black sails | the blue octavo notebooks, franz kafka

| CHARACTER STUDY |

>> Private Daniel Jackson [Saving Private Ryan]

>> Sergeant Hazel Parker [The Soldier of Stars - Band of Brothers Fic]

A little while ago, I was talking to Linda ( @wecomrades ) and she had just read of a portion of one of my Band of Brothers fics, The Soldier of Stars, where it portrays my main OC, Hazel Parker, who is a sniper, as whispering prayers each and everytime she shoots her rifle. And so she sent me a message, saying how it was very similar to Private Dnaiel Jackson of Saving Private Ryan. And I was like, OMG THATS WHO SHE IS BASED OFF OF! And well here we are!!

When I first started drafting The Soldier of Stars, it was under a different title, had more characters instead of my 3 now, and was sorta a mess, but I cleaned it up with help from a few writer friends. But Hazel always stayed the same - derived from the character of Private Daniel Jackson of Saving Private Ryan was what I always wanted to go for!! And I did!! For a while I had been planning a sort of almost character study to show Hazel’s similarities to Jackson, but never got the time. But now since our discussion, I have been more inclined than ever to finally do one!! Private Daniel Jackson is also my favorite Saving Private Ryan character, and I just KNEW I had to go along with it!! So without further adieu, please enjoy if you wish!! It’s not much, as I don’t want to spread this out, but it’s my general thought process that I had creating the tiny lil sniper I ADORE with all my heart - Hazel Parker. 💛

INTRODUCTION + BACKGROUND

When I first created Hazel Parker as a character, I wanted to create a quiet, introverted character that people of the more introverted side of the fandom could relate to - who was also a strong female character in her own ways, and also a pretty badass sniper :) So I drew inspiration from Private Daniel Jackson of Saving Private Ryan, pretty heavily - similar ways of seemingly approaching the war, firing their weapon and saying prayers to accompany it, being religious, sort of an quieter personality (they can do their job and do it well). I drew multiple different things from Private Daniel Jackson to add to Hazel Parker as a person and the outcome was exactly what I had hoped to get! 

(1) This Is Just Pure Irony

When Hazel Parker was simply just an idea, with no name, no face claim, nothing really, I just spent time watching war films, gathering ideas, personalities, all of that. The name came to me one night a few minutes before I fell asleep and I really just loved the name ‘Hazel Parker’ together, because I felt it was fairly unique, yet it worked for many, many reasons. And then I went and rewatched Saving Private Ryan and found something out that I LOVED and still LOVE to this day. 

The man who was up with Private Daniel Jackson in the bell tower was named Private Parker. And I honestly just love the irony and connection between that, because then I went and created my own Private [Hazel] Parker. I just loved it because Hazel is based off Private Jackson and then there was that connection and I just loved it! :) 

(2) Religion

Private Daniel Jackson is described as a ‘devout Christian’ and he wears a cross as well as whispers prayers directly from the [King James Version] Bible before shooting his Springfield in combat, which is something paralleled with what I made Hazel do as well as a Christian. 

As a child, Hazel had nowhere to look after her father left and Faith and God were really the only things she could follow after and look to, to guide her she felt because there was nowhere else to go and she felt so lost. This follows her into the war year with Easy Company and eventually into postwar. 

But I used her description of being Christian to show the morals she held in war almost constantly and how she viewed the war and how God was with war. 

One of the most pivotal scenes to describe this moment is between Hazel Parker and Shifty Powers in Bastogne (two who grow to become close friends), where Hazel is talking about how ‘God tells her to love her enemies’, but how can she do that when the enemy does cruel things such as this war? She has a power struggle with her Faith in God and in the reality of war and I present this struggle in many different situations - yet she still remains faithful in the end, which I love. God was there for her through her childhood and through war and she respects that. 

(3) Prayer Whispers

Just like what I mentioned above, a bit, actually is the fact that like Jackson, Hazel is a Christian and similarly whispers prayers before each shot she takes in battle. For how morally coded she is, she is not a fan of death but knows she can not avoid it and whispering a prayer for the life she takes it better than saying nothing in her stance, wishing them well in the afterlife and hope God protects her afterwards for what she has done and committed. 

Private Jackson - Psalm 25:2

“ O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me.” 

Corporal Hazel Parker - Not Specified

“ By God, rule me and guide me, ever this day, be at my side, to light and to guard.” 

The examples above are just two excerpts of what both tend to say throughout the course of the book and movie and I think this was the major connection that many people made throughout the course of The Soldier of Stars was how Hazel reminded them of Private Jackson. And I felt super happy that in the end, that was what I had initially hoped for when I had started. It was a nice feeling to have. 

(4) Motives

For me, I felt their motives were also very similar - that is Private Jackson and Corporal Parker. 

In my own interpretation from when I saw Saving Private Ryan, Private Jackson just seemed like the sort of guy, who was there for his friends, highly caring, highly intelligent and skilled, he knew his place, and he had this sort of persona about him that said ‘I’ll go where ever the war takes me, as long as this rifle is in my hand.’ and Hazel is VERY similar to that in many senses. 

Hazel Parker, who doesn’t exactly know her place in the beginning of the fic eventually does find her place, and then remains reliable, intelligent, skilled and focused in her position as she does so - along with the idea of ‘Wherever I go in war, I want my rifle in my hand.” 

( Might I mention that both shoot with Springfield rifles ;) ) 

Even though Private Jackson has much more confidence than Hazel does, his confidence is just an outward confidence of her inward confidence. He speaks it, saying he could kill H*tler from a mile away. Now, Hazel would never say that, but she sure could easily think that. She knows by the middle of the book really she’s good and doesn’t need to say it, she just needs to have that confidence in herself - but it is a very similar sort of confidence overall. 

(5) Just some Fun Facts!

It is said that Private Jackson was born in West Fork, Tennessee and I, coincidentally made Hazel Parker also born in Tennessee in Pigeon Forge! They have a bit of the Southern Charm. 

Like I mentioned above - they both shoot with the exact same sort of Sniper Rifle - the M1903A4 Springfield Rifle and are highly outstanding marksman that both Captain Miller and Major Winters put faith in for the two of them in their separate ways. 

They tend to be able to do solo missions, sometimes with or without a spotter. The M1903A4 Springfield Sniper rifle was used by the US Army during World War 2 and feds a 5 round magazine and is bolt action. And one of the things I liked about this rifle is you didn’t always quite need a spotter for it to be in use - most snipers have a spotter with them for calculations and such - but with this rifle, it is not always required, for if you need to drop and shoot, it still is effective.

Private Jackson does this many times, such as in the very beginning on D-Day on Omaha Beach as well as a bit later on when he faces off with a German Sniper in a downpour in Neuville. And then he continues again in the Bell Tower where he meets his death. 

I portray Hazel as doing a very similar thing when she attacks with Easy Company in Brecourt Manor and is positioned up in a tree, before moving to the first gun - a spotter is not required for her to be effective. She does it again in various moments through out the Normandy Campaign such as during the Battle of Carentan, where she kills from above and in the Battle of Bloody Gulch. We see her again in action in Nuenen and throughout Market Garden and into The Island again where WInters has faith to send her up along the dike away from everyone else to battle. 

The last time we see her in this position is in Bastogne in various, different situations where she is effective and makes it work - one of my ALL TIME FAVORITES actually. It is her night time solo mission to recover the body of Private John Julian, which she does with success and it is I feel one of the most pivotal moments for a character like her because by then we know she can fully handle herself in many, many ways. We see a bit of her inner battle there as well which I love because her mind is highly complex, congested and always in a mind-battle, but I love it and we really get to see her inner thought for what they are. 

And, I also sorta based it on Physical Appearance - neither are exactly the biggest soldiers there - as that is where Hazel got ‘Tiny’ for a nickname really, but being tiny as a sniper works for Hazel because she can move around quickly and hide away easily as well, so her build was based similarly off of Private Jackson’s. 

OH fun fact - it seemed to be that when it came to Jackson’s friends, he was not afraid to quite literally kill for them, Hazel was very much made the same way.

Something that goes off of this is Hazel’s repetition of the ‘bright green-eyed, German soldier’ she killed on her first day in the early hours of the morning. He haunted her in different ways throughout the war (she had killed him with a knife which she had the entire war) and by the end we see her confront the man who shot Chuck and put the knife that killed that German, to the man’s throat. By the end she throws down the knife as a signal that she won’t let the German with the bright green eyes follow her anymore, which gave me, personally, strong Jackson vibes in a way which I loved to write :) 

HEY! so this was sort of my view I took on making Hazel Parker similar to Daniel Jackson in many aspects, just taking important bits and chunks that I noticed and incorporating it like that! I really enjoyed making this and Daniel Jackson had always been a huge inspiration so I was excited to make a character similar to him!! I do this with most of my OC’s in various degrees actually, but this one was on my mind for a while so I was excited to finally do it!! Huge thank you to Linda for being so interested in this topic and hyping me up for it!! I hope you enjoyed, my friend! <3 

We now begin 51, which will likely take us to an entirely different perspective. Thanks, Monty Python!

On a random note, though... 

Man, this is fricking crazy, from a dramatic irony perspective. I do appreciate that Homestuck is written such that that spreads from not only the author’s possession, but to that of the audience via rereads.  As... macabre as this particular example is.

Finally, Dorothy is gone, and all that is left is the Witch (and her little dog too)?

