Black Widow Fic: No Time Left to Start Again

Post-BW, between the end and the post-credits. Yelena Belova faces life after The Snap.

No Time Left to Start Again (AO3 - wc: 4983)

She looks down to see her hands disintegrating -- fingers floating away like the wispy tufts of the dandelions that grew in their front yard in Ohio -- and Yelena thinks, Is this a cool way to die?

The question is still on her mind when she comes to, even though she’ll find out later that five years have passed since she started wondering. 

She puts the pieces together as fast as she can, even though each one only makes the picture more grim. She learns she was lucky to be in the Widows’ safe house in Istanbul when it happened, even if the rancid smell of the rotted fridge makes her gag and there’s a hole in the ceiling and straight through the floor from a bathtub left running. 

She learns that the best estimates say it was half of the population that floated away with her that day, and has now returned just as abruptly. The world wasn't ready for them to go, and it is even less prepared for them to return. Cities are plunged into chaos in an instant, governments and aid organizations just starting to steady themselves after half a decade of desolation get the rug pulled out from them once again.

She learns that her phone still works, even if internet service is shit, thanks to dwindling maintenance and overloaded servers. She learns that the Avengers are fighting a war for the fate of the universe (again), somewhere in upstate New York. And she learns, quickly, where she needs to go next.

“Малышка.”

Melina greets her at the gate with an unexpected softness -- so different than the last time -- and Yelena wonders if the woman has simply spent the last five years alone with her pigs, if they've felt any different than the twenty before. Then, Alexi steps out the door behind her, and she realizes that they have. 

“So, neither of you…” Yelena starts to ask as they let her in, though she doesn't really have to. She can see the years on them both, and for a moment, she's a child with a family once again.

My mother is going grey at her temples. My father's glasses are thicker than they used to be. 

They both have deeper crinkles at the corners of their eyes and Yelena finds herself hoping that it’s laughter that’s left them there.

“For five years we've been on our own,” Alexi answers, but he can't help himself a little smirk before he continues, “and moss grows fat on a rolling stone.”

He doesn't smell so bad this time, when he wraps her in a bear hug. Mercifully, he's shaved and taken to civilian clothes -- she decides to keep to herself how much she dislikes his new handlebar mustache.

“You did?” Melina guesses, and Yelena nods her agreement into Alexi’s chest before he relents and lets her go.

When she turns back to face the question, she finds herself on the receiving end of a look that feels equal parts discerning and maternal. That too, she remembers from her childhood.

“Are you alright?”

“I seem to be,” Yelena answers, gesturing down to her hands, tangible once more. There won't be an answer that satisfies the woman scientifically, she’ll have to be proof enough. “I don't remember any of it.”

What she truly doesn't expect from Melina is a hug, and it's even more surprising when it’s fiercer and longer than Alexi’s. A beat too long, Yelena realizes slowly. Alexi turns away when she tries to meet his eye, and her stomach turns over with dread.

Something else has happened. Something she doesn't know yet. Something worse.

“The report came over my comms just an hour or so before you got here,” Melina says softly, an arm reaching up to stroke the back of Yelena’s head, just like she did when she was a toddler. “It's over. The Avengers have won.”

There's the sound of splintering wood and both women step back sharply, turning to see Alexi clutching a handful of splinters that used to be the back of a dining room chair. He drops them to the ground and strides back out the door, pointedly not looking at either of them, and Yelena tastes bile in the back of her mouth. 

“What else?” She tries and fails to stop herself from asking the question. It comes out on a choked kind of half-breath.

“Tony Stark is dead.” Melina answers, dropping her eyes, an uncharacteristic waver in her voice. “And it's been... harder to confirm, but we are almost certain that Natasha is too.”

In the Red Room, after the treatments, there would be a buzzing in your ears for days, like static from an old radio. Widows in training were known to be disciplined after missing commands, and would do their best to shake it off as quickly as possible, but Yelena sometimes welcomed the fuzzy silences, the chance to try and focus inward, no matter how painful.

This is nothing like that.

This is a heartbreak in a cry, a desperate, wailing sound that builds and builds, cutting through the quiet isolation of the farm compound like a knife. It's only when it gets muffled by Melina wrapping her up in her arms once more, that Yelena realizes she's the one making it.

“Малышка,” her mother whispers again -- my baby -- and Yelena can’t tell if it’s meant for her or not.

They sit around the table again that night, but dinner consists only of vodka and memories and they all try -- and fail -- not to notice the empty chair closest to the windows, the one with the broken back. 

“Oh, I hated that blue hair!” Melina admits with a watery chuckle, paging through the photo album when their second bottle is nearly gone. “But she was so good at getting what she wanted.”

“You know, I begged her to dye mine too,” Yelena shares, recalling a long-forgotten memory that means something completely different now. “She said no, that she wouldn't let me be spoiled.”

Alexi interrupts the reverie before she goes too deep, laughter overtaking him as he pokes at Melina’s arm. “I remember the night she did it. You came to bed and you were so fed up, you cried! She made you cry!”

“And I punched you for laughing at me, do you remember that too?” Melina fires back, swatting his hand away.

When she was old enough to realize what had happened to her as a child, Yelena remembers scouring her memories for real moments, signs of genuine affection between the family she hadn’t known enough to question. It was difficult then, to believe any of it had been real. But sometimes now, it's not so hard.

“The only reason I was glad we left when we did, was because I knew I could never have handled her as a teenager,” Melina muses then, but there's little humor left in her voice. Yelena wonders if her face darkens in the same way as her mother’s when they think of that day on the airstrip.

It's quiet for a long moment, but Alexi never stops looking at Melina. Yelena's head is heavy from liquor and tears and she rests it on folded arms as she watches them. (Sometimes, it's not so hard to believe.)

“You didn't want to go,” her father says, low and mournful. “I should have listened.”

“You followed the orders,” her mother answers. “What was the alternative? They would have killed us and taken the girls back if we had made even one misstep.”

None of them had a way out, Yelena thinks, they never had. A super soldier and a Widow, weapons both, with daughters destined to follow in their footsteps. Maybe that's still true. Maybe there is no peace when all you've ever known is war.

But they'd had each other.

“It was real,” she murmurs, as her eyes drift closed. “Natasha said it was real.”

-----

A public memorial for Tony Stark is held on the National Mall. Steve Rogers is consecrated at the Smithsonian, again. But no one seems to know quite what to do about Natasha Romanov. The Black Widow, the female Avenger, the Russian-born assassin, only claimed by America, it seemed, when they wanted to accuse her of treason.

Still, Yelena flies to Washington DC, half-curious and half-desperate to burn off the fog she’s been wandering around in since Melina’s suspicions had been confirmed. 

Captain America, the new one, had announced the events on a world-wide broadcast -- making a point to mention Natasha by name, Yelena had noticed -- and so she heads to the museum first, though she's not entirely sure what she hopes to learn. The Avengers have saved the world several times over, but those conflicts are usually reduced to heroic platitudes when it comes to the public, and she expects this to be no different.

She's mostly right, but the exhibit is worth it for a few glimpses of Natasha fighting alongside the Captain, scattered throughout the pictures and video of the Avengers’ years together. That's how she finds herself in a darkened theater, watching a compilation of newsreel footage, broadcasts and shaky cell phone shots, the valiant timeline of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

She feels him sit down beside her, catches the glint of metal in the sleeve of his leather jacket before she can even clock his face. Her nerves are instinctively on edge, but if he came for combat, they’d already be in it, so she stays still and quiet, waiting to follow his lead.

“ты сестра?” he asks softly. You're the sister?

Yelena turns to face him, the question and answer on her lips. But the Winter Soldier speaks again before she does.

“She showed me the pictures once. From when you were kids.”

Yelena couldn't count them if she tried, the nights she spent in the Red Room, rubbing a finger along the torn seam of her photo strip, willing the thought that Natasha was out there somewhere, holding the other half, to be enough to comfort her enough to sleep.

She turns away before he can see the tears in her eyes, but it’s no use -- they’re there in her throat when she speaks.

“They didn't even know her.” She nods back to the crowded museum and hopes he can grasp her meaning. There’s no way Natasha can be properly memorialized by government officials, who knew her as little more than a recon file, or the adoring public, who only thought of her when the world was ending.

“She liked it that way.” He means it as a comfort, but still, it makes Yelena flinch.

He notices, and she knows he understands when he tries again. “They were never gonna do her justice.”

The world never would, never could, Yelena thinks. A spy. A sister. A survivor. A lost girl, who fought her whole life for the kind of peace she’d never allow herself. These are not the people who get parades in their honor, holidays in their name. 

“I will,” she says, and the stubborn tears win their battle, spilling down her cheeks. “I will do her justice.”

The Winter Soldier nods, with as much of a smile as he seems to allow himself. “I hope you will.”

Then he's gone, back the way he came, and Yelena thinks it's time to leave this city, with its buttoned-up bureaucracy and privatized secrets.

She doesn't care much about the Stark memorial, but skirts around the periphery on her way back to the airfield, catching a glimpse of the enormous photos and expensive-looking displays.

Natasha’s in these too, off to the side or just out of focus. It's starting to wear on her, the way these people seem to barely even notice the Black Widow, how quick they are to disregard one of their greatest heroes because she didn't fly or transform or wield some mystical weapon.

Shouldn’t that have made her even more impressive?

She's standing in front of a tribute to the Battle of New York just beside the bridge, weighing that unanswerable question, hands clenched unconsciously to fists, when Valentina finds her.

“I've been looking for you.” It sounds more like a taunt. I found you.

Yelena scoffs. “Probably a bad idea, if you know anything about me.”

“Oh, babe, believe me. I know plenty,” the woman answers, offering up that ridiculous name, a business card and a tone that's too familiar for Yelena's liking.

She's not to be trusted. That would be clear even to the Red Room’s youngest and most naive recruit. But it's this gleeful performance of espionage, or maybe villainy, that keeps Yelena from writing her off entirely. From the outfit to the attitude, she's either insane or untouchable. Or both.

And then: “So I have some… let's call it interesting information about your sister.”

Yelena clenches her fists tighter, digging her fingernails into her palm. “I don't believe you.”

Valentina seems to anticipate this, and is already reaching into her bag at the answer. She pulls out a thin, soft-bound book, printed with colorful block lettering: Parkside Elementary School, ‘95-’96.

Instantly, Yelena feels like someone's tightening a vice around her ribcage. “No.”

The woman shrugs, with that haughty grin she's already starting to loathe. “See for yourself.” 

She flips it open, turning only a few pages to find the first grade classes, and there she is. Six years old. An innocent smile on her face and a fake last name beneath her picture. Orange juice spots on the collar of her shirt -- Melina had scolded her when they brought the photos home. 

“How did you get this?” Even if it's a fake, it was done by someone who knows far too much.

“Well, you don't trust me, so I won't bother telling you,” Valentina snaps, taking the book back before she can look for Natasha. “Let’s call it proof that I know a lot of people who have been keeping a lot of secrets.”

Yelena tries to look unimpressed, dropping her shaking hands to her sides when she realizes they're giving her away. “You and me both.” 

“Ha! No kidding,” Valentina replies. It's not actually a laugh. “That's exactly why we're gonna work so well together.”

Maybe it's the grief clouding her judgement or residual conditioning left over in her frontal lobe. Maybe it's the unspoken threat to the rest of her family. Or maybe she was just born for this -- a soldier like her father, an assassin like her mother. Whatever it is, Yelena can feel herself agreeing to Valentina’s “offer” before she's even made it explicit.

“We'll start you out small,” the woman assures, but she knows better than to be comforted. “How do you feel about some light arson? There’s some documents and hard drives at a warehouse in Bethesda that need disappearing.”

“Fine,” Yelena answers, ears already buzzing, as a small voice in her head sings along. Fire is the devil's only friend.

-----

When the money from her first job comes in, she buys an old Chevy C/K and drives to Akron, with a useless hope to disappear again. She's lucky enough to find a modest apartment with a kind neighbor who's always happy to dogsit, which becomes a blessing -- Valentina’s demands only increase as the corners of her fake smile tighten. 

But it's enough. Enough that when Yelena thinks about home, she can once again think of Ohio.

Not long after, Alexi and Melina keep a promise she’d asked them to make, and return for a few days. She picks them up at the airfield, and drives to the spot she and Fanny found on one of their long walks together -- under the trees that are just starting to blossom with pink flowers.

Alexi lifts the heavy gravestone from the back of the truck and places it at the end of a row, under a tree, where the ground can't be dug up anyway. 

“Toughest girls in the world,” Yelena hears him murmur as he runs his hand over the inscription.

Melina hasn't spoken much since they landed. Yelena thought at first that she didn't want to come back, but when she closes her eyes and takes in a deep, shuddering breath as they stand facing the grave marker, she understands that it isn't that at all.

“Big girl,” her mother begins with an uncharacteristic, watery softness, and Yelena is transported back to another lifetime once again. “I’m so sorry...”

There might be more to say, but the long, mournful silence is broken by the sound of another car pulling up. All three of them go on alert, until Yelena spots a familiar flash of metal from the driver's side.

“не волнуйся,” she says, still stepping defensively in front of her mother. “It’s OK.”

The Winter Soldier -- Sergeant Barnes, she reminds herself -- parks and exits quickly, moving to the rear of the car to help an elderly man step out and straighten himself.

He isn't what Yelena expected, but once he's at full posture, it's impossible not to recognize him. He's the man from the news, the internet, all the posters — give or take a few decades.

“Captain America.” Under normal circumstances, she might chuckle at Alexi’s awed whisper.

“Forgive us for interrupting,” the Captain says by way of a greeting. He sounds like him, too, so it must be true. “And, in advance, for not explaining. I just… I thought both of her families should be here.”

“If that's OK,” Barnes adds with a look, first at Captain Rogers, then back at the family.

Yelena nods her acceptance, but feels her heart sink a little when Melina turns back silently to face the gravestone. Only Alexi steps forward, extending his arm, first to the captain, then to his comrade.

“Alexi Shostakov,” he offers. “You probably don’t…”

“The Red Guardian,” Captain Rogers interrupts, and Yelena tries not to let her eyes go wide as they shake hands proudly. “The Soviet super soldier. Of course I know who you are.”

Alexi puffs his chest up for just a moment, and gives himself a pleased nod, before returning to Melina’s side. It's proof of his grief, Yelena thinks, that that's the end of it.

Then it's her turn. “You must be Yelena.”

“Captain.” She nods once and then twice, looking past him. “Sergeant.”

“Buck mentioned you two had run into each other in Washington,” the older man says with a well-worn, knowing smile.

“I would say we're glad to have you,” she offers as a reply, “but now I'm mostly worried that I'm not covering my tracks as well as I should.”

“Don't worry about that,” Captain Rogers replies, with a shake of his head. “I had to call in multiple favors to find you. Big ones, too.”

“Well then,” she sighs, “I guess I should say I'm sorry you went through all that trouble.”

Another small smile, and then the captain steps closer, lowering his voice almost conspiratorially. It strikes her that, while he's likely still one of the most powerful men in the universe, there's nothing about him that feels threatening to her.

“I don't know if you've noticed,” he tells her, “but I'm getting up there in years. Why don't you save us both a lot of time from now on, and only bother saying what you mean.”

He means it as a kindness, Yelena can tell, but there's only one question she wants to ask, and it's screaming in her mind like a klaxon horn.

“Will you...” she begins, stopping to swallow when her throat turns to sandpaper. “Will you tell us what happened?”

“Yelena,” Melina says sharply, and she almost takes it back. But she knows the curiosity will eat her from the inside out if she doesn't take the chance now, when it's literally right in front of her.

“No, I want to know,” she tells her mother before turning back and steeling herself once again. “I want the truth.”

Captain Rogers purses his lips and tilts his head, like he's seeing something different in her now.

“You really are her sister, aren't you?” he muses.

She scoffs, almost reflexively. “There's no family resemblance, if that's what you mean.”

“Isn't there?” She hears Alexi chuckle softly behind her and makes a mental note to elbow him in the ribs later. One super soldier at a time.

“Please,” she asks again, and the twinkle leaves Captain Rogers' eye as he nods solemnly.

“Natasha sacrificed herself to retrieve the last of the Infinity Stones.” Yelena only understands part of that sentence, and she's not sure if it's the important part.

“The stones were the key to bringing everyone back, to defeating Thanos once and for all,” he explains. “We made a plan, as a team. We each had our assignments, but we didn't know the cost.”

The cost, it's evident now, had been Natasha, and it grates again at Yelena that all the other Avengers had returned from this mission for their final battle, while her sister’s sacrifice had merely been part of the unknowable set up. 

But Captain Rogers continues, and she finds consolation in the fact that at least he doesn't take Natasha's death lightly, not in the slightest. 

“I went back, after,” he reveals, sounding close to tears. “I tried-- I tried like hell to get her back. I never should have let her go.”

“You wouldn't have been able to stop her.” Melina’s voice comes out of nowhere; even she seems surprised to have spoken. But they all nod at the truth.

“Clint said he-- she wouldn't let him go in her place,” Rogers adds. He’s turning something over in his hands, but when Yelena looks closer, it seems to be just a simple pack of bubble gum. “She was just too…”

His eyes, cast towards the sky, return to their group, and he speaks first to Alexi, and then to Melina. Yelena reaches out for her mother's hand, and it's taken with a fierce squeeze.

“I'm not sure I ever really understood her until now,” the Captain says. “I thought her strength, her heart, who she was, was in spite of what she'd been through. But I know now, it was because of it.”

Yelena’s eyes have blurred with tears, but she can see him turn to her next. “We fought that war for her,” he adds. “And I think she fought it for you.”

It's the eulogy Natasha deserves, the one none of them could have hoped to give, and it feels both fitting and unfathomable that it comes from Captain America, of all people.

They sit in it for a moment, each thinking of Natasha in their own way, until the silence is broken by two people speaking in unison -- perhaps the two that understood her best.

