Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 825

March 25, 2016

Robert De Niro defends Tribeca’s anti-vaxx film screening: “This is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion”

Looks like the Tribeca Film Festival isn't budging. Earlier this week, Andrew Wakefield — the disgraced British physician whose 1998 claims linking autism and vaccinations were later retracted and declared "an elaborate fraud" — proudly announced that he was debuting a new documentary called "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe" at the upcoming Festival. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people who support science and medicine were appalled. The film purports to "understand what’s behind the skyrocketing increase of autism diagnoses today" — despite both the repeated assurances from respected and independent health organizations refuting the link between vaccines and autism, and the dangerously increasing rates of once eradicated illnesses like measles. Wakefield, meanwhile, has been barred from practicing medicine in the UK after what British medical journal BMJ called "a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data." He has been accused of doing so while conveniently working on "a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines." And as CNN reported in 2011, Wakefield "had been paid by a law firm that intended to sue vaccine manufacturers -- a serious conflict of interest he failed to disclose." In a statement earlier this week, a representative for the Tribeca Film Festival nevertheless justified the film's inclusion, saying, "Over the years we have presented many films from opposing sides of an issue. We are a forum, not a judge." On Friday, the festival issued the following follow-up statement from the Fest's co-founder, Robert De Niro:

"Grace and I have a child with autism and we believe it is critical that all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined. In the 15 years since the Tribeca Film Festival was founded, I have never asked for a film to be screened or gotten involved in the programming. However this is very personal to me and my family and I want there to be a discussion, which is why we will be screening VAXXED. I am not personally endorsing the film, nor am I anti-vaccination; I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue."

It's unfortunate that rather than using his experience to educate, De Niro has chosen to give a platform to a person whose disgraceful and fraudulent behavior has helped perpetuate a legitimate public health crisis in the form of unvaccinated children. Hiding behind the phrase "conversation," the Tribeca Film Festival is perpetuating ignorance. And I can't help thinking of the words of another parent, blogger Jen Forsyth, who's written on Voices for Vaccines that "As an autism parent, it offends me my children’s condition is being used to scare people away from life-saving medicine."

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Published on March 25, 2016 12:25

March 24, 2016

Hillary Clinton doesn’t speak for me: I’m a millennial woman raising a biracial son. I voted for Bernie, and I refuse to be shamed for it

Just after Super Tuesday, a family friend and Hillary supporter sent an article to me and a dozen other millennial women, rightly assuming that most of us were Bernie supporters. She asked us what we younger women thought of the essay. Several weeks later, Hillary has won many more primary delegates than Bernie, and has cinched almost all the unelected superdelegates, but millennials are still voting 2-to-1 for her anti-establishment rival. Hana Schank, who wrote the article “My Gen-X Hillary problem: I know why we don’t 'like' Clinton” argues that millennial women support Bernie because they think we’ve moved beyond sexism. Given a couple more decades in the professional world, these young women would feel the same low-level, “insidious" discrimination Schank experiences and realize just how monumental and necessary electing a woman is. While I couldn’t agree more that we are far from a post-sexist world, Schank’s essay sidesteps over other measures of inequality and glosses over just how sprawling and varied an affliction sexism still is in this country. She sees her struggle in Hillary's, but forgets that many American women do not and never will — that neither Hillary’s platform nor Hillary’s life speaks to those women. Even issues rooted in gender inequality (like access to reproductive healthcare) are defined by the intersections of gender, race and class. A pro-woman candidate must understand how racism and an economy of the 1 percent impact all women in color and class-specific ways. I think millennial women intuitively understand that Hillary is not that candidate. As younger women, perhaps we're also less burdened by the tug of being so close to winning the old fight and freer to imagine a new fight entirely. (As Robert Reich put it: Hillary is “the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have. But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we ought to have.”) Supporting him doesn’t mean we're naive or that we fail to understand the realities of our time. Schank is right: Hillary’s election would be monumental. But the right wing is campaigning in terms of real lives lost and rights revoked. Now is not the time to seek out monuments. The next Democratic candidate – whether male or female – must be able to beat a Republican nominee whose racism and classism will undoubtedly disproportionately harm women (check out all of their records and positions here). I think millennials intuitively understand that Bernie – not Hillary – commands the fervor needed to beat Trump. I’m a millennial woman raising a biracial son who will not share the privilege of my skin. Race is one of many conversations I have the privilege of opting out of. I vote as a woman. But I also vote as my son’s mother; I vote as a feminist in solidarity with women who lead less privileged lives than my own. I voted for Bernie, and I refuse to be shamed for that. Here’s why. ONE: This election isn’t about gender Hillary’s political career has been impressive and groundbreaking for American women. But it is astonishing (and disappointing) that in a race where the most likely Republican nominee is a billionaire endorsed by the KKK, middle-aged white feminists are campaigning to make sexism the primary issue. Klan chapters more than doubled from 2014 to 2015; hate groups are on the rise in general. Last year saw the highest rate of young black men killed by police. Already, my son is five times more likely to be killed by police than if he were white. He’s more likely to be searched by police, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be sent to adult prison as a juvenile, and more likely to receive longer sentences for the same convictions. He’s more likely to have his voting rights revoked. Even as a man, he’s likely to be paid less than me, because he’s black. Sexism still simmers and seethes, yes. But racism and economic inequality have reached a boiling point in this country. Trump is conservative America’s backlash to seeing a black man hold the Oval Office for eight years. And in some way that white Democrats will never, ever admit, Hillary is liberal America’s backlash to seeing a black man hold the Oval Office for eight years. Now that Obama’s presidency has presumably relieved 400 years of white guilt, middle-aged white feminists are clamoring for their turn. These women are willing to elect a symbol of progress that makes them feel good, forgetting just how much is on the line – we’re talking coerced deportation, state-sanctioned lynchings and

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Published on March 24, 2016 16:00

“I was a hope-I-die-before-I-get-old kind of guy”: Bob Mould opens up about his career’s third act, writing through loss and the presidential election “circus”

