Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 88

Bank of Internet, which had been under federal investigation, appears in multiple Kushner deals

AP/Alex Brandon

This article originally appeared on ProPublica.

A bank that had been under federal investigation until last year has played a role in two recent real estate transactions involving Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner’s family company.

Earlier this month, BofI Federal took over a mortgage previously owned by the Kushner Companies for a development in Brooklyn, New York City real estate filings show. The previously unreported transaction involves a loan on a development project in the historically industrial, now gentrifying Bushwick neighborhood. Kushner Companies had made a loan of roughly $30 million to the project at 215 Moore Street in late 2016. Jared Kushner remains a senior adviser to President Donald Trump.

BofI, which was previously known as Bank of Internet USA, said in a statement to ProPublica that it “has no exposure or relationship with Mr. Kushner or his company with respect to 215 Moore St.” The bank likened the transaction to a routine refinancing.

In another transaction last October, the Kushner Companies got a $57 million loan on one of its own projects in New Jersey. BofI Federal provided much of the money behind that loan, Bloomberg reported last week.

BofI Federal Bank faced a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its lending practices and conflict of interest policies until last year. After multiple subpoenas in 2016, the SEC closed the investigation in late June 2017.

Kushner stepped away from the management of his family real estate company to join the Trump White House but held onto many of his family company’s assets, including the Bushwick project debt. Ethics experts have criticized the arrangement, saying it could create conflicts of interest if Kushner Companies business partners have business before the government.

Based in San Diego, the publicly traded BofI Federal does most of its real estate lending in California, and has only a small presence in the New York market. It has attracted attention from short-selling investors, who question the bank’s business model and practices. The company has said the investors have purveyed misleading information.

In November 2016, shortly after the presidential election, Kushner Companies announced it was pursuing a new line of business in lending money to other developers’ projects.

That month, the company made a loan of at least $33 million to a well-known New York developer, Toby Moskovits, for a project in Brooklyn. The developers have dubbed the project at 215 Moore Street and several adjacent lots the “Bushwick Generator.” The project is targeting what they describe as “the job-generating tech and creative firms that are repowering Brooklyn’s economy.” On a recent visit, the project was still under construction. Most of the rundown former industrial building was still open to the sky, except for a central open-plan office area where a vintage Singer sewing machine table acts as a front desk.

In a transaction inked in early April, the Kushner Companies debt was transferred to BofI, which is now the lender on the project, real estate filings show. Public records don’t reveal the terms of the BofI transaction and whether Kushner Companies made money or otherwise benefitted.

In a statement, BofI said that it had no relationship with Kushner regarding the Bushwick property. The bank said the owner of the Bushwick project was a pre-existing customer. BofI “decided, after carefully underwriting the transaction, to provide financing to one of our prior customers,” the bank said in a statement.

A Kushner Companies spokeswoman said that the owners of the project exited from the loan and “repaid the Kushner lending arm.” She declined to elaborate on the terms.

BofI also played a role in an earlier Kushner Companies transaction in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Bloomberg reported that BofI provided much of the money for a $57 million October 2017 loan to the One Journal Square development.

The Jersey City loan was issued by Fortress Investment Group and BofI purchased an interest in the loan from Fortress. In its statement, BofI said the terms of that deal are confidential. “Banks routinely purchase participation interests in loans made by other institutional investors,” the statement said.

In the hunt for funding for the same Jersey City project, Kushner’s sister drew negative attention last year when she pitched Chinese investors using a controversial program that gives visas to foreigners who invest in the U.S.

The SEC investigation of BofI was closed without any action on June 27, 2017, several months before the first of the known Kushner transactions, according to documents obtained through public records requests by investment research outfit Probes Reporter.

As part of its investigation, the SEC subpoenaed documents from BofI relating to its internal controls, conflicts of interest policies, and residential loans to foreigners, among other matters.

The New York Post reported early last year that the Justice Department was also looking into issues at the bank related to possible money laundering. “We are not aware of any ongoing DOJ or Treasury investigation,” the company said in a statement.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Decca Muldowney contributed reporting.

YouTube Red’s “Cobra Kai” revisits a rivalry and asks us to rethink labels

YouTube Red

Near the beginning of “Cobra Kai” the downtrodden Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) ends a humiliating day by watching an edited-for-TV broadcast of the jingoistic 1986 action flick “Iron Eagle.”  Very little about "Iron Eagle" is designed to tug at one's heartstrings, and yet witnessing one scene brings Johnny to the verge of tears.

“Iron Eagle” occupies a modest place within the cheese department of the ‘80s action flick pantheon, and knowing this makes watching the villain of “The Karate Kid” weep at sight it just shy of genius. A miserable example of lost game recognizing lost game.

By that point in the YouTube Red series, available on Wednesday, we can see that Johnny is clinging the vestiges of his golden years by the quicks of his fingernails. He drives a Pontiac Firebird that, like him, has seen better days; incredibly, he stills acts like it's a chick magnet. He treats his middle-aged physique and his liver as if they belong to a 17-year-old in peak condition.

Obviously his best years are long gone. In fact, they all seem to have come before Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) kicked him in the face more than 30 years ago.

And this makes that “Iron Eagle” detail as funny as it is poignant. Just like Johnny, “Iron Eagle” is an “also ran” of popular culture. “Top Gun” came out a few months afterward and became a classic, proving that being there first doesn’t matter if something better comes along.

Such a fleeting moment is one of many that speak to the meticulous construction of “Cobra Kai,” a 10-part continuation of the “Karate Kid” storyline that began in 1984, co-created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

Picking up the “Karate Kid” story three decades after that fateful Under-18 All-Valley Karate Tournament gives the “Cobra Kai” producers and stars an opportunity to use Johnny’s and Daniel’s lives to explore the ways that our early mentors can guide or misshape our destinies. Daniel had Mr. Miyagi (the late Pat Morita), but most people forget that Johnny learned at the feet of John Kreese (Martin Kove), a ruthless man who taught his students to do anything it takes to win.

Hurwitz and Schlossberg are the minds behind “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” and they employ the same subversive tactics in making “Cobra Kai." That is, they’ve taken an appealing conceptual kernel and cooked it into something heartier, expanding upon a Reagan-era underdog tale in a way that speaks to America in 2018.

