Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 801
April 22, 2016
A Clinton/Warren ticket? VP shortlist fuels rampant speculation
A top official in the Hillary Clinton campaign has said that the shortlist of potential running mates for Clinton, should she secure the nomination, includes a woman, according to the Boston Globe. Naturally, this has fueled speculation about a possible Hillary Cinton/Elizabeth Warren ticket.Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told the Globe that Clinton wants, “the best person to make the case to the American people. We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list.”
He hastened to add that the campaign is still very focused on cinching the nomination, which many pundits think she is on track to do after her win in New York.
There are other women besides Warren who might be considered, as the Globe pointed out. They include former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Washington Senator Patty Murray.
A top official in the Hillary Clinton campaign has said that the shortlist of potential running mates for Clinton, should she secure the nomination, includes a woman, according to the Boston Globe. Naturally, this has fueled speculation about a possible Hillary Cinton/Elizabeth Warren ticket.Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told the Globe that Clinton wants, “the best person to make the case to the American people. We’ll start with a broad list and then begin to narrow it. But there is no question that there will be women on that list.”
He hastened to add that the campaign is still very focused on cinching the nomination, which many pundits think she is on track to do after her win in New York.
There are other women besides Warren who might be considered, as the Globe pointed out. They include former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Washington Senator Patty Murray.
April 21, 2016
“Male contraceptive options haven’t changed since Elvis was thin”: These revolutionary alternatives to condoms are dragging male birth control into the 21st century
Most people think of contraception as an issue of women’s health and rights. But for millennia, men too have wanted choices—the means to decide whether, when and with whom they father a child.Coitus interruptus or the withdrawal method, was practiced as early as 2,500 years ago, and from the 18th century till modern times has been one of the most common forms of contraception. Condoms, made first of linen or intestine, date to at least the 16th century. But today coitus interruptus, condoms, vasectomy and abstinence are still the only methods of contraception available to men. As Sightline Institute in Seattle put it, “Male contraceptive options haven’t changed since Elvis was thin, cars had fins, and Ike was stumping for your vote.”
Today almost a third of American couples rely on the man to prevent ill-timed or unwanted pregnancy, but for young men who may want a child in the future, the options stink. Condoms are the best means available to prevent STIs, but in any given year one in six couples relying on condoms will end up with an unplanned pregnancy. Withdrawal and episodic abstinence (the rhythm method) fail even more often because they are so hard to do perfectly. Vasectomy is highly effective, but since reversal may not work, it’s not an option for men who don’t already have the family they want.
By contrast, “get it and forget it” methods for women drop pregnancy risk below 1 in 500, have bonus health benefits, and return normal fertility. When it comes to people being able to manage their fertility, we are a long way from gender equality.
The good news is that the last decade has brought increased understanding of male reproductive physiology and revealed potential new methods to safeguard against an ill-timed pregnancy. No single method will ever fit for everyone, but a variety of potential contraceptives (mechanical or pharmaceutical, shorter or longer acting, reversible or permanent, some enhancing libido or sexual function and some sexually neutral) could offer men real choices that fit their age, culture and lifestyle. Some may even have bonus health benefits like increasing energy and muscle mass or preventing balding.
In addition, modern information technologies invite novel educational approaches and distribution channels for medical services including contraceptives. Technology now allows personalized education through the Internet and deliveries in hard-to-reach geographic locations, such as drone shipments to remote locations around the world. Social media opens up new opportunities to generate dialogue about men and contraceptive choice and the broader issue of intentional parenthood.
We finally may be at the point that a serious investment in male contraception could create real options for the half of the world’s population that currently has to rely on condoms, vasectomy, withdrawal, abstinence, or a trusted partner. Imagine if all people, regardless of gender, could enjoy sexual intimacy and pleasure without the worry of an unexpected pregnancy? Imagine if each person, regardless of gender, could fully choose if or when to become a parent, and with whom?
How might that work?
Potential Targets and Methods of Male Contraception
Male reproductive physiology offers three broad targets for contraception. A potential contraceptive can target the production of sperm itself, or the maturation and function of sperm, or the transport of fully developed sperm out of the male body. Within each of these three broad targets lies a range of more specific targets and mechanisms for preventing unwanted fertility. Some potential contraceptive approaches are hormones, some are drugs and some are mechanical. Each is in very different stages of research and development.
Contraceptive approaches seeking to switch off sperm production:
Testosterone
Synthetic androgens such as MENT
Testosterone-progestin combinations
Antagonists of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (such as Acyline)
Approaches that affect maturation and function of sperm:
BET protein inhibitor JQ1
Retinoic acid synthesis inhibitors
Lonidamine derivatives–Adjudin and Gamendazole
Approaches that target a sperm’s ability to travel towards the egg:
CatSpers
Polymer barriers
Mechanical barriers
Clean Sheets Pill
Epididymal Protease Inhibitor (EPPIN)
Turning off sperm production with a hormonal switch
Sperm production begins in puberty and continues through adulthood, maintained by high levels of testosterone within the testes. The entire process takes between 74 and 120 days, and the testes produce 200 to 300 million sperm each day. That’s about 1,000 sperm for every heartbeat! (Think of this in contrast with the monthly ovulation cycle of women and the relative ease of targeting a single egg issued by a woman each month by comparison.)
Complex hormonal interactions between the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the Leydig cells in the testes bring this about. These interactions are summarized in the figure that follows.
Figure 1 Hormonal Regulation of Spermatogenesis
Source: Opentextbc.ca
Testosterone : Given that testosterone is so key to male reproduction, an obvious first choice of a reversible male contraceptive is testosterone itself. Most hormonal methods of male contraception seek to create a negative feedback loop that by increasing testosterone elsewhere decreases testosterone in the testes. The aim is to lower testosterone inside the testes while maintaining normal levels in the body as a whole. Possible modes of administration include injections, biodegradable microspheres, and implants which, when placed just below the skin, would work for 4-6 months. Testosterone is effective and reversible, but to date minimizing negative side effects has been a challenge.
Synthetic androgens : Androgens are the general class of hormones to which testosterone belongs. Some synthetic androgens suppress spermatogenesis at lower doses and with fewer side effects than testosterone. And some work better in combination with another class of hormone, progestins. The ideal androgen and the ideal mode of administration are still being investigated. MENT is a promising synthetic androgen that is being developed as a subdermal implant.
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone-based contraceptive therapy : Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is a pivotal hormonal control that turns on fertility by increasing levels of other hormones including testosterone in the reproductive system. Acyline and related drugs are GnRH antagonists, meaning they inhibit the action of GnRH. This class of drugs has potential for fighting prostate cancer and turning off unwanted sperm production.
Altering Sperm Maturation and Function
To understand the next class of targets, those that alter sperm maturation and function, it is helpful to know a bit more about where and how sperm development takes place.
The Sertoli cells in the testes are the male equivalent of the ovaries. They harbor and nourish the developing sperm, then send them on their way when they are mature and ready to fertilize an egg. After maturing, sperm are collected and stored in the epididymis, where they develop motility, meaning the ability to swim. They also develop smell receptors that will sense and guide them toward an egg and the enzymes required to penetrate it.
Figure 2: Physiology of Sperm Production
Source: Wikispaces.com
In the earliest stage of sperm development, individual immature “spermatocytes” split off from germ cells through multiple cycles of cell division. At this early stage of development they contain the DNA needed to create an embryo but lack the ability to move or fertilize an egg. It is here that JQ1 and retinoic acid synthesis inhibitors block development.
After maturation ends, fully formed sperm are released into the epididymis in a process called spermiation. The investigational drugs Adjudin and Gamendazole target this phase, causing premature release of spermatozoa. One researcher likened this to teens leaving home before they are fully able to function in the outside world.
Although methods that target sperm motility and function are in their infancy, early stage research is breaking new ground. A large number of potential targets for this aspect of sperm production come from "knock out" experiments with mice wherein researchers disrupted their genetic profile. Preliminary results from this research indicate that many different genes when eliminated produce mice whose only characteristic appears to be infertility. Reverse engineering allows identification of the proteins produced by these genes. Some of the proteins discovered to be essential to fertility include:
CatSpers are a group of sperm-specific proteins that appear necessary for motility.
Odorant receptors may be important in guiding the sperm toward the egg. Blocking them would inhibit the directional movement of the sperm.
Even if sperm reach an egg, it may be possible to block the fusion of the two. Epididymal Protease Inhibitor (EPPIN) is a compound that binds an enzyme on the surface of the sperm, making it immobile and unable to penetrate the egg. A compound isolated from the Indonesian shrub Gendarussa may also interfere with enzymes that facilitate egg penetration.
Preventing Sperm Release During Sex
Even if sperm are allowed to mature and gain full function, fertility can be impeded by blocking flow of the sperm down the vas deferens.
Once fully formed sperm have been stored in the epididymis, all that remains is for them to be transported through the vas deferens and urethra and out of the male body during sexual intercourse. Two interesting aspects of male physiology allow this transport phase to be a contraceptive target. One is that a man can experience normal ejaculation with or without sperm in the ejaculate. The other (and most people would find this more surprising) is that a man can experience the intense pleasurable sensation of orgasm without any ejaculate whatsoever. Consequently, unwanted fertility can be eliminated by either gating the vas or by blocking very specific muscular contractions that propel the ejaculate forward. Figure 3 shows the structures that allow for the storage, transport and release of sperm.
Figure 3: Male Reproductive Tract
Source: Wikispaces.com
Interventions in this category seek to mechanically or chemically prevent sperm from traveling down the vas deferens.
One possibility that has captured the attention of researchers is the injection of polymers into the vas, creating a possibly reversible alternative to vasectomy. Part of the appeal is that this kind of outpatient procedure is non-surgical and does not require anesthesia. Projects focused on bio-polymeric plugs include Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (RISUG), Vasalgel, and Echo-V. In each case, a liquid polymer is injected and then hardens, either blocking or busting sperm as they pass through the vas deferens. When contraception is no longer desired, a solvent or ultrasound is used to dissolve the polymer.
