Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 942
November 25, 2015
Don’t go home for the holidays: For some of us, Friendsgiving is more than a meal — it’s a lifesaver
There’s an old saying that there’s nothing worse than spending the holidays alone, but for some Americans, there’s nothing lonelier than family. While Thanksgiving might conjure up a "Home for the Holidays"-style image of Mom, Dad, and the whole family gathered around a succulent headless bird, this isn’t the reality for everyone—including many queer people. For instance, 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, forced out of their homes and communities after coming out. Some queer youth and adults may be cut off from contact with their family entirely, while others might have parents or siblings that are struggling with tolerance. Many families may never get to that place of understanding. But you don’t have to identify as queer to understand why making the often arduous trek back home isn’t joyous for everyone, especially if you live in another state or abroad. Pew found that 75 percent of college grads relocate at least once, and that’s likely be for work in large cities, taking them away from the communities in which they were raised. Statistics show that more Americans are traveling for Thanksgiving than ever, and that experience can be a headache. The holidays are the worst time to fly, between the increased ticket prices and the nightmare lines at the airport. JFK, for example, has the longest customs wait times in the country (up to 93 minutes on average), and that estimate doesn’t even factor in the holiday rush. If you hate flying or you, well, hate your family, Friendsgiving offers an alternative to what can be an exhausting tradition. Although its origins are unclear, the concept was seemingly pioneered by the popular television sitcom Friends, in which the titular comrades for sit down for a yearly meal together. But the Friendsgiving trend has become particularly popular with young people in the era of social media—with the first Urban Dictionary entry for the observance dating back to 2009. On Instagram and Facebook each year, millennials commonly share photos of home-cooked meals and sepia-tinged selfies in which guests pile together to make duck faces. The observance is usually celebrated the day before Thanksgiving, meaning that young people don’t have to choose between their friends and relatives. (Others might celebrate Friendsgiving in place of family time.) USA Today’s Kirsten Clark posits that the added festivities are an outgrowth of “a generation of people who schedule their lives around events.” Clark interviews Jason Dorsey, a Texas-based researcher and self-described “millennial expert,” who describes young people as “the most event-driven generation.” According to Dorsey, millennials so need to pack their calendars with things to do that we even create new holidays—like National Donut Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day—to fill the empty space. But it’s not just the rise of Facebook event invites that has led millennials to rethink our definition of what the holidays mean to us. It’s part of the expanding concept of family itself. In the queer community, the idea of “chosen family” is popular among LGBT-identified individuals as an alternative to the nuclear unit, building the intimate communities we too often lack at home. As the name suggests, the term refers to the people you opt-in to surrounding yourself with—whether those are friends, neighbors, or peers. Even Greek life, by terming its participants as sorority sisters and frat brothers, has sneakily embraced the queer redefinition of family as a relative concept. Queering the family has gone surprisingly mainstream, so much so that Rachel Green herself, Jennifer Aniston, discussed it in a 2011 interview. “Where would you be without friends?” she asked. “The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends—your own chosen family. There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.” And the former "Friends" star isn’t the only celebrity to embrace the idea. During the press tour for the upcoming "Sisters," in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler play siblings, Poehler said, “Neither Tina or I have sisters in real life. We are each other's chosen sister.” Whether chosen family is a complement to your relatives or a replacement for them, these relationships are some of the most sustaining in our lives. And as much as I’m one of the lucky ones who has a fairly good relationship with my family (it’s complicated), I’ve recognized how important it is to set aside a day to give thanks to the people who choose to be around you. Every year, I spend Thanksgiving with two of my best friends—a lesbian couple in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood who spend the entire day cooking. In my years of attendance, we’ve never once eaten the turkey before 10 p.m.—because the guests are usually too busy enjoying each other’s company (read: drunk) to worry about it. But with time, our chosen families change. I relocated to New York last year for a job,and they split up. After this year’s holiday was called off, my boyfriend and I decided to carry on the tradition ourselves by hosting our own Friendsgiving with two women in Harlem we plan on rooming with in the spring. They were the first people I really felt close to in the city, and on paper, we make no sense as friends. I’m a staunch atheist, and they go to church together in the Bronx every Sunday. They’re open-hearted and kind, whereas I often come across as cold and standoffish (I blame my RBF). But despite our seeming differences, I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be tomorrow. They always say that you don’t get to pick your relatives, but Friendsgiving recognizes that sometimes your family chooses you.There’s an old saying that there’s nothing worse than spending the holidays alone, but for some Americans, there’s nothing lonelier than family. While Thanksgiving might conjure up a "Home for the Holidays"-style image of Mom, Dad, and the whole family gathered around a succulent headless bird, this isn’t the reality for everyone—including many queer people. For instance, 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, forced out of their homes and communities after coming out. Some queer youth and adults may be cut off from contact with their family entirely, while others might have parents or siblings that are struggling with tolerance. Many families may never get to that place of understanding. But you don’t have to identify as queer to understand why making the often arduous trek back home isn’t joyous for everyone, especially if you live in another state or abroad. Pew found that 75 percent of college grads relocate at least once, and that’s likely be for work in large cities, taking them away from the communities in which they were raised. Statistics show that more Americans are traveling for Thanksgiving than ever, and that experience can be a headache. The holidays are the worst time to fly, between the increased ticket prices and the nightmare lines at the airport. JFK, for example, has the longest customs wait times in the country (up to 93 minutes on average), and that estimate doesn’t even factor in the holiday rush. If you hate flying or you, well, hate your family, Friendsgiving offers an alternative to what can be an exhausting tradition. Although its origins are unclear, the concept was seemingly pioneered by the popular television sitcom Friends, in which the titular comrades for sit down for a yearly meal together. But the Friendsgiving trend has become particularly popular with young people in the era of social media—with the first Urban Dictionary entry for the observance dating back to 2009. On Instagram and Facebook each year, millennials commonly share photos of home-cooked meals and sepia-tinged selfies in which guests pile together to make duck faces. The observance is usually celebrated the day before Thanksgiving, meaning that young people don’t have to choose between their friends and relatives. (Others might celebrate Friendsgiving in place of family time.) USA Today’s Kirsten Clark posits that the added festivities are an outgrowth of “a generation of people who schedule their lives around events.” Clark interviews Jason Dorsey, a Texas-based researcher and self-described “millennial expert,” who describes young people as “the most event-driven generation.” According to Dorsey, millennials so need to pack their calendars with things to do that we even create new holidays—like National Donut Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day—to fill the empty space. But it’s not just the rise of Facebook event invites that has led millennials to rethink our definition of what the holidays mean to us. It’s part of the expanding concept of family itself. In the queer community, the idea of “chosen family” is popular among LGBT-identified individuals as an alternative to the nuclear unit, building the intimate communities we too often lack at home. As the name suggests, the term refers to the people you opt-in to surrounding yourself with—whether those are friends, neighbors, or peers. Even Greek life, by terming its participants as sorority sisters and frat brothers, has sneakily embraced the queer redefinition of family as a relative concept. Queering the family has gone surprisingly mainstream, so much so that Rachel Green herself, Jennifer Aniston, discussed it in a 2011 interview. “Where would you be without friends?” she asked. “The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect, so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends—your own chosen family. There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.” And the former "Friends" star isn’t the only celebrity to embrace the idea. During the press tour for the upcoming "Sisters," in which Tina Fey and Amy Poehler play siblings, Poehler said, “Neither Tina or I have sisters in real life. We are each other's chosen sister.” Whether chosen family is a complement to your relatives or a replacement for them, these relationships are some of the most sustaining in our lives. And as much as I’m one of the lucky ones who has a fairly good relationship with my family (it’s complicated), I’ve recognized how important it is to set aside a day to give thanks to the people who choose to be around you. Every year, I spend Thanksgiving with two of my best friends—a lesbian couple in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood who spend the entire day cooking. In my years of attendance, we’ve never once eaten the turkey before 10 p.m.—because the guests are usually too busy enjoying each other’s company (read: drunk) to worry about it. But with time, our chosen families change. I relocated to New York last year for a job,and they split up. After this year’s holiday was called off, my boyfriend and I decided to carry on the tradition ourselves by hosting our own Friendsgiving with two women in Harlem we plan on rooming with in the spring. They were the first people I really felt close to in the city, and on paper, we make no sense as friends. I’m a staunch atheist, and they go to church together in the Bronx every Sunday. They’re open-hearted and kind, whereas I often come across as cold and standoffish (I blame my RBF). But despite our seeming differences, I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be tomorrow. They always say that you don’t get to pick your relatives, but Friendsgiving recognizes that sometimes your family chooses you.
