#but what she says highlights one of the issues with steven’s upbringing

[sevenines]

i’ve always taken rose’s “take care of them steven” as something meant to initially be sweet but is one of those statements turned sour in retrospect. rose knows that shes leaving behind the gems. yet she believes so strongly in the good of humanity and the awfulness of herself that she trusts them with steven. and he does take care of them! soothe their pains from rose’s absence and help them carry their baggage. but he’s a kid and he shouldntve had to be the caretaker for his broken family in the first place. he did what his mom couldn’t do, and it broke him.

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Where Have They Gone Now: Axl Rose

Born William Bailey originally in Lafayette, Indiana in 1962. His mother was still in high school when she had him, while his juvenile delinquent father was 20 years old. They would divorce when he was two years old, which led his father William Rose abducting him and reportedly molesting the young boy. His mother remarried to a man named Steven Bailey, who was not much better than his birth father. Axl and his siblings were beaten on a regular basis and once again reportedly molested as well. Led by his stepfather, the Rose household was very strict religiously growing up in the Pentecostal faith. He was required to attend church 7 to 8 times a week, and even taught Sunday school on occasion. This seems to be in stark contrast to the Axl Rose we will see later. Axl would comment on his upbringing. “We'd have televisions one week, then my stepdad would throw them out because they were Satanic. I wasn't allowed to listen to music. Women were evil. Everything was evil." Music became a source of solace from an early age as he began singing in the church choir at the age of five. Rose began as a natural baritone, but decided to change his pitch consistently during practice just to anger the teacher. The future Guns N’ Roses lead singer also began to study piano at Jefferson High School, as well as participating in high school musicals. At the age of 17, Axl was going through some insurance papers when he discovered the existence of his biological father. At that time, he unofficially adopted his real father‘s last name of Rose, but told everyone he would not share a first name with him only referring to himself as W. Rose. After this discovery, the young man began to completely act out leading to at least 20 misdemeanor arrests from public intoxication to assault. Lafayette police were trying to charge him as a habitual criminal when he moved to LA in 1982 at the age of 20.

Almost immediately upon arrival, Rose joined the band Rapidfire with guitarist Kevin Lawrence. He had met him just outside the Troubadour in West Hollywood. They recorded a five song demo, but due to legal actions was not released until 2014. The EP was entitled Ready To Rumble. His next band included childhood friend and guitarist Izzy Stradlin, which they named Hollywood Rose. They recorded a demo featuring songs like “Shadow of Your Love,” “Anything Goes,” and “Reckless Life.” These songs would appear on various releases throughout the years including 2004’s, The Roots of Guns N’ Roses. The band would break up just after the hiring of Slash and Steven Adler. The biggest reason for this was that Rose decided to join LA Guns led by guitarist Tracii Guns. As he struggled for musical success, the young Axl continued to work to make any sort of money including night manager of Tower Records and even smoking cigarettes for a scientific study at UCLA with Izzy Stradlin. By 1985, Rose had restarted Hollywood Rose, so this band and LA Guns could merge their members. Guns N’ Roses was finally born, but almost immediately Tracii Guns and two other members left the band. Essentially, Guns N’ Roses became an expanded version of Hollywood Rose rather than any connection to LA Guns. They simply liked the name, so they kept it. Yet, there is absolutely no Guns in the band.