A potential contraceptive called the Clean Sheets Pill works at an even later stage, after sperm are mixed with the fluids that make up ejaculate. Once formed, ejaculate is propelled forward by different muscle contractions than those creating the rhythmic sensation and pleasure of orgasm. Consequently, the Clean Sheets Pill works by relaxing the muscles that would otherwise propel ejaculation, effectively turning off the flow of both sperm and ejaculate while still allowing the muscle contractions that create the pleasure of orgasm. Any ejaculate is simply reabsorbed by a man’s body just as it is routinely during cycles of arousal that don’t end in orgasm.
Moving Forward
The time may be right for male contraception. More and more young men, and men not so young too, want options—the ability to control their own DNA, their parenthood, and the trajectory of their future. What is missing for guys, to an unconscionably greater degree than with contraception for women, is available product and a societal mindset which demands this.
Getting real alternatives into the hands of men who want them won’t be easy or cheap. Most promising drugs get scratched off at some point between early lab research and final clinical trials—a process that can take two decades and hundreds of millions of dollars. The male contraceptive nearest to market (one that also treats low testosterone!) is languishing in clinical trials for lack of research funding. Most certainly, not every option listed in this article will pan out. But some may, and new possibilities are constantly being discovered, sometimes quite by accident.
Some people say that making this investment is a matter of basic fairness—that every person deserves the right to determine their own fertility no matter where they may fall on the gender spectrum. In the words of Aaron Hamlin at the Male Contraception Project, “It’s been 55 years since the Pill for women came to market in the United States. The Pill for men is long overdue.”
Read More
Scientific American: Beyond Condoms: The Long Quest for a Better Male Contraceptive
Sightline Institute: Burning Rubber(s)
The Atlantic: Block That Sperm!
NYT: Scientific Advances on Contraceptives for Men
Huffington Post: Is Male Birth Control Coming? The Gates Foundation Thinks So
WSJ: Honey It’s Your Turn
Popular Science: How Not to Be a Dad
Salon: Stop Our Sperm Please
Guardian: Who Wants a Male Pill?
ValerieTarico: Will Reproductive Rights Advocates Stand Up for Men?
Make it Happen! Discuss, Fund or Get Involved
Male Contraception Initiative
Population Council
Most people think of contraception as an issue of women’s health and rights. But for millennia, men too have wanted choices—the means to decide whether, when and with whom they father a child.Coitus interruptus or the withdrawal method, was practiced as early as 2,500 years ago, and from the 18th century till modern times has been one of the most common forms of contraception. Condoms, made first of linen or intestine, date to at least the 16th century. But today coitus interruptus, condoms, vasectomy and abstinence are still the only methods of contraception available to men. As Sightline Institute in Seattle put it, “Male contraceptive options haven’t changed since Elvis was thin, cars had fins, and Ike was stumping for your vote.”
Today almost a third of American couples rely on the man to prevent ill-timed or unwanted pregnancy, but for young men who may want a child in the future, the options stink. Condoms are the best means available to prevent STIs, but in any given year one in six couples relying on condoms will end up with an unplanned pregnancy. Withdrawal and episodic abstinence (the rhythm method) fail even more often because they are so hard to do perfectly. Vasectomy is highly effective, but since reversal may not work, it’s not an option for men who don’t already have the family they want.
By contrast, “get it and forget it” methods for women drop pregnancy risk below 1 in 500, have bonus health benefits, and return normal fertility. When it comes to people being able to manage their fertility, we are a long way from gender equality.
The good news is that the last decade has brought increased understanding of male reproductive physiology and revealed potential new methods to safeguard against an ill-timed pregnancy. No single method will ever fit for everyone, but a variety of potential contraceptives (mechanical or pharmaceutical, shorter or longer acting, reversible or permanent, some enhancing libido or sexual function and some sexually neutral) could offer men real choices that fit their age, culture and lifestyle. Some may even have bonus health benefits like increasing energy and muscle mass or preventing balding.
In addition, modern information technologies invite novel educational approaches and distribution channels for medical services including contraceptives. Technology now allows personalized education through the Internet and deliveries in hard-to-reach geographic locations, such as drone shipments to remote locations around the world. Social media opens up new opportunities to generate dialogue about men and contraceptive choice and the broader issue of intentional parenthood.
We finally may be at the point that a serious investment in male contraception could create real options for the half of the world’s population that currently has to rely on condoms, vasectomy, withdrawal, abstinence, or a trusted partner. Imagine if all people, regardless of gender, could enjoy sexual intimacy and pleasure without the worry of an unexpected pregnancy? Imagine if each person, regardless of gender, could fully choose if or when to become a parent, and with whom?
How might that work?
Potential Targets and Methods of Male Contraception
Male reproductive physiology offers three broad targets for contraception. A potential contraceptive can target the production of sperm itself, or the maturation and function of sperm, or the transport of fully developed sperm out of the male body. Within each of these three broad targets lies a range of more specific targets and mechanisms for preventing unwanted fertility. Some potential contraceptive approaches are hormones, some are drugs and some are mechanical. Each is in very different stages of research and development.
Contraceptive approaches seeking to switch off sperm production:
Testosterone
Synthetic androgens such as MENT
Testosterone-progestin combinations
Antagonists of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (such as Acyline)
Approaches that affect maturation and function of sperm:
BET protein inhibitor JQ1
Retinoic acid synthesis inhibitors
Lonidamine derivatives–Adjudin and Gamendazole
Approaches that target a sperm’s ability to travel towards the egg:
CatSpers
Polymer barriers
Mechanical barriers
Clean Sheets Pill
Epididymal Protease Inhibitor (EPPIN)
Turning off sperm production with a hormonal switch
Sperm production begins in puberty and continues through adulthood, maintained by high levels of testosterone within the testes. The entire process takes between 74 and 120 days, and the testes produce 200 to 300 million sperm each day. That’s about 1,000 sperm for every heartbeat! (Think of this in contrast with the monthly ovulation cycle of women and the relative ease of targeting a single egg issued by a woman each month by comparison.)
Complex hormonal interactions between the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the Leydig cells in the testes bring this about. These interactions are summarized in the figure that follows.
Figure 1 Hormonal Regulation of Spermatogenesis
Source: Opentextbc.ca
Testosterone : Given that testosterone is so key to male reproduction, an obvious first choice of a reversible male contraceptive is testosterone itself. Most hormonal methods of male contraception seek to create a negative feedback loop that by increasing testosterone elsewhere decreases testosterone in the testes. The aim is to lower testosterone inside the testes while maintaining normal levels in the body as a whole. Possible modes of administration include injections, biodegradable microspheres, and implants which, when placed just below the skin, would work for 4-6 months. Testosterone is effective and reversible, but to date minimizing negative side effects has been a challenge.
Synthetic androgens : Androgens are the general class of hormones to which testosterone belongs. Some synthetic androgens suppress spermatogenesis at lower doses and with fewer side effects than testosterone. And some work better in combination with another class of hormone, progestins. The ideal androgen and the ideal mode of administration are still being investigated. MENT is a promising synthetic androgen that is being developed as a subdermal implant.
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone-based contraceptive therapy : Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) is a pivotal hormonal control that turns on fertility by increasing levels of other hormones including testosterone in the reproductive system. Acyline and related drugs are GnRH antagonists, meaning they inhibit the action of GnRH. This class of drugs has potential for fighting prostate cancer and turning off unwanted sperm production.
Altering Sperm Maturation and Function
To understand the next class of targets, those that alter sperm maturation and function, it is helpful to know a bit more about where and how sperm development takes place.
The Sertoli cells in the testes are the male equivalent of the ovaries. They harbor and nourish the developing sperm, then send them on their way when they are mature and ready to fertilize an egg. After maturing, sperm are collected and stored in the epididymis, where they develop motility, meaning the ability to swim. They also develop smell receptors that will sense and guide them toward an egg and the enzymes required to penetrate it.
Figure 2: Physiology of Sperm Production
Source: Wikispaces.com
In the earliest stage of sperm development, individual immature “spermatocytes” split off from germ cells through multiple cycles of cell division. At this early stage of development they contain the DNA needed to create an embryo but lack the ability to move or fertilize an egg. It is here that JQ1 and retinoic acid synthesis inhibitors block development.
After maturation ends, fully formed sperm are released into the epididymis in a process called spermiation. The investigational drugs Adjudin and Gamendazole target this phase, causing premature release of spermatozoa. One researcher likened this to teens leaving home before they are fully able to function in the outside world.
Although methods that target sperm motility and function are in their infancy, early stage research is breaking new ground. A large number of potential targets for this aspect of sperm production come from "knock out" experiments with mice wherein researchers disrupted their genetic profile. Preliminary results from this research indicate that many different genes when eliminated produce mice whose only characteristic appears to be infertility. Reverse engineering allows identification of the proteins produced by these genes. Some of the proteins discovered to be essential to fertility include:
CatSpers are a group of sperm-specific proteins that appear necessary for motility.
Odorant receptors may be important in guiding the sperm toward the egg. Blocking them would inhibit the directional movement of the sperm.
Even if sperm reach an egg, it may be possible to block the fusion of the two. Epididymal Protease Inhibitor (EPPIN) is a compound that binds an enzyme on the surface of the sperm, making it immobile and unable to penetrate the egg. A compound isolated from the Indonesian shrub Gendarussa may also interfere with enzymes that facilitate egg penetration.
Preventing Sperm Release During Sex
Even if sperm are allowed to mature and gain full function, fertility can be impeded by blocking flow of the sperm down the vas deferens.