While the writers make it clear that Johnny’s troubles are of his own making, we also get the sense that the one-time golden boy never received help in recovering from his hard fall. Meanwhile, under Mr. Miyagi’s tutelage Daniel learned what it means to be a man, to take care of one’s family, and as a bonus, he got a trip Japan.

Three decades later Daniel is a wealthy owner of a chain of car dealerships and repair shops in the San Fernando Valley while Johnny can barely keep a job. Daniel sips martinis at tony country club functions and lives in a beautiful mansion; Johnny ends every day getting drunk on Coors before passing out in his cheap apartment.

And it is during one of these depressive fogs that we see him cry at the sight of “Iron Eagle” in a fit of nostalgia for the old days. The film demonstrates the “strike first, strike hard, no mercy” ethos central to the Cobra Kai way of being, Johnny’s way. The fact this does not prove true explains why the Johnny we meet in 2018 is rage personified: an absentee father, and a walking wreckage of casual racism and sexual frustration produced by thwarted entitlement and privilege.

Johnny comes across as a sort of #MAGA figure, at times. Certainly “Cobra Kai” is bound to inspire written analysis to that effect. But in the professed spirit of another recently revived ‘80s property, “Cobra Kai” isn’t meant to cater to one political team or another — although unlike “Roseanne,” its intent is far clearer.

Positioning one of ‘80s cinema’s best known bullies as an anti-hero is a fierce hook, but what keeps “Cobra Kai” interesting is its conscientiously-rendered contrast of the kind of men Daniel and Johnny symbolize, separately and together.

Clearly Johnny is stand-in for guys mired in a retrograde view of masculinity, the kind of loathsome dude-bro many falsely hoped was on his way toward extinction. Daniel represents the high example of the capitalist ideal, a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and did everything the right way.

But even gentle Daniel — a loving husband, devoted father and all-round good guy — has unbearable qualities about him. During his first meeting with Johnny, he acts magnanimously only after humiliating his old rival. It’s easy to assume that the past is in the past if history crowns you the winner.

In this way, “Cobra Kai” rebukes the common hero/villain binary.  Johnny’s motivation for re-opening the dojo Daniel recognizes as a den of evil is less an act of spite than an act of protest against losing over and over again. We get it — and by “we” that refers to everyone. Johnny’s first students are  fellow “losers,” starting with a brown kid  (Xolo Maridueña) before other scarred, scrawny misfits follow. Initially Johnny cares less about them than he does about using them to polish his own abilities. His highest investment is in making Johnny Lawrence great again.

The thing is, Daniel isn’t aware that he’s standing against these outcasts, the people he should be closely identifying himself with. He’s only familiar with the teens his daughter brings home, popular kids picking on their less fortunate schoolmates. Never does he consider that his old nemesis could be training those geeks and the nerds to defend themselves.

And why would he? He raised his daughter to be a good kid and trusts she’s surrounded herself with the right kinds of people. Not thugs like Johnny Lawrence.

The two episodes made available for review allow Zabka to make the most of his star turn in “Cobra Kai,” as he paints Johnny as a crumpled man stuck in a rut, who nevertheless begins down the path of doing some semblance of what we’d consider to be the right thing.

Macchio’s terrific too, but anyone who has seen his work on "Ugly Betty" and "The Deuce" would expect nothing less. (He also serves as an executive producer for this series, as does Zabka.) Zabka is less familiar to TV viewers, save for roles requiring him to play some version of the Johnny we knew, or himself.  In "Cobra Kai" he straddles a line between stubbornness and pathos, convincingly evoking the type of angry suffering that strips a person down to raw metal. This is a pleasantly surprising to watch in this context, considering this is a show that basically owes its existence to an ongoing gag on “How I Met Your Mother” and a viral video-fueled meme.

Underneath its winks at the audience and in-jokes “Cobra Kai” also reminds viewers that the “The Karate Kid” is a film steeped in history, especially as it refers to America's collective self-image (This notion is most prominent in Mr. Miyagi’s storyline; few if any other ‘80s blockbuster feature a major character who is an internment camp survivor). Mainly we’re meant to identify with Danny’s adolescent “Jersey tough” vision of himself, especially in the scenes when he plays the part of the chivalrous, outmatched knight ready to take the hit for his girl.

But we never got to know Johnny, save for his relationship with his vicious sensei and the rest of his blonde wolfpack.  Only in “Cobra Kai” can we appreciate that the Karate Kid and the boy he defeated are more alike than we thought back then. Perhaps upcoming episodes with expand upon that notion, depicting through one entertaining tale that it's possible for opposing tribes to find a common ground, starting in a small dojo in a mini-mall.

Even if we don't view it through these thematic prisms, there's no denying that "Cobra Kai" is a kick to watch, and that's really all that's required to declare it a winner.

Michelle Wolf is right to reject the empty ritual of the forced apology — just ask Miley and Kathy

Getty/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Tasos Katopodis/Christopher Polk

The trajectory of public shaming almost always follows a predictable path. There's the revelation or a real or perceived transgression. There's the haltingly delivered, awkwardly written apology that begins with a humblebrag of the person's stellar track record, a segue into a vague allusion to "mistakes made" and ends with a nonspecific promise to do better. There's the laying low, followed by the carefully plotted comeback. But the cycle of outrage and the public thirst for immediate contrition have led to a spate of transparently coerced apologies over the years. And now we're learning that some mea culpas have a statute of limitations.

It's been a decade now since a 15-year-old Miley Cyrus incited a wave of pearl-clutching when she appeared, styled like an Ingres portrait in a satiny sheet clutched modestly to her chest, on the cover of Vanity Fair. The Annie Leibovitz photo sparked instant cries from fans that the underage girl was displayed in an image verging on "soft-core porn," and concerns about the "Hannah Montana" star's status as "a role model." Even media outlets that were more restrained expressed a tut-tutting subtext, with the New York Times calling the image "revealing" and the CBC deeming it "sexy."

Cyrus, a Disney superstar at the time, then went into swift damage control mode, issuing a statement that "I have let myself down. I will learn from my mistakes. . . . My family and my faith will guide me through my life's journey," and explaining, "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize for my fans who I care so deeply about."

