Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 812

“Homeland” made me laugh: Here’s what it’s really like being a CIA agent in the Middle East

For a book that’s clearly been under the censor’s knife – words, sentences, entire paragraphs are blacked out -- “Left of Boom” is a very revealing document. Subtitled “How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” the book follows Douglas Laux from his hometown in rural eastern Indiana to the Middle East. And while the CIA has excised classified material about his missions in Afghanistan and Syria, his descriptions of his life stateside – constantly coming and going, dodging questions from friends, lying to girlfriends – are powerful and raw. Alongside the pain, much of the book has an understated, self-deprecating humor that makes it intensely readable. It’s both a CIA memoir set in the Middle East and the story of a confused young man in his 20s. Eight years in the agency, which included a tour in Afghanistan during the Afghan surge and another to Kandahar during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, left Laux at times energized by the work, at times frustrated by the CIA bureaucracy, and sometimes self-destructive. He lost friends and colleagues. During a break between Middle Eastern postings, he fell hard into alcohol and OxyContin. He’s also critical of President Obama’s Syria policy. Publishers Weekly called “Left of Boom,” written with Ralph Pezzullo, “a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today’s CIA.” Salon spoke to the Washington, D.C.-based Laux from an undisclosed location. In conversation, Laux doesn’t come across like a macho boaster or a disgruntled officer with an axe to grind. He’s surprisingly humble, cautious, and almost soft-spoken. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. You were a guy who couldn’t pick out Afghanistan on a map, right? And then 9/11 made a huge impact on you. Absolutely. I had planned to be an eye doctor when I first went to college. There was no Silicon Valley, nowhere people from the Midwest aspired to be. Now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. I had done pretty well in high school, and got into a decent university. I set my goals pretty high: I figured I’d be a doctor or something. And then 9/11 happened and I immediately threw all of that out the window, realized I needed to start understanding the world I was living in. It wasn’t all my little bubble anymore. A lot of the most poignant parts of the book show you dealing with girlfriends, not being able to tell people what you really do for a living. What’s that like? It must be brutal to have to lie to people close to you. I always found that the most poignant part of the book, too, but over the last week the entire media has cared about one page about Syria. And it is, and it’s why a good majority of my book. Every CIA book I had read previously – from all of the top director guys – I wondered, “Did we go through the same CIA? Where’s your personal life story? Share that!” And I get it – a lot of them were married, and it was about raising children overseas. But I thought, that’s pretty pristine. It sounds like Mayberry. It sounds fantastic – I’d love that! Because that’s not what I’m experiencing: This is really, really, really hard. I think I lay it out in the book: The CIA by its nature is insular – it has to be. It’s a secretive organization. That’s great. It’s sort of built into the mission – not really any other way for them to do things… I grew up in the CIA. Some people have come to calling me “Spy Kid.” I really became a man through the CIA. Even social experiences on the outside – whether it be with girlfriends or just friends, dealing with adult concerns now that you’re out of college – it was all new for me, too. You think of someone with a sales job, and what’s hard for them. It amplifies a couple levels when you’re lying to everybody, keeping secrets, trying not to reveal your true identity. So the easiest thing to do is to only hang out with other clandestine officers – people who already are in the know. It’s what a lot of people choose to do, and I understand why. But as you can probably pick up from the book, my personality’s pretty strong, and I still wanted to have a very robust social life, as a single 23-year-old. I brought a lot of it on myself by making that decision. Let’s talk about your life in the field a little bit. What made you successful infiltrating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Two things. The foresight for them training me in Pashtu was very smart – I do want to give the CIA credit for that. I talk about frustrations, but then as I matured, and looked back, I saw that my knowing Pashtu was really, really reaping benefits. Another was just persistence. I wasn’t there to check a box. I wasn’t there as a career move to help me advance. It looked at it as, “I’m going to do this regardless. It’s service to the U.S., not to the CIA.” You can tell, I’m a stubborn guy, I just stayed on target until mission complete. What did you learn about the psychology of people who go into terrorist groups? Did you get a sense of what motivates them? That’s an interesting question, because whether it’s Al-Qaeda, or Taliban, or ISIS, you’re talking about terrorist groups… You gotta ask what motivated them to begin with. A lot of people wish there was a silver bullet, or a simple answer: "Why do they hate us?," a lot of people ask me. The best, most perfect analogy is that terrorism is a lot like cancer. In that, cancer is a catch-all term for a lot of different diseases that are not really related. A lot of the media used “terrorism” because it’s complex. With terrorism, some of these guys are motivated because they’re sociopaths: That’s a good majority of them. Others because they were simply bored. Or because it was the thing to do. Or because, “My best friend joined, so I joined.” Or, “I wanted to experience some action, some adventure.” You tell this to some Americans and they say, “Oh, bullcrap, it’s all Islam.” Certainly for some, they take the hard-line stance. But in my perspective – and I’m not speaking for CIA, it’s just my opinion -- from the guys I spoke to, Islam was often in the backseat. I go and I learn the Koran, and translated it into Pashtu, because I thought I’d have to be so religious with these guys, and pray with them five times a day to get intelligence. But it was, “Now what can I do for you to get paid today? Brother, I’m struggling, I haven’t eaten in a while. I don’t feel like praying today… Let’s move on to me getting paid." You’re frustrated at times by the CIA. How would you like to see the agency change to be more responsive to officers in the field? Everyone takes the perspective that I was so frustrated and couldn’t no longer tolerate President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or pick your poison… That’s not the case. If you get to the final chapter, you see I went to the senior guy in charge me and said, “I’m having a hard time – what do you think I should do.” And he was open to me. I want to be clear: The CIA never pushed me out the door. It was, we’d love you to stay but if it’s not for you, Doug, it’s best you leave now. I brought upon myself all the stress: I insisted on keeping it at 11 the entire time. What happened to me is not indicative of what happens to every CIA officer. A lot of them manage their stress a lot better than I did. I just got to a breaking point. As far as what they can do: This is how it has to work. This is a bureaucracy. What are you gonna do – privatize intelligence? This is how it works. It took me this long to gain that perspective. I was happy to get the opportunity to serve, and now I’m gonna go do something else. How much did your life resemble the show “Homeland?” Really, the only similarity is that we were both in the same country, and may’ve spoken some of the same language. But I’ve watched the first episode – that’s the only one I’ve seen -- and it made me laugh. I’m not disparaging it, I hear it’s a great show and it’s very compelling. It’s exaggerated because it’s exciting and it sells tickets. I’ve seen every Bourne movie and every Bond movie. That doesn’t mean I can relate to any of it. But they’re enjoyable. I imagine the actual spycraft is a lot slower than in a movie. The tradecraft what we call it – it’s a lot slower and a lot more methodical. For instance, you see Carrie in the pilot episode running around, calling the assistant director of the NCS [National Clandestine Service] – I’m like coughing! If I was drinking milk it would have shot out of my nose. She’s a case officer! That’s 7,000 layers above her. She would never… and on an open line, by the way, from the Middle East… Paying an asset, in public, in front of a hostile government’s building… All the stuff that to us is so obvious and laughable. People say, “You really remind me of Carrie.” Hey, I don’t take that as a compliment at all. I’d also not seen the show “True Detective,” but people told me I reminded them of this guy Rust, played by Matthew McConaughey. I was like, Wow, that’s two for two in the dark realm, there.For a book that’s clearly been under the censor’s knife – words, sentences, entire paragraphs are blacked out -- “Left of Boom” is a very revealing document. Subtitled “How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” the book follows Douglas Laux from his hometown in rural eastern Indiana to the Middle East. And while the CIA has excised classified material about his missions in Afghanistan and Syria, his descriptions of his life stateside – constantly coming and going, dodging questions from friends, lying to girlfriends – are powerful and raw. Alongside the pain, much of the book has an understated, self-deprecating humor that makes it intensely readable. It’s both a CIA memoir set in the Middle East and the story of a confused young man in his 20s. Eight years in the agency, which included a tour in Afghanistan during the Afghan surge and another to Kandahar during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, left Laux at times energized by the work, at times frustrated by the CIA bureaucracy, and sometimes self-destructive. He lost friends and colleagues. During a break between Middle Eastern postings, he fell hard into alcohol and OxyContin. He’s also critical of President Obama’s Syria policy. Publishers Weekly called “Left of Boom,” written with Ralph Pezzullo, “a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today’s CIA.” Salon spoke to the Washington, D.C.-based Laux from an undisclosed location. In conversation, Laux doesn’t come across like a macho boaster or a disgruntled officer with an axe to grind. He’s surprisingly humble, cautious, and almost soft-spoken. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. You were a guy who couldn’t pick out Afghanistan on a map, right? And then 9/11 made a huge impact on you. Absolutely. I had planned to be an eye doctor when I first went to college. There was no Silicon Valley, nowhere people from the Midwest aspired to be. Now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. I had done pretty well in high school, and got into a decent university. I set my goals pretty high: I figured I’d be a doctor or something. And then 9/11 happened and I immediately threw all of that out the window, realized I needed to start understanding the world I was living in. It wasn’t all my little bubble anymore. A lot of the most poignant parts of the book show you dealing with girlfriends, not being able to tell people what you really do for a living. What’s that like? It must be brutal to have to lie to people close to you. I always found that the most poignant part of the book, too, but over the last week the entire media has cared about one page about Syria. And it is, and it’s why a good majority of my book. Every CIA book I had read previously – from all of the top director guys – I wondered, “Did we go through the same CIA? Where’s your personal life story? Share that!” And I get it – a lot of them were married, and it was about raising children overseas. But I thought, that’s pretty pristine. It sounds like Mayberry. It sounds fantastic – I’d love that! Because that’s not what I’m experiencing: This is really, really, really hard. I think I lay it out in the book: The CIA by its nature is insular – it has to be. It’s a secretive organization. That’s great. It’s sort of built into the mission – not really any other way for them to do things… I grew up in the CIA. Some people have come to calling me “Spy Kid.” I really became a man through the CIA. Even social experiences on the outside – whether it be with girlfriends or just friends, dealing with adult concerns now that you’re out of college – it was all new for me, too. You think of someone with a sales job, and what’s hard for them. It amplifies a couple levels when you’re lying to everybody, keeping secrets, trying not to reveal your true identity. So the easiest thing to do is to only hang out with other clandestine officers – people who already are in the know. It’s what a lot of people choose to do, and I understand why. But as you can probably pick up from the book, my personality’s pretty strong, and I still wanted to have a very robust social life, as a single 23-year-old. I brought a lot of it on myself by making that decision. Let’s talk about your life in the field a little bit. What made you successful infiltrating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Two things. The foresight for them training me in Pashtu was very smart – I do want to give