Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 992

October 2, 2015

4chan and the Oregon shooter: What the suspicious thread says about a horrifying subculture of young male rage

It may have been a direct warning. It may have been just a coincidence. And regardless of which scenario is true, the fact we can't yet be sure should tell you plenty already about the horrifying subculture of murderously angry young men out there. As law enforcement and the press scrambled for information in the wake of Thursday's mass shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, which left ten people dead and seven wounded, Federal officials announced they were investigating a recent 4chan exchange that appeared to predict the rampage. In a cryptic post on the /r9k board on Wednesday, an anonymous poster with an image of Pepe the Frog holding a gun reportedly posted, "Some of you guys are alright. Don’t go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest. happening thread will be posted tomorrow morning. so long space robots." After the shooting, some users noted that a well-known figure on the board who goes by Eggman had in August posted a video declaring "I'm done with r9k" and on Wednesday had added another video saying, "Anybody in the Seattle area, the Washington area, and want me to come, like, couch surf at their house or whatever, just hit me up dawg. I’m going to be here a few days." Predictably, speculation soon ran rampant that Eggman was the shooter. But the killer was later identified as someone else — 26 year-old Chris Harper Mercer. Was Mercer the 4chan user who issued the warning? The timing is certainly eerie. But what's demoralizing is that it could easily have been the rambling of just one more loathsome 4chan troll in an ocean of loathsome 4chan trolls. The post was immediately greeted with a Christmas Eve level excitement — the first reply was, "Is beta uprising finally going down? You might want to chillax and not alert police." See, in the sad world of frustrated men who dwell in the lowest reaches of online community, males can divide themselves into "alphas" — self-aggrandizing, openly hostile followers of pick up artist culture, and betas, the poor misunderstood, passed over men who will have their glorious day of revenge. Does this talk of alphas and betas sound familiar? Maybe you remember getting the tutorial a year and a half ago, when another young man, Elliot Rodger, went on a deadly spree. Responding to the original poster, other users jumped in with helpful feedback. One person told him, "I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire. Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it it possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun." Another suggested, "You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo." Someone else posted a photo of Elliot Rodger with the message, "It takes a great man to do great things. Become Legendary." Someone else, concerned, asked, "You're only shooting college age students, correct? I have grandparents that live up there," while another person encouraged discretion, telling him to aim for the "Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. You'll do the world a favor by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves." And one person posted hopefully, "I am so excited for this. If this comes true then thank you for my late birthday gift anon." Yes, some other participants chimed in to say, "Nobody cares you're pathetic and this is why no one likes you," but the amount of enthusiastic support the post received is nauseating. And after the news of the shooting broke? "HE DID IT ONE OF US ONE OF US." "You made us proud today, son. You made us proud." One of the more rational comments came from the man who said,"Wanting to KILL EVERYONE (including yourself) is a symptom of having male emotions," because at least he added, "Ya gotta get some distance mentally... but more importantly, you have to turn around and feel, just feel." Not every frustrated male with mental health issues posting about how "Our hero showed us the light and a reason to live" is going to go out and do what Mercer did. What Rodger did. What Roof did. But it should be clear that guys like this are there, all the time, so full of fury at the world and the regular people living in it that they are delighted at the prospect of their deaths. And when it happens, they celebrate it. So maybe Chris Harper Mercer wasn't really in that 4chan thread on Wednesday. The sickening thing is, there are so many voices in it, just like his, how could you even tell?

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Published on October 02, 2015 15:01

Tennessee Republican’s deranged reaction to Oregon shooting: Christians must now arm themselves

Conservatives have scrambled to connect nearly every recent event to a larger trend of Christian persecution. Now obviously, terror groups like ISIS have singled out Christians for persecution in places like Iraq and Libya but somehow America's religious right has inserted themselves into the mix to paint themselves as victims of a broader attack against the faith. Call it the Kim Davis complex. The latest examples comes courtesy of Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey who reacted to yesterday's mass shooting in Oregon by imploring Christians to consider arming themselves with a gun for protection. The Tennessean first flagged Ramsey's Facebook post, which links to a New York Post article titled "Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage." There are reports that the 28-year-old man who opened fire at Umpqua Community College on Wednesday, killing nine people and wounding seven more, asked the victims if they were Christians before shooting those who affirmatively answered in the head and shooting those who said no or denied to respond in the leg. "While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare," Ramsey suggested, reacting to the 294th mass shooting in America this year. "Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West," he declared. Ramsey then urged Christians to get serious about their faith and "think about getting a handgun carry permit." "Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise," he concluded.

As I scroll through the news this morning I am saddened to read the details of the horrible tragedy in Oregon. My heart... Posted by Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey on Friday, October 2, 2015

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Published on October 02, 2015 14:33

“Shut the f**k up Donny”: This mashup of The Big Lebowski’s Walter Sobchak silencing Donald Trump is everything

Apparently, the 1998 film The Big Lebowski was 17 years ahead of its time. The movie's iconic phrase "Shut the f**k up, Donny!" is seemingly the perfect response to every ridiculous Donald Trump quote. So we decided to create the mashup for you. Enjoy. [jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/ShutUp..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/Screen..., the 1998 film The Big Lebowski was 17 years ahead of its time. The movie's iconic phrase "Shut the f**k up, Donny!" is seemingly the perfect response to every ridiculous Donald Trump quote. So we decided to create the mashup for you. Enjoy. [jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/ShutUp..." image="http://media.salon.com/2015/10/Screen...]

