Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 92

How Bill Cosby, America’s dad, used TV to betray us

AP//Matt Slocum

Through the medium of television Bill Cosby has been intimately influencing American perspectives on race, class, how we think about ourselves and, most crucially, how we feel about him, for more than five decades.

Give that information a moment to sink in, to really scrabble its way inside the inkiest crannies of your gray matter. Only by processing how long the comedian, actor and self-styled moral police commander of the African-American community has been running his game on an entire nation of viewers — several generations' worth — can we begin to comprehend the significance of Thursday’s verdict.

Cosby’s conviction comes years after the diminishment of his power, long after Hollywood, and much of the populace, declared him persona non grata. As sacrifices go, Cosby is a sizable one but also hobbled, softened and ready for slaughter.

Nevertheless, Thursday's news that a jury in Norristown, Pennsylvania, found Cosby guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, came as a shock.

Constand is one of scores of accusers — 60, by USA Today's count — who have accused Cosby of sexual assault. Until now, however, these allegations rolled off of Cosby like raw eggs off Teflon. Stories about these rapes and assaults have circulated for decades; Constand first came forward in 2005, a year after her original assault took place. Police dropped her case then for lack of evidence, and with Cosby insisting the sex was consensual, it became a matter of his word against hers.

And who were they to believe: Bill Cosby, TV icon, philanthropist and national father figure, or a lowly office worker at his alma mater?

Constand’s ordeal and the many others resembling it tell a bigger and much more sinister story: that of Cosby malevolently capitalizing on an image carefully cultivated over decades spent in front of TV audiences. Television is a medium that is only effective when its products forge a sense of intimacy, trust and belief for its viewers. People don’t necessarily have to believe the characters we watch on television or even like the people who play them. But we do have to trust the programs and platforms on which they appear enough to invite those characters into our homes time and again.

The fact that Cosby was able to get away with his crimes against Constand for so long — in addition to allegedly assaulting and abusing a vast array of women in his orbit, even friends — speaks to the potency of that idea.

Cosby didn’t merely gamble on the notion that a culture hardwired to question the credibility of sexual assault victims would never support the claims of the women he targeted. He also spent years grooming millions to view him as a man who couldn’t possibly commit such acts. He convinced Americans that he was a safe paternal figure who sold Jell-O pudding to giggling youngsters, who instilled wholesome values in children via Saturday morning cartoons. He wasn’t content to play America’s best dad — he had to make us believe that he himself was an example of the wise and noble paterfamilias.

Such a man is incapable of plying women with drugs before raping them.

In fully accounting for every part of our relationship with Cosby’s many television personas, we only begin to get a sense of how extensively he hoodwinked millions of people. Indeed, the timeline of Cosby’s mass deceit by way of popular culture is almost as long as the modern history of the television medium itself.

In the mid-'60s, around the time Sunni Welles alleges she was raped (according to her statement at a news conference held on March 27, 2015), Cosby was a popular comedian who made television history in becoming the first black actor to star in a weekly drama series, 1965’s “I Spy.” He shared lead billing with Robert Culp, went on to win three Emmys for his performance in the role, and followed that successful run with a sitcom bearing his own name, “The Bill Cosby Show,” which ran from 1969 to 1971.

Cosby went on to become a staple figure of Saturday morning cartoons with “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,” voicing the title role in addition to speaking directly to all the kids watching him. Anyone who watched television between 1972 and 1985 can imitate Fat Albert’s “hey, hey, hey!”  Even if you didn’t stick around to absorb the important moral lessons Albert, Rudy, Mushmouth and the rest of the gang were learning that day, you couldn’t avoid it.

Those of us who did watch also took in Cosby’s jovial live-action appearances bookending each episode. That goofy grin and friendly voice imprinted on the memory centers of Generation X, Constand’s cohort, from the time they were toddlers and elementary school kids.

Prior to her assault, Constand said she thought of Cosby as a mentor. Many people may have viewed him thusly, even those who never met him. “Fat Albert” is one reason why.

Another accuser who provided testimony in this second trial, Chelan Lasha, says Cosby invited her to his Las Vegas hotel suite in 1986, when she was 17 years old. She alleges that he handed her a blue pill and offered her a double shot of Amaretto to wash it down. The last thing she remembers, according to her account in the now-famous 2015 New York magazine story that features 35 of Cosby’s accusers, was him “humping her leg and grunting.”

By 1986 my mother had signed us up to be a Nielsen family. As part of that task, she believed it was our responsibility to strategically wield whatever infinitesimal power we had to help keep “The Cosby Show” on the air. Whenever it was on, even if the episode was a repeat, our main television had to be tuned in to NBC.

“The Cosby Show” represents massive, transformative success, not only to the sitcom genre itself and NBC’s prime-time fortunes, but in its capacity as a symbol of middle-class possibility. For most of the years between the comedy’s debut in 1984 through its 1992 cancellation, the upwardly mobile Huxtables shaped how white America viewed a specific segment of black America, for good or ill.

To black families like ours it represented progress and pride. Cliff Huxtable, a physician, and his wife Clair, an attorney, promoted an image of the black family that placed education and refinement at the center of its world. They shared similar problems to those of middle-class white America, rarely making race the focus of episodic plots.

They were, to put it bluntly, the right kind of black folks. Model minorities. Neither NBC, nor its viewers, nor the community heartened to see a positive portrayal of black life on a major network in the 1980s would have countenanced the notion that Cosby also was a sexual predator.

Only since Cosby’s divisive and insulting oratory given during a 2004 NAACP award ceremony, his infamous “Pound Cake” speech, did we come to understand the part “The Cosby Show” played in perpetuating its creator’s brand of respectability politics.

Rather than wandering further into the briar patch with that particular acre of his hypocrisy, let’s instead consider that Cosby used it, along with the rest of his work, to construct a heretofore impenetrable bulwark to delay justice for his victims.

The surprise revamp of the series’ third season opening credits in 1986, for example, was quite a thrill. Tweaking the theme song with the debut of each new season became part of the show’s identity, and that version incorporated a Latin jazz flair. I recall my family, along with tens of millions of other households, took delight in his purposely awful Dad Dancing.