the CIA credit for that. I talk about frustrations, but then as I matured, and looked back, I saw that my knowing Pashtu was really, really reaping benefits. Another was just persistence. I wasn’t there to check a box. I wasn’t there as a career move to help me advance. It looked at it as, “I’m going to do this regardless. It’s service to the U.S., not to the CIA.” You can tell, I’m a stubborn guy, I just stayed on target until mission complete. What did you learn about the psychology of people who go into terrorist groups? Did you get a sense of what motivates them? That’s an interesting question, because whether it’s Al-Qaeda, or Taliban, or ISIS, you’re talking about terrorist groups… You gotta ask what motivated them to begin with. A lot of people wish there was a silver bullet, or a simple answer: "Why do they hate us?," a lot of people ask me. The best, most perfect analogy is that terrorism is a lot like cancer. In that, cancer is a catch-all term for a lot of different diseases that are not really related. A lot of the media used “terrorism” because it’s complex. With terrorism, some of these guys are motivated because they’re sociopaths: That’s a good majority of them. Others because they were simply bored. Or because it was the thing to do. Or because, “My best friend joined, so I joined.” Or, “I wanted to experience some action, some adventure.” You tell this to some Americans and they say, “Oh, bullcrap, it’s all Islam.” Certainly for some, they take the hard-line stance. But in my perspective – and I’m not speaking for CIA, it’s just my opinion -- from the guys I spoke to, Islam was often in the backseat. I go and I learn the Koran, and translated it into Pashtu, because I thought I’d have to be so religious with these guys, and pray with them five times a day to get intelligence. But it was, “Now what can I do for you to get paid today? Brother, I’m struggling, I haven’t eaten in a while. I don’t feel like praying today… Let’s move on to me getting paid." You’re frustrated at times by the CIA. How would you like to see the agency change to be more responsive to officers in the field? Everyone takes the perspective that I was so frustrated and couldn’t no longer tolerate President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or pick your poison… That’s not the case. If you get to the final chapter, you see I went to the senior guy in charge me and said, “I’m having a hard time – what do you think I should do.” And he was open to me. I want to be clear: The CIA never pushed me out the door. It was, we’d love you to stay but if it’s not for you, Doug, it’s best you leave now. I brought upon myself all the stress: I insisted on keeping it at 11 the entire time. What happened to me is not indicative of what happens to every CIA officer. A lot of them manage their stress a lot better than I did. I just got to a breaking point. As far as what they can do: This is how it has to work. This is a bureaucracy. What are you gonna do – privatize intelligence? This is how it works. It took me this long to gain that perspective. I was happy to get the opportunity to serve, and now I’m gonna go do something else. How much did your life resemble the show “Homeland?” Really, the only similarity is that we were both in the same country, and may’ve spoken some of the same language. But I’ve watched the first episode – that’s the only one I’ve seen -- and it made me laugh. I’m not disparaging it, I hear it’s a great show and it’s very compelling. It’s exaggerated because it’s exciting and it sells tickets. I’ve seen every Bourne movie and every Bond movie. That doesn’t mean I can relate to any of it. But they’re enjoyable. I imagine the actual spycraft is a lot slower than in a movie. The tradecraft what we call it – it’s a lot slower and a lot more methodical. For instance, you see Carrie in the pilot episode running around, calling the assistant director of the NCS [National Clandestine Service] – I’m like coughing! If I was drinking milk it would have shot out of my nose. She’s a case officer! That’s 7,000 layers above her. She would never… and on an open line, by the way, from the Middle East… Paying an asset, in public, in front of a hostile government’s building… All the stuff that to us is so obvious and laughable. People say, “You really remind me of Carrie.” Hey, I don’t take that as a compliment at all. I’d also not seen the show “True Detective,” but people told me I reminded them of this guy Rust, played by Matthew McConaughey. I was like, Wow, that’s two for two in the dark realm, there.For a book that’s clearly been under the censor’s knife – words, sentences, entire paragraphs are blacked out -- “Left of Boom” is a very revealing document. Subtitled “How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” the book follows Douglas Laux from his hometown in rural eastern Indiana to the Middle East. And while the CIA has excised classified material about his missions in Afghanistan and Syria, his descriptions of his life stateside – constantly coming and going, dodging questions from friends, lying to girlfriends – are powerful and raw. Alongside the pain, much of the book has an understated, self-deprecating humor that makes it intensely readable. It’s both a CIA memoir set in the Middle East and the story of a confused young man in his 20s. Eight years in the agency, which included a tour in Afghanistan during the Afghan surge and another to Kandahar during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, left Laux at times energized by the work, at times frustrated by the CIA bureaucracy, and sometimes self-destructive. He lost friends and colleagues. During a break between Middle Eastern postings, he fell hard into alcohol and OxyContin. He’s also critical of President Obama’s Syria policy. Publishers Weekly called “Left of Boom,” written with Ralph Pezzullo, “a fascinating and engaging look inside the fast-paced and dangerous daily workings of today’s CIA.” Salon spoke to the Washington, D.C.-based Laux from an undisclosed location. In conversation, Laux doesn’t come across like a macho boaster or a disgruntled officer with an axe to grind. He’s surprisingly humble, cautious, and almost soft-spoken. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. You were a guy who couldn’t pick out Afghanistan on a map, right? And then 9/11 made a huge impact on you. Absolutely. I had planned to be an eye doctor when I first went to college. There was no Silicon Valley, nowhere people from the Midwest aspired to be. Now everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. I had done pretty well in high school, and got into a decent university. I set my goals pretty high: I figured I’d be a doctor or something. And then 9/11 happened and I immediately threw all of that out the window, realized I needed to start understanding the world I was living in. It wasn’t all my little bubble anymore. A lot of the most poignant parts of the book show you dealing with girlfriends, not being able to tell people what you really do for a living. What’s that like? It must be brutal to have to lie to people close to you. I always found that the most poignant part of the book, too, but over the last week the entire media has cared about one page about Syria. And it is, and it’s why a good majority of my book. Every CIA book I had read previously – from all of the top director guys – I wondered, “Did we go through the same CIA? Where’s your personal life story? Share that!” And I get it – a lot of them were married, and it was about raising children overseas. But I thought, that’s pretty pristine. It sounds like Mayberry. It sounds fantastic – I’d love that! Because that’s not what I’m experiencing: This is really, really, really hard. I think I lay it out in the book: The CIA by its nature is insular – it has to be. It’s a secretive organization. That’s great. It’s sort of built into the mission – not really any other way for them to do things… I grew up in the CIA. Some people have come to calling me “Spy Kid.” I really became a man through the CIA. Even social experiences on the outside – whether it be with girlfriends or just friends, dealing with adult concerns now that you’re out of college – it was all new for me, too. You think of someone with a sales job, and what’s hard for them. It amplifies a couple levels when you’re lying to everybody, keeping secrets, trying not to reveal your true identity. So the easiest thing to do is to only hang out with other clandestine officers – people who already are in the know. It’s what a lot of people choose to do, and I understand why. But as you can probably pick up from the book, my personality’s pretty strong, and I still wanted to have a very robust social life, as a single 23-year-old. I brought a lot of it on myself by making that decision. Let’s talk about your life in the field a little bit. What made you successful infiltrating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? Two things. The foresight for them training me in Pashtu was very smart – I do want to give the CIA credit for that. I talk about frustrations, but then as I matured, and looked back, I saw that my knowing Pashtu was really, really reaping benefits. Another was just persistence. I wasn’t there to check a box. I wasn’t there as a career move to help me advance. It looked at it as, “I’m going to do this regardless. It’s service to the U.S., not to the CIA.” You can tell, I’m a stubborn guy, I just stayed on target until mission complete. What did you learn about the psychology of people who go into terrorist groups? Did you get a sense of what motivates them? That’s an interesting question, because whether it’s Al-Qaeda, or Taliban, or ISIS, you’re talking about terrorist groups… You gotta ask what motivated them to begin with. A lot of people wish there was a silver bullet, or a simple answer: "Why do they hate us?," a lot of people ask me. The best, most perfect analogy is that terrorism is a lot like cancer. In that, cancer is a catch-all term for a lot of different diseases that are not really related. A lot of the media used “terrorism” because it’s complex. With terrorism, some of these guys are motivated because they’re sociopaths: That’s a good majority of them. Others because they were simply bored. Or because it was the thing to do. Or because, “My best friend joined, so I joined.” Or, “I wanted to experience some action, some adventure.” You tell this to some Americans and they say, “Oh, bullcrap, it’s all Islam.” Certainly for some, they take the hard-line stance. But in my perspective – and I’m not speaking for CIA, it’s just my opinion -- from the guys I spoke to, Islam was often in the backseat. I go and I learn the Koran, and translated it into Pashtu, because I thought I’d have to be so religious with these guys, and pray with them five times a day to get intelligence. But it was, “Now what can I do for you to get paid today? Brother, I’m struggling, I haven’t eaten in a while. I don’t feel like praying today… Let’s move on to me getting paid." You’re frustrated at times by the CIA. How would you like to see the agency change to be more responsive to officers in the field? Everyone takes the perspective that I was so frustrated and couldn’t no longer tolerate President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or pick your poison… That’s not the case. If you get to the final chapter, you see I went to the senior guy in charge me and said, “I’m having a hard time – what do you think I should do.” And he was open to me. I want to be clear: The CIA never pushed me out the door. It was, we’d love you to stay but if it’s not for you, Doug, it’s best you leave now. I brought upon myself all the stress: I insisted on keeping it at 11 the entire time. What happened to me is not indicative of what happens to every CIA officer. A lot of them manage their stress a lot better than I did. I just got to a breaking point. As far as what they can do: This is how it has to work. This is a bureaucracy. What are you gonna do – privatize intelligence? This is how it works. It took me this long to gain that perspective. I was happy to get the opportunity to serve, and now I’m gonna go do something else. How much did your life resemble the show “Homeland?” Really, the only similarity is that we were both in the same country, and may’ve spoken some of the same language. But I’ve watched the first episode – that’s the only one I’ve seen -- and it made me laugh. I’m not disparaging it, I hear it’s a great show and it’s very compelling. It’s exaggerated because it’s exciting and it sells tickets. I’ve seen every Bourne movie and every Bond movie. That doesn’t mean I can relate to any of it. But they’re enjoyable. I imagine the actual spycraft is a lot slower than in a movie. The tradecraft what we call it – it’s a lot slower and a lot more methodical. For instance, you see Carrie in the pilot episode running around, calling the assistant director of the NCS [National Clandestine Service] – I’m like coughing! If I was drinking milk it would have shot out of my nose. She’s a case officer! That’s 7,000 layers above her. She would never… and on an open line, by the way, from the Middle East… Paying an asset, in public, in front of a hostile government’s building… All the stuff that to us is so obvious and laughable. People say, “You really remind me of Carrie.” Hey, I don’t take that as a compliment at all. I’d also not seen the show “True Detective,” but people told me I reminded them of this guy Rust, played by Matthew McConaughey. I was like, Wow, that’s two for two in the dark realm, there.