One thing to understand about Rose and his prima donna behavior that eventually led to the disintegration of the band was that every band in Los Angeles wanted him to be their lead singer in the mid-1980s. Axl had a certain buzz about the energy and intensity he brought every night on stage that could not be replicated. He represented the shining star of the Sunset Strip at that time; he could pick any group that was not signed to a record contract. The band would sign with Geffen Records in 1986, but one thing to note was that right before he changed his name officially to W. Axl Rose. The name originated when he was playing in a band called the Axls, so one of his bandmates suggested that he change his name to Axl. Rose thought it was a cool idea and never changed it. As the band began their sudden rise to the top of the music world, people began to realize that Rose was much different than any other singer before him. He began to single people out in the crowd, who were causing problems after two people died at the Monsters of Rock Festival in 1988. Most times previously singers would tell roadies to take care of it without publicly calling out anyone in the crowd. If you listen to their live compilation album, there are a couple of tracks where you can hear him actually doing this. Axl would say this in a 1992 interview. “Most performers would go to a security person in their organization, and it would just be done very quietly. I'll confront the person, stop the song: 'Guess what: You wasted your money, you get to leave.'" Upon the release of their EP Lies, Rose ran into quite a bit of controversy for his use of racial and homophobic slurs in the song, “One in a Million.” His explanation and defense of the use of the terms at the time was he meant it to be a joke about people that are a pain in your ass in your life. If that had occurred in our present times, he would have been canceled immediately. In 1992, the singer tried to explain the use of the lyrics once again relating some personal experiences he had with blacks and gays that had formed this negative connotation in his mind. For all the controversy, the group was dropped from a 1992 AIDS benefit show. By 1989, most rock writers had begun to see him as one of the top frontmen in rock and roll at the time. Rolling Stone had such respect for him as a singer that they allowed him to use his personal photographer for their story on him, instead of someone on their staff. During the recording of Use Your Illusion, Rose began to impose his will upon the band in a variety of ways. He forced the band to accept his friend Dizzy Reed as a keyboardist. Axl then wanted to fire their longtime manager Alan Nevin, which the band had to go along with because the singer threatened to not perform on the album if he was allowed to stay.

The Use Your Illusion tour began in May 1991 highlighted by concerts that started hours late, rants of his on stage, and even a riot in St. Louis. He tried to jump into the crowd during that show to take away a fan’s video camera, so after he got back on stage Rose quit the concert. Upon seeing an empty stage, the 25,000 people there started a riot. The damage bill came out to be just around $200,000. The friendships between the band members and Rose were gradually imploding throughout the tour. At one point, Axl demanded and received legal ownership of the Guns N’ Roses brand name. He had supposedly issued an ultimatum either give me legal ownership or I will not perform. Axl would later deny these reports saying the contract would not have been legally binding if he had done such a thing. Who knows what the truth is when it comes to this band sometimes? The singer helped to start another riot in Montreal at a concert co-headlined by Metallica. The heavy metal band had their concert cut short because pyrotechnics severely burned lead singer James Hetfield. Once again, Rose was nowhere near the venue to go on early coming on stage very late. The group needed to do an extensive set to make up for the short one by Metallica, but Rose cut his set short claiming voice problems. Once again, the fans rioted leading to some extensive fines directed towards the singer by Canadian authorities.

In 1994, the band released the covers album The Spaghetti Incident, which included a hidden track originally written by Charles Manson. Axl had intended the song to be a message to his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. The controversy that followed this song meant that the band needed to donate money for the son of one of the victims of those murders. In 1994, Rose also decided to terminate guitarist Gilby Clarke as a member of the band without consulting any of the other members. This decision was made so that Axl could bring in the controversial guitar replacement, Paul Tobias, which eventually led to Slash leaving the band. By 1997, the only original member of Guns N’ Roses was one Axl Rose. He had started to fade from any public view becoming essentially a rock and roll hermit. The media had dubbed him either Rock and Roll’s Greatest Recluse or the Howard Hughes of Rock and Roll. By the late 1990’s, rumors began to spread that Rose was forming a new lineup of Guns N’ Roses for an album entitled Chinese Democracy.

