Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 955
November 12, 2015
“Empire”’s sex slump: Why sex on TV’s sexiest show — including that threesome — is so incredibly awkward
The second season of “Empire” seems to have misplaced a lot of its verve, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the fact that in last night’s episode, “True Love Never,” a threesome between Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), Mimi Whiteman (Marisa Tomei) and a random pretty woman named April is somehow the most boring thing to happen all season. In fairness, it doesn’t progress all the way to actual threesome, because Lucious spots April’s gun tattoo and leaves to write a song about it. But there’s a long and awkward build-up to that point which highlights how little chemistry the three characters have with each other. The mood of the scene is that all three characters set themselves a dare and are now getting cold feet at the idea of following through with it. Then Mimi starts crying because she has a quarrel over the phone, and Lucious has flashbacks to his bipolar mother putting a gun to her head. It is not hot. “Empire” is a show that features a lot of sex, but it’s not a show that is terribly sexy. Most of the time, the sex scenes are a bridge to another kind of storytelling—narratives of power, using the bedroom as just one more battleground in a war of attrition. In this scene, it’s an uncomfortable parable of moneyed power; Lucious and Mimi are business partners that are terrifyingly open to misuse of power. In the season premiere, Mimi allowed a woman to sleep with her in order to attempt to gain favor. Then she—turn of phrase intended—screwed her over anyway. That woman was Lucious’ ex-fiancee Anika (Grace Gealey). Lucious, who is fully aware of all that transpired, seems to take all of this as just another day of doing business. He also has a reputation for rapacious, predatory behavior—and we know Lucious, at least, to be a man capable of violence, in his quest to dominate every scenario. Right as the threesome is about to “start,” April shifts positions, beckoning Lucious and Mimi closer to her. Lucious looks almost annoyed that she would do something she wants to do. He moves her back to her previous position, and then pushes her legs apart. Then, distracted by her tattoo, he disappears for a songwriting spree, but the way he takes his leave is still chilling. He tells Mimi she should “go first.” This isn’t a threesome, this is a (consensual and possibly for-profit) gang-bang. Mimi, a ludicrous caricature of a lesbian, is cast in the “male” role; April, throughout her time on screen, does not speak at all. In a show that prides itself on female characters that do whatever they want, April is bizarrely marionette-like, lying on a hotel chaise lounge in her underwear. This second season of “Empire” has been caught between the show’s ambitions and its failures to execute; as I wrote when it premiered, “Empire” is often torn between creating a spectacle and deriving some sense of meaning from that spectacle. This is particularly showcased in its sex scenes. So it’s not that “Empire” doesn’t know what it’s doing when it films a character in the bedroom. (Last week’s sex scene with the criminally underused Gabourey Sidibe existed only to allow her character to be sexual, and even though it was just as random as everything else, the show was conscious of the effect Sidibe’s scene would have.) It’s more that the show’s occasionally atrocious writing makes it difficult to see the occasional brilliance of its setups. Intimacy is a fraught battleground for all of these privileged characters; Jamal (Jussie Smollett) can’t trust any of his boyfriends, Anika only knows how to sleep her way to the top, and Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) has a whole lot of not-so-subtle Freudian desires. Nearly every sexual pairing on the show has a sense of forced intimacy, but that’s almost the point. After all, even the show’s best character can’t seem to get a truly hot scene. Henson carries “Empire” through its nadirs with sheer willpower and a bat of her false eyelashes, and that is more important than ever in the second season, which has pitched and yawed through every sort of confused storytelling choices. But this is nowhere more apparent than in bed, when Henson plays a woman who knows she is operating through a set of convenient masks. With her, it’s no surprise that Cookie’s two lovers that haven’t been her ex-husband Lucious have both been security personnel; she’s searching for a sense of safety that she will never feel again after 17 years in prison. But the problem is that none of her partners can really match her—either Cookie’s force of character or Henson’s skill in playing her. “True Love Never” starts with matriarch Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson) in bed with a new paramour, Laz (Adam Rodriguez), and though it’s decadent, it’s about as unsexy as the threesome, albeit less illogical. The two are engaged in a power play that never quite bubbles over from fighting to flirting, and the two barely seem to connect to each other. Partly this is because Laz’s most dominant character trait, right now, is that he has a mysterious tattoo on his back—the outline of a longhorn’s skull, or a bull’s, or you know, some other kind of cattle. There isn’t a lot to get invested in there. The tattoos — April's gun and Laz's bull — reveal an odd storytelling crutch. Both sex scenes in “True Love Never” pivot around an image engraved upon the body, an image that is supposed to have some kind of grander significance. The image is on top of a situation that is already charged, and takes the viewer—both audience and the character that views it—out of the moment. The implication seems to be that the bodies cannot have significance themselves, so they must be over-emphasized, with another image on top of the image. It’s a very messy layering, so embellished as to be baroque. It’s no wonder nothing on “Empire” ever feels sexy; eroticism might be rooted in complex emotions, but in its consummation, it’s a pretty basic act. “Empire” is throwing everything at the wall this season, and it might have better results if it would let its characters breathe a little, and maybe enjoy the moment just a little bit.
November 11, 2015
Aziz Ansari pens emotional tribute to his folks: “I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to the ‘Parents’ episode of our show”
Aziz Ansari's new Netflix comedy "Master of None" is garnering high praise since it debuted last Friday — not only for its humor and relatable millennial storyline, but also for how the series has made Ansari's real parents its break-out stars. Shoukath Ansari and Fatima Ansari stole the show as parents of protagonist Dev in the much-lauded second episode, "Parents." The episode highlighted the frustrations felt by both parents and child and takes it to another level—a level where this frustration is analyzed and resolved through a hilarious dinner that includes Dev, his parents, and Dev’s friend Brian and his father. In a sweet Facebook post today by the actor, Ansari thanks his father for taking most of his vacation time to work on the show. He admits his he and parents haven’t always been very close, but the “Parents” episode and the show in general have brought them closer. Ansari uses his platform as a prominent actor to show that he goes through the same things with his parents as we do—but he also reminds us that we need to cherish them as much as we can. "Sorry if this is cheesy or too sentimental but if your parents are good to you too, just go do something nice for them" — wise words, even if you can't get your dad on as a Colbert guest. He says, "I urge you to work at it and get better because these are special people in your life and I get terrified when my dad tells me about friends of his, people close to his age, that are having serious health issues, etc. Enjoy and love these people while you can.” The emotional post not only adds to the message of the “Parents” episode, but also gives us a glimpse of how this helped his relationship with his parents. Casting his parents as Dev's parents is a visible and endearing part of Ansari's push to shine a light on the problem of the lack of Asian representation in American TV and in Hollywood. Here he is, the star of his own show, with an Asian co-star and with his own parents playing well, his character’s parents—which is a commendable feat. He is using his influence, not only to outline the problem of lack of diversity on television, but also to solve it the best way he can. He writes in a New York Times essay published yesterday: “Even at a time when minorities account for almost 40 percent of the American population, when Hollywood wants an 'everyman,' what it really wants is a straight white guy. But a straight white guy is not every man. The 'everyman' is everybody.” It's a powerful statement, pointing out what's wrong with western television and the need to cast a majority of white actors for major roles, or rather, for more common roles. Ansari uses his influence to show that he’s serious about fixing this problem. He admits he’s sold out Madison Square as a comedian, but when he gets offered a role, it’s usually defined by ethnicity and not really by talent. He goes on to define the problem to include finding the right Asian actors for a role. He explains how he paused and thought how this shouldn’t be a huge problem. But it is. It’s how things are, as Ansari rightly points out, and how they've been this way for decades. But it doesn't have to be — and he's doing his part to make it right.Aziz Ansari's new Netflix comedy "Master of None" is garnering high praise since it debuted last Friday — not only for its humor and relatable millennial storyline, but also for how the series has made Ansari's real parents its break-out stars. Shoukath Ansari and Fatima Ansari stole the show as parents of protagonist Dev in the much-lauded second episode, "Parents." The episode highlighted the frustrations felt by both parents and child and takes it to another level—a level where this frustration is analyzed and resolved through a hilarious dinner that includes Dev, his parents, and Dev’s friend Brian and his father. In a sweet Facebook post today by the actor, Ansari thanks his father for taking most of his vacation time to work on the show. He admits his he and parents haven’t always been very close, but the “Parents” episode and the show in general have brought them closer. Ansari uses his platform as a prominent actor to show that he goes through the same things with his parents as we do—but he also reminds us that we need to cherish them as much as we can. "Sorry if this is cheesy or too sentimental but if your parents are good to you too, just go do something nice for them" — wise words, even if you can't get your dad on as a Colbert guest. He says, "I urge you to work at it and get better because these are special people in your life and I get terrified when my dad tells me about friends of his, people close to his age, that are having serious health issues, etc. Enjoy and love these people while you can.” The emotional post not only adds to the message of the “Parents” episode, but also gives us a glimpse of how this helped his relationship with his parents. Casting his parents as Dev's parents is a visible and endearing part of Ansari's push to shine a light on the problem of the lack of Asian representation in American TV and in Hollywood. Here he is, the star of his own show, with an Asian co-star and with his own parents playing well, his character’s parents—which is a commendable feat. He is using his influence, not only to outline the problem of lack of diversity on television, but also to solve it the best way he can. He writes in a New York Times essay published yesterday: “Even at a time when minorities account for almost 40 percent of the American population, when Hollywood wants an 'everyman,' what it really wants is a straight white guy. But a straight white guy is not every man. The 'everyman' is everybody.” It's a powerful statement, pointing out what's wrong with western television and the need to cast a majority of white actors for major roles, or rather, for more common roles. Ansari uses his influence to show that he’s serious about fixing this problem. He admits he’s sold out Madison Square as a comedian, but when he gets offered a role, it’s usually defined by ethnicity and not really by talent. He goes on to define the problem to include finding the right Asian actors for a role. He explains how he paused and thought how this shouldn’t be a huge problem. But it is. It’s how things are, as Ansari rightly points out, and how they've been this way for decades. But it doesn't have to be — and he's doing his part to make it right.