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The one percent always ate us alive: How human sacrifice led to our society’s gross inequality

Religion has long been a particularly useful tool for social control, with the “fear of god” used in service of every despicable practice from slavery to war. A new study now reveals that religious rites – particularly, ritual sacrifice – helped create and maintain class stratification in ancient societies. According to researchers from the University of Auckland, Victoria University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, the findings reveal a “darker link between religion and the evolution of modern hierarchical societies” than once thought. The analysis focused on 93 Austronesian cultures, meaning peoples who originated in Taiwan, later settling in Madagascar, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. Researchers found that the more class stratification that existed in a society – elites on top, with the rest of the populace on the bottom – the more likely it was to engage in ritualistic killing. By employing “god-sanctioned” sacrifice – which entailed implicitly threatening the lives of many for supposed wrongdoing – the powerful helped frighten the masses into staying in proverbial line. Those at the top became, by proxy, gods among men and women, and they maintained those positions by doling out killings as they deemed necessary. “By using human sacrifice to punish taboo violations, demoralize the underclass and instill fear of social elites, power elites were able to maintain and build social control,” lead study author Joseph Watts stated in a press release. “[H]uman sacrifice provided a particularly effective means of social control because it provided a supernatural justification for punishment,” says study co-author Russell Gray. “Rulers, such as priests and chiefs, were often believed to be descended from gods and ritual human sacrifice was the ultimate demonstration of their power.” The method by which sacrifices were carried out reads like a horrifying laundry list of ways you would never want to go out. Ritual killings took the form of “burning, drowning, strangulation, bludgeoning, burial, being cut to pieces, crushed beneath a newly-built canoe or being rolled off the roof of a house and decapitated.” Once a society began using sacrifice keep the ancient equivalent of the 1 percent in the top slot and slaves at the bottom, the system became self-perpetuating. “What we found was that sacrifice was the driving force,” says researcher Quentin Atkinson, “making societies more likely to adopt high social status and less likely to revert to egalitarian social structure." The study, which was published in Nature, holds obvious implications for the role of religion – and, of course, fear – in our own top-down, elite-ruled culture. “Religion has traditionally been seen as a key driver of morality and cooperation,” states Watts, “but our study finds religious rituals also had a more sinister role in the evolution of modern societies.”

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James Franco’s lesbian vampires: For prestige drama overload, a self-aware Lifetime spoof could be the campy antidote

Terrible television is having a bit of a moment. Terrible, in a certain kind of way; that type of bad art that turns into a good laugh. For reasons that are certainly beyond me, outrageously terrible film and television often stumbles into the quadrant of neural receptors that read for hilarity. But trying to make something consciously bad is a difficult endeavor. IFC tried this a few years ago with “The Spoils Of Babylon,” a short series that starred Kristen Wiig and Tobey Maguire as star-crossed lovers, but that mini was always just self-aware enough; apparently, it was too detached for Wiig and costar Will Ferrell, who went on to star in the bonafide Lifetime film “A Deadly Adoption.” Now James Franco, of all people, is following in their footsteps. Directly because of “A Deadly Adoption”—and bolstered by his own turn on the long-running soap “General Hospital”—Vulture reports today that Franco’s remake of the Lifetime film “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger,” also on Lifetime, will not just be about a “danger-seeking” daughter, but also a “lesbian vampire romance.” Even typing those words is making me laugh. Tori Spelling played the lead role in the original; in the remake, she’ll be the wary mother, suspicious that something is up. From Lifetime’s website:

When theater major Leah (George), brings home the special someone in her life to meet her mom, Julie (Spelling), the family is met with a surprise when Pearl (Meade) comes to the door. Julie tries to embrace the idea of Leah’s new love interest, but she can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. Julie’s suspicions lead to a startling discovery about Pearl that puts Leah in serious danger. Will Julie be able to save her daughter from an eternity of heartache before it’s too late?

This is going to be terrible, and that is the point. Lifetime, to its bizarre credit, is a network that has never let the flame of the hilariously terrible go out. They made, for example, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle “Liz & Dick,” “Lizzie Borden Took An Ax,” with Christina Ricci, “Prosecuting Casey Anthony,” with Rob Lowe, and a remake of the iconic incest film “Flowers In The Attic”—making for some of the best laugh-watches of the last few years. Other network have tried to approach its level of calculated misfire—A&E, most notably, as it transitioned from the network that produced “A Nero Wolfe Mystery” to the one that aired “Duck Dynasty.” At least partly because of the unholy phenomenon known as the made-for-TV movie, television has long been a medium friendly to the so-bad-it’s-hilarious genre. I think partly, a cultivated appreciation for the terrible comes from an era of media scarcity, where you kinda just had to watch whatever was on TV or playing in theaters. In our era of Peak TV and prestige everything, that meta- level of enjoyment for something really terrible is a rarer pleasure. But it appears to be one we’re still looking for. “American Horror Story,” on FX, has an almost Teflon appeal, despite frustratingly bad storytelling and exploitative sex scenes, and that’s because Murphy is an adept of camp storytelling, whose academic lineage and destabilizing implications are better discussed by Emily Nussbaum at the New Yorker. “Empire,” with its implausible twists and turns, its melodramatic family dynamics, and over-the-top grating performances, is one of the most-watched shows on television. The twinned pleasures of overwrought and entirely un-self-aware storytelling have not been lost in the post-“Mad Men” world. This has had an interesting renaissance in “The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” the true-crime re-enactment series that captured audiences both for being deadly serious and for finding ways to exploit the bewigged and taupe-upholstered nostalgia for the ‘90s. Which is why immediately after that show concluded, NBC announced that they would be working with legendary “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf to create their own true-crime anthology miniseries. I love “Law & Order” and its many spinoffs, and they are captivatingly addictive. But they are the very definition of a guilty pleasure, living at the nexus between implausibility, exploitative melodrama, and extremely sexy public servants. Maybe what audiences have been looking for is a touch of trashiness; at any rate, even if we weren’t looking for it, studios appear ready and willing to deliver anyway.Terrible television is having a bit of a moment. Terrible, in a certain kind of way; that type of bad art that turns into a good laugh. For reasons that are certainly beyond me, outrageously terrible film and television often stumbles into the quadrant of neural receptors that read for hilarity. But trying to make something consciously bad is a difficult endeavor. IFC tried this a few years ago with “The Spoils Of Babylon,” a short series that starred Kristen Wiig and Tobey Maguire as star-crossed lovers, but that mini was always just self-aware enough; apparently, it was too detached for Wiig and costar Will Ferrell, who went on to star in the bonafide Lifetime film “A Deadly Adoption.” Now James Franco, of all people, is following in their footsteps. Directly because of “A Deadly Adoption”—and bolstered by his own turn on the long-running soap “General Hospital”—Vulture reports today that Franco’s remake of the Lifetime film “Mother, May I Sleep With Danger,” also on Lifetime, will not just be about a “danger-seeking” daughter, but also a “lesbian vampire romance.” Even typing those words is making me laugh. Tori Spelling played the lead role in the original; in the remake, she’ll be the wary mother, suspicious that something is up. From Lifetime’s website:

When theater major Leah (George), brings home the special someone in her life to meet her mom, Julie (Spelling), the family is met with a surprise when Pearl (Meade) comes to the door. Julie tries to embrace the idea of Leah’s new love interest, but she can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. Julie’s suspicions lead to a startling discovery about Pearl that puts Leah in serious danger. Will Julie be able to save her daughter from an eternity of heartache before it’s too late?

This is going to be terrible, and that is the point. Lifetime, to its bizarre credit, is a network that has never let the flame of the hilariously terrible go out. They made, for example, the Lindsay Lohan vehicle “Liz & Dick,” “Lizzie Borden Took An Ax,” with Christina Ricci, “Prosecuting Casey Anthony,” with Rob Lowe, and a remake of the iconic incest film “Flowers In The Attic”—making for some of the best laugh-watches of the last few years. Other network have tried to approach its level of calculated misfire—A&E, most notably, as it transitioned from the network that produced “A Nero Wolfe Mystery” to the one that aired “Duck Dynasty.” At least partly because of the unholy phenomenon known as the made-for-TV movie, television has long been a medium friendly to the so-bad-it’s-hilarious genre. I think partly, a cultivated appreciation for the terrible comes from an era of media scarcity, where you kinda just had to watch whatever was on TV or playing in theaters. In our era of Peak TV and prestige everything, that meta- level of enjoyment for something really terrible is a rarer pleasure. But it appears to be one we’re still looking for. “American Horror Story,” on FX, has an almost Teflon appeal, despite frustratingly bad storytelling and exploitative sex scenes, and that’s because Murphy is an adept of camp storytelling, whose academic lineage and destabilizing implications are better discussed by Emily Nussbaum at the New Yorker. “Empire,” with its implausible twists and turns, its melodramatic family dynamics, and over-the-top grating performances, is one of the most-watched shows on television. The twinned pleasures of overwrought and entirely un-self-aware storytelling have not been lost in the post-“Mad Men” world. This has had an interesting renaissance in “The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” the true-crime re-enactment series that captured audiences both for being deadly serious and for finding ways to exploit the bewigged and taupe-upholstered nostalgia for the ‘90s. Which is why immediately after that show concluded, NBC announced that they would be working with legendary “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf to create their own true-crime anthology miniseries. I love “Law & Order” and its many spinoffs, and they are captivatingly addictive. But they are the very definition of a guilty pleasure, living at the nexus between implausibility, exploitative melodrama, and extremely sexy public servants. Maybe what audiences have been looking for is a touch of trashiness; at any rate, even if we weren’t looking for it, studios appear ready and willing to deliver anyway.

