#I think because he recently had some kind of a plagiarism controversy?

[leomitchellart]

So… about this latest Inktober controversy….

Time to begrudgingly chuck in my two penneth… (Remeber you can always press “J” to skip this post altogether)

As most of you may or may not know, Alphonso Dunn released a Youtube video wherein he publicly accused Jake Parker, and creator of the Inktober challenge, of plagiarising his book. Both of these men are public figures, artists specialising in pen & ink. In the video Dunn looks at the preview pages and flip through footage of Parker’s “Inktober All Year Round” and says they draw many similarities in the illustrations, language and layout that he used in his own book, “Pen & Ink Drawing”. Parker’s book was set to this month. Hense why Dunn only used footage and not a physical copy.

Since the video’s release, the art community has been very spilt down the middle. The book’s publisher has halted the launch of Parker’s book until the matter can be investigated. Even DeviantArt cancelled their own Inktober event thing (I’ll admit I don’t keep up with these things DA keeps doing). Parker has since released a statement in the matter. Now it’s up to the courts to decide what’s happening next. The video itself is an hour long, but it’s crucial to see it yourself. 

People are, understandably, outraged after seeing it. This seems like a shitty thing to rip-off Dunn - not to mention stupid. Since Dunn is the more popular pen & ink artist with more social media followers and name recognition. Many have called to boycott inktober and condemn Parker. I’ll admit, I was right alongside them at first, at least for feeling outraged. The similarities are there. But if YMS’s Kimba video has taught me anything, it’s that, even if an accusation of plagiarism may be obvious at a cursory glance, sometimes it’s important to take a more critical eye and do more research to learn that things aren’t as cut and dry as they first seem. If there’s a lesson I can take away from the internet as a whole, it’s that no one thinks about the consequences of mob mentality.

The most common defence of Parker is that because they’re both books about pen and ink drawing, then they’re inevitably going to be similar. I’ll admit that, when you pick-up so many art books, a lot of them will cover the same basic grounds of materials, tutorials, strokes, techniques etc. The parts about rendering textures on spheres and cubes isnt new. Look up “texture study” and you’ll see so many examples of artists rendering these kinds of things digitally. I’ve also noticed a common theme of people more formally educated in art pointing out how none of these are original. Everything down to the steps and illustrations are things they’ve learned from years ago. Since I'm a pen & ink artist, inspired by my love of comics, I have quite a few books about inking: Dunn’s included. I own both his books and still highly recommend them. I didn't even preorder Parker’s book. Ironically because I didn't think it could offer anything new that my other books hadn’t already.

While Ethan Becker took the time to cross-examine Dunn and Parker’s books with several others, there weren’t many of the ones I actually owned. So I looked to my shelves to see what I could find. Books like:

“The Art of Comic Book Inking” by Gary Martin & Steve Rude

“How Comics Work” by Dave Gibbons & Tim Pilcher

“The DC Comics guide to Inking Comics” by Klaus Janson

“Making Comics” by Scott McCloud

“Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics”

I’m sure there’s plenty more examples out there. I was planning to go through all of these and take pictures. But ultimately that’s not the core point of these post. Plus it would’ve taken WAY too long and this post itself, is long enough.

Of course, none of the them are 100% close to Dunn’s in the way they’re displayed. Not as close as Parker’s could be considered. That being said, I know Dunn is trying to claim that he invented these techniques. The nucleus of the issue is how similar they are in terms of order and how these pages are displayed. Some I can chock-up to standard practice, while others seem more coincidental.

If there’s one thing I’m adamant about, it’s that I think that Dunn should’ve messaged Parker first before making the accusation public. Some try to dispute that this would've made it easier for Dunn to be “silenced”, whatever that means; but that sounds a bit conspiratorial to me. Ideally, you confront him about it in private, if he makes any threats or blows you off, get your lawyer on the phone and then make the video. Not only is it the more civil thing to do - but it’s the smarter thing to do. This is a serious legal matter, not just internet drama. While I’m sure Dunn had no intention of tearing Parker down or getting a mob onto him, that’s unfortunately what’s happened. A backlash both from the general artisan community and several companies. Wherein it was left to Parker himself to make this an official legal matter. If Parker’s found not guilty, then this could easily leave the gate open for him to sue Dunn for damages, loss of revenue, defamation of character or whatever else, should he see fit. As could the publishers, given how this affected their sales. Companies responded to the accusation of the video alone, before an investigation could be launched. Sure, it wouldn't be “acting the bigger man” but he’d be well within his right to do it. Dunn showed that Jake has mentioned him before, shown admiration for his career and referenced him in other posts. If it comes to light in court, that Dunn is even cited as an inspiration or source in the book itself, then it’s case closed. 

Then there’s the other possibility that Parker might not have done this on his own, but that he has a team behind the book. If that’s the case, the most I can accuse Parker of is being a hack. I worry Dunn has kneecapped himself for just how badly he’s handled this situation. Made worse by him not having an actual physical copy to assess and just had footage of preview pages to go on. So far, the circumstances don’t seem on his favour. 

I don’t think ill of Dunn. I do think he believes he’s been wronged and no malice in his intentions. I just think he’s made some critical errors on how to handled this. As for Parker himself, I couldn't give a donkey’s doo-dah about him. I’m sure you could accuse me of playing devil’s advocate earlier, but to me, he was the guy who released the annual prompt list. If it really does turn out that he’s a plagiarist and had malicious intent, then fuck ‘im. I never regarded him as an inspiration of mine or paid much attention to him outside of that. It was the community that made Inktober what it is. I’ve never met Parker. Maybe he’s a cool guy? Maybe he’s a bellend? I don’t know.

Granted this isn't the first time Parker has proved himself to be a controversial figure: - Last year people were upset about him trademarking (not copywriting, as many have erroneously claimed) the word “Inktober” and some artists were stopped from selling their related work or zines. Parker would issue a statement: claiming the takedowns were a mistake of “overzealous lawyers” and it’s just a matter of the logo being trademarked. People can sell their Inktober works and even mention they are Inktober-related. Just not use the official logo. On the one hand, from a business standpoint, I get it. It’s the bare minimum you need to do to protect your IP, especially when you have a store. BUT, like most people, I don’t like how, what’s intended as a community challenge, has slowly become more of a brand associated with one man. Hardly a surprise it left a bad taste in so many people’s mouths. But, since it doesn't actually effect anyone’s ability to take part in the challenge, outside of personal principle, I went ahead with it the previous year. 

 - The year before, when asked if one can do Inktober digitally, Parker said the following:

I know some are still bitter about that, but speaking as someone who inks traditionally and digitally, this came across as needless whinging and blowing things out of proportion. Claiming that Jake had derided digital artists and said they were invalid etc etc. Take it from me, challenging yourself to try out different methods to ink traditionally can greatly improve the work you do digitally. It’s like how learning traditional fundamentals of art can still be applied to digital. Plus he never said “No.” he just gave valid reasons about how it makes it a different experience. That said, if you’re someone who can’t afford any kind of inking equipment or pens and only have a selected application to draw on - then none of this applies to you. Just the aforementioned few who took it upon themselves to get angry over nothing. Recently I’ve heard from subscribers of his newsletter that he’s now embraced the idea of people doing inktober digitally, to the point of selling digital brushes for inktober. I’m sure some will call this “backsliding” or “money grubbing” because people aren’t allowed to change their minds or update their statements.

For weeks I’ve been torn on what to do, not being able to solidify one stance over another. One minute I thought #JusticeForAlphonsoDunn then I wonder “Wait maybe I should look again?” to “But wait, those are way too similar!” Having splinters in my arse from sitting on the fence for so long. The longer this went on, however, I began to realise that I can’t take one stance over another. This case is far too muddy and complicated. I don’t have enough sufficient knowledge or evidence. Nor do any of you. We literally only have Dunn’s video to go on. While it’s a good start, it’s not enough to be taken 100% as gospel when it’s the only thing to hand. 

As previously mentioned, a lot of artists have decided to not take part in Inktober at all, or follow different prompt lists. That’s completely fine. A lot of them are based around a specific theme: halloween, kinky stuff, bears, transformers, OCs, Disney or whatever. That has massive appeal. I just can’d do it myself. I prefer the focus on random words, rather than all centred on a single subject; allowing me to be creative with my ideas and execution. I actually did try to make a list of my own random words. Problem is, I worried that because I was choosing my own, I might be subconsciously bias towards certain prompts and not truly challenging myself. Even narrowing down my options was taking too long. In the end…. I’ve decided to just do the official prompts again this year.

For me, that’s what it ultimately came down to. TIME. It’s the middle of September. I can’t afford to wait for the court case to be settled. No other prominent artists I respect have released their own prompt lists. I know there’s been some shitty people who are condemning this choice. Attacking others, accusing them of supporting plagiarism, looking to block anyone who does the official prompts. Even trying to make this a racial issue. Just…. no. 

If someone doesn’t want to take part in Inktober, that’s fine. If someone wants to do the official prompts, that’s fine. If someone wants to do their own prompts, that’s fine.

Don’t go around aggressively making snap judgements or accusing people of taking a side. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable. This has been a shit year, let people enjoy something.

If you look at this situation and it makes you feel angry, and you don’t feel comfortable in taking part in a challenge because of it’s creator. I get that, I literally get that. It’s why I haven't done Mermay. And please don’t mention Pinktober, I’m aware of it, but given his insta video on the subject and the things he said, I quickly came to the conclusion that I can’t take this person seriously. I’m sure this might make me seem hypocritical, but how this differs, if only for me, is the sheer amount Inktober means to me. It’s more than a simple challenge. Inktober's the one thing I’ve been most excited about all year. As it was ruined for me in 2019, when I lost my home and I didn't get to complete every prompt. (Long story, I’m okay now). As we all know, 2020, has been an AWFUL year. We’ve got to take whatever joy we can. As I’ve looked longer at the official prompts, I found ideas I’m really excited for. 

Once I started to really dedicate myself to it, it became a massive event. I hype myself up as I prepare for the busy month. Buy in supplies, clean the house and workspace, cook and freeze meals in bulk to save time, printing off a sheet that allows me to jot down ideas as I plan ahead.  Then once it’s done, after so much work, it makes the reward all the sweeter: Ordering a takeaway, celebrating a great halloween night and still rocking those vibes throughout November. Feeling proud of myself for doing it and seeing myself improve my technique, discipline and earning a few lie-ins to make up for the sleep I lost working. I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas. That said, don’t think that there’s something wrong with you when you understandably can’t dedicate that amount time for a simple art challenge. If anything that’s plenty of reason to why you’re smarter than me. You have a life and don’t push yourself too much.

Now, I need to crack on with the preparations. If you want to boycott Jake Parker, just not buying any of his products should be enough. Doing the inktober challenge doesn't bring attention to him, as I doubt most people even know him as the creator, nor does it even line his pockets. I just hate how cancel culture can do such serious damage like this and then try and put pressure on others to act accordingly without even doing any research themselves. 

As long as you’re not harassing anybody. Just do what YOU want to do. That’s fine. 

[spamzineglasgow]

(HOT TAKE) Notes on a Conditional Form by The 1975, part 1

In the first instalment of a two part dialogic HOT TAKE of The 1975′s latest album, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit, 2020), Maria Sledmere writes to musician and critic Scott Morrison with meditations on the controversial motormouth and prince of sincerity that is Matty Healy, the poetics of wrongness, millennial digression and what it means to play and compose from the middle.

Dear Scott,

> So we have agreed to write something on The 1975’s fourth studio album, Notes on a Conditional Form (Dirty Hit/Polydor). I have been traipsing around the various necropoli of Glasgow on my state-sanctioned walks this week, listening to the long meandering 80-minute world of it, disentangling my headphones from the overgrown ferns, caught between the living and dead. Can you have a long world, a sprawling fantasia, when ‘the world’ feels increasingly shortened, small, boiled down to its ‘essentials’? Let’s go around the world in 80 minutes, the band seem to say, take this short-circuit to the infinite with me. I like that; I don’t even need a boat, just a half-arsed WiFi connection and a will to download. I’m really excited to be talking with you, writing you both about this; it’s an honour to connect our thoughts. I want writing right now to feel a bit like listening, so I write this listening. When my friend Katy slid into my DMs on a Monday morning with ‘omg the 1975 album starts with greta?????????’ and then ‘what on earth is the genre of this album ?!’ I just knew it had to happen, this writing-listening, because I was equally alarmed and charmed by the cognitive dissonance of that fall from Greta’s soft, yet urgent call to rebel (‘The 1975’), into ‘People’ with its parodic refrain of post-punk hedonism that would eat Fat White Family on a Dadaesque meal-deal platter ‘WELL, GIRLS, FOOD, GEAR [...] Yeah, woo, yeah, that’s right’. Scott, you and I went to see The 1975 play at the Hydro on the 1st of March, my last gig before lockdown. I’d been up all night drinking straight gin and doing cartwheels and crying on my friend’s carpet, and the sleeplessness made everything all the more lush and intense. Those slogans, the theatrical backdrops, the dancers, the lights, the travellator! Everything so EXTRA, what a JOURNEY. And well, it would be rude of me not to invite you to contribute to this conversation, as a thank you for the ticket but also because of your fortunate (and probably unusual) positioning as both a classically trained musician (with a fine-tuned listening ear) and fervent fan of the band (readers, Scott messaged me with pictures of pre-ordered vinyl to prove it).

> It seems impossible to begin this dialogue without first addressing the FRAUGHT and oft~problematic question of Matty Healy, the band’s frontman, variously described as ‘the enfant terrible of pop-rock’ and ‘outspoken avatar’ (Sam Sodomsky, Pitchfork), ‘enigmatic deity’ (Douglas Greenwood for i-D), ‘a charismatic thirty-one-year-old’ and ‘scrawny’, rock star ‘archetype’, not to mention ‘avatar of modern authenticity, wit, and flamboyance’ (Carrie Battan, The New Yorker). ‘Divisive motormouth or voice of a generation?’ asks Dorian Lynskey with (fair enough) somewhat tired provocation in The Guardian, as if you could have one without the other, these days. ‘There are’, writes Dan Stubbs for The NME, ‘as many Matty Healys here as there are musical styles’. So far, so postmodern, so elliptical, so everything/yeah/woo/whatever/that’s right. Come to think of it, it makes sense for The 1975 to draft in Greta Thunberg to read her climate speech over the opening eponymous track. Both Matty and Greta, for divergent yet somehow intersecting reasons, suffer the troublesome, universalising label of voice of a generation. Why not join forces to exploit this label, to put out a message? I’ve always thought of pop music as a kind of potential broadcast, a hypnotic, smooth space for desire’s traversal and recalibration. More on that later, maybe. What do you think?

> You can imagine Matty leaping out of a cryptic, post-internet Cocteau novelette (if not then straight onto James Cordon’s studio desk), emoji streaming from his fingertips like the lightning that Justine wields in Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia (2011); but the terrifying candour of the enfant terrible is also his propensity to wax lyrical on another (bear with my clickhole) YouTube interview about his thoughts on Situationism and the Snapchat generation. It feels relevant to mention cinema right now, if only in passing, because this album is full of cinematic moments: strings and swells worthy of Weyes Blood’s latest paean to the movies, but also a Disneyfication of sentiment clotted and packed between house tracks, ballads and rarefied indie hits. Nobody does the interlude quite like The 1975. Maybe more on that later, also.

> Where do I start though, how to really write about this, how to attain something like necessary distance in the space of a writing-listening? Matty Healy, I suppose, like SPAM’s celebrated authorial mascot, Tom McCarthy, poses the same problem of response: how to write about an artist whose own critical commentary is like an eloquent, overzealous and self-devouring, carnivorous vine of opinion?  

> Now, let’s not turn this into a discussion about who wears pinstripes better (we can leave that to readers - these are total Notes from the Watercooler levels of quiche). There seems to be this obsession with pinning (excuse the pun) Matty down to a flat surface of multiples: a moodboard, avatar, placeholder for automatic cancellation. He’s the soft cork you wanna prod your anxieties through and call it identity, you wanna provoke into saying something bizarrely, painfully true about life ‘as it is now’. Healy himself quips self-referentially, ‘a millennial that babyboomers like’. I don’t really know where to start really, not even on Matty; my brain is all over the place and I can’t find a critical place to settle. I’m lost in the fog and the stripes, some stars also; I haven’t even washed my hair for a week. Funnily enough, in 2018 for SPAM’s #7 Prom Date issue I wrote a poem called ‘Just Messing Around’ where the speaker mentions ‘pinning my eye to the right side / of matt healy’s hair all shaved / & serene’ and you don’t really know if it’s the eye that’s shaved or the hair, but both I guess offer different kinds of vision. Every time I google the man, IRL Matty I mean, I am offered a candied proliferation of alluring headlines: ‘The 1975’s Matty Healy opens up on his beef with Imagine Dragons’, ‘The 1975’s Matty Healy savagely destroys Maroon 5 over plagiarism claims’. Perhaps the whole point is to define (or slay?) by negation. Hey, I’ll write another poem. The opening sentence comes from Matty’s recent Guardian interview.

Superstar

I’m not an avocado, not everyone thinks I’m amazing. That’s why they call me the avocado, baby was a song released by Los Campesinos! in 2013, same year as the 1975’s debut. In the am I have been wanting to listen and Andy puts up a meme like ‘The 1975 names their albums stuff like “A Treatise on Epistemological Suffering” and then spends 2 hours singing about how hard it is to be 26’ and I reply being 26 IS epistemological suffering (isn’t that the affirmative dismissal contained in the title, ‘Yeah I Know’) I mean only yesterday I had to ask myself if it’s true you can wish on 11:11 or take zinc to improve your immune system or use an expired provisional license to buy alcohol like why are they even still asking I thought indie had died after that excruciating Hadouken! song called ‘Superstar’ which was all like You don’t like my scene / You don’t like my song / Well, if you Somewhere I’ve done something wrong it seems a delirious, 3-minute scold of the retro infinitude of scarf-wearing cunts with haircuts, and yeah sure kids dressed as emos rapping to rave is not the end of the world, per se, similarly I had to ask myself is there a life in academia is there a wage here or there, like the Talking Heads song And you may ask yourself, well How did I get here? Good thing I turn 27 next month Timothy Morton often uses the refrain, this is not my beautiful house this is not my beautiful wife to refer to those moments you find yourself caught in the irony loop and that’s dark ecology the closer you are the stranger it feels like slice me in half I’ll fall out with more questions you can plant in the soil like a stone or stoner, just one more drag of does it offend you, yeah? will I live and die in a band Matty sings the sweet green meat of my much-too-old -and-such-youthful experience of adding healthy fat to conference dialogue, like ‘Avocado, Baby’ was released on a record called No Blues I believe a large automobile is hurtling towards me now in negative space and the driver is crooning Elvis and reciting my funding conditions and everything feels like there aren’t not still people who believe the new culture of content is a space ‘over there’ and you can still have earnest power ballads about love if you want them =/ to cancel (too many tabs don’t make a tableau but in the future facebook has a paywall) and fame is a drag the pressure we put on the atmosphere, like somewhere you’re alive and still amazing asking wtf I’m reading this novel by Roberto Bolaño set partly in 1975 before we had internet it seems poets got laid a lot that year in Mexico City before I was born to pick up video calls with a spliff in one hand in the splendid, essential heat like a difficult knife in my side you can put me on toast, grind the pepper over me gently and say fucking hell this has taken forever.

