Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 936
December 1, 2015
TV is killing the movies: Can Hollywood step up its game to compete with the small screen?
Have you seen “Our Brand Is Crisis,” starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton? What about “Steve Jobs,” which tells the story of one of the most revered figures of recent years? How about “Rock the Kasbah,” starring uber-cool Bill Murray? Or “Pan,” with box office draw Hugh Jackman? “The Walk,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has made enormous riches over the years in movies like “Back to the Future,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Forrest Gump?” These movies are part of a long list of 2015 films that tanked at the box office, and the list could stretch as the year goes on. The trouble started months ago, with the summer slate of what should have been blockbusters. But as we get into Oscar season – when the prestige films, aimed at grown-ups and academy voters, are dragged out for end-of-year display – it’s becoming clear that something has gone seriously wrong, especially with the ability of a certain kind of movie to draw a big audience. Smart, quality movies, the kind driven by characters and not special effects and gross-out comedy, are having a hard time. (OK, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” bombed as well.) Billions of dollars are at stake trying to figure out what’s happened and how Hollywood can line up its output with what people will come out to see. Every year, of course, some films exceed expectations and some fall below them. And films can earn back their expenses beyond the box office. This year, the list of disappointments stretches longer than usual -- even with a reasonably healthy economy -- and on-demand revenues are not going to save them. There are so many bombs, you can line them up in whatever category you like. Variety editorial director Peter Bart, in an insightful column, looks at the issue of smart, “specialty films,” using the film “Burnt,” with Bradley Cooper and Siena Miller, in his lead. The theories he floats all make some sense, including the Oscar season theory: “Distributors are blowing it by mandating that every ‘smart’ movie has to come out in a tight corridor in the fall; there’s too much to see in too short a time,” he writes. “It’s autumn, and prospective filmgoers are also involved in football, school activities and Donald Trump.” The most important of the ideas – especially if we’re talking about prestigious, character-driven films -- is that television has just gotten so good that it’s keeping people at home. Here’s Bart:
The current crop of movies seems somehow diminished by the media fixation on the present ‘golden age of television.’ The water cooler conversation — online version — focuses on binge-watched digital shows, or even an evanescent YouTube act. During the summer, the kids put that all aside, and respond faithfully to their must-see Marvel Comics movie opening. But come fall, their parents aren’t as ready to leave the house.Over the last few months we’ve heard about “peak TV” – that television had reached a limit and the audience would not keep expanding, leading some programs to wither. That may still be happening, but the main casualty is probably the movies. The TV-will-defeat-film argument is, admittedly, a throwback to the ‘50s and early ‘60s. “That moment witnessed the ultimate cord-cutting: Hollywood’s once-loyal ‘habit’ audience suddenly stopped going to the movies,” Bart writes. “More than half the audience simply vaporized — due to an earlier golden age of TV.” But TV in the ‘50s was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today: It’s hard to think of many movies that are legitimately as good as the best of what’s on television— as epic and compelling "Game of Thrones," or as as meticulously and beautifully rendered as FX's "Fargo" (OK, another Coen brothers film could stand up to it). One thing that’s different today than in earlier decades is the enormous anxiety around public spaces, including cinemas, because of theater shootings. Some people will always want to see a movie the weekend it opens, or in the cinema. But for a lot of the audience, the safety of home, or the plane, or whatever, could be discouraging moviegoing. There’s at least one other reason likely for the slow crushing of movies by television. We’ve been hearing about problems of diversity in Hollywood for more than a decade now. Spike Lee’s feature debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” came out in 1986, Robert Townsend’s “Hollywood Shuffle” in 1987; both sparked a debate about race. The discussion of underrepresentation of women in film has been more recent but it’s become full-throated now. Television is hardly a diversity wonderland yet, but the debate has been accompanied by real progress. How many cinematic parallels do we get to acclaimed and award-winning shows like "Jane the Virgin," "Empire," "Transparent" or “Orange Is the New Black”? The movies may grow from the crisis – as they did after the impasse of the mid-‘60s, which led to the justly celebrated maverick cinema of the ‘70s. But it may be that things have to get worse – more box office bombs, more Hollywood hand-wringing -- before they get better.Have you seen “Our Brand Is Crisis,” starring Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton? What about “Steve Jobs,” which tells the story of one of the most revered figures of recent years? How about “Rock the Kasbah,” starring uber-cool Bill Murray? Or “Pan,” with box office draw Hugh Jackman? “The Walk,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has made enormous riches over the years in movies like “Back to the Future,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Forrest Gump?” These movies are part of a long list of 2015 films that tanked at the box office, and the list could stretch as the year goes on. The trouble started months ago, with the summer slate of what should have been blockbusters. But as we get into Oscar season – when the prestige films, aimed at grown-ups and academy voters, are dragged out for end-of-year display – it’s becoming clear that something has gone seriously wrong, especially with the ability of a certain kind of movie to draw a big audience. Smart, quality movies, the kind driven by characters and not special effects and gross-out comedy, are having a hard time. (OK, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” bombed as well.) Billions of dollars are at stake trying to figure out what’s happened and how Hollywood can line up its output with what people will come out to see. Every year, of course, some films exceed expectations and some fall below them. And films can earn back their expenses beyond the box office. This year, the list of disappointments stretches longer than usual -- even with a reasonably healthy economy -- and on-demand revenues are not going to save them. There are so many bombs, you can line them up in whatever category you like. Variety editorial director Peter Bart, in an insightful column, looks at the issue of smart, “specialty films,” using the film “Burnt,” with Bradley Cooper and Siena Miller, in his lead. The theories he floats all make some sense, including the Oscar season theory: “Distributors are blowing it by mandating that every ‘smart’ movie has to come out in a tight corridor in the fall; there’s too much to see in too short a time,” he writes. “It’s autumn, and prospective filmgoers are also involved in football, school activities and Donald Trump.” The most important of the ideas – especially if we’re talking about prestigious, character-driven films -- is that television has just gotten so good that it’s keeping people at home. Here’s Bart:
The current crop of movies seems somehow diminished by the media fixation on the present ‘golden age of television.’ The water cooler conversation — online version — focuses on binge-watched digital shows, or even an evanescent YouTube act. During the summer, the kids put that all aside, and respond faithfully to their must-see Marvel Comics movie opening. But come fall, their parents aren’t as ready to leave the house.Over the last few months we’ve heard about “peak TV” – that television had reached a limit and the audience would not keep expanding, leading some programs to wither. That may still be happening, but the main casualty is probably the movies. The TV-will-defeat-film argument is, admittedly, a throwback to the ‘50s and early ‘60s. “That moment witnessed the ultimate cord-cutting: Hollywood’s once-loyal ‘habit’ audience suddenly stopped going to the movies,” Bart writes. “More than half the audience simply vaporized — due to an earlier golden age of TV.” But TV in the ‘50s was not nearly as sophisticated as it is today: It’s hard to think of many movies that are legitimately as good as the best of what’s on television— as epic and compelling "Game of Thrones," or as as meticulously and beautifully rendered as FX's "Fargo" (OK, another Coen brothers film could stand up to it). One thing that’s different today than in earlier decades is the enormous anxiety around public spaces, including cinemas, because of theater shootings. Some people will always want to see a movie the weekend it opens, or in the cinema. But for a lot of the audience, the safety of home, or the plane, or whatever, could be discouraging moviegoing. There’s at least one other reason likely for the slow crushing of movies by television. We’ve been hearing about problems of diversity in Hollywood for more than a decade now. Spike Lee’s feature debut, “She’s Gotta Have It,” came out in 1986, Robert Townsend’s “Hollywood Shuffle” in 1987; both sparked a debate about race. The discussion of underrepresentation of women in film has been more recent but it’s become full-throated now. Television is hardly a diversity wonderland yet, but the debate has been accompanied by real progress. How many cinematic parallels do we get to acclaimed and award-winning shows like "Jane the Virgin," "Empire," "Transparent" or “Orange Is the New Black”? The movies may grow from the crisis – as they did after the impasse of the mid-‘60s, which led to the justly celebrated maverick cinema of the ‘70s. But it may be that things have to get worse – more box office bombs, more Hollywood hand-wringing -- before they get better.