Cyrus is now grown woman who's outspoken about her gender identity, pansexuality and drug use. She doesn't need anybody's approval for her behavior, past or present, and she stopped reflexively apologizing years ago. Just three years after the Vanity Fair dustup, she remained conspicuously silent and unremorseful when supposedly "reputation-damaging" images of her with a bong surfaced.

And now ten years after Leibovtiz-gate, having completed a hugely successful transition to adult pop stardom, she is once again reconsidering that notorious shoot. Over the past weekend, she issued a salty sorry-not-sorry about it, tweeting a vintage shot of the New York Post's front page declaration of "MILEY'S SHAME" with a new addendum. "IM NOT SORRY," she wrote, adding, "F**k YOU #10yearsago."

IM NOT SORRY

Fuck YOU #10yearsago pic.twitter.com/YTJmPHKwLX

— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) April 29, 2018

Her defiant withdrawal of regret drew some reignited concern trolling over the magazine's choice of how to depict such a young girl, but the passage of time has also provided fresh perspective, perhaps best articulated by the Twitter user who said that in the photo, she was merely "looking like she just woke up from a bomb ass nap."

Just one day later, another controversial woman decided she too was ready to issue her own backsies on a provocative image. The photo that got Kathy Griffin into hot water eleven months ago was a Tyler Shields image of her holding up a bloodied Donald Trump mask. The arresting image sparked an instant backlash, with Trump Jr. tweeting, "Disgusting but not surprising. This is the left today. They consider this acceptable. Imagine a conservative did this to Obama as POTUS?" (Oh, but we don't have to imagine!) Mike Cernovich, meanwhile, announced that "If you're a Trump supporter, Hollywood wants to murder you. Media will not decry this."

At the time, Griffin also reacted quickly, saying later the same day on Twitter, "I am sorry. I went too far. I was wrong." She then also released a video, saying, "I sincerely apologize. . . . I crossed the line, I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. . . . It wasn't funny, I get it. I ask your forgiveness."

Things have changed a lot since then, for Griffin and for the country. She was dropped from co-hosting CNN's New Year's Eve coverage and replaced by Andy Cohen, sparking a grudge she continues nurse. Over the summer, Griffin shaved her hair in solidarity with her sister Joyce, while she was undergoing chemo. Joyce died in September. Around the same time, Griffin became embroiled in a legal conflict with her neighbor, KB Homes CEO Jeffrey Mezger, who called her a “bald dyke” and a “c**t” who "Donald Trump put the heat on" during a dispute. And then somewhere along the way, the comic decided she was all fresh out of f**ks to give.

When she announced her comeback world tour in March, setting the first two in "Trump's backyard" at Carnegie Hall, Griffin pointedly called it her "Laugh Your Head Off Tour." The poster for it features her attired exactly as in the infamous photo, triumphantly holding up a very head-like globe.

On "The View" Monday, Kathy Griffin recalled the incident and declared, "Look, I'm not holding back on this family. This family is different, and I have been through the mill," and said, "By the way, I take the apology back. F**k him."

She did admit that her initial apology was inspired by her experiences performing in Iraq and Afghanistan, "two places Trump has never been and couldn't find on a map," and her empathy for the mother of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, who was decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

"Then I found out I was part of the Trump wood chipper, which Michele Wolf is in now," she said. "I wanted to make a statement about what a misogynist he is."

"The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason," she said, revealing the terrifying harassment she received in the aftermath of the controversy. "My mom got death threats in her retirement village, and my sister got death threats in her hospital."

As Griffin alluded to on Monday, part of her inspiration for speaking up so vocally now surely comes from the explosive backlash to Michelle Wolf's weekend performance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. For firing off some digs at Sarah Huckabee Sanders — notably her "perfect smoky eye" smudged out of burned facts — at a comedy event, Wolf provoked the ire of obtuse pundits who took the remark as a comment on White House Press Secretary's looks. The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, for instance, said on Twitter that Sanders had "absorbed intense criticism of her physical appearance," despite literally zero evidence anything of the kind had taken place. The White House Correspondents' Association then also moved to distance itself from Wolf, issuing a statement that the evening was "not in the spirit" of its mission.

But Wolf, instead of being cornered into a reciting the kind of hollow apology every parent has squeezed out of their squabbling offspring, has thus far refused to back down. She tweeted back to Maggie Haberman that "All these jokes were about her despicable behavior. Sounds like you have some thoughts about her looks though?" She posted a photo of herself on Instagram, smiling, with the caption "not in the spirit of the mission." And doubling down on the joke, she asked on Twitter that "Why are you guys making this about Sarah’s looks? I said she burns facts and uses the ash to create a *perfect* smoky eye. I complimented her eye makeup and her ingenuity of materials."

God knows we are running at a deficit on sincere amends for authentically terrible behavior in this country. And whatever you think of Miley, Kathy, Michelle and company, it should be pretty clear that the penalties for women speaking and merely existing are far greater than they generally are for men for doing legitimately not OK things. Women are trained from birth to smooth the path, to take the blame, to be deferential for making other people uncomfortable. That, thankfully, looks like it's changing.

The first rule of thumb for a good apology is just being truly sorry. If you don't believe you have anything to apologize for, then don't. Or if you are pressured to and don't mean it, take it the hell back. Not every single thing that offends someone else is worthy of atonement. And regret should be reserved for the things you really wish you'd done differently, not the things that tick anybody else off.

Donald Trump’s former doctor claims president’s team raided his office

YouTube/NBC News

Updated at 7:40pm ET to reflect a new report on Bornstein’s comments

"I feel raped," President Donald Trump's former doctor Harold Bornstein told NBC News as he described an incident from over a year ago when the president's longtime body guard-turned-top White House aide and two others allegedly showed up at his office and confiscated all of Trump's medical records. Bornstein called it a "raid," and said it happened in Feb. 2017, two days after he told the New York Times that, for years, he prescribed Trump medication related to hair growth.

The New York doctor, who served as Trump's doctor for 35 years, said he felt "raped, frightened and sad."

"They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos," Bornstein added, naming Keith Schiller, who was at the time director of Oval Office operations at the White House (he left the White House in Sept. 2017) and another "large man" as those who entered his office without warning to retrieve the president's records.

