Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 987

October 7, 2015

Bob Dylan called me a “scurrilous little wretch with a hard-on for comedy”

In 1991 I was a struggling songwriter, teaching tennis in Encino, just up the 101 from Hollywood where I was living in a little studio apartment a couple blocks from Melrose. My big claim to fame was having given a few tennis lessons to Wilt Chamberlain, who would come to the park on the occasional afternoon. I taught him a nice slice serve. “I gotta practice now,” he said once. “It’s a little intimidating with the coach right here.” Meaning me. I wrote a few Bukowski-like poems about teaching Wilt. Mostly crazy fantasies about hanging out with him, cruising down Ventura Blvd. “Hey!” people would shout in the avenues of my mind, “Isn’t that Dan Bern and Wilt Chamberlain?!” In the evenings I would go and play little music gigs throughout Los Angeles. I had a steady Wednesday night spot at a Chinese joint on Fairfax called Genghis Cohen. I played there so much they put my name on the menu. “The Dan Bern Deal.” Szechuan green beans and Mongolian beef. A great combo, “The Dan Bern Deal.” The guy who ran the club was named Artie Wayne. He had run A&M’s publishing “for five minutes,” in the industry parlance. Legend was that he’d had a lighted dance floor installed in his office. “It ain’t a hit unless I can dance to it!” he’d crow. Sometimes Artie would mess with me. “Dan,” he’d pull me aside, two minutes before my set, “Bob Dylan’s coming tonight.” Artie knew I had a serious Dylan fixation. Maybe it was the harmonica rack I wore around my neck. Maybe it was the topical, talkin’ blues songs I sang. Maybe it was my Jewish midwestern roots and my nasal inflections. Maybe it was all of it. Artie knew how to get under my skin. I’d first been hit by Dylan, hard, when I was about 16. Up til then I’d mostly listened to the Beatles, and whatever happened to be on the radio. Then one day, this older guy, the husband of a co-worker of my Mom’s, played some Dylan records for me. “Here’s ‘Shelter from the Storm,’” he said. “Here’s ‘Blowing in the Wind.’” Immediately, my cello was toast. I got my Dad to buy me a guitar the next day. Even so, I didn’t really “get” what Dylan was on about until one summer day a few weeks later when I was home after my paint crew job at the college. I’d smoked a little dope, and was painting the door of my room. I had put “Blonde on Blonde” on the record player. Suddenly, as “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” began churning, I fell fully into the song. It was like Alice stepping into Wonderland. Every line Dylan sang meant something else! Every line was a sarcastic sneer! For the first time I’d heard something that sounded exactly how I felt. I started writing my own songs. I never looked back. After college I went to Chicago and started playing seven open mics a week. Soon I started to get my own gigs. The Earl of Old Town. Holstein’s. The No Exit. Legendary Chicago folk clubs. I printed up posters. “Topical and original folk and blues” they said. With a picture of a curly-haired Midwestern Jewish kid with a guitar and a harmonica rack. I was on my way. Ten years later, having migrated west, I was teaching tennis in Encino and still struggling. But I’d made a little headway. There was a buzz. The junior scouts from the major record companies, with no power to sign but nice suits and offices and business cards, were coming around. And I had a column in a little publication called “Song Talk.” My column was called “Verse-Chorus-Bridge.” I didn’t do any real reporting. I just made up characters, mostly based on the publishers and songwriters I was running into, and told fanciful tales of trying to make some headway into the cutthroat world of music and songwriting. One night I wrote a fake interview with Bob Dylan’s mom. I knew her name, so I used it. The Milli Vanilli scandal was fresh in the news, so I made up a “scandal” about Dylan not having actually written his songs. Turned out, I said, that his mom had written all of his songs. And I “interviewed” his mom. To great comic effect, I thought. They printed it, I had a laugh, and forgot all about it. Time rolled along. I almost had a record deal with Chameleon, an offshoot of Warner Bros., but it fell through. I got frustrated hanging around L.A. trying to get a record deal. I let go of my apartment, sold my car, bought a van, and started living the road life. For several years I had no home except my van, with a little dog for companionship. Along the way I got a record deal with Work Records, a part of Sony, and at long last started putting out records. Still, every time I thought I’d put the long shadow of Dylan behind me, it would loom up and engulf me again. Every new record I made, no matter how different it seemed to be from the last, brought on new comparisons to the man from Hibbing. When I’d started out, nothing was so flattering as “You know who you sound like? Bob Dylan!!” But it became increasingly frustrating. If I had a penny for every time I heard some Dylan comparison, I’d be a millionaire. At some point you see it coming before anyone even says anything. Eventually you make some kind of peace with such things. Mainly because you have to. Maybe you make jokes. “I sort of see Bob Dylan as the Dan Bern of the '60s,” I said once. I wrote a song, The “Talkin Woody, Bob, Bruce and Dan Blues,” where I break into Bruce Springsteen’s compound and try to serenade him, much as the young Dylan had done for an ailing Woody Guthrie.

I found The Boss asleep in bed Pillows piled up round his head I turned on the light, took off my coat Stuck a thermometer down his throat Said “Don’t talk….you look pale, Boss….not at all well!” I said “I wrote you a song called ‘Song to Bruce’ “With a tune I stole from one of yours” To his platinum records next I pointed, Said “I just want to be anointed!” He said, “I ain’t sick…this ain’t a hospital…and how’d you get past the security gate?!!”

In 2007 I got to write songs for the movie “Walk Hard,” a fake biopic about the legendary (and fictional) Dewey Cox, played by John C. Reilly. One of my assignments was to write some faux Dylan songs. My whole life I’d tried to not sound exactly like Dylan. Here I was being asked to actually channel him. I jumped all over that one:

Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum Dewey drawls in the first lines of “Royal Jelly,” Rimjob fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum oh-say-can-you see ‘em Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack Pressing, passing, spinning, half-synthetic fabrication Of his time…

There was more. From “Farmer Glickstein:”

From every job now I’ve been fired From Judas to Joan of Arc inspired Red clouds on the road required Three new garbage men just hired My bloodshot eyes from whiskey tired The beehive stovetop tractor moonstone sleeping….

And so on. That was fun. It put a little distance on the whole Dylan thing for me. He was him, and I was me. Even if, whenever I saw a picture of his first album cover, I still thought it was me. But whatever. We all have our stuff. Sometimes, I didn’t think about Dylan so much anymore. I had a beautiful daughter. I composed hundreds of little kids-sized songs with her. Put out a couple kids albums. By now I’d made about 25 records. My time in the southwest was evident in my work. Merle Haggard, George Jones—those guys had as much influence on me as Dylan, I figured. I was painting a lot (when I started painting in the late ‘90s, someone gave me a book of Dylan’s paintings. They were good. “Damn, he’s even done that!” I thought). I was writing songs for cartoons. Things were OK. Then, one night in late September of 2015, I got a note from a friend, Paul Zollo. Paul was the guy who used to write the big interviews for “Song Talk.” He’d interviewed Dylan (for real), which had run in the same issue as my spurious interview with Dylan’s Mom. In 1991. Apparently, Dylan had seen our Song Talk issue, way back in 1994. With Paul’s interview of him. And mine, of his mom. Dylan had been in a hotel in Japan. Why he had seen it three years after it ran, while in Japan no less, I have no idea. But Dylan had been incensed. He wrote a scathing letter, on the stationery of his Japanese hotel. He called me a “Scurrilous Little Wretch with a Hard-On for Comedy.” Somehow the letter, unsent at the time, had surfaced and is being auctioned by Sotheby’s, expecting upwards of $12,000. He had some choice words for Paul Zollo too. It seems Paul’s main sin was guilt-by-association—his piece had appeared next to mine. At first I was speechless. After most of a lifetime of songwriting, performing, road-warrioring, recordmaking—always in the shadow of this guy, always somehow measuring myself against this guy—it seemed I had, indeed, pierced the bubble of his consciousness. And this was his judgement! “A scurrilous little wretch!” I wanted to say, “Bob! It was a joke, Bob!” But I guess he knew that. After all, I had a “hard-on for comedy.” So, even though he knew it was a joke, he didn’t find it funny. I guess I shouldn’t have used his mom in the piece. Still, it seemed so obviously ludicrous. But still. I guess if you’re Bob Dylan, and people take potshots at you all the time, maybe your patience wears thin. Especially regarding your mom. I couldn’t believe it. It was like God finally acknowledges your existence, and when he does, he flicks you off his shoulder, like an annoying flea. What was I to do? Laugh it off? Maybe. But still. This was Bob Dylan! Well, Bob. I mean, Mr. Dylan. Sir. Your Excellency. Probably you forgot all about it. It’s been over 20 years! For sure, you’ve got other things to think about! But who knows. So here’s the thing. Maybe it was lame, but it wasn’t meant to cause any harm or pain. If it did, even fleetingly, like, for a millionth of a second, I apologize. If this is the only time our spirits will ever cross paths, well, so be it. I guess that’s life. Kind of ironic, for me. Probably less so for you. My high school principal once grabbed me in his special death-grip and, leaning low, said, “Some day, you’re gonna get in big trouble for your mouth.” His words have proven prophetic more than once. Still, even he probably couldn’t have imagined that Bob Dylan would call me “a scurrilous little wretch.” On the other hand, most people never get a personal quote from Bob Dylan about anything. That’s something. They can’t take that away from me. In 1991 I was a struggling songwriter, teaching tennis in Encino, just up the 101 from Hollywood where I was living in a little studio apartment a couple blocks from Melrose. My big claim to fame was having given a few tennis lessons to Wilt Chamberlain, who would come to the park on the occasional afternoon. I taught him a nice slice serve. “I gotta practice now,” he said once. “It’s a little intimidating with the coach right here.” Meaning me. I wrote a few Bukowski-like poems about teaching Wilt. Mostly crazy fantasies about hanging out with him, cruising down Ventura Blvd. “Hey!” people would shout in the avenues of my mind, “Isn’t that Dan Bern and Wilt Chamberlain?!” In the evenings I would go and play little music gigs throughout Los Angeles. I had a steady Wednesday night spot at a Chinese joint on Fairfax called Genghis Cohen. I played there so much they put my name on the menu. “The Dan Bern Deal.” Szechuan green beans and Mongolian beef. A great combo, “The Dan Bern Deal.” The guy who ran the club was named Artie Wayne. He had run A&M’s publishing “for five minutes,” in the industry parlance. Legend was that he’d had a lighted dance floor installed in his office. “It ain’t a hit unless I can dance to it!” he’d crow. Sometimes Artie would mess with me. “Dan,” he’d pull me aside, two minutes before my set, “Bob Dylan’s coming tonight.” Artie knew I had a serious Dylan fixation. Maybe it was the harmonica rack I wore around my neck. Maybe it was the topical, talkin’ blues songs I sang. Maybe it was my Jewish midwestern roots and my nasal inflections. Maybe it was all of it. Artie knew how to get under my skin. I’d first been hit by Dylan, hard, when I was about 16. Up til then I’d mostly listened to the Beatles, and whatever happened to be on the radio. Then one day, this older guy, the husband of a co-worker of my Mom’s, played some Dylan records for me. “Here’s ‘Shelter from the Storm,’” he said. “Here’s ‘Blowing in the Wind.’” Immediately, my cello was toast. I got my Dad to buy me a guitar the next day. Even so, I didn’t really “get” what Dylan was on about until one summer day a few weeks later when I was home after my paint crew job at the college. I’d smoked a little dope, and was painting the door of my room. I had put “Blonde on Blonde” on the record player. Suddenly, as “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” began churning, I fell fully into the song. It was like Alice stepping into Wonderland. Every line Dylan sang meant something else! Every line was a sarcastic sneer! For the first time I’d heard something that sounded exactly how I felt. I started writing my own songs. I never looked back. After college I went to Chicago and started playing seven open mics a week. Soon I started to get my own gigs. The Earl of Old Town. Holstein’s. The No Exit. Legendary Chicago folk clubs. I printed up posters. “Topical and original folk and blues” they said. With a picture of a curly-haired Midwestern Jewish kid with a guitar and a harmonica rack. I was on my way. Ten years later, having migrated west, I was teaching tennis in Encino and still struggling. But I’d made a little headway. There was a buzz. The junior scouts from the major record companies, with no power to sign but nice suits and offices and business cards, were coming around. And I had a column in a little publication called “Song Talk.” My column was called “Verse-Chorus-Bridge.” I didn’t do any real reporting. I just made up characters, mostly based on the publishers and songwriters I was running into, and told fanciful tales of trying to make some headway into the cutthroat world of music and songwriting. One night I wrote a fake interview with Bob Dylan’s mom. I knew her name, so I used it. The Milli Vanilli scandal was fresh in the news, so I made up a “scandal” about Dylan not having actually written his songs. Turned out, I said, that his mom had written all of his songs. And I “interviewed” his mom. To great comic effect, I thought. They printed it, I had a laugh, and forgot all about it. Time rolled along. I almost had a record deal with Chameleon, an offshoot of Warner Bros., but it fell through. I got frustrated hanging around L.A. trying to get a record deal. I let go of my apartment, sold my car, bought a van, and started living the road life. For several years I had no home except my van, with a little dog for companionship. Along the way I got a record deal with Work Records, a part of Sony, and at long last started putting out records. Still, every time I thought I’d put the long shadow of Dylan behind me, it would loom up and engulf me again. Every new record I made, no matter how different it seemed to be from the last, brought on new comparisons to the man from Hibbing. When I’d started out, nothing was so flattering as “You know who you sound like? Bob Dylan!!” But it became increasingly frustrating. If I had a penny for every time I heard some Dylan comparison, I’d be a millionaire. At some point you see it coming before anyone even says anything. Eventually you make some kind of peace with such things. Mainly because you have to. Maybe you make jokes. “I sort of see Bob Dylan as the Dan Bern of the '60s,” I said once. I wrote a song, The “Talkin Woody, Bob, Bruce and Dan Blues,” where I break into Bruce Springsteen’s compound and try to serenade him, much as the young Dylan had done for an ailing Woody Guthrie.