Well, maybe not even that. Certainly, Bec’s powers are muted, and I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised if his instincts are too; on the other hand,they could be strongly contributing to this. This sequence strongly reminds me of the sequence wherein Jade’s destiny to become fused with him was first alluded to. “You eat a weird bug, and don’t even care,” and whatnot.  Certainly, 

Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush ...  as you and your new friend must claim the night with piercing howls moonward.

seems reminiscent to me of all of her thoughts of her former existence fading as she is beckoned by the call-- not of a moon, but of another reflection of the light of the sun: the Void-y remains that come with its demise. Obviously her “new friend” in this case would seem to refer both to Bec (who is a part of her, now, thus explaining the uniform motion) and through allusion, to the Alt!Calliope that her other version of herself had already befriended, who would be the one beckoning in the first place. It should also be said that shoes could be taken as a symbol of civilization, in this case, beyond just the obvious symbolism that is being pointed out to the viewer.  Regardless, whether this similarity was intended or not doesn’t actually matter. It’s just that this scene vaguely made me think of that.

What irony, considering this is coming from the one who just bewitched the Seer (which, I would just like to say, is honestly some nice narrative symmetry, considering this is almost exactly like what Doc Scratch did before him [not that I don’t still feel disgust toward him, even if this might turn out in Rose’s favor, in the long run]).                    Oh, yes, and by the way... very nice confirmation of the fact that the Green Sun Black Hole is Void-oriented. I appreciate that coming from an in-story source. (Even if you don’t connect emptiness with Void, which you should, the fact that the Ocean is connected with it is almost indisputable. That’s part of the reason why Rose’s quest was to bring life to the dead ocean by Playing the Rain. It was about using her inner Light to counteract her tendencies toward its equal opposite.)

Which is part of the reason why Alt!Calliope and Jade get along so well, and why there’s a connection between them, I’m sure. (Both of their lifestyles/life histories emphasized thematically their inner Space orientation. [This may also be why Kanaya lived in them middle of a desert, with no one but her Virgin Mother Grub to directly keep he company.])

Yes, way to downplay one of the core Aspects of reality just because it doesn’t necessarily always function in the way that perception would suggest it does. This doesn’t make it illusory, nor does it invalidate the continuum aspect of it:  that it is intrinsically relevant to how life persists and interacts with the world itself demonstrates the importance of this part of Time. It’s like suggesting an iceberg is an illusion just because you can’t see the depths hidden away below the surface (Void hides it from your eyes [read: Light is blocked]).   Gah, you are so bloody irksome and pride-projecting in your demeanor just because you managed to pick something up that the Trolls basically illuminated to the Beta Kids way back when they were all 13.  Congratulations.

Fool. (Oh, and I would argue that time continuing to be relevant conceptually, despite its non-linearity, helps to emphasize its importance as a pillar of reality. That it is an existence persisting independent of its consequent internal signifiers [entropy, {temporal} causality, direction] allows for it to play the very important role of acting as a medium for general interaction and consequence; particularly, it allows for the persistence and simultaneous activity of all possible states of being within its domain [e.g.: reality or the meta-narrative Existence within the context of MSPA, or whatever set of other works which would necessarily include all relevantly connected miscellany] which are additionally allowed for via the logical intermingling it has with the other Aspects.            In other words: Time is one of the two necessary present architectonic forces that undergird the Narrative.   Your suggesting that it is given disproportionate attention and that loneliness is therefore an illusion is just the sort of insulting, crass, and perspective-locked claptrap that I’d expect from someone who’s so enthusiastically embraced a departure from humanity, and who thus has lost mooring in the solid, political existence which sapient, physically-connected beings dwell in by nature.   I suspect that your distraction and loss of perspective will eventually come back to haunt you.  ) Yes, I realize that the Ultimate Self is a timeless construct, but this does not mean time is irrelevant to it or the limited forms it girds itself with when connecting to physicality. (On a random note:  I do appreciate his decision to call Aspects ideas.)

Along with the creepiness with regards to Dirk pushing thoughts into Jade’s head (which is honestly par for the course in Homestuck, and at least he’s mostly trying to remind her of something he believes she already knows, so it’s somwhat benevolent), we get this interesting snippet.  Seems he wants to foreshadow difficulties between Dave, Jade, and Karkat in the future.   I suppose the only logical question is whether Jade will break their hearts in turn.   Love is hard. It’s hard and everybody (with actual experience) understands.

Ha ha, “How much of Homestuck was actually illusion seen in the perspective of the characters involved, a la the kids’ rooms before Gamzee’s Chucklevoodoo curses were disrupted,” ha ha. On a more important note:   I very much appreciate Dirk’s well-arranged metaphors relating to time, to Calliope’s Muse-inspired-powered Spatial-influential music. Dirk is indeed quite bad at distracting hyper-focused people with thoughts he thinks they will reasonably find seem similar to thoughts she might have.

Hey, man, don’t give up. Your breaking from the narrative of trying to help her is making it seem like your nervousness is throwing you off, meaning we won’t know if your attempts to help her had any chance to succeed in general! Way to go, “hero!”

“Time is an illusion,” you say?   Yet here’s your narration, there’s Jade.  Oh!  There she goes, persisting to fly off into the dead sun, just as linear time would demand of her!  What’s wrong?  Couldn’t make the time to properly put your thoughts together or try until you got it right?   Gasp!         My word!  It’s almost like Time is pretty fricking important to the narrative and reality of the story!

HEEHEEHAHAHAHA!!!        Serves you right, getting spooked like that, you incompetent, over-confident knave!

... Now, let’s see how the rest of this goes, now that I have a better handle on my humours.

You’re dealing with the Grim Reaper, inspirer of great woe and terror, as well as happy children drawings and stories everywhere.  Obviously, you were overmatched. Perhaps you should have tried focusing on Jade initially, rather than John?  That might have given you a little bit more time.   I am reminded of a group of trolls who didn’t properly think through their attempts to mock and cajole those they perceived to be the artificers of their downfall.  Perhaps this will turn out as well.

Demiourgos, your pride showeth. Your composure runneth down and streaketh thine face like free-flowing ichor. Hubris, doth it become thee?   Thou reflecteth thine flaws, and by thy own hand. Revealeth thou not the weakness of thine breast with Rage-filled uproar?   A lion in thine face we see, but at this flickering of that glamour, a snake in masquerade is spotted. Foul wretch, I pity thee:  for it is truly painful to behold the disheartening of the ambitious, and the glorious in the midst of downfall. What do you fear?  What compels such panic into one normally so serene?

I suppose I should have known. A mechanist always fears uncontrollable variables.    (I do wonder if his fear is truly warranted, though. Certainly, things aren’t as bad as they could be, but there is much to be depressed about in these outcomes as they have emerged so far, you know?)

And thus, a new star was born?   Well, we’ll see.   I certainly do appreciate the physics of black hole mechanics being involved, though I am not 100% sure that this is accurate to how such an ultra-massive construct would actually work. I know super-massive black holes effect objects differently than normal ones, when they approach the event horizon, so it seems rather reasonable to guess that one the mass of multiple universes would behave a bit differently from either.  I do not know, however.  ... All in all, a pretty great page, I guess.  It was nice to see the Narrator lose control so badly.  A bit sad that the consequences of that were as they were, but I knew that this would likely be the case, regardless. I wonder when John and Terezi will be back in focus~ ... P.S.:  I am pretty sure that subtle interference with the narrative is the normal role of a Muse, and that her Mastery over Jade in particular makes a great deal of sense, given who Jade is. I wonder what has compelled her to speak in such a manner that her voice is actually visible in the text, rather than subtly bending it to her will as presumably has been the case over the course of Homestuck, generally.  Could it be that she did this specifically to teach the Narrator a lesson?  Shall we ever find out?

