Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 970

My Creation Museum quest: A skeptic’s genuine search for faith, science and humanity in a most unlikely place

The town of Petersburg, Kentucky, sits quietly at the mouth of the Midwest. The Ohio River snakes around the borders of the scant, 620-person town, separating it from the state of Indiana immediately north, and Ohio slightly northeast. Streaks of smoke hang lazily among the clouds, stretching into the sky from the coal power plant just to the south. Ranch and split-level homes stand plain before acres of flat pasture. The silhouettes of lonesome billboards dotting the highway are as close as the town comes to a skyline. One gets the impression that a gaze out of a Petersburg window today would reveal the same landscape that existed a hundred years ago. In 2001, however, the town saw something new. A non-profit, fundamentalist Christian apologetics ministry called Answers in Genesis (AiG) broke otherwise untroubled ground in Petersburg, in the construction of what the group would later call the Creation Museum. The multimillion-dollar testament to a seemingly invaluable faith did not come without a fight. AiG filed several suits in order to develop the plot of Boone County land the way that they wished, with the apparent strategy being to litigate until their opponents gave up. From planning to construction, the 60,000-square-foot museum took nearly 10 years and $27 million to complete. The museum opened to the public in 2007, and according to AiG officials surpassed its annual attendance projection of 250,000 visitors within five months. An array of extravagances — such as a planetarium, raptor-themed zip line, biblical-era petting zoo as well as dinosaur and insect skeleton collections — await Creation Museum visitors, as does friendly service. If hired permanently, museum employees must sign a “statement of faith” affirming their beliefs in AiG’s principles. The workers always smile as they greet guests. They smile as they remind visitors that their tickets — which have just gone up from $5 to $29.95, officially due to gas hikes and a poor economy — are good for two days. They smile as they offer Noah’s Café patrons a souvenir mug, featuring information on the real age of a T-rex (created on Day 6, approximately 4004 BC) for $6.99, which includes free refills all day. They smile even more as they guide guests into a lecture hall for an hour-long talk on the physical existence of a “mitochondrial Eve.” Once inside the hall, they smile as they remind visitors that Adam, Eve and Jesus were all real people; that all visions offered by the Bible are real, and that to abandon this real word — even a select passage or two — is to slip into an ugly, graffiti-covered world of depravity and sin. Beneath that smiling is fear. In Georgia Purdom’s talk on Mitochondrial Eve — in which the PhD-holding research scientist invokes science to prove that the biblical Eve did exist — she expresses concerns about the future. “Among Christians today,” Purdom says, “there is an increasing debate over whether or not Adam and Eve were real people.” Audience members collectively lower their chins and furrow their brows in deep consternation. Some clap their hands in frustrated agreement. Purdom then evidentiates her case by presenting slide after slide of popular Christian publications whose editorial staff, before a continuously sophisticating science, have interpreted the Bible with a more scrutinizing eye. Based on the science, these publications say, certain passages of the Bible can no longer reasonably be considered as literally true. Perhaps, they add, we too should evolve with the times. Purdom pauses, waiting for her audience to be hit by that rhetorical anvil. To Purdom and her peers, these developments are not mere annoyances; they warn that faith is something mortal, and is thus something that can die — or be killed by a hungrier, leaner species than they. In their eyes, a predatory science has sniffed out the flesh of the faithful, forcing them to contort and camouflage their beliefs in order to survive. For Purdom, the less-devout have already ceded their values to the demands of a new reality, and yet the appetite of science remains insatiable. They, the defendants of a truth unchanging, are under attack. If the Word is to live, if its believers are to have purpose, it is up to institutions like Answers in Genesis to save it, and likewise a guiding, collective morality. In a world abandoning the totalizing austerities of faith for the boundless frontiers of science, the Creation Museum must stand in defiance. And it does. And yet, by erecting a physical space to enshrine their faith as fact, they follow in the footsteps and theories of their scientific opponents: In constructing the Creation Museum, the fundamentalists too participate in natural selection, albeit of the curatorial kind. But they certainly won’t admit it. Under this lens, it is too easy to dismiss the Creation Museum as yet another ornament on the fundamentalist’s heavy-limbed Christmas tree. It is likewise puerile to laugh at their depictions of an early human grazing among dinosaurs as simply “crazy.” A closer look at the Petersburg attraction reveals that the questions raised in the museum are deeply existential, and ones which are steeped in — and troubled by — an atheistic logic: If it is indeed true that Adam and Eve did not literally exist, as science says, then there is no original sin. If there is no original sin, then Jesus did not have to die for it. If Jesus did die, but not for our sins, then why is he our savior? If he is not our savior, then what is he? What are we? Viewed this way, the Creation Museum becomes less of a clearly demarcated home for the irrational, but rather a metaphysical space for individuals deeply troubled by emerging forms of authoritative rationality. The museum complex, which sprawls over dozens of acres, is less of an amusement park for fanatics and more of a fortress for the vanishing fearful. It is a space where the likeminded can physically enter a mindset that they know, and that they worry — if science has anything to say about it — might one day become unknown. Questions of social justice, evolution and humankind’s place in the universe are answered here — and usually in 150 pages or less. Indeed, the Creation Museum offers itself as a vital, life-affirming buffer against the spiritually weathering effects, and warnings, of coming worlds. And yet, this sequestered space has the potential to greatly impact public life. As with any place of refuge, the Creation Museum wraps its guests in safety to revitalize their spirits. Fundamentalist views — anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-evolution — are not challenged but embraced, and promoted, here. And lest we forget, it was AiG president Dr. Ken Ham who galvanized climate skeptics around the country in his widely viewed debate with popular science icon Bill Nye at a time when carbon parts per million hover at historically high levels, and residents of low-lying, often-poor coastal areas are living through the effects of climate change as we speak. But no matter; this is a place of answers, not complications. The gilded pages of the Bible manifest themselves three-dimensionally, with a white Adam and Eve locking their heterosexual limbs in a short film and life-size exhibit. With every vision of a sharp-mouthed woman or a gun-toting minority, guests’ fears of living within a fallen world are drawn out, and legitimated, with equal precision. Visitors’ faith, as anatomized by AiG’s so-called academics, is heralded as scientifically valid, and therefore beyond reproof from either side. Their views, however anachronistic, are elevated to a place of science and therefore sacredness, however paradoxical. While refuting the laurels of science, they rely upon it to authorize their beliefs and prejudices and thus assure their own survival. The limbo continues. The need for the Creation Museum grows. What a sad, confusing time. What a sad, confusing place. If only the museum’s founders believed enough in their own faith to see them through it. [image error]

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9 of the most hilarious “SNL” political impersonations of the last 40 years

Seinfeld creator Larry David perfectly impersonated Bernie Sanders on "Saturday Night Live" in a performance that left viewers wondering if the two are actually the same person. David nailed Sanders' accent and mannerisms and also managed to make the democratic candidate more likeable in the process. The display is just the latest in a a long history of political impressions beginning in 1975 when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford — and many of them have helped influence public opinion. Most notable was Tina Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin that was arguably the beginning of the end of Palin's political career. Whether influencing the national conversation or just being super fun to watch, SNL has had a lot of practice perfecting the art of the political impersonation. Watch this mash-up of some of show's greatest hits: [jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/bestSN..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/Larry-...] [image error]

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U.S. lawmakers call for more oversight of workers’ comp

This story was co-published with NPR. Ten prominent Democratic lawmakers, including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, are urging the U.S. secretary of labor to come up with a plan to ensure that state workers’ compensation programs are properly caring for injured workers. The lawmakers’ letter, sent Tuesday, was prompted by an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, which found that more than 30 states have cut benefits to injured workers, created daunting hurdles to getting medical care or made it more difficult for workers with certain injuries and illnesses to qualify. As a result, some workers have been evicted from their homes, denied prosthetic devices their doctors recommended or left in precarious situations when their home health aides were taken away. Denied care, some workers have turned to state Medicaid or federal disability programs, the investigation found. “State workers’ compensation laws are no longer providing adequate levels of support and compensation for workers injured on the job,” the lawmakers wrote. “Instead, costs are increasingly being shifted to the American taxpayers to foot the bill.” The letter also cited a ProPublica and NPR story from last week that detailed a campaign by some of the biggest names in corporate America to let companies “opt out” of workers’ comp and write their own rules for taking care of injured workers. Laws in Texas and Oklahoma already allow such an option and it is under serious consideration in Tennessee and South Carolina. “The race to the bottom now appears to be nearly bottomless,” the members of Congress wrote. The letter was sent to Secretary Thomas E. Perez by the ranking members of the Senate and House labor, budget and finance committees and the subcommittees that deal with workplace safety and Social Security. In addition to Sanders, they include Sens. Patty Murray, Ron Wyden, Al Franken and Sherrod Brown and Reps. Bobby Scott, Chris Van Hollen, Sander Levin, Frederica Wilson and Xavier Becerra. The Labor Department said in a statement that it was reviewing the letter but shared the members’ concerns. “Every year injured workers and their families are bearing more and more of the cost of workplace injuries and illnesses,” the department said. “American workers and their families deserve the peace of mind that comes with knowing a workplace injury won’t knock them out of the middle class, and we look forward to working with stakeholders to find real solutions.” As the minority party in Congress, Democratic lawmakers have had little success getting attention for their proposals. But in the last year, the Obama administration has used its authority aggressively on a range of workplace issues, including overtime, paid sick leave and the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. In an interview, Scott, the ranking member on the House education and workforce committee, said the cost shifting to federal programs underscores that “there is a strong federal interest in making sure the workers’ comp programs pay appropriate benefits." Scott said he was struck by harsh restrictions in the benefit plans of some companies that had opted out of workers’ comp, particularly one that requires employees to report an injury by the end of their shift or lose their benefits. “A lot of people have injuries and they go home and think it will go away and it turns out to be a much more serious injury than they thought, “ he said. “So you have a person that has no benefits at all if we allow some of these things to continue.” The lawmakers’ letter marks the most significant interest that Congress has shown in workers’ comp since the Labor Department stopped monitoring state laws in 2004. And it comes as Congress debates the solvency of the Social Security Disability trust fund, which is projected to run short of money next year as an increasing number of people receive federal assistance. Workers’ comp — the nation’s system for dealing with workplace injuries — arose in the early 20th century as tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire brought home the grisly consequences of industrialization. As a compact between labor and industry, workers gave up their right to sue their employers in exchange for a guarantee of prompt medical care and enough of their wages to get by while they recovered. In 1972, a presidential commission created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act recommended a series of minimum standards that state workers’ comp programs should meet. Fearing that Congress would mandate the standards, nearly every state passed laws to improve their benefits. For decades, the Labor Department kept track of states’ compliance with the federal recommendations — even though it lacked the authority to take action against states that did not comply. But budget cuts ended that. ProPublica and NPR’s investigation found that, over the years, states had developed disparate methods for how employers must compensate injured workers and their families. The hodgepodge nature of workers’ comp has resulted in some startling discrepancies. Workers who lose limbs in similar accidents, for example, may receive dramatically different compensation based on which state they work in. In the letter, the Democratic lawmakers said they “would welcome a report” from the Labor Department on how it would “reinstitute oversight” of state programs. They also said they would work with the Obama administration if it needs additional legislative authority to “better ensure that the interests of injured workers and taxpayers are protected.” Several recent studies have estimated that workers’ comp covers only a fraction of the costs of workplace injuries and illnesses as government programs like Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare and Medicaid pay about $30 billion a year for medical care and lost wages not covered by workers’ comp. “An accumulating body of evidence shows that at least part of the growth in SSDI benefit payments is attributable to the program’s subsidy for work injuries and illnesses,” the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said in a March report. In a study to be released later today, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, estimates that more than 20 percent of the rise in federal disability rolls can be explained by cuts to workers’ comp programs. This story was co-published with NPR. Ten prominent Democratic lawmakers, including presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, are urging the U.S. secretary of labor to come up with a plan to ensure that state workers’ compensation programs are properly caring for injured workers. The lawmakers’ letter, sent Tuesday, was prompted by an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, which found that more than 30 states have cut benefits to injured workers, created daunting hurdles to getting medical care or made it more difficult for workers with certain injuries and illnesses to qualify. As a result, some workers have been evicted from their homes, denied prosthetic devices their doctors recommended or left in precarious situations when their home health aides were taken away. Denied care, some workers have turned to state Medicaid or federal disability programs, the investigation found. “State workers’ compensation laws are no longer providing adequate levels of support and compensation for workers injured on the job,” the lawmakers wrote. “Instead, costs are increasingly being shifted to the American taxpayers to foot the bill.” The letter also cited a ProPublica and NPR story from last week that detailed a campaign by some of the biggest names in corporate America to let companies “opt out” of workers’ comp and write their own rules for taking care of injured workers. Laws in Texas and Oklahoma already allow such an option and it is under serious consideration in Tennessee and South Carolina. “The race to the bottom now appears to be nearly bottomless,” the members of Congress wrote. The letter was sent to Secretary Thomas E. Perez by the ranking members of the Senate and House labor, budget and finance committees and the subcommittees that deal with workplace safety and Social Security. In addition to Sanders, they include Sens. Patty Murray, Ron Wyden, Al Franken and Sherrod Brown and Reps. Bobby Scott, Chris Van Hollen, Sander Levin, Frederica Wilson and Xavier Becerra. The Labor Department said in a statement that it was reviewing the letter but shared the members’ concerns. “Every year injured workers and their families are bearing more and more of the cost of workplace injuries and illnesses,” the department said. “American workers and their families deserve the peace of mind that comes with knowing a workplace injury won’t knock them out of the middle class, and we look forward to working with stakeholders to find real solutions.” As the minority party in Congress, Democratic lawmakers have had little success getting attention for their proposals. But in the last year, the Obama administration has used its authority aggressively on a range of workplace issues, including overtime, paid sick leave and the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. In an interview, Scott, the ranking member on the House education and workforce committee, said the cost shifting to federal programs underscores that “there is a strong federal interest in making sure the workers’ comp programs pay appropriate benefits." Scott said he was struck by harsh restrictions in the benefit plans of some companies that had opted out of workers’ comp, particularly one that requires employees to report an injury by the end of their shift or lose their benefits. “A lot of people have injuries and they go home and think it will go away and it turns out to be a much more serious injury than they thought, “ he said. “So you have a person that has no benefits at all if we allow some of these things to continue.” The lawmakers’ letter marks the most significant interest that Congress has shown in workers’ comp since the Labor Department stopped monitoring state laws in 2004. And it comes as Congress debates the solvency of the Social Security Disability trust fund, which is projected to run short of money next year as an increasing number of people receive federal assistance. Workers’ comp — the nation’s system for dealing with workplace injuries — arose in the early 20th century as tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire brought home the grisly consequences of industrialization. As a compact between labor and industry, workers gave up their right to sue their employers in exchange for a guarantee of prompt medical care and enough of their wages to get by while they recovered. In 1972, a presidential commission created by the Occupational Safety and Health Act recommended a series of minimum standards that state workers’ comp programs should meet. Fearing that Congress would mandate the standards, nearly every state passed laws to improve their benefits. For decades, the Labor Department kept track of states’ compliance with the federal recommendations — even though it lacked the authority to take action against states that did not comply. But budget cuts ended that. ProPublica and NPR’s investigation found that, over the years, states had developed disparate methods for how employers must compensate injured workers and their families. The hodgepodge nature of workers’ comp has resulted in some startling discrepancies. Workers who lose limbs in similar accidents, for example, may receive dramatically different compensation based on which state they work in. In the letter, the Democratic lawmakers said they “would welcome a report” from the Labor Department on how it would “reinstitute oversight” of state programs. They also said they would work with the Obama administration if it needs additional legislative authority to “better ensure that the interests of injured workers and taxpayers are protected.” Several recent studies have estimated that workers’ comp covers only a fraction of the costs of workplace injuries and illnesses as government programs like Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare and Medicaid pay about $30 billion a year for medical care and lost wages not covered by workers’ comp. “An accumulating body of evidence shows that at least part of the growth in SSDI benefit payments is attributable to the program’s subsidy for work injuries and illnesses,” the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said in a March report. In a study to be released later today, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, estimates that more than 20 percent of the rise in federal disability rolls can be explained by cuts to workers’ comp programs.

