nuances of being hyper-sexualized.
The voice of Malcolm X reminds us that this is issue is bigger than one relationship’s conflicts. “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman.” We see as other women join in the narrative and band together through dance—in formation. In “Sorry,” Beyoncé makes it clear that she won’t be accepting any attempted apologies. Instead, she’s going to move forward with living her life. “You better call Becky with the good hair, you better call Becky with the good hair” she sings as the song comes to a close. ("Becky" is a slang term for a white woman.) She uses that anger and frustration to move on to a place of self-empowerment, as she reminds women to keep on grinding, no matter what.
And then, the most turned-up all-girls party begins. Beyoncé sits nonchalantly in a bodysuit with Serena Williams twerking at her side — yeah, that happened. She’s over everything as she sings, “suck my balls.” (WHAT!) Beyoncé: a champion in the entertainment world; Serena Williams, a champion athlete. They come together to let us know that they got this—men aside, they are going to keep on winning no matter what.
But despite the efforts to look as though she is winning, Beyoncé finds herself feeling empty.
In this next chapter we find her in a red dress, surrounded by fire:
She then goes off in “Six Inch,” and introduces a new form of feminism, one where stripping is praised—“she worth every dollar and she’s worth every minute — making it clear that when we talk about black women's empowerment, we aren’t shaming a sister for choosing to use her body to make money. We move into a stage of accountability. We find her getting candid about her turbulent relationship with her father. The scene cuts between old footage of her with her father, and alone, in an Afro-centric ball gown. She poses a series of questions:
Once we address the pain that has been brought into our lives through fraught relationships, “Lemonade” suggests, we can go be reborn. We see a group a women together wade into the water wearing all white, and it’s spiritual. The scene feels like a southern baptismal moment—any moment you’re waiting for them to breakout into a hymn. However, this moment of soul baptism is set to “Love Drought,” — without internalizing the pain, the power of love can "move a mountain," "calm a war down," "make it rain now." This moment brings the arc of her testimony full circle — she started off feeling pinned down by the waters of self-doubt, and now she comes back up with a new understanding of love.
Once the relationship with love is made new, forgiveness can happen. We see Jay, finally, and Beyoncé loving on one another in a very beautiful, PG-rated way. In the first song she sings, “I tried to make a home out of you.” “Sandcastles” brings this image full circle — the “home” as a fragile structure that can break when the water comes through, but can also be rebuilt.
The pain in “Lemonade” is not all personal — in “Forward,” she features mothers who have lost their sons to police brutality holding up their pictures: Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother; and Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother. Once she’s done unpacking past and present pain, Beyoncé ushers in with, “Freedom song,” featuring Kendrick Lamar: "Freedom! Freedom! I can't move/ Freedom, cut me loose.... I break chains all by myself.” This empowering song calls forth our truth.
And finally, redemption — Beyoncé unveils the preservation of her love. We see shots of Jay and Beyoncé celebrating their daughter’s birthday together and of them playing in the middle of an empty football stadium. To bring the narrative full circle there's also footage from Jay Z and Beyoncé’s wedding, a shot of Beyoncé’s mom, Tina, dancing with her husband. It's all set to the album's penultimate track "All Night" — a song about starting again: "Our love was stronger than your pride / Beyond your darkness, I'm your light."
The power of love is what will set us free; however, it’s important that we give each other the time and space to recover and become whole again. It is through this process that an awakening can happen — for us and for our communities.
As a culture, we haven’t created spaces for — let alone acknowledged the mental health needs of — African American women. We are forced to move through trauma, somehow, like nothing has happened, no damage has been done and no healing has ever been needed. “Lemonade” rejects that. Beyoncé uses her platform to encourage black women to accept that bottling our emotions won’t help us get free. Instead, she’s insisting that we take time and release our pain, so it no longer burdens us. Beyoncé just shared her testimony through the ministry of song. Saturday night on HBO, Queen Bey took us through the visual anthology of her highly-anticipated album “Lemonade,” a narrative of grief, told in stages — intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation and forgiveness. Watching her acknowledgement of this inner battle unfold is like witnessing a Black Girl Magic Super Bowl — it’s that powerful.
Interspersed between new songs are visceral monologues by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. One minute you’re cheering, yassss come through! as fierce bat-wielding Beyoncé slays in a yellow gown, and the next you’re tearing up as mothers of sons killed at the hands of police officers show pictures of their children. Beyoncé also gives us an autobiographical sketch of her Houston, Texas, upbringing, complete with footage, and video of Jay Z’s grandmother making a speech on her 90th birthday: “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
“Lemonade” is Beyoncé’s personal story as much as it is ours as African American women (sorry, Becky). She did this one for us. Her story is one of resilience, pushing past pain with superwoman strength. At the same time, she signals she’s done wearing the “I’m good” façade — it hurts, and we’ve done it for too long. Instead, Beyoncé gives us a play-by-play on how she has coped with pain, and how we might be able to as well. It’s more than having sister-girl venting sessions — it’s being really present with ourselves and allowing one another to be confident with our own emotions. It’s important that we affirm in one another that there is nothing wrong with being angry, sad and being completely over everything, but we also have to understand that we can’t stay down in that place. As Beyoncé sings about the burden of her grief, she doesn’t shy away from unpacking her historical self. She flashes between present and past shots to bring historical context to her visuals, just as she did in her black power anthem “Formation.”
In the opening, she lays the foundation for the message and tone of the album. We find Beyoncé kneeling down in front of a red curtain with a black hoodie on, as she explores the role intuition plays in reading the signs, or rumors, of infidelity. She questions whether or not the man in her narrative — widely interpreted by fans as commentary on her husband, Jay Z, and rumors about his alleged infidelity — is cheating and attempts to affirm that there is no way this could happen: “They don’t love you like I do, and they don’t love you like I do.” While she’s trying to self-affirm, we see her drowning in the waters of her own self-doubt.
She goes through everything that she went through in order to regain her sense of self-worth and identity, from reading the Bible to changing the way she looked in the first track. So many of us can relate to the idea of looking for our identity in men, even if the relationship is dysfunctional—we always go back to ourselves and attempt to fix some aspect of ourselves in order to appease a man’s perceived wants and needs.
Beyoncé moves into the chapter of denial as she comes through smashing the windows out of cars with a bat and driving a monster truck over a line of parked cars. The women witnessing Queen Bey’s aggression react with both shock and head-nodding approval. Once she’s done denying everything, we see angry Beyoncé in the next chapter, “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She’s still not over the betrayal. This time around though, she’s brought her girls along with her.
In the words of Shire, whose poems become monologues in “Lemonade”:
We see a group of women all wearing white and joined together in a circle; she understands that her story could be any of ours. Black women bear the burden of invisibility politics, being the mule, but never being acknowledged. It’s been an ongoing struggle throughout history for proper representation — whether a voice in the political arena or the proper representations of our fly in the media, without the nuances of being hyper-sexualized.
The voice of Malcolm X reminds us that this is issue is bigger than one relationship’s conflicts. “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman.” We see as other women join in the narrative and band together through dance—in formation. In “Sorry,” Beyoncé makes it clear that she won’t be accepting any attempted apologies. Instead, she’s going to move forward with living her life. “You better call Becky with the good hair, you better call Becky with the good hair” she sings as the song comes to a close. ("Becky" is a slang term for a white woman.) She uses that anger and frustration to move on to a place of self-empowerment, as she reminds women to keep on grinding, no matter what.
And then, the most turned-up all-girls party begins. Beyoncé sits nonchalantly in a bodysuit with Serena Williams twerking at her side — yeah, that happened. She’s over everything as she sings, “suck my balls.” (WHAT!) Beyoncé: a champion in the entertainment world; Serena Williams, a champion athlete. They come together to let us know that they got this—men aside, they are going to keep on winning no matter what.
But despite the efforts to look as though she is winning, Beyoncé finds herself feeling empty.
In this next chapter we find her in a red dress, surrounded by fire:
She then goes off in “Six Inch,” and introduces a new form of feminism, one where stripping is praised—“she worth every dollar and she’s worth every minute — making it clear that when we talk about black women's empowerment, we aren’t shaming a sister for choosing to use her body to make money. We move into a stage of accountability. We find her getting candid about her turbulent relationship with her father. The scene cuts between old footage of her with her father, and alone, in an Afro-centric ball gown. She poses a series of questions:
Once we address the pain that has been brought into our lives through fraught relationships, “Lemonade” suggests, we can go be reborn. We see a group a women together wade into the water wearing all white, and it’s spiritual. The scene feels like a southern baptismal moment—any moment you’re waiting for them to breakout into a hymn. However, this moment of soul baptism is set to “Love Drought,” — without internalizing the pain, the power of love can "move a mountain," "calm a war down," "make it rain now." This moment brings the arc of her testimony full circle — she started off feeling pinned down by the waters of self-doubt, and now she comes back up with a new understanding of love.