Clinton apologizes for calling immigrants “illegal” — but not for her anti-immigrant record
“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.“I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,” Clinton said at a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire. After a lot of criticism, Clinton apologized for calling immigrants “illegal.” “That was a poor choice of words,” she said, making amends. But there was apparently no apology for her “numerous” votes “to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in.” The term “illegal” is offensive when applied to a human being. But the migrant deaths caused by the sort of border militarization measures Clinton has supported are far more reprehensible because they have been deadly. In 2006, Clinton voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act, mandating “at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors extending” across at least 700 miles of the 1,969-mile border with Mexico, according to the Washington Office on Latin America. Bernie Sanders, then a member of the U.S. House, voted against it. The fencing complex was never completed in its entirety due to a cost that would have reached more than $4.1 billion, according to WOLA. Nevertheless, hundreds of miles of fencing were built. The upshot of border militarization has been death. According to Border Patrol, deaths along the Southwest Border rose from 263 in 1998 to 380 in 2000, 454 in 2006 and 471 in 2012. The U.S. Government has spent more than $130 billion on border surveillance and security over the past two decades, according to an August story in the Arizona Republic. According to Border Patrol, their force of agents grew from 4,139 agents in fiscal year 1992 to 9,212 in 2000 and 21,444 in 2011. All of that militarization has resulted in death for migrants because it has pushed border crossers out into dangerous places like southern Arizona's Sonoran desert. It has also caused rampant civil rights and liberties violations against residents border communities who are subject to Border Patrol stops and searches conducted without regard for normal Fourth Amendment protections. Clinton no doubt has “evolved” on immigration and backs measures to grant undocumented people legal status. She has also morphed from a critic of providing drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants in 2007 to this year, a supporter. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer recently told David Axelrod that he had pulled his proposal to provide licenses ahead of the election in part because of behind-the-scenes pressure from the Clinton campaign. "We heard from folks [on Clinton's campaign] who said they want this issue gone," Spitzer said on Axelrod's podcast, according to the Huffington Post's account. "I thought the issue was a metaphor for her vacillation." Clinton, however, has never vacillated on border militarization, let alone apologized, as far as I can glean (and her campaign does not respond requests for comment from me). Some Clinton partisans make the strange argument that Hillary can benefit from Bill's legacy when it proves beneficial and duck it when it proves controversial. In today's Democratic Party, immigration would be one of those areas where Bill Clinton's record would be extremely controversial. President Clinton, as University of San Francisco law professor Bill Hing told the Republic, presided over a dramatic increase in border militarization. This included, per the Republic:
“Operation Gatekeeper, which was aimed at stopping illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego by deploying more Border Patrol agents, and installing fencing, ground sensors, lights and other technology... Clinton also signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, a sweeping bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress that was aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants through a wide range of punishments. Those included barring undocumented immigrants from returning to the United States for up to 10 years, and expanding the list of crimes for which legal immigrants could be stripped of their status and deported.”Hillary Clinton has no doubt embraced policies far more humane than those put forward by her increasingly nativist Republican opponents. That, however, is nothing to brag about. Insulting migrants is reprehensible. Forcing them into the desert, increasing their chance of death, is something much worse.
It officially sucks to be female on the Internet: 95 percent of online abuse is aimed at women
This likely won't exactly come as a shock — especially if you're a woman and especially if you've spent any amount of time whatsoever online. But it's a depressing validation nonetheless. The BBC's Valeria Perasso reports Wednesday that the United Nations has issued a "worldwide wake-up call" about cyber violence against women just in time for its annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. And the next time someone tries to tell you it's not as bad as you say or it happens to everybody or go somewhere else if you can't handle it, please repeat this line: "The UN estimates 95% of all aggressive and denigrating behavior in online spaces is aimed at women." That's the United Nations saying that — about 95 percent of the crap that goes down. As the UN defines it, online abuse against women takes numerous forms, from threats to harassment to revenge porn. The UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka tells the BBC: "Online violence has subverted the original positive promise of the Internet's freedoms and in too many circumstances has made it a chilling space that permits anonymous cruelty and facilitates harmful acts towards women and girls." Why does it happen, why does it persist? Because it can. Because the trolls know there will likely be zero consequences for their behavior. On a generalized level, that means anonymous self-described beta males can gather and post their fantasies of shooting up female students. They can wet themselves with glee over stolen nude photos of Hollywood actresses. And a self-anointed "creepy uncle of Reddit" boast of time as the mastermind of subreddits like Jailbait, Rapebait, Chokeabitch and Creepshots. More specifically, it means that Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian can get threats of mass violence before a scheduled event, and have a school official shrug that "They determined the threat seems to be consistent with ones [Sarkeesian] has received at other places around the nation. The threat we received is not out of the norm for [her.]" It means game developer Brianna Wu has to leave her home after her personal information posted on 8chan, and that she get warnings like "I’ve got a K-bar and I’m coming to your house so I can shove it up your ugly feminist c__t." Think these are just isolated examples? Gosh, if only I had something to cite from oh, I don't know, this very International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Wait, how about what just happened to Holly Brockwell? Brockwell is the 29 year-old editor of Gadgette, a "tech and lifestyle" site aimed at females. Earlier this week, she wrote a piece for the BBC's 100 Women 2015 called "Desperate not to have children." In it, she admits, "There's nothing about creating another human that appeals to me," and says that her simple and private choice has made her the subject of invasive questioning and insistent arguments about why she should change her mind. She's even had doctors tell her she's "too young to even consider" her tubes tied. But if she thought the garbage she's already put up with for choosing her own reproductive future was intense, it got much worse after her story ran. The abuse she endured was so intense she briefly shut off her Twitter account, "due to the number of creepy, abusive threats she got, mainly from men," she says. And when she went to the BBC studios for a Q&A session, she was met by a security guard. She told Business Insider this week, "In the half hour between it going up and me seeing it, the volume of stuff, and the harshness of stuff, was already worrying me and made me think uh, maybe this wasn't going to be fine after all." A recent UN report calls for providers such as "Internet service providers, mobile phone companies, social networking sites, gaming sites and websites" to "explicitly recognize cyber violence against women and girls as unlawful behavior" and provide "relief to victims and survivors." But until then, the trolls will keep on trolling, and make no mistake, the people they're aiming their hatred at are female.
Why punk mattered: “Pink Floyd is not rock ‘n’ roll! It’s some bullsh*t!”
