Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 967
October 28, 2015
Lindsey Graham cracks wise on climate change: “I’m not a scientist — and I’ve got the grades to prove it”
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was asked whether -- given the fact that he believes climate change is real and man-made -- he is in the wrong party's debate, and Graham replied as he has been all week, i.e. more like a comedian than a politician. "I'm not a scientist," he answered, "and I've got the grades to prove it." He explained that he's been to many places in the world which are very cold, and that "ninety percent of [the scientists he's met there] have told him that greenhouse gasses are real, and I just want a solution." His commonsense statements drew boos from the carefully vetted audience, but they quickly turned to cheers as he switched gears and began speaking about immigration and national defense -- because even though the focus of this debate is ostensibly the economy, all of the potential nominees have taken every opportunity provided to speak about other issues, almost as if they're afraid of boring their base. "I'm tired of losing!" he continued. "Look at the candidates on the other side! The leading one thought she and her husband were flat-broke after they were in the White House for eight years. The other guy went to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon and I don't think he ever came back," he added, repeating the joke he'd cracked on "Morning Joe" Monday. Watch the debate live via CNBC.South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was asked whether -- given the fact that he believes climate change is real and man-made -- he is in the wrong party's debate, and Graham replied as he has been all week, i.e. more like a comedian than a politician. "I'm not a scientist," he answered, "and I've got the grades to prove it." He explained that he's been to many places in the world which are very cold, and that "ninety percent of [the scientists he's met there] have told him that greenhouse gasses are real, and I just want a solution." His commonsense statements drew boos from the carefully vetted audience, but they quickly turned to cheers as he switched gears and began speaking about immigration and national defense -- because even though the focus of this debate is ostensibly the economy, all of the potential nominees have taken every opportunity provided to speak about other issues, almost as if they're afraid of boring their base. "I'm tired of losing!" he continued. "Look at the candidates on the other side! The leading one thought she and her husband were flat-broke after they were in the White House for eight years. The other guy went to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon and I don't think he ever came back," he added, repeating the joke he'd cracked on "Morning Joe" Monday. Watch the debate live via CNBC.South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was asked whether -- given the fact that he believes climate change is real and man-made -- he is in the wrong party's debate, and Graham replied as he has been all week, i.e. more like a comedian than a politician. "I'm not a scientist," he answered, "and I've got the grades to prove it." He explained that he's been to many places in the world which are very cold, and that "ninety percent of [the scientists he's met there] have told him that greenhouse gasses are real, and I just want a solution." His commonsense statements drew boos from the carefully vetted audience, but they quickly turned to cheers as he switched gears and began speaking about immigration and national defense -- because even though the focus of this debate is ostensibly the economy, all of the potential nominees have taken every opportunity provided to speak about other issues, almost as if they're afraid of boring their base. "I'm tired of losing!" he continued. "Look at the candidates on the other side! The leading one thought she and her husband were flat-broke after they were in the White House for eight years. The other guy went to the Soviet Union for his honeymoon and I don't think he ever came back," he added, repeating the joke he'd cracked on "Morning Joe" Monday. Watch the debate live via CNBC.
How the f*** did we get here?! Why Trump & Carson have demolished all comers—and why you should keep an eye on Rubio & Cruz
One of the more entertaining aspects of this political season so far has been watching the political professionals cycle through the ups and downs of the Republican presidential field. They have been completely flummoxed by the Trump and Carson phenomena, as the two quirky outsiders knock down one establishment heartthrob after another. As we await the third debate tonight, let's briefly recap where we've been and the state of play at this moment. Nobody was too surprised to see Texas Governor Rick Perry take the fall; he had been badly damaged by his terrible debate performance in 2012. (A cautionary tale for all those on stage tonight no doubt.) But Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dropping out was a shocker to virtually everyone in the political profession despite the fact that he was clearly overrated and a bit of a dolt. And there was the time when everyone thought Senator Rand Paul had a real shot, leading his army of libertarian millennial Republicans demanding an end to all government regulation and imperial ambition? Unfortunately, his soldiers seem to have deserted. Today he is reduced to threatening to filibuster bills that really can't be filibustered in a desperate bid for attention. The list goes on: Carly Fiorina briefly soared after describing bloody mayhem in dramatic detail in the last debate, but as much as Republicans love that sort of thing, for some reason her popularity didn't last. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was the designated rude-bro until Trump trumped him. Kooky Ohio Governor John Kasich decided to demonstrate his craziness by calling all the other candidates (and by implication their supporters) crazy. And Iowans obviously figure that previous winners Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum failed to make the most of their opportunities so the two are getting no love this time. And Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and George Pataki? Never mind. But nobody has stunned the establishment more than Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, whom all the smart money assumed would be the man to beat. Why they all thought this remains something of a mystery, since his father and brother both left office with damning disapproval ratings and a country mired in deep recession, but there you are. Poor Jeb is now cutting staff and wistfully telling voters that he's got lots of cooler things to do than deal with nutballs like Donald Trump. He's fading like an old black-and-white polaroid while the ever more vivid and colorful "outsiders" continue to dominate the spotlight. I have written here for months that Marco Rubio makes the most sense on paper. Considering the very real demographic challenges in the GOP, if one were to conjure up a candidate to face the older white candidates being offered up on the Democratic side one, could hardly come up with a more perfect counterpoint than he. Many people have attested to his talent as a speaker and a retail politician, the big money boys love him, and he's from Florida to boot. So far he has not lived up to that reputation; and he's teetering dangerously toward Scott Walker territory, with these lame excuses for failing to turn up for work at the U.S. Senate, and his less than compelling campaign appearances. Still, there's been a tiny Rubio boomlet over the past few weeks and some ripples in the polls that suggest he's still a top potential establishment candidate. And then there's the dark horse, Senator Ted Cruz. I have been tracking his campaign here for some time as well and have been impressed with how methodically and strategically he's gone about it. Yesterday, Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post took note as well. He pointed out that Cruz announced before everyone else and that he made his announcement at Liberty University, showing his social conservative credentials up front and proudly. (It was an effective announcement, too, although at the time the pundits dismissed him as a joke, which, considering what has since unfolded with Trump and Carson, was actually a joke on them.) Cillizza also points out that Cruz has handled Trump very deftly, placing himself as the natural heir to those supporters when he flames out. He's collected more money than anyone but Bush ($64 million!) and he hasn't been blowing through it like a teenager at Hot Topic, as Walker did. And then there's this, which I think is more important than people realize:
[Cruz's] message is pitch-perfect. No one, not even Trump, in the GOP field can deliver the Washington-is-broken-and-they-don't even-get-it message better than Cruz. Trump's problem is that he veers WAY off message every few minutes. Cruz is much more disciplined, finding ways to bring virtually any question he is asked back to how terrible the "Washington Cartel" is. Cruz has one other thing that Trump lacks: A track record of sticking it to the party establishment ...[And] as the field starts to shrink, Cruz's skills as a nationally recognized debate champ will shine through -- and get more positive attention.Cruz is the guy who has the message that the Trump and Carson followers want to hear, but he can deliver it in a polished, professional manner. The establishment hates him as much as he hates them, but whatever you think of his policies and his tactics, he's a serious politician and they may have no choice but to accept him. If he does win the nomination, He's more likely to be Barry Goldwater rather than Ronald Reagan, but you just never know. Either way he's formidable. So as we all play the debate drinking game tonight, taxing our poor livers every time the candidates robotically decry "political correctness" and promise to repeal Obamacare, we might want to keep an eye on Rubio and Cruz. If the GOP has any savvy (or any luck) they should want these two candidates to end up being the insider vs the outsider down the stretch. As Al Hunt from Bloomberg observed, these two are both 44 year old sons of Cuban immigrants who beat an establishment Republican. And they both have some very wealthy donors bankrolling their campaigns. But they have very different styles, with Cruz being the hard-charging doctrinaire conservative and Rubio being more of a standard conciliator. Hunt describes the exceptionally accomplished Cruz as smarter and Rubio as smoother which seems right. But those are not the only differences:
Both hew a hard conservative line on most domestic issues, though Cruz is a bit more to the right. The Floridian favors a sharp cut in income taxes, especially for upper incomes, and Cruz talks favorably of a flat tax, without providing specifics. They don’t have many differences on social issues, though Cruz has shown a greater willingness to shut down the government to get his way on issues such as defunding Planned Parenthood. In any showdown, the Texas senator would make a big deal of immigration, specifically Rubio's key role in Senate passage of a reform measure that would have offered a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers. That is anathema to rank-and-file conservative voters. Rubio has now changed his position. On national security, the roles would be reversed, with Rubio taking the harder line. He has embraced Dick Cheney's interventionist posture and has taken on advisers such as Eric Edelman, a Cheney protégé, and the neoconservative favorite Elliott Abrams. Rubio has left open the possibility of sending more U.S. forces to combat the so-called Islamic State.If those two were the last candidates standing it would make for a very interesting race -- two youthful, conservative Latino Senators representing the outsider and insider strains in the GOP. Considering the primary race so far, the better bet at the moment would seem to be Cruz. His strategy is more sophisticated and he better reflects the anti-establishment zeitgeist in the party. But he is a very hardcore Tea Party conservative and has little ability to appeal to moderates or independents. Rubio is a much more congenial politician who could conceivably draw a broader segment of the electorate -- if the GOP base ever sobers up enough to care about that. Tonight's debate is likely going to be a slugfest between Tump, Carson and Bush with the rest trying desperately to make some kind of an impression. But I would keep my eyes on the Senators from Texas and Florida. In the unlikely event that Republican voters realize that they actually have to nominate something other than a sideshow act, these are the two freshest acts in the game. Their politics and policies may be appallingly out of step with the majority of the country but the juxtaposition with the older Sanders and Clinton on the other side could be a powerful symbolic image. And after what Trump and Carson and the rest of the clown car have done these last few months, the Republican image needs all the help it can get.
