Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 835

“The Carmichael Show’s” definitive take on Bill Cosby’s legacy: How Jerrod Carmichael became the most important comedian in America

NBC’s “The Carmichael Show” is like nothing else on television, and there is no better proof of that than last night’s episode “Fallen Heroes,” which was about the ongoing Bill Cosby rape scandal. Creator and star Jerrod Carmichael—who more or less plays himself in the show—gets his girlfriend tickets to see Cosby perform live; her flat refusal to see the comedian perform sparks a discussion among the Carmichael clan about what it means to grapple with the legacy of any tarnished hero, but specifically, for this black family sitcom on NBC, this hero. “The Carmichael Show” owes its title, its format and its tenability as mainstream sitcom to “The Cosby Show,” and the episode is completely aware of it. Carmichael himself, as a stand-up comedian, clearly modeled much of his own career on Cosby’s. At the same time, this is a show about nearly any black family, stand-up sons notwithstanding. A family that grew up, like so many families did, on “The Cosby Show.” So for this show and this comedian to consider the legacy of Bill Cosby is already presenting a perspective that feels revolutionary. As the A.V. Club’s Joshua Alston observes, Carmichael and co-writer Mike Scully are very aware of how the thorny issue of Cosby—as both a serial rapist and a trailblazer for the normalization of black lives and the mainstream acceptance of black comedy—isn’t one that’s easily resolvable. The episode leaves a lot of breathing room around most of its assertions—not to avoid the facts, but to avoid simplifying the issue—and the cast of characters, whose political beliefs range from religious and conservative to ideological indifference to bleeding-heart liberal, offer multiple arguments to identify with. As Pilot Viruet put it at Vulture, “The Carmichael Show’s" cast makes for “a microcosm of the internet in one living room.” “The Carmichael Show” is attempting what should be impossible—a hot-button issue every week, in one of the most traditional television formats possible: a multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track, centered on a battered couch in front of the fourth wall of the audience. The show also films sometimes in Jerrod and Maxine’s loft apartment, but its heart and soul is in his childhood home, a brick Southern home with a picture window and flowered wallpaper. What’s most surprising is that it works. “The Carmichael Show” is a vehicle shaped and intended to be a tool of political discussion; from the deliberately throwback format to the wide political variance among the cast of characters, from Jerrod’s conservative parents (Loretta Devine and David Alan Grier) to his biracial, liberal girlfriend Maxine (Amber Stevens West). But most important, “The Carmichael Show” is also incredibly, pointedly, unbelievably hilarious. Devine, who plays Cynthia Carmichael, is a God-fearing woman with impossible-to-forget inflections and mannerisms; when she learns who the stand-up tickets are for, she repeats “Bill Cosby?!” in increasing incredulity, meaning something different each time. Brother Bobby (Lil Rel Howery) asks if this means he can go back to listening to Chris Brown. Grier—who plays the patriarch Joe—responds with a virtuoso-like blend of ignorance and understanding, “Has there ever been a singer with the last name Brown who didn’t hit a girl? Chris, Bobby, James? The list is bottomless!” “The ironic part,” Maxine says to Jerrod, when he shows her the tickets, “is that you’d have to knock me unconscious to get me to go.” He answers, flippantly—“I wouldn’t take you without your consent, Maxine!” * * * When “The Carmichael Show” premiered in 2015, it was just six episodes debuting late in August, in the dog days of summer. If you’re familiar with the broadcast television schedule, you know that the summer is when most scripted programming takes a hiatus, in advance of the regular television season starting in earnest in late September. It is, after all, summer, when people want to be outside more than they want to be in front of a television. Which is all to say that NBC’s decision to debut a short-run series, two episodes at a time, over three weeks in what Hollywood Reporter’s Dan Fienberg called an “odd late-summer hole,” is quite a message of non-confidence. It’s saying, we don’t think much of these episodes, so we’re burning them off where no one can see them. It’s saying, no one was going to watch this anyway. They have rather radically changed their tune. “The Carmichael Show,” which returned for its second season last week, has rebounded from its ignominious origins to, as of yesterday, having the most coveted lead-in on NBC’s schedule—Sunday night prime time, following Steve Harvey’s overnight success “Little Big Shots.” The lead-in of a hefty reality TV show audience is a tried-and-true way to build an audience for a fledgling sitcom, and “The Carmichael Show” premiered its second season with two new episodes in a row—in a nod to the changing viewing patterns of the average American family, who are more used to binge-watching than ever. And with a sitcom about a black family following a reality show hosted by black television personality Steve Harvey, NBC is not just embracing “The Carmichael Show,” but also discovering that investing in diversity leads to better ratings, in what is an increasingly competitive market. But “The Carmichael Show” broke out all on its own, proving itself in the wasteland of summer entertainment. Variety reports at the time that the show’s second-week ratings uptick was the first of its kind since 2006, and its overall viewers were the largest for a show in that summer time slot since 2004. “The Carmichael Show” beat out numbers from an era before Netflix streaming and Hulu; for the latter statistic, even YouTube wasn’t around yet. The show only had three weeks to imprint on the American audience, and it found a way to stick. There’s a story here about NBC’s incompetence—not just in being unable to foster a competent comedy, but not even being able to spot a great one when they had it—but there’s also a story here about how unlikely a hit “The Carmichael Show” was. Here was a multi-camera sitcom helmed by a comedian not well known out of the stand-up scene (or serious fans of the Seth Rogen/Zac Efron film “Neighbors”); like the highly regarded ABC sitcom “Black-ish,” it aimed to bring the black family comedy back to broadcast television. In late August of last year, it certainly seemed like it could be derivative, forgettable or simply not very funny. What changed everything, very early on, was “The Carmichael Show’s" second episode, “Protest.” It had been just over a year since the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a wave of protests and birthed the Black Lives Matter movement, which has grown to become a formidable political entity. In the year following, though, progress was hard to find in police departments—but was more visible than ever on television, as more and more programming starring and created by creatives of color found an audience. It made for a charged juxtaposition between real-life and representation, what I have earlier called the “just one guy” problem. “The Carmichael Show” stepped into that fraught space and decided to own it, right from the jump. Instead of ignoring the politics of being black in America, the show confronts them head-on; instead of using its comedy to escape big questions, “The Carmichael Show” uses its comedy to illuminate them. In “Protest,” the Carmichael family is torn on whether to join in the demonstrations around the death of another young black man; in the middle, Bobby and his estranged wife, Nekeisha (Tiffany Haddish), roll up with a huge flatscreen TV. When the other Carmichaels ask why they looted a television, they protest that they stole it from someone who had stolen it first. Cynthia goes upstairs to dig her old protest garb out from the attic, and then scolds Maxine for making the amateur mistake of wearing wedges to a march. “Protest” is about the horrific injustice of institutional racism, of course; but it is also about how all of it, whether it is politics or not, is filtered through the lens of family. It’s this that makes the show feel so compulsively watchable: the sense of togetherness, sharp edges and all. Conversation has become increasingly fraught in this country, but on “The Carmichael Show,” it reigns supreme, despite many differences both within the family and in the outside world. Jerrod Carmichael’s stand-up, writes Jonah Weiner in the New York Times, is an aggressive, groan-inducing kind of humor, one that leans into the role of “race traitor” and pushes hard. But as his profile of Carmichael reveals—that rebellious streak is an indication of some deeper mission, some irrepressible streak of character. The comedian’s investment—and the show’s, too—is not in being “correct” or in running the other way from politics, but in beginning an uncomfortable but important conversation. And if “The Carmichael Show’s" conversations are on a stuffy sofa, in a kitschy living room, with embroidered cushions and pine end tables—well, so much the better; that’s where they need to be.

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Your new Replacements bible: “Trouble Boys” tells the truth about the Replacements — if you can handle it