It’s not as if Bob Mould has spent much time coasting: The veteran punk rocker has released new music at a steady clip since his influential Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü debuted with the “Land Speed Record” EP in 1982. Yet despite amassing an enviable catalog in a career stretching more than three and a half decades, Mould seemed to spring out of nowhere in 2012 with “Silver Age,” an album blending the full-throttle ferocity of Hüsker Dü with the barbed melodicism of Sugar, Mould’s early-’90s power pop band. After an equally riotous follow-up on 2014’s “Beauty & Ruin,” Mould is back with “Patch the Sky.” Again featuring Jon Wurster on drums and Jason Narducy on bass, the new album is of a piece with the two before it, cementing what feels like a comeback for a musician who has never really been gone. Mould has taken detours, to be sure. “Workbook,” his 1989 solo debut following Hüsker Dü’s split, owes as much to folk as punk, and he explored electronic music thoroughly enough to co-host a regular dance party called Blowoff when he lived in Washington, D.C., in the 2000s — to say nothing of his stint writing story lines for World Championship Wrestling in the ’90s, or penning the theme song for “The Daily Show.” The ongoing rediscovery of Mould started in 2011, the year before “Silver Age.” He contributed that year to Foo Fighters’ album “Wasting Light” and performed with them occasionally onstage, published the memoir “See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody,” and was feted at a tribute concert in his honor at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where Dave Grohl, Ryan Adams and members of Spoon, the Hold Steady and No Age performed his songs. “I never saw that show coming, people I’ve influenced singing my words back to me,” Mould says now, still marveling at the idea. The singer and guitarist reflected with Salon on his recent renaissance, and weighed in on politics, his current relationship with electronic music and how living in San Francisco is making him soft. Your recent albums have been described as a “third-act resurgence.” Is that how you see it? Once it was put in those words on my behalf, I guess I would tend to agree. I just sort of go from one to the next and I don’t notice where the parentheticals fit as I’m actually doing it. But I think that’s fair. It’s the third album with the same lineup and the same engineer and a similar tone and style in a general sense. I think there are big differences between the records, but yeah, I guess it feels like part three of a third act. How does “Patch the Sky” fit together with “Silver Age” and “Beauty & Ruin?” If we go back to the events that got me to “Silver Age,” that being the writing of the book, work with the Foo Fighters, the book coming out, more work with Foo Fighters and the Disney Hall show, “Silver Age” was written with energy and love, and it had a brighter tone to it. “Beauty & Ruin,” same lineup after a lot of touring, after losing my dad, just changes that were going on. I thought it was a little darker record, but I thought it showcased how the three of us made music together. With this record, more loss. A little more isolated in the writing. Totally isolated in the writing, actually, so it’s a little more introspective. You said at the time that “Silver Age” was sort of a bookend to Sugar’s 1992 album “Copper Blue.” Is there a similar corollary for “Patch the Sky”? “Black Sheets of Rain.” [Laughs] If there’s anything that it could resemble, I think it’s that record [Mould’s soul-baring second solo LP, released in 1990]. If any decade informed this record musically, it would probably be mid- to late-’70s and not punk rock. Were you listening to particular bands from that era? No, no, it just came out. Started popping out. It was like, what the hell, what is this, “Toys in the Attic”? [Laughs] What was isolated about the writing process for “Patch the Sky”? With “Silver Age,” I had some songs kicking around, but just all that compact energy. I wrote most of that record in a month, month and a half, right before we recorded it, and I felt like it was more of a spontaneous statement. “Beauty & Ruin” was a lot of ideas gathered on the run, and we went in to make that record right after we got back from South America. This record, I had a solid six months of writing, so in terms of process, it was probably closest to “Workbook.” Having six months of alone time is not necessarily the healthiest thing, but you get good work out of it. What makes the new album so introspective? I just had a lot of loss. I lost my mom, I lost a lot of friends, people got sick. It’s just the stuff that happens as you get older. It’s never fun. People leave, you mourn the loss and then you have to move on. Sometimes it happens quicker than others, and this time, I just wanted to sit and process it for a while. Punk rock has always been a very personal means of expression for you, though you spoke out against the proposed same-sex marriage ban in North Carolina a few years ago. How much of a political component is there in your work? Big politics, what can you do? You can speak your mind, and then you move on. To me, it’s more about going to my neighborhood association meetings to try to keep people from building giant, oversized ugly houses in my little neighborhood. Or trying to speak to the police in my neighborhood about crime. Big-stage politics, I’m not so good at that. But same-sex marriage, that was something that needed a light shined on it. That’s a human rights issue, and one that I take personally, whether or not I want to get married. How much attention have you been paying attention to the presidential primaries? Too much. What a circus. Is it something your work will reflect? I’m sure it’s affecting my mind-set, so I’m sure somehow it’s going to get in there. I think the most important thing I could do, or anyone could do, is you have to vote. It’s that simple. Why is voting not mandatory in this country? What do you make of it all? I think it’s good to shine a very bright light on the crazy. I think some of these ideas that people are stealing have been couched and disguised and sometimes hidden away for sometimes decades, and now that we’re in the last gasp of that political party, it’s all on display. Now the hope is that people will see what they’ve been doing and see how the system is failing all of us. Hopefully we’ll get some good change out of this. Are you supporting a particular candidate? I haven’t picked yet, but I know who I’m not voting for. As far as local politics go, you live in San Francisco, where tech workers have become a sometimes unwelcome presence. How much do you feel the effects of that? I don’t get inside that beehive directly. A lot of acquaintances work in that business. I don’t know. Cities change. San Francisco is such a beautiful place. It’s a city with a rich history in music and culture and arts and lifestyle, and I don’t know how many people who have showed up in the last three years are aware of it, or care about it. It’s a tough deal. People can’t afford to live there, it’s really hard. You’ve moved around a lot. How much are you influenced by the places you live? New York, I was always on my feet, always walking, always thinking on my feet. That was a big part of it to me, the way the ideas were constructed. I think Minneapolis and Austin were direct opposites. In Minnesota, you stayed in all winter, and in Austin you stayed in all summer. The weather has a lot to do with it. D.C., it was crazy being there during the George W. Bush years. The pulse of the city was just war, war, war, just people with pacemakers running wars. It was like, what the fuck? San Francisco, I’d been going there since ’81. I love the soft weather. It’s making me soft. The one thing that I feel in my six and a half years, my memories are weird because there are no weird seasons to speak of, other than fog. It has a little bit of that affect, where those potential markers due to weather don’t really exist. How does that come out in your work? I don’t know if I can specifically pin it down. I’m aware of what it does to me as a person. Because I don’t work in tech, San Francisco to me is pretty chill. It feels very, very different than the East Coast. For this record, I pretty much sat in my room and worked. Sometimes I wasn’t even aware of when the fog came or went. [Laughs.] Now that you’re in this third-act resurgence, what’s your relationship these days with electronic music? I put it pretty much on hold. I’ll put on a compilation from a label that I like and listen to what people are doing with progressive house or French house, but as an active hours-a-day-looking-for-new-music guy, I’m done with it for now. It got kind of overblown. I just felt like that genre had gotten filled with the same drops and the same zooooom, and that was it. I just needed a break. I’ll probably go back to DJing at some point, but the 11 years of Blowoff was a full-on immersion. In the gay community at that time, the music wasn’t really top-notch, and it felt like we were bringing something different, and I know we were good at it. What do you think about your own influence? I think it’s there. I don’t know how big or small it is. I can’t tell. I feel like I’m really important to a small group of people, and that’s great. If they get the stories and can relate to them, that’s really what this is about. On a global level, I don’t know. I really have no idea. I’m close to it, so I’m not really sure. I’m grateful that people like the early work, the middle work, the recent work. I think it all fits together in a cool way, there’s a consistency to all of it. I think after 37 years of it, I know what I’m good at, I know what people want to hear from me. So back 37 years ago, what did you think you’d be doing today? Hoping I would do this, but in what form, I didn’t know. I was a hope-I-die-before-I-get-old kind of guy. Punk rock was crazy. We were just building stages and asking our friends to come play with us. And I was bored, and I needed to do it or perish. There was no idea that we’d be carrying on about it at this point, but I’m very grateful that we are, of course. It’s pretty great. I love my work, I love doing what we do. It gets harder as I get older, of course, but I’ll keep doing it as long as it lasts.It’s not as if Bob Mould has spent much time coasting: The veteran punk rocker has released new music at a steady clip since his influential Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü debuted with the “Land Speed Record” EP in 1982. Yet despite amassing an enviable catalog in a career stretching more than three and a half decades, Mould seemed to spring out of nowhere in 2012 with “Silver Age,” an album blending the full-throttle ferocity of Hüsker Dü with the barbed melodicism of Sugar, Mould’s early-’90s power pop band. After an equally riotous follow-up on 2014’s “Beauty & Ruin,” Mould is back with “Patch the Sky.” Again featuring Jon Wurster on drums and Jason Narducy on bass, the new album is of a piece with the two before it, cementing what feels like a comeback for a musician who has never really been gone. Mould has taken detours, to be sure. “Workbook,” his 1989 solo debut following Hüsker Dü’s split, owes as much to folk as punk, and he explored electronic music thoroughly enough to co-host a regular dance party called Blowoff when he lived in Washington, D.C., in the 2000s — to say nothing of his stint writing story lines for World Championship Wrestling in the ’90s, or penning the theme song for “The Daily Show.” The ongoing rediscovery of Mould started in 2011, the year before “Silver Age.” He contributed that year to Foo Fighters’ album “Wasting Light” and performed with them occasionally onstage, published the memoir “See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody,” and was feted at a tribute concert in his honor at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where Dave Grohl, Ryan Adams and members of Spoon, the Hold Steady and No Age performed his songs. “I never saw that show coming, people I’ve influenced singing my words back to me,” Mould says now, still marveling at the idea. The singer and guitarist reflected with Salon on his recent renaissance, and weighed in on politics, his current relationship with electronic music and how living in San Francisco is making him soft. Your recent albums have been described as a “third-act resurgence.” Is that how you see it? Once it was put in those words on my behalf, I guess I would tend to agree. I just sort of go from one to the next and I don’t notice where the parentheticals fit as I’m actually doing it. But I think that’s fair. It’s the third album with the same lineup and the same engineer and a similar tone and style in a general sense. I think there are big differences between the records, but yeah, I guess it feels like part three of a third act. How does “Patch the Sky” fit together with “Silver Age” and “Beauty & Ruin?” If we go back to the events that got me to “Silver Age,” that being the writing of the book, work with the Foo Fighters, the book coming out, more work with Foo Fighters and the Disney Hall show, “Silver Age” was written with energy and love, and it had a brighter tone to it. “Beauty & Ruin,” same lineup after a lot of touring, after losing my dad, just changes that were going on. I thought it was a little darker record, but I thought it showcased how the three of us made music together. With this record, more loss. A little more isolated in the writing. Totally isolated in the writing, actually, so it’s a little more introspective. You said at the time that “Silver Age” was sort of a bookend to Sugar’s 1992 album “Copper Blue.” Is there a similar corollary for “Patch the Sky”? “Black Sheets of Rain.” [Laughs] If there’s anything that it could resemble, I think it’s that record [Mould’s soul-baring second solo LP, released in 1990]. If any decade informed this record musically, it would probably be mid- to late-’70s and not punk rock. Were you listening to particular bands from that era? No, no, it just came out. Started popping out. It was like, what the hell, what is this, “Toys in the Attic”? [Laughs] What was isolated about the writing process for “Patch the Sky”? With “Silver Age,” I had some songs kicking around, but just all that compact energy. I wrote most of that record in a month, month and a half, right before we recorded it, and I felt like it was more of a spontaneous statement. “Beauty & Ruin” was a lot of ideas gathered on the run, and we went in to make that record right after we got back from South America. This record, I had a solid six months of writing, so in terms of process, it was probably closest to “Workbook.” Having six months of alone time is not necessarily the healthiest thing, but you get good work out of it. What makes the new album so introspective? I just had a lot of loss. I lost my mom, I lost a lot of friends, people got sick. It’s just the stuff that happens as you get older. It’s never fun. People leave, you mourn the loss and then you have to move on. Sometimes it happens quicker than others, and this time, I just wanted to sit and process it for a while. Punk rock has always been a very personal means of expression for you, though you spoke out against the proposed same-sex marriage ban in North Carolina a few years ago. How much of a political component is there in your work? Big politics, what can you do? You can speak your mind, and then