“Vacationing Brian Williams credited with bringing down the runaway Army Blimp”: A big, goofy #blimp went rogue, and Twitter went wild
As the hunt for a rogue JLENS blimp over Pennsylvania played out, — CNN reports the runaway aircraft just landed in Montour County, PA — those with still-standing power lines took to Twitter to pluck the low-hanging fruit: [embedtweet id="659463666266472448"] [embedtweet id="659431932246142977"] [embedtweet id="659438059549802497"] [embedtweet id="659440265728532480"] [embedtweet id="659456093060538368"] [embedtweet id="659451808725737472"] https://twitter.com/SimonMaloy/status... https://twitter.com/petersagal/status... https://twitter.com/Matthops82/status... Even Sen. McCain couldn't resist: [embedtweet id="659441969840660480"] The blimp now has a fake Twitter account -- Not to be confused with its real Twitter account, that I can't imagine anyone followed before this afternoon.As the hunt for a rogue JLENS blimp over Pennsylvania played out, — CNN reports the runaway aircraft just landed in Montour County, PA — those with still-standing power lines took to Twitter to pluck the low-hanging fruit: [embedtweet id="659463666266472448"] [embedtweet id="659431932246142977"] [embedtweet id="659438059549802497"] [embedtweet id="659440265728532480"] [embedtweet id="659456093060538368"] [embedtweet id="659451808725737472"] https://twitter.com/SimonMaloy/status... https://twitter.com/petersagal/status... https://twitter.com/Matthops82/status... Even Sen. McCain couldn't resist: [embedtweet id="659441969840660480"] The blimp now has a fake Twitter account -- Not to be confused with its real Twitter account, that I can't imagine anyone followed before this afternoon.
Rogue state: For 24th year, U.S. defies 99 percent of world, voting against ending Cuba embargo
The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"]
(Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.
(Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.The entire world opposes the unilateral U.S. embargo on Cuba. Well, except for the U.S. and Israel. The United Nations General Assembly voted on Tuesday on a resolution calling on Washington to end its blockade of Cuba. 191 of 193 countries voted for the resolution -- 99 percent of the member states. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. and its allies were the only nations to vote against the measure. For the 24th year in a row, the U.S. has utterly defied the will of the entire international community. A U.N. photo of the General Assembly meeting illustrates just how ludicrously disproportionate the vote was: [caption id="attachment_14188789" align="aligncenter" width="619"] (Credit: U.N. Photo/Cia Pak)[/caption] The 191 green lights are the 99 percent of the world who voted for the resolution. The mere two red lights are the one percent who opposed it. This is what a true rogue state looks like. And this is not the beginning -- far from it. In both the 2013 and 2014 votes on the resolution, which were identical, 188 (97 percent) of U.N. member states voted to end the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. and Israel were the only ones to oppose it. The Washington-allied Pacific island nations of Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia abstained. An embargo of sugar, oil, and weapons was first imposed on Cuba by President Eisenhower in 1960. In 1962, two years later, the Kennedy administration expanded the blockade to impede virtually all imports. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international community has called for an end to the embargo, while Washington has adamantly insisted that it must continue to blockade the small socialist island state. 55 years later, the U.S. has finally moved toward rapprochement with Cuba. The U.N. reported that the General Assembly "welcomed the resumption of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba," in what is a truly historical development. But, with its vote at the U.N., the U.S. -- true to its imperial nature -- continues to convey that it will only act on its own terms, not on those of the international community. The Cuban embargo is by no means the only issue on which the U.S. is isolated from the rest of the world, nor is it a coincidence that Israel has continuously voted with it. In July, the U.S. was, yet again, the only country in the world to directly oppose a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for war crimes it committed in its 2014 war on Gaza. At the 29th regular session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Washington alone voted against "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in" the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One year before, the U.S. was, once more, the only country on the UNHRC to oppose "ensuring respect for international law in the OPT." Moreover, in 2012, the U.S. led eight allies, including Israel and Canada, in a vote against non-member observer status for Palestine at the U.N., which was supported by 138 countries. American exceptionalism may be a deranged lie, a dangerous myth, and a sick joke, but the U.S. government sure believes it. The Obama administration has often tried to differentiate itself from the Bush administration by appealing to rhetoric concerning international law. Yet votes like these prove such statements to be hollow. Behind the veneer of Obama's emphasis on international rules and norms is the cold logic of empire: The U.S., as the global economic and military hegemon, will do what it wants, when it wants. By blatantly spitting in the face of the international community for the 24th time, America only continues to reinforce its global reputation as a rogue state.
Carol Queen is a fan of Amy Schumer’s “frisky” feminism: She’s “standing up here with a level of swagger that people expect from a fellow when he’s out on the town”
Carol Queen is a Ph.D-wielding sexologist and, since 1990, an employee at Good Vibrations, the San Francisco sex shop. A longtime educator, anthology editor, and author (her books include “Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture”), she’s also a kind of evangelist for pleasure and tolerance. Queen has just released, with Shar Rednour, “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone,” which is both a how-to book about positions, dating, and erotica, as well as an argument for a healthy and tolerant sexual culture. Salon spoke to Queen from San Francisco; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with your new “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex For Everyone.” There’ve been sex guides since the “Joy of Sex” books in the ‘70s. How is your book different from what’s come before? What does yours pay attention to that we haven’t gotten in similar books? To start out, we really tried to live up to the [subtitle] and make it as comprehensive as we could: In a lot of past books, there were readers who felt left out: That was certainly true of “The Joy of Sex.” And we wanted to make this relevant to people of pretty much any gender identity, sexual orientation, sex style, set of sexual interests, time of life… And that’s something we hope we’ve done better than anybody so far. It goes into sex toys, I think, more deeply than other books have done. And what I hope I’ve brought to it that’s really different is a focus on identity, real diversity. Like, no two people are identical sexually: We use the phrase “blizzard of sexy snowflakes,” which makes some people go, Oh God! But some people will not have been exposed to this idea, that there is no normal male or normal female sexuality, who think that generally that all the equipment works the same on everybody, whether they have a penis or a clitoris and a vulva. That’s not true! And we really wanted to emphasize that everyone has a responsibility – and a privilege, an exciting one -- to figure out their own operating manual. And this is a book that hopefully will help as people delve into their experience to figure out what they most want. Early in the book you talk about a term a lot of people think they understand but may not: Sex-positive. What does it mean, what does it not mean? A colleague at Good Vibrations, Andy Duran, and I were doing a training for our staff the other day, and he made a differentiation: “Sex-positive” versus “positive about sex.” So what people mainly think these days when they hear the phrase “sex-positive” is “Whee! I love sex! Sex is great!” How could I possibly ever think that’s a bad thing? But I’ve heard the phrase used as, “If you were really sex-positive you’d open our relationship.” Or, “If you were really sex-positive you’d do anal.” That is about as far from the actual definition as you could get. The real way sex-positive is useful to us is as a social critique. What kind of culture and sexuality would we have to create for everyone to feel good about their sexual options? To get the information they need to be optimal sexual creatures, whoever they are? To get the knowledge they need to find appropriate partners for themselves – because if everyone’s a little different sexually, you can’t just match comparables up and assume they’ll be compatible. And the sexual health issue is huge – that takes us into issues of sexual justice. You want to live your life, you little snowflake, without discrimination, bias and hatred – what kind of society makes that possible, not just for the people we tend to see as sex symbols – a Kardashian – but everybody else. Old people, people who haven’t had sex yet, asexuals… Where do we put everyone on this spectrum and respect that kind of diversity? How has the coverage of sexuality in the media – newspapers, magazines, television news – and in pop culture changed in the quarter century since you started working at Good Vibrations? The sheer volume of discourse, especially mainstream media-driven and pop culture, is a little stunning, even to me. Once in a while I get growly when someone is [prudish] and I think of my grandmother when we told her that someone had landed on the moon. They must be kind of overwhelmed; there are days when I’m overwhelmed. I didn’t even say the word Internet, but that’s a significant part of the equation, as far as driving access to all kinds of other media, but also making access to explicit information… I mean porn, actually. Yeah there was a time when picking up something like “The Joy of Sex” or Playboy was like uncovering this secret knowledge. Sex was so far from the surface of the culture. Yeah! It’s probably pretty hard for people to grasp that. And Playboy announcing they were going to go no-nude. Wow! Somebody thinks the battle is won now, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Whatever the battle is. Also, especially when we step into the question of the Internet, the support networks are extraordinary. But not all the information is correct. Not all of it is free of trolls or attitudes. But there are ways for people to find like-mindeds in a way that didn’t exist back in the day. And I think that’s changed all kinds of sexual communities. I think the Internet played a role in marriage equality. People act like we just started to plan on this a few years ago. But when I came out, it was 1974, and we were already talking about it. So this was a 40- or 50-year civil rights issue. So all of this is great. And the degree to which people can anoint themselves sexperts is great… But the real problem is that if you think you understand sexuality because you understand your own, you miss the whole snowflake business I started the book with. That’s the thing I worry the most about. I’m of the generation of anti-censorship people who believes that a rising tide of discourse evens all that stuff out. So I’m not super worried. But I think people believe we have achieved something we haven’t achieved yet. What do you make of the new wave of female comedians – Amy Schumer, for instance? How does this mark a change from a decade or two or three ago? I think there is a space made when there is some sex-positive discourse, some frisky, positive-about-sex discourse, and some feminism. Most feminism these days is dosed with sex positivity. When you put that stuff together, you get some women who will bob to the top with something both cheeky and thoughtful to say. There’s been this argument about feminists all along, that we just want to be like men. Actually, we want to be able to do whatever men can do as part of their patrimony, without anyone telling us, “You’re a girl, you can’t do that.” We’ve got some representation of that in this generation of women comics. Can you give us an example of what you mean? Well, this isn’t a perfect example. But the whole Amy Schumer standing up and going, “Yeah, I’m f*ckable…” That level of not “I’ve made myself so sexy that men cannot resist me” but “I’m standing up here with a level of swagger that people expect from a fellow when he’s out on the town.” I think back to the fierce women comics of the ‘60s, when I was tuning in and paying attention. They could have most of that. But they couldn’t have the sexuality very openly and it always had to be a little self-deprecating. You could see Phyllis Diller kind of doing that. But it would have had a whole slab of irony on that top that I don’t think Schumer’s bringing. I think Schumer’s saying what she’s saying. [Until recently], the culture wasn’t ready for it to happen.Carol Queen is a Ph.D-wielding sexologist and, since 1990, an employee at Good Vibrations, the San Francisco sex shop. A longtime educator, anthology editor, and author (her books include “Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture”), she’s also a kind of evangelist for pleasure and tolerance. Queen has just released, with Shar Rednour, “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone,” which is both a how-to book about positions, dating, and erotica, as well as an argument for a healthy and tolerant sexual culture. Salon spoke to Queen from San Francisco; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with your new “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex For Everyone.” There’ve been sex guides since the “Joy of Sex” books in the ‘70s. How is your book different from what’s come before? What does