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“Breastfeed is the best vaccine for everything!”: An anti-vax mom changes her tune, and the idiotic backlash begins

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Black Lives Matter protesters heckle Bill Clinton — and his terrible response was cringeworthy: “You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter”

While stumping in Philadelphia Thursday, former-President Bill Clinton was repeatedly interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters who criticized his wife and the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary, for peddling the junk-science theory of minority kids as "superpredators" who ought to be brought "to heel" during Bill's 1996 campaign. "I like protesters," Bill said Thursday. "But the ones that won't let you answer, are afraid of the truth." The protesters further challenged Bill on his 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act," which many have credited with the lingering effects of prison overpopulation on poor minority communities. "I had an assault weapons ban in it, I had money for inner-city kids for out-of-school activities, we had 110,000 police officers so ... the police would look like the people they were policing," Clinton argued, evidently uncomfortable with the line of questioning. He said he "talked to a lot of African-American groups" who told him to "take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs," adding, "We had 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals." "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got thirteen-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told protesters Thursday. "You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter." Watch the full exchange below:

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Democrats are better in bed: Apparently, this is one thing singles on the right and left can agree on

The upcoming election has voters considering the implications of each candidate’s potential presidency in addition to the shape their lives might look like in the near future. What if Donald Trump takes the White House? What about Hillary Clinton? As political discussions heat up, Americans are also being roused to consider the sexual and emotional factors that affect their political leanings. In a new study conducted by Zoosk, 6,000 American singles were surveyed in order to evaluate the impact of politics on their relationships. The survey was first administered in August 2015, and recently revisited to see how attitudes have evolved as the election race heats up. The survey found singles are increasingly willing to date outside their respective party, with 84 percent stating they see no problem blurring party lines when it comes to dating, a 4 percent increase from the initial survey in August. Respondents also reported favoring one party over another in terms of sexual performance. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Democrats are likely to be better in bed. The survey found that 55 percent of those surveyed believe Democrats have greater sexual prowess — and 23 percent of those were self-identified Republicans. No wonder so many people are willing to date/sleep outside their party lines. The survey also evaluated the desirability of each candidate to see who singles are most drawn to. Turns out, people reported that each party’s front-running candidates were the most dateable, no matter what their political leanings. Trump and Clinton received the highest votes in terms of potential dateability from voters, even if they were voting for different candidates in the presidential election. Politics aside, the frontrunners are probably the most desirable hypothetical love interests for reasons that have little to do with physical appearance. This could be due to a number of reasons that include our tendency to be attracted to dominant personalities. In terms of evolution, the alphas are the ones who are best able to provide, making them more appealing as partners. Power and influence are also qualities we find attractive in both leaders and in lovers. There’s a reason people swoon over frontmen in bands. Humor is oftentimes considered an important quality when it comes to a person’s level of attractiveness, simply because we like people who put us at ease and make us laugh. According to the Zoosk survey, 41 percent of singles find Trump to be the funniest candidate, followed by Sanders at 28 percent and Clinton at 14 percent. (Of course, there’s a fine line between being considered funny and being a joke.) The data from the survey suggests respondents have a greater interest in Trump than they do Sanders and Clinton for reasons that don’t have to do with political affiliations or romantic intrigue. Respondents seem intrigued by Trump for his controversial comments and over-the-top -- borderline cartoonish -- behavior. Trump seems to be a source of odd entertainment to the singles who were surveyed, with 38 percent saying they’d prefer to grab a beer with him over any of the other candidates. No word yet on whether it’s because they’d like to toss the beer at him.The upcoming election has voters considering the implications of each candidate’s potential presidency in addition to the shape their lives might look like in the near future. What if Donald Trump takes the White House? What about Hillary Clinton? As political discussions heat up, Americans are also being roused to consider the sexual and emotional factors that affect their political leanings. In a new study conducted by Zoosk, 6,000 American singles were surveyed in order to evaluate the impact of politics on their relationships. The survey was first administered in August 2015, and recently revisited to see how attitudes have evolved as the election race heats up. The survey found singles are increasingly willing to date outside their respective party, with 84 percent stating they see no problem blurring party lines when it comes to dating, a 4 percent increase from the initial survey in August. Respondents also reported favoring one party over another in terms of sexual performance. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Democrats are likely to be better in bed. The survey found that 55 percent of those surveyed believe Democrats have greater sexual prowess — and 23 percent of those were self-identified Republicans. No wonder so many people are willing to date/sleep outside their party lines. The survey also evaluated the desirability of each candidate to see who singles are most drawn to. Turns out, people reported that each party’s front-running candidates were the most dateable, no matter what their political leanings. Trump and Clinton received the highest votes in terms of potential dateability from voters, even if they were voting for different candidates in the presidential election. Politics aside, the frontrunners are probably the most desirable hypothetical love interests for reasons that have little to do with physical appearance. This could be due to a number of reasons that include our tendency to be attracted to dominant personalities. In terms of evolution, the alphas are the ones who are best able to provide, making them more appealing as partners. Power and influence are also qualities we find attractive in both leaders and in lovers. There’s a reason people swoon over frontmen in bands. Humor is oftentimes considered an important quality when it comes to a person’s level of attractiveness, simply because we like people who put us at ease and make us laugh. According to the Zoosk survey, 41 percent of singles find Trump to be the funniest candidate, followed by Sanders at 28 percent and Clinton at 14 percent. (Of course, there’s a fine line between being considered funny and being a joke.) The data from the survey suggests respondents have a greater interest in Trump than they do Sanders and Clinton for reasons that don’t have to do with political affiliations or romantic intrigue. Respondents seem intrigued by Trump for his controversial comments and over-the-top -- borderline cartoonish -- behavior. Trump seems to be a source of odd entertainment to the singles who were surveyed, with 38 percent saying they’d prefer to grab a beer with him over any of the other candidates. No word yet on whether it’s because they’d like to toss the beer at him.The upcoming election has voters considering the implications of each candidate’s potential presidency in addition to the shape their lives might look like in the near future. What if Donald Trump takes the White House? What about Hillary Clinton? As political discussions heat up, Americans are also being roused to consider the sexual and emotional factors that affect their political leanings. In a new study conducted by Zoosk, 6,000 American singles were surveyed in order to evaluate the impact of politics on their relationships. The survey was first administered in August 2015, and recently revisited to see how attitudes have evolved as the election race heats up. The survey found singles are increasingly willing to date outside their respective party, with 84 percent stating they see no problem blurring party lines when it comes to dating, a 4 percent increase from the initial survey in August. Respondents also reported favoring one party over another in terms of sexual performance. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed that Democrats are likely to be better in bed. The survey found that 55 percent of those surveyed believe Democrats have greater sexual prowess — and 23 percent of those were self-identified Republicans. No wonder so many people are willing to date/sleep outside their party lines. The survey also evaluated the desirability of each candidate to see who singles are most drawn to. Turns out, people reported that each party’s front-running candidates were the most dateable, no matter what their political leanings. Trump and Clinton received the highest votes in terms of potential dateability from voters, even if they were voting for different candidates in the presidential election. Politics aside, the frontrunners are probably the most desirable hypothetical love interests for reasons that have little to do with physical appearance. This could be due to a number of reasons that include our tendency to be attracted to dominant personalities. In terms of evolution, the alphas are the ones who are best able to provide, making them more appealing as partners. Power and influence are also qualities we find attractive in both leaders and in lovers. There’s a reason people swoon over frontmen in bands. Humor is oftentimes considered an important quality when it comes to a person’s level of attractiveness, simply because we like people who put us at ease and make us laugh. According to the Zoosk survey, 41 percent of singles find Trump to be the funniest candidate, followed by Sanders at 28 percent and Clinton at 14 percent. (Of course, there’s a fine line between being considered funny and being a joke.) The data from the survey suggests respondents have a greater interest in Trump than they do Sanders and Clinton for reasons that don’t have to do with political affiliations or romantic intrigue. Respondents seem intrigued by Trump for his controversial comments and over-the-top -- borderline cartoonish -- behavior. Trump seems to be a source of odd entertainment to the singles who were surveyed, with 38 percent saying they’d prefer to grab a beer with him over any of the other candidates. No word yet on whether it’s because they’d like to toss the beer at him.