I found The Boss asleep in bed Pillows piled up round his head I turned on the light, took off my coat Stuck a thermometer down his throat Said “Don’t talk….you look pale, Boss….not at all well!” I said “I wrote you a song called ‘Song to Bruce’ “With a tune I stole from one of yours” To his platinum records next I pointed, Said “I just want to be anointed!” He said, “I ain’t sick…this ain’t a hospital…and how’d you get past the security gate?!!”

Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum Dewey drawls in the first lines of “Royal Jelly,” Rimjob fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum oh-say-can-you see ‘em Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack Pressing, passing, spinning, half-synthetic fabrication Of his time…

There was more. From “Farmer Glickstein:”

From every job now I’ve been fired From Judas to Joan of Arc inspired Red clouds on the road required Three new garbage men just hired My bloodshot eyes from whiskey tired The beehive stovetop tractor moonstone sleeping….

I found The Boss asleep in bed Pillows piled up round his head I turned on the light, took off my coat Stuck a thermometer down his throat Said “Don’t talk….you look pale, Boss….not at all well!” I said “I wrote you a song called ‘Song to Bruce’ “With a tune I stole from one of yours” To his platinum records next I pointed, Said “I just want to be anointed!” He said, “I ain’t sick…this ain’t a hospital…and how’d you get past the security gate?!!”

Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum Dewey drawls in the first lines of “Royal Jelly,” Rimjob fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum oh-say-can-you see ‘em Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack Pressing, passing, spinning, half-synthetic fabrication Of his time…

There was more. From “Farmer Glickstein:”

From every job now I’ve been fired From Judas to Joan of Arc inspired Red clouds on the road required Three new garbage men just hired My bloodshot eyes from whiskey tired The beehive stovetop tractor moonstone sleeping….

I found The Boss asleep in bed Pillows piled up round his head I turned on the light, took off my coat Stuck a thermometer down his throat Said “Don’t talk….you look pale, Boss….not at all well!” I said “I wrote you a song called ‘Song to Bruce’ “With a tune I stole from one of yours” To his platinum records next I pointed, Said “I just want to be anointed!” He said, “I ain’t sick…this ain’t a hospital…and how’d you get past the security gate?!!”

Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum Dewey drawls in the first lines of “Royal Jelly,” Rimjob fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum oh-say-can-you see ‘em Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack Pressing, passing, spinning, half-synthetic fabrication Of his time…

There was more. From “Farmer Glickstein:”

From every job now I’ve been fired From Judas to Joan of Arc inspired Red clouds on the road required Three new garbage men just hired My bloodshot eyes from whiskey tired The beehive stovetop tractor moonstone sleeping….

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Published on October 07, 2015 15:29

“Steve Jobs”: Michael Fassbender stars in a riveting three-act moral drama — that has nothing to do with computers