I spent a lot of time thinking about that particular credits sequence since Thursday's news broke, setting its infectious percussion line and sparkling piano riff against my imaginings of Lasha’s trauma.

Lasha says in 1986 she wanted to be a model. Her stepmother sent a letter about her as well as her photo to Cosby, the nicest man in America, a champion of education and symbol of black success, a man who might be able to make her stepdaughter’s dream come true.

It’s very likely that in October 1985 or in some repeat airing of the episode thereafter that Lasha watched the man who would attack her join his character’s wife and kids in a lip-sync of Ray Charles’ “Night Time Is the Right Time.”

Remember tiny, 6-year-old Keshia Knight Pulliam, as Rudy, bringing down the house with her adorably exaggerated mimicry of “Bay-bay! Bayee-bay!...Hold me tight! Make everything alright!”? What you might not remember is the context. This performance was part of an anniversary gift to Cliff’s parents. Rudy’s grandparents.

Lasha said Cosby invited her and her grandmother to his comedy show. He met this teenager’s grandmother. Afterward, she said, Cosby assaulted that woman’s grandchild.

Lasha was in high school, not much older than I was when the incident would have taken place. “You remember, don’t you, Mr. Cosby?” she yelled across the courtroom. These contradictory images now battle and merge as part of our collective memory. They’re another kind of sickening transgression.

In the years following the end of “The Cosby Show,” the performer starred in “Cosby” for CBS, which ran between 1996 and 2000, and one season of “The Cosby Mysteries” on NBC in 1994. He also hosted a revival of “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” By then he’d established himself as America’s Dad.

None of this computes with the perception of, as model and TV personality Janice Dickinson testified, “'America’s Dad’ on top of me, a happily married man with five children, on top of me.”

Dickinson says Cosby assaulted her in 1982, which was around the time Cosby’s “Picture Pages” segments were running as part on CBS’ “Captain Kangaroo” and later on Nickelodeon’s “Pinwheel,” children’s programming starting in the late 1970s. He was teaching millions of kids how to draw and use their imaginations at the time Dickinson says he forced himself on her.

This is why even after multiple accusers came forward with the eerily similar stories of violation, Cosby not only remained free but had the juice to sell a comedy pilot in 2014 and even as recently as January of this year could attract people to his live stand-up appearances.

All of these assaults, those recounted in courtroom testimony and the dozens of others reconstructed in allegations made public and ignored for decades, took place behind the heavy curtain of a career that helped sustain and was sustained by important pillars of the entertainment industry. And the lifeblood of that industry is attention, affection and belief of the audience.

Wrapping our brains around that truth feels stunning, frankly. It explains why the 2017 proceedings ended in a mistrial. Despite all the evidence presented to the jury, including Cosby’s admission that he used to give Quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with, two jurors simply refused to accept the possibility that Cliff Huxtable, TV’s Greatest Dad, attacked women.

But that mistrial occurred before the shocking revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s years of harassment and misconduct broke in October, before multiple sexual misconduct reports took down Matt Lauer. It came before the end of Louie C.K.’s TV career after he confessed to exposing himself to women and forcing them to watch him masturbate.

As such, this guilty verdict for Cosby is being considered as the first true legal victory of #MeToo. But in the longer, broader view it can and is likely to be seen as more than this. This moment represents many things to many different parties.

Cosby’s actions betray the community he claimed to represent, the one he admonished for being responsible for creating the social and economic woes that have befallen it. And he insisted that community stand by him even so.

Cosby’s reputation for education advocacy and his philanthropy played a role in enabling him to spend most of his life and career as a free man. It is now reasonable to believe he targeted and attacked women over the course of at least 50 of the 80 years he has spent on this Earth.

Let’s be careful before declaring it to be a sign of a beginning of something larger, or an end to women’s collective struggles to be heard, or a sign of lasting change in any respect. In the fullness of time it may prove to be any of those things or none of them. But as of Friday afternoon his works are still easily available to the public: reruns of "The Cosby Show" may have been pulled from Bounce TV, but the show remains available to be streamed via Amazon's Prime subscription service. Similarly, as of this writing "I Spy" episodes are still streaming on Hulu.

That matters less than knowing one of Cosby's victims has been seen, heard and believed, and has attained some level of vindication for herself and others.

But it's going to take a while for the rest of us to fully grasp the heinousness of the duplicity to which we were unwittingly subjected throughout many stages of our lives.

Molly Ringwald sits down with Salon: “I have a voice and I feel like I’ve earned it”

Kevin Carlin

"Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," "The Breakfast Club." These are some of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and they all star Molly Ringwald, who is currently starring in "All These Small Moments," making its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

In this film, Ringwald plays the mom of two teenage boys. Her character, Carla, is trying to keep the peace at home while dealing with trouble in her marriage to her husband, Tom, played by Brian d'Arcy James.

Ringwald recently appeared on an episode of "Salon Talks" to discuss the art of playing a "massively flawed" woman, #MeToo and her New Yorker essay about John Hughes. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

I was really taken by the fact that you’re playing the mother of teenagers in this, because you’re so well-known for being a screen teenager. What can you say or what observations do you have about your career as an onscreen mom?

Well, I feel like I’ve played a few moms now. I’m playing a mom currently on "Riverdale," I’m playing Archie’s mom. I’ve played Shailene Woodley’s mother in "The Secret Life of the American Teenager."

It’s happened a few times. And I’m a mother in real life. I feel like I have a lot of experience. I certainly feel more well-equipped to play a mother than I do a teenager now. But I really liked this particular mother because I felt like she was really multilayered and she felt like a real person. Sometimes, I think, particularly when it’s a project that’s from the point of view of a teenager, the parents are very one-dimensional. They come in and say, “You’ll figure it out, honey,” and then they go.

Carla, she’s in a crisis. She’s at this moment in her life where she doesn’t know if she’s in love with her husband anymore and what’s going to happen with the kids and why did I make all of these choices in my life. She clearly loves her kids, but she’s not the nicest person all the time.

