Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 944

“The children are having sex!”: The sexting scandal in Colorado that highlights America’s dangerous sex-ed shortcomings

Adults in the small municipality of Cañon City, CO, have obtained a huge cache of pornographic photos featuring teenagers. The voyeurs aren't interested in statutory rape. Rather, they are law enforcement officials conducting a criminal investigation into youth sexting: the furtive trading of underage photos by underage exhibitionists known to send adults into perennial alarm. The sexting allegedly involved at least one hundred youths and hundreds of photos at a school where many parents reportedly work as guards at nearby state and federal prisons. So many players on Cañon City High School's varsity football game were involved that they forfeited their final regular season game. Fremont County District Attorney Tom LeDoux declared that consent is irrelevant, and that "it is a possibility that students will have to register as sex offenders." It is the sort of lurid scandal — “the children are having sex!” — that media can't resist. To be fair, much recent coverage has been substantial, questioning the wisdom of treating self-pornographing teens as criminal child pornographers. What is typically lost in the discussion, however, is why teens sext; what, exactly sexting and the panics that ensue have to do with American sexual culture; and, more to the point, in what ways sexting might result from the near-non-existence of truly comprehensive sex education in public schools. Sexting can no doubt be an unwise idea. Not because it is shameful to consensually share one's body, or an image thereof, with another person. But because it is sometimes not a great idea for teenagers to trust their peers so much. Meanwhile, the advent of social media can take the stakes of high school meanness to new scales of humiliation. The adult conversation around teen sexting, however, makes little distinction between the not-at-all inherently wrong practice of sharing a nude photograph and the malicious and not-consented-to sharing of those photographs. The latter can be very harmful, particularly to young women. So can the adult response. “People are panicking about the wrong thing. People tend to panic about sexting in general and often don't make any distinction between consensual sexting and privacy violations,” says Amy Hasinoff, a communications professor at University of Colorado Denver. “This is a continuation of longstanding gendered double standards about sexuality. Meaning we tend to shame and criticize women and girls who are being sexually active and expressive. And the same behavior among men and boys is seen as an expected thing.” The thing that is perhaps most stupid about sexting and the scandals that follow is that teenagers, like the adults who scold them, are often so ignorant about sex: Cañon City, for one, does not offer much in the way of sex education. “There's actually a Colorado sample health curriculum,” says Cañon City Superintendent George Welsh. “That's what we follow. In fact, it is not so much a fully-fleshed-out curriculum but rather just general standards, says Lisa Olcese, executive director of Colorado Youth Matter. And those standards, according to the state Department of Education, are largely limited to lessons like: “How can a personal choice to become sexually active affect one’s future goals and options?” and “How might a teen encourage and support a peer in their decision about sexual abstinence?” Skills to be taught include: “Demonstrate ways to encourage friends to remain sexually abstinent or return to abstinence if sexually active.” The word “orgasm,” for one, doesn't appear in the standards, reflecting a refusal to acknowledge that teens will continue to have sex, and sext; and that teens might have sex, and sext, because they enjoy it, and that it might even be a positive part of their sexual and romantic lives. In Cañon City, high schoolers, typically as sophomores, receive just one year of health class, says Welsh, often taught by physical education teachers. There are no specialized sex ed instructors. “I don't see the necessity for it,” says Welsh. “I mean, we don't necessarily bring a nuclear physicist in to teach a high school psychics class.” Colorado is not an abstinence-only state. For example, it suggests lessons on how “family, media, peer pressure, and culture influence sexual health,” and “the consequences and benefits of contraception, including condoms.” There are far more conservative environments where youth can not receive a real sex education. “We address body changes, and what that means; reproduction, and ways to put that off, from abstinence to contraception,” says Welsh. But there is nothing, as far as I can glean, about how to achieve sexual pleasure which, it seems, is at least part what people are often after when they have sex—and sext. As sex educator Elizabeth Schroeder wrote at RH Reality Check, “people engage in particular behaviors for a reason. Without addressing the benefits a person gets from engaging in particular behaviors, sexual or otherwise—including unhealthy behaviors—it will be impossible to support healthy practices relating to those behaviors.” In most Colorado classrooms, as in many nationwide, sex is all danger and no fun. And so, when it comes to actually flirting, making out and having sex, kids get no advice from experts at school. “Correct,” says Welsh. “I'm not sure we get into technique.” At worst, the lesson is don't do it. At best, the lesson is if you must do it, take every precaution so you don't die. But that's not good enough because it is that very question of technique that people find so confusing about sex. “When we're focusing solely on sexual behavior and negative outcomes rather than talking about sexuality as being healthy...and part of that is pleasure and should include pleasure...it's no wonder that young people are going and seeking other forms of information and other ways of engaging,” says Jesseca Boyer, interim president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. That other form of information is often ubiquitous internet pornography, which often does not present women in the most dignified or empowered light. 43-percent of 13- to 18-year-olds report viewing pornography online, according to a recent survey by Northwestern University's Center on Media and Human Development School of Communication. That could be a conservative figure. Many would be wary of admitting to viewing pornography, even anonymously. It is not easy for teens to talk about sex.

* * *

Teaching pleasure in sexual education is rare in the United States save for some elite liberal private schools. But it doesn't have to be this way. In the Netherlands, for example, sexuality education kicks off at age four singing songs about crushes, talking about hugs. Gender stereotypes are addressed at age 8. Sexual orientation and contraceptives at 11. “For girls, I think the Dutch put a lot more emphasis on the fact that women can make choices,” Amy Schalet, a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Alternet. “It’s not like it’s perfect, but there’s at least a conversation about, ‘what do you want? What do you feel?’ You can also see it in the fact that the Dutch are one of the few countries that really openly talk about masturbation for both sexes [during sex education]. It’s often thought that that’s one way that women can really become empowered about their sexuality, when they know about sexual pleasure and their own bodies. That’s not usually part of American sex education.” Most Dutch teens report consensual and pleasant first sexual experiences, according to PBS Newshour. They have very low teen pregnancy rates, and very high rates of contraceptive use. And low rates of sexually transmitted infections too. Sexual ignorance contributes to people making such bad decisions about sex, from maliciously sharing explicit photos to sexual harassment and assault—part and parcel of a culture that prioritizes male pleasure as the principal goal of sex and subjugates women as that pleasure's object. According to the Guttmacher Institute, just 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education. Only 18, plus D.C., require that information on contraception be provided. 37 states require that abstinence be covered, 25 of which require that it be stressed. Colorado does not even require that sex education be taught, according to the Guttmacher. But it does require that if it is taught, that it be medically accurate. George Welsh, who is 51, says that the big problem is not sex education but “digital citizenship.” In this view, sexting is on par with plagiarism: new technology has made certain problematic behaviors more possible than ever before. When Welsh was a child, “if I wanted to get naked pictures at school or anywhere,” he would have had to “buy a magazine. My family was too poor to afford a Polaroid camera, but I suppose that could've been an option.” It is no doubt true that digital communication has outrun our social norms. But the problem is also probably rooted, as Welsh concedes, in the “taboos” around sex in American culture. But American culture, he says, just won't allow for too much sex ed at schools. “I get that in many communities in the country parents feel like, this is my role to be educating my kid about this,” says Welsh. “It's always a gray area of how deep you can go into it...what the community's willing to stomach.” But if adults can't stomach sexting, they need to start thinking more about sex. In the meantime, kids will keep hitting send.Adults in the small municipality of Cañon City, CO, have obtained a huge cache of pornographic photos featuring teenagers. The voyeurs aren't interested in statutory rape. Rather, they are law enforcement officials conducting a criminal investigation into youth sexting: the furtive trading of underage photos by underage exhibitionists known to send adults into perennial alarm. The sexting allegedly involved at least one hundred youths and hundreds of photos at a school where many parents reportedly work as guards at nearby state and federal prisons. So many players on Cañon City High School's varsity football game were involved that they forfeited their final regular season game. Fremont County District Attorney Tom LeDoux declared that consent is irrelevant, and that "it is a possibility that students will have to register as sex offenders." It is the sort of lurid scandal — “the children are having sex!” — that media can't resist. To be fair, much recent coverage has been substantial, questioning the wisdom of treating self-pornographing teens as criminal child pornographers. What is typically lost in the discussion, however, is why teens sext; what, exactly sexting and the panics that ensue have to do with American sexual culture; and, more to the point, in what ways sexting might result from the near-non-existence of truly comprehensive sex education in public schools. Sexting can no doubt be an unwise idea. Not because it is shameful to consensually share one's body, or an image thereof, with another person. But because it is sometimes not a great idea for teenagers to trust their peers so much. Meanwhile, the advent of social media can take the stakes of high school meanness to new scales of humiliation. The adult conversation around teen sexting, however, makes little distinction between the not-at-all inherently wrong practice of sharing a nude photograph and the malicious and not-consented-to sharing of those photographs. The latter can be very harmful, particularly to young women. So can the adult response. “People are panicking about the wrong thing. People tend to panic about sexting in general and often don't make any distinction between consensual sexting and privacy violations,” says Amy Hasinoff, a communications professor at University of Colorado Denver. “This is a continuation of longstanding gendered double standards about sexuality. Meaning we tend to shame and criticize women and girls who are being sexually active and expressive. And the same behavior among men and boys is seen as an expected thing.” The thing that is perhaps most stupid about sexting and the scandals that follow is that teenagers, like the adults who scold them, are often so ignorant about sex: Cañon City, for one, does not offer much in the way of sex education. “There's actually a Colorado sample health curriculum,” says Cañon City Superintendent George Welsh. “That's what we follow. In fact, it is not so much a fully-fleshed-out curriculum but rather just general standards, says Lisa Olcese, executive director of Colorado Youth Matter. And those standards, according to the state Department of Education, are largely limited to lessons like: “How can a personal choice to become sexually active affect one’s future goals and options?” and “How might a teen encourage and support a peer in their decision about sexual abstinence?” Skills to be taught include: “Demonstrate ways to encourage friends to remain sexually abstinent or return to abstinence if sexually active.” The word “orgasm,” for one, doesn't appear in the standards, reflecting a refusal to acknowledge that teens will continue to have sex, and sext; and that teens might have sex, and sext, because they enjoy it, and that it might even be a positive part of their sexual and romantic lives. In Cañon City, high schoolers, typically as sophomores, receive just one year of health class, says Welsh, often taught by physical education teachers. There are no specialized sex ed instructors. “I don't see the necessity for it,” says Welsh. “I mean, we don't necessarily bring a nuclear physicist in to teach a high school psychics class.” Colorado is not an abstinence-only state. For example, it suggests lessons on how “family, media, peer pressure, and culture influence sexual health,” and “the consequences and benefits of contraception, including condoms.” There are far more conservative environments where youth can not receive a real sex education. “We address body changes, and what that means; reproduction, and ways to put that off, from abstinence to contraception,” says Welsh. But there is nothing, as far as I can glean, about how to achieve sexual pleasure which, it seems, is at least part what people are often after when they have sex—and sext. As sex educator Elizabeth Schroeder wrote at RH Reality Check, “people engage in particular behaviors for a reason. Without addressing the benefits a person gets from engaging in particular behaviors, sexual or otherwise—including unhealthy behaviors—it will be impossible to support healthy practices relating to those behaviors.” In most Colorado classrooms, as in many nationwide, sex is all danger and no fun. And so, when it comes to actually flirting, making out and having sex, kids get no advice from experts at school. “Correct,” says Welsh. “I'm not sure we get into technique.” At worst, the lesson is don't do it. At best, the lesson is if you must do it, take every precaution so you don't die. But that's not good enough because it is that very question of technique that people find so confusing about sex. “When we're focusing solely on sexual behavior and negative outcomes rather than talking about sexuality as being healthy...and part of that is pleasure and should include pleasure...it's no wonder that young people are going and seeking other forms of information and other ways of engaging,” says Jesseca Boyer, interim president and CEO of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. That other form of information is often ubiquitous internet pornography, which often does not present women in the most dignified or empowered light. 43-percent of 13- to 18-year-olds report viewing pornography online, according to a recent survey by Northwestern University's Center on Media and Human Development School of Communication. That could be a conservative figure. Many would be wary of admitting to viewing pornography, even anonymously. It is not easy for teens to talk about sex.