Once fully formed sperm have been stored in the epididymis, all that remains is for them to be transported through the vas deferens and urethra and out of the male body during sexual intercourse. Two interesting aspects of male physiology allow this transport phase to be a contraceptive target. One is that a man can experience normal ejaculation with or without sperm in the ejaculate. The other (and most people would find this more surprising) is that a man can experience the intense pleasurable sensation of orgasm without any ejaculate whatsoever. Consequently, unwanted fertility can be eliminated by either gating the vas or by blocking very specific muscular contractions that propel the ejaculate forward. Figure 3 shows the structures that allow for the storage, transport and release of sperm.
Figure 3: Male Reproductive Tract
Source: Wikispaces.com
Interventions in this category seek to mechanically or chemically prevent sperm from traveling down the vas deferens.
One possibility that has captured the attention of researchers is the injection of polymers into the vas, creating a possibly reversible alternative to vasectomy. Part of the appeal is that this kind of outpatient procedure is non-surgical and does not require anesthesia. Projects focused on bio-polymeric plugs include Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance (RISUG), Vasalgel, and Echo-V. In each case, a liquid polymer is injected and then hardens, either blocking or busting sperm as they pass through the vas deferens. When contraception is no longer desired, a solvent or ultrasound is used to dissolve the polymer.
A potential contraceptive called the Clean Sheets Pill works at an even later stage, after sperm are mixed with the fluids that make up ejaculate. Once formed, ejaculate is propelled forward by different muscle contractions than those creating the rhythmic sensation and pleasure of orgasm. Consequently, the Clean Sheets Pill works by relaxing the muscles that would otherwise propel ejaculation, effectively turning off the flow of both sperm and ejaculate while still allowing the muscle contractions that create the pleasure of orgasm. Any ejaculate is simply reabsorbed by a man’s body just as it is routinely during cycles of arousal that don’t end in orgasm.
Moving Forward
The time may be right for male contraception. More and more young men, and men not so young too, want options—the ability to control their own DNA, their parenthood, and the trajectory of their future. What is missing for guys, to an unconscionably greater degree than with contraception for women, is available product and a societal mindset which demands this.
Getting real alternatives into the hands of men who want them won’t be easy or cheap. Most promising drugs get scratched off at some point between early lab research and final clinical trials—a process that can take two decades and hundreds of millions of dollars. The male contraceptive nearest to market (one that also treats low testosterone!) is languishing in clinical trials for lack of research funding. Most certainly, not every option listed in this article will pan out. But some may, and new possibilities are constantly being discovered, sometimes quite by accident.
Some people say that making this investment is a matter of basic fairness—that every person deserves the right to determine their own fertility no matter where they may fall on the gender spectrum. In the words of Aaron Hamlin at the Male Contraception Project, “It’s been 55 years since the Pill for women came to market in the United States. The Pill for men is long overdue.”
Read More
Scientific American: Beyond Condoms: The Long Quest for a Better Male Contraceptive
Sightline Institute: Burning Rubber(s)
The Atlantic: Block That Sperm!
NYT: Scientific Advances on Contraceptives for Men
Huffington Post: Is Male Birth Control Coming? The Gates Foundation Thinks So
WSJ: Honey It’s Your Turn
Popular Science: How Not to Be a Dad
Salon: Stop Our Sperm Please
Guardian: Who Wants a Male Pill?
ValerieTarico: Will Reproductive Rights Advocates Stand Up for Men?
Make it Happen! Discuss, Fund or Get Involved
Male Contraception Initiative
Population Council
Prince, pop, race and America: How a difficult, pansexual genius remade our culture
I once had a girlfriend, a thousand years ago across the continent, who got her dark curly hair cut into an off-center wedge that hung across the right half of her face. She liked to wear purple paisley-pattern dresses, and cut out her own paisley stencil to use in repainting her red 1969 Vespa scooter. She used to talk dreamily about the affair she’d have with Prince someday, which would not jeopardize our relationship — I mean, surely I would understand — and which for some reason involved a house on Lake Geneva. (She and I are still close friends, and in fact she is also a New York journalist now. It wouldn’t be fair to out her in this context.)
I don’t think my friend ever got to have her Swiss escapade with Prince, which sounds like an episode out of an undiscovered Henry James novel, and it’s too late now. Prince Rogers Nelson, formerly the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, one of the most talented, exuberant and profoundly frustrating songwriters and musical performers of our time, was found dead at his Paisley Park complex outside Minneapolis on Thursday. She had a point, though, when it came to my reaction to her proposed liaison: What could I possibly have said? At the peak of his powers, Prince was an ambiguous, erotic figure of tremendous potency and protean symbolism. I’m not a woman, he sang to us in 1984. I’m not a man/ I am something that you’ll never understand.
Prince was not a generation-spanning, culture-shaping genius who transcended or transformed all questions of style and genre, as the late David Bowie was. He was a massive influence on one micro-generation — which happens to be mine — and something of a mixed and mysterious legend to those younger or older. He recorded and released too much music too fast and too carelessly, to the point that the albums he made after about 1994 (at the latest) often feel like the work of a different and far less focused artist. His struggles with religion, the Internet, his fans, and record companies and promoters became a bigger part of the story than his recordings or performances.
None of that was unique in the annals of pop music, to be sure, but Prince was such an outsize talent and — how do I put this on the day of his death? — such a challenging personality that everything about his story felt exaggerated. In any case, the similarities between Prince and Bowie are unavoidable, and I feel certain the two artists studied each other’s musical output and mercurial personas with fascination. The fact that the former was not quite the latter reflected various things, from race and nationality to timing and temperament, but definitely not a lack of talent or ambition. Prince was a prodigious natural musician who could play almost any instrument and sing in any male vocal range from falsetto to baritone. If Bowie was a relentless chameleon who experimented with every possible style, Prince was the ultimate pop synthesist of his era. While the mixture of rock and funk was pretty much atmospheric in the 1980s, few hitmakers of that decade understood both genres as deeply as Prince did.
Prince’s distinctive brand of hybridized American dance-pop no doubt had something to do with growing up as an African-American kid in Minneapolis, then a predominantly white city. One of his most endearing qualities was his relationship to his hometown; while he spent extended periods in Los Angeles and London and various European cities, he never abandoned the Gopher State altogether. But you also get the sense that Prince was his own creation, and might have forged himself the same way in Harlem or Amsterdam or Juneau, Alaska.
It’s so often a useless cliché to say that a pop artist was ahead of his time, and in fact Prince’s ascension perfectly distilled the pansexual, multiracial, hedonistic and downwardly mobile cultural politics of the Reagan era, when those of us who lived in cities where our friends were dying of a disease the president wouldn’t name out loud had good reason to feel hated and rejected by the so-called mainstream. But he also anticipated so many things, including an era when artificial distinctions between “black music” and “white music” have largely evaporated. No one finds it peculiar now when a hip-hop record incorporates heavy-metal guitar, or when members of the Roots talk about how much they love Brian Wilson.
If you want to talk about influences on Prince’s music you can pretty much stick a pin in the map of pop history, from Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop to 1960s psychedelia. For me he epitomizes a remark attributed to Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, another musical genius we lost barely two months ago: White people sometimes assume that black people didn’t listen to the Beatles, or weren’t affected by them. No African-American artist I can think of is more obviously and self-consciously Beatle-esque than Prince, who seemed to channel each of the Fab Four at different moments. If the aforementioned “I Would Die 4 U” — for my money one of Prince’s very best — has the bravado and ambition of a John Lennon song, then “Raspberry Beret” has the infectious pop craftsmanship of Paul McCartney. (Yes, I know: Production-wise, it’s closer to the L.A. psychedelic sound.)
After his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004, Prince played an extended guitar solo during an ensemble performance of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Barely a month earlier, he had played a memorable duet with Beyoncé at the Grammys, performing her hit “Crazy in Love” as well as “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” That was the world he had created, and there were quite a few moments like that in his later career, live performances where it all seemed to come together one more time. In 2006, he played a medley of Chaka Khan hits (several of which he wrote) at the BET Awards. His Super Bowl halftime show in 2007, featuring covers of “Proud Mary,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “We Will Rock You,” may yet be the best single performance in the history of that peculiar showcase (if you don’t count Katy Perry’s land shark).
I won’t claim to have paid equal or fair attention to the indiscriminate onslaught of recordings that flowed from the breakdown of Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. in the ‘90s; I’m not sure anyone could have. Counting live albums, remixes and greatest-hits collections, he released at least 21 records between 1995 and 2005. There were successes like “Musicology” in 2004 (his most consistent release in at least a decade) and semi-lost critical fave-raves like “The Gold Experience” from 1995, which remains difficult to find by legal means. But just as often Prince seemed devoted to sabotaging his career as a perverse act of performance art: He shoved aside the much-anticipated “Black Album” for years, releasing the slapdash “Lovesexy” instead. Anyone with ears could tell that the jazz tradition had profoundly shaped his sensibility; that didn’t mean he had to spend several years and several albums playing his own mediocre jazz compositions.
Prince understood, as we all understood, that the seven albums he recorded from “Dirty Mind” in 1980 to the double-length masterpiece “Sign o’ the Times” in 1987 represented a creative peak, and a creative fusion, that neither he nor anyone else could match. I haven’t mentioned his hits from that period because I don’t need to: After the opening chords of “Little Red Corvette” or “When Doves Cry” or “Kiss,” almost any person of any race or nationality who lived within the Western cultural economy of the 1980s reaches over to turn up the car radio. Prince captured, embodied and symbolized a multicultural dance-floor utopia that was never quite reality, but was all the more beautiful for that. He was a difficult person who taught us to love each other, resist evil and dance while the world ended: 1999 came and went, long ago. Losing Prince is a bitter reminder that we never partied quite the way we should.I once had a girlfriend, a thousand years ago across the continent, who got her dark curly hair cut into an off-center wedge that hung across the right half of her face. She liked to wear purple paisley-pattern dresses, and cut out her own paisley stencil to use in repainting her red 1969 Vespa scooter. She used to talk dreamily about the affair she’d have with Prince someday, which would not jeopardize our relationship — I mean, surely I would understand — and which for some reason involved a house on Lake Geneva. (She and I are still close friends, and in fact she is also a New York journalist now. It wouldn’t be fair to out her in this context.)