“She would have hated this,” Yelena mumbles, only realizing after a moment that Barnes had said the same thing.

A reserved chuckle rumbles through the five of them, and then a deep, forgiving breath. It’s time to go. 

But Yelena drops Melina’s hand as the rest of them turn back for the road, suddenly unable to move. She can’t pull her eyes away from the grave, stuck staring at a legacy that makes her feel six years old again, a metaphorical pair of shoes she'll never be able to fill.

When she doesn't hear either car start, she expects maybe Captain Rogers or Alexi, but surprisingly, it's Barnes who returns to her side.

“I haven't… I didn't make a speech or anything,” she admits, gesturing at the stone with her sister’s name and titles, and willing him, once again, to understand the feelings she can’t put into words. “I don't know what to say to her.”

He's quiet for a moment, and when he speaks it's lower than she’s expecting, like he’s drawing the words from somewhere deep. “Nat never shared much with us,” he tells her. “I understood that. It's hard to talk about memories you don't think you deserve to miss.”

Yelena knows she’s felt that too, that kind of arrested nostalgia. And she’s seen it in the Widows she recovered before the snap. It's not a surprise that the Winter Soldier could understand it as well -- what it’s like to be freed from a prison in your own mind, but constantly aware of how easily that door could slam closed on you once again.

“She wouldn't care what you say here,” he continues. “She would care what you do out there.”

Suddenly, Yelena wonders if his heightened senses include a bullshit detector, if he can somehow see the marionette strings Valentina has looped around her conscience.

“I might have lied to you when we met,” she admits, telling him as much of the truth as she can muster. “I'm not sure I know how to do her justice.”

“I think you do,” he answers. “Even if it’s hard. Even if it takes a while.”

She turns to face him, and he’s staring at the gravestone like he can see something more than the paltry words they had paid someone to carve in Natasha’s memory.

“Nat was haunted by the red in her ledger, but she also thought it was what made her a good Avenger. She thought it made her fearless, unbreakable.” Yelena looks down and watches the metal of Barnes’ bionic hand curl into a fist, and then release. “But I'll take a wild guess that she was fearless before that, wasn't she?”

Through the years of mind control and conditioning, Yelena has never forgotten the feeling of Natasha’s arm wrapped around her back on that airstrip in Cuba, screaming and threatening men twice her size to try and keep them both safe.

“You may not know what to do now. You might feel like the things you've done, or the things you want to do, have set your future in stone,” Barnes continues, cutting through the haze of her memories.

“But there's gonna be a moment, maybe in the future, maybe soon, when you're faced with a choice. And in that moment, if you choose to be the person she thought you could be, that'll do her justice.”

Yelena looks up and Barnes’ eyes are there to meet now. Whatever he knows, it’s enough. 

“Thank you for coming,” she tells him. “Truly. And thank you for bringing the Captain.”

“Couldn't keep him away,” the man admits, with his little half-smile. “The two of them...I think that was as close as they let themselves get to anybody. I know he’ll always blame himself, but I hope this helped.” 

Yelena nods her goodbye, thinking idly, mournfully, about the way Natasha never gave any thought to her future -- wondering if that’s something she and her teammates had shared. But as Barnes returns to his car, the back window rolls down and Captain Rogers flags her down with something dark and folded in his hand.

“I found this with her things on the quinjet,” he says as she approaches the window, and her throat is tightening with new tears before he can finish, before she can even reach out to touch the familiar fabric. “Thought maybe you might want it. It’s pretty nice, it’s got a lot of pockets.”

-----

When she returns Melina and Alexi to the airfield a few days later, it's the most Yelena has felt like a real person in a long time, maybe the whole of her adult life.

“You’ll come to visit, yes?” Alexi asks, but his raised eyebrow tells her it's more of an order than a request.

“I will.”

“Come for Christmas!” he booms as he climbs out of the truck. “I will tell Santa Claus where to find you.” 

Melina doesn't follow him out the passenger door right away, turning back to face her and looking for all the world like a typical worrisome mother.

“Yelena…”

“мама, I'll be fine,” she promises, trying not to hear how hollow it sounds.

“I know you will. But please, watch out for yourself.” Yelena’s stomach knots at the memory of Melina telling Natasha the very same. That was the last time they were all together, she recalls. It always will be. 

“And if you need us,” Melina adds, “just come home, where it’s safe. OK?”

It's something about the way she says it that steals Yelena's planned reply from her lips. She doesn't want to lie, not now.

So she ducks forward, pressing her head against her mother’s and willing them both a little bit of peace.

“You are the best of us. Strong like your father, smart like your mama,” Melina whispers. “And like Natasha, through everything, you’ve kept your heart.”

Yelena pulls back then, swiping at her eyes, unable to stop herself from asking. “You don’t think that’s a weakness?”

“Maybe, at one time,” Melina admits. “But now, I think it’s lucky. Because now, you have a place to carry her.”

She can do that, at least, Yelena promises herself, reaching down to tug instinctively at the hem of her vest. Natasha died for them, and so she can live for her. She can do her justice.

“Stay safe, Малышка,” Melina says again, kissing her on the cheek before climbing out and following Alexi towards the runway. They two of them turn back to wave before boarding their jet, and Yelena’s heart knocks in her chest to remind her. That’s my family.

She puts the truck in gear and is pulling out to the main road, brushing away a few stray tears, when she notices it. A cassette, half-ejected from her ancient tape deck, with a Post-it stuck to the end. 

She peels off the note and grins at the mismatched handwriting -- “Love, Mom. And Dad,” both in Cyrillic -- before pressing the tape in and starting to sing along.

“A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…”

“Literal violence” and the death of the heterodox

I teach college students. This means I assign young people things to read. If the students don’t do the reading--if they consider it too boring or uninteresting or difficult--they don’t do well in the class. I update my reading lists every semester, because what was interesting to students a few years or even months ago might not click with the students of today. Sometimes students love what they’re assigned. Sometimes they hate it. And it’s very hard to tell if a piece is or isn’t going to work until I’ve assigned it and gotten feedback. 

As I’ve gotten older it has become more difficult to relate to young people. This is a completely normal part of life--nothing to be ashamed of or panic about, and I think almost everyone agrees that it’s more dignified to age gracefully than to try too hard to seem hip or with it. And so, over the past few years, as I’ve found it nearly impossible to find good, engaging writing with a broad appeal, I figured it was just because I, naturally, don’t relate to young people as much as I used to.

But lately--certainly since Trump’s ascendance, but perhaps going back as far as the early twenty-teens--mainstream writing has become incredibly predictable. Name any event and I can tell you almost word-for-word how it will be discussed in Jezebel vs. Teen Vogue vs. The Root vs The Intercept. And, increasingly, there’s been very little analytical divergence even between different publications. Everyone to the left of Fox News seems to agree upon just about everything, and all analysis has been boiled down to the repetition of one of a half-dozen or so aphorisms about privilege or validity. There is, in short, a proper and improper way to describe and understand anything that happens, and a writer is simply not going to get published if they have an improper understanding of the world. 

This, I think, is the result of our normalizing hyperbolic overstatements of harm and the danger posed by anything short of absolute fealty to orthodox liberalism. If it’s “literal violence” to express mild criticism and incredulity, people aren’t going to do so. Editors don’t want to risk accusations of “platforming fascists,” and so there’s been very little pushback against fascism being recently re-defined as “anything that displeases upper middle class Democrats.” 

Not long ago, it was commonplace on the left to celebrate the internet’s ability to allow writers to bypass the gatekeeping functions of old media. With mainstream liberalism needing a scapegoat to explain away the failures of the post-2008 Democratic party, however, the tone has shifted. 

Case in point, Clio Chang’s rather chilling piece from the Columbia Journalism Review that seeks to problematize an open platform called Substack.. Substack allows writers to publish almost whatever they want, outside of editorial control, and then charge a subscription to readers. As more and more websites and print media are being hollowed out and sacrificed to the gods of speculative capital, a large number of big-name writers have embraced this new platform. It has also allowed writers to report on stories that are objectively true but inconvenient to the Democratic establishment, such as Matt Taibbi’s admirable work debunking Russiagate bullshit. 

Chang begins with a lengthy description of Substack’s creation. She stresses that no one—not even the site’s founders and most successful writers—consider it an ideal replacement for the well-funded journalism of old. Chang focuses on one particular Substack newsletter called “Coronavirus News For Black Folks” which appears to be moderately successful (the piece cites 2000+ subscribers, and its founder is earning enough to have hired an assistant editor). Even after describing how the platform has given large grants and stipends to other newsletter run by women and people of color, the fact that this one particular newsletter isn’t as successful as others is held up as proof of the platform’s malignancy.

​“Coronavirus News For Black Folks” may be somewhat successful, but Chang implies that it rightfully should be even more successful, and that something evil must be afoot. Simple arithmetic tells us that a specialized newsletter—one pitched specifically to a minority audience and only covering one particular issue—is going to have a smaller readership than a more general interest piece. Rather than accept this simple explanation, Chang instead embraces the liberal tendency to blame a lack of desired outcomes upon the presence of evil forces.

While Chang provides a thorough overview of the current, fucked state of media and journalism, at no point does she grapple with the role that mainstream liberalism has played in abetting the industry’s collapse. This is surprising, as a quick google search suggests she generally has solid, left-wing politics. This omission reveals a problematic gap in left analysis, and bodes poorly for any hope of leftism accomplishing any material goals while the movement remains aligned with more mainstream identity politics. Even as she cogently explains the destruction of media and the hellish future that lay before writers, Chang still embraces the mystical fatalism that liberals have been leaning on since 2010 or so, when it became clear that Obama wasn’t going to make good on any promises of hope or change. She blames our nation’s horrors not elite leadership, but on the presence of people and ideas she doesn’t like. In this case, Substack is problematic because many of its writers are white and male, and some are even conservative:

When [Andrew] Sullivan joined Substack, over the summer, he put the company’s positioning to the test: infamous for publishing excerpts from The Bell Curve, a book that promotes bigoted race “science,” Sullivan would now produce the Weekly Dish, a political newsletter. (Substack’s content guidelines draw a line at hate speech.) Sullivan’s Substack quickly rose to become the fifth-most-read among paid subscriptions—he claimed that his income had risen from less than $200,000 at New York magazine to $500,000. When I asked the founders if they thought his presence might discourage other writers from joining, they gave me a pat reply. “We’re not a media company,” Best said. “If somebody joins the company and expects us to have an editorial position and be rigorously enforcing some ideological line, this is probably not the company they wanted to join in the first place.”

I’m no fan of Andrew Sullivan, but the man has spent decades building and maintaining his audience. Of course he’s going to have a larger readership than someone who is just starting out. This isn’t a sign of anything nefarious. It’s basic commonsense. But there’s no other conclusions that can be reached: things are bad because people haven’t done enough to root out badness. Things are bad because evil exists. The only way we can attempt reform is to make the evil people go away. Anyone who says anything I don’t like is evil and their words are evil and they shouldn’t be published.

Chang doesn’t make any direct suggestions for remediating Substack, but her implications are clear: equity requires censorship and ideological conformity. Providing any platform for people who are disliked by the liberal mainstream, be they too far left or too indelicate with their conservative cruelty, equates to harming vulnerable people—even when those vulnerable people freely admit to making money off the same platform. There is no room for dissent. There is no possibility of reform. The boundaries of acceptable discourse must grow narrower and narrower. Only when we free our world from the presence of the bad ones will change magically arrive.

NOTE: I wrote a follow-up to this piece that I think does a better job of articulating the points I was trying to make.

QUARANTINE MOVIES PART FOUR

It’s wild to watch any movie knowing that none will be made for the foreseeable future, and that the whole collective experience of filmgoing might be dead. I tend to have a certain sad, scared lonely feeling when I contemplate the future at night, and while I attempt to put off by watching movies, it only partly works. Now, more than ever, movies are a larger part of my processing of the world than the ongoing conversations I have with friends.

Smithereens (1982) dir. Susan Seidelman

There is something particularly powerful about movies where people run around, socializing. These things are pretty resonant with my youth, but “youth” in this broad sense that just means “the before times,” because if there’s anything quarantine is bringing home it’s the importance of a form of adulthood based around domestic partnerships with someone you like and having “real jobs” that can translate to telecommuting. Of course, socializing of the sort no longer allowed is really useful, and shouldn’t be written off as youthful frivolity. Smithereens is not a particularly romantic movie: While it might be famous for being “punk” in a “cool” way, documenting young New York nightlife in a way where David Wojnarowicz’s band 3 Teens Kill 4 is on a club’s marquee, it’s really about young people as these sort of upwardly-mobile opportunists with no real talent trying to exploit one another for a mixture of sex and social clout, and ignoring those who are not actively useful to them. It’s a useful document of people being shitty where the appeal now is how cool they look, and it’s interesting to watch in this moment where I’m worried that the whole idea of community will be lost very soon, in a way we won’t even be able to articulate. We’ll all be scrambling for jobs and security but everything will be further hollowed out, and we’ll be left with an even more vicious and dog-eat-dog citizenry. So a movie like this has nostalgic appealing, but by depicting the seeds of what will only become more widespread problems, it avoids feeling dated or idealistic.

Gloria (1980) dir. John Cassavetes

Oh shit this movie rules! I was under the impression I disliked Cassavetes, based on the others I had seen, and watching the first twenty-odd minutes reminded me of why: Sort of circular conversations, involving a lot of people being upset with one another. But this ends up feeling more like a movie, and less like a play. Once Gena Rowlands kills a carful of people I was completely on board. She’s great in this, playing opposite a child, who is also amazing in it, tons of dialogue that should be quotable: “You’re not my mother, my mother was beautiful” being but one amazing bit of poetry. Both extremely cute and extremely badass from moment to moment, the parts of this movie are in tension with one another where it also feels like it’s going from strength to strength, and ever scene, every moment, is great. Incredible music, and also great documentation of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, of telephone booths, smoking sections, and places that’ll develop photos for you. Highest possible recommendation.

The Naked City (1948) dir. Jules Dassin

Seemingly the first movie to be shot on location throughout New York, rather than studio backlots, and it milks the city for all its worth, shifting frequently from one location to another, introducing to new characters. Initially guided by omniscient narration but quickly focusing to become a police procedural. I knew Dassin from Rififi but this feels more exciting, I would gladly watch movies bite the techniques from this every few decades, though Gloria does a good job of moving through the streets of New York in a less-contrived way. There was a Naked City TV show ten years later, shot on location and focusing on a police precinct.

Near Dark (1987) dir. Kathryn Bigelow

I consider this Kathryn Bigelow’s best movie, but circumstances have not led me to watch it as many times as I’ve seen Point Break, so the memories I’ve retained of it were kind of inaccurate: Specifically, the thing I thought of as the climax, the part at the hotel where light is getting shot through the blankets taped up to cover windows, happens like halfway through. Screenwriter Eric Red wrote this at the same time as he wrote The Hitcher, and that’s another one that just GOES, moving from one scene to another where they all have this climactic intensity constantly but the scale is shifting of what you’re invested in? The Hitcher is a nightmare and this is more of an action movie. People point out this movie has a bunch of the cast from Aliens but I didn’t realize there’s a shot where Aliens is actually on the marquee of a theater. I also wonder if this whole horror/action/western/but with vampires thing was an inspiration to Garth Ennis? I kinda feel like the pacing I find so powerful could not really be sustained over the length of an extended comic run.

Hero (1992) dir. Stephen Frears

Dustin Hoffman plays a criminal schlub, doing a weird voice. It’s almost like he was told that the role was written for Sylvester Stallone, but Stallone’s insistence on getting a writing credit on every movie he acts in complicated the premise in a weird way, so Hoffman just attempts a Stallone impression. One of his few redeeming characteristics is he’s a loving father, but that isn’t why he’ll remind you of your dad. Maybe most men are just Dustin Hoffman doing impersonations of Sylvester Stallone! From 1992, so Hoffman’s I guess in a post-Rain-Man mode, but the film also feels very early nineties in its commentary on television news turning stories into celebrities, and an analysis of the problems with professional cynicism that seem very much of their time. It’s not like a more sophisticated critique has found its way into any mainstream film I can think of, we’ve just stopped thinking about these issues, as they’ve become much worse. Joan Cusack’s good as his Hoffman’s ex-wife, and Susie Cusack’s good as his lawyer. I would like to see Susie Cusack in more things! Geena Davis plays a television reporter, Andy Garcia plays a decent guy who is a contrast to Hoffman, there’s also small roles for the likes of Stephen Tobolowsky and Tom Arnold, really placing this in a moment of time.

The Age Of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese

I didn’t like this one, for all the obvious reasons: I don’t like costume dramas about rich people, and I don’t like Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s an Edith Wharton adaptation, all about a world of well-mannered old money with very rigidly defined rules of behavior. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the true love Day-Lewis is kept from by the mores of the day, and part of her romantic appeal is she’s able to see through the rituals and make fun of them, while Winona Ryder fully buys into them, and thus reaps the benefits. Everything is repressed, all behavior is affect, this is of course the point but very much not my thing. There’s also a lot of a narrator reading the text of the book while the camerawork fades between lavishly composed image, while the cinematography probably looked great on a big screen I would still be very anxious about getting to the storytelling.

Experiment In Terror (1962) dir. Blake Edwards

This one starts off super-intensely, with a home invasion scene, the sense of horror in this is palpable but the fear is just used as this blackmail structure for some noir stuff? It straggles the genre line pretty well, feeling weird because of this horror energy of sheer creeping malevolence defines it. This is also considerably longer than most of the other film noir I’ve watched recently, because those moments extend and take away from the sense of a building plot, to instead feel like they might derail it. Lee Remick is the lead, and she is this terrified victim, which makes the film more interesting than if it were focused on the cop played by Glenn Ford. The main character’s younger sister gets kidnapped at one point, it gets creepy. The climax occurs at a end of a crowded baseball game, and there’s shots that I assume were done via helicopter, which seems like it would’ve upped the budget considerably.

