Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 802
April 21, 2016
Robert Reich: The populist left and right are on the same side
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
The old debate goes something like this:
‘You don’t believe women have reproductive rights.”
“You don’t value human life.”
Or this:
“You think everyone should own a gun.”
“You think we’re safer if only criminals have them.”
Or this:
“You don’t care about poor people.”
”You think they’re better off with handouts.”
Or this:
“You want to cut taxes on the rich.”
"You want to tax everyone to death.”
But we’re seeing the emergence of a new debate where the populist left and right are on the same side:
Both are against the rich to spend as much as they want corrupting our democracy.
Both are against crony capitalism.
Both are against corporate welfare.
Both are against another Wall Street bailout.
Both want to stop subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Both want to close the tax loophole for hedge fund partners.
Both want to ban inside trading on Wall Street.
Both want to stop CEOs from pumping up share prices with stock buy-backs … and then cashing in their stock options.
Both want to stop tax deductions of CEO pay over $1 million.
Both want to get big money out of politics, reverse Citizens United, and restore our democracy,
If we join together, we can make these things happen.
April 20, 2016
After New York, now what? Trump and Clinton win big — but this bizarre political year still holds mysteries
In the wake of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s big wins in the New York primary, the chaos of the 2016 presidential campaign seems to be assuming more familiar dimensions. In recent weeks I’ve been focused on the big-picture questions emerging from this extraordinary year, and I still think those are unavoidable. We’re heading into a general election with no clear precedent, in which the two parties’ prospective nominees are viewed in overwhelmingly negative terms by most of the public. If “none of the above” were on the ballot in a Clinton-Trump race, it might win an outright majority.
Both political parties are going through intense internal turmoil, not to mention a refusal to acknowledge their own increasing irrelevance. Independents have been a larger group than either Democrats and Republicans for most of the last 25 years — and the day when they outnumber both parties put together is not far away. Both parties have now picked their nominees, in effect if not in fact, but that will do nothing to resolve their internal struggles.
If the conflict between Republican leaders and the party’s electoral base is more obvious at the moment, a similar split among Democrats is not far behind. Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee (in large part because he isn’t a Democrat), but he has exposed an immense generational and ideological gulf within the left-liberal coalition, and has channeled or galvanized a reborn activist consciousness that is fundamentally opposed to the Hillary Clinton model of top-down, incremental, organization-based politics.
On the other side of the ledger, we see a funhouse mirror image: Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, in large part because he isn’t a Republican — which might be all we need to say about that party’s confusion and dysfunction. After decades of luring the white working class with trumped-up cultural issues (ha ha!) and thinly veiled racism, only to deliver trickle-down, CEO-friendly economics that drove those people further into poverty, the GOP’s Georgetown leadership caste has encountered one of the great karmic laws of the universe: Payback’s a bitch.
With the New York results signaling that the primary campaigns have entered the home stretch, it may be a useful moment to look at some of the more granular tactical or strategic questions lingering over the 2016 race. Not so much in terms of horse-race dynamics — especially since the horse race is over, as far as I can see — but because they may shed some light on the larger, murkier philosophical issues surrounding the future of our so-called democracy. These questions fall into two useful categories: Things We Already Knew (but that New York reinforced), and Things We Didn’t Understand (and mostly still don’t).
What We Already Knew, Or Should Have Known
Clinton and Trump remain on course for first-ballot victories at their respective conventions. All other scenarios require an elaborately constructed alternate universe worthy of Philip K. Dick. Both frontrunners hold big leads over their opponents both in terms of pledged delegates and popular votes. There is no longer any plausible pathway in which either Sanders or Ted Cruz can overtake his party’s frontrunner in pledged delegates before the convention. No such pathway existed even before the New York votes were counted, and now its last traces have been obliterated. There is no example in modern political history of an underdog staging a come-from-behind victory late in a primary campaign. This isn’t a baseball pennant race, where a team might unexpectedly reel off a dozen wins in a row. The mysterious commodity known as “momentum,” in this case, is a matter of media perceptions and mass psychology, both of which are firmly cemented at this point.
Sanders’ brain trust may wish to claim, as of Wednesday, that they knew all along they probably wouldn’t win New York, and always thought the Pennsylvania primary next week was more important. Evidence suggests otherwise. New York was Sanders’ last chance to turn the tide, and his last chance to prove that he could win a closed-primary state where only registered Democrats vote. He fought hard, and didn’t even come close.
Sanders held numerous large and enthusiastic rallies from Buffalo to Brooklyn; over the course of the past week he drew his two biggest crowds of the entire campaign, first in Washington Square Park and then in Prospect Park. If primary elections were decided by fervor, he’d have won easily. In the end, he failed to make significant inroads in the African-American community and lost badly in New York City. A statistical tie or near-miss, in the mode of Iowa, Nevada and Missouri, would at least have been spin-worthy, and might have sustained his apparent momentum a few more weeks. Instead, Clinton won roughly 58 percent of the Democratic vote, and the long, strange trip of the Sanders candidacy is just about over.
Ted Cruz never thought he could beat Trump in New York, and John Kasich didn’t either. But they both got obliterated, and even the moral victory that Kasich was hoping to score among affluent suburbanites in Westchester County and Long Island didn’t materialize. Cruz has now pretty well run through all the states where he can win, having been revealed as a Bible Belt candidate with an exceedingly narrow demographic. Kasich never won any states in the first place, except the one where he happens to be governor. His story is one of the most bizarre in this year of bizarre events: Polls suggest that if the whole country were voting Kasich could beat Trump or Cruz or Clinton easily, but he has no shot at the Republican nomination. (Sanders, who polls by far the best among all five people still running for president, faces a similar predicament.)
To this point, Cruz, Kasich and Sanders are all vowing to pursue their cause to the party conventions in quest of some back-room miracle. This kind of dirty talk about a “contested convention” or “brokered convention” (which are not the same thing) gets political reporters breathing heavily and paging through the archives, but I have a word of advice: Don’t bother. OK, that was two words. But there hasn’t been anything close to a contested convention since the Republican contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976, and no convention in either party has required a second ballot since 1952. I’m no mathematician, but that’s a long time; the idea that the convention might be anything more than an orchestrated showpiece for bland, patriotic messaging and party unity (even if imaginary) has become a political no-go zone. Both parties may well be destroying themselves, but they won’t do it on TV during their summer prime-time show.
What Remains Mysterious
We don’t know what the Bernie Sanders endgame will look like, or what it might hope to accomplish — either in terms of short-term strategic gains or long-term political objectives. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when Sanders could have withdrawn from the race and forged some sort of backstage political alliance with Hillary Clinton, dragging her a bit further to the left and extracting some more or less meaningless promises about cabinet officers or specific policy proposals or whatever. I’m not suggesting that would have been a great idea then, and there’s surely no advantage to either of them now that the race is effectively over.
In the immediate aftermath of the New York blowout, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and strategist Tad Devine are still insisting they’ll push on to the convention, in hopes they can deny Clinton enough delegates for a first-ballot victory. After next week’s primaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania, they may have to shelve that dubious theory, but it’s probably not the real goal. Beyond giving Bernie one last chance to speak on national TV before he goes back to the Senate, and offering his supporters a chance to blow off some steam in public, what’s the point? I can offer a hypothesis, related to my earlier hypothesis that Sanders has half-accidentally sparked the rebirth of “class consciousness,” almost but not quite in the old Marxist sense.
If you can show the world that the forces of Clintonism may have won this battle, but in the fullness of time may yet lose the war, then you’re making a statement that goes beyond symbolism or political vanity. For that matter, as symbolism and political vanity go, offering Bernie Sanders a big sendoff in what will surely be his final moment in the national spotlight seems worth doing. Even in this extraordinary year, it’s been clear from the outset to anyone who can count that Sanders had virtually no shot at the Democratic nomination. I have argued all along that the central question was his legacy: What becomes of the Bernie Sanders movement after Bernie Sanders is defeated?
The usual answer, at least in American politics, is that nothing happens: The insurgency dissipates and the Democratic Party gets back to business, i.e., shining the shoes of the rich, apologizing for endless war and endless surveillance, recoiling in horror from any talk of class-based economic justice and, of course, losing every possible election from coast to coast except the quadrennial White House tournament. At least until the next cycle brings forth another wave of discontent and then it’s wash, rinse, repeat. That’s entirely likely to happen again this time, but there are stirrings of other possibilities in a few local races across the country and far more important, in the growing sense that the political system is no longer rooted in the popular will and can potentially be redeemed or reformed. Or overthrown.
Unless the Bernie-fied shift in consciousness empowers democratic socialists and similar outsiders to challenge the Democratic Party establishment and its candidates from the left, as the Tea Party and before that the Christian Coalition did so effectively on the right, then the whole thing will have been — no, not pointless, that’s too strong. But deeply frustrating. This moment of defeat for the left offers a world of possibility — indeed, it offers the sense that another world is possible, the tangible possibility of revolution. But it would be diabolically easy to let that possibility slip away.
We also don’t know how Kasich and Cruz and the rest of the Republican hierarchy will make peace with the torch-bearing peasantry of Trumpmania, or whether they will even bother. Between the drubbing they just absorbed in New York and the ones just ahead in Pennsylvania and Indiana and several other large states, such people have collectively curled into a ball, pillbug-style. They could decide to view this as a catastrophic setback for the Republican brand, one that demands an internal purge, an extended period of reformation and a stem-to-stern rebuild of the entire party. If they were paying me a bazillion dollars as a consultant, that’s what I’d tell them, with lots of bullet points and pie charts. There is some theoretical if counterintuitive possibility that the Republicans could emerge from this debacle as the stronger of the two parties in the medium term, because they had their crisis and hit bottom first.