I don’t think my friend ever got to have her Swiss escapade with Prince, which sounds like an episode out of an undiscovered Henry James novel, and it’s too late now. Prince Rogers Nelson, formerly the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, one of the most talented, exuberant and profoundly frustrating songwriters and musical performers of our time, was found dead at his Paisley Park complex outside Minneapolis on Thursday. She had a point, though, when it came to my reaction to her proposed liaison: What could I possibly have said? At the peak of his powers, Prince was an ambiguous, erotic figure of tremendous potency and protean symbolism. I’m not a woman, he sang to us in 1984. I’m not a man/ I am something that you’ll never understand.
Prince was not a generation-spanning, culture-shaping genius who transcended or transformed all questions of style and genre, as the late David Bowie was. He was a massive influence on one micro-generation — which happens to be mine — and something of a mixed and mysterious legend to those younger or older. He recorded and released too much music too fast and too carelessly, to the point that the albums he made after about 1994 (at the latest) often feel like the work of a different and far less focused artist. His struggles with religion, the Internet, his fans, and record companies and promoters became a bigger part of the story than his recordings or performances.
None of that was unique in the annals of pop music, to be sure, but Prince was such an outsize talent and — how do I put this on the day of his death? — such a challenging personality that everything about his story felt exaggerated. In any case, the similarities between Prince and Bowie are unavoidable, and I feel certain the two artists studied each other’s musical output and mercurial personas with fascination. The fact that the former was not quite the latter reflected various things, from race and nationality to timing and temperament, but definitely not a lack of talent or ambition. Prince was a prodigious natural musician who could play almost any instrument and sing in any male vocal range from falsetto to baritone. If Bowie was a relentless chameleon who experimented with every possible style, Prince was the ultimate pop synthesist of his era. While the mixture of rock and funk was pretty much atmospheric in the 1980s, few hitmakers of that decade understood both genres as deeply as Prince did.
Prince’s distinctive brand of hybridized American dance-pop no doubt had something to do with growing up as an African-American kid in Minneapolis, then a predominantly white city. One of his most endearing qualities was his relationship to his hometown; while he spent extended periods in Los Angeles and London and various European cities, he never abandoned the Gopher State altogether. But you also get the sense that Prince was his own creation, and might have forged himself the same way in Harlem or Amsterdam or Juneau, Alaska.
It’s so often a useless cliché to say that a pop artist was ahead of his time, and in fact Prince’s ascension perfectly distilled the pansexual, multiracial, hedonistic and downwardly mobile cultural politics of the Reagan era, when those of us who lived in cities where our friends were dying of a disease the president wouldn’t name out loud had good reason to feel hated and rejected by the so-called mainstream. But he also anticipated so many things, including an era when artificial distinctions between “black music” and “white music” have largely evaporated. No one finds it peculiar now when a hip-hop record incorporates heavy-metal guitar, or when members of the Roots talk about how much they love Brian Wilson.
If you want to talk about influences on Prince’s music you can pretty much stick a pin in the map of pop history, from Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop to 1960s psychedelia. For me he epitomizes a remark attributed to Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, another musical genius we lost barely two months ago: White people sometimes assume that black people didn’t listen to the Beatles, or weren’t affected by them. No African-American artist I can think of is more obviously and self-consciously Beatle-esque than Prince, who seemed to channel each of the Fab Four at different moments. If the aforementioned “I Would Die 4 U” — for my money one of Prince’s very best — has the bravado and ambition of a John Lennon song, then “Raspberry Beret” has the infectious pop craftsmanship of Paul McCartney. (Yes, I know: Production-wise, it’s closer to the L.A. psychedelic sound.)
After his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004, Prince played an extended guitar solo during an ensemble performance of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Barely a month earlier, he had played a memorable duet with Beyoncé at the Grammys, performing her hit “Crazy in Love” as well as “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” That was the world he had created, and there were quite a few moments like that in his later career, live performances where it all seemed to come together one more time. In 2006, he played a medley of Chaka Khan hits (several of which he wrote) at the BET Awards. His Super Bowl halftime show in 2007, featuring covers of “Proud Mary,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “We Will Rock You,” may yet be the best single performance in the history of that peculiar showcase (if you don’t count Katy Perry’s land shark).
I won’t claim to have paid equal or fair attention to the indiscriminate onslaught of recordings that flowed from the breakdown of Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. in the ‘90s; I’m not sure anyone could have. Counting live albums, remixes and greatest-hits collections, he released at least 21 records between 1995 and 2005. There were successes like “Musicology” in 2004 (his most consistent release in at least a decade) and semi-lost critical fave-raves like “The Gold Experience” from 1995, which remains difficult to find by legal means. But just as often Prince seemed devoted to sabotaging his career as a perverse act of performance art: He shoved aside the much-anticipated “Black Album” for years, releasing the slapdash “Lovesexy” instead. Anyone with ears could tell that the jazz tradition had profoundly shaped his sensibility; that didn’t mean he had to spend several years and several albums playing his own mediocre jazz compositions.
Prince understood, as we all understood, that the seven albums he recorded from “Dirty Mind” in 1980 to the double-length masterpiece “Sign o’ the Times” in 1987 represented a creative peak, and a creative fusion, that neither he nor anyone else could match. I haven’t mentioned his hits from that period because I don’t need to: After the opening chords of “Little Red Corvette” or “When Doves Cry” or “Kiss,” almost any person of any race or nationality who lived within the Western cultural economy of the 1980s reaches over to turn up the car radio. Prince captured, embodied and symbolized a multicultural dance-floor utopia that was never quite reality, but was all the more beautiful for that. He was a difficult person who taught us to love each other, resist evil and dance while the world ended: 1999 came and went, long ago. Losing Prince is a bitter reminder that we never partied quite the way we should.
I don’t think my friend ever got to have her Swiss escapade with Prince, which sounds like an episode out of an undiscovered Henry James novel, and it’s too late now. Prince Rogers Nelson, formerly the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, one of the most talented, exuberant and profoundly frustrating songwriters and musical performers of our time, was found dead at his Paisley Park complex outside Minneapolis on Thursday. She had a point, though, when it came to my reaction to her proposed liaison: What could I possibly have said? At the peak of his powers, Prince was an ambiguous, erotic figure of tremendous potency and protean symbolism. I’m not a woman, he sang to us in 1984. I’m not a man/ I am something that you’ll never understand.
Prince was not a generation-spanning, culture-shaping genius who transcended or transformed all questions of style and genre, as the late David Bowie was. He was a massive influence on one micro-generation — which happens to be mine — and something of a mixed and mysterious legend to those younger or older. He recorded and released too much music too fast and too carelessly, to the point that the albums he made after about 1994 (at the latest) often feel like the work of a different and far less focused artist. His struggles with religion, the Internet, his fans, and record companies and promoters became a bigger part of the story than his recordings or performances.
None of that was unique in the annals of pop music, to be sure, but Prince was such an outsize talent and — how do I put this on the day of his death? — such a challenging personality that everything about his story felt exaggerated. In any case, the similarities between Prince and Bowie are unavoidable, and I feel certain the two artists studied each other’s musical output and mercurial personas with fascination. The fact that the former was not quite the latter reflected various things, from race and nationality to timing and temperament, but definitely not a lack of talent or ambition. Prince was a prodigious natural musician who could play almost any instrument and sing in any male vocal range from falsetto to baritone. If Bowie was a relentless chameleon who experimented with every possible style, Prince was the ultimate pop synthesist of his era. While the mixture of rock and funk was pretty much atmospheric in the 1980s, few hitmakers of that decade understood both genres as deeply as Prince did.
Prince’s distinctive brand of hybridized American dance-pop no doubt had something to do with growing up as an African-American kid in Minneapolis, then a predominantly white city. One of his most endearing qualities was his relationship to his hometown; while he spent extended periods in Los Angeles and London and various European cities, he never abandoned the Gopher State altogether. But you also get the sense that Prince was his own creation, and might have forged himself the same way in Harlem or Amsterdam or Juneau, Alaska.
It’s so often a useless cliché to say that a pop artist was ahead of his time, and in fact Prince’s ascension perfectly distilled the pansexual, multiracial, hedonistic and downwardly mobile cultural politics of the Reagan era, when those of us who lived in cities where our friends were dying of a disease the president wouldn’t name out loud had good reason to feel hated and rejected by the so-called mainstream. But he also anticipated so many things, including an era when artificial distinctions between “black music” and “white music” have largely evaporated. No one finds it peculiar now when a hip-hop record incorporates heavy-metal guitar, or when members of the Roots talk about how much they love Brian Wilson.
If you want to talk about influences on Prince’s music you can pretty much stick a pin in the map of pop history, from Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop to 1960s psychedelia. For me he epitomizes a remark attributed to Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, another musical genius we lost barely two months ago: White people sometimes assume that black people didn’t listen to the Beatles, or weren’t affected by them. No African-American artist I can think of is more obviously and self-consciously Beatle-esque than Prince, who seemed to channel each of the Fab Four at different moments. If the aforementioned “I Would Die 4 U” — for my money one of Prince’s very best — has the bravado and ambition of a John Lennon song, then “Raspberry Beret” has the infectious pop craftsmanship of Paul McCartney. (Yes, I know: Production-wise, it’s closer to the L.A. psychedelic sound.)
After his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004, Prince played an extended guitar solo during an ensemble performance of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Barely a month earlier, he had played a memorable duet with Beyoncé at the Grammys, performing her hit “Crazy in Love” as well as “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” That was the world he had created, and there were quite a few moments like that in his later career, live performances where it all seemed to come together one more time. In 2006, he played a medley of Chaka Khan hits (several of which he wrote) at the BET Awards. His Super Bowl halftime show in 2007, featuring covers of “Proud Mary,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “We Will Rock You,” may yet be the best single performance in the history of that peculiar showcase (if you don’t count Katy Perry’s land shark).
