Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 814

Porn is not the enemy of good sex: Don’t blame a male “virility” crisis on browser histories

Time magazine’s latest cover story is illustrated with a hazy black and white silhouette of a naked woman wrapped in the arms of another person, followed by an ominous looking four letter term: Porn, with a glaring red X inside the “o” followed by “Why young men who grew up with internet porn are becoming advocates for turning it off.” It’s clear just looking at it that pornography is not going to fare well. Inside, the headline of Belinda Luscombe’s story is even more sinister: “Porn and the Threat to Virility.” (The issue is out now, but online, the article is behind Time's paywall.) It goes on to paint a portrait of young men who at one time were internet porn’s most avid consumers (largely of free pornography, rather than paying customers), who’ve now become self-described porn addicts and crusaders against such easily available XXX images. As Luscombe puts it, “A growing number of young men are convinced that their sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in porn when they were adolescents. Their generation has consumed explicit content in quantities and varieties never before possible, on devices designed to deliver content swiftly and privately, all at an age when their brains were more plastic–more prone to permanent change–than in later life. These young men feel like unwitting guinea pigs in a largely unmonitored decade-long experiment in sexual conditioning. The results of the experiment, they claim, are literally a downer.” For these men, such as Alexander Rhodes, who left a job at Google to start “community based porn recovery website” NoFap.com, porn became something that controlled him, rather than vice versa, with him using porn to masturbate 10 times a day by age 14. What’s missing, though, from this treatment of porn is that this isn’t the whole story of modern porn consumption, nor is it a fully accurate one. When her subjects pit porn against real life sex, Luscombe doesn’t question them—but she should. It’s a dangerous, slippery slope to slide from saying something to the effect of “Porn caused problems for me and my sexuality” to “Porn kills love”—but that’s exactly what many of these advocates, along with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” actor Terry Crews, are doing. Crews proudly sported a #PornKillsLove t-shirt in a smiling Instagram photo, a product created by the group Fight the New Drug, who Luscombe approvingly cites. Yes, in their worldview, porn is a “drug” one can easily become addicted to—and quite the vicious one. (Incidentally, Fight the New Drug is cited in court filings by an attorney who’s suing Apple for allowing him to access porn on its devices.) Fight the New Drug quotes a video Crews made called "Dirty Little Secret," where he says, “My issue was, and is with pornography, is that it changes the way you think about people, people become objects, people become body parts; they become things to be used rather than people to be loved.” But why are we singling out porn and only porn as a purveyor of sexism and dehumanization? Why are we discounting the millions of men and women who use porn and are still able to see people as people? Why aren’t we trying to backtrack and explore when porn went from being something used for recreational fun to being a problem in these men’s lives, rather than equating porn use, practically by definition, with addiction and harm? I’m not trying to argue that Crews and the men quoted in Time did not feel deleterious effects based on their pornography use; I’m saying that it’s quite possible those effects could have been avoided or lessened if they were given a context, whether at home and/or at school, about what porn signifies, and what it doesn’t. For instance, take the advice Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz, founder and president of The Child Mind Institute, offers at Time Ideas, where he urges parents to tell kids that sex in porn is not the same as sex in real life. He writes, “In the real world, people don’t relate to each other this way. They have complex needs, and sex is usually just one part of their relationship. Real people don’t have intercourse for hours at a time, and they don’t always use the language and have the attitude towards each other that are common in porn films.” Does that mean we shouldn’t watch porn? No, but that we should watch it with an educated eye and awareness that it’s not a documentary. There are ways we can critique the conflation of fantasy and reality when it comes to porn without blaming porn for things it hasn't actually caused (see Cindy Gallop’s TED Talk “Make love, not porn” and her website of the same name for an excellent example). For the men afflicted by what they call PIED (“porn induced erectile dysfunction”), porn is viewed as a monolithic beast that one can either enjoy casually or something they must abstain from entirely lest it interfere with their personal sexual relationships. This is a draconian either/or that ignores female porn viewers and ways of interacting with porn that might mitigate what they see as its ill effects. Are we just replacing one type of shame (at overusing porn) with another (missing porn)? That isn’t so far-fetched when you consider a rapturous post on NoFap by a “Fapstronaut” who will soon be getting married and “will be able to have a natural release with my wife.” But this comes at a cost to his psyche: “At times I felt like I missed P so much it was like mourning the death of someone.” By treating porn as a dangerous drug-like substance, we’re buying into the idea that all porn has negative consequences, and that porn is a relationship deterrent. Does porn have to be treated as something that only men, and only solo men at that, enjoy, or are curious about, when we know that plenty of women watch porn themselves? In fact, 85 percent of women in a 2013 survey said they watched porn as a “fantasy escape.” So presenting porn only as a male crisis, and men seeing porn as something they can only either surrender to or overcome, is a false dichotomy. I’m not denying the experience of Gabe Deen, founder of Reboot Nation, which describes itself as “a community of people who have discovered the negative effects of pornography.” But when he tells Time, “The reason I quit watching porn is to have more sex,” rather than unquestioningly accepting that porn abstainers get laid more often, we have to be clear that porn and sex can and do go hand in hand, so to speak, for plenty of viewers—whether that means watching porn on their own in addition to partner sex, or watching porn with a partner. I asked David J. Ley, Ph.D., author of “The Myth of Sex Addiction” and the forthcoming “Ethical Porn for Dicks, a Man's Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure,” who’s quoted in the Time story, for his take on it. He said he was dismayed by the way the story “elevated the anecdotal experiences of people without giving any credence to the need to be critical of a patient's self report.” Further, Ley strongly questioned the linking of not being able to get hard with a female partner with proof that there’s a threat to a man’s “virility.” According to Ley, “There are many reasons why a person might have difficulty getting an erection when they're with another person versus when they're masturbating to pornography. Those issues have to do with the fact that masturbation and sexual intercourse are two very different experiences that require different levels of activity, self-awareness, negotiation communication and integrity. It makes perfect sense that a man masturbating to pornography can relax and get an erection more easily versus when he has to be mindful and worry about whether he is a good lover with a partner. The difference has to do with the person, not the pornography.” This attitude was echoed by others I spoke with, such as Hernando Chaves, a college sexuality professor and licensed marriage and family therapist. “Rather than promote abstinence campaigns against porn, the better approach is implementing early education and porn literacy training,” said Chaves. “In my ten years as a college human sexuality professor, with more than 1,500 students, I have never had a student state they were taught about porn, the realities of the adult industry, how to use porn as a pleasure enhancer or taught how to feel good about their sexual explorations with porn. It’s a failure of the parenting, educational, and societal systems to turn a blind eye to young adolescents who are seeking out porn yet have no opportunity or platform to process or discuss the material they discover.” In other words, that men like the ones Time profiled were stuck navigating the vast array of porn at their fingertips completely alone is what we should be more concerned about, rather than considering porn itself the culprit. Indeed, it’s alarming and disturbing that an 11th grade student told Peggy Orenstein, as reported in her new book “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape,” “I watch porn because I’m a virgin and I want to figure out how sex works.” But is the problem porn—or that this girl feels she has no other options to learn about sex? I strongly believe it’s the latter. Shira Tarrant, Ph.D., a professor at California State University, Long Beach and author of “The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know,” told Salon, “It is definitely possible—and important—to advocate for men moving away from compulsive porn use. That does not mean we have to demonize all porn in the process. It’s a lot like video games or food in that regard. People find a lot of pleasure in both but, when there’s a problem, we want to support people in healthier lifestyles without eradicating video games or dinner.” It’s telling that Deem explains that when he was a teenager, porn “was normal and it was everywhere. It wasn’t something we were ashamed of.” That statement could be read as him wishing he and his peers had indeed felt more shame, which I hope is not something we want to add to the burden of today’s teens and young men and women. It also goes back to something Ley told me: that the Time article was “heteronormative” and focused only on “extremely heterosexual, procreation focused views of sexuality.” Of the men complaining about their porn addiction issues, Ley observed, “They are all almost exclusively reporting erectile dysfunction when they are trying to have sex with a woman. These don't appear to be issues in the gay community. Why is that? Perhaps it is because neither porn use nor erectile dysfunction are issues that are significantly shamed in the homosexual community.” Just as the Time story went online, I was attending sexuality conference CatalystCon, where I got to hear porn producer (link NSFW) Kate Sinclaire offer a timely lecture on the need for media literacy when it comes to pornography, which is all too often treated the way this article does: as an evil lurking in society we must maintain constant vigilance over. When I asked her if porn is indeed a threat to “virility,” she said we need to understand what goes into making porn in order to decrease its power over viewers like the men Time profiled. “We have this pressure that people who have a penis need to be able to get hard at the drop of a hat, any time and anywhere, especially if a person they’re attracted to is present,” explained Sinclaire. “The men in the Time article are complaining of an inability to perform after using porn as a reference for years upon years. Porn typically displays something that isn’t real: instant erections. Almost always, behind the scenes, dicks are not automatically hard. There’s fluffing, there’s breaks, some people even use medications sometimes. These men are seeing that they should just automatically have an erection and, when they inevitably don’t, they think this means that they are broken." "If they aren’t living up to what they have seen in porn, does that mean they have failed as a lover? Of course not! But these viewers might not have had the real life experience to understand that erections can take time, and that sometimes they don’t come at all, and that’s okay," Sinclaire added. "So much of an erection comes from being comfortable and relaxed, and not constantly thinking ‘oh my god my erection isn’t instant I have failed as a lover.’” In other words, to reiterate my earlier point, porn shouldn’t be used as sex education, because that’s not its intended purpose. Perhaps asking burgeoning porn viewers to watch with a more critical, discerning eye, seems like it might be ruining the fantasy, but clearly, the pleasure they once got from porn has morphed into something more unpleasant. We need to lessen the stigma and shame around porn use.  Since porn isn’t going anywhere, we need to give young people tools to grapple with it, to know that “porn” is an industry with as much variety as mainstream television or movies. Just as we need to talk to teens about airbrushing and how the bodies they see in magazines shouldn’t be unthinkingly emulated, so too do we need to talk about porn with kids—not as a boogeyman, but as a normal part of many people’s lives.

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How Muslim Americans are making their presence felt this election