> I guess I want or wanted to begin with this question of difficulty that rises when responding to Notes on a Conditional Form. How do you approach an album whose delayed release places it in a position of considerable hype, an album whose world tour and promotion is again delayed by global pandemic, an album shrouded in the ever-shifting controversy of Matty’s persona, an album whose length and sonic variety risks collapse into litanies of zany superlative and necrophilic attempts to revive musical category as vaguely relevant here? As beautiful as it is to catalogue the offbeat Pinegrove vibes of ‘Roadkill’, the shoegaze croons of ‘Then Because She Goes’ and the pop-punk, chord-bright euphoria of ‘Me & You Together Song’, I could keep going and going with this. I could just list and just list this. The album is a generous offering: a tribute to the album as form in an age where attention tapers away on high-streaming playlists set to conditioned, circadian moods curated by the likes of Spotify or Apple Music. The album is a Borgesian plenitude of multiple pathways, multiple timelines, infinite feed, choose your own adventure; a hypertext of cultural reference almost worthy of Manic Street Preachers at their Richey Edwards era of paranoid, intellectual peak; a metamodernist feat of oscillation between irony and sincerity, an extended tract, a drunk millennial ramble, a journey that loops from house party to club basement to the streams of sexuality repressed and expressed encounter...and yet. It is both more and less than these things. In trying to capture Notes on a Conditional Form with some pithy, journalist’s statement, I’m doing it all wrong.

> Sidenote: I recently listened to Rachel Zucker give a 2016 lecture on ‘The Poetics of Wrongness’ as part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. She makes a case for wrongness in poetry and critique, rejects the poem of pithy essence, the short, pretty and to the point lyric whose meaning is easily digested in a greetings card, or A Level exam paper, say. ‘Instead of the Fabergé egg of the short lyric, I prefer the aesthetics of intractability and exhausted exhaustedness’, the mistakes, lags or aporia made along the way in one of these long and winding poems. Notes on a Conditional Form is full of what some might deem mistakes, digression, exhaustion; but it is also peppered with the gloss of almost perfect pop ‘hits’ such as ‘Me & You Together Song’ and ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’. A wrong poem should be, ‘ashamed and irreverent’, which feels like a decent description of The 1975’s general orientation towards artistic conception. There is cringe and incongruity, there is by all intents and purposes ‘too much of it’, whatever we mean by ‘it’. And yet, that is its beautiful poetics of wrongness, the sound of wrongness, which ‘prefers the stairs’ to the easy elevator pitch (as Zucker puts it), that ‘prefers a half-finishing crumbling stairwell to nowhere’. I like to think about this 1975 album as a kind of exhausting Escherian scene of shifting, crumbling stairwells, shuffling and reassembling against the glistering backdrop of the internet’s inverse void, where everything, literally everything is translated to a starry excess of 1s and 0s, our collective binary data, the white hot, unreadable howl of our noise. What do you think Scott, would Matty find this image agreeable? Does that matter?

> Pushing dear Matty aside, say what you like, let’s start (again) with the title: Notes on a Conditional Form. Following 2018’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, it’s fair to position these records as gestures towards philosophical statements ‘of the times’. Important to recognise the resistance to total or dominating knowledge built into the titles: these are not complete tracts or theses, but rather ‘a brief inquiry’ and ‘notes’. It’s obviously the ancient yet *hip* thing to do in capital-P Philosophy, to put out your statement on aesthetics and ethics, and I think The 1975 are playing with that tradition and its failure. You can imagine if his attention span were different, Matty Healy would’ve already written a PhD thesis on this stuff and published it as drunken bulletins on LiveJournal in 2007. As it stands, we have the smorgasbord sprawl of this eclectic record to get through in this cursèd year of 2020 — it’s not like we have much of anything better to do right now, when everything feels so futile, beyond reason and even the greatest human endeavour. Haha, woo, Yeah :’(((.

> Let’s stay in that conditional space between crying and laughter. Conditional form is interesting as a term, often used in grammar to refer to the ‘unreal past’ because it uses a past tense but does not actually refer to something that literally happened in the past: If I had texted him back, we would probably have gone to the gig that night. There’s something about the conditional as the ur-condition of the internet, the proliferating possibilities it offers and the hauntological strains of what could have been had we chosen x option over y, z, a, b, c, infinity...As millennials, we often make decisions by hedging, always caught in the conditional state of what it is to be. Hovering in the emotional shortcuts provided by dumb yellow icons, the poetics of abstraction. A verb form’s dalliance with uncertain reverb; and so we live our conditional lives.

> To push this further, we can say the internet is, as ever, Matty Healy’s natural habitat. In a recent podcast interview with Conor Oberst for The Face, Healy tells his favourite emo-country hero that ‘my natural environment by the time I started The 1975 was the fucking internet’. So how does that ecosystem play into the music? In a damning review for The Line of Best Fit, Claire Biddles concludes:

The 1975’s first three albums are ideal and distinct worlds to inhabit, each individually cohesive but situated in specific contexts — the anticipation of the small town, profundity in the face of vacuous fame, and the horror and isolation of late capitalism. Perhaps because of its broken genesis, Notes has no such common context, and ends up feeling flat, directionless and inessential, where its forebears felt vital, worthy of devoting a life to. For a band with proven dexterity in deftly capturing the nuances and quick changes of contemporary conversation, it is disheartening to witness them with nearly nothing of note to say.

That description — ‘flat, directionless and inessential’ — is kind of how I experience the internet right now, in the paradox of Web 2.0 becoming utterly essential, somehow, to how I live my life, how I love, how I am with friends. The internet as my ecosystem, my utility, my complete environment, my Imaginary — beyond the mere utility of a WiFi connection. Broken genesis might well describe the childhoods of those of us who grew up online, whose platforms collapsed around them, whose adolescent data was lost in the great ~accidental annihilation of the MySpace servers, whose identities were always already fractured, performed, anonymised or exquisitely personalised, deferred into only the (im)possible keystroke of utterance and trace, the fort-da play of MSN sign-ins. ‘My life is defined by a desire to be outward followed by a fear of being seen’, Matty says in a new short film for Apple Music, released in tandem with the album. The internet requires this chiaroscuro destiny: not to burn always with Baudelaire’s hard and gem-like flame (O to be an IRL flaneur beyond times of lockdown) but to endlessly flicker between the bright green light of presence and the shade of what once was called afk, away from keyboard. To live and burn in the gap between extroversion and introversion, to live in this conditional state of tendency. To express with emoji, send pics, is to both reveal and withhold something else, essential.

> I like albums to feel like worlds; I appreciate Biddles’ evocation of the cohesion experienced in the first three 1975 records. But perhaps it is a kind of violence to assume a world must have cohesion to exist. What is even meant by ‘common context’? What pressure are we putting on a singer, a band, a cultural moment to produce something familiar and harmonious, and to whom, at what scale? What does it mean to be the biggest band in the world...for a bit? How does that work when everything is dissonance, transience, noise, interference; both this and not-this; when life itself is lived as the flat traversal of a millioning existential terrains that seem to collapse into this nowness in which I feel myself sliding forever? Can anyone weigh-in on what it means to make music, art or writing that’s ‘worthy of devoting a life to’, because the gravity and force of that condition for good art, good pop, seduces me so.

> Maybe the point is to always be in the middle, to never quite start to write about The 1975, to find yourself always already writing about this album because this album was always already writing about your life. I have said nobody does the interlude quite like The 1975, but I was being coy, because the hottest twentieth-century philosophical double act, Deleuze and Guattari (haters gonna hate), do the interlude rather nicely. The point of a rhizome being ‘no beginning or end [...] always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo’ as they write in A Thousand Plateaus (1980). I see the musical interlude of a pop record, the instrumental moment without lyric, as a kind of middling gesture that places the listener in that conditional state of presence and absence, a hinge between songs, times and narrative moments. Maybe my favourite moment in A Thousand Plateaus is the statement: ‘RHIZOMATICS = POP ANALYSIS, even if the people have other things to do besides read it, even if the blocks of academic culture or pseudoscien-tificity in it are still too painful or ponderous’. Painful or ponderous might be a fair critique levelled at the enfant terrible vibes of Matty’s lyrics and generic pick’n’mix, but isn’t this tactic a kind of swerving punch at the categorical violence that keeps people out of academia, that keeps academic discourse so often stale in the first place? Unlike most journal articles, let’s face it, pop reaches ‘“the people”’. Perhaps Notes on a Conditional Form is the rhizomatic sprawl of the myriad we need as an alternative to institutional hierarchy, ring-fencing and the language games of academia. Surely the title is a reference to the very ‘pseudoscient-tificity’ D&G mention? I’m gonna quote Richard Scott’s blurb to Colin Herd’s 2019 poetry collection, You Name It here (not least because the indie publishers, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, come straight out of Manchester, home to The 1975, and because Herd’s poetic spirit is pure pop generosity with a platter of theory on the side), because I want to say similar things of this album: ‘Colin Herd’s poems are masterpieces of variousness. They are talismans against Macho demons. They are snatches of theory operating under lavish spills of language’. The good thing about Herd’s poetry and Matty Healy’s lyrics is that the impulse towards romantic or florid expression is always tapered by an interest in the mundane and everyday. Healy is always singing about pissing or buying clothes online or, as on ‘The Birthday Party’, singing about ‘a place I’ve been going’ that seems to consist of the lonely, infinite regress of conversations about seeing friends and watching someone drink kombucha while buying, in the convenient life of rhyme, Ed Ruscha prints.

Ed Ruscher, Cold Beer, Beautiful Girls (2009)

> So what kind of listening does this rhizomatic sprawl demand — does it expand beyond the banal or find a holding space there, a heaven of affect chilled to late-modernity’s crisp perfection? ‘The End (Music For Cars)’ is a luxurious, Hollywood ‘soaring’ moment, all strings and swells, fucking woodwind, and comes as the third track on the album, where normally you’d place it as some kind of penultimate climax, the album’s landscape pan-out or big swelling screen kiss in three-dimensional rotation. The band’s ‘Music For Cars’ era comprises their two most recent records, and you have to take it as a nod to Brian Eno’s 1978 ambient classic Ambient 1: Music for Airports (Matty recently interviewed Eno again for The Face, cool). The thing about cars is you drive around in them, you follow rules but also whims and desires, convictions; you choose to join others or you pursue the selfish acceleration (‘People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles’ goes the laconic teenage refrain in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1985 debut novel Less Than Zero). You only listen to music half-attentively; you don’t listen close enough to trade in souls. Are we being invited to experience this album as an ambient disruption of figure and ground, presence and absence, here and there, space and place, intimacy and despondency? Driving feels increasingly ‘directionless and inessential’ when the scale effects and obscenities of the anthropocene, of covid and other late-capitalist crises loom in our vision, when the sign systems we used to navigate our lives by seem to shimmer out of focus, or pixelate and deteriorate through endless memetic replication... You can’t help feel like Biddles review kind of misses the point.

Sylvano Bussoti, Five Pieces for Piano for David Tudor (1959)

> What point would that be though, in a world of rhizomatic overlap and intersecting, middling lines, a direction without seeming end? I love the approximation at work when Biddles writes, ‘with nearly nothing of note to say’, because that seems to be a possibility condition for writing in the age of the internet. To write in a way that is almost less than zero and loop back upon some kind of infinity, yet keep it in 2-step. I think back to Rachel Zucker’s image of the half-finished crumbling stairwell, and feel an amiable sense of approval towards this band who always work between the registers of diary, confession, advertising, provocative sloganeering and faux-didactics, never quite settling in to specifically tell you this particular story. It’s all mess, and it’s awful and delicious, I’m sorry. ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’ is the title of track 13 on the album: that movement between nothing and everything feels like the absolutist, absurdist conditions of ‘truth’ possibility in the Trumpocene/age of so-called ‘post-truth’. ‘Life feels like a lie, I need something to be true’, Healy sings with strained conviction in the song’s opening. But what is at stake in this truth? ‘I never fucked in a car, I was lying’, goes the line, referring back to the dramatic in medias res opening to ‘Love It If We Made It’, notable banger from A Brief Inquiry…: ‘We’re fucking in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it’. If lying is a pun on telling a mistruth or laying back, practically sexless in a passive state, there’s a deliberate play on apathy, agency and distortion here. It’s something Matty seems snagged on. On ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’ he collapses aesthetic superficiality, capital’s lyric abstraction (‘Oh, what’s a fiver?’) and generalised crisis into this (un)conscious desire for shutdown, expressed in fragmentary bullets of needing-to-know-and-not-know: ‘Is that designer? Is that on fire? Am I a liar? Oh, will this help me lay down?’ And then that impassioned refrain, processed through vocal distortion as if to enact the difficulty in clarity as overcome somehow by the sheer making of noise: ‘Belief and saying something / And saying something / And saying something’. It’s the endless, driving recursion of our lives online, online.

> Back to ‘The End (Music for Cars)’ which really is the middle of the beginning. It’s weird to listen to songs about driving and lying down in the middle of lockdown, drowning in the bloat of social media, on top of our ongoing climate emergency (yeah, remember that, it’s still happening), where high-carbon travel feels like an exhausted, almost impossible concept. A musician complaining about travelling is an age-old subject for a song, but this feels just as much about living in the in-between times of the internet (remember the sweet naivety of the information superhighway) as much as the great Road, for which Kerouac longed as much as Springsteen, Dylan, or Lana Del Rey. Is Matty Healy homesick though? ‘Get somewhere, change my mind, eh / Get somewhere but don’t find it / I don’t find what I’m looking for’. It’s all ‘(out there)’ as the parenthetical refrain goes, but maybe ‘out there’, outside, is the maddening supplement, as Derrida would say, to our lives online, thus revealing their mutual, entwined dependency. Imagine the M6 but tangled up crazily, zanily, like one of those Sylvano Bussoti scores. It’s not like you’re trying to get home, get back, exactly. It’s not like you can just click back on your browser and erase that trace of the touch that enacts it. That’s the weird-ass sensation of being an ecological being: ‘Wherever you go, there you are’, writes Tim Morton in Being Ecological (2018). We’re all pretty alien, even to ourselves.

> If life feels like a lie, as Matty sings, does it matter anymore whether it is or not? Or, to pose the question differently, how do we feel into, attune to something like ‘truth’, a shared reality or feeling? ‘Out there’ is only a state of ellipsis [...] a vine extended, something for the listener, user, consumer and/or human to cling to — or be strangled by. In the aforementioned Apple Music video, Matty takes away the canvas and presents the frame beneath, in a gesture that is comically overwrought with Duchampian pretention around the state and context of the artwork itself. ‘Sometimes I think what is the point of...it’s not my atheism coming out, it’s just my being human coming out’, he muses. The phrase ‘coming out’, with its connotations of closeting, shame and cocoon-like emergence is intriguing here. In a dehumanising, post-internet world of neoliberalism and its attendant microfascisms, its commodification of all kinds of art, its easythink translation of poetry-to-advertising, what would it mean to come out as human after, or better still, in the middle of all this? It’s significant that he trails off after ‘the point of…’, for surely the point itself (of the art?) would be to find yourself here, there, right in the middle of it all. And then in ‘Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied’, it’s like Matty is calling us back from that epistemological and ontological boiling point of knowing and being, like in singing we could go along, we could feel present and ‘true’ again, even with friction and difference. We gotta take hold, cool ourselves down from the rhetoric and into warm emotion, the smell of paint, erotic vibration of bass, in a manner of speaking.

> What if the mode of inquiry were not to investigate but rather to follow the lines of flight, to riff on this world where narrative arcs and chains are replaced by the multiple possibilities of hallucinatory experience, what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end’? To just desire and trace it. This, Scott, is where you come in (and I finally shut up to listen). There is so much more to write about this album, echo for echo, and I feel like I’ve only begun the tracing which was already beginning: I want to know your thoughts on The 1975 and America, on gender and genre, on bodies and football and friendship, on political engagement, those house beats, on the beautiful, sultry appearance of Phoebe (fucking) Bridgers, on sincerity, on the question of ‘What Should I Say’...It’s been playing on my mind that I will never say what I want to, or should, or would say of this album, but this perhaps is what I would otherwise have said. I give you my notes in conditional form.

Read part 2 of our review in Scott Morrison’s response here.

Notes on a Conditional Form is out now and available to order. 

~

Text: Maria Sledmere

Published: 23/6/20

[madelinerhetoricandethics]

What Does it Mean to Be a Good Person?

What does it mean to be a good person? Are you willing to change from being a bad person to a good person? How does being a good or bad person inform who I am as a writer? Who will I be in the future? What is next for me? Over the course of this semester, I have explored the idea of what it means to be a good person.