The Harder They Fall (1956) dir. Mark Robson

Humphrey Bogart stars as a former sports writer, working to drum up publicity for a fresh-off-the-boat boxer who does not know how to fight, but is naively participating in fixed matches, for the economic benefit of the mob. While the boxer is being exploited and making no money, despite his celebrity; Bogart is being well-compensated to sell out his conscience and he is very good at playing a dude in moral conflict with himself, struggling to do the decent thing. While this isn’t the best boxing movie, or the best Bogart, it’s still pretty good.

The Devil And Miss Jones (1941) dir. Sam Wood

Heard about this one in the context of it having good politics. It’s about a rich guy who goes undercover at a department store hoping to bust the union only to realize that the guy organizing the union is supremely decent and the middle manager should get fired. It has some scenes that feel like they might play for “cringe comedy” but also are just so fucked up? One where the rich dude is forcing shoes onto the feet of little girl who is crying saying “I don’t like it! I don’t like it!” feels way too much like a pervert’s fetish for me to be comfortable with. The female lead is played by Jean Arthur, who is very good at playing a genuine, kind, and idealistic person. I am very grateful she dates the union organizer and the old rich dude’s love interest is someone age-appropriate. Interesting to see a pro-union movie from a time when unions were popular, so it functions as populist entertainment while Sorry To Bother You gestures at being radical propaganda for self-congratulation’s sake.

Human Desire (1954) dir. Fritz Lang

Another noir from Lang, with the same leads as The Big Heat. This one made me worried about age-inappropriate relationships too, as it begins with a dude being back from war, moving in with his friends, and their daughter having “become a woman” while he was away. Luckily the title refers  to a desire he ends up feeling for a married woman who as an accomplice to a murder committed by her abusive husband. Glenn Ford stars in this one, and he has this very boring morally upstanding male lead quality that makes these well-made movies feel generic. This thing is happening to me watching movies where I get kind of hung up on how no one ever explains themselves or their feelings: I don’t think they should, I think the whole thing of watching a movie where you watch it thinking like “Why don’t you just tell her you love her??” is interesting because… a writer doesn’t need the characters to explain their feelings to each other if the viewers understand them, these feelings are the most obvious things and so can go unspoken, and so you would really only have them say these things if they were lying or being manipulative? But maybe in more modern movies people really do state their motivations because screenwriters are dumber now? I don’t know.

Fail Safe (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

I have talked about this movie a lot since watching it, and in a way that doesn’t even mention that the opening is amazing, and the title and credits sequence are all-time greats. Instead I mention that Henry Fonda’s performance seems to have inspired David Lynch’s performance of Gordon Cole, and how the weird, fucked up nightmarish ending doesn’t really change the fact that watching it in 2020 it feels like a sort of pornography of competence when contrasted against our own reality. The whole movie is about an accident that leads to a U.S. military plane flying to Moscow to drop a nuke, and everyone (except for the pilots) realizing this is a mistake and trying to avert global nuclear war. The ending is pretty astounding in its darkness. Walter Matthau plays a guy whose role is to argue for the pragmatic value of mass death, but the moral calculus that ends up being embraced is far beyond the nihilistic death drive he advocates for. Mutually assured destruction is such a motherfucker of a concept. I am really hung up on the idea that unilateral nuclear disarmament never became a thing really set a precedent for how political parties in this country will never unilaterally dismantle their propaganda machines. 24-hour news is a nightmare, not really on a par with nuclear weapons, but similarly something that should be illegal, but for the calculations made. We would be a different country if we were willing to make these kinds of sacrifices but we really are not.

The Deadly Affair (1967) dir. Sidney Lumet

James Mason stars in this John Le Carre adaptation. He plays a spy whose wife is cheating on him, with another spy. None of the twists in this are unforeseen, in fact, the title alone explains a bunch, but the title is also so generic you might forget what the movie is called while you’re watching it. James Mason is good in it, although it’s weird that he’s playing a likable guy who sort of doesn’t seem to understand why everyone can’t get along or be honest adults with one another considering his work in the intelligence community. Another solid Sidney Lumet movie.

Three Days Of The Condor (1975) dir. Sydney Pollack

This movie does a very good job of not explaining things up front, and then portioning out understanding as it goes on. The movie begins with Robert Redford getting his office getting shot up, and we eventually learn he works for the CIA, but he cannot rely on them for his protection. It doesn’t introduce the female lead, played by Faye Dunaway, until like halfway through the movie, when our hero takes her hostage. Redford can’t really explain the situation to her, and just sort of acts like a psychopath, but they are able to have a quasi-romantic relationship where she trusts him because he’s played by Robert Redford, who is in some ways the seventies’ answer to Glenn Ford. The movie star aspect allows him to sell his agreeability, although he’s also supposed to be something of a nerd, a guy whose job is just to read books and analyze the information. Max Von Sydow plays the villain.

The Third Shadow Warrior (1963) dir. Umetsugu Inoue

Watched this because it’s made by the dude who made Black Lizard, it’s a samurai thing about a warrior who employs body doubles. It follows one such body double, overshadowed by the man whose existence he supports, at the expense of his own individuality or happiness. Interesting enough, feels like it occupies the solid middle of samurai movies- Something sort of common to stuff on Criterion is something that doesn’t blow you away but it is definitely a “real movie” at the very least.

La Cienaga, (2001) dir. Lucrecia Martel

That said, you kind of do need to be careful with newer Criterion channel stuff, because some things feel more like they’re just trying to engage with an art house history in order to earn their place in the canon. This movie isn’t bad, but I do feel like the reason it’s interesting stems from a context the film itself has nothing to do with: After Martel made Zama (2017), there was talk of her being asked by Marvel to do a Black Widow movie, which is insane. The studio also volunteered to handle the action for her, which she said she would actually be interested in learning how to do herself, but she had no interest in working with Marvel. Let Lucrecia Martel make a big-budget action movie without corporate properties you cowards! This movie is pretty difficult to follow, with no clear narrative thread, a lot of characters, weird pacing, etc. There’s moments of poetry or tension but this is one of those things that’s just beyond my preferences enough to remind me of a certain aesthetic conservatism I possess. I didn’t finish Zama, though I had read the book. It’s honestly tough to imagine Martel making a movie with straightforward plot that can easily be followed, it doesn’t seem to be what she’s interested in, even in terms of editing a movie so that you have a sense of where scenes stand in relation to one another in time. Many scenes still maintain a sense of beauty or mystery but at there’s no velocity. She’s closer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Carlos Reygadas or Bi Gan, to name three people whose names I absolutely had to Google because I couldn’t think of them off the top of my head.

All these movies are streaming on The Criterion Channel, if you want me to recommend things on other streaming services, please DM me your login information.

Day 9 of a National Emergency

Day 11 of a Pandemic

It’s Day 9 of a National Emergency, as declared by President #45. (On March 21, 2020)

There are many creative memes floating around the interwebs: this might be my favorite:

“Kinda feeling like the earth just sent us all to our rooms to think about what we’ve done.”

Valerie and I are in the house in Paisley, with Griffey the poodle and Moe the cat. We have fabric and yarn for making masks to protect people, including us, from the novel coronavirus known as Covid19, which popped out of the animal kingdom to the bipedal mammalian one known as humanity, in Wuhan China, in December of 2019. The deaths from covid19 in Italy have surpassed the ones in China where many more people were infected.

“A staggering 793 people died TODAY alone in Italy from the Coronavirus. That makes it the single deadliest day for any nation in the entire pandemic.” (Shaun King, Instagram.)

Although the medical system in Italy is sophisticated, the people and public health system were too slow. And the average age is higher than average? Iran is also devastated, while the USA screws down tighter with sanctions. The countries that have dealt with the virus while ‘flattening the curve’? South Korea, Singapore, and finally, China.

There are no positive tests in Lake County because there are no tests. There are a few people reporting the symptoms of sore throat, fever, shortness of breath, and fatigue. Valerie’s friend, who is also Valerie’s second husband’s eighth wife, but who’s counting, had a sore throat and just didn’t feel well, and went walking with Valerie and Griffey on the desert road by the Paisley airport, to my consternation. Valerie is 72, and is hale and hearty most of the time, but has this little flaw: an autoimmune disorder that kicks her butt, or rather the myelin sheath of her nerves, following any immune battle. I wasn’t around to forbid it, so all I can do is point out that Valerie is at higher risk than the average 60+ year old.

I might be, too, given my general lack of aerobic fitness and, um, insulin dependent diabetes. Also, sleep apnea and hypertension.

The person I worry most about is Toni’s husband, Al, who has been smoking cigarettes for 50+ years and uses oxygen now. He had just resurrected community theater in Paisley and we were rehearsing when the ‘social distancing’ directive from Governor Brown came down. I am to play Cora, a busy body and gossip in a small New England town, foil to the proper but also gossiping member of the welcome committee, Reba. And we both apparently dislike Willa Mae, played by Valerie.

The play will happen at some point. But I refuse to memorize my lines until I know when we start up rehearsals again.

Covid 19 would take out Al in a New York minute.

Schools are closed, restaurants are ‘take out only’. No one is traveling, with the exception of my sister’s youngest child, 19 year old Makoto, who flew east from Japan, to Los Angeles, to Philadelphia, cutting short his adventure as a student abroad. He became fluent in Japanese, and posted daily on Instagram. Now he’s in quarantine at his father’s home, just to be safe.

I have had moments in the past two weeks where I had trouble feeling at all safe or grounded. Join the club, Miss Lincoln. I sat in a meeting in a large circle of mostly women who all have an interest in helping ‘senior citizens’: the Aging Services Collaborative. And for me, there was a large elephant in the room that had my attention the entire time called ‘Coronavirus.’ It was Thursday, March 12. We were meeting in the Lakeview Senior Center, and the director got rather defensive when someone asked if she had shut down the lunch program. She said there’s be a serious backlash if she shut it ‘too soon.’  No such thing as too soon in the pandemic: by the next day, the senior lunch program was shuttered.

I was cranky and agitated in that meeting, and the younger women, new to the Collaborative, probably though I was a menopausal bitch. I wonder if they look back now, a week later, and think me prescient. Maybe a prescient menopausal bitch. At one point I said something to the effect of, we can choose to be South Korea or Italy. Let’s be like South Korea.

I also still get really wound up when the conservative Trumpian assholes in this county pipe up on Facebook about how the whole thing is a fraud, a hoax, a tactic to get to “Marshall Law.” Omigod. Like this guy:

Snowflake waving wildly here. If I could address this man directly, I would say the following:

Except we are not paying for it equally. Poor people always have a harder time.

Someone pointed out that, when this is all over, it will not be the CEOs and billionaires who saved us, but the nurses and janitors and grocery store clerks. Also, the truckers, the doctors and family nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants.

I can’t retort to the delusion MAGA Lake county resident because we who work for Lake Health District are frequently scolded about posting anything in social media about Covid 19 because we ‘represent the hospital.’ Hmf, I’ve been muzzled. I try to read less of ‘Lakeview Announcements’ and more NYTimes. Still, I overhear bullshit at work. It’s not good for my blood pressure.

I am trying to figure out how to be useful at work, and I’m signed up to be a ‘greeter’ at the front entrance, and staff the ‘hotline’ which means I call folks who have symptoms to see how they’re doing, and wait for calls. The clinics are closed, the acute care is cleared out for the most part, the Operating Room where Hope works is ‘emergencies only.’ People drive up to a tent in front of the hospital and get their temperature taken. They’re asked, by a medical assistant who has a high school education and some extra training, whether they’ve been traveling, have a sore throat or any other symptoms. If they answer no to all and have no fever, they may be allowed to proceed to the emergency room, clinic, or to an appointment with the staff, like the head of corrections who came by on my greeter shift. He’s an enormous man, married to a pretty woman who holds at least 3 jobs in Lakeview including a part time Area Agency on Aging gig that’s directed by the Klamath group. Many non profit or governmental entities are based in Klamath and have a partial oversight in Lake County, the red-headed step child of Klamath County. This woman, and a south Asian man nicknamed “avatar’ by the BLM staff because they couldn’t remember “Arvinder”, and I were to start working on developing a “Village” volunteer effort in Lakeview. Then, the virus.

There are some volunteer activities spontaneously springing up in Lakeview; one facebook group is called Helping Hands of Lakeview. There are helpful things going on in Paisley through informal networks. I have one primary volunteer job: to pick up books at the Lakeview Library that sit in canvas bags labeled Paisley. And drop them off to Jan, who I think is the informal town mayor. She knows everyone, and everything, and reared her kids here.

I saw this on twitter: 

Most of the volunteer stuff seems to happen via Facebook, a group called Lakeview Announcements. That’s where a lot of political bickering also happens. Missing dogs. Reports of ‘tweakers’ thieving around. Well of course they’re stealing, when no one will hire them, when the US of A punishes what is actually an illness, not a crime. An illness born of childhood trauma. But I digress.

No more crochet/ knitting/ rug hooking at the cavernous Bowling Alley’s party room. No more church, either.

We watched the marvelous Presiding Bishop Curry preach on our computers last Sunday, and listened to gorgeous church music and sonorous prayers, online from the Washington National Cathedral, one of my favorite Episcopal places. We’ll see what’s streaming again tomorrow, Sunday morning.  

The knitting group is contemplating making face masks. So is Valerie. I’ve been looking at ‘the literature’ and there is one and only one study, in 2013, looking at the efficacy of homemade masks versus ‘respirators’ or ‘surgical masks.’ Of course, they are not as good but they are better than nothing. And corvid 19 seems to go straight for the throat. I’m thinking, those Safeway employees have been working really hard, and they are more at risk at the moment than health care workers at Lake Health District.

It’s a very strange time, full of opportunity for goodness and for greed. I’m glad my kids are safe, we are healthy so far, and I still receive a paycheck. We’ll see how this evolves.

"Nothing has prepared us for this moment. All we have is each other. Your safety is my safety. Protecting myself means protecting you, too. We are one race. Human race." - Jose Antonio Vargas

‘Something Just Keeps Happening’: Dayton Shooting Hit a City Already in Pain https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/us/dayton-shooting-nan-whaley.html

‘Something Just Keeps Happening’: Dayton Shooting Hit a City Already in Pain

By Campbell Robertson and Mitch Smith | Published Aug. 9, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 9, 2019 |

DAYTON, Ohio — First, the Ku Klux Klan came to town. Two days later, tornadoes destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and obliterated entire neighborhoods in and around the western Ohio city of Dayton.

Then this past weekend, a gunman stormed onto a crowded sidewalk in the entertainment district — an area of town typically swarming with revelers who stay until the bars close in the early morning — and fired at least 41 shots into the crowd, killing nine people before he was shot dead by the authorities.

“Something just keeps happening,” said Amanda Hensler, an owner of a store, Heart Mercantile, that is across the street from where the massacre took place.

The day after the mass shooting — the second within a 13-hour period in America — residents flocked to Ms. Hensler’s store to buy T-shirts that read “Dayton Strong,” which has become something of a motto for this grieving, shocked city. The customers knew that the store would have them in stock because they had been printed three months earlier, after the catastrophic tornado outbreak.

Indeed, Dayton has been through a brutal six-month stretch, even before the Klan held a rally at the city’s downtown Courthouse Square. Since the beginning of February, the city has also endured a large infrastructure failure and federal indictments at City Hall.

Seeing the city through all this has been Mayor Nan Whaley, 43, a blunt and outspoken second-term Democrat who is believed to have political ambitions beyond Dayton, a city with about 140,000 residents who have endured more trauma this year than many larger cities experience in a decade.

Since Sunday morning, when she first appeared before a throng of reporters, Ms. Whaley has found herself in the biggest moment of her political life — and at the worst moment of her city’s modern history. She has been a whirlwind presence across the city, too, talking to victims’ families, briefing reporters and working with the state’s Republican governor to form bipartisan alliances on gun policy.

And then there is the Twitter feud with the president of the United States.

“She’s going to be governor one day,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, a fellow Democrat who represents Ohio. Mr. Brown was not speaking of Ms. Whaley’s presence solely over the past few days, but over the whole, bad year.

“There have been these three big things, two of them tragic,” he said, “and then you put all that in the context of the past 30 years, with globalization. It’s sort of been one thing after another.”

In February — after a water line break left tens of thousands without water, but before the federal indictments of current and former local officials — Montgomery County granted the Klan a permit to come to town on the last weekend in May. Afterward, the city sued, arguing that a paramilitary-style rally would present serious public safety concerns. Officials ultimately agreed to a consent decree that limited the weapons the marchers could carry.

The rally cost the city at least $600,000 in security costs, but in the end, only nine Klansmen showed up. They were hemmed in by more than 700 law enforcement officers and were easily drowned out by the shouts and chants of the hundreds who had come out to oppose the march. When the rally ended uneventfully, it seemed that the potential for serious violence had passed.

Two days later, the tornadoes hit.

“It was almost as if it was a metaphor of a divine nature,” said the Rev. Renard Allen Jr., the pastor of St. Luke Missionary Baptist Church, one of the larger churches in Dayton.

That tornado outbreak on May 27 devastated suburban communities and littered city streets with fallen trees. For weeks, residents lifted branches off strangers’ homes and served meals at temporary shelters.

“I think the tornadoes really brought the community together in a really bizarro kind of way,” said Shelley Dickstein, Dayton’s city manager. “We were very much still in the process of healing from the tornadoes when the mass shooting hit.”

When Ms. Whaley was elected to the City Commission at age 29, Dayton, like much of the industrial Midwest, was struggling to recover from a prolonged decline. Over the decades, factories and Fortune 500 companies had left Dayton. So had nearly half its residents.

But during her nearly six years as mayor, Ms. Whaley has presided over a downtown revival. Buildings that had long been vacant are being redeveloped. Some neighborhoods that had been emptied are seeing an infusion of new residents.