I don’t know how much the tormented, loquacious, obsessive-compulsive dad played by Michael Fassbender in writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle’s riveting three-act backstage drama “Steve Jobs” resembles the actual co-founder of Apple, the guy who made technology feel like an extension of the human personality rather than its antiseptic antidote. I also don’t know how much that matters. Not to draw an invidious comparison right off the bat, but how much did Shakespeare’s “Henry V” have to do with the historical monarch who fought the battle of Agincourt? This film and Alex Gibney’s highly critical but richly nuanced recent documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” barely seem to be about the same person, and brush against each other in only the most cursory ways. But the Boyle-Sorkin “Steve Jobs” is not a hagiography or a whitewashing. In fact, it’s not a biopic at all. Although I found Fassbender’s performance magnetic – the Irish actor gradually becomes Jobs, through some mysterious metamorphosis, despite looking almost nothing like him – the character we see backstage before three major product launches is frequently downright unpleasant and almost never resembles the sympathetic and “relatable” protagonist typically demanded by major motion pictures. If you find Steve Jobs relatable, you may need professional help. Just as “The Social Network” was not about Facebook, “Moneyball” was not about the Oakland Athletics and “The West Wing” was not about the White House, “Steve Jobs” is not really about Steve Jobs or Apple Computer. Like nearly all of Sorkin’s work in movies and television, it’s about the moral interaction between public performance and private behavior, and about the difficulty many driven and talented people have in treating other human beings as if they mattered. Quite likely it’s a self-portrait to some degree, although there I lapse into exactly the kind of amateur psychoanalysis that Sorkin will cheerfully tell you he indulges in every time he sits down to write. A few nights ago I moderated a conversation with Sorkin after a screening for the Writers Guild. Before laying out his psychological theory on Jobs – which is essentially that he was a profoundly damaged person who gradually came to understand how damaged he was – Sorkin hauled out a quip he has used many times before. “When I say stuff like this, you need to remember that I do hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater,” he said. “So this isn’t just coming from some guy off the street.” But that gag line contains buried meanings that are not superficial: Sorkin’s writing is always theatrical, and in this screenplay he has essentially boiled down Walter Isaacson’s whopping Jobs biography into a trilogy of one-act plays. And his language is inherently musical: The famous Sorkin “walk and talk,” the overly lyrical expository monologue in which a character reveals his or her driving desires, the zinger comeback uttered while leaving a room, the finely balanced back and forth between a man and a woman. If anything, “Steve Jobs” is so perfectly wrought and meticulously shaped a vessel that it leaves all verisimilitude behind and delivers a dramatic redemption or salvation that Steve Jobs never found in life. For most viewers, that won’t be a problem, and this is simultaneously Sorkin’s most satisfying movie script and Boyle’s most graceful work as a director Many fans of Apple and Jobs were puzzled to learn that Sorkin had taken just three incidents from Isaacson’s authorized biography – three of Jobs’ product launches, yes, but none of the greatest hits. This movie ends in 1998, with Jobs’ return to Apple and the launch of the iMac, the friendly ovoid blob that came in many colors and was described by Jobs’ daughter Lisa (in the movie, at least) as “Judy Jetson’s Easy-Bake Oven.” There is no such thing as an iPhone, still less an iPad, and people who want to listen to music while they walk around have those clunky portable CD players. In one of his final scenes with Lisa, Jobs tells her he’s going to fix that problem, which is probably a bit of Sorkin-esque cheating – the iPod was not launched for another three years. But the structure of “Steve Jobs” makes perfect sense once you understand that Sorkin is essentially not interested in the story of Steve Jobs as a technological innovator or a corporate visionary. He’s looking for moments of dramatic tension and personal crisis in a famous person’s life, and is entirely willing to fictionalize them for effect, as was done in, say, the lives of the saints written by church historians centuries after their deaths. The moral spine of all three episodes in “Steve Jobs” is not Jobs’ relationship to his machines, but his relationships with a “West Wing”-style core group of people around him and especially with Lisa, the illegitimate daughter whom he denied for years and resisted getting to know. In the first act of the film, it’s 1984 and Jobs is preparing to unveil the Macintosh desktop computer at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California – then a relatively obscure Silicon Valley bedroom community, and now famous all over the world as Apple’s hometown. The second chapter takes place four years later at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, after Jobs has been hounded out of Apple and is preparing to launch the NeXT, an overpriced, overdesigned and underpowered cube that was effectively a Trojan horse directed at his former company. Then we skip a full decade, to Jobs’ reconquest of Apple and the iMac launch at Davies Symphony Hall, just across the street. (All the locations are genuine, and it really does make a difference.) Boyle’s design team doesn’t go over the top with the ‘80s and ‘90s styles and signatures – although we certainly see oversize glasses and enormous shoulder pads – but each section of the film has a distinctive visual flavor. For the opening section, in 1984, cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler uses old-school 16mm film, lending the scene a subtle grain and slightly washed-out colors. In 1988, we get the richness and sophisticated color palette of 35mm, and for the late ‘90s Küchler switches to the relentless digital clarity and “contemporary” feeling of the Arri Alexa. There’s a problem with the computer Jobs plans to unveil at the Flint Center: It doesn’t work. At least it doesn’t say “hello,” or not without a little backstage trickery, and Jobs is utterly inflexible on this point. (That part, Sorkin says, is actually true.) As for the Apple founder, who is about to risk his wunderkind reputation on a machine that will be a disastrous failure, he doesn’t want to say hello either. Not to the eager journalists, not to the technical wizards he alternately berates and patronizes – Seth Rogen plays Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Michael Stuhlbarg is software genius Andy Hertzfeld – and not to his ex-girlfriend, Chrisanne Brennan (Katherine Waterston) or the little girl he insists is not his daughter. Chrisanne and Woz and Hertzfeld come and go throughout the movie, as each is subjected to Jobs’ baleful glare, and for obvious reasons Lisa is played by a different young actress in each section. Jobs’ confidante and antagonist and external voice of conscience, throughout all three episodes, is Apple marketing head Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), constantly trying to make the angel-on-shoulder argument that he would still be Steve Jobs even if he stopped treating other people with vicious disregard. If Fassbender is almost never off screen – there are two brief shots where he is not visible – Winslet is present only slightly less, and turns what could have been an overly “womanly” amanuensis role into a steely, angry and ultimately irresistible force of ferocious power and emotion. If there’s an Oscar in this cast, beyond the one for which Fassbender will surely be nominated, it’s hers. Another voice of normalcy from the outside world is supplied by Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley, whose role here is largely a Sorkin invention. In real life, Sculley’s famous falling out with Jobs after the Macintosh fiasco of ’84 led first to the latter’s dismissal from Apple and then to the former’s, and the two men never spoke again. Sorkin says he had a lengthy email exchange with Sculley, who is now retired in Florida and has never spoken publicly about his days at Apple, and decided to give him a chance, in dramatic form, to say all the things he wanted to say to Steve Jobs but never did. I’m perfectly fine with that decision, largely because any chance to watch Daniels act is a chance worth taking, and because Sorkin’s concocted confrontations between Jobs and Sculley are richly enjoyable. But it exemplifies the fact that “Steve Jobs” is a work of imagination and reinvention, not of biography or history. It’s a moral survey of American life on the cutting edge of the late 20th century as we wish it had happened (during the administration of President Jed Bartlet, in effect), rather than as it did. It’s a moving and magnificently crafted story about a person named Steve Jobs who was brought low by pride and arrogance and then redeemed by love. It might be a story that mirrors our dreams and desires, which is what the real Steve Jobs did too, and in that sense maybe it’s indirectly about him. It’s definitely not about a guy who built and sold computers. “Steve Jobs” opens this week in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow, beginning Oct. 23.I don’t know how much the tormented, loquacious, obsessive-compulsive dad played by Michael Fassbender in writer Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle’s riveting three-act backstage drama “Steve Jobs” resembles the actual co-founder of Apple, the guy who made technology feel like an extension of the human personality rather than its antiseptic antidote. I also don’t know how much that matters. Not to draw an invidious comparison right off the bat, but how much did Shakespeare’s “Henry V” have to do with the historical monarch who fought the battle of Agincourt? This film and Alex Gibney’s highly critical but richly nuanced recent documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine” barely seem to be about the same person, and brush against each other in only the most cursory ways. But the Boyle-Sorkin “Steve Jobs” is not a hagiography or a whitewashing. In fact, it’s not a biopic at all. Although I found Fassbender’s performance magnetic – the Irish actor gradually becomes Jobs, through some mysterious metamorphosis, despite looking almost nothing like him – the character we see backstage before three major product launches is frequently downright unpleasant and almost never resembles the sympathetic and “relatable” protagonist typically demanded by major motion pictures. If you find Steve Jobs relatable, you may need professional help. Just as “The Social Network” was not about Facebook, “Moneyball” was not about the Oakland Athletics and “The West Wing” was not about the White House, “Steve Jobs” is not really about Steve Jobs or Apple Computer. Like nearly all of Sorkin’s work in movies and television, it’s about the moral interaction between public performance and private behavior, and about the difficulty many driven and talented people have in treating other human beings as if they mattered. Quite likely it’s a self-portrait to some degree, although there I lapse into exactly the kind of amateur psychoanalysis that Sorkin will cheerfully tell you he indulges in every time he sits down to write. A few nights ago I moderated a conversation with Sorkin after a screening for the Writers Guild. Before laying out his psychological theory on Jobs – which is essentially that he was a profoundly damaged person who gradually came to understand how damaged he was – Sorkin hauled out a quip he has used many times before. “When I say stuff like this, you need to remember that I do hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater,” he said. “So this isn’t just coming from some guy off the street.” But that gag line contains buried meanings that are not superficial: Sorkin’s writing is always theatrical, and in this screenplay he has essentially boiled down Walter Isaacson’s whopping Jobs biography into a trilogy of one-act plays. And his language is inherently musical: The famous Sorkin “walk and talk,” the overly lyrical expository monologue in which a character reveals his or her driving desires, the zinger comeback uttered while leaving a room, the finely balanced back and forth between a man and a woman. If anything, “Steve Jobs” is so perfectly wrought and meticulously shaped a vessel that it leaves all verisimilitude behind and delivers a dramatic redemption or salvation that Steve Jobs never found in life. For most viewers, that won’t be a problem, and this is simultaneously Sorkin’s most satisfying movie script and Boyle’s most graceful work as a director Many fans of Apple and Jobs were puzzled to learn that Sorkin had taken just three incidents from Isaacson’s authorized biography – three of Jobs’ product launches, yes, but none of the greatest hits. This movie ends in 1998, with Jobs’ return to Apple and the launch of the iMac, the friendly ovoid blob that came in many colors and was described by Jobs’ daughter Lisa (in the movie, at least) as “Judy Jetson’s Easy-Bake Oven.” There is no such thing as an iPhone, still less an iPad, and people who want to listen to music while they walk around have those clunky portable CD players. In one of his final scenes with Lisa, Jobs tells her he’s going to fix that problem, which is probably a bit of Sorkin-esque cheating – the iPod was not launched for another three years. But the structure of “Steve Jobs” makes perfect sense once you understand that Sorkin is essentially not interested in the story of Steve Jobs as a technological innovator or a corporate visionary. He’s looking for moments of dramatic tension and personal crisis in a famous person’s life, and is entirely willing to fictionalize them for effect, as was done in, say, the lives of the saints written by church historians centuries after their deaths. The moral spine of all three episodes in “Steve Jobs” is not Jobs’ relationship to his machines, but his relationships with a “West Wing”-style core group of people around him and especially with Lisa, the illegitimate daughter whom he denied for years and resisted getting to know. In the first act of the film, it’s 1984 and Jobs is preparing to unveil the Macintosh desktop computer at the Flint Center in Cupertino, California – then a relatively obscure Silicon Valley bedroom community, and now famous all over the world as Apple’s hometown. The second chapter takes place four years later at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, after Jobs has been hounded out of Apple and is preparing to launch the NeXT, an overpriced, overdesigned and underpowered cube that was effectively a Trojan horse directed at his former company. Then we skip a full decade, to Jobs’ reconquest of Apple and the iMac launch at Davies Symphony Hall, just across the street. (All the locations are genuine, and it really does make a difference.) Boyle’s design team doesn’t go over the top with the ‘80s and ‘90s styles and signatures – although we certainly see oversize glasses and enormous shoulder pads – but each section of the film has a distinctive visual flavor. For the opening section, in 1984, cinematographer Alwin H. Küchler uses old-school 16mm film, lending the scene a subtle grain and slightly washed-out colors. In 1988, we get the richness and sophisticated color palette of 35mm, and for the late ‘90s Küchler switches to the relentless digital clarity and “contemporary” feeling of the Arri Alexa. There’s a problem with the computer Jobs plans to unveil at the Flint Center: It doesn’t work. At least it doesn’t say “hello,” or not without a little backstage trickery, and Jobs is utterly inflexible on this point. (That part, Sorkin says, is actually true.) As for the Apple founder, who is about to risk his wunderkind reputation on a machine that will be a disastrous failure, he doesn’t want to say hello either. Not to the eager journalists, not to the technical wizards he alternately berates and patronizes – Seth Rogen plays Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Michael Stuhlbarg is software genius Andy Hertzfeld – and not to his ex-girlfriend, Chrisanne Brennan (Katherine Waterston) or the little girl he insists is not his daughter. Chrisanne and Woz and Hertzfeld come and go throughout the movie, as each is subjected to Jobs’ baleful glare, and for obvious reasons Lisa is played by a different young actress in each section. Jobs’ confidante and antagonist and external voice of conscience, throughout all three episodes, is Apple marketing head Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), constantly trying to make the angel-on-shoulder argument that he would still be Steve Jobs even if he stopped treating other people with vicious disregard. If Fassbender is almost never off screen – there are two brief shots where he is not visible – Winslet is present only slightly less, and turns what could have been an overly “womanly” amanuensis role into a steely, angry and ultimately irresistible force of ferocious power and emotion. If there’s an Oscar in this cast, beyond the one for which Fassbender will surely be nominated, it’s hers. Another voice of normalcy from the outside world is supplied by Jeff Daniels as Apple CEO John Sculley, whose role here is largely a Sorkin invention. In real life, Sculley’s famous falling out with Jobs after the Macintosh fiasco of ’84 led first to the latter’s dismissal from Apple and then to the former’s, and the two men never spoke again. Sorkin says he had a lengthy email exchange with Sculley, who is now retired in Florida and has never spoken publicly about his days at Apple, and decided to give him a chance, in dramatic form, to say all the things he wanted to say to Steve Jobs but never did. I’m perfectly fine with that decision, largely because any chance to watch Daniels act is a chance worth taking, and because Sorkin’s concocted confrontations between Jobs and Sculley are richly enjoyable. But it exemplifies the fact that “Steve Jobs” is a work of imagination and reinvention, not of biography or history. It’s a moral survey of American life on the cutting edge of the late 20th century as we wish it had happened (during the administration of President Jed Bartlet, in effect), rather than as it did. It’s a moving and magnificently crafted story about a person named Steve Jobs who was brought low by pride and arrogance and then redeemed by love. It might be a story that mirrors our dreams and desires, which is what the real Steve Jobs did too, and in that sense maybe it’s indirectly about him. It’s definitely not about a guy who built and sold computers. “Steve Jobs” opens this week in New York and Los Angeles, with wider national release to follow, beginning Oct. 23.

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Published on October 07, 2015 15:27

We have committed a war crime: “Patients were burning in their beds”

Doctors Without Borders says it is under "the clear presumption that a war crime has been committed" after a U.S.-led NATO coalition bombed its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The aid organization, referred to internationally in French as Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF), asserted that it "condemn[s] this attack, which constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law." The U.S. military's version of the story behind the bombing is full of holes, and constantly changing. After launching airstrikes on Kunduz, which has recently seen an insurgency by the Taliban, on Saturday morning, NATO said its bombing "may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility." At least 22 people people were killed in the airstrikes, including 12 staff members and 10 patients, three of whom were children. A minimum of 37 more were wounded. A hospital nurse said there "are no words for how terrible it was," noting "patients were burning in their beds." Uncertainty dominated Washington's earliest account of the attack. The media echoed this ambiguity, but MSF insisted all "indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces" led by the U.S. The humanitarian organization stressed that it had "communicated the precise locations of its facilities to all parties on multiple occasions over the past months" and yet, despite this, the NATO bombing of the hospital continued for over 30 minutes, even after MSF "frantically phoned" Washington. Subsequently, the U.S. and Afghan governments moved away from describing the attack as an accident, a tragic instance of "collateral damage," and proceeded to imply the bombing was intentional. Afghan officials claimed the hospital was being used as a "base" for the Taliban. "The hospital has a vast garden, and the Taliban were there," insisted Kunduz acting Governor Hamdullah Danishi. MSF was not buying it. The aid organization called the "Taliban base" claims "spurious" and said it is "disgusted by the recent statements coming from some Afghanistan government authorities justifying the attack." The organization flatly denied that the Taliban was ever fighting from its hospital. "Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike," MSF recalled. "These statements imply that Afghan and US forces working together decided to raze to the ground a fully functioning hospital with more than 180 staff and patients inside because they claim that members of the Taliban were present," MSF stated. "This amounts to an admission of a war crime. This utterly contradicts the initial attempts of the US government to minimize the attack as 'collateral damage.'" On Monday morning, the U.S. officially confirmed that it carried out the airstrikes on the hospital. Yet its story has changed once again. Now the U.S. says the Afghan military asked it for air support. Gen. John Campbell, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told reporters NATO airstrikes, requested by Afghan forces, "were called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck." Twenty-three clearly constitutes more than "several," but this is not the primary problem with Gen. Campbell's claim. The three accounts of the incident promulgated by U.S. military cannot all be true; they contradict each other. MSF expressed frustration with the mercurial U.S. position. The government's "description of the attack keeps changing," MSF remarked, and Washington is "now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government." "The reality is the US dropped those bombs. The US hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff," the humanitarian organization added. "The US military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition. There can be no justification for this horrible attack." Other international organizations have condemned the U.S. for the attack. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein stated that, if "established as deliberate in a court of law, an airstrike on a hospital may amount to a war crime." "This event is utterly tragic, inexcusable, and possibly even criminal," the U.N. chief added. He called for an independent and transparent inquiry into the bombing. Like the U.N., MSF is also requesting that "an independent international body" conduct an investigation into the attack on its hospital. The organization maintained that the U.S. investigating its own bombing "would be wholly insufficient." Just days before the bombing, MSF said it was "overwhelmed with wounded patients" amid heavy fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan government. In just two days, it had treated 252 people, including 53 children. The aid group noted its medical teams were "working nonstop to provide the best possible care." The Kunduz hospital was the only medical "facility of its kind in the whole northeastern region of Afghanistan, providing free life- and limb-saving trauma care," MSF emphasized. The closest large hospital is hours away. Now, Doctors Without Borders, after losing a dozen staff members, is withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving behind a city full of besieged civilians who will no longer have access to desperately needed medical care.