The political future of the American Muslim vote seems anchored in the Democratic Party after years of enduring Islamophobia and bigotry from the Republican Party. This year’s election cycle marked the return of American Muslims to national politics after more than a decade of political dormancy. In many ways it has already exceeded the political participation of the 2000 elections, when Muslims formed a sought after voting bloc in support of the Republican, George W. Bush. Led by a new generation that came of age after 9/11, Muslims have shifted their support to the Democratic presidential candidates seeking the outsized voting power of political minorities to help defeat an increasingly white, male and overwhelmingly evangelical Christian Republican party. It’s not difficult to see what has accounted for this change. The Republican Party has pushed out almost any support it once had among Muslims. Whereas 50,000 Muslims helped deliver George W. Bush enough votes to contest the Florida election results in 2000. As Sami Al-Arian explained for Alternet, Muslims mobilized after Bush promised to end the practice of secret evidence, a pledge he reneged on after 9/11. Today’s Muslim voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, and increasingly leaning towards Bernie Sanders. Along with outright Republican hostility, the changing nature of the national debate over race and the increasing diversification of younger generations of Americans have emboldened American Muslims to be more vocal in their politics and engage with it at a grassroots level. “A lot of people I talked to about Bernie Sanders, they would say, Bernie who?’” said Ahmed Bedier, founder of United Voices for America, a non-profit, and of the Facebook group Muslim Americans for Bernie Sanders. Bedier has helped with the Sanders campaign in his personal capacity, so as not to violate the political neutrality of UVA. “It wasn’t until May or June that I started paying attention to his message, which is a lot of the things I was working for, that we need a political revolution, that we need more people in the political process, more diversity in government.” Political organizers like Bedier support Sanders for more reasons than his defense of Muslims. They too share the notion that the economic and political system is rigged to benefit the top 1 percent of society, and they have been motivated by the belief that two or more seemingly unrelated sociopolitical issues exist because they originate from many of the same systemic problems. While the public has engaged in a well-publicized debate about the effects of the 1994 Violent Crimes Act on the black community, the 1996 Secret Evidence Act harmed the American Muslim community in much the same way. “They would arrest you and say the evidence is so secret and classified that we can’t tell you what it is,” said Bedier. “The Secret Evidence Act disproportionately impacted the Muslim community and we need to bring attention to that because it was used so many times to unjustly put people away.” “I think younger Muslim voters see themselves in a natural alliance with other communities of color and in alliance with social justice issues,” said Dalia Mogahed, a researcher at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) who worked on a January poll of Muslim political and social attitudes. “For those reasons they identify with Bernie Sanders, they identify with his progressive politics.” The poll (PDF) showed that among Muslims 18-24 years old, 78 percent supported Sanders. Among the 25-44 demographic, that number decreased to 44 percent support for Sanders. Overall though, Clinton was the most favored candidate, enjoying support levels of 40 percent of American Muslims polled, while Sanders came in second with 27 percent. There have been just three national polls looking at the political and social attitudes of American Muslims during the 2016 election cycle. “I would say it’s about 85 percent Sanders and the rest Clinton, in the circle of people I know,” said Aisha Yaqoob, an organizer in the Georgia Muslim Voter Project. She said she learned about Sanders while listening to Congressional Dish, a podcast hosted by Jennifer Briney that strictly discussed the fine text of political policy. “I remember she had mentioned something very controversial and she had a clip from Sanders in the podcast and I had never heard of him until that clip and after that I thought I really liked what he said. And he announced about a week later that he was running.” Yaqoob said she was initially a Clinton supporter but switched to Sanders a few days after he announced his candidacy. Initially attracted to his values, she said that as the campaign continued, his political messaging further reinforced her support. “His messages about equality, minorities being treated equally, reaching out to different communities, all of that put together made me realize Bernie Sanders was the guy I wanted to vote for,” she said. The question now is whether Sanders can turn grassroots Muslim support for his politics into momentum at the polls. CAIR performed two sets of polls of registered Muslim voters, one before Super Tuesday and one after, to gain insight into the bloc’s voting trends. The polls showed a slight increase of support for Sanders. Prior to Super Tuesday, Clinton commanded 52 percent of the Muslim vote among all presidential candidates, while Sanders received only 22 percent support. The post-Super Tuesday poll showed Sanders’s support rising to 25 percent while Clinton’s support dropped among registered voters to 47 percent. While not as close a race as the ISPU poll presented, there was a marked change among Muslim voters. “While statistically I cannot say there has been any major shift, it’s hard not to acknowledge the Sanders campaign’s stronger outreach to Muslim voters, his willingness to directly address and be associated with local Muslim leaders and activists in the primary states he is campaigning in,” said Robert McCaw, Department Manager of Government Affairs at CAIR. “It must have some effect, and did change the outcome in Michigan.” The importance of Michigan to the Sanders campaign could not be overstated. It was his biggest win to date and partly the consequence of wooing Muslim voters. The state is home to the largest population of Arabs, who are majority Muslim, in the country. Dearborn, where Sanders beat Clinton by 20 points, is the largest concentration of Arabs in America. Sanders specifically appealed to the Arab and Muslim population, launching radio ads in Arabic, featuring a campaign poster which included an Arabic translation of his message, “Not me, us” and being the only remaining presidential candidate to speak in a mosque. “It was so refreshing to see a presidential candidate go to a mosque, and at the point President Obama had never been to a mosque, and he went there and called upon all the other candidates to stop the scapegoating of Muslims. That showed true leadership,” said Bedier, who attended his speech at the Masjid Muhammad in Washington, D.C. in December. “After the San Bernardino incident, we felt this was something that helped change the tone of the rhetoric.” The greatest challenge, however, will be what comes of the dramatic political shift the Muslim community is currently experiencing in America. Demonized by nearly all the Republican presidential candidates, it is now preparing to mobilize to prevent a Donald Trump or Ted Cruz presidency. But that is only the beginning, according to Wardah Khalid, a Middle East Policy analyst and political organizer. “Honestly, the president doesn’t matter that much. And a lot of that is because his hands are tied, he’s surrounded by people, there’s lots of political pressure,” she said. “At the end of the day, who is going to stay in power longer? Its members of Congress. So the Muslim American community has a really long way to go and not just focus on the presidential elections.” She recounted a Muslim county judge in Texas who focused her campaign on other minority communities like Latinos, Tejanos and blacks because Muslim voters weren’t as engaged in the local level elections. Even during the political jockeying that surrounded the Iran deal, ostensibly a political issue that should interest Muslims, she found herself wondering where all the Muslim lobbying groups were. Nevertheless, the split between Muslim voters over Clinton and Sanders was a hopeful sign for her. “It’s been interesting watching people get divided between Bernie and Hillary,” she said. “People care about issues and they care about policies, they don’t care whether the candidate is male or female or if he’s Jewish or Christian. They care about important issues and I think people in the media and establishment are surprised by that.”

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“You can’t be racist and be a Christian! You all have gotta choose”: Ben Harper opens up about activism, racism and how police brutality “threatens democracy in a very specific way”

Ben Harper was at a park in West Los Angeles talking to some young skaters there when it finally hit him: For all the talk about the shooting of young black men, going back to Trayvon Martin, most people were still walking around the issue. To him, these killings were murder, and he wanted the language to be as blunt as possible. When Harper went home, he wrote the song “Call It What It Is,” which became the title track to an album that comes out on April 8, a few days after he begins a tour with the Innocent Criminals. Harper, who grew up in Claremont, a college town east of Los Angeles, has combined folk, blues, reggae and social protest since the early ‘90s; he’s also a first-rate slide guitarist. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his album with Charlie Musselwhite, the blues guitarist, singer, and harmonica player. His last album, “Childhood Home,” was collaboration with his mother, Ellen. Salon spoke to Harper from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. https://youtu.be/IjlzXEtOnh8 Your title track is about a very serious subject. How long have you been aware of the problem of police harassment? Was this was something you experienced in your own childhood? How long does it go back for you? All my life. And I think that’s why the situation bubbles over. The solution doesn’t match the problem. You’d be hard-pressed to interview any black male who has not dealt with it in some form. It’s a problem that’s been suffocated and compressed, and then it’s released. Not to mention the deaths/murders themselves. You grew up in Claremont, right? I did. And you dealt with this problem there. It just goes to show, it’s everywhere. Big cities, small cities; East, West. It’s inescapable. The only way to change things is to be open to being changed. It’s a tough gig; there are incredible individuals in law enforcement who I respect and admire. Without them, it would be freakin’ anarchy in the streets. But that’s not going to pull me away from my resolve that we have a problem. I can definitely see the two things simultaneously. Let’s talk about the title track a little bit. Where did the idea come from – what pushed you over into writing the song? It just came out of conversation and dialogue. There was a time when it seemed to be getting worse, not better. You can’t let situations like that stand. Part of your frustration in the song is that people were saying something bad was happening, but weren’t calling it murder. They were stepping around the problem. Good point. Some tip-toeing was going on. So it was the denial that drove you crazy? There was a consistent collective dialogue – to the point where I just blurted it out. “Why don’t they stop pretending it’s not murder?” I wish we’d just call it what it is. So I just went home and wrote the song. Tell us a little about the video, where you spray paint the lyrics on a wall. That’s my dear friend Andy Nolan. He’s a renowned graffiti artist. Oh man, I could never write that good. I just couldn’t…. It was so different seeing the words on the wall. Your music has been about politics and social issues from the beginning. How did you get interested in extending that tradition? It’s been a part of my family upbringing. I do come by that honestly. My family was always politically active, socially active. It was part of my everyday conversation, what went on at my house every day. Not necessarily with friends: We were allowed to be kids. But dinner-table conversation, in the home, with my parents’ friends, and my grandparents… My family has a music store in Claremont called the Claremont Folk Music Center, and it’s not only for folk music; it’s the center for a good deal of activism and social awareness and dialogue and conversation. It’s amazing how much progressive activity starts out of that kind of dialogue. Sounds like you were aware, growing up, of the roots of politics and folk music. Yeah – very much aware of that. Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs – all the way up to Bob Marley and Rage Against the Machine. Those are the names you want to summon. Your album with Charlie Musselwhite was pretty great. Did that change you musically, deepen your connection to the blues at all? Yeah – for sure. The blues was always my first instincts – the first music I pursued. I just hounded it. In my late teens and early ’20s, it was my life’s mission to sit at the hem of the garment of as many of the remaining true blues men. I spent a winter with Dave Myers of The Aces, in Chicago; I went and sat at the feet of Brownie McGhee up in Oakland… John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal was my first professional paying gig: I was 20-years-old and he invited me to join his band…. In many ways that’s still the top of the mountain for me. Blind Joe Hill, an L.A. blues musician. I just went to it. Now, when you get a chance to collaborate with the guys who lived and breathed it… Yes, it definitely deepened my connection. You can’t collaborate with Charlie Musselwhite and not have your roots with the blues deepened. Let’s go back to politics. You’ve sung a lot of songs about political and social issues over the years. Is there one you’re especially proud of, that had a real impact? I’m really proud of “Better Way.” I think that’s the optimistic side of all of it. The Dixie Chicks are closing their shows with it right now, which I was incredibly honored to hear. Now I’m just bragging, so pardon that. But it’s a point of excitement – my songs don’t get covered all that often. Also “With My Own Two Hands” is another kind of optimistic song…. But at the same time, “Call It What it Is,” “Black Rain,” “Like a King,” “How Many Miles Must We March”… It’s hard or me to pick on, you know? “Call It Like It Is” is not optimistic, but it’s powerful. How do you hope people will cone out of hearing that song? Do you want to enrage people? You can’t let what’s going on – whether it’s Michael Brown or Walter Scott, where the guy just casually drops a taser near a dead body… It can’t stand! It can’t go unchecked. We can’t – it’s just too dangerous. Race relations is just too integral a part of modern democracy. And this threatens democracy in a very specific way. And it’s just a matter of music being the people’s justice, in a way. Music can make people feel comfortable, it can make people feel angry, it can make people want to join together in a group… And it can also be nothing but background noise – and I understand all of that. What do I hope for the song? This is not what I hope for the song – it’s what I hope for the country, for the planet, for America. That it shifts policy. There has to be policy implementation for racial relations in this country. Whether that’s in education – at public and private, staring at grade zero – or whether that’s in the way law enforcement deal with race relations. You’re hoping for change at every level. Let’s not be foolish enough to think a song is gonna do that! This is just what I want for our country. But it all starts with us calling it what it is. Well I hope the song stirs people up. And also: You can’t be racist and be a Christian! You all have gotta choose! ... You have to choose what you’re gonna be. You can’t be both.Ben Harper was at a park in West Los Angeles talking to some young skaters there when it finally hit him: For all the talk about the shooting of young black men, going back to Trayvon Martin, most people were still walking around the issue. To him, these killings were murder, and he wanted the language to be as blunt as possible. When Harper went home, he wrote the song “Call It What It Is,” which became the title track to an album that comes out on April 8, a few days after he begins a tour with the Innocent Criminals. Harper, who grew up in Claremont, a college town east of Los Angeles, has combined folk, blues, reggae and social protest since the early ‘90s; he’s also a first-rate slide guitarist. In 2014 he won a Grammy for his album with Charlie Musselwhite, the blues guitarist, singer, and harmonica player. His last album, “Childhood Home,” was collaboration with his mother, Ellen. Salon spoke to Harper from New York. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. https://youtu.be/IjlzXEtOnh8 Your title track is about a very serious subject. How long have you been aware of the problem of police harassment? Was this was something you experienced in your own childhood? How long does it go back for you? All my life. And I think that’s why the situation bubbles over. The solution doesn’t match the problem. You’d be hard-pressed to interview any black male who has not dealt with it in some form. It’s a problem that’s been suffocated and compressed, and then it’s released. Not to mention the deaths/murders themselves. You grew up in Claremont, right? I did. And you dealt with this problem there. It just goes to show, it’s everywhere. Big cities, small cities; East, West. It’s inescapable. The only way to change things is to be open to being changed. It’s a tough gig; there are incredible individuals in law enforcement who I respect and admire. Without them, it would be freakin’ anarchy in the streets. But that’s not going to pull me away from my resolve that we have a problem. I can definitely see the two things simultaneously. Let’s talk about the title track a little bit. Where did the idea come from – what pushed you over into writing the song? It just came out of conversation and dialogue. There was a time when it seemed to be getting worse, not better. You can’t let situations like that stand. Part of your frustration in the song is that people were saying something bad was happening, but weren’t calling it murder. They were stepping around the problem. Good point. Some tip-toeing was going on. So it was the denial that drove you crazy? There was a consistent collective dialogue – to the point where I just blurted it out. “Why don’t they stop pretending it’s not murder?” I wish we’d just call it what it is. So I just went home and wrote the song. Tell us a little about the video, where you spray paint the lyrics on a wall. That’s my dear friend Andy Nolan. He’s a renowned graffiti artist. Oh man, I could never write that good. I just couldn’t…. It was so different seeing the words on the wall. Your music has been about politics and social issues from the beginning. How did you get interested in extending that tradition? It’s been a part of my family upbringing. I do come by that honestly. My family was always politically active, socially active. It was part of my everyday conversation, what went on at my house every day. Not necessarily with friends: We were allowed to be kids. But dinner-table conversation, in the home, with my parents’ friends, and my grandparents… My family has a music store in Claremont called the Claremont Folk Music Center, and it’s not only for folk music; it’s the center for a good deal of activism and social awareness and dialogue and conversation. It’s amazing how much progressive activity starts out of that kind of dialogue. Sounds like you were aware, growing up, of the roots of politics and folk music. Yeah – very much aware of that. Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs – all the way up to Bob Marley and Rage Against the Machine. Those are the names you want to summon. Your album with Charlie Musselwhite was pretty great. Did that change you musically, deepen your connection to the blues at all? Yeah – for sure. The blues was always my first instincts – the first music I pursued. I just hounded it. In my late teens and early ’20s, it was my life’s mission to sit at the hem of the garment of as many of the remaining true blues men. I spent a winter with Dave Myers of The Aces, in Chicago; I went and sat at the feet of Brownie McGhee up in Oakland… John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal was my first professional paying gig: I was 20-years-old and he invited me to join his band…. In many ways that’s still the top of the mountain for me. Blind Joe Hill, an L.A. blues musician. I just went to it. Now, when you get a chance to collaborate with the guys who lived and breathed it… Yes, it definitely deepened my connection. You can’t collaborate with Charlie Musselwhite and not have your roots with the blues deepened. Let’s go back to politics. You’ve sung a lot of songs about political and social issues over the years. Is there one you’re especially proud of, that had a real impact? I’m really proud of “Better Way.” I think that’s the optimistic side of all of it. The Dixie Chicks are closing their shows with it right now, which I was incredibly honored to hear. Now I’m just bragging, so pardon that. But it’s a point of excitement – my songs don’t get covered all that often. Also “With My Own Two Hands” is another kind of optimistic song…. But at the same time, “Call It What it Is,” “Black Rain,” “Like a King,” “How Many Miles Must We March”… It’s hard or me to pick on, you know? “Call It Like It Is” is not optimistic, but it’s powerful. How do you hope people will cone out of hearing that song? Do you want to enrage people? You can’t let what’s going on – whether it’s Michael Brown or Walter Scott, where the guy just casually drops a taser near a dead body… It can’t stand! It can’t go unchecked. We can’t – it’s just too dangerous. Race relations is just too integral a part of modern democracy. And this threatens democracy in a very specific way. And it’s just a matter of music being the people’s justice, in a way. Music can make people feel comfortable, it can make people feel angry, it can make people want to join together in a group… And it can also be nothing but background noise – and I understand all of that. What do I hope for the song? This is not what I hope for the song – it’s what I hope for the country, for the planet, for America. That it shifts policy. There has to be policy implementation for racial relations in this country. Whether that’s in education – at public and private, staring at grade zero – or whether that’s in the way law enforcement deal with race relations. You’re hoping for change at every level. Let’s not be foolish enough to think a song is gonna do that! This is just what I want for our country. But it all starts with us calling it what it is. Well I hope the song stirs people up. And also: You can’t be racist and be a Christian! You all have gotta choose! ... You have to choose what you’re gonna be. You can’t be both.