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Published on October 02, 2015 13:15

Jeb Bush shrugs off Oregon shooting: “Stuff happens”

After ignoring the issue of guns, failing to even mention that the killings at Oregon's Umpqua Community College were caused by a deranged man with a gun when he tweeted his condolences to the families yesterday, Jeb Bush is apparently just shrugging off the 45th school shooting in 2015 as another example of how "stuff happens." This guy: https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/... "We're in a difficult time in our country and I don't think more government is necessarily the answer to this, I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else," Bush offered in response to a question about the shooting. “But I resist the notion—and I had this challenge as governor—because we had—look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis. And the impulse is always to do something and it’s not necessarily the right thing to do." Bush doubled-down on his remarks when he was pressed by New Yorker Magazine's Ryan Lizza, denying that he had misspoken when he referred to America's latest mass shooting as "stuff happens." “No, it wasn’t a mistake. I said exactly what I said. Why would you explain to me what I said wrong? Things happen all the time—things—is that better?” Bush said defensively. Bush's remarks were quick to cause a stir and even evoked a response from President Obama who reacted to news of Bush's comments during a press briefing today with a straight face, saying, “I don’t even think I have to react to that.” Watch both of Bush's remarks below: Bush's remarks echo those of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Discussing Thursday's shooting, Trump said Friday that the massacre was "horrible" but "these things happen." Poll: Marco Rubio Now Ahead Of Jeb Bush

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Published on October 02, 2015 12:45

Australia doesn’t want this guy: Troy Newman, head of extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, not welcome Down Under

Here's a novel thought — what if somebody actually did something about people who go around trying to incite dangerous ideas and behavior? What would that be like? Maybe something to consider, especially as we wrap up this perfect dumpster fire week of a shameless attack on Planned Parenthood and yet another deadly school shooting. So let's take it as one small victory that Operation Rescue head Troy Newman has been sent packing after trying to enter Australia. You may remember Operation Rescue. The anti-abortion group ran into a bit of bad publicity a few years back after the murder of Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder, an active supporter of the organization. How could Roeder have ever come up with such a terrible idea? I don't know, but it does sound awfully in line with Newman's 2000 book, "Their Blood Cries Out," in which he wrote, "In addition to our personal guilt in abortion, the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people." In 2003, Newman spoke out against the execution of Paul Jennings Hill, who murdered abortion provider Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett in 1994. In a press release, he said, "Florida judge denied Rev. Hill his right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day…. There are many examples where taking the life in defense of innocent human beings is legally justified and permissible under the law." That kind of talk seems pretty clear. But when Newman was invited to Australia to give a ten-day series of talks in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart and Cairns, he was shocked that Australia did not welcome him with open arms. The New York Times reports that immigration had already canceled his visa "after Australian politicians raised concerns that he might encourage violence against abortion providers or women seeking the procedure." Undeterred, the intrepid Newman attempted to wend his way there anyway. After boarding a flight from Los Angeles this week, he was detained in Melbourne. On Thursday, his attorneys filed an urgent injunction to stop him from being deported. The Guardian explains the logic, noting, "While Newman has been arrested for taking part in anti-abortion protests in the US, he has never been charged or advocated violence." Hey, Newman, this is Australia. They will kick out Johnny Depp's dogs. You think they have patience for your shenanigans? On Friday, Justice Geoffrey Nettle rejected the bid, and rebuked Newman for flying without a visa, saying, "Acting as he did means he does not come to this court with clean hands," chastising him for treating the law as "nought." So now Mr. Newman and Operation Rescue are deeply offended at the actions of the Australian government, not permitting someone who spews hateful garbage and doesn't have a visa to just swan into their country. During his flight, he posted an update on Facebook that said, "The revocation was based on a pile of lies, including the idea that I promote violence…. Through a chain of events the Lord has allowed me to get on a plane in spite of many objections by the airlines and Australia." Would that chain of events be… ignoring the restrictions on your travel? It's a miracle! Considering that Australia also has its act way more together than ours regarding gun violence, it's possible that Newman's more extreme rhetoric would be less persuasive there anyway. It still doesn't make him any more welcome, and it also reveals how delusionally entitled the so called pro-life movement really is. In a statement, Australian Labor MP Terri Butler said, "I am most concerned that Mr. Newman's call for abortionists to be executed could lead to threats or the commission of acts of violence against women and medical professionals." Imagine if we felt the same in the US. And Butler added, "To think he is above the law gives us an insight into the sort of person we are dealing with. We don't welcome extremists into our country and we don't welcome extremism."

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Published on October 02, 2015 12:36

What the f*ck, Nebraska? Why is this dancing pumpkin man on all my feeds?

Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today: Memes. We know -- just exhale pointedly with us, it's going to be OK. Memes take over your various social media feeds, and you have no idea why, but you don't want to out yourself as an out-of-toucher so you don't speak up. Fortunately, we're just as confused as you are and have no shame, so we'll ask the nearest child "What in God's name is going on?" for you. In this case, what's going on is that in 2006, a man in a Jack O'Lantern mask danced on Omaha, Nebraska's CW affiliate, KXCO, in a skin-tight leotard to the theme from the 1984 blockbuster "Ghostbusters." Since this initial performance, it's become a yearly tradition to annually re-post video of this anonymous dancer's Internet accomplishment in October, which is why your social media feeds probably look a little like this today:

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Published on October 02, 2015 12:16

October 1, 2015

Russell Brand’s impossible revolution: How a drugged-out comedian reinvented himself as radical apostle