Once the relationship with love is made new, forgiveness can happen. We see Jay, finally, and Beyoncé loving on one another in a very beautiful, PG-rated way. In the first song she sings, “I tried to make a home out of you.” “Sandcastles” brings this image full circle — the “home” as a fragile structure that can break when the water comes through, but can also be rebuilt.
The pain in “Lemonade” is not all personal — in “Forward,” she features mothers who have lost their sons to police brutality holding up their pictures: Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother; and Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother. Once she’s done unpacking past and present pain, Beyoncé ushers in with, “Freedom song,” featuring Kendrick Lamar: "Freedom! Freedom! I can't move/ Freedom, cut me loose.... I break chains all by myself.” This empowering song calls forth our truth.
And finally, redemption — Beyoncé unveils the preservation of her love. We see shots of Jay and Beyoncé celebrating their daughter’s birthday together and of them playing in the middle of an empty football stadium. To bring the narrative full circle there's also footage from Jay Z and Beyoncé’s wedding, a shot of Beyoncé’s mom, Tina, dancing with her husband. It's all set to the album's penultimate track "All Night" — a song about starting again: "Our love was stronger than your pride / Beyond your darkness, I'm your light."
The power of love is what will set us free; however, it’s important that we give each other the time and space to recover and become whole again. It is through this process that an awakening can happen — for us and for our communities.
As a culture, we haven’t created spaces for — let alone acknowledged the mental health needs of — African American women. We are forced to move through trauma, somehow, like nothing has happened, no damage has been done and no healing has ever been needed. “Lemonade” rejects that. Beyoncé uses her platform to encourage black women to accept that bottling our emotions won’t help us get free. Instead, she’s insisting that we take time and release our pain, so it no longer burdens us.
Interspersed between new songs are visceral monologues by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. One minute you’re cheering, yassss come through! as fierce bat-wielding Beyoncé slays in a yellow gown, and the next you’re tearing up as mothers of sons killed at the hands of police officers show pictures of their children. Beyoncé also gives us an autobiographical sketch of her Houston, Texas, upbringing, complete with footage, and video of Jay Z’s grandmother making a speech on her 90th birthday: “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
“Lemonade” is Beyoncé’s personal story as much as it is ours as African American women (sorry, Becky). She did this one for us. Her story is one of resilience, pushing past pain with superwoman strength. At the same time, she signals she’s done wearing the “I’m good” façade — it hurts, and we’ve done it for too long. Instead, Beyoncé gives us a play-by-play on how she has coped with pain, and how we might be able to as well. It’s more than having sister-girl venting sessions — it’s being really present with ourselves and allowing one another to be confident with our own emotions. It’s important that we affirm in one another that there is nothing wrong with being angry, sad and being completely over everything, but we also have to understand that we can’t stay down in that place. As Beyoncé sings about the burden of her grief, she doesn’t shy away from unpacking her historical self. She flashes between present and past shots to bring historical context to her visuals, just as she did in her black power anthem “Formation.”
In the opening, she lays the foundation for the message and tone of the album. We find Beyoncé kneeling down in front of a red curtain with a black hoodie on, as she explores the role intuition plays in reading the signs, or rumors, of infidelity. She questions whether or not the man in her narrative — widely interpreted by fans as commentary on her husband, Jay Z, and rumors about his alleged infidelity — is cheating and attempts to affirm that there is no way this could happen: “They don’t love you like I do, and they don’t love you like I do.” While she’s trying to self-affirm, we see her drowning in the waters of her own self-doubt.
She goes through everything that she went through in order to regain her sense of self-worth and identity, from reading the Bible to changing the way she looked in the first track. So many of us can relate to the idea of looking for our identity in men, even if the relationship is dysfunctional—we always go back to ourselves and attempt to fix some aspect of ourselves in order to appease a man’s perceived wants and needs.
Beyoncé moves into the chapter of denial as she comes through smashing the windows out of cars with a bat and driving a monster truck over a line of parked cars. The women witnessing Queen Bey’s aggression react with both shock and head-nodding approval. Once she’s done denying everything, we see angry Beyoncé in the next chapter, “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She’s still not over the betrayal. This time around though, she’s brought her girls along with her.
In the words of Shire, whose poems become monologues in “Lemonade”:
If this what you truly want. I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair, over mine, her hands as gloves, her teeth as confetti, her scalp a cap, her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph, all three of us, immortalized.
You and your perfect girl.... Why can't you see me? Everyone else can.
We see a group of women all wearing white and joined together in a circle; she understands that her story could be any of ours. Black women bear the burden of invisibility politics, being the mule, but never being acknowledged. It’s been an ongoing struggle throughout history for proper representation — whether a voice in the political arena or the proper representations of our fly in the media, without the nuances of being hyper-sexualized.
The voice of Malcolm X reminds us that this is issue is bigger than one relationship’s conflicts. “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman.” We see as other women join in the narrative and band together through dance—in formation. In “Sorry,” Beyoncé makes it clear that she won’t be accepting any attempted apologies. Instead, she’s going to move forward with living her life. “You better call Becky with the good hair, you better call Becky with the good hair” she sings as the song comes to a close. ("Becky" is a slang term for a white woman.) She uses that anger and frustration to move on to a place of self-empowerment, as she reminds women to keep on grinding, no matter what.
And then, the most turned-up all-girls party begins. Beyoncé sits nonchalantly in a bodysuit with Serena Williams twerking at her side — yeah, that happened. She’s over everything as she sings, “suck my balls.” (WHAT!) Beyoncé: a champion in the entertainment world; Serena Williams, a champion athlete. They come together to let us know that they got this—men aside, they are going to keep on winning no matter what.
But despite the efforts to look as though she is winning, Beyoncé finds herself feeling empty.
In this next chapter we find her in a red dress, surrounded by fire:
She sleeps all day, dreams of you in both worlds...Grief, sedated by orgasm. Orgasm heightened by grief. God was in the room when the man said to the woman, "I love you so much, wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in." Sometimes when he'd have her nipple in his mouth, she'd whisper "Oh my God." That too is a form of worship.
She then goes off in “Six Inch,” and introduces a new form of feminism, one where stripping is praised—“she worth every dollar and she’s worth every minute — making it clear that when we talk about black women's empowerment, we aren’t shaming a sister for choosing to use her body to make money. We move into a stage of accountability. We find her getting candid about her turbulent relationship with her father. The scene cuts between old footage of her with her father, and alone, in an Afro-centric ball gown. She poses a series of questions:
Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his hand? Am I talking about your husband or your father?
Once we address the pain that has been brought into our lives through fraught relationships, “Lemonade” suggests, we can go be reborn. We see a group a women together wade into the water wearing all white, and it’s spiritual. The scene feels like a southern baptismal moment—any moment you’re waiting for them to breakout into a hymn. However, this moment of soul baptism is set to “Love Drought,” — without internalizing the pain, the power of love can "move a mountain," "calm a war down," "make it rain now." This moment brings the arc of her testimony full circle — she started off feeling pinned down by the waters of self-doubt, and now she comes back up with a new understanding of love.
Once the relationship with love is made new, forgiveness can happen. We see Jay, finally, and Beyoncé loving on one another in a very beautiful, PG-rated way. In the first song she sings, “I tried to make a home out of you.” “Sandcastles” brings this image full circle — the “home” as a fragile structure that can break when the water comes through, but can also be rebuilt.
The pain in “Lemonade” is not all personal — in “Forward,” she features mothers who have lost their sons to police brutality holding up their pictures: Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother; and Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother. Once she’s done unpacking past and present pain, Beyoncé ushers in with, “Freedom song,” featuring Kendrick Lamar: "Freedom! Freedom! I can't move/ Freedom, cut me loose.... I break chains all by myself.” This empowering song calls forth our truth.
And finally, redemption — Beyoncé unveils the preservation of her love. We see shots of Jay and Beyoncé celebrating their daughter’s birthday together and of them playing in the middle of an empty football stadium. To bring the narrative full circle there's also footage from Jay Z and Beyoncé’s wedding, a shot of Beyoncé’s mom, Tina, dancing with her husband. It's all set to the album's penultimate track "All Night" — a song about starting again: "Our love was stronger than your pride / Beyond your darkness, I'm your light."
The power of love is what will set us free; however, it’s important that we give each other the time and space to recover and become whole again. It is through this process that an awakening can happen — for us and for our communities.
As a culture, we haven’t created spaces for — let alone acknowledged the mental health needs of — African American women. We are forced to move through trauma, somehow, like nothing has happened, no damage has been done and no healing has ever been needed. “Lemonade” rejects that. Beyoncé uses her platform to encourage black women to accept that bottling our emotions won’t help us get free. Instead, she’s insisting that we take time and release our pain, so it no longer burdens us. Beyoncé just shared her testimony through the ministry of song. Saturday night on HBO, Queen Bey took us through the visual anthology of her highly-anticipated album “Lemonade,” a narrative of grief, told in stages — intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation and forgiveness. Watching her acknowledgement of this inner battle unfold is like witnessing a Black Girl Magic Super Bowl — it’s that powerful.