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When you’re “SNL’s” “weird” end-of-the-show guy, “You’re counting how many [sketches] you got on that year, hoping not to get let go”

There are a lot of types of comedy found on “Saturday Night Live.” There’s the acerbic cultural commentary of Weekend Update and the ripped-from-the-headlines political satire that often dominates the show's cold opening. There are the more broad, character-driven sketches that tend to take up the bulk of the show. And then there are what’s known as the “five to one” sketches — those surreal, high-concept ideas that air in the show's final minutes, where the biggest risks are taken, and where the most bizarre and bold comedic ideas get their chance to come to fruition. Mike O’Brien is a five-to-one type of guy. During his time at “SNL” — where he spent five years as a writer and one as a featured player — he produced some of the most memorable and unusual segments in recent memory: absurdist, avant-garde digital shorts from “Bugs" to “Grow a Guy,” to his beautifully bizarre Jay Z biopic which earned him many devoted fans (Lorne Michaels included) and a couple of people who just didn't get it (hey, there's always a few). As he tells Salon: "I remember a couple of times I tried to write a CNN cold opener to the show. Like, 'I should be able to do this too, I’m not just the weird end-of-the-show guy.' They didn’t go well. I am just the weird end-of-the show guy." Of course, O'Brien is much more than that. The comic left the show at the beginning of this season — although he says he may return to do some videos — but he already has some stuff in the works that we're pretty excited about. First up on his roster is a comedy album called "Tasty Radio," an old-school compilation of audio sketches in the vein of early Adam Sandler and Nichols and May, featuring high-profile contributors like Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Scarlett Johansson (you can listen to the first one below). He's also planning on more “7 Minutes in Heaven” videos, the viral series that built him a massive following even before he took the “SNL” stage, where he spends seven minutes cramped in a closet with various celebrities and seals the encounter with a kiss. We caught up with O’Brien via phone from L.A., where he is working on developing comedy pilots with the ongoing support of Lorne Michaels, to talk about "Tasty Radio," comedy writing and life beyond Studio 8H. Can you tell me a little bit about how the concept for "Tasty Radio" came about? I grew up listening to Adam Sandler albums and then later I found out about Nichols and May and all those, so it was in the back of my mind as something that would be cool to do. Then, my first year of writing for "SNL" in 2009 and 2010, I had all these leftover sketches, and other friends I’d made them with and I were all hanging out in New York that summer, so I asked Lorne if I could round up these people and make a comedy album. And he said yes. We both admitted we don’t quite know what [a comedy album] is now, if it’s going to be online or in an actual physical album. I wasn’t even positive when I started if they were going to be physical  vinyl records and stuff. I wasn’t quite sure of what I was getting into, so [it was] just a fun side thing. It was an excuse to do some performing and to use some things that hadn't found a home at "SNL" or Second City in Chicago. Do you and Lorne have a good relationship? Yeah, we do have a good relationship, and he’s great about supporting side things. If you’ve got a specific vision and if you know what you’re doing with it and all that, then I think he likes that, he certainly supports it. So it’s very cool. You have a bunch of "SNL" alums on “Tasty Radio” – Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader — as well as more high-profile names like Scarlett Johansson. Can you talk about how you got those people involved? The "SNL" friends were all just because we’re around each other at work all day and I generally tried to ask people who I’d collaborated with in writing the sketches or who the writers had in mind to perform, so I asked those people first. Scarlett was more because she knows all those other cast members. She’s hosted enough that now she’s friends with those older "SNL" casts and writers that have been around for a while. I asked her through that circle of friends. So it’s a lot of sketches that were written for "SNL" originally and just didn’t make the cut? At least a third of the album is that. A lot of it is just kind of side, random things that I’ve had a long time or things that are just a bit more audio-based. Once I started thinking of ideas and eliminating the visual aspect of being able to see a sketch, some just popped out as perfect for the album and others were immediately eliminated. This idea of a comedy album isn’t done much anymore. Why did you choose this route instead of, say, a series of viral videos? One thing was my love of the tradition of it, and another was that I find viral videos really hard to make outside of "SNL." This was so much faster and easier and cheaper. Yet in my mind, a lot of these sketches came just as much to fruition as if they had been on video. There wasn’t a downgrade in having audio only. What was behind the decision to leave the “SNL” writing staff this season? Mostly trying to work on and hopefully sell a cable show or something out in L.A., still with Broadway [Video] and Lorne. It seems Lorne is really still continuing to support your career. Absolutely, yeah. There’s a chance that I may go back and make some more of the videos that I was making [for “SNL”] if we can find the right timing and the right host for the ideas and so on. He’s supportive and is continuing [to be] so. Are we going to get any more “7 Minutes in Heaven?” I think so, yeah. I’m just starting to get back to asking people. I like how [Zach] Galifianakis has his occasional “Between Two Ferns” [episode], and it’s kind of a fun thing to get excited for when it comes out. I’d love to do like that once in a while. Forever, maybe! I don’t know if it would get weird if I’m a 90-year-old in a closet, but I guess it started out a little weird. As a shorter answer, I’m hoping to do some more soon. That’s awesome. Do you have a dream guest? Will Ferrell is someone I admire so much, and I think would be so much fun in it. And it would be so much fun having someone taller than me in such a squashed space, where I’m usually lurking over someone. I read this quote from Bill Hader about how “SNL” writers are given this piece of advice that there’s a Venn diagram of what you find funny as a writer versus what the “SNL” audience finds funny, and your job is to hit that space in between. And he was saying he really admired you as a writer because you didn’t pander to what you thought audiences would find funny. You just ran with your own sense of humor. Do you think that that’s a fair assessment? [Laughs.] Well, it’s flattering. Bill has always been so nice to me. I would say it was initially because I couldn’t. It wasn’t a choice, I didn’t have the mainstream hard joke-writing skills coming out of the slightly more artistic-leaning Chicago improv scene. I didn’t have a lot of background in stand-up. I couldn’t have written a good joke for, say, Weekend Update, when I first arrived. And so I just kind of did what I do, which was writing scenes that were a little weirder. Then it has become more of a choice, even though I’ve developed those skills. I do like hearing people laugh. The goal is not awkward silence forever. But I don’t mind it a little bit. You had a year where you were a featured player in addition to being a writer. Can you talk a little bit about that experience? It had probably less of the emotional swings that people have in their first year as a featured player at “SNL” because I’d had four years of writing, knew the building, knew the people. So it wasn’t as overwhelming as it must be for some people. But I’d still say it was a lot. It was a whole new type of uncomfortableness and tension building on Friday and Saturday that you don’t quite get if you’re standing off-set outside the camera. It was extremely fun. It was a lot of things, but mostly really fun. It was cool to really get to live on the inside of that, see what it’s like to do weird 5 a.m. video shoots an hour outside of the city and all the little things you’re not involved in sometimes as a writer. Your comedy has a more absurd, avant-garde vein to it, which some people love but others find less accessible. Do you think that there is a certain kind of comedy that just doesn’t work on “SNL”? I don’t think so. It is an interesting question that I feel like we could debate or discuss for hours. Because it is harder to get things [on air] that are a little bit more odd. But the examples throughout the years would say that you can. Certainly Fred Armisen and a lot of people, have accomplished some of the weirdest stuff ever. And the Mr. Bill claymation. There are many recent examples, too. What we used to call the five-to-one sketches -- 12:55 a.m. is when they would be airing. Those are still very present every week; on Wednesday’s table reads there’s a whole bunch of them. Because there are a ton of writers there with very weird sensibilities and other staff support it and will laugh if it’s working. It does have a little bit of a hard time with that 8 o’clock dress rehearsal audience, but they get through still. So I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule where you have to go more mainstream. Lorne probably appreciates people doing what he hired them to do; the reason they stood out in their own hometown was not because they were doing something for the mainstream. So you don’t want to lose whatever that was. But it can also be hard because you’re counting how many [sketches] you got on that year, hoping not to get let go. It’s hard not to give into the temptation a bit. I remember a couple of times I tried to write a CNN cold opener to the show. Like “I should be able to do this too, I’m not just the weird end-of-the-show guy.” They didn’t go well. I am just the weird end-of-the show guy. Is there any part of you that wishes you were going to be there for election season? No. [Laughs.] I got to be there for an election and I felt like that aspect of the show I was watching from the outside, because my brain just doesn’t work like that. Seth Meyers, my old boss, can crank out a hilarious take on the debate right after the debate ends, but I could be at it for weeks, and be like, “I don’t know, should we have the podium catch fire?” And they’d be like no, that’s not a take on what happened, you’ve got to read about immigration stuff. And I’d go “I’m not going to read about that!” What do you think about Trump hosting? Well, he hosted before. It would be interesting to go back and watch. It was before I worked there. I just remember one sketch, I think John Lutz had him in a big pizza costume. But will he be good? I don’t know. My favorite hosts are always comedians, I’ll say that. And when people are hosting a comedy show and they’re not a comedian -- I think it is cool that "SNL" does that and should always have that -- but as a comedy nerd, I’m always excited for the next upcoming comedian or famous actor, and excited to put them in these comedic scenarios, [especially if] they’ve also played these famous straight roles like Robert De Niro or Jude Law. So yeah, I think Trump will be fine, but not as good as Will Ferrell. During your time on “SNL,” you were really known for your videos, and nowadays it seems like a lot of the most memorable segments are pre-taped. Do you think that the nature of “SNL” fundamentally changed in the post-Lonely Island era, now that the live sketches are increasingly competing with pre-taped footage? Is the live stuff being crowded out? That’s an interesting one. I’m not sure. Election years definitely bring it more back to the live show. But, yes, the Lonely Island guys definitely changed the ways that Lorne and the producers look at the running order and say, “We definitely want some video pieces in this.” Or “every episode, do we have a couple of good video pieces we’re excited about,” whereas before I assume that was less mandatory. Now, there’s got to be some of that. And they have great directors and crew standing by. But I think of course it’s always got to be a live show and that’s what makes it unique from other great shows, like “Portlandia” or “Key and Peele,” it’s that liveness that is so important. It’s been neat watching it from L.A. after six years of not missing a show in the building. I’m watching it here and it feels like an exciting night is happening, with all my friends back in New York, and that’s the feeling I probably had when I was 15 watching it too. The excitement vibe of "SNL" is more important than videos. Do you have any particularly memorable stories or moments from your time on the show? I’ve got a ton. Hmm... don’t want to do that one. I’ll come out with another round of them when I’m for sure never going to see anyone again. So I guess on my deathbed? [Laughs]. But just being at the show, running around, is so fun. Quick-change is when an actor has to go fully from one moment to the next with just a commercial break, so like two minutes. And there’s hair and makeup that just surround you and your clothes are being ripped off and new ones put on and your wig is being ripped off and a new one glued on, so it’s just like 10 hands around. So it’s very cool. That’s just an adrenaline rush that I think you can get addicted to, it’s so exciting from every department. A million of those types of moments, I’ll have those forever. Any specific "SNL 40" recollections? It was a great night. Everything was just surreal and it was too much. There were too many famous people in one room. I did get to go up to Jay Z and tell him I played him in a biopic we made. And it was definitely clear that he hadn’t seen it yet and had no idea what I could mean by that. But I assumed he had seen it because it had been a couple of weeks and I figured some assistant had shown it to him or something. But he just kind of smiled and nodded and I kept going, “I played you, man! I’m Mike! I played you! I was you!” And he