This past semester a girl in one of my classes asked me for assistance on an assignment. I had my topic ingrained into my brain and I was absolutely thrilled to analyze Beyoncé as a twenty-first-century feminist. I pride myself on the fact that my work and writing pieces are my own thoughts and ideas, therefore making me a strong writer. I had met with my teacher to discuss my topic as well as go over key details of a TED talk Beyoncé used in one of her major songs. I could not wait to write. In class, this girl and I were assigned to be peer review partners and I sent her my finalized draft. She never sent me hers. Then when the papers were due we both handed ours in. She told me we ironically we had the same topic, even though I had mentioned mine to her earlier in the semester. I thought to myself “oh wow, that’s interesting,” but never really thought anything of it. Weeks go by. Then I am sent an email saying my paper was similar to another student in the class. She copied me. I felt completely taken advantage of. I went out of my way to help her and instead of thanking me she took my piece and copied it. I had never been in such a position I was at a loss. Why would she copy me? Why would she risk both of us getting in trouble? I immediately arranged a meeting with my teacher and explained the timeline of events to her. Plagiarizing a paper is one of the most common errors that occur on college campuses worldwide I just never would have thought it would happen to me. My professor recognized the error and thought it was very strange how examples we had to discuss ended up in the other girl's paper and apologized. Now, when I see the girl it is extremely awkward. She never apologized. She never owned up to her fault. I do not even know what happened to her in this situation. Did she get a zero? What kind of person does that make her? She put my name on the line and barely knows me. I replay this situation in my head most days. Was it my fault that I sent her my paper even though we were peer review partners? Should I have asked for the draft? What could I have done differently? Do you think she learned from this experience? Having had this happen to me I look to the Coles reading for some sort of explanation, but I just could not find one. How could someone I am aquatinted with actively choose to copy me? I had to let it go and move on. Now every time I have to read other peoples work or conduct peer review I give them feedback and I ask questions. I take my writing, my ideas, and thoughts very seriously because at the end of the day they are mind. My mom told me it happens in business all the time, but to me, this was not business; this was a school assignment, this was a grade and that it would define me. I ended up getting an A.

Robert Coles analyzed the idea if intellect is attributed to our character and whether or not being smart makes you a good person. Based on his experience with his student he found this claim to be false. His goal was to, “pursue the discussion, applaud her for taking on a large subject in a forthright, incisive manner, and tell her she was right in understanding that moral reasoning is not to be equated with moral conduct (Coles, 1995). Most people assume if you are a smart person, you will know how to conduct yourself in a social setting, therefore making you a good person, but that is not necessarily true. Coles’ student brought up a good point she asked him, “what’s the point of knowing good if you don’t keep trying to become a good person” (Coles, 1995). She made a fair point here, but she can not speak for others experience. The male student she encountered was extremely smart but was unable to channel his wit into his character. He was able to study and get straight A’s, but never knew the proper way to interact with women and his peers. It is upsetting to see the lack of character in a person, but this student is who he is based on his experience and genetics. He was not open to making a change he was fine with his life and was going to continue to be smart, but never live up to his full potential to be a good person. In 2017, HarperCollins withdrew the digital version of Monica Crowley’s book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened?” from all retailers due to the realization she had plagiarized from Wikipedia and other newspaper articles. The book discussed Barack Obama’s presidential term as well as his policies and was quite the success. She sold over 20,000 hardcover copies and was also re-written in multiple languages. Reporters have re-evaluated her other work and have found plagiarism in her own dissertation, in which she copied multiple examples of passages from other scholarly works. After our experience with the ELI students, I have realized that all people are different. This one student, Joy, I spoke to told me her Chinese teacher encouraged her to cheat on her version of the SATs. I was completely shocked. If an American student were caught cheating on the SATs, they would be given a zero, and you can potentially be banned from the College Board.

A writer is defined as a person who has written a particular text, a person who writes books, stories, or articles as a job or regular occupation or a person who writes in a specified way. During my four years at Syracuse University being a writing major has opened my eyes to the field. I believe that to be a writer you have a responsibility to the arts. Last year in one of my classes I wrote a controversial piece about my own personal experience. The story was about a time in my life that basically felt like I was at war with my family. I felt completely isolated and misunderstood by my parents to the point I would do anything to upset them. We were instructed to share our pieces in class. I am not a very outspoken person especially when it comes to sharing my own work. It took me many years to have the courage and to believe in my own writing pieces. Through my supportive professor, I was able to create this masterpiece, an explanation of my thoughts and feelings during this critical time period in my life. I remember that class period like no other. It was the day I had to read my piece. I had to show my true color to my peers and hear their feedback. I wanted to skip. I wanted to cry. I tried to think of any excuse I could, but it was too late. I took a deep breath and started reading my story. As it went on I glanced around the room. Everyone was invested. Eyes were wide and mouths were open. As I finished they were stunned. They wanted to know more and were surprised that such an experience had happened to me. Looking back on the reflective work I did that semester I found that I am a writer.

I told my truth and I learned to believe in my own work. I had made it my own art form my own way to express my feelings. I have found that when you are a writer you carry a type of ethical responsibility because you are the bearer of major information and in turn, keeping silent would hinder the shared knowledge. The New York Times claims that it “pays to be a writer,” but ironically writing was never considered a lucrative career choice. A recent survey claims that the median pay for full-time writers ranges from $20,000 and gradually increased from 2017-2019. A few years ago writing for a magazine or a newspaper used to be a solid source for additional income, but due to the decline of freelance journalism, there is less of an opportunity for authors to write for pay. Now that everything is digital writers are able to freelance on their own and all they need is a computer. This claim suggests that most people can write and become a writer if they choose to. Based on my personal experience I think a writer is more than just their computer or platform they have to have a passion for it.

Roy believes that “you have a platform, use it,” but find a way to make it your own and implement your own ideas. It is a writers job to write their feelings and thoughts even in a world that may disagree. This course and exploration have taught me that it is okay to have a differing opinion than others, but in order to be a good writer, I need to stand by my decisions. I have found through my experience that writing is a complicated art because it involves opinions and facts. I think being a good writer is all about taking risks and providing new and different perspectives. In addition, Roy also mentions the idea of “professionalizing the business protest,” as she describes the term “writer-activist.” She highlights the problem of being a writer-activist within the writing world professionally. Roy’s main point is that writers are ethically bound to be emotionally involved in certain issues because they are reporting about human beings. As a millennial, it is our job to offer our interpretation and being activists in our own community. In Roy’s reading, she also discusses how whether or not speaking out is a positive or negative thing.

As a child, you are taught to mind your own business and not get involved, but also told: “if you see something, say something.” In a way these two saying contradict each other. Witnessing an act of crime is still taking part in it. A person is just as involved in this situation as if they committed the actual crime; they become a key witness, a point-person in this scenario. It is assumed that keeping quiet will save you from trouble, but if anything it leads to further questioning of your character. I think not speaking up is the wrong course of action. If you see something, you need to say something. Our justice system is extremely cruel and daily innocent people end up in jail due to "not speaking out." Roy discusses how accountability is a significant factor in the way people present themselves and justify their actions. I wanted to further investigate this idea of speaking out vs. not saying anything and there have been multiple discussions on, which is ethical.

This course has taught me to not only reflect on myself but listen to the ideas of others. Based on the coursework, analyzing texts and hearing from my peers I have found that being “a good person,” means you are open. You are open to learning and transforming. You are a yes person, meaning you are willing to try new things and hear peoples ideas. Most people assume that being a good person stems from nature, but I have found it comes from nature and nurture. Who you are as a person is what defines your decision as well as your past. I know for myself who I am as a person is because of the many decisions I have made in the past whether they are good or bad they have all shaped me to who I am today. I have taken this class as a reflective experience as well because it has given me the opportunity to figure out the type of person I am and who I hope to be in the future. Throughout the readings of Coles and Roy, I wanted to explore the idea of being a good person, but also what defines a good writer. Being that I am a writing major, I do more than just write I have become an informant. I write for pleasure, I write for academic reason, I write for the yearbook, but I also write to tell a story and to tell my truth. As I sat down to write this piece and think about everything, I have done to make me a twenty-two-year-old washed up senior I have found that I would not want to change a thing about myself. Graduation is right around the corner, which is beyond frightening and my next question is what now? Who will I be? I am open to learning new ideas and shifting perspectives on certain issues, but at this point, I am who I am and I believe I am a good person.

[tvdas]

Banning Evil

In the Shadow of Christchurch, Quasi-Religious Myths Can Lead Us Astray

written by Michael Shermer

On March 15, a 28-year old an Australian gunman named Brenton Tarrant allegedly opened fire in two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, killing 50 and wounding 50 more. It was the worst mass shooting in the history of that country. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who was rightly praised for her response to the murders, declared: “While the nation grapples with a form of grief and anger that we have not experienced before, we are seeking answers.”

One answer took form a week later, when Ms. Ardern announced legislation that would ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons, assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Will such gun-control measures work to reduce gun crime? Maybe. They did in Australia following a 1996 mass shooting in Tasmania in which 35 people were murdered. A 2006 follow-up study showed that in the 18 years prior to the ban, there had been 13 mass shootings. But in the decade following, there had been none. Gun culture is different in every country. But there is at least an arguable case to be made that the newly announced controls will make New Zealand a safer country.

But banning certain tools that may be used to commit murder is one thing. Tarrant’s rampage also has led to calls to block ideas that allegedly fuel murderous extremism. In the immediate aftermath of tragedy, it is understandable that every conceivable means should be employed to prevent a recurrence. But censorship is almost invariably the wrong response to evil actions. You cannot ban evil.

Before the killings, Tarrant authored a rambling 74-page manifesto titled The Great Replacement. The document is difficult to find online, as most platforms took to blocking it as soon as its appearance was flagged. I was quick to grab a copy early on, however, because such documents inform my longstanding research into extremist groups and ideologies.

The Great Replacement was inspired by a 2012 book of the same title by the French author Renaud Camus—a right-wing conspiracy theorist who claims that white French Catholics in particular, and white Christian Europeans in general, are being systematically replaced by people of non-European descent, especially from Africa and the Middle East, through immigration and higher birth rates. The manifesto is filled with white supremacist fearmongering. “If there is one thing I want you to remember from these writings, it’s that the birthrates must change,” the author tells his audience (whom he presumes to be white). “Even if we were to deport all Non-Europeans from our lands tomorrow, the European people would still be spiraling into decay and eventual death.” The result, he concludes apocalyptically, is “white genocide.”

Like many cranks and haters of this type, Tarrant has a weakness for codes and slogans. He references the number 14 to indicate the 14-word slogan originally coined by white supremacist David Lane while imprisoned for his role in the 1984 murder of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Lane, for his part, explicitly extolled the writings of white supremacist William Pierce, who in turn inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people.

Accusations of racism and white supremacism are thrown around so casually these days that the meaning of these terms has become diluted and ambiguous. So, for clarity, I will state the obvious by emphasizing that the writings of Tarrant, Lane and Pierce all reflect attitudes that are completely racist and hateful, as such terms are properly used.

And yes, there is a connection with Nazism. The number 14 is sometimes rendered as 14/88, with the 8’s representing the eighth letter of the alphabet—H—and 88 or HH standing for Heil Hitler. Lane, who died in 2007, was inspired by Mein Kampf, in which the Nazi Party leader declared: “What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe.”

But even here, the bibliographical trail of hatred doesn’t end—because Hitler copied much of his anti-Semitic conspiracism from The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a tragically popular hoaxed document purporting to record the proceedings of a secret meeting of Jews plotting global domination. Nor was the Protocols itself conceived out of thin air: It was plagiarized from Biarritz, a luridly anti-Semitic 19th-century novel; and a propaganda tract called Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, which had been written by a French lawyer as an act of protest against Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte; both of which, in turn, drew on anti-Semitic tropes going back to Roman times. So if you’re looking to root out and ban the political ideology that produces Jew hatred, you’re going to have to purge whole library shelves. The same goes for Islamophobia, anti-black racism, and virtually every other kind of bigotry you could name.

And yet, there are those who argue that mass censorship is justified in the name of heading off hateful indoctrination. That group apparently would include leaders of the Whitcoulls bookstore chain in New Zealand. Late last week, the company announced it was banning one popular book, “in light of some extremely disturbing material being circulated prior, during and after the Christchurch attacks.” Yet the book wasn’t Mein Kampf, which you can still buy on the company’s site for $44.95—or anything of its ilk. Rather, the chain is boycotting Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, a self-help book that has no connection at all with the mosque attacks or their perpetrator.

What is the “extremely disturbing material” in Peterson’s book? Whitcoulls doesn’t say. I’ve read the entire book, along with much of the University of Toronto professor’s 1999 massive first book, Maps of Meaning. And I’ve watched many of his YouTube videos and media interviews. I have yet to find anything remotely reminiscent of white supremacy, racism, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.

On Twitter, I suggested that those who think Peterson is the ideological culprit behind the New Zealand massacre have lost their minds. I added that I’m no toady for Jordan Peterson, inasmuch as I disagree with him on many subjects—including his theory of truth, and his largely uncritical endorsement of religious myths as an organizing principle for human cultures. But the banning of Peterson on any theory related to preventing mass murder doesn’t even rise to the level of wrong: It’s demonstrably absurd—akin to banning spoons and skateboards as a strategy to stave off prospective arsonists.

When I asked my social-media followers for examples of anything Peterson had said or done that could be construed as inviting mass murder, the only remotely relevant responses I got pointed to photos that random fans had taken with Peterson, one of which featured a guy sporting a t-shirt proclaiming himself to be an “Islamaphobe,” and another (more ambiguous) example of someone holding a Pepe the Frog banner. But this proves nothing. Peterson has taken photos with tens of thousands of people at public events in recent years. In a typical fan-photo cattle call, fans are cycled into frame with a celebrity roughly every five or six seconds—typically by handlers, not the celebrity acting in his or her personal capacity. I’ve done a number of these during book tours and can attest to the fact that it’s completely unrealistic to think that Peterson could screen the clothes worn by all these legions of photo seekers for ideological purity—even if this were something he aspired to do.

On March 23, I received an email from Change.org, the left-leaning political action group whose stated mission is to “empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see.” In this case, the change users wanted to see in response to the New Zealand massacre was… to ban PewDiePie from YouTube. “One of the largest platforms for white supremacist content is PewDiePie’s YouTube channel,” the petition informs us. “PewDiePie has on many occasions proven once and again to promote and affiliate himself with white supremacist and Nazi ideologies.” The petitioners then list the YouTuber’s alleged sins, including using the N-word, playing videos of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, and giving the Nazi heil in a video.

For those unaware, PewDiePie is a Swedish comedian and video game player named Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, whose YouTube channel has a massive following and whom Tarrant referenced in his manifesto (along with Candace Owens, Donald Trump and others). It is true that PewDiePie once used the N-word during a video game competition (and then apologized profusely for doing so). He also has used brief audio and video snippets of Nazi imagery as part of satirical responses to attacks against him that he lampooned as melodramatic. The idea that any of this betrays PewDiePie as a closet white supremicist is absurd. Even without Change.org’s urging, YouTube already has demonetized the videos of such avowedly anti-racist and anti-supremacist moderates as Dave Rubin and Gad Saad, as well as anti-anti-Semite conservatives such as Dennis Prager. YouTube is acting on an ideological hair trigger: If there were any evidence whatsoever that PewDiePie had expressed real Nazi sympathies, he would have been axed from the platform long ago.

Responding to evil by banning random controversial authors or YouTubers is completely irrational. But that doesn’t make it inexplicable. Manifestations of great evil provoke a desire to do something—anything—to reestablish moral order. Remember when millions of people tweeted #BringBackOurGirls after the terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped dozens of Nigerian students in 2014? Murderous rapists don’t give a fig about being mobbed on Twitter. But it made people feel useful for an instant—as if they had done something. We all entertain some version of this instinct in times of tragedy—a reflex satirized by The Onion in the days after 9/11 with the headline Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake.

Intertwined with this instinct is the idea that there is some abstract force called evil that exists in the cosmos, a force that we are all called upon to confront and defeat. As I argued in my 2003 book, The Science of Good and Evil, this belief—that pure evil exists separately from individuals—is a myth. “Evil” makes literal sense as an adjective, but not as a noun (except in a figurative sense), because there is no quantum of something called “evil” that exists in human hearts, or, indeed, anywhere else.

Thus concluded social psychologist Roy Baumeister, as reported in his 1997 book about serial killers and other career criminals, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. Ironically, Baumeister found that the myth of evil existing as a standalone force may, itself, lead societies to become more violent: “The myth encourages people to believe that they are good and will remain good no matter what, even if they perpetrate severe harm on their opponents. Thus, the myth of pure evil confers a kind of moral immunity on people who believe in it…belief in the myth is itself one recipe for evil, because it allows people to justify violent and oppressive actions. It allows evil to masquerade as good.”

This helps explain the grimly bizarre manner by which violent criminals and terrorists find ways to justify even the most horrifying and nihilistic acts. Consider this 1994 police record of Frederick Treesh, a spree killer from the Midwest who explained, “Other than the two we killed, the two we wounded, the woman we pistol-whipped, and the light bulbs we stuck in people’s mouths, [my accomplice and I] didn’t really hurt anybody.” After killing 33 boys the serial killer John Wayne Gacy explained: “I see myself more as a victim than as a perpetrator. I was cheated out of my childhood.”

Modern campaigns aimed at shutting down this or that speaker implicitly present evil as something that may be communicated from one person to another, like bacteria. By this model, censorship is akin to quarantine. But Baumeister tells us “you do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.” It is absolutely true that some extremist ideologies can encourage adherents to abandon the sense of restraint that Baumeister describes. But the campaign to ban the likes of Jordan Peterson and PewDiePie—individuals whose work bears no relationship at all to the extreme forms of hatred we should be most concerned about—suggests that censors aren’t actually thinking through such propositions. Instead, they seem to be operating on the idea of evil as a quasi-mystical force akin to Satan. In this conception, Peterson and PewDiePie are seen as carriers of evil, much like witches channeling demons from below, no matter that they never actually say or do anything evil in nature.

As Baumeister argued, this mythical idealization of evil as being an actual force in our universe, rather than a descriptor of human motivations, isn’t merely harmless ersatz spiritualism: It causes people to act worse, sometimes murderously so, by allowing them to imagine the locus of evil as lying completely outside their own intentions and actions.

Which gets to the (necessarily political) question of who should be identified, stigmatized, and even punished for being a “carrier” of evil? Who gets to define that class of people? Me? You? The majority? An evil-thought committee? The government? Social-media companies? We already have law enforcement and the military to deal with evil deeds. Controlling evil thoughts is far more problematic.