Since the people who run political parties are stupid and self-absorbed and short-sighted (I believe those are prerequisites for the job), that’s highly unlikely. Kasich and Cruz and Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and the rest of the defanged vampires of Republican-land will almost certainly treat this whole thing as an aberration that couldn’t possibly happen again and will soon go away, and treat the fall election the way losing NBA teams sometimes treat the final games of the season: We’ll be in better shape for the future if we get creamed now! They haven’t written me that check with numerous zeroes yet, so that’s the course of action I recommend.In the wake of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s big wins in the New York primary, the chaos of the 2016 presidential campaign seems to be assuming more familiar dimensions. In recent weeks I’ve been focused on the big-picture questions emerging from this extraordinary year, and I still think those are unavoidable. We’re heading into a general election with no clear precedent, in which the two parties’ prospective nominees are viewed in overwhelmingly negative terms by most of the public. If “none of the above” were on the ballot in a Clinton-Trump race, it might win an outright majority.
Both political parties are going through intense internal turmoil, not to mention a refusal to acknowledge their own increasing irrelevance. Independents have been a larger group than either Democrats and Republicans for most of the last 25 years — and the day when they outnumber both parties put together is not far away. Both parties have now picked their nominees, in effect if not in fact, but that will do nothing to resolve their internal struggles.
If the conflict between Republican leaders and the party’s electoral base is more obvious at the moment, a similar split among Democrats is not far behind. Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee (in large part because he isn’t a Democrat), but he has exposed an immense generational and ideological gulf within the left-liberal coalition, and has channeled or galvanized a reborn activist consciousness that is fundamentally opposed to the Hillary Clinton model of top-down, incremental, organization-based politics.
On the other side of the ledger, we see a funhouse mirror image: Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, in large part because he isn’t a Republican — which might be all we need to say about that party’s confusion and dysfunction. After decades of luring the white working class with trumped-up cultural issues (ha ha!) and thinly veiled racism, only to deliver trickle-down, CEO-friendly economics that drove those people further into poverty, the GOP’s Georgetown leadership caste has encountered one of the great karmic laws of the universe: Payback’s a bitch.
With the New York results signaling that the primary campaigns have entered the home stretch, it may be a useful moment to look at some of the more granular tactical or strategic questions lingering over the 2016 race. Not so much in terms of horse-race dynamics — especially since the horse race is over, as far as I can see — but because they may shed some light on the larger, murkier philosophical issues surrounding the future of our so-called democracy. These questions fall into two useful categories: Things We Already Knew (but that New York reinforced), and Things We Didn’t Understand (and mostly still don’t).
What We Already Knew, Or Should Have Known
Clinton and Trump remain on course for first-ballot victories at their respective conventions. All other scenarios require an elaborately constructed alternate universe worthy of Philip K. Dick. Both frontrunners hold big leads over their opponents both in terms of pledged delegates and popular votes. There is no longer any plausible pathway in which either Sanders or Ted Cruz can overtake his party’s frontrunner in pledged delegates before the convention. No such pathway existed even before the New York votes were counted, and now its last traces have been obliterated. There is no example in modern political history of an underdog staging a come-from-behind victory late in a primary campaign. This isn’t a baseball pennant race, where a team might unexpectedly reel off a dozen wins in a row. The mysterious commodity known as “momentum,” in this case, is a matter of media perceptions and mass psychology, both of which are firmly cemented at this point.
Sanders’ brain trust may wish to claim, as of Wednesday, that they knew all along they probably wouldn’t win New York, and always thought the Pennsylvania primary next week was more important. Evidence suggests otherwise. New York was Sanders’ last chance to turn the tide, and his last chance to prove that he could win a closed-primary state where only registered Democrats vote. He fought hard, and didn’t even come close.
Sanders held numerous large and enthusiastic rallies from Buffalo to Brooklyn; over the course of the past week he drew his two biggest crowds of the entire campaign, first in Washington Square Park and then in Prospect Park. If primary elections were decided by fervor, he’d have won easily. In the end, he failed to make significant inroads in the African-American community and lost badly in New York City. A statistical tie or near-miss, in the mode of Iowa, Nevada and Missouri, would at least have been spin-worthy, and might have sustained his apparent momentum a few more weeks. Instead, Clinton won roughly 58 percent of the Democratic vote, and the long, strange trip of the Sanders candidacy is just about over.
Ted Cruz never thought he could beat Trump in New York, and John Kasich didn’t either. But they both got obliterated, and even the moral victory that Kasich was hoping to score among affluent suburbanites in Westchester County and Long Island didn’t materialize. Cruz has now pretty well run through all the states where he can win, having been revealed as a Bible Belt candidate with an exceedingly narrow demographic. Kasich never won any states in the first place, except the one where he happens to be governor. His story is one of the most bizarre in this year of bizarre events: Polls suggest that if the whole country were voting Kasich could beat Trump or Cruz or Clinton easily, but he has no shot at the Republican nomination. (Sanders, who polls by far the best among all five people still running for president, faces a similar predicament.)
To this point, Cruz, Kasich and Sanders are all vowing to pursue their cause to the party conventions in quest of some back-room miracle. This kind of dirty talk about a “contested convention” or “brokered convention” (which are not the same thing) gets political reporters breathing heavily and paging through the archives, but I have a word of advice: Don’t bother. OK, that was two words. But there hasn’t been anything close to a contested convention since the Republican contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976, and no convention in either party has required a second ballot since 1952. I’m no mathematician, but that’s a long time; the idea that the convention might be anything more than an orchestrated showpiece for bland, patriotic messaging and party unity (even if imaginary) has become a political no-go zone. Both parties may well be destroying themselves, but they won’t do it on TV during their summer prime-time show.
What Remains Mysterious
We don’t know what the Bernie Sanders endgame will look like, or what it might hope to accomplish — either in terms of short-term strategic gains or long-term political objectives. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when Sanders could have withdrawn from the race and forged some sort of backstage political alliance with Hillary Clinton, dragging her a bit further to the left and extracting some more or less meaningless promises about cabinet officers or specific policy proposals or whatever. I’m not suggesting that would have been a great idea then, and there’s surely no advantage to either of them now that the race is effectively over.
In the immediate aftermath of the New York blowout, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and strategist Tad Devine are still insisting they’ll push on to the convention, in hopes they can deny Clinton enough delegates for a first-ballot victory. After next week’s primaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania, they may have to shelve that dubious theory, but it’s probably not the real goal. Beyond giving Bernie one last chance to speak on national TV before he goes back to the Senate, and offering his supporters a chance to blow off some steam in public, what’s the point? I can offer a hypothesis, related to my earlier hypothesis that Sanders has half-accidentally sparked the rebirth of “class consciousness,” almost but not quite in the old Marxist sense.
If you can show the world that the forces of Clintonism may have won this battle, but in the fullness of time may yet lose the war, then you’re making a statement that goes beyond symbolism or political vanity. For that matter, as symbolism and political vanity go, offering Bernie Sanders a big sendoff in what will surely be his final moment in the national spotlight seems worth doing. Even in this extraordinary year, it’s been clear from the outset to anyone who can count that Sanders had virtually no shot at the Democratic nomination. I have argued all along that the central question was his legacy: What becomes of the Bernie Sanders movement after Bernie Sanders is defeated?
The usual answer, at least in American politics, is that nothing happens: The insurgency dissipates and the Democratic Party gets back to business, i.e., shining the shoes of the rich, apologizing for endless war and endless surveillance, recoiling in horror from any talk of class-based economic justice and, of course, losing every possible election from coast to coast except the quadrennial White House tournament. At least until the next cycle brings forth another wave of discontent and then it’s wash, rinse, repeat. That’s entirely likely to happen again this time, but there are stirrings of other possibilities in a few local races across the country and far more important, in the growing sense that the political system is no longer rooted in the popular will and can potentially be redeemed or reformed. Or overthrown.
Unless the Bernie-fied shift in consciousness empowers democratic socialists and similar outsiders to challenge the Democratic Party establishment and its candidates from the left, as the Tea Party and before that the Christian Coalition did so effectively on the right, then the whole thing will have been — no, not pointless, that’s too strong. But deeply frustrating. This moment of defeat for the left offers a world of possibility — indeed, it offers the sense that another world is possible, the tangible possibility of revolution. But it would be diabolically easy to let that possibility slip away.
We also don’t know how Kasich and Cruz and the rest of the Republican hierarchy will make peace with the torch-bearing peasantry of Trumpmania, or whether they will even bother. Between the drubbing they just absorbed in New York and the ones just ahead in Pennsylvania and Indiana and several other large states, such people have collectively curled into a ball, pillbug-style. They could decide to view this as a catastrophic setback for the Republican brand, one that demands an internal purge, an extended period of reformation and a stem-to-stern rebuild of the entire party. If they were paying me a bazillion dollars as a consultant, that’s what I’d tell them, with lots of bullet points and pie charts. There is some theoretical if counterintuitive possibility that the Republicans could emerge from this debacle as the stronger of the two parties in the medium term, because they had their crisis and hit bottom first.