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“They’re selling to people’s fears”: Fear of the unknown fuels anti-transgender laws like North Carolina’s — and their days might be numbered

Alaina Kupec wept. She’s 46 and has worked at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals for the past 21 years. Before that, Kupec was an intelligence officer in the Navy. She’s also transgender. The state she lives in, North Carolina, passed a bill on March 23 that legalizes discrimination against LGBT people in the state by repealing local non-discrimination protections, a decision that particularly targets trans residents. The Tar Heel State is hereby forcing trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth. Thus, trans women would, by law, have to use the men’s facilities. Otherwise they could potentially face being arrested or even put in jail. (The logistics around enforcement are fuzzy, at best.) Kupec began transitioning three years ago, and views being transgender as a “very small part” of who she is. Those who meet her for the first time likely wouldn’t know that she was trans, unless she were to disclose that information. “Nobody mistakes me for anything other than being a woman,” she said. To use the men’s restroom would mean outing her and, thus, placing her in a potentially dangerous and deadly situation. (Recent statistics indicate that, since 2008, more than 2,000 transgender folks have been murdered worldwide.) Using the women’s room would be illegal. Nonetheless, Kupec plans to defy the legislation—because she feels she has no other choice. “I don’t know if I could ever [use the men’s bathroom],” Ms. Kupec said, her voice breaking. “It brings tears to my eyes to even think about it.” Rather than face what is an impossible decision, Julia Kreger, a trans woman who lives in the Raleigh-Durham area, said that many trans people may choose to get out of North Carolina altogether. “A lot of people are walking away from everything they have right now,” she said. “We have a number of friends that have already left, packed up their car with every possession not caring about their bills and just walking away.” She described houses left empty and abandoned, as if their occupants had simply vanished. “If their goal is to remove trans people from society, they’re succeeding by spreading and selling this hate,” Kreger said. “They’re selling to people’s fears.”

***

In 2016, it seems that trans people are one of the very few “culture war” wedge issues that Republicans have left. A decades-long battle over same-sex marriage was decided by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote last June, thus ending the mid-2000s gravy buffet of exploiting the fear of wedded gay couples for votes. As the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky writes, the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign was absurdly successful at “[getting] anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot.” Eleven states, many of which were “key swing states,” pushed laws that would add amendments to their state constitutions defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Every single one passed. In Ohio, the state often credited with deciding the election, the marriage ban helped drive evangelical voters to the polls—where George W. Bush, who won the state, registered significant gains among groups of voters who supported the ban. It’s difficult to underestimate the potential impact of hate and fear. As MSNBC notes, nearly 20 million voters across the U.S. showed up to the polls to voice their opinions on the marriage issue. That traffic drove the 2004 elections to their highest turnout numbers since Nixon's victory in 1968. These so-called “values voters” comprised 22 percent of those who cast a ballot, according to a CBS News Exit Poll. Just over a decade since that massive turnout, sentiment on gay marriage has turned. Following the landmark 2015 decision, 55 percent of Americans voiced their support for marriage equality in a Pew Research poll. Further polls have indicated that the public also widely supports gay adoptions (by a 20-point margin) and even more are in favor of workplace protections for LGBT people.   How did we come so far in such a short time? According to nearly every poll conducted on the subject, Americans become more favorable toward LGBT folks when they have a close friend, acquaintance, or relative that identifies as queer. Although we’ve widely credited the importance of media visibility in changing attitudes toward sexuality, much of that work has been done by LGBT people in their own lives—simply by coming out and being visible to those around them. Back in 2010, over three-quarters of Americans claimed to personally know a gay or lesbian person, and that number is likely much higher today. A 2014 poll in the U.K. showed that the average British person knows eight queer people. What makes trans people more exploitable, in contrast, is that outside of trans celebrities like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, larger numbers of Americans say that they don’t know a transgender person. As of last year, the oft-cited statistic is that just one in 10 people report knowing someone who is out as trans. That lack of familiarity with transgender people makes it easier to think of them as perverts, pedophiles or predators.  Across the United States, conservatives have been successfully peddling the idea that transgender folks pose a threat to others in public spaces—particularly restroom facilities. In 2015, a non-discrimination ordinance was voted down in Houston by right-wing opponents who claimed it would be a boon to sex criminals. Lance Berkman, a former player for the Astros and New York Yankees, condemned the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in a television spot. “My wife and I have four daughters,” Berkman said. “Proposition 1 would allow troubled men who claim to be women to enter women’s bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms.” This conservative meme of “men in women’s restrooms” has been a staple of anti-trans bathroom legislation, and despite frequent debunking, it has stuck. In defense of his state’s decision, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory used the same logic.  Brynn Tannehill, who lives in Springfield, Virginia with her wife and three children, noted that she’s even heard these myths repeated by friends. A couple of weeks ago, a couple she knows in North Carolina sent their daughter to her home to spend Spring Break with their family. When dropping her off, the subject of HB 2 came up. Tannehill was surprised to find out that they supported it. “Well, we’re not worried about you,” the couple told her. “We know you. There are people who want to do these horrible things.” Tannehill said, “That blew my mind.” These interactions, while painful, give trans people the power to speak back to prejudice through the power of lived experience. For transgender folks, a public restroom can be a scary and life-threatening place, and many people have a history of negative experiences. Erica Lachowitz, who lives in Charlotte, was once cornered by a group of men while using the bathroom at a nightclub in New York. “I said, ‘Fuck, what am I going to do?’” she recalls. “This is it. You’re scared. Your palms are sweaty. Your anxiety is high. You don’t know what’s going to happen next.” The only thing that saved Lachowitz from being beaten is that one member of their group intervened, telling them that hurting her wasn’t worth it. The incident took place over a decade ago, but that close call still haunts her. “That PTSD that happens from those memories, you relive that,” she said. Although North Carolina’s law is the most severe anti-trans bill that has been passed, it’s far from the only U.S. state that’s attempting to police how trans people pee. Currently, 14 other anti-trans bills are under consideration by state legislatures across the country. These states include Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Massachusetts. However, a recent bill in South Dakota that specifically targeted trans students was vetoed by the state’s Republican governor, Dennis Daugaard. The bill would have forced middle- and high-schoolers to use the restroom that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. When the legislation initially crossed his desk, Daugaard claimed that he didn’t know a trans person, but in considering the bill, that changed. He met many of the students who would have been affected. “I heard their personal stories,” Daugaard told South Dakota Public Radio. “And so I saw things through their eyes in that sense. I had read other personal stories. Certainly I'm getting personal stories through the emails, and through what I read in the paper.” If there’s a silver lining in America’s wave of anti-trans hate, it’s that increasing numbers of Americans are getting the chance to do the same: having their views of trans people challenged through the simple act of getting to know them. Recent surveys from the Human Rights Campaign indicate that a record number of Americans now know a transgender person: 35 percent. “Of those who said they personally know a transgender person, a majority knew two or more people who are transgender, and 44 percent knew at least three,” the HRC reports. That’s a huge increase that’s paying major dividends in the fight for trans acceptance: In a separate survey from the nationwide LGBT non-profit, two-thirds of those who say that they personally know someone who is transgender report being more favorable toward trans people. There’s already widespread evidence that society is inching toward progress: After Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender last year, musicians like Snoop Dogg and Timbaland both willfully misgendered the former Olympian on Twitter. Due to enormous backlash from their followers, both issued swift apologies. Exploiting the fears of the American public might have worked in North Carolina and Mississippi, which recently passed its own law allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBT people on the basis of faith. However, as increasing numbers of trans people come out and give their friends, family members, and co-workers a chance to know them, these tactics are likely to have diminishing returns—just as they did in the mid-aughts gay marriage battle.Alaina Kupec wept. She’s 46 and has worked at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals for the past 21 years. Before that, Kupec was an intelligence officer in the Navy. She’s also transgender. The state she lives in, North Carolina, passed a bill on March 23 that legalizes discrimination against LGBT people in the state by repealing local non-discrimination protections, a decision that particularly targets trans residents. The Tar Heel State is hereby forcing trans people to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth. Thus, trans women would, by law, have to use the men’s facilities. Otherwise they could potentially face being arrested or even put in jail. (The logistics around enforcement are fuzzy, at best.) Kupec began transitioning three years ago, and views being transgender as a “very small part” of who she is. Those who meet her for the first time likely wouldn’t know that she was trans, unless she were to disclose that information. “Nobody mistakes me for anything other than being a woman,” she said. To use the men’s restroom would mean outing her and, thus, placing her in a potentially dangerous and deadly situation. (Recent statistics indicate that, since 2008, more than 2,000 transgender folks have been murdered worldwide.) Using the women’s room would be illegal. Nonetheless, Kupec plans to defy the legislation—because she feels she has no other choice. “I don’t know if I could ever [use the men’s bathroom],” Ms. Kupec said, her voice breaking. “It brings tears to my eyes to even think about it.” Rather than face what is an impossible decision, Julia Kreger, a trans woman who lives in the Raleigh-Durham area, said that many trans people may choose to get out of North Carolina altogether. “A lot of people are walking away from everything they have right now,” she said. “We have a number of friends that have already left, packed up their car with every possession not caring about their bills and just walking away.” She described houses left empty and abandoned, as if their occupants had simply vanished. “If their goal is to remove trans people from society, they’re succeeding by spreading and selling this hate,” Kreger said. “They’re selling to people’s fears.”