There is much more to Adele than just her voice: 10 things you didn’t know about the record-breaking artist
From being discovered on Myspace, to Sarah Palin playing a special part in her rise to U.S. stardom, to crippling stage fright there is a lot more to Adele than just a voice.
Donald Trump is too terrifying for the GOP: Even the Koch brothers cower away from criticism in fear of his blowback
The New York Times is out with a new report today revealing the debilitating depths of the GOP establishment's fear of a dominating Donald Trump overrunning the Republican presidential primary process to win the nomination. Even the most well funded GOP backed political organization, like the ominous Koch network which has pledged to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 race, has opted out of directly challenging the domineering frontrunner for fear of setting off a war of words with the one-man insult machine and former "Apprentice" boss. In fact, according to the Times, Charles and David Koch abandoned their early effort to undercut Trump's rise for fear of "more ferocious counterattacks" being lobbed their way by The Donald:
Two of the most potent financial networks in Republican politics, that of the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer and another led by the industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch, have each had preliminary conversations about beginning an anti-Trump campaign, according to strategists involved. But Mr. Trump has already mocked Mr. Singer and the Kochs, and officials linked to them said they were reluctant to incur more ferocious counterattacks.With Trump proving he has the gall to mock the physical disabilities of those with whom he disagrees, it is no wonder the elderly billionaires want to keep their anti-Trump antics, like so much of their political dealings, shrouded in secrecy. Just because the Kochs are abstaining from funding anti-Trump campaign ads like Ohio Governor's John Kasich's Super PAC has done, doesn't mean they've given up all avenues of hamstringing the presidential wannabe. Trump was one of the only top-tier candidates not invited to the brother's exclusive annual summer gathering and they've denied his campaign access to their state-of-the-art voter database.The New York Times is out with a new report today revealing the debilitating depths of the GOP establishment's fear of a dominating Donald Trump overrunning the Republican presidential primary process to win the nomination. Even the most well funded GOP backed political organization, like the ominous Koch network which has pledged to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 race, has opted out of directly challenging the domineering frontrunner for fear of setting off a war of words with the one-man insult machine and former "Apprentice" boss. In fact, according to the Times, Charles and David Koch abandoned their early effort to undercut Trump's rise for fear of "more ferocious counterattacks" being lobbed their way by The Donald:"You have to deal with Trump berating you every day of the week,” explained a strategist briefed on the thinking of both groups.
Two of the most potent financial networks in Republican politics, that of the hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer and another led by the industrialists Charles G. and David H. Koch, have each had preliminary conversations about beginning an anti-Trump campaign, according to strategists involved. But Mr. Trump has already mocked Mr. Singer and the Kochs, and officials linked to them said they were reluctant to incur more ferocious counterattacks.With Trump proving he has the gall to mock the physical disabilities of those with whom he disagrees, it is no wonder the elderly billionaires want to keep their anti-Trump antics, like so much of their political dealings, shrouded in secrecy. Just because the Kochs are abstaining from funding anti-Trump campaign ads like Ohio Governor's John Kasich's Super PAC has done, doesn't mean they've given up all avenues of hamstringing the presidential wannabe. Trump was one of the only top-tier candidates not invited to the brother's exclusive annual summer gathering and they've denied his campaign access to their state-of-the-art voter database."You have to deal with Trump berating you every day of the week,” explained a strategist briefed on the thinking of both groups.
White killers go to Burger King: Race, Planned Parenthood and our diseased white privilege
Privilege consists of unearned advantages. Privilege is a system of power relationships. And privilege consists of all of the inconveniences, challenges and opportunities denied that a person does not have to ever think or worry about. On Friday afternoon, a white man named Robert Lewis Dear attacked a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He killed three people and injured 11 others. One of the dead is a police officer. Dear then engaged in a several hours-long gun battle and standoff with local authorities. He was captured alive. Robert Lewis Dear reportedly told police “no more baby parts” after being arrested. Apparently, Friday’s attack on Planned Parenthood is part of a longer pattern of violence by right-wing terrorists against the providers of women’s reproductive health services in the United States. White privilege takes many forms. As was seen in Colorado Springs on Friday, white privilege also consists of being able to kill three people (including one cop), injure 11 more, and then survive unscathed. Robert Lewis Dear is not the only white man to have used this unique and near exclusive type of privilege in American society. James Eagan Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 in a mass shooting at a Colorado-area movie theater. He was not killed by the police. Jared Lee Loughner shot 18 people, killing six of them. He was taken alive by the police. White people also have the unique privilege of brandishing guns in public without consequence—and to even aim them at America’s police and other authorities without being killed. White gun fetishists Islamophobes in Texas harass Muslims attending religious services. “Open carry” advocates, almost all of them white men, routinely march in public with weapons. Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who refused to pay his grazing fees, used an armed militia to stop federal agents from arresting him. In all of these instances—and many more—white people are not killed (and usually not even arrested or detained) by the police. And in the case of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the police both arrested him without incident and then took him to Burger King for a meal. By contrast, black and brown people are not treated so kindly by America’s police. Black Americans are shot, abused and beaten up by America’s police and other white-identified vigilantes while surrendering, sleeping, seeking help after being in a car accident, walking down the street, with their hands up, showing identification, standing in a crowd, listening to music, riding bicycles, playing in the park, and being totally submissive and compliant. Muslim and Arab-Americans most certainly cannot access Robert Lewis Dear’s, Jared Lee Loughner’s, or James Eagan Holmes’ unique type of white privilege. When a white person commits an act of mass violence he or she is “a lone gunman,” “mentally ill” or “disturbed.” White men commit a disproportionate percentage of the mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the United States. Yet, their actions are never taken to be reflective of white men as a group. The mere suggestion of this basic fact is met with outrage by Republicans and the right-wing news entertainment complex. However, when an “Arab” or a “Muslim” commits a crime, said event is processed by the White Gaze as an indictment of an entire population and to summon the boogeyman of “Muslim Terrorism.” In all, whiteness is freedom from collective responsibility and indictment; to be the Other is an a priori assumption where the actions of one non-white person means that all members of the group should be punished and made suspect. White people, even those who have committed horrific crimes, survive their encounters with America’s police for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the lives of black and brown people are systematically devalued in American society. This is demonstrated by how black Americans have shorter life spans, earn less money, possess less wealth, receive substandard medical care, go to worse schools, and live in under-resourced neighborhoods as compared to white Americans. The police, like Americans as a whole, are taught to devalue the lives of black people by a news media and broader popular culture that routinely circulates stereotypical, racist, debased, and derogatory images of non-whites. American society also suffers from very high levels of racial segregation—research from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 75 percent of white people do not have one non-white friend. Other research shows that white Americans lack empathy for the suffering, pain and humanity of non-whites. The sum effect of all these cultural forces is that America’s police are much more likely to kill and abuse black and brown people than they are whites. Police are enabled in this routine violation of the human rights of black and brown people because the former are rarely if ever prosecuted (or even charged) for their crimes. America’s police are also protected by a white American public that supports a racist criminal justice system. People chant “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “Black Lives Matter” because they know that every encounter--however mundane--between a black citizen and America’s police could end in unprovoked death and violence. The Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, and how the gunman was subsequently captured alive even after killing a police officer, is more proof of comedian Louis C.K.’s wisdom that there is no better deal than being white, straight and male in America. As he suggests, it is one hell of a deal if you can get it. The ways in which white people can commit monstrously violent acts and survive, while people of color are killed by the state for far less serious offenses ( if they have committed any “crime” at all), is a ledger of death across the color line. This balance sheet of death has existed for centuries in the United States. In the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama, it still shows no signs of equaling out. 