* * *

Teaching pleasure in sexual education is rare in the United States save for some elite liberal private schools. But it doesn't have to be this way. In the Netherlands, for example, sexuality education kicks off at age four singing songs about crushes, talking about hugs. Gender stereotypes are addressed at age 8. Sexual orientation and contraceptives at 11. “For girls, I think the Dutch put a lot more emphasis on the fact that women can make choices,” Amy Schalet, a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Alternet. “It’s not like it’s perfect, but there’s at least a conversation about, ‘what do you want? What do you feel?’ You can also see it in the fact that the Dutch are one of the few countries that really openly talk about masturbation for both sexes [during sex education]. It’s often thought that that’s one way that women can really become empowered about their sexuality, when they know about sexual pleasure and their own bodies. That’s not usually part of American sex education.” Most Dutch teens report consensual and pleasant first sexual experiences, according to PBS Newshour. They have very low teen pregnancy rates, and very high rates of contraceptive use. And low rates of sexually transmitted infections too. Sexual ignorance contributes to people making such bad decisions about sex, from maliciously sharing explicit photos to sexual harassment and assault—part and parcel of a culture that prioritizes male pleasure as the principal goal of sex and subjugates women as that pleasure's object. According to the Guttmacher Institute, just 22 states and the District of Columbia mandate sex education. Only 18, plus D.C., require that information on contraception be provided. 37 states require that abstinence be covered, 25 of which require that it be stressed. Colorado does not even require that sex education be taught, according to the Guttmacher. But it does require that if it is taught, that it be medically accurate. George Welsh, who is 51, says that the big problem is not sex education but “digital citizenship.” In this view, sexting is on par with plagiarism: new technology has made certain problematic behaviors more possible than ever before. When Welsh was a child, “if I wanted to get naked pictures at school or anywhere,” he would have had to “buy a magazine. My family was too poor to afford a Polaroid camera, but I suppose that could've been an option.” It is no doubt true that digital communication has outrun our social norms. But the problem is also probably rooted, as Welsh concedes, in the “taboos” around sex in American culture. But American culture, he says, just won't allow for too much sex ed at schools. “I get that in many communities in the country parents feel like, this is my role to be educating my kid about this,” says Welsh. “It's always a gray area of how deep you can go into it...what the community's willing to stomach.” But if adults can't stomach sexting, they need to start thinking more about sex. In the meantime, kids will keep hitting send.

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Donald Trump’s white fascist brigade: His rallies are now a safe space for racism

A protester from the Black Lives Matter movement was beaten at a Donald Trump rally held on Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama. CNN reported that:

At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event. At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground. All of the attendees who were involved in the physical altercation with the protester were white. The protester appeared to be shouting "black lives matter" and later removed his sweatshirt to reveal a shirt with those words. At least one attendee shouted "all lives matter" as the protester was eventually led out by police officers on the scene…

Mercutio Southall Jr., the man who was assaulted, offered these additional details:

The Black Lives Matter protester attacked during Donald's Trump's Birmingham rally said he was punched, kicked and called "n****r" while a group of eight or nine people were on top of him…" He said people encircled him, and he was being pushed and punched from every direction. Someone hit him from behind, and the next thing he knew, he was at the bottom of pile. He was kicked in the stomach, and the chest, both men and women. "I got enough people off of me that I was able to get up a little bit,'' he said. "Somebody got behind me and started trying to choke me out."… Southall said he was repeatedly called a "n****r" and "monkey" and told his life doesn't matter.

Donald Trump later appeared to endorse this violence:

“Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing,” Trump said on the Fox News Channel on Sunday morning. “I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble.”

In their current state of outrage about anti-racism protests at America’s colleges and universities, “political correctness,” and Black Lives Matter activism, movement conservatives are refighting the Culture Wars of the 1960s and 1980s. Once more, the university is their enemy both because of the American right’s deeply rooted anti-intellectualism, as well as how it is one of the few spaces where women, gays and lesbians, and people of color are (incorrectly) imagined as having a voice and some pittance of power. Because conservatives exhibit a high degree of social dominance behavior, any threat to what they view as “the natural order of things” is met with fear, a sense of victimization, and feelings of hostility. This dynamic helps to explain the right-wing’s current obsession with “political correctness” and “safe spaces.” It also reveals the glaring difference between how movement conservatives and liberally minded people understand the world, and the language they use to describe it. As originally used and intended by liberals and progressives, a “safe space” is one where non-whites, gays and lesbians, women, the differently-abled, and other stigmatized groups and individuals, can be momentarily free from harassment, marginalization and discrimination. Liberals use the phrase “political correctness” to describe a basic principle that individuals should try to treat one another with dignity and respect. Conservatives (who of course practice their own type of ideological orthodoxy as “political correctness”) are enraged by these notions because they view them as a limitation on their ability to demean, harass and abuse other people. Moreover, conservatives are especially upset by “political correctness” because it is often an assertion of agency and a demand for respect from marginalized groups against dominant, white, male, institutional authority. The divergent reaction to “safe spaces” and “political correctness” from conservatives and liberals also signals to another socio-political fact. American society is structured around maintaining, promoting, and protecting unearned advantages, life opportunities, and resources for white people. As viewed through the lens of the color line, almost every aspect of American life is a “safe space” for white people. This “safe space” for whiteness is reinforced by many factors, including, but not limited to, the mass media, residential and housing segregation, racially homogeneous interpersonal social networks, as well as a racist “criminal justice” system. And when this protective bubble of white privilege is pierced, or in any way challenged, many white folks respond in extremely negative, hostile, and immature ways. When people tell and show you who they really are, you had best pay close attention. When Black Lives Matter protesters exercised their constitutionally protected right of free speech at Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ rallies earlier this year, they were not physically assaulted by those in attendance. In contrast, when Black Lives Matter and other protesters have intervened at Donald Trump rallies they have been met with thuggish violence by his public. It is also telling that Donald Trump’s supporters began to triumphantly yell “all lives matter” while Mercutio Southall Jr. was taken away by police. This slur is a rejection of the basic principle driving Black Lives Matter: African-Americans should have same the full and equal human rights, protections, and freedoms as whites. Any other civic arrangement should be unacceptable in a country that purports to be the greatest country on Earth. To stand against Black Lives Matter is to agree that black people should in fact be second class citizens in their own country. Consequently, it has become abundantly clear in recent months that “All Lives Matter” is the new “White Power!” for the Age of Obama. Research on political attitudes, values, and American history has repeatedly demonstrated the many ways that conservatism and racism is now the same thing in post-civil rights era America. The rise of the Tea Party, the GOP’s extreme rightward shift, vicious and ugly racially driven animus and conspiracy theories towards Barack Obama, the efforts to destroy the gains of the civil rights movement, and now the Know-Nothing-like xenophobia and prejudice against non-white immigrants and Syrian refugees are current events as an example of the Republican Party’s white supremacist orientation and brand. [This is seen online as well. The YouTube clip of the fracas in Birmingham, Alabama, has hundreds of comments—many of them are overtly racist, use racially violent anti-black language, lie about how “Black Lives Matter” is a “terrorist organization,” and deploy the slogans “White Power” and “All Lives Matter” interchangeably.] And because he appeals to the most strident, immature, and reactionary part of the American right-wing id, Donald Trump’s rallies are safe spaces -- for nativism, white racism, and increasingly, violence.    

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Redskins player blames biased refs who hate the team name for loss: “We shouldn’t have to be punished for that”

Football fans and players, just a heads up. There's a full moon this week. Adele has a number one Billboard album. Both Glenn Rhee and Jon Snow are totally alive. I mention this because you might be in need of a completely reasonable and logical excuse for your team losing next time. You're welcome, Jason Hatcher! Remember when you thought we'd reached peak weaksauce explanations just last week, when ostensibly legitimate news organizations gave a veneer of legitimacy to the bonkers theories that Olivia Munn's relationship with Aaron Rodgers was the root of Green Bay's dismal three losses in a row? ESPN's Rob Demovsky went so far as to insinuate "possible off-field issues," noting, "Lions reporters said they spotted Rodgers’ girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, at Lambeau Field on Sunday. Sometimes it's easy to forget that professional athletes have lives away from the field, and you never know what could be going on in their personal lives." Both the Washington Post and Fox Sports likewise jumped on the story, quoting one concerned tweeter who theorized that Munn was likely behind the reason "God has taken his hand of blessing off the Packers players." Munn, because she is an adult and a smart person and also, of course, not responsible for the outcomes of football games she herself does not play, called BS on this line of reasoning late last week, pointing out along the way that "If ur going to validate a 'fan's' comments about me, please also include if he's a racist." And she added, "Playing it fast & loose w/the journalism @RobDemovsky. Your professional skills are lacking... you must be having personal problems at home." Boom! But Packers fans aren't the only ones looking to make sense of how a professional team of athletes could lose a game. Speaking with the Washington Post this weekend, the Redskin's defensive end Jason Hatcher expressed his thoughts about what happened during his team's 44-16 loss to the Panthers. After a controversial unnecessary roughness call when the game was still tied at 14-14, fans were left steaming — and the Redskins went on to defeat. Searching for explanations post-game, Hatcher mused, "It’s going to be hard, you know, we fighting against teams and the referees. It just is what it is. I’m not saying this out of character to get fined, but it is what it is. I don’t know if it’s about the name or what, but at the same time, we play football too. We work our butt off too.

Republicans just don’t get Stephen Colbert: Why the Fox News-watching, climate-change denying crowd can’t understand complex satire

