#2024 the new york times

[shannendoherty-fans]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/opinion/shannen-doherty-gen-x.html

The New York Times — Opinion

We Owe Shannen Doherty an Apology

July 17, 2024. By Jennifer Weiner

Shannen Doherty was difficult.

If you were alive and sentient in the 1990s — whether you, like me, were a devoted fan of “Beverly Hills, 90210” and E! or you were just the most casual reader of People magazine — you knew this to be true. The sky is blue. The earth is round. Shannen Doherty, the star of multiple hit movies and television shows, is difficult. She was, per the tabloids, a volatile, unmanageable diva, and that reputation was only reinforced by the pouty, prima donna roles in which she was so often and so brilliantly cast.

Ms. Doherty died on Saturday, at the age of 53, of the cancer that was diagnosed in 2015. Since the news broke, the tenor of the conversation around her has changed. Instead of being an eye-roll-inducing wild child, Ms. Doherty is now being praised for the sensitivity and candor with which she discussed her cancer diagnosis and her time in the spotlight. And those ’90s tabloid stories? They’re hitting differently. The glee with which they were once consumed no longer feels appropriate. Ms. Doherty made her fair share of mistakes, but Gen X’s quintessential bad girl no longer looks all that bad.

If this reassessment feels familiar, it’s because in death, Ms. Doherty has joined the growing ranks of female celebrities whose scandals and legacies are being reconsidered by a newly sensitive culture.

In 2002, when Britney Spears’s high-profile relationship with Justin Timberlake ended, she was a train wreck, a bad joke, a problem. Eventually, her career and her money were placed under her father’s control. In 2008, Katherine Heigl went from queen of the rom-com to Hollywood purgatory for the sins of taking herself out of Emmy contention and having the temerity to say that “Knocked Up” was “a little sexist.” In 2009, Megan Fox got slammed — and fired — for calling out Michael Bay, her director on “Transformers,” for a desire “to create this insane, infamous madman reputation.” (OK, maybe she did also compare him to Hitler, which never ends well.)

Today, so many of the former tabloid mainstays do not look like punchlines or cautionary tales, but like regular young women enjoying the pleasures of fame. Some even look like role models. Ms. Spears emerged as a hero, not a villain, and it’s her ex who’s the target of comedians’ jabs. Post #MeToo, Ms. Heigl and Ms. Fox look like truth-tellers, not ingrates. Ms. Doherty, sadly, did not live long enough to enjoy her restored reputation.

A former child actress, Ms. Doherty was only 19 when she landed a starring role in “Beverly Hills, 90210.” She played Brenda Walsh, half of a set of fish-out-of-water Midwestern twins navigating the halls of West Beverly High. She left the show after four seasons, reportedly after feuding with co-stars, including Jennie Garth and the boss’s daughter, Tori Spelling. When Aaron Spelling hired her again, giving her a three-season run on “Charmed,” tensions with a co-star reportedly led to her being fired a second time. She was separated from the other actors as though she were an irrational toddler rather than a skilled, valued employee.

Those high-profile roles, along with her talent and her beauty, made her a star. But the conversation about her often made it seem as if her real job was to be fodder for the tabloids and a target for late-night comedians.

To be sure, Ms. Doherty gave them plenty to work with. There were the feuds and bar fights, a pair of quickie marriages and a D.U.I. arrest. Producers complained that she showed up late to the set, hogged the spotlight, bailed on the Emmys. A former fiancé filed an order of protection.

Ms. Doherty was eviscerated for this behavior in a way that indecorous male actors were not, at least at that time. A People magazine cover labeled her a “hard-partying, check-bouncing bad girl.” A zine called Ben Is Dead published an “I Hate Brenda” newsletter, complete with the “Shannen Snitch Line,” where informants could call in reports of unaired bad behavior.

In a 1992 cover story, People asked “TV’s brashest 21-year-old” why she, “alone among ‘90210’ co-stars and teen idols,” got stuck with the “difficult” label. Is she “one of those women who rhyme with rich? Is she, as the tabloids have gleefully reported, impossible on the set? Is she a prima donna? Also: After hours, does she party too much?”

Years later, Ms. Doherty copped to some of her misdeeds. “I have a rep,” she told Parade in 2010. “Did I earn it? Yeah, I did. But, after awhile you sort of try to shed that rep because you’re kind of a different person.”

So what drove the scandal? Blame it on youth. “90210” begat a whole generation of shows with ensemble casts of teenagers. Ms. Doherty was not the only one who needed time to grow into her outsize prominence. “We were locked in this sound stage for 14 to 16 hours every day,” Ms. Garth, who was also just a teenager, said years later. “There were times when we loved each other and there were times when we wanted to claw each other’s eyes out.”

Blame it on a desire to typecast female celebrities as heroes and villains, sweethearts and shrews, and the time-honored tradition of setting women against each other.