Bornstein said they also told him to remove a framed photo of himself and Trump, which had been hanging on one of the walls in the waiting room. That photo is now under a stack of papers on the doctor's book shelf, according to NBC News.

"Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law," NBC reported. "A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter to Bornstein from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, but didn't know if there was a release form attached."

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders countered the story Tuesday and said that obtaining a new president's medical records was "standard operating procedure" and there was no "raid."

In a series of interviews to the Times, Bornstein told the publication that he prescribed Trump Propecia, a prostate-related drug but which also helps to stimulate hair growth in men, as well as medication for rosacea and cholesterol. He said Trump cut ties after the story published.

"I couldn't believe anybody was making a big deal out of a drug to grow his hair that seemed to be so important," Bornstein told NBC. "And it certainly was not a breach of medical trust to tell somebody they take Propecia to grow their hair. What's the matter with that?"

In the Times article, Bornstein said he told Rhona Graff, Trump's secretary, "You know, I should be the White House physician." The doctor told NBC that after the story, Graff called him and said, "So you wanted to be the White House doctor? Forget it, you're out.'"

Bornstein is coming forward now because of the reports about Ronny Jackson, Trump's personal physician and pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, who withdrew his name after dozens of current and former White House medical staff accused him of misconduct. He was reportedly called "Candyman" for handing out medication without paperwork. Jackson denied the allegations.

Bornstein famously wrote a letter in 2015 during Trump's campaign for president saying "If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency." At 70, Trump was the oldest president to be elected into office. Several months later, Bornstein revealed that he wrote the letter in five minutes as a limo sent by Trump waited outside.

However, according to a new report published on May 1, Trump told Bornstein what to write in the letter.

"He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter," Bornstein told CNN. "I just made it up as I went along."

Bornstein added that he did have a small participatory role in its creation.

"(Trump) dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn't put in there," he told CNN. "They came to pick up their letter at 4 o'clock or something."

Bornstein compared the letter to the plot of the movie "Fargo," describing it as a subtle expansion of the truth.

"That's black humor, that letter. That's my sense of humor," he said. "It's like the movie 'Fargo': It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction."

Watch daredevil stunt drivers face India’s “Well of Death”

Erik Morales

The grand tradition of death-defying showmanship, from Harry Houdini to Evel Knievel, takes a new spin in poor, rural India in “Riders of The Well of Death.”

You can watch the full documentary "Riders on the Well of Death" on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Here's how. 

Director Erik Morales, who created a portrait of the everyday heroes who ride motorcycles and small cars up the wooden, cylinder wall, talked to Salon about how he turned a circus act into a meditation on life.

How did you come to make a film in India?

About ten years ago I met, during a shoot, Anand Menon, an Indian producer with whom I grew a great relationship. During this time I filmed a lot there with him and it was precisely in one of those trips where I met the "Well of Death."

Could you characterize what's unique or distinctive about shooting a documentary in India?

India has its own universe very differentiated from the rest of the world. For me, as a European, it's like traveling to another planet. The mixture of the old and the new is incredible. On the one hand, you have the modern and futuristic India and on the other the traditional Indian that seems to have remained anchored in time and has not evolved since the middle ages. A huge contrast. What fascinates me most is that these two worlds coexist in a strange harmony, feeding on each other.

What were the greatest logistical and technical challenges of filming the riders on the Well of Death?

During the preparation, the most complicated thing was to contact and intercept the "drivers." The show of "Well of Death" takes place in the context of a fair (Mela) and these fairs are itinerant, they move from city to city indefinitely, in deep India, in regions far from large urban centers. This nomadic nature made it very difficult to foresee where they were going to be at the moment that we could go to roll and prepare everything to be able to carry it out.

On the other hand, speaking of shooting technique, the biggest challenge was to shoot the cars and motorcycles in movement inside the "well of death." We use very light Go-Pros with very basic grips. The complicated thing was to find a location for the cameras that would not unbalance the vehicles and would allow the drivers to perform their stunts without danger.

You make very effective use of slow motion in the film; please tell us, creatively, why you used that technique?

I used slow motion for two reasons. The first is at the conceptual level. I was dealing with a very specific issue that was speed and I wanted to create the effect that these people, who make their living performing high-speed pirouettes, live their lives in slow motion. The only part that is at normal speed is the start of the show. I wanted to prepare the viewer so that, when they arrived at that moment, the impact was very strong.

The second reason is personal and is based on my experience traveling to India. The first day after landing is always a bit shocking. The change from Europe to India is very drastic. It is like landing on another planet. That first day I am always with a feeling of tiredness and sleep motivated by jet lag and I perceive what surrounds me as in a semi-waking state, between dream and reality. I wanted to convey that feeling.

Do you have any updates about the riders since filming?

To be honest, no. It is very difficult to communicate with them. They live in a very remote region, they do not have email, nor smartphones and they speak a northern dialect. We sent a person with several DVDs to them, but we have not had feedback. I hope they are well and have not suffered any accidents. They were really nice people and I do have a great appreciation for them. I would love to meet them again in the future.

Did you or your crew ever take a spin on one of the cars or bikes on the wall?

Hahaha, not really. We tried to go around with the camera inside the car just when the car has some wheels on the ground and others on the wall but it was unviable, it moved a lot and it was impossible to frame.

What are you working on now?

After "Riders" I made "Immortals" which, although it is also located in India, is very different. I'm preparing a new documentary, which I cannot tell you much about yet. It will be more in the line of "Immortals." I want to explore in more depth things that arose during that filming.

Take a life-affirming ride with the “Riders on the Well of Death,” streaming on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app.

Reading this in the app already? Go back to the main menu and select "SalonTV" to find Salon Films and Salon original shows.

The Wall Street Journal is upset about having to interact with poor people at the airport

Getty/Photo Montage by Salon

The last few months have not been kind to the airline industry. The main culprit seems to be United Airlines, which has been caught engaging in shady behavior ranging from forcing a mother to carry her toddler during a flight; dragging a passenger off of an overbooked flight after he refused to give up his seat; allegedly accidentally killing a rabbit; and later, accidentally killing a French bulldog puppy confined to an overhead storage compartment. So it's fair to say that the airline industry in general has a taken a major PR hit recently.