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Published on October 07, 2015 15:26

John McCain’s insane delusions: The big Afghanistan lie he will not let go of

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan to ensure it "would never again be a safe haven for al-Qaeda or other radical Islamist terrorists to attack us again," John McCain said in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday morning. And "that mission has been successful for 14 years." To say al-Qaeda has not again attacked Americans on U.S. soil is technically correct, but to call such a mission "successful" is mindbogglingly myopic. No rational person can look at the situation throughout South Asia and the Middle East today and say U.S. military intervention has been a success. This would take either extreme blindness or sheer delusion. McCain insisted "American troops and civilians have made steady progress in supporting our Afghan partners to secure their country and dealt severe blows to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups." Yet these claims blatantly defy the facts on the ground. It was the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that in fact led to the growth of al-Qaeda throughout the world. Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the U.S. invasion; the U.S. war, which pulverized the government, destroyed enormous amounts of infrastructure, and escalated sectarian tensions, is what brought al-Qaeda into the country. This eventually led to the rise of ISIS - whose predecessor was ISI (the Islamic State of Iraq) - which broke ties with al-Qaeda for not being extreme enough. McCain failed to mention in the hearing that al-Qaeda has grown exponentially since the U.S. war in Afghanistan began. Now al-Qaeda is present in almost every country in the region. And ISIS, even more violent than al-Qaeda and the Taliban, has entered Afghanistan, while taking more and more territory in war-stricken Libya - where U.S. bombing once again destroyed the government and left the country in shambles - along with Yemen - where Washington is backing the Saudi-led coalition that is responsible for approximately two-thirds of the thousands of civilian casualties and has used banned U.S.-made cluster munitions to bomb civilian areas - and more. Never mentioned by McCain, moreover, is that over 220,000 Afghans were killed in the U.S. war, according to a report conducted by Physicians for Social Responsibility. (At least another 1 million people were killed in the U.S. war in Iraq, the study indicates, noting that "this is only a conservative estimate.") All the facts indicate that U.S. military intervention has only made matters worse. Yet, almost 15 years later, war hawks like McCain are still calling for more. In order to justify continued U.S. war in Afghanistan, nevertheless, McCain brought up women's rights several times - recalling the blunt tropes dissected by scholar Lila Abu-Lughod in her article "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?" This is an interesting choice, coming from a right-wing senator who insisted the War on Women is "imaginary," and was "conjured" by Democrats. This is fascinating, coming from a Republican lawmaker who mocked women's health in his own country, and who recently co-sponsored a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. This is rich, coming from a male politician who has opposed legislation that seeks equal pay for women. As for the claim that the U.S. war in Afghanistan has helped Afghan women, Afghan women like former parliamentarian and human rights activist Malalai Joya disagree. Joya lamented in a 2013 interview that, in her country, "imperialism and fundamentalism has joined hands." The "consequences of the 12 years of occupation of U.S. and NATO, unfortunately, was more bloodshed, crimes, women rights, human rights violations, looting of our resource, and changing of our country into mafia state," she said. "During these 12 bloody years, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed by occupation forces and terrorist groups," Joya added. Joya was banned from the parliament for accusing other members of being involved in terrorist groups and drug trafficking. "Since I've started my struggle for human rights in Afghanistan, for women's rights, these criminals, these drug smugglers, they've stood against me from the first time I raised my voice," she remarked. Human Rights Watch excoriated the Afghan parliament for suspending Joya, demanding her reinstatement and calling it a setback for democracy. McCain also claimed "we have seen a remarkable progress in Afghan society... Life expectancy in Afghanistan has increased by 22 years in less than a generation." This talking point has been raised many times before. The Christian Science Monitor's Dan Murphy noted the dubious factoid is "bandied about, usually to support the case for an extended military effort in Afghanistan." He was unable to find solid documentation of the 22-year figure, which may be exaggerated, and pointed out that life expectancy rose under the Taliban too - which would hardly be a justification for its regime of repression and brutality. "The claim that Western intervention in Afghanistan has dramatically improved life expectancy is a surprisingly durable myth," Murphy explained. There was no dearth of hypocrisy in McCain's statement too. In the hearing, he declared it "is precisely because we are fighting for progress and fighting for our values that it has been so disturbing to read reports alleging that some of our coalition partners may be engaged in sexual abuse and other activities that contradict our values." In reality, however, an investigation by the New York Times found the U.S. military explicitly told soldiers not to intervene when Afghan allies were abusing children. American soldiers were told to remain about the rampant abuse, lest they face castigation. Instead "of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children," the Times revealed. The goal of McCain's speech before the Senate Armed Services Committee was clear: He was calling for a greater American military presence in Afghanistan. U.S. Army General John Campbell, who also spoke, did the same. Nowhere in his 20-page statement did Gen. Campbell discuss the impact of the U.S. war on Afghan civilians, nevertheless. The at least 220,000 people killed are not on his radar. Gen. Campbell also failed to tell the committee that, mere days before the hearing, his own forces had bombed a hospital run by international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, killing 12 staff and 10 patients, including three children, in what the U.N. says may be a war crime. At the hearing, McCain brought up the specter of Iraq as an example of why, according to him, withdrawing American troops would not work. Encouraging the tail to wag the dog, McCain blamed the U.S. withdrawal for the rise of ISIS, not the U.S. invasion. He warned that "the White House remains committed to its politically-driven withdrawal of nearly all U.S. forces from Afghanistan," which he called a "dangerous course." What would truly be the most dangerous course of all is escalating American military involvement in the region, which has again and again proven to be nothing short of disastrous. The Obama administration, after pledging it would end the Afghanistan War by the end of 2014, has already delayed the withdrawal of troops one time. If it were to do so again, violent military conflict would only further torture Afghanistan - and Afghan civilians would inevitably pay the largest toll, as in any war. The continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is a key recruitment point throughout the region for militant movements; continued U.S. occupation virtually guarantees further conflict. Unmentioned by McCain was, too, any of the history surrounding the conflict in Afghanistan. In his desperate call for more war, McCain glossed over the fact that it was U.S. military intervention that was responsible for the rise of the Taliban in the first place. During the Soviet War in Afghanistan, the U.S. government supported the militant Islamist movement the Mujahideen - the Taliban's predecessor - as part of its larger Cold War strategy. President Reagan even met with the Mujahideen, whom he dubbed "freedom fighters," in the Oval Office. McCain speaks of the "sacrifices" of the "thousands upon thousands of American troops and their families who have served and are serving in Afghanistan," but says nothing of the horrors suffered by Afghans themselves throughout three decades of U.S. military intervention. Even if your goal is just to protect American civilians, with little regard for the people of the Middle East or South Asia - which McCain's statements seem to suggest - the U.S. war in Afghanistan and elsewhere has been utterly disastrous. Prolonging, yet alone escalating, it is simply a recipe for further disaster. Colbert Audience Boos John McCain Over Obama Dig

Colbert Audience Boos John McCain Over Obama Dig

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Published on October 07, 2015 15:26

Where 9 GOP candidates stand on pot: The hypocrisy will not surprise you

In 2014, a staggering 84 percent of Americans said the government was losing the war on drugs. Even political conservatives, once reliable hardliners on U.S. drug policy despite overwhelming evidence of its futility, have finally acknowledged that the cost of the drug war has far exceeded any benefits. At last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Christopher Beach — producer of the conservative talk radio show "Morning in America" — conceded that drugs just don’t rile the Republican base the way they once did. “There used to be a strong conservative coalition opposed to drugs, but it's dissipated in the face of mounting public support for legalization," Beach told the Atlantic. "We're fighting against the tide on this." It’s only taken “small government” advocates nearly 45 years, countless destroyed communities and $1 trillion in federal funding to recognize the drug war has been an expensive, devastating failure. (Which is not to take credit from Democratic President Bill Clinton, who escalated the war to unprecedented levels.) The policy has mostly succeeded in achieving the most shameful example of American exceptionalism: We now jail more of our citizens — in both number and percentage — than any other country on the planet, and our drug laws have proven especially punitive for African Americans and Latinos. In this case, we are, as we’re often told to believe, indeed number one. But for the worst reasons. Looking specifically at pot-related arrests, as the Huffington Post did, reveals how the numbers defy reason and justification.

Marijuana offenses account for roughly half of all drug-related offenses, and most of those are for simple possession. According to a recent report on marijuana arrests from the American Civil Liberties Union, of the more than 8 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88 percent were for just being in possession of the drug. In 2011, according to the FBI's uniform crime report, there were more arrests in the U.S. for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