Marco Rubio declares war on the liberal arts: Pitting vocational training against the humanities misses the point of both
The first outrageous statement in last night’s Republican debate also ends up being the one that’s likely to stay around the longest. In a discussion of the minimum wage, Marco Rubio pivoted to discussing the importance of vocational training, arguing that a better trained workforce could earn more without requiring market intervention. "Welders make more money than philosophers," Rubio said, not for the first time. "We need more welders and less philosophers." So far, much of the chatter, on both sides of the political spectrum, has been about whether he’s literally correct or not. Rubio’s supporters – including the Fox News crowd – jeered a bit over his comment; some pointed out that welding employs far more Americans than philosophy. And it does: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 850,000 people employed in welding and similar fields, which compares to a mere 23,000 postsecondary teachers of philosophy and religion, the most typical full-time philosopher gig. But Rubio’s line was about welders earning more, and here he seems to be wrong. The annual mean wage for welders – again, this is from the BLS -- is between $36,450 and $40,040, while for college philosophy and religion teachers, it’s $71,350. There are two other ways to look at this that may be more substantial than just comparing salaries. The first comes from the GOP’s anti-intellectualism and war on the liberal arts. It wasn’t that long ago that conservatives fought for the literary canon, for student exposure to Western civilization, and the like: A certain kind of Republican saw himself as defending the humanities against the identity-politics-driven radicals. But that kind of Republican – the blue-blood WASPs as well as conservative Jewish intellectuals like Allan “Closing of the American Mind” Bloom -- are not really driving the political right any more. In the Tea Party age, a more typical conservative is someone like Pat McCrory, governor of North Carolina, who went a bit farther than Rubio along the same anti-intellectual lines. McCrory complained to old Reagan hand and high-stakes gambler William Bennett about college curriculums being out of sync with where jobs are. “So I’m going to adjust my education curriculum to what business and commerce needs to get our kids jobs as opposed to moving back in with their parents after they graduate with debt," the governor said. "What are we teaching these courses for if they're not going to help get a job?" He went on to say, “If you want to take gender studies that's fine. Go to a private school, and take it. But I don't want to subsidize that if that's not going to get someone a job." Though Rubio has become more assertive these days, he’s still working hard to be the friendly face of the Republican field, and he rarely follows his ideas through when he speaks about them. The large number of candidates in the debates means he can just toss out a phrase including the term “21st century” in it and draw applause. But he’s coming from the same place as McCrory on these matters. Education is not there to deepen your critical thinking, expose you to the great works of the past, or enlarge the soul, but simply to get you a job. Of course, expanding vocational training and taking it seriously does not have to be opposed to studying philosophy. It doesn’t have to be anti-intellectual to pursue a trade. The non-reactionary case for vocational training was made eloquently by Matthew Crawford, who trained as a political philosopher at the University of Chicago, joined a right-of-center think tank, and resigned to devote more of his time to repairing motorcycles. His book “Shop Class as Soulcraft” begins by describing the huge number of “metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws” floating around now that vo-tech education has been dismantled for the sake of the “knowledge worker.” “The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world of artifacts we inhabit,” Crawford writes. “Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy.” The book’s argument – which is by turns individualistic, a bit macho, and a critique of capitalism – is hard to sum up. Let’s just say that, contra Rubio and his like, it’s possible to imagine an America that values both the welder and the philosopher, and doesn’t pit the two against each other. Somehow, this notion seems unlike to come up at the next GOP debate. But that's a 21st century I could get behind.The first outrageous statement in last night’s Republican debate also ends up being the one that’s likely to stay around the longest. In a discussion of the minimum wage, Marco Rubio pivoted to discussing the importance of vocational training, arguing that a better trained workforce could earn more without requiring market intervention. "Welders make more money than philosophers," Rubio said, not for the first time. "We need more welders and less philosophers." So far, much of the chatter, on both sides of the political spectrum, has been about whether he’s literally correct or not. Rubio’s supporters – including the Fox News crowd – jeered a bit over his comment; some pointed out that welding employs far more Americans than philosophy. And it does: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 850,000 people employed in welding and similar fields, which compares to a mere 23,000 postsecondary teachers of philosophy and religion, the most typical full-time philosopher gig. But Rubio’s line was about welders earning more, and here he seems to be wrong. The annual mean wage for welders – again, this is from the BLS -- is between $36,450 and $40,040, while for college philosophy and religion teachers, it’s $71,350. There are two other ways to look at this that may be more substantial than just comparing salaries. The first comes from the GOP’s anti-intellectualism and war on the liberal arts. It wasn’t that long ago that conservatives fought for the literary canon, for student exposure to Western civilization, and the like: A certain kind of Republican saw himself as defending the humanities against the identity-politics-driven radicals. But that kind of Republican – the blue-blood WASPs as well as conservative Jewish intellectuals like Allan “Closing of the American Mind” Bloom -- are not really driving the political right any more. In the Tea Party age, a more typical conservative is someone like Pat McCrory, governor of North Carolina, who went a bit farther than Rubio along the same anti-intellectual lines. McCrory complained to old Reagan hand and high-stakes gambler William Bennett about college curriculums being out of sync with where jobs are. “So I’m going to adjust my education curriculum to what business and commerce needs to get our kids jobs as opposed to moving back in with their parents after they graduate with debt," the governor said. "What are we teaching these courses for if they're not going to help get a job?" He went on to say, “If you want to take gender studies that's fine. Go to a private school, and take it. But I don't want to subsidize that if that's not going to get someone a job." Though Rubio has become more assertive these days, he’s still working hard to be the friendly face of the Republican field, and he rarely follows his ideas through when he speaks about them. The large number of candidates in the debates means he can just toss out a phrase including the term “21st century” in it and draw applause. But he’s coming from the same place as McCrory on these matters. Education is not there to deepen your critical thinking, expose you to the great works of the past, or enlarge the soul, but simply to get you a job. Of course, expanding vocational training and taking it seriously does not have to be opposed to studying philosophy. It doesn’t have to be anti-intellectual to pursue a trade. The non-reactionary case for vocational training was made eloquently by Matthew Crawford, who trained as a political philosopher at the University of Chicago, joined a right-of-center think tank, and resigned to devote more of his time to repairing motorcycles. His book “Shop Class as Soulcraft” begins by describing the huge number of “metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws” floating around now that vo-tech education has been dismantled for the sake of the “knowledge worker.” “The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world of artifacts we inhabit,” Crawford writes. “Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy.” The book’s argument – which is by turns individualistic, a bit macho, and a critique of capitalism – is hard to sum up. Let’s just say that, contra Rubio and his like, it’s possible to imagine an America that values both the welder and the philosopher, and doesn’t pit the two against each other. Somehow, this notion seems unlike to come up at the next GOP debate. But that's a 21st century I could get behind.The first outrageous statement in last night’s Republican debate also ends up being the one that’s likely to stay around the longest. In a discussion of the minimum wage, Marco Rubio pivoted to discussing the importance of vocational training, arguing that a better trained workforce could earn more without requiring market intervention. "Welders make more money than philosophers," Rubio said, not for the first time. "We need more welders and less philosophers." So far, much of the chatter, on both sides of the political spectrum, has been about whether he’s literally correct or