She sort of has this nonchalance about how the family unit is run because she’s so preoccupied, and everybody in the film is preoccupied with something. But your performance is really expressive because of your body language and your expressions, and that’s what makes your character have depth. You're not just the mom, you’re really a part of the story because of what happens between Carla and her husband, Tom, but also with her kids.

That’s right. Yes, she’s a real person and she makes a lot of mistakes and she is massively flawed.

Did you like playing it?

Yes. For an actress, it’s a lot more interesting to play someone who is not perfect and find the humanity in them and find moments to make them sympathetic in a way, even with all of the mass and distractions. Yes.

Well, are you a perfect mom? I mean, would your kids say that?

I’m absolutely perfect. We should probably say that to my daughter. My 14-year-old is sitting off camera at the moment, rolling her eyes at me.

I can hear them.

I know. You can actually hear the eyes rolling back into her head. No. I’m definitely not perfect. I freely pretty much [have] given up on the idea of perfection. I think it’s just, I’m good enough. Every day, I have big plans about what I’m going to do that day. You know what, it inevitably does not work out the way that I hope or wish, but I think I have my moments.

What I like about Carla is that she’s perpetually angry, and her discomfort is really visible and palpable. We learn later in the film why this is the case, but I like that your performance conveys that before we put all the pieces together. I think your approach to her character is really interesting. Can you talk about that?

Well, I don’t know how much I should say in terms of, I don’t know if I want to give away exactly why she’s angry. But yes, she is. She is really angry, and I feel like she is practically humming with it the whole time. Every time you see her, I feel like you can feel how angry she is, and unhappy, too. I feel like it’s just all in my body language. It’s in my face.

There is this one shot where it’s a super, super closeup, and I feel like I look the unhappiest I think I’ve ever looked, in this closeup. I feel like it’s very relatable. I feel like people are going to watch this movie — I mean, already, when I’ve been doing interviews, I’ve talked to two people already who said that it made them want to call their mother, which I was so touched by because I pretty much gave up on being a likeable character and I was OK with that. In fact, I like that Melissa [Miller, the director] did not try to make me more likeable, like so many people do. It was more important to her that it was an honest portrayal.

Yes. I think it comes across beautifully in the film. Now, there’s one scene in the film where Carla knits to keep busy because she needs to find a new project. She gets her son weights to help him with self-esteem. How do you improve your self-worth when you feel low? I know you like to sing, for example, and you’ve done cabaret as well as the show "Cabaret." I know you are really into books. Can we talk about what you do to sort of unwind or decompress?

I drink a lot of wine.

What kind?

Pinot noir, Côtes du Rhône. I’m not picky, just no chardonnay. [Laughs.]

I think what I try to do is reach out to friends, which is something that I didn’t do when I was younger. I come from this sort of Protestant stiff upper lip kind of family, and you tend to suffer in silence. That’s, I think, what I did for the first part of my life and at some point I thought, you know, that doesn’t really work. It doesn’t really help.

What helps me is to talk to people and to sort of get out of myself and also to help other people. I don’t know. I help people whenever I can. I feel like that also gets me out of my mind. But I’ve also sort of accepted the fact that there’s a time for everything, and there’s a time to feel great and there’s a time to feel terrible. There’s a time to wallow. There’s a time to celebrate. It’s like just all part of life.

I want to know what you like to read.

What do I like to read? I like to read just about anything. I mean, I’ve been reading, I think, for years. I’m not as much in a reading phase at the moment just because I’ve been writing a lot and it’s really hard for me to do both. I kind of go through phases where I read a lot and then I take a break and then I write a lot. Most of what I’m reading right now is poetry.

I love Mary Oliver. I’ve been reading a lot of Rilke.

I try to keep up on the news, as maddening as it is. I’ve been reading a lot of essays, and I read a lot of The New York Times and Salon.

[Former Salon editor in chief and current contributor David Daley is] a good friend, an old friend. He's been my friend since, gosh, the early '90s.

Speaking of your writing, you did a piece in The New Yorker recently about John Hughes’s films and the #MeToo movement and some of the [movies'] moments of rape and sexism and racism. I’m curious about your speaking out and how empowered you feel now. It’s so many years after this intense time in your life. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure. I always knew that I was going to write about that time in my life. I didn’t know that I would necessarily write about it in a context that I did, but I felt like a certain responsibility, in a way, to write about it, because the films that I’ve made with John Hughes are still incredibly popular. They’re still watched a lot. They’re even taught in schools. I also love the movies, too. I don’t want to make anyone think — and I think I’m pretty clear about that in the piece — I’m not renouncing the films. I’m discussing what feels problematic for me as a woman and as a mother.

But I feel like it’s a conversation, and I feel like the films still also have a great deal of value. That’s really, I think, why I decided to write the piece and also why it was as long as it was.

Also, it’s very important now because of the #MeToo movement that we have to look back, 35 years [later], at these projects to say, “Well, this was the culture then. This is what it is now. This is how it’s evolved or changed or how it hasn’t.” How have you evolved and changed from 16 to 50? 

Well, I feel like when I was 16 years old, I feel like I knew everything. Then I sort of went through the stage—

This is the Mark Twain quote . . . 

— where I felt like I didn’t know anything, and now I’m sort of getting to where I feel like I’m starting to know a little something, like life experience has — I don’t know the actual Mark Twain quote.

It says, “When I was 16, I felt my parents knew nothing. When I was 18, I was amazed with how much they learned in two years.”

Yes. Exactly. I feel like over the years I was asked or expected to be an authority at a very young age, which was when I was a teenager, because any time you become famous or when you become . . . I was considered a role model for people my age. Naturally, people want to put you in that position where you’re telling people what to do. I felt incredibly uncomfortable with that, just because I was figuring things out for myself. I mean, I had opinions, certainly, and I was maybe a little on the bossy side with my friends and felt very free to share those opinions with my friends. But in terms of telling anybody else, it was not really . . . I just didn’t feel comfortable with it.