was like, “Okay, alright.” He was like, "what are you talking about?" Yeah, like: “What? How?!”There are a lot of types of comedy found on “Saturday Night Live.” There’s the acerbic cultural commentary of Weekend Update and the ripped-from-the-headlines political satire that often dominates the show's cold opening. There are the more broad, character-driven sketches that tend to take up the bulk of the show. And then there are what’s known as the “five to one” sketches — those surreal, high-concept ideas that air in the show's final minutes, where the biggest risks are taken, and where the most bizarre and bold comedic ideas get their chance to come to fruition. Mike O’Brien is a five-to-one type of guy. During his time at “SNL” — where he spent five years as a writer and one as a featured player — he produced some of the most memorable and unusual segments in recent memory: absurdist, avant-garde digital shorts from “Bugs" to “Grow a Guy,” to his beautifully bizarre Jay Z biopic which earned him many devoted fans (Lorne Michaels included) and a couple of people who just didn't get it (hey, there's always a few). As he tells Salon: "I remember a couple of times I tried to write a CNN cold opener to the show. Like, 'I should be able to do this too, I’m not just the weird end-of-the-show guy.' They didn’t go well. I am just the weird end-of-the show guy." Of course, O'Brien is much more than that. The comic left the show at the beginning of this season — although he says he may return to do some videos — but he already has some stuff in the works that we're pretty excited about. First up on his roster is a comedy album called "Tasty Radio," an old-school compilation of audio sketches in the vein of early Adam Sandler and Nichols and May, featuring high-profile contributors like Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Scarlett Johansson (you can listen to the first one below). He's also planning on more “7 Minutes in Heaven” videos, the viral series that built him a massive following even before he took the “SNL” stage, where he spends seven minutes cramped in a closet with various celebrities and seals the encounter with a kiss. We caught up with O’Brien via phone from L.A., where he is working on developing comedy pilots with the ongoing support of Lorne Michaels, to talk about "Tasty Radio," comedy writing and life beyond Studio 8H. Can you tell me a little bit about how the concept for "Tasty Radio" came about? I grew up listening to Adam Sandler albums and then later I found out about Nichols and May and all those, so it was in the back of my mind as something that would be cool to do. Then, my first year of writing for "SNL" in 2009 and 2010, I had all these leftover sketches, and other friends I’d made them with and I were all hanging out in New York that summer, so I asked Lorne if I could round up these people and make a comedy album. And he said yes. We both admitted we don’t quite know what [a comedy album] is now, if it’s going to be online or in an actual physical album. I wasn’t even positive when I started if they were going to be physical  vinyl records and stuff. I wasn’t quite sure of what I was getting into, so [it was] just a fun side thing. It was an excuse to do some performing and to use some things that hadn't found a home at "SNL" or Second City in Chicago. Do you and Lorne have a good relationship? Yeah, we do have a good relationship, and he’s great about supporting side things. If you’ve got a specific vision and if you know what you’re doing with it and all that, then I think he likes that, he certainly supports it. So it’s very cool. You have a bunch of "SNL" alums on “Tasty Radio” – Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader — as well as more high-profile names like Scarlett Johansson. Can you talk about how you got those people involved? The "SNL" friends were all just because we’re around each other at work all day and I generally tried to ask people who I’d collaborated with in writing the sketches or who the writers had in mind to perform, so I asked those people first. Scarlett was more because she knows all those other cast members. She’s hosted enough that now she’s friends with those older "SNL" casts and writers that have been around for a while. I asked her through that circle of friends. So it’s a lot of sketches that were written for "SNL" originally and just didn’t make the cut? At least a third of the album is that. A lot of it is just kind of side, random things that I’ve had a long time or things that are just a bit more audio-based. Once I started thinking of ideas and eliminating the visual aspect of being able to see a sketch, some just popped out as perfect for the album and others were immediately eliminated. This idea of a comedy album isn’t done much anymore. Why did you choose this route instead of, say, a series of viral videos? One thing was my love of the tradition of it, and another was that I find viral videos really hard to make outside of "SNL." This was so much faster and easier and cheaper. Yet in my mind, a lot of these sketches came just as much to fruition as if they had been on video. There wasn’t a downgrade in having audio only. What was behind the decision to leave the “SNL” writing staff this season? Mostly trying to work on and hopefully sell a cable show or something out in L.A., still with Broadway [Video] and Lorne. It seems Lorne is really still continuing to support your career. Absolutely, yeah. There’s a chance that I may go back and make some more of the videos that I was making [for “SNL”] if we can find the right timing and the right host for the ideas and so on. He’s supportive and is continuing [to be] so. Are we going to get any more “7 Minutes in Heaven?” I think so, yeah. I’m just starting to get back to asking people. I like how [Zach] Galifianakis has his occasional “Between Two Ferns” [episode], and it’s kind of a fun thing to get excited for when it comes out. I’d love to do like that once in a while. Forever, maybe! I don’t know if it would get weird if I’m a 90-year-old in a closet, but I guess it started out a little weird. As a shorter answer, I’m hoping to do some more soon. That’s awesome. Do you have a dream guest? Will Ferrell is someone I admire so much, and I think would be so much fun in it. And it would be so much fun having someone taller than me in such a squashed space, where I’m usually lurking over someone. I read this quote from Bill Hader about how “SNL” writers are given this piece of advice that there’s a Venn diagram of what you find funny as a writer versus what the “SNL” audience finds funny, and your job is to hit that space in between. And he was saying he really admired you as a writer because you didn’t pander to what you thought audiences would find funny. You just ran with your own sense of humor. Do you think that that’s a fair assessment? [Laughs.] Well, it’s flattering. Bill has always been so nice to me. I would say it was initially because I couldn’t. It wasn’t a choice, I didn’t have the mainstream hard joke-writing skills coming out of the slightly more artistic-leaning Chicago improv scene. I didn’t have a lot of background in stand-up. I couldn’t have written a good joke for, say, Weekend Update, when I first arrived. And so I just kind of did what I do, which was writing scenes that were a little weirder. Then it has become more of a choice, even though I’ve developed those skills. I do like hearing people laugh. The goal is not awkward silence forever. But I don’t mind it a little bit. You had a year where you were a featured player in addition to being a writer. Can you talk a little bit about that experience? It had probably less of the emotional swings that people have in their first year as a featured player at “SNL” because I’d had four years of writing, knew the building, knew the people. So it wasn’t as overwhelming as it must be for some people. But I’d still say it was a lot. It was a whole new type of uncomfortableness and tension building on Friday and Saturday that you don’t quite get if you’re standing off-set outside the camera. It was extremely fun. It was a lot of things, but mostly really fun. It was cool to really get to live on the inside of that, see what it’s like to do weird 5 a.m. video shoots an hour outside of the city and all the little things you’re not involved in sometimes as a writer. Your comedy has a more absurd, avant-garde vein to it, which some people love but others find less accessible. Do you think that there is a certain kind of comedy that just doesn’t work on “SNL”? I don’t think so. It is an interesting question that I feel like we could debate or discuss for hours. Because it is harder to get things [on air] that are a little bit more odd. But the examples throughout the years would say that you can. Certainly Fred Armisen and a lot of people, have accomplished some of the weirdest stuff ever. And the Mr. Bill claymation. There are many recent examples, too. What we used to call the five-to-one sketches -- 12:55 a.m. is when they would be airing. Those are still very present every week; on Wednesday’s table reads there’s a whole bunch of them. Because there are a ton of writers there with very weird sensibilities and other staff support it and will laugh if it’s working. It does have a little bit of a hard time with that 8 o’clock dress rehearsal audience, but they get through still. So I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule where you have to go more mainstream. Lorne probably appreciates people doing what he hired them to do; the reason they stood out in their own hometown was not because they were doing something for the mainstream. So you don’t want to lose whatever that was. But it can also be hard because you’re counting how many [sketches] you got on that year, hoping not to get let go. It’s hard not to give into the temptation a bit. I remember a couple of times I tried to write a CNN cold opener to the show. Like “I should be able to do this too, I’m not just the weird end-of-the-show guy.” They didn’t go well. I am just the weird end-of-the show guy. Is there any part of you that wishes you were going to be there for election season? No. [Laughs.] I got to be there for an election and I felt like that aspect of the show I was watching from the outside, because my brain just doesn’t work like that. Seth Meyers, my old boss, can crank out a hilarious take on the debate right after the debate ends, but I could be at it for weeks, and be like, “I don’t know, should we have the podium catch fire?” And they’d be like no, that’s not a take on what happened, you’ve got to read about immigration stuff. And I’d go “I’m not going to read about that!” What do you think about Trump hosting? Well, he hosted before. It would be interesting to go back and watch. It was before I worked there. I just remember one sketch, I think John Lutz had him in a big pizza costume. But will he be good? I don’t know. My favorite hosts are always comedians, I’ll say that. And when people are hosting a comedy show and they’re not a comedian -- I think it is cool that "SNL" does that and should always have that -- but as a comedy nerd, I’m always excited for the next upcoming comedian or famous actor, and excited to put them in these comedic scenarios, [especially if] they’ve also played these famous straight roles like Robert De Niro or Jude Law. So yeah, I think Trump will be fine, but not as good as Will Ferrell. During your time on “SNL,” you were really known for your videos, and nowadays it seems like a lot of the most memorable segments are pre-taped. Do you think that the nature of “SNL” fundamentally changed in the post-Lonely Island era, now that the live sketches are increasingly competing with pre-taped footage? Is the live stuff being crowded out? That’s an interesting one. I’m not sure. Election years definitely bring it more back to the live show. But, yes, the Lonely Island guys definitely changed the ways that Lorne and the producers look at the running order and say, “We definitely want some video pieces in this.” Or “every episode, do we have a couple of good video pieces we’re excited about,” whereas before I assume that was less mandatory. Now, there’s got to be some of that. And they have great directors and crew standing by. But I think of course it’s always got to be a live show and that’s what makes it unique from other great shows, like “Portlandia” or “Key and Peele,” it’s that liveness that is so important. It’s been neat watching it from L.A. after six years of not missing a show in the building. I’m watching it here and it feels like an exciting night is happening, with all my friends back in New York, and that’s the feeling I probably had when I was 15 watching it too. The excitement vibe of "SNL" is more important than videos. Do you have any particularly memorable stories or moments from your time on the show? I’ve got a ton. Hmm... don’t want to do that one. I’ll come out with another round of them when I’m for sure never going to see anyone again. So I guess on my deathbed? [Laughs]. But just being at the show, running around, is so fun. Quick-change is when an actor has to go fully from one moment to the next with just a commercial break, so like two minutes. And there’s hair and makeup that just surround you and your clothes are being ripped off and new ones put on and your wig is being ripped off and a new one glued on, so it’s just like 10 hands around. So it’s very cool. That’s just an adrenaline rush that I think you can get addicted to, it’s so exciting from every department. A million of those types of moments, I’ll have those forever. Any specific "SNL 40" recollections? It was a great night. Everything was just surreal and it was too much. There were too many famous people in one room. I did get to go up to Jay Z and tell him I played him in a biopic we made. And it was definitely clear that he hadn’t seen it yet and had no idea what I could mean by that. But I assumed he had seen it because it had been a couple of weeks and I figured some assistant had shown it to him or something. But he just kind of smiled and nodded and I kept going, “I played you, man! I’m Mike! I played you! I was you!” And he was like, “Okay, alright.” He was like, "what are you talking about?" Yeah, like: “What? How?!”