not. Rubio’s supporters – including the Fox News crowd – jeered a bit over his comment; some pointed out that welding employs far more Americans than philosophy. And it does: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 850,000 people employed in welding and similar fields, which compares to a mere 23,000 postsecondary teachers of philosophy and religion, the most typical full-time philosopher gig. But Rubio’s line was about welders earning more, and here he seems to be wrong. The annual mean wage for welders – again, this is from the BLS -- is between $36,450 and $40,040, while for college philosophy and religion teachers, it’s $71,350. There are two other ways to look at this that may be more substantial than just comparing salaries. The first comes from the GOP’s anti-intellectualism and war on the liberal arts. It wasn’t that long ago that conservatives fought for the literary canon, for student exposure to Western civilization, and the like: A certain kind of Republican saw himself as defending the humanities against the identity-politics-driven radicals. But that kind of Republican – the blue-blood WASPs as well as conservative Jewish intellectuals like Allan “Closing of the American Mind” Bloom -- are not really driving the political right any more. In the Tea Party age, a more typical conservative is someone like Pat McCrory, governor of North Carolina, who went a bit farther than Rubio along the same anti-intellectual lines. McCrory complained to old Reagan hand and high-stakes gambler William Bennett about college curriculums being out of sync with where jobs are. “So I’m going to adjust my education curriculum to what business and commerce needs to get our kids jobs as opposed to moving back in with their parents after they graduate with debt," the governor said. "What are we teaching these courses for if they're not going to help get a job?" He went on to say, “If you want to take gender studies that's fine. Go to a private school, and take it. But I don't want to subsidize that if that's not going to get someone a job." Though Rubio has become more assertive these days, he’s still working hard to be the friendly face of the Republican field, and he rarely follows his ideas through when he speaks about them. The large number of candidates in the debates means he can just toss out a phrase including the term “21st century” in it and draw applause. But he’s coming from the same place as McCrory on these matters. Education is not there to deepen your critical thinking, expose you to the great works of the past, or enlarge the soul, but simply to get you a job. Of course, expanding vocational training and taking it seriously does not have to be opposed to studying philosophy. It doesn’t have to be anti-intellectual to pursue a trade. The non-reactionary case for vocational training was made eloquently by Matthew Crawford, who trained as a political philosopher at the University of Chicago, joined a right-of-center think tank, and resigned to devote more of his time to repairing motorcycles. His book “Shop Class as Soulcraft” begins by describing the huge number of “metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws” floating around now that vo-tech education has been dismantled for the sake of the “knowledge worker.” “The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world of artifacts we inhabit,” Crawford writes. “Many people are trying to recover a field of vision that is basically human in scale, and extricate themselves from dependence on the obscure forces of a global economy.” The book’s argument – which is by turns individualistic, a bit macho, and a critique of capitalism – is hard to sum up. Let’s just say that, contra Rubio and his like, it’s possible to imagine an America that values both the welder and the philosopher, and doesn’t pit the two against each other. Somehow, this notion seems unlike to come up at the next GOP debate. But that's a 21st century I could get behind.
George Will vs. Bill O’Reilly rages on: O’Reilly accuses Will of waging a “jihad” against him out of jealousy
Accusations of jealousy and hypocrisy abound in the latest installment of this most laughable conservative reality TV show. Catch up on episodes 1, 2 and 3, but there is surely no need for a spoiler alert in this slow-moving Fox News melodrama. Bill O'Reilly promised not to spend anymore airtime attacking George Will during the "O'Reilly Factor" last night, after the conservative Washington Post columnist released his second op-ed filleting O'Reilly's bestseller "Killing Reagan." But of course, O'Reilly first accused Will of waging a personal "jihad" against him out of jealousy. Fun times. Opening his latest salvo in this war of attrition, Will began his second column by directly calling out O'Reilly as a know-nothing bloviator. "Were the lungs the seat of wisdom, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly would be wise, but they are not and he is not." Will went on to accuse O'Reilly's sloppy historical account of fueling longtime efforts to discredit conservatism by undermining President Reagan’s competency in office:
O’Reilly impales himself on a contradiction: He says his book is “laudatory” about Reagan — and that it is being attacked by Reagan “guardians” and “loyalists.” How odd. Liberals, who have long recognized that to discredit conservatism they must devalue Reagan’s presidency, surely are delighted with O’Reilly’s assistance. The diaspora of Reagan administration alumni, and the conservative movement, now recognize O’Reilly as an opportunistic interloper.While everyone else was watching last night's GOP presidential debate on sister network Fox Business Channel, O'Reilly took the chance to respond to Will's second take-down. And for the second night in a row, O'Reilly found his loyal viewers preoccupied with the ongoing feud. He responded to one such loyal fan from The Villages who complained that O'Reilly had gone "too far" in his on-air lashing of Will. "You should let the facts speak for themselves and write a rebuttal in the Washington Post," the viewer encouraged O'Reilly. "Funny you should mention that," Bill-O began. "The Washington Post will not print the rebuttal written by me and Martin Dugard. Ron, they won't print it," the hosted explained. "Even though the newspaper has run two op-eds and possibly will run a third, attacking 'Killing Reagan.' They won't let us reply." Calling the Post's move "disgraceful," O'Reilly extended his attacks to the paper, calling it "unfair, unbalanced, and unworthy." O'Reilly assured his viewers that despite it not being printed in the Post, his rebuttal could be found on his website. O'Reilly then redirected his target back on Will and went off on this epic rant:
But you know what, George? I'm bored with it, I'm bored with it. So this is my last reply to you. Everything in Killing Reagan is true. Everything is documented. You, George, are jealous. You're jealous of our success on television and in publishing. Your last book was a huge bomb, George. A catastrophe in the sales department. Only 28,000 copies sold. I might be jealous, too, with that kind of resume. So I really don't blame you. But your elitist tone has never really been welcomed here in The Factor, as you know. And we believe that is a factor in your current jihad against us. As far as we're concerned George, where there's a Will, there's no way. End of story.In his rebuttal to Will's second column, O'Reilly again accuses Will of being part of the "Reagan cabal," hellbent on nothing short of "deification" in historical accounts of 40th president:
Recently, the Washington Post published two columns attacking our book Killing Reagan. We believe the hostile criticism is both misguided and disingenuous and is motivated by a small group of Reagan loyalists who are vehemently opposed to any objective look at the 40th President. It should be noted that Killing Reagan is, on balance, a book that lauds the man but apparently that is not enough. The Reagan cabal insists on deification.Watch O'Reilly's hysterical rant, via Media Matters: Accusations of jealousy and hypocrisy abound in the latest installment of this most laughable conservative reality TV show. Catch up on episodes 1, 2 and 3, but there is surely no need for a spoiler alert in this slow-moving Fox News melodrama. Bill O'Reilly promised not to spend anymore airtime attacking George Will during the "O'Reilly Factor" last night, after the conservative Washington Post columnist released his second op-ed filleting O'Reilly's bestseller "Killing Reagan." But of course, O'Reilly first accused Will of waging a personal "jihad" against him out of jealousy. Fun times. Opening his latest salvo in this war of attrition, Will began his second column by directly calling out O'Reilly as a know-nothing bloviator. "Were the lungs the seat of wisdom, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly would be wise, but they are not and he is not." Will went on to accuse O'Reilly's sloppy historical account of fueling longtime efforts to discredit conservatism by undermining President Reagan’s competency in office:
O’Reilly impales himself on a contradiction: He says his book is “laudatory” about Reagan — and that it is being attacked by Reagan “guardians” and “loyalists.” How odd. Liberals, who have long recognized that to discredit conservatism they must devalue Reagan’s presidency, surely are delighted with O’Reilly’s assistance. The diaspora of Reagan administration alumni, and the conservative movement, now recognize O’Reilly as an opportunistic interloper.While everyone else was watching last night's GOP presidential debate on sister network Fox Business Channel, O'Reilly took the chance to respond to Will's second take-down. And for the second night in a row, O'Reilly found his loyal viewers preoccupied with the ongoing feud. He responded to one such loyal fan from The Villages who complained that O'Reilly had gone "too far" in his on-air lashing of Will. "You should let the facts speak for themselves and write a rebuttal in the Washington Post," the viewer encouraged O'Reilly. "Funny you should mention that," Bill-O began. "The Washington Post will not print the rebuttal written by me and Martin Dugard. Ron, they won't print it," the hosted explained. "Even though the newspaper has run two op-eds and possibly will run a third, attacking 'Killing Reagan.' They won't let us reply." Calling the Post's move "disgraceful," O'Reilly extended his attacks to the paper, calling it "unfair, unbalanced, and unworthy." O'Reilly assured his viewers that despite it not being printed in the Post, his rebuttal could be found on his website. O'Reilly then redirected his target back on Will and went off on this epic rant:
But you know what, George? I'm bored with it, I'm bored with it. So this is my last reply to you. Everything in Killing Reagan is true. Everything is documented. You, George, are jealous. You're jealous of our success on television and in publishing. Your last book was a huge bomb, George. A catastrophe in the sales department. Only 28,000 copies sold. I might be jealous, too, with that kind of resume. So I really don't blame you. But your elitist tone has never really been welcomed here in The Factor, as you know. And we believe that is a factor in your current jihad against us. As far as we're concerned George, where there's a Will, there's no way. End of story.In his rebuttal to Will's second column, O'Reilly again accuses Will of being part of the "Reagan cabal," hellbent on nothing short of "deification" in historical accounts of 40th president:
Recently, the Washington Post published two columns attacking our book Killing Reagan. We believe the hostile criticism is both misguided and disingenuous and is motivated by a small group of Reagan loyalists who are vehemently opposed to any objective look at the 40th President. It should be noted that Killing Reagan is, on balance, a book that lauds the man but apparently that is not enough. The Reagan cabal insists on deification.Watch O'Reilly's hysterical rant, via Media Matters:
Alec Baldwin gets it right: Parents don’t have to be weird about their adult children’s sex lives
Recently, while interviewing Amy Schumer on his podcast “Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin,” the actor shared that he’s learned about the idea of sexuality being a spectrum from younger people he’s worked with as well as his daughter, Ireland Baldwin. Ireland made headlines last year for very publicly kissing rapper Angel Haze, who told an interviewer, “I’m just a kid in love right now. It’s just like some 14-year-old posting pictures of their first girlfriend.” While the pair reportedly split up earlier this year, Ireland’s same sex relationship has left its mark on her father, making him more open-minded than he’d presumably been previously. On the podcast, after being asked whether women throw themselves at her because of how funny and “sexually liberated,” Schumer told Baldwin that “women get confused around me. They want my attention, they like me,” but they can’t quite figure out whether they have a girl crush or a crush crush. “I’m straight, but they’ll sometimes deal with me the way that they would a guy that they’re attracted to,” said Schumer. This prompted Baldwin to share, “As my daughter said to me—because she had a girlfriend for a while—she said to me, ‘You don’t sleep with a man or a woman. You sleep with the person. I’m attracted to that person. So she slept with somebody who was a woman. I was like, you know, wow, I’ve met men that I loved as much as anybody in my life.’” When Schumer asked Baldwin, “And you’re never?” he replied, “I’m not built that way.” But the very fact that Baldwin so casually mentioned that his daughter had slept with a woman and that he clearly didn’t consider it a problem—plus that he learned that there’s more varieties to the sexual rainbow than straight, gay or bi—is a sign of how far we’ve come in the evolution of sexual freedom, not to mention parental acceptance and openness. Parents who make such statements are acknowledging that their child is an adult capable of making his or her own decisions, and a sign that the older generation can learn from the younger. As Emily Winter wrote at The Frisky, “[W]hen dads can’t admit that their daughters are sexual, it sustains the pattern of men filing women into two groups: sex ones and non-sex ones. But Baldwin proves he’s a little more evolved.” In January here at Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory wrote approvingly of Brian Williams being totally supportive of his daughter Allison Williams’ infamous butt eating sex scene on HBO drama "Girls." “Dads have so many opportunities to positively influence how their daughters feel about their own bodies and sexualities. They have so many chances to not teach them shame. They have so many ways to communicate that it’s a woman, not a man — be he her father or husband — who owns her sexuality,” declared Clark-Flory. She’s exactly right, but this isn’t just about dads and daughters. Kristen Stewart’s mom Jules Stewart was quoted in June in the UK’s The Sunday Mirror saying, “What’s not to be accepting about her now having a girlfriend? She’s happy. She’s my daughter, I’m just her mom so she knows I would accept her choices. I’ve met Kristen’s new girlfriend, I like her. What’s not to accept? She’s a lovely girl.” While Jules later denied speaking to The Sunday Mirror reporter about her daughter, she admitted to US Weekly that she did say in that interview, speaking about Kristen’s personal assistant (and rumored girlfriend), Alicia Cargile, “Yes, she’s a lovely girl” and went on the record as being a “huge supporter of gay rights.” Whether or not she actually talked about Kristen being in love with a woman, Stewart’s outspokenness about gay rights and the fact that she didn’t rush to deny that her daughter might be in a same-sex relationship, speak volumes. Johnny Depp wore a “We Are You” t-shirt on The Ellen DeGeneres Show to broadcast his support for teenage daughter Lily-Rose Depp, who came out as sexually fluid on Instagram earlier this year by also wearing a “We Are You” t-shirt. The t-shirts are part of The Self Evident Truths project, which is described on its website as “a photographic document of 10,000 people in the USA that identify as ANYTHING OTHER than 100% straight – as in, if you are anywhere on the LGBTQ spectrum in ANY way, even 1% gay, we want to take your picture!” In other words, you can show your support for your child being able to own their own sexuality, wherever it falls on the spectrum Baldwin mentioned, without even saying a word, by aligning yourself with those working to expand the cultural discussion around sex and sexual orientation. Of course this isn’t going to be the easiest process for all parents, especially when there are still plenty of people out there who think it’s perfectly okay for a daughter to proudly present a “certificate of purity” to her father on her wedding day ensuring that her hymen is intact. The ways Baldwin, Depp, and Stewart have chosen to support their children is the exact opposite of the kind of monitoring purity culture asks parents to do, as if they are the ultimate arbiters of who their offspring should be attracted to and how those attractions should manifest. This week’s "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" featured a plotline about Rebecca helping her boss in his custody battle. After she accuses him of rhapsodizing about his daughter in way that came off as creepy, he busts into song to declare why “I Love My Daughter,” which features the lines, “One day she’ll fall in love and I’ll give her away/not like I ever had her/what a weird thing to say.” The song is as over-the-top as most of the songs on the show, but it highlights the schism fathers can be made to feel about whether they are showing too much enthusiasm about parenting a daughter. What does that say about our culture when we assume a father can’t be as obsessive of a parent as a mom without bordering on something untoward? This is the start of the kinds of attitudes that breed people thinking Brian Williams should have automatically condemned his daughter’s anilingus scene. Now, can this be taken too far? Of course. Every family has to figure out what their boundaries are around discussing sex amongst themselves or, in the case of celebrities, in public. Justin Bieber’s father Jeremy caught flak for a now-deleted Tweet joking about his son’s penis after paparazzi photos of it were published, in which he asked “@justinbieber what do you feed that thing. #proud daddy.” But you know what? The Biebs himself found his dad’s comment funny, so who am I to challenge it? I’d rather see parents at least acknowledge that their kids don’t belong to them and have sexual body parts and sexual desires than pretending the opposite. Someday, I hope that statements like Baldwin’s are so commonplace they aren’t even noteworthy. But until that time, let’s applaud parents who can appreciate that their adult children are sexual beings, and aren’t ashamed or embarrassed about that fact.