Beat Happening hasn’t experienced the kind of massive revival of interest that the Pixies and Replacements have seen, and they never sold that many records. But the Olympia, Wash., trio was a major part of the ‘80s indie-rock movement. We probably would not have Belle & Sebastian, some Riot Grrl, and a whole line of indie rock without them, and they influenced Nirvana despite sounding nothing like them. “They were resolutely unmacho and played melodic, downright quaint-sounding music,” Michael Azzerad writes in “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” his important indie chronicle. “They could barely play or sing.” These cardigan-clad lo-fi wallflowers have returned with a new 23-song compilation, “Look Around,” on Domino. (It includes “Indian Summer,” an iconic song covered by Luna and Ben Gibbard.) Salon spoke to the band’s deep-voiced singer Calvin Johnson – who was also a founder of Olympia’s legendary K Records -- from the label’s London offices. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Hey, congratulations for the new collection. Did you go back and listen to your old music to select the songs? No – I didn’t. I’d heard it before and stuff… Bret [Lunsford, band guitarist] put together a list of what would be a good compilation, and then Heather [Lewis, drummer] and I made some suggestions, and it ended up being what it is… I guess it’s an understatement to say Beat Happening’s songs are very different from most of the pop made today… I hope so! To what extent did you see yourself as an extension of punk? I didn’t see us an extension – I thought we were part of it. What was it that you had in common with punk? Obviously your music is not aggressive and macho the way most punk is. Well, that is just some manifestations of punk. Punk – I was very young when I first discovered punk, as most people are, when it started as a genre, in 1976 or ’77 – to me it was about freedom of expression, about being an individual and expressing yourself in a exciting way. For some people that means being aggressive. For some people it means being colorful. For some people it means being emotional. Everyone’s different, and that’s why it’s different for different people. That’s why it’s beautiful when you talk about someone like John Lydon, who talks about punk when it started in London. He said, Nobody had a Mohawk, nobody had a leather jacket – everybody dressed differently. That’s what made it special – there was no uniform. I grasped onto that concept early on. That punk was about expression… We just went with that, and elaborated on it in our own way. Were there specific punk bands that inspired you guys at the time? Oh yeah – too many to mention. Millions. Just in the Northwest there were bands like The Rejectors, the Wipers, the Dishrags…. The Beakers, Blackouts, Fastbacks. The thing that’s so striking about Beat Happening is the simplicity of it. Was that something you were deliberately going for? I think that’s another thing that punk did – it said it was okay to be simple. In the ‘70s, music had just gotten too ridiculous. Bands like Yes and Pink Floyd and all this kind of crap was just so far away from rock n roll. It’s like, What about rock ‘n’ roll? Pink Floyd is not rock ‘n’ roll! It’s some bullshit! So punk rock was about taking rock ‘n’ roll and bringing it to a point where you could have some fun. Do you have any idea why “Indian Summer” became the big Beat Happening song? Yeah – what’s the big deal? It’s a good song, but there’s so many good songs. Why pick that one. I haven’t the vaguest idea. I think “Foggy Eyes” is an amazing song – I don’t know why more people don’t cover that one. Beat Happening was not alone among ‘80s indie groups in having a woman in the band. Was that important for the band’s mission or did it just happen accidentally? I always feel like you should work with the best. So it just happened that the best was Heather Lewis. She’s a woman. Just working with the people it made sense to work with. Does it change the dynamic of the band? You’ve probably been in bands that were all guys. I’d always worked with women. It wasn’t until I was in the Halo Benders that I was in an all-male band. Before that I’d always had women in the band. How much do you listen to new music these days? It’s all I do. What’s some of the stuff you like? Does new music excite you the way it used to? Music’s great – people are always coming up with something interesting. I like Priests – they’re from D.C…. This band from L.A. I like, Dream Boys. Secret Cat, from Northern California. We played a show with then last year; I like them a lot. Ghosty, from Portland, is really great. So many great bands, music, people. There’s a band called Valet, from Portland, just put out an album called “Nature.” Sounds like you’re still pretty curious about what’s happening these days. What’s next for you? I’ve got a new album, under the name Selector Dub Narcotic. It’s called “This Party is Just Getting Started.”Beat Happening hasn’t experienced the kind of massive revival of interest that the Pixies and Replacements have seen, and they never sold that many records. But the Olympia, Wash., trio was a major part of the ‘80s indie-rock movement. We probably would not have Belle & Sebastian, some Riot Grrl, and a whole line of indie rock without them, and they influenced Nirvana despite sounding nothing like them. “They were resolutely unmacho and played melodic, downright quaint-sounding music,” Michael Azzerad writes in “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” his important indie chronicle. “They could barely play or sing.” These cardigan-clad lo-fi wallflowers have returned with a new 23-song compilation, “Look Around,” on Domino. (It includes “Indian Summer,” an iconic song covered by Luna and Ben Gibbard.) Salon spoke to the band’s deep-voiced singer Calvin Johnson – who was also a founder of Olympia’s legendary K Records -- from the label’s London offices. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Hey, congratulations for the new collection. Did you go back and listen to your old music to select the songs? No – I didn’t. I’d heard it before and stuff… Bret [Lunsford, band guitarist] put together a list of what would be a good compilation, and then Heather [Lewis, drummer] and I made some suggestions, and it ended up being what it is… I guess it’s an understatement to say Beat Happening’s songs are very different from most of the pop made today… I hope so! To what extent did you see yourself as an extension of punk? I didn’t see us an extension – I thought we were part of it. What was it that you had in common with punk? Obviously your music is not aggressive and macho the way most punk is. Well, that is just some manifestations of punk. Punk – I was very young when I first discovered punk, as most people are, when it started as a genre, in 1976 or ’77 – to me it was about freedom of expression, about being an individual and expressing yourself in a exciting way. For some people that means being aggressive. For some people it means being colorful. For some people it means being emotional. Everyone’s different, and that’s why it’s different for different people. That’s why it’s beautiful when you talk about someone like John Lydon, who talks about punk when it started in London. He said, Nobody had a Mohawk, nobody had a leather jacket – everybody dressed differently. That’s what made it special – there was no uniform. I grasped onto that concept early on. That punk was about expression… We just went with that, and elaborated on it in our own way. Were there specific punk bands that inspired you guys at the time? Oh yeah – too many to mention. Millions. Just in the Northwest there were bands like The Rejectors, the Wipers, the Dishrags…. The Beakers, Blackouts, Fastbacks. The thing that’s so striking about Beat Happening is the simplicity of it. Was that something you were deliberately going for? I think that’s another thing that punk did – it said it was okay to be simple. In the ‘70s, music had just gotten too ridiculous. Bands like Yes and Pink Floyd and all this kind of crap was just so far away from rock n roll. It’s like, What about rock ‘n’ roll? Pink Floyd is not rock ‘n’ roll! It’s some bullshit! So punk rock was about taking rock ‘n’ roll and bringing it to a point where you could have some fun. Do you have any idea why “Indian Summer” became the big Beat Happening song? Yeah – what’s the big deal? It’s a good song, but there’s so many good songs. Why pick that one. I haven’t the vaguest idea. I think “Foggy Eyes” is an amazing song – I don’t know why more people don’t cover that one. Beat Happening was not alone among ‘80s indie groups in having a woman in the band. Was that important for the band’s mission or did it just happen accidentally? I always feel like you should work with the best. So it just happened that the best was Heather Lewis. She’s a woman. Just working with the people it made sense to work with. Does it change the dynamic of the band? You’ve probably been in bands that were all guys. I’d always worked with women. It wasn’t until I was in the Halo Benders that I was in an all-male band. Before that I’d always had women in the band. How much do you listen to new music these days? It’s all I do. What’s some of the stuff you like? Does new music excite you the way it used to? Music’s great – people are always coming up with something interesting. I like Priests – they’re from D.C…. This band from L.A. I like, Dream Boys. Secret Cat, from Northern California. We played a show with then last year; I like them a lot. Ghosty, from Portland, is really great. So many great bands, music, people. There’s a band called Valet, from Portland, just put out an album called “Nature.” Sounds like you’re still pretty curious about what’s happening these days. What’s next for you? I’ve got a new album, under the name Selector Dub Narcotic. It’s called “This Party is Just Getting Started.”Beat Happening hasn’t experienced the kind of massive revival of interest that the Pixies and Replacements have seen, and they never sold that many records. But the Olympia, Wash., trio was a major part