Campaigns aimed at banning evil in its own (mythical) right almost always include efforts to ban evil speech—or even, as in the aftermath of the New Zealand mass murder, speech from someone who has not said anything remotely evil, but is seen, in some vague sense, to be contaminated by evil. When western societies were religious, evil speech was tantamount to anti-Christian speech. In a secular age, we call it “hate speech,” a reformulation that does nothing to solve the always contentious issue of distinguishing between evil speech and free speech, and the problem of who gets to decide where one ends and the other begins.

It is my contention that we must protect speech no matter how hateful it may seem. The solution to hate speech is more speech. The counter to bad ideas is good ideas. The rebuttal to pseudoscience is better science. The answer to fake news is real news. The best way to refute alternative facts is with actual facts. This is just as true now as it was in the moment before 50 innocent Muslim lives were taken in New Zealand—even if our emotionally felt need to put a name and form to evil now makes this truth harder to see.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine, a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, and the author of The Moral Arc. 

[hoenn-hakase]

The Hosts in 20 Years

So there was  a prompt over on the subreddit and i thought I’d share my entry here.

Red: Was never one for the massive following he got. He did love to think that he was able to bring so many to the light of Helix's teachings, but they should be following HELIX not him. Used the fight with AJ to fake his death, and after getting Abe back home, his bro helped him find a good place to build a monastery hidden in the mountains. His followers are some of the most zealous, but he doesn't mind because he's the worst since it's a much smaller group. Abe and their mom are just glad to know where he is and write more often than risk visiting.

AJ: After "murdering Red", he had several years and a heck of a time proving his innocence on the matter. Honestly, he'd be proud to admit it if it didn't mean basically losing EVERYTHING either due to being hunted down by Red's followers (which he's had enough of that already) or the stigma from his friends and family to learn he'd actually killed someone, so he eventually managed to convince the courts that there wasn't enough evidence to say whether or not Red's reported death was his fault. While there is still speculation, he's managed to live a mostly quiet life. 20 years later, he's telling his adopted kid about his wild tales on the road and lauding himself how it's because of him that Johto is at least much safer than it used to be when the Church of Helix was at it's peak.

A-chan: If her addictions haven't killed her, after 20 years, she's probably been through rehab a few times on mandate. Her wild and reckless streak has toned down, but she's still quite the pistol you don't want to mess with. It's been debated for years just how much damage her and her team actually caused for Hoenn, whether talking about the societal structure, the economy, or property damage, and even more so in wondering if all their work was "for the better" or not. Gets compared to Alice a lot as far claims of totalitarianism goes, but no one can deny that Hoenn has at least been peaceful since she took out Aqua, Magma and the League.

Alice: Pokemon Professor, no surprise, but she is THE authority of Commewnist Kanto. Green is also a professor, usually the one dealing with starting trainers and such, but most kids know that if or when they're ready to go into an academic career instead of being just another trainer, they'll probably be meeting with her eventually.

Napoleon: Even if he doesn't like to show it, he's surprisingly close with those of his inner circle. His friends, his family, his Pokemon, he just seems to like traveling a lot with them or to visit them for some reason or another while keeping his life very private from the public. When he does show up though, it's usually as a major Sinnoh event (like the League games or Rapidash Races) or when opening new venue. He sure does still own a lot of different kinds of gambling venues (like his Aunt Gracie has a place named after her since she's long since retired as a Rhyhorn Rider) and he sure does know how to throw one hell of a party, but after 20 years he's not big on the dance riots. He still enjoys a good dance riot, and many will say to see any of the family dance is a real treat, but he tends to just feed off the energy of the room than participate.

Aooo: It is a mystery! 8O But seriously, while she does have a family to take care of, how she does so is anyone's guess since she doesn't work but instead will go off for hours by herself and somehow come back with stuff for them. With her wife being a big name movie star, most just assume that money isn't the issue, but where she goes all day leaves people guessing. Never shows up at Sabrina's movie premiers either, at least... not on the red carpet. People always report seeing her at the theatre, but for some reason no fan or tabloid has ever be able to prove it on camera.

Jimmy: While he may have gained such notoriety as an internet star and has had his fair share of ups and downs with the Media trying to bring up his ties with Plasma in the past, he's learned not to let it get to him. After 20 years Plasma has long since been gone, he was the one to take them down in the first place, the former and even current gym leaders support him and often guest star at his online or real life charity events, and it seems when it's not some charity event he's in the papers for, it's his on-again-off-again relationship with N that's even become something of a joke with his fanbase in taking bets to how long before N runs off again. He's had other relationships, but somehow... somehow this just never "officially" went away.

Cly: While she is still a big name actress, she's not as active as she used to be. She's a lot more meticulous in her roles and only seems to show up for either big-budget projects or films she really feels passionate about the script. And she can do that because she's got a clothing line and several music albums that seem to take up most of her time anyway.

D: Hilariously, while he failed as a fashion designer, he's a really great detective. It's just, most people don't realize this. As a member of the Looker Bureau, he's got a code-name like the others, and his investigations often seem to coincide with his love and knowledge of high fashion: jewelry theft, accusations of plagiarizing from between big name stores, getting asked for his opinion on cases where articles left at the scene might be crucial evidence of a bigger picture, ect. Nevermind the rumors that the only reason he's not on the streets yet is because his royalty family keep his otherwise lavish lifestyle funded, he likes the thrill of the hunt and it's kept him both well off and entertained between attempts at a "real" business. Pepe gives him a hard time in saying that by now Richard is failing on purpose. He should know how to art, it is really not that hard. Says the one with possibly literal god-given talent. Lay off him, jerk. XP

Arty: As I've mentioned before elsewhere, married to May (no, not M A Y but the Birch girl he traveled with during his time in Hoenn) and was at odds with her brother Orlando for quite some time but has since reconciled. HOWEVER, Orlando is still unsure how May even puts up with Arty after all these years because the guy has never held a steady job in his life. Sure he can always fall back on his music, but considering most people are asked what their fall back is when they want to get into music, that's saying something. The guy has done the rock star thing, the small business thing (several times really, from making t-shirts to breeding rabbits), the published writer thing (he did have an autobiography book published recently, but that was with a ghost-writer and sales were decent at least) and even the mafia thing. Not that he was bad at the mafia thing, but he just didn't think he was up for all this "shady business" when he craved the spotlight. Rumors still swirl around that he's got ties to the mafia, but oddly, despite all evidence, most general public just looks at that and laugh it off.

Abe: After finally making it home, stayed home for quite a long time just sort of helping out around Kanto. Helping Red get his place built and up and running, it kind of reminded him how much he missed traveling and exploring the uncharted territories of the world. Still, after all the trouble he ran into, he takes some baby steps at first in just making better maps of the Kanto and Johto region. 20 years later, he's a leading name when it comes to cartography and is quite the established architect too, having dozens of blueprints seen in buildings around the world for some of the most surreal looking structures. Got a dream? Let him take a look at the landscape in mind to get this thing started.

Baba: Like A-chan, if she's not dead, she's probably left quite a mess in her wake. Baba however was never as aggressive as A-chan was, and while her time as President was seriously controversial, many of Chengdu don't blame her for the circumstances as she inherited a mess to begin with. If she didn't pull the trigger, it would have been someone else (possibly was someone else considering the mysterious circumstances to when she left office.) For all she did wrong with the ongoing war with Orre, she did a lot of good in the way of equality for Elfs, Half-elfs, and the humans still leery about them. After 20 years, she's done quite a bit of travel anywhere other than her home country, and has settled down quite nicely in a house by the sea when she's actually home.

Amber: The ever faithful cleric still finds trouble making Sanae as big a thing as anything with the Fossil Pantheon. However, she's found quite a following none-the-less and has found much better tolerance among other "small" religions such as the fading Weather worshippers in Hoenn.

Athena: While she's never given up the fight for equality for her people, it's been a long and tiring fight nonetheless. Others have been able to take up the mantle for her, large gatherings taken up with more powerful or outspoken leaders. She writes a lot, but spends most of her time traveling with Amber since her own work can be done from anywhere whereas Amber seems to following her calling.

Nina: ...Oh Nina. Where do I even begin? -Ahem- After 20 years, she's finally managed to return home to find that Hoenn is FINALLY safe. While it could take a lifetime for things to finally return to normal, at least they can handle anything that's still lingering. Handle being the key word there. There's always still a lot of work left to do though. On the upside, there's no longer a sense of urgency for fear of impending doom, so the things she and all her network of friends has to focus on now is stuff that takes time. Stuff that she couldn't actually help with no matter how much she wanted to. Stuff that, for her at least, will have to wait. So in the meantime, there's a lot of trying to settle into a semi-normal life. But at least for all the "... what now?" that permeates the region, everyone is willing to work together to solve this.

A7: Like many have said, he never really could settle down. Not that he had some purpose he was chasing like Amber or Abe, he just doesn't know how. He's at least come to peace with his past though, and has long since come to accept that there's a whole lot of people who actually do care about him. He spends a lot of time going from one couch to crash on to another, and while his friends may not necessarily like it, they're always glad to see him when he passes through.

Alpha: ...|D;;; -AHEM- Well not taking anything else into account, I'm sure he's grown up to be a fine young... teen. It's not that he doesn't age, but due to a lot of his cybernetics and chemical changes, his body just doesn't respond normally anymore. It's been odd seeing his little sister grow up and surpass him, but his physical form has had done little in stopping him from becoming a high ranked researcher at the Pokemon HQ. And hey, he can still do a heck of a lot more than most people can, so his smaller stature has never been an issue either. He's had a lot of identity issues to overcome, but over the past 20 years, he's figured that there's a lot of stuff he can do to help in the region's recovery and gods know he's got plenty of time to do it.

Evan: Is basically a god. Timelines or not, I can't see him as anything otherwise. Shared the burden of Olden's power he inherited with Azure, and the two do a lot of minor meddling in the world to keep it functioning. He's WAY more chill about things than Olden ever was though, and has been rather curious and pleased to see how over the next several decades after being named supreme overlord that the Glitches have somewhat been accepted by the world. It's not necessarily peacefully, it's almost like any story where you have lots of mythological creatures being real. The "old wives tales" have proven quite useful to people who have learned that "If you see a -glitch- you can protect yourself with a pouch full of basil! / If you encounter one, it could prove quite lucky and make you a very wealthy person indeed! / They're actually very curious little things you might see out of the corner of your eye. They disappear if you ignore them long enough." He tries to keep them in line more often than he goes meddling in human affairs anyway. Even he, though, has become something of a legend among people as they may swear that sometimes, sometimes, you may see a ripple in the fabric of reality where the Glitch King has passed through recently.

Paul: He made it to the top! CEO of his own company, lots of friends, lots of adventures! ... So why did he feel like his journey was so... lackluster compared to the others? He's heard plenty of the other hosts, I don't doubt he's probably met a few of them, but hearing their stories compared to his own, it seemed... dull. But then again, he was a lot older than any of them when he started, so maybe the journey just seemed a lot less "magical." Or perhaps it was because of his friendship with the Glitches, that there seemed to be a lot less danger? Sometime in the first 10 years, he goes to take a personal journey for some soul searching for what he felt he was missing. After 20 years, he's long since returned home feeling empowered by what he's learned, and his company has been flourishing.

Pepe: By far the most quiet and reserved of his family, it constantly surprises people he's also the friendliest. Whenever there's some kind of major event, chances are he's there. Hiding out in the crowd, somewhat mingling along the outskirts to admire the building's decore or take a fascination with the party's theme, but he's very rarely one to instigate conversation. Should someone approach him though, he's not one to turn them away. He claims to own the dance floor. Napoleon highly disagrees, but it's more a matter of opinion since they have VERY different styles when it comes to dance. Over the past 20 years, he's realized that there's oddly a LOT of perks to being in his brother's shadow. He can shirk off most of political duties Napoleon has to deal with, and takes advantage of the fact that most people don't seem to care about him as much. He's not a major leader, he's not a party animal, he's got a fairly steady love life, and he's quiet about it. The news finds him dull usually, and intriguing to realize there's a certain air of mystery about him. Otherwise, he spends a lot of time off by himself, with his work, with his faith, and holding close the secret he's had since he was a child about the whole Artisan ordeal the world has long since forgotten about.

Cyan: In a constant state of "Dad pls" even after she's managed to get him to step down as Champion and has him offering advice whenever she rants to him whether she actually asked for his opinion or not. Her family still loves to get away from things every now and then, camping trips, exploring their "territories," her trying to prove to her parent that the Glitches are really sweet... that's not been going well, but they admire her for it anyway. After 20 years, she's quite the leader now and has spent a lot of time trying to clean up Naljo/Rijon political system. Probably goes golfing with Paul occasionally as an excuse for them to complain about Host things that no one else could ever understand.

Nigel: While he's settled down in Alola, he's never given up his Ranger ways and spends a lot of his time working in conservation efforts and working with other regional leaders about just what they could do to help out in a more grand scale preservation effort on some of the world's most delicate species.

Devin: Devin is uh... Okay, so 20 years from now, he... There's really no telling with him. While he does most likely have a bird sanctuary, he's got several other things he runs as well. His hyperness has thankfully gone down with age, but his eagerness has never waned and he's a World Tournament super star as his thirst for battle has only grown with each new region he gets to explore. Movie star? Maybe once or twice, and getting to meet Cly is certainly a good motive, but only because he can't turn down a good challenge. (She still kicked his ass btw, though in a coordinated for film fight, they loved to show off and keep it rather even.) He still lives in Alola though, and very rarely stays away for more than a few weeks at time because he does feel like he has a lot still to do there. WHERE in Alola is anyone's guess since he tends to just show up on the different islands at random, but a lot of people joke that he's probably got a bed set up in his office at the sanctuary. He's no longer Champion though due to how much he travels, but still stays in touch with all of the would-be Champions that have tried to take his place (except Faba, he will gladly kick him out of the seat the MINUTE he finds out Faba succeeded in becoming champ -shot- ).

X-man: Whoo boy, I hate to say it, but the rate technology advances, after the first decade most of his features have probably become obsolete. After 20, if he's not in a museum, you know that finding parts and storage drives has become nearly impossible due to the increasing rarity of finding such tech in good condition. He might still be functioning though, even if only as a display for how things were back then. There's been newer models since then, sleeker, more human looking models too, but even if the team found a way to transfer all of his data to the new robot, it's just not quite the same. New!X-man probably has looked at the old model in the display and smiles sometimes as he still remembers the journey. Every. last. input because his data files are accurate and doesn't allow for such nostalgia, but even he has to sometimes wonder at the grandmotherly parrot on his shoulder how the hell they managed to do it?

[wakingdreamland]

Argumentative Essay Sample

One of the services I offer is the critique and review of essays, as well as custom examples for students to use as references when constructing their own works. 

The argumentative essay is often one of the most challenging to write, as it must be presented with multiple sides of an issue, but a clear opinion on the part of the author that can be argued by others. Even finding an appropriate topic can be difficult, as the writer must immerse themselves in the issue to understand multiple viewpoints involved, state through the writing their stance (or just the stance they are choosing to present) on the topic, and attempt to sway the opinions of the readers. It should also be tailored to the audience, be it the teacher, classmates, or a larger group, so anticipating the viewpoints of the audience is crucial. 

The essay beneath the cut is just shy of 2500 words, and could be trimmed or expanded to fit an assignment if it was needed. It lacks any source citations or footnotes, though those could be provided in whatever format an assignment required.

The topic for this sample argumentative essay is the current controversy over Marvel’s upcoming story-arc, Secret Empire, and how Magneto, a canonically Jewish character, could potentially ally with Hydra, an organization that once had strong Nazi ties. 

Please remember that this is a sample of an argumentative essay only. It is not intended to spark debate in comments or reblogs, nor is it intended for others to plagiarize for themselves.

Magneto And Hydra;  Attract Or Repel?

“What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins, the way he comes to life? I don't think so. It’s the choices he makes; not how he starts things but how he decides to end things.”  -John Meyers, Hellboy

If you're a nerd and not living under a rock that the Mars Rover is about to inspect, you've borne witness to the chaos swirling around Marvel's Secret Empire. Or at least the part that is spreading through the internet like secrets through the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thanks to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken stories once only found in comics and stray movies and spread them out for a far wider audience, many people are weighing in heavily on the matter of Magneto vs. Hydra. There is outrage aplenty that a canonically Jewish character who survived the Holocaust would ever join an organization as heavily associated with Nazis as Hydra, but as John Meyers said regarding Hellboy, it is not the origins of a man that defines him, but the choices he makes along the way.

Before we examine the character of Magneto as he's developed over the years as well as Hydra, the fascist organization that has allied with the Nazis during WWII and has been seen as an allegory for the Nazis since, it is important to note why this is a sensitive issue for a significant number of people. The current political climate in the US appears to be encouraging a rise in hate crimes; while these bigots have always been among us, believing themselves superior, now they have become more brazen. Bomb threats have been called in to many Jewish Community Centers and Muslim Mosques, and cemeteries have been vandalized; swastikas are appearing in far greater numbers than any time in recent memory. Marvel has already taken a beloved hero, Captain America, and through the use of a Cosmic Cube plot-line, has turned him into an agent of Hydra, which generated intense outrage. Now, there are strong implications that a canonically Jewish character will be a turncoat as well. Readers --or even just people who have enjoyed the movies-- may feel as though their heroes are being taken away from them in a darkening time, to join The Enemy. In all likelihood, this is intentional; comic books have long been known for touching on real-world issues, and these particular story arcs are taking both heroes and villains into a grim and uncertain new reality.

It should also be noted that this controversy is in response to a Marvel variant cover, which don't often have much, if anything,  to do with the story; various other heroes like Hulk, Thor, and Captain Marvel are depicted as secret Hydra agents as well, and even a poster for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. displays a looming threat of Hydra. Nothing on the variant covers hint at what the story arc of Secret Empire will involve, besides a likely conflict between the heroes and villains of several Marvel groups and Cosmic Cubed Captain America.