 When it was first announced that Stephen Colbert would take over for David Letterman as host of “The Late Show”—both the right and the left complained.  The left worried that the end of “The Colbert Report” and his pundit persona would signal a huge loss for politically progressive satire.   The right argued that the choice of Colbert signaled that CBS was, to quote Rush Limbaugh, at “war on the heartland of America.” “CBS executives made it clear” however, “that they expected Mr. Colbert to broaden his appeal when he moved to the medium of late night on a network.” At least that was the idea. We now have data that paint a different picture.  First of all, despite a strong start, Colbert has now trailed behind his comedic competitors on ABC and NBC for two weeks running.  That is good news for ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who had held the No. 3 spot since Colbert took over.  NBC’s Jimmy Fallon remains comfortably No. 1 with approximately a half million more viewers than his closest competitor. So what’s the catch?  Why has Colbert dropped in ratings?  Well, according to a poll published by The Hollywood Reporter, it seems that Colbert has a GOP problem.  Only 17 percent of Colbert’s viewers are Republican compared to 31 percent for Fallon and 33 percent for Kimmel.   While Kimmel is clearly the comedian that most appeals to Republican viewers, both he and Fallon have a fairly balanced split between parties.  Colbert, in contrast, does not. Colbert Fallon Kimmel Democrat 47% 36% 34% Republican 17% 31% 33% Independent 31% 27% 30% While late night viewers already skew Democratic, Colbert’s viewers lean much more to the left. When asked who they would vote for in an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, 72 percent of Colbert’s viewers said they would vote Democratic. That’s a huge jump over Fallon’s 56 percent and Kimmel’s 52 percent.  Even more revealing is the fact that 49 percent of Colbert’s viewers favor Bernie Sanders. Now for those of you who actually watch Colbert, this has to come as big news.  Colbert didn’t just shed his conservative blowhard pundit persona when he took over for Letterman—he also changed his comedy to fit in to the format.  First of all, he moved far more towards the variety show comedy of Letterman. He has great musical talent on the show every night.  He does silly jokes during his stand up every night. He gets a great menu of celebrity talent on every night. Even within the format, Colbert made a number of shifts away from the comedy he did on “The Colbert Report” and towards the mainstream.  Now many of his interviews are just opportunities for celebrities to shill their next project.  And he softballs many of his political guests—as happened when he had Donald Trump on.  He also has a significant amount of bits that are just pure entertainment – goofy jokes that have no connection to the political satire that made him famous. But, here’s the catch.  Colbert may have largely adapted to the genre, but he has also introduced elements into the genre that we have never seen before.   He has hosted guests like Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Tesla founder Elon Musk.  He had a heartfelt and intense interview with Joe Biden.  And he did a biting interview with Ted Cruz where he refused to allow the Tea Party candidate to rewrite history and spout lies. He has also held on to his sharp satirical edge. Besides continuing to do a very Colbert Report-like segment where he regularly critiques the news media, he has also included brilliant satirical bits like “The Hungry for Power Games” series where he takes on the persona of Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman and bids farewell to a presidential candidate exiting the race. That series has given equal time –and mockery—to both Democrats and Republicans.  Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb each got their due.  Colbert has also done great segments mocking the Democrats in general.  In fact, there is ample evidence that he has effectively moved his satire into a more centrist mode. So why don’t Republicans like him?  According to Callum Borchers in the Washington Post, the problem is that Colbert takes positions that will enrage the GOP on topics like gay marriage and Syrian refugees.  When he goes after these issues he tends to skewer the GOP, exposing the flaws to their logic, mocking their twisted so-called values, and revealing their penchant for re-writing history.  Borcher tells us “Colbert knows how to bring down the house by painting conservatives as a bunch of backward xenophobes. He’s one of the best at it.” Borchers is right, of course. But there’s more to the story.  The real divide here is over the sort of comedy offered by Colbert on “The Late Show” and that offered by his counterparts on NBC and ABC.  Even if he goes after positions held by the right and the left, he will still offer viewers a smart, incisive comedic view—one that is radically different from the goofy, frat boy humor of Kimmel and the charming, cool guy humor of Fallon. The key difference is that Colbert still offers satirical comedy—not just entertaining comedy.  Satire is completely different from the sort of jokes that make others seem silly or stupid.  Instead it uses irony, sarcasm, and parody to encourage critical thinking.  Colbert’s “Hungry for Power Games” segments are perfect examples of it. Whether he is going after a Democrat or a Republican, at the core of the sketch is a critique of our electoral system and the ways it favors a political oligarchy. By parodying “The Hunger Games” Colbert is able to draw interesting parallels between the fictional world and ours. It is smart humor and it is a sort of humor one never sees on Fallon or Kimmel.  Even more importantly it is the sort of humor that is much less likely to appeal to Republican viewers because it depends on questioning beliefs and criticizing the status quo. Recent studies have suggested that there is a significant intelligence gap between Democrats and Republicans.  This is not just tied to data that shows that “blue states” have higher graduation rates; it is connected to what researchers call “the Republican brain.” There have been studies, for instance, that link racism, low I.Q. and Republican views.  As Psychology Today reports “for those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.” Lumping all Republicans together is not a fair move, of course, and it must be pointed out that there is competing research that gives Conservatives the edge over Liberals.  That research showed that “A socially conservative Republican (pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun rights) scored lower on the test than the classically liberal Republican (pro-small government, maximum personal freedom, and maximum personal responsibility).”  That second segment of liberal Republicans is often from a more affluent class with better access to education—a factor the researchers suggest may account for their higher intelligence scores. It is the socially conservative, less educated, Tea Party version of the GOP that is least likely to want to watch smart comedy like Colbert’s.  This is the portion of the population that thinks climate science is a liberal plot, Obama is not a citizen, and the separation of church and state is a myth.  As Chris Mooney explains, “liberals tend to be more open, flexible, curious and nuanced—and conservatives tend to be more closed, fixed and certain in their views.”  It’s not surprising that those differences would also yield different tastes in comedy. This means that it is not just a question of who Colbert targets in his joke; it is also a question of how he makes the joke itself.  Nuance, irony, and layered thinking may be more of the problem than Trump jokes.  He has virtually abandoned jokes about Fox News but clearly that isn’t enough to attract GOP viewers. Recall that on “The Colbert Report” Colbert’s character went after Fox News almost every show.  With classic lines like --"A new poll says that Fox News is both the most trusted and least trusted news network. See, they do report both sides of the story" –-Colbert used smart humor to attempt to counter the power of Fox News.  As he prepared to step down as host of “The Colbert Report” he did one last segment of “Formidable Opponent—a bit that had him debating himself playing the left and the right.  As the right-wing, red-tied Colbert quoted Bill O’Reilly one last time, blue-tied, lefty Colbert said  “Oh, I am going to miss that good man.” When his counterpart pointed out that it was Colbert stepping down, not O’Reilly, the real Colbert replied, “Yeah, but no one’s going to pay me to watch him anymore, so fuck that noise!” Colbert may have gotten rid of his character, stopped watching Fox News, and unleashed his mainstream entertaining side, but he still does smart, satirical comedy every show--unlike Fallon and Kimmel who basically trade on mindless, goofy comedy.  When polled, 43 percent of viewers surveyed called Colbert “opinionated” and 46 percent called Fallon a “cool dude.”  Could it be that any humor that asks viewers to think critically feels “opinionated”? Colbert famously quipped on “The Colbert Report” that “the facts have a liberal bias.” But it now seems clear that his smart comedy has a liberal bias too. When it was first announced that Stephen Colbert would take over for David Letterman as host of “The Late Show”—both the right and the left complained.  The left worried that the end of “The Colbert Report” and his pundit persona would signal a huge loss for politically progressive satire.   The right argued that the choice of Colbert signaled that CBS was, to quote Rush Limbaugh, at “war on the heartland of America.” “CBS executives made it clear” however, “that they expected Mr. Colbert to broaden his appeal when he moved to the medium of late night on a network.” At least that was the idea. We now have data that paint a different picture.  First of all, despite a strong start, Colbert has now trailed behind his comedic competitors on ABC and NBC for two weeks running.  That is good news for ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who had held the No. 3 spot since Colbert took over.  NBC’s Jimmy Fallon remains comfortably No. 1 with approximately a half million more viewers than his closest competitor. So what’s the catch?  Why has Colbert dropped in ratings?  Well, according to a poll published by The Hollywood Reporter, it seems that Colbert has a GOP problem.  Only 17 percent of Colbert’s viewers are Republican compared to 31 percent for Fallon and 33 percent for Kimmel.   While Kimmel is clearly the comedian that most appeals to Republican viewers, both he and Fallon have a fairly balanced split between parties.  Colbert, in contrast, does not. Colbert Fallon Kimmel Democrat 47% 36% 34% Republican 17% 31% 33% Independent 31% 27% 30% While late night viewers already skew Democratic, Colbert’s viewers lean much more to the left. When asked who they would vote for in an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, 72 percent of Colbert’s viewers said they would vote Democratic. That’s a huge jump over Fallon’s 56 percent and Kimmel’s 52 percent.  Even more revealing is the fact that 49 percent of Colbert’s viewers favor Bernie Sanders. Now for those of you who actually watch Colbert, this has to come as big news.  Colbert didn’t just shed his conservative blowhard pundit persona when he took over for Letterman—he also changed his comedy to fit in to the format.  First of all, he moved far more towards the variety show comedy of Letterman. He has great musical talent on the show every night.  He does silly jokes during his stand up every night. He gets a great menu of celebrity talent on every night. Even within the format, Colbert made a number of shifts away from the comedy he did on “The Colbert Report” and towards the mainstream.  Now many of his interviews are just opportunities for celebrities to shill their next project.  And he softballs many of his political guests—as happened when he had Donald Trump on.  He also has a significant amount of bits that are just pure entertainment – goofy jokes that have no connection to the political satire that made him famous. But, here’s the catch.  Colbert may have largely adapted to the genre, but he has also introduced elements into the genre that we have never seen before.   He has hosted guests like Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Tesla founder Elon Musk.  He had a heartfelt and intense interview with Joe Biden.  And he did a biting interview with Ted Cruz where he refused to allow the Tea Party candidate to rewrite history and spout lies. He has also held on to his sharp satirical edge. Besides continuing to do a very Colbert Report-like segment where he regularly critiques the news media, he has also included brilliant satirical bits like “The Hungry for Power Games” series where he takes on the persona of Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman and bids farewell to a presidential candidate exiting the race. That series has given equal time –and mockery—to both Democrats and Republicans.  Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb each got their due.  Colbert has also done great segments mocking the Democrats in general.  In fact, there is ample evidence that he has effectively moved his satire into a more centrist mode. So why don’t Republicans like him?  According to Callum Borchers in the Washington Post, the problem is that Colbert takes positions that will enrage the GOP on topics like gay marriage and Syrian refugees.  When he goes after these issues he tends to skewer the GOP, exposing the flaws to their logic, mocking their twisted so-called values, and revealing their penchant for re-writing history.  Borcher tells us “Colbert knows how to bring down the house by painting conservatives as a bunch of backward xenophobes. He’s one of the best at it.” Borchers is right, of course. But there’s more to the story.  The real divide here is over the sort of comedy offered by Colbert on “The Late Show” and that offered by his counterparts on NBC and ABC.  Even if he goes after positions held by the right and the left, he will still offer viewers a smart, incisive comedic view—one that is radically different from the goofy, frat boy humor of Kimmel and the charming, cool guy humor of Fallon. The key difference is that Colbert still offers satirical comedy—not just entertaining comedy.  Satire is completely different from the sort of jokes that make others seem silly or stupid.  Instead it uses irony, sarcasm, and parody to encourage critical thinking.  Colbert’s “Hungry for Power Games” segments are perfect examples of it. Whether he is going after a Democrat or a Republican, at the core of the sketch is a critique of our electoral system and the ways it favors a political oligarchy. By parodying “The Hunger Games” Colbert is able to draw interesting parallels between the fictional world and ours. It is smart humor and it is a sort of humor one never sees on Fallon or Kimmel.  Even more importantly it is the sort of humor that is much less likely to appeal to Republican viewers because it depends on questioning beliefs and criticizing the status quo. Recent studies have suggested that there is a significant intelligence gap between Democrats and Republicans.  This is not just tied to data that shows that “blue states” have higher graduation rates; it is connected to what researchers call “the Republican brain.” There have been studies, for instance, that link racism, low I.Q. and Republican views.  As Psychology Today reports “for those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.” Lumping all Republicans together is not a fair move, of course, and it must be pointed out that there is competing research that gives Conservatives the edge over Liberals.  That research showed that “A socially conservative Republican (pro-life, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun rights) scored lower on the test than the classically liberal Republican (pro-small government, maximum personal freedom, and maximum personal responsibility).”  That second segment of liberal Republicans is often from a more affluent class with better access to education—a factor the researchers suggest may account for their higher intelligence scores. It is the socially conservative, less educated, Tea Party version of the GOP that is least likely to want to watch smart comedy like Colbert’s.  This is the portion of the population that thinks climate science is a liberal plot, Obama is not a citizen, and the separation of church and state is a myth.  As Chris Mooney explains, “liberals tend to be more open, flexible, curious and nuanced—and conservatives tend to be more closed, fixed and certain in their views.”  It’s not surprising that those differences would also yield different tastes in comedy. This means that it is not just a question of who Colbert targets in his joke; it is also a question of how he makes the joke itself.  Nuance, irony, and layered thinking may be more of the problem than Trump jokes.  He has virtually abandoned jokes about Fox News but clearly that isn’t enough to attract GOP viewers. Recall that on “The Colbert Report” Colbert’s character went after Fox News almost every show.  With classic lines like --"A new poll says that Fox News is both the most trusted and least trusted news network. See, they do report both sides of the story" –-Colbert used smart humor to attempt to counter the power of Fox News.  As he prepared to step down as host of “The Colbert Report” he did one last segment of “Formidable Opponent—a bit that had him debating himself playing the left and the right.  As the right-wing, red-tied Colbert quoted Bill O’Reilly one last time, blue-tied, lefty Colbert said  “Oh, I am going to miss that good man.” When his counterpart pointed out that it was Colbert stepping down, not O’Reilly, the real Colbert replied, “Yeah, but no one’s going to pay me to watch him anymore, so fuck that noise!” Colbert may have gotten rid of his character, stopped watching Fox News, and unleashed his mainstream entertaining side, but he still does smart, satirical comedy every show--unlike Fallon and Kimmel who basically trade on mindless, goofy comedy.  When polled, 43 percent of viewers surveyed called Colbert “opinionated” and 46 percent called Fallon a “cool dude.”  Could it be that any humor that asks viewers to think critically feels “opinionated”? Colbert famously quipped on “The Colbert Report” that “the facts have a liberal bias.” But it now seems clear that his smart comedy has a liberal bias too.