The absolute insanity that was Chinese Democracy took place from 2001 to 2011. The album would be officially released in 2008, but not after several starts and stops over and over again. A tour of the new album had been scheduled from 2001 to 2002, but almost all of the shows were either cut short or canceled because Rose was either a no-show or would quit very quickly. Finally, in 2006 and 2007, he actually toured as Guns N’ Roses promising new music. The concert offered very little in Chinese Democracy, but only concentrated on their hit songs. Around this time, he had changed his hair into cornrows, which got a laugh from music fans everywhere. One should note that Izzy Stradlin actually made a few guest appearances during that tour. Fans had hoped that a reunion collaboration might occur, but there was no such luck. Upon the release of Chinese Democracy, the singer did everything he could to sabotage any possible success the album might have overall. He refused to promote the album, would not return phone calls, or give interviews for three months after the release of the album. By the time he actually did say something about the album, the reclusive Rose complained that Interscope Records did not help them very much in promoting the album. In 2009, Axl and GNR went on a 2 1/2 year long tour, which included a headlining appearance at Rock in Rio 4. Around that time, he was sued by former band manager Irving Azhoff for $1.87 million. Of course, Axl countersued him claiming that he was forced to do a reunion tour because Azhoff had completely mismanaged the release, promotion, and tour of Chinese Democracy. In 2010, he sued Activision for their game Guitar Hero. Axl claimed that he had an oral agreement with the company that if “Welcome to the Jungle” was allowed on the game, then Slash nor any Velvet Revolver would not be included in any release of it. Not only was Slash’s music included in the game, but he ended up on the cover. A judge threw out the lawsuit in 2013 saying that Rose could not prove the oral agreement and the statute of limitations had run out anyway. In 2012, the Guns N’ Roses singer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but he declined to appear. In an open letter published on the Internet, Rose stated that due to the tensions between his former bandmates, he did not want to be where he was not wanted or respected. Yet, slowly but surely Guns N’ Roses began to tour with some of the original members culminating with the inclusion of Slash in 2016.

[phroyd]

We lost a Great Journalist today, and there are very few, if any, working today, who could fill her shoes!  We will miss you Cokie, and we wish there were more who could live up to your bar! - Phroyd.

Cokie Roberts, who drew on her upbringing in a powerful political family to fashion a career as a leading Washington journalist for NPR and ABC News, bringing a tough, knowledgeable voice to the rough-and-tumble political arena at a time when few women had national profiles in the news business, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 75.

ABC News, in a posting on its website Tuesday morning, said the cause was breast cancer.

Ms. Roberts was known to millions for both her reporting and her commentaries, moving easily among radio, television and print to explain the impact of world events and the intricacies of policy debates. And in books like “Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation” (2008) and “Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868” (2015) she highlighted the often overlooked role of women in history, especially political history.

“Cokie Roberts was a trailblazer,” Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, said on Twitter, “who transformed the role of women in the newsroom & our history books as she told the stories of the unsung women who built our nation.”

Ms. Roberts, who joined NPR in the late 1970s and ABC News in 1988, carved out a career that served as an example to later generations of women in journalism.

“I’m proud as hell — proud as hell — to work at a news organization that has ‘Founding Mothers’ whom we all look up to,” Danielle Kurtzleben, an NPR reporter, said on Twitter. “God bless Cokie Roberts.”

In a statement, former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama called Ms. Roberts “a role model to young women at a time when the profession was still dominated by men; a constant over 40 years of a shifting media landscape and changing world, informing voters about the issues of our time and mentoring young journalists every step of the way.”

And President Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One en route to California from New Mexico, said of Ms. Roberts: “I never met her. She never treated me nicely. But I would like to wish her family well. She was a professional and I respect professionals. I respect you guys a lot, you people a lot. She was a real professional. Never treated me well, but I certainly respect her as a professional.”

If Ms. Roberts brought keen insight to her work, that was in part because she was a child of politicians, one who first walked the halls of Congress as a girl. Her father was Hale Boggs, a longtime Democratic representative from Louisiana who in the early 1970s was House majority leader. After he died in a plane crash in 1972, his wife and Ms. Roberts’s mother, Lindy Boggs, was elected to fill his seat. She served until 1991 and later became United States ambassador to the Vatican.

Ms. Roberts’s background gave her a deep respect for the government institutions she covered, and she didn’t hold herself or her journalism colleagues blameless for the problems of government. “We are quick to criticize and slow to praise,” she said in a commencement address at Boston College in 1994.

“But,” she told the crowd, “it’s also your fault.” Constituents, she said, needed to allow members of Congress to make the tough votes and “let that person live to fight another day.”

In an oral history recorded for the House of Representatives in 2007 and 2008, she expanded on the impact her childhood experiences had in shaping her views about America.

“Because I spent time in the Capitol and particularly in the House of Representatives, I became deeply committed to the American system,” she said. “And as close up and as personally as I saw it and saw all of the flaws, I understood all of the glories of it.”