Yet for all the gripes about flying, you know what you shouldn't gripe about? The elite having to suffer sub-par airport lounges, where they might be forced to sit next to (gasp!) non-affluent people. Oh, the horror.

A recent Wall Street Journal article breathlessly chronicles the decline in airport lounges with language normally reserved for actual victims — you know, like the family that had to experience their beloved dog suffocating to death in an overhead bin.

Take this passage about the experience of one passenger who experienced a six-hour layover at an airport in Atlanta.

What he envisioned: a quiet space where he could relax and eat free before boarding his flight to Ukraine. What he found: A packed room with no available seats. A buffet with barely any food left. Toilet paper on the bathroom floor.

Truly such travesties are indeed worthy of being chronicled in a major newspaper. Can you imagine the trauma endured by the IT executive who remembers the days in which "lounge staff used to approach him to ask if he would like a drink, and the food available would be a full entree" and now "has to stand in line for a Coke" while "the food options consist of cheese squares, crackers, soup and 'what passes for salad'"?

The reason behind this cavalcade of horrors, according to the Journal, is the proliferation of so-called Priority Passes, such as the Sapphire Reserve credit card offered by JP Morgan Chase & Co. Apparently so many people are now able to take advantage of various airport lounge services that the sheer quantity often reduces the quality of what can be received there.

To be clear: I am not denying that a drop in airport lounge quality has occurred, or even that this drop in quality can be unpleasant. It is merely alarming that such an openly classist article was able to make it to publication.

Bill McGuinness, a 57-year-old real-estate developer, was at a Centurion Lounge, which is open to certain American Express cardholders, in Seattle in April when a woman placed her toddler on a bar table. She stripped him down to his diaper and changed him into his pajamas. Mr. McGuinness said the woman then ordered a cocktail and talked on her phone while her son was “running laps” around the lounge for the next hour.

His biggest pet peeve about the various lounges he has visited: people stacking piles of food from the buffet on their plates and loading up on cheap Chardonnay. “The whole thing is so bleak,” he said. People are behaving like “farm animals.”

First, anyone who refers to fellow human beings as "farm animals" simply because they're trying to go about their lives during a stressful situation — and, let's be honest, because their behavior around free food and "cheap Chardonnay" suggests they are from low-income backgrounds — needs to get off their proverbial high horse. One could plausibly argue that this is elitist, but if you want a more generous interpretation, it is callous and out-of-touch.

Yet there is something deeper at work here. I don't work for the Journal and have no way of knowing what went on in their editorial room, so I'm not going to speculate as to whether they intended for this story to be contextualized as part of our zeitgeist's larger list of grievances arising about how air travel is awful. Yet it's reasonable to assume that other people might interpret it this way. That is why a crucial distinction must be made between situations in which people are wronged and situations in which they are inconvenienced.

Being physically dragged off of a flight, to the point where you are injured, because the airline goofed and needs you to relinquish your seat is wrong. Having to hold your toddler for several hours — thereby endangering both of you — is wrong. Losing a loved one (and yes, animals count as loved ones) because the airline made a mistake is wrong.

On the other hand, the vast majority of people who travel will need to encounter overcrowded waiting areas, cheap food, squealing children and disgusting floors. It is certainly reasonable to complain about these things and to call for them to be improved. If you feel like you're spending money on lounge services that aren't delivering what you expected, you can justify no longer giving them your money and even writing a strongly-worded letter to the company explaining how their ineptitude motivated your decision.

But please, oh please, let's leave the air of victimization to people who are actually being victimized.

Michelle Wolf committed a grave comedy error at the correspondents’ dinner: She told the truth

Getty/Tasos Katopodis

In "Rabelais and his World," the Russian political theorist Mikhail Bakhtin outlined the dynamics of what he described as "the carnivalesque." This was an aesthetic sensibility and space where humanity is emancipated from the limits imposed by the powerful, life is celebrated, equality is real, free and honest speech is permitted, the "grotesque" is nurtured, and peasants or serfs are at liberty to mock the king while keeping their heads attached to their bodies.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner possesses few if any of those attributes. Instead, it is a celebration of the affluent and the influential, where the powerful gather to mock one another, all the while behaving within the confines of prescribed social norms. The comedian-host is supposed to gently prod and poke fun (in some vague style of "good taste") at a group of journalists, pundits and politicians who publicly operate as though they are enemies most of the time but in the most important ways are members of the same social class. The punches can be thrown low -- but not too low. The fight is fixed but it should still look believable. (In professional wrestling this is called a "worked shoot.")

It would seem that comedian Michelle Wolf broke those rules at last Saturday's correspondents' dinner. As a result, she has been subjected to esoteric complaints rooted in performance theory and comedy. Apparently she is not supposed to make fun of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' appearance; some consider this lazy because a person usually cannot change how their face looks. Others have said her performance was "mean-spirited" and "just not that funny." Again, those are subjective judgments operating outside of any fixed criteria that can be easily and universally qualified or agreed upon.

It has been said that an old lady falling down a flight of stairs is always funny if the story is told correctly, but some comedians have observed that such a scenario is not funny -- unless the old lady was pushed down the stairs by someone else. Humor truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Beyond debates about style and form, Wolf broke a more important rule: she dared to tell the truth.

Yes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a professional liar. Here Wolf is spot-on: "I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts, and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies."

The American corporate news media is in a mutually abusive symbiotic relationship with Donald Trump. Wolf diagnoses this perfectly.

You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you used to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric, but he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off of him. If you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money, because he doesn’t have any.

Wolf spoke even more truth to power at the close of her routine. Four years after its drinking water crisis made national news, Flint, Michigan, still does not have clean water -- in a country where the Republican-led Congress voted to give millionaires and billionaires even more money by further cutting the social safety net and raising taxes on poor and working-class people.

The negative reaction to Wolf's WHCD speech demonstrates other truths as well.