The Problem With Bipartisanship

Josh Gottheimer is co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus and one of the most bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives. These aren't necessarily things to be touted, though, and his attempts to strong-arm Nancy Pelosi into making rule changes definitely shouldn't be commended. (Photo Credit: FCC/Wikipedia) Note: This post was first published before any meetings between Nancy Pelosi and the Problem Solvers Caucus. The two sides have reportedly cut a deal on proposed rule changes. I'm not the biggest fan of Nancy Pelosi personally. Even I, though, have to balk at the recent attempts to challenge her prospective leadership as Speaker of the House. In particular, a no-vote of confidence from members of the Problem Solvers Caucus seems to be, well, a problem, or at least a distraction. The Problem Solvers Caucus is a bipartisan group of representatives that seeks to create cooperation among members of both major parties on key policy issues. In practice, it is a centrist committee. For the purposes of this challenge's to Pelosi's authority, Jim Costa (CA), Vicente González (TX), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Daniel Lipinski (IL), Stephanie Murphy (FL), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Kurt Schrader (OR), Darren Soto (FL), and Tom Suozzi (NY) are the Democrats who are making their support contingent on the eventual Speaker's acceptance of certain rule changes. As Gottheimer, caucus co-chair, identified, these #BreaktheGridlock changes involve 1) legislation going to the House floor for debate and a vote when co-sponsored by at least three-fifths of Congress, 2) an amendment to legislation getting a debate and vote with at least 20 Democratic and 20 Republican co-sponsors, and 3) each member of Congress being allowed to introduce a bill for debate and vote on a committee he or she serves on once a congressional term. In principle, these proposals designed to "break the gridlock" are worth considering in the name of procedural reform. The timing and very public nature of this threat to Pelosi's leadership, however, as well as the take-it-or-leave attitude accompanying it, are concerning. What's more, when considered alongside existing feelings that the Democratic Party needs to be taken in a "new direction," the overall picture is one of party discord at a time when gains in the House should perhaps have the Dems thinking more harmoniously. What's additionally striking about this turn of events is that it has come at the behest of members of a caucus that tout their bipartisan credentials, not long after Pelosi herself vowed the House would move toward greater bipartisanship. Of course, this in itself drew criticism elsewhere. That Nancy Pelosi—damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Amid a spirit of partisan acrimony and congressional ineffectiveness, bipartisanship would seem to be exactly what we'd want or need. Everybody gets along, Congress actually gets meaningful things done—sounds good, right? The problem with bipartisanship as an ideal, however, is that it may be overrated, if not counterproductive. Lew Blank, editor-in-chief of The Outsider, an independent, student-led online publication devoted to telling stories from outside the mainstream media bubble and the two-party binary, wrote in a detailed post last year (with helpful charts and graphs!) about how bipartisanship is, well, a myth. Firstly, there's the matter of how the goal of bipartisanship tends to reduce matters to "debates" in the name of balance when there should be no room for debate. Blank starts his article thusly: What America considers a debate is pretty messed up. Apparently, the existence of climate change is a “debate.” Allowing 33,000 Americans to die every year because they can’t afford health care is a “debate.” Continuing to arm ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria is a “debate.” And yet, there’s one singular issue that seems to read “case closed” in the minds of millions of Americans, both red and blue: bipartisanship. Somehow, we have wound up in a world where saying “we should stop literally arming terrorists” is an opinion, but lauding the glories of bipartisan politics is unbiased and impartial. On top of this, and more to the point, finding bipartisan legislative solutions tends to involve compromises that skew to the political right. As Blank characterizes this relationship, centrist Democrats often strive for policies that are "both (a) conservative enough to get Republican support, and (b) liberal enough to like." Viewing Obama-era policy directives through this lens, however, very few, if any, of them actually ticked both boxes. Either they were too conservative for liberals to like (e.g. extending the Bush tax cuts), too liberal for conservatives to pass or support after Obama was gone (e.g. the Paris Agreement), or neither very liberal nor supported by the GOP (e.g. military expansion that still saw Obama's critics calling him "soft on terrorism"). The wrench in compromising and finding a middle ground, as many on the left might expect, is the uncompromising position Republicans take on issue after issue. In Blank's words, their failure to "support anything with even a tinge of progressivism" means trying to bend over backward to appease them is a non-starter. The true solution for Democrats, then, is to run to the left. Only from this position can they negotiate and get something close to what they really want. Per Blank: This is compromise 101. If you get an offer of $50 for a painting and you ask for $60 instead, you may come away with a solid $55. If you go the “moderate” route and raise to $51 instead, you’re missing out on a potential four dollars. What's more, the statistics seem to bear out that running further to the left is the better strategy from an electoral perspective. How else to explain the enduring popularity of someone like Bernie Sanders and the lingering unpopularity of someone like Hillary Clinton? Of course, popularity and social media fervor don't necessarily equate to votes cast. Then again, capitulation is not a very sexy approach to attracting voters, especially in the context of a general election, so why not go for the gusto? Noting the refusal of Republicans to yield on policy matters in recent years, examples of bipartisan cooperation on the part of moderate Democrats might actually be more disconcerting than anything. As alluded to before, increased military spending has continued to be approved by Congress despite the cost of human life and despite the notion this focus on "defense" dwarfs the spending on domestic programs the GOP claims we can't afford. The Dodd-Frank rollback aided and abetted by "Blue Dog" Dems like Gottheimer also jumps to mind as one of those points of accord between parties that should inspire fear more than confidence. Coming together is all well and good when we're paving the road to another economic collapse. For any number of reasons, therefore, bipartisanship may not be all it's cracked up to be. Not the least of which is, if you ask this writer, that at 14 letters, the word bipartisanship is already too long. As with "civility," calls for bipartisanship are only as good as the individual or individuals making such an appeal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell caught flak for an op-ed for FOX News in which he asked whether the Democrats will work with Republicans, or "simply put partisan politics ahead of the country?" The irony was not lost on, er, pretty much anyone who knows McConnell. The Republican senator from Kentucky has been the proverbial poster child for partisan obstructionism in recent years. Accordingly, the prevailing response seemed to be "Merrick Garland" and some sort of invective or gesture not printable in this space. How's that for bipartisanship, Mr. McConnell? Nancy Pelosi, in her stated preference to work in a bipartisan manner within Congress and with President Trump, may have been similarly full of shit—at least outwardly. That is, she may genuinely wish to work in a partnership with Trump and the GOP, but knowing his and his party's demands, this is functionally impossible. In this respect, Pelosi's conviviality appears to be a show of rationality and goodwill in the face of a White House that lacks it so as to make her and her party look more reasonable. Even in jest, however, the sentiment is one whose sharing has the power to boil progressives' blood. I'm a resident of New Jersey's ninth congressional district, but I'm a friend of a number of progressive-minded residents of the fifth where Josh Gottheimer calls home (by crossing from one town into the next, you're entering into a different district). And I can tell you this much: while they're plenty relieved to have someone like Gottheimer rather than someone like John McCann or his predecessor Scott Garrett in office, they're disappointed in this display of brazenness from the co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus. This isn't the first time he's disappointed them either, whether it's because he voted with the GOP or because he has avoided making his stance clear so as to not risk a backlash. On one hand, there's the political "reality" that he represents a district which has its clearly blue and red segments, so his bipartisan mentality may have its advantages. On the other hand, as a Democratic supporter, it makes you wonder what lines someone like Gottheimer won't cross. A number of these friends either voted to endorse him or campaigned for him in the midterms. Their reward? Little, if any, expressed gratitude and an overt attempt to undermine their party's leadership. It should be no surprise that there's already talk of wanting a primary challenge to Gottheimer's seat in the House. For my part, I think all incumbents should be challenged as a matter of procedure and because it makes for better party platforms, but I sympathize with this desire. Though it may go without saying at this point, there's a financial aspect to this effort to contest Pelosi's leadership heretofore unmentioned. As Ryan Grim of The Intercept reports, political/corporate consultant Mark Penn and No Labels, a bipartisan group funded by wealthy donors, are the driving force behind this revolt. Gottheimer and Penn, described by Grim as "one of the most toxic and notorious partisan warriors the Democratic Party has produced in the past three decades," have a history together dating back to the Bill Clinton White House. Members of no Labels, described by critics as "aggressively" centrist, have had an ax to grind against Pelosi for some time now. While they may have softened their position to make her Public Enemy #1—when in doubt, Bernie Sanders makes a convenient target—that ill will has evidently lingered. There's ample room for debate whether or not Nancy Pelosi, a seeming epitome of the "old guard" of Democratic Party leadership, is the right person for the role of Speaker of the House come January. Certainly, though, this attack on her from the Problem Solvers Caucus is one to be disparaged, as their insistence on "breaking the gridlock" purely as a function of their moderate ideology rings hollow. In all, the Democrats' commitment to bipartisanship without any show of good faith from the Republican Party is a questionable tack to take. It's bad negotiating on top of poor electoral strategy, and its effectiveness as a tool to rally the base is similarly suspect. With the Dems needing a big win in 2020 to continue their momentum, that's a problem.   Read the full article

The age of “fake news” is coming for film criticism.

The new Gotti, which stars John Travolta as the infamous mob boss, seems like a solid contender for the title of worst movie of the year. Technically, it premiered at Cannes — if by “premiered” you mean “had a screening almost no press attended in the smallest theater at the Palais” — and garnered abysmal reviews from the critics who were there.

It then screened for a very small set of critics (I was not invited to any screenings), who found it so awful that it wound up with the rare 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a damning-by-faint-praise 24 on Metacritic.

But the film’s marketers have fought back, launching an offensive that doesn’t just suggest but outright accuses critics of mounting a coordinated hit on the movie.

In all likelihood, it’s just a marketing tactic for a silly movie, and it will have little, if any, effect on either the film’s bottom line or the field of movie criticism. Yet the tactics lurking behind the Gotti campaign bear an eerie resemblance to the much larger problem of “fake news” in our time.

Looking at Gotti is like staring through the wrong end of a telescope and seeing everything you need to know about “truth” on the internet, only in microcosm and applied to the least important thing imaginable: a bad movie.

“Fake news” started out as a term to describe sensationalized, fabricated stories concocted for profit. But it was quickly co-opted by Donald Trump and his followers as a lazy slur to sling at any story he didn’t like, something he’s outright admitted. “Fake news” is shorthand for “this story doesn’t paint me in a good light.”

That’s the Gotti ad method, too:

Audiences loved Gotti but critics don’t want you to see it… The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself! pic.twitter.com/K6a9jAO4UH

— Gotti Film (@Gotti_Film) June 19, 2018

In case you didn’t finish watching the video, here’s what it says:

AUDIENCES LOVED GOTTI. CRITICS PUT OUT THE HIT. WHO WOULD YOU TRUST MORE? YOURSELF OR A TROLL BEHIND A KEYBOARD

For critics, it’s pretty impossible to watch this without chuckling. (The aforementioned “troll behind a keyboard” definitely describes a lot of the people who show up in your Twitter mentions if they don’t like your opinion about a film.)