Magneto is a very well-known super villain of Marvel even to those who have never touched a comic book. He's played big parts in anything related to X-Men, which means significant appearances in cartoons and movies over decades, but many of those depictions focus on Magneto rather than Max Eisenhardt, who after enough name changes to confuse even a comic book writer a little, including Erik Lehnsherr, became Magneto. How does one go about creating such a charismatic super villain? Well, judging by his background, apparently one shoves the character through at least three levels of hell from childhood, makes sure they are repeatedly betrayed and lose multiple loved ones, and makes certain they slaughter a large number of people in a rage that also forces them to lose a loved one. While different variations of the story exist due to the complexities of translating comics to TV shows to movies, the basics of this Intro To Super Villainy are as follows: Through the 1930s and into the 1940s, young Max Eisenhardt suffered the loss of mother, father, and sister by execution, after which he escaped a mass grave. He was captured again and sent to Auschwitz, the horrors of which could have their own essay. While there, he found a "bright side", reuniting with Magda, a Romani girl he'd fallen in love with. They escaped the prison camp and lived an uneventful life until a manifestation of his powers drove an angry mob to attack, burning down their home and killing his daughter. Magneto, or Magnus, as he was calling himself at the time, retaliated by destroying everyone he could get his magnets on. Magda, terrified by the display of power and violence, fled, and would later give birth to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.

Looking at what this character went through in his formative years thanks to the Nazis, it's incredibly difficult for many to accept that he would align his interests with Hydra. These are events that can shape a man in many different ways. Stan Lee, the creator of Magneto, said in a 2008 interview that he didn't think of Magneto as a bad guy. He was dangerous, he was driven, but not a villain. This is particularly interesting, and a display of the concept: Villains are the heroes of their own stories. From the outside, it is clear that Magneto is absolutely a villain, but from the perspective of the character, he is doing whatever it takes to protect mutant-kind, "Homo superior" from the horrific results of bigotry and fear combining. Even as Magneto wanders off and makes an orbital base in a hollowed out asteroid and gathers a bunch of pissed-off mutants to form the "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants", --seriously, there was no name creativity happening here-- which is probably one of the most super villainy things one can possibly do, his goal is to protect the mutants from the rest of mankind. In his own narrative, and in Stan Lee's mind, he's not the "bad guy"; he's simply willing to do whatever it takes to keep what happened during the Holocaust to the Jews from happening to the mutants.

Magneto goes through a great number of character development arcs, as do most long-term characters that exist in comic books that span decade after decade. Some to the point of becoming utterly nonsensical when looked at with hindsight. At one point, it is discovered that the use of his mutant powers has made him extremely paranoid and aggressive, traits which show during several attempts to conquer or destroy humanity. At another point, Magneto is inwardly horrified that he's become a supremacist himself; in an encounter with the X-Men he nearly kills Kitty Pryde, stopping himself barely in time when he realizes that she's just a child. He also realizes that he's started to view those who oppose him to be as worthless as the Nazis considered his people to be. One of the most unique story arcs he was involved in was called Secret Wars, in which an alien being took heroes and villains to pit against each other so he could view the concept of "good vs. evil" in action. Significantly, it sorted Magneto in with the heroes, because regardless of his methods, his desires were based on a wish to help mutant-kind rather than the more selfish motivations we often see in villains.

Some of these arcs are off-set by others that show just how far he is willing to go with regard to helping mutant-kind; kidnapping, torture, and aiming stolen nuclear warheads at Earth from an asteroid-base are all fine examples of this. He is perfectly willing, at numerous points, to slaughter as much of humanity as his paranoia insists is necessary to preserve mutants, even if he has to kill other mutants to do it. Marvel also repeatedly created spin-off universes, such as the House of M, in which Scarlet Witch warps reality so that those in her family can receive their heart's desires. It says a good deal about the character Magneto that this arc involves him as the leader of the world's much larger mutant population, using Genosha as a base for dominating the rest of the world and placing mutantkind above humanity.

Now we take a look at Hydra. In many instances, members of Hydra can be easily identified by a habit of wearing green with a serpent motif which has probably led to Slytherin / Hydra cross-over fan-fiction somewhere on the internet. Marvel has tried quite a bit, especially in recent times, to distance Hydra from real-world Nazis, though many fans can't --or won't-- see a distinction. The wider fan-based reached by the Marvel Cinematic Universe has seen Hydra in association with Nazis repeatedly, while the comic book canon shows a far more diverse cast for the history of Hydra, which spans back to dynastic Egypt. Red Skull is the villain that many see as the head of Hydra, forgetting that the hydra has many heads; cut off one and two more will grow.

Red Skull is significant because unlike the overwhelming majority of Hydra, he really is a Nazi. Red Skull first appeared in 1941 as a Nazi agent and enemy of Captain America and of the free world in general. What might surprise people is that he has had several incarnations, including having his mind placed into a clone of Steve Rogers. Time and again, the world believes he has gone, only to have him return time and again with schemes of world domination and genocide. People focusing on the allegory of Hydra as Nazis because of Red Skull's association with both miss that Red Skull himself is an allegory of how some enemies will never be truly gone. The ideals he espouses of fascism, bigotry, rule-by-intimidation, and superiority are problems that the real world sees time and again, in many different forms. In a way, he is Captain America's opposite; trained by Hitler himself and appointed head of terrorist activities, given a grotesque mask of a red skull to strike fearful obedience in others while Captain America's costume and shield have stood for hope, uniting against an enemy of the free people, leading others through inspiration. It was Red Skull who took over the reins of Hydra during World War II, thus giving Hydra an association with Nazis that Marvel has been trying, with little success, to break away from.

So why would Magneto join forces with Hydra? We have no real way to know even that he is going to, much less the reasons that will be provided in the upcoming story arc. Art and teasers that Marvel has made available strongly suggest that many groups from the Cinematic Universe, including the X-Men, the Avengers, and even the Guardians of the Galaxy will be swept up in this year-long story, Secret Empire.

People look at one facet of Magneto, the fact that Max Eisenhardt is a Jew. Not just a Jew, but one who survived the horrors of the concentration camps and lost his family in the process. And from that viewpoint, it does seem appalling that he would join with Hydra. While it now lacks any true Nazi ties, the fascist organization has its tentacles squeezing tight on the Marvel universe, subverting Captain America to their side while utilizing S.H.I.E.L.D. as an intelligence gathering unit, surely with intent to (as all villainous organizations wish) take over the world.

But Magneto is not only a Jew. The character has made a number of choices in his life, choices that have led down paths of possible redemption and paths that would make most other super villains anxious and wary of hostile take-over. What he experienced as a young Jew during the Holocaust has led him to desire, beyond all else, protection of mutantkind. He even qualifies as a supremacist himself, over and over, to the point that he'd be willing to eradicate the rest of humanity so that mutants can ascend to their rightful place, believing that they are far superior. A place above a humanity that is so often cruel to the unknown, that lets fear of the things they do not understand lead to war and tragedy over and over. From that perspective, perhaps we can see why he might throw himself in with Hydra, even with the organization's history.

Magneto is not only a mutant with incredibly dangerous and extremely powerful abilities, he is also a brilliant tactician (various asteroid-base debacles aside.) He is cunning, and ruthless, and if he saw a way to utilize Hydra in his ever-present goal of protecting and uplifting mutantkind, he would very likely take it. It is also possible that he would make use of his intelligence and wit to infiltrate the organization with the thought of causing it to topple from within; he is often depicted as a patient man willing to go to great lengths, even ones he may question himself, in order to achieve his goals. To us, the readers, that makes him not just a super villain, but one that can have a certain amount of admiration. Unlike many comic characters, his origins and his experiences have combined to make a fairly steady character in a genre that often sends characters through roller-coaster loops that baffle the laws of physics; no matter what Magneto does, always in the back of his mind is the goal of keeping what happened to his people, the Jews, from happening to his people, the mutants.

Right now, in the real world, minorities are feeling not just oppressed, but scared. Sacred spaces of many cultures are being violated in the name of bigotry or "progress", to the point that it's become difficult to tell the difference between the two anymore. The behavior of US officials has been dismissive over these frequent horrors, sweeping them under the rug, only adding to the hurt and anxiety that many people all over the world are feeling. And while many of us look toward fiction to lift us up, hints and theories suggest that Marvel's Secret Empire will lead our heroes into darkness. Looking at the US today, Captain America being subverted by propaganda and putting Hydra on display as American military is terrifyingly on the nose; those who see Hydra as allegory for Nazis may now see Hydra as allegory for America, and that is a horrifying thought. But comics have often reflected the real world quite intentionally, and perhaps the choices Magneto will make, the way he decides to end things within the story-arc of Secret Empire, will reveal a man we can admire as a hero.

[supertrendingnewsarticles]

Like the vast majority of Americans, I have been effectively disenfranchised in the last few presidential elections. In 2011, I moved to Washington, D.C., which is so heavily Democratic that any vote for president is totally meaningless — in 2016, Hillary Clinton won with 93 percent of the vote. But last year, I moved to famously swingy Pennsylvania, and suddenly I'm a full citizen again. (I'm already lording it over my friends from California and New York.)As I have written on many occasions, I think Bernie Sanders is the best candidate. But given the abominable Trump presidency, I have also said that I'll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination.However, that was before Mike Bloomberg became a serious presidential contender (currently in third place in national polls and rising fast). I have given it very serious thought, and while I would happily vote for Elizabeth Warren, grudgingly vote for Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar, or secure an entire bottle of Southern Comfort to get sufficiently hammered to vote for Pete Buttigieg, I will not vote for Mike Bloomberg in November if he is nominated.To start with, it is not at all obvious that Bloomberg would even be a better president than Trump. As Alex Pareene writes at The New Republic, he is a right-wing authoritarian with nakedly racist views who constantly violated civil rights laws during his time as mayor of New York City. He locked up thousands of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention (where he gave a speech warmly endorsing George W. Bush, and thanked him for starting the war in Iraq), and a judge held the city in contempt for violating due process law. He created what amounted to a police state for New York Muslims, subjecting the entire community to dragnet surveillance and harassment, and filling mosques with spies and agent provocateurs. The city had to pay millions in settlements for violating Muslims' civil rights. (All this did precisely nothing to prevent terrorism, by the way.)As Nathan Robinson writes at Current Affairs, he drastically escalated the infamous "stop-and-frisk" program in New York, in which innocent black and brown youths were jacked up by cops literally millions of times. Ninety-nine percent of the stops found nothing, and many police used it as a handy pretext to vent their racist prejudice. At its peak in 2011, there were more stops of black men than there were black men in the entire city. And because it was mainly young men being targeted, some were stopped dozens of times. Innocent people were routinely beaten senseless.Bloomberg justified the policy with straightforwardly racist collective guilt. In a 2015 speech, he said "it's controversial, but first thing is, all of your — 95 percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O. ... They are male minorities, 15 to 25."These statistics are hideously inaccurate. In reality, the relatively few whites stopped under stop-and-frisk were more likely to be carrying weapons, and as The Atlantic's Adam Serwer points out, after the program was halted, crime continued to fall unabated. The whole thing was completely useless — unless the point was to constantly remind black and brown New Yorkers that they were second-class citizens. Bloomberg also espouses the racist theory that the financial crisis was caused by government efforts to reduce prejudice in home lending — thus scapegoating minorities to deflect blame from the real culprit, Wall Street oligarchs like himself.Bloomberg's newfound commitment to progressive policies is so transparently fraudulent that his campaign apparently plagiarized huge chunks of his campaign platform. He is just trying to trick the Democratic electorate with a tidal wave of cash (with evident success).Now, Bloomberg does have a legitimate history of supporting gun control and climate policy. But it is exceedingly unlikely that he will be able to get past a Senate filibuster on gun control, especially given his sneering know-it-all approach. And given his politics and personal wealth, his climate policy would probably look a great deal like Emmanuel Macron's diesel tax in France — a carbon tax whose revenues would go towards cutting taxes on the rich. Macron's move sparked violent protests and was quickly abandoned.Does this sound like a guy who would do anything substantial to reverse Trump's worst policies? If we're lucky, he might reverse the Muslim ban and let a few people out of the CBP camps. If we're not, he'll implement a much quieter and more effective version of the same policies, and partisan Democrats will reverse-engineer justifications for these being somehow necessary (or just ignore them, as they did during the Obama years). Recall that Bloomberg once argued that every Social Security card should have fingerprints so unauthorized immigrants would be unable to get jobs.On the other hand, in some areas Bloomberg would likely be worse than Trump. As Mehdi Hasan writes at The Intercept, Bloomberg is a committed and pitiless warmonger — he supported the war in Iraq and repeated the Bush administration's lie that Saddam Hussein had plotted 9/11. (In January he said he had no regrets about doing so.) He opposed President Obama's Iran deal, and had few complaints about Trump's assassination of Iran's Qassem Soleimani. While Trump has escalated conflicts across the globe, he appears to have at least a mild hesitation about starting new full-scale wars of aggression. The chances of a shooting war with Iran probably increase if Bloomberg wins in 2020.Given his wretched politics, even Bloomberg's superior competence is a mark against him. Right now one tiny silver lining of the Trump administration is that the people trying to commit atrocities through the federal bureaucracy are so inept they keep fumbling the legal procedures and getting stopped in the courts. Bloomberg is sure to appoint competent authoritarian maniacs.And for all the people who complain that Bernie Sanders is not a real Democrat, Bloomberg was literally a Republican up until 2007, and worked to elect Republicans until very recently. In 2014, he or his political action committee donated to the senate campaigns of Susan Collins in Maine and Bob Dold in Illinois. In 2016, he donated $11.7 million to Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — making it the most expensive Senate race in history up to that point, and likely securing victory for Toomey, who won by less than two points. Though he has also donated a lot to Democrats, Bloomberg is a guy who did more than almost anyone to help protect Mitch McConnell's Republican majority in the Senate, and hence to put two more conservatives on the Supreme Court.At bottom, Bloomberg is basically just like George W. Bush, with a dollop of maddening nanny-state condescension. Without question he would be one of the top five worst major-party presidential nominees in the last century of American history.This stance will no doubt infuriate the "vote blue no matter who" crowd who view Donald Trump as some kind of Lovecraftian nightmare. But even aside from how horrible a president Bloomberg would be, perhaps the most compelling reason not to vote for him is what his nomination would reveal about American democracy. It would mean that the oligarch class has so thoroughly corrupted the system that the voice of the people is drowned. His entire candidacy is a cartoonishly blatant instance of how money can corrupt democracy. Right now he is scooping up thousands of campaign operatives and field organizers by offering them as much as $6,000 a month — creating a desperate shortage for other campaigns. He's racking up endorsement after endorsement — of representatives, mayors, and one governor, so far — who have cashed checks from his vast empire of bribery. His nomination would mean the Democratic Party can be "bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese."Partisan Democrats insist that everyone has an obligation to vote tactically — that is, to always pick the lesser of two evils in the voting booth. But as Daniel Davies argues, given that one's individual vote has virtually no chance of actually deciding the outcome, the truly tactical choice is to not bother to vote at all. The only compelling reason to vote is about civic duty and one's patriotic conscience. And as Davies writes, "it seems pretty clear that there is some point at which it becomes obvious that a morally and politically valid response is simply to declare that the fundamental basis of the implied contract has broken down, and that it's a reasonable choice to simply refuse to participate further." If the choice is Cthulhu versus Nyarlathotep, I for one see little point in voting for the candidate that might have one fewer grasping eldritch tentacle.Among Bernie Sanders supporters, I am far from the most die-hard. If I simply cannot countenance putting my name down for Bloomberg in November, there are millions more who would do the same — plus no small number of supporters of the other candidates, in all likelihood. Then there is the general fact that Bloomberg's extreme wealth and extensive record of racism and sexual harassment would negate most of the strongest attacks against Trump. Bloomberg would be highly likely to bleed enough support to third parties (or no one) to lose to Trump, just as Hillary Clinton did.Luckily, it will be easy to avoid this dreadful possibility. Simply vote against Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primary.More stories from theweek.com The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it. What if Trump stopped tweeting? Trump adds former NYPD commissioner, financier convicted in fraud schemes to pardon spree

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/38DRD5r

[batenchantingcollectorsong]