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“Jessica Jones”: Marvel’s newest show makes surviving trauma a superpower

“Marvel’s Jessica Jones,” the second Marvel Studios property to be led by a female character, is best described by explaining what it is not. It’s a comic-book show, but it’s not your average comic-book show. It stars a superhero, but she’s not your average superhero. And it’s about good guys beating up bad guys, but not in the classic caped-crusader airborne battle. “Jessica Jones” is instead a story of one superhero in a hostile world—a single character’s slice in what is otherwise a sprawling, Technicolor supernatural universe. Even in the original comics the show is based on, Jessica Jones is defined by her difference from the rest of Marvel’s superheroes. She left the Avengers to be a private eye, starting her own detective agency, Alias Investigations. It helps that she can break padlocks with one hand, but her greatest asset isn’t super-strength, it’s her tenacity. And she doesn’t have a superhero alterego; if anything, she prefers the shadows to the limelight. This is why, if you’re a newcomer to comic books, or even just not that interested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Jessica Jones,” now available on Netflix, could still be for you. Aside from the fact that a few people in the story have extraordinary abilities, there are no costumes, no aliens and no easy answers. Jessica (Krysten Ritter, in the show) doesn’t run around and save the day for other people; she works cases while trying to untangle the mess that is her own life. Much like Veronica Mars, that other cult-favorite noir-ish private eye, Jessica is carrying around a central, unspoken mystery, a horrible trauma that she is barely able to live with. The story of the first season of “Jessica Jones” is that the perpetrator of the trauma—a mind-controlling psychopath named Kilgrave (David Tennant)—is looking for Jessica, and has just finally found her again. The show is not, unfortunately, perfect. Ritter is perfect, Tennant is perfect, and the bones of the story—which come from the comics’ creators, Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos—are still completely chilling. Kilgrave made Jessica his puppet for a whole month, making her his ideal and subservient romantic partner. The word “rape” is not used until Episode 8, but it is clear, from the start, that Jessica is a trauma survivor. She copes with alcohol and insomnia; no one gets close to her, and she doesn’t get too close to anyone. The superpowers make the story bigger, broader and more tangible—Kilgrave doesn’t just bully people to doing what he wants, he gets into their heads and makes it so—but the story is very human, just the same. “Jessica Jones” is that rare genre story that uses the supernatural not to obfuscate, but instead to better illustrate a human story. And as a result, it’s an extraordinary meditation on violence perpetuated by men against women, whether that is rape, stalking, harassment or abuse. Kilgrave dabbles in all of them, and Tennant’s mad-happy performance conveys both the charisma and appeal of the abuser and his frightening, sudden ability to shift to violence. Most horrifyingly, Kilgrave’s power is impossible to prove to the outside world. The wounds he causes are technically “self-inflicted”—in one of his most horrible acts, he orders two attendants to rip the skin off of each other’s faces if he doesn’t come back in two hours. Jessica spends most of the season trying not to stop Kilgrave but to prove that he is responsible; one of the most awful recurring themes of “Jessica Jones” is how unreliable the huddled masses are. The very people Jessica is trying to save don’t believe her, and then quickly fall under Kilgrave’s spell. Jessica’s life becomes a struggle to get anyone to believe that she was raped—all too familiar—while her abuser somehow charms everyone around her into smiling acquiescence. And recovering from the nightmares, addiction and isolation of post-traumatic stress, in “Jessica Jones,” is not an internal struggle, but a car-tossing, body-slamming conflict. Kilgrave alternates between seductive and deadly, and in his quest to get Jessica willingly back to his side—like most rapists, he denies having actually raped her, insisting she was into it on some level—he tries to worm his way under her skin in other ways, creating horrible dioramas for her to walk into and deal with. At one point, he reconstructs her childhood home; at another, he walks her into a restaurant where half the occupants have nooses around their necks. It’s a funhouse of horror; which is to say, it is the life of a trauma survivor. The show is not perfect. There are subplots and minor characters that are invested in for unclear reasons; as wonderful as I typically find Carrie-Anne Moss, her role in the show is an irritating, time-consuming sideshow. “Jessica Jones” would probably have been better adapted in 10 episodes, or eight; given the closed-endedness of Bendis’ and Gaydos’ four-volume arc, it might have made a hell of a movie, too. What makes it work is Ritter herself, who has too long been lurking in the shadows of other people’s shows. She’s playing a character carrying a lot of burdens, but she balances them with a hard-earned, delicate lightness. She is not above humor, or beauty, or faith; she is neither weak nor helpless. And she performs the most difficult feat of all, superpowered or no; she faces her own demons, as far down as they go, to find a way to be free of them. Suggesting that perhaps what is required for superheroes isn’t always strength; it’s vulnerability, too.

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“Robert De Niro bit my face off!”: How I learned to work with our greatest living actor without coming unglued