***

In 2016, it seems that trans people are one of the very few “culture war” wedge issues that Republicans have left. A decades-long battle over same-sex marriage was decided by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote last June, thus ending the mid-2000s gravy buffet of exploiting the fear of wedded gay couples for votes. As the Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky writes, the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign was absurdly successful at “[getting] anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballot.” Eleven states, many of which were “key swing states,” pushed laws that would add amendments to their state constitutions defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Every single one passed. In Ohio, the state often credited with deciding the election, the marriage ban helped drive evangelical voters to the polls—where George W. Bush, who won the state, registered significant gains among groups of voters who supported the ban. It’s difficult to underestimate the potential impact of hate and fear. As MSNBC notes, nearly 20 million voters across the U.S. showed up to the polls to voice their opinions on the marriage issue. That traffic drove the 2004 elections to their highest turnout numbers since Nixon's victory in 1968. These so-called “values voters” comprised 22 percent of those who cast a ballot, according to a CBS News Exit Poll. Just over a decade since that massive turnout, sentiment on gay marriage has turned. Following the landmark 2015 decision, 55 percent of Americans voiced their support for marriage equality in a Pew Research poll. Further polls have indicated that the public also widely supports gay adoptions (by a 20-point margin) and even more are in favor of workplace protections for LGBT people.   How did we come so far in such a short time? According to nearly every poll conducted on the subject, Americans become more favorable toward LGBT folks when they have a close friend, acquaintance, or relative that identifies as queer. Although we’ve widely credited the importance of media visibility in changing attitudes toward sexuality, much of that work has been done by LGBT people in their own lives—simply by coming out and being visible to those around them. Back in 2010, over three-quarters of Americans claimed to personally know a gay or lesbian person, and that number is likely much higher today. A 2014 poll in the U.K. showed that the average British person knows eight queer people. What makes trans people more exploitable, in contrast, is that outside of trans celebrities like Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, larger numbers of Americans say that they don’t know a transgender person. As of last year, the oft-cited statistic is that just one in 10 people report knowing someone who is out as trans. That lack of familiarity with transgender people makes it easier to think of them as perverts, pedophiles or predators.  Across the United States, conservatives have been successfully peddling the idea that transgender folks pose a threat to others in public spaces—particularly restroom facilities. In 2015, a non-discrimination ordinance was voted down in Houston by right-wing opponents who claimed it would be a boon to sex criminals. Lance Berkman, a former player for the Astros and New York Yankees, condemned the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in a television spot. “My wife and I have four daughters,” Berkman said. “Proposition 1 would allow troubled men who claim to be women to enter women’s bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms.” This conservative meme of “men in women’s restrooms” has been a staple of anti-trans bathroom legislation, and despite frequent debunking, it has stuck. In defense of his state’s decision, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory used the same logic.  Brynn Tannehill, who lives in Springfield, Virginia with her wife and three children, noted that she’s even heard these myths repeated by friends. A couple of weeks ago, a couple she knows in North Carolina sent their daughter to her home to spend Spring Break with their family. When dropping her off, the subject of HB 2 came up. Tannehill was surprised to find out that they supported it. “Well, we’re not worried about you,” the couple told her. “We know you. There are people who want to do these horrible things.” Tannehill said, “That blew my mind.” These interactions, while painful, give trans people the power to speak back to prejudice through the power of lived experience. For transgender folks, a public restroom can be a scary and life-threatening place, and many people have a history of negative experiences. Erica Lachowitz, who lives in Charlotte, was once cornered by a group of men while using the bathroom at a nightclub in New York. “I said, ‘Fuck, what am I going to do?’” she recalls. “This is it. You’re scared. Your palms are sweaty. Your anxiety is high. You don’t know what’s going to happen next.” The only thing that saved Lachowitz from being beaten is that one member of their group intervened, telling them that hurting her wasn’t worth it. The incident took place over a decade ago, but that close call still haunts her. “That PTSD that happens from those memories, you relive that,” she said. Although North Carolina’s law is the most severe anti-trans bill that has been passed, it’s far from the only U.S. state that’s attempting to police how trans people pee. Currently, 14 other anti-trans bills are under consideration by state legislatures across the country. These states include Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Massachusetts. However, a recent bill in South Dakota that specifically targeted trans students was vetoed by the state’s Republican governor, Dennis Daugaard. The bill would have forced middle- and high-schoolers to use the restroom that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth. When the legislation initially crossed his desk, Daugaard claimed that he didn’t know a trans person, but in considering the bill, that changed. He met many of the students who would have been affected. “I heard their personal stories,” Daugaard told South Dakota Public Radio. “And so I saw things through their eyes in that sense. I had read other personal stories. Certainly I'm getting personal stories through the emails, and through what I read in the paper.” If there’s a silver lining in America’s wave of anti-trans hate, it’s that increasing numbers of Americans are getting the chance to do the same: having their views of trans people challenged through the simple act of getting to know them. Recent surveys from the Human Rights Campaign indicate that a record number of Americans now know a transgender person: 35 percent. “Of those who said they personally know a transgender person, a majority knew two or more people who are transgender, and 44 percent knew at least three,” the HRC reports. That’s a huge increase that’s paying major dividends in the fight for trans acceptance: In a separate survey from the nationwide LGBT non-profit, two-thirds of those who say that they personally know someone who is transgender report being more favorable toward trans people. There’s already widespread evidence that society is inching toward progress: After Caitlyn Jenner came out as transgender last year, musicians like Snoop Dogg and Timbaland both willfully misgendered the former Olympian on Twitter. Due to enormous backlash from their followers, both issued swift apologies. Exploiting the fears of the American public might have worked in North Carolina and Mississippi, which recently passed its own law allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBT people on the basis of faith. However, as increasing numbers of trans people come out and give their friends, family members, and co-workers a chance to know them, these tactics are likely to have diminishing returns—just as they did in the mid-aughts gay marriage battle.

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Respect for Marcia Clark: Years after the humiliation, sexism and scrutiny during the O.J. trial — Clark finally getting well-deserved appreciation