Privilege consists of unearned advantages. Privilege is a system of power relationships. And privilege consists of all of the inconveniences, challenges and opportunities denied that a person does not have to ever think or worry about. On Friday afternoon, a white man named Robert Lewis Dear attacked a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He killed three people and injured 11 others. One of the dead is a police officer. Dear then engaged in a several hours-long gun battle and standoff with local authorities. He was captured alive. Robert Lewis Dear reportedly told police “no more baby parts” after being arrested. Apparently, Friday’s attack on Planned Parenthood is part of a longer pattern of violence by right-wing terrorists against the providers of women’s reproductive health services in the United States. White privilege takes many forms. As was seen in Colorado Springs on Friday, white privilege also consists of being able to kill three people (including one cop), injure 11 more, and then survive unscathed. Robert Lewis Dear is not the only white man to have used this unique and near exclusive type of privilege in American society. James Eagan Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 in a mass shooting at a Colorado-area movie theater. He was not killed by the police. Jared Lee Loughner shot 18 people, killing six of them. He was taken alive by the police. White people also have the unique privilege of brandishing guns in public without consequence—and to even aim them at America’s police and other authorities without being killed. White gun fetishists Islamophobes in Texas harass Muslims attending religious services. “Open carry” advocates, almost all of them white men, routinely march in public with weapons. Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who refused to pay his grazing fees, used an armed militia to stop federal agents from arresting him. In all of these instances—and many more—white people are not killed (and usually not even arrested or detained) by the police. And in the case of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the police both arrested him without incident and then took him to Burger King for a meal. By contrast, black and brown people are not treated so kindly by America’s police. Black Americans are shot, abused and beaten up by America’s police and other white-identified vigilantes while surrendering, sleeping, seeking help after being in a car accident, walking down the street, with their hands up, showing identification, standing in a crowd, listening to music, riding bicycles, playing in the park, and being totally submissive and compliant. Muslim and Arab-Americans most certainly cannot access Robert Lewis Dear’s, Jared Lee Loughner’s, or James Eagan Holmes’ unique type of white privilege. When a white person commits an act of mass violence he or she is “a lone gunman,” “mentally ill” or “disturbed.” White men commit a disproportionate percentage of the mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the United States. Yet, their actions are never taken to be reflective of white men as a group. The mere suggestion of this basic fact is met with outrage by Republicans and the right-wing news entertainment complex. However, when an “Arab” or a “Muslim” commits a crime, said event is processed by the White Gaze as an indictment of an entire population and to summon the boogeyman of “Muslim Terrorism.” In all, whiteness is freedom from collective responsibility and indictment; to be the Other is an a priori assumption where the actions of one non-white person means that all members of the group should be punished and made suspect. White people, even those who have committed horrific crimes, survive their encounters with America’s police for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the lives of black and brown people are systematically devalued in American society. This is demonstrated by how black Americans have shorter life spans, earn less money, possess less wealth, receive substandard medical care, go to worse schools, and live in under-resourced neighborhoods as compared to white Americans. The police, like Americans as a whole, are taught to devalue the lives of black people by a news media and broader popular culture that routinely circulates stereotypical, racist, debased, and derogatory images of non-whites. American society also suffers from very high levels of racial segregation—research from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 75 percent of white people do not have one non-white friend. Other research shows that white Americans lack empathy for the suffering, pain and humanity of non-whites. The sum effect of all these cultural forces is that America’s police are much more likely to kill and abuse black and brown people than they are whites. Police are enabled in this routine violation of the human rights of black and brown people because the former are rarely if ever prosecuted (or even charged) for their crimes. America’s police are also protected by a white American public that supports a racist criminal justice system. People chant “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “Black Lives Matter” because they know that every encounter--however mundane--between a black citizen and America’s police could end in unprovoked death and violence. The Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, and how the gunman was subsequently captured alive even after killing a police officer, is more proof of comedian Louis C.K.’s wisdom that there is no better deal than being white, straight and male in America. As he suggests, it is one hell of a deal if you can get it. The ways in which white people can commit monstrously violent acts and survive, while people of color are killed by the state for far less serious offenses ( if they have committed any “crime” at all), is a ledger of death across the color line. This balance sheet of death has existed for centuries in the United States. In the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama, it still shows no signs of equaling out.