Everywhere I go, every movie I do, every relationship I have ever been in, every red light I’ve ever been stopped at, I am invariably asked: “What’s it like to work with Robert De Niro?” I’ll be at an airport with guards going through my bags, making sure I’m not a threat, and suddenly one of the TSA folks will look at me very earnestly and say, Can I ask you something? And I think it’s going to be about my illegally stashed weapon, or the pot brownie someone planted on me, and instead he or she will say, “Hey! What’s it like to get your face bitten off by Robert De Niro?” I’m sorry, is that a security question? I’m pretty sure it’s not. A week before Cape Fear came out, I went on David Letterman’s  show. In Cape Fear, I played Lori, the jilted colleague of Nick Nolte who is attacked by Max Cady (Robert De Niro) after he picks her up in a bar. In the pre- interview for Letterman, I went over all my questions with the producer, but when I sat down, Letterman surprised me out of the gate by going off script and asking, “So what’s it like? Having Robert De Niro beat the crap out of you?” And people always get an interesting look on their face when they ask me. Like I’m going to offer up some amazing insight. Something profound: “He covers himself with soot ashes, then incants the words of Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares.” Something mystical: “He only works at sunrise, with his body facing east.” Something ridiculous: “Well in between takes of getting beaten up we did Three Stooges routines.” I’ve always thought that if I did say any of those things except for the last one, which is actually true, people would smile knowingly at me and say, “Yes. That’s what I thought.” People’s curiosity about this matter is a testament to one of our greatest living actors, and since it’s my legacy forever to be the girl who got her face bitten off by him in Cape Fear, I’m going to try to answer the question. So what is it like to work with Robert De Niro? To give this some context, I’m going to go back to acting school— that first acting school I went to, where the headmistress thought I had no future. I heard that she was later run over by a bus. I had nothing to do with it, of course. But maybe just as she couldn’t see my huge talent right in front of her, she couldn’t see that enormous bus coming at her, either. My friend and fellow acting student was Elias Koteas. Elias is a wonderful actor who has created some edgy performances in films such as Crash, The Thin Red Line, and Zodiac. He is very serious, and he had a lot of ambitions, but his main ambition back then was to be in a movie with Robert De Niro, hopefully one directed by Martin Scorsese. He was obsessed with all things Robert De Niro. I mean, he would make me eat at the Belmore Cafeteria, because “That’s where Travis Bickle ate in Taxi Driver.” When I told Elias that I had never actually seen Taxi Driver, he was outraged and dragged me to a double feature of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver so that I could experience the genius of his favorite actor, Robert De Niro. I remember coming out into the light after seeing both films back to back and thinking, Jesus, I want my mommy! Take me to see Lassie Come Home or a Danny Kaye musical. Life can’t be that dark. Elias just laughed. He was wearing an army jacket and contemplating getting a Mohawk at the time. (I’m kidding.) Part of the reason Elias thought it was his destiny to work with Robert De Niro was that Elias bore a striking resemblance to him. He had all his mannerisms down, too, which made the comparison more obvious. He was not above stalking him, either. Elias started lurking around the set of The King of Comedy, which was filming near our school, trying to get spotted by De Niro so he could hopefully get a part in the movie purely based on their resemblance. Now, unbeknown then to Elias, The King of Comedy is a movie about a stalker and Elias was spotted by De Niro, and he actually thought he might be a stalker, and someone from production told him to get the hell away from the set. This, of course, thrilled Elias. It was a sign that it was only a matter of time before he fulfilled his destiny and worked with De Niro for real. I just wanted to be in show business. I thought my destiny was to do comedy. Be on a sitcom. At the time, I couldn’t dream a dream big enough that included working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese. I was a comedian. How would I ever in a million years end up working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese? After I was in The Last Temptation of Christ, New York Stories, Goodfellas, Guilty by Suspicion, Cape Fear— five movies in a row, all with Martin Scorsese or Robert De Niro— I ran into Elias, and he good-naturedly accosted me. “You!” he said. “How did you end up with my life?” Elias did eventually work with Marty on Shutter Island, and I was thrilled for him. It was early in 1989 that I first met Robert De Niro. It was right after the premiere of New York Stories. I was in a dark hall on my way to Martin Scorsese’s apartment to discuss being in a movie called Wiseguys, later changed to be called Goodfellas. At the time, Marty was living in a very tall, very modern building on West 57th Street named Metropolitan Tower, nicknamed the Razor Blade Building. The elevator that took you to his penthouse apartment on the seventy-fifth floor was so fast it was like a rocket launch. After you lurched to a stop and got off , the effect was always the same: complete disorientation, nausea, and confusion about which dimension you were in. Everything was pitch-black, as if you were in an air raid, so your eyes had to adjust like a raccoon’s as you made your way down the hall. There was also this loud screeching sound— day and night— that Marty assured me was the wind whistling through the glass and steel, but it made you feel as if the building were going to crash to the ground. So, there I am, making my way down the dark hall, and the wind is blowing like a haunted mansion at Knott’s Scary Farm—Marty’s Spooky Hallway Ride— and who did I see coming the other way but Robert De Niro. There was no official word that Robert De Niro was in the movie, or even considering being in the movie, so I got a secret little thrill that maybe that’s why he was leaving Marty’s. I smiled politely at him as I passed by and respectfully and quietly said, “Hello.” He politely nodded back, said, “Hello,” and we both kept walking. I did notice that he was wearing large horn-rimmed glasses that I thought made him look very sophisticated. Like Clark Kent. It was a good look. Marty opened the door for me, and I said, “I just said hello to Robert De Niro. Does that mean he’s going to be in the movie?” And Marty looked a little concerned and said, “You recognized him?” I laughed, and said, “Of course. He’s Robert De Niro!” And he said, “But he was wearing a disguise.” And I said, “Marty, he was wearing glasses.” And Marty said, “I know, he thinks that’s a disguise.” And I said, “Well, you might want to tell him it’s not working, because he looks like Robert De Niro with glasses on.” I’m not sure if Marty did tell him, but I never saw him wear those Clark Kent glasses again. The casting of Goodfellas was top-secret stuff. I was privy to hearing about and sometimes even seeing every actor or actress that was even in consideration, but I was sworn to secrecy. Listen, I knew that I was in consideration, and Marty wouldn’t confirm or deny if I was going to be in the movie, and we were in a relationship. That’s how top-secret it was! There was a building excitement that Marty would be reunited with both Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, but names like Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, and John Malkovich were also being mentioned. I let the De Niro casting issue drop, but it did not seem accidental that The Godfather had paid Marty a visit. The next time I saw Robert De Niro was on the set of Goodfellas. I became a fixture on set, sitting quietly behind or near Marty absorbing everything that happened on what is often called the best film of the ’90s. I was afraid not to go, because I would miss something. One day they were shooting at the Copacabana, which was near my apartment, and Marty said, “We’re doing something pretty interesting today. You should come down and see it.” It was of course the famous Steadicam shot entering from the back of the restaurant. Another day we were jammed into the Hawaii Kai on Broadway. It was ancient, and inside everything was made of straw and grass. Marty said, “Careful, this place has fleas”— and let me tell you, it did. I was at a booth watching Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta act the “But I’m funny how? Funny like a clown?” scene. And then there was Mr. De Niro. Word was spreading about Goodfellas, and actors, mobsters, you name it were requesting if they, too, could come down just to get a glimpse of Robert De Niro. In some neighborhoods a carnival-like atmosphere developed and folks were having cookouts and sitting in lawn chairs outside places where they were shooting. It was like they were a part of the atmosphere and Marty harnessed that energy and put it into the film. It’s hard to explain the impact of Robert De Niro at the time he and Marty were making Goodfellas. He was a god in New York. I mean, there were actors— Vincent Gallo, for one— who had agreed to be extras just to brag that they were in Goodfellas with him. I had just been watching and had been happy with that, but now I was going to be in a few scenes with him. In one scene, I was going to have a line right before his. Elias was right. How did I end up with his life? Marty created an atmosphere on the set that was fun and homey, like a large Italian family, but the scenes with De Niro always changed that dynamic. His presence brought a tension and energy that I had never experienced before or have since. When he walked on set everyone stopped talking, and it was like, boom, something important is about to happen. We were shooting the famous Christmas scene in the bar where Robert De Niro chews out Johnny Roastbeef for having bought a new Cadillac. All of Brooklyn was outside cheering—as I’ve said, people were having barbecues and drinking wine and applauding every time an actor walked into or out of the bar. It was past midnight, but nobody wanted to leave. When they were shooting that scene and De Niro opened the door and revealed the Cadillac there were hundreds of people to the side that the camera had to avoid. Inside I had a front-row seat watching Robert De Niro. Enough time to get pretty nervous because my first line in Goodfellas was coming up. We had been shooting in the bar a few days, and there was going to be this very long, complicated tracking shot, with most of the cast involved, and I had a line during it to Julie Garfield, which was “If I even look at anyone else, he’ll kill me.” The camera then holds for our reaction, and then moves on to De Niro and Joe Pesci, and the scene continues. It was like an eight-minute shot. We rehearsed it almost all day. Finally Marty said they were ready to shoot. And even though I had told myself, Don’t screw this shot up. Don’t do anything phony. Don’t do anything that makes Robert De Niro go over to Marty and say, “How did that bad actor get in my movie?” I didn’t quite pull it off. The first stupid thing I did was to try to get a laugh. I thought, Let me goose my one line in the scene like a bad actor. So the camera is tracking along, there are twenty people in the frame, all these actions. Out of the corner of my eye I see the camera getting to me, and all of a sudden I become Eve Arden. “If he catches me with anyone, he’ll kill me!” then I downed a glass of wine to button it. It was dreadful, of course, awful and hammy. I knew it immediately, and so did Marty. He yelled out, “Cut. Cut. Technical difficulties.” Everyone started groaning. Everyone else had been brilliant. Marty came over to me and whispered into my ear so no one could hear it but me: “Don’t do that again.” Then he laughed, “Sorry, everyone, sorry,” running back to the camera, “Our fault. Our fault. Technical problems.” Twenty-thousand dollar mistake, Marty later told me. He never let anyone know but me, but he cared enough that he wanted every actor in the frame to be perfect. People always ask me, what did you learn from Marty? A thousand things. That was one. Sensitivity. A love for actors and their processes. I did it right the next time. Wait, the next hundred times, because we continued to shoot the same scene for the next fourteen hours! There was a lot of downtime between shots, and this is where I learned the first surprising thing about what it’s like to work with Robert De Niro: He’s really funny! He loves to laugh. I was in a sketch-comedy group at the time called Manhattan Punch Line, and I dabbled in stand-up. I had a couple routines that Marty was aware of, so in between takes he brought De Niro over to hear them. I used to do a pretty good Shelley Winters impression. She was then a blowsy older actress with a kind of warbly voice who had an association with the Actors Studio. She would make the talk-show rounds babbling about her association with De Niro or Marilyn Monroe. She had this habit of sort of rubbing her rather large breasts and saying, “When Bobby and I were at the Studio with Marilyn, I taught Marilyn how to be sexy.” So I would do that impression for De Niro, adding, “When Bobby and I did Bloody Mama, he asked me for advice, and I said, ‘Bobby, don’t eat fish off the truck; go with the chicken. Here, have some of my breasts.’ ” I had another routine called “Raging Bullwinkle.” Basically, cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle acting out a scene from Raging Bull as Jake and Joe LaMotta. So with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci both staring me down, I did my Rocky the Flying Squirrel. “You’re nuts! You let this girl ruin your life!” Then Bullwinkle, “Rocky. Did you fuck my wife?” Then Squirrel, “How could you ask me that? I’m your brother.” People ask me if making Cape Fear was scary. No. Doing “Raging Bullwinkle” for Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci was much scarier! But I got my laugh. I made Robert De Niro laugh. And if my only interaction with De Niro had been being in Goodfellas, watching him work, getting to say a line before him, making him laugh, I would have been content. Little did I know. Irwin Winkler produced Goodfellas, and he wanted me to audition for a part in Guilty by Suspicion, which he was directing. I didn’t get the part for which I had auditioned, but Irwin still wanted me in the movie, because it dealt with the Communist blacklist, and my grandparents, Melvyn and Helen Gahagan Douglas— who was the first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California—had been in the thick of all of that. He offered me the part of Nan, Daryl Zanuck’s assistant. It was a small part, but I would have a couple scenes with Robert De Niro, so I said sure. This is where I learned the next interesting thing about what it’s like to work with Robert De Niro: It’s not so easy. It’s like waking up and realizing you’re on a tightrope one hundred stories up with the world’s greatest tightrope artist and wondering how the hell you got there. There was an actor in Guilty by Suspicion who found himself on the tightrope. He couldn’t believe he was acting with Robert De Niro. He just thought, I am not good enough, and it threw him. He was so intimidated that he just froze in De Niro’s presence. The scene would begin and he’d start flop-sweating, and it was brutal. He confided in me that he was pretty sure that De Niro thought he was miscast. He kept saying, “I don’t know why I’m here.” No amount of my encouraging him could boost his confidence. I saw this happen on Goodfellas a couple of times, too. Actors would “go up” on their lines— they’d forget what they were saying, or suddenly be like I once had been: really, really bad. It happened to me with my only line in the movie! It suddenly occurs to you, Oh, he’s like the world’s greatest actor. How long is it going to take him to discover that I am a hack? You have to work against this fear that he is judging you in the scene. So, on Guilty by Suspicion, every time I was scared or thought I was awful or didn’t deserve to be acting with Robert De Niro, I remembered making him laugh on the set of Goodfellas. I discovered making him laugh made me less intimidated of him. Pretty soon every time he saw me he expected me to do something funny— and now I couldn’t wait to see him. It almost got me into trouble. One day we were shooting a scene, and I only had one line in it, something like “He’s not in,” and that was the day that Steven Spielberg and Mike Ovitz, the head of Creative Artists Agency, decided to visit the set. Imagine you’re doing a scene with the world’s greatest director and world’s greatest talent agent watching you and you have one line in it. Pitiful. Now, I knew Bob’s next movie was going to be the remake of Cape Fear, and Steven at the time was possibly going to be directing it. So we’re doing the scene, and De Niro walks up to my desk, looking for Daryl Zanuck in the movie, and says, “Is he in?” And I have to say very solemnly, “He’s not in.” Well, De Niro turned to walk away, and I gave it a couple beats and then yelled out to Ovitz, “What do you think, Mike? Have you seen enough? Ready to sign me? When do we start Cape Fear, Steven?” It was pretty ballsy—we were still shooting the scene— but being a comedian at heart, I went for the joke. Luckily for me, Bob busted up, so everyone else followed. There was a poster shop on Hollywood Boulevard— sadly, it’s no longer there— that I went to because I wanted to give Bob a thank-you gift after filming ended. I had this small part in Guilty by Suspicion, yet he went out of his way to be gracious to me, and I really appreciated it. So I was in there, looking around this dusty shop, and I actually found lobby cards from the original Cape Fear, so I gave them to Bob as a wrap gift. We were standing outside on the old Goldwyn lot where my grandfather had once been under contract. I remember De Niro’s tearing the paper off and smiling that wonderful, iconic smile as he looked at the cards. Back-to-back movies with Robert De Niro. Not bad. I went home to New York, and things had changed— now Marty is directing Cape Fear. He tells me that there is a part that I’m right for, but that it’s not up to him. I will have to audition for Robert De Niro. If Bob doesn’t think I’m right, I won’t get it. I watched the original movie, with Barrie Chase playing the part of the drifter Diane Taylor, which in the version Marty was directing would be Lori, an attorney who gets involved with Nick Nolte. Again the casting was top secret, but I knew I could do this part if I got the chance. I auditioned first for the same casting director from New York Stories, Ellen Lewis, and then it was time for De Niro to approve me. There wasn’t really a script at that point so we improvised some scenes, specifically the bar scene, and I was cast in the movie. I remember everything about that audition, including what I wore. It was a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar and a short black skirt. The only thing that changed when we filmed the scene was the color of the skirt. Marty liked the Peter Pan collar because he thought it made me look like a nice Catholic girl, which I was. Still am! Because of Robert De Niro and Cape Fear, people know my name. And if they don’t know my name they always recognize my face— probably because of the harrowing and controversial rape scene that we shot, where part of my face is bitten off. A lot of folks thought the scene was gratuitously violent. I can only say, sadly, that it was based on actual events Bob had researched. To make it truthful, I also spent time with a criminal attorney in Florida’s Broward County Court house doing my own research to prepare for the scene and its aftermath. After a seventeen- hour day and fourteen hours of shooting that scene, Bob went over to Marty and said, “I think she’s done.” I went back to my hotel room and cried. I had gone to places I didn’t know I was capable of. On the second day, the mood on set was so somber that Bob and I lightened things up by doing Three Stooges routines between takes just to let everyone know I was OK, that we were . . . acting. Excerpted from "I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories From a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies" by Illeana Douglas. Copyright © by Illeana Douglas. Reprinted