“Unwanted twerking” isn’t a joke: Sexual abuse charges shouldn’t make cute headlines
It was a story tailor-made for your local 10 o'clock news show and your Facebook "trending" feed — security footage out of Washington, DC. of "Women caught on cam twerking & groping" a male stranger. As WUSA-9 reported Tuesday, 22 year-old Ayanna Marie Knight has been arrested over an October incident at a local gas station convenience store. Police say Knight has two previous arrests for prostitution. She is now charged with third-degree sexual abuse, and the other woman in the video, whom police are still searching for, faces similar charges. Those are serious allegations, regardless of the gender of the alleged perpetrator or victim. In D.C., third degree sexual abuse involves engaging in or causing sexual contact with another person by force or other means. The charge can carry up to ten years imprisonment and $100,000 in fines. In the security footage, at least, it appears that what is happening to man fits that description. He is standing behind one of the women near the checkout and talking on the phone when she backs up on him and begins to twerk. Then the other woman approaches him and grabs his crotch. She persistently touches him, appearing to try to take his phone away, aggressively putting her arm around him — and she keeps coming even as he repeatedly moves away from her. The man says he explicitly told both the women to stop. The man — who has withheld his name — told NBC News Washington Tuesday that "I was assaulted sexually. I felt 100 percent violated. I felt really humiliated also." He adds, "The two cashiers that were at the station just sat there. I asked them to help, they said, 'What do you want us to do?' I'm saying, 'Call the police.'" At one point in the video, you can see another patron walk past the man, paying no apparent attention, all while the victim's trying to fend off the woman. He says the women then followed him outside the station and tried to stop him from calling the cops. Many women face a regular barrage of unwanted physical contact, especially in crowded cities and in confined public transportation spaces. They're grabbed on London buses and groped in Yankee stadium and felt up while they're sleeping on airplanes. It's such a commonplace event it rarely makes the evening news. And when the alleged crime is a male on female one, the dynamic is undoubtedly different. But it doesn't really matter whether these women felt entitled to violate a man's personal space because he was there and they felt like they could get away with it or there was some other motive for their alleged assault. This isn't just about some news shows having an excuse to show underdressed young women in a story, nor is about "unwanted twerking," as DCist fancifully calls it, or bad behavior "being caught on cam" like a blooper reel. It's about acknowledging that just because certain crimes happen more often to women, it doesn't make them funny or acceptable when it happens to men. Men have a right to privacy and bodily autonomy, too, and if those rights are ignored and violated on purpose, it's not some dumb dance move -- it's a crime. As the man in the video told NBC, "Because when someone is just grabbing your body parts without your permission, no matter who it is, that's just a violation completely."
The gloves came off: Watch the most heated battles at last night’s GOP debate
Actual political debates were few and far between at the fourth GOP debate but there were battles aplenty. Watch our recap of a some of the most heated arguments that took place during Tuesday night's debate.
Ben Carson’s demented snake oil: Fox News, black conservatives, and the role of race in the GOP
Tuesday night’s debate on the Fox Business Network was a retread of tired Republican talking points. Benghazi was mentioned—again. The free market is a cure for all problems even when an unregulated free market is actually the cause of said problems. Extending health insurance through privately owned companies to people who need it is evil. Of course, there was empty talk about “keeping America strong.” As always, the so-called “liberal media” was cited as a cause of the GOP candidates’ troubles—as opposed to the latter’s hostile and toxic relationship to the truth. In his role as professional “best black friend” for the Republican Party, Ben Carson played his designated role perfectly as he gave voice to policies that he believes hurt people of color by opposing an increase in the minimum wage. During Tuesday night’s Republican debate he said:
“As far as the minimum wage is concerned, people need to be educated on the minimum wage,” Carson began in his opening salvo. “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. This is particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, or are looking for one. And that's because of those high wages. If you lower those wages, that comes down.”This is a tired and tedious claim, one that is a product of right-wing think tanks and the broader Fox News entertainment complex. Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are also part of a larger belief system where basic efforts by the federal government to protect labor, prevent racial discrimination, maintain a social safety net, and a belief that the state can actually have a positive impact on the Common Good, are rejected by conservatives as incompatible with “individual freedom” and “personal responsibility.” Black conservatives are trotted out at as the lead voices against “big government” because poverty and the idea of an “interventionist” government have been racialized by white conservatives from the end of Reconstruction through to the 1960s with the “Southern Strategy”, and into the present with assaults on Obama as a “welfare king” or when Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and others suggest that black Americans are parasites who only want “free stuff” from the United States government—and by extension—“hard working” white people. Such narratives and claims are the basis of the politics of white racial resentment. Such a strategy uses white racism to win elections for Republicans. Here, black conservatives like Ben Carson are human camouflage that allows the white right to claim they are not racist. In this logic, how could Republican policies be racist when they are parroted and given voice by black conservatives such as Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas and other prominent black faces on the white right? (Black conservatives are also used to dishonestly leverage the symbolic power of the Black Freedom Struggle to advocate for policies such as charter schools (and the broader neoliberal nightmare project) which they claim will give “freedom” to the black and brown poor, but in actuality produce worse educational outcomes than public schools while simultaneously transferring public monies to the pockets of the 1 percent.) There is a whole knowledge production industry that produces Ben Carson’s claims that an increase in the minimum wage will hurt black Americans. For example, African-American economists such as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have built careers on legitimating right-wing arguments that minimum wage and civil rights laws actually hurt people of color. Thomas Sowell is a darling of the right-wing media and libertarian establishment. For more than 30 years, he has been a fellow at The Hoover Institution. Sowell is also a regular contributor to World Net Daily. Walter Williams is a featured columnist in newspapers around the United States where he offers up his Right-wing bromides about the evils of civil rights laws and how African-Americans have actually been hurt by the federal government and civil rights laws (as opposed to empowered by them). Walter Williams’ 1985 documentaries “Good Intentions” and “State Against Blacks” have been repeatedly featured by Fox’s John Stossel. For 20 years, Walter Williams has also been a guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show, a show that has routinely offered racist and hateful stereotypes and screeds about black people and President Obama. Both Williams and Sowell have echoed ugly and unfounded right-wing claims that African-Americans are dumb, stupid, too emotional, irrational, and stuck on a “Democratic plantation” as explanations for why that group has for decades overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party’s policies and candidates. Ultimately, Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are a reflection of the libertarian right-wing’s naïve and fantastical worship of an idealized type of free market capitalism that does not exist. In this world, racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination are just “inefficiencies” that the “invisible hand” will erase. As demonstrated by decades of Jim and Jane Crow, as well as centuries of white on black chattel slavery, the “free market” is extremely adept at reinforcing and producing persistent racist outcomes that rob and limit individual agency and freedom as opposed to expanding