But it’s a good template for how to get the “fake news” claim to stick. First, it’s important to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the people generating the stories and opinions you find objectionable. Do it over and over again. Call them “disgusting” and challenge their right to exist.

And don’t forget to suggest that there’s a conspiracy afoot. “Put out the hit” doubles as a clever topical metaphor for a movie about a crime boss and an implication that critics get together in shadowy, secret back rooms at family restaurants and plot to take down movies over cigars and grappa. We wish!

People like believing conspiracy theories because they seem to make sense of a confusing world and they’re impervious to attempts to refute them. And there are lots of conspiracy theories about film critics, the most popular being that we’re paid by Disney, which owns Marvel Studios, to give negative reviews to DC films.

Gotti is playing right into an idea that some people already believe, though the ad doesn’t bother to suggest any plausible reason critics would bother to “put out a hit” on a film so small most people didn’t see it.

Finally, suggest that the purveyors of whatever you’re deeming “fake news” right now are out of touch with or outright harmful to “real” people, ordinary agenda-less folks whose opinions are by default better than “elites.” This is a time-honored tactic for stars in blockbusters who don’t like what they read about their films.

For instance, here’s Samuel L. Jackson after the 2012 release of The Avengers:

#Avengers fans,NY Times critic AO Scott needs a new job! Let’s help him find one! One he can ACTUALLY do!

— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) May 3, 2012

And here’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson after the release of Baywatch, which only netted a score of 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes:

That kind of populist appeal works on some people for the same reason it works in politics: There’s a sizable group of people who harbor resentment against anyone they think of as looking down on them.

When film critics trash a movie that audiences like, they generally aren’t thinking of the audience. But we sometimes get feedback on those reviews that implies the reader is going to “own” us by going to see the film. I don’t care if you go see the film to which I gave a bad review, nor does any other critic I know. But that kind of reply shows a common perception — and marketers and stars know how to use that perception to their advantage.

If you can get people to doubt the sources, convince them there’s a conspiracy theory afoot, and suggest that the “fans” are obviously more correct than the critics, then you may just succeed in getting more people in the door at the movie theater — and that’s the whole idea.

Gotti went for the full three-pronged approach. The first two are impossible to argue with. I can’t convince you that I’m trustworthy, and no other critic can either — that’s the nature of the opinion-giving business. All you can do is read my writing and decide if you like it. And I can’t prove to you that we’re not conspirators, except to say that if you’ve ever known a group of film critics you’d know how funny the idea of us organizing anything at all is.

The third prong is tough to argue with, too. But in the case of Gotti, there’s an extra layer.

The idea that “audiences” loved Gotti was supported by the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which as of today is at 61 percent. But there are two reasons to raise an eyebrow.

First, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is all but useless. It can, and has, been gamed by groups like the alt-right and angry fans to drive down audience scores for films they deemed objectionable, like Black Panther, The Last Jedi, and Ghostbusters. Anyone can rate a film, whether or not they’ve seen it — and that means sometimes films’ audience scores can be inflated or deflated before the film has even released in theaters.

Even if the site required the user to prove they’d seen the film, though, there’s still a flaw: Audience scores by nature reflect the opinions of people who were inclined enough to see a movie (through interest in the subject matter, perhaps, or the star, or successful marketing efforts), to buy a ticket and give up a couple of hours of their day to see it. So there’s a natural curve built into the audience score.

What audience scores at their best measure is what Cinemascore more or less measures: How much people who already wanted to see the film liked it. But critics don’t get that choice, and thus there’s more granularity built into their opinions.

But there’s one more wrinkle in the case of Gotti. There might be something fishy about the audience score.

First of all, it’s made up of more than 7,000 ratings, which is a remarkably high number for a film that only made $1.7 million on its opening weekend in 503 theaters (which implies a relatively low number of people in the audience). By contrast, Incredibles 2 made more than $183 million in 4,410 theaters and only has a little more than 8,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. And Hereditary, which opened with more than $13 million in 2,964 theaters, has 5,529 ratings on the site.

Sure, it’s possible that Gotti fans are just extremely vocal and passionate about the film. But according to some people who dug through the data, it certainly looks like a number of the user accounts are very new users of Rotten Tomatoes. And while there could be a logical, non-shady explanation for that, there are other explanations, too, that have to do with someone rigging the system. (Rotten Tomatoes, for its part, stands by the score and claims there was no manipulation.)

Once again, herein lie shades of our age of “fake news”: the suspicion that trolls and bots are manipulating our “reality,” first online and then offline, too. There are the Russian “troll farms” that produced truly fake news and weaponized our social media feeds and fake Reddit accounts that have had to be shut down and a lot, lot more. So it seems almost inevitable that whether or not they’re messing with the Gotti score to pump up the film’s visibility, trolls and bots will be part of the mess of audience scores some day soon.

It is very, very hard to tell if any of this is in good faith. Are the people behind the Gotti campaign earnest about their silly claims, or are they just trying to get a rise out of people in order to raise the film’s visibility?

This question extends to the audience reviews left on Rotten Tomatoes, which are pretty wild:

Trolling and shitposting are complicated, but they’re everywhere — weaponizing irony and “comedy” and memes and jokes to both exact some kind of revenge by making your enemy look foolish and confuse them into dismissing you.

That’s not to say that the alt-right is involved in this whole Gotti deal, though anecdotal evidence shows that there may be some overlap between the #MAGA crowd and Gotti fans.

(MoviePass owns a 40 percent stake in Gotti.)

But the fact that we cannot even figure out if this ad campaign and the Rotten Tomatoes score are real feels very of a piece with everything in our fake news world. Call the critics fake news and stoke a conspiracy theory. Game the system through possibly shady tactics. And do it all in an environment where it’s totally possible to just say “we were kidding!” if you somehow get caught.

Gotti doesn’t really matter, and neither does its goofy ad campaign. But it’s a little depressing to see the things many of us worry about in the all-important spheres of policy and politics seeping into something as inconsequential as a terrible movie about a mob boss.

Original Source -> The John Travolta Gotti movie is waging a Trump-style war on critics

via The Conservative Brief

Memento

Postmodernism takes pleasure in playing with convention, and examining how everything is constructed in our minds. The film Mementois not structured like any other film. The director wanted the viewers to follow back the memory of the main character, Leonard, and to assume what would have happened before so that the current scene could occur. Post-modernists believe that works of art are open to many different interpretations. This film forces the viewers to make assumptions about the time periods in which Leonard has suffered amnesia. This is important, especially since the viewers do not know the personalities of each character, so we do not know if a person is lying or not. Our assumptions are based solely on the “facts” that are written on Leonard’s body or on his notes. But if those “facts” are actually lies, then we do not have anything solid to rely on and our interpretation of reality will be flawed. 

The movie overlaps a series of scenes that are not in chronological order. At first, the movie seemed like it was going backwards as the narrator was remembering what he did in the past. But it is also showing his past memories, his memories before the accident. Leonard always talked about a man named Sammy Jankis, who is a mixture of the real Sammy and his own story. Leonard was the person who killed his wife who was diabetic. He killed her by injecting too much insulin because he did not remember that he had already given her an injection. Leonard’s wife wanted to understand Leonard, so she set up her clock at three o’clock over and over until she could not move. These scenes reflect the post-modernist belief of the impossibility of knowing what is true reality and so time and space can be confusing. Post-modernism doesn't believe that there is a meta-narrative. Since all truth is subjective and a matter of individual interpretation, nobody can really be certain of anything, including the current space-time continuum. As a result, life can be seen as simply a series of fragmentary and confusing incidents – much like Leonard experiences in the sequences in the movie.  

Leonard has a problem knowing who people really are, including himself. He seems to see people as being a mixture of different characters. Post-modernism, with its emphasis on subjective point-of-view and no real truth emphasizes the idea that we can never really know anything or anyone, including ourselves. 

Postmodernists say that truth needs to be deconstructed so that we can challenge dominant ideas that people claim as being truth. In the movie, there is a scene where the narrator lacks the necessary tool that would help him to find the truth. He believes that there is a suspect who killed his wife, but in fact he has already killed the real John G. and Teddy was making the fake John G. over and over so that he can make money out of it. Teddy manipulated Leonard for money, but Leonard manipulates himself so that he can control his future thoughts and actions. 

Hyper-reality is only a sign that has surface meaning. There is no longer any original thing that the sign represents because the sign has now become the meaning. In the movie, Leonard only believes what he has written and he does not believe anyone else. He believes in the police report file that he made. He told Natalie that nobody believes in him because he is in this condition where he has only short term memory so he forgets what he has seen or experienced. Leonard relies on his notes so much that at the end of the movie, he realizes that he could fool himself by removing pages from his police file and also by writing down that Teddy is a liar. He made Teddy the next target for his revenge so he could live a life. In this situation, the police report has become Leonard's hyper-reality. It does not matter to Leonard what, in reality, actually happened. This is consistent with post-modernism, which proposes that our individual interpretations of reality are what constitute our reality.  Truth and reality are simply individual subjective perceptions and so there is no definitive truth or reality. 