Interspersed between new songs are visceral monologues by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. One minute you’re cheering, yassss come through! as fierce bat-wielding Beyoncé slays in a yellow gown, and the next you’re tearing up as mothers of sons killed at the hands of police officers show pictures of their children. Beyoncé also gives us an autobiographical sketch of her Houston, Texas, upbringing, complete with footage, and video of Jay Z’s grandmother making a speech on her 90th birthday: “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.”
“Lemonade” is Beyoncé’s personal story as much as it is ours as African American women (sorry, Becky). She did this one for us. Her story is one of resilience, pushing past pain with superwoman strength. At the same time, she signals she’s done wearing the “I’m good” façade — it hurts, and we’ve done it for too long. Instead, Beyoncé gives us a play-by-play on how she has coped with pain, and how we might be able to as well. It’s more than having sister-girl venting sessions — it’s being really present with ourselves and allowing one another to be confident with our own emotions. It’s important that we affirm in one another that there is nothing wrong with being angry, sad and being completely over everything, but we also have to understand that we can’t stay down in that place. As Beyoncé sings about the burden of her grief, she doesn’t shy away from unpacking her historical self. She flashes between present and past shots to bring historical context to her visuals, just as she did in her black power anthem “Formation.”
In the opening, she lays the foundation for the message and tone of the album. We find Beyoncé kneeling down in front of a red curtain with a black hoodie on, as she explores the role intuition plays in reading the signs, or rumors, of infidelity. She questions whether or not the man in her narrative — widely interpreted by fans as commentary on her husband, Jay Z, and rumors about his alleged infidelity — is cheating and attempts to affirm that there is no way this could happen: “They don’t love you like I do, and they don’t love you like I do.” While she’s trying to self-affirm, we see her drowning in the waters of her own self-doubt.
She goes through everything that she went through in order to regain her sense of self-worth and identity, from reading the Bible to changing the way she looked in the first track. So many of us can relate to the idea of looking for our identity in men, even if the relationship is dysfunctional—we always go back to ourselves and attempt to fix some aspect of ourselves in order to appease a man’s perceived wants and needs.
Beyoncé moves into the chapter of denial as she comes through smashing the windows out of cars with a bat and driving a monster truck over a line of parked cars. The women witnessing Queen Bey’s aggression react with both shock and head-nodding approval. Once she’s done denying everything, we see angry Beyoncé in the next chapter, “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She’s still not over the betrayal. This time around though, she’s brought her girls along with her.
In the words of Shire, whose poems become monologues in “Lemonade”:
If this what you truly want. I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair, over mine, her hands as gloves, her teeth as confetti, her scalp a cap, her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph, all three of us, immortalized.
You and your perfect girl.... Why can't you see me? Everyone else can.
We see a group of women all wearing white and joined together in a circle; she understands that her story could be any of ours. Black women bear the burden of invisibility politics, being the mule, but never being acknowledged. It’s been an ongoing struggle throughout history for proper representation — whether a voice in the political arena or the proper representations of our fly in the media, without the nuances of being hyper-sexualized.
The voice of Malcolm X reminds us that this is issue is bigger than one relationship’s conflicts. “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman, the most unprotected person in America is the black woman, the most neglected person in America is the black woman.” We see as other women join in the narrative and band together through dance—in formation. In “Sorry,” Beyoncé makes it clear that she won’t be accepting any attempted apologies. Instead, she’s going to move forward with living her life. “You better call Becky with the good hair, you better call Becky with the good hair” she sings as the song comes to a close. ("Becky" is a slang term for a white woman.) She uses that anger and frustration to move on to a place of self-empowerment, as she reminds women to keep on grinding, no matter what.
And then, the most turned-up all-girls party begins. Beyoncé sits nonchalantly in a bodysuit with Serena Williams twerking at her side — yeah, that happened. She’s over everything as she sings, “suck my balls.” (WHAT!) Beyoncé: a champion in the entertainment world; Serena Williams, a champion athlete. They come together to let us know that they got this—men aside, they are going to keep on winning no matter what.
But despite the efforts to look as though she is winning, Beyoncé finds herself feeling empty.
In this next chapter we find her in a red dress, surrounded by fire:
She sleeps all day, dreams of you in both worlds...Grief, sedated by orgasm. Orgasm heightened by grief. God was in the room when the man said to the woman, "I love you so much, wrap your legs around me and pull me in, pull me in, pull me in." Sometimes when he'd have her nipple in his mouth, she'd whisper "Oh my God." That too is a form of worship.
She then goes off in “Six Inch,” and introduces a new form of feminism, one where stripping is praised—“she worth every dollar and she’s worth every minute — making it clear that when we talk about black women's empowerment, we aren’t shaming a sister for choosing to use her body to make money. We move into a stage of accountability. We find her getting candid about her turbulent relationship with her father. The scene cuts between old footage of her with her father, and alone, in an Afro-centric ball gown. She poses a series of questions:
Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his hand? Am I talking about your husband or your father?
Once we address the pain that has been brought into our lives through fraught relationships, “Lemonade” suggests, we can go be reborn. We see a group a women together wade into the water wearing all white, and it’s spiritual. The scene feels like a southern baptismal moment—any moment you’re waiting for them to breakout into a hymn. However, this moment of soul baptism is set to “Love Drought,” — without internalizing the pain, the power of love can "move a mountain," "calm a war down," "make it rain now." This moment brings the arc of her testimony full circle — she started off feeling pinned down by the waters of self-doubt, and now she comes back up with a new understanding of love.
Once the relationship with love is made new, forgiveness can happen. We see Jay, finally, and Beyoncé loving on one another in a very beautiful, PG-rated way. In the first song she sings, “I tried to make a home out of you.” “Sandcastles” brings this image full circle — the “home” as a fragile structure that can break when the water comes through, but can also be rebuilt.
The pain in “Lemonade” is not all personal — in “Forward,” she features mothers who have lost their sons to police brutality holding up their pictures: Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Lesley McSpadden, Mike Brown's mother; and Gwen Carr, Eric Garner's mother. Once she’s done unpacking past and present pain, Beyoncé ushers in with, “Freedom song,” featuring Kendrick Lamar: "Freedom! Freedom! I can't move/ Freedom, cut me loose.... I break chains all by myself.” This empowering song calls forth our truth.
And finally, redemption — Beyoncé unveils the preservation of her love. We see shots of Jay and Beyoncé celebrating their daughter’s birthday together and of them playing in the middle of an empty football stadium. To bring the narrative full circle there's also footage from Jay Z and Beyoncé’s wedding, a shot of Beyoncé’s mom, Tina, dancing with her husband. It's all set to the album's penultimate track "All Night" — a song about starting again: "Our love was stronger than your pride / Beyond your darkness, I'm your light."
The power of love is what will set us free; however, it’s important that we give each other the time and space to recover and become whole again. It is through this process that an awakening can happen — for us and for our communities.
As a culture, we haven’t created spaces for — let alone acknowledged the mental health needs of — African American women. We are forced to move through trauma, somehow, like nothing has happened, no damage has been done and no healing has ever been needed. “Lemonade” rejects that. Beyoncé uses her platform to encourage black women to accept that bottling our emotions won’t help us get free. Instead, she’s insisting that we take time and release our pain, so it no longer burdens us.
“Game of Thrones” wings it: Running out of books was the best thing that could happen to the HBO show
Lost, perhaps, in the surprise of seeing Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) revealed as not just nude but haggard, is the more shocking reveal that the red-robed sorceress has decided to do nothing for the rest of the night, even though Jon Snow (Kit Harington)’s death is waiting to be avenged and her compatriot Davos (Liam Cunningham) is holed up in a room at Castle Black. Melisandre is not sweeping through the remaining members of the Night’s Watch with the power and rage that we know she is capable of. Instead she is having a bit of a lie-down, thinking over what comes next.
And for the first time in “Game Of Thrones”’ history, no one knows what happens next except for the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. With Jon Snow’s death at the end of the last season, the source material has completely fallen off. It’s a brave new world here in season six, and as I discussed a bit this morning, the showrunners are making hay with it.
What is interesting is how much room there is for moving forward now. One of the biggest problems of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song Of Ice And Fire” is that the man couldn’t close a plot thread to save his life; five books in, more and more characters were introduced, as were more and more long-buried secrets. Instead of feeling like the story was going to coalesce from many disparate plot points into a coherent, stunning finish, “A Song Of Ice And Fire” increasingly feels like an ink blot that keeps bleeding into a page, and diluting its essence as it goes.