Russell Brand is smart enough to see that to be a comedian is already to stand against the social order in some respects, and to enlist himself in a tradition of comedy as political provocation that stretches from Jon Stewart through Lenny Bruce and Mark Twain all the way back to Socrates (who we must assume was not the first person to make fun of the self-satisfied morons who run things). If anything, the Brand we encounter in Ondi Timoner’s fascinating documentary “Brand: A Second Coming" is too smart for his own good. Brand is not content with being a trickster, a philosopher or a provocateur. He wants to be a revolutionary, a word so freighted with ideological baggage we can no longer understand it. He has openly floated ideas of himself as a savior, a symbol, a messiah. Of course his “Messiah Complex” comedy tour was a “joke,” and his self-comparisons to Gandhi, Jesus, Che Guevara and Malcolm X were intentionally narcissistic and grandiose. But where do the jokes end with Russell Brand? The complicated, inspiring and often maddening former spouse of Katy Perry we meet in Timoner’s film is trapped in a cycle he can clearly perceive but is unable to escape. He’s a little like that guy in the late medieval illustration, pushing his head through the sky: What good does it do him, or anybody else, to know too much? Brand’s 2014 book “Revolution” did not spark a revolution, at least not that I noticed. It was daring, fatally undisciplined and sometimes idiotic, almost an exaggerated juvenile prank. Outside his fan base, it was largely ignored or derided. That may not have been fair, but cultural discourse is rarely based on principles of fairness and decency, especially not in the Information Age – which demands instant, negative opinions from everyone about everything. Just ask Brand’s old friend Amy Winehouse, who rose to celebrity status in London around the same time he did and succumbed to the same excesses, but lacked his resilience or his luck or his male privilege. Indeed, “Brand: A Second Coming” stands in accidental counterpoint to Asif Kapadia’s “Amy,” both films asking why we nominate certain talented and charismatic people as celebrities, and what God of Darkness we then sacrifice them to. Throughout this movie, Brand bounces around the world in first-class airplane seats and the backs of limousines, moving from the practical to the impossible to the unreal. He has conventional celebrity do-gooder moments, visiting children who make their living by scavenging in a vast garbage dump in East Africa. (Actually seeing that, he says, was a revelation.) He launches a promising entrepreneurial and residential facility for recovering drug addicts in London, a social question much closer to his own biography. As Brand frequently tells his stand-up audiences, he has done extensive personal research on addiction in the pub bathrooms and back alleys of England. When he appears on a BBC panel show opposite a smug Tory prohibitionist, Brand runs rings around the guy. When it comes to specific questions of policy and politics, in fact, Brand is sharply focused, well-informed and generally on the money. Whatever value there is in seeing a major British media celebrity, who was briefly on track to become a Hollywood star as well, embrace openly radical positions, Brand has delivered that in full. He has repeatedly argued that the perverse system that elevated him to wealth and fame has condemned millions of others to poverty and servitude, and that the entire political economy of the Western world is organized to protect that anti-democratic and inhumane division of the spoils. In virtually every television appearance, Brand is more intelligent, more far-sighted and more compelling than the people supposedly interviewing him – who of course would not be on television in the first place if they didn’t accept the dominant social and economic order as normal and natural. His classic takeover of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which ended with host Mika Brzezinski in a state of conspicuous agitation and arousal, is one of the highlights here. When Fox News pundits or their British cognates (not that British TV can remotely compete in terms of sheer bigotry and ignorance) deride Brand as a failed D-list actor gone rogue, a Champagne socialist or a post-adolescent poseur, that only demonstrates what an irritant he has become, and what a threat he presents. But those criticisms keep reappearing, and clearly get under Brand’s skin, because they’re not far wide of the mark. He looks, dresses and acts like a groupie-shagging rebel rock star from an underground comic. Like all famous people, he is surrounded by a coterie of assistants and supposed friends who demonstrate their loyalty by catering to his whims and never telling him he’s wrong. According to his American agent, Brand owns a house in Beverly Hills (a legacy of his 14-month marriage to Perry) that he has never been inside. I’m not embracing the specious Fox News logic that those things invalidate Brand’s political arguments, or render him a hopeless hypocrite. We all must live in the world as we find it, and let those who are untainted with any personal or political hypocrisy cast the first stone. We also have limited time on the planet before we die, and if Russell Brand wants to leverage his fame to shift consciousness and change society during the time he has left, more power to him. But he is far more comfortable and more powerful during the more intimate and unscripted moments captured by Timoner’s camera, as when he engages children on the streets and schoolyards of the dismal Essex suburb where he grew up. “You married Katy Perry!” one little girl screams at him. He tells her that adults do all sorts of things for all sorts of crazy reasons, and when she grows up she is likely to marry Katy Perry too. Early in the film, Brand kicks back in his limo reflecting on a just-concluded gig in the “Messiah Complex” tour, during which he spun out an elaborate gay-sex anecdote in increasingly lewd detail. The point was supposed to be a gag about the 10 Commandments, which do not mention homosexuality but urge us not to covet our neighbor’s oxen. But Brand had pushed it in an entirely different direction, and had relished the audience’s struggle between its avowed position of liberal tolerance – “we’re not shocked by gay people!” – and its increasing discomfort with the raunchy specifics. “I liked that,” Brand muses with a mischievous smile. I have no idea whether a great social and political revolution is coming, as Brand confidently predicts, or what it will look like. But I suspect he serves the cause more profoundly when he challenges his own complacent fans with what gay men actually do with their bodies, or reminds the audience at a grotesque fashion gala that Hugo Boss designed uniforms for the Nazis, than by orating about injustice from a soapbox. The revolution needs comedians at least as much as it needs “revolutionaries.” “Brand: A Second Coming” is now playing at the Village East Cinema in New York, with wider release and home video to follow. Russell