“Here we are, so different from each other,” she added, “with no common history or religion or ethnicity or even language these days, and what brings us together is the Constitution and the institutions that it created. And the first among those is Congress. The very word means coming together. And the fact that messily and humorously and all of that, it happens — it doesn’t happen all the time, and it doesn’t always happen well, but it happens — is a miracle.”

Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs was born on Dec. 27, 1943, in New Orleans. She said that her brother, Tommy, invented her nickname because he couldn’t say “Corinne.”

She, her brother and her sister, Barbara, were immersed in political life, accompanying their father on campaign trips, attending ceremonial functions and listening to the dinner-table discussions that ensued when other political leaders visited the home.

“Our parents did not have the children go away when the grown-ups came,” Ms. Roberts said. “In retrospect, I’ve sometimes wondered, ‘What did those people think to have all these children around all the time?’ But we were around, and it was great for us.”

Although her father had considerable influence on her, so did her mother, who was active in furthering her father’s career, along with other women she came to know, like Lady Bird Johnson.

“I was very well aware of the influence of these women,” she said, adding, “I very much grew up with a sense, from them, that women could do anything, and that they could sort of do a whole lot of things at the same time.”

It was a theme she teased out in her 1998 book, “We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters.”

“For years my mother kept telling me that it’s nothing new to have women as soldiers, as diplomats, as politicians, as revolutionaries, as explorers, as founders of large institutions, as leaders in business; that the women of my generation did not invent the wheel,” she wrote. “In the past women might not have had the titles, she painstakingly and patiently explained, but they did the jobs that fit those descriptions.”

Ms. Roberts attended Catholic schools in New Orleans and Bethesda, Md., and graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts in 1964 with a degree in political science. In 1966 she married Steven V. Roberts, who was a correspondent then for The New York Times. Journalism was a largely male world at the time, something driven home to her when she went job hunting.

“In 1966 I left an on-air anchor television job in Washington, D.C., to get married,” she told The Times in 1994. “My husband was at The New York Times. For eight months I job-hunted at various New York magazines and television stations, and wherever I went I was asked how many words I could type.”

She eventually became a radio correspondent for CBS before joining NPR in 1978. (Sources give both 1977 and 1978 as her start year at NPR.) With her fellow newswomen Nina Totenberg and Linda Wertheimer, she began to change the journalistic landscape.

“As a troika they have succeeded in revolutionizing political reporting,” The Times wrote in that 1994 article. “Twenty years ago Washington journalism was pretty much a male game, like football and foreign policy. But along came demure Linda, delicately crashing onto the presidential campaign press bus; then entered bulldozer Nina, with major scoops on Douglas Ginsburg and Anita Hill; and in came tart-tongued Cokie with her savvy Congressional reporting. A new kind of female punditry was born.”

Ms. Roberts wrote a syndicated political column with her husband for many years. They lived in Europe for a time in the 1970s, and over the years she covered international stories, but Washington was her main turf. She covered Congress at a time when her mother was an increasingly important member of it, though that proved to be not as big a benefit to her professionally as it might have seemed, Ms Roberts said.

“She would never tell me anything,” she said in the oral history. “She was disgustingly discreet.”

Ms. Boggs died in 2013.

Ms. Roberts continued to provide segments for NPR even after joining ABC. The difference between the two, she said, was partly a matter of airtime.

“My average piece from the Hill for NPR would be four and a half minutes,” she said, “and my average piece for ABC would be a minute 15.”

At NPR, one of her regular segments was “Ask Cokie,” in which she used her vast knowledge of Washington, politics and history to answer listeners’ question on matters major, minor and obscure. One asked whether nuclear weapons could be launched by executive order only, absent Congressional authorization. One wanted to know where the phrase “lame duck session” came from.

In a recent installment pegged to the 100th anniversary of the House vote to approve the 19th Amendment, Steve Inskeep, the host, found himself interrupted by Ms. Roberts when he used the phrase “granting women the right to vote” to introduce the segment.