Donald Trump has still not personally praised, invited to the White House or otherwise honored James Shaw Jr., the unarmed black man who stopped an apparent white supremacist armed with an assault-style rifle from killing even more black and brown people at a Nashville Waffle House restaurant a week or so ago. Yet President Trump somehow found time to complain on Twitter about Michelle Wolf and the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

As a matter of routine, right-wing media personalities and politicians repeatedly said horrible and cruel things about Michelle Obama and her family, such as that she looked "like a man" or a "gorilla," was some kind of "ghetto baby mama," or was "unattractive" and "tacky" in her style and dress. It would appear that throwing racist stereotypes at America's first black First Lady was acceptable among conservatives. Yet telling the truth about a prominent white Republican woman is verboten. This is just another reminder of the toxic relationship between racism and sexism.

Conservatives and their media love to complain that "liberals" and "progressives" -- especially college students -- are cowards who need "safe spaces" to hide from the supposed truth. Here, the hypocrisy is almost too obvious to merit comment: Conservatives believe in safe spaces as well. But theirs is much larger: The American right wants all of America, its media and every area of public life to be a zone where they are free from criticism, free to twist and distort empirical reality to fit their whims, and empowered to treat nonwhites, women, the poor, the disabled, immigrants, atheists, Muslims, LGBT people and any other group deemed to be the Other with consequence-free disrespect and bigotry.

The era of Trump poses a great challenge for comedians: how does one effectively make fun of the absurd and ridiculous come to life, in the form of the president of the United States and his followers? Moreover, matters are so surreal that one must wonder if this is all just a prank gone wrong -- or gone right, depending one's own point of view -- an elaborate scenario cooked up by a latter-day Andy Kaufman?

Of course this is not a new idea. Zach Schonfeld expounded on the "Kaufman theory" in a 2016 Newsweek essay, writing that it "hinges on the notion that Trump’s bid for the presidency is so outlandish — the gaffes, the boasts about penis size, the policy reversals and white nationalist overtures — that it must surely be performance art.

More specifically, the work of Andy Kaufman, an idiosyncratic figure who yanked performance art in bizarre, unprecedented directions, whether he was impersonating an incompetent comedian known as Foreign Man or pretending to revive an elderly lady who feigned a heart attack on his stage.

The theory is weirdly cemented in election rhetoric. Even weirder, different iterations of the joke often seem to have sprung up independently of one another. ... It’s a crucial distinction: Kaufman fans frequently aren’t comparing Trump to Kaufman so much as they’re likening him to Tony Clifton, the belligerent lounge-singer character created by Kaufman in the late 1970s. As Clifton, Kaufman would don a filthy mustache and shout insults at audience members in a voice that resembled a coked-up Bugs Bunny's. Kaufman frequently insisted on having Clifton perform as his opening act, confusing both audience members and media outlets who didn’t realize it was just Kaufman in a wig.

Schonfeld observed that the "sheer joy" of a Kaufman performance "is that you have no idea what might happen," and the "sheer horror of a Trump presidency, for the overwhelming swath of the country that loathes him," is precisely the same. So the claim that Trump is really Andy Kaufman is a form of "goofy reassurance," or "a way to ascribe meaning to a world without meaning, a world as chaotic and unpredictable as the grammatical decisions in a Trump tweet."

Ultimately, arguing about the merits of a comedy performance, instead of spending that energy sounding the alarm about America's constitutional crisis under President Trump, signals once again to how much the Fourth Estate has failed in its most fundamental responsibilities.

As Noam Chomsky has warned, the media wants access to the powerful above all else. As such, too many leading figures in the media -- including those at last weekend's dinner -- are still stuck in a decades-old habit, trusting or hoping that Trump and his administration will somehow regress to the political mean and become normal. They do not seem to understand that in the age of Trump, longstanding rules and norms have been skewered and left for dead, the body still quivering on the floor. There will be no miraculous resurrection.

Sure, feel free to yuk it up (or not) about Michelle Wolf's performance last Saturday. But there is nothing funny about the truths she dared to speak.

Facebook announces new dating feature because romance isn’t dead

AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Facebook will soon include a dating feature among its services, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s F8 developer conference in San Jose, California on Tuesday.

The feature will sling Facebook into a domain in which it has long played a behind-the-scenes role, but never entered directly. These days, many digital matchmaking services like Tinder require users to sign up for the app through their Facebook accounts. In this way, Facebook's pivot to online dating makes sense, as it has long served as the critical ingredient to begin swiping.

"There are 200 million people on Facebook who list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here," Zuckerberg said. "Today, we are announcing a new set of features coming soon, around dating.”

The service will be opt-in, and will not match users with people they're already friends with. Friends will not be able to see users' dating profiles, Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg also took a jab at his new competitors. “This is going to be for building real long term relationships, not just hookups,” he said.

Immediately after the announcement, the stock for Match Group, which owns several dating apps including Tinder and OkCupid, plummeted more than 20 percent.

Facebook's decision to enter the dating app sphere perhaps makes sense. The site had long let users state their romantic preferences or status on their profiles, an option it tweaked over the years. Likewise, a 2017 survey conducted by popular wedding planning site The Knot claims online dating is now the most popular way people date, up 5 percent from 2015.

From the launch of the first online dating site in 1995, to the invention of mobile dating applications in 2007, digital matchmaking has expanded into a billion-dollar industry with countless users, PBS reports. Even Salon used to have an online personals site, which it co-founded with Nerve.com back in 2000.

Today, nearly 2 billion people worldwide use some source of online dating, according to a 2012 study by the Association for Psychological Science. That number has likely increased over the past six years.

But in the wake of movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, and concerns about user privacy, the way the world views relationships, specifically online dating, is shifting, making it more difficult than ever to understand the already tricky realm of sex and romance. As a result, online dating and relationship platforms are finally facing–and perhaps avoiding–difficult questions: How do we make our platforms safer? How do we eliminate harassment or other inappropriate behaviors that users experience?

Now Facebook – which has recently come under fire since revelations that Cambridge Analytica, an election consultancy used by President Trump's 2016 campaign, had compromised the data of 87 million users – may be putting itself in a position that could land it the hot seat, again.

According an annual report from the Breach Level Index, an organization that tracks publicly disclosed breaches, the technology sector saw a 3 percent increase in breached files in 2017. Since 2013, the organization has tracked nearly 2,000 incidents of compromised records in the technology sector.