By the way, the movie accurately portrays the difficulty of trying to live in a post-modern world, where people realize that there is no objective truth or reality and that they can't really be sure of what they know. If somebody actually tried to live consistently with post-modern thought, they would probably have almost as tough a life as Leonard. How should people act if they realize that they really can't know anything? How can they take actions that will have an important effect on themselves and others when they realize that their perceptions may be completely flawed and so their actions may be totally inconsistent with reality and what is therefore appropriate for them to do. That is what this post-modern movie explores. Leonard realizes that he may have murdered the wrong man because he acted on his individual subjective interpretation of reality. 

            In the movie, the notes that Leonard makes on the back of the photos become his reality. This is post-modernist irony because he claims that Teddy is a liar, but he was the one who was helping Leonard. Also he claimed that Natalie was a helper, but Natalie was trying to use Leonard to kill Dodd. There was a scene where Natalie came up to Leonard and insisted that he kill Dodd, but he refused to do it. She knew about his condition so she hid all of the pens in her house and yelled at him. This showed her true character. Then she said that she does not care if she yells, and that they are still going to be best friends. He hit her in the face and so she leaves the house. He was telling himself to focus and to not forget about the situation that just happened, but within the sound of door slamming, he forgot the incident. Later Natalie came up to him saying that Dodd hit her on the face and told him lies so that Leonard eventually does what she wants him to do – killing Dodd.This series of scenes again shows the movie's post-modernist view on Leonard's (and our) difficulty of knowing what is really true reality versus what is simply our individual subjective interpretation of reality. 

            The entire movie is constructed to demonstrate how individuals, from the post-modernist perspective, can have only disjointed snippets of the overall truth and as a result our perceptions of reality can be distorted. This is reflected in the continual jumping back-and-forth of the time sequences and also between the vivid color scenes that show Leonard's subjective view of reality versus the black-and-white scenes that show the cold, hard, black-and-white facts of actual reality. 

            At the end of the movie, the color scenes and the black-and-white scenes seem to merge more closely together and so, in the end, Leonard (and the audience) is left staring at the photo of dead Teddy and can't really be sure as to what is real and true, versus what is simply Leonard's subjective interpretation of reality. This is the essence of post-modernism. 

Dirty Water (Typed Sermon).

Here’s the transcript from the sermon I gave on December 10th, 2017.

The audio version is here.

Mark 1:1-8

Good morning! Okay.  For those that weren’t here last week, I’m not Josh.  I have way less gray and my beard is imaginary.  By the way, after last week, I’ve come to the conclusion that he uses this mic because it makes him feel very much like a mid-2000’s Britney Spears, which is an amazing feeling.

I’m Ryan and, for those that were here last week, I decided to go against the shirt embargo and wear what I normally do.  It’s a HOLE-Y shirt, guys!  Get it?!  Holy?!  Bringin’ that Josh level humor.  I figured today is probably gonna get weird, so I might as well be comfortable.

Josh asked me to speak last week and this morning.  And just like last week, I want to let you know that the views and opinions expressed in the next half hour-ish, don’t directly reflect those of Josh and the leadership team here at the Bridge.  If I say something that offends you, sparks your interest, or if you have questions about anything that I say, by all means, come talk to me after the message.  

In the early days of the church, the teaching portion of their time was spent in discussion.  It was an open dialogue with people voicing differing opinions.  I love that idea.  We all have had different experiences that have formed different views.  We learn and grow from each other.  Keeping in the spirit of that, then, I would ask that, in the same way that I promise not to shut out what you have to say, please do not shut out what I say this morning.

It’s my plan to delivers today’s message in a few sections.  We will be talking about John the Baptist (Mark 1:1-8), but we’ll be getting there in a strange, convoluted way.  

First, I will tell you about me, give you some context as to who I am and why I’m here.  After that, we will go over the scripture together and hopefully, I’ll tell you some cool things about that.  And, once we’ve done those two things, if I’ve done this correctly, I’ll tie it all together for you.

For those of you keeping score at home or taking notes:

I’m gonna tell you about me. I’m gonna tell you about the reading for today. I’m gonna tie it all together.

Alright.  Me.  

The chubby, angry, tattooed fella.

I was raised in the Christian, fundamentalist faith.  I was saved and baptized by age 7.  I rededicated my life a couple of times at all the big youth rallies and conventions during junior high and high school.  I went to a Christian college, played drums in almost every church I’ve attended, led youth, and have even preached a few sermons before this.

All of that to say, for about the past decade, I’ve said that I was an atheist.  My mother and father are here.  This is the first time they’re hearing me say that.  I am forever sorry, guys.  

I genuinely thought that I didn’t believe in a god, much less the god of the bible, or the god of fundamentalism.  I didn’t understand him.  I didn’t understand the faith I was brought up in.  I saw the way the church, alleged stewards of God’s love, treated people.  I heard the things that were said about the gay community.  I saw the way communities of color were treated.  I couldn’t believe in a god that felt that way about his creation.  That would love some and not others.  That would care about pigmentation and preference above heart, action, love.

So, first mentally, then emotionally, and finally physically, I walked away.

With or without my faith, there have been four women in my life who have ultimately shaped me. There was my mother, Sherry (the crazy one from last week and the one who’s crying now), who taught me truth and strength.  My first dog, Emmylou (who was fat, sassy, and had the absolute worst gas in the world), who taught me compassion.  My wife, Steph (the absolute hottest, funniest, coolest woman who’s ever talked to me and who foolishly agreed to marry me), who has taught me how to be a man and how to submit my will and desire to another.  And Tisha.

Tisha…

Tisha was beyond description.  To call her a force of nature doesn’t describe the kinda whirlwind she was.  To try to sum up her strength, character, force of will, heart, beauty, laugh, sarcasm is a waste of time.  There are no words.  They simply do not exist.  

When I couldn’t afford to eat, she made me potato soup and yelled at me for not taking leftovers home.  

When I met a new girl, Tisha was the litmus test.  If who I was dating could stand up to Tisha, then that girl was worth dating.

And when I needed a reality check, an ego check, a throat punch, an album recommendation, or a hug, Tisha was always there.  Jammin’ Leonard Cohen and smiling behind a cigarette.

Then, she died.

I watched her husband cry over her in a box.  

I cried over her in that same box.  

When I kissed her forehead, it wasn’t her.  It was a hard, plastic thing.  That was not the woman who snuck out of the hospital to smoke with me.  That was not the woman who told me to marry my wife.  That was not the woman who challenged my lack of belief every time we spoke over coffee and dirty jokes.

But, she had died.

I started trying to reconcile what I’d been taught growing up with what I saw, with what I knew and had experienced.  I tried to make things line up.  She couldn’t just be gone.  

God does not need an angel more than I need her.  God certainly does not need her more than her 15-year-old daughter does.  More than her broken, hurting husband does.  God didn’t call her home.  Her husband and her daughter will always be her home.  Our friends are her home.  Christian platitudes and cliches about death weren’t the answer.  

Science taught me that matter reverts to energy and energy to matter.  And she was nothing but radiant energy.  Energy doesn’t just stop.  The bigness of her could not just stop.  She had to still be something.  She had to still be somewhere.  But, science said she became worm food and nutrient-rich soil.  So, science wasn’t the answer, either.

But she was dead and I could not accept that she was gone.

So, I started looking.  I started trying to find Tisha.

Who’s depressed now, eh?

We’re gonna put a pin in the sadness and come back to that, okay?  I can’t handle too much more of that or I might end up snot bubble crying in front of all of you and that will be an even less pleasant sight.  However, I promise we will come back to it, okay?

We go from my past to Christianity’s past, now.

It’s about 60 C.E.  A dude named John Mark is working with his friend, Peter, to write down a story about a man named Jesus who John Mark had never met. Peter, however, had been with Jesus and went about preaching to whoever would listen about what he’d learned at Jesus’ side.  John Mark, then, attempted to chronicle all of these teachings into a book.

Somewhere around 4-6 B.C.E., this man, this Jesus is born.  And one would think that if you’re writing the story of this man, you’d start at the beginning of that story.  The birth of this man.  That’s not where Mark starts his story, though.  Mark starts the story about 25 years after that, in the middle of a thing.  He starts Mark 1:1 with:

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God…”

I love this for two reasons.  One, that’s not a sentence.  It’s not.  If you read through my notes, you’ll notice that I’m a rather big fan of writing in fragments.  And secondly, when Mark was writing this, he would have been in, or near, Rome.  This salutation was how people would ride through the streets to announce the coming of Caesar.  So, already, Mark is starting this off by announcing the kingship, the authority, the heavenly and divine mandate of Jesus with a sly, ironic, tongue-in-cheek smile.  Keep that in mind as we go on:

“…As it is written in Isaiah, the prophet: Look, I am sending My messenger ahead of You, who will prepare Your way. A voice crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord; make His paths straight!…”

This, again, is Mark doing another clever thing.  He starts us in the middle of the story and immediately jumps to the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah.  Mark is utilizing these specific words because, according to oral tradition and rabbinic texts, Isaiah would have been one of the most popular Jewish texts at the time.  He’s showing us that something is happening by using two things, the proclamation of Caesar and Old Testament scriptures, that everyone in his day would have easily, quickly, readily understood.  He’s giving us a peek behind the divine curtain to show the Jewish community of his day that the old words, the old traditions, the words of Isaiah are still alive. Mark was also a huge fan of irony in his text.  He paints a very human picture of the divine Christ figure.  He lets the readers, you and I, in on the secrets of who this Jesus character is before everyone else is made aware of it in the story.  He downplays the power of Christ, Jesus’ claims of divinity, and even ends his story without the resurrection.  The ultimate in irony.  Throughout the entirety of his text, Mark never loses sight of the real lives of ordinary people.  He focuses primarily on the economic and social ramifications, the earthly over the divine, and the present over the future.  