And during this time, Ms. Whaley has steadily built a larger profile for herself, taking on a leadership role in a national mayors’ organization, speaking openly about the toll of the opioid crisis on the state and briefly seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

“People see that she’s striving for a higher political level,” said Gary Leitzell, her predecessor as mayor, who said Ms. Whaley’s ambitions have been seen by some as overshadowing the concerns in some neighborhoods.

“I don’t dislike her,” he added. But, “I do not trust her.”

Still, among mayors across the country, Ms. Whaley has become something of a celebrity.

“She is just so smart, she’s so accessible, she’s so real. Like, what you see is what you get,” said Christine Hunschofsky, the mayor of Parkland, Fla., which endured the unwelcome spotlight last year when 17 people, including 14 students, were killed at a high school in her city. “She is definitely someone other mayors look up to and learn from.”

But on Sunday, it was Ms. Hunschofsky who had guidance for Ms. Whaley. While Dayton police officers were still outside Ned Peppers bar, collecting evidence and methodically combing the vast crime scene, Ms. Hunschofsky texted words of encouragement. Buddy Dyer, the mayor of Orlando, Fla., the site of the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016 that left 49 people dead and more than 50 wounded, called Ms. Whaley. So did Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburgh, where 11 people were killed in a synagogue last October.

At a vigil on Sunday, Ms. Whaley talked about joining an unfortunate fraternity of mayors whose cities had been the site of mass shootings. The crowd roared with approval for the mayor. A moment later, they drowned out the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, imploring him to push for tighter gun laws with chants of “Do something!”

Ms. Whaley said in an interview that she was not sure how Mr. DeWine would react. “After that I said to him, ‘I’m sorry, people are just wound up,’” she recalled. “He said to me, ‘Nan, that’s part of the job.’”

Since that vigil, the two have spoken every day, she said. They have effusively complimented each other at news conferences and tried to put on a bipartisan front for gun control proposals.

“She’s done a great job,” said Mr. DeWine, who grew up about 20 miles from Dayton. “Communities always look for leadership from the mayor when you have a crisis, and she’s stepped up.”

On Tuesday, Mr. DeWine proposed expanding background checks and enacting a version of a “red flag” law that would allow guns to be seized from people deemed dangerous. But feisty exchanges between Ms. Whaley and President Trump have not made a bipartisan alliance very easy.

Before Mr. Trump visited the city on Wednesday, Ms. Whaley said she planned to tell him “how unhelpful he’s been” on gun policy. She also would needle him about mistaking Dayton for Toledo in a national address on Monday about the shooting.

After leaving Dayton on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Ms. Whaley’s characterization of his visit was “a fraud.”

For her part, Ms. Whaley said on Thursday that she was relieved he had left town.

“We’ve got to get to the work of grieving and bringing our community together,” she said. “All of the national drama about what President Trump is thinking and what he’s not thinking, it’s not helpful to our community.”

And there has been no shortage of help needed in Dayton.

On Thursday, for Ms. Whaley, this meant a news conference at a children’s hospital, lunch with the governor and her regular appointment with a counselor, which she highlighted on Twitter to emphasize the importance of mental health.

Still, officials in Dayton were looking ahead. Plans were already underway, the city manager said, for a New Year’s Eve party to bid good riddance to 2019.

Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York.

actually, because i really need to finish my new theme and need new verse blurbs, here’s a more in depth look at my current/in-use verses, with links to full writeups as available.

mcu:  this is boilerplate.  i’m a canon tony, this is a canon verse.  follows the events from iron man through infinity war for the moment, including the tie-in comics iron man 2: public identity, iron man 2: agents of shield, iron man: the coming of the melter, iron man 3 prelude, marvel’s avengers: age of ultron prelude - the scepter’d isle, marvel’s captain america: civil war prelude infinite, marvel’s avengers: infinity war prelude, and marvel’s avengers: endgame prelude.  also includes the post-iron man 3 short about the mandarin.  everything not covered/discussed in mcu canon is plugged with 616 continuity canon.

616:  what it says on the tin.  covers most of the runs from about 2008-present, including the new tony stark: iron man, against my greater judgment, though that may change in the future if it keeps tanking in story. in reality, this actually covers everything post-heroes reborn, but to make it simple we’ll say it’s wibbly wobbly because comics.  also includes heavy snippets still in play from classic invincible iron man.

classic:  from his first appearances in tales of suspense up to the inception of heroes reborn.  or, if you prefer, original flavor tony stark, the cool suave businessman with the aloof nature, party boy ways, and injured heart, reliant on his rechargeable chest piece, as he also has a double identity as the golden avenger known as iron man.  poses as his own bodyguard.  jetsetter.  people love or hate him, but most want to be him.  if only they knew how much his bum ticker isolated him.  a ton of fridged girlfriends.  later physical ailments include:  paralysis from the waist down.  degenerative nervous system.  a cranky ticker more than you can shake a stick at.  literally dying and being cryogenically frozen.

616 meets mcu:  this covers any time comicverse tony is thrown at mcu versions of the people he knows.  things to note include being taller.  he has blue eyes.  his tech is more advanced.  his speech patterns differ heavily.  recovering alcoholic, coffee is fine no matter how shitty it is.  he has more years as a superhero under his belt at this point.  his fears and points of stress differ from mcu tony’s quite a bit, and his reactions are different.  he and pepper are barely on speaking terms (generously speaking). he’s different, and it’s obvious he’s different.

broke:  mcu-based verse that includes corporate espionage and tony stark having to keep his head down and learning to live under the table paycheck to under the table paycheck until he can muster what he needs to make a frontal assault on regaining what’s rightly his.  a verse where tony’s at his absolute lowest, still determined to retain the phoenix metaphor and rise from the ashes of the misfortune thrust upon him.

superior iron man:  hiding the fact that he’s still under the scarlet witch’s inversion spell, tony goes full tilt diva, his main concerns being money, power, and fame.  he starts drinking again.  he makes san francisco his own personal big brother state, where he watches the city like a hawk by day while shilling extremis as a beauty enhancer, and parties like it’s 1999 at his new home on alcatraz island by night.  is still iron man, as long as there’s something in it for him.  will partially be at fault for the destruction of the 616 universe (it gets better).

hypervelocity:  tony’s attacked in his own lab by the mind-emulationware mechs known as “beautiful garbage”, and his newest iteration of the iron man suit forced an upload or a copy of his brain patterns to get him out of there.  the wetware is damaged, and the suit dumps it before it bleeds out in the suit cavity, and thus that suit, with the ability to walk, talk, and think exactly like tony stark (albeit full of bugs) is born, to unravel the mystery of the attack and attempt to stop the emulation program that caused it.

ai:  after being punched into a literal coma during a battle with captain marvel/carol danvers over the fate of miles morales and concerning an inhuman by the name of odysseus’s increasingly violent visions of the future, and with even hank mccoy being afraid to even draw blood on tony after seeing what tony’s been doing to himself over the years, tony’s ai comes online, as a mentor to riri williams/ironheart and to help against the clone captain america with those of the mount.  he’s twice as sassy with quadruple the processing speed, and he’s got some weird feelings about being the recreated consciousness of a living person suddenly finding itself with no physical body.

noir:  a businessman who likes to play adventurer for a men’s magazine, along with his best friend james rhodes and their new reporter pepper potts, writing under a male pseudonym, tony stark on the surface has it all in the late 1930s.  beautiful women, exciting adventures, and loads of money.  but all it does is hide his desperate search for a cure for his dying heart, as he’s forced to wear a metal chest piece that has to be charged frequently to even keep himself alive.  

director of shield:  mcu-based version of tony’s time as the director of shield.  after everything that occurs after captain america: the winter soldier, and the fall of shield, an attempt is made to resurrect it with tony stark at the helm as fury’s replacement (hand-picked).  he stresses transparency, he stresses equality, and most of all, he just wants to find a way to balance being iron man with having to deal with the day-to-day bullshit of international bureaucracy.

sorcerer supreme:  based on the 90s “what if?” one shot comic.  tony was the cause of the accident that injured stephen strange’s hands, and, feeling supremely guilty about the entire thing, searches for ways to give stephen his dexterity and life back.  it leads him to becoming the sorcerer supreme, despite that inherent dislike of magic he has, and he combines the iron man technology with the mystical forces he gains a hold over in that quest for a cure.

guardians of the galaxy:  mcu flavor for tony’s time as an active gotg.  after civil war, on a break with pepper, and feeling about as great about things as someone laying facedown in a gutter possibly can, tony puts his mobile armory into space, tinkers together a suit for deep space exploration, and takes off, losing himself for a while among the stars.  threat is going to come from there, sure, but there’s going to be opportunity, as well.  it’s a useful thing to find out who’s friend, and who’s foe, and see what there is to see in the black expanses of space.

supernatural:  the other family business.  being a founder of shield and everything he took to his grave wasn’t the only secret he was keeping, and this was one maria was in on as well.  too bad tony doesn’t stumble across it until after he’s already become iron man, where saving the world is so tied into his moral code he can’t look away.  if he goes missing for a few days, it’s fine, it’s chill.  he’s just taking a breather, not poking around at things he only still half-believes in even when he’s seen them with his own two eyes.  the biggest skeptic hunter you’ll ever meet.

fallout prewar:  mcu continuity up to the beginning of iron man 3, against fallout’s prewar as a backdrop.  tony stark is who he is, he does what he does, but he also is someone certain government agencies would love to tear down, because he’s a rabble rouser against the war, and has no problem hogging the iron man technology for himself instead of sharing with the military.  he also has no problem sharing the dirty secrets he finds out with the press.  full write up can be found here.

fallout new vegas:  tony as the infamous courier six.  left in stasis in a vault in california, tony comes to years and years after the devastation of the bombs to a world vastly changed from the one he remembers, and in a vault full of ghouls.  once topside, and once reoriented into the world, he ends up something of a jack of all trades until he takes that fateful job with the mojave express, and gets two to the head for his trouble.  independent path with the yes-man aligned ending, details of choices and all dlcs available as needed until i get off my ass and do a full replaythrough and write up.  keeps the spine from big mt, but his heart and brain are back where they belong.  locked elijah in the vault.  nuke launch stopped (ed-e repaired after).  evacuated the sorrows.  

fallout 4 sole survivor:  still needs a full write up, but tony as the sole survivor.  does not take the shock at the change in the world well at first.  eventually pulls his shit together enough to get shit done, but can’t touch a suit, can’t think about the suit, will take some time to even toy with the idea of possibly touching a suit again before he actually can.  minutemen and railroad aligned, destroys the bos and institute.  peaceful ending with all far harbor factions.  spares the mechanist.  destroys the raiders at nuka world and turns the parks over to the minutemen.  question information as needed until i get a full write up done.

fallout 4 companion:  tony’s been in new york since the bombs dropped.  there are huge chunks of it that are still uninhabitable, much like boston’s glowing sea, but the parts that are?  he’s started on a grand rebuilding project, because he’s got nothing but time:  the arc reactor’s kept his heart pumping well past its expiration date.  when the bos slow rolls past new york, he follows them into boston, mostly because he’s paranoid and cagey (with good reason in the wasteland) and partially out of curiosity.  available as a companion for sole survivors, some restrictions apply, please see this write up for more details.

fallout 76 dweller:  locked up with a bunch of other big brains after the bombs, tony’s that guy.  you know.  the one you read about in the terminal.  the one that kept hacking things.  once topside again, he sheds that vault tec blue and yellow as quickly as he can and sees about setting things right.  a member of the responders.  a mole in [redacted].  fire breather.  rebuilding the world has to start somewhere, so it might as well be west virginia.

dwemer:  the last surviving dwemer, finally peeking his head out of his lab in its pocket plane of oblivion to find the nords are at it again, dragons are still doing their thing, his people have just flat out vanished, and that skyrim is still cold as balls.  often gets mistaken as a very tall bosmer.  still calls the dunmer the chimer out of sheer smartassedness.  swung on rolf in windhelm and ends up in jail more times than you can shake a stick at.

single parent au:  handed off a baby under some shady as hell circumstances, unable to find out anything and secretly glad he can’t find out anything about her in the end, tony pulls some strings and sophie stark ends up hitting the jackpot as far as adoptive parents go.  tony had thought just being iron man was hard, but now he’s balancing ballet practice and pta meetings with saving the world.

1048 Miles Morales is not 1610 Miles Morales (and that’s fine)

[Originally Posted @videogamesincolor 11/7/2018]

Miles Morales as a character is only officially seven years old in terms of publication, debuting in 2011 in Ultimate Comics Spider-Man and prior during the Death of Spider-Man arc in Ultimate Comics Fallout, just three or four years before Marvel’s Ultimate Marvel line would come to an abrupt end in 2015. 

From 2011-2017, Miles Morales has been consistently written and drawn by a specific team: Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli, and David Marquez. 

Since Bendis’ departure from Marvel to DC Comics, Pichelli and Marquez moving on to other projects, the character is probably now more open to reinterpretation in popular media than he was when Bendis and Ultimate Marvel were still a thing to consider.

In the case of Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man (or Spider-Man PS4), the writing team have reinterpreted the character to suit the designated 1048 universe that their game and their version of Peter Parker inhabit.

LITERAL vs. REMIX

I don’t think you can say Insomniac Games’ writers don’t know or are ignorant of Miles Morales’ history. It’s pretty clear they’re familiar with it just from what they’ve chosen or chosen not to use for their story. This is more of a case of what most multimedia Marvel properties have done to established superheroes, and that’s change parts of his backstory to suit their version of the Spider-Man canon while maintaining other elements. 

Best example I could use is X-Men’s Rogue and other X-Men characters as reinterpreted by David Hayter and the associated screenwriters for the original X-Men film. They made deliberate changes, not out of ignorance, but convenience to their own take on the X-Men canon.

It happens, it’s the backbone of Marvel’s multiverse, and that’s not necessarily a negative depending on the execution. I’m not of the mind that a character’s origin story can’t be changed or shouldn’t be changed. There’s a possibility to make a Miguel O’Hara Spider-Man without the pretense of 2099, there’s a possibility to create Peter Parker Spider-Man without the death of Ben Parker, there’s a way to make Miles Morales Spider-Man without Peter Parker in any pretense as a necessity to his story.  Again, it’s all about execution.

The expectation of a 1:1 adaptation of a character in different mediums is an expectation fans of any medium assume way too often. Yeah, it’s clear that a lot of characters are closer to their comic book carnations than most sometimes and it’s a game of pick and chose, but those choices shouldn’t be viewed as inherently malicious or done out of ignorance, not when Marvel encourages its content creators to do different things with their brand characters for the sake of relevancy.

It’s fairly clear what they were trying to do with Miles Morales, which is the same method they used on Mary Jane Watson (who has garnered similar complaints from 616 fans of the character).

I don’t think Anya Corazon is really a solution. Even if Insomniac decided to used Anya, her backstory would’ve changed to suit the canon of game, just like Miles’ was. And it’s clear that Miles was chosen for the same reasons he continues to appear in new Spider-Man cartoons: His relevancy and his connection to Peter. Anya really doesn’t have that.

The absence of characters like Ganke Lee, Aaron Davis, or even Jefferson’s frayed relationship with his brother doesn’t mean they were ignorant of them, so much as they weren’t things they could tie to Peter Parker as a means of creating a relationship with Miles. Ganke and Aaron are crucial bits to 1610 Miles Morales in a universe where Miles was, initially, only tangentially connected to Peter Parker (despite the fact his character more or less orbits around him, to his detriment) and Spider-Man was an afterthought prior to his being bitten by the Oscorp Spider. 

1048 Miles Morales is literally informed by Peter Parker’s actions, and Miles’ heroism is more or less informed by Spider-Man because he is Miles’ hero. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is more or less playing on the same scenario, but on a different track. The nameless kid from Miles’ intro more or less indicates, yes, Miles has friends, but they’re literally not important to his story arc so they’re not getting screentime remotely.

The Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon has one version of Miles Morales that attends Midtown High instead of Brooklyn Visions Academy (but he doesn’t know Peter), while the other (”Kid Arachnid”) followers his 1610 narrative a little closer (but his father is dead). The 2017 animated Spider-Man has Miles attends Horizon High with Peter Parker (they also happen to be friends). The Miles of Marvel’s Spider-Man could be attending Midtown High (but the game never verbalizes that as fact) and later becomes a friend to Peter. 

1048 Rio Morales is a school teacher (instead of an apparent stay-at-home mom) who teaches science, Peter Parker is a struggling scientist working a public funded project with Doctor Octopus. 1048 Miles is also into science, and likes to fix or tinker with things. 1610 Miles simply was not (and his original comic book title never really explores or makes plain what his favor subject or hobbies are like it does with Ganke). 

1048 Rio’s game profile says she was born in New York City, New York, 1048 Jeff Davis’ profile emphasizes that he was born in Brooklyn, but the its clear that he is a beat cop who clearly works within the city. From all of that, it wouldn’t be out there to assume that the 1048 Morales family lives in NYC instead of Brooklyn, NY in this Spider-Man canon. 

Everything they do, including attending school, is within that area. They don’t commute to or from Brooklyn or do anything there despite Miles and Jefferson being born there. There is no Brooklyn Visions Academy or Brooklyn apartment in 1048 to worry about.

I don’t see their version of Miles being a fan of Spider-Man in this canon as negative, but it is illustrative of Insomniac tying their version of Miles closer to 1048 Peter Parker, in the same way Jefferson Davis’ introduction and death acts as the catalyst for Miles and Peter’s mentor/student friendship later on in the game. 

I don’t believe Jefferson dying was ever meant to represent the death of 1610 Peter so much as it was meant to be that “tragic backstory” moment for Miles. It was also meant to give Peter and Miles a reason to talk to each other, and mirrors Doctor Octopus’ metaphorical “death” in Peter Parker’s eyes. (They were doing a whole “death of the father figure” thing, obviously.)