Marcia Clark is having her moment – 20 years after her first uncomfortable brush with fame. On FX's drama "The People v. O.J. Simpson" actress Sarah Paulson's portrayal of Clark shows a resilient prosecutor coping with brutal public scrutiny during the historic murder case. "It's crazy ['The People v. O.J. Simpson'] turned out to be so good — never expected that," Clark says in a recent interview with Broadly. At the time of the trial in 1994 and 1995, Clark was demonized in the media the victim of sexist scorn. Insults ranged in scope from the fact that she was a single mother of two, had nude photos leaked in the "National Enquirer," and, of course, about her hair. In retrospect, Marcia Clark is a feminist hero, standing up for the life of a woman who was unjustly abused by her husband. In 1994, Clark, who had dreamt of being a crime writer but settled on law due to finances, heard the evidence against celebrity O.J. Simpson and was immediately intrigued by the case. All the evidence pointed to him: the DA had found a bloody 12-size shoe print (same size as Simpson), a pair of bloody socks at the foot of Simpson's bed, the victim's blood in Simpson's Ford bronco and  the list  goes on. In a Hollywood Reporter interview last week, Clark described how she herself was a victim of a heinous crime at age 17. While on vacation in Israel, she was raped by a waiter but kept the attack hidden until after the frenzy of the Simpson trial had settled. "I realized I wanted to stand up for the victims, and that's when I became a prosecutor," Clark says. Previously a high-profile case meant a photographer showing up to an arraignment, with the Simpson case, press were camped outside the courthouse and home of the defendant 24/7. Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial, even let celebrities visit the chambers. Clark was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. To counter Simpson's flashy defense attorneys, Clark went for a simple, professional look. She wanted to look serious. It was also pragmatic: she had two boys at home and was working full time. She had no time for grooming. But the media mocked her appearance ruthlessly, so much so that she finally decided to get a haircut. "As for my hair, here's the true 'saga,'" Clark tells Broadly. "I had it permed long before the trial. I had two babies at home and no time for hair drama. When the trial started, I got my hair trimmed, which made the perm kink up a bit (less weight on the hair makes it curl up more). Then, when the perm started to grow out and look scraggly, I had no time to get it permed again, so I just blew it out, because my hair is naturally straight. And when I did that, the press had a field day." Clark is now an author, specializing in crime; she is now on her fifth book. "Back then [domestic violence] was still very much viewed as a family affair, something to be swept under the rug," Clark told Broadly. "[People thought], You don't wash your dirty laundry by calling the cops and that sort of thing. They didn't view it as a crime, let alone as a crime that often leads to murder—which it often does." Clark, though, remembers one person caring about the domestic violence problem: Kris Jenner. "[Jenner] brought out the witnesses of the domestic violence," Clark recalls. "She brought out Nicole's friends who saw her getting beaten or abused by him, so she was helpful."   Read the rest Clark's interview with Broadly here.Marcia Clark is having her moment – 20 years after her first uncomfortable brush with fame. On FX's drama "The People v. O.J. Simpson" actress Sarah Paulson's portrayal of Clark shows a resilient prosecutor coping with brutal public scrutiny during the historic murder case. "It's crazy ['The People v. O.J. Simpson'] turned out to be so good — never expected that," Clark says in a recent interview with Broadly. At the time of the trial in 1994 and 1995, Clark was demonized in the media the victim of sexist scorn. Insults ranged in scope from the fact that she was a single mother of two, had nude photos leaked in the "National Enquirer," and, of course, about her hair. In retrospect, Marcia Clark is a feminist hero, standing up for the life of a woman who was unjustly abused by her husband. In 1994, Clark, who had dreamt of being a crime writer but settled on law due to finances, heard the evidence against celebrity O.J. Simpson and was immediately intrigued by the case. All the evidence pointed to him: the DA had found a bloody 12-size shoe print (same size as Simpson), a pair of bloody socks at the foot of Simpson's bed, the victim's blood in Simpson's Ford bronco and  the list  goes on. In a Hollywood Reporter interview last week, Clark described how she herself was a victim of a heinous crime at age 17. While on vacation in Israel, she was raped by a waiter but kept the attack hidden until after the frenzy of the Simpson trial had settled. "I realized I wanted to stand up for the victims, and that's when I became a prosecutor," Clark says. Previously a high-profile case meant a photographer showing up to an arraignment, with the Simpson case, press were camped outside the courthouse and home of the defendant 24/7. Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial, even let celebrities visit the chambers. Clark was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. To counter Simpson's flashy defense attorneys, Clark went for a simple, professional look. She wanted to look serious. It was also pragmatic: she had two boys at home and was working full time. She had no time for grooming. But the media mocked her appearance ruthlessly, so much so that she finally decided to get a haircut. "As for my hair, here's the true 'saga,'" Clark tells Broadly. "I had it permed long before the trial. I had two babies at home and no time for hair drama. When the trial started, I got my hair trimmed, which made the perm kink up a bit (less weight on the hair makes it curl up more). Then, when the perm started to grow out and look scraggly, I had no time to get it permed again, so I just blew it out, because my hair is naturally straight. And when I did that, the press had a field day." Clark is now an author, specializing in crime; she is now on her fifth book. "Back then [domestic violence] was still very much viewed as a family affair, something to be swept under the rug," Clark told Broadly. "[People thought], You don't wash your dirty laundry by calling the cops and that sort of thing. They didn't view it as a crime, let alone as a crime that often leads to murder—which it often does." Clark, though, remembers one person caring about the domestic violence problem: Kris Jenner. "[Jenner] brought out the witnesses of the domestic violence," Clark recalls. "She brought out Nicole's friends who saw her getting beaten or abused by him, so she was helpful."   Read the rest Clark's interview with Broadly here.Marcia Clark is having her moment – 20 years after her first uncomfortable brush with fame. On FX's drama "The People v. O.J. Simpson" actress Sarah Paulson's portrayal of Clark shows a resilient prosecutor coping with brutal public scrutiny during the historic murder case. "It's crazy ['The People v. O.J. Simpson'] turned out to be so good — never expected that," Clark says in a recent interview with Broadly. At the time of the trial in 1994 and 1995, Clark was demonized in the media the victim of sexist scorn. Insults ranged in scope from the fact that she was a single mother of two, had nude photos leaked in the "National Enquirer," and, of course, about her hair. In retrospect, Marcia Clark is a feminist hero, standing up for the life of a woman who was unjustly abused by her husband. In 1994, Clark, who had dreamt of being a crime writer but settled on law due to finances, heard the evidence against celebrity O.J. Simpson and was immediately intrigued by the case. All the evidence pointed to him: the DA had found a bloody 12-size shoe print (same size as Simpson), a pair of bloody socks at the foot of Simpson's bed, the victim's blood in Simpson's Ford bronco and  the list  goes on. In a Hollywood Reporter interview last week, Clark described how she herself was a victim of a heinous crime at age 17. While on vacation in Israel, she was raped by a waiter but kept the attack hidden until after the frenzy of the Simpson trial had settled. "I realized I wanted to stand up for the victims, and that's when I became a prosecutor," Clark says. Previously a high-profile case meant a photographer showing up to an arraignment, with the Simpson case, press were camped outside the courthouse and home of the defendant 24/7. Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial, even let celebrities visit the chambers. Clark was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. To counter Simpson's flashy defense attorneys, Clark went for a simple, professional look. She wanted to look serious. It was also pragmatic: she had two boys at home and was working full time. She had no time for grooming. But the media mocked her appearance ruthlessly, so much so that she finally decided to get a haircut. "As for my hair, here's the true 'saga,'" Clark tells Broadly. "I had it permed long before the trial. I had two babies at home and no time for hair drama. When the trial started, I got my hair trimmed, which made the perm kink up a bit (less weight on the hair makes it curl up more). Then, when the perm started to grow out and look scraggly, I had no time to get it permed again, so I just blew it out, because my hair is naturally straight. And when I did that, the press had a field day." Clark is now an author, specializing in crime; she is now on her fifth book. "Back then [domestic violence] was still very much viewed as a family affair, something to be swept under the rug," Clark told Broadly. "[People thought], You don't wash your dirty laundry by calling the cops and that sort of thing. They didn't view it as a crime, let alone as a crime that often leads to murder—which it often does." Clark, though, remembers one person caring about the domestic violence problem: Kris Jenner. "[Jenner] brought out the witnesses of the domestic violence," Clark recalls. "She brought out Nicole's friends who saw her getting beaten or abused by him, so she was helpful."   Read the rest Clark's interview with Broadly here.Marcia Clark is having her moment – 20 years after her first uncomfortable brush with fame. On FX's drama "The People v. O.J. Simpson" actress Sarah Paulson's portrayal of Clark shows a resilient prosecutor coping with brutal public scrutiny during the historic murder case. "It's crazy ['The People v. O.J. Simpson'] turned out to be so good — never expected that," Clark says in a recent interview with Broadly. At the time of the trial in 1994 and 1995, Clark was demonized in the media the victim of sexist scorn. Insults ranged in scope from the fact that she was a single mother of two, had nude photos leaked in the "National Enquirer," and, of course, about her hair. In retrospect, Marcia Clark is a feminist hero, standing up for the life of a woman who was unjustly abused by her husband. In 1994, Clark, who had dreamt of being a crime writer but settled on law due to finances, heard the evidence against celebrity O.J. Simpson and was immediately intrigued by the case. All the evidence pointed to him: the DA had found a bloody 12-size shoe print (same size as Simpson), a pair of bloody socks at the foot of Simpson's bed, the victim's blood in Simpson's Ford bronco and  the list  goes on. In a Hollywood Reporter interview last week, Clark described how she herself was a victim of a heinous crime at age 17. While on vacation in Israel, she was raped by a waiter but kept the attack hidden until after the frenzy of the Simpson trial had settled. "I realized I wanted to stand up for the victims, and that's when I became a prosecutor," Clark says. Previously a high-profile case meant a photographer showing up to an arraignment, with the Simpson case, press were camped outside the courthouse and home of the defendant 24/7. Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial, even let celebrities visit the chambers. Clark was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. To counter Simpson's flashy defense attorneys, Clark went for a simple, professional look. She wanted to look serious. It was also pragmatic: she had two boys at home and was working full time. She had no time for grooming. But the media mocked her appearance ruthlessly, so much so that she finally decided to get a haircut. "As for my hair, here's the true 'saga,'" Clark tells Broadly. "I had it permed long before the trial. I had two babies at home and no time for hair drama. When the trial started, I got my hair trimmed, which made the perm kink up a bit (less weight on the hair makes it curl up more). Then, when the perm started to grow out and look scraggly, I had no time to get it permed again, so I just blew it out, because my hair is naturally straight. And when I did that, the press had a field day." Clark is now an author, specializing in crime; she is now on her fifth book. "Back then [domestic violence] was still very much viewed as a family affair, something to be swept under the rug," Clark told Broadly. "[People thought], You don't wash your dirty laundry by calling the cops and that sort of thing. They didn't view it as a crime, let alone as a crime that often leads to murder—which it often does." Clark, though, remembers one person caring about the domestic violence problem: Kris Jenner. "[Jenner] brought out the witnesses of the domestic violence," Clark recalls. "She brought out Nicole's friends who saw her getting beaten or abused by him, so she was helpful."   Read the rest Clark's interview with Broadly here.Marcia Clark is having her moment – 20 years after her first uncomfortable brush with fame. On FX's drama "The People v. O.J. Simpson" actress Sarah Paulson's portrayal of Clark shows a resilient prosecutor coping with brutal public scrutiny during the historic murder case. "It's crazy ['The People v. O.J. Simpson'] turned out to be so good — never expected that," Clark says in a recent interview with Broadly. At the time of the trial in 1994 and 1995, Clark was demonized in the media the victim of sexist scorn. Insults ranged in scope from the fact that she was a single mother of two, had nude photos leaked in the "National Enquirer," and, of course, about her hair. In retrospect, Marcia Clark is a feminist hero, standing up for the life of a woman who was unjustly abused by her husband. In 1994, Clark, who had dreamt of being a crime writer but settled on law due to finances, heard the evidence against celebrity O.J. Simpson and was immediately intrigued by the case. All the evidence pointed to him: the DA had found a bloody 12-size shoe print (same size as Simpson), a pair of bloody socks at the foot of Simpson's bed, the victim's blood in Simpson's Ford bronco and  the list  goes on. In a Hollywood Reporter interview last week, Clark described how she herself was a victim of a heinous crime at age 17. While on vacation in Israel, she was raped by a waiter but kept the attack hidden until after the frenzy of the Simpson trial had settled. "I realized I wanted to stand up for the victims, and that's when I became a prosecutor," Clark says. Previously a high-profile case meant a photographer showing up to an arraignment, with the Simpson case, press were camped outside the courthouse and home of the defendant 24/7. Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the trial, even let celebrities visit the chambers. Clark was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. To counter Simpson's flashy defense attorneys, Clark went for a simple, professional look. She wanted to look serious. It was also pragmatic: she had two boys at home and was working full time. She had no time for grooming. But the media mocked her appearance ruthlessly, so much so that she finally decided to get a haircut. "As for my hair, here's the true 'saga,'" Clark tells Broadly. "I had it permed long before the trial. I had two babies at home and no time for hair drama. When the trial started, I got my hair trimmed, which made the perm kink up a bit (less weight on the hair makes it curl up more). Then, when the perm started to grow out and look scraggly, I had no time to get it permed again, so I just blew it out, because my hair is naturally straight. And when I did that, the press had a field day." Clark is now an author, specializing in crime; she is now on her fifth book. "Back then [domestic violence] was still very much viewed as a family affair, something to be swept under the rug," Clark told Broadly. "[People thought], You don't wash your dirty laundry by calling the cops and that sort of thing. They didn't view it as a crime, let alone as a crime that often leads to murder—which it often does." Clark, though, remembers one person caring about the domestic violence problem: Kris Jenner. "[Jenner] brought out the witnesses of the domestic violence," Clark recalls. "She brought out Nicole's friends who saw her getting beaten or abused by him, so she was helpful."   Read the rest Clark's interview with Broadly here.

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“A guy in my MFA program once described my stories as ‘cutesy’”: 5 authors on the worst words critics have used to describe their work