Now, I just feel like I have a voice and I feel like I’ve earned it. I’ve also worked on my writing a lot over the years, so I feel like I’m able to express what I want and how I want to express it. That does feel empowering. I mean, everybody has a voice. Not everybody always feels comfortable using it and not everybody is taken as seriously as they ought to be, but I feel like women are feeling a lot more empowered now.

We saw you grow up on screen and [then] reinventing yourself for "For Keeps" or even "Fresh Horses," which are films that I saw because I wanted to see you do something different. I appreciate these films and the chances you took at the time. Do you look back at your career at that time saying, “Well, these were the kinds of roles I had to take because I needed to reinvent”?

When I was younger, I don’t really feel like I thought things through that much. Everything was very instinctive for me. I took projects based on something that spoke to me. I turned down projects because they didn’t. I move to Paris because I wanted to. I tried to listen to that voice inside of me and also to drown out a little bit what everybody else is saying because everybody has an opinion. I think opinions matter, but I feel like, for each individual, the one that matters the most is their own.

Right. I think that’s what your piece in The New Yorker does; it asks you to think critically and says, “Look at this not just for what it is but for what it could it be or how it can be perceived and how other people can perceive it. Even though I had one vision of it or view at the time, it’s changed over the years because I’ve become more mature, or the world has changed.” I mean, there’s a lot of value to it.

Yes. It’s evolved and we’re constantly evolving. I think it’s important. I’m very much not in the school of thought that we should erase history. That makes me really uncomfortable. I would rather that these films exist, that we still watch them, and that we learn from them, and we sort of take what’s good, and that we continue to evolve and make movies.

Everybody’s always trying to make a John Hughes movie. They can’t. He’s not here anymore. That was definitely his voice, and I feel like he was masterful in sort of recreating his world. Now I feel like we can go forward and make John Hughes-esque movies, but for today.

The Golden State Killer suspect and DNA: Would you forfeit your privacy to catch a killer?

Getty/Justin Sullivan

On Tuesday, police arrested the man they believe is one of the most notorious serial rapists and murderers in American history. The news came, astonishingly, thanks to some unidentified person who was likely just intrigued about genealogy and ethnicity. The Sacramento District Attorney's office has attributed the capture of suspected Golden State Killer, ex-cop Joseph James DeAngelo, to "genealogical websites that contained genetic information from a relative." Which, if you've ever spit into a tube and dropped it in the mail, has got to make you wonder.

The potential for justice in a series of shocking, sadistic crimes that began more than 40 years ago was cause for excitement among crime obsessives and relief for the family members of victims. This week, a survivor who was just 13 when she was raped during a 1979 home invasion called the break in the case "the greatest gift ever." But along with the jubilation over the arrest, there were concerns over the implications of the case for privacy rights and questions over how DNA can be collected and used.

Speaking with KGO-TV news this week, San Francisco attorney Bicka Barlow warned that amateur genealogists should know that "When you provide them with a sample, they have all your DNA," and that for all its crime-solving potential, the testing "is not foolproof." She added, "I don't think it's safe." And Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University's School of Medicine, told USA Today Friday that “People don’t realize that unlike most medical tests where you find out information, it isn’t just about you.”

There are other concerning issues around DNA collection. In California, where DeAngelo was arrested, authorities can obtain samples not just from persons convicted of felonies but those merely arrested for them. CNN reports that the state now has roughly two million profiles.

In light of all the attention, two popular testing services issued statements alluding to the DeAngelo case this week. 23andMe affirmed that it has "never given customer information to law enforcement officials," and Ancestry.com stated it "will not share any information with law enforcement unless compelled to by valid legal process," adding that it had received "no valid legal requests" from 2015 to 2017. The free, open source DNA analysis company GEDmatch is believed to have provided the key DNA information that helped investigators in the DeAngelo case. The site's terms of service note that "It is important that GEDmatch participants understand the possible uses of their DNA, including information of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes."

But DeAngelo's case doesn't just hinge on that one relative. Once authorities found a familial DNA link to their crime scene evidence samples, they honed in on potential suspects who fit the age and location parameters, before obtaining a DNA sample from "something [DeAngelo] discarded."

The murky areas around obtaining DNA samples have been explored before — notably in another case of a long unsolved series of brutal crimes. When law enforcement was closing in on Dennis Rader, aka the Kansas serial killer known as BTK, in 2005, a judge ordered the university hospital where his daughter had been given a pap smear years before to provide a sample of her DNA. It soon provided a link to the semen found at a quadruple homicide two decades earlier. A 2015 profile of Kerri Rader described how "violated" the experience made her feel, even as she subsequently grappled with "The terrible things [Rader] did to the victims," and how "Women were scared — my own mother was scared to go home."

When you grow up with a lot of questions about your biological family, you always know that your curiosity may lead you toward information you may not like. As USA Today noted this week, "You just wanted to find out if you were Portuguese or Spanish, but instead you found out you were related to a mass murderer." I always assumed in my case it would be an "and," not a "but."

Thanks to my own secretive family and substantially unknown genealogical background, I decided to try out a DNA testing service a few years ago. I'd wrestled with the question of whether or not to do it for a long time beforehand. I had concerns about privacy and how the data could be used. I wondered if I'd find something or someone who surprised me. But by that point in my life, I'd also spent two years in a clinical trial and already blithely handed over so much of my genetic information for the sake of science, I was ready to part with some of it for my own personal use.

The results offered no bombshell revelations about where my ancestors came from, nor did they provide me any tearful family reunions. They didn't tell me I was related to any killers though, so that's nice. But that doesn't reassure me in any way that I'm not. A quick search of recent arrests near the town where I grew up, using my family's less common maiden names, quickly yields the phrase "meth ring." Could a distant cousin of mine be a local drug lord? I'll likely never know for sure, but that would not exactly be surprising.