The removal of Jefferson from the narrative to facilitate the Peter/Miles relationship is your standard anti-Blackness. It makes no bones which of the characters is more important for their version of Miles, which, like other things in the game, is Peter Parker. (It’s reminiscent of Bendis of killing off and minimizing Riri Williams’ family to make a stronger connection between her and Tony Stark.) I find that as questionable as Marvel’s insistence to make Davis a cop in alt-universes instead of a father with a off-screen job, or, hell, an Agent of SHIELD. But, I get Jefferson’s profession is another narrative convenience in the same way Mary Jane Watson being a reporter instead of a model/actor was also narrative convenience.

1048 Miles was written and designed to be Peter’s supporting character, so a lot of the elements that make him the lead character of his own titles are not necessary. If he was made to be anything else (like a leading character or the lead character of the game), I’d probably view of all these ties to Peter as an outright negative. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a): just another way of differentiating him from his 1610, b): not far off from what Marvel is already doing with the character anyway.

The fact the writing in the game is upfront about its preoccupation with connecting Miles closer to Peter, instead of pretending otherwise (as Bendis has), probably makes me less inclined to dislike their take on Miles. 1048 Miles is just another cog in this Peter Parker’s mythos, yes, but Flash Thompson he ain’t. 

1610 Miles Morales was designed to be and had the potential to be a character set apart from Peter. Bendis and Marvel simply squandered that by undermining him with the constant fallback on Peter Parker and his history. 

Even the MCU, when they had the opportunity to create a Miles Morales Spider-Man without the pretense of needing Peter Parker, just reduced him to a throwaway line for a miscast Donald Glover to utter, then used every element in his story for their version of Peter Parker. If we’re doing a compare and contrast, I’ll take supporting character Miles Morales over a Miles Morales that’ll be standing next to his white clone as portrayed by Tom Holland.

JEFFERSON’S SURNAME

Jefferson never renounced his last name in such a way that he stopped using it. He might be married to Rio Morales, but it’s clear he never changed his surname to hers. For the entire run of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man, Cataclysm: Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen and the 616 soft reboot (Spider-Man), Jefferson has always referred to himself as “Jefferson Davis”.

The characters he interacts with - either personally or professionally - always refer to him as “Mr. Davis” or “Jefferson Davis”, or “Jeff Davis”. Insomniac’s narrative does nothing to alter this whatsoever and sticks to the status quo established by the comics. The most  Jefferson ever did was dissociate himself with his brother because Aaron refused to shape-up. Miles doesn’t use his father’s surname (and, sure, you can spend a lot time theorizing the in-universe reason for that), but it’s a clear writing decision on Bendis’ part that the Morales surname was to ensure no one would question whether or not Miles was, in his words, a "Black” and “Hispanic” character.

Not once in the run of the Ultimate Marvel or Miles’ recently ended Spider-Man series, or even the Jason Reynolds penned Young Adult Novel, does Jefferson denounce his name, or refer or is referred to Jefferson Morales. There isn’t even an instance in the comic books or said book where he says, “Please, call me Jefferson Morales.”

He’s ashamed of his past, rarely talks about it, yes, but his surname? Still uses that. Jefferson Davis is a black male character created by a tone-deaf white man. The comic books (by proxy of their author, Bendis) have historically ignored the unfortunate ties behind the name “Jefferson Davis”. The most Miles Morales: Spider-Man does is have Ganke crack a joke about Miles not using Jeff’s surname, and draw explicit attention to the fact that Jefferson Davis is the name of supporter of the confederacy and a racist to boot. 

We’ve never gotten a genuine discussion in either medium about how Jefferson feels about his name.Jefferson being called “Jefferson Morales” has never been a thing in Miles’ mainline titles or alternate canons. His surname has never been ignored.

COLORISM AND ASSUMING BLACKNESS

Colorism with respect to Miles has always been fairly present with the character, though not on any level as bad as it is with someone like Storm. With his most consistent artists, Sara Pichelli and David Marquez, Miles’ complexion was consistently somewhere between medium brown and dark brown. But, outside of those artists, Miles’ skintone is fairly all over the place in other titles with other artists, with his most recently ended Spider-Man title often bringing somewhere closer to Rio Morales complexion (and it happened with Jefferson as well). It gets even worse with animated shows, which give him an almost washed out, zombie-esque, pale brown complexion.

Miles’ complexion in Marvel’s Spider-Man is definitely fairer in comparison to his 1610 counterpart, or even 1048 Jefferson, and closer to Rio’s. Depending on the cinematic, it flip-flops from extremely fair to medium brown in the same way Rio goes from medium brown to extremely pale in a lot of scenes.

And with regard to Rio Morales, there’s nothing about her character model that excludes her from Blackness? But, similar to characters like Aya of Alexandria (from Assassin’s Creed: Origins) or Jade from the original Beyond Good and Evil (who, yes, could be viewed as a Black woman), the way the character is designed (both in the game and in the comics) is inherently divorced from common markers of Blackness in such a way that it’s no one’s first assumption. 

Rio Morales has always been a fair skinned woman. She in no way was drawn to match the skintones of Jefferson or Miles, and she wasn’t lightened in the game at all. Her representation in the game is fairly close to her representation in the comics, which also flip-flops between “super-fair-skinned” to “medium brown” Rio Morales.

I think Brian Michael Bendis makes it very clear with his poor understanding of Blackness and its lack of exclusivity to folk with Puerto Rican parentage - that Rio Morales is a non-Black woman (or in Bendis’ words, “Hispanic”), and Jeff Davis is Black (African-American). 

Miles’ selling point is that he was the “Biracial Spider-Man” in the same way Miguel O’Hara is lesser known for. That’s the divide Bendis’ writing and comprehension creates for this character. The clear avoidance of the issue for something that wasn’t a walking joke (Rio’s racial caricature of a mother) or Bendis’ “who cares if I’m black? I’m also Hispanic, so...” spiel, is another indicator. 

So, yeah, even though her character design (in any medium) doesn’t necessarily exclude her from Blackness, I don’t think Rio Morales was ever a Black woman to begin with. Brian Michael Bendis never saw her as a Black woman, just the “Hispanic” side of Miles Morales’ family tree where Jefferson was the Black side of the family tree.

I can’t blame anyone for not assuming Blackness on Rio’s part, because neither does Bendis’, neither do the artists drawing her, and by extension, neither does Insomniac Games. 

Honestly, I think Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse might be the first property Rio has appeared in where someone appeared to even consider the question, “Is Rio Morales Black?” when designing her character.

Missing elements in a reinterpreted character is neither wrong or a dsplay of ignorance on part of the writers. 1048 Miles Morales and the Morales family are not the 1610 iterations of the character, and that’s fine. Jefferson Davis has never dropped the use of his name, personally or personally. In addition none of the writers, white or non-Black, have ever considered questioning the history behind his name and let it be. 

Rio Morales was always a fair-skinned and non-Black woman on accounts of Bendis and her artists constructed her within Miles’ narrative, which outright ignores any cultural or emotional significance Rio and Miles being Puerto Rican holds. Amid varying complexions of bright she’s been depicted, her character in the game has hardly been lightened, whereas Miles’ complexion definition has.

Crypto NEWSFLASH, Mine BTC with Your TV

Hey everybody – this is Maddie with altcoin buzz, hope, you’re doing very well wherever it is in the world that you may be listening to my voice, hey question: for you right off the bat when I absorb the daily cryptocurrency news, I usually do it In the morning before breakfast, with a cup of coffee, how do you guys go about that out there in the altcoin buzz army? What are your habits? Do you have maybe a cigar, a glass of lemonade glass of cognac? Perhaps maybe you do it while sunbathing just a thought that struck my mind for whatever reason, I’m curious to know. Let me know in the comments below how you go about absorbing the news when you watch videos like this one in today’s video we’re gon na.

Take a look at what’s affecting the world of cryptocurrency. We’Re gon na take a little bit of a glimpse at the market, which is kind of flat marginally up since yesterday. But we do have some anomalies and some outliers that are performing pretty well, which I want to take a quick look at we’re. Gon na. Take a look at, I think now, for the third day in a row at this New York Stock Exchange story, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, intercontinental exchange and what they’re planning to do by expanding the space by creating an ecosystem.

So we’ll get leashes. Take on that story, we’re taking a look at this hybrid product, that’s being offered that’s half crypto Bitcoin mining rig, half television and that’s being reported by the South China Morning Post. It’S a pretty interesting consumer option, that’s being made available, we’ll take a deeper look into that, but we begin guys, as always on altcoin buzz. Do with this news flash today by Luke. This was the news.

So again, this is a feature that we’ve rolled out. It’S been getting a great response and, if you’re not checking in daily on either altcoin buzz dot, IO or if you’re, not watching the daily news pieces. This is a really good way to catch yourself up and to become. You know to make sure that you’re up to speed with the latest developments in the crypto space, because there are so many of them, like I said in the past, trying to keep up with the news, sometimes is like trying to get a sip of water from A firehose it’s just really difficult to do, and it’s not always possible to be frank, so taking a look at the top four or so stories we have at number one owner of the New York Stock Exchange launches crypto trading platform. That’S been a big story.

Of course, we’re gon na briefly glance at it again today, but make sure you’re up to speed with the details of that number two coin based customers can now buy crypto with the British pound again as I’ve joked about before coinbase is taking over the world making It easier and easier for their customers in little ways like this to purchase and to trade cryptocurrency Story number three by Nance is one step closer to making crypto adopted and, finally, rounding out the news. Flash Gibraltar football team gets paid in crypto, which is a great precedent to observe in the sporting world. Let us know what you guys think about these stories. We’Ve identified them as being some of the most important of the week so do be sure to check them out and leave a comment for Luke. In the article comments section below taking a look at the market.

Again, I mean we’re up marginally just a little bit. The slightest just barely detectable bounce from yesterday’s lows, so nothing too special in the top ten here other than Knox CIO de up over seven percent, not too bad. But taking a look at the 24 hour gainers, those that have performed most notably and for the second or third day in a row I got to say empowered coin is knocking it out of the park. Thirty three point: three: six percent gains in the last 24 hours and these guys have come out of nowhere. They’Re sitting at a market cap of 141 million dollars currently number 63 in the top 100, and I got to say I don’t know too much about them.

Taking a look at their Twitter profile, they don’t have a ton of information here. To be frank and power is a democratic social economy. It is uniquely enabling the quote: sharing of everything, also known as everything fast and free all right, a little bit vague, but interesting. Marketing and then the rest of their tweets are mostly about their performance, which, I got to admit, is pretty solid. You can see here that they have some very solid metrics as far as their recent growth, which stands out that much more because everything you know most recently in the last few days, the last few weeks has been either flat or declining, so I’ll give them credit Where credit’s, due in that regard, they have grown quite a bit.

Imagine a future where everything we want or need is in our hands fast for virtually free. I don’t know that sounds like the Communist coin to me, but they going reading on ahead here they do talk about how we’re committed to democracy, sustainability and justice. So there, I guess, is balancing it out. That’S a good thing. I’Ve not heard about empower coin.

More than this, it’s something that, if you guys are interested in perhaps we’ll do a deeper look into it, provide you with a bit of a featurette but excellent performance. In these last few days and very surprising, I got to say amid an otherwise market. That’S very much in a red sea at the moment, so let’s keep an eye on in power coin. Let’S see what they’re up to let’s see if they can sustain this exuberance and excitement. So this is Lisa’s.

Take on the news that we’ve been reporting on for a few days now, New York Stock Exchange owner launches a crypto trading platform. We’Re not going to go over this at length because I think most of you are already up to speed with at least the bare details of this story. But it’s big news and part of me is so bewildered by the fact that the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies hasn’t reacted more favorably, because this is massive news. Intercontinentalexchange ice, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange is making a big move together with Microsoft and Starbucks. Those are two big names together.

It is launching a new digital asset platform which promises to be revolutionary. Let’S give you some quotes here quote in bringing regulated connected infrastructure together with institutional and consumer applications for digital assets. We aim to build confidence in the asset class on a global scale, consistent with our track record of bringing transparency and Trust to previously unregulated markets. That’S courtesy of Isis, CEO Jeffrey Sprecher, so that’s pretty good news. Another quote here quote: Starbucks will leverage the platform to allow their customers to use digital assets at their coffee shops?

Can you imagine if that’s something that caught on? I was watching another video recently on the analyst suggested that that’s really the place where a lot of younger people, a lot of Millennials, for example, will want to have a use case. Sort of a practical use case for spending their cryptocurrencies and look. Starbucks is a trendy place, maybe maybe alike it may be a dislike it, but I feel that that is the kind of place where a consumer interchange could take place. We’Re just at the very beginning, stages of this whole deal and this ecosystem that they’re purportedly trying to create, but I think the potential is huge, so I’ve been talking about this a lot we’re not going to go over it too much more.

You can check out Lisa’s article for more details. You can also read about it here on the Virge new york stock exchange owner is a Bitcoin exchange and a Nordic business insider, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, is teaming up with Microsoft and Starbucks to build an ecosystem for crypto. As long as it’s done diligently and carefully, I think this is exactly what we need. This is going to be something that pushes us down that path toward greater mainstream adoption and CNBC, of course, covering this as well. New Starbucks partnership with Microsoft allows customers to pay for frappuccinos with Bitcoin there you go.

Let us know what you think about this development. I’Ve heard some negative opinions for whatever reason they feel like. There are some potential mismanagement issues that may arise. I think it’s good on the whole, but let us know your thoughts, of course, in the comments below and finally today, this article, also by Lisa, why not mine with a TV set so kanan, the second biggest manufacturer of Bitcoin mining equipment has launched a curious product Which might hit the crypto enthusiasts sweet spot from now on, your TV set will allow you to watch Netflix shows and mine crypto reports the South China Morning Post. What is this all about?

So the TV set is called Avalon miner inside its processing, power is 2.8 trillion hashes per second, but its most powerful machine is capable of even more 11 trillion. Hashes per second, the device is powered by an AI, has voice controlled features and can produce certain calculations. For instance, it can determine Bitcoin mining profitability in real time quote. The product launch comes after Kanan submitted an application for an initial public offering in Hong Kong in May, which is expected to raise as much as 1 billion dollars.

Writes the South China Morning, Post quote, the digital currency earn can be used to buy entertainment content or physical gifts through Caymans platform. Again, that’s per the South China Morning Post. This is interesting because if it’s the sort of thing you know you’re you’re buying a television set, it’s it’s, probably not the most powerful miner in the world as far as mining hardware, but if you’re already buying a television set whatever amount you want to spend on That – and you can add on this extra piece of hardware, which is really just something – that’s in the background is mining that I mean to the extent that this catches on that could be the kind of thing that for those people on the fence, may entice them To purchase this product and then they can, you know of whatever I’ll sort out the details later, but yeah mining Bitcoin mining crypto. I hear people have made a lot of money off of that and who knows if this catches on that could be a significant development in terms of crypto adoption, at least an indirect development by way of people purchasing this and whether or not they’re become active in Crypto, hey, you know they have the mining capabilities, they have the technology it’s at their disposal if they choose to pursue it further. So there are some criticisms related to this.

Of course, the innovation has received mixed reviews. It looks like a lot of hype. Yeah, that’s possible, there’s also the discussion here of the fact that we’re really looking at $ 9,000 per Bitcoin. We need that figure to be attained again before mining becomes profitable. It would be interesting to see you know what is the markup on some of these televisions?

How much more are they charging, given that it comes with this, this Bitcoin Hardware, this mining technology built into it? But I don’t know I mean if this is the sort of thing if you’re selling millions and millions of TVs, some of which may be equipped. Who knows, maybe even all of which would be equipped with mining hardware if this really takes off? That could make a pretty big difference and that could really move the the needle as far as hash power out there in the world. That could make a difference economically.

In terms of what we’re all doing with Bitcoin and the mining industry so interesting, take make sure you read leashes article leave her a comment. Let us know below, would you purchase a TV that had built-in crypto or Bitcoin mining capabilities? I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world as long as they can get away with selling it at a competitive price point. If you want to read more, you can check out canons website here, take a look at all the specifications and what it is they’re putting into these televisions seems like an ambitious project and I don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world personally. As long as it’s economically competitive within the television market, of course, that’s my caveat as I look at it, and you can read about that as well on the South China Morning, Post Kanan launches world’s first Bitcoin mining television set again.

Let us know what you guys think about that in the comments below and do make sure you’re following alt point buzz and altcoin buzz news follow us as well on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the fun stuff, hey guys. If you haven’t caught up with this video to be sure to check it out, check out our site, altcoin buzz dot IO, if you do choose to invest, I wish you happy investing. We will see you all again soon in a new video take care for now. Ladies and gentlemen of the altcoin buzz army have a great day.

Read More: 12% Bitcoin Leap

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via Crypto NEWSFLASH, Mine BTC with Your TV

Melania Trump and adult Trump children avoid the spotlight after one of nation's darkest days

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/melania-trump-and-adult-trump-children-avoid-the-spotlight-after-one-of-nations-darkest-days/

Melania Trump and adult Trump children avoid the spotlight after one of nation's darkest days

Professional lighting, the sort used for photography and videography, could be seen through the windows of the White House. “Photos were being taken of rugs and other items in the Executive Residence and the East Wing,” a person familiar with the day’s activities with the first lady told Appradab. Trump — who, as Appradab has reported, has expressed interest in writing a coffee table book about decorative objects she has amassed and had restored in the White House — was overseeing the photo project, said the source, with her remaining time in the White House dwindling.

Just blocks away, domestic terrorists were swarming the US Capitol in a riot that her husband had incited earlier that day at the rally. While images of the mob breaking into the Capitol consumed the airwaves, the first lady was focused — with the White House chief usher, Timothy Harleth — on getting the shoot completed. Both the media, including Appradab, and members of her staff were asking if Trump had plans to tweet a statement of calm, or a call to stop the violence — something she had done a handful of times months earlier during the protests surrounding the police killing of George Floyd. She did not.

Instead, the first lady was quiet, and has remained so. Her disinterest in addressing the country was indicative of being “checked out,” said another White House source, who added, “she just isn’t in a place mentally or emotionally anymore where she wants to get involved.”