Or blame it, if you like, on plain old sexism. Ms. Doherty said the first time she was called a bitch was when she called out a male cast member on the set of “Heathers” for taking advantage of an extra. “I’m a strong woman,” Ms. Doherty told People. “There are still some people out there who can’t deal with that.”

Today, maybe more people are equipped to deal, more likely to look askance at misbehaving men instead of the women who call them out. Instead of the coy, “is she a rhymes-with-rich?” of early ’90s People, a Rolling Stone tribute is headlined “Nobody Could Break Shannen Doherty, and Everybody Tried.” “Shannen Doherty was irresistible, underrated and permanently shackled to misogynistic speculation,” wrote Adam White in The Independent. The headline on an opinion piece in Vogue read, simply, “Team Brenda Forever.”

The reassessment is more than just a desire (sincere or otherwise) not to speak ill of the dead. It’s a result of a few tough decades that have taught us what real bad behavior in Hollywood looks like: not impolite ingénues but Harvey Weinstein. Or Bill Cosby. Or Danny Masterson.

Maybe Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and Tara Reid were not hot messes, but just girls being girls, the same way we’ve always allowed boys to be boys. And at least their misdeeds were largely victimless, unlike the missteps of so many male counterparts or superiors.

Maybe showing up late to the set, while not ideal, is not completely unexpected from a teenager adjusting to sudden, unimaginable wealth and fame. Maybe the bitches and the bad girls were giving voice to inconvenient truths about men with power and the sexist scripts they greenlighted, the abusive film sets they ran and the bad behavior they indulged in or ignored. Maybe the difficult women like Ms. Doherty are the ones we should have been listening to all along.

[hysterical-random-things]

Went to nycc today cosplaying Loop from @insertdisc5 game In Stars and Time! Gonna be cosplaying Siffrin tomorrow and if anyone runs into me they'll get a little surprise ^v^

[ralfmaximus]

Two things — check that, three things — appear to have gone off the rails at the paper we used to call the Gray Lady. First, whoever is in charge of the paper’s polls is not doing their job. Second, whoever is choosing what to emphasize in Times coverage of the campaign for the presidency is showing bias. Third, the Times is obsessed with Joe Biden’s age at the same time they’re leaving evidence of Donald Trump’s mental and verbal stumbles completely out of the news. Let’s start right there. At a rally on Saturday night in Virginia, Trump confused Barack Obama, who left office seven years ago, with President Biden for the third time over the last six months. “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” Trump said, as his crowd of rabid supporters suddenly fell silent. “You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today.” You won’t find that verbal stumble and the crowd’s stunned reaction in the Times coverage of the campaign over the weekend. You’ll have to read other publications — for example, Salon or maybe the Guardian — if you want to learn how often Trump is losing his way mid-sentence at rallies and just mumbling incoherently.

The article also explores a recent Times poll favoring Trump that is so insanely, obviously inaccurate that it reads like parody.

The NYT is definitely in the bag for Trump, same as 2016.

[dykealloy]

“we sent yuan away so his feelings could subside” you sent him to gay rizz bootcamp is what you did

[fuddlyduddly]

some Hundreds Of Beavers parody posters that made me lose my mind

[gamer2002]

It's (D)ifferent

[deadpresidents]

On the cliffs of Normandy, in a small holding area, the President of the United States was looking out at the English Channel. It was only six weeks ago, on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and President Biden had just finished his remarks at the American cemetery atop Omaha Beach. Guests had been congratulating him on the speech, but he didn't want to talk about himself. The moment was not about him; it was about the men who had fought and died there. "Today feels so large," he told me. "This may sound strange -- and I don't mean it to -- but when I was out there, I felt the honor of it, the sanctity of it. To speak for the American people, to speak over those graves, it's a profound thing." He turned from the view over the beaches and gestured back toward the war dead. "You want to do right by them, by the country."

Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his campaign for re-election. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one's immediate desires -- to give, rather than to try to take -- is perhaps the most difficult thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.

To be clear: Mr. Biden is my friend, and it has been a privilege to help him when I can. Not because I am a Democrat -- I belong to neither party and have voted for both Democrats and Republicans -- but because I believe him to be a defender of the Constitution and a public servant of honor and of grace at a time when extreme forces threaten the nation. I do not agree with everything he has done or wanted to do in terms of policy. But I know him to be a good man, a patriot and a president who has met challenges all too similar to those Abraham Lincoln faced. Here is the story I believe history will tell of Joe Biden. With American democracy in an hour of maximum danger in Donald Trump's presidency, Mr. Biden stepped in the breach. He staved off an authoritarian threat at home, rallied the world against autocrats abroad, laid the foundations for decades of prosperity, managed the end of a once-in-a-century pandemic, successfully legislated on vital issues of climate and infrastructure and has conducted a presidency worthy of the greatest of his predecessors. History and fate brought him to the pinnacle in a late season in his life, and in the end, he respected fate -- and he respected the American people.