I have relatives who I love very much and am proud of. I also come from a line of petty criminals, a few low level violent offenders and some people I'd give the amateur diagnosis of straight up sociopathic. There's a chilling lack of empathy in my gene pool, swimming in there with the blue eyes and poor math skills. When I think of guys like Dennis Rader and Joseph James DeAngelo, fellows described by their neighbors as "unpleasant" and "always angry," I see a simmering dark side that I recognize right away. When I recall the pathology of Ted Bundy, I see the faint echo of charming, skilled manipulators I know intimately. That familiarity is likely the reason for my finely tuned instincts for spotting abusers, and my fascination with true crime.

My information is on a testing site that says it doesn't share it, but the rapid developments in DNA testing over just the past few years have given me cause to think about these things, and the ways commercial DNA sites can be used for good. In 2016, forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick used samples submitted to two DNA sites to link the daughter of a deceased identity thief known as Lori Erica Ruff to the woman's surviving family. Fitzpatrick has since been involved in other high profile cases involving previously unidentified decedents, including — just this month — the Ohio murder victim known as "Buck Skin Girl," through the DNA Doe Project.

I learned through my clinical trial that we carry secrets in our bodies that can crack open the deepest, most confounding mysteries. I still have a lot of questions about the unforeseen implications of commercial and open source DNA tests have for all of us in the long run. I have absolutely legitimate concerns about the repercussions for my privacy and that of my children. But when I consider the possibility of something in my saliva one day leading law enforcement to the door of someone in my family tree who's done something bad, that does not feel like a stretch of the imagination. It feels like the best possible use of a little spit.

It’s not just the HBO series: New “Game of Thrones” book “The Winds of Winter” has also been delayed

HBO/Helen Sloan

Unfortunately, "Game of Thrones" fans are going to have to wait even longer to get their hands on author George R.R. Martin’s “The Winds of Winter" – the latest entry in his best-selling "Song of Ice and Fire" series.

“No, winter is not coming . . . not in 2018, at least," Martin told fans April 25 on his official blog. "You’re going to have to keep waiting for 'The Winds of Winter.'"

"Fire & Blood" — which Martin calls a "monumental history of the Targaryen kings of Westeros” — is still set to be released, however, on Nov. 20.

“It’s a hefty book, almost a thousand manuscript pages. (OK, 989, if you want to be precise.)” the official announcement explains. “That’s not quite as long as 'A Game of Thrones' or any of the later volumes in 'A Song for Ice and Fire,' but there’s a lot of reading there. And I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

In addition to covering the Targaryen kings from Aegon I, there will be “lots” of dragons, too.

While this news might be disappointing for some, it’s unlikely that it comes as a surprise. Martin reassured fans he has not forgotten about "Winds of Winter."

“Archmaester Gyldayn is hanging up his quill for a while,” he said. “As for me, I’m returning once again to 'The Winds of Winter.'"

This book isn’t the only anticipated "Game of Thrones" event that has experienced a delay this year. In January, HBO admitted that the final season of "Game of Thrones" will debut in 2019 — leaving fans to wait for an agonizing year after a series of clues were revealed.

But some things are worth the wait.

Regarding the final season of the HBO show,  some cast members have provided clues about what fans can expect. Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, told Variety, "This season, there’s a new threat. And, all of a sudden, [Sansa] finds herself somewhat back in the deep end. And without Littlefinger, it’s a test for her of whether she can get through it. It’s a big challenge for her without this master manipulator having her back."

"This season is more a passionate fight for her than a political, manipulative kind of fight," Turner continued.

Casey Bloys, HBO programming president, told Entertainment Weekly, "The show has proven that TV is every bit as impressive – and in many cases more so – than film. What they’re doing is monumental. When you see these battles in season seven – and what I imagine season eight will be – it’s a big, big show. We’ve done a lot of great shows, but this one combines the complex characters we love with a huge cinematic scope."

"Winter" will come one day — just not in 2018.

“A pop miracle” Legendary Swedish pop group Abba to release new music for the first time in 35 years

AP/Robert Dear

"Mamma Mia," here we go again! Abba is set to release new music for the first time in 35 years. The ilegendary Swedish pop act announced on its Instagram account Friday that it has recorded two new songs for an upcoming tour, where avatars of its group members will perform live.

"The decision to go ahead with the exciting ABBA avatar tour project had an unexpected consequence," the announcement reads. "We all four felt that, after some 35 years, it could be fun to join forces again and go into the recording studio. So we did. And it was like time had stood still and that we had only been away on a short holiday. An extremely joyful experience!"

The widely successful four-piece, which formed in Stockholm in 1972, has sold an estimated 500 million albums worldwide, earning nine No. 1 hits from 1974 to 1980 in the UK alone. But the group split in late 1982, andBenny Andersson, Agnetha Faltskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Bjorn Ulvaeus have not performed together on stage since 1986.

The group's Instagram statement continued, "It resulted in two new songs, and one of them, 'I Still Have Faith In You,' will be performed by our digital selves in a TV special produced by NBC and the BBC aimed for broadcasting in December."

"We may have come of age, but the song is new. And it feels good," the post concluded. It was signed: "Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn, Anni-Frid – Stockholm, Sweden, 27 April 2018."

❤️ #abbaofficial #abba

A post shared by @ abbaofficial on Apr 27, 2018 at 4:11am PDT

In Brussels earlier this week, Ulvaeus, now 72, revealed that an Abba stage reunion of sorts would come in the form of computerized avatars as part of a televised tribute to the legendary group later this year.

"It's a kind of ABBA tribute show, but the centerpiece . . . will be something I call 'Abbatars,'" Ulvaeus told the international news agency Agence France-Presse. "It is digital versions of ABBA from 1979," when the group performed their final tour. (The digital "Abbatars" will embark on their own world tour.)

The group, consisting of two couples – Ulvaeus and Fältskog and Andersson and Lyngstad – had a breakthrough moment when it won the Eurovision song contest in 1974 for the song, "Waterloo." And, for the next decade, Abba dominated the disco-pop scene with iconic hits that included "Dancing Queen," "Mamma Mia" and "Super Trouper."

Abba is one of the best-selling and most commercially successful groups of all time. Even after the group split, its 1992 compilation album sold 30 million copies and spent 833 weeks on the UK album charts.