But the tide is slowly changing. Perhaps owing to the fact that more Americans than ever now report they’ve tried pot, support for legalization is now at an all-time high. Twenty-three states now have legalized medical marijuana, 16 have decriminalized the drug and four — Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska — have made pot legal. Republican candidates for president have, out of political necessity, adjusted with the times and public sentiment. Mostly, that is. What follows is a look at where the leading Republican presidential candidates stand on pot. Who’s still advocating mandatory minimums and who’s pushing for drug law reform? Who’s trying to stop medical marijuana and who’s behind it all the way? Who’s probably still really good at rolling joints and has a last name that rhymes with “kush”? Check out the list below. 1. Jeb Bush. At the very least, John Ellis Bush smoked pot with some regularity in high school; there’s a preponderance of evidence that suggests he was actually a full-on stoner. Bush himself has acknowledged the former multiple times, including at the most recent Republican debate, where he said, “Forty years ago, I smoked marijuana, and I admit it.” In a lengthy piece on his secondary school years that ran in the Boston Globe this February, he stated, “I drank alcohol and I smoked marijuana when I was at Andover,” noting that it was “pretty common.” That same piece also points toward the latter: that Bush was actually a fairly prolific weed smoker in his youth. Classmates say he smoked a “notable amount of pot,” an offense that could get you expelled from Phillips Academy were your last name not Bush. (One former Bush roommate told the paper, “There wasn’t anything he could do to be kicked out so he was relaxed about rules, doing the work. This was just his family’s place.”) That includes a Bush classmate who claims the first time he “really got stoned” on hash “was in Jeb’s room.” His description of the situation is like something out of a movie called Almost Comically Stereotypical Scenes from the 1960s. “He had a portable stereo with removable speakers,” the friend told the Globe. “He put on [Steppenwolff’s “Magic Carpet Ride”] for me.” Nonetheless, as Florida governor, Bush took a highly punitive stance on drug use. And while he has given tepid support to medical marijuana on the campaign trail, saying it is “the right of states to decide,” he fought vigorously against it in his home state. Think Progress documents how Bush “opposed treatment instead of jail for nonviolent drug users, and backed mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession offenses, even as his daughter faced jail time over a drug rehabilitation relapse.” (Noelle Bush, arrested for crack possession in 2003, served less than two weeks in jail before later completing rehab.) In August of last year, he “strongly urged” voters to oppose a measure legalizing medical marijuana, stating the bill would destroy Florida’s reputation as a “world-class,” “family friendly,” “desirable place to raise a family or retire.” “[U]nder the guise of using [pot] for medicinal purposes,” Bush suggested, marijuana would spread like wildfire across the state. The bill ultimately went down in flames. 2. Rand Paul. Though Rand Paul is pretty terrible on an awful lot of things, he is, by leagues, the sanest and most progressive voice on drug policy in the 2016 Republican pack. This may seem unsurprising considering the old cliche about Libertarians being Republicans who like to smoke pot. But Paul has gone beyond talking about “states' rights”and medical marijuana, criticizing the failure of the war on drugs and its disproportionate impact on Latino and African American communities and calling for reform of the criminal justice system. He has also been very happy to point out the boundless hypocrisy of Jeb Bush’s position, and to use the story of Bush’s high school years as a case in point about how drug laws are unequally enforced. Is this political opportunism? Absolutely. That doesn’t make it any less true. “There is at least one prominent example on the stage of someone who says they smoked pot in high school,” Paul stated at the Republican debate earlier this month, calling Bush out by everything but his name, “and yet the people going to — to jail for this are poor people, often African Americans and often Hispanics, and yet the rich kids who use drugs aren’t.” Paul has advocated for an overhaul of federal drug legislation and an end to mass incarceration. “The war on drugs has had a racial outcome and really has been something that has damaged our inner cities,” he said at the aforementioned debate. “Not only do drugs damage [offenders], we damage them again by incarcerating them and then preventing them from getting unemployment over time." 3. Donald Trump. As with nearly every other issue under the sun, Donald Trump has done a complete 180 on pot. Back in 1990, the billionaire was advocating for the wholesale abolition of all drug laws, which he pilloried as “a joke.” “We’re losing badly the war on drugs,” Trump said at a luncheon held by the Miami Herald. “You have to legalize drugs to win that war ... You have to take the profit away from these drug czars ... What I’d like to do maybe by bringing it up is cause enough controversy that you get into a dialogue on the issue of drugs so people will start to realize that this is the only answer; there is no other answer.” But more recently, Trump suggested states that have legalized pot will face consequences for doing so. “I think it’s bad and I feel strongly about that,” he said at CPAC this year. “They’ve got a lot of problems going on right now in Colorado, some big problems.” And like nearly every other Republican contender, he evoked “states’ rights” on the question of whether federal drug laws should be enforced across the country. "If they vote for it, they vote for it,” Trump said. He’s also more enthusiastically supports medical marijuana than most of his rivals, stating, “I think medical marijuana, 100 percent." Trump — who in his 2000 book "The America We Deserve" wrote that he has “never taken drugs of any kind, never had a glass of alcohol. Never had a cigarette, never had a cup of coffee” — has also pounced on Jeb Bush’s drug past. Not to call for substantive policy change (this is Trump we’re talking about here) but to suggest that Bush is still getting high these days. Donald Trump: Professional Troll. 4. Ben Carson. If you’ve heard anything Ben Carson has said for, oh, the last several years, you might guess — correctly — that he is very not pro-pot. Though he concedes that medical marijuana isn’t just a liberal scheme to get joints into the hands of babies, Carson clings to the old idea that today’s pot smoker is tomorrow’s dope fiend. In an interview with Greta Van Susteren last year, when asked about the legalization of pot, Carson discussed his fear that marijuana was unraveling the moral fabric of America. “Medical use of marijuana in compassionate cases certainly has been proven to be useful. But recognize that marijuana is what’s known as a gateway drug. It tends to be a starter drug for people who move onto heavier duty drugs — sometimes legal, sometimes illegal. I don’t think this is something we really want for our society. You know, we’re gradually just removing all the barriers to hedonistic activity. We’re changing so rapidly to a different type of society. And nobody is getting a chance to discuss it. Because it’s taboo; it’s politically incorrect.” In fact, numerous studies find that this simply isn’t true. A report from the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy finds that while “scientific evidence suggests that cannabis use often precedes the use of “harder” illicit drugs ... there is no evidence to suggest that the use of cannabis causes or increases the risk that an individual will move on to use other drugs.” And the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal scientific research arm of the National Institutes of Health, reinforces this finding, and points out that lots of other substances could also be identified as “gateways” to drug abuse. “[M]ost people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, 'harder' substances,” the agency writes on its website. “Also, cross-sensitization is not unique to marijuana. Alcohol and nicotine also prime the brain for a heightened response to other drugs and are, like marijuana, also typically used before a person progresses to other, more harmful substances.” 5. Carly Fiorina. During the most recent Republican debate, Carly Fiorina stated, “We are misleading young people when we tell them that marijuana is just like having beer. It's not. And the marijuana that kids are smoking today is not the same as the marijuana that Jeb Bush smoked 40 years ago.” Sure, today’s pot is, indeed, stronger than yesteryear’s. She’s basically right there. But her insinuation that pot is more dangerous than alcohol is just wrong. Citing a 2014 study that examined 20 years of research on recreational pot use, the Washington Post notes that “[p]eople who try marijuana are significantly less likely to become dependent on it than users of just about any other drug, including...alcohol,” and that 90 percent of those who try pot never develop an addiction. A recent Vox piece points out that “[w]hile zero people have reportedly died from a marijuana overdose ever, alcohol poisoning kills more than 2,200 people in the U.S. each year (and that's a small part of the 88,000 alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. annually).” Alcohol is linked to up to 30 percent of violent crimes, while pot actually reduces the odds of violent behavior. Another study, also highlighted by the Washington Post, finds that marijuana is “roughly 114 times less deadly than booze.” The debate wasn’t the last time Fiorina would make inaccurate statements about pot. At a recent event in Iowa, Fiorina said her doctor had inquired if she might be interested in medical marijuana after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. “I said ‘No,’ and his response was ‘Good,’” Fiorina told the audience, “because it’s a chemically complex compound that we do not understand — we do not understand how it reacts with chemotherapy and all of the other [treatments],” she said. Except, actually, that isn’t true today, and we’ve known it isn’t true for years. As Factcheck.org notes, multiple studies conducted both before and after 2009 have examined how pot interacts with other drugs, finding “few problems in terms of interactions with cancer therapies, as well as other types of medication.” The site also points out that “studies have shown that 'cannabinoids do in fact interact with [some] cancer drugs — synergistically, meaning they actually add to the beneficial effects.” What’s more, according to the National Cancer Institute, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “[s]tudies in mice and rats have shown that cannabinoids may inhibit tumor growth by causing cell death, blocking cell growth, and blocking the development of blood vessels needed by tumors to grow” and that “[l]aboratory and animal studies have shown that cannabinoids may be able to kill cancer cells while protecting normal cells.” 6. Ted Cruz. What sounds like a confession coming from most politicians almost seems like a desperate attempt to seem like something approximating cool coming from Cruz. “Teenagers are often known for their lack of judgment, and Senator Cruz was no exception,” a Cruz’s spokesperson stated to the U.K.’s Daily Mail . “When he was a teenager, he foolishly experimented with marijuana. It was a mistake, and he's never tried it since.” Sure. Anyway, as Cruz’s standard m.o. is to figure out where Obama stands on an issue and then attack that position, in 2014 the Texas senator called the president’s decision not to enforce federal drug laws in Washington and Colorado “fundamentally dangerous to the liberty of the people.” He also said, “Anyone who is concerned about liberty should be concerned about the notion that this president over and over again has asserted the right to pick and choose what laws to follow.” Ted Cruz could give a rat's ass about liberty these days, it seems, because he’s done a complete about-face on the issue in the last year. This is less likely the result of a heartfelt change than it is yet more proof of Cruz’s cynicism and political cravenness. A 2014 Gallup survey finds a slight majority of Americans support pot legalization, and most Republican millennials — 63 percent — favor legalization, numbers Cruz’s campaign team is undoubtedly familiar with. Cruz was suddenly all for states' rights on marijuana when he appeared at CPAC earlier this year. “I actually think this is a great embodiment of what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the laboratories of democracy,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “If the citizens of Colorado decide they want to go down that road, that’s their prerogative. I don’t agree with it, but that’s their right.” 7. Mike Huckabee. Back in the 1970s, while other kids his age were toking and snorting anything they could get their hands on, 17-year-old Mike Huckabee was apparently prepping for a run for city council in Beaumont, the town from "Footloose." Meaning Huckabee, who at the time wrote a column for an Arkansas-based paper called the Baptist Trumpet, spent his time warning other teens about the evils of dancing, smoking, dating non-Christians and soap operas (“In a 30-minute segment, you can witness the breaking of almost every commandment God has established”). Not much has changed with Huckabee since then, except that he’s gotten a lot less earnest and a lot more invested in saying despicable things to get attention. Huckabee isn’t so much of a states' rights kind of candidate; he says he would leave enforcement of federal drug laws “up to the DEA.” Though neither a doctor nor a scientist, he also stated, “I think there are better ways to treat medical illnesses than the use of a drug that has really caused so many more people to have their lives injured than it has to necessarily have their lives helped.” 8. Marco Rubio. According to Marco Rubio, there are two very good reasons why he refuses to answer the question of whether he’s ever smoked marijuana: First, because if he says no, people will accuse him of lying. Second, because if he says yes, “[K]ids will look up to me and say, ‘Well, I can smoke marijuana, ‘cause look how he made it. He did all right, so I guess I can do it, too.’” My guess is that Rubio is deeply misguided about his sway over America’s youth. Multiple times, and in various venues, Rubio has said that he believes federal drug laws should be upheld across the country. In 2014, he told ABC News, “Marijuana is illegal under federal law. That should be enforced.” This past April, appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, when asked if he would “shut down the marijuana trade” in Washington and Colorado, he answered affirmatively. “Yes, I think, well, I think we need to enforce our federal laws. Now do states have a right to do what they want? They don’t agree with it, but they have their rights. But they don’t have a right to write federal policy...I don’t believe we should be in the business of legalizing additional intoxicants in this country for the primary reason that when you legalize something, what you’re sending a message to young people is it can’t be that bad, because if it was that bad, it wouldn’t be legal.” Rubio has talked about pot and alcohol as if they were one and the same (“I think this country is paying a terrible and high price for the impact that alcohol has had on families, and addiction, on the destruction of marriages, homes, and businesses, and now we’re going to legalize an additional intoxicant?”), implied that marijuana is dangerous under any circumstances (“I don't believe there's a responsible way to recreationally use marijuana”), suggested there’s no need to reform drug laws that have led to mass incarceration (“I don’t think legalizing marijuana or even decriminalizing it is the right decision for our country”) and stated that he might be convinced to support medical marijuana — provided nobody’s getting any kind of a buzz off of it. (“If there are medicinal uses of marijuana that don't have the elements that are mind-altering or create the high but do alleviate whatever condition it may be they are trying to alleviate, that is something I would be open to.”) 9. Chris Christie. During the most recent Republican debate, when the issue of pot came up, Christie stated, “In New Jersey, we have medical marijuana laws, which I supported and implemented.” But that’s not exactly true. As NewsWorks’ Rob Tornoe notes, “[b]ack in 2009, Christie [stated] that he opposed a then-pending medical marijuana bill on the basis that it was too lax. That bill would later be signed into law by his predecessor, Jon Corzine, leaving Christie to drag his feet on implementation.” Vocativ cites an op-ed by Chris Goldstein, a spokesperson for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), in assessing the role the governor played in his state’s medical marijuana program. “In 2010 and 2011, Christie organized a severe over-regulation of the compassionate use law and delayed the implementation by years,” Goldstein wrote. This over-regulation, Vocativ points out, “included limiting the potency of the marijuana, the types of illnesses or ailments that qualify for medical marijuana and forcing doctors who prescribe it to register on lists maintained by the state, [and] was panned by the New Jersey State Assembly as ‘arbitrary and unnecessary.’ In March, the Assembly voted to rebuke certain regulations put in place by the Christie administration.” Christie has called marijuana a “gateway” drug, which we’ve already covered. CNN enumerates the many times Christie has spoken out against medical marijuana:

[He] has called similar laws in 22 other states a "front" for full recreational legalization. He has characterized taxes generated from the sale of marijuana as "blood money." He threatened to veto a decriminalization measure in his home state. And earlier this year, in no uncertain terms, he said that if elected president, he would "crack down and not permit" recreational cannabis in states that have legalized it.