Everyone still tracking with me?

“…John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were flocking to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins…”

Rome was in control of everything about Jewish life, including the Temple.  This is the great Temple.  Solomon’s temple.  Albeit, a rebuilt, expanded upon, destroyed and rebuilt multiple times over version of Solomon’s temple.  But, it’s that Temple that Rome controls.  And they control it to the point where wealthy families get into bidding wars with each other to pay Rome for their sons to be the high priest.  The one who enters the Holy of Holies, the one who speaks directly with God for the atonement of His people, all of Israel.  That position is up for sale at this time.

Alongside this, you have lenders, creditors, standing outside the temple offering lines of credit to the people who can’t afford a sacrifice.  Rome was taxing the citizens of Judea around 90%, so if you’re a poor farmer, you would take a line of credit to buy an animal that was raised specifically for sacrifice because that was what the law of Moses required.  And if you failed to repay this debt, or missed a payment, they didn’t repo the goat or the chicken, they took you and your family as slaves.  They took your land as their own.  

So, essentially, you have a small number of the Jewish aristocracy, that has sworn allegiance to Rome in exchange for power and wealth, preying on the rest of the Judean population.  The wealthy elite are holding everyone’s salvation and atonement hostage.

This was the world that John the Baptist was stepping out of the wilderness into.  And he was telling these people, this corrupt Jewish aristocracy and the poor Jewish community and the normal Israelites in between, that they needed to be baptized.  Aside from the priest taking ceremonial baths, baptism was a thing reserved for Gentiles at this time.  It was a rite of passage to be cleaned when converting to Judaism.  And here’s this dude, standing in the same river where people wash their clothes and their armpits and so on, telling the entire nation they need to come down there and be baptized.

It goes on:

“John wore a camel-hair garment with a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.  He was preaching: ‘Someone more powerful than I will come after me.  I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of His sandals.  I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’”

At the same time, there were people roaming all over Judea, claiming to be the messiah, amassing followers, murdering Romans, and establishing credibility to be Israel’s savior, a physical king of a physical realm.

And juxtaposed with this, happening next to these faux-messiahs, you have John, a man born to descendants of Aaron, making John a descendant of Aaron.  A kohen, priest.  One of the potentially wealthy elite that could pledge his allegiance to Rome and live a life of luxury.  And he’s living in the wilderness and we meet him standing in a dirty river.  He is humbling himself in appearance, wearing the clothes of Elijah an old testament prophet (who was said to come again before the coming of the Messiah), well beneath what a man of his station should be wearing.  Essentially, John is super punk rock.  He’s living off honey and locusts, bugs and bug juice, when as a Kohen, he should be feasting on meat from the sacrificed animals and drinking the finest wine.  But, there, in the Jordan, he stands.  Proclaiming, unlike the other Jewish rebels with a following, he is not the messiah.  Proclaiming he’s not even worth to untie the messiah’s shoelaces.  Proclaiming what he’s doing is nothing compared to what the one who comes after him, the true messiah, will do.

Before we get too far into this and further unpack what’s happening here, I do want to point out something very important to me and near to my heart.  We grew out of Judaism.  Which means we absolutely, positively, 100% MUST give it the respect and honor it’s due.  We are a Judaic cult, a branch of the Jewish faith that went a little further in it’s belief system.  We can not gloss over the importance of Judaism to the current church or in the text.  We must respect it.  We must honor the Jewish nature of the Christ, the early mothers and fathers of the church, and the importance that Jewish customs, traditions, and oral histories played on the scriptures.

Right out of the gate, “fresh out the box,” as the kids would say (did I get that right, youngin’s?), you get this incredibly politically charged statement from Mark.  A statement that could certainly get you killed for making at that time. He immediately draws a parallel between the earthly power of Caesar and the heavenly power of the Christ. He’s letting the reader in on a powerful, ironic secret. He’s establishing this new thing, the gospel, good news, about the Messiah, with a capital M. The true messiah. He’s signaling the importance of what’s to come in the rest of the book, drawing the reader into this social, political, eternal drama that’s unfolding.

Mark then dives into the OT, something every Jewish person would have known. He tells them about a prophecy of Isaiah wherein John’s coming is foretold. The same prophecy that John’s father, Zekkariah, receives from Gabriel in other gospels.

(Also, once John the Baptist’s dad finds out he’s gonna have a son, he can’t speak. Literally. He goes the entirety of his wife’s pregnancy without speaking. When it comes time to decide on a name, he actually writes “His name will be John” on a tablet. I’m sure there’s more than one woman in here that would see a mute baby daddy as a blessing…)

It’s in this corrupt, combined church and state system that John comes up in. Where the rich, the elite, the fancy pants types push for more power and more wealth and more dominance over everyone else.  It wasn’t the whole of the Jewish community, but a small percentage that traded their own people for a little bit more money and power.  

Being a Kohen, descendant of Aaron, of priestly lineage, he would have been taught all of the things of his people, as well as the Romans. John would have been afforded the right to take his place in that group of social, political, and monetarily elite ruling class of Jews.  He would have known about the money changers, the creditors, the garish feasts and rights of the priests. He would have been an inside man. A made man. John could have sat in a tiki-themed temple, cracking wise with his knucklehead cronies, asking the tough questions like, “I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?”

Some 2,000 years later, it’s this same system of greed and wealth and power and dominance and moral gluttony that we find ourselves in today. There are “prosperity” bibles out there and people telling you if you give them all of your money, God will bless you beyond your wildest dreams. We fight for political power, bending the teachings of Jesus to fit within our political definition of morality. “Well, the Bible says this but means that...” to justify marginalization and pushing people out the door. We temper love with dogma and faith with certainty. We favor being right over being humble.

We have used a corrupt religious system to influence our politics in an effort to gain power or dominance. John gave up every notion of power actually afforded to him by his birth to lead the people to Christ. He gave up the wealth and the social standing and clout he received just by who his great-great-great-grandpa was in an effort to be who God said he was, not what society said he was, not what the power structure said he was.

John the Baptist, and later Jesus, goes on to call the religious figures who wielded political power a “brood of vipers.” That’s not just a super gnarly band name, it was a major insult in those days. Snakes were associated with evil (you know, Garden of Eden, creation story, etc.) not with awesome album covers or dudes with bleach blonde mullets drinking Budweiser in American flag t-shirts. He called these priests, who used their religion to make political decisions that placed their boot squarely on the throats of others, children of evil. Yeah. That’s a thing. (If you’re not offended easily by strong language, ask me after the service what they were really being called.)

Is any of this ringing true for how the church operates today? Can you think of any more fitting a thing to say about the Westboro Hatemongers, TV evangelists spewing anti-gay rhetoric, God’s desire for you to be rich, or the importance of division among the church over political views?  

Peter Popoff, Jerry Falwell Jr., Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, Beny Hinn, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham.  They all preach monetary faith, they all preach wealth and power, they all preach political and social dominance.  They preach America and Empire in suits that cost more than some people’s yearly salaries, from the pulpit of million dollar stages, after being driven to their church in a six figure car.  Those ideas and ideals are antithetical to what Jesus, “the one who comes after,” actually spoke about.  

John wasn’t standing in a dirty river telling the elite to come to him, he was calling all to him. Stating that he was baptizing them in water, but the one who would come after would baptize them in the Holy Spirit. He didn’t say that the baptism would be reserved for those who voted down a party line.  He didn’t say that the baptism would only be for those who claimed a specific doctrinal belief or belonged to a specific church denomination. He didn’t say that the baptism of the Holy Spirit would be reserved for those that said “Merry Christmas.”

As a people belonging to this faith tradition, we absolutely must understand where we come from to understand where we’re going.  We came out of corruption.  We came out of religious power wielded by a moral majority of elitists who used that power to gain wealth and influence.  That tradition is what Christ stood up against, leading a very small percentage of the wealthy, elite, upper echelon Jewish leaders to work with Empire in the killing of the Christ.  We have our roots in that tradition, but John the Baptist and the Christ figure showed up and moved us away from earthly power and towards the river.  Our inheritance is standing in dirty water.  

As Americans, we were lucky enough to be born on the correct side of a man-made line on a map, at a specific time.  As Americans, we have been born into a culture of dominance.  As Americans, we have been born into a state-run temple, a theocratic system of government that we call democracy.  As Americans, we have been born into a system defined by power, wealth, works.  As Americans we have been born into a flag waving, gun toting, National Anthem singing, allegiance pledging, worshipping the golden calf of the stars and bars, love it or leave it, this-faith-and-these-colors-don’t-run church.

But, as believers, we are called to turn from those things that our country teaches us are important and turn to the one who truly is important.  This is the repentance that John spoke of.  Turning away from our own self, our own desires for advancement, and to turn towards a desire to advance all who are willing to step foot into that dirty river.

The Jordan River, the dirty water in the desert, with a madman shouting from it, is the great equalizer.  It is here that we are called to turn away from corruption, power, greed, and towards equality, grace, humility.  It is here that we are asked to show our unity with all who would step into the water.  It is here that we are given the chance to meet the one who comes after.