For April, I posed a series of questions — with, as always, a few verbal restrictions — to five authors with new books: Charles Bock (“Alice and Oliver”), Manuel Gonzales (“The Regional Office is Under Attack!"), Charlotte Rogan (“Now and Again”), Rebecca Schiff (“The Bed Moved”), and Rob Spillman ("All Tomorrow’s Parties”). Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?  SCHIFF: This book is about resenting not having enough sex, and then having too much sex and resenting that, too. BOCK: What do we owe ourselves; what do we owe to those we love; how am I supposed to move through this world and these competing urges when my time is finite? GONZALES: The Regional Office is at its core a book about revenge and a book about how awful it is sometimes to get what you want. SPILLMAN: Berlin in the Sixties, Berlin in 1990, the East Village in the late Eighties, opera, punk rock, the search for authenticity. ROGAN: Ordinary people who start to pay attention to what is going on around them—now that they know, what do they do? How hard it is to tell which information is correct and which is misinformation or outright lies. Whistleblowers. People who want to make the world a better place. History repeats itself. Eternal return. Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book? ROGAN: A 2004 blog post, Gulf War syndrome, Edward Snowden, the American incarceration rate, our ambivalence toward do-gooders, Peter Singer and the expanding circle, sea to shining sea, the novel as world-building, gospel music, rootedness/unrootedness, idealism, Kierkegaard: “Do it or don’t do it, you will regret both.” GONZALES: "La Femme Nikita" -- the movie, not the show -- and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” -- the show, not the movie -- and the two-part episode of “Alias” from season 1 featuring a cameo from Quentin Tarantino. Also a couple of books that dove into the culture of working in an office. And let's not forget the Hayley Mills classic "The Parent Trap," and the Bruce Willis classic "Die Hard." SCHIFF: Hot springs, catered events, cordless phones, the way my parents were when I was young. BOCK: Oncology wards and everything that happens in them; hospital waiting rooms; IV machine battery packs; portable diaper-changing kits; breast feeding; the old Tuesday afternoon lines at Astor Place where you waited for the Village Voice classifieds; late nights together on the couch when the child is asleep; John Starks going 2-18 in game seven of the NBA Finals. SPILLMAN: A soundtrack with 67 tracks, one per chapter. The Beats, the New York School, Berlin in the Twenties, “He forces you to use the word beautiful”—Robert Motherwell on Joseph Cornell. Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book? SPILLMAN: Writing on planes, receiving 20,000 submissions per year, meditation on long bike rides, multiple nonprofit boards, reviewing, interviewing other authors on stages and at bookstores, two very different teenagers. ROGAN: Kids off to college and jobs, home again, off again, home again, a lot of moves and rescue missions, the publication of my first novel at age 58, connecting with other book people, good and bad medical advice, angst about the state of the world, a border collie who found me on the Internet, thank god. GONZALES: A poorly conceived turn at managing employees; more influence over important matters handed over to me than was necessarily wise; a move (my family and me to Kentucky); a move (my editor to a different publisher). SCHIFF: Dumped guys in their own beds, had to take taxis home from dumping them, moved within Brooklyn, taught essay writing by the sea, mom had breast cancer, dad stayed already dead. BOCK: Ha. What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers? BOCK: How about this anecdote, instead: just before takeoff on an airplane flight, a stewardess reminded Muhammad Ali to fasten his seat belt. "Superman don't need no seat belt,” Ali answered. The stewardess looked at the champ: “Superman don’t need no airplane, either.” Which is to say: you get on the plane, you buckle up. (E.g. Omar Little: "All in the game, yo. It’s all in the game.”) ROGAN: “Huh.” Actually, I don’t dislike the word—I just don’t want someone to say it about my work. “Wow” is the exact opposite—I’m not crazy about the word, but I’m always thrilled to hear a reader say it. GONZALES: Someone once wrote that the novel was irrelevant, which. Irrelevant to what? To whom? In what way? How? It was just maybe the least relevant thing to say about anyone's book. SCHIFF: A guy in my MFA program once described my stories as "cutesy." But he was illustrating his stories, so I thought that was cutesier. SPILLMAN: I have every possible negative review mentally cataloged in preparation for snark. If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be? ROGAN: Astrophysicist—or Alan Dershowitz. GONZALES: The CIA, the FBI, or forensic anthropologist. SPILLMAN: Head of an NGO that has tangible global impact. SCHIFF: I would be a therapist. BOCK: Well, I’ve chosen this. Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction. I’m more than fine with this profession, however limited its material attentions and remuneration. But it’s interesting. Chris Adrian is a tremendous fiction writer and a child oncologist at the same time (probably he deserves some form of sainthood). Sheri Fink has a medical degree and has reported some of the most important medical stories of our era. Atul Gawande; Chekhov; William Carlos Williams — top-tier journalists and essayists and novelists and playwrights who’ve also been doctors. I flatter myself to even imagine I could have had a medical practice; there’s no way; I’m not scientific or disciplined enough, lots of things. I’d hypothetically choose that, I guess. I feel the same way about charity workers. It’s nice to flatter myself with the idea I might have chosen those altruistic roads. Probably I would have chosen a stand-up comedian or NBA point guard. What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at? SCHIFF: Is voice part of craft? I'm pretty good at voice. I can hear my own thought rhythms and translate them to the page. I'm okay at dialogue. I'd like to get better at letting other characters be more than foils for my narrators. I'd like to try a third-person romp. SPILLMAN: Structure. Yet, I wish that I was less logical and more emotional, more poetic. GONZALES: I feel I am strong at describing action, writing dialogue, and making uncomfortable situations uncomfortably funny. I would like to be better at describing things that aren't action -- people, places, a table in a room, etc. BOCK: My lanyard game is mad hot, and I promise I bring the truth with regards to rope bracelets. For improvement? Quilting. My quilting is dookie. All needlepoint-related things, I should do better on, being honest. ROGAN: I am pretty good at dialogue and moving between the various novel elements so that none of them go on too long. I am good at not writing physical descriptions of my characters—I mostly don’t see the need for them. Plotting is hard for me—I would like to get better at that. How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything? GONZALES: I contend with this kind of hubris through illusions of grandeur and by the fact that I'm a megalomaniac and kind of assume that people will be interested in just about everything I have to say? Despite all evidence to the contrary? Despite having eye-rolling (but absolutely lovely) children who place little stock in what I have to say? ROGAN: I imagine my trial—not for the crime of writing, which I did very quietly for 25 years, but for finally daring to publish. Usually this happens at night, or at twilight—fall and winter are the worst. I devise long speeches for my defense. It also helps to listen to online lectures about literary theory—now those are writers who should be worried about losing people’s interest! BOCK: My man Ossip Mandelstam has a thought that sometimes helps: “I divide all the works of world literature into those written with and without permission. The first are trash, the second — stolen air.” SCHIFF: Ha. This may be hubris, but I actually think that keeping my thoughts to myself is kind of stingy. I like to think that I'm sharing something personal/universal and that the people who need what I'm saying will find me. SPILLMAN: When I was sixteen, reading about other possibilities—via Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf—saved my life. I’m hoping that there is one sixteen year-old like me that I can reach.For April, I posed a series of questions — with, as always, a few verbal restrictions — to five authors with new books: Charles Bock (“Alice and Oliver”), Manuel Gonzales (“The Regional Office is Under Attack!"), Charlotte Rogan (“Now and Again”), Rebecca Schiff (“The Bed Moved”), and Rob Spillman ("All Tomorrow’s Parties”). Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?  SCHIFF: This book is about resenting not having enough sex, and then having too much sex and resenting that, too. BOCK: What do we owe ourselves; what do we owe to those we love; how am I supposed to move through this world and these competing urges when my time is finite? GONZALES: The Regional Office is at its core a book about revenge and a book about how awful it is sometimes to get what you want. SPILLMAN: Berlin in the Sixties, Berlin in 1990, the East Village in the late Eighties, opera, punk rock, the search for authenticity. ROGAN: Ordinary people who start to pay attention to what is going on around them—now that they know, what do they do? How hard it is to tell which information is correct and which is misinformation or outright lies. Whistleblowers. People who want to make the world a better place. History repeats itself. Eternal return. Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book? ROGAN: A 2004 blog post, Gulf War syndrome, Edward Snowden, the American incarceration rate, our ambivalence toward do-gooders, Peter Singer and the expanding circle, sea to shining sea, the novel as world-building, gospel music, rootedness/unrootedness, idealism, Kierkegaard: “Do it or don’t do it, you will regret both.” GONZALES: "La Femme Nikita" -- the movie, not the show -- and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” -- the show, not the movie -- and the two-part episode of “Alias” from season 1 featuring a cameo from Quentin Tarantino. Also a couple of books that dove into the culture of working in an office. And let's not forget the Hayley Mills classic "The Parent Trap," and the Bruce Willis classic "Die Hard." SCHIFF: Hot springs, catered events, cordless phones, the way my parents were when I was young. BOCK: Oncology wards and everything that happens in them; hospital waiting rooms; IV machine battery packs; portable diaper-changing kits; breast feeding; the old Tuesday afternoon lines at Astor Place where you waited for the Village Voice classifieds; late nights together on the couch when the child is asleep; John Starks going 2-18 in game seven of the NBA Finals. SPILLMAN: A soundtrack with 67 tracks, one per chapter. The Beats, the New York School, Berlin in the Twenties, “He forces you to use the word beautiful”—Robert Motherwell on Joseph Cornell. Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book? SPILLMAN: Writing on planes, receiving 20,000 submissions per year, meditation on long bike rides, multiple nonprofit boards, reviewing, interviewing other authors on stages and at bookstores, two very different teenagers. ROGAN: Kids off to college and jobs, home again, off again, home again, a lot of moves and rescue missions, the publication of my first novel at age 58, connecting with other book people, good and bad medical advice, angst about the state of the world, a border collie who found me on the Internet, thank god. GONZALES: A poorly conceived turn at managing employees; more influence over important matters handed over to me than was necessarily wise; a move (my family and me to Kentucky); a move (my editor to a different publisher). SCHIFF: Dumped guys in their own beds, had to take taxis home from dumping them, moved within Brooklyn, taught essay writing by the sea, mom had breast cancer, dad stayed already dead. BOCK: Ha. What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers? BOCK: How about this anecdote, instead: just before takeoff on an airplane flight, a stewardess reminded Muhammad Ali to fasten his seat belt. "Superman don't need no seat belt,” Ali answered. The stewardess looked at the champ: “Superman don’t need no airplane, either.” Which is to say: you get on the plane, you buckle up. (E.g. Omar Little: "All in the game, yo. It’s all in the game.”) ROGAN: “Huh.” Actually, I don’t dislike the word—I just don’t want someone to say it about my work. “Wow” is the exact opposite—I’m not crazy about the word, but I’m always thrilled to hear a reader say it. GONZALES: Someone once wrote that the novel was irrelevant, which. Irrelevant to what? To whom? In what way? How? It was just maybe the least relevant thing to say about anyone's book. SCHIFF: A guy in my MFA program once described my stories as "cutesy." But he was illustrating his stories, so I thought that was cutesier. SPILLMAN: I have every possible negative review mentally cataloged in preparation for snark. If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be? ROGAN: Astrophysicist—or Alan Dershowitz. GONZALES: The CIA, the FBI, or forensic anthropologist. SPILLMAN: Head of an NGO that has tangible global impact. SCHIFF: I would be a therapist. BOCK: Well, I’ve chosen this. Really, I've worked my whole adult life at fiction, to try and write fiction. I’m more than fine with this profession, however limited its material attentions and remuneration. But it’s interesting. Chris Adrian is a tremendous fiction writer and a child oncologist at the same time (probably he deserves some form of sainthood). Sheri Fink has a medical degree and has reported some of the most important medical stories of our era. Atul Gawande; Chekhov; William Carlos Williams — top-tier journalists and essayists and novelists and playwrights who’ve also been doctors. I flatter myself to even imagine I could have had a medical practice; there’s no way; I’m not scientific or disciplined enough, lots of things. I’d hypothetically choose that, I guess. I feel the same way about charity workers. It’s nice to flatter myself with the idea I might have chosen those altruistic roads. Probably I would have chosen a stand-up comedian or NBA point guard. What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at? SCHIFF: Is voice part of craft? I'm pretty good at voice. I can hear my own thought rhythms and translate them to the page. I'm okay at dialogue. I'd like to get better at letting other characters be more than foils for my narrators. I'd like to try a third-person romp. SPILLMAN: Structure. Yet, I wish that I was less logical and more emotional, more poetic. GONZALES: I feel I am strong at describing action, writing dialogue, and making uncomfortable situations uncomfortably funny. I would like to be better at describing things that aren't action -- people, places, a table in a room, etc. BOCK: My lanyard game is mad hot, and I promise I bring the truth with regards to rope bracelets. For improvement? Quilting. My quilting is dookie. All needlepoint-related things, I should do better on, being honest. ROGAN: I am pretty good at dialogue and moving between the various novel elements so that none of them go on too long. I am good at not writing physical descriptions of my characters—I mostly don’t see the need for them. Plotting is hard for me—I would like to get better at that. How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything? GONZALES: I contend with this kind of hubris through illusions of grandeur and by the fact that I'm a megalomaniac and kind of assume that people will be interested in just about everything I have to say? Despite all evidence to the contrary? Despite having eye-rolling (but absolutely lovely) children who place little stock in what I have to say? ROGAN: I imagine my trial—not for the crime of writing, which I did very quietly for 25 years, but for finally daring to publish. Usually this happens at night, or at twilight—fall and winter are the worst. I devise long speeches for my defense. It also helps to listen to online lectures about literary theory—now those are writers who should be worried about losing people’s interest! BOCK: My man Ossip Mandelstam has a thought that sometimes helps: “I divide all the works of world literature into those written with and without permission. The first are trash, the second — stolen air.” SCHIFF: Ha. This may be hubris, but I actually think that keeping my thoughts to myself is kind of stingy. I like to think that I'm sharing something personal/universal and that the people who need what I'm saying will find me. SPILLMAN: When I was sixteen, reading about other possibilities—via Ken Kesey, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf—saved my life. I’m hoping that there is one sixteen year-old like me that I can reach.

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“The things he’s saying are wacky as wacky can be”: Ben Stein unloads on Donald Trump’s “nonsensical” economic promises

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The 10 worst states for pot smokers

Last week, we presented a list of the10 most marijuana-friendly states, but which states are the most hostile, or, at best, indifferent to marijuana? Where would you go if you wanted to escape the encroaching baleful effects of the demon weed? Thanks to the national real estate search site Estately, we now have some answers to those burning questions. The site's blog's Ultimate Lists cranks out all sorts of creative comparative data—cities with the most romantic homes for sale, states with the most pizza—and now it's done the same with weed. That's the data we used last week, too. To refresh your memory, Estately measured attitudes toward pot by looking at the number of marijuana users, the price of pot (both high and low quality), and the legal status of marijuana (legal, decriminalized, medical). It also looked to the web and social media, measuring cannabis-related Google searches and using Facebook user data on interest on pot-themed publications. Estately used a 100-point scale to weigh each state on each of the five categories to arrive at its rankings. If the marijuana-friendliest states tend to cluster in the West and New England, those most doobie-dubious are to be found mainly on the Plains and in old Dixie. Reefer doesn't mix well with red states. Estately's top 10 "least marijuana-enthused" states (the palest color) follow just below the map. 1. North Dakota (50 points). The state came in 46th on marijuana use rates, tied for second to last on Google searches, was second to last on Facebook interest, and also scored low for high prices. Not exactly high times on the High Plains. 2. Iowa (65 points). Second-lowest for marijuana use rates, 4th-lowest for Google searches, 4th-lowest for Facebook interest. It would have tied with North Dakota, except that pot prices are cheaper in the Hawkeye State. 3. Utah (74 points). Third-lowest for marijuana use rates, 50th in Google searches, and 50th in Facebook interest. Only comparatively cheap pot prices kept the Beehive State out of first (last) place. (Thanks, Colorado!) 4. South Dakota (78 points). Has the fewest pot smokers, tied for second-lowest in Google searches, but scored above average in Facebook interest. It also tied for the second-highest pot prices. Suggested state motto: "Hey, at least we're not North Dakota." 5. Wisconsin (87 points). The Dairy State apparently likes a little pot, but doesn't like to think about it. The state was 33rd in marijuana smoking, but scored near the bottom on the Google and Facebook indicators, and is afflicted with relatively high prices. 6. Virginia (90 points). The Old Dominion came in 30th in pot smoking, but tanked on Google searches, coming in second-to-last. It was squarely in the mid-range on Facebook, though, and but lost points for relatively high pot prices. 7. Alabama (95 points). The state was tied for 5th-lowest marijuana use rates and tied for 3rd-lowest Google searches, but was respectable on Facebook interest and had the 2nd-lowest pot prices in the Bottom 10. 8. Tennessee (99 points). Not many Tennesseans are volunteering to fire up the bong—the state had the 4th-lowest use rate. It was also "meh" about Facebook and Google marijuana interest, but was mid-range when it came to Bottom 10 pot prices. 9. Mississippi (117 points). The state has the same point total as Oklahoma, pays about the same for weed, and shows a similar lack of interest in Facebook and Google queries, but came in 43rd on pot smoking, so the tie goes to Mississippi. 10. Oklahoma (117 points). Most Oklahomans would sooner inhale red dirt than reefer—the state came in 36th on pot use, and residents showed little interest in marijuana on social media.