yours pay attention to that we haven’t gotten in similar books? To start out, we really tried to live up to the [subtitle] and make it as comprehensive as we could: In a lot of past books, there were readers who felt left out: That was certainly true of “The Joy of Sex.” And we wanted to make this relevant to people of pretty much any gender identity, sexual orientation, sex style, set of sexual interests, time of life… And that’s something we hope we’ve done better than anybody so far. It goes into sex toys, I think, more deeply than other books have done. And what I hope I’ve brought to it that’s really different is a focus on identity, real diversity. Like, no two people are identical sexually: We use the phrase “blizzard of sexy snowflakes,” which makes some people go, Oh God! But some people will not have been exposed to this idea, that there is no normal male or normal female sexuality, who think that generally that all the equipment works the same on everybody, whether they have a penis or a clitoris and a vulva. That’s not true! And we really wanted to emphasize that everyone has a responsibility – and a privilege, an exciting one -- to figure out their own operating manual. And this is a book that hopefully will help as people delve into their experience to figure out what they most want. Early in the book you talk about a term a lot of people think they understand but may not: Sex-positive. What does it mean, what does it not mean? A colleague at Good Vibrations, Andy Duran, and I were doing a training for our staff the other day, and he made a differentiation: “Sex-positive” versus “positive about sex.” So what people mainly think these days when they hear the phrase “sex-positive” is “Whee! I love sex! Sex is great!” How could I possibly ever think that’s a bad thing? But I’ve heard the phrase used as, “If you were really sex-positive you’d open our relationship.” Or, “If you were really sex-positive you’d do anal.” That is about as far from the actual definition as you could get. The real way sex-positive is useful to us is as a social critique. What kind of culture and sexuality would we have to create for everyone to feel good about their sexual options? To get the information they need to be optimal sexual creatures, whoever they are? To get the knowledge they need to find appropriate partners for themselves – because if everyone’s a little different sexually, you can’t just match comparables up and assume they’ll be compatible. And the sexual health issue is huge – that takes us into issues of sexual justice. You want to live your life, you little snowflake, without discrimination, bias and hatred – what kind of society makes that possible, not just for the people we tend to see as sex symbols – a Kardashian – but everybody else. Old people, people who haven’t had sex yet, asexuals… Where do we put everyone on this spectrum and respect that kind of diversity? How has the coverage of sexuality in the media – newspapers, magazines, television news – and in pop culture changed in the quarter century since you started working at Good Vibrations? The sheer volume of discourse, especially mainstream media-driven and pop culture, is a little stunning, even to me. Once in a while I get growly when someone is [prudish] and I think of my grandmother when we told her that someone had landed on the moon. They must be kind of overwhelmed; there are days when I’m overwhelmed. I didn’t even say the word Internet, but that’s a significant part of the equation, as far as driving access to all kinds of other media, but also making access to explicit information… I mean porn, actually. Yeah there was a time when picking up something like “The Joy of Sex” or Playboy was like uncovering this secret knowledge. Sex was so far from the surface of the culture. Yeah! It’s probably pretty hard for people to grasp that. And Playboy announcing they were going to go no-nude. Wow! Somebody thinks the battle is won now, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Whatever the battle is. Also, especially when we step into the question of the Internet, the support networks are extraordinary. But not all the information is correct. Not all of it is free of trolls or attitudes. But there are ways for people to find like-mindeds in a way that didn’t exist back in the day. And I think that’s changed all kinds of sexual communities. I think the Internet played a role in marriage equality. People act like we just started to plan on this a few years ago. But when I came out, it was 1974, and we were already talking about it. So this was a 40- or 50-year civil rights issue. So all of this is great. And the degree to which people can anoint themselves sexperts is great… But the real problem is that if you think you understand sexuality because you understand your own, you miss the whole snowflake business I started the book with. That’s the thing I worry the most about. I’m of the generation of anti-censorship people who believes that a rising tide of discourse evens all that stuff out. So I’m not super worried. But I think people believe we have achieved something we haven’t achieved yet. What do you make of the new wave of female comedians – Amy Schumer, for instance? How does this mark a change from a decade or two or three ago? I think there is a space made when there is some sex-positive discourse, some frisky, positive-about-sex discourse, and some feminism. Most feminism these days is dosed with sex positivity. When you put that stuff together, you get some women who will bob to the top with something both cheeky and thoughtful to say. There’s been this argument about feminists all along, that we just want to be like men. Actually, we want to be able to do whatever men can do as part of their patrimony, without anyone telling us, “You’re a girl, you can’t do that.” We’ve got some representation of that in this generation of women comics. Can you give us an example of what you mean? Well, this isn’t a perfect example. But the whole Amy Schumer standing up and going, “Yeah, I’m f*ckable…” That level of not “I’ve made myself so sexy that men cannot resist me” but “I’m standing up here with a level of swagger that people expect from a fellow when he’s out on the town.” I think back to the fierce women comics of the ‘60s, when I was tuning in and paying attention. They could have most of that. But they couldn’t have the sexuality very openly and it always had to be a little self-deprecating. You could see Phyllis Diller kind of doing that. But it would have had a whole slab of irony on that top that I don’t think Schumer’s bringing. I think Schumer’s saying what she’s saying. [Until recently], the culture wasn’t ready for it to happen.Carol Queen is a Ph.D-wielding sexologist and, since 1990, an employee at Good Vibrations, the San Francisco sex shop. A longtime educator, anthology editor, and author (her books include “Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture”), she’s also a kind of evangelist for pleasure and tolerance. Queen has just released, with Shar Rednour, “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone,” which is both a how-to book about positions, dating, and erotica, as well as an argument for a healthy and tolerant sexual culture. Salon spoke to Queen from San Francisco; the interview has been lightly edited for clarity. Let’s start with your new “The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex For Everyone.” There’ve been sex guides since the “Joy of Sex” books in the ‘70s. How is your book different from what’s come before? What does yours pay attention to that we haven’t gotten in similar books? To start out, we really tried to live up to the [subtitle] and make it as comprehensive as we could: In a lot of past books, there were readers who felt left out: That was certainly true of “The Joy of Sex.” And we wanted to make this relevant to people of pretty much any gender identity, sexual orientation, sex style, set of sexual interests, time of life… And that’s something we hope we’ve done better than anybody so far. It goes into sex toys, I think, more deeply than other books have done. And what I hope I’ve brought to it that’s really different is a focus on identity, real diversity. Like, no two people are identical sexually: We use the phrase “blizzard of sexy snowflakes,” which makes some people go, Oh God! But some people will not have been exposed to this idea, that there is no normal male or normal female sexuality, who think that generally that all the equipment works the same on everybody, whether they have a penis or a clitoris and a vulva. That’s not true! And we really wanted to emphasize that everyone has a responsibility – and a privilege, an exciting one -- to figure out their own operating manual. And this is a book that hopefully will help as people delve into their experience to figure out what they most want. Early in the book you talk about a term a lot of people think they understand but may not: Sex-positive. What does it mean, what does it not mean? A colleague at Good Vibrations, Andy Duran, and I were doing a training for our staff the other day, and he made a differentiation: “Sex-positive” versus “positive about sex.” So what people mainly think these days when they hear the phrase “sex-positive” is “Whee! I love sex! Sex is great!” How could I possibly ever think that’s a bad thing? But I’ve heard the phrase used as, “If you were really sex-positive you’d open our relationship.” Or, “If you were really sex-positive you’d do anal.” That is about as far from the actual definition as you could get. The real way sex-positive is useful to us is as a social critique. What kind of culture and sexuality would we have to create for everyone to feel good about their sexual options? To get the information they need to be optimal sexual creatures, whoever they are? To get the knowledge they need to find appropriate partners for themselves – because if everyone’s a little different sexually, you can’t just match comparables up and assume they’ll be compatible. And the sexual health issue is huge – that takes us into issues of sexual justice. You want to live your life, you little snowflake, without discrimination, bias and hatred – what kind of society makes that possible, not just for the people we tend to see as sex symbols – a Kardashian – but everybody else. Old people, people who haven’t had sex yet, asexuals… Where do we put everyone on this spectrum and respect that kind of diversity? How has the coverage of sexuality in the media – newspapers, magazines, television news – and in pop culture changed in the quarter century since you started working at Good Vibrations? The sheer volume of discourse, especially mainstream media-driven and pop culture, is a little stunning, even to me. Once in a while I get growly when someone is [prudish] and I think of my grandmother when we told her that someone had landed on the moon. They must be kind of overwhelmed; there are days when I’m overwhelmed. I didn’t even say the word Internet, but that’s a significant part of the equation, as far as driving access to all kinds of other media, but also making access to explicit information… I mean porn, actually. Yeah there was a time when picking up something like “The Joy of Sex” or Playboy was like uncovering this secret knowledge. Sex was so far from the surface of the culture. Yeah! It’s probably pretty hard for people to grasp that. And Playboy announcing they were going to go no-nude. Wow! Somebody thinks the battle is won now, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Whatever the battle is. Also, especially when we step into the question of the Internet, the support networks are extraordinary. But not all the information is correct. Not all of it is free of trolls or attitudes. But there are ways for people to find like-mindeds in a way that didn’t exist back in the day. And I think that’s changed all kinds of sexual communities. I think the Internet played a role in marriage equality. People act like we just started to plan on this a few years ago. But when I came out, it was 1974, and we were already talking about it. So this was a 40- or 50-year civil rights issue. So all of this is great. And the degree to which people can anoint themselves sexperts is great… But the real problem is that if you think you understand sexuality because you understand your own, you miss the whole snowflake business I started the book with. That’s the thing I worry the most about. I’m of the generation of anti-censorship people who believes that a rising tide of discourse evens all that stuff out. So I’m not super worried. But I think people believe we have achieved something we haven’t achieved yet. What do you make of the new wave of female comedians – Amy Schumer, for instance? How does this mark a change from a decade or two or three ago? I think there is a space made when there is some sex-positive discourse, some frisky, positive-about-sex discourse, and some feminism. Most feminism these days is dosed with sex positivity. When you put that stuff together, you get some women who will bob to the top with something both cheeky and thoughtful to say. There’s been this argument about feminists all along, that we just want to be like men. Actually, we want to be able to do whatever men can do as part of their patrimony, without anyone telling us, “You’re a girl, you can’t do that.” We’ve got some representation of that in this generation of women comics. Can you give us an example of what you mean? Well, this isn’t a perfect example. But the whole Amy Schumer standing up and going, “Yeah, I’m f*ckable…” That level of not “I’ve made myself so sexy that men cannot resist me” but “I’m standing up here with a level of swagger that people expect from a fellow when he’s out on the town.” I think back to the fierce women comics of the ‘60s, when I was tuning in and paying attention. They could have most of that. But they couldn’t have the sexuality very openly and it always had to be a little self-deprecating. You could see Phyllis Diller kind of doing that. But it would have had a whole slab of irony on that top that I don’t think Schumer’s bringing. I think Schumer’s saying what she’s saying. [Until recently], the culture wasn’t ready for it to happen.
October 27, 2015
Ivan Reitman on directing the original “Ghostbusters” and why fans will be “very, very happy” with the female-centric reboot
In the early 1980s, Ivan Reitman was an ambitious young man in Hollywood, from Slovakia by way of Canada, whose career as a producer and director of low-budget grindhouse movies had taken a dramatic turn after he made a film called “Animal House.” That history-shaping frat-house comedy (which Reitman produced and John Landis directed) didn’t cost much more than Reitman’s usual productions – the previous year, he had made a softcore horror film called “Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia.” But its enormous success made John Belushi into a comedy superstar and introduced the anarchic, subversive National Lampoon/”Saturday Night Live” mode of comedy to mass audiences for the first time. But “Animal House” was only the opening act for the strange and fantastical movie that Reitman began creating with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis during the summer of 1983. Aykroyd had proposed an off-kilter blend of horror and comedy about a team of guys, something like paramedics or firefighters, whose job was to contain and defeat ghosts. Reitman proposed setting the story in present-day Manhattan, and making it a self-aware parable about entrepreneurship, marketing and the business world. If you don’t know what movie I’m talking about, or understand how much its level of crazy invention revolutionized the method, manner and tone of Hollywood comedy (if only for a while, and maybe not enough) – indeed, if Ray Parker Jr.’s irritating but irresistible theme song is not coursing through your brain right now – then you’re in urgent need of a remedial course in 1980s studies. “Ghostbusters” is back, if indeed it can ever be said to have gone away. But can the Zeitgeist-shifting hilarity and craziness of that film actually be replicated? Reitman is serving as a producer of writer-director Paul Feig’s forthcoming and somewhat controversial female-centric “Ghostbusters” reboot starring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. When I get him on the phone in his Los Angeles production office, he assures me that any lingering uncertainty or resentment among the original franchise’s fanbase (he does not use the words “sexism” or “misogyny”) will disappear when they actually see Feig’s movie. In his introduction to a spectacular new coffee-table book of archival photos and production material from the original series, “Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History,” Reitman answers the question everyone asks him first (so I didn’t have to). Yes, Reitman insists, he actually did have an inkling on the set of the 1984 film that he and Aykroyd and Ramis and Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson were creating something unusual and distinctive. When he first saw the quartet “fully outfitted in ghostbusters gear, walking casually down Madison Avenue” for the first shot of the movie, there was something “iconic” about the image, he writes. “It sent a shiver up my spine, and I instantly felt that something special was about to happen.” A self-serving memory? Maybe; I wouldn’t know. But when you’re the freakin’ director of “Ghostbusters,” a movie whose bizarre blend of absurdism, social satire and scares has been endlessly imitated but never recaptured, I think you get to brag on yourself a little. Ivan, Is it still fun for you to talk about the movie after all this time? It’s actually more fun now. The fact that it has survived more than 30 years is always amazing to me. Not just that it survived but that it also seems to be loved. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, and I feel lucky. Seeing all the amazing archival material that’s in this book -- I mean, I wasn’t involved in making this movie at all, and it made me feel intensely nostalgic. You guys were so young! And it looked like you were having such an amazing time. What were your emotions, looking through that stuff? Yeah, I mean, I remember how it felt at the time, and what I love about the book is that it really captures it. By talking to all the department heads and getting all this historical material – which, frankly, I didn’t even know existed — I just thought they did an amazing job. And it’s a real fitting tribute to the film. For anyone who loves movies, learning about how you guys did the effects for that film – which of course were all in-camera or in the physical world – and how different that is from the way movies are made today is such a fascinating education. Yeah. I mean, when I got into discussions with Paul Feig [director and co-writer of the new “Ghostbusters”] about doing another one, I really recommended that he try and do a lot of things in-camera and do things live on stage and live on locations, because it really makes a difference to the performances. I mean, we’re talking about comedy performances, not dramatic performances. He was really taken with that, and he’s done a lot of it in the shooting. I mean, there’s this wonderful advantage now that there has been this extraordinary advance in digital technology. We can do things now that we couldn’t imagine doing before. Right, of course. But digital technology can also be a double-edged sword, don’t you think? Sure, but I think the combination should be very exciting. And also the opportunity to do the movie in 3-D. I think to do ghosts in 3-D – that’s really a cool thing. Yeah, that wasn’t a realistic possibility when you were making the original film. Is that something you think you would have wanted to do? Yeah, I mean, I was always interested in 3-D. I’d actually done a terrible movie in 3-D. I produced it and directed it a few years before “Ghostbusters.” It’s called “Spacehunter.” I saw that! Molly Ringwald is in that. [Laughter.] Yeah. “Spacehunter: In the Forbidden Zone,” or “Something something in the Forbidden Zone.” [The actual subtitle is “Adventures in the Forbidden Zone,” and Reitman is not the official director or producer of record.] We had to have two cameras. We just shot it in what is now called “native” 3-D, and it was hell. And there were no screens that you could show it in. That was not really a practical idea in 1981. Just as a lover of movies and a guy who’s been doing this a long time, do you feel that 3-D has earned its stripes at this point, or has there have been enough good 3-D movies to make up for the bad ones? Oh, sure. I mean, particularly the animated films. You know, particularly the ones from Pixar. They’re just spectacular. I mean, the screen image is still a little dark but they’re finally getting to solving all that. Now that we’re talking about switching over to 4K projection, that’s going to help 3-D more than anything else. With more light coming back off the screen, it makes the contrast that much better. You’re right that in the last couple of years I don’t have that feeling anymore that every scene in a 3-D movie was shot at 6:30 in the evening. That’s right. It was murky. I mean, I get it, it’s pretty tiring. But you know, it’s like everything else. Progress takes a few years. In fact, most movies should not be made in 3-D. It really does enhance certain films, and I think it will enhance “Ghostbusters.” I’m sure everybody wants to ask you about this. There are some people in the fan base who appear to be irate about the way the new “Ghostbusters” has been cast. Frankly, I don’t think very many people are irate about the cast. There had been some blowback in some sense that maybe there wasn’t enough homage to the original film. That said, the guys who see this film? They’re going to be very, very happy. Look, I produced this movie. I’m one of the inventors of “Ghostbusters” along with my colleagues Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and Bill [Murray]. And you know, all of them took part in this one except for poor Harold [Ramis, who died in 2014]. I think everyone’s going to be happy. I think Paul Feig has done a great job and, you know, the new cast is in much the same position as the original cast was at the point in their respective lives. These women are extraordinarily funny and they’ve worked very, very well together. The film is very funny and very emotional, and has a lot to do with the original film. Well, that’s a fascinating point -- the performers in the new film are at a similar point in their careers to where Murray and Aykroyd were in the early ‘80s. You know, I also just saw you in that new documentary about National Lampoon. Did you? [Laughs.] I haven’t seen that yet. I’ve been told I’m in it, but I haven’t actually watched it. Well, it makes the point, with both “Animal House” and “Ghostbusters,” that this style of comedy came out of the National Lampoon worldview to a large extent. Well, when I talk about “Animal House” -- because I produced it -- I always start by referring to it as a new comedy language, really the comedy language of the Baby Boom generation. Which, at that point in their lives, we were in our 20s. So it had a different kind of energy than the comedy movies that were being made in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It seemed to be mark a turning point. Certainly movies like “M.A.S.H.” had a taste of it, but “Animal House” was really the first, 100 percent, top-to-bottom approach to it. And certainly, a lot of those things came from the Lampoon. But the Lampoon was really borrowing from other places as well, like Second City, where most of those performers got started. It’s an evolution of all of that. “Saturday Night Live” played into all that and, really, my first half-dozen movies all spoke that language. That’s so interesting. We always talk about the big-name directors who broke into Hollywood in in the ‘70s: Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, Brian DePalma, all those guys, as representing a new generation. What you guys were doing – you and Aykroyd and Ramis and these other guys -- was the same thing in comedy, in a different register. Do you buy that? Yeah, absolutely. I always complain that comedy was never looked at as seriously, as hard as it is to make. It never got the respect it deserves. You know, people pay lip service to how difficult it is and how easy it is to fail. And frankly, it’s much more easy to fail in comedy than it is in drama. And so, I think now people are starting to look at it. They’re starting to miss the energy of those movies from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I don’t want to oversell this angle, but part of this was about the energy of the counterculture of the ‘60s crossing into mainstream culture, right? Well, the ‘60s is really the Baby Boomer generation turning 18. They’re all young adults, they’re all smoking dope – I should say, we were all smoking dope! -- and it was this enormous culture shift that happened in this country, and then in most of the Western world through those ten years. So, yeah, the ripple effect was huge. And I imagine you had the clear sense on the set of the original film that the energy was much different from that of other Hollywood films at the time. I was working with an extremely gifted group of actors/writers, and they were real writers. Not just the original three guys, but also people like Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis and Annie Potts, they all just had great writing abilities. So it’s not that we were just improv-ing our asses off. We were constructing it very carefully. And I guess it was my job to make sure that the construction was appropriate, whatever new things we were adding. And it was coming not just from the actors and writers. It was coming from the production designer, it was coming from the composer, it was coming from the costume designer. It’s not that they were pitching lines. But in their choices they were creating this very unique world that had never been seen before, and that’s what’s wonderful about the book. I think you get a sense of how that got put together and the collaborative nature of this film. And everybody sort of got into it like it was a very serious movie, and it is. It took an enormous amount of originality, at a level I had never really seen before. When I was looking through the pictures I was so struck by what a distinctive visual world “Ghostbusters” is. It’s so weird and so funny, those are the dominant notes. But the movie also verges on being really scary at times. I imagine you were consciously trying to keep that in the mix. You know, I really believe that it had to be a scary film. I mean, it was about ghosts, and that’s part of what makes it delightful. And you know, we scare the audience very early in the film, and it just establishes the chops of the movie -- you know, that whole librarian scene! From the very first screening, even before we had real effects in it, what would always happen is when the librarian transforms into that scary thing, the audience screamed -- and then they laughed. Then we’d go boom, boom – to the opening and the “Ghostbusters” title. And really, the film grabbed everybody. I always believe in achieving confidence with the audience. With the audience is confident that the filmmaker knows what he’s doing, they tend to laugh more. And you have to earn that confidence very