Just this past July, while stumping in New Hampshire, Christie reportedly stated, “If you’re getting high in Colorado today, enjoy it. As of January 2017, I will enforce the federal laws.” Oddly, Christie has said that he thinks the war on drugs “has been a failure.” But his promise to recriminalize pot usage around the country seems an awful lot like he nevertheless wants to keep fighting that battle. Dan Riffle, the director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, drives the point home in a quote to the Huffington Post. "Governor Christie is right that the war on drugs is a failure,” said Riffle. “But what he apparently doesn’t realize is there are more arrests and prosecutions for marijuana than for any other drug. The war on drugs begins and ends with marijuana." In any case, for your viewing pleasure, here is a compilation of Christie pretending to spontaneously throw his coat jacket to his campaign aide.

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Published on October 07, 2015 14:45

“I’m gonna get expelled?” Yes! The “give me a f**king bacon, jalapeno mac and cheese” kid is booted from UConn

Fame is fleeting, but internet infamy will haunt you for a long, long time. The latest person to feel that swift — but long to dig out of — sting of going unwittingly viral is young Luke Gatti, the kid who just really, really wanted some mac and cheese this weekend. His recent petulant outburst has now reportedly led to an abrupt departure from the University of Connecticut. Barstool Sports posted photos Tuesday of what appears to be Gatti packing up a car, and when the lamp's on the sidewalk, it's probably a sign someone is moving on. Death & Taxes, meanwhile has compiled tweets from locals saying he was kicked out. Gatti became a sensation this week after an outstanding video of his tirade, entitled "Drunk Kid Wants Mac and Cheese," was posted on YouTube. It has over 1.6 million views so far. Ironically, within the first ten seconds of the clip, he's seen bragging, "Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get expelled for this. Just give me some f__king bacon jalapeño mac and cheese." It goes on in this vein for nine minutes. And it's clear at the start of the video that he'd already been demanding the food of the gods from the school's Union Street Market for some time. Oh the stamina of youth! This charming self-proclaimed 19 year-old gentleman, who I would not be so presumptuous as to assume may have been operating on the toxic cocktail of Jager and white male privilege, did not seem to comprehend, as the market's manager quite reasonably explained, "You can't come in here with an open bottle of booze, dude. Think." Not even when he opened his wallet! Not even when he called the manager "a f__king fag." Not even when he began pushing the man. Police arrived after a 911 call saying a "disturbance had now become physical." In their arrest report, police noted he'd been "verbally and physically abusive." The clip ends, predictably, with Gatti facedown on the floor in handcuffs. Shockingly, while a student at the University of Massachusetts Gatti was arrested twice last year for disorderly conduct. During one of the incidents, he allegedly called a police officer by a racial slur. I think it's possible that if a teenager has had now three serious incidents at two different colleges involving drinking, that kid may have real problems, and I genuinely hope that if that's the case, he gets help. I also know plenty of people who have been known to drink too much without becoming overly entitled, physically abusive, racists jerks. That behavior doesn't just happen out of nowhere. And somewhere in the fog of his pre mac and cheese craving Sunday evening, Gatti forgot that if you decide to go out there in the world and behave very badly, someone else may document that. And there will be consequences. Lasting consequences. It's a lesson a whole lot of people seem to keep not getting. People like the recently unemployed Gerod Roth, aka Geris Hilton — who thought it'd be funny to post a selfie with a black colleague's young son, and then set off a torrent of racist remarks on Facebook. People like teacher Karen Fitzgibbons, who was fired from her job this spring after a racist rant about segregation. Guys — I realize you are not so great with the judgment calls. But YouTube and Facebook and Twitter have all been around a long time now. The iPhone came out in 2007. Figure it out. And Gatti, I imagine that you'll ride out this semester and wind up at some other campus by spring. Just know that when you, they have smartphones and YouTube there too. So the next time you go out drinking, try to remember that before your cheese craving gets out of control again. Fame is fleeting, but internet infamy will haunt you for a long, long time. The latest person to feel that swift — but long to dig out of — sting of going unwittingly viral is young Luke Gatti, the kid who just really, really wanted some mac and cheese this weekend. His recent petulant outburst has now reportedly led to an abrupt departure from the University of Connecticut. Barstool Sports posted photos Tuesday of what appears to be Gatti packing up a car, and when the lamp's on the sidewalk, it's probably a sign someone is moving on. Death & Taxes, meanwhile has compiled tweets from locals saying he was kicked out. Gatti became a sensation this week after an outstanding video of his tirade, entitled "Drunk Kid Wants Mac and Cheese," was posted on YouTube. It has over 1.6 million views so far. Ironically, within the first ten seconds of the clip, he's seen bragging, "Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get expelled for this. Just give me some f__king bacon jalapeño mac and cheese." It goes on in this vein for nine minutes. And it's clear at the start of the video that he'd already been demanding the food of the gods from the school's Union Street Market for some time. Oh the stamina of youth! This charming self-proclaimed 19 year-old gentleman, who I would not be so presumptuous as to assume may have been operating on the toxic cocktail of Jager and white male privilege, did not seem to comprehend, as the market's manager quite reasonably explained, "You can't come in here with an open bottle of booze, dude. Think." Not even when he opened his wallet! Not even when he called the manager "a f__king fag." Not even when he began pushing the man. Police arrived after a 911 call saying a "disturbance had now become physical." In their arrest report, police noted he'd been "verbally and physically abusive." The clip ends, predictably, with Gatti facedown on the floor in handcuffs. Shockingly, while a student at the University of Massachusetts Gatti was arrested twice last year for disorderly conduct. During one of the incidents, he allegedly called a police officer by a racial slur. I think it's possible that if a teenager has had now three serious incidents at two different colleges involving drinking, that kid may have real problems, and I genuinely hope that if that's the case, he gets help. I also know plenty of people who have been known to drink too much without becoming overly entitled, physically abusive, racists jerks. That behavior doesn't just happen out of nowhere. And somewhere in the fog of his pre mac and cheese craving Sunday evening, Gatti forgot that if you decide to go out there in the world and behave very badly, someone else may document that. And there will be consequences. Lasting consequences. It's a lesson a whole lot of people seem to keep not getting. People like the recently unemployed Gerod Roth, aka Geris Hilton — who thought it'd be funny to post a selfie with a black colleague's young son, and then set off a torrent of racist remarks on Facebook. People like teacher Karen Fitzgibbons, who was fired from her job this spring after a racist rant about segregation. Guys — I realize you are not so great with the judgment calls. But YouTube and Facebook and Twitter have all been around a long time now. The iPhone came out in 2007. Figure it out. And Gatti, I imagine that you'll ride out this semester and wind up at some other campus by spring. Just know that when you, they have smartphones and YouTube there too. So the next time you go out drinking, try to remember that before your cheese craving gets out of control again.

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Published on October 07, 2015 13:15

Jay Leno, callous boor: “Take your client and go home. She’s only here because she took her clothes off in a magazine after winning gold”

In an interview with Adweek promoting his new CNBC series “Jay Leno’s Garage,” the former “Tonight Show” host spoke out about the persistent lack of diversity in the current late-night lineup. Asked whether he could believe how much the late-night landscape has changed since he left the “Tonight Show” (which boasts an entirely new group of hosts, apart from Jimmy Kimmel), Leno didn’t seem too impressed. "No, it's exactly the same,” he responded. "It’s all white guys. What's changed? Nothing's changed. You just replace one white guy with another. I'm waiting for the breakthrough African-American or female host. But it's all white guys, and most of them are named Jimmy.” "Whenever we do a show, I always try to have good diversity—not hit people over the head with it,” he continued. "But in the car show, we talk to women stunt drivers, women drag racers, because you don't want it to be a bunch of old white guys. You want to see the African-American car culture, the Latino car culture. So you try to be very inclusive—you try to bring everybody in the tent. That's something we always tried to do on The Tonight Show, and that's what we try to do here.” There were some other interesting tidbits in the interview, including a rather callous anecdote about booting a guest off "The Tonight show" when her publicist tried to limit the scope of the interview. As he put it, when asked what he missed about doing the show each night:

"I don't miss a lot of publicists. My favorite one we had was some ice-skater who had won some gold medals, and then 10 years later, she's in Playboy. And the publicist pitched it, all right, second guest. She comes and the publicist pulled me aside: 'We're not discussing the Playboy issue.' I've never said this before, but I said, 'Why don't you take your client and go home. She's only here because she took her clothes off in a magazine after winning gold.' I mean, I'm not going to insult her. I'm not going to make her feel cheap. But if you don't want to discuss it, I can get a comic here in six minutes."

Leno also addressed his absence from the “Letterman” finale, indicating that his long-time rival asked him to appear, but he turned down the offer. "I asked Dave to do a 10-second tape for us [when I left]. Anything, just, 'Leno who?’” he explained. "They said no, they didn't want to do it. Well, why am I going to run all the way to New York? I mean, quid pro quo. I just said, 'No, that's kind of silly.’" Fortunately, Leno and successor Jimmy Fallon don't have such a contentious history to navigate. Watch the former host drop in for a surprise appearances on last night's "Tonight Show" below. In an interview with Adweek promoting his new CNBC series “Jay Leno’s Garage,” the former “Tonight Show” host spoke out about the persistent lack of diversity in the current late-night lineup. Asked whether he could believe how much the late-night landscape has changed since he left the “Tonight Show” (which boasts an entirely new group of hosts, apart from Jimmy Kimmel), Leno didn’t seem too impressed. "No, it's exactly the same,” he responded. "It’s all white guys. What's changed? Nothing's changed. You just replace one white guy with another. I'm waiting for the breakthrough African-American or female host. But it's all white guys, and most of them are named Jimmy.” "Whenever we do a show, I always try to have good diversity—not hit people over the head with it,” he continued. "But in the car show, we talk to women stunt drivers, women drag racers, because you don't want it to be a bunch of old white guys. You want to see the African-American car culture, the Latino car culture. So you try to be very inclusive—you try to bring everybody in the tent. That's something we always tried to do on The Tonight Show, and that's what we try to do here.” There were some other interesting tidbits in the interview, including a rather callous anecdote about booting a guest off "The Tonight show" when her publicist tried to limit the scope of the interview. As he put it, when asked what he missed about doing the show each night:

"I don't miss a lot of publicists. My favorite one we had was some ice-skater who had won some gold medals, and then 10 years later, she's in Playboy. And the publicist pitched it, all right, second guest. She comes and the publicist pulled me aside: 'We're not discussing the Playboy issue.' I've never said this before, but I said, 'Why don't you take your client and go home. She's only here because she took her clothes off in a magazine after winning gold.' I mean, I'm not going to insult her. I'm not going to make her feel cheap. But if you don't want to discuss it, I can get a comic here in six minutes."