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Ban homework: It doesn’t help little kids learn—and it ruins their love of school

If you are hoping to raise a child who always shares, who follows all the rules, and doesn’t act angry once in a while, you will want to skip the books by Heather Shumaker. A speaker and authority on early childhood and parenting, Shumaker has attracted attention for her argument that we should “ban homework in elementary school.” That’s just one part of her new book, “It’s OK to Go Up The Slide: Renegade Rules For Raising Confident and Creative Kids.” It’s a sequel of sorts to her first book, “It’s OK Not To Share and Other Renegade Rules For Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids.” Shumaker generally argues that parents should rarely force and pressure children, and we should respect each kid’s individual speed and style instead of imposing the same set of expectations on all of them. This doesn’t come simply from a free-to-be-you-and-me worldview: She draws on solid research to make many of her points. Salon spoke to the Michigan-based Shumaker from Ohio, where she was visiting a pre-school. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. The premise of your book is that other parenting books – or at least, our conventional wisdom about children and child-rearing – is mistaken. What do we get wrong about childhood? I don’t think it’s so much that the books have gotten it wrong, but that we as societies and families have got it wrong. This book certainly does turn things upside down more than most typical parenting advice. The whole thrust of my book is looking at the stress points in children’s lives and looking at where adult expectations are clashing with normal child developments. And when those two things are at odds, to question the adult expectations rather than trying to change the child. Expecting a wider range of typical growth – growth that is not always at the same pace as all their peers. So we’re trying as a society to put kids in a quantifiable box for every age and stage. And when they don’t match – the kindergartner who isn’t developmentally ready to read, has to hit a certain point, and if he doesn’t gets sent to a mandatory literacy camp. That’s an extreme of what a lot of schools are saying: You must reach this goal and if you don’t it will be imposed upon you. When in fact the kid can’t do anything about the way their brain develops. It will come eventually if they are given proper teaching. Where does the pressure come from to have all kids develop in identical ways and at an identical pace? It’s hard to know. But as a culture we’re always looking for constant growth and constant improvement. Our economic structure is always upward. It’s hard to impose that on humans, especially little humans. Some cultures are more laid back, and not to worried – there is a lot of fear in our culture right right now. Fear of our kids not getting ahead, fear of their safety… A lot of parents are driven by fear. Keeping kids indoors, not even playing in the front yard, is driven by fear. We know a lot more about brain development than we even have in human history. There’s more neuroscience research about how kids learn and how they learn through play, and how they learn through different stages. There’s a widening gap between the research and what we do with our kids on a daily basis. This reminds me of a section you include in some of your chapters, called “Take Off Your Adult Lenses.” What’s that intended to do? We’re very used to being adults. So this is to help us realize that they’re not little adults. I have the same adult-lenses category in my book “It’s OK Not to Share.” A child who’s not sharing is not this ungenerous, unkind creature. Think about it in different terms – in terms of child development. It’s not you we’re talking about. It’s a child who’s just beginning to live and grow. In your books you allow parents and teachers to have more unstructured time, to emphasize gym and outdoor play… Why are those important? It’s not so much emphasizing gym as emphasizing recess. In some teachers and principals’ minds, they’re the same, because they’re getting kids run around. I had an eight-year-old explain to me the difference: “Well in gym class, the teacher tells you what to do and your friends aren’t on your team.” We’re talking about the elementary school kids, the younger kids – at those ages, being able to have a break at recess is so essential, at so many levels. Physically, they need to move their bodies. They’ve done research studies and shown that boys are more active. And boys’ bodies are at their peak of physical activity – where they have to move around – when they are seven or eight. And that’s when we ask them to sit still and stay in their seats. When their bodies move, it helps refocus their brains – that frontal lobe they need for memory and learning and problem solving and focus and impulse control. So academic-wise and behavior-wise they need those breaks.... In fact, they’re treating kids with ADHD with more recess and it’s very effective. You argue that there’s not only too much homework but that there should be no homework for younger kids. What leads you to that? The more we learn about child development, the more we see there are many ways they need to learn – socially and emotionally and physically… And that kids learn even the cognitive skills they need in ways that don’t seem like learning to us. If you look at correlation studies, with a meta-analysis of 180 different research studies, on the impact that doing homework has, they find that it’s very age dependent. At high school it can help. In middle school it can help a tiny bit. In elementary school there was zero correlation between the time kids spend on homework and academic achievement. People will usually say, It’s to develop responsibility, or good habits so when they get to high school they’ll be ready. But if you look at a five-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old they have other things they need to focus on now: Running around outside, making faces as their sister, learning family chores, learning how to cut up a carrot…. And kids need a break. It has the effect of turning kids away from school, diminishing joy of learning, creating negative attitudes. If homework and school and learning get a bad rap at five or six, you’ve got years ahead of you – it’s a disaster in the making. Yeah, you’re not gonna have good associations with school when you’re older if it’s unpleasant when you’re young. And pleasure reading is so important… and keeping it pleasurable. Some schools have substituted reading for homework. You argue that books, and stories with unpleasant elements, are valuable for kids. “Don’t Remove Ogres From Books” is one of your chapter titles. Don’t these frighten kids, make them anxious, fearful? Why is it important to expose children to these? It’s not just the frightening moments, it’s the sad, sorrowful moments. When it comes to fear, and sorrow, and anger, these are all the difficult moments we wish would go away. We don’t want our kids to be scared, we especially don’t want our boys to be scared. Those are feelings that are uncomfortable for adults, so we often like to push them aside. People will skip the part in “Charlotte’s Web” where the spider dies. Kids have these fears, they have these sorrows, they have angry moments. They need to see these genuine and big emotions reflected in the world around them, And books are such a safe way to experience these fears and sorrows. But what we tend to do as a culture is to let them watch anything, where there’s all kinds of visual imagery that might scare them… But with books we back off. Books are the place where you can go at a child’s pace, and they will take on as much as they can handle. That’s the beauty of books: They won’t over-imagine what they can’t handle. And it’s a time to talk about things. Keep the ogres in books. Not enough to terrify them. But have the kid encounter something in a safe place, with you right next to them. We need to not be afraid of doing that.If you are hoping to raise a child who always shares, who follows all the rules, and doesn’t act angry once in a while, you will want to skip the books by Heather Shumaker. A speaker and authority on early childhood and parenting, Shumaker has attracted attention for her argument that we should “ban homework in elementary school.” That’s just one part of her new book, “It’s OK to Go Up The Slide: Renegade Rules For Raising Confident and Creative Kids.” It’s a sequel of sorts to her first book, “It’s OK Not To Share and Other Renegade Rules For Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids.” Shumaker generally argues that parents should rarely force and pressure children, and we should respect each kid’s individual speed and style instead of imposing the same set of expectations on all of them. This doesn’t come simply from a free-to-be-you-and-me worldview: She draws on solid research to make many of her points. Salon spoke to the Michigan-based Shumaker from Ohio, where she was visiting a pre-school. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. The premise of your book is that other parenting books – or at least, our conventional wisdom about children and child-rearing – is mistaken. What do we get wrong about childhood? I don’t think it’s so much that the books have gotten it wrong, but that we as societies and families have got it wrong. This book certainly does turn things upside down more than most typical parenting advice. The whole thrust of my book is looking at the stress points in children’s lives and looking at where adult expectations are clashing with normal child developments. And when those two things are at odds, to question the adult expectations rather than trying to change the child. Expecting a wider range of typical growth – growth that is not always at the same pace as all their peers. So we’re trying as a society to put kids in a quantifiable box for every age and stage. And when they don’t match – the kindergartner who isn’t developmentally ready to read, has to hit a certain point, and if he doesn’t gets sent to a mandatory literacy camp. That’s an extreme of what a lot of schools are saying: You must reach this goal and if you don’t it will be imposed upon you. When in fact the kid can’t do anything about the way their brain develops. It will come eventually if they are given proper teaching. Where does the pressure come from to have all kids develop in identical ways and at an identical pace? It’s hard to know. But as a culture we’re always looking for constant growth and constant improvement. Our economic structure is always upward. It’s hard to impose that on humans, especially little humans. Some cultures are more laid back, and not to worried – there is a lot of fear in our culture right right now. Fear of our kids not getting ahead, fear of their safety… A lot of parents are driven by fear. Keeping kids indoors, not even playing in the front yard, is driven by fear. We know a lot more about brain development than we even have in human history. There’s more neuroscience research about how kids learn and how they learn through play, and how they learn through different stages. There’s a widening gap between the research and what we do with our kids on a daily basis. This reminds me of a section you include in some of your chapters, called “Take Off Your Adult Lenses.” What’s that intended to do? We’re very used to being adults. So this is to help us realize that they’re not little adults. I have the same adult-lenses category in my book “It’s OK Not to Share.” A child who’s not sharing is not this ungenerous, unkind creature. Think about it in different terms – in terms of child development. It’s not you we’re talking about. It’s a child who’s just beginning to live and grow. In your books you allow parents and teachers to have more unstructured time, to emphasize gym and outdoor play… Why are those important? It’s not so much emphasizing gym as emphasizing recess. In some teachers and principals’ minds, they’re the same, because they’re getting kids run around. I had an eight-year-old explain to me the difference: “Well in gym class, the teacher tells you what to do and your friends aren’t on your team.” We’re talking about the elementary school kids, the younger kids – at those ages, being able to have a break at recess is so essential, at so many levels. Physically, they need to move their bodies. They’ve done research studies and shown that boys are more active. And boys’ bodies are at their peak of physical activity – where they have to move around – when they are seven or eight. And that’s when we ask them to sit still and stay in their seats. When their bodies move, it helps refocus their brains – that frontal lobe they need for memory and learning and problem solving and focus and impulse control. So academic-wise and behavior-wise they need those breaks.... In fact, they’re treating kids with ADHD with more recess and it’s very effective. You argue that there’s not only too much homework but that there should be no homework for younger kids. What leads you to that? The more we learn about child development, the more we see there are many ways they need to learn – socially and emotionally and physically… And that kids learn even the cognitive skills they need in ways that don’t seem like learning to us. If you look at correlation studies, with a meta-analysis of 180 different research studies, on the impact that doing homework has, they find that it’s very age dependent. At high school it can help. In middle school it can help a tiny bit. In elementary school there was zero correlation between the time kids spend on homework and academic achievement. People will usually say, It’s to develop responsibility, or good habits so when they get to high school they’ll be ready. But if you look at a five-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old they have other things they need to focus on now: Running around outside, making faces as their sister, learning family chores, learning how to cut up a carrot…. And kids need a break. It has the effect of turning kids away from school, diminishing joy of learning, creating negative attitudes. If homework and school and learning get a bad rap at five or six, you’ve got years ahead of you – it’s a disaster in the making. Yeah, you’re not gonna have good associations with school when you’re older if it’s unpleasant when you’re young. And pleasure reading is so important… and keeping it pleasurable. Some schools have substituted reading for homework. You argue that books, and stories with unpleasant elements, are valuable for kids. “Don’t Remove Ogres From Books” is one of your chapter titles. Don’t these frighten kids, make them anxious, fearful? Why is it important to expose children to these? It’s not just the frightening moments, it’s the sad, sorrowful moments. When it comes to fear, and sorrow, and anger, these are all the difficult moments we wish would go away. We don’t want our kids to be scared, we especially don’t want our boys to be scared. Those are feelings that are uncomfortable for adults, so we often like to push them aside. People will skip the part in “Charlotte’s Web” where the spider dies. Kids have these fears, they have these sorrows, they have angry moments. They need to see these genuine and big emotions reflected in the world around them, And books are such a safe way to experience these fears and sorrows. But what we tend to do as a culture is to let them watch anything, where there’s all kinds of visual imagery that might scare them… But with books we back off. Books are the place where you can go at a child’s pace, and they will take on as much as they can handle. That’s the beauty of books: They won’t over-imagine what they can’t handle. And it’s a time to talk about things. Keep the ogres in books. Not enough to terrify them. But have the kid encounter something in a safe place, with you right next to them. We need to not be afraid of doing that.If you are hoping to raise a child who always shares, who follows all the rules, and doesn’t act angry once in a while, you will want to skip the books by Heather Shumaker. A speaker and authority on early childhood and parenting, Shumaker has attracted attention for her argument that we should “ban homework in elementary school.” That’s just one part of her new book, “It’s OK to Go Up The Slide: Renegade Rules For Raising Confident and Creative Kids.” It’s a sequel of sorts to her first book, “It’s OK Not To Share and Other Renegade Rules For Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids.” Shumaker generally argues that parents should rarely force and pressure children, and we should respect each kid’s individual speed and style instead of imposing the same set of expectations on all of them. This doesn’t come simply from a free-to-be-you-and-me worldview: She draws on solid research to make many of her points. Salon spoke to the Michigan-based Shumaker from Ohio, where she was visiting a pre-school. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. The premise of your book is that other parenting books – or at least, our conventional wisdom about children and child-rearing – is mistaken. What do we get wrong about childhood? I don’t think it’s so much that the books have gotten it wrong, but that we as societies and families have got it wrong. This book certainly does turn things upside down more than most typical parenting advice. The whole thrust of my book is looking at the stress points in children’s lives and looking at where adult expectations are clashing with normal child developments. And when those two things are at odds, to question the adult expectations rather than trying to change the child. Expecting a wider range of typical growth – growth that is not always at the same pace as all their peers. So we’re trying as a society to put kids in a quantifiable box for every age and stage. And when they don’t match – the kindergartner who isn’t developmentally ready to read, has to hit a certain point, and if he doesn’t gets sent to a mandatory literacy camp. That’s an extreme of what a lot of schools are saying: You must reach this goal and if you don’t it will be imposed upon you. When in fact the kid can’t do anything about the way their brain develops. It will come eventually if they are given proper teaching. Where does the pressure come from to have all kids develop in identical ways and at an identical pace? It’s hard to know. But as a culture we’re always looking for constant growth and constant improvement. Our economic structure is always upward. It’s hard to impose that on humans, especially little humans. Some cultures are more laid back, and not to worried – there is a lot of fear in our culture right right now. Fear of our kids not getting ahead, fear of their safety… A lot of parents are driven by fear. Keeping kids indoors, not even playing in the front yard, is driven by fear. We know a lot more about brain development than we even have in human history. There’s more neuroscience research about how kids learn and how they learn through play, and how they learn through different stages. There’s a widening gap between the research and what we do with our kids on a daily basis. This reminds me of a section you include in some of your chapters, called “Take Off Your Adult Lenses.” What’s that intended to do? We’re very used to being adults. So this is to help us realize that they’re not little adults. I have the same adult-lenses category in my book “It’s OK Not to Share.” A child who’s not sharing is not this ungenerous, unkind creature. Think about it in different terms – in terms of child development. It’s not you we’re talking about. It’s a child who’s just beginning to live and grow. In your books you allow parents and teachers to have more unstructured time, to emphasize gym and outdoor play… Why are those important? It’s not so much emphasizing gym as emphasizing recess. In some teachers and principals’ minds, they’re the same, because they’re getting kids run around. I had an eight-year-old explain to me the difference: “Well in gym class, the teacher tells you what to do and your friends aren’t on your team.” We’re talking about the elementary school kids, the younger kids – at those ages, being able to have a break at recess is so essential, at so many levels. Physically, they need to move their bodies. They’ve done research studies and shown that boys are more active. And boys’ bodies are at their peak of physical activity – where they have to move around – when they are seven or eight. And that’s when we ask them to sit still and stay in their seats. When their bodies move, it helps refocus their brains – that frontal lobe they need for memory and learning and problem solving and focus and impulse control. So academic-wise and behavior-wise they need those breaks.... In fact, they’re treating kids with ADHD with more recess and it’s very effective. You argue that there’s not only too much homework but that there should be no homework for younger kids. What leads you to that? The more we learn about child development, the more we see there are many ways they need to learn – socially and emotionally and physically… And that kids learn even the cognitive skills they need in ways that don’t seem like learning to us. If you look at correlation studies, with a meta-analysis of 180 different research studies, on the impact that doing homework has, they find that it’s very age dependent. At high school it can help. In middle school it can help a tiny bit. In elementary school there was zero correlation between the time kids spend on homework and academic achievement. People will usually say, It’s to develop responsibility, or good habits so when they get to high school they’ll be ready. But if you look at a five-year-old or an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old they have other things they need to focus on now: Running around outside, making faces as their sister, learning family chores, learning how to cut up a carrot…. And kids need a break. It has the effect of turning kids away from school, diminishing joy of learning, creating negative attitudes. If homework and school and learning get a bad rap at five or six, you’ve got years ahead of you – it’s a disaster in the making. Yeah, you’re not gonna have good associations with school when you’re older if it’s unpleasant when you’re young. And pleasure reading is so important… and keeping it pleasurable. Some schools have substituted reading for homework. You argue that books, and stories with unpleasant elements, are valuable for kids. “Don’t Remove Ogres From Books” is one of your chapter titles. Don’t these frighten kids, make them anxious, fearful? Why is it important to expose children to these? It’s not just the frightening moments, it’s the sad, sorrowful moments. When it comes to fear, and sorrow, and anger, these are all the difficult moments we wish would go away. We don’t want our kids to be scared, we especially don’t want our boys to be scared. Those are feelings that are uncomfortable for adults, so we often like to push them aside. People will skip the part in “Charlotte’s Web” where the spider dies. Kids have these fears, they have these sorrows, they have angry moments. They need to see these genuine and big emotions reflected in the world around them, And books are such a safe way to experience these fears and sorrows. But what we tend to do as a culture is to let them watch anything, where there’s all kinds of visual imagery that might scare them… But with books we back off. Books are the place where you can go at a child’s pace, and they will take on as much as they can handle. That’s the beauty of books: They won’t over-imagine what they can’t handle. And it’s a time to talk about things. Keep the ogres in books. Not enough to terrify them. But have the kid encounter something in a safe place, with you right next to them. We need to not be afraid of doing that.