of the ‘80s indie-rock movement. We probably would not have Belle & Sebastian, some Riot Grrl, and a whole line of indie rock without them, and they influenced Nirvana despite sounding nothing like them. “They were resolutely unmacho and played melodic, downright quaint-sounding music,” Michael Azzerad writes in “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” his important indie chronicle. “They could barely play or sing.” These cardigan-clad lo-fi wallflowers have returned with a new 23-song compilation, “Look Around,” on Domino. (It includes “Indian Summer,” an iconic song covered by Luna and Ben Gibbard.) Salon spoke to the band’s deep-voiced singer Calvin Johnson – who was also a founder of Olympia’s legendary K Records -- from the label’s London offices. The interview has been edited slightly for clarity. Hey, congratulations for the new collection. Did you go back and listen to your old music to select the songs? No – I didn’t. I’d heard it before and stuff… Bret [Lunsford, band guitarist] put together a list of what would be a good compilation, and then Heather [Lewis, drummer] and I made some suggestions, and it ended up being what it is… I guess it’s an understatement to say Beat Happening’s songs are very different from most of the pop made today… I hope so! To what extent did you see yourself as an extension of punk? I didn’t see us an extension – I thought we were part of it. What was it that you had in common with punk? Obviously your music is not aggressive and macho the way most punk is. Well, that is just some manifestations of punk. Punk – I was very young when I first discovered punk, as most people are, when it started as a genre, in 1976 or ’77 – to me it was about freedom of expression, about being an individual and expressing yourself in a exciting way. For some people that means being aggressive. For some people it means being colorful. For some people it means being emotional. Everyone’s different, and that’s why it’s different for different people. That’s why it’s beautiful when you talk about someone like John Lydon, who talks about punk when it started in London. He said, Nobody had a Mohawk, nobody had a leather jacket – everybody dressed differently. That’s what made it special – there was no uniform. I grasped onto that concept early on. That punk was about expression… We just went with that, and elaborated on it in our own way. Were there specific punk bands that inspired you guys at the time? Oh yeah – too many to mention. Millions. Just in the Northwest there were bands like The Rejectors, the Wipers, the Dishrags…. The Beakers, Blackouts, Fastbacks. The thing that’s so striking about Beat Happening is the simplicity of it. Was that something you were deliberately going for? I think that’s another thing that punk did – it said it was okay to be simple. In the ‘70s, music had just gotten too ridiculous. Bands like Yes and Pink Floyd and all this kind of crap was just so far away from rock n roll. It’s like, What about rock ‘n’ roll? Pink Floyd is not rock ‘n’ roll! It’s some bullshit! So punk rock was about taking rock ‘n’ roll and bringing it to a point where you could have some fun. Do you have any idea why “Indian Summer” became the big Beat Happening song? Yeah – what’s the big deal? It’s a good song, but there’s so many good songs. Why pick that one. I haven’t the vaguest idea. I think “Foggy Eyes” is an amazing song – I don’t know why more people don’t cover that one. Beat Happening was not alone among ‘80s indie groups in having a woman in the band. Was that important for the band’s mission or did it just happen accidentally? I always feel like you should work with the best. So it just happened that the best was Heather Lewis. She’s a woman. Just working with the people it made sense to work with. Does it change the dynamic of the band? You’ve probably been in bands that were all guys. I’d always worked with women. It wasn’t until I was in the Halo Benders that I was in an all-male band. Before that I’d always had women in the band. How much do you listen to new music these days? It’s all I do. What’s some of the stuff you like? Does new music excite you the way it used to? Music’s great – people are always coming up with something interesting. I like Priests – they’re from D.C…. This band from L.A. I like, Dream Boys. Secret Cat, from Northern California. We played a show with then last year; I like them a lot. Ghosty, from Portland, is really great. So many great bands, music, people. There’s a band called Valet, from Portland, just put out an album called “Nature.” Sounds like you’re still pretty curious about what’s happening these days. What’s next for you? I’ve got a new album, under the name Selector Dub Narcotic. It’s called “This Party is Just Getting Started.”
November 24, 2015
Mother of Muslim American 9/11 first responder rebukes Donald Trump: “Maybe it is time for him to go back to Germany and advocate his pro-Nazi policies over there”
The mother of a Muslim American NYPD cadet who was killed working to rescue New Yorkers on 9/11 has a direct message to Donald Trump: Take your "pro-Nazi policies" back to the land of your German immigrant grandparents. Talat Hamdani, who lost her 23-year-old son, Mohammad Salman on 9/11, said in an interview on “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” on Tuesday that her son would have been "bemused" by Trump's latest antics but that "he would not have agreed because this is so unAmerican." In recent days, Trump has called for a the ongoing surveillance of Muslims in America, claimed to have witnessed "thousands" of Muslims openly cheering on 9/11, and entertained the idea of forcing all Muslims in America to carry a specialized id. "As a child growing up, he did have to face this discrimination in the fourth grade," Hamdani explained, retelling the story of her Muslim American son being taunted in a Catholic school until a teacher assigned the students to find a Quran for a lesson on world religions. "So this is where we stand, now, as a nation. What Salman had, you know, experienced in the fourth grade, our nation needs to be taught now, tolerance, multifaith -- through multifaith events, tolerance and assimilation and integration, instead of talking of fear, like Donald Trump and so many other presidential candidates are doing right now, at the expense of our tragedy. We who have buried our children." Hamadani said that such rhetoric disqualifies a candidate for higher office. "If you are running for a presidential position, you are taking an oath to uphold the constitution but here you are, you are going to violate the constitution." Hamdani also wrote a New York Daily News op-ed on Monday, calling out Trump for "advocat[ing] for policies with ugly precedents":
[A]cross America today, we are witnessing the spectacle of politicians crassly exploiting the tragedies of Paris, Beirut and Russia for selfish political gains. Capitalizing on fear and the considerable ignorance about the Muslim faith among many of our citizens, they are in a rush to the bottom, driving a stampede of prejudicial proposals. Quite the opposite of supporting their fellow Americans in a moment of crisis as my son did, many apparently see political gain to be had in selectively denying American Muslims their rights. If that weren’t ugly enough, many are equally ready to turn their backs on the finest American tradition of welcoming refugees fleeing violence, persecution and war. Perhaps the worst of all is Donald Trump’s recent openness to the idea of having all Muslims registered in a database, along with his suggestion that it might be necessary to shut down mosques and force all who share my faith to carry a special ID card. This is not some fringe candidate; it is the Republican Party’s undisputed front-runner. When others pushed back against these proposals for their obvious parallels to pre-war Nazi Germany, Trump did not back down. Instead, he further claimed this weekend that “thousands” of New Jersey Muslims cheered as the Twin Towers fell. He used this blatant lie to suggest the NYPD renew its spying program on local New York and New Jersey Muslims. Let’s be clear here: By making such horrendous suggestions, Trump is generating fear and advocating hatred and violence against Muslims.On MSNBC, Hamdai pointed out that Trump's grandparents had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany before suggesting, "maybe it is time for him to go back to Germany and advocate his pro-Nazi policies over there": The mother of a Muslim American NYPD cadet who was killed working to rescue New Yorkers on 9/11 has a direct message to Donald Trump: Take your "pro-Nazi policies" back to the land of your German immigrant grandparents. Talat Hamdani, who lost her 23-year-old son, Mohammad Salman on 9/11, said in an interview on “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” on Tuesday that her son would have been "bemused" by Trump's latest antics but that "he would not have agreed because this is so unAmerican." In recent days, Trump has called for a the ongoing surveillance of Muslims in America, claimed to have witnessed "thousands" of Muslims openly cheering on 9/11, and entertained the idea of forcing all Muslims in America to carry a specialized id. "As a child growing up, he did have to face this discrimination in the fourth grade," Hamdani explained, retelling the story of her Muslim American son being taunted in a Catholic school until a teacher assigned the students to find a Quran for a lesson on world religions. "So this is where we stand, now, as a nation. What Salman had, you know, experienced in the fourth grade, our nation needs to be taught now, tolerance, multifaith -- through multifaith events, tolerance and assimilation and integration, instead of talking of fear, like Donald Trump and so many other presidential candidates are doing right now, at the expense of our tragedy. We who have buried our children." Hamadani said that such rhetoric disqualifies a candidate for higher office. "If you are running for a presidential position, you are taking an oath to uphold the constitution but here you are, you are going to violate the constitution." Hamdani also wrote a New York Daily News op-ed on Monday, calling out Trump for "advocat[ing] for policies with ugly precedents":