Except with the furniture.

By Wednesday evening, two of her first hires as first lady, chief of staff Stephanie Grisham — who also served as Trump’s closest adviser, speechwriter and spokesperson — and Anna Cristina “Rickie” Niceta, White House social secretary, had submitted their resignations effective immediately. Appradab confirmed both Grisham and Niceta quit their jobs in large part because of Wednesday’s events.

Much has been made of the first lady’s influence on her husband. But it was Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter, who held an emergency meeting with him in the Oval Office Wednesday, where she urged him to call for the violence to stop.

Still, the first lady and the President, as Appradab has reported, have a close relationship, which is sometimes surprising to those who have interpreted salacious stories of Trump’s alleged adulterous behavior and their physical distance as a sign of a dislike. The first lady speaks on the phone throughout the day with the President, according to several sources who have witnessed it — from both wings of the building — and she is the first one to share with her husband her thoughts on domestic and international issues.

Though the bulk of her public statements in recent months have been related to holiday decorations, on November 8, she tellingly tweeted her support of Trump’s baseless fight against the election results. “The American people deserve fair elections,” said the first lady. “Every legal – not illegal – vote should be counted. We must protect our democracy with complete transparency.” It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to indicate she was on his side.

The first lady has also not been shy when her opinions differ from her husband’s, tweeting — either on her own or via Grisham as her mouthpiece — messages that would seem to be out step with his.

But this week was not one of those times.

Appradab has reached out multiple times to the East Wing, both before and after Grisham’s departure, to ask for comment on the first lady’s thoughts about Wednesday’s events, or if she had any comment at all. The requests were not answered.

The Trump children

Along with the first lady, the other three most influential people in the Trump orbit are his oldest children, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric Trump, all of whom have amplified the voice of their father after his election loss, calling for Americans to “fight” against what they baselessly deemed a corrupt election.

Trump Jr. was part of a roster of speakers at the Ellipse Wednesday morning, more than willing to inflame an already blindly loyal and largely infuriated group of supporters. “This gathering should send a message to them. This isn’t their Republican Party anymore,” railed Trump Jr. “This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”

He addressed lawmakers in his hype speech, which was peppered with expletives: “You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely.”

Eric Trump and his wife Lara spoke too, and listened with big smiles as the crowd of thousands serenaded the younger Trump with “Happy Birthday;” he turned 37. The couple vociferously maligned the democratic election process, and the will of American voters who elected Joe Biden as President. The crowd loved it.

“We live in the greatest country in the world, and we will never, ever, ever stop fighting,” said Eric Trump, the word “fight” a dog whistle to the eager crowd who were just blocks from where they — falsely — believed their future was being dealt an illegal hand by lawmakers. Shortly after Eric and Lara left the stage, they were whisked by Secret Service to the airport — the match they helped light in the rear-view as they flew back to their multimillion dollar New York home.

The President was at the rally, too, of course. The headliner, he first watched the crowd on monitors from a tented VIP area with his daughter Ivanka Trump, who did not speak at the rally, before he took the stage.

Ivanka Trump would shortly be the one whose responsibility it was to press her father to publicly call for the violence to stop — but not before she sent her own tweet, referring to the Trump supporters rioting as “American Patriots.”

“American Patriots — any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable,” wrote Trump, who also said the violence must stop. After being called out for dubbing them “patriots,” Trump deleted her tweet.

At the White House, panic was setting in. “The President didn’t want to listen to people telling him he had to get these people to stop doing this,” a White House official told Appradab.

“Everyone else was told to leave the room,” a different source close to Ivanka Trump told Appradab of her emergency meeting with the President in the Oval Office. Trump had been called on by multiple people, both in person in her West Wing office and from Capitol Hill, where she had multiple contacts. “The message was, ‘President Trump has to tell these people to stop. He’s the only one they’ll listen to,'” said the source, who noted Ivanka Trump was already more than aware the rioters were wreaking irretrievable damage.

In their meeting, Ivanka Trump argued her father must make an immediate, televised address to the nation, the source said. The President was hesitant, with multiple sources telling Appradab he appeared at times to enjoy watching the chaos he had unleashed unfold. Trump turned down the request for an immediate televised address, but would eventually compromise with a milquetoast version of reproach from the Rose Garden, which he then tweeted. “We love you,” he said in a recorded video to the people who forced lawmakers and staff to hide under chairs, scared for their lives. “Go home,” as though they had stayed too long at a dinner party.

“He will do what he wants to do,” said the source close to Ivanka, referring to the President. “But if she wasn’t in there yesterday, his tweets would have been a lot different,” the source added. Ivanka Trump has often received public criticism for taking credit for working “behind the scenes” on issues related to the President — and this time will likely be no exception. But the source told Appradab Wednesday’s actions were not “virtue signaling by her.”

On Thursday evening, in another prerecorded video message, the President publicly conceded for the first time that he will not serve a second term, although he stopped short of congratulating Biden. With his presidency threatened by resignations and potential impeachment, Trump acknowledged that a transfer of power to a new administration is underway.

Ivanka Trump and her brother Don Jr. later retweeted the video.

HOW TO LIVE AN AUTHENTIC LIFE, ON PURPOSE

We live in a fast-paced, ever developing, and ever-changing world. Full of Tweets, Likes, and shares. In an instant someone’s life can change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. All by hitting send. We decide based on them. What we wear. What we buy. Where we go. How we act and yes, how we show up in life. We decide if we like someone, something, or someplace based on popularity. It is part of our culture now and has become the new social norm, so we all accept it. But are we being authentic? Are we being true to ourselves, or just being marketed and tricked into thinking this is how we should be, act, or show up? You are one decision away from an original life. Only you can decide which way it will turn out. Merriam-Webster defines Authentic as: not false or Imitation: REAL, ACTUAL, and true to one’s personality, spirit, or character. Moving your life in the direction that is not false or Imitation: REAL, ACTUAL, and true to one’s personality, spirit, or character aligns you with the things in life you want and desire and will prevent you from living in fear of thinking “what will happen if I say no?”. Using any method to attain something will NOT work if you do not know what you want as the outcome. The mistake we all make is we focus on the person, place, or thing we think will save us and we focus on something way too big. This creates an enormous gap between where you are verses where you want to be that you think will rescue you from your miserable life right now. That gap can be the thing that can make you feel lost in figuring out what you want, and discovering what your passion or direction is, or should be. Those in life who are genuinely happy in life understand the power of, and vehemently stick to, being their authentic selves.   EXAMPLES OF A NON-AUTHENTIC LIFE EXAMPLE 1 Your friends' lives may look more exciting than yours on Facebook, but recent research reveals that is because they might be faking it. A recent survey has found around two-thirds of people on social media post images to their profiles to make their lives seem more adventurous. And over three quarters of those asked said they judged their peers based on what they saw on their Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook profiles. A published British survey, by smartphone maker HTC, found that, to make our own pages and lives appear more exciting, six percent also said they had borrowed items to include in the images to pass them off as their own. More than half of those surveyed said they posted images of items and places purely to cause jealousy among friends and family. 76 percent of those asked also said seeing items on social media influences them to buy them, with men more likely to take style advice and buy what they see.     EXAMPLE 2 Over 5,000 people have taken the free online test “Does Your Job Require High or Low Emotional Intelligence?” And after analyzing the data, they made a scary discovery. It was discovered that 51% of people said that they Always or Frequently have to ‘act’ or ‘put on a show’ at work. But they made an even bigger discovery; 51% who must ‘put on a show at work’ are 32% less likely to love their job. Or put another way, if you do not have to fake your emotions at work, you are 32% more likely to love your job. And not only will you be more likely to love your job, you are also much less likely to have negative feelings about your job. People that do not have to put on a show are 59% less likely to dislike or hate their job. This data also suggests that many people would probably enjoy taking a deep look at their own emotional intelligence, particularly to discover whether they must do lots of acting on the job. The more they are forced to act like they have the right attitude, the less happy they will ultimately be.         EXAMPLE 3 Another related construct is the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Sociologist Robert K. Merton coined the term to describe a phenomenon that dates to Ancient Greece. Basically, a prediction about the outcome of a situation can invoke a new behavior that leads to the prediction coming true. For example, if I believed that I would fail an exam, that belief may have led me to alter the strategies I used for preparation and taking the test, and I would probably fail it. While I may have had an excellent chance to pass, my belief hindered my performance, and I made this belief become a reality. Psychological research shows that the self-fulfilling prophecy works for both negative and positive predictions, showing again that the beliefs you hold impact what happens to you.         EXAMPLE 4 In a yearlong study it was found that those ringing the alarm bells the loudest about climate change are the least likely to change their own behavior. They just want everyone else to. The study divided 600 adults who reported on their climate-change beliefs into three groups: "skeptical," "cautiously worried" and "highly concerned." Then the researchers — from the University of Michigan and Cornell University — tracked how often they reported doing things like recycling, using public transportation, buying environmentally friendly consumer products, and reusing shopping bags. And they asked about support for government mandates like CO2 emission reduction, gasoline taxes and renewable energy subsidies. The Journal of Environmental Psychology published the findings. What they found was very illuminating. The researchers found that the "highly concerned" group was the least likely to take individual action, but they were the most insistent on government action. The "skeptical" group, in contrast, was the most likely to recycle, use public transportation and do other environmentally sound things all on their own. Skeptics were least likely to endorse costly government regulations and mandates. "Belief in climate change," the researchers explained, "predicted support for government policies, but rarely translated to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental behavior." In plain English: The position of climate-change genuine believers is: Do as I say, not as I do. This study supports a YouGov poll reported on recently, which found that most of those who believe in catastrophic global warming are not doing anything on their own to combat it. More than half said they are not cutting back on their use of fossil fuels or changing their recycling or composting habits. Another study found that "conservation scientists," have carbon footprints that do not differ from those of anyone else. The study found that these scientists "still flew frequently — an average of nine flights a year — ate meat or fish approximately five times a week and rarely purchased carbon offsets for their own emissions."   EXAMPLE 5 A study by Deloitte found that 61% of millennial's who rarely or never volunteer still consider a company’s commitment to the community when deciding on a potential job even though 60% of hiring managers see the act of volunteerism as a valuable asset when making recruitment decisions according to a study performed by Career Builder. 92% of human resource executives agree that volunteering can improve an employee’s leadership skills. Only 4% of college graduates, 25 years or older, volunteer each year. Millennial's ages 18 to 30 are more likely to have gone to a protest since the election than any other age group, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted from Feb. 1 to Feb. 3. Millennial's are also more likely than older groups to think protesting is an effective form of political action. In recent days America has seem mass protests and unrest which has in every corner of the country left charred and shattered landscapes in dozens of American cities over the death of George Floyd. They estimate that the damages left behind will total in the billions. Cities who encountered the most loss and damages include:     Minneapolis, Minn. Los Angeles California New York, NY Philadelphia, PA Nashville Tenn. San Francisco, CA. Detroit, Mich. Portland, Ore. Chicago, Ill. Atlanta, Ga. Washington, D.C. In a national survey reported by the National Service Knowledge Network of Volunteer Rates by State they ranked the followings states in this order. Minneapolis, Minn.             Minnesota #1 with a 43.23% volunteer rate statewide. Portland, Ore.                     Oregon #13 with a 31.42% volunteer rate statewide. Washington, D.C.                District of Columbia #14 with a 31.07% volunteer rate statewide. Philadelphia, PA                  Pennsylvania #22 with a 28.03% volunteer rate statewide. Detroit, Mich.                       Michigan #26 with a 26.64% volunteer rate statewide. Chicago, Ill.                          Illinois #31 with a 24.85% volunteer rate statewide. Nashville Tenn.                    Tennessee #33 with a 24.12% volunteer rate statewide. Los Angeles CA                   California #34 with a 23.89% volunteer rate statewide. Atlanta, Ga.                          Georgia #39 with a 23.00% volunteer rate statewide. New York, NY                      New York #49 with a 19.61% volunteer rate statewide.   This survey points out that except for Minnesota, the cities who had the most people who marched to support the problem, volunteered, and supported in the community the least.They estimate that over one million people will attend a George Floyd protest, yet most have never volunteered in the neighborhoods who need the help the most. Some officials estimate that most still will not.   How to Live an Authentic Life, On Purpose   Most of us struggle with the need to be seen, heard, respected, and yes, Loved. We all want to stay true to ourselves, but we also want to fit in. Therein lies the dilemma. How do we stay true to ourselves, yet still stay in our Tribe? We were born and created Tribal, a community, a family, and not meant to do this alone. Our Tribe is who we associate with, trust, and allow to influence us. They are that powerful group who are our biggest support system and cheerleaders. They become a family and we can sometimes know them all our lives. They make you feel relevant, seen, heard, important, and valued. But are they the right tribe for you? Are they really your family, or just your influence? Living an Authentic Life will prevent you from joining the wrong tribe and surround yourself with only those who will make you better by being honest with you. Calling you out when you mess up. Praising you on the victories, and yes, walking next to you in the dark valley’s that life will always throw at you. When you do not know WHO you are, someone else will decide it for you and it might or might not be the person you want to be. So how do we do it? How do we keep the passion, yet still be authentic? How do we be REAL, NOT FAKE?   Here are some suggestions. - Start with the person in the mirror first. Too many times people seek approval first, and acceptance second. Stop it! Look in the mirror at the person you see and accept them, warts, and all. You are not perfect and need not be, but you are perfect for you. Accept that! - Own your life, do not borrow one. Successful and Happy people need not prove anything to anyone, and they do not need other’s approval. The beautiful thing about life is if you dislike yours, you can always change it. When the haters hate, and they will, let them. And forget them. When you make a mistake, and you will own it 100%, then move on. It's in our mistakes we learn what will and will not work. - Be honest, do not live a lie. Do not pretend to be something or someone you are not, for someone else’s sake. If people do not accept you, as you are, where you are, for WHO you are they should not be in your life, let alone influence you. - Be ALL IN. A living example, more than words, will create action. If you believe in a movement, LIVE the movement 100%. If you believe in a cause, LIVE the cause 100%. Show me how you want me to see you and I will see you. Tell me and it will get lost in the noise. Give 100% every day to everything, especially yourself. Just be All In! - Forgive easily, and often. Successful and Happy people do not hold a grudge, they cannot. It impedes progress. It holds them back. It makes you bitter. Give others the same break you give yourself and forgive yourself, often. Others, and you, will be glad you did. - Put your own oxygen mask on first. We have all heard the warnings on airplanes, “if they deploy the oxygen masks, puts yours on first, then those who are with you next”. Make a habit of taking care of yourself, first. Self-care is the most important care you will ever receive. Make it a regular occurrence and do it often. - Live your life in Service to Humanity. Countless studies have shown that those who put other's needs above their own live longer, happier, more fulfilling lives. Care. Genuinely care. About others, about issues, about people. Then serve them. Do not save them, rescue them, or bail them out. Serve them by allowing your help to be about them, and not you. Do it with no expectations. If you need to be thanked, you did it for the wrong person. - If you have a choice between being right verses being kind, be kind. Successful and happy people can “give others a break”. They do not always need to be right. It is not a reflection on them. Sometimes it is better to lose the battle and win the war. - Pay everything forward. We deserve nothing in life. Life is not fair; it is designed that way. When you receive anything, it is a gift, be thankful, and share it. If you clutch on to life with a clenched fist so nothing can escape, nothing can enter either. Be generous, and life will be generous back. Volunteer, donate, serve, contribute, take part, mentor, and ask nothing in return. Remember, if you need to be thanked, it is a bribe, not a gift. - Life rewards the brave, so be brave. Take a chance, be vulnerable, be approachable, be teachable, take the first step, start the conversation, listen intending to listen and without thinking of what you will say next. Step outside of your comfort zone. That is where you will grow the most. A plant, transplanted from a pot to the ground will grow bigger and stronger, naturally. - Be more understanding. We are a divided world today. Friends lose friends over politics. People are against someone, someplace, or something without ever attempting to understand things from the other people's point of view. Take the time to ask why they believe what they believe, then shut up, do not interrupt, or interject, and just listen. Ask questions, with the desire to learn something and let them believe it even if you do not. People do not care what you know until they know you care. - Be more accepting of others Allow others to coexist around you as they are, not how you think they should be. Successful and Happy people are not threatened by what they do not understand. They attempt to understand it and accept that whatever it might be is the right choice for the other person even though it might not be the right choice for them and is no reflection on them. Accepting others as they are, where they are, for who they are, just as they are is one of the greatest ways to understand others and have a meaningful conversation with them. Do so intending to understand them, not to prove them wrong. If you have enjoyed this article please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles. You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don't think so For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report Remember: Happiness is a choice, so choose to be happy. Read the full article

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/us/pedro-pierluisi-puerto-rico-governor.html#click=https://t.co/cV6JUeVlqK

Puerto Rico Governor Names Pedro Pierluisi as His Possible Successor

By Frances Robles and Patricia Mazzei | Published July 31, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 31, 2019 3:12 PM |

Leer en español

SAN JUAN, P.R. — The ousted governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo A. Rosselló, chose his successor on Wednesday, nominating Pedro R. Pierluisi, who formerly represented the island in Congress, to serve as secretary of state. The move positions Mr. Pierluisi to take over as governor when Mr. Rosselló’s resignation becomes effective later this week.

“After much analysis and taking into account the best interests of our people, I have selected Mr. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia to fill the secretary of state vacancy,” Mr. Rosselló said in a statement. He said he would call a special session of the Legislative Assembly on Thursday, the day before he is scheduled to step down, to confirm the appointment.

Mr. Rosselló said he considered several choices and ultimately picked Mr. Pierluisi for his experience as resident commissioner in Washington and as secretary of justice under Mr. Rosselló’s father, former Gov. Pedro J. Rosselló.

The younger Mr. Rosselló said that Mr. Pierluisi intends to serve through the end of the term but would not seek the governor’s office in 2020.