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White House quick to jump to Clinton’s aid in first big kerfuffle with Sanders: Hillary more qualified than any recent candidate in history

With the Democratic presidential campaign moving to New York, it now feels like developments coming out of the recently not-so-newsworthy battle between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have sped up in less than the state's proverbial minute and have quickly taken an even more dramatic tone. First, Clinton's campaign was quick to jump all over Sanders' supposedly "disastrous" interview with the New York Daily News editorial board, blasting out the transcript to argue that Sanders is woefully underprepared to move past platitudes about many of his policy proposals -- including his signature refrain on breaking up the big banks. Reports soon followed that the Clinton campaign planned to paint Sanders as unelectable. When MSNBC's Joe Scarborough pressed Clinton on what CNN described as her campaign's move to "disqualify" Sanders in the eyes of Democratic voters after suffering seven losses to the Vermont senator, the former secretary of state called her rival unprepared, in so many words. “I think he hadn’t done his homework and he’d been talking for more than a year about doing things that he obviously hadn’t really studied or understood, and that does raise a lot of questions,” she said Wednesday morning. By Wednesday evening, Sanders had responded, rattling off five reasons he argued Clinton was "unqualified" to be President of the United States -- including her support of the current President's Trans-Pacific Partnership -- at a rally in Philadelphia. Thursday morning, Sanders defended his move towards aggressive campaigning, claiming he was merely reacting to reports of Clinton's plan of attack and vowing, "this campaign will fight back.” By midday Thursday, the New York-based media was busy marveling at Clinton's inability to swipe into the New York City subway and Ohio Governor John Kasich's ability to scarf down an entire deli menu, but by then the Sanders campaign had already doubled down on its newer, more aggressive style against Clinton and another Clinton, Bill, had already found himself in the middle of a whole new mini-scandal -- doubling down on the bunk premise of so-called superpredators to defend his notorious crime bill. But, back in Washington, D.C., where time apparently moves a whole lot slower, the White House was asked to respond to the first real back-and-forth of attacks out of the usually tame (and lame) Democratic contest Thursday afternoon. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House had Clinton's back in this battle. White House spokesman Eric Schultz said that “The president has said that Secretary Clinton comes to this race with more experience than any other non-vice president in recent campaign history," during a daily briefing today, adding that President Obama was "fortunate" to have Clinton serve as his secretary of state. The President himself has not yet commented on the battle between Sanders and Clinton.

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Lessons of the Panama Papers: Yes, the rich are different from us — they stole our money

F. Scott Fitzgerald apparently never told his Parisian drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway, “Ernie, the rich are different from us,” only to be rebuffed by the legendary comeback, “Yes, they have more money.” Like so many famous anecdotes, that one was cooked up years after the fact (probably by Fitzgerald’s posthumous editor, the literary critic Edmund Wilson). One reason that apocryphal exchange possesses such enduring cultural resonance is that both observations are true, and what sounds like a contradiction is not a contradiction after all. What have we learned so far from the Panama Papers, the largest volume of leaked documents in history, which have begun to peel the lid off a vast web of global greed, deception and iniquity among the highest level of the moneyed classes? For starters, they should serve to remind us how different the very rich are from the rest of us. Yes, it starts with the fact that they have more money, but it doesn’t end there. How did they get all that money, and what are they doing with it? Why do they have so much more money than the rest of us — unimaginably more, and on an unprecedented scale? Why do they seem so perpetually unsatisfied with their wealth, and so desperate to nurture it, shield it and multiply it? To quote someone else who confronted a society of immense injustice and economic inequality, a few years before Scott and Ernie’s imaginary Left Bank conversation: What is to be done? What are the Panama Papers? For starters, they represent a data dump of literally staggering size, many times larger than any trove of government or corporate secrets ever disclosed by Wikileaks or anyone else. They also represent one of the biggest scoops in the history of investigative journalism, one that left the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream American media completely flat-footed. More than a year ago, an anonymous source apparently provided the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with about 11.5 million files, or 2.5 terabytes of data, from the archives of Mossack Fonseca, a worldwide law firm based in Panama whose specialties include the creation of imaginative offshore tax havens and other strategies for “wealth management.” Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, the Munich newspaper decided to share the trove with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and ultimately with other large publications and broadcasters, including the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde in Paris and La Nación in Buenos Aires. According to the fascinating report published on the SZ website (in English), 400 journalists from more than 80 countries have spent the last year combing through millions of documents, rendering them into searchable text and cross-referencing names, dates, companies, transactions and other data points. I’m tempted to dive into a tangent about New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan’s agonized discussion of why the Times wasn’t involved in the ICIJ’s research effort and didn’t even know about the Panama Papers until their existence was first reported last weekend, and why it took three days for any related story to reach the Times’ front page. Let’s put it this way: The Gray Lady has a long and tormented relationship to the powers of big government and big capital, which largely speaks for itself. Outside of those teams of journalists and a few thousand people around the world who operate in and around the upper reaches of the financial elite, almost no one had heard of Mossack Fonseca before Sunday. It might be comforting to think of their designer-suited minions as lizard-people with forked tongues and the power to turn day into night, and black into white, when not cleaning their clients’ Louboutins with their tongues, and who can melt the will of mortals with the Black Breath of the Nazgûl. (Please note: That is hyperbole! And satire! Not libel!) But even they can’t make themselves disappear into the Olympian ether again, not after this. The Panama Papers reportedly cover more than 40 years of Mossack Fonseca’s operations on behalf of a who’s-who list of the global elite, including numerous important politicians and current or former heads of state, international criminals and star athletes, along with any number of less charismatic but equally wealthy corporations and individuals. Close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin appear in the Mossack documents (although Putin himself is not named), as do the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, members of the Saudi royal family, the president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Pakistan. The Icelandic prime minister, named as a Mossack client with offshore holdings, was forced to resign on Tuesday, before apparently reversing himself on Wednesday. It’s safe to say the ripple effects of these revelations will be felt for years, if not decades. Mossack evidently created some 214,000 anonymous offshore companies for its moneyed clientele — “shell firms” with sham directors and phony boards of directors, reports the SZ, designed such that their “true purpose and ownership structure is indecipherable from the outside.” In most of these cases, “concealing the identities of the true company owners was the primary aim,” and the documents suggest that Mossack routinely engages in business practices that “potentially violate sanctions, in addition to aiding and abetting tax evasion and money laundering.” Those are explosive charges, and one should of course be cautious in characterizing a powerful law firm that has tried to deny or deflect most of these allegations in a vigorous if laborious rebuttal, published in full on the Guardian’s website. In a long-winded letter signed by Carlos Sousa, the firm’s public-relations director, Mossack Fonseca insists it “does not foster or promote illegal acts,” respectfully disagrees with the conclusion that it sought to help anyone avoid paying taxes or launder dirty money, and claims to “have operated beyond reproach in [its] home country and in other jurisdictions” for 40 years. Furthermore, if any of its clients misused its services or did anything illegal, the firm professes itself deeply shocked and distressed (I am paraphrasing, but not by much). In short, Mossack says it did nothing wrong or at least didn’t mean to, and has recently added 26 new hires to its “compliance department” to ensure it continues to do nothing wrong in the future. Here’s what else the Panama Papers are: They’re just the tip of a really big iceberg. That’s true in several senses. First of all, although Mossack Fonseca is a major player in the lucrative international industry of helping the rich get richer, it’s only one company among the network of bankers and lawyers and honey-tongued advisers competing to grovel before the world’s elite caste and make safe their massive wealth. But there is another and more important sense too. Most of the Panama Papers stories so far revolve around relatively narrow legal questions of criminality, tax evasion and political scandal. I understand the journalistic imperative at work here: Stories linking Mossack’s shell companies to prominent individuals like Putin or Cameron, to outlaw regimes like North Korea and Zimbabwe, or to egregious criminal activity make legitimate headline news. Larger issues are at stake, however, than whether anyone committed a crime under the current rules of international business and commerce. As even the SZ’s hard-hitting piece takes pains to make clear, owning an offshore company is not illegal in itself, even when the intention is clearly to conceal the company’s real owners and true purposes. It was quite likely legal for Ian Cameron, the late father of Britain’s current prime minister, to avoid paying taxes in the United Kingdom by running his investment fund through a Mossack shell firm in the Bahamas. As the Guardian observes, "It is not illegal to own property through an offshore company," as the children of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif evidently do (four luxury apartments in London’s Park Lane, owned through shell companies in the British Virgin Islands). Let’s put it this way: Who writes the laws, in a society dominated by finance capital, neoliberal economics and the ideology of free trade and globalization? In a system, to quote the author I alluded to earlier, “under which the market is the regulator of social production,” including the production of culture and thought? (Yes, that would be V.I. Lenin, of October Revolution fame.) Whose interests are those laws meant to protect? Does the world of Mossack Fonseca and its ilk, where morphing, shifting corporate entities shepherd amazingly large sums of money in secret from one jurisdiction to another, sound like the operation of a free and fair market society where everyone who works hard or has talent has an equal chance to become Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian? Or does it sound like a rigged system designed to delude the powerless and make them accomplices in their own impoverishment, while ensuring the indefinite oligarchic rule of the rich and powerful? One of Lenin’s main points, in the essay “What Is to Be Done?,” was that the market system produces its own rules, its own ideology and its own self-justifying structure of thought. Those things are enforced upon the entire society, and you can’t do anything to fight the system until you get outside that ideological structure. One does not have to agree with Lenin’s concrete solutions (which I am not inclined to defend) to