The Replacements, the alternative rock heroes that emerged out of Minneapolis in the 1980s, remain one of rock 'n' roll’s legendary bands. The mythos was created by a combination of classic elements: the stories of amazing gigs, where you believed they were one of the best bands in the world; the tales of drunken outings, filled with medleys of hits from the ‘70s; the discography of albums that influenced bands and musicians from Kurt Cobain to Titus Andronicus, Billie Joe Armstrong to the Hold Steady. Lorde covered “Swingin’ Party” from 1985’s “Tim”; Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy’s declared onstage, “Everything we do is based on the Replacements.” The songs continue to attract new fans and still hold up 30 years later. “Trouble Boys,” the new biography about the Replacements, dismantles (or upholds!) the myths with an artful, patience diligence. Author Bob Mehr painstakingly tells the entire story of the band, and delves into every relevant detail necessary in order to accomplish this task. It took Mehr over a decade to complete his research, talking to literally hundreds of individuals. The book is not authorized, but rather written “with the participation of.” That doesn’t just mean that the band members granted interviews, but also that they clearly gave the nod to anyone else in the continuum of their lives and history to speak to Mehr. This allowed him to follow the story wherever it went, for good, bad and tragic. There’s no spoiler here: Those who followed or cared about the band already know that there’s an awful lot of tragedy around the Replacements, from the way success seemed to elude their grasp, to the dismissal and departure of founding guitarist Bob Stinson. Mehr’s approach to this is unstinting and unvarnished--this isn’t a glossy feel-good story, there’s no artful spin to the tales. The reader will come out of the book not wondering why the band didn’t make it, but rather wondering how they managed to go as far as they did. “Trouble Boys” opens with Bob Stinson’s funeral in 1995. Mehr starts here because Bob founded the band. He starts with Bob because he was the soul of the band. He starts with Bob because everyone who ever loved the Replacements wants to know what really happened with Bob, even if they already likely carry their own strongly held opinions on the subject. The book then digs deep into the family history and the childhood of each individual band member, because where you come from has a lot to do with who you are and who you become. No spoilers, but it is literally a wonder and a testament to a special brand of dogged inner determination that each member of the Replacements made it to adulthood. This early background isn’t presented in a vacuum the way it is in some artist biographies, where the reader is never given any assistance in weighing the information or understanding why they’re being told something; the real art in Trouble Boys is how no detail is wasted or there simply because it was acquired. So a note about Paul’s mother’s pregnancy is immediately connected to a quote about "Bastards of Young," a detail about the Stinson kitchen that comes back to "Sorry Ma, I Forgot to Take Out the Trash," or an observation about Alex Chilton’s behavior next to a trash can on a New York street, which, of course, connects to the song named after him. The book is insanely dense with this kind of detail, which Mehr doggedly closes the loop on, over and over again. Early in the book, there’s a paragraph about the history of rehab centers and why there are so many in Minnesota. This directly connects to why so many teens in the Minneapolis music scene had been in rehab programs, which gives further background to the band’s first show, played at a teen "sober dance," and all of this together explains how a song called “Treatment Bound” ended up on their 1983 "Hootenanny" album. This type of connection happens over and over again during the course of the book. Along the way, "Trouble Boys" also relates necessary history regarding the Minneapolis alternative rock scene, because without it, the reader would be missing critical context. So the birth of Twin/Tone Records (who would sign the Replacements), the individuals who worked in and around the local music business, and the life and death of various clubs and music venues is presented alongside the rest of the tale. This includes the story of Peter Jesperson, the man who discovered the Replacements, who later became their manager, “fifth Replacement,” biggest cheerleader, and whose life was deeply impacted in a permanent way from his association with the band, as well as the role of other musicians who joined the band in the later years --  most important, that of Slim Dunlap, who stepped into the second guitar role after the departure of Bob Stinson. It’s important to note that author Bob Mehr didn't grow up in Minnesota, didn’t live there, wasn’t part of the crowd. While some people might discount the authority of this book because of that, it’s actually one of its strengths. This distance means that Mehr has to work at recognizing, identifying and explaining the inside jokes and local references. He also doesn’t have to see these people every time he goes out to see a show, which makes it a lot easier when it comes time to reveal hard truths, or stories of a person’s younger days that might not shed a positive light. Where the book shines the brightest is when it comes to talking about the most important part of the Replacements’ legacy: the music. There is wonderful, incredibly descriptive detail of recording sessions, and of the songwriting process. It’s here where Mehr’s appreciation of the band serves the material well, and that’s not meant in a negative way: someone who wasn’t a fan of the band wouldn’t be able to describe the songs in the type of bright, evocative detail that’s a highlight of Mehr’s music writing in general. But he also writes from the perspective of someone who’s been an informed observer of the band’s music for decades. Someone who didn’t get the Replacements could not have written this book, period. Mehr is sympathetic to the story in that he gives it as much room as it needs, and unfailingly fills in the necessary detail, whether it’s through research, going through the archives, or hunting down friends from grade school, ex-girlfriends, or Minneapolis scenesters. (He even gets Winona Ryder on the record, whose role as some kind of indie rock Yoko Ono was, unsurprisingly, incorrect.) Mehr’s affinity for the band is probably why "Trouble Boys" works double overtime to give each member of the band equal time. The book equalizes everyone’s role, and disabuses the prevailing myth that Paul Westerberg was some megalomaniacal war lord, stealing Bob Stinson’s band. It gives Tommy Stinson more credit than his age might have belied, particular in his role as “de facto musical director for the band before he hit puberty,” Westerberg says. “For the next ten years I’d be asking Tommy, ‘What chord does that start with?’” And it also unstintingly distributes the frustration with Bob Stinson’s role in the band even back as far as "Hootenanny," where Tommy semi-scouted Dan Murphy from Soul Asylum as a potential replacement for his brother, or during the "Pleased to Meet Me" sessions, where Tommy fired back at producer Jim Dickinson’s dismissal: “You don’t think I’m serious? I fired my fuckin’ brother. That’s how serious I am about this band.” Don’t worry: There are plenty of tales of destruction, drugs, drinking, destroyed dressing rooms, and double-dares to suit the fan who loved that side of the Replacements. A classic is the time that storied rock critic Robert Christgau saw the band at First Avenue, whereupon Paul Westerberg announced that Chuck Berry had died and the band kicked into “Maybelline.” Mehr writes, “A panicked Christgau scurried to a payphone before he realized he was being put on.” Every detail of the apocryphal "Saturday Night Live" appearance is captured. The tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is filled in by Benmont Tench and Stan Lynch. If you have a favorite ‘Mats legend, it’s in here somewhere, guaranteed. “The stories of them being legless and then being able to get up and play a great show,” says Slim Dunlap, “that part of the legend was true.” By the book’s end, though, your heart will be broken. You’ll be furious at the band’s inability to play it straight, to grab the gold ring, to step into the spotlight. You’ll understand exactly why the band’s career played out the way it did, but that won’t make you less angry about the lost opportunity, the songs left unfinished, the gigs we never got to see. The epilogue, usually the place in a biography for some ray of sunshine, will either make you weep or turn you catatonic, page after page, waiting for the roller coaster to come to a stop. Not everyone will be thrilled with "Trouble Boys." The reader who’s just looking for a celebration of the chaos, the same way some fans used to come to ‘Mats shows demanding drunken spectacle, will probably be unsatisfied. There are so many people who are happy to continue believing in their own version of the truth, even if it’s completely wrong. That is rarely true more than it is with fans of the Replacements, because they were so loved and so hated and so much the band of the forgotten misfit, and it’s hard to let go of something that meant that much to you. But for everyone else, students of rock 'n' roll, or those who wondered what the big deal really was, "Trouble Boys" is a tremendous piece of research and writing, and absolutely the Replacements biography we’ve been waiting for.The Replacements, the alternative rock heroes that emerged out of Minneapolis in the 1980s, remain one of rock 'n' roll’s legendary bands. The mythos was created by a combination of classic elements: the stories of amazing gigs, where you believed they were one of the best bands in the world; the tales of drunken outings, filled with medleys of hits from the ‘70s; the discography of albums that influenced bands and musicians from Kurt Cobain to Titus Andronicus, Billie Joe Armstrong to the Hold Steady. Lorde covered “Swingin’ Party” from 1985’s “Tim”; Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy’s declared onstage, “Everything we do is based on the Replacements.” The songs continue to attract new fans and still hold up 30 years later. “Trouble Boys,” the new biography about the Replacements, dismantles (or upholds!) the myths with an artful, patience diligence. Author Bob Mehr painstakingly tells the entire story of the band, and delves into every relevant detail necessary in order to accomplish this task. It took Mehr over a decade to complete his research, talking to literally hundreds of individuals. The book is not authorized, but rather written “with the participation of.” That doesn’t just mean that the band members granted interviews, but also that they clearly gave the nod to anyone else in the continuum of their lives and history to speak to Mehr. This allowed him to follow the story wherever it went, for good, bad and tragic. There’s no spoiler here: Those who followed or cared about the band already know that there’s an awful lot of tragedy around the Replacements, from the way success seemed to elude their grasp, to the dismissal and departure of founding guitarist Bob Stinson. Mehr’s approach to this is unstinting and unvarnished--this isn’t a glossy feel-good story, there’s no artful spin to the tales. The reader will come out of the book not wondering why the band didn’t make it, but rather wondering how they managed to go as far as they did. “Trouble Boys” opens with Bob Stinson’s funeral in 1995. Mehr starts here because Bob founded the band. He starts with Bob because he was the soul of the band. He starts with Bob because everyone who ever loved the Replacements wants to know what really happened with Bob, even if they already likely carry their own strongly held opinions on the subject. The book then digs deep into the family history and the childhood of each individual band member, because where you come from has a lot to do with who you are and who you become. No spoilers, but it is literally a wonder and a testament to a special brand of dogged inner determination that each member of the Replacements made it to adulthood. This early background isn’t presented in a vacuum the way it is in some artist biographies, where the reader is never given any assistance in weighing the information or understanding why they’re being told something; the real art in Trouble Boys is how no detail is wasted or there simply because it was acquired. So a note about Paul’s mother’s pregnancy is immediately connected to a quote about "Bastards of Young," a detail about the Stinson kitchen that comes back to "Sorry Ma, I Forgot to Take Out the Trash," or an observation about Alex Chilton’s behavior next to a trash can on a New York street, which, of course, connects to the song named after him. The book is insanely dense with this kind of detail, which Mehr doggedly closes the loop on, over and over again. Early in the book, there’s a paragraph about the history of rehab centers and why there are so many in Minnesota. This directly connects to why so many teens in the Minneapolis music scene had been in rehab programs, which gives further background to the band’s first show, played at a teen "sober dance," and all of this together explains how a song called “Treatment Bound” ended up on their 1983 "Hootenanny" album. This type of connection happens over and over again during the course of the book. Along the way, "Trouble Boys" also relates necessary history regarding the Minneapolis alternative rock scene, because without it, the reader would be missing critical context. So the birth of Twin/Tone Records (who would sign the Replacements), the individuals who worked in and around the local music business, and the life and death of various clubs and music venues is presented alongside the rest of the tale. This includes the story of Peter Jesperson, the man who discovered the Replacements, who later became their manager, “fifth Replacement,” biggest cheerleader, and whose life was deeply impacted in a permanent way from his association with the band, as well as the role of other musicians who joined the band in the later years --  most important, that of Slim Dunlap, who stepped into the second guitar role after the departure of Bob Stinson. It’s important to note that author Bob Mehr didn't grow up in Minnesota, didn’t live there, wasn’t part of the crowd. While some people might discount the authority of this book because of that, it’s actually one of its strengths. This distance means that Mehr has to work at recognizing, identifying and explaining the inside jokes and local references. He also doesn’t have to see these people every time he goes out to see a show, which makes it a lot easier when it comes time to reveal hard truths, or stories of a person’s younger days that might not shed a positive light. Where the book shines the brightest is when it comes to talking about the most important part of the Replacements’ legacy: the music. There is wonderful, incredibly descriptive detail of recording sessions, and of the songwriting process. It’s here where Mehr’s appreciation of the band serves the material well, and that’s not meant in a negative way: someone who wasn’t a fan of the band wouldn’t be able to describe the songs in the type of bright, evocative detail that’s a highlight of Mehr’s music writing in general. But he also writes from the perspective of someone who’s been an informed observer of the band’s music for decades. Someone who didn’t get the Replacements could not have written this book, period. Mehr is sympathetic to the story in that he gives it as much room as it needs, and unfailingly fills in the necessary detail, whether it’s through research, going through the archives, or hunting down friends from grade school, ex-girlfriends, or Minneapolis scenesters. (He even gets Winona Ryder on the record, whose role as some kind of indie rock Yoko Ono was, unsurprisingly, incorrect.) Mehr’s affinity for the band is probably why "Trouble Boys" works double overtime to give each member of the band equal time. The book equalizes everyone’s role, and disabuses the prevailing myth that Paul Westerberg was some megalomaniacal war lord, stealing Bob Stinson’s band. It gives Tommy Stinson more credit than his age might have belied, particular in his role as “de facto musical director for the band before he hit puberty,” Westerberg says. “For the next ten years I’d be asking Tommy, ‘What chord does that start with?’” And it also unstintingly distributes the frustration with Bob Stinson’s role in the band even back as far as "Hootenanny," where Tommy semi-scouted Dan Murphy from Soul Asylum as a potential replacement for his brother, or during the "Pleased to Meet Me" sessions, where Tommy fired back at producer Jim Dickinson’s dismissal: “You don’t think I’m serious? I fired my fuckin’ brother. That’s how serious I am about this band.” Don’t worry: There are plenty of tales of destruction, drugs, drinking, destroyed dressing rooms, and double-dares to suit the fan who loved that side of the Replacements. A classic is the time that storied rock critic Robert Christgau saw the band at First Avenue, whereupon Paul Westerberg announced that Chuck Berry had died and the band kicked into “Maybelline.” Mehr writes, “A panicked Christgau scurried to a payphone before he realized he was being put on.” Every detail of the apocryphal "Saturday Night Live" appearance is captured. The tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers is filled in by Benmont Tench and Stan Lynch. If you have a favorite ‘Mats legend, it’s in here somewhere, guaranteed. “The stories of them being legless and then being able to get up and play a great show,” says Slim Dunlap, “that part of the legend was true.” By the book’s end, though, your heart will be broken. You’ll be furious at the band’s inability to play it straight, to grab the gold ring, to step into the spotlight. You’ll understand exactly why the band’s career played out the way it did, but that won’t make you less angry about the lost opportunity, the songs left unfinished, the gigs we never got to see. The epilogue, usually the place in a biography for some ray of sunshine, will either make you weep or turn you catatonic, page after page, waiting for the roller coaster to come to a stop. Not everyone will be thrilled with "Trouble Boys." The reader who’s just looking for a celebration of the chaos, the same way some fans used to come to ‘Mats shows demanding drunken spectacle, will probably be unsatisfied. There are so many people who are happy to continue believing in their own version of the truth, even if it’s completely wrong. That is rarely true more than it is with fans of the Replacements, because they were so loved and so hated and so much the band of the forgotten misfit, and it’s hard to let go of something that meant that much to you. But for everyone else, students of rock 'n' roll, or those who wondered what the big deal really was, "Trouble Boys" is a tremendous piece of research and writing, and absolutely the Replacements biography we’ve been waiting for.