[A]cross America today, we are witnessing the spectacle of politicians crassly exploiting the tragedies of Paris, Beirut and Russia for selfish political gains. Capitalizing on fear and the considerable ignorance about the Muslim faith among many of our citizens, they are in a rush to the bottom, driving a stampede of prejudicial proposals. Quite the opposite of supporting their fellow Americans in a moment of crisis as my son did, many apparently see political gain to be had in selectively denying American Muslims their rights. If that weren’t ugly enough, many are equally ready to turn their backs on the finest American tradition of welcoming refugees fleeing violence, persecution and war. Perhaps the worst of all is Donald Trump’s recent openness to the idea of having all Muslims registered in a database, along with his suggestion that it might be necessary to shut down mosques and force all who share my faith to carry a special ID card. This is not some fringe candidate; it is the Republican Party’s undisputed front-runner. When others pushed back against these proposals for their obvious parallels to pre-war Nazi Germany, Trump did not back down. Instead, he further claimed this weekend that “thousands” of New Jersey Muslims cheered as the Twin Towers fell. He used this blatant lie to suggest the NYPD renew its spying program on local New York and New Jersey Muslims. Let’s be clear here: By making such horrendous suggestions, Trump is generating fear and advocating hatred and violence against Muslims.On MSNBC, Hamdai pointed out that Trump's grandparents had immigrated to the U.S. from Germany before suggesting, "maybe it is time for him to go back to Germany and advocate his pro-Nazi policies over there":
Trevor Noah’s just not funny: “The Daily Show” is a trainwreck — I know, because I watch for a living
I watch comedy shows for a living. My job is to cover what happens overnight while the rest of you are asleep. I watch everything -- Fallon, Colbert and Conan, but even the later shows like Seth Meyers and James Corden. On Comedy Central, that means my nerd crushes like Larry Wilmore and Chris Hardwick, and also the new "Daily Show With Trevor Noah" that began in September of this year. When I write up the morning clip, most times I try to make you laugh before you even watch the video. With people like Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Chris Hardwick, that isn't difficult. Many times with the new "Daily Show" I find myself throwing in a few extra jokes to try to boost the funny. Yeah, the new "Daily Show" is so deadly that I have to do what I can to punch up the jokes. I'm not the only one who senses that something is lacking. Since Noah's takeover, "The Daily Show's" ratings have fallen like a drunk heckler slipping on watermelon guts at a Gallagher show. Nielsen stats show a 37 percent drop overall. However, there has been an increase in the coveted 18-to-24 demographic by 20 percent, and on-demand streaming (presumably from younger online viewers) has increased by 44 percent. All viewers, young and older, certainly appreciate Noah's impressive good looks, dazzling dimples and beaming smile. But the type of comedy to which loyal "Daily Show" watchers have become accustomed is drastically different. Jon Stewart has a kind of physical comedy you saw from greats like Robin Williams, Dick van Dyke or Lucille Ball. Noah's comedy is all in what he says or occasionally how he says it. In the final month of the "Daily Show," the website did a series of videos remembering the 16 years of Stewart. One included clips of unbelievable accents. Another was a collection of his impressions from Sen. Mitch McConnell (a kind Cecil the Turtle from the old Looney Tunes cartoons), Sen. Lindsey Graham, a squinty-eyed George W. Bush with an evil laugh, and the odd gangster-squawk of Dick Cheney. But by far the best was an example of the years of physical shtick:
Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows
He even did an entire segment where he didn't say a word and used sounds and gestures along with the graphics to comment on Mike Huckabee. It was Stewart's 13-minute impression of Glenn Beck that took the show beyond mockery to sheer genius. After that, the "Daily Show" flew into the stratosphere of fans and will forever lead the annals of comedy until God himself tells you about the time two Jews walked into a bar. Stewart's physical talent, silly voices and accents, self-deprecating humor and classic deadpan were the recipes for success to which the audience became accustomed. His "Daily Show" was like "Saturday Night Live," while Noah's is more like MadTV: well-written with good ideas, but burdened by clumsy attempts to emulate some previous idea of what funny should look like. For all of Noah's classical beauty, he seems too unsure of himself to let the gestures and silliness fly. It's as if he has impostor syndrome and won't try new things for fear of failure. Even his deadpan is off. For each time Stewart cracked up with hysterics, Noah breaks 50 times more, making him look amateurish. Comedic timing should feel as natural as slipping down a slide. Right now his jokes are plopping down the stairs like a piece of pizza being dragged by a rat. Add that to the newest crop of subpar correspondents who began when Stewart left and you've got a comedy meal that tastes as bland as "The Love Guru" or "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." Not terrible, not worthless, but something you only watch on basic cable while you sweep the dust under the sofa or unclog the kitchen sink. Noah has the disadvantage of high expectations. Stewart and his team spent years perfecting the "Daily Show." He too wasn't amazing on the first day, but he was jumping rope and built it up to a crazy double-dutch display. Noah has no choice but to pace himself into the big show. So far it seems like he's just wrapped up in the rope.I watch comedy shows for a living. My job is to cover what happens overnight while the rest of you are asleep. I watch everything -- Fallon, Colbert and Conan, but even the later shows like Seth Meyers and James Corden. On Comedy Central, that means my nerd crushes like Larry Wilmore and Chris Hardwick, and also the new "Daily Show With Trevor Noah" that began in September of this year. When I write up the morning clip, most times I try to make you laugh before you even watch the video. With people like Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Chris Hardwick, that isn't difficult. Many times with the new "Daily Show" I find myself throwing in a few extra jokes to try to boost the funny. Yeah, the new "Daily Show" is so deadly that I have to do what I can to punch up the jokes. I'm not the only one who senses that something is lacking. Since Noah's takeover, "The Daily Show's" ratings have fallen like a drunk heckler slipping on watermelon guts at a Gallagher show. Nielsen stats show a 37 percent drop overall. However, there has been an increase in the coveted 18-to-24 demographic by 20 percent, and on-demand streaming (presumably from younger online viewers) has increased by 44 percent. All viewers, young and older, certainly appreciate Noah's impressive good looks, dazzling dimples and beaming smile. But the type of comedy to which loyal "Daily Show" watchers have become accustomed is drastically different. Jon Stewart has a kind of physical comedy you saw from greats like Robin Williams, Dick van Dyke or Lucille Ball. Noah's comedy is all in what he says or occasionally how he says it. In the final month of the "Daily Show," the website did a series of videos remembering the 16 years of Stewart. One included clips of unbelievable accents. Another was a collection of his impressions from Sen. Mitch McConnell (a kind Cecil the Turtle from the old Looney Tunes cartoons), Sen. Lindsey Graham, a squinty-eyed George W. Bush with an evil laugh, and the odd gangster-squawk of Dick Cheney. But by far the best was an example of the years of physical shtick:Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows
He even did an entire segment where he didn't say a word and used sounds and gestures along with the graphics to comment on Mike Huckabee. It was Stewart's 13-minute impression of Glenn Beck that took the show beyond mockery to sheer genius. After that, the "Daily Show" flew into the stratosphere of fans and will forever lead the annals of comedy until God himself tells you about the time two Jews walked into a bar. Stewart's physical talent, silly voices and accents, self-deprecating humor and classic deadpan were the recipes for success to which the audience became accustomed. His "Daily Show" was like "Saturday Night Live," while Noah's is more like MadTV: well-written with good ideas, but burdened by clumsy attempts to emulate some previous idea of what funny should look like. For all of Noah's classical beauty, he seems too unsure of himself to let the gestures and silliness fly. It's as if he has impostor syndrome and won't try new things for fear of failure. Even his deadpan is off. For each time Stewart cracked up with hysterics, Noah breaks 50 times more, making him look amateurish. Comedic timing should feel as natural as slipping down a slide. Right now his jokes are plopping down the stairs like a piece of pizza being dragged by a rat. Add that to the newest crop of subpar correspondents who began when Stewart left and you've got a comedy meal that tastes as bland as "The Love Guru" or "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." Not terrible, not worthless, but something you only watch on basic cable while you sweep the dust under the sofa or unclog the kitchen sink. Noah has the disadvantage of high expectations. Stewart and his team spent years perfecting the "Daily Show." He too wasn't amazing on the first day, but he was jumping rope and built it up to a crazy double-dutch display. Noah has no choice but to pace himself into the big show. So far it seems like he's just wrapped up in the rope.