Most recently, NBC News revealed that Grindr, a dating app geared towards gay and bisexual men, suffers from a security flaw that can expose the personal information of millions of users — including the location of users who have opted out of sharing such data. In a statement released to NBC News, Grindr said it was aware of the app’s vulnerability and had changed access to data of blocked users. The app did not elaborate on additional measures it would be taking to protect its users, highlighting the reluctance of many digital matchmakers to address issues on their platform.

“Dating apps must especially take care to protect users from letting bad actors access sensitive data,” Harlo Holmes, director of newsroom digital security at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told NBC News. “This type of info exposure betrays our trust that the service can determine what fields of data should be public and private.”

“If there’s a desire for third-party apps, then building out some sort of interface, like with Facebook, where they could control the data ... that could help mitigate the risk,” Norman Shamas, an independent cyber security consultant, told NBC News.

“The single weakest point in most security chains is often the human element,” Shamas added. “Not backdoors, not weak authentication schemes — just people with malicious intent that know enough to dupe other people.”

Roseanne Barr defends her support of Trump to Fallon: ‘People are mad . . . I don’t give a f**k!’

NBC/Andrew Lipovsky

In April 2017, when ABC announced the resurrection of “Roseanne" – the highest-rated show on TV from 1989 to 1990 – to its lineup, few people publicly questioned the decision.

Perhaps it makes sense from a business perspective, as President Donald Trump's political ascendence is seemingly impacting the entertainment sphere. According to E-Poll Market Research's July 2016 analysis of favorite TV series, Republicans "prefer programs that are family-friendly, funny, plot-driven or have storylines that involve 'good vs. evil.'" The findings suggest that Trump voters' tastes may differ from what we're seeing on TV now.

But when President Donald Trump made a point to call Roseanne Barr and congratulate her on the series return episode’s high ratings – and subsequently praised the show’s success in a speech, saying "it was about us"– he mounted the show’s place in the current culture war, as Salon's Erin Keane writes.

As Keane indicates, "Now 'Roseanne' can’t possibly be just a TV show. It’s going to be the blue-collar story we talk about, no matter how many other shows today . . . also depict the struggles of a struggling America."

Perhaps, in this way, it is clear why ABC would bring the series back more than 20 years after it went off the air – and nearly 30 years after its original broadcast debut.

On Monday night, Barr, the comedienne and vocal Trump supporter, appeared on "The Tonight Show," where she answered questions from host Jimmy Fallon about the criticism she has received for endorsing Trump.

“Oh, yeah. People are mad about that. But you know, I don’t give a f**k,” Barr told Fallon, receiving a large amount of laughter and applause from the in-studio audience at New York's iconic 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

“I mean, everybody had to choose for themselves, according to their own conscience, who they felt was the lesser of two evils,” she continued. “You know, everybody chose that, so I’m not going to put anybody down who didn’t vote like me. This is America. It’s a free country, and when you weigh it all together, I just felt like we needed a whole new thing. All the way. Bottom to top.”

This is not the first time Barr, who has insisted that she was the first person to tell Donald Trump to run for president in 2016, has forayed into presidential politics.

In 2012, the comedian waged a dedicated campaign to be the Green Party’s nominee for president. Despite her committed efforts, Jill Stein eventually scored the third-party nomination. But Barr, the fiery populist, refused to give up. She instead ran on the Peace and Freedom ticket and managed to get on the ballot in three states, earning more than 67,000 votes on her way to a sixth-place finish on Election Day, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In addition to claiming she encouraged Trump to pursue the highest public office, Barr has previously said her 2012 campaign inspired some 2016 presidential frontrunners.

"Hillary, Bernie and Trump — they're all borrowing heavily from my 2012 campaign," she said in an interview with the Times.

The legendary female comic seems to be well aware that her reboot is riding on the tails of the Trump Train.

In May of last year, Page Six reported that Barr was overheard at ABC’s upfront telling her co-star John Goodman that she believes the current political landscape and the show's comeback are connected. Goodman allegedly remarked to Barr that, “I never thought in a million years we’d be back,” to which she responded, “I did. As soon as I saw the election results, I knew we’d be back.”

This time it’s too personal: “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction”

AMC/Michael Moriatis

Sci-fi fandom frequently requires a measure of quiet, consistent reconciliation between one's enduring affection for the genre and annoyance at the people creating it. Such musings tugged at the borders of my thoughts while watching “AMC Visionaries: James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction,” debuting Monday at 10 p.m. on AMC.

Each of its six episodes is an entertaining rehash of modern cinema’s greatest genre hits, or a few of them anyway. Devotees to the “Terminator” and “Alien” franchises should have a wonderful time knocking off to bed with this trip through what Cameron considers to be the standard-bearers of sci-fi entertainment as we know it. His takes are divided into manageable and easy-to-digest segments, starting with “Alien Life” and how concepts of those ideas have been translated by the likes of Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott.

Cameron also chats with fellow directors Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas and Christopher Nolan throughout the series, as well as a few of the genre’s prominent faces including Will Smith, Keanu Reeves and two actors in whose careers he’s played a major role, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver. Certainly there is value to having those stars in the mix if only to enjoy seeing Schwarzenegger admit, “I would have loved to be able to time travel. I mean, imagine to go back and to say, ‘I’m not going to do ‘Hercules in New York.’”

But hardcore sci-fi nerds aren’t going to learn anything new in watching “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction.” In some respects, actually, they may question why Cameron chooses to feature a few esoteric film choices while omitting mention of others.

Perhaps the best purpose of this series is to be used as an aid to help non-geeks understand the enthusiasts in their lives. I almost went as far to posit that Cameron’s series could help relative noobs hold their own in party conversations with fans but honestly, that’s usually a losing battle in the best of circumstances. Anyway, if the highest value of this version of “Visionaries” is to celebrate specific versions of entertainment in the most basic way possible by triggering our emotional memories of cinematic touchstones, then Cameron’s “Story of Science Fiction” fulfills that directive to the best of its ability.

Cameron’s ode to sci-fi represents the second edition of  AMC's “Visionaries” series; Robert Kirkman, creator of “The Walking Dead,” served as a tour guide through his “Secret History of Comics” in 2017.