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Published on October 07, 2015 13:12

Hillary Clinton comes out against TPP — but leaves wiggle room: “As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it”

"As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it," Hillary Clinton said of the recently agreed upon Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact today. The 12 nation treaty encompassing roughly 40 percent of the world's economy has become a political hot potato stateside. Clinton, the secretary of state when negotiations on the treaty first began, told PBS's Judy Woodruff that she no longer supports the deal in its current incarnation. Clinton made her comments during an interview for the PBS "News Hour," saying “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set" and setting the bar as "create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security." Although she conceded that she is still "trying to learn as much as I can about the agreement" she cited her concerns “about currency manipulation" in Asia and other "unanswered questions." Clinton also claimed that “pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer.” "We've learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years," Clinton concluded before admitting that "now looking back on it, it doesn't have the results they thought it would have." In 2012, then-Secretary of State Clinton said TPP "sets the gold standard in trade agreements." Watch Clinton come out against the TPP three years later, via PBS: "As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it," Hillary Clinton said of the recently agreed upon Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact today. The 12 nation treaty encompassing roughly 40 percent of the world's economy has become a political hot potato stateside. Clinton, the secretary of state when negotiations on the treaty first began, told PBS's Judy Woodruff that she no longer supports the deal in its current incarnation. Clinton made her comments during an interview for the PBS "News Hour," saying “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set" and setting the bar as "create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security." Although she conceded that she is still "trying to learn as much as I can about the agreement" she cited her concerns “about currency manipulation" in Asia and other "unanswered questions." Clinton also claimed that “pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer.” "We've learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years," Clinton concluded before admitting that "now looking back on it, it doesn't have the results they thought it would have." In 2012, then-Secretary of State Clinton said TPP "sets the gold standard in trade agreements." Watch Clinton come out against the TPP three years later, via PBS: "As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it," Hillary Clinton said of the recently agreed upon Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact today. The 12 nation treaty encompassing roughly 40 percent of the world's economy has become a political hot potato stateside. Clinton, the secretary of state when negotiations on the treaty first began, told PBS's Judy Woodruff that she no longer supports the deal in its current incarnation. Clinton made her comments during an interview for the PBS "News Hour," saying “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set" and setting the bar as "create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security." Although she conceded that she is still "trying to learn as much as I can about the agreement" she cited her concerns “about currency manipulation" in Asia and other "unanswered questions." Clinton also claimed that “pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer.” "We've learned a lot about trade agreements in the past years," Clinton concluded before admitting that "now looking back on it, it doesn't have the results they thought it would have." In 2012, then-Secretary of State Clinton said TPP "sets the gold standard in trade agreements." Watch Clinton come out against the TPP three years later, via PBS:

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Published on October 07, 2015 13:07

October 6, 2015

The prisoners who kicked Harvard’s ass: Only people who think Ivy Leaguers are smarter than felons were surprised

When prisoners from Eastern New York Correctional Facility beat Harvard University in an exhibition debate last month, it made national headlines. It had all the elements of a classic underdog story, with a motley trio made up of violent offenders adjudged to be society’s worst, going up against a fresh-faced team made up of America’s best and brightest. Yet in this most civilized of battles, where words were the only weapons, the prisoners won. What happened, Harvard? Was the match fixed? Nearly every report on the story explored the niggling question that the judges were biased against the Ivy League team. To the Wall Street Journal, lead judge Mary Nugent defended their decision for Eastern New York Correctional, stressing: “I don’t think we can ever judge devoid of context or where we are, but the idea they would win out of sympathy is playing into pretty misguided ideas about inmates. Their academic ability is impressive.” To educators and advocates who work with vast and varied prison populations, the win was perfectly plausible on a generalized and specific level. (This same debate team had won a match against West Point in 2014.) As of last official count, the United States currently boasts a federal and state prison population of just over 1.5 million, of which 106,000 were female. Per numbers crunched in 2008, approximately 1 per 100 adults in the U.S. is incarcerated. As far as these prison advocates are concerned, it’s the general public that needs to be educated regarding the systemic socioeconomic asymmetries feeding the dismal growth of rates of incarceration in a this country. The contemporary prison is no longer a penitentiary, a place of penitence and reflection, but an industry that requires demeaned and docile bodies off which it can profit. Correspondingly, there has been an alarming strengthening of the preschool-to-prison pipeline, as well as the reappearance of debtors’ prison, which makes being poor a crime in itself. Deborah Jiang-Stein is the author of the memoir "Prison Baby" and founder of the unPrison Project. In an email to me, she writes: “What’s so surprising about the triumph of a prison debate team over Harvard’s team? When I read the subtitle, '...In a surprising turn of events, a debate team comprised of prisoners from Eastern New York Correctional Facility beat Harvard’s debate team,' my first thought was: This is close to: ‘S/he’s pretty articulate for a (fill in the blank).’ And often the blank isn’t filled in. It’s implied about race, dialect, nationality.” She explains that a raft of prejudices make it too easy to dismiss “a bunch of inmates” as being incapable of debate skills and logical thinking. “The tide might be turning about mass incarceration,” she concludes, “but it’s time to look inside the humanity and abilities of the people inside prisons.” Boria Sax agrees with her. That inmates won a debate against Harvard “should not be surprising," he comments to me. "The inmates think and study intensely, and without distractions of the Internet. They are probably the most engaged students I have ever had.” The author of several books focusing on animal-human relations, Sax teaches at Sing Sing and Taconic prisons with a program called Hudson Link, which provides a college education and imparts life skills to incarcerated men and women. It is similar to the Bard Prison Initiative, which had fostered the Eastern New York Correctional debate team. The underlying rationale for these programs is that they prevent recidivism by generating self-respect while imparting critical thinking skills. There is respect for these programs inside prison, as there are very few spots and the inmates have to compete for admission by writing an essay and going for an interview, just as they would to get into a regular college. Notably, the Hudson Link program focuses on the traditional disciplines of a classical liberal arts education. Sax teaches philosophy, history, English, art and religion. The stuff of an Ivy League education, usually taught at institutions where the sons and daughters of the moneyed elite go to sing the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.” It is too easy to mock, and yet the program is working: Out of 300 men who graduated from Bard’s program, fewer than 2 percent returned to custody within three years; and Hudson Link’s rates are at 3 percent. Without education, 40 percent of prisoners end up incarcerated again. In an oddly backhanded way, the success of these programs reveals the importance of the humanities—those “useless” subjects such as literature, philosophy, and history--which educate the whole person instead of training a worker. For some inmates, Sax writes, their situation may compel them “to think about things more intensely than most people. A crisis like going to prison can move people to question everything in their lives.” As for providing a liberal arts education to inmates, he posits the question: “Are we doing it for the prisoners or for society? Both, but helping the prisoners is a more tangible and immediate goal.” He wants to remind those who have never experienced life behind bars that prison is not like how it is portrayed in films and television. It is, above all else, “terribly bleak.” In recent years, perhaps no one has done more than Rene Denfeld to simultaneously illuminate the grinding despair of prison life while humanizing the condemned. Her gorgeously written, brutal tale about an inmate awaiting execution, "The Enchanted," was one of the most critically acclaimed literary works of 2014. What did she think of the fact that Eastern New York Correctional beat Harvard? It’s “an indictment of both our prison economy and our higher education system,” she says to me, for whether our children end up in prison or in the Ivy League has far “less to do with their potential than the color of their skin and economic background.” And luck, too, I would add. Growing up in rural Maine, I often heard adults comment that smart kids in school would either end up in jail, or getting into Harvard. There but for the grace of God go I. So I will end by quoting T. S. Eliot again, whose words take on solemn resonance in light of the profitable prison industry that is now hoovering up the poor: “There will be time to murder and create/ And time for all the works and days of hands/That lift and drop a question on your plate/ Time for you and time for me.”When prisoners from Eastern New York Correctional Facility beat Harvard University in an exhibition debate last month, it made national headlines. It had all the elements of a classic underdog story, with a motley trio made up of violent offenders adjudged to be society’s worst, going up against a fresh-faced team made up of America’s best and brightest. Yet in this most civilized of battles, where words were the only weapons, the prisoners won. What happened, Harvard? Was the match fixed? Nearly every report on the story explored the niggling question that the judges were biased against the Ivy League team. To the Wall Street Journal, lead judge Mary Nugent defended their decision for Eastern New York Correctional, stressing: “I don’t think we can ever judge devoid of context or where we are, but the idea they would win out of sympathy is playing into pretty misguided ideas about inmates. Their academic ability is impressive.” To educators and advocates who work with vast and varied prison populations, the win was perfectly plausible on a generalized and specific level. (This same debate team had won a match against West Point in 2014.) As of last official count, the United States currently boasts a federal and state prison population of just over 1.5 million, of which 106,000 were female. Per numbers crunched in 2008, approximately 1 per 100 adults in the U.S. is incarcerated. As far as these prison advocates are concerned, it’s the general public that needs to be educated regarding the systemic socioeconomic asymmetries feeding the dismal growth of rates of incarceration in a this country. The contemporary prison is no longer a penitentiary, a place of penitence and reflection, but an industry that requires demeaned and docile bodies off which it can profit. Correspondingly, there has been an alarming strengthening of the preschool-to-prison pipeline, as well as the reappearance of debtors’ prison, which makes being poor a crime in itself. Deborah Jiang-Stein is the author of the memoir "Prison Baby" and founder of the unPrison Project. In an email to me, she writes: “What’s so surprising about the triumph of a prison debate team over Harvard’s team? When I read the subtitle, '...In a surprising turn of events, a debate team comprised of prisoners from Eastern New York Correctional Facility beat Harvard’s debate team,' my first thought was: This is close to: ‘S/he’s pretty articulate for a (fill in the blank).’ And often the blank isn’t filled in. It’s implied about race, dialect, nationality.” She explains that a raft of prejudices make it too easy to dismiss “a bunch of inmates” as being incapable of debate skills and logical thinking. “The tide might be turning about mass incarceration,” she concludes, “but it’s time to look inside the humanity and abilities of the people inside prisons.” Boria Sax agrees with her. That inmates won a debate against Harvard “should not be surprising," he comments to me. "The inmates think and study intensely, and without distractions of the Internet. They are probably the most engaged students I have ever had.” The author of several books focusing on animal-human relations, Sax teaches at Sing Sing and Taconic prisons with a program called Hudson Link, which provides a college education and imparts life skills to incarcerated men and women. It is similar to the Bard Prison Initiative, which had fostered the Eastern New York Correctional debate team. The underlying rationale for these programs is that they prevent recidivism by generating self-respect while imparting critical thinking skills. There is respect for these programs inside prison, as there are very few spots and the inmates have to compete for admission by writing an essay and going for an interview, just as they would to get into a regular college. Notably, the Hudson Link program focuses on the traditional disciplines of a classical liberal arts education. Sax teaches philosophy, history, English, art and religion. The stuff of an Ivy League education, usually taught at institutions where the sons and daughters of the moneyed elite go to sing the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock: “In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo.” It is too easy to mock, and yet the program is working: Out of 300 men who graduated from Bard’s program, fewer than 2 percent returned to custody within three years; and Hudson Link’s rates are at 3 percent. Without education, 40 percent of prisoners end up incarcerated again. In an oddly backhanded way, the success of these programs reveals the importance of the humanities—those “useless” subjects such as literature, philosophy, and history--which educate the whole person instead of training a worker. For some inmates, Sax writes, their situation may compel them “to think about things more intensely than most people. A crisis like going to prison can move people to question everything in their lives.” As for providing a liberal arts education to inmates, he posits the question: “Are we doing it for the prisoners or for society? Both, but helping the prisoners is a more tangible and immediate goal.” He wants to remind those who have never experienced life behind bars that prison is not like how it is portrayed in films and television. It is, above all else, “terribly bleak.” In recent years, perhaps no one has done more than Rene Denfeld to simultaneously illuminate the grinding despair of prison life while humanizing the condemned. Her gorgeously written, brutal tale about an inmate awaiting execution, "The Enchanted," was one of the most critically acclaimed literary works of 2014. What did she think of the fact that Eastern New York Correctional beat Harvard? It’s “an indictment of both our prison economy and our higher education system,” she says to me, for whether our children end up in prison or in the Ivy League has far “less to do with their potential than the color of their skin and economic background.” And luck, too, I would add. Growing up in rural Maine, I often heard adults comment that smart kids in school would either end up in jail, or getting into Harvard. There but for the grace of God go I. So I will end by quoting T. S. Eliot again, whose words take on solemn resonance in light of the profitable prison industry that is now hoovering up the poor: “There will be time to murder and create/ And time for all the works and days of hands/That lift and drop a question on your plate/ Time for you and time for me.”