It is, of course, an incredibly difficult moment. Highs and lows, victories and defeats, joy and pain: It has been ever thus for Mr. Biden. In the distant autumn of 1972, he experienced the most exhilarating of hours -- election to the United States Senate at the age of 29. He was no scion; he earned it. The darkness fell: His wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident that seriously injured his two sons, Beau and Hunter. But he endured, found purpose in the pain, became deeper, wiser, more empathetic. Through the decades, two presidential campaigns imploded, and in 2015 his son Beau, a lawyer and wonderfully promising young political figure, died of brain cancer after serving in Iraq.

Such tragedy would have broken many lesser men. Mr. Biden, however, never gave up, never gave in, never surrendered the hope that a fallen, frail and fallible world could be made better, stronger and more whole if people could summon just enough goodness and enough courage to build rather than tear down. Character, as the Greeks first taught us, is destiny, and Mr. Biden's character is both a mirror and a maker of his nation's. Like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, he is optimistic, resilient and kind, a steward of American greatness, a love of the great game of politics and, at heart, a hopeless romantic about the country that has given him so much.

Nothing bears out this point as well as his decision to let history happen in the 2024 election. Not matter how much people say that this was inevitable after the debate in Atlanta last month, there was nothing foreordained about an American President ending his political career for the sake of his country and his party. By surrendering the possibility of enduring in the seat of ultimate power, Mr. Biden has taught us a landmark lesson in patriotism, humility and wisdom.

Now the question comes to the rest of us. What will we the people do? We face the most significant of choices. Mr. Roosevelt framed the war whose dead Mr. Biden commemorated at Normandy in June as a battle between democracy and dictatorship. It is not too much to say that we, too, have what Mr. Roosevelt called a "rendezvous with destiny" at home and abroad. Mr. Biden has put country above self, the Constitution above personal ambition, the future of democracy above temporal gain. It is up to us to follow his lead.

-- "Joe Biden, My Friend and an American Hero" by Jon Meacham, New York Times, July 22, 2024.

[lovelyy-moonlight]

Scarlett Johansson for New York Times.

[contemplatingoutlander]

That the Editorial Board of the premier U.S. newspaper of record is finally warning about Donald Trump is significant. As such, this is a gift 🎁 link so that those who want to read the entire editorial can do so, even if they don't subscribe to The New York Times. Below are some excerpts:

As president, [Trump] wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain, undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution, intent on eluding the institutional, legal and bureaucratic restraints that put limits on him in his first term. Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound a warning. Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution. [...] It is instructive in the aftermath of that administration to listen to the judgments of some of these officials on the president they served. John Kelly, a chief of staff to Mr. Trump, called him the “most flawed person I’ve ever met,” someone who could not understand why Americans admired those who sacrificed their lives in combat. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general, and Mark Esper, a former defense secretary, both said Mr. Trump repeatedly put his own interests over those of the country. Even the most loyal and conservative of them all, Vice President Mike Pence, who made the stand that helped provoke Mr. Trump and his followers to insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, saw through the man: “On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” he said.

[See more under the cut.]

There will not be people like these in the White House should Mr. Trump be re-elected. The former president has no interest in being restrained, and he has surrounded himself with people who want to institutionalize the MAGA doctrine. According to reporting by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump and his ideological allies have been planning for a second Trump term for many months already. Under the name Project 2025, one coalition of right-wing organizations has produced a thick handbook and recruited thousands of potential appointees in preparation for an all-out assault on the structures of American government and the democratic institutions that acted as checks on Mr. Trump’s power. [...] Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers” accept legal, institutional or even constitutional constraints. He has promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties. He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice Department, to have his way. [...] Re-electing Mr. Trump would present serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political differences, grievances and party affiliations and to contemplate — as families, as parishes, as councils and clubs and as individuals — the real magnitude of the choice they will make in November.

I encourage people to use the above gift link and read the entire article.

[edited]

[voguefashion]

Robert Smith photographed by Charlie Gates for The New York Times, 2024.

[blackpinkofficialupdates]

Rosé for The New York Times

[arianaweekly]

ARIANA GRANDE and CYNTHIA ERIVO photographed by DANA SCRUGGS for THE NEW YORK TIMES, 06TH NOVEMBER 2024.

[brian-in-finance]

Instagram

Remember… relevance is a quality that others give to you. One cannot self-crown himself relevant. — Giorgio Armani

[singerorpheus]

Hadestown - West End - 26/05/2024

Dónal Finn (Orpheus), Madeline Charlemagne (u/s Eurydice), Melanie La Barrie (Hermes), Gloria Onitiri (Persephone), Zachary James (Hades), Allie Daniel (Fate), Bella Brown (Fate), Beth Hinton-Lever (u/s Fate), Lauren Azania (Worker), Tiago Dhondt Bamberger (Worker), Lucinda Buckley (Worker Swing), Waylon Jacobs (Worker), Christopher Short (Worker)

Do not share outside of Tumblr.

In honour of Dónal leaving and Madeline becoming main Eurydice <3

[unsolicited-opinions]

[lenbryant]

Do better, New York Times!