I won’t claim to have paid equal or fair attention to the indiscriminate onslaught of recordings that flowed from the breakdown of Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. in the ‘90s; I’m not sure anyone could have. Counting live albums, remixes and greatest-hits collections, he released at least 21 records between 1995 and 2005. There were successes like “Musicology” in 2004 (his most consistent release in at least a decade) and semi-lost critical fave-raves like “The Gold Experience” from 1995, which remains difficult to find by legal means. But just as often Prince seemed devoted to sabotaging his career as a perverse act of performance art: He shoved aside the much-anticipated “Black Album” for years, releasing the slapdash “Lovesexy” instead. Anyone with ears could tell that the jazz tradition had profoundly shaped his sensibility; that didn’t mean he had to spend several years and several albums playing his own mediocre jazz compositions.
Prince understood, as we all understood, that the seven albums he recorded from “Dirty Mind” in 1980 to the double-length masterpiece “Sign o’ the Times” in 1987 represented a creative peak, and a creative fusion, that neither he nor anyone else could match. I haven’t mentioned his hits from that period because I don’t need to: After the opening chords of “Little Red Corvette” or “When Doves Cry” or “Kiss,” almost any person of any race or nationality who lived within the Western cultural economy of the 1980s reaches over to turn up the car radio. Prince captured, embodied and symbolized a multicultural dance-floor utopia that was never quite reality, but was all the more beautiful for that. He was a difficult person who taught us to love each other, resist evil and dance while the world ended: 1999 came and went, long ago. Losing Prince is a bitter reminder that we never partied quite the way we should.I once had a girlfriend, a thousand years ago across the continent, who got her dark curly hair cut into an off-center wedge that hung across the right half of her face. She liked to wear purple paisley-pattern dresses, and cut out her own paisley stencil to use in repainting her red 1969 Vespa scooter. She used to talk dreamily about the affair she’d have with Prince someday, which would not jeopardize our relationship — I mean, surely I would understand — and which for some reason involved a house on Lake Geneva. (She and I are still close friends, and in fact she is also a New York journalist now. It wouldn’t be fair to out her in this context.)
I don’t think my friend ever got to have her Swiss escapade with Prince, which sounds like an episode out of an undiscovered Henry James novel, and it’s too late now. Prince Rogers Nelson, formerly the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, one of the most talented, exuberant and profoundly frustrating songwriters and musical performers of our time, was found dead at his Paisley Park complex outside Minneapolis on Thursday. She had a point, though, when it came to my reaction to her proposed liaison: What could I possibly have said? At the peak of his powers, Prince was an ambiguous, erotic figure of tremendous potency and protean symbolism. I’m not a woman, he sang to us in 1984. I’m not a man/ I am something that you’ll never understand.
Prince was not a generation-spanning, culture-shaping genius who transcended or transformed all questions of style and genre, as the late David Bowie was. He was a massive influence on one micro-generation — which happens to be mine — and something of a mixed and mysterious legend to those younger or older. He recorded and released too much music too fast and too carelessly, to the point that the albums he made after about 1994 (at the latest) often feel like the work of a different and far less focused artist. His struggles with religion, the Internet, his fans, and record companies and promoters became a bigger part of the story than his recordings or performances.
None of that was unique in the annals of pop music, to be sure, but Prince was such an outsize talent and — how do I put this on the day of his death? — such a challenging personality that everything about his story felt exaggerated. In any case, the similarities between Prince and Bowie are unavoidable, and I feel certain the two artists studied each other’s musical output and mercurial personas with fascination. The fact that the former was not quite the latter reflected various things, from race and nationality to timing and temperament, but definitely not a lack of talent or ambition. Prince was a prodigious natural musician who could play almost any instrument and sing in any male vocal range from falsetto to baritone. If Bowie was a relentless chameleon who experimented with every possible style, Prince was the ultimate pop synthesist of his era. While the mixture of rock and funk was pretty much atmospheric in the 1980s, few hitmakers of that decade understood both genres as deeply as Prince did.
Prince’s distinctive brand of hybridized American dance-pop no doubt had something to do with growing up as an African-American kid in Minneapolis, then a predominantly white city. One of his most endearing qualities was his relationship to his hometown; while he spent extended periods in Los Angeles and London and various European cities, he never abandoned the Gopher State altogether. But you also get the sense that Prince was his own creation, and might have forged himself the same way in Harlem or Amsterdam or Juneau, Alaska.
It’s so often a useless cliché to say that a pop artist was ahead of his time, and in fact Prince’s ascension perfectly distilled the pansexual, multiracial, hedonistic and downwardly mobile cultural politics of the Reagan era, when those of us who lived in cities where our friends were dying of a disease the president wouldn’t name out loud had good reason to feel hated and rejected by the so-called mainstream. But he also anticipated so many things, including an era when artificial distinctions between “black music” and “white music” have largely evaporated. No one finds it peculiar now when a hip-hop record incorporates heavy-metal guitar, or when members of the Roots talk about how much they love Brian Wilson.
If you want to talk about influences on Prince’s music you can pretty much stick a pin in the map of pop history, from Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop to 1960s psychedelia. For me he epitomizes a remark attributed to Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire, another musical genius we lost barely two months ago: White people sometimes assume that black people didn’t listen to the Beatles, or weren’t affected by them. No African-American artist I can think of is more obviously and self-consciously Beatle-esque than Prince, who seemed to channel each of the Fab Four at different moments. If the aforementioned “I Would Die 4 U” — for my money one of Prince’s very best — has the bravado and ambition of a John Lennon song, then “Raspberry Beret” has the infectious pop craftsmanship of Paul McCartney. (Yes, I know: Production-wise, it’s closer to the L.A. psychedelic sound.)
After his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2004, Prince played an extended guitar solo during an ensemble performance of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Barely a month earlier, he had played a memorable duet with Beyoncé at the Grammys, performing her hit “Crazy in Love” as well as “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” That was the world he had created, and there were quite a few moments like that in his later career, live performances where it all seemed to come together one more time. In 2006, he played a medley of Chaka Khan hits (several of which he wrote) at the BET Awards. His Super Bowl halftime show in 2007, featuring covers of “Proud Mary,” “All Along the Watchtower” and “We Will Rock You,” may yet be the best single performance in the history of that peculiar showcase (if you don’t count Katy Perry’s land shark).
I won’t claim to have paid equal or fair attention to the indiscriminate onslaught of recordings that flowed from the breakdown of Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. in the ‘90s; I’m not sure anyone could have. Counting live albums, remixes and greatest-hits collections, he released at least 21 records between 1995 and 2005. There were successes like “Musicology” in 2004 (his most consistent release in at least a decade) and semi-lost critical fave-raves like “The Gold Experience” from 1995, which remains difficult to find by legal means. But just as often Prince seemed devoted to sabotaging his career as a perverse act of performance art: He shoved aside the much-anticipated “Black Album” for years, releasing the slapdash “Lovesexy” instead. Anyone with ears could tell that the jazz tradition had profoundly shaped his sensibility; that didn’t mean he had to spend several years and several albums playing his own mediocre jazz compositions.
Prince understood, as we all understood, that the seven albums he recorded from “Dirty Mind” in 1980 to the double-length masterpiece “Sign o’ the Times” in 1987 represented a creative peak, and a creative fusion, that neither he nor anyone else could match. I haven’t mentioned his hits from that period because I don’t need to: After the opening chords of “Little Red Corvette” or “When Doves Cry” or “Kiss,” almost any person of any race or nationality who lived within the Western cultural economy of the 1980s reaches over to turn up the car radio. Prince captured, embodied and symbolized a multicultural dance-floor utopia that was never quite reality, but was all the more beautiful for that. He was a difficult person who taught us to love each other, resist evil and dance while the world ended: 1999 came and went, long ago. Losing Prince is a bitter reminder that we never partied quite the way we should.
Amy Schumer’s missing edge: Has she outgrown her own show already?
The ad campaign for season four of Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer” is, as is characteristic for Schumer, uncomfortably on point. In a few different spots, a doctor diagnoses the comedian with the medical condition of “overexposure,” with the resultant connotations of sunburn, radiation poisoning, or, you know, public nudity. For Schumer, it’s both her network and herself acknowledging that for the last several months, she has been everywhere at once. In addition to a critically lauded (and award-winning) third season for her show “Inside Amy Schumer,” which produced one of the most remarkable comedy episodes of the year, Schumer wrote and starred in “Trainwreck,” which went on to gross over $100 million domestically.
Because Schumer’s comedy is so trenchant—and, more to the point, because it assumes and implies feminism, with every frame—she has become more than just “Trainwreck” and “Inside Amy Schumer”; she has become a symbol of Hollywood political feminism, with all of the rights and responsibilities that appears to entail. Partly that is because her work is just that good. Sketches like “Last F*ckable Day,” “Football Town Nights,” and “A Very Realistic Military Game” will likely be the go-to examples of complex, difficult-to-describe variations in gender privilege for quite some time, because they are considered and complex arguments, rendered into minutes-long bits of sketch comedy. Schumer is fearless with her topics, and fully embraces the perspective of feminism; it makes for comedy that often expresses exactly what is so hard to say about the world we live in.
It has also led to a lot of scrutiny. Schumer transformed from a marginal comedian on Comedy Central to one whose every tweet and public comment creates a new wave of commentary. One might call it the Lena Dunham effect, but Schumer went for that position of controversy and buzz with a lot more intention than Dunham, who seemed continually surprised that she was, for many people, a walking flashpoint. Where others might find awkwardness or embarrassment, Schumer has found opportunity—through her show, her stand-up, her Twitter account, and the media appearances of the very famous, such as the cover of GQ or a nude in the Pirelli art calendar. She’s met the president and danced with the Democratic frontrunner, she’s photobombed Meryl Streep and Harrison Ford. And she has become a target; the perceived face of feminism will always be subject to critique, whether that is from intersectional feminists who critique her portrayal of minorities or misogynists who can’t even fake decency for an interview.