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Wealth therapy is a sick joke: Meet the 1 percenters finding solace in wealth redistribution

In a political and economic system seemingly tailor-made for the 1 percent, backlash against “wealth therapy” — the trend of moneyed Americans seeking counsel through their Occupy-induced feeling of shame and isolation — is well-placed. While the top 0.1 percent of families in the United States possess as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, money psychologist Jamie Traege-Muney moaned to The Guardian that the movement wrongly “singled out the 1 percent and painted them globally as something negative.” But a growing cadre of this statistical owning class are now crafting a healthier relationship to the rabble at their doorstep. Responding to Occupy and other movement moments, young people with wealth are organizing the resources of their peers and families to level the playing field — and support one another in the process. “It’s not that I disagree that having wealth in this society is uncomfortable,” said organizer and donor Farhad Ebrahimi. “But treating it is not about individual therapy or even engaging in philanthropy or charity. It’s about collective action.” As a teenager, Ebrahimi was gifted a pool of wealth from his high-tech entrepreneur father. Growing up Iranian-American during the Iran-Iraq war was part of a “perfect storm” that led him to punk rock and radical politics, though for years Ebrahimi continued to identify more as a musician than an organizer. It was only later that he would conjoin his background with his beliefs. “I wasn’t even 100 percent sure they were compatible at first,” he explained. “I approached philanthropy pretty agnostically in the beginning.” Shortly after graduating from MIT in 2002, Ebrahimi founded the Chorus Foundation using $25 million of his personal money. Focused on funding projects to address climate change, Chorus is dedicated to “working for a just transition to a regenerative economy in the United States.” And unlike other foundations, Chorus has a built-in expiration date: intending to spend out the entirety of its — and Ebrahimi’s — reserves by 2024. While he expects another gift from his father at some point in the future, he says it will go toward a “Chorus Foundation Round Two” with the same goal. “I’m trying to put myself out of business,” Ebrahimi said. “And I’m trying to create a world in which someone would not end up in my situation of having been gifted more money than I possibly know what to do with.” Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” a bible of sorts for modern philanthropists, was penned at the height of the Gilded Age in 1889. Observing the continued accumulation and stratification of wealth that surrounded him, Carnegie declared it “a waste of time to criticize the inevitable,” seeing inequality — not unlike the contemporary economist Thomas Piketty — as a structural outcome of capitalism. He scorned the “socialists or anarchists who seek to overturn present conditions,” arguing that their plight “is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests.” Much like Hillary Clinton did in last week’s Democratic debate, Carnegie argued that the wealthy have to “save capitalism from itself,” ameliorating its worst excesses by choosing to redistribute their own surplus. In doing so, he called on his fellow industrialists to “consider how the foundation, as one of the [capitalist] system’s most prominent offspring, might act most wisely to strengthen and improve its progenitor.” Organizer Abe Lateiner — who describes his giving as “spiritual and empowering work” — has a gospel that is noticeably distinct from Carnegie’s. Confronting the idea that society’s most well-off should pick which causes deserve funds, Lateiner warns that “Writing checks by yourself on New Year’s Eve is not liberating if you’re doing whatyou think is best — which is exactly what got us here.” “The isolation thing is very real,” Lateiner said of his affluent bretheren seeking wealth therapy. “There are very specific, non-material, damaging things that come with privilege.” Excess resources, he explained, “are wonderful for our material well-being, but destroy the spirit [and] our ability to connect socially.” Having grown up in a “solidly Democratic” household, Lateiner’s family never discussed money around the dinner table, and he struggled to explain his circumstances even to close friends. “My inability to talk about money or class on a personal level has definitely ruined relationships and cut off opportunities for relationships,” Lateiner said. “I mean that as friendships and romantic relationships and everything in between.” Having taught for six years — something he described as “the best way, within my liberal framework, I could think of to give back” — Lateiner came across an article in the New York Times in 2012 about young, socially conscious heirs, including Naomi Sobel and Resource Generation executive director Jessie Spector. “The ground started to shift under my feet,” Lateiner remembered. Not only were Sobel and Spector speaking openly about their wealth and about giving it away; they were happy about it. He looked Resource Generation up online and quickly became involved. This collective version of wealth therapy emerged from “being able to be with people who understand [the problems of having wealth] and can honor them to get past the guilt.” A national, chapter-based organization, Resource Generation serves as a space for both support and political education among young people with wealth. More recently, it has also become a platform for them to leverage resources toward “an equitable redistribution of land, wealth and power.” An initiative launched last year called “It Starts Today” collaborated with racial justice groups around the country to raise $1.4 million for the movement for black lives and other black-led organizing. While Ebrahimi has worked with Resource Generation, he’s also been involved with the upstart funders’ network Solidaire, which looks to combine Resource Generation’s political analysis and support structures with a commitment to moving sizable resources toward burgeoning movements. Founded in the wake of Occupy in 2012, Solidaire’s grants have backed everything from the People’s Climate March to on-the-ground mobilizations in Ferguson, Missouri to work against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Three classes of grants support movements at different stages in their development, be it in “movement moments” like Darren Wilson’s non-indictment, or building out long-term infrastructure for when reporters stop calling. Apart from Solidaire, Ebrahimi also noted that Occupy marked a kind of sea change among more mainstream funders’ circles, who are now more open than ever to cross-issue conversations centered on justice. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, for instance, was invited to speak at the Environmental Grantmakers’ Association’s annual conference this year — a small step, but something Ebrahimi said would have been virtually unheard of just a few years ago. Both Ebrahimi and Lateiner emphasized the importance of honesty when approaching movements as people with wealth. While he was involved in Occupy Boston, Ebrahimi walked around the Dewey Square encampment with a shirt bearing the words “I am the 1%… I stand with the 99%.” “There was a time when I was scared that anybody with good politics would be inherently wary of somebody sitting on a pile of gifted money,” he recalled. But being clear about his background from the outset was met with more excitement than derision. Instead of worrying about being judged by his fellow occupiers, Ebrahimi “could focus on trying to support a political moment that I thought was important, making a bunch of new friends and having all sorts of crazy adventures. It really never had to be an elephant in the room that I was a rich kid with a foundation.” Meanwhile, Lateiner has started dressing up rather than down in movement spaces, where being open about his wealth has enabled him to build trust with working class organizers. “I have to be careful about the way I choose to speak and behave in those spaces,” he said. “But I’m not going to deny who I am.” While acknowledging the trials of extreme wealth, Lateiner, Ebrahimi and other forward-thinking heirs are turning to one another for support, not so-called money psychologists. They take solace, too, in putting their personal resources to work. “Under a scarcity mentality, we’re taught to see giving as losing something, rather than seeing it as getting to be part of justice,” Lateiner said. And for the wealthy, he added, being a part of justice means not getting to define it. “I think the best work happens when people who are funding it get the hell out of the way.” For solutions, they turn to movements. As opposed to Carnegie, this new breed of philanthropists reject their so-called “obligations” to capitalism, and are eager to help build a fundamentally different economy. “When we respond to the crisis of income inequality, we’re really responding to the crisis of consolidated wealth,” Ebrahimi explained. “What that says to me is that we’re trying to create a world in which there is no radically consolidated wealth. Without that, you don’t have any foundations” — or, at least, any wealth therapists. In a political and economic system seemingly tailor-made for the 1 percent, backlash against “wealth therapy” — the trend of moneyed Americans seeking counsel through their Occupy-induced feeling of shame and isolation — is well-placed. While the top 0.1 percent of families in the United States possess as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, money psychologist Jamie Traege-Muney moaned to The Guardian that the movement wrongly “singled out the 1 percent and painted them globally as something negative.” But a growing cadre of this statistical owning class are now crafting a healthier relationship to the rabble at their doorstep. Responding to Occupy and other movement moments, young people with wealth are organizing the resources of their peers and families to level the playing field — and support one another in the process. “It’s not that I disagree that having wealth in this society is uncomfortable,” said organizer and donor Farhad Ebrahimi. “But treating it is not about individual therapy or even engaging in philanthropy or charity. It’s about collective action.” As a teenager, Ebrahimi was gifted a pool of wealth from his high-tech entrepreneur father. Growing up Iranian-American during the Iran-Iraq war was part of a “perfect storm” that led him to punk rock and radical politics, though for years Ebrahimi continued to identify more as a musician than an organizer. It was only later that he would conjoin his background with his beliefs. “I wasn’t even 100 percent sure they were compatible at first,” he explained. “I approached philanthropy pretty agnostically in the beginning.” Shortly after graduating from MIT in 2002, Ebrahimi founded the Chorus Foundation using $25 million of his personal money. Focused on funding projects to address climate change, Chorus is dedicated to “working for a just transition to a regenerative economy in the United States.” And unlike other foundations, Chorus has a built-in expiration date: intending to spend out the entirety of its — and Ebrahimi’s — reserves by 2024. While he expects another gift from his father at some point in the future, he says it will go toward a “Chorus Foundation Round Two” with the same goal. “I’m trying to put myself out of business,” Ebrahimi said. “And I’m trying to create a world in which someone would not end up in my situation of having been gifted more money than I possibly know what to do with.” Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth,” a bible of sorts for modern philanthropists, was penned at the height of the Gilded Age in 1889. Observing the continued accumulation and stratification of wealth that surrounded him, Carnegie declared it “a waste of time to criticize the inevitable,” seeing inequality — not unlike the contemporary economist Thomas Piketty — as a structural outcome of capitalism. He scorned the “socialists or anarchists who seek to overturn present conditions,” arguing that their plight “is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests.” Much like Hillary Clinton did in last week’s Democratic debate, Carnegie argued that the wealthy have to “save capitalism from itself,” ameliorating its worst excesses by choosing to redistribute their own surplus. In doing so, he called on his fellow industrialists to “consider how the foundation, as one of the [capitalist] system’s most prominent offspring, might act most wisely to strengthen and improve its progenitor.” Organizer Abe Lateiner — who describes his giving as “spiritual and empowering work” — has a gospel that is noticeably distinct from Carnegie’s. Confronting the idea that society’s most well-off should pick which causes deserve funds, Lateiner warns that “Writing checks by yourself on New Year’s Eve is not liberating if you’re doing whatyou think is best — which is exactly what got us here.” “The isolation thing is very real,” Lateiner said of his affluent bretheren seeking wealth therapy. “There are very specific, non-material, damaging things that come with privilege.” Excess resources, he explained, “are wonderful for our material well-being, but destroy the spirit [and] our ability to connect socially.” Having grown up in a “solidly Democratic” household, Lateiner’s family never discussed money around the dinner table, and he struggled to explain his circumstances even to close friends. “My inability to talk about money or class on a personal level has definitely ruined relationships and cut off opportunities for relationships,” Lateiner said. “I mean that as friendships and romantic relationships and everything in between.” Having taught for six years — something he described as “the best way, within my liberal framework, I could think of to give back” — Lateiner came across an article in the New York Times in 2012 about young, socially conscious heirs, including Naomi Sobel and Resource Generation executive director Jessie Spector. “The ground started to shift under my feet,” Lateiner remembered. Not only were Sobel and Spector speaking openly about their wealth and about giving it away; they were happy about it. He looked Resource Generation up online and quickly became involved. This collective version of wealth therapy emerged from “being able to be with people who understand [the problems of having wealth] and can honor them to get past the guilt.” A national, chapter-based organization, Resource Generation serves as a space for both support and political education among young people with wealth. More recently, it has also become a platform for them to leverage resources toward “an equitable redistribution of land, wealth and power.” An initiative launched last year called “It Starts Today” collaborated with racial justice groups around the country to raise $1.4 million for the movement for black lives and other black-led organizing. While Ebrahimi has worked with Resource Generation, he’s also been involved with the upstart funders’ network Solidaire, which looks to combine Resource Generation’s political analysis and support structures with a commitment to moving sizable resources toward burgeoning movements. Founded in the wake of Occupy in 2012, Solidaire’s grants have backed everything from the People’s Climate March to on-the-ground mobilizations in Ferguson, Missouri to work against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Three classes of grants support movements at different stages in their development, be it in “movement moments” like Darren Wilson’s non-indictment, or building out long-term infrastructure for when reporters stop calling. Apart from Solidaire, Ebrahimi also noted that Occupy marked a kind of sea change among more mainstream funders’ circles, who are now more open than ever to cross-issue conversations centered on justice. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, for instance, was invited to speak at the Environmental Grantmakers’ Association’s annual conference this year — a small step, but something Ebrahimi said would have been virtually unheard of just a few years ago. Both Ebrahimi and Lateiner emphasized the importance of honesty when approaching movements as people with wealth. While he was involved in Occupy Boston, Ebrahimi walked around the Dewey Square encampment with a shirt bearing the words “I am the 1%… I stand with the 99%.” “There was a time when I was scared that anybody with good politics would be inherently wary of somebody sitting on a pile of gifted money,” he recalled. But being clear about his background from the outset was met with more excitement than derision. Instead of worrying about being judged by his fellow occupiers, Ebrahimi “could focus on trying to support a political moment that I thought was important, making a bunch of new friends and having all sorts of crazy adventures. It really never had to be an elephant in the room that I was a rich kid with a foundation.” Meanwhile, Lateiner has started dressing up rather than down in movement spaces, where being open about his wealth has enabled him to build trust with working class organizers. “I have to be careful about the way I choose to speak and behave in those spaces,” he said. “But I’m not going to deny who I am.” While acknowledging the trials of extreme wealth, Lateiner, Ebrahimi and other forward-thinking heirs are turning to one another for support, not so-called money psychologists. They take solace, too, in putting their personal resources to work. “Under a scarcity mentality, we’re taught to see giving as losing something, rather than seeing it as getting to be part of justice,” Lateiner said. And for the wealthy, he added, being a part of justice means not getting to define it. “I think the best work happens when people who are funding it get the hell out of the way.” For solutions, they turn to movements. As opposed to Carnegie, this new breed of philanthropists reject their so-called “obligations” to capitalism, and are eager to help build a fundamentally different economy. “When we respond to the crisis of income inequality, we’re really responding to the crisis of consolidated wealth,” Ebrahimi explained. “What that says to me is that we’re trying to create a world in which there is no radically consolidated wealth. Without that, you don’t have any foundations” — or, at least, any wealth therapists.

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Viva Sexy Pizza Rat: Shaming sexy Halloween costumes doesn’t help women achieve equality

Every year in October, feminist blogs and social media light up with outrage over the supposed scourge of "sexy" Halloween costumes. People share photos of the worst offenders, usually costumes that sex-ify something usually not seen as sexy, such as "sexy ebola" or "sexy Big Bird". (Which was actually no sexier than a standard flapper dress.) The argument against these costumes is that they are sexually objectifying and degrading in their assumption that sexiness should be part of Halloween anyway. Well, there's a bit of information in Claire Suddath's piece in Bloomberg Business on Halloween costumes that should give people pause before they express outrage at yet another round of goofy/sexy costumes on sale this year: The people who make them are making big money off your outrage. The annual outrage-fest drives visitors to the sites of places like Yandy, and even though you are supposedly visiting it to be outraged, a lot of you end up buying costumes from them anyway. This is such a profitable marketing strategy that Yandy, the biggest costume maker, actually designs outrageous "sexy" costumes that they know no one will actually wear. It doesn't matter, as long as people are sharing links to express outrage and driving visitors to the site, visitors who will buy another costume. So yeah, they designed that "sexy pizza rat" costume specifically so you would share it in Facebook, lamenting about how the world is going to hell, and your friends would all buy costumes off the link. Very few women will likely dress as sexy pizza rat, but the free advertising they got off the costume did the trick. It is true that I don't think "they just want attention, so don't give it to them" is a crappy argument. Sometimes giving racist, sexist trolls attention is just the price you have to pay in order to highlight very real problems with racism and sexism in our society. But that's only when the source of outrage is legitimate. The problem with all the hand-wringing over sexy Halloween costumes is that it doesn't really make sense. So what if some women want to flash a little T&A on Halloween? Who, exactly, are they hurting with this behavior? These costumes are clearly meant to be worn to parties, not the office. You know, social occasions where the point is to have fun, flirt and maybe get laid. Maybe you already have a partner you want to tease a little with the sexy costume. Maybe you have a guy whose attention you're trying to get. Maybe you just like attention. Not one of those desires is wrong. If being sexy Cookie Monster makes you laugh, more power to you. The world is a dark place a lot of the time, and people deserve to shake it up and have fun. I used to go along with the outrage-fest over sexy pizza rats and children's characters. But I read Dan Savage point out what should have been obvious, which that the whole point of Halloween is for people to let their freak flag fly a little. He calls it the straight version of Gay Pride festivals. I'd add that it's reminiscent of Mardi Gras. His argument shamed me. I am not averse, personally, to dressing sexy when the occasion calls for it. I live in New York, where no one even looks at you twice if you're wearing knee-high boots with miniskirts and I take full advantage of that. I marched in Slut Walk. I think Amber Rose kicks ass. There's nothing inherently wrong with dressing sexy, and sneering at women who want to use Halloween to express that side of themselves is, well, slut-shaming. Sure, there's a lot of problems you could point out. I'm often told the problem is that "sexy" costumes are the only ones for sale for women. But that's not really a fair argument. Yandy-type costumes are explicitly marketed to people who don't really care about costuming as an art, but just want to wear something cheap and sexy to go to a party. People who are interested in something other than that already don't buy costumes from Yandy. People who want a costume that says something more than "this is a cheap thing I grabbed off the rack to wear to a last-minute party" make their own (as I'm doing with my Batgirl costume this year) or they go to a site like Etsy or Chasing Fireflies instead. Then there's the fact that costumes marketed to straight men tend to be more goofy than sexy. But you know, that's kind of their loss, too. A lot of men would probably, if left to their own devices, like to flaunt it for the ladies, but our culture tends to code that behavior as weird and to shame it. And no doubt some women feel a lot of pressure to look "sexy" all the time, even when it's really a bad idea. Anyone who has lived near a college campus in the winter and seen young women chattering their teeth because they went outside with bare legs and no coat over their minidresses can attest to that. But these problems stem from much deeper issues, namely a deep power imbalance between men and women, particularly young men and women. As Rebecca Traister writes in her new piece in New York Magazine about this power imbalance:

Students I spoke to talked about “male sexual entitlement,” the expectation that male sexual needs take priority, with men presumed to take sex and women presumed to give it to them. They spoke of how men set the terms, host the parties, provide the alcohol, exert the influence. Male attention and approval remain the validating metric of female worth, and women are still (perhaps increasingly) expected to look and fuck like porn stars — plucked, smooth, their pleasure performed persuasively. Meanwhile, male climax remains the accepted finish of hetero encounters; a woman’s orgasm is still the elusive, optional bonus round.

Traister's column focuses on hook-up culture, but the larger, more bitter truth is this power dynamic is  found everywhere. More than a few women in monogamous relationships have found themselves wondering why they do so much work to make sex sexy for male partners who often can't even be bothered to ask what they want. The issue isn't even really about sex at all, but about power. Which is why I can't really be too annoyed with feminists who outrage at sexy Halloween costumes, even if I disagree with them. Railing against sexy Halloween costumes is a way to rail against these larger dynamics, a way to express discontent over the fact that women are expected to satisfy but not expect satisfaction themselves. But getting rid of the costumes won't do anything to change that. Women aren't going to get men to treat us like equals by covering our bodies. (See here and here and here for evidence of that.) If anything, the only way to get it into men's heads that they need to treat women with respect is to make it clear that respecting a woman and wanting to have sex with her are not mutually exclusive desires. (For all you know, the woman you're judging for her sexy banana costume might have a loving partner who shares the housework with her but just has a fruit fetish that she's trying to indulge.) Getting men to change their minds is a lot more work than shaming women for wearing sexy Bert and Ernie costumes. But it's the only real solution to the problem that troubles us.