you move on. To me, it’s more about going to my neighborhood association meetings to try to keep people from building giant, oversized ugly houses in my little neighborhood. Or trying to speak to the police in my neighborhood about crime. Big-stage politics, I’m not so good at that. But same-sex marriage, that was something that needed a light shined on it. That’s a human rights issue, and one that I take personally, whether or not I want to get married. How much attention have you been paying attention to the presidential primaries? Too much. What a circus. Is it something your work will reflect? I’m sure it’s affecting my mind-set, so I’m sure somehow it’s going to get in there. I think the most important thing I could do, or anyone could do, is you have to vote. It’s that simple. Why is voting not mandatory in this country? What do you make of it all? I think it’s good to shine a very bright light on the crazy. I think some of these ideas that people are stealing have been couched and disguised and sometimes hidden away for sometimes decades, and now that we’re in the last gasp of that political party, it’s all on display. Now the hope is that people will see what they’ve been doing and see how the system is failing all of us. Hopefully we’ll get some good change out of this. Are you supporting a particular candidate? I haven’t picked yet, but I know who I’m not voting for. As far as local politics go, you live in San Francisco, where tech workers have become a sometimes unwelcome presence. How much do you feel the effects of that? I don’t get inside that beehive directly. A lot of acquaintances work in that business. I don’t know. Cities change. San Francisco is such a beautiful place. It’s a city with a rich history in music and culture and arts and lifestyle, and I don’t know how many people who have showed up in the last three years are aware of it, or care about it. It’s a tough deal. People can’t afford to live there, it’s really hard. You’ve moved around a lot. How much are you influenced by the places you live? New York, I was always on my feet, always walking, always thinking on my feet. That was a big part of it to me, the way the ideas were constructed. I think Minneapolis and Austin were direct opposites. In Minnesota, you stayed in all winter, and in Austin you stayed in all summer. The weather has a lot to do with it. D.C., it was crazy being there during the George W. Bush years. The pulse of the city was just war, war, war, just people with pacemakers running wars. It was like, what the fuck? San Francisco, I’d been going there since ’81. I love the soft weather. It’s making me soft. The one thing that I feel in my six and a half years, my memories are weird because there are no weird seasons to speak of, other than fog. It has a little bit of that affect, where those potential markers due to weather don’t really exist. How does that come out in your work? I don’t know if I can specifically pin it down. I’m aware of what it does to me as a person. Because I don’t work in tech, San Francisco to me is pretty chill. It feels very, very different than the East Coast. For this record, I pretty much sat in my room and worked. Sometimes I wasn’t even aware of when the fog came or went. [Laughs.] Now that you’re in this third-act resurgence, what’s your relationship these days with electronic music? I put it pretty much on hold. I’ll put on a compilation from a label that I like and listen to what people are doing with progressive house or French house, but as an active hours-a-day-looking-for-new-music guy, I’m done with it for now. It got kind of overblown. I just felt like that genre had gotten filled with the same drops and the same zooooom, and that was it. I just needed a break. I’ll probably go back to DJing at some point, but the 11 years of Blowoff was a full-on immersion. In the gay community at that time, the music wasn’t really top-notch, and it felt like we were bringing something different, and I know we were good at it. What do you think about your own influence? I think it’s there. I don’t know how big or small it is. I can’t tell. I feel like I’m really important to a small group of people, and that’s great. If they get the stories and can relate to them, that’s really what this is about. On a global level, I don’t know. I really have no idea. I’m close to it, so I’m not really sure. I’m grateful that people like the early work, the middle work, the recent work. I think it all fits together in a cool way, there’s a consistency to all of it. I think after 37 years of it, I know what I’m good at, I know what people want to hear from me. So back 37 years ago, what did you think you’d be doing today? Hoping I would do this, but in what form, I didn’t know. I was a hope-I-die-before-I-get-old kind of guy. Punk rock was crazy. We were just building stages and asking our friends to come play with us. And I was bored, and I needed to do it or perish. There was no idea that we’d be carrying on about it at this point, but I’m very grateful that we are, of course. It’s pretty great. I love my work, I love doing what we do. It gets harder as I get older, of course, but I’ll keep doing it as long as it lasts.It’s not as if Bob Mould has spent much time coasting: The veteran punk rocker has released new music at a steady clip since his influential Minneapolis trio Hüsker Dü debuted with the “Land Speed Record” EP in 1982. Yet despite amassing an enviable catalog in a career stretching more than three and a half decades, Mould seemed to spring out of nowhere in 2012 with “Silver Age,” an album blending the full-throttle ferocity of Hüsker Dü with the barbed melodicism of Sugar, Mould’s early-’90s power pop band. After an equally riotous follow-up on 2014’s “Beauty & Ruin,” Mould is back with “Patch the Sky.” Again featuring Jon Wurster on drums and Jason Narducy on bass, the new album is of a piece with the two before it, cementing what feels like a comeback for a musician who has never really been gone. Mould has taken detours, to be sure. “Workbook,” his 1989 solo debut following Hüsker Dü’s split, owes as much to folk as punk, and he explored electronic music thoroughly enough to co-host a regular dance party called Blowoff when he lived in Washington, D.C., in the 2000s — to say nothing of his stint writing story lines for World Championship Wrestling in the ’90s, or penning the theme song for “The Daily Show.” The ongoing rediscovery of Mould started in 2011, the year before “Silver Age.” He contributed that year to Foo Fighters’ album “Wasting Light” and performed with them occasionally onstage, published the memoir “See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody,” and was feted at a tribute concert in his honor at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, where Dave Grohl, Ryan Adams and members of Spoon, the Hold Steady and No Age performed his songs. “I never saw that show coming, people I’ve influenced singing my words back to me,” Mould says now, still marveling at the idea. The singer and guitarist reflected with Salon on his recent renaissance, and weighed in on politics, his current relationship with electronic music and how living in San Francisco is making him soft. Your recent albums have been described as a “third-act resurgence.” Is that how you see it? Once it was put in those words on my behalf, I guess I would tend to agree. I just sort of go from one to the next and I don’t notice where the parentheticals fit as I’m actually doing it. But I think that’s fair. It’s the third album with the same lineup and the same engineer and a similar tone and style in a general sense. I think there are big differences between the records, but yeah, I guess it feels like part three of a third act. How does “Patch the Sky” fit together with “Silver Age” and “Beauty & Ruin?” If we go back to the events that got me to “Silver Age,” that being the writing of the book, work with the Foo Fighters, the book coming out, more work with Foo Fighters and the Disney Hall show, “Silver Age” was written with energy and love, and it had a brighter tone to it. “Beauty & Ruin,” same lineup after a lot of touring, after losing my dad, just changes that were going on. I thought it was a little darker record, but I thought it showcased how the three of us made music together. With this record, more loss. A little more isolated in the writing. Totally isolated in the writing, actually, so it’s a little more introspective. You said at the time that “Silver Age” was sort of a bookend to Sugar’s 1992 album “Copper Blue.” Is there a similar corollary for “Patch the Sky”? “Black Sheets of Rain.” [Laughs] If there’s anything that it could resemble, I think it’s that record [Mould’s soul-baring second solo LP, released in 1990]. If any decade informed this record musically, it would probably be mid- to late-’70s and not punk rock. Were you listening to particular bands from that era? No, no, it just came out. Started popping out. It was like, what the hell, what is this, “Toys in the Attic”? [Laughs] What was isolated about the writing process for “Patch the Sky”? With “Silver Age,” I had some songs kicking around, but just all that compact energy. I wrote most of that record in a month, month and a half, right before we recorded it, and I felt like it was more of a spontaneous statement. “Beauty & Ruin” was a lot of ideas gathered on the run, and we went in to make that record right after we got back from South America. This record, I had a solid six months of writing, so in terms of process, it was probably closest to “Workbook.” Having six months of alone time is not necessarily the healthiest thing, but you get good work out of it. What makes the new album so introspective? I just had a lot of loss. I lost my mom, I lost a lot of friends, people got sick. It’s just the stuff that happens as you get older. It’s never fun. People leave, you mourn the loss and then you have to move on. Sometimes it happens quicker than others, and this time, I just wanted to sit and process it for a while. Punk rock has always been a very personal means of expression for you, though you spoke out against the proposed same-sex marriage ban in North Carolina a few years ago. How much of a political component is there in your work? Big politics, what can you do? You can speak your mind, and then you move on. To me, it’s more about going to my neighborhood association meetings to try to keep people from building giant, oversized ugly houses in my little neighborhood. Or trying to speak to the police in my neighborhood about crime. Big-stage politics, I’m not so good at that. But same-sex marriage, that was something that needed a light shined on it. That’s a human rights issue, and one that I take personally, whether or not I want to get married. How much attention have you been paying attention to the presidential primaries? Too much. What a circus. Is it something your work will reflect? I’m sure it’s affecting my mind-set, so I’m sure somehow it’s going to get in there. I think the most important thing I could do, or anyone could do, is you have to vote. It’s that simple. Why is voting not mandatory in this country? What do you make of it all? I think it’s good to shine a very bright light on the crazy. I think some of these ideas that people are stealing have been couched and disguised and sometimes hidden away for sometimes decades, and now that we’re in the last gasp of that political party, it’s all on display. Now the hope is that people will see what they’ve been doing and see how the system is failing all of us. Hopefully we’ll get some good change out of this. Are you supporting a particular candidate? I haven’t picked yet, but I know who I’m not voting for. As far as local politics go, you live in San Francisco, where tech workers have become a sometimes unwelcome presence. How much do you feel the effects of that? I don’t get inside that beehive directly. A lot of acquaintances work in that business. I don’t know. Cities change. San Francisco is such a beautiful place. It’s a city with a rich history in music and culture and arts and lifestyle, and I don’t know how many people who have showed up in the last three years are aware of it, or care about it. It’s a tough deal. People can’t afford to live there, it’s really hard. You’ve moved around a lot. How much are you influenced by the places you live? New York, I was always on my feet, always walking, always thinking on my feet. That was a big part of it to me, the way the ideas were constructed. I think Minneapolis and Austin were direct opposites. In Minnesota, you stayed in all winter, and in Austin you stayed in all summer. The weather has a lot to do with it. D.C., it was crazy being there during the George W. Bush years. The pulse of the city was just war, war, war, just people with pacemakers running wars. It was like, what the fuck? San Francisco, I’d been going there since ’81. I love the soft weather. It’s making me soft. The one thing that I feel in my six and a half years, my memories are weird because there are no weird seasons to speak of, other than fog. It has a little bit of that affect, where those potential markers due to weather don’t really exist. How does that come out in your work? I don’t know if I can specifically pin it down. I’m aware of what it does to me as a person. Because I don’t work in tech, San Francisco to me is pretty chill. It feels very, very different than the East Coast. For this record, I pretty much sat in my room and worked. Sometimes I wasn’t even aware of when the fog came or went. [Laughs.] Now that you’re in this third-act resurgence, what’s your relationship these days with electronic music? I put it pretty much on hold. I’ll put on a compilation from a label that I like and listen to what people are doing with progressive house or French house, but as an active hours-a-day-looking-for-new-music guy, I’m done with it for now. It got kind of overblown. I just felt like that genre had gotten filled with the same drops and the same zooooom, and that was it. I just needed a break. I’ll probably go back to DJing at some point, but the 11 years of Blowoff was a full-on immersion. In the gay community at that time, the music wasn’t really top-notch, and it felt like we were bringing something different, and I know we were good at it. What do you think about your own influence? I think it’s there. I don’t know how big or small it is. I can’t tell. I feel like I’m really important to a small group of people, and that’s great. If they get the stories and can relate to them, that’s really what this is about. On a global level, I don’t know. I really have no idea. I’m close to it, so I’m not really sure. I’m grateful that people like the early work, the middle work, the recent work. I think it all fits together in a cool way, there’s a consistency to all of it. I think after 37 years of it, I know what I’m good at, I know what people want to hear from me. So back 37 years ago, what did you think you’d be doing today? Hoping I would do this, but in what form, I didn’t know. I was a hope-I-die-before-I-get-old kind of guy. Punk rock was crazy. We were just building stages and asking our friends to come play with us. And I was bored, and I needed to do it or perish. There was no idea that we’d be carrying on about it at this point, but I’m very grateful that we are, of course. It’s pretty great. I love my work, I love doing what we do. It gets harder as I get older, of course, but I’ll keep doing it as long as it lasts.