Like the vast majority of Americans, I have been effectively disenfranchised in the last few presidential elections. In 2011, I moved to Washington, D.C., which is so heavily Democratic that any vote for president is totally meaningless — in 2016, Hillary Clinton won with 93 percent of the vote. But last year, I moved to famously swingy Pennsylvania, and suddenly I'm a full citizen again. (I'm already lording it over my friends from California and New York.)As I have written on many occasions, I think Bernie Sanders is the best candidate. But given the abominable Trump presidency, I have also said that I'll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination.However, that was before Mike Bloomberg became a serious presidential contender (currently in third place in national polls and rising fast). I have given it very serious thought, and while I would happily vote for Elizabeth Warren, grudgingly vote for Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar, or secure an entire bottle of Southern Comfort to get sufficiently hammered to vote for Pete Buttigieg, I will not vote for Mike Bloomberg in November if he is nominated.To start with, it is not at all obvious that Bloomberg would even be a better president than Trump. As Alex Pareene writes at The New Republic, he is a right-wing authoritarian with nakedly racist views who constantly violated civil rights laws during his time as mayor of New York City. He locked up thousands of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention (where he gave a speech warmly endorsing George W. Bush, and thanked him for starting the war in Iraq), and a judge held the city in contempt for violating due process law. He created what amounted to a police state for New York Muslims, subjecting the entire community to dragnet surveillance and harassment, and filling mosques with spies and agent provocateurs. The city had to pay millions in settlements for violating Muslims' civil rights. (All this did precisely nothing to prevent terrorism, by the way.)As Nathan Robinson writes at Current Affairs, he drastically escalated the infamous "stop-and-frisk" program in New York, in which innocent black and brown youths were jacked up by cops literally millions of times. Ninety-nine percent of the stops found nothing, and many police used it as a handy pretext to vent their racist prejudice. At its peak in 2011, there were more stops of black men than there were black men in the entire city. And because it was mainly young men being targeted, some were stopped dozens of times. Innocent people were routinely beaten senseless.Bloomberg justified the policy with straightforwardly racist collective guilt. In a 2015 speech, he said "it's controversial, but first thing is, all of your — 95 percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O. ... They are male minorities, 15 to 25."These statistics are hideously inaccurate. In reality, the relatively few whites stopped under stop-and-frisk were more likely to be carrying weapons, and as The Atlantic's Adam Serwer points out, after the program was halted, crime continued to fall unabated. The whole thing was completely useless — unless the point was to constantly remind black and brown New Yorkers that they were second-class citizens. Bloomberg also espouses the racist theory that the financial crisis was caused by government efforts to reduce prejudice in home lending — thus scapegoating minorities to deflect blame from the real culprit, Wall Street oligarchs like himself.Bloomberg's newfound commitment to progressive policies is so transparently fraudulent that his campaign apparently plagiarized huge chunks of his campaign platform. He is just trying to trick the Democratic electorate with a tidal wave of cash (with evident success).Now, Bloomberg does have a legitimate history of supporting gun control and climate policy. But it is exceedingly unlikely that he will be able to get past a Senate filibuster on gun control, especially given his sneering know-it-all approach. And given his politics and personal wealth, his climate policy would probably look a great deal like Emmanuel Macron's diesel tax in France — a carbon tax whose revenues would go towards cutting taxes on the rich. Macron's move sparked violent protests and was quickly abandoned.Does this sound like a guy who would do anything substantial to reverse Trump's worst policies? If we're lucky, he might reverse the Muslim ban and let a few people out of the CBP camps. If we're not, he'll implement a much quieter and more effective version of the same policies, and partisan Democrats will reverse-engineer justifications for these being somehow necessary (or just ignore them, as they did during the Obama years). Recall that Bloomberg once argued that every Social Security card should have fingerprints so unauthorized immigrants would be unable to get jobs.On the other hand, in some areas Bloomberg would likely be worse than Trump. As Mehdi Hasan writes at The Intercept, Bloomberg is a committed and pitiless warmonger — he supported the war in Iraq and repeated the Bush administration's lie that Saddam Hussein had plotted 9/11. (In January he said he had no regrets about doing so.) He opposed President Obama's Iran deal, and had few complaints about Trump's assassination of Iran's Qassem Soleimani. While Trump has escalated conflicts across the globe, he appears to have at least a mild hesitation about starting new full-scale wars of aggression. The chances of a shooting war with Iran probably increase if Bloomberg wins in 2020.Given his wretched politics, even Bloomberg's superior competence is a mark against him. Right now one tiny silver lining of the Trump administration is that the people trying to commit atrocities through the federal bureaucracy are so inept they keep fumbling the legal procedures and getting stopped in the courts. Bloomberg is sure to appoint competent authoritarian maniacs.And for all the people who complain that Bernie Sanders is not a real Democrat, Bloomberg was literally a Republican up until 2007, and worked to elect Republicans until very recently. In 2014, he or his political action committee donated to the senate campaigns of Susan Collins in Maine and Bob Dold in Illinois. In 2016, he donated $11.7 million to Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — making it the most expensive Senate race in history up to that point, and likely securing victory for Toomey, who won by less than two points. Though he has also donated a lot to Democrats, Bloomberg is a guy who did more than almost anyone to help protect Mitch McConnell's Republican majority in the Senate, and hence to put two more conservatives on the Supreme Court.At bottom, Bloomberg is basically just like George W. Bush, with a dollop of maddening nanny-state condescension. Without question he would be one of the top five worst major-party presidential nominees in the last century of American history.This stance will no doubt infuriate the "vote blue no matter who" crowd who view Donald Trump as some kind of Lovecraftian nightmare. But even aside from how horrible a president Bloomberg would be, perhaps the most compelling reason not to vote for him is what his nomination would reveal about American democracy. It would mean that the oligarch class has so thoroughly corrupted the system that the voice of the people is drowned. His entire candidacy is a cartoonishly blatant instance of how money can corrupt democracy. Right now he is scooping up thousands of campaign operatives and field organizers by offering them as much as $6,000 a month — creating a desperate shortage for other campaigns. He's racking up endorsement after endorsement — of representatives, mayors, and one governor, so far — who have cashed checks from his vast empire of bribery. His nomination would mean the Democratic Party can be "bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese."Partisan Democrats insist that everyone has an obligation to vote tactically — that is, to always pick the lesser of two evils in the voting booth. But as Daniel Davies argues, given that one's individual vote has virtually no chance of actually deciding the outcome, the truly tactical choice is to not bother to vote at all. The only compelling reason to vote is about civic duty and one's patriotic conscience. And as Davies writes, "it seems pretty clear that there is some point at which it becomes obvious that a morally and politically valid response is simply to declare that the fundamental basis of the implied contract has broken down, and that it's a reasonable choice to simply refuse to participate further." If the choice is Cthulhu versus Nyarlathotep, I for one see little point in voting for the candidate that might have one fewer grasping eldritch tentacle.Among Bernie Sanders supporters, I am far from the most die-hard. If I simply cannot countenance putting my name down for Bloomberg in November, there are millions more who would do the same — plus no small number of supporters of the other candidates, in all likelihood. Then there is the general fact that Bloomberg's extreme wealth and extensive record of racism and sexual harassment would negate most of the strongest attacks against Trump. Bloomberg would be highly likely to bleed enough support to third parties (or no one) to lose to Trump, just as Hillary Clinton did.Luckily, it will be easy to avoid this dreadful possibility. Simply vote against Michael Bloomberg in the Democratic primary.More stories from theweek.com The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it. What if Trump stopped tweeting? Trump adds former NYPD commissioner, financier convicted in fraud schemes to pardon spree

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/38DRD5r

[the-end-of-art]

Ended loneliness

From Mary Karr Names Names by Nina Puro at The Fix

Karr teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University, where I once took a memoir class with her. On the first day she got in a huge spat with the program director, who came in and told her she was in the wrong classroom. They traded some choice barbs and he walked out. Then she broke character and told us to write down everything that happened—it had all been an act. The class argued long and hard about whether he was wearing pants or long shorts, and the exact wording of the final insult. Our recollections of such a recent event, as well as our personal reactions, varied wildly. The exercise demonstrated how inaccurate memoir is. Karr gave The Fix a chance to see if interview can do any better.

The Paris Review called you “surprisingly diffident when it comes to talking about [your]self.” Have meetings and therapy helped you become more comfortable with that?

Everything I wanted people to know I’ve already presented, and in some ways I’m more candid in talking about myself than I was before. When you surrender, you get used to a certain level of candor—you know, the old thing, you’re only as sick as your secrets. You develop a confidence in truth-telling. Part of my drinking was so much about trying not to feel things, to not feel how I actually felt, and the terrible thing about being so hidden is if people tell you they love you…it kinda doesn’t sink in. You always think, if you’re hiding things, How could you know who I am? You don’t know who I am, so how could you love me? Saying who I am, and trying to be as candid as possible as part of practicing the principles, has permitted me to actually connect with people for the first time in my life. It’s ended lifelong exile.

They always say God is in the truth, and I’ve ended loneliness and been able to feel connected by saying who I am and how I feel. I’m sort of comfortable to the degree to which I’m an asshole. It’s not like I’m not an asshole—people know the ways I’m an asshole and it’s within the realm of acceptable asshole-ocity. Part of my drinking and depression was having a voice in my head that was constantly criticizing everybody. I was sort of brought up that way, hypercritical, and I feel like my spiritual practice is a constant correction out of judging everybody else. But I think I’m more critical of myself than anybody, strangely enough, as marvelous as I am.

It’s generally agreed that the enormous success of The Liars' Club spurred a lot more confessional memoirs. But since then, there’s also been a trend in other media to broadcast people’s deepest secrets in a way that’s often seen as exploitive. What do you think about shows like Intervention and so on?

I think the problem with visual media like TV is that they’re reductive. They don’t show the psychological complexity, the real struggle and practice of what it is to have to give up the substance. I think Dr. Drew should be shot. I really do. That guy...small wonder that everybody who’s on 'Celebrity Drug House' or whatever it is would like to blow their fucking brains out. He seems like the most malevolent—I’m sure he means well, I’m sure he has benevolent impulses—but he seems so insincere and exploitative. And also, being told, “Oh yes, you are special because you’re a celebrity and trying to get sober”… I think those shows, especially with celebrities, are awful, and that’s why anonymity is important: Nobody should be a spokesperson. I’m not an example of anything, and the best way to learn about how to quit drinking is to spend a lot of time talking one-on-one with people who have done it.

James Frey is another famous memoirist and addict—a highly controversial one. Do you want to share your opinion of him, or should I nix that question?

No, no, go ahead. He was the guy who wanted nothing to do with AA—and look how well you turned out, you lying sack of shit! I felt sorry for that guy for a while and then when he started that thing—let’s rip off young people and exploit them—that thing he’s doing is just...really reprehensible, I don’t quite understand it.

If we can talk about your relationship with David Foster Wallace in the early ‘90s—did you get sober together?

He was in rehab and we’d met through friends; he was in rehab down the street and I lived in Belmont, Mass., which is where McLean [Hospital] is. When he got kicked out of Harvard they slam-dunked him in McLean, where I’d eventually do a happy little stint. One of the Whiting fellows said, "Can you contact him?" So I brought him a batch of brownies. I thought it was super sweet that they did that. I was about a month clean; his sobriety date was about a month after mine. So we ran into each other a lot. He was in a halfway house where I did volunteer work. I would drive people to job interviews and stuff like that; there were a lot of disabled people, people who only had one hand or whatever. Everybody there had to have a job and I drove a lot of people around. So I saw him there quite a bit, and we had a lot of mutual friends, many of whom ended up in Infinite Jest in a way I thought was…I really thought was unkind.

I remember you saying how a lot of Infinite Jest was lifted straight from meetings, despite the anonymity tradition. But some would say storytelling is always plagiarism, and maybe his book did people good; where’s the line?

Yeah, I thought it was pretty awful. Another person who does that is Augusten Burroughs. Everybody I ever wrote about, including David, I talked with in advance and said, “This is what I wanna do.” I talked to David before… I wasn’t going to use his name, then after he died, I’d talked to him before he did it and included him enough that I was gonna give him a pseudonym—which he said he didn’t care about, but nonetheless…then he was dead before the book came out. Tragically, stupidly...moron. Moron.

How much do you think his addiction or sobriety had to do with his death [by suicide in 2008]?

David had tried to kill himself three times before that, so you can’t slap that on it. I think being sober kept him alive way longer than he would have made it otherwise. But he wasn’t exactly sober by my measure: He was taking lots of anti-anxiety meds and stuff I consider chemically no different, so I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t in touch with him the last six months of his life. Such a tragic thing. And you know, I don’t know his wife but it seems like such a nasty fucking thing to do. Here’s this woman who’s been trying to take care of you and…I guess I could’ve imagined myself in that situation too easily, and I wouldn’t have been as nice about it as she was. I was lucky I wasn’t, I guess, but damn.

I think we kept each other alive to some extent, for a period of time when we were trying to quit using and it was all but impossible for each of us to do that. And I think our friendship and sobriety was important to both of us. I told him a lot of things about how he was writing. Everybody was very in awe of him because he was so much smarter than everybody. I’d been living in Cambridge where everybody was smarter than everybody, and I’d sort of decided that smart wasn’t that big of a deal. Not that it’s not a great advantage, but in his case I think it was a great disadvantage.

There’s this idea of the tortured artist, or of a link between depression and creativity—is that true and necessary? If so, how do you make meaningful art after recovery, if you’re no longer tortured?

Well, I don’t know, maybe you don’t. I’ve been sober almost 25 years and anything anyone’s ever bought from me has been written when I was sober. If I hadn’t been, I would’ve been like David, swinging from a fucking noose. That really cuts down on your creativity. [Laughs]

When I was super depressed, I wasn’t working—I was always too depressed. Hemingway did his best work when he didn’t drink, then he drank himself to death and blew his head off with a shotgun. Someone asked John Cheever, “What’d you learn from Hemingway?” and he said “I learned not to blow my head off with a shotgun.” I remember going to the Michigan poetry festival, meeting Etheridge Knight there and Robert Creeley. Creeley was so drunk—he was reading and he only had one eye, of course, and had to hold his book like two inches from his face using his one good eye. But you look at somebody like George Saunders—I think he’s the best short story writer in English alive—that’s somebody who tries very hard to live a sane, alert life.

You’re present when you’re not drinking a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every day. It’s probably better for your writing career, you know? I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist. It comes out of that Symbolist idea, back to Rimbaud and all that disordering of the senses and all of that being some exalted state. When I’ve been that way, I’ve always been less exalted than I would have liked.

So in the beginning you said you weren’t going to talk about AA. I was planning to ask whether you still go to meetings or have a sponsor. Should I nix that?

Well, I guess what I would say is, I always talk to people who are trying to stay sober and trying to have some kind of connection or community. And I spend a lot of time talking to young women with little kids who were trying to quit drinking, because when I was a young woman with a little kid and I was trying to quit drinking and a single mom, it was so hard; I was so deranged. So I feel an obligation to be of service. And there were people who helped me and talked to me and talked to my kid, who made places in their lives when I was so isolated—I want to be available to them— to any woman I have time for who is raising a kid and trying to quit drinking, I want to be available to them. So I guess I’d talk to that with that amount of a fig leaf.

I’m going to Michigan this week to talk to women at an organization that runs domestic violence shelters for women who are in violent relationships and struggling with addiction, or their partners are.

Do you think some people have addictive tendencies that both precede and outlast active use: the “addictive personality”? I’m thinking, now, about your habit of coming into class with two giant Wegmans green teas, and the gregarious ferocity with which you approach your students, and any conversation, which kinda scares people sometimes...

Oh, yeah! I would snort all the coke and kiss all the boys—if I could live on Ho-Hos, Jack Daniel’s and pharmaceutical cocaine, I would (and not blow my brains out, ‘cause that’s exactly what I’d do). I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last—God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I’m such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won’t let myself buy it. I’m sorta like the girl who only gets coke from boys—at parties I let myself have a Diet Coke with lime and it’s exactly like snorting a line. If a bomb goes off, I’m getting a carton of Marlboros.

There’s a notion of your being and celebrating the pistol-packing outlaw—a very Texan lack of adherence to convention—which addicts often resemble. But in recovery, the idea of surrender, of adherence to rules, is something people have to learn. How have you managed?

I used to think of it as an adherence to rules, and the really horrible thing about quitting drinking is, I think, inside my mind I was so divided against myself. Nobody really talks about what happens to you and your level of self-confidence when you tell yourself every fucking day you’re going to drink X, and then you drink 10 times that—or you’re not going to drink at all and you drink anyway. You become very split off against yourself. So there was a part of me that would yell and scream and say, “You stupid bitch, goddamnit, you said you weren’t gonna drink and you drank anyway.” And there was this other part that was like “Fuck those people! Fuck the rules!” you know, blah blah blah…

You assume that when you quit drinking, you’re surrendering to that kind of nasty schoolmarm rule-maker. But for me getting sober has been freedom—freedom from anxiety and freedom from…my head. What has kept me sober is not that strict rule-following schoolmarm. There’s more of a loving presence that you become aware of that is I think everyone’s real, actual self—who we really are.

Blake said, “...we are put on Earth a little space / That we might learn to bear the beams of love.” And I think, quote-unquote, “bearing the beams of love” is where the freedom is, actually. Every drunk is an outlaw, and certainly every artist is. Making amends, to me, is again about freedom. I do that to be free of the past, to not be haunted. That schoolmarm part of me—that hypercritical finger-wagging part of myself that I thought was gonna keep me sober—that was is actually what helped me stay drunk. What keeps you sober is love and connection to something bigger than yourself.

When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That’s when the sparkle started for me.

(https://www.thefix.com/content/mary-karr-liars-sober91684?page=all)

[linabrigette]

Tron Independence Day Explained: What’s at Stake for a $3 Billion Blockchain

One year and nearly $3 billion later, the Tron blockchain is set to finally put its much-debated technology to the test.

At least, that’s what should happen Monday, when Tron completes the token swap it began last week, migrating the last of its users’ funds from ethereum to a new proprietary blockchain. For investors, the moment marks a historic “independence day” of sorts, but it could more broadly become a make-or-break moment for the project, which though controversial, already finds itself among the top cryptocurrencies globally.

Founded last July, Tron has set out to “decentralize the internet.” However, the project has yet to rigorously define what this means in practice.

And while Tron’s rhetoric may seemingly resemble that of many cryptocurrencies that emerged from  2017’s token boom, the project is distinguished by the size of its funding and the outspokenness of its founder, former Ripple representative Justin Sun, who last week caused a stir in the tech world by purchasing the company behind file-sharing service BitTorrent.

Some onlookers speculated that Sun made the acquisition to lend legitimacy to his project – something it has been accused of lacking on more than one occasion.

More specifically, while Tron has positioned itself as a competitor to ethereum and decided to launch its own protocol to address ethereum’s “inefficiencies”, the project was rebuked earlier this year for using code from the protocol without providing an attribution. These allegations were closely followed by claims that project leaders had plagiarized Tron’s white paper.

Despite the gravity of these claims, Tron has done little to dispel concerns. On the contrary, the significant alteration of its roadmap, specifically its decision to abandon its original plan to develop on ethereum in favor of creating its own mainnet and its decision to use a delegated proof-of-stake system, further exacerbated them.

For his part, however, Sun remains confident that past allegations are little cause for concern.

He told BTC News Today in an interview that these decisions were necessary to achieve his vision of leading the blockchain industry away from its emphasis on R&D and toward a new focus on user experience and “consumer-facing products.”

Sun continued:

“Ethereum is like IBM back in the day, making those big supercomputers. And I’m not saying that ethereum does not have robust technology, but I’m saying that ethereum is just like IBM. They only focus on tech, they don’t focus on user experience.”

Sun, on the other hand, is attempting to position his project as the “Microsoft of the blockchain,” which he says succeeded “because they were able to take the computer and make it into a PC, making it into a consumer good.”

Despite the appeal of this vision, Tron has a complex launch ahead and concerns are unlikely to be abated quickly. As with the recent EOS blockchain launch, which saw the $4 billion blockchain go live in an elaborate global process that dragged on for days, Tron will need to navigate similar complexities ahead.

On Tuesday, Tron is expected to follow its token swap with a “super representative election,” in which token holders will select the block producer delegates that will approve transactions, after which the technology will finally be live.

‘The Frankenstein of crypto’

But launching may be only part of the battle ahead for Tron.

For one, there remain unanswered questions about the strength of its technology. According to Lucas Nuzzi, director of research at Digital Asset Research, which recently analyzed Tron’s code, the project may inherit issues from the codebases that its developers have sought to copy.