The jukebox musical "Mamma Mia!" made its debut in 1999, and it continues to run in London's West End. In 2008, the show was adapted into a feature-length film starring Meryl Streep. And, this summer, a sequel "Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again" is set to hit movie theaters in June.

In 2014, Ulvaeus told Billboard, "We took a break in '82, and it was meant to be a break. It's still a break and will remain so. You'll never see us onstage again."

Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice, told the Guardian that Friday's announcement is "the biggest pop news of the 21st century. Most fans grudgingly admired Abba’s refusal to record new music, but I think we all sometimes daydreamed about the band possibly, maybe, one day having a re-think at the right time, on the right terms and for the right reasons, which seems to be what’s happened here."

He continued, "It’s a pop miracle."

A majority of Republicans now say “media is the enemy of the people”

Getty/Saul Loeb/Twitter/Salon

President Donald Trump may not be convincing most Americans that they should trust him over former FBI Director James Comey and the media, but he has definitely persuaded one group — his fellow Republicans.

Overall Americans believe Comey more than Trump by a whopping margin of 54 percent to 35 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. That said, among Republicans Trump is believed over Comey by 76 percent to 13 percent. White men are also more inclined to believe Trump by a margin of 47 percent to 39 percent, while white voters without any college degree are more likely to believe Trump by a margin of 47 percent to 40 percent. Aside from these groups, Comey is believed by most of the poll respondents within every other partisan, gender, racial, education and age group.

Not all of the news in the poll is good for Trump when it comes to his standing among Republicans. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans believe that Trump should not fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel who was appointed to investigate potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government after the president fired Comey. Only 25 percent of Republicans said they would support such a move by Trump, reinforcing the conventional wisdom that any attempt by Trump to fire Mueller would trigger a political crisis for the president as well as a constitutional one.

By contrast, however, 74 percent of overall voters think Trump should not fire Mueller, with only 13 percent believing that he should do so. American voters also believe that Mueller's investigation is fair, by a margin of 54 percent to 31 percent, and 52 percent think the investigation is legitimate. Only 44 percent of overall voters believe that the investigation is, as Trump has described it, a "political witch hunt."

It is worth noting that Comey himself is not popular in this poll, with 41 percent of respondents having an unfavorable opinion of the former FBI director and only 30 percent having a favorable one. Overall, the poll's results were consistent with those in surveys stretching as far back as June, where neither Trump nor Comey was well-liked but Comey was trusted more than Trump.

As Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, explained:

American voters aren't enamored of former FBI Director James Comey, but they trust, by 19 points, his version of events more than President Donald Trump's version. Americans also seem to be on Independent Counsel Robert Mueller's side in his ongoing look at the president and his people.

Trump has also managed to shape the average Republican's perception of another one of his favorite targets: The media. Fifty-one percent of Republicans believe that the media are the enemy of the people — harkening back to an insult Trump used toward the press last year — with only 37 percent acknowledging the media's important role in democracy. That said, among overall voters, the media is still more trusted than Trump by a margin of 53 percent to 37 percent.

This finding is particularly troubling in part because it hinges on the false notion that liberal media outlets which criticize Trump are "fake news." As media experts told Salon earlier this month, there is a difference between reporting that you dislike — or even reporting that is biased — and reporting that actually spreads falsehoods.

"In general what I would consider 'fake news' is information that purports, that presents itself as conveying factual information about the world, about reality, that is in fact not factual, is not real," Susan McGregor, an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School, told Salon. "And I think that obviously what we've seen in the last year or so is the politicization of that term used as a label to mean anything that a person doesn't like or disagrees with. And so, you know, obviously, those are two different things: I can dislike something that is factually true, but that doesn't mean that it's fake."

"If you have a society that's completely or very divided between Democrats and Republicans, between right-wing and left-wing, in fact even if  the New York Times tomorrow would come out with a story that was factually not fake news, but actually very factual about some sort of Trump complicity in Russia and Russian affairs or whatever — most of the people, half of the people, the ideologues, would simply say, Well, that's just fake news from, what? From the liberal media!" Dr. Stephen J. A. Ward told Salon.

"And how we get around that, I don't know."

House Republicans’ Russia report tries to exonerate Trump but can’t fully carry his water

Getty/AP/Salom

The House Intelligence Committee may be led by a man who has gone out of his way to carry President Donald Trump's water for him, but even their report closing an investigation into alleged collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign couldn't help but throw some strong criticisms in the commander-in-chief's direction.

The report found that Russia had engaged an extensive information warfare campaign during the 2016 presidential election and determined that a number of parties deserved criticism, according to Reuters. These included the FBI, which was described as having done an "inadequate" job of notifying hacking victims, and President Barack Obama, who was deemed to have responded to news of Russia's hacking in a half-hearted manner.

Yet the report also contained surprisingly harsh words for the president's campaign. It blasted the Trump team for meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, in June 2016 because she claimed to have "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate. The report also pointed out that the Trump campaign should not have praised WikiLeaks or its founder, Julian Assange, describing the interactions with the ostensible whistleblowing group (that is, let's be honest, more a Russian puppet now) as "highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests."

This doesn't mean that the report can be viewed as an impartial or even thorough document. As Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee explained in their own 98-page report, the Republican documented "reflects a lack of seriousness and interest in pursuing the truth." As Ranking Member Adam Schiff explained in a statement, "Throughout the investigation, Committee Republicans chose not to seriously investigate - or even see, when in plain sight - evidence of collusion." He also claimed that the Democrats would continue their own investigation alluded to "new documents from another important witness" that they had recently received.

In a similar vein, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia told Yahoo! News' "Skullduggery" podcast on Friday that the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which he is the Ranking Member, plans on continuing to proceed with their investigation in a cautious and deliberative manner.

"I would rather do it thoroughly than do a half-baked report that leaves a lot of questions hanging," Warner said. He also added, when asked about what conclusions they would arrive at, that "it’s too early to tell. We’ve still got a series of witnesses to see. We got thousands of additional documents just within the last two weeks."