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Published on March 24, 2016 15:59

“The Catch” falls flat: Shonda Rhimes’ new show has all the right ingredients, but no sizzle

Tonight at 10, TV mogul Shonda Rhimes aims to clinch her legacy with a new drama debuting in the spot recently vacated by “How to Get Away With Murder.” Though Rhimes’ empire is still a juggernaut, neither “Scandal” nor “How to Get Away With Murder” has the ratings strength they boasted even just last year. Shondaland could really use a new, buzzy, exciting hit. “The Catch,” its latest attempt, is not it. It is unmistakably a Shondaland production, though Rhimes is not the showrunner. (Instead, “The Catch” is helmed by Shondaland veteran Allan Heinberg, who has worked on the questionable later seasons of several shows you probably loved at some point—“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Sex and the City,” “The O.C.,” even “Party of Five.”) Following the Shondaland blueprint, the cast of workaholics all talk fast and only hang out with each other, cracking performative, character-establishing little jokes about sizzling topics like casual sex and drinking in zippy banter that isn’t quite Sorkinese but is definitely inspired by him. Plot twists are telegraphed through dramatic writing on some kind of surface, whether that’s “Grey’s Anatomy’s" surgical schedule whiteboard or “How to Get Away With Murder’s" scratchy law school chalkboard. Love, and marriage, are nothing more than liabilities. And the female protagonist quivers with barely repressed emotion, which either comes out through Shakespearean monologues and trembling (Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope), voice-cracking raspiness (Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey), seduction that quickly shifts to power plays (Viola Davis as Annelise Keating) or some combination of the above (Mireille Enos, as the lead of “The Catch,” Alice Graham). And yet. Either viewers are tiring of the Shondaland model or “The Catch” is just not a very good iteration of it; I’m inclined to think the latter, given the continued dominance of her reliable medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” “Scandal” did better than it ever should have, and is an aging if still lovely beauty; “How to Get Away With Murder” was stunted by a poorly designed premise; and “The Catch,” frankly, should be better than it is, given what it’s working with. A satisfying nighttime soap opera doesn’t have to make a ton of sense in order to be fun, provided it’s anchored by strong storytelling or strong leads. Look no further than “How to Get Away With Murder,” a show whose premise made for a very anticlimactic and confusing Season 2, but it has the advantage of showcasing one of the best performances on television in the lead role, courtesy of Davis, who won a historic Emmy for best actress in a drama for her first season. Professor Annalise Keating, Esq., could hang wallpaper for 40 minutes a week instead of solving cases or hiding bodies and I guarantee that it would still be compelling. “The Catch,” unfortunately, reads as an attempt to combine many of the elements of the previous shows into something new and fun without infusing enough originality into it. Partly that’s because the show had a rocky creative start: It was massively retooled following creative differences late last year that rewrote the premise, recast the male lead, and let go the creator, Jennifer Schuur, along with her co-showrunner, Josh Reims. The result, at least in tonight’s pilot, is a kind of watered-down Shondaland lite, one that goes for something fun and interesting without being able to really deliver it. Enos plays private investigator Alice Graham, who discovers her fiancé is playing her for a long con right after she writes him a $1.4 million check. The details of the con are a bit tortured, but basically, he lied and she’s mad about it, but—of course—he really does love her, and she probably really does love him, she’s just (understandably) really angry and maybe trying to destroy him in the meantime. It’s very “Mr. And Mrs. Smith”—except without having learned from that film that the most interesting part of a premise where the couple is trying to kill each other is just that, the premise. They can’t not-kill each other for very long before it starts to get tiresome, and/or implausible. It is, legitimately, rather delightful to watch Rhimes’ signature ambivalence around romantic partnership rear its head again here. Following “Grey’s Anatomy,” all of Shondaland’s shows have depicted characters past the rosy flush of youth and innocence, trading on bitterness and ambition and fine, crinkly eye wrinkles instead of hormones and alcohol. Nothing with an aim to please could have quite the cynicism of Gillian Flynn and David Fincher’s “Gone Girl,” but the echoes of it are there. Most of Shondaland’s heroines have a terrible, life-creating back story; in “The Catch,” the pilot depicts that back story, when a woman who never thought she’d fall in love gets her heart broken. That kind of narrative requires some serious chemistry between two actors. And while Enos is giving it her all—batting those implausibly glamorous eyelashes and smiling bewitchingly—she’s basically working with a brick wall. Mireille Enos comes to “The Catch” via “The Killing,” so she has her own dramatic clout, but her scene partner as her fiancé and enemy is none other than Peter Krause, of “Six Feet Under,” “Sports Night” and “Parenthood” fame—three very different shows in which he was excellent. For some reason, in “The Catch,” he is a human Ken doll. Enos’ Alice is trying to carry the weight of two people in consuming passion for each other; Krause is phoning it in so hard he might as well have a telephone receiver strapped to his head. Enos’ Alice, as a result, comes off far too gullible for a character who should be a hardened investigator; the pilot makes it hard to root for her, when—as a brassier version of a jilted bride—she should be the most sympathetic woman on television. Without the smolder between Krause and Enos, “The Catch” just falls apart, and right now, it is entirely skippable. And that’s worrying news for Shondaland. Even with its own branded night of programming on ABC (Thank God It’s Thursday) and a history of audience engagement, viewers might not stick around for “The Catch.” And at this point, even if its fans know Shondaland can do better, they might be tired of waiting around for the studio’s next great show.Tonight at 10, TV mogul Shonda Rhimes aims to clinch her legacy with a new drama debuting in the spot recently vacated by “How to Get Away With Murder.” Though Rhimes’ empire is still a juggernaut, neither “Scandal” nor “How to Get Away With Murder” has the ratings strength they boasted even just last year. Shondaland could really use a new, buzzy, exciting hit. “The Catch,” its latest attempt, is not it. It is unmistakably a Shondaland production, though Rhimes is not the showrunner. (Instead, “The Catch” is helmed by Shondaland veteran Allan Heinberg, who has worked on the questionable later seasons of several shows you probably loved at some point—“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Sex and the City,” “The O.C.,” even “Party of Five.”) Following the Shondaland blueprint, the cast of workaholics all talk fast and only hang out with each other, cracking performative, character-establishing little jokes about sizzling topics like casual sex and drinking in zippy banter that isn’t quite Sorkinese but is definitely inspired by him. Plot twists are telegraphed through dramatic writing on some kind of surface, whether that’s “Grey’s Anatomy’s" surgical schedule whiteboard or “How to Get Away With Murder’s" scratchy law school chalkboard. Love, and marriage, are nothing more than liabilities. And the female protagonist quivers with barely repressed emotion, which either comes out through Shakespearean monologues and trembling (Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope), voice-cracking raspiness (Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey), seduction that quickly shifts to power plays (Viola Davis as Annelise Keating) or some combination of the above (Mireille Enos, as the lead of “The Catch,” Alice Graham). And yet. Either viewers are tiring of the Shondaland model or “The Catch” is just not a very good iteration of it; I’m inclined to think the latter, given the continued dominance of her reliable medical drama “Grey’s Anatomy.” “Scandal” did better than it ever should have, and is an aging if still lovely beauty; “How to Get Away With Murder” was stunted by a poorly designed premise; and “The Catch,” frankly, should be better than it is, given what it’s working with. A satisfying nighttime soap opera doesn’t have to make a ton of sense in order to be fun, provided it’s anchored by strong storytelling or strong leads. Look no further than “How to Get Away With Murder,” a show whose premise made for a very anticlimactic and confusing Season 2, but it has the advantage of showcasing one of the best performances on television in the lead role, courtesy of Davis, who won a historic Emmy for best actress in a drama for her first season. Professor Annalise Keating, Esq., could hang wallpaper for 40 minutes a week instead of solving cases or hiding bodies and I guarantee that it would still be compelling. “The Catch,” unfortunately, reads as an attempt to combine many of the elements of the previous shows into something new and fun without infusing enough originality into it. Partly that’s because the show had a rocky creative start: It was massively retooled following creative differences late last year that rewrote the premise, recast the male lead, and let go the creator, Jennifer Schuur, along with her co-showrunner, Josh Reims. The result, at least in tonight’s pilot, is a kind of watered-down Shondaland lite, one that goes for something fun and interesting without being able to really deliver it. Enos plays private investigator Alice Graham, who discovers her fiancé is playing her for a long con right after she writes him a $1.4 million check. The details of the con are a bit tortured, but basically, he lied and she’s mad about it, but—of course—he really does love her, and she probably really does love him, she’s just (understandably) really angry and maybe trying to destroy him in the meantime. It’s very “Mr. And Mrs. Smith”—except without having learned from that film that the most interesting part of a premise where the couple is trying to kill each other is just that, the premise. They can’t not-kill each other for very long before it starts to get tiresome, and/or implausible. It is, legitimately, rather delightful to watch Rhimes’ signature ambivalence around romantic partnership rear its head again here. Following “Grey’s Anatomy,” all of Shondaland’s shows have depicted characters past the rosy flush of youth and innocence, trading on bitterness and ambition and fine, crinkly eye wrinkles instead of hormones and alcohol. Nothing with an aim to please could have quite the cynicism of Gillian Flynn and David Fincher’s “Gone Girl,” but the echoes of it are there. Most of Shondaland’s heroines have a terrible, life-creating back story; in “The Catch,” the pilot depicts that back story, when a woman who never thought she’d fall in love gets her heart broken. That kind of narrative requires some serious chemistry between two actors. And while Enos is giving it her all—batting those implausibly glamorous eyelashes and smiling bewitchingly—she’s basically working with a brick wall. Mireille Enos comes to “The Catch” via “The Killing,” so she has her own dramatic clout, but her scene partner as her fiancé and enemy is none other than Peter Krause, of “Six Feet Under,” “Sports Night” and “Parenthood” fame—three very different shows in which he was excellent. For some reason, in “The Catch,” he is a human Ken doll. Enos’ Alice is trying to carry the weight of two people in consuming passion for each other; Krause is phoning it in so hard he might as well have a telephone receiver strapped to his head. Enos’ Alice, as a result, comes off far too gullible for a character who should be a hardened investigator; the pilot makes it hard to root for her, when—as a brassier version of a jilted bride—she should be the most sympathetic woman on television. Without the smolder between Krause and Enos, “The Catch” just falls apart, and right now, it is entirely skippable. And that’s worrying news for Shondaland. Even with its own branded night of programming on ABC (Thank God It’s Thursday) and a history of audience engagement, viewers might not stick around for “The Catch.” And at this point, even if its fans know Shondaland can do better, they might be tired of waiting around for the studio’s next great show.