He told BTC News Today that ethereumJ suffers from issues like memory leakage, a problem related to the buffering of incoming blocks. Further, he explained that he believes these issues could be exacerbated in Tron’s protocol because it combines ethereumJ with other relatively new technologies (like the delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism (DPoS) in which various entities compete to act as transaction validators).

Because of this melange of technologies in the Tron protocol, Nuzzi has dubbed the project the “Frankenstein of crypto.”

“The project has this history of repurposing technologies and gluing them together and calling it unique,” he told BTC News Today in an interview. “When you put all these things together, it is very unlikely that you’re not going to encounter severe failures.”

Sun dismissed the allegations of code plagiarism and said the Tron team takes “security issues very seriously,” citing as proof the millions of dollars it offers for bug bounties.

He said:

“Yes, one of our programmers did forget a very small thing that he didn’t put on, however, it was so long ago and it was a very minor issue at the time. It’s kind of like saying, I’m 27 now and when you were 4 you messed up with this one goal kick. It doesn’t really make sense because it’s very insignificant in the bigger picture.”

But in interview, Sun couldn’t seem to attest to the extent of Tron’s use of ethereumJ previously or currently. He initially indicated that Tron previously used “a small portion” of ethereumJ and said, “but it was also six months ago.”

When asked if Tron was no longer using ethereumJ, Sun wavered and eventually said he was unsure and referred BTC News Today to the Tron development team.

The team also failed to provide clarity in an email to BTC News Today:

“We referenced ethereum’s code in our P2P network while keeping all licenses. We have made many changes, optimizing functions like node discovery and node blocking. We’ve also made some improvements that are more suitable to the Tron DPoS use case…adding functions like [high availability] on the P2P network to prevent unexpected [super representative] disconnections; adding trusted nodes and active nodes.”

According to Nuzzi, these changes are “very small,” some being “the bare minimum changes to support a DPoS system.” Likewise, a search in Tron’s code repository for the terms “ethereum” and “ethereumJ” yields 76 and 73 references, respectively.

Implications for network activation

One practical implication of these technical concerns is that the software is “unpredictable,” Nuzzi explained. However, those seeking to leverage the tech appear to be prepared for a bumpy launch.

Dean Zaremba, whose IT networking company Free Space is a Tron super representative candidate, echoed Nuzzi’s contention, though for different reasons (super representatives run nodes in the protocol in a bid to earn its rewards).

“It’s a new software being released to the wild, you can only test so much in a testing environment until the public gets their hands on it and you know, tries to crack it in different ways. You just never know.”

Meanwhile, cybersecurity company and super representative candidate Infinity Stone expressed confidence in the Tron project and the amount of testing it has conducted thus far.

“We are optimistic about Tron… People always keep improving their codebase and in terms of Tron, the good thing is they started their testnet last month. So, some bugs should have been caught already, and they have a dress rehearsal for all the super representative candidates,” the company told BTC News Today.

For his part, Sun dismissed those who have expressed concerns about the protocol’s security as “random people who didn’t really know what they were talking about.” Likewise, he sought to emphasize that the project has carried out “two rounds of successful rehearsals for the official launch.”

But if the Tron blockchain is merely the first step in Sun’s vision of a decentralized internet, he seemed to hint at what that could mean, describing a strategy in which Tron’s tech is even ported to other blockchains and beyond.

“If we are able to successfully launch a voting system and have it be really robust, I really think that bitcoin and ethereum should add a voting mechanism into their governance. Because for me personally,” he added, “I’m not just the founder of Tron, I have a lot of ethereum and a lot of bitcoin, and I really want to vote.”

For now, though, it remains to be seen if Sun’s project will work, much less spread, or merely cause fireworks.

He concluded:

“This is just the beginning of the decentralized internet – it’s not the end…For right now we don’t have a full picture.”

Some statements from Justin Sun were communicated via a translator

Fireworks image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, BTC News Today is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. BTC News Today is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

source: https://ift.tt/2MSsGbU

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[flauntpage]

WWE is Whitewashing The Ultimate Warrior's Bigoted Past

When WWE brought back Jim Hellwig a.k.a The Ultimate Warrior after a long and often contentious absence from the company in order to induct him into the Hall of Fame in 2014, it was a heartwarming story of triumphant redemption that could only ever take place in the squared circle. The day after his induction, he delivered a now-legendary promo on Monday Night RAW where he seemingly foreshadowed his own death… and then a mere 24 hours later, he suffered a massive heart attack and was gone.

If it had been left at that, you could almost forgive WWE for leaving out the not-so-heartwarming part of the story — namely, a series of homophobic and racist remarks made in speeches on college campuses and since-deleted blog posts in the mid-late 2000's during Warrior's stint as a conservative commentator.

Only, it wasn't left at that.

In the following years, WWE proceeded to make Warrior a centerpiece of their burgeoning corporate philanthropy efforts, creating the Warrior Award, to be given out at an elaborate ceremony every year to a recipient who "exhibited unwavering strength and perseverance, and who lives life with the courage and compassion that embodies the indomitable spirit of the Ultimate Warrior." This year, the company merged its Warrior branding into its longstanding partnership with the Susan G. Komen Foundation with the #UnleashYourWarrior campaign. Various WWE Superstars and several breast cancer survivors have been sporting the likeness of the Warrior on television all month as part of the campaign and the company has been relentlessly promoting it on social media. Unleash Your Warrior.

Now is probably a good time to quickly go over a few of the things this man said during his stint as an aspiring conservative firebrand in the 2000s. All of these blog posts have been deleted, but through the magic of internet archiving, we were able to track them down.

On Hurricane Katrina victims:

Anyone who expresses sentiments like "How could they let this hurricane come here and do this to our lives?" is a kook as far as I am concerned. Those that somehow believe people are directly to blame for the happening of a natural catastrophe don't deserve to be heard. In fact, they should to be told to shut the hell up. These kinds of people contribute nothing toward repairing things to a better state. Truth is, these people thrive on despair and disarray. Chaos -- mentally and physically and in the way they conduct their lives -- is nothing new to them. They forge their whole lives in and around it. This hurricane to them was nothing more than like rearranging the furniture. If we could be shown what general conditions they lived in before the hurricane, we would see that had little respect for what they did have. We would see just how unorganized, unclean and dysfunctionally they lived. They never gave a care for order, cleanliness or function before, but now that they can get someone's attention who will possibly take over the responsibility of their life for them, they go on these tirades about how their life has been ruined. Their lives were already in ruin -- self ruin. Ruined by the bad choices they made over and over.

Beginning with the choice to sit on their ass expecting someone else to hand them a wonderful, beautiful, healthy and wealthy life. And excuse me for being the one to say so, but if you have a dozen kids and no husband to be a father, there are some 'holes' in your life plan that should be sewed up.

In case it isn't abundantly clear just who "these people" were, this article on the demographic makeup of Katrina victims should clear it up. Warrior is referring to "poor, mostly black New Orleanians without cars."

On the injustice of Martin Luther King Day:

Martin marched a few times from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL. It's only about 40 miles and he walked along paved roads with security escorts and modern comforts and conveniences. He wrote a few jailhouse letters, plagiarized a great many speeches, and played up his last name "King" as if he was ONE. He led his best rally amid the monuments of Washington, DC. He preached proper, righteous behavior while he at the same time committed adultery many publicly verifiable times — oh, and he had "a dream." One to see a race of people freed completely from discriminate oppression.

On his speech on "Queer Studies" at a Conservative Alliance event at DePaul University:

One guy without his husband and two physically-repulsive butch-dykes slurping on one another's tongues (really) on the front row had a real hard time cozying up to my principled heterosexual obstinacy. So, in an act of pure selfish pleasure the guy got himself physically thrown out by the masculine security guard, unmistakably loving every single masochistic, man-handled moment of it. And the dykes, well, they ran out screaming and yelling like speared wild boars that I was a homophobe for making my remarks. Rumor has it that they decided to exit more because I was not getting stimulated by watching their poorly performed two-nightcrawlers-in-heat act. Ah, the incredible, selfless sacrifices the liberal loons will make on behalf of their cause...warms my heart and makes my whole body laugh.

On the death of actor Heath Ledger (who had played a homosexual character in the film Brokeback Mountain):

By today's standard, though, I do have to agree that he was a great father. Perhaps even greater then the father of the year, Hulk Hogan. After all, Leather Hedger did what it took to kill himself. His kid is without a father, yes, but the negative influence is now removed and his own child has the chance for a full recovery.

On famed WWE Announcer Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (who had recently been diagnosed with throat cancer at the time):

"As for you, Booby Heenan, it's just too difficult to keep a straight face talking about the pure two-faced bag of sh– you are (and have always been), what, with you also actually wearing one as a piece of body jewelry. You are dying, dis-eased on the inside, and no more time is left to get back any of the integrity that matters the most on death's bed. Imagine what it will be like, lying there taking in your last breaths, knowing you whored yourself out your whole life, and had to, in your final years, be faced with emptying your own personal sh–– bag affirming to you the true value of what you achieved in your life. Not even Vince could come up with a better finish than this. Karma is just a beautiful thing to behold."

This one is particularly relevant given that, by sheer coincidence, Heenan's recent death coincided with the launch of the #UnleashYourWarrior campaign. It's unclear whether the Susan G. Komen Foundation is aware of Warrior's past statements — they declined to comment on this story.

The purpose of bringing this up now isn't to drag a dead man's name through the mud, or to simply stir up controversy for no reason. It's to ask why WWE thinks it is appropriate to use this man's likeness as a pillar of their inspirational, altruistic corporate philanthropy branding. After his return to WWE, much was made of the bridges that Warrior had burned and the reparations he had made in the wrestling business, but neither Warrior or WWE offered any acknowledgment of—or apology for—his comments going beyond the wrestling business.

His widow, Dana Warrior, said in a statement to VICE Sports that Warrior had become a different man before he died.

"I will not be disloyal to my husband's memory or speak ill of a man who is not here to defend himself. I can, however, tell you his heart was changed by conversations with his two daughters. The true testament of the man behind the character is his ability to evolve. My husband did just that."

But there was no public sign that he had any change of stance.

It's also important to point out that these speeches weren't given by Jim Hellwig, they were quite literally given by Warrior—he legally changed his name during a copyright dispute with the company—so the idea that WWE can simply make a distinction between the Ultimate Warrior, a fictional character, and the actor portraying him doesn't really hold much water. Also worth mentioning: WWE banished Hulk Hogan, their biggest ever star, down the memory hole when his own ugly, racist comments were made public in 2015.

If the WWE Hall of Fame was occupied only by paragons of moral virtue, it would be a fairly lonely place. Donald Trump is in there, after all. And Warrior was unquestionably an iconic WWE character, who had a profound impact on the wrestling industry. One could make the case that, regardless of the horrible things he had said during this period (a period where he was not under contract with WWE and had no affiliation with the company) he still deserved to be recognized for his significant achievements inside the wrestling ring.

But the same company that banished Hogan has poured millions of dollars into a quasi-philanthropical marketing campaign promoting the image of a person who made vastly uglier comments.And make no mistake—these initiatives are marketing. This is a notion endorsed by Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon in a tweet from WWE's Business Partner Summit in 2015 (the first year the Warrior Award was given out),

It's obviously not a bad thing that the WWE is making an effort to do community outreach, help with breast cancer awareness, and get involved in other philanthropic efforts. But their insistence on not only welcoming Warrior back into the fold, but completely whitewashing his past and elevating his likeness to a bland symbol of corporate altruism is shockingly tone-deaf, especially for a company that's at least outwardly trying to appear progressive, inclusive and diverse. When asked about this, WWE released the following statement to VICE Sports:

"WWE's 'Unleash Your Warrior' breast cancer awareness campaign and annual 'Warrior Award' recognize individuals that exhibit the strength and courage of WWE's legendary character The Ultimate Warrior. Any attempt to distract from the mission of these initiatives and take the spotlight away from the honorees is unfortunately misguided."

Either they were unaware of Warrior's past statements or they were aware and just thought they might sweep them under the rug like many of the other uglier parts of their corporate history. However it happened, the company has now spent years devoting significant resources to promoting a reactionary who is on record saying things that would make Rush Limbaugh blush, as a heroic figure of inspiration and redemption. It appears that they will continue to do so. This version of the Ultimate Warrior would be nice to believe in, but ultimately it's as fictional as any other wrestling storyline.

WWE is Whitewashing The Ultimate Warrior's Bigoted Past published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

WWE is Whitewashing The Ultimate Warrior’s Bigoted Past

When WWE brought back Jim Hellwig a.k.a The Ultimate Warrior after a long and often contentious absence from the company in order to induct him into the Hall of Fame in 2014, it was a heartwarming story of triumphant redemption that could only ever take place in the squared circle. The day after his induction, he delivered a now-legendary promo on Monday Night RAW where he seemingly foreshadowed his own death… and then a mere 24 hours later, he suffered a massive heart attack and was gone.

If it had been left at that, you could almost forgive WWE for leaving out the not-so-heartwarming part of the story — namely, a series of homophobic and racist remarks made in speeches on college campuses and since-deleted blog posts in the mid-late 2000’s during Warrior’s stint as a conservative commentator.

Only, it wasn’t left at that.

In the following years, WWE proceeded to make Warrior a centerpiece of their burgeoning corporate philanthropy efforts, creating the Warrior Award, to be given out at an elaborate ceremony every year to a recipient who “exhibited unwavering strength and perseverance, and who lives life with the courage and compassion that embodies the indomitable spirit of the Ultimate Warrior.” This year, the company merged its Warrior branding into its longstanding partnership with the Susan G. Komen Foundation with the #UnleashYourWarrior campaign. Various WWE Superstars and several breast cancer survivors have been sporting the likeness of the Warrior on television all month as part of the campaign and the company has been relentlessly promoting it on social media. Unleash Your Warrior.

Now is probably a good time to quickly go over a few of the things this man said during his stint as an aspiring conservative firebrand in the 2000s. All of these blog posts have been deleted, but through the magic of internet archiving, we were able to track them down.

On Hurricane Katrina victims:

Anyone who expresses sentiments like “How could they let this hurricane come here and do this to our lives?” is a kook as far as I am concerned. Those that somehow believe people are directly to blame for the happening of a natural catastrophe don’t deserve to be heard. In fact, they should to be told to shut the hell up. These kinds of people contribute nothing toward repairing things to a better state. Truth is, these people thrive on despair and disarray. Chaos — mentally and physically and in the way they conduct their lives — is nothing new to them. They forge their whole lives in and around it. This hurricane to them was nothing more than like rearranging the furniture. If we could be shown what general conditions they lived in before the hurricane, we would see that had little respect for what they did have. We would see just how unorganized, unclean and dysfunctionally they lived. They never gave a care for order, cleanliness or function before, but now that they can get someone’s attention who will possibly take over the responsibility of their life for them, they go on these tirades about how their life has been ruined. Their lives were already in ruin — self ruin. Ruined by the bad choices they made over and over.

Beginning with the choice to sit on their ass expecting someone else to hand them a wonderful, beautiful, healthy and wealthy life. And excuse me for being the one to say so, but if you have a dozen kids and no husband to be a father, there are some ‘holes’ in your life plan that should be sewed up.

In case it isn’t abundantly clear just who “these people” were, this article on the demographic makeup of Katrina victims should clear it up. Warrior is referring to “poor, mostly black New Orleanians without cars.”

On the injustice of Martin Luther King Day:

Martin marched a few times from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL. It’s only about 40 miles and he walked along paved roads with security escorts and modern comforts and conveniences. He wrote a few jailhouse letters, plagiarized a great many speeches, and played up his last name “King” as if he was ONE. He led his best rally amid the monuments of Washington, DC. He preached proper, righteous behavior while he at the same time committed adultery many publicly verifiable times — oh, and he had “a dream.” One to see a race of people freed completely from discriminate oppression.

On his speech on “Queer Studies” at a Conservative Alliance event at DePaul University:

One guy without his husband and two physically-repulsive butch-dykes slurping on one another’s tongues (really) on the front row had a real hard time cozying up to my principled heterosexual obstinacy. So, in an act of pure selfish pleasure the guy got himself physically thrown out by the masculine security guard, unmistakably loving every single masochistic, man-handled moment of it. And the dykes, well, they ran out screaming and yelling like speared wild boars that I was a homophobe for making my remarks. Rumor has it that they decided to exit more because I was not getting stimulated by watching their poorly performed two-nightcrawlers-in-heat act. Ah, the incredible, selfless sacrifices the liberal loons will make on behalf of their cause…warms my heart and makes my whole body laugh.

On the death of actor Heath Ledger (who had played a homosexual character in the film Brokeback Mountain):

By today’s standard, though, I do have to agree that he was a great father. Perhaps even greater then the father of the year, Hulk Hogan. After all, Leather Hedger did what it took to kill himself. His kid is without a father, yes, but the negative influence is now removed and his own child has the chance for a full recovery.

On famed WWE Announcer Bobby “The Brain” Heenan (who had recently been diagnosed with throat cancer at the time):

“As for you, Booby Heenan, it’s just too difficult to keep a straight face talking about the pure two-faced bag of sh– you are (and have always been), what, with you also actually wearing one as a piece of body jewelry. You are dying, dis-eased on the inside, and no more time is left to get back any of the integrity that matters the most on death’s bed. Imagine what it will be like, lying there taking in your last breaths, knowing you whored yourself out your whole life, and had to, in your final years, be faced with emptying your own personal sh–– bag affirming to you the true value of what you achieved in your life. Not even Vince could come up with a better finish than this. Karma is just a beautiful thing to behold.”

This one is particularly relevant given that, by sheer coincidence, Heenan’s recent death coincided with the launch of the #UnleashYourWarrior campaign. It’s unclear whether the Susan G. Komen Foundation is aware of Warrior’s past statements — they declined to comment on this story.

The purpose of bringing this up now isn’t to drag a dead man’s name through the mud, or to simply stir up controversy for no reason. It’s to ask why WWE thinks it is appropriate to use this man’s likeness as a pillar of their inspirational, altruistic corporate philanthropy branding. After his return to WWE, much was made of the bridges that Warrior had burned and the reparations he had made in the wrestling business, but neither Warrior or WWE offered any acknowledgment of—or apology for—his comments going beyond the wrestling business.

His widow, Dana Warrior, said in a statement to VICE Sports that Warrior had become a different man before he died.