Attaching high-profile names to "Visionaries" grants the series an imprimatur of legitimacy, albeit to varying degrees. Kirkman, for example, isn’t merely one of the comic book industry’s better-known celebrities, he’s the network’s most valued name brand producer. Nerdier and more knowledgeable comic book experts are out there, and there’s a case to be made that Kevin Smith is more famous than Kirkman. But AMC’s executives are amply-aware that most “Walking Dead” viewers have never experienced the musty innards of their local comic book shop and may never do so. And more pertinently, Smith’s comic book series is not the show that’s keeping the lights over there.

Meanwhile, few people if any would question Cameron’s qualifications to helm a multi-episode swim through sci-fi, a genre to which he’s substantially contributed and has a significant hand in shaping, and don't you forget it.

The director has been playing around with television projects for the last few years, mainly filming his adventures manning the deep-diving submersible vessel known as Deepsea Challenger. Concurrently he was also plotting to franchise his “Avatar” series by creating four sequels to the 2009 film, the first of which is currently scheduled to release two and a half years from now December 2020.  It’s never too early to campaign these days, especially in a marketplace dominated by Marvel’s sleeper-hold on that segment.

The topmost limitation of “James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction” is the fact that it is Cameron’s vision, specific to his tastes, opinions about and comprehension of the genre. He's no fan of the "Avengers" universe which explains, say, the lack of segments about "Black Panther" and the elements of Afro-futurism incorporated throughout. This is acutely noticeable given that two of the experts called upon to lend their opinion to episodes are noted black sci-fi authors Nnedi Okorafor and Nalo Hopkinson.

Cameron would pay lip service to that point, in all likelihood, while explaining that his series focus on high concept films and subject matter. By and large, this approach works best for the seasoned cable movie consumer, people who may sit through 1985’s “Cocoon” and not be put off by the notion that they’re watching a movie about extraterrestrial life forms.

Similarly, the series takes time travel, the subject of its sixth episode, and loops in a discussion about “Doctor Who,” calling upon recently departed Time Lord Peter Capaldi to hold forth on the series. Just in case that’s too nerdy, “Story of Science Fiction” also brings it back around to conversations about why  “Back to the Future” and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” theoretically speaking, could never happen while letting us know that it's perfectly OK to remain in love with both movies.

Cameron values broad appeal over digging deeply to closely examine some science fiction’s taproots. Look closely enough — which, here, only requires you to keep your eyes open — and you may also notice a hierarchy among those Cameron interview subjects. Dean Devlin, the screenwriter of “Independence Day,” is featured, as is “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers” director Paul Verhoeven. However, Cameron reserves his onscreen passion for his exchanges with Lucas and Spielberg, directors he likely considers to be on his level.

Indeed, the most obvious of Cameron’s touches on “Story of Science Fiction” is his insistence upon inserting himself into his conversations with his fellow A-listers so that we never forget his role in creating the modern science fiction cinematic universe. Somehow he can’t resist making their mutual experience and viewpoint on a specific subject about him and the way he relates to it. For instance, take his interactions with Spielberg, recently the subject of an illuminating and emotionally vulnerable biopic that did much to explain why and how his filmmaking shaped the American moviegoing experience. Spielberg's humility only makes Cameron's mountainous self-regard stand out. What else could one expect from a guy who declared himself king of the world upon winning his Oscar for “Titanic”?

This doesn’t greatly detract from the series as a whole; its still fun to watch cinematic giants trace the genre best known films back to the works of H.G. Wells, Ted Chiang, Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein and others. However, I'm not sure that I needed to spend a quarter of the "Intelligent Machines" episode watching Cameron and Schwarzenegger massage one another over the wonderfulness and originality of the "Terminator" franchise.

Upcoming hours devoted to space exploration, monsters, dark futures and intelligent machines all serve this end while skipping through these subjects with a light touch. Television genre aficionados are served well by the series’ inclusion of “Battlestar Galactica” creator Ronald D. Moore as well as Christopher Nolan and Lisa Joy, the minds behind HBO’s “Westworld.” These join the obligatory considerations of iconic installments of “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” along with other TV sci-fi ephemera.

Even so, it’s difficult if not impossible to overlook who and which subjects are missing from Cameron’s evaluation of the discussion. Whatever diversity of viewpoints on display in the series appears to be inserted, occasionally as an afterthought. Women are represented largely by Cameron’s female leads, such as Weaver and Zoe Saldana. With the exception of notable TV producer Jane Espenson the series features very few female screenwriters and no female directors.

Mind you, only recently have female directors gotten the opportunity to helm high profile sci-fi blockbusters, but one would think that at the very least a series that found a way to wax on about the low-budget 2004 film “Primer” might have take a minute or two to chat with Ava DuVernay about her work on bringing Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” to the screen.

Even Cameron’s ex-wife Katheryn Bigelow could have gotten a mention; she won a Saturn Award for her work on 1995's “Strange Days,”  which Cameron co-wrote and produced. Of course, knowing what we know about Cameron, that's asking a lot.

Similarly it may be silly to wonder why the series doesn't devote more than a few moments to Okorafor and Hopkinson to weigh in on more than just sci-fi cinema’s usage of alien stories as parables to examine man’s inhumanity against man. Future episodes incorporate Smith but for the most part, the minority experience with science fiction receives the most discussion in that first episode.

Afterward the show moves on, checking its boxes by including input from Brown professor  as well as authors Ken Liu and Veronica Roth. To be fair, expert commentary by critics Amy Nicholson and Annalee Newitz  and science fiction professor Lisa Yaszek lend vital context to every episode, preventing "James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction" from being entirely "stale, male and pale," to use Cameron's own words. Cameron's series could had done a slightly better job at setting a standard for other "Visionaries" to follow.

We've yet to see Eli Roth's "Visionaries" installment on the horror genre, and that may fill in those gaps. At a 2017 Television Critics Association press conference, when the series was first announced, Roth enthusiastically declared, "I want to get Catherine Hardwicke. I want to get . . . Katt Shea . . . Jackie Kong — any woman that’s directed a movie, because there were a lot of fantastic entries." It'll be refreshing to see a look at films from a creator who is enthusiastic about adopting a wider point of view.  Until that happens we'll have to content ourselves with going back to a well many others have dipped into before, albeit with a lesser sense of their own boldness.