“Game Of Thrones” wants to not do that. HBO chief Michael Lombardo told critics last summer that he anticipated the show would run around eight seasons. That’s two seasons to clean up the show’s deepest mysteries, from the true parentage of Jon Snow to the final occupant of the Iron Throne. A lot has to happen between now and then to make any sort of finale feel plausible. Maybe the reason that critics didn’t get screeners this year is because the show is more wary of spoilers than ever. Certainly, with killing off of most of the population of Dorne and uniting a couple of long-estranged characters, the show has already made quick work of several dangling threads. At this point in the season, we are all Melisandre—taking stock of the day before going to bed, mulling over what happens next.
What is unfortunate for the show is that the books brought things to a weird, unfulfilling narrative point before petering out. It’s hard to imagine anyone making much sense out of the sudden rise of fundamentalism in King’s Landing, or the seemingly endless machinations in Dorne, or the ongoing strife in Meereen. Dany’s story, to my mind, is the most poised for failure; mid-arc in a narrative of occupying power at the top of her pyramid, she’s fled and then quickly been abducted, for a reprisal of the victimhood arc that she already went through in the first season of the show. It doesn’t help that Emilia Clarke, who plays the Mother of Dragons, is not the show’s best actress; the idea of watching another long subplot with her that focuses on her solitary inner journey doesn’t quite make me giddy with anticipation.
But as I wrote this morning, what does excite me for the show moving forward is that it’s discovered who its real heroes are, and is doubling down to create lived-in worlds for them. I am excited to see what Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) will do to get herself out of her prison, just as I am intrigued by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)’s approaching heroic death. [I am less moved by Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey)’s emptily passionate love scenes, but I suspect that might be the point.] “Game Of Thrones” has all the material and time it needs now, with a sandbox is free of obstacles for the first time. It time to make some fleeting but beautiful sand castles.Lost, perhaps, in the surprise of seeing Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) revealed as not just nude but haggard, is the more shocking reveal that the red-robed sorceress has decided to do nothing for the rest of the night, even though Jon Snow (Kit Harington)’s death is waiting to be avenged and her compatriot Davos (Liam Cunningham) is holed up in a room at Castle Black. Melisandre is not sweeping through the remaining members of the Night’s Watch with the power and rage that we know she is capable of. Instead she is having a bit of a lie-down, thinking over what comes next.
And for the first time in “Game Of Thrones”’ history, no one knows what happens next except for the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. With Jon Snow’s death at the end of the last season, the source material has completely fallen off. It’s a brave new world here in season six, and as I discussed a bit this morning, the showrunners are making hay with it.
What is interesting is how much room there is for moving forward now. One of the biggest problems of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song Of Ice And Fire” is that the man couldn’t close a plot thread to save his life; five books in, more and more characters were introduced, as were more and more long-buried secrets. Instead of feeling like the story was going to coalesce from many disparate plot points into a coherent, stunning finish, “A Song Of Ice And Fire” increasingly feels like an ink blot that keeps bleeding into a page, and diluting its essence as it goes.
“Game Of Thrones” wants to not do that. HBO chief Michael Lombardo told critics last summer that he anticipated the show would run around eight seasons. That’s two seasons to clean up the show’s deepest mysteries, from the true parentage of Jon Snow to the final occupant of the Iron Throne. A lot has to happen between now and then to make any sort of finale feel plausible. Maybe the reason that critics didn’t get screeners this year is because the show is more wary of spoilers than ever. Certainly, with killing off of most of the population of Dorne and uniting a couple of long-estranged characters, the show has already made quick work of several dangling threads. At this point in the season, we are all Melisandre—taking stock of the day before going to bed, mulling over what happens next.
What is unfortunate for the show is that the books brought things to a weird, unfulfilling narrative point before petering out. It’s hard to imagine anyone making much sense out of the sudden rise of fundamentalism in King’s Landing, or the seemingly endless machinations in Dorne, or the ongoing strife in Meereen. Dany’s story, to my mind, is the most poised for failure; mid-arc in a narrative of occupying power at the top of her pyramid, she’s fled and then quickly been abducted, for a reprisal of the victimhood arc that she already went through in the first season of the show. It doesn’t help that Emilia Clarke, who plays the Mother of Dragons, is not the show’s best actress; the idea of watching another long subplot with her that focuses on her solitary inner journey doesn’t quite make me giddy with anticipation.
But as I wrote this morning, what does excite me for the show moving forward is that it’s discovered who its real heroes are, and is doubling down to create lived-in worlds for them. I am excited to see what Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) will do to get herself out of her prison, just as I am intrigued by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)’s approaching heroic death. [I am less moved by Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey)’s emptily passionate love scenes, but I suspect that might be the point.] “Game Of Thrones” has all the material and time it needs now, with a sandbox is free of obstacles for the first time. It time to make some fleeting but beautiful sand castles.
And for the first time in “Game Of Thrones”’ history, no one knows what happens next except for the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. With Jon Snow’s death at the end of the last season, the source material has completely fallen off. It’s a brave new world here in season six, and as I discussed a bit this morning, the showrunners are making hay with it.
What is interesting is how much room there is for moving forward now. One of the biggest problems of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song Of Ice And Fire” is that the man couldn’t close a plot thread to save his life; five books in, more and more characters were introduced, as were more and more long-buried secrets. Instead of feeling like the story was going to coalesce from many disparate plot points into a coherent, stunning finish, “A Song Of Ice And Fire” increasingly feels like an ink blot that keeps bleeding into a page, and diluting its essence as it goes.
“Game Of Thrones” wants to not do that. HBO chief Michael Lombardo told critics last summer that he anticipated the show would run around eight seasons. That’s two seasons to clean up the show’s deepest mysteries, from the true parentage of Jon Snow to the final occupant of the Iron Throne. A lot has to happen between now and then to make any sort of finale feel plausible. Maybe the reason that critics didn’t get screeners this year is because the show is more wary of spoilers than ever. Certainly, with killing off of most of the population of Dorne and uniting a couple of long-estranged characters, the show has already made quick work of several dangling threads. At this point in the season, we are all Melisandre—taking stock of the day before going to bed, mulling over what happens next.
What is unfortunate for the show is that the books brought things to a weird, unfulfilling narrative point before petering out. It’s hard to imagine anyone making much sense out of the sudden rise of fundamentalism in King’s Landing, or the seemingly endless machinations in Dorne, or the ongoing strife in Meereen. Dany’s story, to my mind, is the most poised for failure; mid-arc in a narrative of occupying power at the top of her pyramid, she’s fled and then quickly been abducted, for a reprisal of the victimhood arc that she already went through in the first season of the show. It doesn’t help that Emilia Clarke, who plays the Mother of Dragons, is not the show’s best actress; the idea of watching another long subplot with her that focuses on her solitary inner journey doesn’t quite make me giddy with anticipation.
But as I wrote this morning, what does excite me for the show moving forward is that it’s discovered who its real heroes are, and is doubling down to create lived-in worlds for them. I am excited to see what Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) will do to get herself out of her prison, just as I am intrigued by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)’s approaching heroic death. [I am less moved by Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey)’s emptily passionate love scenes, but I suspect that might be the point.] “Game Of Thrones” has all the material and time it needs now, with a sandbox is free of obstacles for the first time. It time to make some fleeting but beautiful sand castles.Lost, perhaps, in the surprise of seeing Melisandre (Carice Van Houten) revealed as not just nude but haggard, is the more shocking reveal that the red-robed sorceress has decided to do nothing for the rest of the night, even though Jon Snow (Kit Harington)’s death is waiting to be avenged and her compatriot Davos (Liam Cunningham) is holed up in a room at Castle Black. Melisandre is not sweeping through the remaining members of the Night’s Watch with the power and rage that we know she is capable of. Instead she is having a bit of a lie-down, thinking over what comes next.
And for the first time in “Game Of Thrones”’ history, no one knows what happens next except for the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. With Jon Snow’s death at the end of the last season, the source material has completely fallen off. It’s a brave new world here in season six, and as I discussed a bit this morning, the showrunners are making hay with it.
What is interesting is how much room there is for moving forward now. One of the biggest problems of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song Of Ice And Fire” is that the man couldn’t close a plot thread to save his life; five books in, more and more characters were introduced, as were more and more long-buried secrets. Instead of feeling like the story was going to coalesce from many disparate plot points into a coherent, stunning finish, “A Song Of Ice And Fire” increasingly feels like an ink blot that keeps bleeding into a page, and diluting its essence as it goes.
“Game Of Thrones” wants to not do that. HBO chief Michael Lombardo told critics last summer that he anticipated the show would run around eight seasons. That’s two seasons to clean up the show’s deepest mysteries, from the true parentage of Jon Snow to the final occupant of the Iron Throne. A lot has to happen between now and then to make any sort of finale feel plausible. Maybe the reason that critics didn’t get screeners this year is because the show is more wary of spoilers than ever. Certainly, with killing off of most of the population of Dorne and uniting a couple of long-estranged characters, the show has already made quick work of several dangling threads. At this point in the season, we are all Melisandre—taking stock of the day before going to bed, mulling over what happens next.
