Prayer and Meditation for Walter Mondale by Rev. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen

Prayer and Meditation for Walter Mondale by Rev. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen

At the May 1, 2022 memorial service for Walter Mondale, Rev. Dr. Timothy Hart-Andersen, the Senior Pastor at Mondale’s Minneapolis church, Westminster Presbyterian, delivered the following prayer and Meditation. Prayer “Let us pray:”  “Gracious God, we gather in this Easter season to give you thanks and   praise for the life and witness of Walter F. Mondale. In remembering him and his legacy of…

View On WordPress

An ‘echo chamber’ is a social structure from which other relevant voices have been actively discredited. Where an epistemic bubble merely omits contrary views, an echo chamber brings its members to actively distrust outsiders. In their book Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (2010), Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Frank Cappella offer a groundbreaking analysis of the phenomenon. For them, an echo chamber is something like a cult. A cult isolates its members by actively alienating them from any outside sources. Those outside are actively labelled as malignant and untrustworthy. A cult member’s trust is narrowed, aimed with laser-like focus on certain insider voices.

Americans have less confidence in vaccines to address a variety of illnesses than they did just a year or two ago, and more people accept misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, according to the latest health survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.

The survey conducted October 5-12, 2023, with a panel of over 1,500 U.S. adults, finds that the number of Americans who think vaccines approved for use in the United States are safe dropped to 71% from 77% in April 2021. The percentage of adults who don’t think vaccines approved in the U.S. are safe grew to 16% from 9% over that same two-and-a-half-year period.

Despite concerted efforts by news organizations, public health officials, scientists, and fact-checkers (including APPC’s project FactCheck.org) to counter viral misinformation about vaccination and Covid-19, the survey finds that some false or unproven claims about them are more widely accepted today than two to three years ago. Although the proportion of the American public that holds these beliefs is, in some cases, still relatively small, the survey finds growth in misinformation acceptance across many questions touching on vaccination.

“There are warning signs in these data that we ignore at our peril,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and director of the survey. “Growing numbers now distrust health-protecting, life-saving vaccines.”

https://www.c-span.org/video/?522650-3/washington-journal-kathleen-hall-jamieson-discusses-civics-education&live

After Watching This Ceremony, the Conspiracy Theorists Might Be Right About Davos

It’s a world-class gathering of the elite in Switzerland. The World Economic Forum in Davos is a hub for the globalist class, which was rightfully criticized by former Daily Show host Jon Stewart as an “orgy of self-congratulatory excess.” Such conferences also breed conspiracy theories, some entertaining while others veer into plausible territory. 

Reportedly, the area is awash with prostitutes. A bunch of rich people frolicking with hookers and doing cocaine—what else is new? But this pagan ceremony that was reportedly done at an event is grade-A ‘what the hell’ material: 

There’s also ‘the great reset’ theory, along with the conspiracy to eliminate meat from our diets and replace it with bugs (via CBS News): 

What in the fresh hell is this? pic.twitter.com/ZKgK3lgjAq— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 17, 2024

The World Economic Forum in Davos features a pagan cough prayer and it’s as bizarre as you think. https://t.co/uc1bxSit1k— Free Speech America (@FreeSpeechAmer) January 18, 2024

Wow, I didn’t know Elizabeth Warren was at Davos pic.twitter.com/q9FwDDx3Z8— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2024

When some of the world's wealthiest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting last year, sessions on climate change drew high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.  But an entirely different narrative played out on the internet, where social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.  The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit. Experts say what was once a conspiracy theory found in the internet's underbelly has now hit the mainstream.  […]  When we have very high levels of ambiguity, it's very easy to fill in narratives," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who is the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and also studies misinformation.  Theories about influential global leaders are not new, she said, but scrutiny of the forum and its chairman, Klaus Schwab, intensified in 2020 in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. That year, the theme of the annual meeting was "The Great Reset." The initiative envisioned sweeping changes to how societies and economies would work to recover from the pandemic and build a more sustainable future.

Recommended

Okay, say whatever you want, guys, but when you have pagan rituals being performed and folks who think that farming is an ‘ecocide,’ you’re writing the script here.