“His aspiration is to complete this term, so that the successes we have achieved do not disappear,” Mr. Rosselló said. “The electoral process that will begin in the coming months will allow other highly qualified leaders to put their ideas and character to the people’s consideration, as Pierluisi and I did in the last primary.”

If he is confirmed by the territory’s House and Senate, Mr. Pierluisi’s nomination would settle the complicated succession question that has thrown the island into uncertainty in the days since Mr. Rosselló’s  unprecedented resignation. He announced his imminent exit last Wednesday, under fire for his participation in a leaked exchange of rude and profane text messages and pressured by a mass uprising of Puerto Ricans fed up with corruption, a stagnant economy and a poor response to Hurricane Maria in 2017.

But Mr. Pierluisi’s confirmation seems far from certain, as a tense power struggle continues inside the ruling New Progressive Party, which supports Puerto Rican statehood. The powerful Senate president, Thomas Rivera Schatz, a contender for the secretary of state job himself, let it be known before the nomination was even official — by calling a well-known local radio host — that Mr. Pierluisi would not have enough votes to win confirmation in the Senate.

Under Puerto Rico’s Constitution, the secretary of state automatically replaces a governor who leaves office. But the last official to hold the post, Luis Rivera Marín, stepped down over his role in the leaked private exchange of sexist and homophobic messages that precipitated the political crisis. His departure created a critical vacancy ahead of Mr. Rosselló’s resignation, which becomes effective at 5 p.m. on Friday.

It left Wanda Vázquez, the secretary of justice, next in line. Mr. Rosselló posted photos on Twitter last week after he announced his resignation showing Ms. Vázquez attending “transition” meetings at La Fortaleza, the governor’s official residence in San Juan, the capital.

But Ms. Vázquez made clear that she was not a politician and preferred not to step in as governor. Hundreds of protesters, denouncing Ms. Vázquez’s close ties to the disgraced Mr. Rosselló, rallied outside the Justice Departmenton Monday, rejecting her as the governor’s successor and demanding that she, too, resign.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Rosselló, 40, a first-term governor who took office in 2017, negotiated with legislative leaders from the New Progressive Party to try to find a consensus candidate who could be left in charge of the troubled government until next year’s election.

But it was difficult for leaders to find a candidate who could be confirmed by the Legislative Assembly and be acceptable to the public. Puerto Ricans who took to the streets to call for Mr. Rosselló’s ouster said repeatedly that they were tired of crony politics.

The choice of Mr. Pierluisi, 60, suggests that Mr. Rosselló remains determined to keep Mr. Rivera Schatz, one of his rivals in the party, from succeeding him. If confirmed, Mr. Pierluisi, who narrowly lost the party’s 2016 primary for governor to Mr. Rosselló, is expected to serve as a caretaker governor for the remainder of Mr. Rosselló’s four-year term.

Mr. Pierluisi served eight years in Washington as Puerto Rico’s nonvoting resident commissioner in Congress during the Obama administration. Like Mr. Rosselló, he is a Democrat when it comes to national politics, though many New Progressives are Republicans.

“I have listened to the people’s messages, their demonstrations, their demands and their concerns,” Mr. Pierluisi said in a statement accepting the nomination. “And in this new challenge in my life, I will only answer to the people.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Pierluisi would be welcomed by the thousands of Puerto Ricans whose street protests ended Mr. Rosselló’s term as governor.

Gisela Gómez, 45, who sells homemade sweets to tourists, said she participated in the massive march last week to oust the governor and was pleased with his selection. “We have to run all of the corrupt ones out, and replace it with a new government,” Ms. Gómez said. “I don’t know much about politics, but from what I have heard, of all of them out there, he is the best one.”

Juan Pagán, 57, a cabdriver who was standing on a street corner in Old San Juan hoping to pick up cruise ship passengers, said that although he does not vote for the New Progressive Party, he thinks Mr. Pierluisi is an acceptable candidate.

“At least he’s the least bad,” Mr. Pagán said. “The party is completely corrupt. History has said that that is the most corrupt party in history,” he added, noting that there were dozens of arrests during the administration of Mr. Rosselló’s father.

Bernardo Burgos Vázquez, 68, referred to concerns that Mr. Pierluisi, a lawyer, could have a conflict of interest because he works for a firm that does external legal consulting for the unelected federal oversight board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances. On Tuesday, Mr. Pierluisi was placed on a leave of absence from the law firm, O’Neill & Borges, according to the firm’s website.

In any case, it should not be a serious problem, Mr. Vázquez said.

“You have to give a break to the people who are fighting for the best for the people,” he said. “They almost always judge people for things that they have not even done.”

Mr. Pierluisi’s brother-in-law, José B. Carrión III, remains the chairman of the oversight board, which was created by Congress. The New York Times found in 2016 that Mr. Pierluisi introduced legislation as resident commissioner that would benefit at least two Wall Street companies that had hired his wife, María Elena Carrión, for financial advice. (Mr. Pierluisi and Ms. Carrión are in the process of divorcing, the Puerto Rican news media have reported.)

[Read more about Mr. Pierluisi’s time in Washington here.]

Mr. Pierluisi’s ties to the unpopular oversight board are unlikely to sit well with some lawmakers.

“That could do some damage,” Representative Gabriel Rodríguez Aguiló, the House majority leader, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Many protesters, when calling for Mr. Rosselló’s resignation, also spoke out against the oversight board, urging him, “Llévate a la junta” — Take the board with you.

If Mr. Pierluisi is not confirmed by Friday afternoon, Ms. Vázquez would become governor.

Mr. Rivera Schatz is known to dislike Ms. Vázquez and to harbor ambitions to run for governor himself next year. And he holds considerable sway within his party; he became its interim leader after Mr. Rosselló relinquished the role of president.

But he, too, is considered a divisive figure. The protesters who marched against Mr. Rosselló and then Ms. Vázquez also chanted to Mr. Rivera Schatz: “No te vistas, que no vas” — Don’t get dressed; it’s not going to be you.

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Rivera Schatz said the confirmation process will play out and lawmakers will perform their constitutional duty. But he did not mention Mr. Pierluisi by name, or refer to his chances at winning the Senate vote. “There is no problem that does not have a solution, and in Puerto Rico we should focus on solutions,” Mr. Rivera Schatz said. “We should promote unity, not discord.”

Frances Robles reported from San Juan, and Patricia Mazzei from Miami.

Five Books for Eid

It's the Eid pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Eid is this weekend, so I decided to suggest five books by and/or about women in the ‘Muslim world’. I tried to choose books with women as the main focus (one is a YA book about a little girl), that didn’t victimise women or demonise men in Muslim cultures. Although several revolve around war and revolutions, I tried to choose books that covered women with different experiences and opinions. Many of these books are more or less ‘real world’ accounts and although many of them are difficult to read and not all of them are ‘literary’, I would recommend them to everyone, if for nothing but the ideal that through reading we can build empathy and understanding of different peoples and experiences, and these are voices rarely heard in mainstream Western literature.

"Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn’t dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us." - Lolita in Tehran

I’ll start with the easiest to read:

1. Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa al-Sanea

A casual, light book about women from the KSA. It takes the form of gossipy anonymous e-mails about the lives of a group of four college-age women who were high school friends in Riyadh - mostly their adventures in the world of love and relationships in a country where they have limited contact with men.

If I were to file this under a genre it would be chick lit. It’s fun and easy to read. The women are clearly privileged: they’re wealthy, they travel, they get nose jobs, they wear Elie Saab. The writer wrote this in Arabic for an Arab audience and didn’t expect it to be translated and disseminated in the English speaking world. The characters aren’t meant to represent all Saudi women, and though this was controversial and was immediately banned when it came out in the KSA, this isn’t meant to be a political polemic. It’s a rare pop culture peek into the lives of ‘regular’ women in a country that seldom reveals itself in this way.

2. Our Women on the Ground, edited by Zahra Hankir

This is a compilation of essays by Arab women journalists reporting from the Arab world. The journalists include not just those working for familiar media agencies like the BBC, New York Times and Al Jazeera, but also freelancers and citizen journalists.

These essays are personal and many deal with the realities of living and working in war zones. It's not the easiest book to read, but I think it's an important book. If you had to choose only one book in this list, I suggest this one. Every essay is eloquent. The book presents not just the perspectives of Arab woman journalists about the conflicts they cover, they also share their lives and work conditions honestly and openly. In societies which are gender segregated, Arab women journalists can access places that would otherwise be closed off to Western, and male, journalists, and in this book we hear from people who we would otherwise find difficult to reach.

3. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

This lyrical free verse YA book is about a Syrian girl named Jude. Syria is on the cusp of revolution. After her house is raided, she and her mother go to Cincinnati to live with relatives. There she adjusts to living in a new country, speaking a language she isn't completely comfortable with yet, and becoming American. She faces some Islamphobia, but also meets lovely and welcoming people in her school and community, and by the end she has made friends and is beginning to feel more settled into her new home.

I found the writing to be particularly beautiful. The targeted age group is middle grade. I think some issues would have to be explained or researched by children as they'd be too young to have been politically aware and following the news coverage of the Arab Spring as it occurred, and some background guidance on revolutions and the political situation in the Middle East would be helpful for them to contextualize the story. However the latter half about Jude's new life in America is I think helpful for helping young readers (and adults!) empathise with the day to day struggles of refugee or immigrant children. There are also many children who will identify with Jude's story of immigration and/or escaping conflict, and who don't often see their story represented in children's literature.

More generally, this is a book about home and belonging. The loss of home, the desire for home, and the struggle to build a new home. Although the ending is uplifting, I think it's ultimately a sad book, because the Syria Jude had to leave behind can never be reclaimed, and this loss will always exist for her.

4. Reading Lolita in Tehran

I realise this book is a little controversial. It's been accused of being New Orientalist and neoconservative by Hamid Dabashi (he writes the forward for Dreaming of Baghdad, my last book recommendation below).

This book is the memoir of an English literature professor teaching in Tehran during the revolution. When she's fired from her job for refusing to wear the hijab, she starts a book club/reading group for some of her female students in her living room.

I enjoyed this book, it's very readable. Much of the book are her discussions with her students about literature and their lives, and she directly correlates the books they read to their political experiences in Iran (c.f. the title: Reading Lolita in Tehran). I recommend reading it at least for her funny story of putting The Great Gatsby on trial in her classroom, and other amusing anecdotes, like her student life protests and when her drug dealer neighbour hid in their garden.

This isn't a book that's meant to encompass the experiences of all Iranian women, or a literary critique on Lolita, or a broad political analysis on Iran-US relations. It's a memoir of a woman, who's upper class, educated in the US, and decidedly secular. She seems to like Marx, dislike the hijab, and that is entirely fair and her right to do so and write about in her memoir.

I personally feel that some of the criticisms of her book are a little unfair, and people are reading too much into the book, and expecting too much out of it, but I say this with the caveat that I read this years after its publication, so I read this removed from any expectations the initial marketing/advertising would have inspired. I'll probably write a separate post on how I feel about this book. However I would be remiss if I didn't also I also suggest you read a balancing piece, Jasmine and Stars (Reading more than Lolita in Tehran) by Fatemah Keshavarz.

I recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran to you with the assumption that you are a politically aware, rational adult who doesn't assume that one writer's opinions and experiences are representative of an entire country, and doesn't look to a single book to give you an overview of 'the condition of women's lives in Iran'. Look at it as a literature professor's anecdotes about her life in books, and proceed from there.

5. Dreaming of Baghdad by Haifa Zangana

I left this till the end because this is the hardest book in the list.

Haifa Zangana was an Iraqi Communist Party activist who was imprisoned during Saddam Hussein's regime. She was initially tortured and imprisoned in a political prison, then transferred to Abu Ghraib, then to a prostitute's prison. This is essentially her recollections.

It's not a torture narrative, instead it takes on a dreamlike quality, and switches from the first to third person, letters to herself, disjointed dreams and nightmares, scenes from her childhood, her present, and her time as an activist and in prison.

This is a book I really want you to read. It will haunt you forever. Reading about imprisonment, torture and executions is always difficult, but I felt reading this was like bearing witness to her testimony.

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Three weeks ago, after Leeann Tweeden accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken of groping her and kissing her without her consent, we argued that Democrats ought to have pushed for Franken to resign. Doing so would have allowed them to claim the moral high ground at a time when allegations of sexual misconduct had implicated both Democratic and Republican politicians — including President Trump and Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama. It would also have come at a relatively small political price, since Franken’s replacement would be named by a Democratic governor and Democrats would be favored to keep the seat in a special election in 2018.

Democrats didn’t see it the same way; instead, the party line was that Franken’s case should be referred to the Senate ethics committee. But the party has since shifted gears: On Wednesday, a cavalcade of Democratic senators — first several female members, such as New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, but eventually including party leaders such as New York’s Chuck Schumer — called on Franken to resign. Franken’s office has said he’ll make an announcement about his future on Thursday, which many reporters expect to be a resignation.

So what changed? Most obviously, several other women came forward with accusations that Franken had groped them or made unwanted advances toward them, including two new accusations on Thursday alone.

Unfortunately, this was fairly predictable: Sexual predation is often serial. (Consider, for instance, that, on Jezebel’s fairly exhaustive list of prominent men accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault, all but a handful have multiple accusers.) The lesson is that even if party leaders think that an initial allegation against one of their members may be politically survivable or morally tolerable, it will often be followed by other accusations.

But something else changed too: Democratic leaders got a lot of feedback from voters in the form of polls, and it wasn’t positive.

Voters care about sexual harassment allegations — and thought both parties were mishandling them

Polling suggests that voters care a lot about sexual harassment allegations — a Quinnipiac poll this week, for instance, found that 66 percent of voters thought that politicians should resign when “accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault by multiple people.” And the poll also found that only 28 percent of voters approve of the Democrats’ handling of sexual harassment and sexual assault claims, as compared with 50 percent who disapprove. That’s better than the numbers for Republicans (21 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove), but not by much. Meanwhile, a Huffington Post/YouGov poll last month found equally poor numbers for Democrats and Republicans when voters were asked whether the parties had a sexual harassment “problem.”

Voters are also not necessarily interested in making overly fine distinctions among different types of sexual misconduct. A YouGov poll this week, for instance, found that roughly the same proportion of voters wanted Franken (43 percent resign, 23 percent not resign, 35 percent not sure) and Moore (47/22/31) to step down.1 All of this goes to show that voters face a number of complexities when considering these allegations, such as the number of accusers; the severity of the alleged misconduct; the age of the victims and their ability to consent; the amount of time passed since the alleged misconduct; the credibility of the accusers; whether the politicians apologize for the conduct or how persuasive they were in denying the allegations; and whether the allegations involved an abuse of public office. As a human being, I have my own intuitive and moral sense for how to weigh these factors — but as someone who tries to diagnose their political impact, I don’t necessarily expect everyone else to sort them out in quite the same way.

The moral high ground could also be the political high ground for Democrats

It’s reasonable to be a little bit suspicious of polls showing voters to be highly worried about sexual harassment because sometimes partisanship can outweigh voters’ self-professed concerns.

There’s also some partisan asymmetry in how voters interpret these claims. As The Huffington Post’s Ariel Edwards-Levy points out, voters in both parties largely believe sexual harassment claims made against the other party — but Democrats also tend to believe claims made against fellow Democrats, while Republicans are more skeptical about claims made against GOP lawmakers. Note, of course, that Trump won the Electoral College last year and received 88 percent of the Republican vote despite more than a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct against him.

All of this can be frustrating to Democratic and liberal commentators, who complain about “unilateral disarmament,” i.e. the notion that Democratic legislators such as Franken and Rep. John Conyers will be forced to resign because of sexual misconduct allegations while Republicans such as Moore, Trump and Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold will survive theirs because their bases will rally behind them.

This may be more of a curse than a blessing for Republicans, however. Somewhat contrary to the conventional wisdom, the allegations against Moore have had a meaningful impact in Alabama. Moore has put Republicans in an unenviable position: He’ll either lose a race to a Democrat in one of America’s reddest states, trigger a nasty intraparty fight over expulsion, or stay in office but potentially damage the Republican brand for years to come. Voter concern over Republican mishandling of the accusations against GOP Rep. Mark Foley, who sent sexually explicit messages to underaged teenage pages, was a contributing factor in the landslide losses Republicans suffered in 2006. And while it isn’t a perfect analogy because they weren’t accused of sexual misconduct themselves, Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock lost highly winnable Senate races for Republicans in 2012 after making controversial comments about women who had been raped.

So it may well be that Democratic politicians usually resign from office when faced with accusations of sexual harassment while Republicans usually don’t. If so, that could work to Democrats’ benefit. If the Democrat is in a safe seat, he’ll be replaced with another Democrat anyway. And if he’s in a swing seat, the party would often be better off with a new candidate rather than one who’s damaged goods.2 In Minnesota, for instance, Franken’s approval rating has plunged to 36 percent, according to a SurveyUSA poll, down from 53 percent last year. Whichever Democrat replaces him would have to win the special election in 2018 but would then probably have an easier time than Franken holding the seat for the full six-year term that comes up in 2020.

Moreover, a tougher stance toward accused harassers such as Franken makes Democrats look less hypocritical when party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi talk about having “zero tolerance” on sexual harassment.

Maintaining the moral high ground isn’t always easy. It means you have to hold your party to a higher standard than the other party. It means you sometimes have to make real trade-offs. But it can also pay political dividends and mitigate political risks. Democrats just lost an election in 2016 against a historically unpopular candidate because their candidate was disliked nearly as much. The political environment is favorable for Democrats in 2018, but perhaps the easiest way that Democrats could blow their opportunity is if voters conclude that as bad as Republicans are, Democrats are no better. With Democrats coming around to a tougher stance on Franken and Conyers while Republicans equivocate on Moore and restore funding to his campaign, they’ll be able to draw a clearer distinction for voters.