What is unfortunate for the show is that the books brought things to a weird, unfulfilling narrative point before petering out. It’s hard to imagine anyone making much sense out of the sudden rise of fundamentalism in King’s Landing, or the seemingly endless machinations in Dorne, or the ongoing strife in Meereen. Dany’s story, to my mind, is the most poised for failure; mid-arc in a narrative of occupying power at the top of her pyramid, she’s fled and then quickly been abducted, for a reprisal of the victimhood arc that she already went through in the first season of the show. It doesn’t help that Emilia Clarke, who plays the Mother of Dragons, is not the show’s best actress; the idea of watching another long subplot with her that focuses on her solitary inner journey doesn’t quite make me giddy with anticipation.
But as I wrote this morning, what does excite me for the show moving forward is that it’s discovered who its real heroes are, and is doubling down to create lived-in worlds for them. I am excited to see what Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) will do to get herself out of her prison, just as I am intrigued by Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen)’s approaching heroic death. [I am less moved by Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey)’s emptily passionate love scenes, but I suspect that might be the point.] “Game Of Thrones” has all the material and time it needs now, with a sandbox is free of obstacles for the first time. It time to make some fleeting but beautiful sand castles.
Cleveland police union responds to $6 million dollar shooting settlement: Tamir Rice’s family should use money to educate children on gun safety
On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. After a more than year long delay, a grand jury failed to indict Loehmann for what prosecutor Tim McGinty described as a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications.” Seconds after arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired at Rice who was alone in a local park with a toy gun.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. After a more than year long delay, a grand jury failed to indict Loehmann for what prosecutor Tim McGinty described as a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications.” Seconds after arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired at Rice who was alone in a local park with a toy gun.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. After a more than year long delay, a grand jury failed to indict Loehmann for what prosecutor Tim McGinty described as a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications.” Seconds after arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired at Rice who was alone in a local park with a toy gun.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. After a more than year long delay, a grand jury failed to indict Loehmann for what prosecutor Tim McGinty described as a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications.” Seconds after arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired at Rice who was alone in a local park with a toy gun.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.On November 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. After a more than year long delay, a grand jury failed to indict Loehmann for what prosecutor Tim McGinty described as a “perfect storm of human error, mistakes and communications.” Seconds after arriving at the scene, Loehmann fired at Rice who was alone in a local park with a toy gun.
In February, the city of Cleveland filed a creditor’s claim against Rice's family of $500 for “emergency medical services rendered as the decedent’s last dying expense,” $450 for “ambulance advance life support” and $50 for mileage, before quickly retracting the charges in the face of swift public outcry.
Today, the city of Cleveland approved a $6 million settlement for Rice's family, the largest settlement ever in a civil rights case against the city.
Reacting to the news, the head of Cleveland's Police Patrolman's Association association Steve Loomis called on Rice's family to use part of the settlement to educate children on gun safety. The bright orange safety tip on Rice's toy gun was reportedly removed when he took it to the park days before Thanksgiving in 2014. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "Loomis has used Tamir's shooting to show that police often cannot tell the difference between real and replica firearms."
"Something positive must come from this tragic loss. That would be educating youth of the dangers of possessing a real or replica firearm," Loomis said in a statement.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training so that officers like Loehmann approach potentially armed suspects with caution. Video footage of Rice's shooting shows that Loehmann and his partner sped their patrol car right up to Rice, immediately hoping out and appearing to gun down the 12-year-old without much time for stand-down talks.
The union's rather odious response made no mention of better training for 9-11 dispatch officers like the one who received a call correctly identifying Rice as likely a teenager and his gun as likely a toy, but who somehow managed to not accurately relay that information to the responding police officers.
"We can only hope the Rice family and their attorneys will use a portion of this settlement to help educate the youth of Cleveland in the dangers associated with the mishandling of both real and facsimile firearms," Loomis wrote.
Beyoncé’s stunning triumph: “What we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented”
The weekend’s release of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” film and album has become one of the year’s biggest cultural events and one of the most revealing look at a musician’s domestic life we’ve had in some time. In some ways it resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” the 1978 album about the breakup of his first marriage, but in a much fiercer pitch: Beyoncé wields a baseball bat, smashing cars, as she sings about infidelity that’s thought to refer to her husband, Jay Z.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.The weekend’s release of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” film and album has become one of the year’s biggest cultural events and one of the most revealing look at a musician’s domestic life we’ve had in some time. In some ways it resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” the 1978 album about the breakup of his first marriage, but in a much fiercer pitch: Beyoncé wields a baseball bat, smashing cars, as she sings about infidelity that’s thought to refer to her husband, Jay Z.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.The weekend’s release of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” film and album has become one of the year’s biggest cultural events and one of the most revealing look at a musician’s domestic life we’ve had in some time. In some ways it resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” the 1978 album about the breakup of his first marriage, but in a much fiercer pitch: Beyoncé wields a baseball bat, smashing cars, as she sings about infidelity that’s thought to refer to her husband, Jay Z.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.The weekend’s release of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” film and album has become one of the year’s biggest cultural events and one of the most revealing look at a musician’s domestic life we’ve had in some time. In some ways it resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” the 1978 album about the breakup of his first marriage, but in a much fiercer pitch: Beyoncé wields a baseball bat, smashing cars, as she sings about infidelity that’s thought to refer to her husband, Jay Z.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.The weekend’s release of Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” film and album has become one of the year’s biggest cultural events and one of the most revealing look at a musician’s domestic life we’ve had in some time. In some ways it resembles Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” the 1978 album about the breakup of his first marriage, but in a much fiercer pitch: Beyoncé wields a baseball bat, smashing cars, as she sings about infidelity that’s thought to refer to her husband, Jay Z.
The film connects Beyoncé’s frustration and rage to a wide range of black women's experiences, including visual references to the slave-era South. Critics are calling it a revolutionary work of black feminism, and
Salon spoke to Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African American Studies at Duke University, about "Lemonade." He’s also the author of “New Black Man” and co-editor of “That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader.” We spoke to Neal in Durham, North Carolina; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with the musical context of “Lemonade.” What musical references do you see and hear in this?
The obvious one, when you hear “Daddy’s Lesson,” it’s kind of a hark back to the Texas and Louisiana blues sound of the early 20th century. I think that’s the most striking. She’s also dabbling in a little dancehall… The things she’s starting to do with filtering her voice in different ways allows her to tap into a screw version of hip hop, also from that Texas-Louisiana space.
I’ve read a lot of pieces where folks have talked about the fact that this album represented a kind of maturity, because she’s branched out to so many different genres of music. But I think in some ways, those kinds of observations belittle and devalue the R&B world that produced Beyoncé. I think more than anything what you’re hearing is what a mature R&B album can sound like – one that’s in conversation with these different genres of music.
You’re saying that these days R&B has a lot of historical references in it already.
Oh, absolutely.
There seem to be references to African music and African images.
Part of that is the way she distilled traditional and classic New Orleans culture – New Orleans being one of those places where you still have some very strong remnants of West African culture. You see it in New Orleans, you see it on the South Carolina coast. She’s speaking through those, whether through childhood memories, or her own willingness to go into the history books and have some kinds of visual memories around that.
In most ways, this is about femininity – about a woman who’s been wronged, who’s going to let the world know, who’s connecting it to historical parallels. Is there a subtext about black masculinity going on as well?
Yeah, there are lots of subtexts going on!
Let me start with the femininity piece. We don’t often get to see, or hear, artists grow up in public. And very often, when they do grow up in public, nobody’s paying attention to them. We’ve watched Beyoncé grow up in public, and at this time where she’s almost, in her full expression of mature black womanhood, she is in fact at her most popular.
So it allows her to tell many stories about herself – about her daughter, about her mother, about her grandmother… I don’t think we’ve ever seen that before in American pop music – a black woman performer who can tell such wide-ranging stories about her kinfolk. In this case, including her father.
So when you hear that line very early, when she talks about, “You were like my father, a magician, could be in two places at once,” she clearly found appealing in her husband the very things she found comforting in her father. And of course has to deal with those complications.
When we see the scene in the forgiveness portion of the film, which is “Sandcastles” on the album, I can’t remember ever seeing such a tender portrayal of black masculinity – especially by someone of the hip-hop generation -- than we see at that moment. Because we know who it is, but someone who makes his living with his mouth is rendered silent. And we have to read through that scene with his gestures. We see in his gestures someone who is loving, who is sorry, who is looking for redemption. It’s just a powerful scene.
She’s doing a range of things here. When the [infidelity] rumors started to circulate two years ago, what I always found amazing is that periodically she would flash photos of her with Jay and Blue. It was almost as if [she were saying], “Even if he’s a bad husband, a bad partner, he’s a good father, and I’m not going to let the court of public opinion disparage the man who is, when all is said and done, the father of my daughter.”