Brand is smart enough to see that to be a comedian is already to stand against the social order in some respects, and to enlist himself in a tradition of comedy as political provocation that stretches from Jon Stewart through Lenny Bruce and Mark Twain all the way back to Socrates (who we must assume was not the first person to make fun of the self-satisfied morons who run things). If anything, the Brand we encounter in Ondi Timoner’s fascinating documentary “Brand: A Second Coming" is too smart for his own good. Brand is not content with being a trickster, a philosopher or a provocateur. He wants to be a revolutionary, a word so freighted with ideological baggage we can no longer understand it. He has openly floated ideas of himself as a savior, a symbol, a messiah. Of course his “Messiah Complex” comedy tour was a “joke,” and his self-comparisons to Gandhi, Jesus, Che Guevara and Malcolm X were intentionally narcissistic and grandiose. But where do the jokes end with Russell Brand? The complicated, inspiring and often maddening former spouse of Katy Perry we meet in Timoner’s film is trapped in a cycle he can clearly perceive but is unable to escape. He’s a little like that guy in the late medieval illustration, pushing his head through the sky: What good does it do him, or anybody else, to know too much? Brand’s 2014 book “Revolution” did not spark a revolution, at least not that I noticed. It was daring, fatally undisciplined and sometimes idiotic, almost an exaggerated juvenile prank. Outside his fan base, it was largely ignored or derided. That may not have been fair, but cultural discourse is rarely based on principles of fairness and decency, especially not in the Information Age – which demands instant, negative opinions from everyone about everything. Just ask Brand’s old friend Amy Winehouse, who rose to celebrity status in London around the same time he did and succumbed to the same excesses, but lacked his resilience or his luck or his male privilege. Indeed, “Brand: A Second Coming” stands in accidental counterpoint to Asif Kapadia’s “Amy,” both films asking why we nominate certain talented and charismatic people as celebrities, and what God of Darkness we then sacrifice them to. Throughout this movie, Brand bounces around the world in first-class airplane seats and the backs of limousines, moving from the practical to the impossible to the unreal. He has conventional celebrity do-gooder moments, visiting children who make their living by scavenging in a vast garbage dump in East Africa. (Actually seeing that, he says, was a revelation.) He launches a promising entrepreneurial and residential facility for recovering drug addicts in London, a social question much closer to his own biography. As Brand frequently tells his stand-up audiences, he has done extensive personal research on addiction in the pub bathrooms and back alleys of England. When he appears on a BBC panel show opposite a smug Tory prohibitionist, Brand runs rings around the guy. When it comes to specific questions of policy and politics, in fact, Brand is sharply focused, well-informed and generally on the money. Whatever value there is in seeing a major British media celebrity, who was briefly on track to become a Hollywood star as well, embrace openly radical positions, Brand has delivered that in full. He has repeatedly argued that the perverse system that elevated him to wealth and fame has condemned millions of others to poverty and servitude, and that the entire political economy of the Western world is organized to protect that anti-democratic and inhumane division of the spoils. In virtually every television appearance, Brand is more intelligent, more far-sighted and more compelling than the people supposedly interviewing him – who of course would not be on television in the first place if they didn’t accept the dominant social and economic order as normal and natural. His classic takeover of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which ended with host Mika Brzezinski in a state of conspicuous agitation and arousal, is one of the highlights here. When Fox News pundits or their British cognates (not that British TV can remotely compete in terms of sheer bigotry and ignorance) deride Brand as a failed D-list actor gone rogue, a Champagne socialist or a post-adolescent poseur, that only demonstrates what an irritant he has become, and what a threat he presents. But those criticisms keep reappearing, and clearly get under Brand’s skin, because they’re not far wide of the mark. He looks, dresses and acts like a groupie-shagging rebel rock star from an underground comic. Like all famous people, he is surrounded by a coterie of assistants and supposed friends who demonstrate their loyalty by catering to his whims and never telling him he’s wrong. According to his American agent, Brand owns a house in Beverly Hills (a legacy of his 14-month marriage to Perry) that he has never been inside. I’m not embracing the specious Fox News logic that those things invalidate Brand’s political arguments, or render him a hopeless hypocrite. We all must live in the world as we find it, and let those who are untainted with any personal or political hypocrisy cast the first stone. We also have limited time on the planet before we die, and if Russell Brand wants to leverage his fame to shift consciousness and change society during the time he has left, more power to him. But he is far more comfortable and more powerful during the more intimate and unscripted moments captured by Timoner’s camera, as when he engages children on the streets and schoolyards of the dismal Essex suburb where he grew up. “You married Katy Perry!” one little girl screams at him. He tells her that adults do all sorts of things for all sorts of crazy reasons, and when she grows up she is likely to marry Katy Perry too. Early in the film, Brand kicks back in his limo reflecting on a just-concluded gig in the “Messiah Complex” tour, during which he spun out an elaborate gay-sex anecdote in increasingly lewd detail. The point was supposed to be a gag about the 10 Commandments, which do not mention homosexuality but urge us not to covet our neighbor’s oxen. But Brand had pushed it in an entirely different direction, and had relished the audience’s struggle between its avowed position of liberal tolerance – “we’re not shocked by gay people!” – and its increasing discomfort with the raunchy specifics. “I liked that,” Brand muses with a mischievous smile. I have no idea whether a great social and political revolution is coming, as Brand confidently predicts, or what it will look like. But I suspect he serves the cause more profoundly when he challenges his own complacent fans with what gay men actually do with their bodies, or reminds the audience at a grotesque fashion gala that Hugo Boss designed uniforms for the Nazis, than by orating about injustice from a soapbox. The revolution needs comedians at least as much as it needs “revolutionaries.” “Brand: A Second Coming” is now playing at the Village East Cinema in New York, with wider release and home video to follow.