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Why we ignore the litany of potentially deadly side effects in TV ads for drugs

Who doesn’t laugh at drug commercials with their before-and-after scenes of life-changing improvements accompanied by numerous terrifying side effects? But these drug ads continue because they work. Beyond the overt manipulations, there are more covert ones—including techniques that diminish the impact of the required warning section. Former advertising executive Jerry Mander observed that his ex-colleagues in advertising don’t care if you think their commercial is ridiculous or even false, because the image of the product goes into your head anyway, and your insides will always carry this “neuronal billboard.” Mander, in his 1978 book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," instructed us that TV commercials must be viewed with what he called “sensory cynicism.” Nearly two decades after Mander’s book was published, a new kind of TV commercial—one requiring a different level of sensory cynicism—appeared in the United States. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration implemented new rules for direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs. These new rules required that the ad need only mention the major risks and prevalent adverse effects, provide a toll-free number, refer to other information sources, and state the need to see a medical professional. Those new rules made it possible to run a TV drug ad. The task for drug advertisers was how to meet the requirement of stating major risks and prevalent adverse effects in a manner so that viewers do not care about them, ensuring the warning section will not interfere with the placement in viewers’ minds of those billboards of life-changing improvements. While the FDA has scolded drug companies for using blatant techniques to distract viewers away from the warning section, STAT (“How Drug Ad Narrators Take the Scariness Out of Side Effects”) notes, “The FDA can’t do much about ads that bore consumers into ignoring the side effect lists.” Health and medicine publication STAT details how “the warning section may be written with more complex sentence structures, to make it harder for viewers to absorb.” STAT quoted Ruth Day, a cognitive scientist at Duke University who has studied drug ads: “There’s a shift in how the voice is used to make it easier to understand the benefits and less easy to understand the risks.” So, for example, a hurried warning narration makes it much harder to remember the warning section. A major technique used to weaken the impact of the warning section is for it to be reported by an off-screen voice. In contrast, we routinely see a person having life-changing improvement after taking the drug, and seeing that person’s transformation creates a mental billboard. These techniques are exemplified in an often-broadcasted commercial for Abilify, advertised as an antidepressant booster medication (for which it was FDA approved in 2007). This commercial does not inform viewers that Abilify is an antipsychotic drug, originally approved by the FDA in 2002 for schizophrenia. Instead, the ad tells us, “Approximately 2 out of 3 people being treated for depression still have unresolved symptoms”—an assertion we hear and also see written on a blackboard. And the ad directs itself to depressed people for whom an “antidepressant alone is not enough”—this also accompanied by a visual, a 6-second blackboard scene showing a list of well-known antidepressants plus a container of Abilify. In this 75-second Abilify commercial, over 40 seconds are used for the required warning list that includes increased suicide, stroke and other “life-threatening reactions.” However, simultaneous to the warning list being reported by an off-screen voice, we see a once very sad woman now enjoying her life with her family and friends and at work. When the warning list is completed, we see a close-up of this attractive woman speaking directly to us, “Adding Abilify has made a difference for me.” Abilify has grossed over $7 billion annually, become one of the best-selling drugs of all time, and until recently was America’s top-grossing drug (it is now No. 2 position behind Sovaldi, the hepatitis C drug). Big Pharma and the Ad Industry: A Marriage Made in Hell How did the United States in 1997 become one of just two countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs? In 1994, with the Republican Party’s takeover of Congress, House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked FDA regulations, and President Bill Clinton offered no resistance to the FDA holding hearings in 1995 on direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs, which Julie Donohue described in 2006 in the Milbank Quarterly:

Officials heard testimony from pharmaceutical and advertising industry representatives, consumer organizations, medical societies, and academics...By 1997, those FDA officials who were reluctant to open the floodgates to prescription drug advertising on television felt increased pressure from a variety of sources to ease the regulations and permit broadcast advertising.

Big Pharma, historically, has either applied financial and political pressure to politicians and regulators so as to create laws and rules that benefit them, or they simply have boldly broken laws. Pro Publica details drug companies’ largest fines for their criminal actions, including: the intent to defraud or mislead; failure to report safety data; and the often-repeated, illegal marketing for unapproved use. Peter Gotzsche, in his book "Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare," makes a case for Big Pharma being guilty of racketeering. Gotzsche quotes Peter Rost, former vice president of marketing at Pfizer who turned whistleblower against Pfizer and Big Pharma (see "The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman"). In a 2008 interview, Rost stated:

It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry—which has been proven in different cases. You could go through a 10-point list discussing similarities between the two....It’s pretty scary that they’re committing crimes that cause [the government] to levy those enormous amounts of fines against them.

Given the criminality and immorality of Big Pharma and the amorality of the advertising industry, do we really want to give this mob the extraordinary power of direct-to-consumer advertising on television? Bruce E. Levine is a practicing clinical psychologist. His latest book is "Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite."  Who doesn’t laugh at drug commercials with their before-and-after scenes of life-changing improvements accompanied by numerous terrifying side effects? But these drug ads continue because they work. Beyond the overt manipulations, there are more covert ones—including techniques that diminish the impact of the required warning section. Former advertising executive Jerry Mander observed that his ex-colleagues in advertising don’t care if you think their commercial is ridiculous or even false, because the image of the product goes into your head anyway, and your insides will always carry this “neuronal billboard.” Mander, in his 1978 book "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television," instructed us that TV commercials must be viewed with what he called “sensory cynicism.” Nearly two decades after Mander’s book was published, a new kind of TV commercial—one requiring a different level of sensory cynicism—appeared in the United States. In 1997, the Food and Drug Administration implemented new rules for direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs. These new rules required that the ad need only mention the major risks and prevalent adverse effects, provide a toll-free number, refer to other information sources, and state the need to see a medical professional. Those new rules made it possible to run a TV drug ad. The task for drug advertisers was how to meet the requirement of stating major risks and prevalent adverse effects in a manner so that viewers do not care about them, ensuring the warning section will not interfere with the placement in viewers’ minds of those billboards of life-changing improvements. While the FDA has scolded drug companies for using blatant techniques to distract viewers away from the warning section, STAT (“How Drug Ad Narrators Take the Scariness Out of Side Effects”) notes, “The FDA can’t do much about ads that bore consumers into ignoring the side effect lists.” Health and medicine publication STAT details how “the warning section may be written with more complex sentence structures, to make it harder for viewers to absorb.” STAT quoted Ruth Day, a cognitive scientist at Duke University who has studied drug ads: “There’s a shift in how the voice is used to make it easier to understand the benefits and less easy to understand the risks.” So, for example, a hurried warning narration makes it much harder to remember the warning section. A major technique used to weaken the impact of the warning section is for it to be reported by an off-screen voice. In contrast, we routinely see a person having life-changing improvement after taking the drug, and seeing that person’s transformation creates a mental billboard. These techniques are exemplified in an often-broadcasted commercial for Abilify, advertised as an antidepressant booster medication (for which it was FDA approved in 2007). This commercial does not inform viewers that Abilify is an antipsychotic drug, originally approved by the FDA in 2002 for schizophrenia. Instead, the ad tells us, “Approximately 2 out of 3 people being treated for depression still have unresolved symptoms”—an assertion we hear and also see written on a blackboard. And the ad directs itself to depressed people for whom an “antidepressant alone is not enough”—this also accompanied by a visual, a 6-second blackboard scene showing a list of well-known antidepressants plus a container of Abilify. In this 75-second Abilify commercial, over 40 seconds are used for the required warning list that includes increased suicide, stroke and other “life-threatening reactions.” However, simultaneous to the warning list being reported by an off-screen voice, we see a once very sad woman now enjoying her life with her family and friends and at work. When the warning list is completed, we see a close-up of this attractive woman speaking directly to us, “Adding Abilify has made a difference for me.” Abilify has grossed over $7 billion annually, become one of the best-selling drugs of all time, and until recently was America’s top-grossing drug (it is now No. 2 position behind Sovaldi, the hepatitis C drug). Big Pharma and the Ad Industry: A Marriage Made in Hell How did the United States in 1997 become one of just two countries that allow direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs? In 1994, with the Republican Party’s takeover of Congress, House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked FDA regulations, and President Bill Clinton offered no resistance to the FDA holding hearings in 1995 on direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs, which Julie Donohue described in 2006 in the Milbank Quarterly:

Officials heard testimony from pharmaceutical and advertising industry representatives, consumer organizations, medical societies, and academics...By 1997, those FDA officials who were reluctant to open the floodgates to prescription drug advertising on television felt increased pressure from a variety of sources to ease the regulations and permit broadcast advertising.

Big Pharma, historically, has either applied financial and political pressure to politicians and regulators so as to create laws and rules that benefit them, or they simply have boldly broken laws. Pro Publica details drug companies’ largest fines for their criminal actions, including: the intent to defraud or mislead; failure to report safety data; and the often-repeated, illegal marketing for unapproved use. Peter Gotzsche, in his book "Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare," makes a case for Big Pharma being guilty of racketeering. Gotzsche quotes Peter Rost, former vice president of marketing at Pfizer who turned whistleblower against Pfizer and Big Pharma (see "The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman"). In a 2008 interview, Rost stated:

It is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob. The mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side effects of organized crime are killings and deaths, and the side effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry—which has been proven in different cases. You could go through a 10-point list discussing similarities between the two....It’s pretty scary that they’re committing crimes that cause [the government] to levy those enormous amounts of fines against them.

Given the criminality and immorality of Big Pharma and the amorality of the advertising industry, do we really want to give this mob the extraordinary power of direct-to-consumer advertising on television? Bruce E. Levine is a practicing clinical psychologist. His latest book is "Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite." 

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The payback candidate: Trump’s campaign is for conservatives seeking revenge on everyone they think disrespects them