She’s getting at the complexity of that relationship.
Absolutely. And I think what’s telling about this album, and it speaks to who Beyoncé has tried to become. When you’re a celebrity as those are, and everybody knows about you – in theory… What she seems be to saying is, “If the price of celebrity is just constant surveillance, the way that I gain some agency or control is to curate it in my own terms. Everyone knows something went down two years ago, but let me tell the story the way I want to tell it – in its full complexity, with the pacing I want to.” So that when all is said and done, her life, Blue’s life, Jay’s life, her mother’s life – it belongs to them.
Making it very public, and still claiming it for themselves.
It’s like, “If folks are going to know about our lives, they’ll know about them in ways that I can control, and as a piece of art.” I see Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear” as a precursor to this.
Besides Marvin Gaye, what are the antecedents to this kind of open musical statement?
We’ve always had artists who shared their lives with the public. We’ve rarely had it occur on multiple platforms like it does in Beyoncé’s universe. I think it’s her best album to date. But the album itself as a standalone entity is far overshadowed by the beauty of the film. For someone to be able pull that together is absolutely stunning – in that regard, what we’re seeing is absolutely unprecedented.
So this is based in the past, the Southern past, her family’s past, but also moves things forward in a way. Does it feel like she’s added something to her image? Redrawn the way we see her in any way?
We do know that Beyoncé pays attention to all of the critiques. To everyone who questions the depth of her embrace of feminism, of her understanding to feminism, the way she centers, throughout the film, black women’s voices and black women’s images. Whether it’s the working-class folks in New Orleans, who are all over the video, or the young lady who’s in “Beasts of the Southern Wild” [Quvenzhané Wallis], and the other young black women trying to do what she’s done…
And then there’s the Malcolm X quote. It’s a particular moment where he’s talking about black women – there are not a whole lot of moments in the Malcolm X archive. It allows her to celebrate black women, but because it’s coming from Malcolm X, it’s almost this idea that you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist… She claims that for Malcolm X and all of those men who might be listening to her and suspicious of what she’s presenting.
She’s changing the game.
Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party presidential candidate invites Sanders to “cooperate on political revolution”
While overly presumptive Republican presidential candidates rushing to announce potential vice presidential running mates, one presidential candidate is openly courting the idea of a bipartisan unity ticket.
Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders, asking the Independent Vermont senator to consider ditching his attempt to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination for a real "revolution for people, planet and peace" alongside Stein.
Stein, who has long called on Sanders to join forces with her in the interest of their “shared goals,” wrote to Sanders over the weekend: "I invite you to join me in pushing the boundaries of that system to a place where revolution can truly take root."
"You've proven that in today’s rapidly changing America, a populist progressive agenda covered by the media and the televised debates can catch on like wildfire and shake the foundations of a political establishment that seemed invulnerable just a few short months ago," Stein wrote to Sanders, asking if "in this wildly unpredictable election where the old rules are giving way one by one, can we think outside the box and find new and unexpected ways to synergize beyond obsolete partisan divides?"
Stein, who first ran for the White House under the Green Party banner in 2012, argued that despite its early successes, Sanders' campaign has faltered as the "neoliberal Democratic machine mobilizes to quash revolution in its ranks":
"I would love to explore with you collaborative ways to advance that effort and ensure the revolution for people, planet and peace will prevail. Please let me know if you're interested in talking," Stein concluded.
This isn't the first time the Harvard-trained physician has reached out to the Sanders campaign with an offer of a possible third-party unity ticket.
https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/statu...
"Many of my supporters are also his supporters," Stein told NBC News last month. "I'm asked all the time if there could be a Bernie Sanders collaboration and my answer to that has always been yes. The Green Party has long sought to establish a collaboration with Bernie Sanders."
But, Stein said, "that phone call has not been returned and I don't expect that this will happen."
"We're different," she added. "He is working inside the Democratic Party. I threw in the towel a long time ago."
In another interview with The Huffington Post last month, Stein expressed worries that Sanders’ campaign would ultimately end and his supporters will eventually support Hillary Clinton, arguing that the primary “is over” and that “the party machinery is behind [Clinton].”
"There are many things about Sanders that are great. We agree on a lot domestically. But to allow yourself to be lulled into compliance with the Democratic Party means you’re allowing yourself to be reined in from establishing a real progressive message,” she said.
For his part, Sanders has repeatedly stated he intends to support the eventual Democratic nominee -- even if it is Hillary Clinton.
Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders, asking the Independent Vermont senator to consider ditching his attempt to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination for a real "revolution for people, planet and peace" alongside Stein.
Stein, who has long called on Sanders to join forces with her in the interest of their “shared goals,” wrote to Sanders over the weekend: "I invite you to join me in pushing the boundaries of that system to a place where revolution can truly take root."
"You've proven that in today’s rapidly changing America, a populist progressive agenda covered by the media and the televised debates can catch on like wildfire and shake the foundations of a political establishment that seemed invulnerable just a few short months ago," Stein wrote to Sanders, asking if "in this wildly unpredictable election where the old rules are giving way one by one, can we think outside the box and find new and unexpected ways to synergize beyond obsolete partisan divides?"
Stein, who first ran for the White House under the Green Party banner in 2012, argued that despite its early successes, Sanders' campaign has faltered as the "neoliberal Democratic machine mobilizes to quash revolution in its ranks":
The Democratic machine has launched an unjust attack on your campaign - from the NY Daily News hit job to Paul Krugman's unfounded assault, the DNC's efforts to minimize your debate exposure, and the near-unanimous endorsement of Clinton by Democratic elected officials and super-delegates.
"I would love to explore with you collaborative ways to advance that effort and ensure the revolution for people, planet and peace will prevail. Please let me know if you're interested in talking," Stein concluded.
This isn't the first time the Harvard-trained physician has reached out to the Sanders campaign with an offer of a possible third-party unity ticket.
https://twitter.com/DrJillStein/statu...
"Many of my supporters are also his supporters," Stein told NBC News last month. "I'm asked all the time if there could be a Bernie Sanders collaboration and my answer to that has always been yes. The Green Party has long sought to establish a collaboration with Bernie Sanders."
But, Stein said, "that phone call has not been returned and I don't expect that this will happen."
"We're different," she added. "He is working inside the Democratic Party. I threw in the towel a long time ago."
In another interview with The Huffington Post last month, Stein expressed worries that Sanders’ campaign would ultimately end and his supporters will eventually support Hillary Clinton, arguing that the primary “is over” and that “the party machinery is behind [Clinton].”
"There are many things about Sanders that are great. We agree on a lot domestically. But to allow yourself to be lulled into compliance with the Democratic Party means you’re allowing yourself to be reined in from establishing a real progressive message,” she said.
For his part, Sanders has repeatedly stated he intends to support the eventual Democratic nominee -- even if it is Hillary Clinton.
“Gay” James Franco’s delusion: Why “a little gay” doesn’t go a long way in real life
How do you solve a problem like James Franco? Promoting his new gay-themed film “King Cobra,” about the 2007 murder of gay porn producer Bryan Kocis, the multi-hyphenate discussed his sexuality—yet again—in a sitdown with New York magazine. Referring to himself as a “gay cock tease,” Franco called himself a “little gay,” while emphasizing that he’s straight. “There is a bit of over focusing on my sexuality, both by the straight press and the gay press, and so the first question is 'Why do they care?’'' the 38-year-old said. “Well, because I’m a celebrity, so I guess they care who I’m having sex with.”
At face value, James Franco’s approach to sexuality sounds very progressive, and it appears to be coming from a good place. In an excerpt from his 2016 book, “Straight James / Gay James,” Franco claimed that his intent is to question the boundaries of sexuality. “I am a figure who can show the straight community that many of their definitions are outdated and boring,” the actor wrote. “And I can also show the gay community that many of the things about themselves that they are giving up to join the straight community are actually valuable and beautiful.”
The problem isn’t just that Franco doesn’t need to liberate the gays, who are doing OK on their own. It’s that much of his logic about what constitutes queerness actually ends up reinforcing many of the notions he intends to shatter.
What does it mean to be a “little gay?” As recent examples have proven, the answer is almost nothing at all. Earlier this year, musician Olly Murs appeared to come out in an interview with British tabloid newspaper The Sun, in which he claimed to be “20 percent” homosexual. But his reasoning was based less on sexuality than the fact that he’s comfortable with queer people. “I’ve got a lot of gay friends I get on with really well,” Murs claimed. “I get on with everyone. Everyone’s got a bit of campness about them.”
Murs, of course, was responding to an earlier interview from Sacha Baron Cohen, known for playing gay characters in films like “Brüno” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” In an interview with E! News, the 44-year-old actor—who most recently appeared in “The Brothers Grimsby”—said that his sexuality fluctuates. On average, he’s “23 percent gay.” “Sometimes I’m 31, depends on the situation,” Cohen said. “When I was doing ‘Borat’ and I had the testicles at my chin, I was at 31.” His comments were not warmly received on the Internet, labeled as “obnoxious.”