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Published on October 01, 2015 16:00

Let’s be honest, they’re idiots: The embarrassing truth about the unqualified, underprepared GOP field

With Russia’s surprise decision to launch airstrikes against Syrian rebels, the Afghan government’s failure to defend Kunduz, and the flood of Syrian refugees in Syria, we’ve entered a surprising moment in American politics where the right answer, contrary to all conventional political wisdom, might be “It’s complicated, stupid.” Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” In the coming months, every presidential candidate worth their salt might consider creating a winning political message by taking Holmes up on his advice and leaning into complexity. They could promise that they’ll work hard to design intricate policies that mirror the world’s actual challenges. And they could (convincingly) argue that Americans should trust them precisely because of that approach. Of course, what I’ve just written totally violates campaign orthodoxy. Back in 1996, I participated in a campaign training academy at a hotel in New Brunswick. For a week, we studied political campaigns with the best political consultants in the country. To this day, I remember one adviser scrawling “KISS” in large letters on a blackboard, which stood for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” I’ve since worked on many campaigns (including my own), and I can tell you that in politics KISS has the gravitational pull of the Death Star. Resisting is the right thing to do, but it feels impossible and can be fatal. While KISS particularly dominates today’s Republican field, it hasn’t seemed to bear much fruit for anyone but Donald Trump (more on him in a moment). Last December, Rick Perry (now, out of the race) said of Hillary Clinton, “And this secretary of state, and this president of the United States, both did a miserable job. I would put it in the feckless foreign policy category.” Both Chris Christie and Rand Paul (they of the moribund campaigns) have also criticized Obama as “feckless.” Here’s the dictionary definition of that word: “having or resulting from a weak character or nature.” The Republican candidates are conflating willful simplicity with good moral character. That sounds appealing in theory, but its hollowness immediately appears when you tap on their Iraq policies, where, as former senior Obama defense official Derek Chollet recently wrote in the Washington Post, there’s virtually no difference between their ideas and what Obama and Clinton have actually done. “[I]t is seductive to trumpet solutions as ‘tougher’ or ‘stronger,’” Chollet wrote, “but Republicans are finding it is difficult to define a way forward, especially when they must first grapple with the ghosts of their past.” The reason their policies are bankrupt and that they’re falling back on character attacks is that they don’t know what to do in a world that’s vastly more confusing than ever before. There has been no more egregious example than Donald Trump, who this week on "60 Minutes" framed our foreign policy choices in Syria and Iraq as so simple they might as well be a game of Risk. Of ISIS in Syria, he said, “Why aren't we letting ISIS go and fight Assad and then we pick up the remnants?” Of Syria, he said, “Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let ‘em get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?” And of ISIS in Iraq, he said, “Look with ISIS in Iraq, you gotta knock 'em out. You gotta knock 'em out. You gotta fight 'em. You gotta fight ‘em.” This was beyond slogans and bumper stickers. It is a foreign policy of bombast alone. Out of the Republican field, it’s the most experienced candidate—Ohio Gov. John Kasich—who alone seems to go out of his way to repudiate Manichaeism, framing the challenges facing the nation as complicated and requiring experience and judgment rather than bombast. Kasich alone seems to recognize that, contrary to the Death Star’s dictates, there’s political gold in the hills of complexity. He seems to see that Barack Obama’s unlikely victory in 2008 represented a repudiation not only of the Iraq War but of the broader impulse (apotheosized by his opponent, John McCain) to oversimplify matters. Obama’s whole approach was in the context of the neoconservatives who took power in the George W. Bush administration, who never wanted to accept that we’d moved beyond the reassuringly Manichean simplicity of the Cold War. When Obama said he was “not against all wars, just stupid wars,” it was a courageous nuance beyond the black and white “global war on terrorism” framework. During the 2008 campaign, when the economy collapsed, Republican nominee John McCain suspended his presidential campaign and flew back to Washington. Obama avoided that black and white response and stayed on the campaign trail. His choice was seen as measured, balanced, mature and professional by the voters. The strongest moments of Obama’s presidency have also been when he’s rejected false simplicity. Remember the Ebola craze? Politicians like Rick Perry said the only option was for Obama to shut down air travel with West Africa. Here’s what Obama said: “What we’re seeing now is not an ‘outbreak’ or an ‘epidemic’ of Ebola in America. This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear. We have to keep this in perspective. Every year, thousands of Americans die from the flu.” There is ample precedent in American history for complexity defeating simplicity. In 1788, at the Virginia convention in Richmond to ratify the U.S. Constitution, for instance, James Madison—an introverted intellectual more at ease with research and argument than politicking—had to face off against the revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, a brilliant orator skilled at pulling heartstrings. Henry sought to turn the complexity of the document against it, mocking the Constitution’s “specious, imaginary balances,” and “rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances.” Madison defeated this bluster precisely by embracing how necessary the Constitution’s complex checks and balances were to stability and progress. He won when delegates criticized Henry’s “endeavouring to prove oppressions which can never possibly happen.” And the same could be said today. This time around, the American people could see bloviation for what it is. They could recognize that to get our arms around the new world order, we’ll need fine-tuned distinctions, multifaceted approaches, and our best minds concentrated on evidence and outcomes, rather than posturing and ideology. And here’s the other thing about complexity: It recognizes that things change. We can’t know what the status of ISIS in Iraq will be next year, nor the strength of Assad’s government in Syria. What appears “feckless” in 2015 might instead look courageous in 2016, which is all the more reason to use scalpels rather than sledgehammers when describing issues and our policies to the American people. 2016 will be no ordinary presidential year, and our political campaigns shouldn’t be, either. Presidential candidates ought to create campaigns that respect the American people—that mirror the reality of the all-too-real challenges our nation will face in the years ahead.With Russia’s surprise decision to launch airstrikes against Syrian rebels, the Afghan government’s failure to defend Kunduz, and the flood of Syrian refugees in Syria, we’ve entered a surprising moment in American politics where the right answer, contrary to all conventional political wisdom, might be “It’s complicated, stupid.” Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” In the coming months, every presidential candidate worth their salt might consider creating a winning political message by taking Holmes up on his advice and leaning into complexity. They could promise that they’ll work hard to design intricate policies that mirror the world’s actual challenges. And they could (convincingly) argue that Americans should trust them precisely because of that approach. Of course, what I’ve just written totally violates campaign orthodoxy. Back in 1996, I participated in a campaign training academy at a hotel in New Brunswick. For a week, we studied political campaigns with the best political consultants in the country. To this day, I remember one adviser scrawling “KISS” in large letters on a blackboard, which stood for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” I’ve since worked on many campaigns (including my own), and I can tell you that in politics KISS has the gravitational pull of the Death Star. Resisting is the right thing to do, but it feels impossible and can be fatal. While KISS particularly dominates today’s Republican field, it hasn’t seemed to bear much fruit for anyone but Donald Trump (more on him in a moment). Last December, Rick Perry (now, out of the race) said of Hillary Clinton, “And this secretary of state, and this president of the United States, both did a miserable job. I would put it in the feckless foreign policy category.” Both Chris Christie and Rand Paul (they of the moribund campaigns) have also criticized Obama as “feckless.” Here’s the dictionary definition of that word: “having or resulting from a weak character or nature.” The Republican candidates are conflating willful simplicity with good moral character. That sounds appealing in theory, but its hollowness immediately appears when you tap on their Iraq policies, where, as former senior Obama defense official Derek Chollet recently wrote in the Washington Post, there’s virtually no difference between their ideas and what Obama and Clinton have actually done. “[I]t is seductive to trumpet solutions as ‘tougher’ or ‘stronger,’” Chollet wrote, “but Republicans are finding it is difficult to define a way forward, especially when they must first grapple with the ghosts of their past.” The reason their policies are bankrupt and that they’re falling back on character attacks is that they don’t know what to do in a world that’s vastly more confusing than ever before. There has been no more egregious example than Donald Trump, who this week on "60 Minutes" framed our foreign policy choices in Syria and Iraq as so simple they might as well be a game of Risk. Of ISIS in Syria, he said, “Why aren't we letting ISIS go and fight Assad and then we pick up the remnants?” Of Syria, he said, “Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let ‘em get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?” And of ISIS in Iraq, he said, “Look with ISIS in Iraq, you gotta knock 'em out. You gotta knock 'em out. You gotta fight 'em. You gotta fight ‘em.” This was beyond slogans and bumper stickers. It is a foreign policy of bombast alone. Out of the Republican field, it’s the most experienced candidate—Ohio Gov. John Kasich—who alone seems to go out of his way to repudiate Manichaeism, framing the challenges facing the nation as complicated and requiring experience and judgment rather than bombast. Kasich alone seems to recognize that, contrary to the Death Star’s dictates, there’s political gold in the hills of complexity. He seems to see that Barack Obama’s unlikely victory in 2008 represented a repudiation not only of the Iraq War but of the broader impulse (apotheosized by his opponent, John McCain) to oversimplify matters. Obama’s whole approach was in the context of the neoconservatives who took power in the George W. Bush administration, who never wanted to accept that we’d moved beyond the reassuringly Manichean simplicity of the Cold War. When Obama said he was “not against all wars, just stupid wars,” it was a courageous nuance beyond the black and white “global war on terrorism” framework. During the 2008 campaign, when the economy collapsed, Republican nominee John McCain suspended his presidential campaign and flew back to Washington. Obama avoided that black and white response and stayed on the campaign trail. His choice was seen as measured, balanced, mature and professional by the voters. The strongest moments of Obama’s presidency have also been when he’s rejected false simplicity. Remember the Ebola craze? Politicians like Rick Perry said the only option was for Obama to shut down air travel with West Africa. Here’s what Obama said: “What we’re seeing now is not an ‘outbreak’ or an ‘epidemic’ of Ebola in America. This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear. We have to keep this in perspective. Every year, thousands of Americans die from the flu.” There is ample precedent in American history for complexity defeating simplicity. In 1788, at the Virginia convention in Richmond to ratify the U.S. Constitution, for instance, James Madison—an introverted intellectual more at ease with research and argument than politicking—had to face off against the revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, a brilliant orator skilled at pulling heartstrings. Henry sought to turn the complexity of the document against it, mocking the Constitution’s “specious, imaginary balances,” and “rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances.” Madison defeated this bluster precisely by embracing how necessary the Constitution’s complex checks and balances were to stability and progress. He won when delegates criticized Henry’s “endeavouring to prove oppressions which can never possibly happen.” And the same could be said today. This time around, the American people could see bloviation for what it is. They could recognize that to get our arms around the new world order, we’ll need fine-tuned distinctions, multifaceted approaches, and our best minds concentrated on evidence and outcomes, rather than posturing and ideology. And here’s the other thing about complexity: It recognizes that things change. We can’t know what the status of ISIS in Iraq will be next year, nor the strength of Assad’s government in Syria. What appears “feckless” in 2015 might instead look courageous in 2016, which is all the more reason to use scalpels rather than sledgehammers when describing issues and our policies to the American people. 2016 will be no ordinary presidential year, and our political campaigns shouldn’t be, either. Presidential candidates ought to create campaigns that respect the American people—that mirror the reality of the all-too-real challenges our nation will face in the years ahead.