Over the weekend, Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns published a fascinating story in the New York Times about how much of Donald Trump's presidential bid is rooted in his desire to be taken seriously and his resentment against political elites, both on the left and right, who see him as a joke. "Mr. Trump’s campaign is driven by a deep yearning sometimes obscured by his bluster and bragging: A desire to be taken seriously," they write. Events in recent days suggest that since that will never actually happen — even as people fear Trump's rise, they still don't see him as a legitimate or serious political thinker and never will — his campaign has turned into an act of revenge against those who shun him. Trump's personal motivations are fascinating, but what is even more so is how much his pettiness, his hurt ego, and his desire for revenge on those who think aren't giving him his due is what compels his supporters to rally around him. A lot of his support comes from people who see themselves in him: People who believe they — white conservative Christians who shun city life — deserve to be at the center of American life and culture, but look out and see a world where the president is a black man from Chicago, the charts are ruled by Rihanna and Beyoncé, and Lena Dunham is a celebrity. The modern conservative movement is filled with people who believe they are due deference from the rest of us but are getting mockery instead. The conservative media has stoked this narrative of cultural resentment for decades, too. "Liberal elite" is a common catchphrase on the right. Some might think that term is an economic one, but in reality, it's a cultural one. The "liberal elite" is mostly composed of people who belong to the middle class: Journalists, college professors, artists, even lawyers, most of whom are not millionaires. Meanwhile, the right absolutely hero worships conservative billionaires like the Waltons, the Kochs, and yes, Donald Trump. No, the "liberal elite" is a term of cultural resentment, rooted in a thwarted sense of conservative entitlement. It's backed by this narrative that there once was a time when America was "great" because the culture was controlled by white Christians, but at some point, usually the 1960s, the undesirables — hippies, artists, people of color, secularists, feminists, gay people — started taking over. This sense that something has been stolen and needs to be taken back is the organizing narrative of conservative populism. Trump is tapping into the same narrative that propelled Richard Nixon into the White House, fueled the "Disco Demolition" night of straight white men burning records associated with said "others," helped start the Moral Majority and the Christian right, and is the engine that drives right wing talk radio and the relentless rage machine of Fox News to this day. And while it's trendy, especially amongst those who believe the white working class is one pamphlet on democratic socialism away from leaving the Republicans, to say that it's based on economics, the fact is these flare-ups aren't quite as pegged to economic trends as one might think but can quite easily be linked to white conservative anger over cultural moments that remind them they are not the actual owners of American culture. With Obama to leave office soon in triumph, his legitimacy as not just the first black president but one of the greater American presidents secured, the anger is boiling over. Trump's vendetta against the political elites for laughing at him perfectly echoes the larger white conservative anger over not getting the respect they believe they deserve. And make no mistake: Trump knows this. He knows how to speak directly to his followers' anger at being disrespected and fear that they are being laughed at by the cool kids. He's not just encouraging his supporters to violently retaliate against protesters, but framing that violence as a way to get revenge against all those snooty hipsters who think they are so cool and are laughing at you, the salt of the earth white conservative Americans. On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Trump used this frame to justify an incident where a 78-year-old white man at one of his rallies sucker-punched a young black protester who was being escorted out by security. "I will say this, I do want to see what that young man was doing," Trump told Chuck Todd. "Because he was very taunting, he was very loud, very disruptive. And from what I understand a certain finger was up in the air.” "And that is a terrible thing to do in front of somebody who, frankly, wants to see American made great again," he added. While he claimed he wasn't condoning the punch, it's clear from this language that he was at least excusing it. The narrative is crystal clear here: Young people, especially young black people, owe older white conservatives respect and deference and failure to give it is so outrageous that it justifies reacting with violence. Another interesting aspect of Trump's escalating rabidity on this is his focus on Bernie Sanders, or more specifically, Sanders supporters.

Bernie Sanders is lying when he says his disruptors aren't told to go to my events. Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2016

  Trump continued this line of attack in person, calling Sanders a "communist" and saying, "You know where [the protesters] come from? Bernie's crowd. They're Bernie's crowd." Sanders has denied the accusations, pointing out correctly that it's Trump's supporters who are inciting the violence. But it's interesting that Trump is going after Sanders, who is still not expected to win the nomination, over the frontrunner Hillary Clinton on this. But in terms of stoking culture war resentment, this move makes total sense. Sanders's supporters are younger and perceived as hipper by the larger public. Since Trump is pushing the "hipsters are disrespecting their conservative elders who made America great" narrative, it makes way more sense to go after Sanders supporters than Clinton's supporters, even though that defies the usual campaign logic of attacking the frontrunner of the opposing party. "I love this country. We're going to make this country great again. It's payback time," Trump said over the weekend at a Dayton event. It was a telling line. "Make America Great Again" might be the official Trump campaign slogan, but "It's Payback Time" is the real one that is driving not just the candidate, but his supporters.

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Hillary will never survive the Trump onslaught: It’s not fair, but it makes her a weak nominee

There are many nauseating aspects of the new reality TV series, "America Picks a Prez," which airs around the clock on every single channel on earth: the cynical, open-air conspiracy between our Fourth Estate and Donald “Ratings Viagra” Trump. Ted Cruz uttering the word "prayerfully" while not exploding into a cloud of synthetic piety. Caucasian patriots heroically exercising their right to punch people of color. Among these, let me nominate one more: listening to Hillary partisans explain to those of us who support Bernie Sanders just how naive we are. Only Hillary, we are told, has a real shot at winning in November. She’s the only one with a realistic grasp of how Washington works, whose moderate (and modest) policy aims might, realistically, be enacted. It often sounds as if Clinton’s central pitch to voters isn’t that she has a moral vision for the country, but that she owns the franchise on realism. Bernie, meanwhile, is just a sweet-shouting rube whose quarter-century as a congressman and senator has somehow failed to instill in him an appreciation for the twin plagues of grift and gridlock. For us benighted hippies, the standard counter-argument at this point is that our man understands all too well the magnitude of Washington’s dysfunction, which is why he’s calling for a political revolution: to obliterate the most heinous aspects of the status quo, starting with corporate-sponsored elections. I happen to agree with this. But there’s a sadder and more pointed response to Hillary’s reality brigade. Namely, that they need to face the reality of what the 2016 election is going to be like with Hillary at the top of the ticket. Before I outline that particular shitstorm, let me issue a few sure-to-be-ignored (and therefore pointless) caveats. First, I myself was a Hillary supporter until Sanders entered the race. (More precisely, until I read his policy positions.) Second, I will enthusiastically support Hillary when and if she is nominated. Years ago, I interviewed the secretary and I say now what I said then: She is a brilliant and compassionate public servant. If presidential elections in this country were based on policy positions and moral intention, on how each candidate hopes to solve common crises of state, Clinton would win going away. Alas, the reality is that Hillary is among the most hated politicians in America. There is, to begin with, her dismal favorability rating, which stands at 53 percent, with a net negative of 12 percent. (Sanders has a net positive of 12 percent.) But even more important is the intensity of the animus against her, and the sad mountain of baggage she carries with her as a candidate. No matter who the GOP nominee is, the battle plan against Hillary will be the same: a tawdry and unrelenting relitigation of all the phony scandals cooked up by the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” that she identified nearly two decades ago. Cue up the Pearl Jam, folks, because we’re going all the way back to the '90s: Whitewater, Travelgate, Troopergate, Lewinskygate, with a little Vince Foster Murdergate, for a dash of blood. But wait—those are just the golden oldies! You’ll also be hearing about the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Pardons. Of course, what respectable slander campaign would be complete without the new material? Benghazi, the private email server, the Wall Street speeches? The dark corporate money and talented propagandists aligned against Hillary will make the Swift Boat Veterans look like toy soldiers. And because our Fourth Estate is driven at this point almost entirely by the desperate promotion of scandal narratives and conflict, every one of these paid attacks will be amplified by so-called free media, or what us starry-eyed hippies used to call journalism. I’m not blaming Hillary for this sad state of affairs. I’m just trying to be—what’s the word I’m looking for? Ah yes, here it is—realistic about how it’s going to go down. Republicans tend to lose when they have to talk in specific terms about policies, priorities and solutions. They win when elections are reduced to brawls and/or personality contests. (See Reagan/Carter, Bush/Kerry, et al.) But if Donald Trump is the nominee, as seems most likely right now, he will also enjoy two genuine lines of attack against Hillary. The first is the same one Bernie just used to upset her in Michigan: the fact that free trade pacts are wildly unpopular with many Americans. Trump has been full-throated (and, as usual, somewhat full of shit) in his condemnation of free trade, and it has been one of his most successful pitches. You can bet your bottom yen that he’ll hammer Hillary on this, as if she personally whipped votes for NAFTA. He’ll excoriate various forms of crony capitalism (deals cut with big pharma, bogus military contracts, etc.) that Democrats such as Hillary either endorsed or enabled through timidity. And he’ll blast her for backing our trillion-dollar boondoggle in Iraq, too. These accusations will be framed in terms of a larger narrative: that Hillary represents business as usual in Washington, that she’s just another career pol beholden to the donor class and to the Wall Street swells who paid her millions to deliver her secret speeches. Trump may be a sexually insecure adolescent with a penchant for inciting racial violence, but the one undeniable aspect of his appeal is that he recognizes the toxic nature of the status quo and will, by sheer force of personality, bring it down. This promise is about as flimsy as a Trump University diploma. But it’s resonating with voters who feel Washington’s carnival of corruption is beyond redemption. All of which brings us back to that credulous waif from Brooklyn, by way of Ben and Jerry’s. Donald Trump can holler all he wants about how Crazy Bernie is a socialist. But he (and the super Pacs) won’t be able to distract voters by digging up scandals in his past. Nor will Trump be able to portray him as a corporate stooge. In fact, the shocking success of the Sanders campaign is predicated on many of the same essential frustrations Trump is exploiting: corporate influence, wage stagnation, trade. This is why polls consistently show Sanders beating Trump more convincingly than Clinton does. The right wing knows how to go after Hillary, because they’ve been doing so for 30 years. Within the media and a significant portion of the electorate, the neural pathways have already been carved out. Hillary is defensive, programmed, ethically suspect. They are going to have a more difficult time smearing a candidate whose biggest liabilities are his “extreme” policy positions, most of which sound more like a common sense corrective to the excesses of capitalism. Higher taxes on corporations and the super-wealthy? Healthcare as a right? A higher minimum wage? Increased funding for education and infrastructure? Good luck demonizing those positions, Big Donald. None of this is to suggest that Hillary won’t beat Trump, if they wind up as the nominees. Nor that she won’t be a great president. But if Hillary supporters want to claim the mantle of realism, they should start by accepting very real liabilities of their candidate.

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Hiding the truth about Flint water crisis: Many emails from officials staying sealed

The 11th annual Sunshine Week, devoted to reminding Americans of the importance of a transparent government,  has been slightly eclipsed at the revelation that the contents of some emails between officials of Flint, Michigan will remain a secret.

The news comes as government officials are investigated for their roles in the toxic water scandal, which began in 2014 when state officials detached Flint from Detroit’s water supply and began using Flint River water instead to save money. Regulators failed to treat water properly and lead from pipes leached into the city’s water supply, contributing to a spike in resident lead exposure and brown-colored tap water.

According to The Detroit Free Press, in mid-October, as the scope of the toxic drinking water and public health crisis became public, Adam Rosenthal, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality engineer, emailed two supervisors stating a Flint resident's name and address, with two lead readings for water samples taken from that home.

However what was typed beneath the message was most surprising: "Preliminary and Deliberative not subject to FOIA."

Rosenthal’s e-mail is just one of thousands.

After calls for information on the extent of the knowledge of the public health crisis from advocates and the media, the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder voluntarily released some emails related to the lead contamination and the state's response.

Apart from answers to some questions, the emails revealed a striking trend: Many of them displayed the same exact phrase “not subject to FOIA" in what could be an active effort by state employees to avoid disclosure of public records.

"There's a culture in state government that's filtered down to employees that says, 'That's just FOIA; this is how you get around it,'" said Jane Briggs-Bunting, president of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government, told The Detroit Free Press.

FOIA laws vary state by state, and Michigan is one of only two states in which both the governor's office and the legislature is exempt from FOIA.

Another popular subject heading: "Attorney Client Privilege. Not subject to FOIA."

According to the Detroit Free Press, such was the heading used by former DEQ Director Dan Wyant on Oct. 13 when he sent a Flint water plan "action update" to six officials in the governor's office.

Again, Michigan's FOIA law protected the email from the public eye as the records were subject to attorney-client privilege.

Jarrod Agen, Snyder’s chief of staff, told the Detroit Free Press the governor is currently examining possible changes to the executive FOIA exemption.

The 11th annual Sunshine Week, devoted to reminding Americans of the importance of a transparent government,  has been slightly eclipsed at the revelation that the contents of some emails between officials of Flint, Michigan will remain a secret.

The news comes as government officials are investigated for their roles in the toxic water scandal, which began in 2014 when state officials detached Flint from Detroit’s water supply and began using Flint River water instead to save money. Regulators failed to treat water properly and lead from pipes leached into the city’s water supply, contributing to a spike in resident lead exposure and brown-colored tap water.