This is in stark contrast to the approach embodied by the House Intelligence Committee, where Chairman Devin Nunes made it clear from the get-go that he had no interest in pursuing the investigation in ways that could politically hurt Trump. Last year Nunes worked with the Trump White House to manufacture a story that implied President Barack Obama had engaged in unethical behavior in monitoring the Trump campaign. Although he supposedly recused himself from the investigation during the controversy that ensued, he clearly continued to involve himself in the investigation. In so doing, he has continued the close alliance he forged with Trump by being one of his first congressional supporters during the 2016 presidential election and later advising his transition team after the election.

It later came out that Nunes had told a group of Republicans at a Tulare County Lincoln Dinner that Democrats wanted an independent commission to investigate potential Trump-Russia collusion because "they want to continue the narrative that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are best friends, and that’s the reason that he won, because Hillary Clinton would have never lost on her own; it had to be someone else’s fault."

Later he said:

They have tried to destroy this Russia investigation, they’ve never been serious about it, and one of the great things now that I’ve stepped aside from this Russia investigation, I can actually say what I want to say. I know that there’s probably media in here, you can write it but just try to get it right when you do.

Nunes again made the news in February when he released a memo that Republican partisans claimed would discredit the Trump-Russia investigation but wound up disclosing unremarkable observations.

The deeper concern about the House Intelligence Committee's handling of the investigation isn't simply that it's failing to do its job. It is also that, by repeatedly trying to deflect blame away from Trump, it is providing the president with both rhetorical and political ammunition.

As an example of the former, here is the tweet Trump posted in response to the committee's report.

Just Out: House Intelligence Committee Report released. “No evidence” that the Trump Campaign “colluded, coordinated or conspired with Russia.” Clinton Campaign paid for Opposition Research obtained from Russia- Wow! A total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 27, 2018

As an example of the latter, consider how Trump has repeatedly tried to fire Robert Mueller, including as recently as December. In order to offset this possibility, on Friday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would protect Mueller from being terminated, according to Politico.

That bill harkens back to Warner's aforementioned interview with Yahoo! News. During the interview, Warner also noted that his fellow senators have a plan in place should Trump to fire either special counsel Robert Mueller or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

"We have a strategy that will take place if he takes these actions. But to get lured into kind of where the president’s allies want to go — to turn this election into what would happen if the Democrats take over and impeachment — that’s not where I’m headed," Warner told Yahoo! News.

Are Kanye’s “crazy” pro-Trump tweets just hype for a new album?

Getty/Neilson Barnard

“D, why you gotta be so tough all of the time?” a friend asked me with big pleading eyes. “That’s the problem with the black community now. We don’t pay enough attention to mental health.”

we got love pic.twitter.com/Edk0WGscp6

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 25, 2018

I sipped my juice as she talked.

“Kanye needs our help, D. We need to understand that he’s sick and he needs our help!”

Kanye needs my help like I need a higher tax bill, is what I told her. I don’t ignore mental health issues. I’ve  seen the harm that has done to my community, from the homeless to the murderers, and all types of victims, including children who are forced to endure all of the trauma in a neighborhood where mental illness is rarely acknowledged. I work with kids — trust me, I get it, so I won’t take that “D ignores mental illness" charge.

“Look, check this out,” I told her. “I’m not making excuses for Kanye, because he has Kardashian money — meaning, his family can hire the Michael Jordan/LeBron James of therapists. And since when does being bipolar cause a person to align themselves with a racist movement led by a guy who’s 24/7 offensive, a hyper-liar, and openly sexually assaults women? This is all about attention for Kanye.”

my MAGA hat is signed

NBC faces another round of #MeToo woes with Tom Brokaw accusations, Matt Lauer denial

Getty/Jason Kempin/Mike Coppola

After five months of silence following his firing from NBC over allegations of sexual harassment were made against him by multiple women, Matt Lauer has decided to speak up, just as his former colleague Tom Brokaw is hit with new sexual harrasment allegations of his own.

The fired "Today" show anchor claims that while he might have behaved inappropriately, he never coerced or abused anyone.

“I have made no public comments on the many false stories from anonymous or biased sources that have been reported about me over these past several months," Lauer said in a statement to The Washington Post, in a report by Sarah Ellison. "I remained silent in an attempt to protect my family from further embarrassment and to restore a small degree of the privacy they have lost. But defending my family now requires me to speak up.”

“I fully acknowledge that I acted inappropriately as a husband, father, and principal at NBC,” Lauer continued. “However, I want to make it perfectly clear that any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive, or abusive actions on my part, at any time, are absolutely false.”

In the same report, however, Lauer’s former co-host Ann Curry said she recalled a female NBC staffer telling her that she had been “sexually harassed physically” by Lauer, insisting that Curry not disclose her identity to anyone. “A woman approached me and asked me tearfully if I could help her,” Curry told The Post. “She was afraid of losing her job. . . . I believed her.”

Curry, who left NBC in 2015, co-hosted "Today" alongside Lauer for a year, from the summer of 2011 to 2012. Some speculate she was removed from her role as co-host of the program in June 2012 amid low ratings and a testy relationship with Lauer.

Curry said that following the female staffer’s story, she told NBC management to keep an eye on Lauer, particularly his treatment of women. The anonymous female staffer corroborated the story to the Post but an NBC spokesman told the paper that there’s no record of the warning in Lauer’s personnel file.

When NBC learned that two outlets were working on stories about sexual misconduct involving Lauer, the network says that executives looked for records of complaints or settlements but found neither.

When asked executives including NBC News President Noah Oppenheim and NBC News Chairman Andy Lack asked Lauer directly if there ever was any sexual misconduct, Lauer said he was “racking his brain and couldn’t think of anything at all," one executive said.

The Post ran the new allegations against Lauer in a report that also details new misconduct claims against long-time network anchor Tom Brokaw, all of which the former newsman denies.

Linda Vester, a former NBC correspondent, told The Post that Brokaw "made unwanted advances toward her on two occasions in the 1990s, including a forcible attempt to kiss her." She was in her 20s and did not file a complaint, the paper notes.