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Published on October 01, 2015 16:00

Porn and sex addictions: Real or bullsh*t?

Porn addiction does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And yet the label seems to pop up everywhere. There are counselors who warn against the addictive nature of pornography. Anti-porn advocates have been quick to blame the industry for the degradation of human relationships. And others have begun advertising treatment plans to remedy the "disorder." But without much reliable empirical data on the subject, the idea of lumping sex and porn into the list of addictive substances remains a matter of debate. Of course, that hasn't stopped certain outlets from doing so. The Sexual Recovery Institute website offers a sex addiction screening quiz to visitors worried they may be addicted to pornography or have a “hypersexual disorder” (the clinical term for sex addiction). The men’s quiz presents 27 questions about sexual history and habits. The women’s quiz brings you to a broken link. There are individuals who lose hours — even days — to pornography. There are also a number of individuals who have spent all their money on porn products and escorts. That’s a real problem. Compulsive behavior patterns are a real problem. And those consumed by them need professional help. What’s curious, however, is that these individuals don’t seem to make up the majority of self-identifying “porn addicts” out there. Joshua Grubbs of Case Western has been examining the concept of porn addiction for the past five years. He told AlterNet, “I noticed that people, particularly religious people, were really quick to use the addiction label. They were really fast to say, ‘I’m an addict, I’m an addict, I’m addicted to this. I can’t control myself.’ And I started to think, ‘Well, something’s not adding up.’” He added, “You know how hard it is to convince [an addict] that they have a problem? They don’t just come out and say, ‘Oh, I’m an addict.’ They don’t do that until they’re in recovery.” So when are these labels most likely to come up? And by whom are they assigned? Some experts suggest that the concepts of “porn addiction” and “sex addiction” are used to explain away behaviors condemned by socially (and sexually) conservative societies. Think about celebrities like David Duchovny and Tiger Woods, and what led them to come forward with their “addictions.” Dr. Mark Griffith writes, “It becomes a problem only when you’re discovered.” Grubbs suggests most self-identifying “porn addicts” simply don’t meet a clinical criteria. In January 2015, he published research finding that religiosity tended to be more closely related to porn addiction than porn consumption itself. “Porn addiction, sex addiction are so closely related to religious and moral beliefs about sexuality," Grubbs says. "If you’re coming from a religious tradition that says that indulging sexual desires outside the confines of heterosexual committed marriage is wrong, any sexual impulse that you have that doesn’t fit that prescribed criteria is going to produce guilt and distress. “Conceptually, it would make sense that it’s easier to say ‘I’m an addict’ than to say that what I believe about sex is maybe not the healthiest belief.” At Grubbs’ suggestion, we went to Amazon to check out its selection of books on “porn addiction.” No fewer than 404 results popped up in the Religion & Spirituality category. Less than half that number appeared in the Psychology & Counseling section. Grubbs’ most recent research suggests that porn addiction does indeed cause harm, but not in the way that you may think. Grubbs and his team found that the “psychological distress” caused by porn addiction relates to the label itself, not the material it refers to. According to his research, identifying as a porn addict was likely to bring on feelings of depression, anxiety, anger and distress. Porn use itself had no “reliable relationship” to these symptoms. Grubbs asks, "What is driving people to think they have a problem? And does assuming you have a problem actually create problems for you? “We need to think before we throw out these labels, because clearly, people self-diagnosing these labels over time is related to other mental health problems," he explained. "Let's think about what we're saying." For Grubbs, the question of whether “porn addiction” exists remains secondary to the fact that the label causes distress to those who are assigned it. His goal, primarily, is to home in on why people see themselves as addicts. He explained, “You can swap out the word ‘porn’ for ‘video game’ or ‘online shopping’ or ‘binge watching’ — any behavior that is getting in the way of the rest of your life and that you want to work on. Sex has its own kind of unique flavor to it, but you’re still going to use the same clinical technique. That’s a very different thing from someone coming into the office depressed because they’re a ‘porn addict,’ and when you asked the last time they viewed porn they say, ‘Well, two weeks ago.’" Clinical psychologist David Ley, author of "The Myth of Sex Addiction," told AlterNet in an email, “Decades of research shows that sex and porn are not addictive. Instead, the notion of porn addiction reflects people's moral and social fears of sex.” He added, “I've seen countless people who were taught to fear and be ashamed of their sexual desires, all because they were told they were addicted to sex. But the idea that there is such a thing as too much sex is based on a subjective, relative judgment: too much sex compared to what? Or who?” In 2003, Eric Blumberg authored a study called “The Lives and Voices of Highly Sexual Women.” Of the 44 women interviewed, all expressed the desire to have six or more orgasms a week, either solo or with partners. All considered having lots of sex an important element in their lives. And all admitted to having labeled themselves “sluts,” “nymphomaniacs” and “sex addicts” in the past. Grubbs says, “Ideally what we’re doing now will help people change their approach to treatment. Just because someone identifies as a porn addict doesn’t necessarily mean you need to treat them like an addict. You need to treat them like someone who is experiencing a lot of self-stigma.” Carrie Weisman is an AlterNet staff writer who focuses on sex, relationships and culture. Got tips, ideas or a first-person story? Email her.