them. Racism and capitalism are not exclusive of one another. They have existed in a symbiotic relationship in the United States and the West. This relationship continues into the post civil rights era. Carson’s understanding of how minimum wage laws actually hurt black and brown Americans is based on a fallacious belief that if non-whites are stigmatized by racism or otherwise lack skills—thus making them comparatively more “expensive” as this is another labor disincentive or cost—raising the minimum wage will make them even less desirable in the labor market. The evidence complicates this in a number of ways. Black Americans at all levels of education and income face discrimination in the labor market relative to white people. In fact, social scientists have estimated that a black man with no criminal background has the same chance of getting an interview as a white man with a felony. Black and brown Americans are over-represented in minimum and low wage sectors of the American economy. An increase in the minimum wage would have a disproportionate impact on their life outcomes. While black youth with no skills may be initially hurt by raising the minimum wage, the incomes of people in the low to semi skilled job sector would be helped. Moreover, the institutional forces such as broken schools, custodial citizenship, mass incarceration, and residential segregation that lock people into low wage work need to be corrected as well. Low wages for non-whites have historically been a tool for white employers and plutocrats to suppress wages for all Americans. White Americans have a fear that black and brown people will “take their jobs.” White American elites know this. For centuries they used such fear to position the white working class and poor against their natural allies among people of color in the same economic cohort. In the United States “divide and conquer” is one of the primary tools for white supremacy: it uses class insecurity to hurt working people on both sides of the color line. Most importantly, conservatives’ specious claims about how a raise in the minimum wage would hurt the American economy are easily contradicted. The role of black conservatives is to make the unconscionable acceptable, to turn lies into truths, and to make the unacceptable okay. Ben Carson fulfills that role perfectly. Black folks, the doctor will see you now. His name is Ben Carson. Your prognosis is already grim—and Dr. Carson’s medicine bag is overflowing with poison.Tuesday night’s debate on the Fox Business Network was a retread of tired Republican talking points. Benghazi was mentioned—again. The free market is a cure for all problems even when an unregulated free market is actually the cause of said problems. Extending health insurance through privately owned companies to people who need it is evil. Of course, there was empty talk about “keeping America strong.” As always, the so-called “liberal media” was cited as a cause of the GOP candidates’ troubles—as opposed to the latter’s hostile and toxic relationship to the truth. In his role as professional “best black friend” for the Republican Party, Ben Carson played his designated role perfectly as he gave voice to policies that he believes hurt people of color by opposing an increase in the minimum wage. During Tuesday night’s Republican debate he said:
“As far as the minimum wage is concerned, people need to be educated on the minimum wage,” Carson began in his opening salvo. “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. This is particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, or are looking for one. And that's because of those high wages. If you lower those wages, that comes down.”This is a tired and tedious claim, one that is a product of right-wing think tanks and the broader Fox News entertainment complex. Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are also part of a larger belief system where basic efforts by the federal government to protect labor, prevent racial discrimination, maintain a social safety net, and a belief that the state can actually have a positive impact on the Common Good, are rejected by conservatives as incompatible with “individual freedom” and “personal responsibility.” Black conservatives are trotted out at as the lead voices against “big government” because poverty and the idea of an “interventionist” government have been racialized by white conservatives from the end of Reconstruction through to the 1960s with the “Southern Strategy”, and into the present with assaults on Obama as a “welfare king” or when Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and others suggest that black Americans are parasites who only want “free stuff” from the United States government—and by extension—“hard working” white people. Such narratives and claims are the basis of the politics of white racial resentment. Such a strategy uses white racism to win elections for Republicans. Here, black conservatives like Ben Carson are human camouflage that allows the white right to claim they are not racist. In this logic, how could Republican policies be racist when they are parroted and given voice by black conservatives such as Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas and other prominent black faces on the white right? (Black conservatives are also used to dishonestly leverage the symbolic power of the Black Freedom Struggle to advocate for policies such as charter schools (and the broader neoliberal nightmare project) which they claim will give “freedom” to the black and brown poor, but in actuality produce worse educational outcomes than public schools while simultaneously transferring public monies to the pockets of the 1 percent.) There is a whole knowledge production industry that produces Ben Carson’s claims that an increase in the minimum wage will hurt black Americans. For example, African-American economists such as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have built careers on legitimating right-wing arguments that minimum wage and civil rights laws actually hurt people of color. Thomas Sowell is a darling of the right-wing media and libertarian establishment. For more than 30 years, he has been a fellow at The Hoover Institution. Sowell is also a regular contributor to World Net Daily. Walter Williams is a featured columnist in newspapers around the United States where he offers up his Right-wing bromides about the evils of civil rights laws and how African-Americans have actually been hurt by the federal government and civil rights laws (as opposed to empowered by them). Walter Williams’ 1985 documentaries “Good Intentions” and “State Against Blacks” have been repeatedly featured by Fox’s John Stossel. For 20 years, Walter Williams has also been a guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show, a show that has routinely offered racist and hateful stereotypes and screeds about black people and President Obama. Both Williams and Sowell have echoed ugly and unfounded right-wing claims that African-Americans are dumb, stupid, too emotional, irrational, and stuck on a “Democratic plantation” as explanations for why that group has for decades overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party’s policies and candidates. Ultimately, Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are a reflection of the libertarian right-wing’s naïve and fantastical worship of an idealized type of free market capitalism that does not exist. In this world, racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination are just “inefficiencies” that the “invisible hand” will erase. As demonstrated by decades of Jim and Jane Crow, as well as centuries of white on black chattel slavery, the “free market” is extremely adept at reinforcing and producing persistent racist outcomes that rob and limit individual agency and freedom as opposed to expanding them. Racism and capitalism are not exclusive of one another. They have existed in a symbiotic relationship in the United States and the West. This relationship continues into the post civil rights era. Carson’s understanding of how minimum wage laws actually hurt black and brown Americans is based on a fallacious belief that if non-whites are stigmatized by racism or otherwise lack skills—thus making them comparatively more “expensive” as this is another labor disincentive or cost—raising the minimum wage will make them even less desirable in the labor market. The evidence complicates this in a number of ways. Black Americans at all levels of education and income face discrimination in the labor market relative to white people. In fact, social scientists have estimated that a black man with no criminal background has the same chance of getting an interview as a white man with a felony. Black and brown Americans are over-represented in minimum and low wage sectors of the American economy. An increase in the minimum wage would have a disproportionate impact on their life outcomes. While black youth with no skills may be initially hurt by raising the minimum wage, the incomes of people in the low to semi skilled job sector