Jojo Mehta, co-founder of Stop Ecocide International, tells a panel at the WEF's annual Davos meeting why farming, fishing and energy production should be considered "ecocide"—which her organisation is aiming to have "recognised legally as a serious crime", akin to genocide.… pic.twitter.com/pjrWfR9wEo— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) January 18, 2024

Davoser Globalisten zwingen die Bevölkerung Insekten statt Fleisch zu essen um die Umwelt zu retten!

Als einige der reichsten und einflussreichsten Persönlichkeiten der Welt zum Jahrestreffen des Weltwirtschaftsforums zusammen kamen, führten Sitzungen zum Klimawandel zu hochrangigen Diskussionen über Themen wie Kohlenstofffinanzierung und nachhaltige Ernährungssysteme. Aber eine ganz andere Diskussion spielte sich auch noch ab! Die Globalisten wollen die Bevölkerung zwingen, Insekten statt Fleisch zu essen, um die Umwelt zu retten. Die jährliche Veranstaltung im Schweizer Skiort Davos ist zunehmend zum Ziel bizarrer Diskussionsrunden einer wachsenden Zahl von Kommentatoren geworden, die glauben, die global gemachten Ereignisse zu ihrem eigenen Vorteil zu manipulieren. Experten sagen, was einst eine Verschwörungstheorie war, ist jetzt im Mainstream angekommen. „Das ist keine Verschwörung, die sich am äußersten Rand abspielt“, sagte Alex Friedfeld, ein Forscher der Anti-Defamation League, der regierungsfeindlichen Extremismus untersucht. „Wir sehen es auf Mainstream-Social-Media-Plattformen, die von normalen Menschen geteilt werden. Wir haben gesehen, wie es von Mainstream-Medienvertretern direkt in ihren Nachrichten zur Hauptsendezeit in ihren nächtlichen Netzwerken verbreitet wurde.“ Das Treffen zieht Staatsoberhäupter, Wirtschaftsführer, kulturelle Trendsetter und Vertreter internationaler Organisationen in die luxuriöse Bergstadt. Obwohl es immer unklar ist, wie viele konkrete Maßnahmen entstehen werden, soll sich das Treffen mit drängenden global gemachten Problemen befassen, von Klimawandel, Insekten essen und wirtschaftlich, politisch gemachter Unsicherheit bis hin zu geopolitischer Instabilität und öffentlicher Gesundheit. Hunderte von öffentlichen Sitzungen sind jährlich geplant, aber die viertägige Konferenz ist auch bekannt für geheime Hinterzimmertreffen und Geschäftsabschlüsse von Wirtschaftsführern. Diese Lücke zwischen dem, was der Öffentlichkeit gezeigt wird, und dem, was hinter verschlossenen Türen passiert, trägt dazu bei, dass das Treffen zu einem Brennpunkt für die aufgeklärte Bevölkerung wird. „Wenn wir ein sehr hohes Maß an Mehrdeutigkeit haben, ist es sehr einfach, Narrative zu ergänzen“, sagte Kathleen Hall Jamieson, die Direktorin des Annenberg Public Policy Center an der University of Pennsylvania ist und auch Fehlinformationen untersucht. Theorien über einflussreiche globale Führer seien nicht neu, sagt sie, aber die Prüfung des Forums und seines Vorsitzenden Klaus Schwab habe sich 2020 in den frühen Tagen der COVID-19-Pandemie intensiviert.  In diesem Jahr lautet das Thema des Jahrestreffens The Great Reset. Die Initiative sah weitreichende Veränderungen in der Art und Weise vor, wie Gesellschaften und Volkswirtschaften arbeiten würden, um sich von der Pandemie zu erholen und eine nachhaltigere Zukunft aufzubauen und auch die Menschenrechte und Gesetze global über das WEF zu organisieren. Jetzt ist The Great Reset in zunehmend Mainstream-Ecken des Internets und in konservativen Talkshows zur Abkürzung für das geworden, was Skeptiker als eine Umstrukturierung der Gesellschaft bezeichnen, wobei die globale Unsicherheit als Deckmantel verwendet wird, um Rechte wegzunehmen. Gläubige argumentieren, dass Maßnahmen wie