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Published on March 24, 2016 15:58

Not every culture eroticizes breasts. Why does ours — especially large ones?

In 1995, cultural anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler wrote a book called "Breastfeeding: Bicultural Perspectives." Her research took her to Mali, West Africa, where she attempted to explain the western eroticization of breasts. Those she fell into conversation with regarded the behavior as "unnatural," even "perverted.” They seemed to have a hard time believing that "men would become sexually aroused by women’s breasts, or that women would find such activities pleasurable.” Years earlier, anthropologist Clellan Ford and ethnologist Frank Beach conducted a study of 191 cultures. The pair found that breasts were considered sexually important in only 13 of those cultures, and of those, just nine preferred large breasts. If you’re reading this from Anywhere, America, you might join me in assuming the U.S. was one of them. If we weren’t already wired to find breasts sexually appealing, we’ve done a pretty good job of convincing ourselves they are. And while bigger is by no means better, certain trends seem to suggest that a good portion of Americans seem to think size matters a great deal. According to a report released by the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, 279,143 breast augmentations were performed in 2015. For those who are keeping track, that’s a 31% increase from the number performed back in 2000. Yes, the American obsession with abundance has officially gone breastal. When it comes to heterosexual dating circles, boobs tend to come up. Now that online dating platforms allow us to tailor our preferences, people are getting pretty specific about what they want. Maybe that’s why a string of sites like Big Breast Dating, Dating Big Boob Girls, Big Boob Date Link and Big Tit Love have popped up. (Note: almost all of these sites have a clause in the Terms of Use stating they do not guarantee and cannot verify the accuracy of the information provided by any user.) But we know that when it comes to sex, breasts aren't really necessary. As sex therapist Susan Block writes, “Breasts are far more essential to nurturing than to sexual intercourse.” Still, they almost always make their way into the conversation. British researchers Viren Swami and Martin Tovee believe it has something to do with “resource insecurity,” or the inability to access the tools needed to survive. In their experiments, wealthy men, as well as those who had just eaten, rated smaller breasts as more attractive. So ladies with large breasts might be in luck, so long as poor and hungry is their thing. Then again, maybe there’s more to this. In 2013, researchers from the University of Westminster published an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. They had interviewed 361 white heterosexual men, raging in age from 18 to 68. After being shown different 3-D models of women with varying breast size, they were ask to record which image they found most sexually attractive. Afterward, the participants were given a survey to measure their level of hostility toward women, how likely they were to objectify women, attitudes about relationships between men and women and benevolent sexism. The authors concluded, “It is arguable that benevolently sexist men perceived larger female breasts as attractive because larger breast size on a woman is associated with perceived femininity.” Of course, that does not mean all men attracted to large breasts are sexist. But it may help explain some of the sexually aggressive and gender-directed behaviors often hurled toward women with big breasts. Block told us in an email, “In general, men (and women…but especially men) tend to believe that if someone’s body (or even just one of their body parts) arouses them, then that person is also aroused. Call it the power of wishful thinking or self-involved, delusionary insensitivity coupled with a woeful lack of sex education, but it’s a common phenomenon.” She added, “Sometimes [men] feel that big breasts and hard nipples are actual evidence of the woman’s arousal, in much the same way that a big hard cock can be considered evidence of a man’s arousal. Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way.” Sex and relationship expert Ava Cadell explained to AlterNet, “Many men presume that women with large breasts are more sexual than women with small breasts,” adding, “Obviously this is a myth. Sex drive has nothing to do with breast size.” So no, big-breasted women are not necessarily more sexual than their smaller-breasted counterparts, they just seem a little easier to sexualize. Block also noted, “There are other, somewhat more reasonable reasons that so many men are attracted to large breasts and perceive large-breasted women to be more sexual, such as the primal visual cue that large breasts indicate female sexual maturity.” In regards to the big-breasted aficionados who manage to snag an invite into the bedroom, they tend to throw out a few breast-centered requests once there. Some may be familiar with what academics call coitus a mammilla, or tit fucking. And then there are the other breast-centered kinks out there: smothering, suckling, the list goes on. Apparently, when you find a pair of big breasts, it’s important to take full advantage of them. Though, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many women find the idea of helping fulfill someone else’s fantasy pretty thrilling. According to Cadell, women who find breast stimulation erotic might want to explore what she calls “nipple orgasms.” She tells us, “Nipple stimulation activates the same area of the brain as the clitoris, so that intense pleasure can be enjoyed tremendously.” Interestingly enough, researchers at the University of Vienna found that large breasts were actually around 24 percent less sensitive than small breasts. Alan Matarasso, a New York City-based plastic surgeon, explained to Men’s Health, "This is probably because the nerve that transmits sensation from the nipple is stretched." For the big-breasted woman who has grown tired of the attention, breathe easy. By most accounts, sexual attention is falling further south on a woman’s body. Maybe by this time next year, you’ll be able to dodge that old and unwelcomed barroom question, “Are those real?” Carrie Weisman is an AlterNet staff writer who focuses on sex, relationships and culture. Got tips, ideas or a first-person story? Email her.

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Published on March 24, 2016 15:57

Garry Shandling’s “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” episode is a must-see: “What I want at my funeral is an actual boxing referee to do a count”

Garry Shandling's unexpected death at age 66 has prompted an outpouring of appreciation for the comedian and actor, best known for his HBO series "The Larry Sanders Show." Shandling appeared on the current season of his old friend Jerry Seinfeld's web series "Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee," and the result is a particularly tender portrait of the late comic. The episode's title, "It's Great that Garry Shandling Is Still Alive," takes on a deeply saddening tone in the wake of Shandling's death. Shandling and Seinfeld's long friendship goes back to their early days in the Los Angeles standup scene, and the two later shot their sitcoms in neighboring studios. "We have been very good friends for a very long time and our careers have pretty much paralleled most of that time," Seinfeld says in the video. "We were a pair." The duo's comedic chemistry is evident in the video, as Shandling and Seinfeld effortlessly jump from riffing on Matthew McConaughey to discussing Shandling's background in electrical engineering. They later drop by The Comedy Store to reminisce about their youthful years working for owner Mitzi Shore at the legendary Hollywood club. The two share a poignant moment as they reflect on mortality and Robin Williams' death. "I realized '63 is so young' is a phrase you never hear relative to anything but death," Shandling said. But as a dyed-in-the-wool comedian, Shandling can't help but joke about his own death. "What I want at my funeral is an actual boxing referee to do a count, and at 'five' just wave it off and say, 'He's not getting up,'" Shandling deadpans as Seinfeld doubles over in laughter. Check out the entire episode here.