I know that this feels like an incredibly political message, but I promise you that I don’t care what your politics are. I don’t. I care about you standing in that dirty water, humbling yourself when telling all to come, repent, and be baptized. To prepare themselves for who’s to come. Because the humbling and inclusion that happens, the renouncing of systems and power, that’s where you’ll find the one who comes after. Turning away from the structures we’ve built to separate, demean, demoralize, institutionalize, and weaponize; that’s where you find the second baptism; the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist calls us to humble ourselves.  To repent.  To make ourselves like those we try to fit into our molds.  Those we try to clean up, pretty up, church up.  John tells us to make ourselves their equal and stand in the dirty water.  

Tisha lived her life in the dirty water and because of that, I found the one who came after her.  I found him in a more profound way than I could have at seven.  Or 13.  Or 15.  Or 17.  

176 days after Tisha left this world, her husband married my wife and I.  He was stoned and in pain and broken.  He spoke softly, the exact opposite of how she would have been, and kept the service weird and short, exactly like she was.  He spoke to the importance of love in life and in death.  

373 days after she died, I found myself on my knees thanking the God that I swore did not exist.  Thanking him for the beautiful, mystical wife he’d blessed me with.  The painfully smart, hilarious, and earnest friends he blessed me with.  And amazing, understanding, comforting, loving, and currently crying parents and family.  

When I went looking for Tisha, I found humility and love and grace.  I found pieces of her in every single person I’ve encountered over the last year.  

I found the love she showed in her husband as he and I have journeyed through hell, relationships, faith, and whiskey this past year.

I found the hugs, crass humor, and desire to feed people she showed in a couple of vegan bakers that are trying to build community using baked treats and chili.

I found her deep-rooted, inclusive faith in a bar while having a beer with a pastor, and telling him that I believe in a resurrected Christ and an eternal God.  I found her in the realization that this is the calling on my life, to teach.  I found her in coming to terms with the last 10 years of my life being an inevitable journey through the wilderness, just so I could stand in the dirty water and say, “The one who comes after me…”

In the immortal words of Jack Black in this century’s Citizen Kane, School of Rock, you’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore.  John the Baptist was hardcore because he lived it.  Tisha was hardcore because she lived it.  We are all called to be hardcore.  We are called to be the voice in the wilderness.  We are called to be the ones declaring the one who comes after us.  We are called to stand in the dirty water and invite ALL to join us.

A close friend came out to last week’s sermon and told me that I didn’t offer up too much hope in my message.  For those that felt the same, I do want to apologize.  I’m the hope, guys.  I was born in a double-wide and my dad still rocks a mullet.  My wife and I live paycheck to paycheck.  My friends and I have family style dinner at someone’s house once a week to save money on groceries.  I have tattoos, I have blasphemed against God, I have sinned and I have failed my wife, my family, my friends, and my God more times than I have succeeded.  But, despite all of that, the stack of items in the con-column versus the “He made us laugh” item in the pro-column, I am here.  I was invited to stand in the dirty water and asked to proclaim the one who comes after me.  Whether you were born the elite, or you borrowed gas money to get here, it doesn’t matter.  We have all been invited into the water just the same.  I challenge you to go out, into your lives and into your week, secure in the knowledge that you are good enough to step into the water exactly where you’re at.  You don’t have to say the right words or know the right things. If a Pearl Jam fan is worthy to stand in that dirty water and make that proclamation, you are, too.

The Intolerant Tolerance Police

On their mission to purge the world of thoughts and opinions that don’t slot neatly into their moral agenda and worldview, the increasingly intolerant tolerance police have done some severe damage along the way.

We are frequently bombarded with headlines and hand-wringing over meaningless controversies ignited by people who, I’m convinced, wake up in the morning desperate to find the next focus for their endless capacity for moral outrage. For the most part, these so-called scandals are initiated by those who identify themselves as liberals — and the lines of battle are drawn around issues of race, gender, sexual orientation etc.

Our hyper-sensitive social media culture lends itself perfectly to these kinds of non-controversies, where something as simple as a badly worded tweet can, within minutes, direct a storm of abuse and online bullying toward an individual. The end result can range from a person being forced to issue a public apology for their opinion, to losing their job — or even taking their own life.

The examples are numerous, but one recent case stands out.

View image on Twitter

In December, porn star August Ames committed suicide following a tweet expressing her preference not to shoot scenes with an actor who had previously done gay porn. The tweet sparked an onslaught of abuse against Ames who attempted to defend herself against accusations of homophobia, but it was too late. The modern judges of moral acceptability had already made up their minds. Ames deserved to be trashed endlessly online for her unacceptable lapse in moral judgement. One gay porn actor, Jaxton Wheeler, told Ames to apologize or “swallow a cyanide pill” — as if her personal preference was so heinous that she deserved to die for it. Days later she was found dead. The cause of her death was asphyxiation due to hanging.

This is the totalitarianism and petty tyranny of the liberal tolerance doctrine at work. It is not enough to have your opinion and let others have theirs. No, no. We must all share the same exact moral standards and worship the same ideals — or perhaps we deserve to die. At the very least, those who stray deserve to face an avalanche of public abuse before repenting and falling in line.

Ames’ suicide is one of the more shocking stories, but there are countless examples of these moral ‘controversies’.

When actress Lili Reinhart posted a picture of a woman in a Halloween costume — painted head-to-toe in black paint to resemble a mythical demon — she was immediately accused by other Twitter users of being racially insensitive, making fun of black people and of not seeing the ‘racist implications’ of the costume. Of course, Reinhart apologized and deleted the tweet — because that’s the only recourse following such an apparently massive indiscretion.

Read more

Just say sorry: MPs in Westminster sex scandal need ‘only to apologize’

Perhaps one of these uber-enlightened individuals should release a rulebook for everyone else to follow. After all, it’s a minefield out there. So, I nominate the author of a blog post which warned parents of young girls not to allow them to dress up as Disney’s Moana princess for Halloween because it risks “making fun of” Polynesian culture. One can easily imagine the same blogger writing an article complaining that it was ‘racist’ if white girls didn’t want to dress up as Moana. But don’t be fooled into thinking it’s okay for white girls to dress up as white characters, either. Later in the post, the blogger warns that girls dressing up as Elsa from Frozen risks promoting white beauty, which is also highly problematic, apparently.

The internet is littered with these petty controversies.

When Vanity Fair recently poked fun at Hillary Clinton’s long career in politics with a video that advised her to get a new hobby in the new year, like “knitting” or “improv comedy”, it prompted yet another meltdown from the tolerance crew. You can’t tell a woman to take up knitting, they roared, that’s sexist! Or maybe…it’s just a joke? But don’t be silly, jokes aren’t allowed anymore. Never mind that it was a woman who made the comments about Clinton in the light-hearted video.

A couple of years back, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston was forced to cancel an event during which visitors to the museum would be allowed try on a kimono. One outraged group of individuals started a website called Stand Against Yellowface to fight the terrible injustice perpetrated by the Boston museum. But guess who didn’t care? Japanese people. An official from the Japanese consulate in Boston commented: “We actually do not quite understand what their point of protest is.”

Or how about this gem? A janitor at an Indiana university was accused of “racial harassment” for the crime of reading a historical book about the Ku Klux Klan on his lunch break. The book in question was Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan. Keith John Sampson, the 58 year-old janitor, who was also a student at the university, tried to explain that it was a history book, but that wasn’t good enough for the school’s affirmative action officer, who told Sampson that “his conduct constituted racial harassment” and that he had exhibited “extremely poor judgement” by reading it out in the open. You see, you must educate yourself about the history of slavery in the United States, but you can’t do it in public, because that could be offensive! Are you confused yet?

Read more

‘I’d receive 200 messages threatening rape every day’: Online abuse of women laid bare in new report

In another pathetic non-controversy, Wellesley College students started an online petition to have a statue of a sleepwalking man in underwear removed from their campus. The statue was part of an art exhibition. Within hours of its placement, the petition read, the sculpture had become “a source of undue stress” which caused “apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts” for students who had experienced sexual harassment at the hands of men — although presumably not at the hands of scantily clad art installations.

Then there’s this guy, who thinks climate change deniers should be arrested. Or this guy, who thinks classic literature like The Great Gatsby or Mrs Dalloway should be marked with “trigger warnings” lest any fragile-minded student come across a passage which might upset their sensibilities. Professors should also “warn” their students, he says, about which passages in a novel may possess “triggering material” and which passages are “safer to read”.

Back in the real world, the average person will read a book’s blurb, decide if it sounds appealing to them, dig in, and then, if they happen to get offended somewhere along the way, they stop reading. It’s a simple process which doesn’t require trigger warnings or the implementation of new reading methods.

The potential for any comment to erupt into a firestorm of controversy is so worrying to today’s authors that hiring “sensitivity readers” in advance of publication has become commonplace. A sensitivity reader provides “feedback on issues like race, religion, gender, sexuality, chronic illness and physical disabilities”. Critics of sensitivity reading say that it could lead to “sanitized books that tiptoe around difficult topics”. It’s not hard to see how that could happen.

The tolerance police are afraid of the very concepts which they claim to hold so dear — like freedom of speech, choice and democracy itself. It doesn’t matter to them what anyone else feels or believes. Only their version of reality counts and only their moral compass is the correct one.