The most extreme case of this was in July of last year in Lafayette, Louisiana, when John Russell Houser opened fire on the audience members in a theater about 20 minutes into their screening of “Trainwreck”—killing two, wounding nine more, and then taking his own life. Houser demonstrated a deep-seated hatred and distrust of women, especially feminists, throughout his entire life. Overexposure is a serious risk, albeit not quite for the reasons that Comedy Central’s fake doctor suggests. For all of our well-argued quibbles about comedy and representation and the circular arguments for “punching up,” at least one thing can unequivocally be said for Schumer, which is that she is definitely striking a nerve.
Returning from this life—from personality/activist/Tweeter/famous friend to showrunner of her own half-hour sketch show on Comedy Central—is another potential negative side effect of overexposure. Amy Schumer is not the first feminist comedian, nor is she the best; by dint of skill, timing, and zeitgeist, she has created a nationwide discussion of institutional sexism, but it has been a whole year since then. Audiences and fans have had a whole year of expecting more and more from Schumer; meanwhile, the comedian has been living through what is probably one of the most eventful years of her life. Everything else aside, Schumer would not be the first popular performer to lose a grip on their talent in the first flush of major fame.
And that is, unfortunately, what looks to be the case for the returning “Inside Amy Schumer,” which debuts its fourth season tonight at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The premiere, “The World’s Most Interesting Woman In The World,” is one of the weakest episodes of “Inside Amy Schumer,” period; it does not help that it is an episode stacked with marquee guest-star Lin-Manuel Miranda, playing his typically adorable self. The most political moment in the episode is a sketch featuring Schumer, as a gynecological patient, who is treated not by a doctor but by a panel of Congressmen; but weirdly, the sketch feels like it is a pale imitation of Schumer—instead of the woman who put pointed, political comedy like this on the mainstream radar. Schumer seems eager to prove in this first episode that she can be funny in ways that aren’t just about feminism, but the result is comedy that doesn’t quite play to her strengths, whether that is the kind of slapstick humor she performs for Miranda or the “relationships, amirite?” comedy she digs into with a few different segments.
The growing feeling of dread is heightened by Schumer’s considerable pull with Hollywood elites these days, as every actor not in season three scrabbles to make it to season four. Steve Buscemi, Laura Linney, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Hudson, and Louis C.K. all make appearances in just the second episode. It’s difficult to not get the impression that the celebrity life has, in this case, clouded Schumer’s ability to tell a great joke without relying on her extant popularity or famous friends to bring it home.
But it’s not all bad. Comedy Central only sent two episodes to critics, but the second episode, “Brave,” is a lot better than the premiere. Maybe the premiere is a just a bit of throat-clearing; “Brave” settles down to brass tacks with a few sketches that approach the breathtaking brilliance of Schumer’s peak. There’s even some evidence of growth, a positive side effect of all that media discussion. In at least one sketch, which I do not want to reveal too many details of, she goes out of her way to showcase just how different of a challenge being a woman of color is, over being a white woman like herself.
Above all, it’s difficult to imagine that this season of “Inside Amy Schumer” will surpass the third, because that one really took us all by surprise. How many comedians have suddenly hit the jackpot in the third season of their self-titled sitcoms? How many sketch comedians have met the president largely because they made a ridiculously brilliant adaptation of “12 Angry Men,” but about having sex with her? Schumer’s career trajectory is even more shocking than Dunham’s, even more high-profile than Ilana and Abbi from “Broad City.” Even if it were a perfect fourth season, our expectations would just be too high.
But as is often the case with shows that have just experienced brilliance, it will now have, in all likelihood, its biggest audience ever. The ad spots mocking Schumer’s overexposure end with her turning towards the camera and vowing—almost threatening—that she’ll keep exposing herself for as long as she wants. And even though what I’ve seen of season four isn’t quite as funny as I’d like it to be, I hope that Schumer’s benign tyranny of mainstreaming feminism isn’t ending anytime soon.
Because Schumer’s comedy is so trenchant—and, more to the point, because it assumes and implies feminism, with every frame—she has become more than just “Trainwreck” and “Inside Amy Schumer”; she has become a symbol of Hollywood political feminism, with all of the rights and responsibilities that appears to entail. Partly that is because her work is just that good. Sketches like “Last F*ckable Day,” “Football Town Nights,” and “A Very Realistic Military Game” will likely be the go-to examples of complex, difficult-to-describe variations in gender privilege for quite some time, because they are considered and complex arguments, rendered into minutes-long bits of sketch comedy. Schumer is fearless with her topics, and fully embraces the perspective of feminism; it makes for comedy that often expresses exactly what is so hard to say about the world we live in.
It has also led to a lot of scrutiny. Schumer transformed from a marginal comedian on Comedy Central to one whose every tweet and public comment creates a new wave of commentary. One might call it the Lena Dunham effect, but Schumer went for that position of controversy and buzz with a lot more intention than Dunham, who seemed continually surprised that she was, for many people, a walking flashpoint. Where others might find awkwardness or embarrassment, Schumer has found opportunity—through her show, her stand-up, her Twitter account, and the media appearances of the very famous, such as the cover of GQ or a nude in the Pirelli art calendar. She’s met the president and danced with the Democratic frontrunner, she’s photobombed Meryl Streep and Harrison Ford. And she has become a target; the perceived face of feminism will always be subject to critique, whether that is from intersectional feminists who critique her portrayal of minorities or misogynists who can’t even fake decency for an interview.
The most extreme case of this was in July of last year in Lafayette, Louisiana, when John Russell Houser opened fire on the audience members in a theater about 20 minutes into their screening of “Trainwreck”—killing two, wounding nine more, and then taking his own life. Houser demonstrated a deep-seated hatred and distrust of women, especially feminists, throughout his entire life. Overexposure is a serious risk, albeit not quite for the reasons that Comedy Central’s fake doctor suggests. For all of our well-argued quibbles about comedy and representation and the circular arguments for “punching up,” at least one thing can unequivocally be said for Schumer, which is that she is definitely striking a nerve.
Returning from this life—from personality/activist/Tweeter/famous friend to showrunner of her own half-hour sketch show on Comedy Central—is another potential negative side effect of overexposure. Amy Schumer is not the first feminist comedian, nor is she the best; by dint of skill, timing, and zeitgeist, she has created a nationwide discussion of institutional sexism, but it has been a whole year since then. Audiences and fans have had a whole year of expecting more and more from Schumer; meanwhile, the comedian has been living through what is probably one of the most eventful years of her life. Everything else aside, Schumer would not be the first popular performer to lose a grip on their talent in the first flush of major fame.
And that is, unfortunately, what looks to be the case for the returning “Inside Amy Schumer,” which debuts its fourth season tonight at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central. The premiere, “The World’s Most Interesting Woman In The World,” is one of the weakest episodes of “Inside Amy Schumer,” period; it does not help that it is an episode stacked with marquee guest-star Lin-Manuel Miranda, playing his typically adorable self. The most political moment in the episode is a sketch featuring Schumer, as a gynecological patient, who is treated not by a doctor but by a panel of Congressmen; but weirdly, the sketch feels like it is a pale imitation of Schumer—instead of the woman who put pointed, political comedy like this on the mainstream radar. Schumer seems eager to prove in this first episode that she can be funny in ways that aren’t just about feminism, but the result is comedy that doesn’t quite play to her strengths, whether that is the kind of slapstick humor she performs for Miranda or the “relationships, amirite?” comedy she digs into with a few different segments.
The growing feeling of dread is heightened by Schumer’s considerable pull with Hollywood elites these days, as every actor not in season three scrabbles to make it to season four. Steve Buscemi, Laura Linney, Julianne Moore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jennifer Hudson, and Louis C.K. all make appearances in just the second episode. It’s difficult to not get the impression that the celebrity life has, in this case, clouded Schumer’s ability to tell a great joke without relying on her extant popularity or famous friends to bring it home.
But it’s not all bad. Comedy Central only sent two episodes to critics, but the second episode, “Brave,” is a lot better than the premiere. Maybe the premiere is a just a bit of throat-clearing; “Brave” settles down to brass tacks with a few sketches that approach the breathtaking brilliance of Schumer’s peak. There’s even some evidence of growth, a positive side effect of all that media discussion. In at least one sketch, which I do not want to reveal too many details of, she goes out of her way to showcase just how different of a challenge being a woman of color is, over being a white woman like herself.
Above all, it’s difficult to imagine that this season of “Inside Amy Schumer” will surpass the third, because that one really took us all by surprise. How many comedians have suddenly hit the jackpot in the third season of their self-titled sitcoms? How many sketch comedians have met the president largely because they made a ridiculously brilliant adaptation of “12 Angry Men,” but about having sex with her? Schumer’s career trajectory is even more shocking than Dunham’s, even more high-profile than Ilana and Abbi from “Broad City.” Even if it were a perfect fourth season, our expectations would just be too high.
But as is often the case with shows that have just experienced brilliance, it will now have, in all likelihood, its biggest audience ever. The ad spots mocking Schumer’s overexposure end with her turning towards the camera and vowing—almost threatening—that she’ll keep exposing herself for as long as she wants. And even though what I’ve seen of season four isn’t quite as funny as I’d like it to be, I hope that Schumer’s benign tyranny of mainstreaming feminism isn’t ending anytime soon.
A Prince for every occasion: He created his own borderless genre—and always sounded exactly like himself
Last week, when TMZ reported that Prince's plane made an emergency landing so he could be rushed to the hospital, we all collectively held our breath. 2016 has been an uncommonly bad year for musician deaths, and the loss of David Bowie, Glenn Frey and countless other artists still feels like a raw nerve, even months later. Losing Prince—Prince!—would be not only inconceivable, but devastating. After word broke that he apparently just had a touch of the flu, and was discharged several hours later, we all exhaled. And then when the Purple One returned to Minneapolis and then proceeded to go on with his weekend—tweeting that he bought a Stevie Wonder album on Record Store Day at local shop Electric Fetus, and then later having an impromptu dance party/gathering at Paisley Park, where he showed off a new purple piano—we could maybe even breath a sigh of relief.