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I’m a feminist with a football obsession: “I’m interested in the way we love things that aren’t good for us: chocolate, booze, narcissists, football”

For those fans tortured by the moral quandaries that now surround the multi-billion dollar college football industry — quandaries that begin with an unpaid workforce and proceed all the way to potential brain damage — Diane Roberts’ new book will offer little solace. "Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America" is a penetrating examination of how and why football has infiltrated our system of higher education, and what role it serves at a school like Florida State University, where Roberts has taught English and creative writing for eight years. (She spent another fifteen at the gridiron-gaga University of Alabama.) The kicker is that Roberts, an avowed feminist who contributes to National Public Radio and The New York Times, is a passionate fan of the Seminoles. In the midst of another glorious and thus far undefeated season for FSU, Roberts sat down with Salon to discuss what her new book says about old loyalties. Early on in "Tribal" you talk about how fandom “takes the edge off this painful self-examination, offering a kind of energetic clarity.” But the book complicates the experience of fandom, by suggesting all the toxic attitudes and outcomes football fosters. Does the game still provide you with that clarity? I can still disappear into the hold-your-breath moment of the game. I holler. I cheer. I sing. I clap. If I’m home watching on television, I coach. I’m really good at calling plays when nobody can hear me. It’s so comfortable and fine to belong, to be part of the tribe, to know that the people around you in the stadium — people who don’t see the world as you do, who might hate your politics — will share the general triumph when your guys score. For a moment, you’re all one family. It’s why people join churches, political parties, sororities, fraternities, gangs, book clubs. Most of us live tangled in paradox. Loving a college football team is simple and comforting — even when that team loses. When I’m praying that FSU’s quarterback can actually get the ball to that open receiver, I forget all about climate change, Syria and the NRA. When the ball lands in the boy’s waiting hands, the world falls away. Joy takes over. As a devout fan for many years, I get it. But can I just ask why you decided to open this particular can of worms? Because it’s my can of worms. I’m trying to figure out how and why this absurd (and gorgeous and thrilling and destructive) game has such a hold on me and other people. I’m particularly interested in the way we often love things that aren’t good for us: chocolate, booze, narcissists, football. I’m also a product of my culture — a culture I love and celebrate, a culture I deplore and critique, a culture I also try to understand so that its less attractive aspects (those little issues with racism, sexism, glorified violence and the like, all deep-rooted in the history of America and, particularly, the South) don’t prevail unchallenged. Maybe I’m trying to have my tailgate and eat it, too. I dissect the game, disparage it and yet keep on consuming. It’s a part of me. Sometimes I suspect I’m just creating a cover story that allows me to feed my addiction. You know, like some fundamentalist who assures the faithful that he’s an expert on sin; he’s studied the decadent works of secular society and can declare that, Yes! It’s all filth and wickedness! As a “feminist with a football problem” how do you feel about cheering for Jameis Winston, the FSU quarterback famously accused of raping a classmate? You write about the accusations, and the negligent police investigation of those accusations, with such disgust. Do you feel that same disgust toward the accused? I still don’t know what to think. Winston plays with such joy and grace (I will admit to sneaking a look at him quarterbacking the Tampa Bay Bucs). He’s an extraordinary athlete. I think he’s also a bit of an idiot. Most young men are idiots. It’s not entirely their fault: their brains don’t get fully formed until they’re in their late twenties, especially the judgment centers. Thanks to the half-assed investigation carried out by the Tallahassee cops and the collusion of the athletic department, we’ll never know if Jameis committed rape. Erica Kinsman thinks he did, though her story was not terribly credible in some ways. Clearly something happened that distressed her. I hate to get all postmodern on you, but it may be that each kid is utterly convinced that he or she is telling the truth. As a college professor for more than 20 years, I can say with authority that 19 and 20 year-old boys are the stupidest creatures on the planet. One of the most fascinating sections of "Tribal" is the investigation of so-called “muscular Christianity.” Can you tell the folks at home what it is and how it fits into America’s football addiction? I always wondered about all the praying and the thanking the Lord for a touchdown and Tim Tebow advertising Bible verses in his eye-black. I mean, I grew up in the South, where people would say Jesus is Love, then go nuts for a vicious open-field tackle. We went to football on Saturday and divine service on Sunday, often wearing the same kind of clothes — this was back when we dressed properly for a game. But the knitting of Church and football has increased over the past 20 or 30 years, along with the rise of the Evangelicals in American society. Clemson University coach Dabo Swinney is aggressively Christian, even letting one of his players get baptized on the 50-yard-line during practice, never mind that Clemson is a state school. Swinney’s not alone. Many college football teams have chaplains, often hired by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes but given offices on campus and allowed to travel with the team. Many coaches take their players to church. Bobby Bowden at Florida State was completely unapologetic about it. He saw his job as saving souls as well as winning championships. In Victorian times, certain manly types, including the writer Thomas Hughes, worried that the Anglican Church was becoming “feminized,” with gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild and Victorian angels who looked like cuddly nannies. He favored a badass Jesus, the Jesus who kicks over the money-changers’s tables, eats your lunch and makes you say thank you. Hughes created a hero, Tom Brown, who read just enough to graduate college but played a lot of sports: rugby-football especially. The exemplary Christian is not a flesh-denying weedy saint starving to death in a desert hut, but a buff, tough, butt-kicking mother who takes up the white man’s burden with a “gun in one hand and a Bible in the other.” Theodore Roosevelt, who admired the British Empire and wanted some of that stuff for the United States, pushed Muscular Christianity as the path for the true American manly man. Sports channeled sexual desire into athletic prowess. Roosevelt particularly loved football, which he thought built character through bone-cracking tackles. The South took to football like crazy, knotting sports and religion even more tightly. These days, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, with its thousands of chapters, keeps Muscular Christianity thriving. Peace, love and understanding are all fine, but beating the hell out of your opponent on the gridiron makes Jesus smile. As a college professor, what you make of football’s influence on the mission of higher education? Does it trouble you that most Americans think of FSU as a football team, not a college? I hate that people think FSU is nothing but football. When I taught at the University of Alabama, I hated that people associated it only with football, too — that and George Wallace standing “in the schoolhouse door.” FSU should be known as the site of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Or the home of Carlisle Floyd, America’s pre-eminent opera composer. UA has great schools of law and journalism and a famous Shakespeare program. Doesn’t matter. It’s all Bear Bryant and Bobby Bowden, Jameis Winston, Roll Tide and rapey players. It ain’t fair and it ain’t right, but it’s reality. I don’t see how we change it until we uncouple big money sport from big educational institutions. How we do that uncoupling beats me. The NCAA will have to go — that really will happen in maybe the next decade or so. Then football will have to change as a result of years of lawsuits by people harmed by brain damage. Maybe then we’ll decide that college teams are NFL farm teams. It’s hard to say that football serves any kind of educational mission. Deion Sanders didn’t bother to go to class his last season of playing for FSU. Much as I’d love to holler that the football program takes money away from the library, it doesn’t really. When FSU won the National Championship in 2013, applications for admission went up quite a bit. This means we can raise our academic standards. That’s a good thing. Money came in, though not for the academic departments. What happens is that the state legislature, on which we depend for a chunk of our funding, gets most excited about a winning football program. Many of our legislators (Florida is particularly bad about this) deny evolution, the Big Bang, climate change. They don’t like scholars. We distrust eggheads. We’re more comfortable with meatheads. Howling for blood with 85,000 members of your tribe is more satisfying to most people than listening to a poet read his work. Can football and academics be uncoupled if college football fans and other members of the academic community demand it? Would you be one of those who demands it? Much as I’d love to think that professors could demand that universities divert resources and energy from football and basketball, we have very little power. In the sports economy (always far bigger than the academic economy) we’re replaceable. The people with the power are the ones who buy the tickets. And the parents of kids who play the game. You can’t have a game without players and if more parents decide that their kid isn’t going to endanger his body and brain, that might force a conversation, maybe even change. But until we stop telling poor kids that being a hot-shit athlete — instead of a hot-shit physicist or coder — is your ticket to the American Dream, underfunded high schools in places like Cairo, Georgia; Hoover, Alabama; Batteville, Mississippi and the less salubrious parts of Miami will continue to stress playing over studying. I hate to sound like Donald Trump, but in America, money wins. Football makes money. Until colleges and the NCAA start having to pay out gigantic dollars in the lawsuits over the exploitation of young people’s labor, as well as wrecked brains and bodies, not much will improve. This will take a long, long time. It’s like climate change: most of us know it’s real. We know it’s dangerous. But we’re comfortable living the way we do, with coal plants spitting out nasty stuff but giving us cheap energy. We’d rather the scientists come up with a way to somehow fix the planet. That’s easier than changing our destructive behavior. In football, we’ll assume that somebody will make a better helmet. Or more padding. Or something. That’s easier than actually confronting reality. Americans aren’t comfortable with too much reality.For those fans tortured by the moral quandaries that now surround the multi-billion dollar college football industry — quandaries that begin with an unpaid workforce and proceed all the way to potential brain damage — Diane Roberts’ new book will offer little solace. "Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America" is a penetrating examination of how and why football has infiltrated our system of higher education, and what role it serves at a school like Florida State University, where Roberts has taught English and creative writing for eight years. (She spent another fifteen at the gridiron-gaga University of Alabama.) The kicker is that Roberts, an avowed feminist who contributes to National Public Radio and The New York Times, is a passionate fan of the Seminoles. In the midst of another glorious and thus far undefeated season for FSU, Roberts sat down with Salon to discuss what her new book says about old loyalties. Early on in "Tribal" you talk about how fandom “takes the edge off this painful self-examination, offering a kind of energetic clarity.” But the book complicates the experience of fandom, by suggesting all the toxic attitudes and outcomes football fosters. Does the game still provide you with that clarity? I can still disappear into the hold-your-breath moment of the game. I holler. I cheer. I sing. I clap. If I’m home watching on television, I coach. I’m really good at calling plays when nobody can hear me. It’s so comfortable and fine to belong, to be part of the tribe, to know that the people around you in the stadium — people who don’t see the world as you do, who might hate your politics — will share the general triumph when your guys score. For a moment, you’re all one family. It’s why people join churches, political parties, sororities, fraternities, gangs, book clubs. Most of us live tangled in paradox. Loving a college football team is simple and comforting — even when that team loses. When I’m praying that FSU’s quarterback can actually get the ball to that open receiver, I forget all about climate change, Syria and the NRA. When the ball lands in the boy’s waiting hands, the world falls away. Joy takes over. As a devout fan for many years, I get it. But can I just ask why you decided to open this particular can of worms? Because it’s my can of worms. I’m trying to figure out how and why this absurd (and gorgeous and thrilling and destructive) game has such a hold on me and other people. I’m particularly interested in the way we often love things that aren’t good for us: chocolate, booze, narcissists, football. I’m also a product of my culture — a culture I love and celebrate, a culture I deplore and critique, a culture I also try to understand so that its less attractive aspects (those little issues with racism, sexism, glorified violence and the like, all deep-rooted in the history of America and, particularly, the South) don’t prevail unchallenged. Maybe I’m trying to have my tailgate and eat it, too. I dissect the game, disparage it and yet keep on consuming. It’s a part of me. Sometimes I suspect I’m just creating a cover story that allows me to feed my addiction. You know, like some fundamentalist who assures the faithful that he’s an expert on sin; he’s studied the decadent works of secular society and can declare that, Yes! It’s all filth and wickedness! As a “feminist with a football problem” how do you feel about cheering for Jameis Winston, the FSU quarterback famously accused of raping a classmate? You write about the accusations, and the negligent police investigation of those accusations, with such disgust. Do you feel that same disgust toward the accused? I still don’t know what to think. Winston plays with such joy and grace (I will admit to sneaking a look at him quarterbacking the Tampa Bay Bucs). He’s an extraordinary athlete. I think he’s also a bit of an idiot. Most young men are idiots. It’s not entirely their fault: their brains don’t get fully formed until they’re in their late twenties, especially the judgment centers. Thanks to the half-assed investigation carried out by the Tallahassee cops and the collusion of the athletic department, we’ll never know if Jameis committed rape. Erica Kinsman thinks he did, though her story was not terribly credible in some ways. Clearly something happened that distressed her. I hate to get all postmodern on you, but it may be that each kid is utterly convinced that he or she is telling the truth. As a college professor for more than 20 years, I can say with authority that 19 and 20 year-old boys are the stupidest creatures on the planet. One of the most fascinating sections of "Tribal" is the investigation of so-called “muscular Christianity.” Can you tell the folks at home what it is and how it fits into America’s football addiction? I always wondered about all the praying and the thanking the Lord for a touchdown and Tim Tebow advertising Bible verses in his eye-black. I mean, I grew up in the South, where people would say Jesus is Love, then go nuts for a vicious open-field tackle. We went to football on Saturday and divine service on Sunday, often wearing the same kind of clothes — this was back when we dressed properly for a game. But the knitting of Church and football has increased over the past 20 or 30 years, along with the rise of the Evangelicals in American society. Clemson University coach Dabo Swinney is aggressively Christian, even letting one of his players get baptized on the 50-yard-line during practice, never mind that Clemson is a