see that the problem is still with us. It may be the secret narrative behind the Democratic primary campaign between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, for instance: While they are nominally not far apart on many issues, Clinton is a member of the Mossack Fonseca-level social stratum, and represents its interests. Whatever his flaws as a candidate may be, Sanders isn’t and doesn’t. Fitzgerald never had that famous conversation with Hemingway, but in his 1926 short story “The Rich Boy,” he did write this: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.” We could rephrase that for the 21st century by saying that the rich are different because they have more money, and because they stole it from us and keep hoping we won't notice. They stole it from you and from me, and even more from billions of other, poorer people around the world. Wealth and poverty have always been with us, and probably always will. But the disparity we see around us, far greater than anything Fitzgerald's rich and innocent Jay Gatsby could have imagined, is an enormous historical crime, and on some level everybody knows it. The Panama Papers hint at the scale of that crime, and the scale of the coverup. Perhaps the rich still believe they deserve to be rich, and too many of the non-rich believe it too. But their desperate attempts to hide their wealth beneath armies of lawyers and nests of imaginary companies and mailing addresses on distant islands suggest otherwise. They're afraid that the illusion may be crumbling. They're afraid that one of these days we'll figure out how they got that money and decide to take it back.F. Scott Fitzgerald apparently never told his Parisian drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway, “Ernie, the rich are different from us,” only to be rebuffed by the legendary comeback, “Yes, they have more money.” Like so many famous anecdotes, that one was cooked up years after the fact (probably by Fitzgerald’s posthumous editor, the literary critic Edmund Wilson). One reason that apocryphal exchange possesses such enduring cultural resonance is that both observations are true, and what sounds like a contradiction is not a contradiction after all. What have we learned so far from the Panama Papers, the largest volume of leaked documents in history, which have begun to peel the lid off a vast web of global greed, deception and iniquity among the highest level of the moneyed classes? For starters, they should serve to remind us how different the very rich are from the rest of us. Yes, it starts with the fact that they have more money, but it doesn’t end there. How did they get all that money, and what are they doing with it? Why do they have so much more money than the rest of us — unimaginably more, and on an unprecedented scale? Why do they seem so perpetually unsatisfied with their wealth, and so desperate to nurture it, shield it and multiply it? To quote someone else who confronted a society of immense injustice and economic inequality, a few years before Scott and Ernie’s imaginary Left Bank conversation: What is to be done? What are the Panama Papers? For starters, they represent a data dump of literally staggering size, many times larger than any trove of government or corporate secrets ever disclosed by Wikileaks or anyone else. They also represent one of the biggest scoops in the history of investigative journalism, one that left the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream American media completely flat-footed. More than a year ago, an anonymous source apparently provided the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung with about 11.5 million files, or 2.5 terabytes of data, from the archives of Mossack Fonseca, a worldwide law firm based in Panama whose specialties include the creation of imaginative offshore tax havens and other strategies for “wealth management.” Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, the Munich newspaper decided to share the trove with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and ultimately with other large publications and broadcasters, including the Guardian, the BBC, Le Monde in Paris and La Nación in Buenos Aires. According to the fascinating report published on the SZ website (in English), 400 journalists from more than 80 countries have spent the last year combing through millions of documents, rendering them into searchable text and cross-referencing names, dates, companies, transactions and other data points. I’m tempted to dive into a tangent about New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan’s agonized discussion of why the Times wasn’t involved in the ICIJ’s research effort and didn’t even know about the Panama Papers until their existence was first reported last weekend, and why it took three days for any related story to reach the Times’ front page. Let’s put it this way: The Gray Lady has a long and tormented relationship to the powers of big government and big capital, which largely speaks for itself. Outside of those teams of journalists and a few thousand people around the world who operate in and around the upper reaches of the financial elite, almost no one had heard of Mossack Fonseca before Sunday. It might be comforting to think of their designer-suited minions as lizard-people with forked tongues and the power to turn day into night, and black into white, when not cleaning their clients’ Louboutins with their tongues, and who can melt the will of mortals with the Black Breath of the Nazgûl. (Please note: That is hyperbole! And satire! Not libel!) But even they can’t make themselves disappear into the Olympian ether again, not after this. The Panama Papers reportedly cover more than 40 years of Mossack Fonseca’s operations on behalf of a who’s-who list of the global elite, including numerous important politicians and current or former heads of state, international criminals and star athletes, along with any number of less charismatic but equally wealthy corporations and individuals. Close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin appear in the Mossack documents (although Putin himself is not named), as do the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron, members of the Saudi royal family, the president of Ukraine and the prime minister of Pakistan. The Icelandic prime minister, named as a Mossack client with offshore holdings, was forced to resign on Tuesday, before apparently reversing himself on Wednesday. It’s safe to say the ripple effects of these revelations will be felt for years, if not decades. Mossack evidently created some 214,000 anonymous offshore companies for its moneyed clientele — “shell firms” with sham directors and phony boards of directors, reports the SZ, designed such that their “true purpose and ownership structure is indecipherable from the outside.” In most of these cases, “concealing the identities of the true company owners was the primary aim,” and the documents suggest that Mossack routinely engages in business practices that “potentially violate sanctions, in addition to aiding and abetting tax evasion and money laundering.” Those are explosive charges, and one should of course be cautious in characterizing a powerful law firm that has tried to deny or deflect most of these allegations in a vigorous if laborious rebuttal, published in full on the Guardian’s website. In a long-winded letter signed by Carlos Sousa, the firm’s public-relations director, Mossack Fonseca insists it “does not foster or promote illegal acts,” respectfully disagrees with the conclusion that it sought to help anyone avoid paying taxes or launder dirty money, and claims to “have operated beyond reproach in [its] home country and in other jurisdictions” for 40 years. Furthermore, if any of its clients misused its services or did anything illegal, the firm professes itself deeply shocked and distressed (I am paraphrasing, but not by much). In short, Mossack says it did nothing wrong or at least didn’t mean to, and has recently added 26 new hires to its “compliance department” to ensure it continues to do nothing wrong in the future. Here’s what else the Panama Papers are: They’re just the tip of a really big iceberg. That’s true in several senses. First of all, although Mossack Fonseca is a major player in the lucrative international industry of helping the rich get richer, it’s only one company among the network of bankers and lawyers and honey-tongued advisers competing to grovel before the world’s elite caste and make safe their massive wealth. But there is another and more important sense too. Most of the Panama Papers stories so far revolve around relatively narrow legal questions of criminality, tax evasion and political scandal. I understand the journalistic imperative at work here: Stories linking Mossack’s shell companies to prominent individuals like Putin or Cameron, to outlaw regimes like North Korea and Zimbabwe, or to egregious criminal activity make legitimate headline news. Larger issues are at stake, however, than whether anyone committed a crime under the current rules of international business and commerce. As even the SZ’s hard-hitting piece takes pains to make clear, owning an offshore company is not illegal in itself, even when the intention is clearly to conceal the company’s real owners and true purposes. It was quite likely legal for Ian Cameron, the late father of Britain’s current prime minister, to avoid paying taxes in the United Kingdom by running his investment fund through a Mossack shell firm in the Bahamas. As the Guardian observes, "It is not illegal to own property through an offshore company," as the children of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif evidently do (four luxury apartments in London’s Park Lane, owned through shell companies in the British Virgin Islands). Let’s put it this way: Who writes the laws, in a society dominated by finance capital, neoliberal economics and the ideology of free trade and globalization? In a system, to quote the author I alluded to earlier, “under which the market is the regulator of social production,” including the production of culture and thought? (Yes, that would be V.I. Lenin, of October Revolution fame.) Whose interests are those laws meant to protect? Does the world of Mossack Fonseca and its ilk, where morphing, shifting corporate entities shepherd amazingly large sums of money in secret from one jurisdiction to another, sound like the operation of a free and fair market society where everyone who works hard or has talent has an equal chance to become Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian? Or does it sound like a rigged system designed to delude the powerless and make them accomplices in their own impoverishment, while ensuring the indefinite oligarchic rule of the rich and powerful? One of Lenin’s main points, in the essay “What Is to Be Done?,” was that the market system produces its own rules, its own ideology and its own self-justifying structure of thought. Those things are enforced upon the entire society, and you can’t do anything to fight the system until you get outside that ideological structure. One does not have to agree with Lenin’s concrete solutions (which I am not inclined to defend) to see that the problem is still with us. It may be the secret narrative behind the Democratic primary campaign between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, for instance: While they are nominally not far apart on many issues, Clinton is a member of the Mossack Fonseca-level social stratum, and represents its interests. Whatever his flaws as a candidate may be, Sanders isn’t and doesn’t. Fitzgerald never had that famous conversation with Hemingway, but in his 1926 short story “The Rich Boy,” he did write this: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves.” We could rephrase that for the 21st century by saying that the rich are different because they have more money, and because they stole it from us and keep hoping we won't notice. They stole it from you and from me, and even more from billions of other, poorer people around the world. Wealth and poverty have always been with us, and probably always will. But the disparity we see around us, far greater than anything Fitzgerald's rich and innocent Jay Gatsby could have imagined, is an enormous historical crime, and on some level everybody knows it. The Panama Papers hint at the scale of that crime, and the scale of the coverup. Perhaps the rich still believe they deserve to be rich, and too many of the non-rich believe it too. But their desperate attempts to hide their wealth beneath armies of lawyers and nests of imaginary companies and mailing addresses on distant islands suggest otherwise. They're afraid that the illusion may be crumbling. They're afraid that one of these days we'll figure out how they got that money and decide to take it back.