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Published on October 01, 2015 15:59

“Every ounce of homophobia I ever experienced was firmly rooted in sexism”

In March of 2013, Ma’lik Richmond, one of two teenage male football players accused of sexual assault of an intoxicated teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, told ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, “I didn't rape anybody. I didn't witness a rape going on. And if I would have thought that somebody was being raped or anything like that, I would have stopped it.” Days later, he was found guilty of rape in court. A 2013 JAMA Pediatrics study of over 1,000 youths between the ages of 14 and 21 found that “nearly 1 in 10 youths (9%) reported some type of sexual violence perpetration in their lifetime.” As summarized by Melissa Healy in the Los Angeles Times, disturbingly, “The study also found that perpetrators of sexual violence of all types were unlikely to accept responsibility for their acts. One in seven believed that he or she was ‘not at all responsible for what happened,’ and almost 4 in 10 said they considered the victim somewhat or completely responsible for the reported incident.” Amid this sobering landscape, young adult fiction has been tackling the topic of sexual assault head-on. The Steubenville case inspired Aaron Hartzler, author of the memoir "Rapture Practice," about growing up gay in a religious family in Kansas City, Missouri, to humanize the story with his recently published novel "What We Saw." Like in the Steubenville case, there’s a party where teens are drinking, followed by rumors aplenty about sports stars possibly having assaulted a drunken girl—in this case, basketball players. There are photographs and video posted on social media, although some surface only to disappear quickly. The story is told from the point of view of Kate Weston, who was at the party, and even had her photo taken with said drunk girl, Stacey Stallard, but left early, so isn’t quite sure what happened. She quickly finds that sides are forming among her peers, and her entire community, with very little effort going into finding out what truly happened. Her peer group is soon torn apart, especially when Kate refuses to go along with sentiments like her friend Christy’s that “Stacey went to that party looking for trouble.” Like its inspiration, there’s a group akin to Anonymous that threatens to publish a video taken the night of the fictional assault. Hartzler homes in on both Kate’s growing skepticism of the handling of the case by the school, and the chasm that forms in the community in its aftermath, one that affects the entire town. Hartzler emailed Salon about his goals for the book, the feminist meaning of the story, and why parents of teens can’t ignore the topic of sexual assault. Why were you inspired to fictionalize the Steubenville rape case? As I watched the screaming match that Steubenville inspired on social media during 2012, I kept thinking about my youngest sister who was just graduating from high school. I wondered what it must be like to live in a small town like Steubenville and be coming of age in the middle of a national conversation about sexual violence. So much of that early conversation was centered on how these allegations would "ruin the lives" of the perpetrators, with zero empathy for the victim. In the slut-shaming and flash-judgment that ensued on Twitter, the town of Steubenville became synonymous with an evil place, where evil people did and allowed evil things. I kept wondering about the kids who had been at that party who weren't directly involved—the ones who weren't aware that a rape had occurred, and only found out about it after the fact. The character of Kate started talking in my head at that point. What kind of impact or reach do you think this novel will have with teenagers that straight news stories might not? As the situation in Steubenville was reported, it increasingly became a larger conversation about rape culture. Writers like Lindy West and Roxane Gay tirelessly took the bull by the horns and helped us see how the sexism in our culture at large was so insidious and pervasive. This was an excellent thing, but it also took the focus away from the adolescent experience, and I was eager take this story and put it back in the context of a high school. It's my hope that the young people who read this book will relate more readily with a narrative that is less about abstract concepts, and more about watching characters they can identify with make choices they may have been or will be faced with themselves. At its heart, "What We Saw" is a feminist story about a young woman who is learning to define herself by the courage of her own choices, and not the opinions of her friends, her family, her community or the news media. So often, when I talk to young people at schools or book festivals, the girls who ask a question or state an opinion will begin with an apology. "I'm sorry but..." The guys never apologize for sorting out what they think aloud. Kate is a character who must decide if she will speak up without apology, even when it means enduring the consequences and inevitable changes that will occur when she does so. Do you have a goal or message with this book? To tell a compelling story. I always approach writing from a character perspective. I believe that characters make choices, and those choices give you a plot. I didn't sit down to write an "issue book," per se. I wanted to write a book I'd want to read. I cried for a couple of the characters as I wrote them. I wanted to make their lives easier, but I couldn't. The major themes that emerged were the complicity in silence, and inevitability of change, both things that I didn't necessarily have a clear perspective on when I was a teenager. If there's a takeaway here, I hope it's the personal responsibility each of us has—at any age—to speak up for and defend those who can't defend themselves. What kinds of reactions have you gotten so far from teenagers? What about parents, teachers and/or librarians? The response has been overwhelmingly positive—especially from teenagers, but also from adults, who have thanked me for giving them a way into a conversation about these kinds of choices with their own kids. I've heard from teenagers who have experienced similar situations at their own school. I've been able to recommend other books that have tackled these themes recently as well, like Courtney Summers’ "All the Rage" and Jennifer Mathieu’s "The Truth About Alice." This is Banned Books Week, and I'm sure some parents don't want to even think about their kids being anywhere near a situation like the one in Steubenville, much less talk about it. However, just because your child isn't talking to you about these issues, doesn't mean they aren't talking about them. If you want to be a part of that conversation, but don't know how to get it started? There are a lot of authors out there who have already done it for you. Do you have anything else to add? I've been asked several times if it was "a challenge" to write from a female perspective, and my response is that at the core of any good story isn't a "male" experience or a "female" experience. It's a human experience. I think we humans (of whatever gender or gender expression) are equals, and not so wildly different on the inside that one gender can't write from the point of view of a different gender. Growing up gay in the middle of the country, every ounce of homophobia I ever experienced was firmly rooted in sexism. If calling somebody a "girl" is the worst put-down you can think of, then we have a problem culturally. It's something I love to talk to