'We're going to call it out': Sanders team thinks media is writing him off

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/were-going-to-call-it-out-sanders-team-thinks-media-is-writing-him-off/

'We're going to call it out': Sanders team thinks media is writing him off

Sen. Bernie Sanders “wants to talk about what he wants to talk about, when he wants to talk about it,” said one reporter who covered the candidate in 2016 and 2019. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Media

His staff is unusually vocal in calling out coverage they dislike, fueling frustration once again among the senator’s supporters about whether he’s getting a fair shot at the White House.

If Bernie Sanders’ team had its way, every reporter covering the Vermont senator would put out a tweet disclosing their unvarnished, personal feelings about the candidate.

It’s not going to happen, but campaign manager Faiz Shakir thinks he knows what it would reveal anyway.

Story Continued Below

“This isn’t intended to be a sweeping generalization of all journalists,” he told POLITICO, “but there are a healthy number who just find Bernie annoying, discount his seriousness, and wish his supporters and movement would just go away.”

In the 2016 Democratic primary, Sanders’ complaint about the media was that he was ignored, especially early in the campaign, while a phalanx of reporters trailed Hillary Clinton and cable networks turned live to Donald Trump’s raucous rallies.

Now, he’s not having trouble getting airtime, giving interviews in just the last week on ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNN. Among the Democratic field, Sanders ranks behind only Vice President Joe Biden in mentions in traditional news outlets this year, according to an analysis by global media and intelligence company Meltwater.

In the 2020 campaign, his team’s frustration has morphed, centering on what they see as excessively negative stories and dismissive commentary. Even though he’s consistently near the top in the polls, Sanders’ staff thinks pundits write off his chances. And they’re unusually vocal in calling out coverage they dislike on Twitter and on the media channels they’ve created in-house, fueling frustration once again among the senator’s supporters about whether he’s getting a fair shot at the White House.

On Sanders’ live-streaming show “The 99,” three campaign staffers spent more than an hour last week discussing what they perceive as media bias, such as the tendency to focus on the shiny and salacious rather than Sanders’ decades-long advocacy for the poor and working class. “Standing up on these issues over 40 years is not new and exciting for people,” said chief of staff Ari Rabin-Havt.

Speechwriter David Sirota, a former journalist with more than 130,000 Twitter followers, took issue Tuesday with tweets from POLITICO and a CNN analyst that named some lower-polling Democrats but didn’t mention Sanders. “When we’re not being treated fairly,” Sirota said later in a Reddit Q&A, “we’re going to call it out and push back on it as much as possible.”

Some reporters, Shakir told POLITICO, “attempt to hide their disdain and masquerade their commentary behind purported straight pieces that amount to seeing everything as a ‘bad news for Bernie’ moment.”

The Sanders campaign is quick to distance itself from Trump’s claims that unfavorable stories are “fake news” and that the media is his “enemy.” Shakir said Sanders “appreciates and understands the role the media plays in a democratic system” and that the campaign tries to isolate examples of what they consider unfair coverage rather than making sweeping generalizations.

“Donald Trump goes on the assault against the entire news media simply for being, in his mind, a perceived slanderer of him,” said Shakir, “and facts don’t matter in that analysis.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and a co-host of “Pod Save America,” told POLITICO he generally considers “it a good thing that the once-private arguments between campaigns and reporters are now happening in public,” though he said he questions the effectiveness of Sanders’ media critiques.

“The right has had unbelievable success working the refs by calling the mainstream media biased against them,” Pfeiffer said. “Unfortunately for the Sanders campaign, the press too often considers complaints from the left as validation of their objectivity and complaints from the right as something worth addressing to prove their objectivity.”

Journalists who cover Sanders, meanwhile, dispute many of those criticisms. They say if he gets less attention than other candidates, it’s because he’s often unwilling to address breaking news and shies away from impromptu question-and-answer sessions, or gaggles, after events.

Shakir calls Sanders a “news of the century kind of candidate,” focused on deep-rooted issues plaguing society rather than the daily churn. Still, the campaign says he’s taken questions from reporters after several campaign stops and had off-the-record meetings in some newsrooms. “We are always looking for opportunities to engage with press,” said deputy communications director Sarah Ford.

But Sanders is less accessible than competitors such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose campaign says she has held 82 press gaggles and done 170 one-on-one interviews.

Sanders “wants to talk about what he wants to talk about, when he wants to talk about it,” said one reporter who covered the candidate in 2016 and 2019. “And he doesn’t see the value of talking to reporters about what they want to talk about because, in part, he thinks they’re going to talk about what he considers stupid stuff.”

He doesn’t hesitate to make that disdain known, either. The New York Times disclosed in May that Sanders declined an interview for a piece on his time as mayor of Burlington, Vt., including a 1985 meeting with Daniel Ortega, the president of Nicaragua and a foe of the Reagan administration. After the story was published, Sanders requested a phone interview, eventually telling the reporter, ���You don’t understand a word that I’m saying.”

Rabin-Havt told POLITICO there’s something akin to a language barrier between political journalists and the campaign.

“They just will never buy that we don’t think it’s a game,” he said.

Sanders hosted a cable access show in the 1980s, and many of his campaign staffers have backgrounds at progressive news outlets — Shakir was founding editor of ThinkProgress, Rabin-Havt served as executive vice president at Media Matters, Sirota wrote for The Guardian, and national press secretary Briahna Joy Gray was an editor at The Intercept.

They all share a skepticism of the “corporate media.” “The media work for huge multinational corporations,” Sanders told Rolling Stone last month, adding that “anyone with my agenda is going to attract a lot of opposition.”

He doesn’t have much patience for reporters who want him to talk about anything other than that agenda. “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos kicked off an interview Thursday by telling Sanders that voters want to know more about him as a person.

Sanders didn’t take the bait. Americans “have a right” to know about a person running for president, Sanders acknowledged, but “sometimes the media goes overboard on that and does not pay enough attention to what you are trying to do to transform the country.”

On Sunday, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had no plans to change his approach.

“When the poor get richer and the rich get poorer, when all of our people have healthcare as a right, when we are leading the world in the fight against climate change, you know what? I will change what I am saying,” Sanders said.

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TV or not TV? Isn’t there a third option?

I’ve already argued that the pickings at the multiplex are pretty slim, nor am I a fan of what I have labeled “Heavy TV”, disliking it so much I had to write a sequel to my original putdown.1 My appetite, such as it was, for the doings of sadistic serial killers is pretty much exhausted, and I’m generally either afraid of “The Dark” or bored by it. So is nothing acceptable? Fortunately, there are a few old favorites that are still holding up, and a few other odds and ends—shows that have come and gone that I’m just discovering.

Archer, suave secret agent/dick (both private and public), about whom I’ve raved in the past, on my own blog and for the Bright Lights Film Journal, still functioning, and still tolerably funny in its ninth season, is preparing for its tenth and last on FX. Earlier seasons are no longer available on Netflix (except on DVD) and Amazon Prime makes you pay extra even for Season 1, which strikes me as exceptionally bitchy (or Archery). I’m sure the kids have figured out a way to watch it for free, but I haven’t, so I’m DVDing it.

The third season of Call My Agent!, aka Dix Pour Cent, a semi-favorite of mine is up on Netflix, chronicling the frenzied adventures of the ever-endangered ASK talent agency in Paris. I complained about the excessive coziness of Saison Deux, but I’m glad to report that Saison Trois is both more dry and more droll. As I expected, the cliffhanger from Saison Deux, that big-hearted, big-nosed lesbian Andréa (Camille Cottin) would be shipped off to New York, didn’t happen, allowing her to have her baby (by boss Hicham Janowski, played by Assaad Bouab) in the safety and sanctity of the French medical system. My big complaint in the past was the show’s star-struck approach to stars, showing them as vain and temperamental (at first) but, after a few complications, emerging as gallant thoroughbreds who always come through under pressure and save the day. This time, instead of a handful of European stars entirely unknown to me, we have a true international star, Isabelle Huppert. Isabelle isn’t “bad”, of course. If anything, she’s too generous and hard-working. The thing is, she’s signed a contract with—wait for it—Americans! Who want her exclusively and, mercenary monsters that they are, would foreclose on Versailles and ship it to LA if they don’t get their way!

Fortunately, ASK has both the sangfroid and the savoir faire to hose the Yanks, though it takes quite a bit of frantic behind the scenes running around to carry the whole thing off. Along the way, there’s a funny side plot, wherein the sweet gay guy, whose name I still don’t know and can’t determine, gets a chance to move up to be an actual agent instead of an assistant! Because sweet not-gay Camille (Fanny Sidney) thinks she’s so busy she should be two people, sweet gay guy becomes her, for a day. And then he meets this really cute waiter who wants to be a star, and so sweet gay guy arranges for an audition for him! Both their dreams are going to come true! Well, how else does one celebrate such an occasion, eh, mon ami? But then, well, really cute waiter gets sent to the wrong audition, and he’s terrible, and the studio wants to know why ASK is sending them boyfriends instead of actors, and SGG has to 1) catch shit from Camille for endangering the agency, 2) tell RCW that he isn’t star material, and 3) take shit from RCW, to wit: “You only took me on because you wanted to fuck me! Well, mission accomplished, bitch! Because now I’m totally fucked!” And all because he wanted to make people’s dreams come true! Agents suffer!

A past hidden gem that I’m just discovering is Blandings, a mere 12 thirty-minute episodes from Britain, but I’m lovin’ ‘em. “Blandings”, available on Amazon, is ultimately from the pen of P. G. Wodehouse, the grandmaster of silly ass Englishman light fiction. I’ve previously discussed a series dating from the early 90s, Jeeves and Wooster, devoted to Wodehouse’s supreme creation, the saga of Bertie Wooster and his man Jeeves, which ran through dozens of short stories and perhaps a dozen novels, from the early twenties through 1970. Devotees/obsessives like myself marinated for decades in Bertie’s inimitable rococo narration of Jeeves’ inimitable rococo machinations, all in the service of the inimitable truth, that Amor Vincit Omnia, though not without considerable assistance from Jeeves.

It was surely inevitable that Jeeves and Wooster would fall below the mark unconsciously set for it by aficionados like myself. Despite the ineffable lightness of Wodehouse’s prose, both Bertie and Jeeves were quite complex characters, doppelgangers for Wodehouse himself. “Plum”, as everyone (apparently) called him, was quite unhappy as a boy, but immensely happy at his “public” school—what we Americans would call a prep school—“Dulwich College”. The moral he seemed to take away from it all was that happiness, though possible, is not “natural”—it must be consciously achieved. Furthermore, it is most often achieved in the company of the privileged, and it can best be achieved by holding the world at arm’s length.

In the early short stories, Bertie is always either falling in love or getting engaged, or both, but always to the “wrong woman”—though, in sharp contrast to the American “rom com”, there is no right one.2 As Jeeves repeatedly makes clear, the only way to avoid the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is to abstain from the fury and mire of human veins. By the mid-thirties, when Wodehouse had largely switched from short stories to novels, Bertie was as skeptical of affairs of the heart as Jeeves. The turning point was Brinkley Manor, aka What Ho, Jeeves (1934), which set in motion a collection of entangled and star-crossed lovers who, thanks to Jeeves, all married happily, though the consummations were delayed for a good thirty years. The Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius notoriously found it pleasing to stand safely on the shore and watch the sufferings of those at sea tormented by the storm.3 Both Jeeves and Bertie are made of softer stuff, and, confronted as they invariably are by victims of internal rather than external weather, always strive to intervene—Bertie ingenuously and disastrously, Jeeves with the effortless hand of the Creator (or the Author). But in both cases, intervention is only possible if one is one’s self immune to the tempest within.4

Jeeves and Bertie are scarcely three-dimensional characters, and the supporting cast distinctly less so, but over the decades that he wrote about them, Wodehouse rang the changes on the limited notes available to him so ingeniously that—for the addicted, at least—they remained ever fresh and vivid. The result is that, I suspect, all true devotees have a “perfect” Aunt Dahlia and a “perfect” Madelaine Bassett, not to mention a perfect Bertie and a perfect Jeeves, already fixed in their heads, so that the poor actors and actresses (if I can use such a term) who portray them almost invariably appear as disappointments or even frauds, for the perfect is always the enemy of the good.

In the “Blandings” stories, revolving around Lord Emsworth and his kin, and most particularly his prize pig, the “Empress” and set in the “eternal Twenties” of Wodehouse’s imagination,5 the perfect rarely intrudes The few I read from the series struck me as a distinctly lesser creation, stories that Wodehouse wrote as a sort of vacation from the Wooster/Jeeves high-wire act. Without Bertie’s perfect voice—the Blandings stories are written the third person—and without Jeeves perfect schemes, we have little more than a stock company road show of silly ass Englishmen, good-hearted chorus girls, good-natured, big-bellied, empty-headed lords, imperious dames, and sherry-slurping butlers, all wandering around the sort of enormous country estate that drove me half bonkers in the unspeakably wretched Downton Abbey.6 But at Blandings, it works.

Rather remarkably, given the degenerate nature of our time, the producers of the show made no attempt to position themselves as superior to the material, no effort to show what life was “really” like in those bad old days, which was in fact pretty horrible for everyone below stairs and for half of those above it. Wodehouse deconstructed would be a sorry sight indeed, and we don’t get it. The only updating that has been done is pretty much limited to the occasional pig fart, and (probably) more “muck” jokes (manure) than P. G. would have allowed himself. Instead, we have the amiable Lord Emsworth (Timothy Spall), sporting a thoroughly “English” set of teeth, his amiable son Freddie Threepwood (Jack Farthing), his unamiable sister Lady Constance (Jennifer Saunders), and his stout butler Beach (played first by Mark Williams in the first season and by Tim Vine in the second), all cavorting and disporting themselves in a suitably Wodehousian manner. Freed from the burden of perfection, and avoiding on its own the burden of pretense, it’s pretty damned good road show all around, and I’m sorry it didn’t get a longer run.

Another invigorating look at the Roaring Twenties with a British accent—more substantial, this time around—comes from Down Under in the form of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, three full seasons of hour long treats on both Netflix and ABC that make Sydney, Australia look surprisingly like London—and sound like it too, because all the leads have surprisingly (to me) posh accents.7 Miss Fisher, played by the charming Essie Davis, is unsurprisingly and unchronologically up to date in all her attitudes, being (of course) independent and quite capable of clambering over walls and scaling buildings in pursuit of evil-doers, even in high heels. Phryne, as her first name is, has a sweet companion, Dorothy Williams (Ashleigh Cummings), somewhat lower down on the social scale and naturally a bit intimidated by Phryne’s upper class lack of inhibition. Both gals have steady Eddies, in the form of Chief Inspector John Robinson (Nathan Page) for Phryne and Constable Hugh Collins (Hugo Johnstone-Burt) for Dorothy. The Chief Inspector, virtually a walking Rock of Gibraltar and a titan of middle-class inhibitions, is naturally entranced by the wicked Miss Fisher, who keeps his Herculean physique tightly wrapped around her little finger for all three seasons, and it must be said that Constable Collins’ fate is only a little less circumscribed.

As should be obvious, Miss Fisher is largely a chick show, of particular interest, I would say, to women who worry about their boyfriends’ hair, because both the Chief Inspector and the Constable have coifs that are, invariably, perfect. Some of the “backstory” for the show—the bitterness many Australians felt at the way the “Mother Country” used them for its own purposes in World War 1, for example—shows some real thought. There is, unsurprisingly, a gaping omission when it comes to the subject of race, and the position of the “aborigines”, which in the twenties was entirely deplorable. Most unattractive is the difference in the treatment of two of Miss Fisher’s many lovers, one Chinese and one “black”. The Chinese lover comes from a prominent family, speaks excellent English, and has come to Australia to flee an arranged marriage in order to marry the woman he loves, whose father is a communist. The black lover is an extra in a film, has not a single line, and clearly functions as a one-night stud. Naughty, yes, but not very nice.

For now, that's it. So don't say nothing's on. Say almost nothing's on.

Latest and worst heavy TV of all is the execrable Game of Thrones. The sappy English accents alone make it unwatchable, not to mention the entire fur coats, tits, and bloody murder ethos of the damn show. Livin’ in the Age o’ Trump is already terrible, but this show makes it worse. ↩︎

As a young man, Wodehouse wrote “straight” rom com novels like Mike in the City and Leave it to Psmith!, whose heroes were impecunious public school men, rather like Wodehouse himself, ↩︎

The opening stanza of Book II of De Rerum Natura, aka “The Nature of Things”—a Roman catchphrase. People are always taking a look at rerum natura. ↩︎

Wodehouse did marry, Ethel May Wayman, an English widow. They had no children, but Wodehouse adopted Wayman’s daughter, to whom he was quite devoted. Supposedly, Ethel was the Jeeves to Plum’s Bertie. ↩︎

“First and last,” I squealed in impotent and ineffectual rage, “I was overwhelmingly put off by the idea that it’s okay, in any sense of the word, for five people to be knocking about in a house the size of Grand Central Station, with two or three dozen menials rushing about night and day to keep everything looking just so.” Blandings rather shamelessly elides the issue by pretending that Lord Emworth’s immense estate is cared for by a handful of servants, who spend most of their time either feeding cake to pigs or drinking sherry. ↩︎

Actually, Wodehouse’s stock characters are really pre-World War I, as George Orwell explains. Orwell’s essay discusses Wodehouse’s early work in some detail, on its way to giving what I found to be too much deference to Wodehouse’s unthinking behavior when captured by the German Army in France in 1940. Wodehouse gave a radio broadcast making it sound as though being imprisoned by the Germans was rather jolly. Wodehouse’s wife was also a prisoner, so it’s not surprising that he wanted to cooperate, but there’s a difference between cooperating and being coopted. I suspect that Wodehouse, like many rich people, hoped that the Nazis wouldn’t be so bad. ↩︎

A contemporary Australian series, Rake, also available on Netflix, which I gave up on because it kept expecting me to identify with a coke addict, features noticeably less posh accents. ↩︎