Since the people who run political parties are stupid and self-absorbed and short-sighted (I believe those are prerequisites for the job), that’s highly unlikely. Kasich and Cruz and Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and the rest of the defanged vampires of Republican-land will almost certainly treat this whole thing as an aberration that couldn’t possibly happen again and will soon go away, and treat the fall election the way losing NBA teams sometimes treat the final games of the season: We’ll be in better shape for the future if we get creamed now! They haven’t written me that check with numerous zeroes yet, so that’s the course of action I recommend.
Both political parties are going through intense internal turmoil, not to mention a refusal to acknowledge their own increasing irrelevance. Independents have been a larger group than either Democrats and Republicans for most of the last 25 years — and the day when they outnumber both parties put together is not far away. Both parties have now picked their nominees, in effect if not in fact, but that will do nothing to resolve their internal struggles.
If the conflict between Republican leaders and the party’s electoral base is more obvious at the moment, a similar split among Democrats is not far behind. Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee (in large part because he isn’t a Democrat), but he has exposed an immense generational and ideological gulf within the left-liberal coalition, and has channeled or galvanized a reborn activist consciousness that is fundamentally opposed to the Hillary Clinton model of top-down, incremental, organization-based politics.
On the other side of the ledger, we see a funhouse mirror image: Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, in large part because he isn’t a Republican — which might be all we need to say about that party’s confusion and dysfunction. After decades of luring the white working class with trumped-up cultural issues (ha ha!) and thinly veiled racism, only to deliver trickle-down, CEO-friendly economics that drove those people further into poverty, the GOP’s Georgetown leadership caste has encountered one of the great karmic laws of the universe: Payback’s a bitch.
With the New York results signaling that the primary campaigns have entered the home stretch, it may be a useful moment to look at some of the more granular tactical or strategic questions lingering over the 2016 race. Not so much in terms of horse-race dynamics — especially since the horse race is over, as far as I can see — but because they may shed some light on the larger, murkier philosophical issues surrounding the future of our so-called democracy. These questions fall into two useful categories: Things We Already Knew (but that New York reinforced), and Things We Didn’t Understand (and mostly still don’t).
What We Already Knew, Or Should Have Known
Clinton and Trump remain on course for first-ballot victories at their respective conventions. All other scenarios require an elaborately constructed alternate universe worthy of Philip K. Dick. Both frontrunners hold big leads over their opponents both in terms of pledged delegates and popular votes. There is no longer any plausible pathway in which either Sanders or Ted Cruz can overtake his party’s frontrunner in pledged delegates before the convention. No such pathway existed even before the New York votes were counted, and now its last traces have been obliterated. There is no example in modern political history of an underdog staging a come-from-behind victory late in a primary campaign. This isn’t a baseball pennant race, where a team might unexpectedly reel off a dozen wins in a row. The mysterious commodity known as “momentum,” in this case, is a matter of media perceptions and mass psychology, both of which are firmly cemented at this point.
Sanders’ brain trust may wish to claim, as of Wednesday, that they knew all along they probably wouldn’t win New York, and always thought the Pennsylvania primary next week was more important. Evidence suggests otherwise. New York was Sanders’ last chance to turn the tide, and his last chance to prove that he could win a closed-primary state where only registered Democrats vote. He fought hard, and didn’t even come close.
Sanders held numerous large and enthusiastic rallies from Buffalo to Brooklyn; over the course of the past week he drew his two biggest crowds of the entire campaign, first in Washington Square Park and then in Prospect Park. If primary elections were decided by fervor, he’d have won easily. In the end, he failed to make significant inroads in the African-American community and lost badly in New York City. A statistical tie or near-miss, in the mode of Iowa, Nevada and Missouri, would at least have been spin-worthy, and might have sustained his apparent momentum a few more weeks. Instead, Clinton won roughly 58 percent of the Democratic vote, and the long, strange trip of the Sanders candidacy is just about over.
Ted Cruz never thought he could beat Trump in New York, and John Kasich didn’t either. But they both got obliterated, and even the moral victory that Kasich was hoping to score among affluent suburbanites in Westchester County and Long Island didn’t materialize. Cruz has now pretty well run through all the states where he can win, having been revealed as a Bible Belt candidate with an exceedingly narrow demographic. Kasich never won any states in the first place, except the one where he happens to be governor. His story is one of the most bizarre in this year of bizarre events: Polls suggest that if the whole country were voting Kasich could beat Trump or Cruz or Clinton easily, but he has no shot at the Republican nomination. (Sanders, who polls by far the best among all five people still running for president, faces a similar predicament.)
To this point, Cruz, Kasich and Sanders are all vowing to pursue their cause to the party conventions in quest of some back-room miracle. This kind of dirty talk about a “contested convention” or “brokered convention” (which are not the same thing) gets political reporters breathing heavily and paging through the archives, but I have a word of advice: Don’t bother. OK, that was two words. But there hasn’t been anything close to a contested convention since the Republican contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976, and no convention in either party has required a second ballot since 1952. I’m no mathematician, but that’s a long time; the idea that the convention might be anything more than an orchestrated showpiece for bland, patriotic messaging and party unity (even if imaginary) has become a political no-go zone. Both parties may well be destroying themselves, but they won’t do it on TV during their summer prime-time show.
What Remains Mysterious
We don’t know what the Bernie Sanders endgame will look like, or what it might hope to accomplish — either in terms of short-term strategic gains or long-term political objectives. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when Sanders could have withdrawn from the race and forged some sort of backstage political alliance with Hillary Clinton, dragging her a bit further to the left and extracting some more or less meaningless promises about cabinet officers or specific policy proposals or whatever. I’m not suggesting that would have been a great idea then, and there’s surely no advantage to either of them now that the race is effectively over.
In the immediate aftermath of the New York blowout, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and strategist Tad Devine are still insisting they’ll push on to the convention, in hopes they can deny Clinton enough delegates for a first-ballot victory. After next week’s primaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania, they may have to shelve that dubious theory, but it’s probably not the real goal. Beyond giving Bernie one last chance to speak on national TV before he goes back to the Senate, and offering his supporters a chance to blow off some steam in public, what’s the point? I can offer a hypothesis, related to my earlier hypothesis that Sanders has half-accidentally sparked the rebirth of “class consciousness,” almost but not quite in the old Marxist sense.
If you can show the world that the forces of Clintonism may have won this battle, but in the fullness of time may yet lose the war, then you’re making a statement that goes beyond symbolism or political vanity. For that matter, as symbolism and political vanity go, offering Bernie Sanders a big sendoff in what will surely be his final moment in the national spotlight seems worth doing. Even in this extraordinary year, it’s been clear from the outset to anyone who can count that Sanders had virtually no shot at the Democratic nomination. I have argued all along that the central question was his legacy: What becomes of the Bernie Sanders movement after Bernie Sanders is defeated?
The usual answer, at least in American politics, is that nothing happens: The insurgency dissipates and the Democratic Party gets back to business, i.e., shining the shoes of the rich, apologizing for endless war and endless surveillance, recoiling in horror from any talk of class-based economic justice and, of course, losing every possible election from coast to coast except the quadrennial White House tournament. At least until the next cycle brings forth another wave of discontent and then it’s wash, rinse, repeat. That’s entirely likely to happen again this time, but there are stirrings of other possibilities in a few local races across the country and far more important, in the growing sense that the political system is no longer rooted in the popular will and can potentially be redeemed or reformed. Or overthrown.
Unless the Bernie-fied shift in consciousness empowers democratic socialists and similar outsiders to challenge the Democratic Party establishment and its candidates from the left, as the Tea Party and before that the Christian Coalition did so effectively on the right, then the whole thing will have been — no, not pointless, that’s too strong. But deeply frustrating. This moment of defeat for the left offers a world of possibility — indeed, it offers the sense that another world is possible, the tangible possibility of revolution. But it would be diabolically easy to let that possibility slip away.
We also don’t know how Kasich and Cruz and the rest of the Republican hierarchy will make peace with the torch-bearing peasantry of Trumpmania, or whether they will even bother. Between the drubbing they just absorbed in New York and the ones just ahead in Pennsylvania and Indiana and several other large states, such people have collectively curled into a ball, pillbug-style. They could decide to view this as a catastrophic setback for the Republican brand, one that demands an internal purge, an extended period of reformation and a stem-to-stern rebuild of the entire party. If they were paying me a bazillion dollars as a consultant, that’s what I’d tell them, with lots of bullet points and pie charts. There is some theoretical if counterintuitive possibility that the Republicans could emerge from this debacle as the stronger of the two parties in the medium term, because they had their crisis and hit bottom first.
Since the people who run political parties are stupid and self-absorbed and short-sighted (I believe those are prerequisites for the job), that’s highly unlikely. Kasich and Cruz and Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and the rest of the defanged vampires of Republican-land will almost certainly treat this whole thing as an aberration that couldn’t possibly happen again and will soon go away, and treat the fall election the way losing NBA teams sometimes treat the final games of the season: We’ll be in better shape for the future if we get creamed now! They haven’t written me that check with numerous zeroes yet, so that’s the course of action I recommend.In the wake of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s big wins in the New York primary, the chaos of the 2016 presidential campaign seems to be assuming more familiar dimensions. In recent weeks I’ve been focused on the big-picture questions emerging from this extraordinary year, and I still think those are unavoidable. We’re heading into a general election with no clear precedent, in which the two parties’ prospective nominees are viewed in overwhelmingly negative terms by most of the public. If “none of the above” were on the ballot in a Clinton-Trump race, it might win an outright majority.