Read more

Teen girl’s ‘sexting’ prosecuted as felony child porn, ACLU fights charges

I recently came across a phrase I had somehow missed until now: No-platforming. It is the practice of banning certain groups from even taking part in a debate if certain cohorts find their views to be offensive. Take, for example, the fact that pro-life women were excluded from the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., last year because their particular views on one issue didn’t line up with the majority.

You’ll have noticed by now, that the running theme in all of these stories is not tolerance, but intolerance. This overly politically correct culture of ours is churning out young adults who have been cocooned and coddled in safe spaces, who have had literature fed to them with trigger warnings, who can’t handle moral or political disagreements without throwing hissy fits, who are more comfortable organizing protests against free speech than fighting for it and who have no idea how to live and let live. They’ve been taught that their right to be offended and have the world fall in line trumps everyone else’s right to speak or to hold an opinion.

It’s no wonder that something as simple as a Halloween costume or a sculpture can send them into meltdown mode. The irony is, while the tolerance police are alienating well-meaning people by going after janitors for reading history books, protesting statues and campaigning for trigger warnings on books, the genuinely mean-spirited, overtly homophobic and racist people aren’t getting any nicer.

It’s almost like this over-the-top, aggressive implementation of the tolerance doctrine isn’t really making the world a more tolerant place at all.

The Intolerant Tolerance Police was originally published on Graham Campbell

The age of “fake news” is coming for film criticism.

The new Gotti, which stars John Travolta as the infamous mob boss, seems like a solid contender for the title of worst movie of the year. Technically, it premiered at Cannes — if by “premiered” you mean “had a screening almost no press attended in the smallest theater at the Palais” — and garnered abysmal reviews from the critics who were there.

It then screened for a very small set of critics (I was not invited to any screenings), who found it so awful that it wound up with the rare 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a damning-by-faint-praise 24 on Metacritic.

But the film’s marketers have fought back, launching an offensive that doesn’t just suggest but outright accuse critics of mounting a coordinated hit on the movie.

In all likelihood, it’s just a marketing tactic for a silly movie, and it will have little, if any, effect on either the film’s bottom line or the field of movie criticism. Yet the tactics lurking behind the Gotti campaign bear an eerie resemblance to the much larger problem of “fake news” in our time.

Looking at Gotti is like staring through the wrong end of a telescope and seeing everything you need to know about “truth” on the Internet, only in microcosm and applied to the least important thing imaginable: a bad movie.

“Fake news” started out as a term to describe sensationalized, fabricated stories concocted for profit. But it was quickly co-opted by Donald Trump and his followers as a lazy slur to sling at any story he didn’t like, something he’s outright admitted. “Fake news” is shorthand for “this story doesn’t paint me in a good light.”

That’s the Gotti ad method, too:

Audiences loved Gotti but critics don’t want you to see it… The question is why??? Trust the people and see it for yourself! pic.twitter.com/K6a9jAO4UH

— Gotti Film (@Gotti_Film) June 19, 2018

In case you didn’t finish watching the video, here’s what it says:

AUDIENCES LOVED GOTTI. CRITICS PUT OUT THE HIT. WHO WOULD YOU TRUST MORE? YOURSELF OR A TROLL BEHIND A KEYBOARD [sic]

For critics, it’s pretty impossible to watch this without chuckling. (The aforementioned “troll behind a keyboard” definitely describes a lot of the people who show up in your Twitter mentions if they don’t like your opinion about a film.)

But it’s a good template for how to get the “fake news” claim to stick. First, it’s important to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the people generating the stories and opinions you find objectionable. Do it over and over again. Call them “disgusting” and challenge their right to exist.

And don’t forget to suggest that there’s a conspiracy afoot. “Put out the hit” doubles as a clever topical metaphor for a movie about a crime boss and an implication that critics get together in shadowy, secret back rooms at family restaurants and plot to take down movies over cigars and grappa. We wish!

People like believing conspiracy theories, because they seem to make sense of a confusing world, and they’re impervious to attempts to refute them. And there are lots of conspiracy theories about film critics, the most popular being that we’re paid by Disney, which owns Marvel Studios, to give negative reviews to DC films. So Gotti is playing right into an idea that some people already believe, though the ad doesn’t bother to suggest any plausible reason critics would bother to “put out a hit” on a film so small most people didn’t see it.

Finally, suggest that the purveyors of whatever you’re deeming “fake news” right now are out of touch with or outright harmful to “real” people, ordinary agenda-less folks whose opinions are be default better than “elites.” This is a time-honored tactic for stars in blockbusters who don’t like what they read about their films.

For instance, here’s Samuel L. Jackson after the 2012 release of The Avengers:

#Avengers fans,NY Times critic AO Scott needs a new job! Let’s help him find one! One he can ACTUALLY do!

— Samuel L. Jackson (@SamuelLJackson) May 3, 2012

And here’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson after the release of Baywatch, which only netted a score of 18 percent on Rotten Tomatoes:

That kind of populist appeal works on some people for the same reason it works in politics: there’s a sizable group of people who harbor resentment against anyone they think of as looking down on them. When film critics trash a movie that audiences like, they generally aren’t thinking of the audience. But we sometimes get feedback on those reviews that implies the reader is going to “own” us by going to see the film. I don’t care if you go see the film to which I gave a bad review, nor does any other critic I know, but that kind of reply shows a common perception — and marketers and stars know how to use that perception to their advantage.

If you can get people to doubt the sources, convince them there’s a conspiracy theory afoot, and suggest that the “fans” are obviously more correct than the critics, then you may just succeed in getting more people in the door at the movie theater — and that’s the whole idea.

Gotti went for the full three-pronged approach. The first two are impossible to argue with. I can’t convince you that I’m trustworthy, and no other critic can either — that’s the nature of the opinion-giving business. All you can do is read my writing and decide if you like it. And I can’t prove to you that we’re not conspirators, except to say that if you’ve ever known a group of film critics you’d know how funny the idea of us organizing anything at all is.

The third prong is tough to argue with, too. But in the case of Gotti, there’s an extra layer.

The idea that “audiences” loved Gotti was supported by the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which as of today is at 61 percent. But there are two reasons to raise an eyebrow.

First, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is all but useless. It can, and has, been gamed by groups like the alt-right and angry fans to drive down audience scores for films that are deemed objectionable, like Black Panther, The Last Jedi, and Ghostbusters. Anyone can rate a film, whether or not they’ve seen it — and that means sometimes films’ audience scores can be inflated or deflated before the film has even released in theaters.

Even if the site required the user to prove they’d seen the film, though, there’s still a flaw: audience scores by nature reflect the opinions of people who were inclined enough to see a movie (through interest in the subject matter, perhaps, or the star, or successful marketing efforts) to buy a ticket and give up a couple of hours of their day to see it. So there’s a natural curve built into the audience score. What audience scores at their best measure is what Cinemascore more or less measures: how much people who already wanted to see the film liked it. But critics don’t get that choice, and thus there’s more granularity built into their opinions.

But there’s one more wrinkle in the case of Gotti. There might be something fishy about the audience score.

First of all, it’s composed of more than 7,000 ratings, which is a remarkably high number for a film that only made $1.7 million on its opening weekend in 503 theaters (which implies a relatively low number of people in the audience). By contrast, Incredibles 2 made more than $183 million in 4,410 theaters and only has a little more than 8,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. And Hereditary, which opened with more than $13 million in 2,964 theaters, has 5,529 ratings on the site.

Sure, it’s possible that Gotti fans are just extremely vocal and passionate about the film. But according to some people who dug through the data, it certainly looks like a number of the user accounts are very new users of Rotten Tomatoes. And while there could be a logical, non-shady explanation for that, there are other explanations, too, that have to do with someone rigging the system. (Rotten Tomatoes, for its part, stands by the score and claims there was no manipulation.)

Once again, herein lie shades of our age of “fake news”: the suspicion that trolls and bots are manipulating our “reality,” first online and then offline, too. There are the Russian “troll farms” that produced truly fake news and weaponized our social media feeds and the fake Reddit accounts that have had to be shut down and a lot, lot more. So it seems almost inevitable that whether or not they’re messing with the Gotti score to pump up the film’s visibility, trolls and bots will be part of the mess of audience scores some day soon.

It is very, very hard to tell if any of this is in good faith. Are the people behind the Gotti campaign earnest about their silly claims, or are they just trying to get a rise out of people in order to raise the film’s visibility?

This question extends to the audience reviews left on Rotten Tomatoes, which are pretty wild:

Trolling and shitposting are complicated, but they’re everywhere — weaponizing irony and “comedy” and memes and jokes to both exact some kind of revenge by making your enemy look foolish and confuse them into dismissing you.

That’s not to say that the alt-right is involved in this whole Gotti deal, though anecdotal evidence shows that there may be some overlap between the #MAGA crowd and Gotti fans.

(MoviePass owns a 40 percent stake in Gotti.)

But the fact that we cannot even figure out if this ad campaign and the Rotten Tomatoes score is real feels very of a piece with everything in our fake news world. Call the critics fake news and stoke a conspiracy theory. Game the system through possibly shady tactics. And do it all in an environment where it’s totally possible to just say “we were kidding!” if you somehow get caught.

Gotti doesn’t really matter, and neither does its goofy ad campaign. But it’s a little depressing to see the things many of us worry about in the all-important spheres of policy and politics seeping into something as inconsequential as a terrible movie about a mob boss.

Original Source -> The John Travolta Gotti movie is waging a Trump-style war on critics

via The Conservative Brief