by permission of Flatiron Books. Everywhere I go, every movie I do, every relationship I have ever been in, every red light I’ve ever been stopped at, I am invariably asked: “What’s it like to work with Robert De Niro?” I’ll be at an airport with guards going through my bags, making sure I’m not a threat, and suddenly one of the TSA folks will look at me very earnestly and say, Can I ask you something? And I think it’s going to be about my illegally stashed weapon, or the pot brownie someone planted on me, and instead he or she will say, “Hey! What’s it like to get your face bitten off by Robert De Niro?” I’m sorry, is that a security question? I’m pretty sure it’s not. A week before Cape Fear came out, I went on David Letterman’s  show. In Cape Fear, I played Lori, the jilted colleague of Nick Nolte who is attacked by Max Cady (Robert De Niro) after he picks her up in a bar. In the pre- interview for Letterman, I went over all my questions with the producer, but when I sat down, Letterman surprised me out of the gate by going off script and asking, “So what’s it like? Having Robert De Niro beat the crap out of you?” And people always get an interesting look on their face when they ask me. Like I’m going to offer up some amazing insight. Something profound: “He covers himself with soot ashes, then incants the words of Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares.” Something mystical: “He only works at sunrise, with his body facing east.” Something ridiculous: “Well in between takes of getting beaten up we did Three Stooges routines.” I’ve always thought that if I did say any of those things except for the last one, which is actually true, people would smile knowingly at me and say, “Yes. That’s what I thought.” People’s curiosity about this matter is a testament to one of our greatest living actors, and since it’s my legacy forever to be the girl who got her face bitten off by him in Cape Fear, I’m going to try to answer the question. So what is it like to work with Robert De Niro? To give this some context, I’m going to go back to acting school— that first acting school I went to, where the headmistress thought I had no future. I heard that she was later run over by a bus. I had nothing to do with it, of course. But maybe just as she couldn’t see my huge talent right in front of her, she couldn’t see that enormous bus coming at her, either. My friend and fellow acting student was Elias Koteas. Elias is a wonderful actor who has created some edgy performances in films such as Crash, The Thin Red Line, and Zodiac. He is very serious, and he had a lot of ambitions, but his main ambition back then was to be in a movie with Robert De Niro, hopefully one directed by Martin Scorsese. He was obsessed with all things Robert De Niro. I mean, he would make me eat at the Belmore Cafeteria, because “That’s where Travis Bickle ate in Taxi Driver.” When I told Elias that I had never actually seen Taxi Driver, he was outraged and dragged me to a double feature of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver so that I could experience the genius of his favorite actor, Robert De Niro. I remember coming out into the light after seeing both films back to back and thinking, Jesus, I want my mommy! Take me to see Lassie Come Home or a Danny Kaye musical. Life can’t be that dark. Elias just laughed. He was wearing an army jacket and contemplating getting a Mohawk at the time. (I’m kidding.) Part of the reason Elias thought it was his destiny to work with Robert De Niro was that Elias bore a striking resemblance to him. He had all his mannerisms down, too, which made the comparison more obvious. He was not above stalking him, either. Elias started lurking around the set of The King of Comedy, which was filming near our school, trying to get spotted by De Niro so he could hopefully get a part in the movie purely based on their resemblance. Now, unbeknown then to Elias, The King of Comedy is a movie about a stalker and Elias was spotted by De Niro, and he actually thought he might be a stalker, and someone from production told him to get the hell away from the set. This, of course, thrilled Elias. It was a sign that it was only a matter of time before he fulfilled his destiny and worked with De Niro for real. I just wanted to be in show business. I thought my destiny was to do comedy. Be on a sitcom. At the time, I couldn’t dream a dream big enough that included working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese. I was a comedian. How would I ever in a million years end up working with Robert De Niro or Martin Scorsese? After I was in The Last Temptation of Christ, New York Stories, Goodfellas, Guilty by Suspicion, Cape Fear— five movies in a row, all with Martin Scorsese or Robert De Niro— I ran into Elias, and he good-naturedly accosted me. “You!” he said. “How did you end up with my life?” Elias did eventually work with Marty on Shutter Island, and I was thrilled for him. It was early in 1989 that I first met Robert De Niro. It was right after the premiere of New York Stories. I was in a dark hall on my way to Martin Scorsese’s apartment to discuss being in a movie called Wiseguys, later changed to be called Goodfellas. At the time, Marty was living in a very tall, very modern building on West 57th Street named Metropolitan Tower, nicknamed the Razor Blade Building. The elevator that took you to his penthouse apartment on the seventy-fifth floor was so fast it was like a rocket launch. After you lurched to a stop and got off , the effect was always the same: complete disorientation, nausea, and confusion about which dimension you were in. Everything was pitch-black, as if you were in an air raid, so your eyes had to adjust like a raccoon’s as you made your way down the hall. There was also this loud screeching sound— day and night— that Marty assured me was the wind whistling through the glass and steel, but it made you feel as if the building were going to crash to the ground. So, there I am, making my way down the dark hall, and the wind is blowing like a haunted mansion at Knott’s Scary Farm—Marty’s Spooky Hallway Ride— and who did I see coming the other way but Robert De Niro. There was no official word that Robert De Niro was in the movie, or even considering being in the movie, so I got a secret little thrill that maybe that’s why he was leaving Marty’s. I smiled politely at him as I passed by and respectfully and quietly said, “Hello.” He politely nodded back, said, “Hello,” and we both kept walking. I did notice that he was wearing large horn-rimmed glasses that I thought made him look very sophisticated. Like Clark Kent. It was a good look. Marty opened the door for me, and I said, “I just said hello to Robert De Niro. Does that mean he’s going to be in the movie?” And Marty looked a little concerned and said, “You recognized him?” I laughed, and said, “Of course. He’s Robert De Niro!” And he said, “But he was wearing a disguise.” And I said, “Marty, he was wearing glasses.” And Marty said, “I know, he thinks that’s a disguise.” And I said, “Well, you might want to tell him it’s not working, because he looks like Robert De Niro with glasses on.” I’m not sure if Marty did tell him, but I never saw him wear those Clark Kent glasses again. The casting of Goodfellas was top-secret stuff. I was privy to hearing about and sometimes even seeing every actor or actress that was even in consideration, but I was sworn to secrecy. Listen, I knew that I was in consideration, and Marty wouldn’t confirm or deny if I was going to be in the movie, and we were in a relationship. That’s how top-secret it was! There was a building excitement that Marty would be reunited with both Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, but names like Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, and John Malkovich were also being mentioned. I let the De Niro casting issue drop, but it did not seem accidental that The Godfather had paid Marty a visit. The next time I saw Robert De Niro was on the set of Goodfellas. I became a fixture on set, sitting quietly behind or near Marty absorbing everything that happened on what is often called the best film of the ’90s. I was afraid not to go, because I would miss something. One day they were shooting at the Copacabana, which was near my apartment, and Marty said, “We’re doing something pretty interesting today. You should come down and see it.” It was of course the famous Steadicam shot entering from the back of the restaurant. Another day we were jammed into the Hawaii Kai on Broadway. It was ancient, and inside everything was made of straw and grass. Marty said, “Careful, this place has fleas”— and let me tell you, it did. I was at a booth watching Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta act the “But I’m funny how? Funny like a clown?” scene. And then there was Mr. De Niro. Word was spreading about Goodfellas, and actors, mobsters, you name it were requesting if they, too, could come down just to get a glimpse of Robert De Niro. In some neighborhoods a carnival-like atmosphere developed and folks were having cookouts and sitting in lawn chairs outside places where they were shooting. It was like they were a part of the atmosphere and Marty harnessed that energy and put it into the film. It’s hard to explain the impact of Robert De Niro at the time he and Marty were making Goodfellas. He was a god in New York. I mean, there were actors— Vincent Gallo, for one— who had agreed to be extras just to brag that they were in Goodfellas with him. I had just been watching and had been happy with that, but now I was going to be in a few scenes with him. In one scene, I was going to have a line right before his. Elias was right. How did I end up with his life? Marty created an atmosphere on the set that was fun and homey, like a large Italian family, but the scenes with De Niro always changed that dynamic. His presence brought a tension and energy that I had never experienced before or have since. When he walked on set everyone stopped talking, and it was like, boom, something important is about to happen. We were shooting the famous Christmas scene in the bar where Robert De Niro chews out Johnny Roastbeef for having bought a new Cadillac. All of Brooklyn was outside cheering—as I’ve said, people were having barbecues and drinking wine and applauding every time an actor walked into or out of the bar. It was past midnight, but nobody wanted to leave. When they were shooting that scene and De Niro opened the door and revealed the Cadillac there were hundreds of people to the side that the camera had to avoid. Inside I had a front-row seat watching Robert De Niro. Enough time to get pretty nervous because my first line in Goodfellas was coming up. We had been shooting in the bar a few days, and there was going to be this very long, complicated tracking shot, with most of the cast involved, and I had a line during it to Julie Garfield, which was “If I even look at anyone else, he’ll kill me.” The camera then holds for our reaction, and then moves on to De Niro and Joe Pesci, and the scene continues. It was like an eight-minute shot. We rehearsed it almost all day. Finally Marty said they were ready to shoot. And even though I had told myself, Don’t screw this shot up. Don’t do anything phony. Don’t do anything that makes Robert De Niro go over to Marty and say, “How did that bad actor get in my movie?” I didn’t quite pull it off. The first stupid thing I did was to try to get a laugh. I thought, Let me goose my one line in the scene like a bad actor. So the camera is tracking along, there are twenty people in the frame, all these actions. Out of the corner of my eye I see the camera getting to me, and all of a sudden I become Eve Arden. “If he catches me with anyone, he’ll kill me!” then I downed a glass of wine to button it. It was dreadful, of course, awful and hammy. I knew it immediately, and so did Marty. He yelled out, “Cut. Cut. Technical difficulties.” Everyone started groaning. Everyone else had been brilliant. Marty came over to me and whispered into my ear so no one could hear it but me: “Don’t do that again.” Then he laughed, “Sorry, everyone, sorry,” running back to the camera, “Our fault. Our fault. Technical problems.” Twenty-thousand dollar mistake, Marty later told me. He never let anyone know but me, but he cared enough that he wanted every actor in the frame to be perfect. People always ask me, what did you learn from Marty? A thousand things. That was one. Sensitivity. A love for actors and their processes. I did it right the next time. Wait, the next hundred times, because we continued to shoot the same scene for the next fourteen hours! There was a lot of downtime between shots, and this is where I learned the first surprising thing about what it’s like to work with Robert De Niro: He’s really funny! He loves to laugh. I was in a sketch-comedy group at the time called Manhattan Punch Line, and I dabbled in stand-up. I had a couple routines that Marty was aware of, so in between takes he brought De Niro over to hear them. I used to do a pretty good Shelley Winters impression. She was then a blowsy older actress with a kind of warbly voice who had an association with the Actors Studio. She would make the talk-show rounds babbling about her association with De Niro or Marilyn Monroe. She had this habit of sort of rubbing her rather large breasts and saying, “When Bobby and I were at the Studio with Marilyn, I taught Marilyn how to be sexy.” So I would do that impression for De Niro, adding, “When Bobby and I did Bloody Mama, he asked me for advice, and I said, ‘Bobby, don’t eat fish off the truck; go with the chicken. Here, have some of my breasts.’ ” I had another routine called “Raging Bullwinkle.” Basically, cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle acting out a scene from Raging Bull as Jake and Joe LaMotta. So with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci both staring me down, I did my Rocky the Flying Squirrel. “You’re nuts! You let this girl ruin your life!” Then Bullwinkle, “Rocky. Did you fuck my wife?” Then Squirrel, “How could you ask me that? I’m your brother.” People ask me if making Cape Fear was scary. No. Doing “Raging Bullwinkle” for Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci was much scarier! But I got my laugh. I made Robert De Niro laugh. And if my only interaction with De Niro had been being in Goodfellas, watching him work, getting to say a line before him, making him laugh, I would have been content. Little did I know. Irwin Winkler produced Goodfellas, and he wanted me to audition for a part in Guilty by Suspicion, which he was directing. I didn’t get the part for which I had auditioned, but Irwin still wanted me in the movie, because it dealt with the Communist blacklist, and my grandparents, Melvyn and Helen Gahagan Douglas— who was the first Democratic woman elected to Congress from California—had been in the thick of all of that. He offered me the part of Nan, Daryl Zanuck’s assistant. It was a small part, but I would have a couple scenes with Robert De Niro, so I said sure. This is where I learned the next interesting thing about what it’s like to work with Robert De Niro: It’s not so easy. It’s like waking up and realizing you’re on a tightrope one hundred stories up with the world’s greatest tightrope artist and wondering how the hell you got there. There was an actor in Guilty by Suspicion who found himself on the tightrope. He couldn’t believe he was acting with Robert De Niro. He just thought, I am not good enough, and it threw him. He was so intimidated that he just froze in De Niro’s presence. The scene would begin and he’d start flop-sweating, and it was brutal. He confided in me that he was pretty sure that De Niro thought he was miscast. He kept saying, “I don’t know why I’m here.” No amount of my encouraging him could boost his confidence. I saw this happen on Goodfellas a couple of times, too. Actors would “go up” on their lines— they’d forget what they were saying, or suddenly be like I once had been: really, really bad. It happened to me with my only line in the movie! It suddenly occurs to you, Oh, he’s like the world’s greatest actor. How long is it going to take him to discover that I am a hack? You have to work against this fear that he is judging you in the scene. So, on Guilty by Suspicion, every time I was scared or thought I was awful or didn’t deserve to be acting with Robert De Niro, I remembered making him laugh on the set of Goodfellas. I discovered making him laugh made me less intimidated of him. Pretty soon every time he saw me he expected me to do something funny— and now I couldn’t wait to see him. It almost got me into trouble. One day we were shooting a scene, and I only had one line in it, something like “He’s not in,” and that was the day that Steven Spielberg and Mike Ovitz, the head of Creative Artists Agency, decided to visit the set. Imagine you’re doing a scene with the world’s greatest director and world’s greatest talent agent watching you and you have one line in it. Pitiful. Now, I knew Bob’s next movie was going to be the remake of Cape Fear, and Steven at the time was possibly going to be directing it. So we’re doing the scene, and De Niro walks up to my desk, looking for Daryl Zanuck in the movie, and says, “Is he in?” And I have to say very solemnly, “He’s not in.” Well, De Niro turned to walk away, and I gave it a couple beats and then yelled out to Ovitz, “What do you think, Mike? Have you seen enough? Ready to sign me? When do we start Cape Fear, Steven?” It was pretty ballsy—we were still shooting the scene— but being a comedian at heart, I went for the joke. Luckily for me, Bob busted up, so everyone else followed. There was a poster shop on Hollywood Boulevard— sadly, it’s no longer there— that I went to because I wanted to give Bob a thank-you gift after filming ended. I had this small part in Guilty by Suspicion, yet he went out of his way to be gracious to me, and I really appreciated it. So I was in there, looking around this dusty shop, and I actually found lobby cards from the original Cape Fear, so I gave them to Bob as a wrap gift. We were standing outside on the old Goldwyn lot where my grandfather had once been under contract. I remember De Niro’s tearing the paper off and smiling that wonderful, iconic smile as he looked at the cards. Back-to-back movies with Robert De Niro. Not bad. I went home to New York, and things had changed— now Marty is directing Cape Fear. He tells me that there is a part that I’m right for, but that it’s not up to him. I will have to audition for Robert De Niro. If Bob doesn’t think I’m right, I won’t get it. I watched the original movie, with Barrie Chase playing the part of the drifter Diane Taylor, which in the version Marty was directing would be Lori, an attorney who gets involved with Nick Nolte. Again the casting was top secret, but I knew I could do this part if I got the chance. I auditioned first for the same casting director from New York Stories, Ellen Lewis, and then it was time for De Niro to approve me. There wasn’t really a script at that point so we improvised some scenes, specifically the bar scene, and I was cast in the movie. I remember everything about that audition, including what I wore. It was a white shirt with a Peter Pan collar and a short black skirt. The only thing that changed when we filmed the scene was the color of the skirt. Marty liked the Peter Pan collar because he thought it made me look like a nice Catholic girl, which I was. Still am! Because of Robert De Niro and Cape Fear, people know my name. And if they don’t know my name they always recognize my face— probably because of the harrowing and controversial rape scene that we shot, where part of my face is bitten off. A lot of folks thought the scene was gratuitously violent. I can only say, sadly, that it was based on actual events Bob had researched. To make it truthful, I also spent time with a criminal attorney in Florida’s Broward County Court house doing my own research to prepare for the scene and its aftermath. After a seventeen- hour day and fourteen hours of shooting that scene, Bob went over to Marty and said, “I think she’s done.” I went back to my hotel room and cried. I had gone to places I didn’t know I was capable of. On the second day, the mood on set was so somber that Bob and I lightened things up by doing Three Stooges routines between takes just to let everyone know I was OK, that we were . . . acting. Excerpted from "I Blame Dennis Hopper: And Other Stories From a Life Lived In and Out of the Movies" by Illeana Douglas. Copyright © by Illeana Douglas. Reprinted by permission of Flatiron Books.