According to The Detroit Free Press, in mid-October, as the scope of the toxic drinking water and public health crisis became public, Adam Rosenthal, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality engineer, emailed two supervisors stating a Flint resident's name and address, with two lead readings for water samples taken from that home.

However what was typed beneath the message was most surprising: "Preliminary and Deliberative not subject to FOIA."

Rosenthal’s e-mail is just one of thousands.

After calls for information on the extent of the knowledge of the public health crisis from advocates and the media, the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder voluntarily released some emails related to the lead contamination and the state's response.

Apart from answers to some questions, the emails revealed a striking trend: Many of them displayed the same exact phrase “not subject to FOIA" in what could be an active effort by state employees to avoid disclosure of public records.

"There's a culture in state government that's filtered down to employees that says, 'That's just FOIA; this is how you get around it,'" said Jane Briggs-Bunting, president of the Michigan Coalition for Open Government, told The Detroit Free Press.

FOIA laws vary state by state, and Michigan is one of only two states in which both the governor's office and the legislature is exempt from FOIA.

Another popular subject heading: "Attorney Client Privilege. Not subject to FOIA."

According to the Detroit Free Press, such was the heading used by former DEQ Director Dan Wyant on Oct. 13 when he sent a Flint water plan "action update" to six officials in the governor's office.

Again, Michigan's FOIA law protected the email from the public eye as the records were subject to attorney-client privilege.

Jarrod Agen, Snyder’s chief of staff, told the Detroit Free Press the governor is currently examining possible changes to the executive FOIA exemption.

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Did Donald Trump incite a riot? Officials could bring charges against the Republican billionaire, reports say

Donald Trump has adamantly denied responsibility for recent violence at his campaign events, but he may soon be held to account. Officials are weighing the possibility of charging Trump with inciting a riot after a protester was assaulted at a campaign rally in North Carolina last week, reports WRAL.com. Trump was repeatedly interrupted by protesters during a March 9 event in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Police removed demonstrators from the audience at least 18 times during his speech, with Trump riling an already agitated crowd. "See, in the good old days this didn’t use to happen, because they used to treat them very rough," said Trump at one point. "We’ve become very weak." During the event, a man named John McGraw struck a black protester who was being removed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLufi... McGraw was later charged with assault. Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that he is looking into covering McGraw's legal expenses. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office is reportedly reviewing Trump's comments at the Fayetteville event and is considering whether to charge Trump with inciting a riot. "We are concerned about a number of things in that speech. We are concerned about activity associated with that speech," said Ronnie Mitchell, attorney for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. "That does not mean that we have decided to charge anyone." Under North Carolina law, inciting a riot is a misdemeanor unless the disturbance causes serious injury or more than $1,500 in property damage, in which case it is a felony offense.Donald Trump has adamantly denied responsibility for recent violence at his campaign events, but he may soon be held to account. Officials are weighing the possibility of charging Trump with inciting a riot after a protester was assaulted at a campaign rally in North Carolina last week, reports WRAL.com. Trump was repeatedly interrupted by protesters during a March 9 event in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Police removed demonstrators from the audience at least 18 times during his speech, with Trump riling an already agitated crowd. "See, in the good old days this didn’t use to happen, because they used to treat them very rough," said Trump at one point. "We’ve become very weak." During the event, a man named John McGraw struck a black protester who was being removed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLufi... McGraw was later charged with assault. Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that he is looking into covering McGraw's legal expenses. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office is reportedly reviewing Trump's comments at the Fayetteville event and is considering whether to charge Trump with inciting a riot. "We are concerned about a number of things in that speech. We are concerned about activity associated with that speech," said Ronnie Mitchell, attorney for the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. "That does not mean that we have decided to charge anyone." Under North Carolina law, inciting a riot is a misdemeanor unless the disturbance causes serious injury or more than $1,500 in property damage, in which case it is a felony offense.

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“Forget about Todd, especially now”: With her husband hospitalized, Donald Trump jokes even Sarah Palin could have stopped San Bernardino attackers with a gun

Sarah Palin's husband, Todd, was involved in a serious snow mobile accident on Sunday and is in the intensive care unit of an Alaskan hospital. The failed presidential candidate had been scheduled to stump for Donald Trump in Florida all day Monday, but the campaign announced early Monday afternoon that she'd fly back to be by her injured husband's side instead. Still, before Palin could leave the Sunshine State, she made one stop on behalf of the Republican frontrunner where the two former reality tv stars certainly put on a show. “I’m a peace-loving person," Trump insisted during an earlier town hall in Tampa with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. But at a rally later in the day, Sarah Palin hyped the Trump audience, who were forced to pass a vocal anti-Trump protest in order to enter the Tampa arena, by falsely suggesting that counter-protest are a violation of the First Amendment. “What we don’t have time for is all that petty, punk-ass little thuggery stuff that’s been goin’ on with these quote-unquote ‘protesters’ who are doin’ nothin’ but wasting your time and trying to take away your First Amendment rights -- your rights to assemble peacefully," an ever feisty Palin yelled to the crowd, after reassuring them that her husband was recuperating from his injuries in the ICU. "And the media, bein’ on the thugs’ side — what the heck are you guys thinkin’, media? It doesn’t make sense!”

WATCH: @SarahPalinUSA decries "petty punk" protesters at @realDonaldTrump rally. https://t.co/ojUXIyawvo

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 14, 2016

Trump returned the favor to Palin when he took the stage, arguing that if anybody had been armed -- even Sarah Palin -- the San Bernardino shooters could have been stopped. “There were no bullets going in the opposite direction,” he argued. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/709... https://twitter.com/stevensonseth/sta... https://twitter.com/TheBradMielke/sta... “Forget about Todd, especially now,” he bizarrely quipped, as Todd Palin remains in the ICU:

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He told me he’d “cut out my kids’ tongues”: The experience with online harassment I can’t forget

“TURN ON FOX NEWS RIGHT NOW. YOU’RE THE NATIONAL LEAD.”

It was Thanksgiving weekend, 2014. The smell of the candied yams permeated the house while my mother rolled out pie crusts and I argued aloud with the turkey recipe. Amid the bustle of dinner preparations, my computer sounded the notification bloop for Facebook messaging and I saw the message from my friend. Sure enough, I turned on the television just in time to hear one of the hosts say, “If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Darlena Cunha is a moron.”

I’m a writer. I freelance for various publications, spouting out my opinion and backing that up with facts and statistics. I get paid to show readers a viewpoint of society through a lens of progressive ideals. I get paid, essentially, to make Fox News mad. In this instance, I had written a piece for Time magazine, titled: "Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting." I wasn’t really playing the moderate. Throughout my career, I’ve made any number of readers angry, and those readers have lashed out, calling me stupid or whiny, or expressing sympathy for my children. Given that, the name-calling from Fox didn’t surprise me. I was, however, taken aback by what followed. Everyday trolling is one thing. Part of my job is to shoulder criticism, and take in what’s valid, leaving the rest on the commenting forum floor. Actual intimidation, stalking and threats, however, are a totally different—and potentially deadly—game.

The difference between national news organization trolling and your garden-variety Internet troll is that the offshoot articles these companies produce become the starting point for the troll army—so that many times a troll never even reads your original work before spouting off. No matter, though, trolling is trolling and primary sources are not required.

But to me, a writer forced to put my name and social media handles on top of every piece I write, trolls can be dangerous. They can be scary. I’ve learned to deal with the hundreds of comments calling me names after I publish a piece, but it’s a different story when comments read like threats. My first published piece, for instance, was a researched personal essay about the time I had to drive my husband’s Mercedes to pick up coupons for Women, Infants and Children—a social service for those facing low incomes. Through that piece alone, the general public knows intimate details about my life. And some of them carry it with them. They follow me from piece to piece.

Not long ago, for example, I received this comment by TomSmith6. He was commenting on the Ferguson piece, but bringing up details from my original essay.

“Easy to say as she drives her Mercedes and watches it all unfold on TV from her 1%-er Florida suburb. Bring the action to her town, to where her kids live/play/go to school. Bitch be singing a different tune. Shoot them all.”

Then he gave out as much personal information as he could, so that people could attempt to find my home address. I had to wipe my Internet presence and ask my publications to take any reference to the town in which I live off my bio. Just in case. Because while most of these comments are all just smoke, you never know which one guy is actually serious.

But there was another time in particular, that stands out from all the rest, a time when I felt completely powerless to protect myself. A time before I’d even chosen public writing as a profession.

His username was Promeny, and we were in a Livejournal community. The persona he presented online was that of a young man, utterly disgruntled and disgusted by women who continued to scorn him. Promeny took the hatred he’d been feeling for himself and women in general, and turned it on the specific women of the group. It would usually start with a post where he would ask the group for advice, something about how to talk to women without scaring them off, for example. A good example is this, posted in April of 2010, “I’ve wandered the nation. No one likes me. No girls. 26 and a virgin.”

The women of the group felt sympathy for him, and began giving suggestions freely. “People can be so mean. I know you will find someone soon, and, trust me, being a virgin is a million times sexier than being a ‘manwhore’ or whatever.”

To these comments, he’d respond with bristle. A woman suggested finding someone who just wanted to have fun to get it over with, and Promeny replied that he would only touch a woman he loved. Then he complained about all those women having boyfriends. He was consistently "friend-zoned."

As the conversations continued, he became more hostile. Eventually, his nice-guy act fell completely away and he began berating the very women who had been trying to help him. They became cold, manipulative sluts in his narrative—another score of women who wrongfully underestimated him, even though they had done nothing of the sort.

Having been a part of that group since its inception, and being older than many of the women there, I felt compelled to step in to call him out on his atrocious behavior. While there is no such thing as a safe space on the Internet, I mistakenly thought we could all just try to be civil. Having not engaged any critic or troll on an emotional level before, I didn’t realize what I was getting into. These days, of course, I rarely comment at all. My writing stands for itself. But back then, I started by calmly showing him how what he was saying was both untrue and offensive, and went on to try to explain how pulling out attitudes like that may be part of what hinders him in terms of women.

He attacked me, calling me stupid and a bitch. I realized I had sent myself on a fool’s errand, and instead of continuing to try to reason with him, I started replying to his continuing diatribes with gifs and macros. Remember, this was 2010. If I had to do this over again, I would not have encouraged his anger by posting smarmy pictures in reply. Looking back, that was mean. It was not uncalled for, but it is not the kind of person I want to be known as. And unlike me, Promeny was not having fun. The pictures, apparently, were all it took to put him over the edge.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps that he would leave quietly with his tail between his legs, or explode in a fiery waste of words before taking his ball and going home. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t what followed.

“I’m going to find you, and one night, while your children are sleeping, I’m going to cut out their tongues and gauge out their eyes, so they can bleed to death, mute and blind.”

It was the first death threat I’d ever received, and it involved not me, but my children.

I scrambled. I was scared. I contacted Livejournal, hoping they could suspend the user, or dole out some consequence. They refused, stating that the best course of action would be to let him be, without reprimand, that to follow any other course could lead to further animosity and danger to me. If he remained in the system, they reasoned, they could keep an eye on him and monitor his remarks.

Without Livejournal on my side, I called my local police department to try to put on file that there had been a threat made toward my family. They listened politely, then told me there was nothing they could do.