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Published on October 06, 2015 16:01

Secrets of “Saturday Night Live” at 40: “There would never be anything like this again”

It’s highly doubtful that anyone associated with the premiere of Saturday Night Live in 1975 imagined that the show would still be around ten, fifteen, or twenty-five years later. Some of those present at the creation, however, were definitely still around on February 15, 2015, and they, along with dozens of other alumni from TV’s longest-running comedy show, returned to Studio 8H to celebrate its epochal fortieth anniversary. The special, which spanned more than three and a half hours of prime time on NBC, truly had something for everybody who’d ever loved or even liked the program, and it also, true to form, had something for everybody to bitch about. Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and its producer for all but five of those forty years, was determined to invite everybody associated with SNL in any significant way to attend the TV special and a splashy after-gala, and he gave orders to the producers and writers of the special to include as many celebrated or notorious highlights from four decades of SNL as possible. Blocks of memory-stirring moments were interlaced with new versions of SNL classics, all of them combined in an astonishing whirlwind ride—one that demonstrated how SNL could sail through myriad changes in American trends, fads, fashions, attitudes, institutions, social realities, political movements, and technology and manage to remain young, even as the rest of us grew older. The show had begun, actor Robert De Niro noted, “back when TV was still watched on TV,” when if you missed the show on Saturday night, then you missed the show. The special was divided loosely into thematic blocks (“Forty Years of Politics on SNL,” hosted by Jack Nicholson; “Forty Years of Sports on SNL,” hosted by Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning) and even included a new rap song, by Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler, to accompany a montage of “breaks”—times when actors broke up laughing. In reviewing the special, Internet writers and bloggers and social-media practitioners dubbed it “uneven,” a charge that the series has faced since its inception. The show was always bound to be uneven, partly because it envelops and displays so many different kinds of comedy, intermingling political satire with shameless slapstick and ribald or just plain dirty farce. On the fortieth anniversary show, the clips whizzed by with once-familiar sayings and catchphrases popping back into the collective consciousness . . .

“I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.” —Michael O’Donoghue to John Belushi, and vice versa, from the first episode ever aired “Guess what: I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell.”—Christopher Walken, as the Bruce Dickinson, to Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, and others in a classic sketch from April 2000 “Wow! That’s good bass!”—Laraine Newman to Dan Aykroyd in a reenactment of Aykroyd’s Bass-O-Matic commercial spoof from the first season “Remember when you were with the Beatles?...That was awesome.”—Chris Farley, as an inept but lovable interviewer, to Paul McCartney in February 1993 “I can see Russia from my house!”—Tina Fey as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008

“It was my understanding that there would be no math.” —Chevy Chase as Gerald R. Ford in a presidential debate from the first season “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” — Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis in response to a burst of gibberish from Dana Carvey as George Bush, in a presidential debate from 1988 “Well, it got a big laugh—but did it get the right laugh?” —Mike Myers as Lorne Michaels in a “Wayne’s World” reunion (with Dana Carvey) written for the fortieth anniversary special And, yes, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was “still dead,” as Chevy Chase had regularly reported in the first season of “Weekend Update” mock-newscasts, back when the cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. “There they are—all my friends,” said John Belushi, made up to look like the old man he would never live to be and pointing to headstones on a cemetery hill in Tom Schiller’s poignant 1977 short film Don’t Look Back in Anger. All his old cohorts from SNL had preceded him in death, Belushi said, scoffing at suspicions that he would be the first to go.

Even SNL detractors would have to admit that the range represented on the special verged on awe-inspiring; it was that breadth of scope and style that helped explain the forty-year run in the first place. That, and the fact that the show perpetually replenished itself onstage and in the writer’s room, launching the careers of many an extraordinary performer in the process. The assembled glitterati watching the special in Studio 8H represented a cross section of the pop-culture elite, just as the performers constituted a remarkable roll call of comedy royalty. They came together to honor a program that had started in the minor tributaries of television and soon became a torrent in the mainstream. Among those seated in the audience that February night was Al Franken, once a Peck’s Bad Boy of television on SNL, now grown up with a vengeance. As a writer and performer, he had maliciously insulted network president Fred Silverman in a sketch for a 1979 episode of the show, and now he was serving his second term as a U.S. senator from Minnesota. How things change. Bill Murray, as lounge singer Nick Ocean, sang new and gratuitous lyrics to the theme from Jaws, with Paul Shaffer at the piano (“Jaws! You took me and made me part of you...you bastard, Jaws”). Eddie Murphy, who’d refused to take part in the show’s twenty-fifth anniversary, made a noncomic appearance to say that all was forgiven and that “I will always love this show” (though he refused to do an impression of scandalized Bill Cosby). Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin paid tribute to Tracy Morgan, former cast member suffering through a long recuperation following a traffic accident. And, in a selection of clips, viewers saw the ancient auditions of performers who did make the cast and a few — Jim Carrey, Kevin Hart — who didn’t. “I’m just glad it’s over” was one of Michaels’s comments a few days after the complex, spectacular, exhaustive, and exhausting show had aired. He was saluted at various points in the program, lampooned at others, and was called up onto the very crowded stage for good nights. And it was clear, however much he and the show he created have tried to avoid sentimentality over the decades, that even Michaels was fighting back tears. Afterward, at the Plaza Hotel, worlds collided in a way that only Michaels could probably engineer. With all due respect to Vanity Fair’s fabled Oscar bashes, no one else could have summoned the array of musicians, comedians, actors, politicians, and corporate big shots that Michaels brought together that night. Music was in the center ring, starting with Dan Aykroyd summoning onstage the likes of Paul McCartney, Jimmy Buffett, Taylor Swift, Debbie Harry, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, the B-52s, and Michael Bolton. That was hardly that. Jimmy Fallon later called on Prince to take the stage and bring the evening to the proverbial “next level.” What was being celebrated that night was a phenomenon that — through the endlessly morphing and recharging organism that Michaels had created — had made not only television history but also played a role in the political and social direction of the nation. Born in an age dominated by three TV networks and a smattering of independent stations, Saturday Night Live had survived into the Internet era and was still rolling powerfully along. The SNL special drew an impressive 26.5 million viewers according to Nielsen ratings, ranking it as the most-watched NBC Entertainment program in a decade, and also setting a record, according to Entertainment Weekly, for the largest number of tweets ever prompted by a single program—9.1 million people interacting via 1.3 million tweets, by the Nielsen Social count. It would be all but inarguable to declare the night not only a success but also a milestone. One had to concede—considering the innumerable earthquakes and sea changes that had already occurred in American media and all the others undoubtedly lurking in the future — that, no, there would never be anything like this again. No, not ever. Excerpted from "Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of 'Saturday Night Live' as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests" by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales. Published by Back Bay Books. Revised 40th anniversary paperback edition copyright September 2015. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved. It’s highly doubtful that anyone associated with the premiere of Saturday Night Live in 1975 imagined that the show would still be around ten, fifteen, or twenty-five years later. Some of those present at the creation, however, were definitely still around on February 15, 2015, and they, along with dozens of other alumni from TV’s longest-running comedy show, returned to Studio 8H to celebrate its epochal fortieth anniversary. The special, which spanned more than three and a half hours of prime time on NBC, truly had something for everybody who’d ever loved or even liked the program, and it also, true to form, had something for everybody to bitch about. Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and its producer for all but five of those forty years, was determined to invite everybody associated with SNL in any significant way to attend the TV special and a splashy after-gala, and he gave orders to the producers and writers of the special to include as many celebrated or notorious highlights from four decades of SNL as possible. Blocks of memory-stirring moments were interlaced with new versions of SNL classics, all of them combined in an astonishing whirlwind ride—one that demonstrated how SNL could sail through myriad changes in American trends, fads, fashions, attitudes, institutions, social realities, political movements, and technology and manage to remain young, even as the rest of us grew older. The show had begun, actor Robert De Niro noted, “back when TV was still watched on TV,” when if you missed the show on Saturday night, then you missed the show. The special was divided loosely into thematic blocks (“Forty Years of Politics on SNL,” hosted by Jack Nicholson; “Forty Years of Sports on SNL,” hosted by Derek Jeter and Peyton Manning) and even included a new rap song, by Andy Samberg and Adam Sandler, to accompany a montage of “breaks”—times when actors broke up laughing. In reviewing the special, Internet writers and bloggers and social-media practitioners dubbed it “uneven,” a charge that the series has faced since its inception. The show was always bound to be uneven, partly because it envelops and displays so many different kinds of comedy, intermingling political satire with shameless slapstick and ribald or just plain dirty farce. On the fortieth anniversary show, the clips whizzed by with once-familiar sayings and catchphrases popping back into the collective consciousness . . .

“I would like to feed your fingertips to the wolverines.” —Michael O’Donoghue to John Belushi, and vice versa, from the first episode ever aired “Guess what: I’ve got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell.”—Christopher Walken, as the Bruce Dickinson, to Will Ferrell, Jimmy Fallon, and others in a classic sketch from April 2000 “Wow! That’s good bass!”—Laraine Newman to Dan Aykroyd in a reenactment of Aykroyd’s Bass-O-Matic commercial spoof from the first season “Remember when you were with the Beatles?...That was awesome.”—Chris Farley, as an inept but lovable interviewer, to Paul McCartney in February 1993 “I can see Russia from my house!”—Tina Fey as vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008

“It was my understanding that there would be no math.” —Chevy Chase as Gerald R. Ford in a presidential debate from the first season “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” — Jon Lovitz as Michael Dukakis in response to a burst of gibberish from Dana Carvey as George Bush, in a presidential debate from 1988 “Well, it got a big laugh—but did it get the right laugh?” —Mike Myers as Lorne Michaels in a “Wayne’s World” reunion (with Dana Carvey) written for the fortieth anniversary special And, yes, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was “still dead,” as Chevy Chase had regularly reported in the first season of “Weekend Update” mock-newscasts, back when the cast was known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. “There they are—all my friends,” said John Belushi, made up to look like the old man he would never live to be and pointing to headstones on a cemetery hill in Tom Schiller’s poignant 1977 short film Don’t Look Back in Anger. All his old cohorts from SNL had preceded him in death, Belushi said, scoffing at suspicions that he would be the first to go.