“No, no, no, no, no granting — no granting,” Ms. Roberts said in her characteristically emphatic style. “We had the right to vote as American citizens. We didn’t have to be granted it by some bunch of guys.”

She is survived by her husband; her two children, Lee and Rebecca Roberts; and six grandchildren.

Ms. Roberts received numerous honors, including sharing in several Emmy Awards. In 2008, the Library of Congress named her as a recipient of one of its “Living Legends” awards.

Ms. Roberts long had a front-row seat to history. In a 2017 interview with Kentucky Educational Television, she recalled a moment when she had to remind herself not to become jaded by that proximity. It was March 2013, and she was waiting in a cold rain for the Vatican smoke signal that would soon announce the selection of Pope Francis.

“Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into St. Peter’s Square with the rain deluging them,” she said. “And my first reaction was: ‘Who are these people? What are they doing? That is crazy.’ And then I thought, ‘You jerk,’ to myself. ‘You are really not getting it. This is a moment in history that will be maybe the only time in all of these people’s lives that they have this front seat to history, and you’re so privileged you get it all the time.’”

But, she also reflected, big-stage moments give journalists only one part of the larger picture of their times.

“The individual interview with someone who is a mom in a shopping mall,” she said, “can tell you more about what’s going on in the world and how people feel about it than any of those grand things.”

Peter Baker contributed reporting from aboard Air Force One.

Correction: Sept. 17, 2019

An earlier version of a digital summary with this obituary misstated the sequence of Ms. Roberts's career. As the obituary correctly states, she was at NPR before she was at ABC, not after.

Phroyd

[moriganstrongheart]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Season One – Review

​Developed by Noelle Stevenson 2018, Netflix 13 episodes, 24 minutes

Rating: ★★★★★

Good: Diversity, character writing & relationships Bad: Lackluster ending, unoriginal worldbuilding

I grew up right outside the window where toyline-centric television shows were at their peak in popularity. Being a 90’s baby and living in a French Canadian community made it so I didn’t get exposed to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, G.I. Joe, and other 80’s cartoons. The only shows I was ever really able to get into were shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or whatever aired before 6 am on YTV, like Voltron or Megaman. My first real exposure to 80’s cartoons was through Robot Chicken, which parodied these kinds of shows a lot. All this to say I had little interest in this era of animation. I hesitated to watch She-Ra and the Princesses of Power for this reason. I was afraid that She-Ra would require some investment in the She-Ra/He-Man mythos, or the show would be targeted exclusively at young girls. It was the blogs I follow on Tumblr that eventually convinced me to watch the show on Netflix. The response the show generated was positive, praising its diversity and interesting characters. And while She-Ra is definitely targeted towards young girls (of which I am not), I very much enjoyed it. Noelle Stevenson manages to present a compelling story, with complex and diverse characters who never feel patronizing or shallow—as characters in children’s shows tend to be. The world-building is also well-done, and requires no prior knowledge of the She-Ra/He-Man mythos from the 80’s. My only issues with She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is its resemblance to other shows and a lackluster ending, but these are small prices to pay for it brilliant execution.

I realized around midway through the series how closely She-Ra resembles Avatar: The Last Airbender, with some passing resemblance to other cartoons like Steven Universe or Adventure Time. Everything from the humour to the major plot points felt familiar and already done. Though, I have a hard time really criticizing She-Ra for its lack of originality as it can be difficult to create something new that’s appealing to everyone. Except, the show doesn’t really have its own identity. It has some great execution and a unique approach to character relationships, but I feel like the writers could have spent more time fleshing out the world and making it stand apart from its contemporaries.

This lack of originality also contributes to my only other criticism with the series: its dull ending. There’s a lot of build up to the final showdown between the kingdoms of Etheria and the evil Horde. I was genuinely invested in the outcome and anticipated that we wouldn’t get a happy ending, based on the way things were progressing. I was then disappointed in how the conflict was ultimately resolved. It felt sloppy and rushed when compared to character development. I wasn’t upset in the way things ended; I enjoyed seeing all of the princesses participating and winning the day through friendship—I had no issue with that. It’s just that it felt more akin to the ending of a Saturday morning cartoon one-shot episode than an epic thirteen episode arc. It’s a shame because there’s so much work put into the characters; that the same couldn’t be true for the main story plot is disappointing. I don’t know if this was due to bad writing, bad planning or intentional constraints by the creators to focus characters, but I hope we see better plot writing in the next season.