This might confuse you: Why would be a bad thing to acknowledge that you might fall somewhere along the spectrum of sexuality? For the most part, it isn’t. In a 2015 poll, YouGov found that nearly half of Britons between the ages of 18 and 24 identified as not exclusively heterosexual. This was also true of nearly a quarter of adults living in the U.K., a result of rapidly changing attitudes when it comes to queerness. In a 2015 report for The Daily Beast, Samantha Allen called millennials “the gayest generation.” Her declaration was in response to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute finding that nearly seven percent of millennials identify as a member of the LGBT community.
But if a new generation of young people are redefining notions of sexuality and even gender as being binary, the “little bit gay” logic serves to do the opposite. In an infamous 2011 interview with Playboy, James Franco claimed that sexuality shouldn’t be defined by the fact of intercourse alone. “Between World War I and World War II, straight guys could have sex with other guys and still be perceived as straight as long as they acted masculine,” he said. “Whether you were considered a ‘fairy’ or a ‘queer’ back then wasn’t based on sexual acts so much as outward behavior.”
What folks like Sacha Baron Cohen and Olly Murs really mean when they quantify their gayness isn’t that they’re part of the community or even attracted to other men. It’s about the very word Franco emphasizes: “behavior.” In his musical persona, the fresh-faced Murs favors a dandy-like aesthetic that borrows heavily from gay culture. He’s a little bit James Dean and a little bit Kurt from “Glee.” On the cover of “Attitude,” a gay magazine based in the U.K., Murs poses with unbuttoned jeans and a leather jacket over his bear torso. Gifted with the cherubic face of a Chelsea twink, the singer strikes a Kenneth Anger pose, and the cover doesn’t shy away from the provocation: It promises that he “gets dirty.” The bait is right on the label.
Perhaps you’ve heard about this behavior classified as “queerbaiting,” when actors and entertainers present themselves as being queer up to the point of actually having sex with men. In television, queerbaiting allows programs like “Supernatural” and “Rizzoli and Isles” to dangle the possibility of same-sex intimacy without ever following through. On the TVTropes website, there’s a valuable entry on the subject called “Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss,” in which TV producers use the spectacle of two women kissing to draw in viewers, only to never mention it again. Remember that one time on “Friends” Jennifer Aniston locked lips with Winona Ryder?
But this is about more than being that girl at the party who makes who with another woman to get attention. The “little bit gay” phenomenon is base appropriation, mistaking things like posing on a magazine, or wearing a ridiculous swimsuit because you are paid to be in a movie, with actual queerness. James Franco can play Allen Ginsberg in “Howl” and produce all the gay porn thrillers he wants, but there’s a big difference between participating in gay culture and actually experiencing it. Whether Franco likes it or not, being queer is about who you’re attracted to: If not, anti-sodomy laws criminalizing same-sex intercourse wouldn’t remain on the books in 11 states, even after the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003. Otherwise, LGBT people wouldn’t continue to be kicked out of their homes, beaten, and murdered every day.
That’s not to say that James Franco doesn’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation. As the actor Zachary Quinto pointed out in an interview with Huffington Post Live, Franco’s institutional power and privilege gives him the ability to get projects bankrolled that gay actors simply wouldn’t have the clout for. (Can’t you practically hear a studio executive calling an Alan Cumming movie “too niche?”) “King Cobra” might be a good film, and reviews have been positive, but getting it made doesn’t make him a member of the club in any way, not even a little. There’s no such thing as “gay James Franco.” There’s only the straight one, and trust me—one is more than enough.
At face value, James Franco’s approach to sexuality sounds very progressive, and it appears to be coming from a good place. In an excerpt from his 2016 book, “Straight James / Gay James,” Franco claimed that his intent is to question the boundaries of sexuality. “I am a figure who can show the straight community that many of their definitions are outdated and boring,” the actor wrote. “And I can also show the gay community that many of the things about themselves that they are giving up to join the straight community are actually valuable and beautiful.”
The problem isn’t just that Franco doesn’t need to liberate the gays, who are doing OK on their own. It’s that much of his logic about what constitutes queerness actually ends up reinforcing many of the notions he intends to shatter.
What does it mean to be a “little gay?” As recent examples have proven, the answer is almost nothing at all. Earlier this year, musician Olly Murs appeared to come out in an interview with British tabloid newspaper The Sun, in which he claimed to be “20 percent” homosexual. But his reasoning was based less on sexuality than the fact that he’s comfortable with queer people. “I’ve got a lot of gay friends I get on with really well,” Murs claimed. “I get on with everyone. Everyone’s got a bit of campness about them.”
Murs, of course, was responding to an earlier interview from Sacha Baron Cohen, known for playing gay characters in films like “Brüno” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” In an interview with E! News, the 44-year-old actor—who most recently appeared in “The Brothers Grimsby”—said that his sexuality fluctuates. On average, he’s “23 percent gay.” “Sometimes I’m 31, depends on the situation,” Cohen said. “When I was doing ‘Borat’ and I had the testicles at my chin, I was at 31.” His comments were not warmly received on the Internet, labeled as “obnoxious.”
This might confuse you: Why would be a bad thing to acknowledge that you might fall somewhere along the spectrum of sexuality? For the most part, it isn’t. In a 2015 poll, YouGov found that nearly half of Britons between the ages of 18 and 24 identified as not exclusively heterosexual. This was also true of nearly a quarter of adults living in the U.K., a result of rapidly changing attitudes when it comes to queerness. In a 2015 report for The Daily Beast, Samantha Allen called millennials “the gayest generation.” Her declaration was in response to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute finding that nearly seven percent of millennials identify as a member of the LGBT community.
But if a new generation of young people are redefining notions of sexuality and even gender as being binary, the “little bit gay” logic serves to do the opposite. In an infamous 2011 interview with Playboy, James Franco claimed that sexuality shouldn’t be defined by the fact of intercourse alone. “Between World War I and World War II, straight guys could have sex with other guys and still be perceived as straight as long as they acted masculine,” he said. “Whether you were considered a ‘fairy’ or a ‘queer’ back then wasn’t based on sexual acts so much as outward behavior.”
What folks like Sacha Baron Cohen and Olly Murs really mean when they quantify their gayness isn’t that they’re part of the community or even attracted to other men. It’s about the very word Franco emphasizes: “behavior.” In his musical persona, the fresh-faced Murs favors a dandy-like aesthetic that borrows heavily from gay culture. He’s a little bit James Dean and a little bit Kurt from “Glee.” On the cover of “Attitude,” a gay magazine based in the U.K., Murs poses with unbuttoned jeans and a leather jacket over his bear torso. Gifted with the cherubic face of a Chelsea twink, the singer strikes a Kenneth Anger pose, and the cover doesn’t shy away from the provocation: It promises that he “gets dirty.” The bait is right on the label.
Perhaps you’ve heard about this behavior classified as “queerbaiting,” when actors and entertainers present themselves as being queer up to the point of actually having sex with men. In television, queerbaiting allows programs like “Supernatural” and “Rizzoli and Isles” to dangle the possibility of same-sex intimacy without ever following through. On the TVTropes website, there’s a valuable entry on the subject called “Sweeps Week Lesbian Kiss,” in which TV producers use the spectacle of two women kissing to draw in viewers, only to never mention it again. Remember that one time on “Friends” Jennifer Aniston locked lips with Winona Ryder?
But this is about more than being that girl at the party who makes who with another woman to get attention. The “little bit gay” phenomenon is base appropriation, mistaking things like posing on a magazine, or wearing a ridiculous swimsuit because you are paid to be in a movie, with actual queerness. James Franco can play Allen Ginsberg in “Howl” and produce all the gay porn thrillers he wants, but there’s a big difference between participating in gay culture and actually experiencing it. Whether Franco likes it or not, being queer is about who you’re attracted to: If not, anti-sodomy laws criminalizing same-sex intercourse wouldn’t remain on the books in 11 states, even after the Supreme Court struck them down in 2003. Otherwise, LGBT people wouldn’t continue to be kicked out of their homes, beaten, and murdered every day.
That’s not to say that James Franco doesn’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the conversation. As the actor Zachary Quinto pointed out in an interview with Huffington Post Live, Franco’s institutional power and privilege gives him the ability to get projects bankrolled that gay actors simply wouldn’t have the clout for. (Can’t you practically hear a studio executive calling an Alan Cumming movie “too niche?”) “King Cobra” might be a good film, and reviews have been positive, but getting it made doesn’t make him a member of the club in any way, not even a little. There’s no such thing as “gay James Franco.” There’s only the straight one, and trust me—one is more than enough.