early on: “Oh, the tone is right. I like these people. This is not cheap. It’s all sort of working.” And I worked very hard to do that in all my films, and earn the respect and confidence of the audience. Absolutely. I’ve been reviewing films for more than 20 years and what I always say to people is that within the first five minutes, I have a feeling whether this person can drive that bus. Whether that’s Ivan Reitman or Orson Welles or, I don’t know, Wes Craven. You want to feel that this person is in command of the instrument, whatever the instrument is. It’s about establishing the tone of that particular genre. And it’s the reason that comedies are so hard to make is that it’s so easy to go off the track with a film. You get too silly or try too hard, or just, you know, the way that people are talking is not right. And you’re done. It’s very hard to win them back when they get that feeling. In terms of what we see on the screen in your “Ghostbusters,” how would you say the balance worked out between what had been scripted in advance and what the guys kind of came up with on the set? Because those are some gifted improv performers. Well, I never did a percentage. First of all, it’s all scripted, because these guys were all the writers. So even when we were improv-ing, we always thought about it as writing the last wrap, or the next-to-last wrap, while we were shooting. And sometimes it happened while we were shooting, and then it was my job to sort of pull and keep the focus, not just editorially, but even the subsequent shooting: “You know that new line? Please hold on to it -- it’s great,” or “Let’s junk all that extra stuff -- I don’t think we need that” or “It’s out of character.” I instituted something that now comedy directors are doing a lot. I used to call it the “free one.” I would do a very strict take which was exactly as written, or with a couple new lines that we sort of came up with between takes, and then I’d say, “OK, I got what I need.” It was sort of a way of getting everyone to relax, and let’s just go for the free one, where anybody could do what they wanted. And because these guys had worked in Second City – see, they weren’t stand-up comedians, they were sketch comedians. One of the things that sketch comedians have to do is learn how to listen. Because the art of great acting is about being honest in what you’re doing and listening to what everyone else is doing and reacting honestly to it. And so whatever came to them that somebody else pitched or improvised, that character would respond to it. So it was very usable, almost all the time. And it was very easy to direct and use again. It was just great fun. You create a vocabulary for directing that’s really different than directing drama. Well, one thing that the enduring popularity of this movie, the love that people have for it, testifies to is the fact that so many comedies don’t get that balance right. And for whatever reason you guys did. I guess. It could be “The Wizard of Oz” factor, you know. It’s just the strangeness of it and the uniqueness of it, the way that “Wizard of Oz” was not quite like anything else that anybody had ever seen. The difference was that “The Wizard of Oz” wasn’t that beloved when it first came out; it evolved over the decades. We were fortunate enough to capture the imagination of the audience from the start.In the early 1980s, Ivan Reitman was an ambitious young man in Hollywood, from Slovakia by way of Canada, whose career as a producer and director of low-budget grindhouse movies had taken a dramatic turn after he made a film called “Animal House.” That history-shaping frat-house comedy (which Reitman produced and John Landis directed) didn’t cost much more than Reitman’s usual productions – the previous year, he had made a softcore horror film called “Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia.” But its enormous success made John Belushi into a comedy superstar and introduced the anarchic, subversive National Lampoon/”Saturday Night Live” mode of comedy to mass audiences for the first time. But “Animal House” was only the opening act for the strange and fantastical movie that Reitman began creating with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis during the summer of 1983. Aykroyd had proposed an off-kilter blend of horror and comedy about a team of guys, something like paramedics or firefighters, whose job was to contain and defeat ghosts. Reitman proposed setting the story in present-day Manhattan, and making it a self-aware parable about entrepreneurship, marketing and the business world. If you don’t know what movie I’m talking about, or understand how much its level of crazy invention revolutionized the method, manner and tone of Hollywood comedy (if only for a while, and maybe not enough) – indeed, if Ray Parker Jr.’s irritating but irresistible theme song is not coursing through your brain right now – then you’re in urgent need of a remedial course in 1980s studies. “Ghostbusters” is back, if indeed it can ever be said to have gone away. But can the Zeitgeist-shifting hilarity and craziness of that film actually be replicated? Reitman is serving as a producer of writer-director Paul Feig’s forthcoming and somewhat controversial female-centric “Ghostbusters” reboot starring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy. When I get him on the phone in his Los Angeles production office, he assures me that any lingering uncertainty or resentment among the original franchise’s fanbase (he does not use the words “sexism” or “misogyny”) will disappear when they actually see Feig’s movie. In his introduction to a spectacular new coffee-table book of archival photos and production material from the original series, “Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History,” Reitman answers the question everyone asks him first (so I didn’t have to). Yes, Reitman insists, he actually did have an inkling on the set of the 1984 film that he and Aykroyd and Ramis and Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson were creating something unusual and distinctive. When he first saw the quartet “fully outfitted in ghostbusters gear, walking casually down Madison Avenue” for the first shot of the movie, there was something “iconic” about the image, he writes. “It sent a shiver up my spine, and I instantly felt that something special was about to happen.” A self-serving memory? Maybe; I wouldn’t know. But when you’re the freakin’ director of “Ghostbusters,” a movie whose bizarre blend of absurdism, social satire and scares has been endlessly imitated but never recaptured, I think you get to brag on yourself a little. Ivan, Is it still fun for you to talk about the movie after all this time? It’s actually more fun now. The fact that it has survived more than 30 years is always amazing to me. Not just that it survived but that it also seems to be loved. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing, and I feel lucky. Seeing all the amazing archival material that’s in this book -- I mean, I wasn’t involved in making this movie at all, and it made me feel intensely nostalgic. You guys were so young! And it looked like you were having such an amazing time. What were your emotions, looking through that stuff? Yeah, I mean, I remember how it felt at the time, and what I love about the book is that it really captures it. By talking to all the department heads and getting all this historical material – which, frankly, I didn’t even know existed — I just thought they did an amazing job. And it’s a real fitting tribute to the film. For anyone who loves movies, learning about how you guys did the effects for that film – which of course were all in-camera or in the physical world – and how different that is from the way movies are made today is such a fascinating education. Yeah. I mean, when I got into discussions with Paul Feig [director and co-writer of the new “Ghostbusters”] about doing another one, I really recommended that he try and do a lot of things in-camera and do things live on stage and live on locations, because it really makes a difference to the performances. I mean, we’re talking about comedy performances, not dramatic performances. He was really taken with that, and he’s done a lot of it in the shooting. I mean, there’s this wonderful advantage now that there has been this extraordinary advance in digital technology. We can do things now that we couldn’t imagine doing before. Right, of course. But digital technology can also be a double-edged sword, don’t you think? Sure, but I think the combination should be very exciting. And also the opportunity to do the movie in 3-D. I think to do ghosts in 3-D – that’s really a cool thing. Yeah, that wasn’t a realistic possibility when you were making the original film. Is that something you think you would have wanted to do? Yeah, I mean, I was always interested in 3-D. I’d actually done a terrible movie in 3-D. I produced it and directed it a few years before “Ghostbusters.” It’s called “Spacehunter.” I saw that! Molly Ringwald is in that. [Laughter.] Yeah. “Spacehunter: In the Forbidden Zone,” or “Something something in the Forbidden Zone.” [The actual subtitle is “Adventures in the Forbidden Zone,” and Reitman is not the official director or producer of record.] We had to have two cameras. We just shot it in what is now called “native” 3-D, and it was hell. And there were no screens that you could show it in. That was not really a practical idea in 1981. Just as a lover of movies and a guy who’s been doing this a long time, do you feel that 3-D has earned its stripes at this point, or has there have been enough good 3-D movies to make up for the bad ones? Oh, sure. I mean, particularly the animated films. You know, particularly the ones from Pixar. They’re just spectacular. I mean, the screen image is still a little dark but they’re finally getting to solving all that. Now that we’re talking about switching over to 4K projection, that’s going to help 3-D more than anything else. With more light coming back off the screen, it makes the contrast that much better. You’re right that in the last couple of years I don’t have that feeling anymore that every scene in a 3-D movie was shot at 6:30 in the evening. That’s right. It was murky. I mean, I get it, it’s pretty tiring. But you know, it’s like everything else. Progress takes a few years. In fact, most movies should not be made in 3-D. It really does enhance certain films, and I think it will enhance “Ghostbusters.” I’m sure everybody wants to ask you about this. There are some people in the fan base who appear to be irate about the way the new “Ghostbusters” has been cast. Frankly, I don’t think very many people are irate about the cast. There had been some blowback in some sense that maybe there wasn’t enough homage to the original film. That said, the guys who see this film? They’re going to be very, very happy. Look, I produced this movie. I’m one of the inventors of “Ghostbusters” along with my colleagues Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and Bill [Murray]. And you know, all of them took part in this one except for poor Harold [Ramis, who died in 2014]. I think everyone’s going to be happy. I think Paul Feig has done a great job and, you know, the new cast is in much the same position as the original cast was at the point in their respective lives. These women are extraordinarily funny and they’ve worked very, very well together. The film is very funny and very emotional, and has a lot to do with the original film. Well, that’s a fascinating point -- the performers in the new film are at a similar point in their careers to where Murray and Aykroyd were in the early ‘80s. You know, I also just saw you in that new documentary about National Lampoon. Did you? [Laughs.] I haven’t seen that yet. I’ve been told I’m in it, but I haven’t actually watched it. Well, it makes the point, with both “Animal House” and “Ghostbusters,” that this style of comedy came out of the National Lampoon worldview to a large extent. Well, when I talk about “Animal House” -- because I produced it -- I always start by referring to it as a new comedy language, really the comedy language of the Baby Boom generation. Which, at that point in their lives, we were in our 20s. So it had a different kind of energy than the comedy movies that were being made in the ‘50s and ‘60s. It seemed to be mark a turning point. Certainly movies like “M.A.S.H.” had a taste of it, but “Animal House” was really the first, 100 percent, top-to-bottom approach to it. And certainly, a lot of those things came from the Lampoon. But the Lampoon was really borrowing from other places as well, like Second City, where most of those performers got started. It’s an evolution of all of that. “Saturday Night Live” played into all that and, really, my first half-dozen movies all spoke that language. That’s so interesting. We always talk about the big-name directors who broke into Hollywood in in the ‘70s: Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, Brian DePalma, all those guys, as representing a new generation. What you guys were doing – you and Aykroyd and Ramis and these other guys -- was the same thing in comedy, in a different register. Do you buy that? Yeah, absolutely. I always complain that comedy was never