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How “American Idol” destroyed itself: The reality game show changed the rules for music — and made itself obsolete

In the summer of 2002, I was in a weird netherworld between college and real life, residing at home with my parents in Ohio while saving money and waiting for a Boston lease to start in September. Restless and out of sorts, I found stability and comfort from religiously watching the first season of "American Idol." The format of the show was addictive: Judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson played off one another and analyzed vocal performances—acting as the id, ego and superego, respectively—while each week, viewer votes and preferences would whittle down the talent field, one by one. By the time early September rolled around, I had moved east—and I recall anxiously making sure I had a functional TV so I could tune into the finalé, which Kelly Clarkson famously won over Justin Guarini. Nearly fourteen years later, I'm in a much different place in life, and so is "American Idol," which is winding down after fifteen seasons. In fact, the final episode airs on April 7, and it will crown one last winner—chosen from finalists Trent Harmon, La’Porsha Renae and Dalton Rapattoni—and feature appearances from past winners Clarkson and Carrie Underwood. Those two women represent arguably the show's biggest success stories, with the latter a huge country star and the former a beloved, multiplatinum pop favorite. However, the show has also spawned plenty of singers who've carved out decent musical careers, across all genres: hard rock (Chris Daughtry), folk-pop (Phillip Phillips, Kris Allen), country (Bo Bice, Scotty McCreery), blues-rock (Crystal Bowersox), R&B (Jordin Sparks, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard) and soul (Clay Aiken, Taylor Hicks). And then there are multi-hyphenates such as Jennifer Hudson, Adam Lambert and Katharine McPhee, who have found success in music and acting, or Kellie Pickler, who won a season of "Dancing With The Stars." That "American Idol" actually accomplished one of the things it set out to do—find and celebrate new talent—remains an integral part of its legacy. The track record of other U.S. singing competition shows is hit-or-miss: "The Voice" hasn't been as strong, despite drawing from a deep talent pool, although current pop darlings Fifth Harmony are alums of "The X Factor." (Internationally, things are much different, as both One Direction and Little Mix are reality music show alums.) Pre-fab pop music, whether formed by a TV show or a label, has always been stigmatized as being somehow less authentic or even fake. Although "American Idol" didn't completely erase this perception, it did wonders to underscore that it doesn't matter how or where a musician was discovered, as long as the talent is there. As a Stereogum post on the show points out, "American Idol" also revolutionized TV, in that it "hybridized two primetime mainstays, the game show and the reality show, creating a genre that has flourished to the point that we now accept it as one of the foundational pillars of primetime programming." Early in its tenure, this combination also produced big ratings for Fox, a sign that the show's underlying, addictive conceit—watching regular people possibly be plucked from obscurity and elevated to stardom—had vast mass appeal. It's easy to see why: "American Idol" first and foremost appealed to the collective, enduring affection people have for fairy tales. The show craftily let viewers learn about the personal lives of the contestants (albeit in a shiny, packaged way), which made for good TV and made them relatable. As a result, people were invested enough to pick up a phone (and, later, text) in support of a favorite singer. No wonder so many contestants developed loyal fanbases who, even to this day, follow and support their own idols. Although that same Stereogum article criticizes the show because it didn't change music, "American Idol" reflected tastes more than it refracted them. That often led to unpopular winners and early exits for favorites, of course, as well as accusations of voter racism and criticism when the show was suspected of trying to steer the results by employing ringers. But the ideals held up by "American Idol," that people have the ability to choose and support favorites, are influential. Sure, things could get dicey in terms of post-show success, but because the initial boost comes from popular support, not beancounters or Svengalis, there's at least the illusion of power in play. This idea would soon saturate the way we consume media, and it explains why the show became an online phenomenon, with writers and fans dissecting the show's every move on message boards and blogs. Indeed, it's important to remember the time period in which "American Idol" started was very different: Napster was kaput, Friendster was the charming online network of choice and MySpace was still several years away from widespread popularity. In other words, the show was pre-everything social and viral—e.g., Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Vine. "American Idol" was a casualty of the monoculture implosion as much as anything else. But as the show progressed, it also reflected pop's growing musical conservatism. Maura Johnston, one of the most incisive "Idol" analysts, pointed out this trend in a crucial 2015 Deadspin piece, "Wimpy White Dudes With Guitars Ruined 'American Idol,'" which examined the show's impact. "Indeed, recent seasons of 'Idol' were most defined by viewers hellbent on keeping a particular, and somewhat archaic, strand of pop alive: those who would, through hell or bad reception, unfailingly text their support for the most Jason Mrazian of the bunch," she wrote, adding a few sentences later, "These singers got their very own acronym from 'Idol' watchers—WGWGs, for White Guys With Guitars—and made the prospect of Another R&B Song Getting Covered In A Gimmicky, Overly Caucasian, YouTube-y Sorta Way grimmer and more inevitable by the week." That "American Idol" started to cling to and rely on reactive traditions points to several things. Johnston notes the "gap between the show’s graying demographics and the ever-younger pop market" which "would only increase as the years went on: Singers who got too modern or adventurous were dispatched earlier and earlier." And despite attempts at freshening up the show—cycling in new judges, switching up the format of elimination rounds—its basic premise remained static. That's not always fatal: After all, shows such as "South Park" and "The Simpsons" continue to enjoy long runs on TV with the same general framework. However, in the time since "American Idol" premiered, the media and music worlds have evolved significantly. People don't need the judges to be the critical mouthpieces anymore, because there's Twitter for live-tweeting their own snark; technology enables ambitious, talented musicians to create their own careers on Instagram, Vine or YouTube; crowdfunding sites and Bandcamp empower people to seek out and financially support favorites without interference. "American Idol" became passé, a quaint novelty of a time when a TV show had to manufacture a competition to find musical talent. Even the "American Idol" contestants themselves became empowered by the choice championed by the show, pushing back against perceived creative meddling (Clarkson's well-publicized battles with Clive Davis over musical control), label indifference (season 13 winner Caleb Johnson, who left Interscope and told Billboard he wanted "a deal with a new label that’s actually going to support me") and the management and label restrictions built into the contracts signed by contestants. Now more than ever, artists don't need to depend on the "American Idol" machine for notoriety or success: They can use the show as a springboard for bigger and better things. In the end, Frankenstein's monster ended up not only destroying its doctor—it made him obsolete.

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Jesse Eisenberg loves his “mercurial” roles: “It’s wonderful to perform in a way that the authenticity of the character is of paramount concern”