Pandemie-Lockdowns und Impfmandate Instrumente sind, um die Macht zu festigen und die individuelle Souveränität zu untergraben. Bei einer Kundgebung auf dem Gelände einer Kirche im Bundesstaat New York wurde ein Foto von Schwab in der Mitte einer großen Leinwand neben anderen Bösewichten gezeigt, denen vorgeworfen wurde, die amerikanischen Werte bedroht zu haben. Die Menge von Tausenden hatte sich in einem Erweckungszelt bei einer reisenden Roadshow versammelt, die als Rekrutierungsinstrument für eine aufsteigende christliche Bewegung dient. Die Teilnehmer diskutierten The Great Reset neben einer Vielzahl anderer Theorien - die bis jetzt auch wahr geworden sind - als einen Angriff auf Amerikas Fundamente. Laut einer Zählung  der TV-Nachrichtendatenbank des Internet Archive wurde der Ausdruck im Jahr 2022 mehr als 60 Mal in allen Sendungen von Fox News verwendet. Das ist ein Anstieg von 30 Erwähnungen im Jahr 2021 und etwa 20 im Jahr 2020. Am häufigsten wurde darüber in „The Ingraham Angle“ und „Tucker Carlson Tonight“ diskutiert. Und im August 2022 veröffentlichte Infowars-Moderator Alex Jones inmitten eines Verleumdungsprozesses, weil er den Angriff auf die Sandy-Hook-Grundschule als Schwindel bezeichnet hatte, ein Buch mit dem Titel The Great Reset: And The War For the World. Es wird als Analyse der internationalen Verschwörung der globalen Elite zur Versklavung der Menschheit und allen Lebens auf dem Planeten beschrieben. Da sich das Weltwirtschaftsforum mit dieser Erzählung verflochten hat, wurde die Organisation von einem stetigen Strom von Behauptungen angegriffen. Während einige Leute legitime Kritik am Forum äußern – nämlich, dass es wohlhabende Führungskräfte beherbergt, die mit emissionsausstoßenden Firmenjets einfliegen – und währenddessen der Bevölkerung das Fliegen verbieten will. Unterdessen ist die weit verbreiteste Behauptung, das Forum wolle, dass Menschen Fleisch durch Käfer ersetzen, der einst auf der Website der Organisation veröffentlicht wurde. In einem anderen Fall wurde in einem Beitrag behauptet, das Forum habe den US-Abgeordneten Kevin McCarthy zum Sprecher des Repräsentantenhauses ernannt, bevor die eigentliche Abstimmung stattgefunden hatte. Diese Behauptungen wurden doch auch schon Realität. Die Sorge, sagt Friedfeld, ist, dass Posts wie diese die Menschen in Randerscheinungen und gefährlichere Verschwörungstheorien einführen oder sogar zu Gewalt in der realen Welt führen könnten. Laut Yann Zopf, Medienleiter des Forums, hat die Organisation ihre Überwachung dieser Art von Online-Aktivitäten verstärkt und achtet sorgfältig auf direkte Bedrohungen. „All diese Art von Zeug zu erschaffen, kann Feinde hervorbringen, von denen die Leute glauben, dass sie für alles Schlechte verantwortlich sind, was auf der Welt passiert“, sagte Friedfeld. „Sobald das passiert, wenn man glaubt, dass Dinge auf der Welt passieren und eine bestimmte Person oder Gruppe von Menschen für diese Angriffe verantwortlich ist, wird die Idee, sich mit Gewalt zu widersetzen, plötzlich plausibler.“ https://der-schandstaat.info/cleveres-geschaeftsmodell-als-auftakt-zum-transhumanismus-die-gender-industrie-ist-die-vorbereitung-der-unternehmen-auf-den-transhumanismus/ Read the full article

Reference：

Jamieson, K. H., & Cappella, J. N. (2008). Echo chamber: Rush Limbaugh and theconservative media establishment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

SLYTHERIN: “In politics as in life, what is known is not necessarily what is believed, what is shown is not necessarily what is seen, and what is said is not necessarily what is heard.” –Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Dirty Politics)