Privilege consists of unearned advantages. Privilege is a system of power relationships. And privilege consists of all of the inconveniences, challenges and opportunities denied that a person does not have to ever think or worry about. On Friday afternoon, a white man named Robert Lewis Dear attacked a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He killed three people and injured 11 others. One of the dead is a police officer. Dear then engaged in a several hours-long gun battle and standoff with local authorities. He was captured alive. Robert Lewis Dear reportedly told police “no more baby parts” after being arrested. Apparently, Friday’s attack on Planned Parenthood is part of a longer pattern of violence by right-wing terrorists against the providers of women’s reproductive health services in the United States. White privilege takes many forms. As was seen in Colorado Springs on Friday, white privilege also consists of being able to kill three people (including one cop), injure 11 more, and then survive unscathed. Robert Lewis Dear is not the only white man to have used this unique and near exclusive type of privilege in American society. James Eagan Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 in a mass shooting at a Colorado-area movie theater. He was not killed by the police. Jared Lee Loughner shot 18 people, killing six of them. He was taken alive by the police. White people also have the unique privilege of brandishing guns in public without consequence—and to even aim them at America’s police and other authorities without being killed. White gun fetishists Islamophobes in Texas harass Muslims attending religious services. “Open carry” advocates, almost all of them white men, routinely march in public with weapons. Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who refused to pay his grazing fees, used an armed militia to stop federal agents from arresting him. In all of these instances—and many more—white people are not killed (and usually not even arrested or detained) by the police. And in the case of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the police both arrested him without incident and then took him to Burger King for a meal. By contrast, black and brown people are not treated so kindly by America’s police. Black Americans are shot, abused and beaten up by America’s police and other white-identified vigilantes while surrendering, sleeping, seeking help after being in a car accident, walking down the street, with their hands up, showing identification, standing in a crowd, listening to music, riding bicycles, playing in the park, and being totally submissive and compliant. Muslim and Arab-Americans most certainly cannot access Robert Lewis Dear’s, Jared Lee Loughner’s, or James Eagan Holmes’ unique type of white privilege. When a white person commits an act of mass violence he or she is “a lone gunman,” “mentally ill” or “disturbed.” White men commit a disproportionate percentage of the mass shootings and domestic terrorism in the United States. Yet, their actions are never taken to be reflective of white men as a group. The mere suggestion of this basic fact is met with outrage by Republicans and the right-wing news entertainment complex. However, when an “Arab” or a “Muslim” commits a crime, said event is processed by the White Gaze as an indictment of an entire population and to summon the boogeyman of “Muslim Terrorism.” In all, whiteness is freedom from collective responsibility and indictment; to be the Other is an a priori assumption where the actions of one non-white person means that all members of the group should be punished and made suspect. White people, even those who have committed horrific crimes, survive their encounters with America’s police for a variety of reasons. Primarily, the lives of black and brown people are systematically devalued in American society. This is demonstrated by how black Americans have shorter life spans, earn less money, possess less wealth, receive substandard medical care, go to worse schools, and live in under-resourced neighborhoods as compared to white Americans. The police, like Americans as a whole, are taught to devalue the lives of black people by a news media and broader popular culture that routinely circulates stereotypical, racist, debased, and derogatory images of non-whites. American society also suffers from very high levels of racial segregation—research from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that 75 percent of white people do not have one non-white friend. Other research shows that white Americans lack empathy for the suffering, pain and humanity of non-whites. The sum effect of all these cultural forces is that America’s police are much more likely to kill and abuse black and brown people than they are whites. Police are enabled in this routine violation of the human rights of black and brown people because the former are rarely if ever prosecuted (or even charged) for their crimes. America’s police are also protected by a white American public that supports a racist criminal justice system. People chant “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” and “Black Lives Matter” because they know that every encounter--however mundane--between a black citizen and America’s police could end in unprovoked death and violence. The Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, and how the gunman was subsequently captured alive even after killing a police officer, is more proof of comedian Louis C.K.’s wisdom that there is no better deal than being white, straight and male in America. As he suggests, it is one hell of a deal if you can get it. The ways in which white people can commit monstrously violent acts and survive, while people of color are killed by the state for far less serious offenses ( if they have committed any “crime” at all), is a ledger of death across the color line. This balance sheet of death has existed for centuries in the United States. In the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama, it still shows no signs of equaling out.
Ted Cruz’s ridiculous “condom police” denial: “No rubber shortage” doesn’t mean no problem for women and birth control
He may be arrogant, uninformed and flat out dishonest, but give him that much — Ted Cruz can turn a colorful phrase. On Monday, the Republican hopeful spoke to Iowans at a town hall meeting, and gave a fascinating response to a question about "making contraception available to women who want to control their own bodies." "Imagine for a second you're Hillary Clinton," he told the audience. "You're trying to think, 'How do I run?' Well you can't run on the economy because we have the lowest percentage of Americans working any year since 1977. You can't run on Obamacare because millions of people have lost their jobs, lost their health care, lost their doctors, seen their premiums skyrocket. You certainly can't run on foreign policy because every country you touched as secretary of state is a disaster." He then paused dramatically, saying, "So what do you do? You go, 'Ah, ha! Condom police. I'm gonna make up a completely made up threat and try to scare a bunch of folks into thinking someone's going to steal their birth control. What nonsense." I don't know about you, but I am so relieved that conservatives believe that attacks on women's reproductive rights are "a completely made up threat." I guess those ongoing, conservative-fueled, trumped up investigations of alleged Planned Parenthood "misuse of federal funds," those campaigns for incredibly restrictive laws around abortion, the forcing women to have invasive and humiliating ultrasounds before granting approval for them to terminate pregnancy — were all just a hallucination. Cruz also told the Monday crowd, "I have been a conservative my entire life. I have never met anybody, any conservative who wants to ban contraceptives. As I noted, Heidi and I, we have two little girls. I'm very glad we don't have seventeen… Last I checked, we don't have a rubber shortage in America. Like look, when I was in college, we had a machine in the bathroom. You put 50 cents in -- and voila! Anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but it's an utterly made-up nonsense issue." I guess it was just made up earlier this year, when Republicans in Colorado refused to fund a successful, safe IUD program to reduce teen pregnancy. In an interview with the Colorado Statesman, Republican Rep. Lori Saine said at the time, "When subsidizing a commodity, you also reward the behavior surrounding the commodity. So in this scenario, the government is subsidizing sex." And surely Republican-backed abstinence-only sex "education" — like the 2012 Texas Republican education platform that featured "the opposition of condom distribution" — was about something other than, uh, opposing birth control. Like when, earlier this year, Texas House Republicans voted to divert funding from HIV screening to abstinence only education. Surely Cruz must have heard about it from Texas State Rep. Stuart Spitzer — who calls him "my favorite senator." Likewise, it was all just a dream when Republicans successfully pushed for businesses to have the right refuse to cover contraception in employee healthcare, on so-called religious grounds. Last March, totally chill with contraceptives Ted Cruz declared, "Time and time again, President Obama has granted exemptions to the politically powerful, yet refuses to grant the same leniency to those for whom Obamacare's contraception mandate infringes on their beliefs." In June, he called the Hobby Lobby decision "a landmark victory for religious liberty…. This ruling is a repudiation of the Obama Administration’s untenable position that people with sincerely held religious beliefs should be forced to comply with an unconstitutional mandate while a parade of waivers, exemptions, and delays are granted for purely commercial and political interests." So it sounds maybe he has heard of conservatives opposed to birth control? Perhaps Cruz, clearly a great fan of Trojans, believes that when we speak of birth control we are only referring to condoms. Maybe when the rest of us talk about contraception, he thinks "monstrous baby killing." After all, at a 2013 Values Voter Summit, he repeatedly referred to Plan B as abortion-inducing, saying the Obama administration was telling "the Little Sisters of the Poor that they must provide abortifacients or pay millions of dollars in government fines." As RH Reality Check explains in terms so simple even Ted Cruz might understand, "Birth control is not an abortifacient because birth control does not cause abortions." Cruz may in his delusional heart of hearts believe that because he knows how to use a vending machine, he's pro-birth control. What he desperately doesn't understand is how birth control that isn't dispensed from the wall of a public restroom (or, to be fair, purchased off the shelf from Target) works. He doesn't know the difference between contraception and abortion. He doesn't support birth control when it's covered by insurance or taught to students. And he certainly doesn't grasp anything the Condom Police could teach him about how to safely and realistically prevent unwanted pregnancies. He has, however, once again distinguished himself as expert on a subject he does know — nonsense.