Years later, I can see why. If every woman called the police on every anonymous threat to her family, the police would have time to do nothing else but investigate these cases. According to the Pew Research Center, 26 percent of young women on the Internet have been stalked, and 23 percent have been physically threatened. Of all people who have experienced online harassment (40 percent of all Internet users), 26 percent did not know the real identity of the perpetrator. While there are currently cyberstalking laws, they are hard to enforce, and victims must know their harasser’s identity to take him to court. And in 2010, those laws didn’t yet exist at all. The police told me there was nothing they could do. With no other recourse, I started checking on my children two or three times a night, waiting for an attack that never happened.

Eventually, Promeny disappeared. I recently searched for him, and the journal no longer exists. He never bothered me again. It really was just a one-off, a fantasy he allowed himself to type out and send across the country to a real person with real children.

The difference between the rape and death threats I receive nowadays and that first threat all those years ago is very simple, and very important.

Back then, in that specific instance, I was Promeny’s main audience. He was talking to me. Trying to scare me. He was looking at no one other than me.

In comment sections and message areas these days, I am not the audience. Every person calling me a moron, or wishing “a dystopian hell upon my unfortunate spawn” isn’t talking to me at all. They aren’t trying to scare me out of writing, or truly threaten my well-being. They are talking to the other commenters on the page, showing off for them. It’s as if you are at an endless holiday dinner with all your conservative uncles, half-drunk around the dinner table, still trying to impress Johnny, the next-door neighbor who used to be the football champion of the high school back in ’72. They might be ruthlessly making fun of you, even bullying you, but you are not the object of their efforts. You could just as easily be a cardboard cutout and they’d not know the difference.

Ultimately, there is a substantial difference between trolling that is meant as a performance and trolling that is meant as an attack. Being the object of trolling is part of my job—it’s irritating and obnoxious, but par for the course. People have things to say, and I make a good scapegoat for their angst. Being the subject of trolling, however, where the words are meant to harass and intimidate, is scary. It’s dangerous. And attacks like that hurt not only the writer but the public, as well. When trolls make writers their true target, they block free speech, not by censorship, but by intimidation.

These days, I consider having to deal with incessant attacks on my person as part of what publications are paying me for. The attacks certainly aren’t going to stop me from writing any time soon. Still, for all this bravado, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry every single time a piece goes live—about my family, about my livelihood, about my reputation, about my very safety. So, in a way, they’ve won. Because what is a game to them truly is my real life, and I have nowhere to hide.

“TURN ON FOX NEWS RIGHT NOW. YOU’RE THE NATIONAL LEAD.”

It was Thanksgiving weekend, 2014. The smell of the candied yams permeated the house while my mother rolled out pie crusts and I argued aloud with the turkey recipe. Amid the bustle of dinner preparations, my computer sounded the notification bloop for Facebook messaging and I saw the message from my friend. Sure enough, I turned on the television just in time to hear one of the hosts say, “If nothing else, I think we can all agree that Darlena Cunha is a moron.”

I’m a writer. I freelance for various publications, spouting out my opinion and backing that up with facts and statistics. I get paid to show readers a viewpoint of society through a lens of progressive ideals. I get paid, essentially, to make Fox News mad. In this instance, I had written a piece for Time magazine, titled: "Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting." I wasn’t really playing the moderate. Throughout my career, I’ve made any number of readers angry, and those readers have lashed out, calling me stupid or whiny, or expressing sympathy for my children. Given that, the name-calling from Fox didn’t surprise me. I was, however, taken aback by what followed. Everyday trolling is one thing. Part of my job is to shoulder criticism, and take in what’s valid, leaving the rest on the commenting forum floor. Actual intimidation, stalking and threats, however, are a totally different—and potentially deadly—game.

The difference between national news organization trolling and your garden-variety Internet troll is that the offshoot articles these companies produce become the starting point for the troll army—so that many times a troll never even reads your original work before spouting off. No matter, though, trolling is trolling and primary sources are not required.

But to me, a writer forced to put my name and social media handles on top of every piece I write, trolls can be dangerous. They can be scary. I’ve learned to deal with the hundreds of comments calling me names after I publish a piece, but it’s a different story when comments read like threats. My first published piece, for instance, was a researched personal essay about the time I had to drive my husband’s Mercedes to pick up coupons for Women, Infants and Children—a social service for those facing low incomes. Through that piece alone, the general public knows intimate details about my life. And some of them carry it with them. They follow me from piece to piece.

Not long ago, for example, I received this comment by TomSmith6. He was commenting on the Ferguson piece, but bringing up details from my original essay.

“Easy to say as she drives her Mercedes and watches it all unfold on TV from her 1%-er Florida suburb. Bring the action to her town, to where her kids live/play/go to school. Bitch be singing a different tune. Shoot them all.”

Then he gave out as much personal information as he could, so that people could attempt to find my home address. I had to wipe my Internet presence and ask my publications to take any reference to the town in which I live off my bio. Just in case. Because while most of these comments are all just smoke, you never know which one guy is actually serious.

But there was another time in particular, that stands out from all the rest, a time when I felt completely powerless to protect myself. A time before I’d even chosen public writing as a profession.

His username was Promeny, and we were in a Livejournal community. The persona he presented online was that of a young man, utterly disgruntled and disgusted by women who continued to scorn him. Promeny took the hatred he’d been feeling for himself and women in general, and turned it on the specific women of the group. It would usually start with a post where he would ask the group for advice, something about how to talk to women without scaring them off, for example. A good example is this, posted in April of 2010, “I’ve wandered the nation. No one likes me. No girls. 26 and a virgin.”

The women of the group felt sympathy for him, and began giving suggestions freely. “People can be so mean. I know you will find someone soon, and, trust me, being a virgin is a million times sexier than being a ‘manwhore’ or whatever.”

To these comments, he’d respond with bristle. A woman suggested finding someone who just wanted to have fun to get it over with, and Promeny replied that he would only touch a woman he loved. Then he complained about all those women having boyfriends. He was consistently "friend-zoned."

As the conversations continued, he became more hostile. Eventually, his nice-guy act fell completely away and he began berating the very women who had been trying to help him. They became cold, manipulative sluts in his narrative—another score of women who wrongfully underestimated him, even though they had done nothing of the sort.

Having been a part of that group since its inception, and being older than many of the women there, I felt compelled to step in to call him out on his atrocious behavior. While there is no such thing as a safe space on the Internet, I mistakenly thought we could all just try to be civil. Having not engaged any critic or troll on an emotional level before, I didn’t realize what I was getting into. These days, of course, I rarely comment at all. My writing stands for itself. But back then, I started by calmly showing him how what he was saying was both untrue and offensive, and went on to try to explain how pulling out attitudes like that may be part of what hinders him in terms of women.

He attacked me, calling me stupid and a bitch. I realized I had sent myself on a fool’s errand, and instead of continuing to try to reason with him, I started replying to his continuing diatribes with gifs and macros. Remember, this was 2010. If I had to do this over again, I would not have encouraged his anger by posting smarmy pictures in reply. Looking back, that was mean. It was not uncalled for, but it is not the kind of person I want to be known as. And unlike me, Promeny was not having fun. The pictures, apparently, were all it took to put him over the edge.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps that he would leave quietly with his tail between his legs, or explode in a fiery waste of words before taking his ball and going home. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t what followed.

“I’m going to find you, and one night, while your children are sleeping, I’m going to cut out their tongues and gauge out their eyes, so they can bleed to death, mute and blind.”

It was the first death threat I’d ever received, and it involved not me, but my children.

I scrambled. I was scared. I contacted Livejournal, hoping they could suspend the user, or dole out some consequence. They refused, stating that the best course of action would be to let him be, without reprimand, that to follow any other course could lead to further animosity and danger to me. If he remained in the system, they reasoned, they could keep an eye on him and monitor his remarks.

Without Livejournal on my side, I called my local police department to try to put on file that there had been a threat made toward my family. They listened politely, then told me there was nothing they could do.

Years later, I can see why. If every woman called the police on every anonymous threat to her family, the police would have time to do nothing else but investigate these cases. According to the Pew Research Center, 26 percent of young women on the Internet have been stalked, and 23 percent have been physically threatened. Of all people who have experienced online harassment (40 percent of all Internet users), 26 percent did not know the real identity of the perpetrator. While there are currently cyberstalking laws, they are hard to enforce, and victims must know their harasser’s identity to take him to court. And in 2010, those laws didn’t yet exist at all. The police told me there was nothing they could do. With no other recourse, I started checking on my children two or three times a night, waiting for an attack that never happened.

Eventually, Promeny disappeared. I recently searched for him, and the journal no longer exists. He never bothered me again. It really was just a one-off, a fantasy he allowed himself to type out and send across the country to a real person with real children.

The difference between the rape and death threats I receive nowadays and that first threat all those years ago is very simple, and very important.

Back then, in that specific instance, I was Promeny’s main audience. He was talking to me. Trying to scare me. He was looking at no one other than me.

In comment sections and message areas these days, I am not the audience. Every person calling me a moron, or wishing “a dystopian hell upon my unfortunate spawn” isn’t talking to me at all. They aren’t trying to scare me out of writing, or truly threaten my well-being. They are talking to the other commenters on the page, showing off for them. It’s as if you are at an endless holiday dinner with all your conservative uncles, half-drunk around the dinner table, still trying to impress Johnny, the next-door neighbor who used to be the football champion of the high school back in ’72. They might be ruthlessly making fun of you, even bullying you, but you are not the object of their efforts. You could just as easily be a cardboard cutout and they’d not know the difference.

Ultimately, there is a substantial difference between trolling that is meant as a performance and trolling that is meant as an attack. Being the object of trolling is part of my job—it’s irritating and obnoxious, but par for the course. People have things to say, and I make a good scapegoat for their angst. Being the subject of trolling, however, where the words are meant to harass and intimidate, is scary. It’s dangerous. And attacks like that hurt not only the writer but the public, as well. When trolls make writers their true target, they block free speech, not by censorship, but by intimidation.

These days, I consider having to deal with incessant attacks on my person as part of what publications are paying me for. The attacks certainly aren’t going to stop me from writing any time soon. Still, for all this bravado, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry every single time a piece goes live—about my family, about my livelihood, about my reputation, about my very safety. So, in a way, they’ve won. Because what is a game to them truly is my real life, and I have nowhere to hide.

Continue Reading...