We need to worry about teaching civics to kids. If you’re going to teach kids civics, I don’t care whether they know when Paul Revere rode. I don’t even care if they know that Paul Revere rode. In fact, I don’t care whether Paul Revere rode. I do care that they understand there are three branches of government. I care that they understand that there are checks and balances built into our system. I care that they understand we have a veto—and what that means, when you exercise it, and how you override it. I care that they understand that there’s an independent Supreme Court; that we’ve set up the Supreme Court to be different and that it’s not a political branch of government. Those are consequential. They are consequential because if you understand them, you act and think differently about our system of government. The willingness to protect our system is, in part, a function of understanding our system, and understanding that our system has presuppositional facts—consequential facts—under it. If I don’t understand those things, then if the Supreme Court issues a series of unpopular decisions that I don’t like, I’m more likely to say that maybe we should get rid of the Supreme Court. Those facts are consequential because if you don’t understand them, you might think it’s OK to subvert a system that I think is a good system and deserves protection.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, co-founder of FactCheck.org and a professor at University of Pennsylvania, in conversation with Zack Stanton at POLITICO.

We need civics education in the US and we need it way badly.

And it needs to be far more than just making kids memorize how many members of the House of Representatives there are and showing them oversimplified stick-figure diagrams of how a bill becomes law.

Civics must be a mandatory course in a functional democracy and instruction needs to start no later than middle school.

Civics education doesn’t have to be confined to schools. Foundations, think tanks, libraries, and museums can produce videos, reading materials, and graphics which reinforce classroom learning. Such institutions can also reach Americans who have completed formal education but who could use more background about our system of government.

The better that Americans understand civic society, the less likely they will fall for ignorant demagogues and organized attempts at disinformation.

Sunday Breakfast Club - What Is America Thinking?

Sunday Breakfast Club – What Is America Thinking?

THE UNION LEAGUE

CENTER CITY. This monthly business “Meet up” was almost filled to capacity with local business leaders and like-minded Influencers networking and exchanging ideas and planning future potential business opportunities.

Very thought-provoking monthly issues from keynote speakers. Last month was a fantastic MEET UP at the UNION LEAGUE.

February’s Keynote speaker, Dr. Kathleen Hall…

View On WordPress

.

From the report, posted 30 July 2021:

The document makes clear that vaccination provides substantial protection against the virus.

But it also states that the CDC must “improve communications around individual risk among [the] vaccinated” because that risk depends on a host of factors, including age and whether someone has a compromised immune system.

The document includes CDC data from studies showing that the vaccines are not as effective in immunocompromised patients and nursing home residents, raising the possibility that some at-risk individuals will need an additional vaccine dose.

The presentation includes a note that the findings and conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the CDC’s official position. The internal document contains some of the scientific information that influenced the CDC to change its mask guidance.

The agency faced criticism from outside experts this week when it changed the mask guidance without releasing the data, a move that violated scientific norms, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “You don’t, when you’re a public health official, want to be saying, ‘Trust us, we know, we can’t tell you how,’” Jamieson said. “The scientific norm suggests that when you make a statement based on science, you show the science. … And the second mistake is they do not appear to be candid about the extent to which breakthroughs are yielding hospitalizations.”

The breakthrough cases are to be expected, the CDC briefing states, and will probably rise as a proportion of all cases because there are so many more people vaccinated now. This echoes data seen from studies in other countries, including highly vaccinated Singapore, where 75 percent of new infections reportedly occur in people who are partially and fully vaccinated.

The CDC document cites public skepticism about vaccines as one of the challenges: “Public convinced vaccines no longer work,” one of the first slides in the presentation states.

Walter A. Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center, said he was struck by data showing that vaccinated people who became infected with delta shed just as much virus as those who were not vaccinated. The slide references an outbreak in Barnstable County, Mass., where vaccinated and unvaccinated people shed nearly identical amounts of virus. “I think this is very important in changing things,” Orenstein said.

A person working in partnership with the CDC on investigations of the delta variant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak, said the data came from a July 4 outbreak in Provincetown, Mass. Genetic analysis of the outbreak showed that people who were vaccinated were transmitting the virus to other vaccinated people. The person said the data was “deeply disconcerting” and a “canary in the coal mine” for scientists who had seen the data.