Both political parties are going through intense internal turmoil, not to mention a refusal to acknowledge their own increasing irrelevance. Independents have been a larger group than either Democrats and Republicans for most of the last 25 years — and the day when they outnumber both parties put together is not far away. Both parties have now picked their nominees, in effect if not in fact, but that will do nothing to resolve their internal struggles.
If the conflict between Republican leaders and the party’s electoral base is more obvious at the moment, a similar split among Democrats is not far behind. Bernie Sanders will not be the Democratic nominee (in large part because he isn’t a Democrat), but he has exposed an immense generational and ideological gulf within the left-liberal coalition, and has channeled or galvanized a reborn activist consciousness that is fundamentally opposed to the Hillary Clinton model of top-down, incremental, organization-based politics.
On the other side of the ledger, we see a funhouse mirror image: Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee, in large part because he isn’t a Republican — which might be all we need to say about that party’s confusion and dysfunction. After decades of luring the white working class with trumped-up cultural issues (ha ha!) and thinly veiled racism, only to deliver trickle-down, CEO-friendly economics that drove those people further into poverty, the GOP’s Georgetown leadership caste has encountered one of the great karmic laws of the universe: Payback’s a bitch.
With the New York results signaling that the primary campaigns have entered the home stretch, it may be a useful moment to look at some of the more granular tactical or strategic questions lingering over the 2016 race. Not so much in terms of horse-race dynamics — especially since the horse race is over, as far as I can see — but because they may shed some light on the larger, murkier philosophical issues surrounding the future of our so-called democracy. These questions fall into two useful categories: Things We Already Knew (but that New York reinforced), and Things We Didn’t Understand (and mostly still don’t).
What We Already Knew, Or Should Have Known
Clinton and Trump remain on course for first-ballot victories at their respective conventions. All other scenarios require an elaborately constructed alternate universe worthy of Philip K. Dick. Both frontrunners hold big leads over their opponents both in terms of pledged delegates and popular votes. There is no longer any plausible pathway in which either Sanders or Ted Cruz can overtake his party’s frontrunner in pledged delegates before the convention. No such pathway existed even before the New York votes were counted, and now its last traces have been obliterated. There is no example in modern political history of an underdog staging a come-from-behind victory late in a primary campaign. This isn’t a baseball pennant race, where a team might unexpectedly reel off a dozen wins in a row. The mysterious commodity known as “momentum,” in this case, is a matter of media perceptions and mass psychology, both of which are firmly cemented at this point.
Sanders’ brain trust may wish to claim, as of Wednesday, that they knew all along they probably wouldn’t win New York, and always thought the Pennsylvania primary next week was more important. Evidence suggests otherwise. New York was Sanders’ last chance to turn the tide, and his last chance to prove that he could win a closed-primary state where only registered Democrats vote. He fought hard, and didn’t even come close.
Sanders held numerous large and enthusiastic rallies from Buffalo to Brooklyn; over the course of the past week he drew his two biggest crowds of the entire campaign, first in Washington Square Park and then in Prospect Park. If primary elections were decided by fervor, he’d have won easily. In the end, he failed to make significant inroads in the African-American community and lost badly in New York City. A statistical tie or near-miss, in the mode of Iowa, Nevada and Missouri, would at least have been spin-worthy, and might have sustained his apparent momentum a few more weeks. Instead, Clinton won roughly 58 percent of the Democratic vote, and the long, strange trip of the Sanders candidacy is just about over.
Ted Cruz never thought he could beat Trump in New York, and John Kasich didn’t either. But they both got obliterated, and even the moral victory that Kasich was hoping to score among affluent suburbanites in Westchester County and Long Island didn’t materialize. Cruz has now pretty well run through all the states where he can win, having been revealed as a Bible Belt candidate with an exceedingly narrow demographic. Kasich never won any states in the first place, except the one where he happens to be governor. His story is one of the most bizarre in this year of bizarre events: Polls suggest that if the whole country were voting Kasich could beat Trump or Cruz or Clinton easily, but he has no shot at the Republican nomination. (Sanders, who polls by far the best among all five people still running for president, faces a similar predicament.)
To this point, Cruz, Kasich and Sanders are all vowing to pursue their cause to the party conventions in quest of some back-room miracle. This kind of dirty talk about a “contested convention” or “brokered convention” (which are not the same thing) gets political reporters breathing heavily and paging through the archives, but I have a word of advice: Don’t bother. OK, that was two words. But there hasn’t been anything close to a contested convention since the Republican contest between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in 1976, and no convention in either party has required a second ballot since 1952. I’m no mathematician, but that’s a long time; the idea that the convention might be anything more than an orchestrated showpiece for bland, patriotic messaging and party unity (even if imaginary) has become a political no-go zone. Both parties may well be destroying themselves, but they won’t do it on TV during their summer prime-time show.
What Remains Mysterious
We don’t know what the Bernie Sanders endgame will look like, or what it might hope to accomplish — either in terms of short-term strategic gains or long-term political objectives. There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when Sanders could have withdrawn from the race and forged some sort of backstage political alliance with Hillary Clinton, dragging her a bit further to the left and extracting some more or less meaningless promises about cabinet officers or specific policy proposals or whatever. I’m not suggesting that would have been a great idea then, and there’s surely no advantage to either of them now that the race is effectively over.
In the immediate aftermath of the New York blowout, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and strategist Tad Devine are still insisting they’ll push on to the convention, in hopes they can deny Clinton enough delegates for a first-ballot victory. After next week’s primaries in Maryland and Pennsylvania, they may have to shelve that dubious theory, but it’s probably not the real goal. Beyond giving Bernie one last chance to speak on national TV before he goes back to the Senate, and offering his supporters a chance to blow off some steam in public, what’s the point? I can offer a hypothesis, related to my earlier hypothesis that Sanders has half-accidentally sparked the rebirth of “class consciousness,” almost but not quite in the old Marxist sense.
If you can show the world that the forces of Clintonism may have won this battle, but in the fullness of time may yet lose the war, then you’re making a statement that goes beyond symbolism or political vanity. For that matter, as symbolism and political vanity go, offering Bernie Sanders a big sendoff in what will surely be his final moment in the national spotlight seems worth doing. Even in this extraordinary year, it’s been clear from the outset to anyone who can count that Sanders had virtually no shot at the Democratic nomination. I have argued all along that the central question was his legacy: What becomes of the Bernie Sanders movement after Bernie Sanders is defeated?
The usual answer, at least in American politics, is that nothing happens: The insurgency dissipates and the Democratic Party gets back to business, i.e., shining the shoes of the rich, apologizing for endless war and endless surveillance, recoiling in horror from any talk of class-based economic justice and, of course, losing every possible election from coast to coast except the quadrennial White House tournament. At least until the next cycle brings forth another wave of discontent and then it’s wash, rinse, repeat. That’s entirely likely to happen again this time, but there are stirrings of other possibilities in a few local races across the country and far more important, in the growing sense that the political system is no longer rooted in the popular will and can potentially be redeemed or reformed. Or overthrown.
Unless the Bernie-fied shift in consciousness empowers democratic socialists and similar outsiders to challenge the Democratic Party establishment and its candidates from the left, as the Tea Party and before that the Christian Coalition did so effectively on the right, then the whole thing will have been — no, not pointless, that’s too strong. But deeply frustrating. This moment of defeat for the left offers a world of possibility — indeed, it offers the sense that another world is possible, the tangible possibility of revolution. But it would be diabolically easy to let that possibility slip away.
We also don’t know how Kasich and Cruz and the rest of the Republican hierarchy will make peace with the torch-bearing peasantry of Trumpmania, or whether they will even bother. Between the drubbing they just absorbed in New York and the ones just ahead in Pennsylvania and Indiana and several other large states, such people have collectively curled into a ball, pillbug-style. They could decide to view this as a catastrophic setback for the Republican brand, one that demands an internal purge, an extended period of reformation and a stem-to-stern rebuild of the entire party. If they were paying me a bazillion dollars as a consultant, that’s what I’d tell them, with lots of bullet points and pie charts. There is some theoretical if counterintuitive possibility that the Republicans could emerge from this debacle as the stronger of the two parties in the medium term, because they had their crisis and hit bottom first.
Since the people who run political parties are stupid and self-absorbed and short-sighted (I believe those are prerequisites for the job), that’s highly unlikely. Kasich and Cruz and Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and the rest of the defanged vampires of Republican-land will almost certainly treat this whole thing as an aberration that couldn’t possibly happen again and will soon go away, and treat the fall election the way losing NBA teams sometimes treat the final games of the season: We’ll be in better shape for the future if we get creamed now! They haven’t written me that check with numerous zeroes yet, so that’s the course of action I recommend.
Live music is a luxury now: Outrageous ticket prices make it harder and harder to support the bands we love
On Monday, Paul McCartney announced his first Cleveland show since 2002 at the downtown indoor basketball arena where the Cleveland Cavaliers play. Celebration quickly turned to mild anxiety in my household: Not only did my husband and I want to attend, but my dad was also interested in the concert, which meant we had to go for three tickets together. (Mom was all good, since she noted that she saw the Beatles. Can't argue with that.) The catch was, we had a budget—and the entire lower bowl, both in the seats and on the floor, was priced at either $153 or $253 per ticket, so they weren't options. The cheapest seats were $59.50, but only the five sections of nosebleed rows directly across the arena from the stage and then four upper-level sections flanking the stage were at this price point. Between our crew's mobility issues and a collective crippling fear of heights, those were also out.