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The Republicans won nothing: Why losing a couple of state races is the best thing possible for Democrats

Last Tuesday was the final off-year election of the Barack Obama era, and it was a mixed bag for both parties. Republicans scored a big upset in the Kentucky governor’s race and held the state Senate in Virginia by one seat, but Democrats took control of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. Ballot measures throughout the nation were equally mixed as a pro-LGBT initiative failed in Houston, a clean elections referendum passed in Maine, and a flawed marijuana regulatory regime was handily rejected in Ohio. Unlike most elections in the Obama era, 2015 wasn’t much of a wave in either party’s direction. Many political commentators didn’t see it that way. Vox’s Matt Yglesias called the loss in Virginia a “disaster.” Molly Ball at the Atlantic declared that Democrats’ efforts on social issues have doomed their electoral chances. One viral tweet stated that, “Under President Obama, Democrats have lost 900+ state legislature seats, 12 governors, 69 House seats, 13 Senate seats. That's some legacy.” While not exactly false, it ignores the nationwide wave of Obama’s 2008 campaign, which gave Democrats historic margins in Congress. When you start off with 60 senators and 255 House members, your numbers can only really go down. The hyperbole surrounding the results of the 2015 election masks the fact that while Republicans have indeed racked up major gains in practically every level of government under President Obama, it’s only been the result of major progressive change. Furthermore, any alternative scenario where Barack Obama played it safe and didn’t try to reform our healthcare system or otherwise enact his progressive agenda would have likely been deemed a failure by Democratic standards, regardless of electoral outcomes. Put another way, Democrats under Barack Obama have long faced a choice: either govern modestly and enjoy electoral success, or push the boundaries of progress and suffer the blowback. History suggests you cannot do both at the same time, and for better or for worse, Barack Obama usually chose progress over popularity. To see what the world may have looked like had Obama chosen the more moderate path, just examine the previous Democrat in the Oval Office: Bill Clinton. In his first two years, President Clinton chose the progressive route, leading a Democratic Congress in raising taxes on the wealthy, passing family medical leave, better regulating gun purchases, banning assault weapons, creating AmeriCorps, and addressing domestic violence through the Violence Against Women Act. The Clintons failed in getting their own version of healthcare reform passed into law, but President Clinton’s first two years still look impressive today. These progressive accomplishments, however, came with a price. Opposition voters mobilized, and the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 swept Democrats out of Congress. In response, President Clinton’s team decided to scale back any remaining ambitions for progressive change. The initiatives that would pass during the rest of the Clinton era reflect his team’s willingness to moderate stances in order to maintain electoral viability—welfare reform, the Defense of Marriage Act, the loosening of regulations on Wall Street, and a series of balanced budgets. Looking back, you would be tempted to think a Republican was in charge at the time. As an electoral strategy, this “triangulation” worked quite well. President Clinton oversaw a tremendous economic boom and managed foreign policy so deftly that in 1998—even in the midst of being impeached—the Democrats actually gained seats in the House, a historical rarity for midterm elections. If your goal is to avoid the wrath of the opposition’s voters, it’s not a bad idea to give the other party a lot of what it wants. You can see presidents and Congresses making this tradeoff between progress and electoral success throughout modern American history. Ronald Reagan was as popular as they come, but he lost big time in the 1982 midterms as voters soured on his budget cuts and perceived poor handling of the economy. LBJ essentially forfeited the South for who knows how many generations with the Civil Rights Act in 1965. Even the unstoppable FDR lost 71 House seats in 1938 and 55 House seats in 1942 despite winning reelection three times. When presidents aren’t on the ballot themselves, it’s much easier for the opposition to motivate their voters to turn out relative to that president’s supporters. Obviously, this is only Congress, and Democratic losses in governorships and state legislatures throughout the country are devastating in their own right. With Congress gridlocked, most real policy development and implementation is happening at the state and local levels. To make matters worse, losses at the local and state levels rob Democrats of a “bench” with which to draw talent for higher offices. Local elections have essentially become nationalized, which has largely been bad news for Democrats. But again, you have to consider the alternative. What would the world have looked like if Barack Obama had decided on a purely moderate path? Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., seemed to hint at this alternative when he said in a 2014 speech: “After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus. But unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem–health care reform.” Feel free to disagree, but Schumer is simply articulating the nature of the tradeoff Democrats made in 2010. Democrats did indeed sacrifice a large share of their electoral mandate in order to tackle healthcare reform. But to fully evaluate Schumer’s statement, you have to answer a much greater question: What is the point of winning elections? Is it to hold power, maintain the public confidence, and keep the other team on the sidelines? Or is it to push the boundaries of popular opinion and the legislative process in order to solve the seemingly intractable problems Americans face? How you answer that question will largely define how you feel about the direction of today’s Democratic Party. If you believe that elections need to be won to maintain majorities and hold important offices, then the Barack Obama era could easily be labeled a failure. If you believe that elections are simply a venue for changing society through governance, then the Barack Obama era looks pretty darn successful. And to be clear, President Obama long ago decided where he stands on this question. Healthcare reform, the stimulus, the automotive industry bailouts, the first reining in of Wall Street since the Great Depression, the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” major regulation of air and water pollution, the rejection of Keystone XL, executive orders on immigration, the opening of Cuba, an Iranian nuclear deal—the list goes on and on. And like every other time in modern history that Democratic presidents have flexed their activist muscles, it has mobilized opposition voters much more than the president’s supporters. For every action, there is an unequal opposite reaction. Luckily for progressives, President Obama and his team recognize that because regulation, legislation and international deals are so difficult to unwind, the effects of these accomplishments will likely be felt for generations. Especially in his second term, President Obama seems much more concerned about racking up accomplishments than racking up electoral victories. You can disagree with that strategy all you want, but when faced with the choice, I imagine most Democrats would cut the same deal as President Obama did. Losing always hurts, and the strategy and messaging can always be improved. But the cycle of American politics practically guarantees that you will lose—and lose big—someday. There are real benefits to holding power, if only to stop the other side from enacting their agenda, but most voters want beneficial changes to be made in society. After all, you don’t see many candidates of either party running for office saying, “Let’s keep America the same way it is today!” Electoral victories come and go, but what you do with them echoes in eternity. I suspect when the president of either party is swearing in our next justice of the Supreme Court, folks may come to appreciate that fact a little more.