If the war has changed, as the CDC states, so has the calculus of success and failure. The extreme contagiousness of delta makes herd immunity a more challenging target, infectious-disease experts said.

“I think the central issue is that vaccinated people are probably involved to a substantial extent in the transmission of delta,” Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University epidemiologist, wrote in an email after reviewing the CDC slides. “In some sense, vaccination is now about personal protection — protecting oneself against severe disease. Herd immunity is not relevant as we are seeing plenty of evidence of repeat and breakthrough infections.”

(NPI is shorthand for non-pharmaceutical intervention)

(X)

One America News, the far-right network whose fortunes and viewership rose amid the triumph and tumult of the Trump administration, has flourished with support from a surprising source: AT&T Inc, the world's largest communications company.

A Reuters review of court records shows the role AT&T played in creating and funding OAN, a network that continues to spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has testified that the inspiration to launch OAN in 2013 came from AT&T executives.

“They told us they wanted a conservative network,” Herring said during a 2019 deposition seen by Reuters. “They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other [leftwing] side. When they said that, I jumped to it and built one.”

Since then, AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, court records show. Ninety percent of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant.

Herring has testified he was offered $250 million for OAN in 2019. Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network’s value “would be zero.”

Dallas-based AT&T, a mobile-phone and Internet provider, also owns entertainment giant Warner Media, which includes CNN and HBO. AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 and in August spun off the satellite service, retaining a 70% share in the new, independently managed company. AT&T’s total U.S. television subscriber base, including satellite and streaming services, fell from 26 million in 2015 to 15.4 million as of August.

AT&T spokesman Jim Greer declined to comment on the testimony about OAN’s revenue streams, citing confidentiality agreements. He said that DirecTV broadcasts “many news channels that offer viewpoints across the political spectrum.”

“We have always sought to provide a wide variety of content and programming that would be of interest to customers, and do not dictate or control programming on channels we carry,” Greer said. “Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.”

Although the contracts are confidential, in court filings Herring cited monthly fees included in one five-year deal with AT&T. According to an AT&T filing citing Herring’s numbers, those fees would total about $57 million. Greer said that figure is inaccurate, but declined to say how much AT&T has paid to air OAN, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Herring and his adult sons own and operate OAN, a subsidiary of their closely held San Diego-based Herring Networks. Their AT&T deal includes Herring’s other network, a little-watched lifestyle channel, AWE. The Herrings declined interview requests.

Herring, who just turned 80, is a self-made businessman who amassed a fortune in the circuit board industry, then turned to television and boxing promotion. OAN’s influence rose in late 2015, when it began covering Trump rallies live, at a time when some of the media still saw the New York celebrity businessman as a longshot presidential contender. The network continues to shower Trump with attention and often provides a friendly platform for his Republican allies.

As president, Trump frequently urged supporters to watch OAN. In his final two years in office, Trump touted the network, known as @OANN online, to his 88 million Twitter followers at least 120 times.

“Hope everybody is watching @OANN right now,” Trump tweeted on December 1, citing a dubious report about a truck carrying more than 100,000 fake ballots. “Other media afraid to show.”

The state and federal court documents reviewed by Reuters detail a lucrative relationship for OAN with AT&T, even as the two occasionally tangled in court.

The records include a reported offer by AT&T to acquire a 5% equity stake in OAN and AWE, though the two sides ultimately signed a different deal. The court filings also cite a promise by OAN to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during newscasts.

The confidential OAN financial records are drawn in part from testimony, including by Herring and the accountant, generated during a labor lawsuit brought against OAN by a former employee and unrelated to AT&T. When that case went to trial last year, the network’s lawyer told the jury that AT&T was keeping OAN afloat.

“If Herring Networks, for instance, was to lose or not be renewed on DirecTV, the company would go out of business tomorrow,” OAN lawyer Patrick Nellies told the court, a transcript shows.