That left trying to grab a trio of seats somewhere else in the upper bowl, at a cool $89.50 a pop. Thankfully, after some frantic browser maneuvering and email list signups, I managed to score three decent tickets via a pre-sale on McCartney's website. For a McCartney concert—an experience where fans know he'll play three hours, and perform just about everything you'd want to hear—the price felt worth it. Incredibly enough, these seats were significantly cheaper (42 percent less, to be specific) than what I paid per ticket for a February Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert at the same venue. Those seats were better, of course, but were in the same general area, just on the lower bowl.
Granted, both of these shows were splurges, and involved artists with great personal significance; they were special occasion purchases, not an everyday or even every-few-months thing. And because I'm a journalist, I occasionally offset expensive shows like this one with free reviewer tickets, which balances things out. (Not always, however—there's a persistent myth that writers always get free stuff, which isn't necessarily the case.) And, above all, yes, McCartney is McCartney, one of the two remaining living members of the Beatles. He's in rarefied air, and people will gladly pay a lot of money to see him perform. (In fact, the Cleveland show even has $2100 VIP front row packages which include a whole suite of perks.) As a fan, I don't begrudge a legend for commanding ticket prices commensurate with his legacy and catalog.
Yet more and more, a ticket to a large concert by an established act is a luxury good, something equivalent to a "car payment," as a friend of mine quipped after shelling out for a pair of pricey McCartney floor tickets. Statistics back up this perception. Pollstar's 2015 year-end North American concert report revealed some eye-popping numbers on what it termed a "record year": "The total gross of the Top 100 Tours [hit] $3.12 billion, which is up 14% over 2014. The 42.08 million tickets sold by just the Top 100 Tours is up 10%, which is also a record. All of this comes with a record average ticket price of $74.25, an increase of $2.81, or 4%, over the previous year."
This trend of rising ticket prices started back in the mid-'90s, according to a 2001 ABC News story on concert tickets. Back then, "artists and concert promoters started realizing that many of the people sitting in the best seats had bought their tickets from scalpers, often paying hundreds of dollars more than face value. Since the industry was not seeing any of that profit, concert organizers decided to start charging premium prices for the best seats." In other words, this ticket pricing model is a classic case of supply responding to demand.
The kneejerk reaction might be "don't go to the show" or "stick to non-arena concerts." However, music isn't the only industry facing a surge in ticket prices. In pro sports, the practice of dynamic pricing—where the cost of tickets fluctuates depending on factors such as demand, importance of the game and opponent—is increasingly common. Movie theater tickets have also become pricier thanks to 3D movies, IMAX films and "the rise of luxury seating," as Variety notes. And then there's the secondary ticketing market, long the domain of scalpers and resellers, two groups that always seem to find ways to circumvent bot-blocking measures and other deterrents with ease. Adele tickets were a hot commodity right after her North American tour immediately sold out, and they're still going for hundreds of dollars today. McCartney's recently announced show at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, which boasted five tiers of tickets under $100, officially sold out in less than an hour. Yet the StubHub resale market starts at $85 a ticket, and that's for standing room only seats, while a $39.50-face value first base upper terrace ticket is running $95 on the site.
Of course, these secondary market prices only reflect what the resellers want to get, not necessarily what the market will bear. And if people want to risk waiting until closer to the show, there's a chance tickets might come down to reasonable levels. (That's what happened with some of the highly anticipated Grateful Dead 2015 reunion shows.) But for people who don't feel secure unless they have a guaranteed seat, the fact remains that live entertainment today comes at a hefty price. The days of sleeping in line overnight at a venue or waiting in line at a grocery store Ticketmaster outlet are long gone, but being fleet-fingered at 10 a.m. the day of an online on-sale to score great seats also sometimes feels challenging. And when a show sells out quickly, and expensive tickets immediately flood resale sites, it's a frustrating, anger-inducing experience: At that point, the perception is that an artist's fans are getting shut out, in favor of those just looking to make a quick buck.
Solving the expensive ticket problem and avoiding pricey shows isn't easy, and not just because fans are paying big bucks for seats. Many factors figure into a concert ticket price: the artist's guarantee, the size and type of venue, production and crew costs, and other assorted fees, among other things. Bigger show promoters with clout also frequently acquire independent promoters who book concerts at smaller, non-arena venues; in fact, news broke on Wednesday that AEG Live was "in final negotiations" to scoop up the New York City-based Bowery Presents, an influential company that puts on shows in major markets such as Philadelphia and Boston as well as New York City.
And tickets have a hefty price tag at venues of all sizes: A newly announced Dolly Parton show at a 2600-capacity Northeast Ohio casino offers seats starting at $99.50 apiece on up to $225, with an elaborate VIP package topping out at a hefty $1,950. Pre-fees prices for pavilion seats for summer shows at the local Northeast Ohio outdoor shed, Blossom Music Center, also vary wildly. Joe Walsh and Bad Company's tour had listed ticket prices from $32 to $132, while the Dixie Chicks' reunion tour commands anywhere from $77 to $145 a ticket; Dave Matthews Band, in contrast, is a reasonable $75 to $85. (VIP-level pavilion seats, however, were far more.) Throw in concessions, merchandise and (potentially) babysitting, and a night out at a show could look more like a large chunk of a mortgage payment.
For certain shows, there actually are ways to get around high ticket prices. The wildly popular Live Nation-sponsored Country MegaTicket offers fans the chance to pay a flat rate up front for guaranteed tickets to its series of summer country shows. Groupon tends to offer generous discounts on lawn seats at pavilion shows the week these shows go on sale. Plus, places such as Yahoo! Music stream live events online, while fans have been able to enjoy major festivals at home for years. Coachella's at-home viewing sessions even have a nickname, Couchella, and a robust Twitter hashtag. Still, it's clear that not enough people are staying away from live music (or declining to buy VIP packages) to make a dent in prices. Until promoters start feeling a hit to their wallets or bottom line, it seems like high concert prices are here to say.
That left trying to grab a trio of seats somewhere else in the upper bowl, at a cool $89.50 a pop. Thankfully, after some frantic browser maneuvering and email list signups, I managed to score three decent tickets via a pre-sale on McCartney's website. For a McCartney concert—an experience where fans know he'll play three hours, and perform just about everything you'd want to hear—the price felt worth it. Incredibly enough, these seats were significantly cheaper (42 percent less, to be specific) than what I paid per ticket for a February Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band concert at the same venue. Those seats were better, of course, but were in the same general area, just on the lower bowl.
Granted, both of these shows were splurges, and involved artists with great personal significance; they were special occasion purchases, not an everyday or even every-few-months thing. And because I'm a journalist, I occasionally offset expensive shows like this one with free reviewer tickets, which balances things out. (Not always, however—there's a persistent myth that writers always get free stuff, which isn't necessarily the case.) And, above all, yes, McCartney is McCartney, one of the two remaining living members of the Beatles. He's in rarefied air, and people will gladly pay a lot of money to see him perform. (In fact, the Cleveland show even has $2100 VIP front row packages which include a whole suite of perks.) As a fan, I don't begrudge a legend for commanding ticket prices commensurate with his legacy and catalog.
Yet more and more, a ticket to a large concert by an established act is a luxury good, something equivalent to a "car payment," as a friend of mine quipped after shelling out for a pair of pricey McCartney floor tickets. Statistics back up this perception. Pollstar's 2015 year-end North American concert report revealed some eye-popping numbers on what it termed a "record year": "The total gross of the Top 100 Tours [hit] $3.12 billion, which is up 14% over 2014. The 42.08 million tickets sold by just the Top 100 Tours is up 10%, which is also a record. All of this comes with a record average ticket price of $74.25, an increase of $2.81, or 4%, over the previous year."
This trend of rising ticket prices started back in the mid-'90s, according to a 2001 ABC News story on concert tickets. Back then, "artists and concert promoters started realizing that many of the people sitting in the best seats had bought their tickets from scalpers, often paying hundreds of dollars more than face value. Since the industry was not seeing any of that profit, concert organizers decided to start charging premium prices for the best seats." In other words, this ticket pricing model is a classic case of supply responding to demand.
The kneejerk reaction might be "don't go to the show" or "stick to non-arena concerts." However, music isn't the only industry facing a surge in ticket prices. In pro sports, the practice of dynamic pricing—where the cost of tickets fluctuates depending on factors such as demand, importance of the game and opponent—is increasingly common. Movie theater tickets have also become pricier thanks to 3D movies, IMAX films and "the rise of luxury seating," as Variety notes. And then there's the secondary ticketing market, long the domain of scalpers and resellers, two groups that always seem to find ways to circumvent bot-blocking measures and other deterrents with ease. Adele tickets were a hot commodity right after her North American tour immediately sold out, and they're still going for hundreds of dollars today. McCartney's recently announced show at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, which boasted five tiers of tickets under $100, officially sold out in less than an hour. Yet the StubHub resale market starts at $85 a ticket, and that's for standing room only seats, while a $39.50-face value first base upper terrace ticket is running $95 on the site.