This must-read essay lights a match, aims for the sexist book world: “Let us burn this motherf*cking system to the ground”
"Let us burn this motherf__king system to the ground," writes Claire Vaye Watkins, "and build something better." Readers of the world, get the torches and gasoline. In a gloriously righteous Tin House essay "On Pandering" that is likely already tearing its way through your social media feed this week, the author of "Battleborn" and "Gold Fame Citrus" explores her own personal history as a reader of male writers and watcher of, as she puts it, "boys doing stuff." Along the way, Watkins shares a telling anecdote of what happened when "The Rumpus" editor Stephen Elliott came to town while she was in grad school, acknowledges her "invisible cloak of white privilege," and admits, "The stunning truth is that I am asking, deep down, as I write, What would Philip Roth think of this? What would Jonathan Franzen think of this? When the answer is probably: nothing…. I wrote 'Battleborn' for white men, toward them. If you hold the book to a certain light, you’ll see it as an exercise in self-hazing, a product of working-class madness, the female strain. So, natural then that Battleborn was well-received by the white male lit establishment: it was written for them. The whole book’s a pander." And Watkins suggests, ultimately, that all of us shake out the "working miniature replica of the patriarchy" in our minds and "make our own canon filled with what we love to read, what speaks to us and challenges us and opens us up, wherein we can each determine our artistic lineages for ourselves, with curiosity and vigor, rather than trying to shoehorn ourselves into a canon ready made and gifted us by some white f__ks at Oxford." It's heady, crackling stuff. In addition to its own strengths, "On Pandering" makes an exquisite sibling to Saeed Jones' fantastic piece for Buzzfeed earlier this year, "Self-Portrait Of The Artist As Ungrateful Black Writer," and Rebecca Solnit's recent LitHub essay, "80 Books No Woman Should Read." In hers, Solnit masterfully eviscerates Esquire's absurd list, from a few years back, of books every man should read. "Should men read different books than women?" she asks. "In this list they shouldn’t even read books by women, except for one by Flannery O’Connor among 79 books by men." She then proceeds to trim the fat from the Esquire list, noting, for example, that "Norman Mailer and William Burroughs would go high up on my no-list, because there are so many writers we can read who didn’t stab or shoot their wives." And in the end, she states what so many of us, male and female, have simply internalized as readers, that "Even Moby-Dick, which I love, reminds me that a book without women is often said to be about humanity but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book." As the ever astute Jennifer Weiner writes in the Guardian this week, the problem isn't just limited to books that women write; there's a ghettoizing of books they read. Writing on critical scorn for lauded yet unforgivably successful recent novels, she notes, "And you, dear (female) reader, are ultimately the object of the Goldfinchers’ ire. The books you’ve insisted on making popular are bad ones: sentimental, mawkish and manipulative. You’re a dim bulb, a fumbling, rattle-grasping baby, unable to digest anything but the watered-down pablum that Tartt or Sebold or Yanagihira are serving; incapable, even, of correctly determining whether or not you liked what you read." I've thought a lot about this recent wealth of smart literary criticism lately. In a few months, I have a nonfiction book coming out, about my experience in a clinical trial. The word "science" even appears on the cover. Yet until I read Watkins' and Solnit's pieces, it honestly never once crossed my mind that there was anything unusual about the fact I'd just assumed men won't read it. I'm a woman; I'm a mother; my book contains a lot of scenes of crying. I didn't bother to ask any men to blurb it; I was mildly apologetic when I asked a few trusted male friends just to read it. I realize that sounds a little casually sexist of me. And my evidence suggests that men read do books by women. Just last week, I went to an event in which "Blackout" author Sarah Hepola talked about her drinking memoir, and having male readers come up to her and say, "You told my story." I have sat on subway trains and spied men reading "Orange Is the New Black." But here's my point: I, a woman who writes about feminist issues on the daily, take for granted Solnit's observation that a book by a man will be greeted by the world as a book, and that a book by a woman — whatever the subject matter — will be greeted by the world as a genre work. I've got to do better, because stories about women are stories about people. Like Watkins and Solnit, I want things to change, one writer, one reader at a time. And I want to see a man on the subway, reading "Bridget Jones' Diary."
Who needs Maxim when you can hate women on Reddit and 4chan?
The death knell continues to sound for "lad mags," the once-ubiquituous reading material for bros and wannabes who found that cat-calling wasn't quite enough to satisfy their resentment towards women for being full human beings instead of purchasable playthings. FHM and Zoo, two once-popular lad mags that have been running on fumes in recent years, are finally closing up shop. Maxim has been trying to rebrand itself into more of a classy fashion magazine like Esquire or GQ, but that effort seems also to have failed, as the female editor hired to usher in the new era recently stepped down. People who want classy reading material probably need a few more decades before the word "Maxim" doesn't make them shudder. It would be nice if all this were a end times sign for the misogyny that helped these magazines, in their heyday, give traditional nudie mags like Playboy a run for their money. But, as any lady with a Tinder account can tell you, the world is not bereft of men who treat women's minds like they are unfortunate obstacles to overcome on the way to vagina. The truth is that lad mags can't compete in the age of the internet. Today, a young man awash in anger at the discovery that women are allowed to make their own choices, even about sex, doesn't need to buy some cheeky magazine that tries to leer women back into their place. He can go straight to the Internet, where the misogyny is unvarnished, participatory, and free. Maxim and the other lad mags arose in the late 90s and early 2000s as part of that era's backlash against the reinvigorated feminism of the 90s. The 90s was a time when women were speaking out against sexual harassment, campus activism was strong, a pro-choice president was in the White House, and women were a prominent presence in pop culture, particularly music, where music acts like TLC, Hole, En Vogue, and L7 were breaking into the mainstream with strongly feminist points of view. (Sound familiar?) Lad mags were, in large part, an ugly reaction to this. Their language and imagery was deliberately dumbed down. As Susan Douglas explained in her book "The Rise of Enlightened Sexism", Maxim used "irony as a shield", often employing copy that ostensibly argued that "beautiful women" are superior to the readers, assumed to be "less cool, lazier, not as smart, dorkier, and very possibly not as good in bed". This humble pose functioned as cover for what was actually going on, which was resentment towards women for not being satisfied with a secondary role to men. Women wanted equality, but the lad mags distorted it to make it seem like women were somehow dominating men. For a time, this toxic mix of male insecurity and resentment towards women helped these magazines sell well. But lad mags, being lifestyle magazines like their classier betters, still had an editorial mission to be aspirational. They had to strike a balance between stoking resentment at women for supposedly being too stuck-up for their humble readers while also seeding the idea that buying a new motorcycle or stereo would be just the thing that makes the babes come running. Wallowing in bitterness or being overly hateful turns off advertisers, after all. But now we live in the age of the Internet. For the young (and sometimes not so young) men out there who are embittered women's autonomy, there's no need to read a magazine that filters your resentment through cheesecake pictures and pictorials on home stereos. You can go straight to Reddit, start an account, and start talking with like-minded men about how bitches these days think they're all that. Online, there's no market pressures keeping a check on some men's belief that women owe them. As a point of comparison, look at this infamous article from Maxim in 2003, titled "How To Cure A Feminist". The article feeds of male resentment of women who want equality and assumes women are stupid, but it still takes the common sense position that if you want people to like you, you have to be nice to them (even if it is all an act). Compare that to a recent diatribe by Scott Adams, the writer of "Dilbert" who has built up an online following with his narcissistic blog postings about how the rest of the world, but women especially, fail men like himself and his readers. In this recent piece, Adams paints men as hapless victims of gynocracy that tortures men by extracting everything out of them for the faint hope of touching the female bodies.