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Published on March 24, 2016 15:10

“Such a genius, such a wonderful man”: Comedians pay tribute to late icon Garry Shandling

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Published on March 24, 2016 14:46

Another reason for Republicans to feel terrible: Obama’s popularity is spiking — further destroying the GOP’s chances of saving its sinking ship

Barack Obama is getting more and more popular of late. A new Bloomberg Politics poll puts his job approval rating at an even 50 percent, a six-point jump from the survey they conducted in November. His favorability rating spiked nine points, all the way up to 57 percent. On specific issue areas that have been troublesome for the president in the past, like the economy and health care, his approval rating is inching up towards 50 percent. He’s getting positive marks for nominating Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Antonin Scalia, and nearly two-thirds of the country supports his push to have the Republican-controlled Senate hold hearings on the nomination. Those numbers are in line with what other polls are showing. A look at the Huffington Post’s poll aggregator shows that Obama’s average approval rating is just a hair under 50 percent and rising. After spending about two and half years with his approval ratings underwater, his numbers began to tick upward starting in December 2015, and they’ve been rising ever since. That’s pretty decent news for a two-term president in his final year of office, when voters tend to register fatigue with the administration and the party in power. It’s difficult to pinpoint a precise explanation for why Obama’s numbers are on the rise. A president’s numbers typically rise and fall in line with economic indicators, but not a whole lot has changed on the economic front over the past few months – job growth continues along at a decent clip, but wage growth is just barely staying ahead of inflation. The timing of his approval spike, however, suggests that it might have something to do with how the presidential primaries are shaking out. On the Democratic side, there’s been no real effort by either candidate to distance themselves from Obama. Quite the opposite, in fact. Hillary Clinton has been running hard on the idea that she represents a continuation of the Obama policy agenda. Bernie Sanders, while more critical of Obama on trade and health care, still makes clear that he broadly supports the president and his policies. Having both candidates embrace the president and promote his agenda helps remind Democrats why they liked him in the first place. It’s a vastly different dynamic from 2008, when the Republican candidates went to great pains to keep their two-term incumbent president at arm’s length, which in turn only deepened his already staggering unpopularity. Speaking of Republicans, it’s probably safe to assume that their primary is also helping Obama. The frontrunner is galumphing about on the national stage and insulting just about every minority group as he encourages violence at his rallies and picks petty fights with women on TV. It’s all but impossible to take Donald Trump’s chief rivals for the nomination seriously, given that they’ve spent the past several months trying to emulate Trump’s style and policy proposals, making dick jokes, and being Ted Cruz. The entire process has been dominated by petty squabbling, personal attacks, and unguarded extremism, most of it driven by Trump’s Twitter feed. Even if you’re not inclined to be of fan of Obama’s, you probably can’t help but look at the GOP primary and think “well, he’s not as bad as these fools.” Whatever the explanation for Obama’s surge in popularity, it’s bad news for his Republican critics. The underlying premise of the GOP primary is that the Obama presidency has been an unrivaled disaster that brought the country to the brink of collapse. “This country is running out of time,” Marco Rubio declared at an October debate. “We can't afford to have another four years like the last eight years.” That line was actually borrowed from Barack Obama, who said in his 2008 speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination: “We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight.” The difference, of course, is that it was true when Obama said it – the country was spiraling towards disaster at that point with a bloody quagmire of a war and a weakening economy that would soon implode on itself. But we’re not at that crisis point right now, which is why Obama’s approval ratings aren’t in the toilet the way George W. Bush’s were. And the higher Obama’s job approval rating creeps, the more ridiculous Republicans look arguing that he’s a historically disastrous president.Barack Obama is getting more and more popular of late. A new Bloomberg Politics poll puts his job approval rating at an even 50 percent, a six-point jump from the survey they conducted in November. His favorability rating spiked nine points, all the way up to 57 percent. On specific issue areas that have been troublesome for the president in the past, like the economy and health care, his approval rating is inching up towards 50 percent. He’s getting positive marks for nominating Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Antonin Scalia, and nearly two-thirds of the country supports his push to have the Republican-controlled Senate hold hearings on the nomination. Those numbers are in line with what other polls are showing. A look at the Huffington Post’s poll aggregator shows that Obama’s average approval rating is just a hair under 50 percent and rising. After spending about two and half years with his approval ratings underwater, his numbers began to tick upward starting in December 2015, and they’ve been rising ever since. That’s pretty decent news for a two-term president in his final year of office, when voters tend to register fatigue with the administration and the party in power. It’s difficult to pinpoint a precise explanation for why Obama’s numbers are on the rise. A president’s numbers typically rise and fall in line with economic indicators, but not a whole lot has changed on the economic front over the past few months – job growth continues along at a decent clip, but wage growth is just barely staying ahead of inflation. The timing of his approval spike, however, suggests that it might have something to do with how the presidential primaries are shaking out. On the Democratic side, there’s been no real effort by either candidate to distance themselves from Obama. Quite the opposite, in fact. Hillary Clinton has been running hard on the idea that she represents a continuation of the Obama policy agenda. Bernie Sanders, while more critical of Obama on trade and health care, still makes clear that he broadly supports the president and his policies. Having both candidates embrace the president and promote his agenda helps remind Democrats why they liked him in the first place. It’s a vastly different dynamic from 2008, when the Republican candidates went to great pains to keep their two-term incumbent president at arm’s length, which in turn only deepened his already staggering unpopularity. Speaking of Republicans, it’s probably safe to assume that their primary is also helping Obama. The frontrunner is galumphing about on the national stage and insulting just about every minority group as he encourages violence at his rallies and picks petty fights with women on TV. It’s all but impossible to take Donald Trump’s chief rivals for the nomination seriously, given that they’ve spent the past several months trying to emulate Trump’s style and policy proposals, making dick jokes, and being Ted Cruz. The entire process has been dominated by petty squabbling, personal attacks, and unguarded extremism, most of it driven by Trump’s Twitter feed. Even if you’re not inclined to be of fan of Obama’s, you probably can’t help but look at the GOP primary and think “well, he’s not as bad as these fools.” Whatever the explanation for Obama’s surge in popularity, it’s bad news for his Republican critics. The underlying premise of the GOP primary is that the Obama presidency has been an unrivaled disaster that brought the country to the brink of collapse. “This country is running out of time,” Marco Rubio declared at an October debate. “We can't afford to have another four years like the last eight years.” That line was actually borrowed from Barack Obama, who said in his 2008 speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination: “We are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight.” The difference, of course, is that it was true when Obama said it – the country was spiraling towards disaster at that point with a bloody quagmire of a war and a weakening economy that would soon implode on itself. But we’re not at that crisis point right now, which is why Obama’s approval ratings aren’t in the toilet the way George W. Bush’s were. And the higher Obama’s job approval rating creeps, the more ridiculous Republicans look arguing that he’s a historically disastrous president.

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Published on March 24, 2016 14:13