Of course, these secondary market prices only reflect what the resellers want to get, not necessarily what the market will bear. And if people want to risk waiting until closer to the show, there's a chance tickets might come down to reasonable levels. (That's what happened with some of the highly anticipated Grateful Dead 2015 reunion shows.) But for people who don't feel secure unless they have a guaranteed seat, the fact remains that live entertainment today comes at a hefty price. The days of sleeping in line overnight at a venue or waiting in line at a grocery store Ticketmaster outlet are long gone, but being fleet-fingered at 10 a.m. the day of an online on-sale to score great seats also sometimes feels challenging. And when a show sells out quickly, and expensive tickets immediately flood resale sites, it's a frustrating, anger-inducing experience: At that point, the perception is that an artist's fans are getting shut out, in favor of those just looking to make a quick buck.
Solving the expensive ticket problem and avoiding pricey shows isn't easy, and not just because fans are paying big bucks for seats. Many factors figure into a concert ticket price: the artist's guarantee, the size and type of venue, production and crew costs, and other assorted fees, among other things. Bigger show promoters with clout also frequently acquire independent promoters who book concerts at smaller, non-arena venues; in fact, news broke on Wednesday that AEG Live was "in final negotiations" to scoop up the New York City-based Bowery Presents, an influential company that puts on shows in major markets such as Philadelphia and Boston as well as New York City.
And tickets have a hefty price tag at venues of all sizes: A newly announced Dolly Parton show at a 2600-capacity Northeast Ohio casino offers seats starting at $99.50 apiece on up to $225, with an elaborate VIP package topping out at a hefty $1,950. Pre-fees prices for pavilion seats for summer shows at the local Northeast Ohio outdoor shed, Blossom Music Center, also vary wildly. Joe Walsh and Bad Company's tour had listed ticket prices from $32 to $132, while the Dixie Chicks' reunion tour commands anywhere from $77 to $145 a ticket; Dave Matthews Band, in contrast, is a reasonable $75 to $85. (VIP-level pavilion seats, however, were far more.) Throw in concessions, merchandise and (potentially) babysitting, and a night out at a show could look more like a large chunk of a mortgage payment.
For certain shows, there actually are ways to get around high ticket prices. The wildly popular Live Nation-sponsored Country MegaTicket offers fans the chance to pay a flat rate up front for guaranteed tickets to its series of summer country shows. Groupon tends to offer generous discounts on lawn seats at pavilion shows the week these shows go on sale. Plus, places such as Yahoo! Music stream live events online, while fans have been able to enjoy major festivals at home for years. Coachella's at-home viewing sessions even have a nickname, Couchella, and a robust Twitter hashtag. Still, it's clear that not enough people are staying away from live music (or declining to buy VIP packages) to make a dent in prices. Until promoters start feeling a hit to their wallets or bottom line, it seems like high concert prices are here to say.
Slavery’s children, today: “Underground” makes the horrors of the slave economy resonate here and now
The opening moments of this week’s “Underground” invites viewers to consider, of all things, the Necco Wafer. A tight shot of a confectioner’s hands shows him meticulously preparing the dough, rolling it into thin sheets and cutting those into small hubs. Arranging these discs in neat cylindrical stacks, they’re wrapped in wax paper and packed into a crate headed South, each package destined to play a silent guest-starring role in the drastically different fates of several children.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.The opening moments of this week’s “Underground” invites viewers to consider, of all things, the Necco Wafer. A tight shot of a confectioner’s hands shows him meticulously preparing the dough, rolling it into thin sheets and cutting those into small hubs. Arranging these discs in neat cylindrical stacks, they’re wrapped in wax paper and packed into a crate headed South, each package destined to play a silent guest-starring role in the drastically different fates of several children.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.The opening moments of this week’s “Underground” invites viewers to consider, of all things, the Necco Wafer. A tight shot of a confectioner’s hands shows him meticulously preparing the dough, rolling it into thin sheets and cutting those into small hubs. Arranging these discs in neat cylindrical stacks, they’re wrapped in wax paper and packed into a crate headed South, each package destined to play a silent guest-starring role in the drastically different fates of several children.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.The opening moments of this week’s “Underground” invites viewers to consider, of all things, the Necco Wafer. A tight shot of a confectioner’s hands shows him meticulously preparing the dough, rolling it into thin sheets and cutting those into small hubs. Arranging these discs in neat cylindrical stacks, they’re wrapped in wax paper and packed into a crate headed South, each package destined to play a silent guest-starring role in the drastically different fates of several children.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.The opening moments of this week’s “Underground” invites viewers to consider, of all things, the Necco Wafer. A tight shot of a confectioner’s hands shows him meticulously preparing the dough, rolling it into thin sheets and cutting those into small hubs. Arranging these discs in neat cylindrical stacks, they’re wrapped in wax paper and packed into a crate headed South, each package destined to play a silent guest-starring role in the drastically different fates of several children.
Candy is a luxury serving to highlight the division between master and servant in the world of “Underground.” The rich whites always seem to have treats handy, and every now and then, if they’re lucky, a few slaves manage to lay their hands on a piece or two.
But the choice to feature the Necco Wafer in this new episode, premiering 10 p.m. Wednesday on WGN America, seems particularly intentional, and not just out of a sense of maintaining historical accuracy. Neccos have been around since 1847, having risen in popularity due to their long shelf life and ability to maintain their integrity through even the most adverse conditions. As such, they became a widely-consumed treat in the 1800s and in the early 20th century.
One only needs to eat a Necco Wafer to understand that their relative trendiness wasn’t due to their flavor. Pretty as those little pastel colored discs look, they taste like chalk. In other words – no offense, Necco fans – they are an empty promise and a lure. An edible deception, if you will.
In this week’s episode, titled “Cradle,” the wafers appear in slave cabins and a doctor’s quarters, in candy dishes laying around the luxurious interior of the slave owner’s mansion, and in the elegant sitting parlor of an abolitionist couple. They are given as a gift and a comfort, taken away to prepare a child for hardship, or rejected as would-be peace offerings.
Until “Cradle,” most of the kids in “Underground” barely had a line or two, largely relegated to the periphery of the action – the exceptions being Ben Pullman (Brady Permenter), who has reluctantly joined his slave-catcher father August to learn the family trade, and Henry (Renwick Scott), the second youngest member of the runaways.
In depicting the action from the viewpoints of Ben, Henry, and the other children, executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski give the drama’s youngest actors the opportunity to fully showcase their talents while lending additional poignancy to a story fueled by the desperation of the runaways and the family they left behind.
When you think about it, sweets and children have played important roles in “Underground” since the show’s beginning. The former is a tool used to reward, placate and manipulate, while the children inspire the adults responsible for them to risk their lives to escape bondage, or twist their moral cores for the sake of financial survival.
This is true of both the white and African American families featured in the drama. The slave community’s minister and his wife may not have run if not for the opportunity to win freedom for their tiny daughter Boo (Darielle Stewart).
Without molasses candy, head house slave Ernestine (Amirah Vann) couldn’t have bought the compliance and silence of T.R. (Toby Nichols), the young son of slave master Tom Macon (Reed Diamond). T.R. covered for Ernestine’s daughter Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) after she stole an important piece of property from the master’s office, for the price of a pocket full of sugar.
And it was the vision of T.R.’s best friend James (Maceo Smedley) sitting in a cage by the ceiling, listlessly fanning the Southern belles attending a party below him, that lit the fire in a hesitant Elizabeth Hawkes (Jessica De Gouw) to aid the abolitionists running the Underground Railroad. Elizabeth, wife to Tom Macon’s brother John Hawkes (Marc Blucas) witnessed this mundane horror while doing her best to act as if she were enjoying a slice of cake.
Ben, meanwhile, harbors no illusions about his father’s work, and in fact, wonders if August (Christopher Meloni) is a bad person for hunting other people, especially considering that August’s most trusted ally is an African-American man named Jay (Clarke Peters), who is more of a parent to Ben than his largely absent parents.
Director Kate Woods tells each of their stories using plenty of close-ups of the young actors and employing angles that show this world through each child’s point of view, beginning with scenes of James enduring the back-breaking labor of picking for the first time. Filling his bag with cotton bolls bigger than his bleeding hands until the sun sets, James is barely as tall as the plants he’s harvesting, and it’s painful to watch their barbs tear at his flesh.
In different locales, Boo and Ben are each processing significant trauma – Boo’s perhaps being the more extreme, as the little girl is now alone and being hunted after witnessing a variety of horrors. But their two stories share a commonality as well, in that each learns what dark compromises must be made to ensure survival in this world.
Elsewhere, T.R. doesn’t quite understand why he can’t play with his best friend James anymore, and doesn’t fully have a handle on James’s terrible fate.
Woods and the executive producers highlighting the emotional disconnect between T.R. and James with different versions of “Summertime,” sung by a children’s choir, as a soundtrack running underneath each of their scenes. James’s version is the more forbidding of the two, and for those familiar with the show’s various subplots, the lyric “your daddy's rich, and your ma is good-lookin'” takes on a terrible subtext.
Scenes like these definitively demonstrate how “Underground” transcends its period setting to sharply resonate with a present day audience. It’s hard to look at James without recognizing parallels to today’s impoverished children, be they American or immigrants — frequently discussed in the abstract during this political season, but not receiving much in the way of tangible empathy.
It is human habit for people who occupy a comfortable status in society to justify unkindness by focusing on what makes the downtrodden, or the foreign, unlike “the rest of us.” But great television makes us see the best and worst of ourselves cloaked in stories that, on the surface, may seem to having nothing to do with our present lives. “Cradle” does this by training its focus on the innocents caught in the net of the slave trade, showing the ways in which both daughters of slaves and sons of slave owners are compromised by widespread injustice.