looked at as seriously, as hard as it is to make. It never got the respect it deserves. You know, people pay lip service to how difficult it is and how easy it is to fail. And frankly, it’s much more easy to fail in comedy than it is in drama. And so, I think now people are starting to look at it. They’re starting to miss the energy of those movies from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I don’t want to oversell this angle, but part of this was about the energy of the counterculture of the ‘60s crossing into mainstream culture, right? Well, the ‘60s is really the Baby Boomer generation turning 18. They’re all young adults, they’re all smoking dope – I should say, we were all smoking dope! -- and it was this enormous culture shift that happened in this country, and then in most of the Western world through those ten years. So, yeah, the ripple effect was huge. And I imagine you had the clear sense on the set of the original film that the energy was much different from that of other Hollywood films at the time. I was working with an extremely gifted group of actors/writers, and they were real writers. Not just the original three guys, but also people like Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis and Annie Potts, they all just had great writing abilities. So it’s not that we were just improv-ing our asses off. We were constructing it very carefully. And I guess it was my job to make sure that the construction was appropriate, whatever new things we were adding. And it was coming not just from the actors and writers. It was coming from the production designer, it was coming from the composer, it was coming from the costume designer. It’s not that they were pitching lines. But in their choices they were creating this very unique world that had never been seen before, and that’s what’s wonderful about the book. I think you get a sense of how that got put together and the collaborative nature of this film. And everybody sort of got into it like it was a very serious movie, and it is. It took an enormous amount of originality, at a level I had never really seen before. When I was looking through the pictures I was so struck by what a distinctive visual world “Ghostbusters” is. It’s so weird and so funny, those are the dominant notes. But the movie also verges on being really scary at times. I imagine you were consciously trying to keep that in the mix. You know, I really believe that it had to be a scary film. I mean, it was about ghosts, and that’s part of what makes it delightful. And you know, we scare the audience very early in the film, and it just establishes the chops of the movie -- you know, that whole librarian scene! From the very first screening, even before we had real effects in it, what would always happen is when the librarian transforms into that scary thing, the audience screamed -- and then they laughed. Then we’d go boom, boom – to the opening and the “Ghostbusters” title. And really, the film grabbed everybody. I always believe in achieving confidence with the audience. With the audience is confident that the filmmaker knows what he’s doing, they tend to laugh more. And you have to earn that confidence very early on: “Oh, the tone is right. I like these people. This is not cheap. It’s all sort of working.” And I worked very hard to do that in all my films, and earn the respect and confidence of the audience. Absolutely. I’ve been reviewing films for more than 20 years and what I always say to people is that within the first five minutes, I have a feeling whether this person can drive that bus. Whether that’s Ivan Reitman or Orson Welles or, I don’t know, Wes Craven. You want to feel that this person is in command of the instrument, whatever the instrument is. It’s about establishing the tone of that particular genre. And it’s the reason that comedies are so hard to make is that it’s so easy to go off the track with a film. You get too silly or try too hard, or just, you know, the way that people are talking is not right. And you’re done. It’s very hard to win them back when they get that feeling. In terms of what we see on the screen in your “Ghostbusters,” how would you say the balance worked out between what had been scripted in advance and what the guys kind of came up with on the set? Because those are some gifted improv performers. Well, I never did a percentage. First of all, it’s all scripted, because these guys were all the writers. So even when we were improv-ing, we always thought about it as writing the last wrap, or the next-to-last wrap, while we were shooting. And sometimes it happened while we were shooting, and then it was my job to sort of pull and keep the focus, not just editorially, but even the subsequent shooting: “You know that new line? Please hold on to it -- it’s great,” or “Let’s junk all that extra stuff -- I don’t think we need that” or “It’s out of character.” I instituted something that now comedy directors are doing a lot. I used to call it the “free one.” I would do a very strict take which was exactly as written, or with a couple new lines that we sort of came up with between takes, and then I’d say, “OK, I got what I need.” It was sort of a way of getting everyone to relax, and let’s just go for the free one, where anybody could do what they wanted. And because these guys had worked in Second City – see, they weren’t stand-up comedians, they were sketch comedians. One of the things that sketch comedians have to do is learn how to listen. Because the art of great acting is about being honest in what you’re doing and listening to what everyone else is doing and reacting honestly to it. And so whatever came to them that somebody else pitched or improvised, that character would respond to it. So it was very usable, almost all the time. And it was very easy to direct and use again. It was just great fun. You create a vocabulary for directing that’s really different than directing drama. Well, one thing that the enduring popularity of this movie, the love that people have for it, testifies to is the fact that so many comedies don’t get that balance right. And for whatever reason you guys did. I guess. It could be “The Wizard of Oz” factor, you know. It’s just the strangeness of it and the uniqueness of it, the way that “Wizard of Oz” was not quite like anything else that anybody had ever seen. The difference was that “The Wizard of Oz” wasn’t that beloved when it first came out; it evolved over the decades. We were fortunate enough to capture the imagination of the audience from the start.
9 interesting facts about sex in the animal kingdom
Sex in the animal kingdom can get pretty wild, as you can imagine. Here are 9 bizarre facts about how animals get down. 1. Don’t get mad, get off. No animal better demonstrates the peacekeeping powers of sex better than the bonobo. As Susan Block writes in her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, “The most revolutionary way bonobos use sex is for conflict resolution.” Sex is an integral part of bonobo politics. Doing the dirty helps provide stress relief, eases tensions and can even be employed for something as simple as snagging a banana. As Block notes, such exchanges might go a little something like, “I’ll trade you a banana for a blowjob.” Often, it’s the female who initiates such transactions. In human society “prostitution” is often framed as a dirty word. But in the bonobo universe, it’s somewhat central to everyday life. Block writes, “Among almost all other species, it’s always the male who does the paying, in the form of providing food in exchange for sex. Among bonobos, it’s very often the lady who picks up the check.” 2. The more the merrier. When hibernation season ends, the red-sided garter snake celebrates by having a massive orgy. Sounds reasonable. These “mating balls” take the form of hundreds of male snakes wrapping themselves around a single female, all in the name of having some procreative fun. But things can get out of hand quickly. One study found that a total of 301 snakes died of suffocation while partaking in one such ritual. Each year, thousands of snake aficionados travel to the Narcisse Snake Dens of Manitoba, Canada for some mating ball tourism. Manitoba is home to the largest congregation of red-sided garter snakes in the world. 3. Kink is cool. During mating season, male porcupines will sniff up and down a female’s body as some kind of aphrodisiacal foreplay. When he’s done, he’ll get up on his hind legs, grab his fully erect penis with a free paw, and unleash a stream of urine onto his mate, “soaking her from head to foot.” Giraffes too, are known to get down with pee. To determine a female’s fertility, a male giraffe will actually taste her urine. If he detects estrus, he’s good to go. Male hippos actually attract their mates by pooping. We’ll leave it at that. 4. Courtship is not dead. Prairie chickens perform an elaborate mating dance. During the performance, the males will raise their tail feathers, stomp the ground, inflate the air sacs along their throats and unleash a distinctive echo to serenade the females. Peacocks play a similar game, using their long tails to attract females in a fanning courtship ritual known as the peacock mating dance. Experts believe females pick their mates based on size, color and feather quality. “Peacocking” has even been adopted as a slang term used to describe men who put on ostentatious displays to get some female attention. You know the type. 5. Bi-curious much? Studies suggest as much as 75 percent of bonobo sex is non-reproductive, and that “nearly all bonobos are bisexual.” Paul Vasey, professor of animal behavior at the University of Lethbridge told National Geographic, “They’re engaging in the behavior because it’s gratifying sexually, or it’s sexually pleasurable… They just like it.” But the bonobos are hardly alone in their quest for same-sex companionship. Male dolphin calves are known to form temporary sexual partnerships. Scientists credit these relationships for helping form lifelong bonds. Elephants have been documented mounting each other, even “kissing” whereby one male inserts his trunk into the other elephant’s mouth. The list of animals who form homosexual bonds goes on and on. Of course, some may be in it for the show. An article put together by AskMensuggests “female gorillas engage in bisexual acts in order to stimulate alpha males into breeding.” That description bears striking resemblance to a lot of amateur porn flicks out there. 6. All about oral. Oral sex is great foreplay. Fact. So why assume humans are the only mammals privy to that knowledge? Researchers have recently discovered that male Indian flying foxes (also known as the greater Indian fruit bat) will perform oral sex on females to make sex last longer. The researchers also came to the unsurprising conclusion that this kind of foreplay helps arouse and lubricate the females. Sound familiar? Though, the scientists also offered one less obvious note. In addition to aiding in arousal, male bats may perform oral sex on females in order to clean off competitors’ sperm. Other animals have more orgasmic goals in mind. Goats, kangaroos, walruses and hyenas have all been observed engaging in auto-fellatio. 7. Ladies, have at it. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, toldNational Geographic that it’s only since the 1980s, with the advent of genetic testing, that scientists started to hone in on how promiscuous the females of many species actually are. The article states, “Only since the late '80s have experts considered the possibility that females are promiscuous because it's beneficial to them. Before then, female promiscuity was generally regarded as unnatural.” More and more scientific data has pointed to the fact that, in many species, females don’t just mate with one male, they take on several lovers to better their chances of producing more and healthier offspring. 8. If you don’t want his sperm, don’t take it. Birth control is a wonderful thing, and minimizing the consequences of unexpected or unwanted sexual contact is important. That’s something most humans are clear on. Fortunately, a CVS is usually just a stone’s throw away. Animals, of course, aren’t afforded such luxuries. Cut to the female Meller duck of Madagascar. Their vaginal canals are lined with a series of pockets and spirals. Scientists argue that the elaborate female duck anatomy is designed to trap and expel unwanted sperm, working as a defense against aggressive males. Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, told the New York Times, “Once they choose a male, they’re making the best possible choice, and that’s the male they want siring their offspring. They don’t want the guy flying in from who knows where. It makes sense that they would develop a defense.” 9. Get it in while you can. Nothing lasts forever, and nature can be cruel. Few things better exemplify that than the lifespan of the brown antechinus. These mouse-like marsupials can mate for an impressive 14 hours at a time, and even break down their muscles to give them more energy in the process. But when their “frenzied mating season” comes to an end, the males die off, usually before the young are even born. This process is known in scientific circles as “suicidal reproduction,” or “semelparity.”