state school. Swinney’s not alone. Many college football teams have chaplains, often hired by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes but given offices on campus and allowed to travel with the team. Many coaches take their players to church. Bobby Bowden at Florida State was completely unapologetic about it. He saw his job as saving souls as well as winning championships. In Victorian times, certain manly types, including the writer Thomas Hughes, worried that the Anglican Church was becoming “feminized,” with gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild and Victorian angels who looked like cuddly nannies. He favored a badass Jesus, the Jesus who kicks over the money-changers’s tables, eats your lunch and makes you say thank you. Hughes created a hero, Tom Brown, who read just enough to graduate college but played a lot of sports: rugby-football especially. The exemplary Christian is not a flesh-denying weedy saint starving to death in a desert hut, but a buff, tough, butt-kicking mother who takes up the white man’s burden with a “gun in one hand and a Bible in the other.” Theodore Roosevelt, who admired the British Empire and wanted some of that stuff for the United States, pushed Muscular Christianity as the path for the true American manly man. Sports channeled sexual desire into athletic prowess. Roosevelt particularly loved football, which he thought built character through bone-cracking tackles. The South took to football like crazy, knotting sports and religion even more tightly. These days, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, with its thousands of chapters, keeps Muscular Christianity thriving. Peace, love and understanding are all fine, but beating the hell out of your opponent on the gridiron makes Jesus smile. As a college professor, what you make of football’s influence on the mission of higher education? Does it trouble you that most Americans think of FSU as a football team, not a college? I hate that people think FSU is nothing but football. When I taught at the University of Alabama, I hated that people associated it only with football, too — that and George Wallace standing “in the schoolhouse door.” FSU should be known as the site of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Or the home of Carlisle Floyd, America’s pre-eminent opera composer. UA has great schools of law and journalism and a famous Shakespeare program. Doesn’t matter. It’s all Bear Bryant and Bobby Bowden, Jameis Winston, Roll Tide and rapey players. It ain’t fair and it ain’t right, but it’s reality. I don’t see how we change it until we uncouple big money sport from big educational institutions. How we do that uncoupling beats me. The NCAA will have to go — that really will happen in maybe the next decade or so. Then football will have to change as a result of years of lawsuits by people harmed by brain damage. Maybe then we’ll decide that college teams are NFL farm teams. It’s hard to say that football serves any kind of educational mission. Deion Sanders didn’t bother to go to class his last season of playing for FSU. Much as I’d love to holler that the football program takes money away from the library, it doesn’t really. When FSU won the National Championship in 2013, applications for admission went up quite a bit. This means we can raise our academic standards. That’s a good thing. Money came in, though not for the academic departments. What happens is that the state legislature, on which we depend for a chunk of our funding, gets most excited about a winning football program. Many of our legislators (Florida is particularly bad about this) deny evolution, the Big Bang, climate change. They don’t like scholars. We distrust eggheads. We’re more comfortable with meatheads. Howling for blood with 85,000 members of your tribe is more satisfying to most people than listening to a poet read his work. Can football and academics be uncoupled if college football fans and other members of the academic community demand it? Would you be one of those who demands it? Much as I’d love to think that professors could demand that universities divert resources and energy from football and basketball, we have very little power. In the sports economy (always far bigger than the academic economy) we’re replaceable. The people with the power are the ones who buy the tickets. And the parents of kids who play the game. You can’t have a game without players and if more parents decide that their kid isn’t going to endanger his body and brain, that might force a conversation, maybe even change. But until we stop telling poor kids that being a hot-shit athlete — instead of a hot-shit physicist or coder — is your ticket to the American Dream, underfunded high schools in places like Cairo, Georgia; Hoover, Alabama; Batteville, Mississippi and the less salubrious parts of Miami will continue to stress playing over studying. I hate to sound like Donald Trump, but in America, money wins. Football makes money. Until colleges and the NCAA start having to pay out gigantic dollars in the lawsuits over the exploitation of young people’s labor, as well as wrecked brains and bodies, not much will improve. This will take a long, long time. It’s like climate change: most of us know it’s real. We know it’s dangerous. But we’re comfortable living the way we do, with coal plants spitting out nasty stuff but giving us cheap energy. We’d rather the scientists come up with a way to somehow fix the planet. That’s easier than changing our destructive behavior. In football, we’ll assume that somebody will make a better helmet. Or more padding. Or something. That’s easier than actually confronting reality. Americans aren’t comfortable with too much reality.For those fans tortured by the moral quandaries that now surround the multi-billion dollar college football industry — quandaries that begin with an unpaid workforce and proceed all the way to potential brain damage — Diane Roberts’ new book will offer little solace. "Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America" is a penetrating examination of how and why football has infiltrated our system of higher education, and what role it serves at a school like Florida State University, where Roberts has taught English and creative writing for eight years. (She spent another fifteen at the gridiron-gaga University of Alabama.) The kicker is that Roberts, an avowed feminist who contributes to National Public Radio and The New York Times, is a passionate fan of the Seminoles. In the midst of another glorious and thus far undefeated season for FSU, Roberts sat down with Salon to discuss what her new book says about old loyalties. Early on in "Tribal" you talk about how fandom “takes the edge off this painful self-examination, offering a kind of energetic clarity.” But the book complicates the experience of fandom, by suggesting all the toxic attitudes and outcomes football fosters. Does the game still provide you with that clarity? I can still disappear into the hold-your-breath moment of the game. I holler. I cheer. I sing. I clap. If I’m home watching on television, I coach. I’m really good at calling plays when nobody can hear me. It’s so comfortable and fine to belong, to be part of the tribe, to know that the people around you in the stadium — people who don’t see the world as you do, who might hate your politics — will share the general triumph when your guys score. For a moment, you’re all one family. It’s why people join churches, political parties, sororities, fraternities, gangs, book clubs. Most of us live tangled in paradox. Loving a college football team is simple and comforting — even when that team loses. When I’m praying that FSU’s quarterback can actually get the ball to that open receiver, I forget all about climate change, Syria and the NRA. When the ball lands in the boy’s waiting hands, the world falls away. Joy takes over. As a devout fan for many years, I get it. But can I just ask why you decided to open this particular can of worms? Because it’s my can of worms. I’m trying to figure out how and why this absurd (and gorgeous and thrilling and destructive) game has such a hold on me and other people. I’m particularly interested in the way we often love things that aren’t good for us: chocolate, booze, narcissists, football. I’m also a product of my culture — a culture I love and celebrate, a culture I deplore and critique, a culture I also try to understand so that its less attractive aspects (those little issues with racism, sexism, glorified violence and the like, all deep-rooted in the history of America and, particularly, the South) don’t prevail unchallenged. Maybe I’m trying to have my tailgate and eat it, too. I dissect the game, disparage it and yet keep on consuming. It’s a part of me. Sometimes I suspect I’m just creating a cover story that allows me to feed my addiction. You know, like some fundamentalist who assures the faithful that he’s an expert on sin; he’s studied the decadent works of secular society and can declare that, Yes! It’s all filth and wickedness! As a “feminist with a football problem” how do you feel about cheering for Jameis Winston, the FSU quarterback famously accused of raping a classmate? You write about the accusations, and the negligent police investigation of those accusations, with such disgust. Do you feel that same disgust toward the accused? I still don’t know what to think. Winston plays with such joy and grace (I will admit to sneaking a look at him quarterbacking the Tampa Bay Bucs). He’s an extraordinary athlete. I think he’s also a bit of an idiot. Most young men are idiots. It’s not entirely their fault: their brains don’t get fully formed until they’re in their late twenties, especially the judgment centers. Thanks to the half-assed investigation carried out by the Tallahassee cops and the collusion of the athletic department, we’ll never know if Jameis committed rape. Erica Kinsman thinks he did, though her story was not terribly credible in some ways. Clearly something happened that distressed her. I hate to get all postmodern on you, but it may be that each kid is utterly convinced that he or she is telling the truth. As a college professor for more than 20 years, I can say with authority that 19 and 20 year-old boys are the stupidest creatures on the planet. One of the most fascinating sections of "Tribal" is the investigation of so-called “muscular Christianity.” Can you tell the folks at home what it is and how it fits into America’s football addiction? I always wondered about all the praying and the thanking the Lord for a touchdown and Tim Tebow advertising Bible verses in his eye-black. I mean, I grew up in the South, where people would say Jesus is Love, then go nuts for a vicious open-field tackle. We went to football on Saturday and divine service on Sunday, often wearing the same kind of clothes — this was back when we dressed properly for a game. But the knitting of Church and football has increased over the past 20 or 30 years, along with the rise of the Evangelicals in American society. Clemson University coach Dabo Swinney is aggressively Christian, even letting one of his players get baptized on the 50-yard-line during practice, never mind that Clemson is a state school. Swinney’s not alone. Many college football teams have chaplains, often hired by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes but given offices on campus and allowed to travel with the team. Many coaches take their players to church. Bobby Bowden at Florida State was completely unapologetic about it. He saw his job as saving souls as well as winning championships. In Victorian times, certain manly types, including the writer Thomas Hughes, worried that the Anglican Church was becoming “feminized,” with gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild and Victorian angels who looked like cuddly nannies. He favored a badass Jesus, the Jesus who kicks over the money-changers’s tables, eats your lunch and makes you say thank you. Hughes created a hero, Tom Brown, who read just enough to graduate college but played a lot of sports: rugby-football especially. The exemplary Christian is not a flesh-denying weedy saint starving to death in a desert hut, but a buff, tough, butt-kicking mother who takes up the white man’s burden with a “gun in one hand and a Bible in the other.” Theodore Roosevelt, who admired the British Empire and wanted some of that stuff for the United States, pushed Muscular Christianity as the path for the true American manly man. Sports channeled sexual desire into athletic prowess. Roosevelt particularly loved football, which he thought built character through bone-cracking tackles. The South took to football like crazy, knotting sports and religion even more tightly. These days, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, with its thousands of chapters, keeps Muscular Christianity thriving. Peace, love and understanding are all fine, but beating the hell out of your opponent on the gridiron makes Jesus smile. As a college professor, what you make of football’s influence on the mission of higher education? Does it trouble you that most Americans think of FSU as a football team, not a college? I hate that people think FSU is nothing but football. When I taught at the University of Alabama, I hated that people associated it only with football, too — that and George Wallace standing “in the schoolhouse door.” FSU should be known as the site of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Or the home of Carlisle Floyd, America’s pre-eminent opera composer. UA has great schools of law and journalism and a famous Shakespeare program. Doesn’t matter. It’s all Bear Bryant and Bobby Bowden, Jameis Winston, Roll Tide and rapey players. It ain’t fair and it ain’t right, but it’s reality. I don’t see how we change it until we uncouple big money sport from big educational institutions. How we do that uncoupling beats me. The NCAA will have to go — that really will happen in maybe the next decade or so. Then football will have to change as a result of years of lawsuits by people harmed by brain damage. Maybe then we’ll decide that college teams are NFL farm teams. It’s hard to say that football serves any kind of educational mission. Deion Sanders didn’t bother to go to class his last season of playing for FSU. Much as I’d love to holler that the football program takes money away from the library, it doesn’t really. When FSU won the National Championship in 2013, applications for admission went up quite a bit. This means we can raise our academic standards. That’s a good thing. Money came in, though not for the academic departments. What happens is that the state legislature, on which we depend for a chunk of our funding, gets most excited about a winning football program. Many of our legislators (Florida is particularly bad about this) deny evolution, the Big Bang, climate change. They don’t like scholars. We distrust eggheads. We’re more comfortable with meatheads. Howling for blood with 85,000 members of your tribe is more satisfying to most people than listening to a poet read his work. Can football and academics be uncoupled if college football fans and other members of the academic community demand it? Would you be one of those who demands it? Much as I’d love to think that professors could demand that universities divert resources and energy from football and basketball, we have very little power. In the sports economy (always far bigger than the academic economy) we’re replaceable. The people with the power are the ones who buy the tickets. And the parents of kids who play the game. You can’t have a game without players and if more parents decide that their kid isn’t going to endanger his body and brain, that might force a conversation, maybe even change. But until we stop telling poor kids that being a hot-shit athlete — instead of a hot-shit physicist or coder — is your ticket to the American Dream, underfunded high schools in places like Cairo, Georgia; Hoover, Alabama; Batteville, Mississippi and the less salubrious parts of Miami will continue to stress playing over studying. I hate to sound like Donald Trump, but in America, money wins. Football makes money. Until colleges and the NCAA start having to pay out gigantic dollars in the lawsuits over the exploitation of young people’s labor, as well as wrecked brains and bodies, not much will improve. This will take a long, long time. It’s like climate change: most of us know it’s real. We know it’s dangerous. But we’re comfortable living the way we do, with coal plants spitting out nasty stuff but giving us cheap energy. We’d rather the scientists come up with a way to somehow fix the planet. That’s easier than changing our destructive behavior. In football, we’ll assume that somebody will make a better helmet. Or more padding. Or something. That’s easier than actually confronting reality. Americans aren’t comfortable with too much reality.