Researchers who tracked the rise of conservative media pillars Rush Limbaugh and Fox News see similarities between those pioneers to One America News and other new rightwing networks, particularly during their formative years.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said the births of Fox News and OAN share common threads: money and opportunity. She noted that the late Republican operative Roger Ailes had the foresight in the 1990s to recommend that Fox create a conservative news network.

• I'm chronically optimistic -- in part because that is, I think, a healthy way to live one’s life, and in part because if you simply give up because everything is going wrong, you’re not going to try to improve it. —Kathleen Hall Jamieson

POLITICO

The Widow’s Best of 2019

Welcome readers to our Best of 2019 round-up. Some of you might remember that when one half of The Widow, Liz Arratoon, started writing about the circus 25 years ago – with Widow other half Adrian Arratoon by her side – she was almost a lone advocate for the art form. Don’t you get jaded, people ask us. Absolutely not! But we do long for something a bit different, and this year we have been disappointed that so many circus shows and acts have started to look a bit similar and yawny.

One notable exception gets our Best Show, and we did love Company Soralino’s clowning with cardboard boxes, and Mizuki Shinagawa on silks at the 40th Cirque de Demain festival, but we have cast our gaze beyond circus to take in whatever else has taken our fancy. Just to remind people, and before any more sensitive hearts are broken, anything we have seen this year, no matter when it was created, is eligible for selection, but if we haven’t seen it, it isn’t. Our list, our rules, and, in no particular order, here it is. All shows are in London unless otherwise stated.

BEST SHOW: We really enjoyed Aurelia Thierrée’s Bells and Spells at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, but our Best Show is La Nuit du Cerf (A Deer in the Headlights) by Cirque Le Roux, seen on French TV. This is the company’s follow-up to The Elephant in the Room, and new cast members Valerie Benoit and Mason Ames join the original troupe of Lolita Costet, Yannick Thomas, Philip Rosenberg and Gregory Arsenal. Together they showcase a sophisticated and exquisitely choreographed blend of top-flight acrobatics, handstands, hand-to-hand, roller-skating, tight wire, you name it, in a totally fresh and exciting presentation, all backed by a wonderfully eclectic soundtrack. If only more companies could come up with something so innovative.

FEMALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Extraordinary acrobat Esmeralda Nikolajeff, part of the line-up for Barely Methodical Troupe’s third show, SHIFT, which opened the London International Mime Festival at the Platform Theatre.

MALE ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Wes Peden, juggler, who had a scintillating guest spot in Gandini Juggling and Alexander Whitley’s show Spring at Sadler’s Wells. Don’t miss his solo show Zebra at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room during the London International Mime Festival in January 2020.

BEST GIG: Le SuperHomard in the library at the Institut Français as part of the Music Rendezvous season, and Durand Jones and the Indications, seen at the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall during Meltdown.

MOST ENTERTAINING: Lucy Worsley’s talk about Queen Victoria at Southwark Cathedral.

BEST VENUE: The Poodle Club in Sydenham. 

BEST ACT: Foot-jugglers Marina and Svetlana Tsodikova, who are the Crystal Ladies in Cirque du Soleil’s Totem. They also get MOST GLAMOROUS.

BEST COSTUMES: Alejandro Gómez Palomo for The Male Dancer, choreographed by Iván Pérez, seen on the Arte app; Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show (pictured below) seen at the Folies Bergère in Paris, and Queen Victoria’s crown, designed by Sheila Hay for A Night with Thick and Tight at the Lilian Baylis Studio, during the London International Mime Festival.

BEST INTERVIEW: Alec Baldwin’s chat with Elaine Stritch on his podcast Here’s the Thing.

BEST MAGIC TRICK: Shin Lim, winner of America’s Got Talent: The Champions 2019, doing card tricks.

LOUDEST GASP!: This photo of Joan Crawford, seen on @cjubarrington’s glorious Twitter account, where he posts vintage photos of Hollywood stars.

BEST MOVE: Anything by world champion football freestyler Liv Cooke.

BEST CASTAWAY: Living legend John Cooper Clarke on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4.

BEST GOWN: Kathleen Nellis’ fabulous recreation of Marlene Dietrich’s ‘naked’ dress for Peter Groom’s show Natural Duty, originally designed by Jean Louis. Peter also wore it in Dietrich: Live in London, seen at the Crazy Coqs, Live at Zédel, for which he gets BEST CABARET.