Camille Paglia: This is why Trump’s winning, and why I won’t vote for Hillary

This week’s horrific terrorist attacks on the Brussels airport and metro raised the pressure in the already tight U.S. presidential campaign. Candidates of both parties were instantly measured against voter expectations of how a president could and should behave in a similar crisis. Meanwhile, it was jarring to see a beaming President Obama relaxing at a Cuban baseball game, while grisly photos of the wrecked terminal and dazed, bloodied victims in Belgium were on steady media feed all over the world. Given that most people, sequestered at their workplace, were unable to monitor the full range of responses throughout the day, the candidate who emerged on top was almost certainly Donald Trump. Despite his alarming enthusiasm for waterboarding and torture, Trump’s central campaign theme of securing the borders and more stringently vetting immigrants was strengthened by the events in Brussels, a historic city whose changing demographics he had already controversially warned about. Trump’s credibility would be enhanced if he treated the vital immigration issue in general policy terms rather than divisively singling out specific groups (Mexican, Muslim), the majority of whom are manifestly law-abiding. Hillary Clinton’s Brussels response was basically boilerplate, calling for solidarity with Europe and playing chess with Trump to paint him as a greenhorn and hothead. Bernie Sanders (whom I support and contribute to) had little to say, beyond conveying condolences to the Belgian people, because foreign affairs have unfortunately remained a sideline for him. Neither Sanders nor Martin O’Malley ever went after Hillary’s disastrous record as Secretary of State with the tenacity that they should have—a failure of strategy that has proved costly in the long run. Ted Cruz took the prize for dolt of the day, however, with his call for U.S. law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” What exactly are the telltale signs of creeping radicalization that roving patrol cars would be able to spot—an uptick in Bedouin garb and the waving of scimitars in the street, as in a Rudolph Valentino movie? And how would American police “secure” any neighborhood without violating basic constitutional rights? Trump may be raw, crude and uninformed, but he’s also smart, intuitive and a quick study who will presumably get up to passable speed as he assembles a brain trust over the coming months. Whether Trump can temper his shoot-from-the-hip impetuosity is another matter. There is a huge gap between the teeth-gnashing fulminations of the anti-Trump mainstream media and the perfectly reasonable Trump supporters whom I hear calling into radio talk shows. The machinations of the old-guard GOP establishment to thwart Trump voters and subvert the primary process are an absolute disgrace. But it’s business as usual for tone-deaf party leaders who, barely more than a day after the discovery of Antonin Scalia’s corpse last month, stupidly proclaimed there would be no hearings for an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court. Republicans need to wake up and realize that Trump’s triumph is not due to some drunken delusion by a benighted rabble but is a direct result of the proven weakness of their other candidates. Ted Cruz, the last one still standing, is bombastic, sanctimonious and coldly sharkish behind that forced smile. Is Cruz a truly convincing model of Christian values of charity, compassion and humility? Jimmy Carter did it way better than this. Cruz seems consumed by a vainglorious conviction of his own destiny, tied to an apocalyptic view of history. He reminds me of glad-handing televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, who were loved and trusted by so many but whose careers ended in disgrace. The humiliating wholesale rejection of cash-glutted Jeb Bush, dynastic crown prince, should have clued the GOP moguls into how out of touch they are with primary voters this year. Jeb’s first mistake (perhaps due to his wife’s dislike of the public eye) was not to run for president soon after serving as Florida governor, when he still had his chops. His second mistake was to loaf on the sidelines and play no role whatever in public debates over pressing national issues. By the time he returned to the scene, he was both uncertain and irrelevant. Then someone foolishly prodded him to lose weight, which reduced his gravitas along with the flab by now highlighting his bland, snub-nosed baby face. Another victim of perpetual-boy syndrome is Marco Rubio, who at 44 seems to have strangely stalled in post-pubescence. How is it possible that Rubio played football (defensive back) in college and none of it shows? During high-wire gigs in Washington or at the primary debates, he chronically flubbed, either by autopilot glibness or painfully palpable anxiety attacks. Oh, right, we’re going to have this skittish, sweaty guy with five o'clock shadow and a bad comb-over going toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin. Rubio seems bright and affable, but there’s nothing remotely presidential about him. As for the rest of the GOP pack, they all flamed out in one way or another. Despite his bold history of confronting and defeating the greedy public-sector unions, Scott Walker with his wide, wary eyes and pretty-boy pout looked like a deer caught in the headlights at the first debate. Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul also struggled with boy-regression—is this a Republican disease? On TV, the snarly, petulant Paul, with his sprig of retro forehead curls, looked like a mummified Dorian Gray dressed by Sears Roebuck, circa 1959. Carly Fiorina: smart and nimble but too taut and wired, like a buzz saw. Too much of a political novice and without Trump’s bumptious exuberance and slashing humor. Her campaign imploded when she went all histrionic (voice tragically breaking) about the secretly taped Planned Parenthood videos, a serious issue that the mainstream media had tried to bury but that should not have been used for blatant political grandstanding. Ben Carson: a thoughtful, dignified private citizen with an illustrious medical career. But was he ever remotely credible as a statesman on the international stage in the age of terrorism? His rote deep-think mode was to close his eyes and press his fingers together, like Madame Arcati conducting a séance in Blithe Spirit. Chris Christie: the lib Manhattan media just loved him to death. He was their fave Republican—he licked their boots, and they licked his. This blathering, gassy, waddling narcissist with his over-trimmed Pinocchio nose and lispy, quacking voice never had a prayer of a chance on the national stage. The Christie boomlet was always a media mirage. John Kasich: the man who could have been king. I think Kasich won the first GOP debate but then blew it. He has exactly the kind of gubernatorial executive experience and legislative budget-balancing record that are sorely needed in the White House. But Kasich’s unfocused, overblown, compulsively self-referential rhetoric is a major liability. And his skills as a public figure are embarrassingly rudimentary: he blurts, lurches, and waves his arms around like a windmill. He lacks patience, subtlety, and finesse. Not presidential. So the GOP is stuck with Trump, and through every fault of their own. Are we really hurtling toward a Trump-Hillary slugfest? If Bernie Sanders had gotten a hundredth of the press coverage lavished on Hillary over the past three years, he would have had an excellent chance of overtaking her. But thanks to the outrageous press blackout (Clinton Incorporated’s vast vulture-wing conspiracy), Sanders remains too unknown to too much of the electorate, particularly in the South. The now widespread claims that Sanders voters will automatically vote for Hillary in the general election aren’t true in my case: I will never cast my vote for a corrupt and incompetent candidate whose every policy is poll-tested in advance. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will write in Sanders or vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, as I did in 2012 as a protest against Obama’s unethical use of drones and the racially divisive tone of his administration. Voters have a tremendous opportunity this year to smash the tyrannical, money-mad machinery of both parties. A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for the future, while a vote for Hillary Clinton is a reward to the Democratic National Committee for its shameless manipulation and racketeering. A primary vote for Donald Trump is a rebuke to the arrogantly insular GOP establishment, which if he wins the nomination will lose its power and influence overnight. But a Trump-Hillary death match will be a national nightmare, a race to the bottom for both parties, as Democratic and Republican operatives compete to dig up the most lurid and salacious dirt on both flawed candidates. We’ll be sadistically trapped in an endless film noir, with Trump as Citizen Kane, Don Corleone and Scarface and Hillary as Norma Desmond, Mommie Dearest and the Wicked Witch of the West. However, there is one way out to ensure a rational, future-oriented, issues-centered presidential campaign: Democrats, vote for Bernie Sanders! * Dear Camille, I just read your column and the three comments from veterans who feel that a free education was a payment for their service, and that is the way it should be. I went to the City College of New York in the '60s. It was FREE. You only had to have an 85 average in high school, and then all you had to do was pay for books. My sister and I both went to CCNY, and so did at least two or three generations of students who then went on to have good lives because of it. We could not have gone to college otherwise. I do not understand, and neither does my 96-year-old mother, why it was fine for me to have a free education, but not for the students of today. We both wish that Bernie would remind people of these facts when he talks about free college and gets chided for it. There were other free colleges besides CCNY, but CCNY was known for having a high quality student body and giving a high quality education. Bonnie Shapiro Fort Lee, New Jersey Dear Bonnie, Many thanks for your letter. I totally agree with you, because my excellent college education at the State University of New York at Binghamton (1964-68) was of wonderfully minimal cost. It is a major public scandal that today’s students and their families are being saddled with enormous debt for what is many cases an inferior product. We desperately need “no frills” alternatives in education—colleges that make learning central and dispense with tangential attractions like gleaming exercise studios jammed with expensive state-of-the-art machines. Why are these luxurious amenities now considered indispensable? American colleges and universities need to strip themselves down to the basics. Subject: Hillary's Reagan AIDS gaffe -- evidence of her endless improvisational pandering or of a minor psychotic break? Dear Camille, I imagine you have noted H.R. Clinton's inexplicable and false statement crediting the Reagans with "starting a national conversation" about AIDS. For gay men of my era, it is more than hard to take, it seems a willful re-writing of history, designed to play to a Republican First Lady funeral audience. What are your thoughts? Sleeplessness and confusion are not adequate explanations in my mind, once you parse not only what she said without provocation to Andrea Mitchell, but in follow-up tweet and patronizing Medium post. But the Clintons are ceaselessly triangulating, so who know? Your take? Thomas Burns New York City Dear Thomas, I think you are quite right to suggest that Hillary was triangulating at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Thinking she had the nomination locked up, she was pivoting toward Republicans and trying to show she was their gal too. But I also suspect she was having a random senior moment, not unlike her fantasy of running for cover under sniper fire in Bosnia. The woman Hillary was praising for her pioneering courage in talking publicly about AIDS was actually Elizabeth Taylor, not Nancy Reagan. It’s very telling: Hillary thinks stereotypically of people as faceless members of groups, fodder for polling data and pandering outreach---which automatically triggers, for example, her cringe-making Southern Fried dialect for black audiences. Nancy Reagan (a former actress married to a former actor) had melted into Clan Hollywood. In Hillary’s mind, all actresses are clones, just as all of her skirt-chasing husband’s targets are floozies, bimbos, and nut jobs. Finally, I want to extend my thanks to Steve Laredo and Roger Longenbach, who wrote separately to question my reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “shot heard round the world,” which they maintain was a reference to the Battle of Lexington and not Concord. But as can be seen in an informational page of the National Park Service, Emerson’s “Concord Hymn”, from which that famous line comes, was indeed referring to the fighting at the Old North Bridge in Concord, which his father had witnessed. Please feel free to send questions to my Salon mailbox (see below). This week’s horrific terrorist attacks on the Brussels airport and metro raised the pressure in the already tight U.S. presidential campaign. Candidates of both parties were instantly measured against voter expectations of how a president could and should behave in a similar crisis. Meanwhile, it was jarring to see a beaming President Obama relaxing at a Cuban baseball game, while grisly photos of the wrecked terminal and dazed, bloodied victims in Belgium were on steady media feed all over the world. Given that most people, sequestered at their workplace, were unable to monitor the full range of responses throughout the day, the candidate who emerged on top was almost certainly Donald