Sex in the animal kingdom can get pretty wild, as you can imagine. Here are 9 bizarre facts about how animals get down. 1. Don’t get mad, get off. No animal better demonstrates the peacekeeping powers of sex better than the bonobo. As Susan Block writes in her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, “The most revolutionary way bonobos use sex is for conflict resolution.” Sex is an integral part of bonobo politics. Doing the dirty helps provide stress relief, eases tensions and can even be employed for something as simple as snagging a banana. As Block notes, such exchanges might go a little something like, “I’ll trade you a banana for a blowjob.” Often, it’s the female who initiates such transactions. In human society “prostitution” is often framed as a dirty word. But in the bonobo universe, it’s somewhat central to everyday life. Block writes, “Among almost all other species, it’s always the male who does the paying, in the form of providing food in exchange for sex. Among bonobos, it’s very often the lady who picks up the check.” 2. The more the merrier. When hibernation season ends, the red-sided garter snake celebrates by having a massive orgy. Sounds reasonable. These “mating balls” take the form of hundreds of male snakes wrapping themselves around a single female, all in the name of having some procreative fun. But things can get out of hand quickly. One study found that a total of 301 snakes died of suffocation while partaking in one such ritual. Each year, thousands of snake aficionados travel to the Narcisse Snake Dens of Manitoba, Canada for some mating ball tourism. Manitoba is home to the largest congregation of red-sided garter snakes in the world. 3. Kink is cool. During mating season, male porcupines will sniff up and down a female’s body as some kind of aphrodisiacal foreplay. When he’s done, he’ll get up on his hind legs, grab his fully erect penis with a free paw, and unleash a stream of urine onto his mate, “soaking her from head to foot.” Giraffes too, are known to get down with pee. To determine a female’s fertility, a male giraffe will actually taste her urine. If he detects estrus, he’s good to go. Male hippos actually attract their mates by pooping. We’ll leave it at that. 4. Courtship is not dead. Prairie chickens perform an elaborate mating dance. During the performance, the males will raise their tail feathers, stomp the ground, inflate the air sacs along their throats and unleash a distinctive echo to serenade the females. Peacocks play a similar game, using their long tails to attract females in a fanning courtship ritual known as the peacock mating dance. Experts believe females pick their mates based on size, color and feather quality. “Peacocking” has even been adopted as a slang term used to describe men who put on ostentatious displays to get some female attention. You know the type. 5. Bi-curious much? Studies suggest as much as 75 percent of bonobo sex is non-reproductive, and that “nearly all bonobos are bisexual.” Paul Vasey, professor of animal behavior at the University of Lethbridge told National Geographic, “They’re engaging in the behavior because it’s gratifying sexually, or it’s sexually pleasurable… They just like it.” But the bonobos are hardly alone in their quest for same-sex companionship. Male dolphin calves are known to form temporary sexual partnerships. Scientists credit these relationships for helping form lifelong bonds. Elephants have been documented mounting each other, even “kissing” whereby one male inserts his trunk into the other elephant’s mouth. The list of animals who form homosexual bonds goes on and on. Of course, some may be in it for the show. An article put together by AskMensuggests “female gorillas engage in bisexual acts in order to stimulate alpha males into breeding.” That description bears striking resemblance to a lot of amateur porn flicks out there. 6. All about oral. Oral sex is great foreplay. Fact. So why assume humans are the only mammals privy to that knowledge? Researchers have recently discovered that male Indian flying foxes (also known as the greater Indian fruit bat) will perform oral sex on females to make sex last longer. The researchers also came to the unsurprising conclusion that this kind of foreplay helps arouse and lubricate the females. Sound familiar? Though, the scientists also offered one less obvious note. In addition to aiding in arousal, male bats may perform oral sex on females in order to clean off competitors’ sperm. Other animals have more orgasmic goals in mind. Goats, kangaroos, walruses and hyenas have all been observed engaging in auto-fellatio. 7. Ladies, have at it. Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, toldNational Geographic that it’s only since the 1980s, with the advent of genetic testing, that scientists started to hone in on how promiscuous the females of many species actually are. The article states, “Only since the late '80s have experts considered the possibility that females are promiscuous because it's beneficial to them. Before then, female promiscuity was generally regarded as unnatural.” More and more scientific data has pointed to the fact that, in many species, females don’t just mate with one male, they take on several lovers to better their chances of producing more and healthier offspring. 8. If you don’t want his sperm, don’t take it. Birth control is a wonderful thing, and minimizing the consequences of unexpected or unwanted sexual contact is important. That’s something most humans are clear on. Fortunately, a CVS is usually just a stone’s throw away. Animals, of course, aren’t afforded such luxuries. Cut to the female Meller duck of Madagascar. Their vaginal canals are lined with a series of pockets and spirals. Scientists argue that the elaborate female duck anatomy is designed to trap and expel unwanted sperm, working as a defense against aggressive males. Patricia Brennan, a behavioral ecologist, told the New York Times, “Once they choose a male, they’re making the best possible choice, and that’s the male they want siring their offspring. They don’t want the guy flying in from who knows where. It makes sense that they would develop a defense.” 9. Get it in while you can. Nothing lasts forever, and nature can be cruel. Few things better exemplify that than the lifespan of the brown antechinus. These mouse-like marsupials can mate for an impressive 14 hours at a time, and even break down their muscles to give them more energy in the process. But when their “frenzied mating season” comes to an end, the males die off, usually before the young are even born. This process is known in scientific circles as “suicidal reproduction,” or “semelparity.”
Bob Schneider’s rabid Taylor Swift jealousy: “It’s so great I want to hate her. I want to hate everybody. It’s so f**ked up. Especially if they’re more successful than me”
My wife and I used to go out to a lot of live music. It was kind of our thing. Then along came a kid, then another and another, and before long live music was something we reminisced about. The single exception to this embargo-by-way-of-exhaustion has always been Bob Schneider. The Austin-based songwriter is almost impossible to categorize as a musician, or a human being. He writes more songs in a month than most musicians do in a decade. He makes stunning visual art that is regularly displayed in galleries. He plays more than 150 shows per year. To witness Schneider in concert is especially mind bending, because he and his band careen through genres like other bands change chords. At the show I caught a week ago, outside Boston, Schneider and his five-piece touring ensemble ripped through a set list that included Americana, arena rock, bluegrass, folk, funk, hip hop, jazz, mambo, pop, punk, R&B, salsa, and zydeco. Oh, and just a dash of death metal. For loyal cultists like myself, the big question surrounding Schneider has always been why he isn’t more famous. He’s got radio-ready songs, the looks of a matinee idol, and a passel of high-profile fans. What Schneider also has is an absolute intolerance for the duties of large-scale fame. He refuses to devote his energies to publicity. He releases albums only when the mood suits him. And he says virtually anything that strikes him as true or funny, regardless of whom he might offend. Upon the release of his new album—actually, a trio of EPs called "King Kong Volumes 1-3" —Salon called Schneider to see what America’s most profane polymath had to say about Taylor Swift, Kenny Rogers, paternal sadism, and playing with a broken arm. Naturally, he was on his way to a gig in Easton, Texas. What’s the deal with the new record? Why release it as three EPs? The original idea was that there would three chances to generate media, to get me into a magazine or on a late-night show or whatever. But basically nobody gives a shit when I put out a record, except for my fans. I haven’t done a single story for this record except for some newspaper in, like, Bend, Oregon. I will tell you this, though. I’ve learned to appreciate how unsuccessful I am. Because what it does is allow me to do what I love to do, which is write songs and hang out with my family and perform whatever songs I feel like performing. Your marketing plan seems predicated on having just enough success to keep you desperately creating art. Absolutely. Have you considered doing a cover of an entire album? Like Ryan Adams did with Taylor Swift’s 1989? Wait, do you know who Taylor Swift is? Yeah. Of course I know who both those guys are. I have heard 1989. But only because my wife, who’s 23 years younger than I am, is a huge Taylor Swift fan and she played it for me. And it’s great. It’s so great I want to hate her. I want to hate everybody. It’s so fucked up. Especially if they’re more successful than me. If they’re less successful I find it much easier to not hate someone. But there are so few people less successful than me that I wind up hating a lot of people. The idea of Ryan Adams covering that album makes me feel bad as well, because it will give Ryan Adams more exposure and people will talk about him and he’ll get in people’s consciousness and they’ll check out his music and they won’t be checking out mine. It makes me mad at myself for not thinking of it first. Couldn’t you choose another album? I might take a crack at George Michael’s Faith. That record sounds like shit. And I’ll tell you another artist—Prince. If you ever listen to the Best of Prince, that shit is really rough, because it was the Eighties and everything was synthesizers and they were recording on digital tape and they hadn’t figured it out yet. The problem is that my favorite albums, like Rain Dogs by Tom Waits, or Randy Newman’s Sail Away or A Charlie Brown Christmas by Vince Guaraldi, they’re done perfectly. Anything I did to those records would be an abomination. Is it true that your dad forced you to play drums in his band as a kid? That’s 100 percent true! My dad was, like, no joke. I was scared of him. I was like this ten-year-old kid with tiny little arms. The drumsticks were as big as my arms. And I’d be crying. Tears would be running down cheeks. There were no breaks. So the lesson I got was that the show must continue no matter what. To the point that I once I broke my arm onstage and I finished the set with a broken arm. Wait. Did your dad break your arm? [laughs] No. This was later on in my life. I was in a band called the Ugly Americans and we were playing the Horde Festival and I jumped off the stage into this concrete parking lot. It was raining and I slipped and broke my forearm. They gave me a sling and I finished the set, then went to the hospital to have the bone set. There were maybe 50 people in the crowd. They wouldn’t have cared if I quit. But I was like, ‘No. I’ve got to finish this!’ I’m the same way with my band. No matter what happens, you keep playing. If you break a string. If you vomit. If you’re sick as a dog. There have been times that I’ve had full-blown panic attacks onstage. I just want to get out of there. But there’s that voice: ‘You finish the set, motherfucker!’ I’m basically terrified all the time. That’s the reason I became a good performer. I figured if people loved me enough, I’d be safe. You also write songs constantly. Yeah, I still make myself write a song a week. That’s the mandatory minimum for me. Before that, it was two or three songs a week. Sometimes a song a day. Sometimes more than that. I considered releasing this project called the Demo Bible, because I have 1,000 unreleased songs. But people would immediately dismiss it. They’re going to figure, ‘This guy has 1,000 songs lying around? That just has to be one huge, horrendous pile of shit.’ But I have to have new songs to play at shows because what happens is I like all my songs at first, but after I play them over and over they get pretty tapped out. So I have to write new ones to play. Won’t you eventually get to a point where you hate all your songs? No, because some hold up. About a year ago I decided I wanted to do a twelve-hour solo show of all originals. I felt like I could do that— Wait, what possessed you to try such a thing? Was it like an EST thing? No, I just read on the Internet that someone said the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest show was 36 hours. It was some German piano player. So I sent the Guinness people a letter asking them what the record was for someone playing all originals. They sent a letter back saying, we don’t have to time to confirm that they’re all originals, so it’s just about length. I wasn’t going to play for motherfucking 36 hours if I didn’t make the book, so I settled on twelve. That’s like 160 to 180 songs. Did you make it? Oh yeah. I thought I would run out of energy but what ended up happening was just the opposite. Every two hours, I took a ten-minute break to catch my breath. But I was so amped up from the last set I was afraid I was going to have some sort of nervous breakdown. Fortunately, the exhaustion kicked in, so I got through it okay. There were a lot of people there for the last four hours, because people just wanted to see me crash and burn. They wanted to see me die onstage. This is probably the wrong time to bring up that you just turned 50. Yep, it’s pretty fucked up. And I have a little daughter who’s eight months old. Of course, if I do the math it’s really bad. I’ll be 70 when my daughter is 20. I don’t want to be like Kenny Rogers, where I’m 70 and I’ve got a five year old. You gotta know when to hold em— Yeah, that’s the other thing I’ve learned in life. People will tell you shit that you should do and they’re the ones who need to learn that lesson. Kenny Rogers has been spewing that line for 40 years. But I’ve never been happier. I do feel like, for first time in my life, my family is more important than my music. In the past, if I had to choose between music and relationships or kids, I always chose music, because that was the thing that was going to save me. I know you’re been making visual art for as long as you’ve been making music. Can you talk about the cover art for the new EPs, those giant collages? When my son Luc was three or four we started doing art projects. One day he had this idea to cut some heads out of magazines and draw the body. So we cut out some heads and he did this basic stick figure drawing and it was perfect. I spent the next six months trying to do something as cool as he did in, like, five seconds. Without even thinking about it. So anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. Now people are wanting to put those images in gallery shows, and buying them. But I never had that in mind. I was just trying to get back to where Luc was. Because the thing about kids, I’ve discovered, is that they don’t think, ‘Who’s going to like this?’ They don’t have a critical voice in their heads yet. They just do what’s right. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to that pure state. Maybe if I did heroin. But art is a lot safer.
Censored UN paper calling for decriminalization marks beginning of the end of drug war as we knew it
Recently, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime quietly circulated a remarkable document not only calling "decriminalising drug use and possession for personal consumption...consistent with international drug control conventions" but stating that doing so "may be required to meet obligations under international human rights law." The paper's language was sober but its critique of drug criminalization devastating, noting that a law-and-order approach to drug use "contributed to public health problems and induced negative consequences for safety, security, and human rights," pointing to the limitation on access to clean needles and the resulting spread of HIV and hepatitis C, overdoses, vulnerability to physical and sexual abuse and, of course, incarceration, which disproportionately impacts poor and minority people. Then, all of a sudden, the paper was censored—or maybe retracted or disavowed, depending on what story you buy—just before it was to be presented at last week's International Harm Reduction conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But it was too late: the paper had already been circulated, including to reporters. The BBC published it as part of a story looking into the drama, as did Virgin's Richard Branson, who serves on the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Soon, drug policy reform advocates began exploring the theory that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy had shut it down, pointing to a short "world briefing" New York Times article (erroneously conflating legalization and decriminalization, it declared: "U.N. Report Did Not Endorse Legalization of Drugs, Agency Says"). An agency spokesman told the Times that "a question about the paper posed to the White House Office of National Drug Policy [sic] by The New York Times last week had been passed to the agency, alerting officials that the paper was being presented as more important than it really was." The paper was reportedly developed by Dr. Monica Beg, the head of UNODC's HIV/AIDS section in the context of growing pressure on the the law enforcement-oriented body to join other UN agencies in embracing decriminalization ahead of next year's major UN General Assembly special session on drug policy, UNGASS 2016. A UNODC official dismissively told the BBC that Beg was "a middle-ranking official" acting without approval of higher ups. But some advocates don't buy that explanation. "I honestly can't speculate as to why UNODC decided at the last minute not to distribute a document that, by its own admission, was planned for public release at our conference earlier this week," says Rick Lines, executive director of Harm Reduction International, in an email. "But any observer of the UN will tell you that agencies do not add their logo to, and recommend press circulation of, draft documents or positions in development. This was not a 'rogue' document, as UNODC comms has now suggested to the press in the wake of its decision to stop publication. The document was clearly intended for international public and media release at our conference this week, and it was pulled back at the 11th hour." The UNODC referred me to a statement posted on their website, which "emphatically denies reports that there has been pressure on UNODC to withdraw the document" in part because "it is not possible to withdraw what is not yet ready." It also stated that the paper was "neither a final nor formal document from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and cannot be read as a statement of UNODC policy." It's hard to make much sense of this spin. The paper's first sentence reads: "This document clarifies the position of UNODC." And how was a paper "not yet ready" if the same statement acknowledged that it was "intended for dissemination and discussion" at last week's conference? An ONDCP source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me that the White House office had nothing do to with it. Either way, hundreds of advocates and health experts gathered in Kuala Lumpur seized on the paper's conclusions, victoriously holding copies in the air and demanding that it be released. Whether the paper gets released or not, however, is immaterial to its striking conclusions, which are carefully grounded in international law: the UN's global drug war arm conceded not only that criminalization was a mistake but also that it violates human rights. "The behind the scenes politics here is less significant than what the document says - UNDOC, the lead UN agency responsible for drug control, has called for the removal of criminal penalties for use of drugs and the possession of drugs for personal consumption," says Lines. "This is perhaps the biggest news in international drug policy we've seen in a long, long time." It's a big deal for a few reasons, both in the U.S. (Americans' typical disregard for the UN notwithstanding) and globally. Other UN agencies have already embraced decriminalization. But the adoption of that position by UNODC, a more law-and-order minded agency, "is kind of the final piece in the UN jigsaw in terms of achieving crosscutting support for decriminalization across the UN family," says Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the UK-based drug policy think tank Transform. He attributes the internal pushback to "die hard drug warriors within the UNODC" who prioritize "enforcement indicators like seizures and arrests" over public health. At a meeting later last week, in what may have been a show of support for the suppressed UNODC paper, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein and UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé issued sharp critiques of criminalization. “Criminalization of possession and use of drugs causes significant obstacles to the right to health,” said Ra’ad Al-Hussein in a video message. “Drug users may justifiably fear that they would be arrested or imprisoned if they seek health care. They may even be discouraged about seeking information about safe practices for drug use.” If the U.S. also played a role in the paper's suppression, Rolles wouldn't be surprised since "it was the U.S. that imposed a global prohibitionist framework on the world." In addition, he says, it wouldn't be the first time it has happened: in the 1990s, the U.S. reportedly pressured the World Health Organization to pull a study challenging conventional wisdom about the dangers of cocaine, threatening to pull funding for agency research if they went ahead with publication. Today, the Obama Administration finds itself in a very awkward position because the marijuana legalization taking place across the U.S. may violate the global treaties of which the U.S. has historically been an adamant enforcer. "The U.S. is potentially in violation of these treaties that they helped set up," says Hannah Hetzer, Americas policy manager at the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance. "Previously if any country even tried to discuss alternatives to drug prohibition they'd be met with a less than positive response from the United States...When they gave the green light to some states to legalize marijuana they then had to extend that green light to foreign governments to some extent." Fear of hypocrisy, however, hasn't stopped the U.S. from repeatedly decertifying Bolivia, a procedure that allows for the denial of foreign aid, because of its government's support for the traditional coca cultivation. That said, the UNODC paper adds to the growing international pressure for the U.S. to come to terms with the global push toward decriminalization. And that pressure may reach the boiling point at next year's General Assembly meeting. A change in the U.S.' global drug policy—an increasing necessity given the move toward marijuana legalization at home—would create new political space for reform both domestically and around the world (though continued zealotry from Russia, China and other countries will continue to be an obstacle). The calls not only for decriminalizing drug use but also for creating legalized and regulated form of drug sales, which the Global Commission on Drug Policy has suggested, are growing louder. The 2016 General Assembly meeting, organized at the behest of Latin American leaders critical of the drug war, is the first such special session since 1998. That year, the motto was "A Drug Free World - We can do it!" Times have certainly changed—enough, perhaps, that the Obama Administration will next year announce a bold and pragmatic new direction. The war on drugs still defines global drug policy. But its political support worldwide is crumbling.