It brilliantly shows the high price everyone pays to enjoy the sweet luxuries afforded by slavery, a tariff that includes heartbreak, trauma and violence. Indeed, it is a devastating hour of viewing, and one not to be missed.
F**k Sanders, says Clinton aide, bragging “We kicked his a**” after massive voter purges and irregularities in NY primary
“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.“We kicked his a** tonight,” bragged a senior Hillary Clinton aide.
“I hope this convinces Bernie to tone it down. If not, f**k him.”
A Politico reporter says this is what he was told Tuesday night, after Clinton won the New York primary, with around 58 percent of the vote to Sanders' 42 percent.
Sanders won the vast majority of New York state, but Clinton won the densely populated urban areas, particularly New York City. In Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, the candidates were neck-and-neck, but Clinton pulled just ahead.
Voting day was plagued with enormous problems, leading to widespread accusations of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.
Since last fall, the New York Board of Elections mysteriously purged more than 125,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the voting records without their knowledge.
Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that there had been “purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists.”
The New York City watchdog, Comptroller Scott Stringer, said all of this happened “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections.”
There were also countless reports that residents were given wrong voting information, people were sent to wrong polling locations, voters were forced to fill out affidavit ballots that may not count, poll workers did not know how to operate the voting machines and voting machines were broken.
The complaint hotline was flooded with 468 percent more complaints than in the 2012 primary. The office said it was "by far the largest volume of complaints we have received for an election since" since Attorney General Eric Schneiderman entered his position.
Stringer condemned the massive "irregularities" and vowed to audit the election board.
https://twitter.com/scottmstringer/st...
"Election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," the city watchdog said.
Stringer went on public radio station WYNC explaining "we need to reform the Board of Elections."
A group of New Yorkers who were purged from the voting records sued the government in an attempt to get back their right to vote.
A New York federal district court judge did not rule to open the primary or issue an order to count provisional ballots, instead leaving electoral decisions up to New York's counties, "essentially kick[ing] the ball down the road."
And these are just the voters who were registered with a dominant party.
New York is one of only 11 U.S. states that has a closed primary, meaning residents who are not registered with the Democratic or Republican Parties cannot participate.
More than one-quarter (27 percent) of New York’s registered voters were therefore unable to vote in the primary. Because they were registered either as independents or with third parties, 3.2 million New Yorkers were left without a voice.
Salon contacted the New York City Board of Elections, asking if there was any way for independents to vote. The office spokesperson bluntly said “You cannot vote today” and “There’s no way,” before abruptly hanging up.
Some groups urged independents to vote with provisional ballots, but there is no indication that they will be counted.
In order to participate, voters had to register for a party in October, six months before the primary. And this is not even considering the possibility of being purged from the records.
The Nation flatly stated that New York has “some of the worst voting laws in the country.” It has no early voting, no same-day registration, no pre-registration and no out-of-precinct voting.
North Carolina, in fact, invoked New York laws to justify its own harsh voting restrictions.
Sanders, a Vermont senator who has been elected for decades as an independent, does significantly better with independent voters than Clinton.
Sanders said he commiserated with the more than 3 million New Yorkers who were unable to vote.
Ted Cruz doppelgängers are everywhere: The latest to freak out the internet appeared on “Maury”
I can't say I'm surprised to learn that in the Venn diagram of Maury Povich's viewership and pro-Trump Redditors, there's at least one-person in the universal set.
And, on account of my night terrors, I also can't say I'm glad that that one person made the following discovery:
https://twitter.com/TheMAURYShow/stat...
Her name is Searcy. After five miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Jayden, who's 6 weeks old. She went on "Maury" to settle a paternity dispute with her fiancé, Freddie, who, the tests proved, is in fact Jayden's daddy.
Also, she looks exactly like Ted Cruz (and, by the transitive property: Duke point guard Grayson Allen, the Zodiac Killer, Rob Kardashian and the lead singer of Christian metal group Stryper).
Cruz hasn't addressed the latest rumor, according to the NY Daily News, but is set to speak in Florida at the top of the hour. Stay tuned for any updates.
And, while you're waiting, watch Searcy's drama unfold below (starting at the 23:30 mark):
I can't say I'm surprised to learn that in the Venn diagram of Maury Povich's viewership and pro-Trump Redditors, there's at least one-person in the universal set.
And, on account of my night terrors, I also can't say I'm glad that that one person made the following discovery:
https://twitter.com/TheMAURYShow/stat...
Her name is Searcy. After five miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Jayden, who's 6 weeks old. She went on "Maury" to settle a paternity dispute with her fiancé, Freddie, who, the tests proved, is in fact Jayden's daddy.
Also, she looks exactly like Ted Cruz (and, by the transitive property: Duke point guard Grayson Allen, the Zodiac Killer, Rob Kardashian and the lead singer of Christian metal group Stryper).
Cruz hasn't addressed the latest rumor, according to the NY Daily News, but is set to speak in Florida at the top of the hour. Stay tuned for any updates.
And, while you're waiting, watch Searcy's drama unfold below (starting at the 23:30 mark):
And, on account of my night terrors, I also can't say I'm glad that that one person made the following discovery:
https://twitter.com/TheMAURYShow/stat...
Her name is Searcy. After five miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Jayden, who's 6 weeks old. She went on "Maury" to settle a paternity dispute with her fiancé, Freddie, who, the tests proved, is in fact Jayden's daddy.
Also, she looks exactly like Ted Cruz (and, by the transitive property: Duke point guard Grayson Allen, the Zodiac Killer, Rob Kardashian and the lead singer of Christian metal group Stryper).
Cruz hasn't addressed the latest rumor, according to the NY Daily News, but is set to speak in Florida at the top of the hour. Stay tuned for any updates.
And, while you're waiting, watch Searcy's drama unfold below (starting at the 23:30 mark):
I can't say I'm surprised to learn that in the Venn diagram of Maury Povich's viewership and pro-Trump Redditors, there's at least one-person in the universal set.
And, on account of my night terrors, I also can't say I'm glad that that one person made the following discovery:
https://twitter.com/TheMAURYShow/stat...
Her name is Searcy. After five miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Jayden, who's 6 weeks old. She went on "Maury" to settle a paternity dispute with her fiancé, Freddie, who, the tests proved, is in fact Jayden's daddy.
Also, she looks exactly like Ted Cruz (and, by the transitive property: Duke point guard Grayson Allen, the Zodiac Killer, Rob Kardashian and the lead singer of Christian metal group Stryper).
Cruz hasn't addressed the latest rumor, according to the NY Daily News, but is set to speak in Florida at the top of the hour. Stay tuned for any updates.
And, while you're waiting, watch Searcy's drama unfold below (starting at the 23:30 mark):
Lip enhancements reach all-time high, statistics show
New statistics show that Americans have an obsession with lip injections. It's becoming all too familiar with the many YouTube posts of people filming their experiences and celebrities transforming their faces. Watch our video for more details.
Call it Curt Schilling Syndrome: Overly sensitive man mortally offended by criticism of his own offensive comments
You know what never gets old? Middle-aged white guys telling the rest of us how we shouldn't be offended by their offensiveness. Curt Schilling, show us how it's done.
The 49 year-old former MLB pitcher and current ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling has in recent years been outspoken in his political and social views — including his generous acceptance of gay people if not marriage equality. Three years ago, he tweeted a story about a human rights atrocity in Pakistan and added, "And we gripe about gay marriage and health care." Because we apparently can't have equal rights and decent healthcare until we fix that.
On Monday, a meme he shared on Facebook emerged on social media — one featuring an unpolished-looking person in a blonde wig with the caption, "Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow minded , judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to DIE!!!" Ooh, topical. Schilling, seemingly swept up in the insane bathroom panic of 2016, also added a personal message, saying, "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." ESPN swiftly issued a statement that "We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it."
Though screen grabs remain (Psssst… removing all traces of stuff off the Internet isn't as easy as it sounds!) Schilling deleted the post. He did not, however, issue a mea culpa for posting it in the first place. Instead, on Tuesday he sent out a tweet saying, "For all of you people dying to be offended by something that never actually happened," and a link to a post on his blog he titled, "The hunt to be offended…" Sounding more than a little offended himself, Schilling warned in his screed, "If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that’s your fault, all yours."
He first addressed a controversy he found himself embroiled in last year, when, once again meme-happy, he posted and then deleted a Hitler image captioned, "It's said only 5 - 10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" He'd editorially added, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s." That earned him a suspension from his Little League World Series duties. And at the time, he said that "Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part." A month later he was back to tweeting anti-Muslim sentiments.
And in his new blog post, Schilling defended his earlier actions, complaining, "All of you fraudulent media folks, you lazy ass 'don’t actually want to work for a story' clowns. The word you left out? the ONLY word that mattered? EXTREMIST…. I don’t dislike or hate Muslims, or people of the Islamic faith. Ask my friends that are both." He then went on to say that "This latest brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious. I didn’t post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and women's restrooms, period." Except that when you retweet or repost things, yes, you are posting them.
Anyway, Schilling then said that "I thank the Lord for the life I’ve been given. A life interspersed and occupied by men and women who are gay, by people of all races and religions, by men and women who dress as the other, by men and women who’ve changed to women and men…. I don’t care who, what, where or why you are who you are. I care about people and how they treat others." That's swell, except that trans people aren't people who "dress as the other" or "change to women and men." That's not how being trans works. There are resources you can access if you're confused about how it does. And if you care about how people treat each other, I wonder why then you're so comfortable in generalizations about Muslims and trans people? How do you think trans men and women are being treated when they are essentially cut off from access to public restrooms?