November 30, 2015
“Seinfeld” cast reaches out to dying fan with heartfelt birthday messages
Jim Calder lost a two-year battle with non-smoking lung cancer on November 7, shortly before his 67th birthday. His son, James, a blogger at HuffPo, used the platform to grab the attention of “Seinfeld” cast-members, asking them for short in-character birthday messages. John O’Hurley (“J. Peterman”) was the first to respond, followed by Larry Thomas (“Soup Nazi”), Danny Woodburn (Mickey), Patrick Warburton (“David Puddy”), Wayne Knight (“Newman”), and several others. In lieu of a video, Michael Richards (“Cosmo Kramer”) scheduled a personal phone call with Jim. “We never dreamed we would be able to get in touch with any of the top four lead actors,” the younger Calder wrote, “let alone some of the actors who played supporting yet legendary characters.” The day before Jim passed, he received his final birthday message from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Elaine”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5UM... Read the full story at The Daily Dot.Jim Calder lost a two-year battle with non-smoking lung cancer on November 7, shortly before his 67th birthday. His son, James, a blogger at HuffPo, used the platform to grab the attention of “Seinfeld” cast-members, asking them for short in-character birthday messages. John O’Hurley (“J. Peterman”) was the first to respond, followed by Larry Thomas (“Soup Nazi”), Danny Woodburn (Mickey), Patrick Warburton (“David Puddy”), Wayne Knight (“Newman”), and several others. In lieu of a video, Michael Richards (“Cosmo Kramer”) scheduled a personal phone call with Jim. “We never dreamed we would be able to get in touch with any of the top four lead actors,” the younger Calder wrote, “let alone some of the actors who played supporting yet legendary characters.” The day before Jim passed, he received his final birthday message from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Elaine”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5UM... Read the full story at The Daily Dot.Jim Calder lost a two-year battle with non-smoking lung cancer on November 7, shortly before his 67th birthday. His son, James, a blogger at HuffPo, used the platform to grab the attention of “Seinfeld” cast-members, asking them for short in-character birthday messages. John O’Hurley (“J. Peterman”) was the first to respond, followed by Larry Thomas (“Soup Nazi”), Danny Woodburn (Mickey), Patrick Warburton (“David Puddy”), Wayne Knight (“Newman”), and several others. In lieu of a video, Michael Richards (“Cosmo Kramer”) scheduled a personal phone call with Jim. “We never dreamed we would be able to get in touch with any of the top four lead actors,” the younger Calder wrote, “let alone some of the actors who played supporting yet legendary characters.” The day before Jim passed, he received his final birthday message from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Elaine”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5UM... Read the full story at The Daily Dot.
Fox News host hijacks American history: Inside the deceptive & Islamophobic revisionism of Brian Kilmeade
Another book has been issued by another popular right-wing personality in an effort to construct a narrative framing virtually the whole of American history as a war against Islam. "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade joins Glenn Beck as the most popular purveyors of the notion that the infant United States’ 1801 conflict with the Barbary pirates of Islamic North Africa was a war that, in Kilmeade’s words, “we are still fighting.” This effort comes specifically by way of a book-length expansion on the historical episode that Beck had chosen to open his own book, “It IS About Islam,” a thoroughly racist affair I’ve written about previously. Both Beck and Kilmeade portray the slave-taking and plundering pirates as monsters whose threat to Americans was not neutralized until President Jefferson deviated from the diplomatic strategy of Presidents Washington and Adams to take war to the Islamic Maghreb. By lacing the skirmish with the pirates into our national DNA, Kilmeade and Beck retrofit right-wing Islamophobia onto our nation’s founding to define the United States as genetically anti-Islam -- and, conversely, to define Islam as anti-American. Though not topping the New York Times bestsellers list like Beck’s, Kilmeade’s anti-Islamic effort is doing well and helping to cement the narrative. Readers are apparently hungry for the facile, laughable case that because of some minimal battle with pirates in the late 17th and early 18th centuries the United States is somehow intrinsically at war with Islam. This narrative sanctifies military conflict with Muslims as part of our nationalist quasi-religion: American exceptionalism. Exceptionalism’s religiosity posits the United States as providentially peerless, the one nation blessed by God; but the addition of an eternal enemy, i.e. Islam, draws more fully a Biblical-grade narrative. Any good religious story needs a foil for the blessed hero, after all. Kilmeade and Beck’s aims are embarrassingly transparent. The attempt is to cast our national narrative in terms of a sort of holy war. The threat of “Islamic extremism,” which Beck contends is really just Islam, is an existential threat, at least to our way of life, if not wholly and mortally so. But any sort of complex webs of causality that produce terrorism and retaliation can be dismissed and replaced with a hamfisted good-versus-evil narrative, updated only slightly to account for a degree of post-God Enlightenment principles out of which the nation was forged. Though not the explicit call for more an extremist Christian counter to Islam that Beck’s book is, Kilmeade’s tale still takes the shape of a holy war, with a prophet, in the form of a Founding Father, encountering and vanquishing the evil forces against which we define our own righteousness. It’s still a parable. Thus, Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t the complex products of geopolitics, war, failed states, the oil economy, and garden variety religious fundamentalism known to all faiths, but, rather, “the latest incarnation of a problem we’ve faced since our earliest days of independence,” as Kilmeade writes. Jefferson’s war is one that “we are still fighting.” In Kilmeade’s fantasy, it has always been through the vanquishing of the evil Muslims that we know our own goodness, then and now. And so the project is thinly veiled prescription, not just historical description, its ostensible purpose. It’s no accident that Kilmeade’s story syncs with the present: Jefferson, a former secretary of state, wins the presidency and abandons the dangerously naive diplomacy of his former position. It’s hard not to detect an analogy to the foreign policy of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Obama White House in the way Kilmeade presents his case. In the most concise case made to prospective readers on the dust jacket:
“Over the previous fifteen years, as a diplomat and then as secretary of state, Jefferson had tried to work with the Barbary states (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco). Unfortunately, he found it impossible to negotiate with people who believed their religion justified the plunder and enslavement of non-Muslims...So President Jefferson decided to move beyond diplomacy...launching the Barbary Wars and beginning America’s journey toward future superpower status.”In other words: Jefferson learned that Muslims cannot be reasoned with like other humans. And not only did the decision to opt for war make us safe, but it initiated the military project that would eventually establish the U.S. as the globe’s most powerful empire, our rightful place. War with Muslims is a winning strategy--that’s the takeaway. And the Obama/Clinton impulse to pursue diplomacy--e.g., the P5+1 Iran nuclear agreement, working with Moscow on Syrian President Assad, and the ongoing intensive coalition-seeking for containment of ISIS--will be shown to be dangerous folly, goes Kilmeade’s implicit assertion. Islamic extremism of the present is no different than that faced at our nation’s founding, since these are “enemies who believe their religion justifies their cruelty and their plunder.” It doesn’t take Noam Chomsky to find the gaping hole in Kilmeade’s logic. Kilmeade obsesses over the Barbary practice of slavery of non-Muslims and their “plunder,” which we’re to understand as antithetical to the incipient American nation. This is where Kilmeade’s whole project calamitously backfires. If your intent is to exhort against the horrific dangers of religiously inspired slavery and plunder on a world-historical level during those years, you don’t look to the Barbary states of North Africa; you focus squarely on the United States. The American transatlantic slave trade was vastly worse than Barbary slavery, and it was founded on Christianity. Writing in the Journal of Religious Thought, Larry R. Morrison finds that “nearly every proslavery pamphlet, or article, or speaker made at least some reference to a biblical sanction of slavery.” Like the Quranic justification so frighteningly described by Kilmeade and Beck, Morrison writes that, to sanction the awful brutality of American slavery, “the appeal was always to the literal wording of Scripture, the authority of the Bible.” The American Christianity of the early decades of the nation was a savage culture, if we’re to believe that the Barbary culture was. In fact, it was more so. The other Barbary crime, their tendency to “plunder,” is far exceeded, too, by that of the early American nation. And, like the Barbary pirates’ Islamic justification, the American theft was powered by Christian morality and notions of superiority and exceptionalism. From the earliest landing of Christian fundamentalists on other people’s land on the east coast of the eventual United States to the imperialist expansion to the Pacific under the aegis of the explicitly Christian “Manifest Destiny,” the theft of land and genocidal slaughter of native peoples was a Christian endeavor, if we’re to understand the piracy of the Barbary states to be Islamic. A fairer appraisal of each would relegate the religious component to only the means by which American and Barbary brutality could be legitimized by the powerful practitioners and beneficiaries. “Because God said it’s OK” is a tired, but no less effective, way of normalizing a mode of control and power. A line of argument that insists on Islam during the age of Jefferson as a religion that inspires slavery and plunder is to simultaneously bring Christianity under indictment. And to insist that Islam is permanently guilty for its adherents’ crimes in 1801 is to invite others to associate Christianity of today, especially the nationalist-infused sort practiced by Evangelical white Americans, with some of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the modern era. Beck chooses to end his book “It IS About Islam,” which begins with Kilmeade’s case about Jefferson and the Barbary wars in brief, with the words “All lives matter.” Using Kilmeade and Beck’s logic, one is free to condemn Beck for the whole white Christian history of state violence against black Americans, from the state-sanctioned slavery of the nation’s founding to police violence today. To lionize or secularly canonize the vicious Christian enslavers who founded the nation and invoke the racist reactionary rebuttal to the Black Lives Matter movement of today is to present a continuity of justified white supremacist and Christian state violence against black Americans. If one wanted to, one could condemn broad swaths of Christianity (or all of it, with Beck’s reasoning) in the very same way Kilmeade and Beck instruct us to fear Islam. But where can innocence be found if we're each held to account for the worst crimes committed in the name of our beliefs? By Kilmeade and Beck’s reasoning, humanity becomes a metaphysical circular firing squad, with associative guilt leaving no one safe. With the full power of the U.S. military essentially pointed at the Middle East, it is extraordinarily reckless to makes claims that imply, or say outright, that Islam is our national enemy, now, at the founding, and for all time. It’s scarcely distinguishable from the logic that animates the attack on Paris or New York.Another book has been issued by another popular right-wing personality in an effort to construct a narrative framing virtually the whole of American history as a war against Islam. "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade joins Glenn Beck as the most popular purveyors of the notion that the infant United States’ 1801 conflict with the Barbary pirates of Islamic North Africa was a war that, in Kilmeade’s words, “we are still fighting.” This effort comes specifically by way of a book-length expansion on the historical episode that Beck had chosen to open his own book, “It IS About Islam,” a thoroughly racist affair I’ve written about previously. Both Beck and Kilmeade portray the slave-taking and plundering pirates as monsters whose threat to Americans was not neutralized until President Jefferson deviated from the diplomatic strategy of Presidents Washington and Adams to take war to the Islamic Maghreb. By lacing the skirmish with the pirates into our national DNA, Kilmeade and Beck retrofit right-wing Islamophobia onto our nation’s founding to define the United States as genetically anti-Islam -- and, conversely, to define Islam as anti-American. Though not topping the New York Times bestsellers list like Beck’s, Kilmeade’s anti-Islamic effort is doing well and helping to cement the narrative. Readers are apparently hungry for the facile, laughable case that because of some minimal battle with pirates in the late 17th and early 18th centuries the United States is somehow intrinsically at war with Islam. This narrative sanctifies military conflict with Muslims as part of our nationalist quasi-religion: American exceptionalism. Exceptionalism’s religiosity posits the United States as providentially peerless, the one nation blessed by God; but the addition of an eternal enemy, i.e. Islam, draws more fully a Biblical-grade narrative. Any good religious story needs a foil for the blessed hero, after all. Kilmeade and Beck’s aims are embarrassingly transparent. The attempt is to cast our national narrative in terms of a sort of holy war. The threat of “Islamic extremism,” which Beck contends is really just Islam, is an existential threat, at least to our way of life, if not wholly and mortally so. But any sort of complex webs of causality that produce terrorism and retaliation can be dismissed and replaced with a hamfisted good-versus-evil narrative, updated only slightly to account for a degree of post-God Enlightenment principles out of which the nation was forged. Though not the explicit call for more an extremist Christian counter to Islam that Beck’s book is, Kilmeade’s tale still takes the shape of a holy war, with a prophet, in the form of a Founding Father, encountering and vanquishing the evil forces against which we define our own righteousness. It’s still a parable. Thus, Al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t the complex products of geopolitics, war, failed states, the oil economy, and garden variety religious fundamentalism known to all faiths, but, rather, “the latest incarnation of a problem we’ve faced since our earliest days of independence,” as Kilmeade writes. Jefferson’s war is one that “we are still fighting.” In Kilmeade’s fantasy, it has always been through the vanquishing of the evil Muslims that we know our own goodness, then and now. And so the project is thinly veiled prescription, not just historical description, its ostensible purpose. It’s no accident that Kilmeade’s story syncs with the present: Jefferson, a former secretary of state, wins the presidency and abandons the dangerously naive diplomacy of his former position. It’s hard not to detect an analogy to the foreign policy of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Obama White House in the way Kilmeade presents his case. In the most concise case made to prospective readers on the dust jacket:
“Over the previous fifteen years, as a diplomat and then as secretary of state, Jefferson had tried to work with the Barbary states (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco). Unfortunately, he found it impossible to negotiate with people who believed their religion justified the plunder and enslavement of non-Muslims...So President Jefferson decided to move beyond diplomacy...launching the Barbary Wars and beginning America’s journey toward future superpower status.”In other words: Jefferson learned that Muslims cannot be reasoned with like other humans. And not only did the decision to opt for war make us safe, but it initiated the military project that would eventually establish the U.S. as the globe’s most powerful empire, our rightful place. War with Muslims is a winning strategy--that’s the takeaway. And the Obama/Clinton impulse to pursue diplomacy--e.g., the P5+1 Iran nuclear agreement, working with Moscow on Syrian President Assad, and the ongoing intensive coalition-seeking for containment of ISIS--will be shown to be dangerous folly, goes Kilmeade’s implicit assertion. Islamic extremism of the present is no different than that faced at our nation’s founding, since these are “enemies who believe their religion justifies their cruelty and their plunder.” It doesn’t take Noam Chomsky to find the gaping hole in Kilmeade’s logic. Kilmeade obsesses over the Barbary practice of slavery of non-Muslims and their “plunder,” which we’re to understand as antithetical to the incipient American nation. This is where Kilmeade’s whole project calamitously backfires. If your intent is to exhort against the horrific dangers of religiously inspired slavery and plunder on a world-historical level during those years, you don’t look to the Barbary states of North Africa; you focus squarely on the United States. The American transatlantic slave trade was vastly worse than Barbary slavery, and it was founded on Christianity. Writing in the Journal of Religious Thought, Larry R. Morrison finds that “nearly every proslavery pamphlet, or article, or speaker made at least some reference to a biblical sanction of slavery.” Like the Quranic justification so frighteningly described by Kilmeade and Beck, Morrison writes that, to sanction the awful brutality of American slavery, “the appeal was always to the literal wording of Scripture, the authority of the Bible.” The American Christianity of the early decades of the nation was a savage culture, if we’re to believe that the Barbary culture was. In fact, it was more so. The other Barbary crime, their tendency to “plunder,” is far exceeded, too, by that of the early American nation. And, like the Barbary pirates’ Islamic justification, the American theft was powered by Christian morality and notions of superiority and exceptionalism. From the earliest landing of Christian fundamentalists on other people’s land on the east coast of the eventual United States to the imperialist expansion to the Pacific under the aegis of the explicitly Christian “Manifest Destiny,” the theft of land and genocidal slaughter of native peoples was a Christian endeavor, if we’re to understand the piracy of the Barbary states to be Islamic. A fairer appraisal of each would relegate the religious component to only the means by which American and Barbary brutality could be legitimized by the powerful practitioners and beneficiaries. “Because God said it’s OK” is a tired, but no less effective, way of normalizing a mode of control and power. A line of argument that insists on Islam during the age of Jefferson as a religion that inspires slavery and plunder is to simultaneously bring Christianity under indictment. And to insist that Islam is permanently guilty for its adherents’ crimes in 1801 is to invite others to associate Christianity of today, especially the nationalist-infused sort practiced by Evangelical white Americans, with some of the most horrific crimes against humanity of the modern era. Beck chooses to end his book “It IS About Islam,” which begins with Kilmeade’s case about Jefferson and the Barbary wars in brief, with the words “All lives matter.” Using Kilmeade and Beck’s logic, one is free to condemn Beck for the whole white Christian history of state violence against black Americans, from the state-sanctioned slavery of the nation’s founding to police violence today. To lionize or secularly canonize the vicious Christian enslavers who founded the nation and invoke the racist reactionary rebuttal to the Black Lives Matter movement of today is to present a continuity of justified white supremacist and Christian state violence against black Americans. If one wanted to, one could condemn broad swaths of Christianity (or all of it, with Beck’s reasoning) in the very same way Kilmeade and Beck instruct us to fear Islam. But where can innocence be found if we're each held to account for the worst crimes committed in the name of our beliefs? By Kilmeade and Beck’s reasoning, humanity becomes a metaphysical circular firing squad, with associative guilt leaving no one safe. With the full power of the U.S. military essentially pointed at the Middle East, it is extraordinarily reckless to makes claims that imply, or say outright, that Islam is our national enemy, now, at the founding, and for all time. It’s scarcely distinguishable from the logic that animates the attack on Paris or New York.
Amy Schumer’s “comic” nude, Serena Williams’ awe-inspiring body study, Patti Smith’s unflinching gaze: The new Pirelli calendar redefines the power of the pin-up
Oh Lord, we have needed this. We needed this like we needed "Jessica Jones" and Jordan Peele and Chelsea Peretti's engagement. In the midst of this week's already heavy docket of rape stories and Planned Parenthood violence, an unlikely reason for feminists to rejoice has emerged — the 2016 Pirelli calendar.
The famed Pirelli tire company's trade calendar has become a hotly anticipated tradition on the scale of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. It's an elusive to obtain treasure (copies are distributed selectively to what the company describes as "V.I.P.’s, musicians, politicians and royalty") and an annual celebration of famous, gorgeous and mostly undressed women shot by legendary — and almost always male —photographers. The Pirelli calendar's list of previous women of the month is a Who's Who of bombshells: Gisele Bündchen and Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum. Last year's issue was a latex-clad fantasy featuring models like Gigi Hadid and Adriana Lima, shot in Milan by Steven Meisel. Five years ago, the calendar featured the likes of Victoria's Secret's Miranda Kerr, and was shot by edgy lensman and accused serial sexual predator Terry Richardson. Sure, it's also played against type — two years ago it featured a pregnant Adriana Lima and sexagenarian actress Sonia Braga. But the 2016 edition is different. Very different.
Yes, there are still undressed women. Yes, it's sexy. But the women chosen and presented represent a broad spectrum of ages, races and accomplishments, viewed through the lens of Annie Leibovitz. There's the glorious Amy Schumer, in panties and high heels, clutching a cardboard coffee cup and defiantly not sucking it in. There's the awe-inspiring Serena Williams, seemingly unretouched and flaunting a tan line. There's also 68-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and memoirist Patti Smith. There's actress and activist Yao Chen. Producer Kathleen Kennedy. Humorist Fran Lebowitz. There's Ava DuVernay, Agnes Gund, Tavi Gevinson, Yoko Ono. Icons. Heroes. Not your typical pinups.
Speaking at the calendar's launch event in London on Monday, Leibovitz — who shot a more traditional version of the calendar back in 2000 -- said that even the more revealing photos were not designed strictly for male arousal. She called Williams' powerful shot "not a nude but a body study" and said of Schumer's "comic" piece: "The idea was that she was the only one who had not got the memo about wearing clothes." And she said, "Pirelli has always given free rein to the photographer, so it’s really about choice of photographer. I think the company has wanted to shift for a few years and my mandate was that they wanted to see some change."