It is easy to pigeonhole Jesse Eisenberg as a smug know-it-all, not unlike many of the characters he plays: Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Social Network,” David Lipsky in “The End of the Tour,” even Lex Luthor in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” But that would be wrong. The hyperverbal Eisenberg is far more respectful and considerate of others in real life. He is down-to-earth, apologetic, and humble. Eisenberg does exhibit some coyness, but it’s not calculated; more self-censoring. In the new film, “Louder Than Bombs,” Eisenberg plays Jonah, who has just become a father as the film opens. However, he almost immediately abandons his wife and newborn to be a dutiful son and return to his parent’s home to sort through the photos of his late mother, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) a war photographer. In his father’s house, Jonah slowly re-connects with his sullen, teenage brother, Conrad (David Druid) and has some touchy discussions with his dad (Gabriel Byrne). While Jonah frequently behaves callously in the film, there is, it appears, a lack of control regarding his character’s emotions. Eisenberg’s subtle performance conveys Jonah’s insecurity adroitly. An early scene has Jonah tentatively smiling in an elevator while running out to get food for his wife, who just gave birth. Is he smiling because he is a proud father, or pleased to get away from his tired, hungry wife? Viewers will likely recalibrate their perception of Jonah by the film’s end. Eisenberg reveals a character far more troubled as he comes to know more about his family members. It is an affecting performance in a film that sneaks up on viewers by frequently shifting perspectives and narrative direction. The actor chatted with Salon about family, choices, and perceptions. Jonah is the first time you have played a parent on screen. What are your thoughts on parenthood and family, both in “Bombs” and in real life? I have siblings, so I know the complicated views of family members and what it means to be saddled for life with them. The movie presents a view of how we see our family members in intimate, inaccurate, and forgiving terms. “Bombs” is set after a tragedy, so it’s not depicting the histrionic reaction by the family, or the dissolution of what you imagine it to be, rather, it is about the hope to find some kind of comparative harmony. The film is conceived in scenes that take place in first and third person narratives, so you view these characters in private moments, but also when they are being spied on by their own family members. “Bombs” is about this manipulation of perspective in order to show the audience different sides of the family. Speaking of shifting perceptions. You tend to be typecast in hyperverbal, know-it-all roles. How do you want people to perceive you? I have no personal feelings on how I’d like to be perceived, or any clearly articulated thoughts about that. I feel embarrassed when someone other than myself summarizes my personality. It’s always an inaccurate rather than objective look of who I am. You also have a big budget blockbuster like “Batman vs. Superman” out one week, and an indie film like “Bombs” made by a foreign director out two weeks later. Do you feel you have to make deliberate career choices? My job doesn’t change based on the nature of the budget. It’s a thrill to play a lead character on the scale of “Batman.” I like a line one of the characters in “Louder Than Bombs” has about choice, in that you can make a choice, but you can’t plan what happens after you choose. Do you feel that Jonah makes bad choices? Do you think he has regrets? That’s right. What the film does so well is create characters behaving in amoral ways. They have a lack of closure. I like to play a character with mercurial behavior. As long as you don’t have to further the plot, it’s wonderful to perform in a way that the authenticity of the character is of paramount concern, and the story is dictated by their behavior. Do you have any regrets about a choice you made in your life or career? I can probably list a dozen in the last hour. I find it’s difficult to navigate being in the public so well. One the one hand, it’s wonderful that people see something I’ve been in. But I feel nervous I’ll misspeak, and that stuff ends up generating regret. Speaking of regret, the film is very much about characters coping with trauma. Jonah certainly alters his behavior as he learns things and observes his family members. Yes, the character is living in a gray area where he doesn’t understand his own behavior. It’s hard to play ambivalent. It’s more mercurial, but it’s also a lot of fun. You have conflicts, and in this film, he’s looking forward to adulthood. He loves his wife, but he’s insecure about a family tragedy he’s not dealt with it in an appropriate and thorough way. As an actor, it’s interesting to play both sides of that—the typical reaction [to trauma] in stories, and how we like watching heroic reaction to tragedy. But it’s challenging to decide which way to go—darker, less morally righteous reaction to decisions. I’m a playwright, and my most recent play has a character who is disturbed at best and despicable at worst. While his reactions are not kind, or outward thinking, as a result, they seem more authentic. Agreed! I like that Jonah lies to his wife during a phone call and then, in the same scene, delivers a painful truth to his brother. What are your thoughts about honesty, and little white lies? If the film is an accurate depiction of indirection, I think people lie for their unconscious need to save oneself. Jonah lies because he is having trouble coming to terms with the reality of his circumstances. He’s not thinking of his honesty, or a potential uncomfortable social interaction but to live in the delusions that allow him to exist every day. You don’t know if the character is acting out of selfish reasons. Is he yelling at his brother, his former self, or his current self? He had to abandon his family and wife he loves [to return home]. He has been prematurely thrust into adulthood. It could be that he’s censuring himself. Is his behavior stemming from his abdication of responsibility? In the film, Isabelle talks about her passion to take photos. Conrad writes what Jonah calls “weird and amazing” essay. What is your passion? What is something weird and amazing that you do? I am more on the "weird" than the "amazing" spectrum. I’m in a lucky position of being able to do a variety of things, but then I have to look for work every three months. So I do “Bombs,” then write a humor piece, and then act in something the scale of “Batman.” When I’m not acting… I ride a bike. That’s neither weird nor amazing. It’s more practical.It is easy to pigeonhole Jesse Eisenberg as a smug know-it-all, not unlike many of the characters he plays: Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Social Network,” David Lipsky in “The End of the Tour,” even Lex Luthor in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” But that would be wrong. The hyperverbal Eisenberg is far more respectful and considerate of others in real life. He is down-to-earth, apologetic, and humble. Eisenberg does exhibit some coyness, but it’s not calculated; more self-censoring. In the new film, “Louder Than Bombs,” Eisenberg plays Jonah, who has just become a father as the film opens. However, he almost immediately abandons his wife and newborn to be a dutiful son and return to his parent’s home to sort through the photos of his late mother, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) a war photographer. In his father’s house, Jonah slowly re-connects with his sullen, teenage brother, Conrad (David Druid) and has some touchy discussions with his dad (Gabriel Byrne). While Jonah frequently behaves callously in the film, there is, it appears, a lack of control regarding his character’s emotions. Eisenberg’s subtle performance conveys Jonah’s insecurity adroitly. An early scene has Jonah tentatively smiling in an elevator while running out to get food for his wife, who just gave birth. Is he smiling because he is a proud father, or pleased to get away from his tired, hungry wife? Viewers will likely recalibrate their perception of Jonah by the film’s end. Eisenberg reveals a character far more troubled as he comes to know more about his family members. It is an affecting performance in a film that sneaks up on viewers by frequently shifting perspectives and narrative direction. The actor chatted with Salon about family, choices, and perceptions. Jonah is the first time you have played a parent on screen. What are your thoughts on parenthood and family, both in “Bombs” and in real life? I have siblings, so I know the complicated views of family members and what it means to be saddled for life with them. The movie presents a view of how we see our family members in intimate, inaccurate, and forgiving terms. “Bombs” is set after a tragedy, so it’s not depicting the histrionic reaction by the family, or the dissolution of what you imagine it to be, rather, it is about the hope to find some kind of comparative harmony. The film is conceived in scenes that take place in first and third person narratives, so you view these characters in private moments, but also when they are being spied on by their own family members. “Bombs” is about this manipulation of perspective in order to show the audience different sides of the family. Speaking of shifting perceptions. You tend to be typecast in hyperverbal, know-it-all roles. How do you want people to perceive you? I have no personal feelings on how I’d like to be perceived, or any clearly articulated thoughts about that. I feel embarrassed when someone other than myself summarizes my personality. It’s always an inaccurate rather than objective look of who I am. You also have a big budget blockbuster like “Batman vs. Superman” out one week, and an indie film like “Bombs” made by a foreign director out two weeks later. Do you feel you have to make deliberate career choices? My job doesn’t change based on the nature of the budget. It’s a thrill to play a lead character on the scale of “Batman.” I like a line one of the characters in “Louder Than Bombs” has about choice, in that you can make a choice, but you can’t plan what happens after you choose. Do you feel that Jonah makes bad choices? Do you think he has regrets? That’s right. What the film does so well is create characters behaving in amoral ways. They have a lack of closure. I like to play a character with mercurial behavior. As long as you don’t have to further the plot, it’s wonderful to perform in a way that the authenticity of the character is of paramount concern, and the story is dictated by their behavior. Do you have any regrets about a choice you made in your life or career? I can probably list a dozen in the last hour. I find it’s difficult to navigate being in the public so well. One the one hand, it’s wonderful that people see something I’ve been in. But I feel nervous I’ll misspeak, and that stuff ends up generating regret. Speaking of regret, the film is very much about characters coping with trauma. Jonah certainly alters his behavior as he learns things and observes his family members. Yes, the character is living in a gray area where he doesn’t understand his own behavior. It’s hard to play ambivalent. It’s more mercurial, but it’s also a lot of fun. You have conflicts, and in this film, he’s looking forward to adulthood. He loves his wife, but he’s insecure about a family tragedy he’s not dealt with it in an appropriate and thorough way. As an actor, it’s interesting to play both sides of that—the typical reaction [to trauma] in stories, and how we like watching heroic reaction to tragedy. But it’s challenging to decide which way to go—darker, less morally righteous reaction to decisions. I’m a playwright, and my most recent play has a character who is disturbed at best and despicable at worst. While his reactions are not kind, or outward thinking, as a result, they seem more authentic. Agreed! I like that Jonah lies to his wife during a phone call and then, in the same scene, delivers a painful truth to his brother. What are your thoughts about honesty, and little white lies? If the film is an accurate depiction of indirection, I think people lie for their unconscious need to save oneself. Jonah lies because he is having trouble coming to terms with the reality of his circumstances. He’s not thinking of his honesty, or a potential uncomfortable social interaction but to live in the delusions that allow him to exist every day. You don’t know if the character is acting out of selfish reasons. Is he yelling at his brother, his former self, or his current self? He had to abandon his family and wife he loves [to return home]. He has been prematurely thrust into adulthood. It could be that he’s censuring himself. Is his behavior stemming from his abdication of responsibility? In the film, Isabelle talks about her passion to take photos. Conrad writes what Jonah calls “weird and amazing” essay. What is your passion? What is something weird and amazing that you do? I am more on the "weird" than the "amazing" spectrum. I’m in a lucky position of being able to do a variety of things, but then I have to look for work every three months. So I do “Bombs,” then write a humor piece, and then act in something the scale of “Batman.” When I’m not acting… I ride a bike. That’s neither weird nor amazing. It’s more practical.It is easy to pigeonhole Jesse Eisenberg as a smug know-it-all, not unlike many of the characters he plays: Mark Zuckerberg, in “The Social Network,” David Lipsky in “The End of the Tour,” even Lex Luthor in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” But that would be wrong. The hyperverbal Eisenberg is far more respectful and considerate of others in real life. He is down-to-earth, apologetic, and humble. Eisenberg does exhibit some coyness, but it’s not calculated; more self-censoring. In the new film, “Louder Than Bombs,” Eisenberg plays Jonah, who has just become a father as the film opens. However, he almost immediately abandons his wife and newborn to be a dutiful son and return to his parent’s home to sort through the photos of his late mother, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) a war photographer. In his father’s house, Jonah slowly re-connects with his sullen, teenage brother, Conrad (David Druid) and has some touchy discussions with his dad (Gabriel Byrne). While Jonah frequently behaves callously in the film, there is, it appears, a lack of control regarding his character’s emotions. Eisenberg’s subtle performance conveys Jonah’s insecurity adroitly. An early scene has Jonah tentatively smiling in an elevator while running out to get food for his wife, who just gave birth. Is he smiling because he is a proud father, or pleased to get away from his tired, hungry wife? Viewers will likely recalibrate their perception of Jonah by the film’s end. Eisenberg reveals a character far more troubled as he comes to know more about his family members. It is an affecting performance in a film that sneaks up on viewers by frequently shifting perspectives and narrative direction. The actor chatted with Salon about family, choices, and perceptions. Jonah is the first time you have played a parent on screen. What are your thoughts on parenthood and family, both in “Bombs” and in real life? I have siblings, so I know the complicated views of family members and what it means to be saddled for life with them. The movie presents a view of how we see our family members in intimate, inaccurate, and forgiving terms. “Bombs” is set after a tragedy, so it’s not depicting the histrionic reaction by the family, or the dissolution of what you imagine it to be, rather, it is about the hope to find some kind of comparative harmony. The film is conceived in scenes that take place in first and third person narratives, so you view these characters in private moments, but also when they are being spied on by their own family members. “Bombs” is about this manipulation of perspective in order to show the audience different sides of the family. Speaking of shifting perceptions. You tend to be typecast in hyperverbal, know-it-all roles. How do you want people to perceive you? I have no personal feelings on how I’d like to be perceived, or any clearly articulated thoughts about that. I feel embarrassed when someone other than myself summarizes my personality. It’s always an inaccurate rather than objective look of who I am. You also have a big budget blockbuster like “Batman vs. Superman” out one week, and an indie film like “Bombs” made by a foreign director out two weeks later. Do you feel you have to make deliberate career choices? My job doesn’t change based on the nature of the budget. It’s a thrill to play a lead character on the scale of “Batman.” I like a line one of the characters in “Louder Than Bombs” has about choice, in that you can make a choice, but you can’t plan what happens after you choose. Do you feel that Jonah makes bad choices? Do you think he has regrets? That’s right. What the film does so well is create characters behaving in amoral ways. They have a lack of closure. I like to play a character with mercurial behavior. As long as you don’t have to further the plot, it’s wonderful to perform in a way that the authenticity of the character is of paramount concern, and the story is dictated by their behavior. Do you have any regrets about a choice you made in your life or career? I can probably list a dozen in the last hour. I find it’s difficult to navigate being in the public so well. One the one hand, it’s wonderful that people see something I’ve been in. But I feel nervous I’ll misspeak, and that stuff ends up generating regret. Speaking of regret, the film is very much about characters coping with trauma. Jonah certainly alters his behavior as he learns things and observes his family members. Yes, the character is living in a gray area where he doesn’t understand his own behavior. It’s hard to play ambivalent. It’s more mercurial, but it’s also a lot of fun. You have conflicts, and in this film, he’s looking forward to adulthood. He loves his wife, but he’s insecure about a family tragedy he’s not dealt with it in an appropriate and thorough way. As an actor, it’s interesting to play both sides of that—the typical reaction [to trauma] in stories, and how we like watching heroic reaction to tragedy. But it’s challenging to decide which way to go—darker, less morally righteous reaction to decisions. I’m a playwright, and my most recent play has a character who is disturbed at best and despicable at worst. While his reactions are not kind, or outward thinking, as a result, they seem more authentic. Agreed! I like that Jonah lies to his wife during a phone call and then, in the same scene, delivers a painful truth to his brother. What are your thoughts about honesty, and little white lies? If the film is an accurate depiction of indirection, I think people lie for their unconscious need to save oneself. Jonah lies because he is having trouble coming to terms with the reality of his circumstances. He’s not thinking of his honesty, or a potential uncomfortable social interaction but to live in the delusions that allow him to exist every day. You don’t know if the character is acting out of selfish reasons. Is he yelling at his brother, his former self, or his current self? He had to abandon his family and wife he loves [to return home]. He has been prematurely thrust into adulthood. It could be that he’s censuring himself. Is his behavior stemming from his abdication of responsibility? In the film, Isabelle talks about her passion to take photos. Conrad writes what Jonah calls “weird and amazing” essay. What is your passion? What is something weird and amazing that you do? I am more on the "weird" than the "amazing" spectrum. I’m in a lucky position of being able to do a variety of things, but then I have to look for work every three months. So I do “Bombs,” then write a humor piece, and then act in something the scale of “Batman.” When I’m not acting… I ride a bike. That’s neither weird nor amazing. It’s more practical.

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