teens about, and hope that these conversations turn on a light, one reader at a time.In March of 2013, Ma’lik Richmond, one of two teenage male football players accused of sexual assault of an intoxicated teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, told ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas, “I didn't rape anybody. I didn't witness a rape going on. And if I would have thought that somebody was being raped or anything like that, I would have stopped it.” Days later, he was found guilty of rape in court. A 2013 JAMA Pediatrics study of over 1,000 youths between the ages of 14 and 21 found that “nearly 1 in 10 youths (9%) reported some type of sexual violence perpetration in their lifetime.” As summarized by Melissa Healy in the Los Angeles Times, disturbingly, “The study also found that perpetrators of sexual violence of all types were unlikely to accept responsibility for their acts. One in seven believed that he or she was ‘not at all responsible for what happened,’ and almost 4 in 10 said they considered the victim somewhat or completely responsible for the reported incident.” Amid this sobering landscape, young adult fiction has been tackling the topic of sexual assault head-on. The Steubenville case inspired Aaron Hartzler, author of the memoir "Rapture Practice," about growing up gay in a religious family in Kansas City, Missouri, to humanize the story with his recently published novel "What We Saw." Like in the Steubenville case, there’s a party where teens are drinking, followed by rumors aplenty about sports stars possibly having assaulted a drunken girl—in this case, basketball players. There are photographs and video posted on social media, although some surface only to disappear quickly. The story is told from the point of view of Kate Weston, who was at the party, and even had her photo taken with said drunk girl, Stacey Stallard, but left early, so isn’t quite sure what happened. She quickly finds that sides are forming among her peers, and her entire community, with very little effort going into finding out what truly happened. Her peer group is soon torn apart, especially when Kate refuses to go along with sentiments like her friend Christy’s that “Stacey went to that party looking for trouble.” Like its inspiration, there’s a group akin to Anonymous that threatens to publish a video taken the night of the fictional assault. Hartzler homes in on both Kate’s growing skepticism of the handling of the case by the school, and the chasm that forms in the community in its aftermath, one that affects the entire town. Hartzler emailed Salon about his goals for the book, the feminist meaning of the story, and why parents of teens can’t ignore the topic of sexual assault. Why were you inspired to fictionalize the Steubenville rape case? As I watched the screaming match that Steubenville inspired on social media during 2012, I kept thinking about my youngest sister who was just graduating from high school. I wondered what it must be like to live in a small town like Steubenville and be coming of age in the middle of a national conversation about sexual violence. So much of that early conversation was centered on how these allegations would "ruin the lives" of the perpetrators, with zero empathy for the victim. In the slut-shaming and flash-judgment that ensued on Twitter, the town of Steubenville became synonymous with an evil place, where evil people did and allowed evil things. I kept wondering about the kids who had been at that party who weren't directly involved—the ones who weren't aware that a rape had occurred, and only found out about it after the fact. The character of Kate started talking in my head at that point. What kind of impact or reach do you think this novel will have with teenagers that straight news stories might not? As the situation in Steubenville was reported, it increasingly became a larger conversation about rape culture. Writers like Lindy West and Roxane Gay tirelessly took the bull by the horns and helped us see how the sexism in our culture at large was so insidious and pervasive. This was an excellent thing, but it also took the focus away from the adolescent experience, and I was eager take this story and put it back in the context of a high school. It's my hope that the young people who read this book will relate more readily with a narrative that is less about abstract concepts, and more about watching characters they can identify with make choices they may have been or will be faced with themselves. At its heart, "What We Saw" is a feminist story about a young woman who is learning to define herself by the courage of her own choices, and not the opinions of her friends, her family, her community or the news media. So often, when I talk to young people at schools or book festivals, the girls who ask a question or state an opinion will begin with an apology. "I'm sorry but..." The guys never apologize for sorting out what they think aloud. Kate is a character who must decide if she will speak up without apology, even when it means enduring the consequences and inevitable changes that will occur when she does so. Do you have a goal or message with this book? To tell a compelling story. I always approach writing from a character perspective. I believe that characters make choices, and those choices give you a plot. I didn't sit down to write an "issue book," per se. I wanted to write a book I'd want to read. I cried for a couple of the characters as I wrote them. I wanted to make their lives easier, but I couldn't. The major themes that emerged were the complicity in silence, and inevitability of change, both things that I didn't necessarily have a clear perspective on when I was a teenager. If there's a takeaway here, I hope it's the personal responsibility each of us has—at any age—to speak up for and defend those who can't defend themselves. What kinds of reactions have you gotten so far from teenagers? What about parents, teachers and/or librarians? The response has been overwhelmingly positive—especially from teenagers, but also from adults, who have thanked me for giving them a way into a conversation about these kinds of choices with their own kids. I've heard from teenagers who have experienced similar situations at their own school. I've been able to recommend other books that have tackled these themes recently as well, like Courtney Summers’ "All the Rage" and Jennifer Mathieu’s "The Truth About Alice." This is Banned Books Week, and I'm sure some parents don't want to even think about their kids being anywhere near a situation like the one in Steubenville, much less talk about it. However, just because your child isn't talking to you about these issues, doesn't mean they aren't talking about them. If you want to be a part of that conversation, but don't know how to get it started? There are a lot of authors out there who have already done it for you. Do you have anything else to add? I've been asked several times if it was "a challenge" to write from a female perspective, and my response is that at the core of any good story isn't a "male" experience or a "female" experience. It's a human experience. I think we humans (of whatever gender or gender expression) are equals, and not so wildly different on the inside that one gender can't write from the point of view of a different gender. Growing up gay in the middle of the country, every ounce of homophobia I ever experienced was firmly rooted in sexism. If calling somebody a "girl" is the worst put-down you can think of, then we have a problem culturally. It's something I love to talk to teens about, and hope that these conversations turn on a light, one reader at a time.