My feminist Sanders fixation: I’m a woman of color, my candidate is a white man

In a classic "Seinfeld" episode, George Costanza relates how his father, Frank, created his own winter holiday, "Festivus," an alternative to the consumerism and the cultural hegemony of Christmas. In this parodic (and screamingly funny) approach, there are no presents but a communal  "airing of the grievances," the tree is replaced by a utilitarian aluminum pole. Frank responds to rotely uttered "Merry Christmas"es by screaming "Festivus for the rest of us!" #FeeltheBern is our presidential "Festivus for the rest of us!" * The rise of Sanders and Trump's candidacies points to a watershed cultural moment, with large numbers of Democrats and Republicans forming a cohort of the angry and disenfranchised, struggling to be heard in a system that increasingly requires money and power as an admission ticket to the table. Trump fans get a human megaphone, who says reliably shocking things that get him on TV, paired with Bernie Sanders, one of the longest-serving and consistently progressive politicians.   What they do share is a take-it-or-leave-it brashness, the opposite of pandering, that the media sloppily categorizes as "populism" (can you own a gold-covered plane and still be populist?) that speaks to the yearning for transparency, authenticity, convictions. We are at a moment unthinkable a decade ago, when the two political parties were cut and dried: The GOP was the party of business and social conservatives--particularly Christian fundamentalists--the Democratic Party the party of the "little people" and minorities. Now, both candidates are outliers in parties that have become unrecognizable. The party of Lincoln is tilting scarily toward fascism and violence,  while the  Democratic administration has brought us Hillary Clinton's State Department, which not only gives the finger to climate change concerns by actively selling fracking globally, it has also fomented the coup of a democratically elected president in Honduras so frightening in its machinations, one can't help thinking of Kissinger urging Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende in Chile.   We want desperately to believe that our elected officials will act in our best interests, as they are the guardians of our tax money, even as they blow that money  on a war that we don't ask for, create trade agreements that benefit corporations while sending good manufacturing jobs overseas. We are basically told we have to commit acts of environmental racism, poison our water through fracking, spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on non-working fighter planes that could have otherwise been traded for a $600,000 mansion for every homeless person, we let them maintain a strange farm subsidy system that ends up giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to "farmers," aka sitting members of Congress who enact these subsidies in the first place. There is hope, however. Jeb Bush's nasty, brutish and short $150 million campaign, bankrolled by 1 percent oligarchs like the Koch brothers, fizzled out. Hillary Clinton's campaign, which runs its own media machine (the Blue Nation Review--owned by David Brock, Clinton strategist and coiner of the phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" to smear Anita Hill) and similarly infused with cash from corporations, lobbyists and mega donors galore, should have made her an unstoppable nominee. This is where our Festivus miracle, what I'm calling #BernieMagic, comes in. Bernie Sanders came out of the gate refusing money from corporations as well as super PACS--the unlimited money allowed by Citizens United, a ruling both Clinton and Obama decried but also ("We have to") availed themselves of during their respective campaigns. Early on, I responded to Bernie's online solicitation for a small donation by sending $25. I affixed my BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT bumper sticker to our apartment door, to some gentle teasing. But so weary of spin, how could I not support a politician who's been so steadfast with the issues, saying the same things about income inequality since he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the '80s? How could I forget his lonely "no" vote on the war in Iraq? His (now prescient) reasoning that our troops would suffer, Iraqis would suffer, we'd open a door to Islamic extremism--delivered to a near-empty room as passionately as if the place was full? So now that he was actually running for president, I felt each little donation was an investment in my future, my voice, even though my puny amount felt a little bit like I was trying to get a rocketship off the ground by tying a balloon to it. But here we are, 4 million individual donations later--the average donation, $27. Each donation a balloon, the rocketship has achieved liftoff. And, like water into wine, my BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT sticker has turned from an ironic eccentricity into the real deal. I use this Christian imagery purposely, to counteract the prewritten corporate narrative that Hillary is the candidate we need to unite behind to defeat Trump. Au contraire, the crossover voters we need are the evangelical Christians and Catholics who formerly voted Republican but are now faced with a multiply married, strip-club-loving Planned Parenthood supporter who also violates Thou Shalt Not Lie by being, according to the New York Times, the biggest liar on the campaign trail. Bernie's long history in public service has shown a steadfast integrity that is catching the eye of the electorate used to being manipulated, lied to, taken for granted. Bernie's bedrock values (more than 90 percent of those voters who prized "honesty" went for Bernie in New Hampshire, according to exit polls) are a natural fit with  evangelical Christians who don't rely on fear-mongering and racism to determine their votes. In fact, Dwight Longnecker, a priest and former evangelical, counsels that it may actually be pro-God to vote for Bernie:

'If...his opponent–someone who supported abortion AND torture AND indiscriminate bombing of civilians AND indiscriminate deportation of immigrants– (like Trump) then a vote for Sanders could be the lesser of two evils.' 

For me and many others, this election is not about choosing among the candidates; Bernie Sanders is my choice. I, along with my brethren, paid our $27 donation in our unironic "citizens united" to BYOB--Bring Your Own Bernie--to the table. I am categorically uninterested in being made to toe the line for a party that branded itself as "for the people" yet whose head is now lobbying for payday loan companies whose sole function is to prey on poor people so disenfranchised in our system that they can't even afford money. Nope. How can I do that when we have a candidate who wants not only break up the predatory big banks but to bring banking to the people. Bernie Sanders has a brilliant idea--widely supported--for citizens to conduct simple banking transactions at the U.S. Post Office. Similarly, instead of allowing banks like Goldman to profit off hardworking people's mortgages, why aren't we taking a closer look at Bernie's land-trust model in Burlington, which got people owning their homes and with a 10 times lower rate of default because the system was set up to help homeowners succeed, not for banks to profit. Evangelicals, including those who have helped push Trump to victory in the last three GOP contests, might want to take another look at the guy cleaning the House (of Representatives) of scurrilous moneylenders, undeniable echoes of what another Jewish guy did for his house, centuries ago. As the Trump rallies take on more and more of a Hitler Youth vibe and as the Democratic Party veers further and further from the populism that once made it the party of progressives and minorities, voters need a place to go, and the more they hear about Bernie Sanders, the more they appear to like him. Before Super Tuesday, the pundits warned that a loss in Oklahoma--a Southern agrarian state--would highly suggest Bernie's appeal was a limited, regional one, especially with Hillary having beaten Obama soundly there in 2008. But Bernie came from far behind and won--thereby suggesting that a Southern state with deep roots in evangelical Christianity is open to the appeal of the democratic socialist. In fact, "many party members saw Jesus as the first socialist." This isn't me, but an encyclopedia entry from the Oklahoma Historical Society. "Socialism" is the boogeyman also being flung around as the so-called reason we must unite around Hillary because Bernie is tarred by this label. However, perhaps eight years of Republican red-baiting of Obama as socialist has helped people see what democratic socialism is: a system that retains capitalism but also works to serve and protect the "little people." Do you like to drive on an interstate highway? That's democratic socialism! In fact, in the Iowa caucuses, more people identified as socialists than capitalists.   * As Oklahoma goes, likely so goes the nation, suggested Nate Silver. Despite the accomplishment and experience Hillary brings to the race, trustworthiness is generally not the first character trait associated with her by voters, even supporters (and do we need to watch Bill Clinton likely violating voting laws by hanging out in and obstructing polling places, the media once again lamely telling us it does look bad but is probably--technically--legal). I spoke with Sandy Rouse, who runs the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and she canvassed a bunch of Vermonters for their Bernie stories. They ended up all revolving around Bernie basically showing up when he was asked, engaged, interested, committed. Meeting schoolchildren (not exactly a valuable voting bloc) in his Senate office with enormous respect--asking them questions, reminding them to thank their teacher; he shows up for civic events then eats his brown bag lunch sitting on a curb. He did then, he does it now. I had a Facebook friend post from a tiny waiting room in a local airport "...this guy looks just like Bernie Sanders. Is it?" This friend didn't know about the hashtag #SandersonaPlane, which highly suggests that if elected, he's not going to use our tax dollars to, say, immediately go overboard with the extravagant redecorating, as some presidents have in the past. Bernie isn't a political panacea, but he does best represent voters who want America to be more inclusive, a change from it being the richest nation and yet one of the highest in the developed world in child poverty. His authenticity has attracted a diverse crowd of writers, artists and musicians supporting his campaign; he is unequivocally the only candidate who is the subject of an admiring Allen Ginsberg poem. My unscientific collection of Vermonters' stories combined with my years of curious and admiring Bernie-watching left me with an impression that writer Ezra Klein described as "an undeniable decency to him that you don't often see at this level of American politics." That is, Sen. Sanders reflexively puts the interests of those who rely on him--no matter how "small" or obscure--first. Orly Munzing, who runs Strolling with the Heifers, a Vermont farm-advocacy project whose parade Bernie marches (strolls in ) every year, told me how one year, traffic was backed up; Sen. Sanders leapt out of the car and jogged on the highway the two miles to Brattleboro so he wouldn't be late.    Even in the self-interested space that is Twitter, years ago, Bernie started following me on his @SenSanders account, from which he occasionally directly tweets (as opposed to @BernieSanders, which is run by staff). Tickled, slightly starstruck, I did not follow him back, just to see what would happen, because politicians follow you all the time to try to gin up more followers (some politicians--Mitt Romney--even buy followers; Trump has been accused of making fake ones). Even progressive @BilldeBlasio followed me then dumped me three days later when I didn't do the quid pro quo. But while @SenSanders' five-figures worth of followers has exploded to 1.5 million, he still looks at mostly the same bunch of non-partisan people doing interesting things, like my friend and writer-colleague Dr. Anna Reisman, whom I noticed he followed at about the same time--he's clearly not in it for the follow-back. For those of us who BYOB'ed to the table early, there's plenty to go around and we're happy--no, ecstatic--to share a candidate that voters of many persuasions can get behind. As a woman, a feminist, a person of color, this is a big deal that my candidate is a white man. But I'm also someone who has studied economics and worked for years at Goldman Sachs, and I don't agree with the idea that Goldman showered Hillary with money so that they could sit politely and listen to her talk about the glass ceiling. This was a company, by the way, that let analysts expense their strip club outings and also used pictures of centerfolds as a joke (a joke!) to introduce incoming young women employees. If you want to have a longer debate about why getting $675,000 for those three speeches is problematic, or why we need to bring  back the Glass-Steagall Act (thank you, FDR), I'm here for you. I understand that most Americans probably don't vote by studying 1933 banking law, but Americans are starting to realize that while they are working to feed their families, powerful people are quietly profiting off things that shouldn't be monetized--and that basically, no one's minding the store. Many American voters want someone--someone honest--to mind the store. One of the odd pro-Trump arguments is that he's so wealthy, he can't be swayed by monied interests. But then would you trust someone who's "too" wealthy to understand anything of what an ordinary working America goes through (here's what his NYC apartment looks like)? Bernie, on the other hand, has an instinctive understanding of his fellow Americans (possibly from his time being a carpenter?) and his character has him doing the same thing when no one's looking as when they are. As the candidates attempt to woo millennials with expensive musical acts, he has, all this time, quietly been the only one of the presidential candidates who pays his interns. How could I not be charmed to learn that he traveled all the way to my rural and not-easy-to-get-to hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, to talk to high school students, steelworkers and Native American activists? The only thing that could have been better would have been to have Bob Dylan, fellow hometown-sharer, doing the music. To be true people of faith, of any faith, we must look toward possibility--which includes the possibility of Festivus and #feeltheBern miracles. I am not the only one who needs a president who will face the challenge of climate change, who wants to focus on education and not war,  who'll work to leave an earth for the next generation (I hear you, millennials!). I don't expect to agree with all his plans, but I do rest assured knowing he will be working for us, that our change-found-in-the-seat-cushion donations, our phone banking, our Facebook sharing has indeed brought our voices to the table, and he will make sure the table is always large and welcoming. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophycisist, spends his days fathoming the endless wonder of the universe. And yet even he came back to our big blue marble earth momentarily to declare in a Super Tuesday tweet:

Who would Jesus vote for? To him walls, wealth, & torture are non-starters, so probably the Jewish New Yorker from Vermont.