“I will not be disloyal to my husband’s memory or speak ill of a man who is not here to defend himself. I can, however, tell you his heart was changed by conversations with his two daughters. The true testament of the man behind the character is his ability to evolve. My husband did just that.”

But there was no public sign that he had any change of stance.

It’s also important to point out that these speeches weren’t given by Jim Hellwig, they were quite literally given by Warrior—he legally changed his name during a copyright dispute with the company—so the idea that WWE can simply make a distinction between the Ultimate Warrior, a fictional character, and the actor portraying him doesn’t really hold much water. Also worth mentioning: WWE banished Hulk Hogan, their biggest ever star, down the memory hole when his own ugly, racist comments were made public in 2015.

If the WWE Hall of Fame was occupied only by paragons of moral virtue, it would be a fairly lonely place. Donald Trump is in there, after all. And Warrior was unquestionably an iconic WWE character, who had a profound impact on the wrestling industry. One could make the case that, regardless of the horrible things he had said during this period (a period where he was not under contract with WWE and had no affiliation with the company) he still deserved to be recognized for his significant achievements inside the wrestling ring.

But the same company that banished Hogan has poured millions of dollars into a quasi-philanthropical marketing campaign promoting the image of a person who made vastly uglier comments.And make no mistake—these initiatives are marketing. This is a notion endorsed by Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon in a tweet from WWE’s Business Partner Summit in 2015 (the first year the Warrior Award was given out),

It’s obviously not a bad thing that the WWE is making an effort to do community outreach, help with breast cancer awareness, and get involved in other philanthropic efforts. But their insistence on not only welcoming Warrior back into the fold, but completely whitewashing his past and elevating his likeness to a bland symbol of corporate altruism is shockingly tone-deaf, especially for a company that’s at least outwardly trying to appear progressive, inclusive and diverse. When asked about this, WWE released the following statement to VICE Sports:

“WWE’s ‘Unleash Your Warrior’ breast cancer awareness campaign and annual ‘Warrior Award’ recognize individuals that exhibit the strength and courage of WWE’s legendary character The Ultimate Warrior. Any attempt to distract from the mission of these initiatives and take the spotlight away from the honorees is unfortunately misguided.”

Either they were unaware of Warrior’s past statements or they were aware and just thought they might sweep them under the rug like many of the other uglier parts of their corporate history. However it happened, the company has now spent years devoting significant resources to promoting a reactionary who is on record saying things that would make Rush Limbaugh blush, as a heroic figure of inspiration and redemption. It appears that they will continue to do so. This version of the Ultimate Warrior would be nice to believe in, but ultimately it’s as fictional as any other wrestling storyline.

WWE is Whitewashing The Ultimate Warrior’s Bigoted Past syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[pat78701]

Sean Hannity Accused Of Sexual Harassment

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News star to be accused of sexual harassment.

In an interview with the Pat Campbell Show on Friday, former Fox News contributor Debbie Schlussel claimed that Hannity had invited her to his hotel room — twice — when they appeared together for one of his programs. But when she rebuffed him, Schlussel said that she was never asked back on the show.

Schlussel claimed the “awkward” incident began when Hannity invited her to a store where he was signing books. While there, she said Hannity asked her: “Why don’t you come back with me to my hotel?” Schlussel said she responded: “No, I have to get ready for the show.”

Schlussel said Hannity pressed her again to come to his hotel room after the show taping, which did not go well. She refused.

“I wasn’t booked on his show again, and he called me and yelled at me,” Schlussel said. “It was made clear to me that I didn’t go back to his hotel with him after. I got a very weird feeling about the whole thing, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be back on his show.”

She added: “This kind of stuff is all over the place at Fox News and anything that has to do with Sean Hannity.”

Her comments were aired just days after Bill O’Reilly’s ouster by Fox News in the wake of revelations that he and the company had paid out some $13 million to women who accused him of sexual harassment.

Fox News provided a statement to The Huffington Post from Hannity who said that Schlussel’s claims were “100 percent false and a complete fabrication.” He called her a “serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade,” and threatened to sue her using a “team of some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the country.”

Hannity also characterized Schlussel’s comments as part of a “coordinated effort afoot to now silence those with conservative views.”

Schlussel, however, is a conservative. One sign of her politics was her repeated — and false — claim beginning in 2006 that President Barack Obama was a Muslim, insisting: “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim.”

But Schlussel has also clashed with Hannity, whom she referred to as “Vannity.” In 2007, she accused him of plagiarizing one of her columns. Three years later, she said the Freedom Alliance, a charity linked to Hannity, was involved in questionable practices, which the charity vehemently denied.

“This is not the first time Debbie Schlussel has lied about Sean Hannity,” Fox News stated. A point-by-point refutation of Schlussel’s attacks on the charity was also included.

Fox’s track record on sexual harassment, on the other hand, is abysmal. Before the most recent controversy over O’Reilly, several women had accused former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, which ultimately resulted in millions of dollars in payoffs. Former Fox News host Alisyn Camerota just revealed on Sunday that Ailes made inappropriate sexual comments to her and told her she’d have to meet him in a hotel if she wanted more opportunities at the network. 

Ailes was eventually forced out of the company with a $40 million golden parachute. O’Reilly received a $25 million settlement as part of his deal to leave.

Over the weekend, Hannity posted a Twitter rant after he was named by The New York Times as one of President Donald Trump’s private advisers. He called the story “total fake news speculation,” then wondered if the Times had found out whom he talks to because perhaps he’s being “surveilled and unmasked by the NSA.”

@nytimes You colluded with HRC in 2016. It's none of your business who i do or do not talk too. Total fake news speculation about me/@POTUS

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

@nytimes Any conversation I have with ANYONE is supposed to be PRIVATE. I have NEVER talked to you. Was I surveilled and unmasked by u/NSA?

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

He then went after Katie Nolan, host of “Garbage Time” on Fox Sports 1, when she tweeted: 

@seanhannity @nytimes You're a literal fucking moron.

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

@seanhannity @nytimes To say your convos are private, sure. But to suggest if something leaked that you were SURVEILLED? That's next-level self-importance

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

Hannity, in turn, admonished Nolan and told her to do some research.

Katie if you are going to try politics, you have to do research. Google Hannity Surveillance & Unmasking reports. Then attack me! Best Sean https://t.co/DkeQSLTiJY

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

That's so nice of you. And how long do you think this "career" in the sports world will last if you keep tweeting like this? Good luck Sean https://t.co/DjG2flq2A1

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58f67b3ee4b05b9d613e1c86,58f7ca94e4b091e58f380f75,58e2976ee4b0d0b7e1639421

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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[exfrenchdorsl4p0a1]

Sean Hannity Accused Of Sexual Harassment

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News star to be accused of sexual harassment.

In an interview with the Pat Campbell Show on Friday, former Fox News contributor Debbie Schlussel claimed that Hannity had invited her to his hotel room — twice — when they appeared together for one of his programs. But when she rebuffed him, Schlussel said that she was never asked back on the show.

Schlussel claimed the “awkward” incident began when Hannity invited her to a store where he was signing books. While there, she said Hannity asked her: “Why don’t you come back with me to my hotel?” Schlussel said she responded: “No, I have to get ready for the show.”

Schlussel said Hannity pressed her again to come to his hotel room after the show taping, which did not go well. She refused.

“I wasn’t booked on his show again, and he called me and yelled at me,” Schlussel said. “It was made clear to me that I didn’t go back to his hotel with him after. I got a very weird feeling about the whole thing, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be back on his show.”

She added: “This kind of stuff is all over the place at Fox News and anything that has to do with Sean Hannity.”

Her comments were aired just days after Bill O’Reilly’s ouster by Fox News in the wake of revelations that he and the company had paid out some $13 million to women who accused him of sexual harassment.

Fox News provided a statement to The Huffington Post from Hannity who said that Schlussel’s claims were “100 percent false and a complete fabrication.” He called her a “serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade,” and threatened to sue her using a “team of some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the country.”

Hannity also characterized Schlussel’s comments as part of a “coordinated effort afoot to now silence those with conservative views.”

Schlussel, however, is a conservative. One sign of her politics was her repeated — and false — claim beginning in 2006 that President Barack Obama was a Muslim, insisting: “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim.”

But Schlussel has also clashed with Hannity, whom she referred to as “Vannity.” In 2007, she accused him of plagiarizing one of her columns. Three years later, she said the Freedom Alliance, a charity linked to Hannity, was involved in questionable practices, which the charity vehemently denied.

“This is not the first time Debbie Schlussel has lied about Sean Hannity,” Fox News stated. A point-by-point refutation of Schlussel’s attacks on the charity was also included.

Fox’s track record on sexual harassment, on the other hand, is abysmal. Before the most recent controversy over O’Reilly, several women had accused former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, which ultimately resulted in millions of dollars in payoffs. Former Fox News host Alisyn Camerota just revealed on Sunday that Ailes made inappropriate sexual comments to her and told her she’d have to meet him in a hotel if she wanted more opportunities at the network. 

Ailes was eventually forced out of the company with a $40 million golden parachute. O’Reilly received a $25 million settlement as part of his deal to leave.

Over the weekend, Hannity posted a Twitter rant after he was named by The New York Times as one of President Donald Trump’s private advisers. He called the story “total fake news speculation,” then wondered if the Times had found out whom he talks to because perhaps he’s being “surveilled and unmasked by the NSA.”

@nytimes You colluded with HRC in 2016. It's none of your business who i do or do not talk too. Total fake news speculation about me/@POTUS

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

@nytimes Any conversation I have with ANYONE is supposed to be PRIVATE. I have NEVER talked to you. Was I surveilled and unmasked by u/NSA?

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

He then went after Katie Nolan, host of “Garbage Time” on Fox Sports 1, when she tweeted: 

@seanhannity @nytimes You're a literal fucking moron.

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

@seanhannity @nytimes To say your convos are private, sure. But to suggest if something leaked that you were SURVEILLED? That's next-level self-importance

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

Hannity, in turn, admonished Nolan and told her to do some research.

Katie if you are going to try politics, you have to do research. Google Hannity Surveillance & Unmasking reports. Then attack me! Best Sean https://t.co/DkeQSLTiJY

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

That's so nice of you. And how long do you think this "career" in the sports world will last if you keep tweeting like this? Good luck Sean https://t.co/DjG2flq2A1

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58f67b3ee4b05b9d613e1c86,58f7ca94e4b091e58f380f75,58e2976ee4b0d0b7e1639421

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oXvXgl

[rtscrndr53704]

Sean Hannity Accused Of Sexual Harassment

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News star to be accused of sexual harassment.

In an interview with the Pat Campbell Show on Friday, former Fox News contributor Debbie Schlussel claimed that Hannity had invited her to his hotel room — twice — when they appeared together for one of his programs. But when she rebuffed him, Schlussel said that she was never asked back on the show.

Schlussel claimed the “awkward” incident began when Hannity invited her to a store where he was signing books. While there, she said Hannity asked her: “Why don’t you come back with me to my hotel?” Schlussel said she responded: “No, I have to get ready for the show.”

Schlussel said Hannity pressed her again to come to his hotel room after the show taping, which did not go well. She refused.

“I wasn’t booked on his show again, and he called me and yelled at me,” Schlussel said. “It was made clear to me that I didn’t go back to his hotel with him after. I got a very weird feeling about the whole thing, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be back on his show.”

She added: “This kind of stuff is all over the place at Fox News and anything that has to do with Sean Hannity.”

Her comments were aired just days after Bill O’Reilly’s ouster by Fox News in the wake of revelations that he and the company had paid out some $13 million to women who accused him of sexual harassment.

Fox News provided a statement to The Huffington Post from Hannity who said that Schlussel’s claims were “100 percent false and a complete fabrication.” He called her a “serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade,” and threatened to sue her using a “team of some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the country.”

Hannity also characterized Schlussel’s comments as part of a “coordinated effort afoot to now silence those with conservative views.”

Schlussel, however, is a conservative. One sign of her politics was her repeated — and false — claim beginning in 2006 that President Barack Obama was a Muslim, insisting: “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim.”

But Schlussel has also clashed with Hannity, whom she referred to as “Vannity.” In 2007, she accused him of plagiarizing one of her columns. Three years later, she said the Freedom Alliance, a charity linked to Hannity, was involved in questionable practices, which the charity vehemently denied.

“This is not the first time Debbie Schlussel has lied about Sean Hannity,” Fox News stated. A point-by-point refutation of Schlussel’s attacks on the charity was also included.

Fox’s track record on sexual harassment, on the other hand, is abysmal. Before the most recent controversy over O’Reilly, several women had accused former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, which ultimately resulted in millions of dollars in payoffs. Former Fox News host Alisyn Camerota just revealed on Sunday that Ailes made inappropriate sexual comments to her and told her she’d have to meet him in a hotel if she wanted more opportunities at the network. 

Ailes was eventually forced out of the company with a $40 million golden parachute. O’Reilly received a $25 million settlement as part of his deal to leave.

Over the weekend, Hannity posted a Twitter rant after he was named by The New York Times as one of President Donald Trump’s private advisers. He called the story “total fake news speculation,” then wondered if the Times had found out whom he talks to because perhaps he’s being “surveilled and unmasked by the NSA.”

@nytimes You colluded with HRC in 2016. It's none of your business who i do or do not talk too. Total fake news speculation about me/@POTUS

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

@nytimes Any conversation I have with ANYONE is supposed to be PRIVATE. I have NEVER talked to you. Was I surveilled and unmasked by u/NSA?

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

He then went after Katie Nolan, host of “Garbage Time” on Fox Sports 1, when she tweeted: 

@seanhannity @nytimes You're a literal fucking moron.

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

@seanhannity @nytimes To say your convos are private, sure. But to suggest if something leaked that you were SURVEILLED? That's next-level self-importance

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

Hannity, in turn, admonished Nolan and told her to do some research.

Katie if you are going to try politics, you have to do research. Google Hannity Surveillance & Unmasking reports. Then attack me! Best Sean https://t.co/DkeQSLTiJY

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

That's so nice of you. And how long do you think this "career" in the sports world will last if you keep tweeting like this? Good luck Sean https://t.co/DjG2flq2A1

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58f67b3ee4b05b9d613e1c86,58f7ca94e4b091e58f380f75,58e2976ee4b0d0b7e1639421

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oXvXgl

[porchenclose10019]

Sean Hannity Accused Of Sexual Harassment

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News star to be accused of sexual harassment.

In an interview with the Pat Campbell Show on Friday, former Fox News contributor Debbie Schlussel claimed that Hannity had invited her to his hotel room — twice — when they appeared together for one of his programs. But when she rebuffed him, Schlussel said that she was never asked back on the show.

Schlussel claimed the “awkward” incident began when Hannity invited her to a store where he was signing books. While there, she said Hannity asked her: “Why don’t you come back with me to my hotel?” Schlussel said she responded: “No, I have to get ready for the show.”

Schlussel said Hannity pressed her again to come to his hotel room after the show taping, which did not go well. She refused.

“I wasn’t booked on his show again, and he called me and yelled at me,” Schlussel said. “It was made clear to me that I didn’t go back to his hotel with him after. I got a very weird feeling about the whole thing, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t be back on his show.”

She added: “This kind of stuff is all over the place at Fox News and anything that has to do with Sean Hannity.”

Her comments were aired just days after Bill O’Reilly’s ouster by Fox News in the wake of revelations that he and the company had paid out some $13 million to women who accused him of sexual harassment.

Fox News provided a statement to The Huffington Post from Hannity who said that Schlussel’s claims were “100 percent false and a complete fabrication.” He called her a “serial harasser who has been lying about me for well over a decade,” and threatened to sue her using a “team of some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the country.”

Hannity also characterized Schlussel’s comments as part of a “coordinated effort afoot to now silence those with conservative views.”

Schlussel, however, is a conservative. One sign of her politics was her repeated — and false — claim beginning in 2006 that President Barack Obama was a Muslim, insisting: “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim.”

But Schlussel has also clashed with Hannity, whom she referred to as “Vannity.” In 2007, she accused him of plagiarizing one of her columns. Three years later, she said the Freedom Alliance, a charity linked to Hannity, was involved in questionable practices, which the charity vehemently denied.

“This is not the first time Debbie Schlussel has lied about Sean Hannity,” Fox News stated. A point-by-point refutation of Schlussel’s attacks on the charity was also included.

Fox’s track record on sexual harassment, on the other hand, is abysmal. Before the most recent controversy over O’Reilly, several women had accused former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, which ultimately resulted in millions of dollars in payoffs. Former Fox News host Alisyn Camerota just revealed on Sunday that Ailes made inappropriate sexual comments to her and told her she’d have to meet him in a hotel if she wanted more opportunities at the network. 

Ailes was eventually forced out of the company with a $40 million golden parachute. O’Reilly received a $25 million settlement as part of his deal to leave.

Over the weekend, Hannity posted a Twitter rant after he was named by The New York Times as one of President Donald Trump’s private advisers. He called the story “total fake news speculation,” then wondered if the Times had found out whom he talks to because perhaps he’s being “surveilled and unmasked by the NSA.”

@nytimes You colluded with HRC in 2016. It's none of your business who i do or do not talk too. Total fake news speculation about me/@POTUS

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

@nytimes Any conversation I have with ANYONE is supposed to be PRIVATE. I have NEVER talked to you. Was I surveilled and unmasked by u/NSA?

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 22, 2017

He then went after Katie Nolan, host of “Garbage Time” on Fox Sports 1, when she tweeted: 

@seanhannity @nytimes You're a literal fucking moron.

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

@seanhannity @nytimes To say your convos are private, sure. But to suggest if something leaked that you were SURVEILLED? That's next-level self-importance

— Katie Nolan (@katienolan) April 22, 2017

Hannity, in turn, admonished Nolan and told her to do some research.

Katie if you are going to try politics, you have to do research. Google Hannity Surveillance & Unmasking reports. Then attack me! Best Sean https://t.co/DkeQSLTiJY

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

That's so nice of you. And how long do you think this "career" in the sports world will last if you keep tweeting like this? Good luck Sean https://t.co/DjG2flq2A1

— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) April 23, 2017

type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58f67b3ee4b05b9d613e1c86,58f7ca94e4b091e58f380f75,58e2976ee4b0d0b7e1639421

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2oXvXgl