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The Kochs, loathsome to the end: The real reason they’re interested in criminal justice reform

As the GOP-controlled Congress drafts a major criminal justice reform package to unshackle millions of poor and people of color from a predatory legal system, House Republicans are ensuring that corporate America also will get what it wants: tougher legal hurdles for prosecutors to go after white-collar crimes. An early draft of one bill in the House Judiciary Committee’s package of reforms would raise the legal threshold needed to prove a person committed a white-collar offense. In most instances today, a person cannot claim he didn’t know what he was doing was illegal. But the House’s proposal would require government to “prove that the defendant knew, or had reason to believe, the conduct was unlawful.” “The House language violates the basic precept that ‘ignorance of the law is no defense,’” Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, told the Huffington Post. “There is absolutely no reason for the otherwise laudable criminal justice reform bill to contain any measure to weaken already feeble standards for corporate criminal prosecution.” Actually, in the ways Washington works, there is every reason to expect that the GOP would include pro-corporate fine print in the reform package. This is legislation both parties want passed before the 2016 elections. Meanwhile, right-wing think tanks funded by corporate titans such as the anti-regulation Koch brothers have been doing what they’re paid to do—issuing papers urging Congress to toughen the requirements to get a white-collar conviction. They argue, much like the civil rights community, that prosecutors have too much power and too readily abuse it. However, a key distinction between the racial justice agenda and the corporate agenda is that civil rights activists are primarily focused on police and prosecutorial abuses of the criminal justice codes, whereas the corporate community is primarily focused on government regulations of industry. They are shrewdly saying that people who make mistakes should be punished, but by fines or other penalities—not criminal convictions that last a lifetime. “Some people or entities intentionally pollute our air and water or intentionally engage in other conduct knowing it will cause harm, in which case criminal prosecution may be entirely appropriate,” John Malcolm, Heritage Foundation’s judicial and legal studies director, wrote this fall. “However, if somebody or some entity unwittingly does something that results in harm, say, to the environment or to another person, there is no reason why it cannot be dealt with (even harshly) through the administrative or civil justice systems. This would help to remedy the problem and compensate victims without saddling morally blameless individuals and entities for life with a criminal conviction.” Malcolm’s paper and argument reviews a range of varying standards of proof that would be required for a conviction. They range from the toughest on perpetrators to the loosest, starting with a person could be accused of “negligently” commiting a crime. The spectrum continues with “recklessly,” “knowingly,” “intentionally,” and finally, “willfully." Making it harder for prosecutors to obtain convictions by changing the standard of proof required for governmental action is a strategy seen in many right-wing political fights. That tactic was exactly how the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act—they changed and raised the standard of proof that would justify federal intervention in new state laws curbing voting rights. Thus, it’s notable the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee’s legislative draftsmen chose the standard that seems to be in the middle of the sprectrum presented by Malcolm, as that seems reasonable, However, in practice, it lets many would-be corporate lawbreakers to escape prosecution. “Will some senior corporate management 'fat cats' benefit because strictermens rea [Latin for guilty mind] requirements make it more difficult to prosecute them successfully? Possibly,” Malcom writes, answering the question he raises, before quoting another Heritage Foundation legal paper. “Corporate directors, chief executive officers (CEOs), presidents, and other high-level officers are not involved in the day-to-day operation of plants, warehouses, shipping facilities, and the like. Lower level officers and employees, as well as small business owners, bear that burden.” It remains to be seen if this new standard of proof will remain in the legislation as it makes its way through the House and Senate, but the chances are good that it will. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, told the Huffington Post that this proposal, should it become law, would seriously undermine white-collar prosecutions. It “would create confusion and needless litigation, and significantly weaken, often unintentionally, countless federal statutes,” including “those that play an important role in protecting the public welfare... protecting consumers from unsafe food and medicine,” Carr said. That is exactly the goal of the Heritage Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute. “Nearly 5,000 federal criminal statutes are scattered throughout the U.S. Code, and an estimated 300,000 or more criminal regulatory offenses are buried in the Code of Federal Regulations,” Heritage wrote. “Not even Congress or the Department of Justice knows precisely how many criminal laws and regulations currently exist. Because many of them lack adequate (or even any) mens rea standards, innocent mistakes or accidents can become crimes.”

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The message that America desperately needs to acknowledge: Arab Lives Matter

On November 12, the day before the attack on Paris, ISIS committed a horrific terrorist attack on innocent citizens of Beirut. Like the Paris attack, it was coordinated and commanded by ISIS. Like the Paris attack, it was executed by a cell of terrorist suicide bombers. Like in Paris, a manhunt ensued to find a network of planners and associates behind the bombers, and the Lebanese authorities have arrested nine people for suspected involvement in the attack. The two tragedies, one in Paris and the other in the largely French-speaking city once known as the "Paris of the Middle East," were remarkably similar. The most significant difference between the two attacks was the relative severity; the Beirut attack was far worse than the attack on Paris. Were the same proportion of the French population killed as in the Lebanon attack, Paris would have suffered 635 deaths. In fact, the attack exceeded the deadliness of 9/11 in terms of the proportion of citizens killed. The same magnitude of attack would have claimed almost 3,100 New Yorkers’ lives.

But according to news coverage in the West, those Lebanese lives effectively don’t matter. FAIR's Jim Naureckas points out the striking disparity in coverage in the New York Times, which was generally reflective of the wider news media's response. But it's not fair to only blame the press; the public appetite for Paris news seemed insatiable. Even those of us who consider ourselves enlightened and proudly attentive to uninterrogated biases--in which camp I like to include myself--couldn't help but be swept up in it, unwittingly revealing what really matters to us, whose lives we value. We say “Black Lives Matter” because black deaths at the hands of police don’t register in the national conscience to any degree commensurate to their tragic significance. The protest movement’s slogan is a dire appeal for black life to be valued as fully as white life is. In a country at whose founding black inhabitants were considered three-fifths of a person, if not simply animals, black citizens in 2015 still fight to be considered fully human.

But another dark dimension of the Black Lives Matter moment is the assumption that the dead deserve their fate. That’s made explicit in failures to indict or convict in the legal system and more implicit in the court of public opinion with the now-predictable conservative reaction of presenting posthumous evidence of the slain citizen’s moral failings or latent danger. That’s why a boyish photo of Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown is countered with a “scary”- and more “black”-looking visage from conservatives; the battle is to determine the character of the victim as much as the circumstances at the time of the killing. Wearing a hoodie or sagging pants--that is, the mere superficial participation in a culture--might become entered as evidence in the national popular litigation. Notions of generalized guilt can influence opinion as much as the matter of precise and particular guilt or innocence of the victim at the moment of his death. A preponderance of cultural guilt applied posthumously to the victim can make his innocence at the moment of his execution immaterial. Thankfully, Black Lives Matter has emerged to combat this vestige of the country’s original sin.

Similarly, a call of “Arab Lives Matter” should accompany the disregard for an attack like the one in Beirut. To casually ignore an attack 500 percent more deadly, per capita, than the Paris slaughter, committed by the very same organization, is racist, to be sure; but it’s also to imply that Lebanese victims deserve the violence in a way that the French don’t. Like an American black boy killed by police, the character of the Beirut neighborhood immediately became a battleground. The initial New York Times headline needlessly described the slaughter of innocents as occurring in a “Hezbollah Stronghold,” while those more concerned with maintaining the full humanity of the victims objected, eventually pushing the Times to alter its description. The Paper of Record reflexively assigned a certain guilt to the victims.

Meanwhile, after the Paris attack, the French were not similarly described as “Libya Invaders,” despite their primary role in the 2011 invasion, or as long and brutal colonizers of Muslim countries, or as the country that controlled Syria after the First World War. Because that would have been wrong; no Parisian victim deserved to die for her country’s thorough involvement in Muslim lands.

So while many recoil at Republican presidential candidates and GOP governors who leap to an assumption of guilt on the part of Syrian refugees, our collective obsession with the Paris attack signals a readiness to understand a certain naturalness to the attack in Beirut. We see it as something alien and foreign to Paris but something endemic to Lebanon, despite the Paris attackers being mostly (if not all) French and the Lebanese attackers being almost exclusively Syrians. But that’s where many start tacitly scrambling distinctions with abandon, imagining the French terrorists to be foreign and the Lebanese attackers to be natural to that environment. Our especial compassion only makes sense if we believe the victims in Paris being less deserving of the violence. The narrative of Islam-as-violent is at work in the rhetoric of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and Republican governors, but so too does it inform the way we’ve mourned Paris and forgotten Beirut.

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Snark is good for you: Science reveals the surprising benefits of sarcasm

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence,” wrote that connoisseur of wit, Oscar Wilde. Whether sarcasm is a sign of intelligence or not, communication experts and marriage counselors alike typically advise us to stay away from this particular form of expression. The reason is simple: sarcasm expresses the poisonous sting of contempt, hurting others and harming relationships. As a form of communication, sarcasm takes on the debt of conflict. And yet, our research suggests, there may also be some unexpected benefits from sarcasm: greater creativity. The use of sarcasm, in fact, promotes creativity for those on both the giving and receiving end of sarcastic exchanges. Instead of avoiding sarcasm completely in the office, the research suggests sarcasm, used with care and in moderation, can be effectively used and trigger some creative sparks. Sarcasm involves constructing or exposing contradictions between intended meanings. The most common form of verbal irony, sarcasm is often used to humorously convey thinly veiled disapproval or scorn. “Pat, don’t work so hard!”, a boss might say upon catching his assistant surfing the Internet. Early research on sarcasm explored how people interpret statements and found that, as expected, sarcasm makes a statement sound more critical. In one laboratory study, participants read scenarios in which, for instance, (1) one person did something that could be viewed negatively, such as smoking, and (2) a second person commented on the behavior to the first person, either literally (“I see you don’t have a healthy concern for your lungs”) or sarcastically (“I see you have a healthy concern for your lungs”). Participants rated sarcasm to be more condemning than literal statements. In a similar study, participants were encouraged to empathize either with a person behaving in a way that could be construed as negative or with a second person commenting on the first person’s behavior. Both perspectives prompted participants to rate sarcastic comments by the second person as more impolite relative to literal comments. Other research has show that sarcasm can be easily misinterpreted, particularly when communicated electronically. In one study, 30 pairs of university students were given a list of statements to communicate, half of which were sarcastic and half of which were serious. Some students communicated their messages via e-mail and others via voice recordings. Participants who received the voice messages accurately gleaned the sarcasm (or lack thereof) 73 percent of the time, but those who received the statements via e-mail did so only 56 percent of the time, hardly better than chance. By comparison, the e-mailers had anticipated that 78 percent of participants would pick up on the sarcasm inherent in their sarcastic statements. That is, they badly overestimated their ability to communicate the tenor of their sarcastic statements via e-mail. What’s more, the recipients of the sarcastic e-mails were also decidedly overconfident. They guessed they would correctly interpret the tone of the e-mails they received about 90 percent of the time. They were considerably less overconfident about their ability to interpret voice messages. In recent research, my colleagues and I discovered an upside to this otherwise gloomy picture of sarcasm. In one study, we assigned some participants to engage in either simulated sarcastic, sincere, or neutral dialogues by choosing from pre-written responses on a sheet of paper. Others were recipients of these different types of messages from others. Immediately after participants engaged in these “conversations,” we presented them with tasks testing their creativity. Not surprisingly, the participants exposed to sarcasm reported more interpersonal conflict than those in other groups. More interestingly, those who engaged in a sarcastic conversation fared better on creativity tasks. The processes involved in initiating and delivering a sarcastic comment improved the creativity and cognitive functioning of both the commenter and the recipient. This creativity effect only emerged when recipients picked up on the sarcasm behind the expresser’s message rather than taking mean comments at face value. Why might sarcasm enhance creativity? Because the brain must think creatively to understand or convey a sarcastic comment, sarcasm may lead to clearer and more creative thinking. To either create or understand sarcasm, tone must overcome the contradiction between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates, and is facilitated by, abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking. Consider the following example, which comes from a conversation one of my co-authors on the research (Adam Galinsky, of Columbia) had a few weeks before getting married. His fiancée woke him up as he was soundly asleep at night to tell him about some new ideas she has for their upcoming wedding next month –many of which were quite expensive. Adam responded with some ideas of his own: “Why don’t we get Paul McCartney to sing, Barack Obama to give a benediction and Amy Schumer to entertain people.” His comment required his fiancée to recognize that there is a distinction between the surface level meaning of the sentence (actually signing up these people to perform) and the meaning that was intended. This is not the first set of studies showing that creativity can be boosted by things that would commonly be considered creativity killers. In one series of studies, for example, researchers found that moderate noise can be an untapped source of creativity, providing a welcome distraction that helps the brain make disparate associations. In addition, alcohol is believed to aid creativity, up to a point, by reducing focus and relaxing the mind. Sarcasm can be interpreted negatively, and thus cause relationship costs. So, how do we harness its creative benefits without creating the type of conflict that can damage a relationship? It comes down to trust. Our studies show that, given the same content and tone, sarcasm expressed toward or received from someone we trust is less conflict provoking than sarcasm expressed toward or received from someone we distrust. Of course, if we were to vary the tone and content, it would make a difference too – given an extremely harsh tone and critical content, even trust might not be enough. Given the risks and benefits of sarcasm, your best bet is to keep salty remarks limited to conversations with those you know well, lest you offend others—even as you potentially help them think more creatively.

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