MOMENT OF WONDER: Andy Goldsworthy throwing handfuls of snow into the wind in the documentary Rivers and Tides.

BEST LOOK AT THE MET GALA: Harry Styles wearing a sheer Gucci blouse!

HOTTEST TICKET: Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s solo triumph, Fleabag, at Wyndham’s Theatre, and, yes, we did speak to Andrew Scott this year!

FUNNIEST PERSON: David Mills, who stormed New York with Bitter Endings, but we saw him at the Poodle Club. Someone! Book this show for London!

BEST DANCE: The Seasons’ Canon choreographed by Crystal Pite at the Opera Garnier, seen on the Arte app.

BEST SET: Anna Reid’s simple, stylish and effective design for The Sweet Science of Bruising at Wilton’s Music Hall.

BEST SHOWBIZ STORY: The Man Behind the Microphone, first heard on Outlook on BBC World Service. The story of how filmmaker Claire Belhassine discovered that her unassuming Tunisian grandfather, Hedi Jouini, had been a singing megastar. Then we found the film of the same name.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Liz Garbus’ 2016 Leave Nothing Unsaid, in which Anderson Cooper interviews his remarkable mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, about her life. Devastating and moving.

MOST FLAMBOYANT: Zack MacLeod Pinsent, who dresses like this all the time!

BEST SHOWBIZ BOOK – MALE ARTIST: Me by Elton John with Alexis Petrides.

BEST SHOWBIZ BOOK – FEMALE ARTIST: Dreamgirl: My Life As a Supreme by Mary Wilson… of the Supremes, with Patricia Romanowski and Ahrgus Juilliard.

BEST AUDIENCE: Ah, woof!

MOST NOTABLE ANNIVERSARIES: Ten years of The Double R Club, which was founded by Benjamin Louche and Rose Thorne, and runs at Bethnal Green’s Working Men’s Club, and three years of Cabaret vs Cancer, the registered charity started by Rose.

BEST VINTAGE CIRCUS PICTURE: Coo!

BEST FILM: Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman – which should have won the Oscar – and Olivia Wilde’s delightful teen comedy Booksmart.

BEST FILM SCORE: Out of Blue by Clint Mansell.

MOST IMPRESSIVE MEMORY FEAT: An hour and 40 minutes’ worth of words spoken by the one and only Maggie Smith, who returned to the stage in A German Life at the Bridge Theatre.

MOST ALLURING: Dina Martina, seen at Soho Theate Downstairs in Forgotten but Not Gone.

MOST MISSED: Agnès Varda, Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James!), and the French TV variety show Le Plus Grand Cabaret du Monde, hosted by Patrick Sébastien, which started in 1998 and ended this year.

GONE FAR TOO SOON: The creative genius Nell Gifford, co-founder of Giffords Circus, who died at 46.

MOST ANTICIPATED: Obviously Wes Peden’s previously mentioned Zebra, and Daniele Finzi Pasca’s latest creation, NUDA, premiering on 11 September 2020 at LAC, Lake Lugano in Switzerland.

Look out for our first interview of 2020, with Scottish aerialist and acobat Lauren Jamieson, who has a PhD in chemistry but gave up her science career to focus on circus full time. She will appear in The Feathers of Daedalus show Tarot during the Vault Festival 2020.

Picture credits: Company Soralino, Valérie Thénard Béal; Wes Peden, Pierre Feniello; Peter Groom, V’s Anchor Studio. Any we’ve missed, please let us know.

Follow @TheWidowStanton on Twitter

© thewidowstanton.com

I have more books and dvds to check out. Please come by my ebay store to check it out! ladythings44

Blade Runner The Director’s Cut (x)

Hannibal Special Edition (x)

We Were Soldiers (x)

Cast Away Special Edition 2 Disk Set (x)

Signs (x)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid #1

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Rodrick Rules #2

Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Last Straw #3

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Dog Days #4 (x)

Unspun Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation by Brookes Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (x)

A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall (x)

Cinder #1 The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers (x)

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (x)