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Let’s make the banks serve us: How the government subsidizes the super-rich, while we pay the overdraft fees

The United States has two personal banking systems. One of these systems is carefully regulated. It benefits from substantial government subsidies, and it offers extensive protections to consumers. The other system serves the poor. “One of the great ironies in American life is that the less money you have, the more you have to pay to use it,” writes Mehrsa Baradaran at the beginning of her new book, "How the Other Half Banks." Baradaran, a law professor at the University of Georgia, is keying in on a deep social inequity: for millions of Americans, the main options for basic banking services are payday lenders and check cashers. These services charge exorbitant rates and fees. In many states, they’re barely regulated. They form an exploitative shadow market to the brick-and-mortar, federally-subsidized-and-guaranteed banks that serve more affluent Americans. Baradaran is unconvinced that the private sector can offer good banking services to low-income Americans. Other than Wal-Mart, few companies are even trying. In "How the Other Half Banks," Baradaran looks for another option — ideally, an institution with a national network of locations already in place and a commitment to public service. If only we had an institution like that! And, of course, we do: the United States Postal Service. The idea isn’t outlandish: a number of countries have postal banks. The United States did, too, from 1911-1967. The Postal Service itself has suggested this idea, in a 2014 white paper, and Bernie Sanders expressed support for postal banking in a recent interview. The Postal Service could offer low-cost checking services, and perhaps even affordable loans. Bank access is a social issue that rarely gets attention in national policy debates. Baradaran is trying to change that. Over the phone, she spoke with Salon about post office lines, bank bailouts and why banking services are a bit like healthcare. If we were to ask Bank of America executives why they don't serve a huge chunk of America, how would they explain it? It’s just not their model. It’s incredibly expensive to service a small deposit. They would say, “Look, it’s not profitable for us, and we would lose money if we went after these deposits.” What about community banks? They have the very same profitability problem as Bank of America. They’ve followed the big banks out of these areas into higher profits, which are big loans, syndicates, huge commercial loans. The deposit area is just not a profitable business anymore, especially small deposits and small loans. Still, it’s possible to open a small account at most banks. What holds so many people back? Fees have a way of repelling small depositors, which I think is mainly the point. You put $100 in a bank, and you have to keep drawing it out, and you get a $35 dollar fee every time it goes below a certain number. So, one, it’s a rational decision, if you have small deposits or volatile deposits. Two, there are substantial cultural barriers. Banks for years have had these marble buildings. That’s a real sort of class barrier — purposely so. A lot of people speak a different language and don’t feel comfortable in the bank. A lot of banks are open 9 to 5, and low-income folks work during those hours, and they need to come in later. Payday lenders, on the other hand, are in their neighborhoods. They’re open all night. They speak their language. They have this informality, [even though] they’re huge, publicly traded, very profitable organizations. Are there designers sitting at Bank of America or Citibank, thinking “How can we push away small depositors?” I don’t think it’s quite that sinister. But when a business does not want a certain customer, they will repel that customer. What does Walmart do when you overdraw on a Wal-Mart account? They just freeze it. They don’t charge you that $35, $45 fee. Now, Bank of America does do that. They could freeze it. But they don’t; they charge the fee. Why? I think it’s used as a repellent for the small accounts, whether they’re going to say it or not. How do payday lenders and check cashers justify their exorbitant fees? One argument that a lot of payday lenders use is that this is the market price. They’re taking a risk by lending to people who are low income, and the way lenders fight that risk is by high interest. But for a market price, you would see a competition on price with these payday lenders. You just don’t see that. Payday lenders will lend to you at the absolute maximum interest rate allowed by law per state. People aren’t shopping around; they’ve exhausted their friends and family, credit cards or whatever. They go to the payday lender as a lender of last resort. They would borrow at almost any price. As for the check cashers, why are they taking 10% off these checks? These are virtually risk-free. A lot of them are Social Security or military checks. The federal government isn’t going to default on their obligation to pay these checks. Now, [check cashers] do have to pay for the storefront, they have to pay for their personnel. It is the cost of doing business, certainly. Can we do it better? Can we do it by not making the poor pay for things that the rich just get for free? This reminds me of the debate over healthcare. Some people argue that healthcare works like a free market, and should be treated as such. The rebuttal is that when you’re dying or in terrible pain, you’re going to pay anything. It’s not like buying a car. We talk about banks being short on cash — illiquid. They have more liabilities than they have assets. The Federal Reserve gives money to banks that are just illiquid. When [these banks] have a cash crunch, they just need to pay out and they’ll make it. People, I think, can be seen the same way. A lot of people are just illiquid. They’ve got a cash crunch. I have to pay $500 to fix my car, and I’m good for it: if I can get my car, I can go back to work, I can make the money. But quickly that illiquidity can turn into bankruptcy. If I don’t get the $500, I have no income. But, if I get that $500, and it costs me $1,500 to pay down that $500 [loan], I’m all of a sudden bankrupt. Banks are the same way. You just have a cash crunch: if you have a bunch of depositors coming in your door, that’s a run. I can either get that money quickly as a loan, pay them out, and be safe — or my bank goes under. We help those banks out. But with people who are financially dying, we say, “Tough. You should have been less stupid and made more money.” Whatever the cultural judgements are that we put on people with debt, we put it out harsher for the poor. In general, we tend to blame the debtor, not the creditor. Well, there definitely is a disdain for the banker and the moneylender, historically and today. We have a hatred of bankers, but we also, paradoxically, have a hatred of debtors. Rick Santelli, the Tea Party, you know: “These are despicable people; we don’t want to help them.” They talk about people borrowing from payday lenders as being stupid or shortsighted. That’s not the case. They’re using it to survive. Certainly, you see rage directed against Goldman Sachs and other large Wall Street firms. It’s more difficult to generate sustained political outrage about payday lenders or check cashers. You’ve got a collective action problem. Whenever the cost is borne by a population that is politically weak — these are politically voiceless people. How do you organize people who are being crushed by the load of life and poverty to really mount a serious effort against the payday lenders? The payday lenders are very organized. There’s a very small group of organizations that have a really strong grasp on political parties and politicians at the state level and the federal level. Access to credit is a necessity for healthy communities. Is there a right to credit, though? I don't think credit is a right, in the way that we think of [the concept]. Access to credit for those who are creditworthy is part of the democratic principles of this country. There shouldn’t be false barriers or political barriers to access to credit. And certainly the state shouldn't favor certain credit institutions and their customers as opposed to others. The federal government builds a foundation for the banks it regulates. You have this huge federal subsidy — and to even call it a subsidy, it’s like calling the wheels on your car a bonus feature. Without the state, these banks do not exist. So you have this federal government foundation on top of which the banking system rests, and then you've got a huge portion of the population that is totally left out of that government largesse. That becomes a selective democracy: when you have so much taxpayer money funding a system that purposefully leaves out those too poor to bank, I think it’s a social, a political problem. It’s not an economic problem any longer. So is Wal-Mart’s bank the solution? It could be. It seems like we're going that way. Look, we're in the world of national banking. Community banking has been dying since the '80s. I wish that it hadn't happened, but that is the world we live in. We are in a national banking era. So we either outsource the needs of the low-income to Wal-Mart, or we bring in a government option or a public option, which I think the Post Office is incredibly well suited for. What makes the Post Office able to bank this way, when others can’t? I think Wal-Mart can do it or the Post Office can do it — those are our choices. You need a large institution; banking has become an economy of scale sort of business. The Post Office could do it, because it’s located everywhere that banks are not located. It’s a community institution, and one of the last relics of the federal government in communities. Once Wal-Mart learns how to turn a profit, we worry about what happens to their customers. Wal-Mart has a tendency to come into communities, underprice everyone, and then jack up prices after everyone else has gone out of business. Whereas the Post Office is still a not-for-profit institution. So let's say I'm making $1,500 dollars each month. I'm breaking even most of the time, but it’s a close call. I decide to start banking with the Post Office. What would that look like? One thing: you don't have to pay ten percent of your check just to cash it, like you would at the check casher. This is my proposal, not something that the Post Office is considering, but how would lending work? You're breaking even, but one month you have an extra expense: your kid gets sick, your car breaks down, you need $500. You can go to a payday lender, and when all is said and done you end up paying 400 percent interest, you've rolled it over several times, and you're in debt. Or you go to the Post Office and get a $500 loan. They can price that at a much cheaper rate — something closer to 10 percent interest. One thing the Post Office can do to protect themselves is to garnish your tax return if necessary. Where payday lenders will hunt you and spend a ton of money collecting that loan, the Post Office can use their position as a government entity to lower their cost of collection. Could the Post Office actually handle this kind of expansion? Would the lines just get even longer? They'll have ATMs, they'll have online banking, right? Any sort of services that banks offer, the Post Office can do. We really are thinking about a modern banking network that's just administered by the Post Office. Now can they handle it? I think so. I mean, if Wal-Mart employees can handle it, postal workers can handle it. They get mail to everyone's door every single day. And yes, there are lines, but they’re doing it: they’re self-sustaining and they’re efficient. It’s funny — I keep thinking of this as the government banking option versus the free market banking option. But it’s not like we have any banking system that’s somehow free of government influence. There are all sorts of ways that our financial services can be improved by market innovations. I think that's all fantastic, right? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the government-supported banking system. Why is it that the poor, for their financial service and credit needs, have to rely on non-government lenders that end up charging them market or above-market rates? And then we have this hugely government-supported banking industry that doesn't operate in a normal market, that operates with huge taxpayer wealth and federal subsidies, that ends up servicing the rest of us. So this isn’t creeping government socialism? If you think we have a private banking market now, you're wrong. If it were truly a private market industry, you would have had a lot of bank failures in 2008. Banks are special. To say, “Well, this new thing — postal banking or public options — that's socialism,” is a misunderstanding of how banks actually work.The United States has two personal banking systems. One of these systems is carefully regulated. It benefits from substantial government subsidies, and it offers extensive protections to consumers. The other system serves the poor. “One of the great ironies in American life is that the less money you have, the more you have to pay to use it,” writes Mehrsa Baradaran at the beginning of her new book, "How the Other Half Banks." Baradaran, a law professor at the University of Georgia, is keying in on a deep social inequity: for millions of Americans, the main options for basic banking services are payday lenders and check cashers. These services charge exorbitant rates and fees. In many states, they’re barely regulated. They form an exploitative shadow market to the brick-and-mortar, federally-subsidized-and-guaranteed banks that serve more affluent Americans. Baradaran is unconvinced that the private sector can offer good banking services to low-income Americans. Other than Wal-Mart, few companies are even trying. In "How the Other Half Banks," Baradaran looks for another option — ideally, an institution with a national network of locations already in place and a commitment to public service. If only we had an institution like that! And, of course, we do: the United States Postal Service. The idea isn’t outlandish: a number of countries have postal banks. The United States did, too, from 1911-1967. The Postal Service itself has suggested this idea, in a 2014 white paper, and Bernie Sanders expressed support for postal banking in a recent interview. The Postal Service could offer low-cost checking services, and perhaps even affordable loans. Bank access is a social issue that rarely gets attention in national policy debates. Baradaran is trying to change that. Over the phone, she spoke with Salon about post office lines, bank bailouts and why banking services are a bit like healthcare. If we were to ask Bank of America executives why they don't serve a huge chunk of America, how would they explain it? It’s just not their model. It’s incredibly expensive to service a small deposit. They would say, “Look, it’s not profitable for us, and we would lose money if we went after these deposits.” What about community banks? They have the very same profitability problem as Bank of America. They’ve followed the big banks out of these areas into higher profits, which are big loans, syndicates, huge commercial loans. The deposit area is just not a profitable business anymore, especially small deposits and small loans. Still, it’s possible to open a small account at most banks. What holds so many people back? Fees have a way of repelling small depositors, which I think is mainly the point. You put $100 in a bank, and you have to keep drawing it out, and you get a $35 dollar fee every time it goes below a certain number. So, one, it’s a rational decision, if you have small deposits or volatile deposits. Two, there are substantial cultural barriers. Banks for years have had these marble buildings. That’s a real sort of class barrier — purposely so. A lot of people speak a different language and don’t feel comfortable in the bank. A lot of banks are open 9 to 5, and low-income folks work during those hours, and they need to come in later. Payday lenders, on the other hand, are in their neighborhoods. They’re open all night. They speak their language. They have this informality, [even though] they’re huge, publicly traded, very profitable organizations. Are there designers sitting at Bank of America or Citibank, thinking “How can we push away small depositors?” I don’t think it’s quite that sinister. But when a business does not want a certain customer, they will repel that customer. What does Walmart do when you overdraw on a Wal-Mart account? They just freeze it. They don’t charge you that $35, $45 fee. Now, Bank of America does do that. They could freeze it. But they don’t; they charge the fee. Why? I think it’s used as a repellent for the small accounts, whether they’re going to say it or not. How do payday lenders and check cashers justify their exorbitant fees? One argument that a lot of payday lenders use is that this is the market price. They’re taking a risk by lending to people who are low income, and the way lenders fight that risk is by high interest. But for a market price, you would see a competition on price with these payday lenders. You just don’t see that. Payday lenders will lend to you at the absolute maximum interest rate allowed by law per state. People aren’t shopping around; they’ve exhausted their friends and family, credit cards or whatever. They go to the payday lender as a lender of last resort. They would borrow at almost any price. As for the check cashers, why are they taking 10% off these checks? These are virtually risk-free. A lot of them are Social Security or military checks. The federal government isn’t going to default on their obligation to pay these checks. Now, [check cashers] do have to pay for the storefront, they have to pay for their personnel. It is the cost of doing business, certainly. Can we do it better? Can we do it by not making the poor pay for things that the rich just get for free? This reminds me of the debate over healthcare. Some people argue that healthcare works like a free market, and should be treated as such. The rebuttal is that when you’re dying or in terrible pain, you’re going to pay anything. It’s not like buying a car. We talk about banks being short on cash — illiquid. They have more liabilities than they have assets. The Federal Reserve gives money to banks that are just illiquid. When [these banks] have a cash crunch, they just need to pay out and they’ll make it. People, I think, can be seen the same way. A lot of people are just illiquid. They’ve got a cash crunch. I have to pay $500 to fix my car, and I’m good for it: if I can get my car, I can go back to work, I can make the money. But quickly that illiquidity can turn into bankruptcy. If I don’t get the $500, I have no income. But, if I get that $500, and it costs me $1,500 to pay down that $500 [loan], I’m all of a sudden bankrupt. Banks are the same way. You just have a cash crunch: if you have a bunch of depositors coming in your door, that’s a run. I can either get that money quickly as a loan, pay them out, and be safe — or my bank goes under. We help those banks out. But with people who are financially dying, we say, “Tough. You should have been less stupid and made more money.” Whatever the cultural judgements are that we put on people with debt, we put it out harsher for the poor. In general, we tend to blame the debtor, not the creditor. Well, there definitely is a disdain for the banker and the moneylender, historically and today. We have a hatred of bankers, but we also, paradoxically, have a hatred of debtors. Rick Santelli, the Tea Party, you know: “These are despicable people; we don’t want to help them.” They talk about people borrowing from payday lenders as being stupid or shortsighted. That’s not the case. They’re using it to survive. Certainly, you see rage directed against Goldman Sachs and other large Wall Street firms. It’s more difficult to generate sustained political outrage about payday lenders or check cashers. You’ve got a collective action problem. Whenever the cost is borne by a population that is politically weak — these are politically voiceless people. How do you organize people who are being crushed by the load of life and poverty to really mount a serious effort against the payday lenders? The payday lenders are very organized. There’s a very small group of organizations that have a really strong grasp on political parties and politicians at the state level and the federal level. Access to credit is a necessity for healthy communities. Is there a right to credit, though? I don't think credit is a right, in the way that we think of [the concept]. Access to credit for those who are creditworthy is part of the democratic principles of this country. There shouldn’t be false barriers or political barriers to access to credit. And certainly the state shouldn't favor certain credit institutions and their customers as opposed to others. The federal government builds a foundation for the banks it regulates. You have this huge federal subsidy — and to even call it a subsidy, it’s like calling the wheels on your car a bonus feature. Without the state, these banks do not exist. So you have this federal government foundation on top of which the banking system rests, and then you've got a huge portion of the population that is totally left out of that government largesse. That becomes a selective democracy: when you have so much taxpayer money funding a system that purposefully leaves out those too poor to bank, I think it’s a social, a political problem. It’s not an economic problem any longer. So is Wal-Mart’s bank the solution? It could be. It seems like we're going that way. Look, we're in the world of national banking. Community banking has been dying since the '80s. I wish that it hadn't happened, but that is the world we live in. We are in a national banking era. So we either outsource the needs of the low-income to Wal-Mart, or we bring in a government option or a public option, which I think the Post Office is incredibly well suited for. What makes the Post Office able to bank this way, when others can’t? I think Wal-Mart can do it or the Post Office can do it — those are our choices. You need a large institution; banking has become an economy of scale sort of business. The Post Office could do it, because it’s located everywhere that banks are not located. It’s a community institution, and one of the last relics of the federal government in communities. Once Wal-Mart learns how to turn a profit, we worry about what happens to their customers. Wal-Mart has a tendency to come into communities, underprice everyone, and then jack up prices after everyone else has gone out of business. Whereas the Post Office is still a not-for-profit institution. So let's say I'm making $1,500 dollars each month. I'm breaking even most of the time, but it’s a close call. I decide to start banking with the Post Office. What would that look like? One thing: you don't have to pay ten percent of your check just to cash it, like you would at the check casher. This is my proposal, not something that the Post Office is considering, but how would lending work? You're breaking even, but one month you have an extra expense: your kid gets sick, your car breaks down, you need $500. You can go to a payday lender, and when all is said and done you end up paying 400 percent interest, you've rolled it over several times, and you're in debt. Or you go to the Post Office and get a $500 loan. They can price that at a much cheaper rate — something closer to 10 percent interest. One thing the Post Office can do to protect themselves is to garnish your tax return if necessary. Where payday lenders will hunt you and spend a ton of money collecting that loan, the Post Office can use their position as a government entity to lower their cost of collection. Could the Post Office actually handle this kind of expansion? Would the lines just get even longer? They'll have ATMs, they'll have online banking, right? Any sort of services that banks offer, the Post Office can do. We really are thinking about a modern banking network that's just administered by the Post Office. Now can they handle it? I think so. I mean, if Wal-Mart employees can handle it, postal workers can handle it. They get mail to everyone's door every single day. And yes, there are lines, but they’re doing it: they’re self-sustaining and they’re efficient. It’s funny — I keep thinking of this as the government banking option versus the free market banking option. But it’s not like we have any banking system that’s somehow free of government influence. There are all sorts of ways that our financial services can be improved by market innovations. I think that's all fantastic, right? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the government-supported banking system. Why is it that the poor, for their financial service and credit needs, have to rely on non-government lenders that end up charging them market or above-market rates? And then we have this hugely government-supported banking industry that doesn't operate in a normal market, that operates with huge taxpayer wealth and federal subsidies, that ends up servicing the rest of us. So this isn’t creeping government socialism? If you think we have a private banking market now, you're wrong. If it were truly a private market industry, you would have had a lot of bank failures in 2008. Banks are special. To say, “Well, this new thing — postal banking or public options — that's socialism,” is a misunderstanding of how banks actually work.