When I go to dinner, I expect the server to take my date’s order first. I expect the server to deliver her meal first. I expect to pay the check. I expect to be the designated driver, or at least manage the transportation for the evening. And on the way out, I will hold the door for her, then open the door to the car. When we get home, access to sex is strictly controlled by the woman. If the woman has additional preferences in terms of temperature, beverages, and whatnot, the man generally complies. If I fall in love and want to propose, I am expected to do so on my knees, to set the tone for the rest of the marriage.It's a topsy-turvy take on reality, of course, so delusional as to be almost comical. (Men fall on their knees one day in a grand gesture, but women are still expected to give up their last names for the rest of their live, you know.) The only way this diatribe makes sense is if you believe that a woman who chooses her sexual partners for herself is somehow robbing a man of something---which requires you to believe her body was his to begin with. That, and your belief that women are to be seen and not heard is so ingrained that you can't believe they expect to be treated like normal guests, who are offered something to drink by their hosts. Maxim couched hostility to women in winking humor. Adams wallows in humorless hysteria, falsely accusing women of being a bunch of hoity-toity princesses who expect the world to bend to their wills, when it's clear that what's really going on here is that he's mad that women expect to be treated as people---people who want to have sex for fun instead to "pay" a man for dinner, people who think they should be treated like any other guest and given a beverage during what they thought was a social occasion. Indeed, women's audacity in treating our own bodies like they belong to us is so outrageous to Adams that he blames terrorism for it:
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn’t religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I’m not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I’m designed that way. I’m a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.Maxim could be bad. It usually was bad. But Maxim was never going to threaten women like this, telling them that they either make sure every man who wants one gets a hug ("hug") when he wants it or public places start getting bombed. Adams is just a small sliver of what is going on online now. There are "pick-up artist" forums, where men trade tips and ideas on how to extract sex out of women they believe would rather not do it. There's the "Red Pill" forum on Reddit, where men take pick-up artistry and build on it, trading tips on how to use emotional abuse to strip a partner's self-esteem and make her submissive. There's "men's rights activist" websites who promote the idea that feminism isn't about women's equality, but about female dominance. If you prefer a more hands-on approach, you can just join Gamergate, which will select various women who have committed the sin of autonomy and direct you to harass them, day in and day out. Why should a man who is embittered by women's encroaching equality engage with the insinuations of lad mags when he can just mainline misogyny straight from the internet? No one is crying for the death of lad mags, of course. But compared to what the angry men of today are up to, Maxim's heyday seems like a gentler time.
Democratic senator debunks GOP refugee fear-mongering: U.S. terrorists “are generally white males, who have shot up people in movie theaters and schools”
The week after a group of radicalized Europeans stormed the city of Paris in coordinated terror attacks, U.S. politicians rushed to scapegoat Syrian refugees, culminating in the passage of severely limiting restrictions on any future resettlement for those fleeing the war zone for the U.S. in the Republican-led House. But as the right-wing rhetoric of fear becomes deafening, despite President Obama's pleas for calm, Democrats have begun to coalesce around a message pushing back on the rampant, xenophobic and misinformed generalization of Syrian refugees as terrorists. While Republicans in the House ramped up their anti-refugee rhetoric in the ramp up to the holiday season, one Democratic senator loudly rejected the misnomer that terrorist is synonymous with Middle Eastern. And as 34 Republican governors rushed to declare their state's Syrian-free zones last week, one Democratic mayor made it clear that he was more fearful of his own constituents than a latent threat from a refugee camp. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown explained during a radio interview last week that since September 11, 2001, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have done a much better job of keeping Americans safe from the brutality of foreign terrorists than from the senselessness of gun violence, specifically mass shootings, perpetuated by white males. "I think most of us recognize that we’re concerned but we also know that we trust the FBI and our security forces to do this right,” Brown told WAKR radio last week. “Since the beginning of the Bush administration when we were attacked, Sept. 11, we’ve not had any major terrorist attack in this country. We’ve had individual crazy people; normally, they look more like me than they look like Middle Easterners. They are generally white males, who have shot up people in movie theaters and schools. Those are terrorist attacks; they’re just different kinds of terrorists”:
But we have since the early Bush days, when September 11th happened, through the rest of the Bush years, and through the almost six years of the Obama administration, we’ve kept this country safe. [...] Individual people shouldn’t be fearful, because by and large our government, the federal government — people always talk obviously they don’t trust the feds, whatever. The federal government and local communities have done a pretty good job at keeping us safe. Not keeping us safe from crazy gunmen coming into schools and movie theaters sometimes but certainly keeping us safe from foreigns attacking this country.“I am more fearful of large gatherings of white men that come into schools, theaters and shoot people up, but we don’t isolate young white men on this issue,” Democratic Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told MSNBC on Saturday, explaining his decision to join with 18 other U.S. mayors in defiance of GOP governors to welcome Syrian refugees in his town. "We want to get rid of ISIS. We all agree with that," Rawlings said. "ISIS wants us to be divided on this issue. ISIS wants us to demonize these refugees, wants us to alienate these children." As Salon's Amanda Marcotte illustrates today, the right-wing rhetoric of rabid hatred has only served to inflame the terroristic tendencies of some disaffected white males, as in Minneapolis last night where five Black Lives Matter protestors were shot by as many as three white gunmen. This comes days after a Black Lives Matter protestor was assaulted at a Donald Trump rally in Alabama. And Democrats working to craft a forceful message of push-back against the incessant demagoguery in the face of 60 percent opposition to Syrian refugees will have to do so in spite of anemic media attention to facts. A Democratic political strategist who attempted to bring attention to the growing "domestic terror" of mass gun violence since 2001 was dismissed out-of-hand by Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Tuesday. Listen and watch Sen. Brown's and Mayor Rawlings' attempts: (h/t: Huffington Post)
Anne-Marie Slaughter says Princeton should take students seriously on Woodrow Wilson: “This is about that sense that we are watching black teenagers be shot in cold blood”
The issue of race and campus protests has been polarizing, with traditionalists and protesters locked in an angry fight with little understanding of the other’s point of view. But Anne-Marie Slaughter – former state department official and current president of New America – argues that not only is the issue complicated, it can only be discussed if everyone sees its full complexity. Earlier this week, she wrote a thought-provoking Facebook post on the issue of race on campus in general and the controversy over Woodrow Wilson at Princeton specifically. (Students and others have argued that his name be scrubbed from the university he once ran because of his racism.) Slaughter – a one-time dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, thinks that erasing Wilson’s name would be “a grave mistake,” since “the good that Woodrow Wilson did, even fully recognizing his racism, his sexism, and indeed the overall rigidity and self-righteousness make him simply unlikable in so many ways, greatly outweighs the bad.” Her hometown, Charlottesville, VA, has had to come to terms, she points out, with Thomas Jefferson’s radically divided soul through honest, not erasure. But a reading of Te-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me” and its antecedent, James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” had led her to understand and recognize the point of view of many students of color: That more decisive action may be necessary. “When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber announced this past week that he was launching a process to consider demands by protesting Princeton students to remove Wilson’s name from the Wilson School, I initially thought it was a crazy decision. But on reflection, it is the only decision that is consistent with Princeton’s values. Princeton’s administration, faculty, alumni and current students should welcome this debate on open and honest terms, without a predetermined outcome.” We spoke to Slaughter about race, the burden of the past, and campus politics. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Your original position was that we shouldn’t just strip the names of racists off buildings – that it’s a shallow way to operate. Six years ago, as dean of the Wilson school – I stepped down in 2009 -- I would have said, “Oh, come on – you’ve got to be kidding me. We’re not going to change the name of the Wilson school! You can’t do that! The man is responsible for the school, he conceived of the school… In the context of Princeton, he stands for Princeton in the nation’s service.” What’s changed for me is I would have been in the camp – as many alums are – that says, “We can talk about racism at Princeton, but we’re not changing the name, that’s not even on the table.” And now I think that’s not right. What’s going on here is something much deeper. It’s why I tie it to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book and James Baldwin – being rendered invisible… I looked at that Yale student screaming… This is not about reason; it’s first about emotion. Only people who’ve not been seen or heard can fully understand the vehemence of the emotion that that triggers. And as a woman who’s had that happen with me, by men, I’m sympathetic. So my point is about the debate as much as about the result. You’ve emphasized that the goal of liberal education is to challenge yourself, to grow… And your point of view on this has really changed. Yes – my view on lots of things. So you no longer think it makes sense to look at the controversies around figures, to acknowledge their sins, but keep their presence intact. The role of a critical education is to lead us to question and challenge… That it’s the students who are forcing Princeton’s alumni association to question and challenge their own beliefs… It doesn’t just run one way. You can’t just say to students that “This is more complex than you realize – he wasn’t just a racist, he was a great man.” You can’t just run the other way, and say to alumni, “He wasn’t a great man who was a racist on the side. He was a man who stands for the denial of our equal intelligence and our right to be here.” That’s something that has to be debated. There has to be a genuinely open debate. It can’t be a, “Yes, we’ll go through the motions but nothing will change.” It’s got to be, “Maybe we should.” I know where I stand in this debate: I think it would be a mistake, I think to deny history [by removing names] would be a mistake. But I want to have that debate with people who feel differently, I want to hear them, I want to entertain ideas I’ve never entertained. Unless we do that, we may dampen the controversy, but we’re not going to actually move forward. What should the balance of power work at a university? What’s the role of students? When I was at Yale, I heard, “This too shall pass.” That’s the way a lot of people who are professors and deans think about students: We are fiduciaries of an institution made up of students present, but also students past and students future, and faculty… That’s what people said in the ‘60s too; the initial reactions to students protesting Vietnam was, “This too shall pass.” Well, it didn’t. This is not just about Woodrow Wilson. This is about Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. This is about that sense that we are watching black teenagers be shot in cold blood and nothing is changing. That level of anger and frustration and not being heard is comparable to the 1960s. I think these students are tapping into the next wave of the civil rights movement. Let us hope that those of us in positions of power understand the bigger stakes here.The issue of race and campus protests has been polarizing, with traditionalists and protesters locked in an angry fight with little understanding of the other’s point of view. But Anne-Marie Slaughter – former state department official and current president of New America – argues that not only is the issue complicated, it can only be discussed if everyone sees its full complexity. Earlier this week, she wrote a thought-provoking Facebook post on the issue of race on campus in general and the controversy over Woodrow Wilson at Princeton specifically. (Students and others have argued that his name be scrubbed from the university he once ran because of his racism.) Slaughter – a one-time dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, thinks that erasing Wilson’s name would be “a grave mistake,” since “the good that Woodrow Wilson did, even fully recognizing his racism, his sexism, and indeed the overall rigidity and self-righteousness make him simply unlikable in so many ways, greatly outweighs the bad.” Her hometown, Charlottesville, VA, has had to come to terms, she points out, with Thomas Jefferson’s radically divided soul through honest, not erasure. But a reading of Te-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me” and its antecedent, James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” had led her to understand and recognize the point of view of many students of color: That more decisive action may be necessary. “When Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber announced this past week that he was launching a process to consider demands by protesting Princeton students to remove Wilson’s name from the Wilson School, I initially thought it was a crazy decision. But on reflection, it is the only decision that is consistent with Princeton’s values. Princeton’s administration, faculty, alumni and current students should welcome this debate on open and honest terms, without a predetermined outcome.” We spoke to Slaughter about race, the burden of the past, and campus politics. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Your original position was that we shouldn’t just strip the names of racists off buildings – that it’s a shallow way to operate. Six years ago, as dean of the Wilson school – I stepped down in 2009 -- I would have said, “Oh, come on – you’ve got to be kidding me. We’re not going to change the name of the Wilson school! You can’t do that! The man is responsible for the school, he conceived of the school… In the context of Princeton, he stands for Princeton in the nation’s service.” What’s changed for me is I would have been in the camp – as many alums are – that says, “We can talk about racism at Princeton, but we’re not changing the name, that’s not even on the table.” And now I think that’s not right. What’s going on here is something much deeper. It’s why I tie it to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book and James Baldwin – being rendered invisible… I looked at that Yale student screaming… This is not about reason; it’s first about emotion. Only people who’ve not been seen or heard can fully understand the vehemence of the emotion that that triggers. And as a woman who’s had that happen with me, by men, I’m sympathetic. So my point is about the debate as much as about the result. You’ve emphasized that the goal of liberal education is to challenge yourself, to grow… And your point of view on this has really changed. Yes – my view on lots of things. So you no longer think it makes sense to look at the controversies around figures, to acknowledge their sins, but keep their presence intact. The role of a critical education is to lead us to question and challenge… That it’s the students who are forcing Princeton’s alumni association to question and challenge their own beliefs… It doesn’t just run one way. You can’t just say to students that “This is more complex than you realize – he wasn’t just a racist, he was a great man.” You can’t just run the other way, and say to alumni, “He wasn’t a great man who was a racist on the side. He was a man who stands for the denial of our equal intelligence and our right to be here.” That’s something that has to be debated. There has to be a genuinely open debate. It can’t be a, “Yes, we’ll go through the motions but nothing will change.” It’s got to be, “Maybe we should.” I know where I stand in this debate: I think it would be a mistake, I think to deny history [by removing names] would be a mistake. But I want to have that debate with people who feel differently, I want to hear them, I want to entertain ideas I’ve never entertained. Unless we do that, we may dampen the controversy, but we’re not going to actually move forward. What should the balance of power work at a university? What’s the role of students? When I was at Yale, I heard, “This too shall pass.” That’s the way a lot of people who are professors and deans think about students: We are fiduciaries of an institution made up of students present, but also students past and students future, and faculty… That’s what people said in the ‘60s too; the initial reactions to students protesting Vietnam was, “This too shall pass.” Well, it didn’t. This is not just about Woodrow Wilson. This is about Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. This is about that sense that we are watching black teenagers be shot in cold blood and nothing is changing. That level of anger and frustration and not being heard is comparable to the 1960s. I think these students are tapping into the next wave of the civil rights movement. Let us hope that those of us in positions of power understand the bigger stakes here.