would be helped. Moreover, the institutional forces such as broken schools, custodial citizenship, mass incarceration, and residential segregation that lock people into low wage work need to be corrected as well. Low wages for non-whites have historically been a tool for white employers and plutocrats to suppress wages for all Americans. White Americans have a fear that black and brown people will “take their jobs.” White American elites know this. For centuries they used such fear to position the white working class and poor against their natural allies among people of color in the same economic cohort. In the United States “divide and conquer” is one of the primary tools for white supremacy: it uses class insecurity to hurt working people on both sides of the color line. Most importantly, conservatives’ specious claims about how a raise in the minimum wage would hurt the American economy are easily contradicted. The role of black conservatives is to make the unconscionable acceptable, to turn lies into truths, and to make the unacceptable okay. Ben Carson fulfills that role perfectly. Black folks, the doctor will see you now. His name is Ben Carson. Your prognosis is already grim—and Dr. Carson’s medicine bag is overflowing with poison.Tuesday night’s debate on the Fox Business Network was a retread of tired Republican talking points. Benghazi was mentioned—again. The free market is a cure for all problems even when an unregulated free market is actually the cause of said problems. Extending health insurance through privately owned companies to people who need it is evil. Of course, there was empty talk about “keeping America strong.” As always, the so-called “liberal media” was cited as a cause of the GOP candidates’ troubles—as opposed to the latter’s hostile and toxic relationship to the truth. In his role as professional “best black friend” for the Republican Party, Ben Carson played his designated role perfectly as he gave voice to policies that he believes hurt people of color by opposing an increase in the minimum wage. During Tuesday night’s Republican debate he said:
“As far as the minimum wage is concerned, people need to be educated on the minimum wage,” Carson began in his opening salvo. “Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. This is particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, or are looking for one. And that's because of those high wages. If you lower those wages, that comes down.”This is a tired and tedious claim, one that is a product of right-wing think tanks and the broader Fox News entertainment complex. Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are also part of a larger belief system where basic efforts by the federal government to protect labor, prevent racial discrimination, maintain a social safety net, and a belief that the state can actually have a positive impact on the Common Good, are rejected by conservatives as incompatible with “individual freedom” and “personal responsibility.” Black conservatives are trotted out at as the lead voices against “big government” because poverty and the idea of an “interventionist” government have been racialized by white conservatives from the end of Reconstruction through to the 1960s with the “Southern Strategy”, and into the present with assaults on Obama as a “welfare king” or when Republicans such as Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, and others suggest that black Americans are parasites who only want “free stuff” from the United States government—and by extension—“hard working” white people. Such narratives and claims are the basis of the politics of white racial resentment. Such a strategy uses white racism to win elections for Republicans. Here, black conservatives like Ben Carson are human camouflage that allows the white right to claim they are not racist. In this logic, how could Republican policies be racist when they are parroted and given voice by black conservatives such as Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Clarence Thomas and other prominent black faces on the white right? (Black conservatives are also used to dishonestly leverage the symbolic power of the Black Freedom Struggle to advocate for policies such as charter schools (and the broader neoliberal nightmare project) which they claim will give “freedom” to the black and brown poor, but in actuality produce worse educational outcomes than public schools while simultaneously transferring public monies to the pockets of the 1 percent.) There is a whole knowledge production industry that produces Ben Carson’s claims that an increase in the minimum wage will hurt black Americans. For example, African-American economists such as Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell have built careers on legitimating right-wing arguments that minimum wage and civil rights laws actually hurt people of color. Thomas Sowell is a darling of the right-wing media and libertarian establishment. For more than 30 years, he has been a fellow at The Hoover Institution. Sowell is also a regular contributor to World Net Daily. Walter Williams is a featured columnist in newspapers around the United States where he offers up his Right-wing bromides about the evils of civil rights laws and how African-Americans have actually been hurt by the federal government and civil rights laws (as opposed to empowered by them). Walter Williams’ 1985 documentaries “Good Intentions” and “State Against Blacks” have been repeatedly featured by Fox’s John Stossel. For 20 years, Walter Williams has also been a guest host on the Rush Limbaugh Show, a show that has routinely offered racist and hateful stereotypes and screeds about black people and President Obama. Both Williams and Sowell have echoed ugly and unfounded right-wing claims that African-Americans are dumb, stupid, too emotional, irrational, and stuck on a “Democratic plantation” as explanations for why that group has for decades overwhelmingly rejected the Republican Party’s policies and candidates. Ultimately, Carson’s claims about the minimum wage are a reflection of the libertarian right-wing’s naïve and fantastical worship of an idealized type of free market capitalism that does not exist. In this world, racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination are just “inefficiencies” that the “invisible hand” will erase. As demonstrated by decades of Jim and Jane Crow, as well as centuries of white on black chattel slavery, the “free market” is extremely adept at reinforcing and producing persistent racist outcomes that rob and limit individual agency and freedom as opposed to expanding them. Racism and capitalism are not exclusive of one another. They have existed in a symbiotic relationship in the United States and the West. This relationship continues into the post civil rights era. Carson’s understanding of how minimum wage laws actually hurt black and brown Americans is based on a fallacious belief that if non-whites are stigmatized by racism or otherwise lack skills—thus making them comparatively more “expensive” as this is another labor disincentive or cost—raising the minimum wage will make them even less desirable in the labor market. The evidence complicates this in a number of ways. Black Americans at all levels of education and income face discrimination in the labor market relative to white people. In fact, social scientists have estimated that a black man with no criminal background has the same chance of getting an interview as a white man with a felony. Black and brown Americans are over-represented in minimum and low wage sectors of the American economy. An increase in the minimum wage would have a disproportionate impact on their life outcomes. While black youth with no skills may be initially hurt by raising the minimum wage, the incomes of people in the low to semi skilled job sector would be helped. Moreover, the institutional forces such as broken schools, custodial citizenship, mass incarceration, and residential segregation that lock people into low wage work need to be corrected as well. Low wages for non-whites have historically been a tool for white employers and plutocrats to suppress wages for all Americans. White Americans have a fear that black and brown people will “take their jobs.” White American elites know this. For centuries they used such fear to position the white working class and poor against their natural allies among people of color in the same economic cohort. In the United States “divide and conquer” is one of the primary tools for white supremacy: it uses class insecurity to hurt working people on both sides of the color line. Most importantly, conservatives’ specious claims about how a raise in the minimum wage would hurt the American economy are easily contradicted. The role of black conservatives is to make the unconscionable acceptable, to turn lies into truths, and to make the unacceptable okay. Ben Carson fulfills that role perfectly. Black folks, the doctor will see you now. His name is Ben Carson. Your prognosis is already grim—and Dr. Carson’s medicine bag is overflowing with poison.