Brokaw rejected the claims.

"I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago, because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC," he told The Post in a statement issued by NBC. "The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda’s allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her, at that time or any other.'"

Vester told The Post she "did not report [the allegations] to management out of fear of retribution. Even if such incidents are reported through internal channels NBC is not willing to hire an outside arbiter."

“I am speaking out now because NBC has failed to hire outside counsel to investigate a genuine, long-standing problem of sexual misconduct in the news division,” she said.

She told the Post she has no intention of filing a legal claim against Brokaw or NBC.

A second woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also told the paper that "Brokaw acted inappropriately toward her in the ’90s, when she was a young production assistant and he was an anchor. Brokaw said no such incident happened."

The fresh allegations against Matt Lauer and Tom Brokaw come as disgraced broadcaster Charlie Rose, who was accused of sexual harassment by eight women in November, is reportedly trying to launch a #MeToo redemption show where he would interview other high-profile men who have been accused of sexual misconduct, according to the New York Post.

In 200 years, cows may be the biggest land mammals on the planet

damnura via iStock

This article was originally published by Scientific American.

Around 13,000 years ago North America had a more diverse mammal community than modern-day Africa. There were multiple horse species, camels, llamas and a now-extinct animal called Glyptodon, which looked something like a Volkswagen bug–size armadillo. Smilodon, a saber-toothed cat around the size of today’s African lion, skulked across the grasslands in search of ground sloths and mammoths. Seven-foot-long giant otters chowed down on massive trees. And such massive creatures were not just found in North America. On every continent mammals on average were a lot larger in the late Pleistocene, the geologic epoch spanning from around 2.5 million until about 11,700 years ago.

Scientists have long debated what caused all these large-bodied critters to go extinct while many of their smaller counterparts survived. A team of researchers led by University of New Mexico biologist Felisa Smith analyzed evidence from millions of years’ worth of mammalian extinctions and found that on each continent large mammals started to die out around the same time humans first showed up. They announced their findings Thursday in Science.

If the extinction trend continues apace, modern elephants, rhinos, giraffes, hippos, bison, tigers and many more large mammals will soon disappear as well, as the primary threats from humans have expanded from overhunting, poaching or other types of killing to include indirect processes such as habitat loss and fragmentation. The largest terrestrial mammal 200 years from now could well be the domestic cow, Smith’s research suggests.

Some scientists lay the blame squarely on humanity’s shoulders, arguing overhunting doomed the planet's megafauna. After our hominid relative Homo erectus fanned out from Africa into Eurasia starting some two million years ago, Homo sapiens followed around 60,000 to 80,000 years ago and became widespread in Eurasia, joining our close cousins, the Neandertals and Denisovans. It is thought H. sapiens later reached Australia between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago and finally settled the Americas between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago. In the time line of mammalian extinctions, large animals started to disappear only after humans or their hominid cousins showed up. But could that be a coincidence? Others have argued the main culprit behind these die-offs was the changing climate.

In their new study Smith and her team compiled a database of all terrestrial mammals that lived from 65 million years ago until today. They divided that time line into one-million-year chunks, and analyzed extinction trends for each of them. “We found absolutely no effect of climate on mammalian extinction over 65 million years,” she says.

But starting around 125,000 years ago and continuing until today, large-bodied mammals have been more likely to go extinct than smaller ones, the researchers found. The average size of surviving mammals has decreased as a result. And those large-mammal extinctions are tightly coupled with the appearance of humans.

In North America the average mammal weighed around 98 kilograms before the ancestors of humans showed up. Today the average size is closer to eight kilograms. “We’ve lopped a couple orders of magnitude off the distribution of mammals’ [body sizes],” Smith says. For most of mammalian evolutionary history, an animal’s size was not predictive of its extinction risk. That link only appeared once hominids began to live alongside large mammals.

This finding does not mean climate-related changes could not have stressed some wildlife populations, enabling humans to more easily bring about their eventual downfall. Rather it suggests the greater likelihood of large-bodied mammals going extinct is tied to human activities. A suite of animals that evolved in Eurasia, Australia and the Americas without the risk of predation from tool-using, fire-making, group-living hominids were suddenly faced with a new threat. They simply could not adapt fast enough to survive the incursion of these omnivorous bipedal apes.

In addition, Smith’s analysis looked at the size distribution of African mammals prior to the hominid migration into Eurasia. She found African mammals were also smaller on average once hominids began appearing on the landscape there — and they evolved right alongside one another. “They have evidence that hominids in Africa had already been impacting the size distribution of mammals on that continent before Homo sapiens evolved,” says paleoecologist Emily Lindsey, assistant curator and excavation site director of the La Brea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study. What that means, she says, is “these groups of hominid species were having impacts on a continental scale before the evolution of modern humans.” And it does not take all that many hominids to have such broad effects. Driving a large species to extinction does not mean killing every last one of its members. “You just have to kill slightly more than are being produced each year,” Lindsey says. If a population's reproduction rate cannot compensate for its losses each year, within a few hundred to a couple thousand years the species will simply die out.

Large-bodied mammals are especially vulnerable because they reproduce slowly. Mammoths and mastodons, for example, likely had a two-year gestation period, akin to modern elephants, and would have typically produced just one offspring at a time. It is therefore a lot easier to decimate a population of 100,000 mammoths than a population of 100,000 rabbits, which reproduce twice a year and birth by litter.

Massive animals have disproportionate impacts on their ecosystems. They disperse seeds, knock down trees and compact the soil with every step they take. The shape of the trails they carve into hillsides impacts water flow and erosion. Large animals also create living spaces for smaller critters. Elephant footprints, for example, produce critical habitats for pond-dwelling invertebrates.

Smith says the lesson to be learned from the new findings is that our hominid heritage prepared us to be extremely proficient killers. “What’s different now,” she says, “is that some of us are comfortable enough, have a high enough standard of living, that we can start thinking about our use of the Earth.” Rather than simply behaving as consumers, many of us are now in a position to become environmental stewards.