Amen. In a classic "Seinfeld" episode, George Costanza relates how his father, Frank, created his own winter holiday, "Festivus," an alternative to the consumerism and the cultural hegemony of Christmas. In this parodic (and screamingly funny) approach, there are no presents but a communal  "airing of the grievances," the tree is replaced by a utilitarian aluminum pole. Frank responds to rotely uttered "Merry Christmas"es by screaming "Festivus for the rest of us!" #FeeltheBern is our presidential "Festivus for the rest of us!" * The rise of Sanders and Trump's candidacies points to a watershed cultural moment, with large numbers of Democrats and Republicans forming a cohort of the angry and disenfranchised, struggling to be heard in a system that increasingly requires money and power as an admission ticket to the table. Trump fans get a human megaphone, who says reliably shocking things that get him on TV, paired with Bernie Sanders, one of the longest-serving and consistently progressive politicians.   What they do share is a take-it-or-leave-it brashness, the opposite of pandering, that the media sloppily categorizes as "populism" (can you own a gold-covered plane and still be populist?) that speaks to the yearning for transparency, authenticity, convictions. We are at a moment unthinkable a decade ago, when the two political parties were cut and dried: The GOP was the party of business and social conservatives--particularly Christian fundamentalists--the Democratic Party the party of the "little people" and minorities. Now, both candidates are outliers in parties that have become unrecognizable. The party of Lincoln is tilting scarily toward fascism and violence,  while the  Democratic administration has brought us Hillary Clinton's State Department, which not only gives the finger to climate change concerns by actively selling fracking globally, it has also fomented the coup of a democratically elected president in Honduras so frightening in its machinations, one can't help thinking of Kissinger urging Nixon to overthrow the democratically elected Allende in Chile.   We want desperately to believe that our elected officials will act in our best interests, as they are the guardians of our tax money, even as they blow that money  on a war that we don't ask for, create trade agreements that benefit corporations while sending good manufacturing jobs overseas. We are basically told we have to commit acts of environmental racism, poison our water through fracking, spend trillions of taxpayer dollars on non-working fighter planes that could have otherwise been traded for a $600,000 mansion for every homeless person, we let them maintain a strange farm subsidy system that ends up giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to "farmers," aka sitting members of Congress who enact these subsidies in the first place. There is hope, however. Jeb Bush's nasty, brutish and short $150 million campaign, bankrolled by 1 percent oligarchs like the Koch brothers, fizzled out. Hillary Clinton's campaign, which runs its own media machine (the Blue Nation Review--owned by David Brock, Clinton strategist and coiner of the phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" to smear Anita Hill) and similarly infused with cash from corporations, lobbyists and mega donors galore, should have made her an unstoppable nominee. This is where our Festivus miracle, what I'm calling #BernieMagic, comes in. Bernie Sanders came out of the gate refusing money from corporations as well as super PACS--the unlimited money allowed by Citizens United, a ruling both Clinton and Obama decried but also ("We have to") availed themselves of during their respective campaigns. Early on, I responded to Bernie's online solicitation for a small donation by sending $25. I affixed my BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT bumper sticker to our apartment door, to some gentle teasing. But so weary of spin, how could I not support a politician who's been so steadfast with the issues, saying the same things about income inequality since he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the '80s? How could I forget his lonely "no" vote on the war in Iraq? His (now prescient) reasoning that our troops would suffer, Iraqis would suffer, we'd open a door to Islamic extremism--delivered to a near-empty room as passionately as if the place was full? So now that he was actually running for president, I felt each little donation was an investment in my future, my voice, even though my puny amount felt a little bit like I was trying to get a rocketship off the ground by tying a balloon to it. But here we are, 4 million individual donations later--the average donation, $27. Each donation a balloon, the rocketship has achieved liftoff. And, like water into wine, my BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT sticker has turned from an ironic eccentricity into the real deal. I use this Christian imagery purposely, to counteract the prewritten corporate narrative that Hillary is the candidate we need to unite behind to defeat Trump. Au contraire, the crossover voters we need are the evangelical Christians and Catholics who formerly voted Republican but are now faced with a multiply married, strip-club-loving Planned Parenthood supporter who also violates Thou Shalt Not Lie by being, according to the New York Times, the biggest liar on the campaign trail. Bernie's long history in public service has shown a steadfast integrity that is catching the eye of the electorate used to being manipulated, lied to, taken for granted. Bernie's bedrock values (more than 90 percent of those voters who prized "honesty" went for Bernie in New Hampshire, according to exit polls) are a natural fit with  evangelical Christians who don't rely on fear-mongering and racism to determine their votes. In fact, Dwight Longnecker, a priest and former evangelical, counsels that it may actually be pro-God to vote for Bernie:

'If...his opponent–someone who supported abortion AND torture AND indiscriminate bombing of civilians AND indiscriminate deportation of immigrants– (like Trump) then a vote for Sanders could be the lesser of two evils.' 

For me and many others, this election is not about choosing among the candidates; Bernie Sanders is my choice. I, along with my brethren, paid our $27 donation in our unironic "citizens united" to BYOB--Bring Your Own Bernie--to the table. I am categorically uninterested in being made to toe the line for a party that branded itself as "for the people" yet whose head is now lobbying for payday loan companies whose sole function is to prey on poor people so disenfranchised in our system that they can't even afford money. Nope. How can I do that when we have a candidate who wants not only break up the predatory big banks but to bring banking to the people. Bernie Sanders has a brilliant idea--widely supported--for citizens to conduct simple banking transactions at the U.S. Post Office. Similarly, instead of allowing banks like Goldman to profit off hardworking people's mortgages, why aren't we taking a closer look at Bernie's land-trust model in Burlington, which got people owning their homes and with a 10 times lower rate of default because the system was set up to help homeowners succeed, not for banks to profit. Evangelicals, including those who have helped push Trump to victory in the last three GOP contests, might want to take another look at the guy cleaning the House (of Representatives) of scurrilous moneylenders, undeniable echoes of what another Jewish guy did for his house, centuries ago. As the Trump rallies take on more and more of a Hitler Youth vibe and as the Democratic Party veers further and further from the populism that once made it the party of progressives and minorities, voters need a place to go, and the more they hear about Bernie Sanders, the more they appear to like him. Before Super Tuesday, the pundits warned that a loss in Oklahoma--a Southern agrarian state--would highly suggest Bernie's appeal was a limited, regional one, especially with Hillary having beaten Obama soundly there in 2008. But Bernie came from far behind and won--thereby suggesting that a Southern state with deep roots in evangelical Christianity is open to the appeal of the democratic socialist. In fact, "many party members saw Jesus as the first socialist." This isn't me, but an encyclopedia entry from the Oklahoma Historical Society. "Socialism" is the boogeyman also being flung around as the so-called reason we must unite around Hillary because Bernie is tarred by this label. However, perhaps eight years of Republican red-baiting of Obama as socialist has helped people see what democratic socialism is: a system that retains capitalism but also works to serve and protect the "little people." Do you like to drive on an interstate highway? That's democratic socialism! In fact, in the Iowa caucuses, more people identified as socialists than capitalists.   * As Oklahoma goes, likely so goes the nation, suggested Nate Silver. Despite the accomplishment and experience Hillary brings to the race, trustworthiness is generally not the first character trait associated with her by voters, even supporters (and do we need to watch Bill Clinton likely violating voting laws by hanging out in and obstructing polling places, the media once again lamely telling us it does look bad but is probably--technically--legal). I spoke with Sandy Rouse, who runs the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and she canvassed a bunch of Vermonters for their Bernie stories. They ended up all revolving around Bernie basically showing up when he was asked, engaged, interested, committed. Meeting schoolchildren (not exactly a valuable voting bloc) in his Senate office with enormous respect--asking them questions, reminding them to thank their teacher; he shows up for civic events then eats his brown bag lunch sitting on a curb. He did then, he does it now. I had a Facebook friend post from a tiny waiting room in a local airport "...this guy looks just like Bernie Sanders. Is it?" This friend didn't know about the hashtag #SandersonaPlane, which highly suggests that if elected, he's not going to use our tax dollars to, say, immediately go overboard with the extravagant redecorating, as some presidents have in the past. Bernie isn't a political panacea, but he does best represent voters who want America to be more inclusive, a change from it being the richest nation and yet one of the highest in the developed world in child poverty. His authenticity has attracted a diverse crowd of writers, artists and musicians supporting his campaign; he is unequivocally the only candidate who is the subject of an admiring Allen Ginsberg poem. My unscientific collection of Vermonters' stories combined with my years of curious and admiring Bernie-watching left me with an impression that writer Ezra Klein described as "an undeniable decency to him that you don't often see at this level of American politics." That is, Sen. Sanders reflexively puts the interests of those who rely on him--no matter how "small" or obscure--first. Orly Munzing, who runs Strolling with the Heifers, a Vermont farm-advocacy project whose parade Bernie marches (strolls in ) every year, told me how one year, traffic was backed up; Sen. Sanders leapt out of the car and jogged on the highway the two miles to Brattleboro so he wouldn't be late.    Even in the self-interested space that is Twitter, years ago, Bernie started following me on his @SenSanders account, from which he occasionally directly tweets (as opposed to @BernieSanders, which is run by staff). Tickled, slightly starstruck, I did not follow him back, just to see what would happen, because politicians follow you all the time to try to gin up more followers (some politicians--Mitt Romney--even buy followers; Trump has been accused of making fake ones). Even progressive @BilldeBlasio followed me then dumped me three days later when I didn't do the quid pro quo. But while @SenSanders' five-figures worth of followers has exploded to 1.5 million, he still looks at mostly the same bunch of non-partisan people doing interesting things, like my friend and writer-colleague Dr. Anna Reisman, whom I noticed he followed at about the same time--he's clearly not in it for the follow-back. For those of us who BYOB'ed to the table early, there's plenty to go around and we're happy--no, ecstatic--to share a candidate that voters of many persuasions can get behind. As a woman, a feminist, a person of color, this is a big deal that my candidate is a white man. But I'm also someone who has studied economics and worked for years at Goldman Sachs, and I don't agree with the idea that Goldman showered Hillary with money so that they could sit politely and listen to her talk about the glass ceiling. This was a company, by the way, that let analysts expense their strip club outings and also used pictures of centerfolds as a joke (a joke!) to introduce incoming young women employees. If you want to have a longer debate about why getting $675,000 for those three speeches is problematic, or why we need to bring  back the Glass-Steagall Act (thank you, FDR), I'm here for you. I understand that most Americans probably don't vote by studying 1933 banking law, but Americans are starting to realize that while they are working to feed their families, powerful people are quietly profiting off things that shouldn't be monetized--and that basically, no one's minding the store. Many American voters want someone--someone honest--to mind the store. One of the odd pro-Trump arguments is that he's so wealthy, he can't be swayed by monied interests. But then would you trust someone who's "too" wealthy to understand anything of what an ordinary working America goes through (here's what his NYC apartment looks like)? Bernie, on the other hand, has an instinctive understanding of his fellow Americans (possibly from his time being a carpenter?) and his character has him doing the same thing when no one's looking as when they are. As the candidates attempt to woo millennials with expensive musical acts, he has, all this time, quietly been the only one of the presidential candidates who pays his interns. How could I not be charmed to learn that he traveled all the way to my rural and not-easy-to-get-to hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, to talk to high school students, steelworkers and Native American activists? The only thing that could have been better would have been to have Bob Dylan, fellow hometown-sharer, doing the music. To be true people of faith, of any faith, we must look toward possibility--which includes the possibility of Festivus and #feeltheBern miracles. I am not the only one who needs a president who will face the challenge of climate change, who wants to focus on education and not war,  who'll work to leave an earth for the next generation (I hear you, millennials!). I don't expect to agree with all his plans, but I do rest assured knowing he will be working for us, that our change-found-in-the-seat-cushion donations, our phone banking, our Facebook sharing has indeed brought our voices to the table, and he will make sure the table is always large and welcoming. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophycisist, spends his days fathoming the endless wonder of the universe. And yet even he came back to our big blue marble earth momentarily to declare in a Super Tuesday tweet:

Who would Jesus vote for? To him walls, wealth, & torture are non-starters, so probably the Jewish New Yorker from Vermont.

Amen.

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