At that Saturday evening gathering, Prince made only a brief appearance, and The Star-Tribune reports that he apparently told the attendees, “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.” That at-the-time mysterious quote seems utterly ominous now, with the news that Prince passed away today at Paisley Park, at the age of 57. No details were given, although the news was so shocking because he's been actively touring outside of Minneapolis: Just one week ago, he performed two shows in Atlanta, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that Prince was slated to do two surprise shows in St. Louis on April 18. (This pop-up concert, however, didn't happen because the article notes he "had suddenly taken ill and didn’t want the dates announced, only to require a cancellation or rescheduled date.") These shows, dubbed "Piano and a Microphone," were just as they were billed: Prince, alone at the instrument, telling stories and performing songs from his entire brilliant career.
A KQED review of a February Oakland performance notes he "played no song in its entirety," but also observed "this medley approach didn’t feel crass. Instead, it felt like music naturally pouring out if the man, as it always has." But this performance format was simply the latest chameleonic move for an artist who was both cavalier toward and incredibly protective of his creative work. On the one hand, he was never beholden to his studio recordings: Hits medleys have been a staple of his live performances for years—so anyone wanting to her a full, say, "Raspberry Beret" is out of luck—and he treats his songs like malleable, evolving entities. Kanye West may have recently called "The Life Of Pablo" a "living breathing changing creative expression," but Prince has considered his catalog a work-in-progress for years now. For example, prior to his solo piano shows, he did a series of last-minute "Hit and Run" shows, which featured him on lead guitar performing while backed by a smoking soul-funk band, 3rdeyegirl.
This penchant for reinvention explains why every concert or tour he announced was such an event, and a must-see one at that. Fans never quite knew what exactly would happen or what form his songs would take on a given night. And because he was against filming his shows, the concerts took on a once-in-a-lifetime feel: Prince's unexpected covers or tributes (mostly) didn't go viral or become fodder for online news posts. They felt like a secret, part of his lore passed from fan-to-fan via reviews, message boards and social media. And when he did do high-profile performances—such as 2008 Coachella, where he turned Radiohead's "Creep" into a wrenching soul-blues number, or the Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show, which occurred in the pouring rain—he just did his thing, nonchalantly and with no desire for external validation.
Yet if there was a David Bowie era for everyone, there was also a Prince for every occasion. He was the life of the party (take your pick—"Let's Go Crazy," "1999," "Raspberry Beret") and the voice for the entire seduction continuum, from hesitant flirtation on through bedroom boots-knocking ("Do Me, Baby," "Scandalous," "Darling Nikki"). At times, he encouraged people to loosen their inhibitions ("Kiss," "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "Erotic City"), but he never lost sight of how vulnerability is a gift ("Purple Rain") and that being unconventional was perfectly acceptable. And, as has been noted many times, Prince was also a prolific songwriter, as influential as fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan. In fact, the Purple One was the pen behind Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U," The Bangles' "Manic Monday," Sheila E.'s "The Glamorous Life," Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You" and Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls," to name a few.
In other words, he not only shaped '80s music with his own productions—he lent his stamp to the overall sound and feel of the decade, bringing playfulness, soul and seduction to MTV and the radio. And few artists have evolved their sound so seamlessly, and were able to write songs that so flawlessly crossed streams. A quick scan of recent concerts playlists reveals he incorporated snippets of songs by Bill Withers, Isley Brothers, Edgar Winter Group, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley in with his own work. Funk, soul, R&B, rock, pop, blues—Prince conquered them all, and in the process created his own borderless genre. Prince's music always sounded, well, like Prince, a claim that few artists can make.
At the same time, Prince was adamant that he had every right to be selective about his catalog. His vault of unreleased music is the stuff of legend, while his albums are only available to stream on Jay-Z's artist-driven Tidal platform, which he spoke highly of in interviews. "They’re just getting their footing, and I think when there’s a company like that, or the OWN network—situations where we finally get into a position to run things—we all should help," he told Ebony in 2015. "It’s been a lot of fun." Prince owning and controlling every aspect of his image and career only made him more likeable, however—a paragon of artistic freedom, earned after navigating (and, finally, growing tired of) the major label system after years of (real and perceived) mistreatment.
Yet Prince wasn't selfish about his platform. He's spent the last few years championing R&B singer Judith Hill, going so far as to borrow Live Nation's email list to send a note offering people a free download of her album, Back In Time. And he's also been outspoken about politics: At the Oakland show, he said, "When someone says that their lives matter, they’re trying to get your attention,” a follow-up to his Black Lives Matter mention at the 2015 Grammys. His 2015 song "Baltimore," meanwhile, addresses Freddie Gray's death at the hands of police, while advocating for taking guns away and preaching love.
Prince was the rare multi-threat artist who did everything well: He was a gifted interpreter, virtuosic musician, dynamic performer, talented producer and a consummate songwriter. In recent years, all of those collided at the Super Bowl, he covered Foo Fighters' "Best Of You" and later unleashed a legendary rendition of "Purple Rain" that culminated with him grabbing his purple glyph guitar and coaxing out a snarling electric solo. The moment was breathtaking, of course, but it was also just another day at the office for Prince. No matter if he was performing in a stadium, a theater or at Paisley Park, he exhibited the same levels of joy and serenity, a stunning guitar player, keyboardist and vocalist most comfortable in the lane just left of center. In the '80s, pop music was Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. That there's just one genius left from that trio is not only patently unfair—it's a shattering blow.
At that Saturday evening gathering, Prince made only a brief appearance, and The Star-Tribune reports that he apparently told the attendees, “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.” That at-the-time mysterious quote seems utterly ominous now, with the news that Prince passed away today at Paisley Park, at the age of 57. No details were given, although the news was so shocking because he's been actively touring outside of Minneapolis: Just one week ago, he performed two shows in Atlanta, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed that Prince was slated to do two surprise shows in St. Louis on April 18. (This pop-up concert, however, didn't happen because the article notes he "had suddenly taken ill and didn’t want the dates announced, only to require a cancellation or rescheduled date.") These shows, dubbed "Piano and a Microphone," were just as they were billed: Prince, alone at the instrument, telling stories and performing songs from his entire brilliant career.
A KQED review of a February Oakland performance notes he "played no song in its entirety," but also observed "this medley approach didn’t feel crass. Instead, it felt like music naturally pouring out if the man, as it always has." But this performance format was simply the latest chameleonic move for an artist who was both cavalier toward and incredibly protective of his creative work. On the one hand, he was never beholden to his studio recordings: Hits medleys have been a staple of his live performances for years—so anyone wanting to her a full, say, "Raspberry Beret" is out of luck—and he treats his songs like malleable, evolving entities. Kanye West may have recently called "The Life Of Pablo" a "living breathing changing creative expression," but Prince has considered his catalog a work-in-progress for years now. For example, prior to his solo piano shows, he did a series of last-minute "Hit and Run" shows, which featured him on lead guitar performing while backed by a smoking soul-funk band, 3rdeyegirl.
This penchant for reinvention explains why every concert or tour he announced was such an event, and a must-see one at that. Fans never quite knew what exactly would happen or what form his songs would take on a given night. And because he was against filming his shows, the concerts took on a once-in-a-lifetime feel: Prince's unexpected covers or tributes (mostly) didn't go viral or become fodder for online news posts. They felt like a secret, part of his lore passed from fan-to-fan via reviews, message boards and social media. And when he did do high-profile performances—such as 2008 Coachella, where he turned Radiohead's "Creep" into a wrenching soul-blues number, or the Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show, which occurred in the pouring rain—he just did his thing, nonchalantly and with no desire for external validation.
Yet if there was a David Bowie era for everyone, there was also a Prince for every occasion. He was the life of the party (take your pick—"Let's Go Crazy," "1999," "Raspberry Beret") and the voice for the entire seduction continuum, from hesitant flirtation on through bedroom boots-knocking ("Do Me, Baby," "Scandalous," "Darling Nikki"). At times, he encouraged people to loosen their inhibitions ("Kiss," "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "Erotic City"), but he never lost sight of how vulnerability is a gift ("Purple Rain") and that being unconventional was perfectly acceptable. And, as has been noted many times, Prince was also a prolific songwriter, as influential as fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan. In fact, the Purple One was the pen behind Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U," The Bangles' "Manic Monday," Sheila E.'s "The Glamorous Life," Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You" and Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls," to name a few.
In other words, he not only shaped '80s music with his own productions—he lent his stamp to the overall sound and feel of the decade, bringing playfulness, soul and seduction to MTV and the radio. And few artists have evolved their sound so seamlessly, and were able to write songs that so flawlessly crossed streams. A quick scan of recent concerts playlists reveals he incorporated snippets of songs by Bill Withers, Isley Brothers, Edgar Winter Group, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley in with his own work. Funk, soul, R&B, rock, pop, blues—Prince conquered them all, and in the process created his own borderless genre. Prince's music always sounded, well, like Prince, a claim that few artists can make.
At the same time, Prince was adamant that he had every right to be selective about his catalog. His vault of unreleased music is the stuff of legend, while his albums are only available to stream on Jay-Z's artist-driven Tidal platform, which he spoke highly of in interviews. "They’re just getting their footing, and I think when there’s a company like that, or the OWN network—situations where we finally get into a position to run things—we all should help," he told Ebony in 2015. "It’s been a lot of fun." Prince owning and controlling every aspect of his image and career only made him more likeable, however—a paragon of artistic freedom, earned after navigating (and, finally, growing tired of) the major label system after years of (real and perceived) mistreatment.