Look, naked and nearly naked women are great. Amy Schumer can take off her clothes and keep them off forever and the world would be a wonderful place for it. The comic, by the way, also appears in a little more clothing as a naughty St. Pauli girl for the new GQ. In it, she runs down a list of the magazine's Men of the Year, cheerfully declaring, "Finally, we're celebrating men!" and confesses, "Ruth Bader Ginsburg is my bitch. We hang. We crush beers together." Her best one word observation? In response to Bradley Cooper — "anal." But speaking about the Pirelli image, she seemed not at all jokey when she said, "I felt like I never looked more beautiful than I've ever felt in my life, and I felt it looked like me."
If you want traditionally sexy images of ladies, they're all over the place. But just remember that women can be more than pretty things to be drooled over. And if you want to see some stellar examples of their strength and intelligence and wit and courage and talent, as well as their beauty, this year, who'd have thought? Consult a tire maker.
Anti-choicers are immoral liars, and liberals should not hesitate to claim the moral high ground
If there was any lingering hope that the loss of three innocent lives during a shooting at Planned Parenthood on Friday would guilt Republican candidates into acting like decent human beings, that hope was dashed over the weekend in an outpouring of lies and indecent posturing about how anti-choicers are the real victims here. Mike Huckabee was quick to play the victim:
Ted Cruz, exploiting a bizarre right-wing conspiracy, told an obvious lie, calling the shooter, Robert Dear, a "transgendered leftist activist." (As thorough reporting from many media outlets has established, Dear is exactly who you would think he is: A conservative Christian with what appears to be major rage issues towards women.) Carly Fiorina, who told a particularly dishonest version of the "baby parts" lie that Dear appears to have been inspired by, claimed to be victimized by "left-wing tactics," a line which suggests that quoting someone directly and fact-checking their lies is dirty pool (though only when done to Republicans, of course). I could go on and on, but you get the point. An honest look at the conservative reaction to this tragedy exposes how shamelessly immoral it all is. No real consideration for the victims, no moment of hesitation over their own complicity in spreading the lie that Dear was acting on, nothing. Instead, they got right back to dishonestly demagoguing Planned Parenthood, even though there is now indisputable proof that such rhetoric can fall on the ears of the unhinged and inspire them to commit acts of violence. None of this should really be a surprise. The anti-choice movement is rotten to its seedy core. The movement, since its inception, has been built on a lie: That it is about "life," when it's clearly a movement of religious prudes who want to sneer at women they think are sluts. (Don't bother to argue. Suffice it to say that people who actually thought abortion was murder would do everything in their power to make contraception available, instead of defunding contraception every chance they get.) A movement built on a lie is bound to be one that's wicked and dishonest in all its tactics, and that is what we see with the anti-choice movement. People who are willing to lie to get their way are not going to apologize and grow a conscience just because some people get killed for their lies. That the anti-choice movement has been successful in painting itself as a moral movement is a demonstration both of how religion can distort our understanding of morality and how backwards this country continues to be when it comes to sex. We're slowly extricating ourselves from our sex negativity---the majority of Americans are both pro-choice and pro-gay nowadays, for instance---but there continues to be a lingering sense that having sex for pleasure is still a sinful pastime, and that religious condemnations of sexual pleasure are somehow rooted in morality, instead of sadism and resentment. Even though most of us intellectually understand that there's nothing wrong with sex, this shame makes it difficult for most liberals to get aggressive on this issue. Meanwhile, conservatives get to enjoy that unearned sense of moral superiority that comes with citing "religion" when they try to impose their deeply immoral sexual restrictions on others. Consider the Hobby Lobby case, where the owners successfully argued that their deep religious convictions should somehow give them a vote in their employees' contraception use. There is no logical reason to believe that being anti-contraception is more moral than being pro-contraception. On the contrary, pro-contraception is clearly the more moral choice, as it allows people to live fuller, happier lives and to give the children they do have a better chance at being raised in stable environments. But that lingering sense that sex is wrong and anything done in the name of Jesus is right trumped actual logic, and Hobby Lobby was able to impose its oppressive viewpoint on employees who simply want to do the right thing for themselves and their families. This shooting should be a reminder that the pro-choice side is the moral one, and not just because you never have to worry about some pro-choicer shooting up a crowd under the delusion of religious righteousness. This morality gap begins with the honesty gap. To say that anti-choicers are liars is to undersell the point. Every inch of the movement is built on lies, starting with the ur-lie that this is about "life" and not sex. Then you have thousands of crisis pregnancy centers, whose mission is to lie to women in order to scare them out of using abortion and contraception. States have enacted over 200 abortion restrictions in the past four years, and nearly every one is justified by a lie---claiming to be about "women's health," when in fact the purpose is to force childbirth on unwilling women. Anti-choicers lie about health care, claiming IUDs and the pill are "abortion" and that abortion causes breast cancer. Those infamous videos that seem to have inspired this shooting? Lies, of course. Anti-choicers lie so much that it's easier to count the exceedingly rare times they tell the truth. But this tendency to lie is rooted in an even deeper immorality, the belief that they have more right to control your body and your private life than you do, on the grounds that some god told them so. Once you embrace that level of entitlement, it makes sense that you also think you're entitled to lie to gain the control over people you think is yours. That's why it's wasted time ever expecting anti-choicers to take terrorism---which is the logical end point of that deep sense of entitlement over others' bodies---seriously at all. Oh, there's surface denunciations, of course. Ted Cruz was flapping his jaws about how wrong the shooting was early on, for instance. But if you look past Cruz's facile condemnations, you will see a man with no conscience and no real sense of morality when it comes to this issue. As Rachel Maddow reported last week, Cruz has been touting the endorsement of Operation Rescue leader Troy Newman. Newman is a nasty piece of work, someone who has few, if any limits on what kind of ugly things he will do in his lifelong quest to impose his religion's bizarre sexual restrictions on women. Newman has defended anti-choice terrorists and even hired one to be his second in command. He helped move Operation Rescue to Wichita, Kansas, for the sole purpose of harassing Dr. George Tiller, which his group did until one of their protesters took it to the next level and shot Dr. Tiller. Condemnations of violence are pointless if you're unwilling, as Cruz is, to address the root causes of terroristic violence. The pro-choice side should not be on the defensive. On every level, pro-choicers have the moral high ground. It's not just that they value things like scientific evidence, proper health care, freedom and honesty, while their opponents wallow in lies and pass policies that they know full well will hurt women. It also goes right back to the core values that drive this debate. The anti-choice rejection of sexual freedom is inherently immoral. It's about denying people their right to self-discovery and pleasure. Life is far too short for the grim, pointless self-denial touted by the abstinence-only, anti-abortion set. The moral choice is the one that allows people to be free and have fun without running unnecessary health risks. The moral choice is one that holds that children should be wanted, not imposed on women as punishment for the non-crime of having sex. Liberals are the good guys here, and people waving Bibles should not intimidate us out of saying just that.The Colorado Springs tragedy is domestic terrorism, especially for those us in the pro-life movement.
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) November 29, 2015