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Speedy Ortiz: “The level of idiocy that is so widespread sometimes gets depressing”

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Benghazi, Joe McCarthy and the witch trials: Trey Gowdy’s farcical hearings tap into a deep, dark American current

Benghazi is many things to many people, but it’s not about Benghazi. What I mean is that the meme or mantra or ideological touchstone known as “Benghazi” has virtually nothing to do with the Libyan port city of that name, or what happened there in September 2012. (Which – can we just say this? – barely registers in the historical scale of American foreign-policy tragedies, blunders and miscalculations.) For the Republican Party and its agonized cadre of true believers, Benghazi is like Yoko Ono, in the legendary National Lampoon spoof from the early ’70s: a concept by which we measure our pain. The House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, before which Hillary Clinton testified for nearly 11 hours on Thursday, is not really investigating the Benghazi incident, in which Libyan militants overran a United States diplomatic compound and four Americans were killed. Or to put it another way, Gowdy’s committee is seeking the truth about Benghazi in the same sense that Joe McCarthy investigated actual Communist spies in the U.S. government, or that Cotton Mather pursued actual witches in Salem Village. Those things are all connected, at least in the nightmare imagination of the Benghazi-verse: If one of the committee members had had the temerity to denounce Clinton as a Communist and a witch (as well as a traitor and murderess and lesbian and whatever the hell else), the “Republican base” would have risen from its collective sofa and roared in Old Milwaukee-spumed delight. It must have been hard to resist. Nothing quite so revealing occurred, but it was revealing enough. To get back to history, Joe McCarthy genuinely feared the Reds and Cotton Mather feared the Devil; those guys may have been sociopaths, but they were not hypocrites. But like the Benghazi-hunters, both men were really after something else, something larger and more numinous and almost impossible to define. That fatal vagueness and sense of mission-creep was precisely what enabled Clinton to humiliate the Benghazi committee’s leading Republicans so thoroughly and repeatedly. She stuck to the putative subject matter, which largely does not interest them. To Gowdy’s most zealous followers on that committee and among the public, the Benghazi incident is not important in itself, despite the ritual utterances of patriotism and the semi-divine status accorded any American who dies in defense of the empire: Dulce et decorum est, and all that. Benghazi is important because of where the faithful believe it will lead, and what they hope it will prove. Let me hasten to add that Democratic loyalists who cast the Benghazi hearings as a purely partisan exercise aimed at sabotaging Clinton’s presidential campaign only reveal their own limitations. Do not misjudge the scale, ambition and imagination at work in the Benghazi myth! Gowdy forcefully rejected such insinuations at the opening of Thursday’s proceedings, telling Clinton, “Not a single member of this committee signed up to investigate you or your email.” Let’s give the chairman a point, or half a point, for irrelevantly dredging up the email scandal just in case we had forgotten about it, but in a sense he is correct: The true mission of the Benghazi committee goes far beyond a crude effort to destroy Hillary. It is much, much crazier than that. This was precisely what got Rep. Kevin McCarthy pitched into the Dumpster of history by the zealots of his own caucus. Sure, it was a media faux pas for the presumptive House Speaker to suggest that the Benghazi investigation he and John Boehner had authorized might have had a political agenda. Heaven forfend! But it was also, and far more importantly, too cynical a note for McCarthy to strike, at a moment when Republican true believers are fighting (as they see it) to save America’s soul. No, I'm serious. Defeating Clinton and electing a Republican president, while clearly desirable, are collateral benefits the GOP fire-breathers hope will flow from Benghazi fervor. But the driving force behind the Gowdy hearings, and the hard right’s inability to let go of the Benghazi meme in the face of widespread mockery, lies in the profound belief that America, or at least “America,” is isolated, persecuted and under constant attack. Such a belief may be objectively insane, not to mention historically and politically ludicrous, but if you think it does not exist or is not genuine, you simply haven’t paid attention to the last 40 years – or, we might say, to the last 400. Joe McCarthy and Cotton Mather represent earlier manifestations of the same tendency, immortalized by historian Richard Hofstadter as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter’s original essay was published in 1964, largely in response to the apocalyptic anti-Communism of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, which marked the birth of the New Right. Paranoia has come a long way. For all his nutso John Birch leanings, Goldwater hewed to a reasonably coherent set of libertarian principles; set against today’s Republican radicals he looks like Voltaire. In the 21st century, we see the paranoid style honed to near-perfection among a significant cadre of Americans – predominantly male and Southern, and almost entirely white – who are ideologically and geographically exiled from their own society but who see themselves, paradoxically or otherwise, as its spiritual inheritors and most ardent defenders. They perceive themselves surrounded on all sides, at home as around the world, by murderous, treasonous and corrosive anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism (and in many cases also by anti-white racism and anti-Christian bigotry). They discern those forces at work in the Democratic Party and the big cities and multiculturalism and Planned Parenthood and “political correctness”; in the spread of mosques and taco trucks and ambiguous gender assignments; in Black Lives Matter and the still-baffling black president with the funny name, in the stagnant or declining real incomes of the last several decades and the fact that the mightiest military superpower in the history of the world has not conclusively won a war since 1945. What Benghazi promised the paranoid faithful, or still promises – we can’t presume that one embarrassing hearing will bring an end to this charade – was a chance to turn the tide, to strip the scales from the eyes of their benighted and deluded fellow countrymen and reveal the scope of the hideous plot to destroy America. For the conspiratorial right-wing hive mind, Benghazi is the gate and the key to the gate, like H.P. Lovecraft’s ancient and indescribable entity Yog-Sothoth. But as with the One-in-All and All-in-One of the Lovecraftian universe, opening that gate leads only to madness and oblivion: What lies beyond is the “amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity,” otherwise known as the legislative agenda of the House Freedom Caucus. It’s important to stress that many “conservatives” (an especially ridiculous term of art in the contemporary American context) still believe they can win in a fair fight, if they can only overcome the mind-control tactics of the feminazis, socialists and Muslim-coddlers in the “liberal media.” For the Republican Party’s Beltway leadership and its financial backers among the plutocrat class, the equation clearly looks different. As I have previously argued, the Koch brothers’ many-stranded assault on democracy represents a sophisticated strategic response to the demographic challenges facing the GOP. As it becomes increasingly difficult for Republicans to win elections -- at least when a representative sample of the public shows up to vote -- the oligarchy’s most efficient path to hegemonic rule lies in paralyzing the political process, depressing or restricting voter turnout and making elections appear meaningless. Or, better still, making them become meaningless. Those tactics have produced the largest Republican congressional majority in more than 70 years, and have shifted the GOP’s ideological center of gravity sharply toward the Puritan right. As we’ve learned over the last few weeks, that is turning out to be a double-edged sword when it comes to the party’s ability to govern and its electoral future. The Tea Partyers and Boehner-scourgers and Benghazi-hunters elected in 2010 and 2014 are largely free of Machiavellian and/or Kochian cynicism and calculation. What they believe may be difficult to describe and impossible to achieve, but they believe it. They are men of principle (with a woman or two thrown in for effect), who were sent to Washington by “real Americans” to save the country from itself, by destroying it if necessary. To the ideologues of the Freedom Caucus and their public cohort, it is axiomatic that Benghazi, if properly understood, will reveal the perverted depths of the left-wing conspiracy to enfeeble America still further and enslave us to Sharia law and soccer and gender-neutral bathrooms. If polls suggest that a large majority of the public does not want Congress to shut down the government or slash “discretionary spending” to zero or cut taxes for billionaires even further or spend millions on a pointless investigation of a murky but minor three-year-old tragedy – well, those polls reflect the dire effects of leftist media brainwashing and Communist witchcraft. The exaggerated and enduring power of the paranoid right in American politics stems from a quality that is otherwise rare, and has been virtually extinct in the Democratic Party since 1972: They know they’re right and they know they will win, and all evidence to the contrary is simply ignored. Cotton Mather never repented of his crusade to drive Satan out of Massachusetts, and Joe McCarthy felt sure that history would vindicate his purge of imaginary Reds, even as he drank himself to death at age 48. (His ideological heirs have done their best: Consider McCarthy’s Wikipedia entry, which amounts to an extensive whitewashing of his legacy.) The paranoid style admits no doubt or ambiguity, let alone the possibility that the diabolical forces it perceives are nothing more than its own fears projected onto the world. Considered on its own dubious merits, Benghazi may look like a feeble parody of those more famous campaigns of persecution, one that is more likely to help Hillary Clinton and hurt the Republicans than the other way around. But even if the Gowdy hearings collapse and the issue fades away (which is no sure thing), “Benghazi” will always be with us. It marks the resurgence of a toxic and dangerous current that has flowed beneath American politics and culture since the first Europeans arrived on this continent, and finds itself newly empowered and militant. That current yearns for a final victory that reaches far beyond such petty matters as politics and elections, all the way to Salvation. Failing that, it will take the Day of Judgment.Benghazi is many things to many people, but it’s not about Benghazi. What I mean is that the meme or mantra or ideological touchstone known as “Benghazi” has virtually nothing to do with the Libyan port city of that name, or what happened there in September 2012. (Which – can we just say this? – barely registers in the historical scale of American foreign-policy tragedies, blunders and miscalculations.) For the Republican Party and its agonized cadre of true believers, Benghazi is like Yoko Ono, in the legendary National Lampoon spoof from the early ’70s: a concept by which we measure our pain. The House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, before which Hillary Clinton testified for nearly 11 hours on Thursday, is not really investigating the Benghazi incident, in which Libyan militants overran a United States diplomatic compound and four Americans were killed. Or to put it another way, Gowdy’s committee is seeking the truth about Benghazi in the same sense that Joe McCarthy investigated actual Communist spies in the U.S. government, or that Cotton Mather pursued actual witches in Salem Village. Those things are all connected, at least in the nightmare imagination of the Benghazi-verse: If one of the committee members had had the temerity to denounce Clinton as a Communist and a witch (as well as a traitor and murderess and lesbian and whatever the hell else), the “Republican base” would have risen from its collective sofa and roared in Old Milwaukee-spumed delight. It must have been hard to resist. Nothing quite so revealing occurred, but it was revealing enough. To get back to history, Joe McCarthy genuinely feared the Reds and Cotton Mather feared the Devil; those guys may have been sociopaths, but they were not hypocrites. But like the Benghazi-hunters, both men were really after something else, something larger and more numinous and almost impossible to define. That fatal vagueness and sense of mission-creep was precisely what enabled Clinton to humiliate the Benghazi committee’s leading Republicans so thoroughly and repeatedly. She stuck to the putative subject matter, which largely does not interest them. To Gowdy’s most zealous followers on that committee and among the public, the Benghazi incident is not important in itself, despite the ritual utterances of patriotism and the semi-divine status accorded any American who dies in defense of the empire: Dulce et decorum est, and all that. Benghazi is important because of where the faithful believe it will lead, and what they hope it will prove. Let me hasten to add that Democratic loyalists who cast the Benghazi hearings as a purely partisan exercise aimed at sabotaging Clinton’s presidential campaign only reveal their own limitations. Do not misjudge the scale, ambition and imagination at work in the Benghazi myth! Gowdy forcefully rejected such insinuations at the opening of Thursday’s proceedings, telling Clinton, “Not a single member of this committee signed up to investigate you or your email.” Let’s give the chairman a point, or half a point, for irrelevantly dredging up the email scandal just in case we had forgotten about it, but in a sense he is correct: The true mission of the Benghazi committee goes far beyond a crude effort to destroy Hillary. It is much, much crazier than that. This was precisely what got Rep. Kevin McCarthy pitched into the Dumpster of history by the zealots of his own caucus. Sure, it was a media faux pas for the presumptive House Speaker to suggest that the Benghazi investigation he and John Boehner had authorized might have had a political agenda. Heaven forfend! But it was also, and far more importantly, too cynical a note for McCarthy to strike, at a moment when Republican true believers are fighting (as they see it) to save America’s soul. No, I'm serious. Defeating Clinton and electing a Republican president, while clearly desirable, are collateral benefits the GOP fire-breathers hope will flow from Benghazi fervor. But the driving force behind the Gowdy hearings, and the hard right’s inability to let go of the Benghazi meme in the face of widespread mockery, lies in the profound belief that America, or at least “America,” is isolated, persecuted and under constant attack. Such a belief may be objectively insane, not to mention historically and politically ludicrous, but if you think it does not exist or is not genuine, you simply haven’t paid attention to the last 40 years – or, we might say, to the last 400. Joe McCarthy and Cotton Mather represent earlier manifestations of the same tendency, immortalized by historian Richard Hofstadter as “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Hofstadter’s original essay was published in 1964, largely in response to the apocalyptic anti-Communism of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, which marked the birth of the New Right. Paranoia has come a long way. For all his nutso John Birch leanings, Goldwater hewed to a reasonably coherent set of libertarian principles; set against today’s Republican radicals he looks like Voltaire. In the 21st century, we see the paranoid style honed to near-perfection among a significant cadre of Americans – predominantly male and Southern, and almost entirely white – who are ideologically and geographically exiled from their own society but who see themselves, paradoxically or otherwise, as its spiritual inheritors and most ardent defenders. They perceive themselves surrounded on all sides, at home as around the world, by murderous, treasonous and corrosive anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism (and in many cases also by anti-white racism and anti-Christian bigotry). They discern those forces at work in the Democratic Party and the big cities and multiculturalism and Planned Parenthood and “political correctness”; in the spread of mosques and taco trucks and ambiguous gender assignments; in Black Lives Matter and the still-baffling black president with the funny name, in the stagnant or declining real incomes of the last several decades and the fact that the mightiest military superpower in the history of the world has not conclusively won a war since 1945. What Benghazi promised the paranoid faithful, or still promises – we can’t presume that one embarrassing hearing will bring an end to this charade – was a chance to turn the tide, to strip the scales from the eyes of their benighted and deluded fellow countrymen and reveal the scope of the hideous plot to destroy America. For the conspiratorial right-wing hive mind, Benghazi is the gate and the key to the gate, like H.P. Lovecraft’s ancient and indescribable entity Yog-Sothoth. But as with the One-in-All and All-in-One of the Lovecraftian universe, opening that gate leads only to madness and oblivion: What lies beyond is the “amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity,” otherwise known as the legislative agenda of the House Freedom Caucus. It’s important to stress that many “conservatives” (an especially ridiculous term of art in the contemporary American context) still believe they can win in a fair fight, if they can only overcome the mind-control tactics of the feminazis, socialists and Muslim-coddlers in the “liberal media.” For the Republican Party’s Beltway leadership and its financial backers among the plutocrat class, the equation clearly looks different. As I have previously argued, the Koch brothers’ many-stranded assault on democracy represents a sophisticated strategic response to the demographic challenges facing the GOP. As it becomes increasingly difficult for Republicans to win elections -- at least when a representative sample of the public shows up to vote -- the oligarchy’s most efficient path to hegemonic rule lies in paralyzing the political process, depressing or restricting voter turnout and making elections appear meaningless. Or, better still, making them become meaningless. Those tactics have produced the largest Republican congressional majority in more than 70 years, and have shifted the GOP’s ideological center of gravity sharply toward the Puritan right. As we’ve learned over the last few weeks, that is turning out to be a double-edged sword when it comes to the party’s ability to govern and its electoral future. The Tea Partyers and Boehner-scourgers and Benghazi-hunters elected in 2010 and 2014 are largely free of Machiavellian and/or Kochian cynicism and calculation. What they believe may be difficult to describe and impossible to achieve, but they believe it. They are men of principle (with a woman or two thrown in for effect), who were sent to Washington by “real Americans” to save the country from itself, by destroying it if necessary. To the ideologues of the Freedom Caucus and their public cohort, it is axiomatic that Benghazi, if properly understood, will reveal the perverted depths of the left-wing conspiracy to enfeeble America still further and enslave us to Sharia law and soccer and gender-neutral bathrooms. If polls suggest that a large majority of the public does not want Congress to shut down the government or slash “discretionary spending” to zero or cut taxes for billionaires even further or spend millions on a pointless investigation of a murky but minor three-year-old tragedy – well, those polls reflect the dire effects of leftist media brainwashing and Communist witchcraft. The exaggerated and enduring power of the paranoid right in American politics stems from a quality that is otherwise rare, and has been virtually extinct in the Democratic Party since 1972: They know they’re right and they know they will win, and all evidence to the contrary is simply ignored. Cotton Mather never repented of his crusade to drive Satan out of Massachusetts, and Joe McCarthy felt sure that history would vindicate his purge of imaginary Reds, even as he drank himself to death at age 48. (His ideological heirs have done their best: Consider McCarthy’s Wikipedia entry, which amounts to an extensive whitewashing of his legacy.) The paranoid style admits no doubt or ambiguity, let alone the possibility that the diabolical forces it perceives are nothing more than its own fears projected onto the world. Considered on its own dubious merits, Benghazi may look like a feeble parody of those more famous campaigns of persecution, one that is more likely to help Hillary Clinton and hurt the Republicans than the other way around. But even if the Gowdy hearings collapse and the issue fades away (which is no sure thing), “Benghazi” will always be with us. It marks the resurgence of a toxic and dangerous current that has flowed beneath American politics and culture since the first Europeans arrived on this continent, and finds itself newly empowered and militant. That current yearns for a final victory that reaches far beyond such petty matters as politics and elections, all the way to Salvation. Failing that, it will take the Day of Judgment.

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