One thing that becomes clear as the series progresses is how devoted the writers are to having a diverse cast of characters. Nearly the entire cast is made up of girls or women, with the only male characters being Hordak, Sea Hawk and Bow—with Bow being distinctly feminine in appearance and mannerism. Characters are also diverse in body type and skin colour: Bow has dark skin, Glimmer is a bit chubby and Adora/She-Ra is noticeably tall and fit. I am always onboard for more diversity, especially in children cartoons, where it is important that children can see themselves represented in media. What’s more, none of the characters actively point out these differences beyond some comments on how tall or strong She-Ra is. There’s a clear sense of normalcy to this diversity. Of course, it’s important to directly address issues of sexism, racism and other types of discrimination directly, but it’s nice to have a show that presents these differences as normal. I also tend to find shows with diverse characters much more interesting and memorable than ones that have three or four of the same milktoast characters with different names, but no real difference between them.

She-Ra also doesn’t shy away from homosexual relationships, having one explicit relationship between the princesses Spinnerella and Netossa, and an implied relationship between Catra and Adora, with Scorpia also being enamoured with Catra. It could be argued that Glimmer and Bow are also part of the show’s LGBTQ representation, but I don’t think the writers intended it as such. Just because Bow has some feminine qualities and doesn’t have a romantic interest doesn’t mean he is gay, nor is there any indication that Glimmer, Adora and Bow aren’t more than good friends. It would be nice to have some homosexual male representation, but as She-Ra is a show targeted at young girls, I can see why it wouldn’t be a priority. Catra and Adora’s implied relationship was one of my favourite parts of the show. In what is essentially an angsty teen romance, the two go back and forth as Adora struggles to reconcile her past while Catra feels betrayed and abandoned. The execution of their interpersonal conflicts is really well done, and is the highlight of the series so far.

Most of the relationships are of this same quality. It very rarely feels like characters are acting just to push the plot forward, and interact with each other in a very human way. Drama is handled well, and nothing is ever pushed to the extreme. One of my biggest gripes with teen dramas is how relationships in those stories are handled, with everyone overreacting and refusing to discuss things openly with each other. By contrast, characters in She-Ra are mostly honest, sincere and actually talk to resolve conflicts. And when they’re not being emotionally mature like this, we immediately feel the impact of their actions. People get hurt or feel their trust is betrayed, but it’s always realistic. Glimmer is a brat, but considering how strict her mom is, her anxieties feel reasonable. Catra’s temper is a logical consequence of her upbringing, so her lashing out against Adora makes sense, especially when we see the internal conflicts she is dealing with. She-Ra trusts its audience to take enjoyment out of a well-crafted story, rather than creating drama for the sake of drama. I find that overdramatic social situations in fiction lead to people to exaggerate their own lives in turn, embodying the mantra: “Art imitates life, life imitates art”. People want to emulate their interests, even as we become more and more obsessed with crafting an exciting life for ourselves, regardless of the negative impact it has on us and the ones around us. Shows like She-Ra demonstrate that you can have an interesting, exciting life while maintaining healthy relationships with others. Relationships in fiction should help us understand the way we approach our own relationships through realistic representation; fiction shouldn’t be glorifying drama and romanticizing broken relationships.

She-Ra is the kind of show we need more and more in the modern age. It has its issues—like most things do—but just as with Adventure Time and Avatar: The Legend of Korra, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power demonstrates that we have a deep appetite for diversity and sincere character development. One thing that people often forget is that popular media has only really been around for a century, but discrimination stretches much further back. Shows like She-Ra help to chip away at the status quo, bit by bit revealing a much more interesting, diverse and accepting world, where everyone has a place regardless of who they are. As more and more of these kinds of media are featured to large audiences, diversity will become commonplace, allowing for more interesting media to be created in turn. And if even half of them are of the same quality as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, we’re in for a wild ride.

Official Show Website