Trump. Despite his alarming enthusiasm for waterboarding and torture, Trump’s central campaign theme of securing the borders and more stringently vetting immigrants was strengthened by the events in Brussels, a historic city whose changing demographics he had already controversially warned about. Trump’s credibility would be enhanced if he treated the vital immigration issue in general policy terms rather than divisively singling out specific groups (Mexican, Muslim), the majority of whom are manifestly law-abiding. Hillary Clinton’s Brussels response was basically boilerplate, calling for solidarity with Europe and playing chess with Trump to paint him as a greenhorn and hothead. Bernie Sanders (whom I support and contribute to) had little to say, beyond conveying condolences to the Belgian people, because foreign affairs have unfortunately remained a sideline for him. Neither Sanders nor Martin O’Malley ever went after Hillary’s disastrous record as Secretary of State with the tenacity that they should have—a failure of strategy that has proved costly in the long run. Ted Cruz took the prize for dolt of the day, however, with his call for U.S. law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.” What exactly are the telltale signs of creeping radicalization that roving patrol cars would be able to spot—an uptick in Bedouin garb and the waving of scimitars in the street, as in a Rudolph Valentino movie? And how would American police “secure” any neighborhood without violating basic constitutional rights? Trump may be raw, crude and uninformed, but he’s also smart, intuitive and a quick study who will presumably get up to passable speed as he assembles a brain trust over the coming months. Whether Trump can temper his shoot-from-the-hip impetuosity is another matter. There is a huge gap between the teeth-gnashing fulminations of the anti-Trump mainstream media and the perfectly reasonable Trump supporters whom I hear calling into radio talk shows. The machinations of the old-guard GOP establishment to thwart Trump voters and subvert the primary process are an absolute disgrace. But it’s business as usual for tone-deaf party leaders who, barely more than a day after the discovery of Antonin Scalia’s corpse last month, stupidly proclaimed there would be no hearings for an Obama nominee to the Supreme Court. Republicans need to wake up and realize that Trump’s triumph is not due to some drunken delusion by a benighted rabble but is a direct result of the proven weakness of their other candidates. Ted Cruz, the last one still standing, is bombastic, sanctimonious and coldly sharkish behind that forced smile. Is Cruz a truly convincing model of Christian values of charity, compassion and humility? Jimmy Carter did it way better than this. Cruz seems consumed by a vainglorious conviction of his own destiny, tied to an apocalyptic view of history. He reminds me of glad-handing televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, who were loved and trusted by so many but whose careers ended in disgrace. The humiliating wholesale rejection of cash-glutted Jeb Bush, dynastic crown prince, should have clued the GOP moguls into how out of touch they are with primary voters this year. Jeb’s first mistake (perhaps due to his wife’s dislike of the public eye) was not to run for president soon after serving as Florida governor, when he still had his chops. His second mistake was to loaf on the sidelines and play no role whatever in public debates over pressing national issues. By the time he returned to the scene, he was both uncertain and irrelevant. Then someone foolishly prodded him to lose weight, which reduced his gravitas along with the flab by now highlighting his bland, snub-nosed baby face. Another victim of perpetual-boy syndrome is Marco Rubio, who at 44 seems to have strangely stalled in post-pubescence. How is it possible that Rubio played football (defensive back) in college and none of it shows? During high-wire gigs in Washington or at the primary debates, he chronically flubbed, either by autopilot glibness or painfully palpable anxiety attacks. Oh, right, we’re going to have this skittish, sweaty guy with five o'clock shadow and a bad comb-over going toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin. Rubio seems bright and affable, but there’s nothing remotely presidential about him. As for the rest of the GOP pack, they all flamed out in one way or another. Despite his bold history of confronting and defeating the greedy public-sector unions, Scott Walker with his wide, wary eyes and pretty-boy pout looked like a deer caught in the headlights at the first debate. Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul also struggled with boy-regression—is this a Republican disease? On TV, the snarly, petulant Paul, with his sprig of retro forehead curls, looked like a mummified Dorian Gray dressed by Sears Roebuck, circa 1959. Carly Fiorina: smart and nimble but too taut and wired, like a buzz saw. Too much of a political novice and without Trump’s bumptious exuberance and slashing humor. Her campaign imploded when she went all histrionic (voice tragically breaking) about the secretly taped Planned Parenthood videos, a serious issue that the mainstream media had tried to bury but that should not have been used for blatant political grandstanding. Ben Carson: a thoughtful, dignified private citizen with an illustrious medical career. But was he ever remotely credible as a statesman on the international stage in the age of terrorism? His rote deep-think mode was to close his eyes and press his fingers together, like Madame Arcati conducting a séance in Blithe Spirit. Chris Christie: the lib Manhattan media just loved him to death. He was their fave Republican—he licked their boots, and they licked his. This blathering, gassy, waddling narcissist with his over-trimmed Pinocchio nose and lispy, quacking voice never had a prayer of a chance on the national stage. The Christie boomlet was always a media mirage. John Kasich: the man who could have been king. I think Kasich won the first GOP debate but then blew it. He has exactly the kind of gubernatorial executive experience and legislative budget-balancing record that are sorely needed in the White House. But Kasich’s unfocused, overblown, compulsively self-referential rhetoric is a major liability. And his skills as a public figure are embarrassingly rudimentary: he blurts, lurches, and waves his arms around like a windmill. He lacks patience, subtlety, and finesse. Not presidential. So the GOP is stuck with Trump, and through every fault of their own. Are we really hurtling toward a Trump-Hillary slugfest? If Bernie Sanders had gotten a hundredth of the press coverage lavished on Hillary over the past three years, he would have had an excellent chance of overtaking her. But thanks to the outrageous press blackout (Clinton Incorporated’s vast vulture-wing conspiracy), Sanders remains too unknown to too much of the electorate, particularly in the South. The now widespread claims that Sanders voters will automatically vote for Hillary in the general election aren’t true in my case: I will never cast my vote for a corrupt and incompetent candidate whose every policy is poll-tested in advance. If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, I will write in Sanders or vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party, as I did in 2012 as a protest against Obama’s unethical use of drones and the racially divisive tone of his administration. Voters have a tremendous opportunity this year to smash the tyrannical, money-mad machinery of both parties. A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote for the future, while a vote for Hillary Clinton is a reward to the Democratic National Committee for its shameless manipulation and racketeering. A primary vote for Donald Trump is a rebuke to the arrogantly insular GOP establishment, which if he wins the nomination will lose its power and influence overnight. But a Trump-Hillary death match will be a national nightmare, a race to the bottom for both parties, as Democratic and Republican operatives compete to dig up the most lurid and salacious dirt on both flawed candidates. We’ll be sadistically trapped in an endless film noir, with Trump as Citizen Kane, Don Corleone and Scarface and Hillary as Norma Desmond, Mommie Dearest and the Wicked Witch of the West. However, there is one way out to ensure a rational, future-oriented, issues-centered presidential campaign: Democrats, vote for Bernie Sanders! * Dear Camille, I just read your column and the three comments from veterans who feel that a free education was a payment for their service, and that is the way it should be. I went to the City College of New York in the '60s. It was FREE. You only had to have an 85 average in high school, and then all you had to do was pay for books. My sister and I both went to CCNY, and so did at least two or three generations of students who then went on to have good lives because of it. We could not have gone to college otherwise. I do not understand, and neither does my 96-year-old mother, why it was fine for me to have a free education, but not for the students of today. We both wish that Bernie would remind people of these facts when he talks about free college and gets chided for it. There were other free colleges besides CCNY, but CCNY was known for having a high quality student body and giving a high quality education. Bonnie Shapiro Fort Lee, New Jersey Dear Bonnie, Many thanks for your letter. I totally agree with you, because my excellent college education at the State University of New York at Binghamton (1964-68) was of wonderfully minimal cost. It is a major public scandal that today’s students and their families are being saddled with enormous debt for what is many cases an inferior product. We desperately need “no frills” alternatives in education—colleges that make learning central and dispense with tangential attractions like gleaming exercise studios jammed with expensive state-of-the-art machines. Why are these luxurious amenities now considered indispensable? American colleges and universities need to strip themselves down to the basics. Subject: Hillary's Reagan AIDS gaffe -- evidence of her endless improvisational pandering or of a minor psychotic break? Dear Camille, I imagine you have noted H.R. Clinton's inexplicable and false statement crediting the Reagans with "starting a national conversation" about AIDS. For gay men of my era, it is more than hard to take, it seems a willful re-writing of history, designed to play to a Republican First Lady funeral audience. What are your thoughts? Sleeplessness and confusion are not adequate explanations in my mind, once you parse not only what she said without provocation to Andrea Mitchell, but in follow-up tweet and patronizing Medium post. But the Clintons are ceaselessly triangulating, so who know? Your take? Thomas Burns New York City Dear Thomas, I think you are quite right to suggest that Hillary was triangulating at Nancy Reagan’s funeral. Thinking she had the nomination locked up, she was pivoting toward Republicans and trying to show she was their gal too. But I also suspect she was having a random senior moment, not unlike her fantasy of running for cover under sniper fire in Bosnia. The woman Hillary was praising for her pioneering courage in talking publicly about AIDS was actually Elizabeth Taylor, not Nancy Reagan. It’s very telling: Hillary thinks stereotypically of people as faceless members of groups, fodder for polling data and pandering outreach---which automatically triggers, for example, her cringe-making Southern Fried dialect for black audiences. Nancy Reagan (a former actress married to a former actor) had melted into Clan Hollywood. In Hillary’s mind, all actresses are clones, just as all of her skirt-chasing husband’s targets are floozies, bimbos, and nut jobs. Finally, I want to extend my thanks to Steve Laredo and Roger Longenbach, who wrote separately to question my reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “shot heard round the world,” which they maintain was a reference to the Battle of Lexington and not Concord. But as can be seen in an informational page of the National Park Service, Emerson’s “Concord Hymn”, from which that famous line comes, was indeed referring to the fighting at the Old North Bridge in Concord, which his father had witnessed. Please feel free to send questions to my Salon mailbox (see below).

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Published on March 24, 2016 14:05

Garry Shandling, comic, ‘Larry Sanders Show’ creator, dies

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Garry Shandling, who as an actor and comedian pioneered a pretend brand of self-focused docudrama with "The Larry Sanders Show," has died. Los Angeles Police officer Tony Im said Shandling died Thursday in Los Angeles of an undisclosed cause. He was 66. Im said officers were dispatched to Shandling's home Thursday for a reported medical emergency. Shandling was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Im did not have any details on when the call was placed or what the nature of the emergency was. He said police will conduct a death investigation. Coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said his office did not yet have any details about Shandling's death. The Chicago-born Shandling moved from a short stint in the advertising business to comedy writing and standup. Then in the 1980s he began to experiment with TV comedy with his first series, "It's Garry Shandling's Show," a Showtime sitcom that called attention to its artificial nature with the actors routinely breaking the fourth wall. In 1992, he created his comic masterpiece with "The Larry Sanders Show," which starred him as an egomaniacal late-night TV host with an anxiety-ridden show-biz life behind the scenes. ___ AP television writer Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this story.