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Doubling down on “Game of Thrones”: HBO needs new stories that take risks—and we’re getting a recap show instead

HBO announced today that it is going to follow up each episode of “Game Of Thrones”’ season six with a new post-show recap called “After The Thrones,” starring Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan of Bill Simmons’ new site the Ringer (which hasn’t yet officially launched). Simmons signed a deal with HBO last year for various unspecified projects; “After The Thrones” is one of them. It's a strategic, if not particularly creative, financial decision. “Game Of Thrones” is HBO’s only surefire hit drama hit after “True Detective” fizzled out in season two; aside from multiple Emmy-winner “Veep,” the rest of the networks’ best-known lineup is thinning out. “Girls” is ending next year, “The Leftovers” is ending after its next season, and well-received productions like “Show Me A Hero” and “Olive Kitteridge” were just miniseries. HBO relies on premium subscribers choosing to pay for the network exclusively—either through traditional cable or satellite or through HBO Now, the network’s new streaming service. So to sweeten the deal, HBO is offering more “Thrones,” sort of. Taking a page from AMC’s book—and from the cottage industry of recaps, thinkpieces, and news segments that follow every episode of “Game Of Thrones”—HBO’s “After The Thrones,” like post-“The Walking Dead”’s “Talking Dead,” aims start discussion and recap the plot first, on that same network, to hopefully both keep that record-setting audience engaged and also to guide the critical conversation. [Update: HBO hasn't confirmed exactly when "After The Thrones" will air, stating that new episodes will be available Mondays on streaming and will air at some undetermined point on HBO itself. I've assumed that it will be directly afterward, based on the title and the scheduling of "Talking Dead." But that's a slot currently occupied by "Veep" and "Silicon Valley."] With all due respect to Greenwald, who has been a TV critic worth following for some time, I am skeptical that “After The Thrones” will be particularly critical or insightful. Perhaps I am influenced by “Talking Dead”’s chatty banter, which is currently the industry standard for this type of thing. But I also highly doubt that HBO would air criticism of its own show, immediately after its broadcast. This is a network that is so averse to anyone else carrying water for it that its PR arm publishes articles on Medium instead of giving exclusives to journalists; with “After The Thrones,” HBO finds a way to launch a pedigreed narrative-guider. And, to be brutally honest: I like “Game Of Thrones,” but it does not surprise me at all to learn that the two talking heads chosen to speak for the whole fandom, on HBO, immediately after broadcast, are two white men. This feels like a frustrating kind of attention grab—an attempt to seize not just the pop-culture conversation, but to pre-empt pop-culture criticism, too. I imagine that season three’s “Breaker Of Chains,” with its shocking rape scene, would have hit the viewing audience at home a lot differently if “After The Thrones” had a ready interpretation and explanation for it. Book readers know that despite the power of “Game Of Thrones”’ production, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have flattened certain elements of the show, out of what looks like disinterest or dismissal; it’s maddening. “After The Thrones” feels like a further degree of flattening, rolling over not just the show’s material but the robust conversation around it. But the real reason HBO probably shouldn’t have done this, aside from my crankiness, is that it also just looks desperate. It’s hard to imagine that anyone considering subscribing to HBO for “Game Of Thrones” would be moved by knowing that “After The Thrones” exists, even if “After The Thrones” exceeds all my wildest expectations. At the end of the day, it’s a recap show, taking up space where another original drama could live. Where are HBO’s other good ideas? It's Sunday night primetime, and this is all you could come up with?HBO announced today that it is going to follow up each episode of “Game Of Thrones”’ season six with a new post-show recap called “After The Thrones,” starring Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan of Bill Simmons’ new site the Ringer (which hasn’t yet officially launched). Simmons signed a deal with HBO last year for various unspecified projects; “After The Thrones” is one of them. It's a strategic, if not particularly creative, financial decision. “Game Of Thrones” is HBO’s only surefire hit drama hit after “True Detective” fizzled out in season two; aside from multiple Emmy-winner “Veep,” the rest of the networks’ best-known lineup is thinning out. “Girls” is ending next year, “The Leftovers” is ending after its next season, and well-received productions like “Show Me A Hero” and “Olive Kitteridge” were just miniseries. HBO relies on premium subscribers choosing to pay for the network exclusively—either through traditional cable or satellite or through HBO Now, the network’s new streaming service. So to sweeten the deal, HBO is offering more “Thrones,” sort of. Taking a page from AMC’s book—and from the cottage industry of recaps, thinkpieces, and news segments that follow every episode of “Game Of Thrones”—HBO’s “After The Thrones,” like post-“The Walking Dead”’s “Talking Dead,” aims start discussion and recap the plot first, on that same network, to hopefully both keep that record-setting audience engaged and also to guide the critical conversation. [Update: HBO hasn't confirmed exactly when "After The Thrones" will air, stating that new episodes will be available Mondays on streaming and will air at some undetermined point on HBO itself. I've assumed that it will be directly afterward, based on the title and the scheduling of "Talking Dead." But that's a slot currently occupied by "Veep" and "Silicon Valley."] With all due respect to Greenwald, who has been a TV critic worth following for some time, I am skeptical that “After The Thrones” will be particularly critical or insightful. Perhaps I am influenced by “Talking Dead”’s chatty banter, which is currently the industry standard for this type of thing. But I also highly doubt that HBO would air criticism of its own show, immediately after its broadcast. This is a network that is so averse to anyone else carrying water for it that its PR arm publishes articles on Medium instead of giving exclusives to journalists; with “After The Thrones,” HBO finds a way to launch a pedigreed narrative-guider. And, to be brutally honest: I like “Game Of Thrones,” but it does not surprise me at all to learn that the two talking heads chosen to speak for the whole fandom, on HBO, immediately after broadcast, are two white men. This feels like a frustrating kind of attention grab—an attempt to seize not just the pop-culture conversation, but to pre-empt pop-culture criticism, too. I imagine that season three’s “Breaker Of Chains,” with its shocking rape scene, would have hit the viewing audience at home a lot differently if “After The Thrones” had a ready interpretation and explanation for it. Book readers know that despite the power of “Game Of Thrones”’ production, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have flattened certain elements of the show, out of what looks like disinterest or dismissal; it’s maddening. “After The Thrones” feels like a further degree of flattening, rolling over not just the show’s material but the robust conversation around it. But the real reason HBO probably shouldn’t have done this, aside from my crankiness, is that it also just looks desperate. It’s hard to imagine that anyone considering subscribing to HBO for “Game Of Thrones” would be moved by knowing that “After The Thrones” exists, even if “After The Thrones” exceeds all my wildest expectations. At the end of the day, it’s a recap show, taking up space where another original drama could live. Where are HBO’s other good ideas? It's Sunday night primetime, and this is all you could come up with?

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