Yet Prince wasn't selfish about his platform. He's spent the last few years championing R&B singer Judith Hill, going so far as to borrow Live Nation's email list to send a note offering people a free download of her album, Back In Time. And he's also been outspoken about politics: At the Oakland show, he said, "When someone says that their lives matter, they’re trying to get your attention,” a follow-up to his Black Lives Matter mention at the 2015 Grammys. His 2015 song "Baltimore," meanwhile, addresses Freddie Gray's death at the hands of police, while advocating for taking guns away and preaching love.
Prince was the rare multi-threat artist who did everything well: He was a gifted interpreter, virtuosic musician, dynamic performer, talented producer and a consummate songwriter. In recent years, all of those collided at the Super Bowl, he covered Foo Fighters' "Best Of You" and later unleashed a legendary rendition of "Purple Rain" that culminated with him grabbing his purple glyph guitar and coaxing out a snarling electric solo. The moment was breathtaking, of course, but it was also just another day at the office for Prince. No matter if he was performing in a stadium, a theater or at Paisley Park, he exhibited the same levels of joy and serenity, a stunning guitar player, keyboardist and vocalist most comfortable in the lane just left of center. In the '80s, pop music was Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna. That there's just one genius left from that trio is not only patently unfair—it's a shattering blow.
NBA says it will move 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte if North Carolina doesn’t change anti-LBGT law
Next year's NBA All-Star game is scheduled to be played in North Carolina, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday that the league will move the all-star festivities to another state if North Carolina's recently passed anti-LGBT legislation remains in place. Silver did not present a timeline for when the NBA would make its decision, as the Washington Post's Tim Bontemps reports.
https://twitter.com/TimBontemps/statu...
“We’ve been working very closely with the business community down there and the governor and the legislature to make it clear that it would be problematic for us to move forward with our All-Star Game if there is not a change in the law,” Silver told reporters.
North Carolina's House Bill 2 bars transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, among other things. The city of Charlotte, where the 2017 NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to take place, had previously tried to pass its own bill to prevent LGBT discrimination. In response, North Carolina's state legislature voted to overturn Charlotte's discrimination ban and prevent local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination laws.
The NBA's threat comes in the wake of the cancellation of North Carolina concert dates by several high-profile entertainers in response to the bill, including Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. NBA Hall of Famer and television commentator Charles Barkley had previously called for Silver to move the All-Star Game in protest.Next year's NBA All-Star game is scheduled to be played in North Carolina, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday that the league will move the all-star festivities to another state if North Carolina's recently passed anti-LGBT legislation remains in place. Silver did not present a timeline for when the NBA would make its decision, as the Washington Post's Tim Bontemps reports.
https://twitter.com/TimBontemps/statu...
“We’ve been working very closely with the business community down there and the governor and the legislature to make it clear that it would be problematic for us to move forward with our All-Star Game if there is not a change in the law,” Silver told reporters.
North Carolina's House Bill 2 bars transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, among other things. The city of Charlotte, where the 2017 NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to take place, had previously tried to pass its own bill to prevent LGBT discrimination. In response, North Carolina's state legislature voted to overturn Charlotte's discrimination ban and prevent local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination laws.
The NBA's threat comes in the wake of the cancellation of North Carolina concert dates by several high-profile entertainers in response to the bill, including Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. NBA Hall of Famer and television commentator Charles Barkley had previously called for Silver to move the All-Star Game in protest.
https://twitter.com/TimBontemps/statu...
“We’ve been working very closely with the business community down there and the governor and the legislature to make it clear that it would be problematic for us to move forward with our All-Star Game if there is not a change in the law,” Silver told reporters.
North Carolina's House Bill 2 bars transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, among other things. The city of Charlotte, where the 2017 NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to take place, had previously tried to pass its own bill to prevent LGBT discrimination. In response, North Carolina's state legislature voted to overturn Charlotte's discrimination ban and prevent local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination laws.
The NBA's threat comes in the wake of the cancellation of North Carolina concert dates by several high-profile entertainers in response to the bill, including Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. NBA Hall of Famer and television commentator Charles Barkley had previously called for Silver to move the All-Star Game in protest.Next year's NBA All-Star game is scheduled to be played in North Carolina, but NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday that the league will move the all-star festivities to another state if North Carolina's recently passed anti-LGBT legislation remains in place. Silver did not present a timeline for when the NBA would make its decision, as the Washington Post's Tim Bontemps reports.
https://twitter.com/TimBontemps/statu...
“We’ve been working very closely with the business community down there and the governor and the legislature to make it clear that it would be problematic for us to move forward with our All-Star Game if there is not a change in the law,” Silver told reporters.
North Carolina's House Bill 2 bars transgender people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity, among other things. The city of Charlotte, where the 2017 NBA All-Star Game is scheduled to take place, had previously tried to pass its own bill to prevent LGBT discrimination. In response, North Carolina's state legislature voted to overturn Charlotte's discrimination ban and prevent local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination laws.
The NBA's threat comes in the wake of the cancellation of North Carolina concert dates by several high-profile entertainers in response to the bill, including Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam. NBA Hall of Famer and television commentator Charles Barkley had previously called for Silver to move the All-Star Game in protest.
“Wait a few days before you waste any prayers”: Prince offered a cryptic and eerie message to fans last Saturday
Last Saturday, Prince hosted a "dance party" at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis mansion and studio, to reassure fans (who paid just $10 to attend) that he was in good health. Chatter surrounding his health had been getting louder after his plane had to make an emergency landing in Illinois on the way back to Minneapolis from Atlanta, where he played his final shows last Thursday (which were postponed by one week after he contracted the flu). Jon Bream, a blogger for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, was in attendance.
"Prince is alive and well," Bream wrote on Sunday. Beyond an opportunity to confirm his aliveness, Prince used the dance party to show off his new Yamaha piano ("He played 'Chopsticks' and a brief instrumental passage with a classical flourish") and "metallic purple guitar."
During his "less-than-five-minute" cameo shortly after midnight Sunday morning, Prince told the crowd of about 200 to, "Wait a few days before you waste any prayers," with respect to his health.
"He never intended to perform on Saturday. There was no microphone stand next to his piano," Bream clarified. "He just wanted to demonstrate that reports of his dire health were greatly exaggerated."
Read the full story here.Last Saturday, Prince hosted a "dance party" at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis mansion and studio, to reassure fans (who paid just $10 to attend) that he was in good health. Chatter surrounding his health had been getting louder after his plane had to make an emergency landing in Illinois on the way back to Minneapolis from Atlanta, where he played his final shows last Thursday (which were postponed by one week after he contracted the flu). Jon Bream, a blogger for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, was in attendance.
"Prince is alive and well," Bream wrote on Sunday. Beyond an opportunity to confirm his aliveness, Prince used the dance party to show off his new Yamaha piano ("He played 'Chopsticks' and a brief instrumental passage with a classical flourish") and "metallic purple guitar."
During his "less-than-five-minute" cameo shortly after midnight Sunday morning, Prince told the crowd of about 200 to, "Wait a few days before you waste any prayers," with respect to his health.
"He never intended to perform on Saturday. There was no microphone stand next to his piano," Bream clarified. "He just wanted to demonstrate that reports of his dire health were greatly exaggerated."
Read the full story here.
"Prince is alive and well," Bream wrote on Sunday. Beyond an opportunity to confirm his aliveness, Prince used the dance party to show off his new Yamaha piano ("He played 'Chopsticks' and a brief instrumental passage with a classical flourish") and "metallic purple guitar."
During his "less-than-five-minute" cameo shortly after midnight Sunday morning, Prince told the crowd of about 200 to, "Wait a few days before you waste any prayers," with respect to his health.
"He never intended to perform on Saturday. There was no microphone stand next to his piano," Bream clarified. "He just wanted to demonstrate that reports of his dire health were greatly exaggerated."
Read the full story here.Last Saturday, Prince hosted a "dance party" at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis mansion and studio, to reassure fans (who paid just $10 to attend) that he was in good health. Chatter surrounding his health had been getting louder after his plane had to make an emergency landing in Illinois on the way back to Minneapolis from Atlanta, where he played his final shows last Thursday (which were postponed by one week after he contracted the flu). Jon Bream, a blogger for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, was in attendance.
"Prince is alive and well," Bream wrote on Sunday. Beyond an opportunity to confirm his aliveness, Prince used the dance party to show off his new Yamaha piano ("He played 'Chopsticks' and a brief instrumental passage with a classical flourish") and "metallic purple guitar."
During his "less-than-five-minute" cameo shortly after midnight Sunday morning, Prince told the crowd of about 200 to, "Wait a few days before you waste any prayers," with respect to his health.
"He never intended to perform on Saturday. There was no microphone stand next to his piano," Bream clarified. "He just wanted to demonstrate that reports of his dire health were greatly exaggerated."
Read the full story here.
Texas is using “Of Mice and Men” to justify executing this man. Seriously.
Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas’s death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to decide his fate.
That’s right—the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby’s severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to seven wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn’t extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby’s case.
Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on “Of Mice and Men.” With its decision in Hall v. Florida two years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don’t conform to accepted scientific standards. It’s hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one’s life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck.
Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby’s family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors’ trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby’s siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again.
Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math -- or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the first grade twice but was socially promoted to second grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby’s behalf.
When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn’t know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed two acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk.
Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn’t have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby’s attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty.
They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby’s intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole.
But the state appealed. That’s when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby’s death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall that determining intellectual disability should never be subject to a strict 70-point cutoff. In fact, when the state’s own expert tested Bobby, he scored 57.
Lennie Smalls was never meant to appear in court. He is a figment of John Steinbeck’s imagination. Texas must stop using such unscientific factors as an excuse to execute people with intellectual disability who don’t fit Lennie’s mold. The Supreme Court must give Bobby a chance to live.
Anna Arceneaux is a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project. She represents clients in capital cases at the trial and direct appeal levels across the South.