“El Trumpo Takes a Thumpo”: St. Louis is latest city to get in on Donald Trump piñata craze
St. Louis is the latest city to get in on the Trump piñata trend. In preparation for the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Donald Trump piñata will be placed on a golden throne.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
St. Louis is the latest city to get in on the Trump piñata trend. In preparation for the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Donald Trump piñata will be placed on a golden throne.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
St. Louis is the latest city to get in on the Trump piñata trend. In preparation for the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Donald Trump piñata will be placed on a golden throne.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
St. Louis is the latest city to get in on the Trump piñata trend. In preparation for the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Donald Trump piñata will be placed on a golden throne.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
St. Louis is the latest city to get in on the Trump piñata trend. In preparation for the city's Cinco de Mayo celebration, a Donald Trump piñata will be placed on a golden throne.
The Trump Piñata will be on display at Yaquis Pizza and Wine Bar, where around dusk on Saturday, May 7, kids will be able to bash down El Trumpo and grab as much candy as they can during the event,called "El Trumpo Takes aThumpo." The piñata will be unveiled on April 27.
“This is our political statement,” Rodriguez said in a news release. “I see Donald Trump as a dangerous character. We are trying to get people to think about him and about what he really stands for. We don’t have much power in the greater society versus those like Donald Trump who dominates the airwaves. Therefore, the only weapon we have is ridicule. We are making fun of Trumpo. This event is meant to be an inclusive event for the entire family.”
Rodriguez first crafted the prop for Mexican Independence Day in 2015 – the tagline, “ElTrumpo Takes aDumpo.” This year, he is planning a bigger and better El Trumpo piñata, at 10-feet high and 5.5-feetwide wide. Artists are currently in the final stages of the piñata.
Donald Trump piñatas have been a hit since the real estate magnate announced his bid for the presidency and a profitable sale for many small time business owners. Mashable reported that Lorena Robletto, a retailer in downtown Los Angeles' Piñata District, has sold at least one Donald Trump piñata a day over the last two months.
83% of senators call for boosting exorbitant U.S. aid to Israel; Bernie Sanders one of 17 who didn’t
The U.S. gives more than $3 billion in unconditional military aid to Israel every single year — more than any other country receives, by far.
In fact, more than half of U.S. foreign military financing goes to Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey.
The vast majority of the Senate, however, thinks $3.1 billion per year isn't enough.
More than four-fifths of the U.S. Senate signed a letter pressuring President Obama to boost military aid to Israel, Reuters reported Monday.
A whopping 83 of the 100 senators signed the letter, including 51 (94 percent) of the 54 Republicans and 32 (73 percent) of the 44 Democrats.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, one of the Senate's two independents, did not sign the letter.
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who is struggling with front-runner Donal Trump for the Republican nomination, did endorse it.
The bipartisan initiative was led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons. Their letter calls on Obama to quickly reach an agreement on a military aid package for Israel.
The letter does not specify by how much exactly U.S. military aid should be increased. The Israeli government wants $4 billion to $4.5 billion, yet some U.S. officials have proposed $3.7 billion.
Sanders, one of the just 17 senators who did not sign the letter, has broken with Democratic Party dogma and criticized Israel for its atrocities in Gaza and its oppression of the Palestinians.
The self-declared democratic socialist has insisted in interviews and a presidential debate that Israel's attacks in its summer 2014 war in Gaza were indiscriminate and disproportionate.
Numerous reports by the United Nations, leading human rights organizations and even the U.S. State Department acknowledge that what Sanders has said is correct.
According to the U.N., the Israeli military killed more than 2,250 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of whom were civilians, including at least 550 children, in its 51-day attack on the densely populated Gaza Strip, bombing civilian homes, hospitals, schools, places of worship and shelters for displaced people.
Sanders, who also happens to be the first Jewish major presidential candidate, has made a critical break with pro-Israel bias. He has called for the U.S. "to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity" and "to work together to help the Palestinian people."
The senators' letter, which was obtained by Reuters, asserts "we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge."
The language of the document sounds very similar to the rhetoric used by Sanders' opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who pledged to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge both in the Brooklyn presidential debate and in her extremely hawkish speech at the 2016 policy conference of the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — a 4,000-word address in which she did not once mention the Israeli military's illegal, almost five-decade-long occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The proposed increase in funding "is intended to boost Israel's military and allow it to maintain a technological advantage over its Arab neighbors," Reuters reported.
The senators' letter also pledges to consider boosting U.S. funding for cooperative missile programs with Israel, at the price of hundreds of millions of tax dollars.
Obama hopes to reach the 10-year military aid deal before he leaves office in January.
Many analysts see the agreement as a way for the U.S. to appease Israel after reaching an historic nuclear deal with Iran.
Hard-line right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who staunchly opposed the diplomatic agreement and has pushed for war with Iran for years, has butted heads with Obama over the deal.
A U.S. official told Reuters, "We are prepared to sign an MOU with Israel that would constitute the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in U.S. history."
Since 1967, the U.S. has given well over $100 billion of tax dollars to Israel in unconditional military aid. And this is not considering other forms of aid, both tangible — in the form of trade deals and subsidies — and intangible — in the form of diplomatic support and scores of unilateral U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions that criticized Israel's illegal activity.
The U.S. spent $5.9 billion on foreign military financing in 2014. Israel, with $3.1 billion, and its neighbor and ally Egypt, with $1.3 billion, received approximately 75 percent of all foreign military aid money.
Iraq and Jordan tied in third with a mere $300 million each.
Israel alone raked in 53 percent of U.S. foreign military financing.
In fact, more than half of U.S. foreign military financing goes to Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey.
The vast majority of the Senate, however, thinks $3.1 billion per year isn't enough.
More than four-fifths of the U.S. Senate signed a letter pressuring President Obama to boost military aid to Israel, Reuters reported Monday.
A whopping 83 of the 100 senators signed the letter, including 51 (94 percent) of the 54 Republicans and 32 (73 percent) of the 44 Democrats.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, one of the Senate's two independents, did not sign the letter.
Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who is struggling with front-runner Donal Trump for the Republican nomination, did endorse it.
The bipartisan initiative was led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Chris Coons. Their letter calls on Obama to quickly reach an agreement on a military aid package for Israel.
The letter does not specify by how much exactly U.S. military aid should be increased. The Israeli government wants $4 billion to $4.5 billion, yet some U.S. officials have proposed $3.7 billion.
Sanders, one of the just 17 senators who did not sign the letter, has broken with Democratic Party dogma and criticized Israel for its atrocities in Gaza and its oppression of the Palestinians.
The self-declared democratic socialist has insisted in interviews and a presidential debate that Israel's attacks in its summer 2014 war in Gaza were indiscriminate and disproportionate.
Numerous reports by the United Nations, leading human rights organizations and even the U.S. State Department acknowledge that what Sanders has said is correct.
According to the U.N., the Israeli military killed more than 2,250 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of whom were civilians, including at least 550 children, in its 51-day attack on the densely populated Gaza Strip, bombing civilian homes, hospitals, schools, places of worship and shelters for displaced people.
Sanders, who also happens to be the first Jewish major presidential candidate, has made a critical break with pro-Israel bias. He has called for the U.S. "to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity" and "to work together to help the Palestinian people."
The senators' letter, which was obtained by Reuters, asserts "we stand ready to support a substantially enhanced new long-term agreement to help provide Israel the resources it requires to defend itself and preserve its qualitative military edge."
The language of the document sounds very similar to the rhetoric used by Sanders' opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who pledged to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge both in the Brooklyn presidential debate and in her extremely hawkish speech at the 2016 policy conference of the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC — a 4,000-word address in which she did not once mention the Israeli military's illegal, almost five-decade-long occupation of the Palestinian territories.
The proposed increase in funding "is intended to boost Israel's military and allow it to maintain a technological advantage over its Arab neighbors," Reuters reported.
The senators' letter also pledges to consider boosting U.S. funding for cooperative missile programs with Israel, at the price of hundreds of millions of tax dollars.
Obama hopes to reach the 10-year military aid deal before he leaves office in January.
Many analysts see the agreement as a way for the U.S. to appease Israel after reaching an historic nuclear deal with Iran.
Hard-line right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who staunchly opposed the diplomatic agreement and has pushed for war with Iran for years, has butted heads with Obama over the deal.
A U.S. official told Reuters, "We are prepared to sign an MOU with Israel that would constitute the largest single pledge of military assistance to any country in U.S. history."
Since 1967, the U.S. has given well over $100 billion of tax dollars to Israel in unconditional military aid. And this is not considering other forms of aid, both tangible — in the form of trade deals and subsidies — and intangible — in the form of diplomatic support and scores of unilateral U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions that criticized Israel's illegal activity.
The U.S. spent $5.9 billion on foreign military financing in 2014. Israel, with $3.1 billion, and its neighbor and ally Egypt, with $1.3 billion, received approximately 75 percent of all foreign military aid money.
Iraq and Jordan tied in third with a mere $300 million each.
Israel alone raked in 53 percent of U.S. foreign military financing.