Schilling then ended with a refrain that's apparently familiar to him: "There are actual causes that need attention such as homeless veterans and our archaic education system." I don't know about you, but I just love it when Curt Schilling gives a lecture on what our social progress priorities should be. And Curt Schilling doesn't think trans rights are important because he literally doesn't understand what they are.You know what never gets old? Middle-aged white guys telling the rest of us how we shouldn't be offended by their offensiveness. Curt Schilling, show us how it's done.
The 49 year-old former MLB pitcher and current ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling has in recent years been outspoken in his political and social views — including his generous acceptance of gay people if not marriage equality. Three years ago, he tweeted a story about a human rights atrocity in Pakistan and added, "And we gripe about gay marriage and health care." Because we apparently can't have equal rights and decent healthcare until we fix that.
On Monday, a meme he shared on Facebook emerged on social media — one featuring an unpolished-looking person in a blonde wig with the caption, "Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow minded , judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to DIE!!!" Ooh, topical. Schilling, seemingly swept up in the insane bathroom panic of 2016, also added a personal message, saying, "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." ESPN swiftly issued a statement that "We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it."
Though screen grabs remain (Psssst… removing all traces of stuff off the Internet isn't as easy as it sounds!) Schilling deleted the post. He did not, however, issue a mea culpa for posting it in the first place. Instead, on Tuesday he sent out a tweet saying, "For all of you people dying to be offended by something that never actually happened," and a link to a post on his blog he titled, "The hunt to be offended…" Sounding more than a little offended himself, Schilling warned in his screed, "If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that’s your fault, all yours."
He first addressed a controversy he found himself embroiled in last year, when, once again meme-happy, he posted and then deleted a Hitler image captioned, "It's said only 5 - 10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" He'd editorially added, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s." That earned him a suspension from his Little League World Series duties. And at the time, he said that "Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part." A month later he was back to tweeting anti-Muslim sentiments.
And in his new blog post, Schilling defended his earlier actions, complaining, "All of you fraudulent media folks, you lazy ass 'don’t actually want to work for a story' clowns. The word you left out? the ONLY word that mattered? EXTREMIST…. I don’t dislike or hate Muslims, or people of the Islamic faith. Ask my friends that are both." He then went on to say that "This latest brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious. I didn’t post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and women's restrooms, period." Except that when you retweet or repost things, yes, you are posting them.
Anyway, Schilling then said that "I thank the Lord for the life I’ve been given. A life interspersed and occupied by men and women who are gay, by people of all races and religions, by men and women who dress as the other, by men and women who’ve changed to women and men…. I don’t care who, what, where or why you are who you are. I care about people and how they treat others." That's swell, except that trans people aren't people who "dress as the other" or "change to women and men." That's not how being trans works. There are resources you can access if you're confused about how it does. And if you care about how people treat each other, I wonder why then you're so comfortable in generalizations about Muslims and trans people? How do you think trans men and women are being treated when they are essentially cut off from access to public restrooms?
Schilling then ended with a refrain that's apparently familiar to him: "There are actual causes that need attention such as homeless veterans and our archaic education system." I don't know about you, but I just love it when Curt Schilling gives a lecture on what our social progress priorities should be. And Curt Schilling doesn't think trans rights are important because he literally doesn't understand what they are.
The 49 year-old former MLB pitcher and current ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling has in recent years been outspoken in his political and social views — including his generous acceptance of gay people if not marriage equality. Three years ago, he tweeted a story about a human rights atrocity in Pakistan and added, "And we gripe about gay marriage and health care." Because we apparently can't have equal rights and decent healthcare until we fix that.
On Monday, a meme he shared on Facebook emerged on social media — one featuring an unpolished-looking person in a blonde wig with the caption, "Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow minded , judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to DIE!!!" Ooh, topical. Schilling, seemingly swept up in the insane bathroom panic of 2016, also added a personal message, saying, "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." ESPN swiftly issued a statement that "We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it."
Though screen grabs remain (Psssst… removing all traces of stuff off the Internet isn't as easy as it sounds!) Schilling deleted the post. He did not, however, issue a mea culpa for posting it in the first place. Instead, on Tuesday he sent out a tweet saying, "For all of you people dying to be offended by something that never actually happened," and a link to a post on his blog he titled, "The hunt to be offended…" Sounding more than a little offended himself, Schilling warned in his screed, "If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that’s your fault, all yours."
He first addressed a controversy he found himself embroiled in last year, when, once again meme-happy, he posted and then deleted a Hitler image captioned, "It's said only 5 - 10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" He'd editorially added, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s." That earned him a suspension from his Little League World Series duties. And at the time, he said that "Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part." A month later he was back to tweeting anti-Muslim sentiments.
And in his new blog post, Schilling defended his earlier actions, complaining, "All of you fraudulent media folks, you lazy ass 'don’t actually want to work for a story' clowns. The word you left out? the ONLY word that mattered? EXTREMIST…. I don’t dislike or hate Muslims, or people of the Islamic faith. Ask my friends that are both." He then went on to say that "This latest brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious. I didn’t post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and women's restrooms, period." Except that when you retweet or repost things, yes, you are posting them.
Anyway, Schilling then said that "I thank the Lord for the life I’ve been given. A life interspersed and occupied by men and women who are gay, by people of all races and religions, by men and women who dress as the other, by men and women who’ve changed to women and men…. I don’t care who, what, where or why you are who you are. I care about people and how they treat others." That's swell, except that trans people aren't people who "dress as the other" or "change to women and men." That's not how being trans works. There are resources you can access if you're confused about how it does. And if you care about how people treat each other, I wonder why then you're so comfortable in generalizations about Muslims and trans people? How do you think trans men and women are being treated when they are essentially cut off from access to public restrooms?
Schilling then ended with a refrain that's apparently familiar to him: "There are actual causes that need attention such as homeless veterans and our archaic education system." I don't know about you, but I just love it when Curt Schilling gives a lecture on what our social progress priorities should be. And Curt Schilling doesn't think trans rights are important because he literally doesn't understand what they are.You know what never gets old? Middle-aged white guys telling the rest of us how we shouldn't be offended by their offensiveness. Curt Schilling, show us how it's done.
The 49 year-old former MLB pitcher and current ESPN baseball analyst Curt Schilling has in recent years been outspoken in his political and social views — including his generous acceptance of gay people if not marriage equality. Three years ago, he tweeted a story about a human rights atrocity in Pakistan and added, "And we gripe about gay marriage and health care." Because we apparently can't have equal rights and decent healthcare until we fix that.
On Monday, a meme he shared on Facebook emerged on social media — one featuring an unpolished-looking person in a blonde wig with the caption, "Let him in! to the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow minded , judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to DIE!!!" Ooh, topical. Schilling, seemingly swept up in the insane bathroom panic of 2016, also added a personal message, saying, "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the penis, women's not so much. Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." ESPN swiftly issued a statement that "We are taking this matter very seriously and are in the process of reviewing it."
Though screen grabs remain (Psssst… removing all traces of stuff off the Internet isn't as easy as it sounds!) Schilling deleted the post. He did not, however, issue a mea culpa for posting it in the first place. Instead, on Tuesday he sent out a tweet saying, "For all of you people dying to be offended by something that never actually happened," and a link to a post on his blog he titled, "The hunt to be offended…" Sounding more than a little offended himself, Schilling warned in his screed, "If you get offended by ANYTHING in this post, that’s your fault, all yours."
He first addressed a controversy he found himself embroiled in last year, when, once again meme-happy, he posted and then deleted a Hitler image captioned, "It's said only 5 - 10% of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7% of Germans were Nazis. How'd that go?" He'd editorially added, "The math is staggering when you get to true #'s." That earned him a suspension from his Little League World Series duties. And at the time, he said that "Bad choices have bad consequences and this was a bad decision in every way on my part." A month later he was back to tweeting anti-Muslim sentiments.
And in his new blog post, Schilling defended his earlier actions, complaining, "All of you fraudulent media folks, you lazy ass 'don’t actually want to work for a story' clowns. The word you left out? the ONLY word that mattered? EXTREMIST…. I don’t dislike or hate Muslims, or people of the Islamic faith. Ask my friends that are both." He then went on to say that "This latest brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious. I didn’t post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and women's restrooms, period." Except that when you retweet or repost things, yes, you are posting them.
Anyway, Schilling then said that "I thank the Lord for the life I’ve been given. A life interspersed and occupied by men and women who are gay, by people of all races and religions, by men and women who dress as the other, by men and women who’ve changed to women and men…. I don’t care who, what, where or why you are who you are. I care about people and how they treat others." That's swell, except that trans people aren't people who "dress as the other" or "change to women and men." That's not how being trans works. There are resources you can access if you're confused about how it does. And if you care about how people treat each other, I wonder why then you're so comfortable in generalizations about Muslims and trans people? How do you think trans men and women are being treated when they are essentially cut off from access to public restrooms?
Schilling then ended with a refrain that's apparently familiar to him: "There are actual causes that need attention such as homeless veterans and our archaic education system." I don't know about you, but I just love it when Curt Schilling gives a lecture on what our social progress priorities should be. And Curt Schilling doesn't think trans rights are important because he literally doesn't understand what they are.