Ben Carson rails against “secular progressive” boogeyman at Liberty University
Fresh off the fourth GOP presidential debate, Ben Carson became the fourth presidential candidate to pay a visit to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University Wednesday morning, where the fervently religious presidential aspirant warned that "secular progressives" are one of the nation's biggest threats and complained, once again, that the news media has conspired to take his campaign down. https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/sta... Carson warmed up to the students gathered for the mandatory convocation by telling him that that he was once "a horrible student" who never learned much from "boring lectures." "Everyone called me dummy, that was my nickname" Carson told the crowd, laughing at the "naysayers" who doubted his ability."Everyone called me and dummy and I believed it too." Carson said he was so motivated to become a doctor that he "would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell the alcohol swipes" in the doctor's office, before thanking his mother for eventually guiding him to success. He then launched into the religious meat of his address. "We have so many people now who are trying to push God out of our lives. They take the word of God and try to negate it." "Well let me tell you, our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world, I believe is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation," Carson declared. "The real question is are we willing to stand up for those values and principles, or will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the secular progressives?" Carson asked before warning against the true threat to American democracy -- apparently not "Islamic terrorism" as Jeb Bush claimed during last night's debate, but so-called "secular progressives." "The secular progressives don’t care whether you agree with them or not, as long as you sit down and keep your mouth shut, and I think that the secret to the prosperity in this nation is we must be willing to stand up for what we believe in." Carson argued that the nation's electoral system "is based upon a well-informed and educated populace," and that, "if they ever become anything other than that, the nature of the country will change." "If the people are not well-informed, all it takes is unscrupulous politicians and news media and off the people go, in the completely wrong direction, listening to all kinds of propaganda and inculcating that into their method of thinking. And then it becomes real easy for them to swallow things," Carson warned the young students who are mandated to attend the thrice-weekly religious gathering at Liberty. "Isn't that part of the problem with our society today," Carson asked. "People want to force their belief on everybody else." He then used himself as a prime example of persecution from secular progressives, pointing to the recent media uproar over discrepancies in his personal narrative. "Trust in the Lord in all your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will direct your paths," Carson said, referencing a Bible verse he claimed to have "clung to" during "all kinds of adversity in my life." "I cling to it now, when so many in the media you know want to bring me down because I represent something that they can’t stand," Carson explained. "But the fact of the matter is, in Romans chapter 8, it says if God be for you, who can be against you? You don’t have to worry.” At the end of the speech, a Liberty University official led students in prayer for Carson and his family. Watch his full speech, via CSPAN: Fresh off the fourth GOP presidential debate, Ben Carson became the fourth presidential candidate to pay a visit to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University Wednesday morning, where the fervently religious presidential aspirant warned that "secular progressives" are one of the nation's biggest threats and complained, once again, that the news media has conspired to take his campaign down. https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/sta... Carson warmed up to the students gathered for the mandatory convocation by telling him that that he was once "a horrible student" who never learned much from "boring lectures." "Everyone called me dummy, that was my nickname" Carson told the crowd, laughing at the "naysayers" who doubted his ability."Everyone called me and dummy and I believed it too." Carson said he was so motivated to become a doctor that he "would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell the alcohol swipes" in the doctor's office, before thanking his mother for eventually guiding him to success. He then launched into the religious meat of his address. "We have so many people now who are trying to push God out of our lives. They take the word of God and try to negate it." "Well let me tell you, our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world, I believe is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation," Carson declared. "The real question is are we willing to stand up for those values and principles, or will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the secular progressives?" Carson asked before warning against the true threat to American democracy -- apparently not "Islamic terrorism" as Jeb Bush claimed during last night's debate, but so-called "secular progressives." "The secular progressives don’t care whether you agree with them or not, as long as you sit down and keep your mouth shut, and I think that the secret to the prosperity in this nation is we must be willing to stand up for what we believe in." Carson argued that the nation's electoral system "is based upon a well-informed and educated populace," and that, "if they ever become anything other than that, the nature of the country will change." "If the people are not well-informed, all it takes is unscrupulous politicians and news media and off the people go, in the completely wrong direction, listening to all kinds of propaganda and inculcating that into their method of thinking. And then it becomes real easy for them to swallow things," Carson warned the young students who are mandated to attend the thrice-weekly religious gathering at Liberty. "Isn't that part of the problem with our society today," Carson asked. "People want to force their belief on everybody else." He then used himself as a prime example of persecution from secular progressives, pointing to the recent media uproar over discrepancies in his personal narrative. "Trust in the Lord in all your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will direct your paths," Carson said, referencing a Bible verse he claimed to have "clung to" during "all kinds of adversity in my life." "I cling to it now, when so many in the media you know want to bring me down because I represent something that they can’t stand," Carson explained. "But the fact of the matter is, in Romans chapter 8, it says if God be for you, who can be against you? You don’t have to worry.” At the end of the speech, a Liberty University official led students in prayer for Carson and his family. Watch his full speech, via CSPAN: Fresh off the fourth GOP presidential debate, Ben Carson became the fourth presidential candidate to pay a visit to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University Wednesday morning, where the fervently religious presidential aspirant warned that "secular progressives" are one of the nation's biggest threats and complained, once again, that the news media has conspired to take his campaign down. https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/sta... Carson warmed up to the students gathered for the mandatory convocation by telling him that that he was once "a horrible student" who never learned much from "boring lectures." "Everyone called me dummy, that was my nickname" Carson told the crowd, laughing at the "naysayers" who doubted his ability."Everyone called me and dummy and I believed it too." Carson said he was so motivated to become a doctor that he "would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell the alcohol swipes" in the doctor's office, before thanking his mother for eventually guiding him to success. He then launched into the religious meat of his address. "We have so many people now who are trying to push God out of our lives. They take the word of God and try to negate it." "Well let me tell you, our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world, I believe is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation," Carson declared. "The real question is are we willing to stand up for those values and principles, or will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the secular progressives?" Carson asked before warning against the true threat to American democracy -- apparently not "Islamic terrorism" as Jeb Bush claimed during last night's debate, but so-called "secular progressives." "The secular progressives don’t care whether you agree with them or not, as long as you sit down and keep your mouth shut, and I think that the secret to the prosperity in this nation is we must be willing to stand up for what we believe in." Carson argued that the nation's electoral system "is based upon a well-informed and educated populace," and that, "if they ever become anything other than that, the nature of the country will change." "If the people are not well-informed, all it takes is unscrupulous politicians and news media and off the people go, in the completely wrong direction, listening to all kinds of propaganda and inculcating that into their method of thinking. And then it becomes real easy for them to swallow things," Carson warned the young students who are mandated to attend the thrice-weekly religious gathering at Liberty. "Isn't that part of the problem with our society today," Carson asked. "People want to force their belief on everybody else." He then used himself as a prime example of persecution from secular progressives, pointing to the recent media uproar over discrepancies in his personal narrative. "Trust in the Lord in all your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will direct your paths," Carson said, referencing a Bible verse he claimed to have "clung to" during "all kinds of adversity in my life." "I cling to it now, when so many in the media you know want to bring me down because I represent something that they can’t stand," Carson explained. "But the fact of the matter is, in Romans chapter 8, it says if God be for you, who can be against you? You don’t have to worry.” At the end of the speech, a Liberty University official led students in prayer for Carson and his family. Watch his full speech, via CSPAN: Fresh off the fourth GOP presidential debate, Ben Carson became the fourth presidential candidate to pay a visit to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University Wednesday morning, where the fervently religious presidential aspirant warned that "secular progressives" are one of the nation's biggest threats and complained, once again, that the news media has conspired to take his campaign down. https://twitter.com/RealBenCarson/sta... Carson warmed up to the students gathered for the mandatory convocation by telling him that that he was once "a horrible student" who never learned much from "boring lectures." "Everyone called me dummy, that was my nickname" Carson told the crowd, laughing at the "naysayers" who doubted his ability."Everyone called me and dummy and I believed it too." Carson said he was so motivated to become a doctor that he "would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell the alcohol swipes" in the doctor's office, before thanking his mother for eventually guiding him to success. He then launched into the religious meat of his address. "We have so many people now who are trying to push God out of our lives. They take the word of God and try to negate it." "Well let me tell you, our nation’s survival as the pinnacle nation in the world, I believe is rooted in our values system, the values and principles that made us into a great nation," Carson declared. "The real question is are we willing to stand up for those values and principles, or will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the secular progressives?" Carson asked before warning against the true threat to American democracy -- apparently not "Islamic terrorism" as Jeb Bush claimed during last night's debate, but so-called "secular progressives." "The secular progressives don’t care whether you agree with them or not, as long as you sit down and keep your mouth shut, and I think that the secret to the prosperity in this nation is we must be willing to stand up for what we believe in." Carson argued that the nation's electoral system "is based upon a well-informed and educated populace," and that, "if they ever become anything other than that, the nature of the country will change." "If the people are not well-informed, all it takes is unscrupulous politicians and news media and off the people go, in the completely wrong direction, listening to all kinds of propaganda and inculcating that into their method of thinking. And then it becomes real easy for them to swallow things," Carson warned the young students who are mandated to attend the thrice-weekly religious gathering at Liberty. "Isn't that part of the problem with our society today," Carson asked. "People want to force their belief on everybody else." He then used himself as a prime example of persecution from secular progressives, pointing to the recent media uproar over discrepancies in his personal narrative. "Trust in the Lord in all your heart, lean not to your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will direct your paths," Carson said, referencing a Bible verse he claimed to have "clung to" during "all kinds of adversity in my life." "I cling to it now, when so many in the media you know want to bring me down because I represent something that they can’t stand," Carson explained. "But the fact of the matter is, in Romans chapter 8, it says if God be for you, who can be against you? You don’t have to worry.” At the end of the speech, a Liberty University official led students in prayer for Carson and his family. Watch his full speech, via CSPAN:
