#georgia public broadcasting

[garadinervi]

Jackson State College, Jackson, MS, May 15, 1970 / 2024

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, (September 1, 1948 – May 15, 1970), student James Earl Green, (December 19, 1952 – May 15, 1970), student at Jim Hill High School (walking down the street on his way home from work)

(image: The Associated Press. Georgia Public Broadcasting, Georgia Public Radio GPTV)

[katherinehelmscummings]

Getting it all wrong at Georgia Public Broadcasting

Last Friday Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), the ONLY television and radio entity serving all of Georgia, announced it is cancelling its most popular in-house produced program, Political Rewind on June 30th. The show, nearing its 10th anniversary, grew from a once-a-week program on Friday afternoons to five days a week at 9:00 a.m., with a rebroadcast at 2:00 p.m., a podcast, and a…

[msclaritea]

ANYBODY ELSE TIRED OF HOLLYWOOD AND SILICON VALLEY BULLSHIT Beyonce Gets Publicly Humiliated By Disgusting Publicity Stunt Involving John Schneider and Tyler Perry.

John Schneider is a TOOL. He's worked directly in black film with very black writer/producer Perry. So, while he's pulling a fake ass stunt to garner Perry sympathy, THAT CAT released a false statement about immediately going AI using SORA.

IT'S NOT EVEN READY TO SCALE. Perry, The Billionaire, sitting in the middle of anti-union Atlanta is attempting to squeeze more Tax Breaks out of Georgia. The COS and BLM trolls helping run all of these scams also took another opportunity to show videos of Naked Black Men ALL OVER Elon Musk VERY VERY Queer platform.

Reception

Greg Braxton of the Los Angeles Times cited "Pause" as one of the sharpest public criticisms of [Tyler] Perry" and situated it alongside other critiques of Perry's work from African American filmmakers like Spike Lee.

Leonard Pierce of The A.V. Club graded the episode a B+, writing that although the episode felt at times "directionless" it nonetheless featured "a bunch of good laugh lines, a dynamite ending, and an increased role for some characters that have been neglected of late".

Tyler Perry was infuriated by "Pause", contacting Turner Broadcasting executives and threatening to re-evaluate his relationship with the company. When "Pause" aired, Perry had two series broadcast on Turner networks, Tyler Perry's House of Payne and Meet the Browns on TBS. Following an encore airing on June 26, 2010, the episode did not rerun again on Adult Swim until May 29, 2020, as a part of a marathon featuring the previously banned episodes "The Hunger Strike" and "The Uncle Ruckus Reality Show"..."

"Recently, a Twitter user reminded fans of one of the series’ most controversial episodes. “Pause,” the eighth episode in the third season, aired in June 2010 and parodied Tyler Perry and his style of filmmaking.The episode was ultimately pulled from TV and media reports began to circulate that Perry called Turner Broadcasting furious over it, leading to the episode being banned. However, Perry never admitted to doing so.

During the episode, fictional iterations of Perry and his Madea character show up as Winston Jerome and Ma Dukes, respectively. Jerome is depicted as a cultish entertainment mogul who uses religious rhetoric and his film themes to seduce men behind the scenes and hide that he is gay.

Throughout the episode, Jerome is depicted as invoking Jesus and isolating his cast and crew from family and friends to brainwash them to bend to his will.

At one point, Huey and Riley are so concerned about their Granddad, they go on a rescue mission to save him.

Near the end of the episode, Jerome drops his polished accent and flat-out asks Granddad to have sex with him. “Look man, all bulls**t aside, can I please just have some a**?” the fictional version of Perry says.

Granddad replies, “Do you mean to tell me that this whole cross-dressing Christian cult crap is just so you can sleep with men?” To this, Jerome replies, “Uh, pretty much, yeah.”

Written by Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder and Rodney Barnes, the episode was expected to cause tension by insiders, according to a report the Los Angeles Times reprinted.

There was also speculation that Perry fired some of his staff and planned to sue ‘The Boondocks” over the episode, but he shot those reports down as false at the time.

“Just like the Spike Lee situation, I feel that ‘no response’ is the best response. I’m just gonna leave it at that,” Perry said, referring to separate criticism Lee lodged at him about his work.

“But I will tell you this … there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that I’m suing ‘The Boondocks.’ Those are all lies. I’m not suing anybody over that. And I haven’t fired anyone because of that show, either. I don’t know where all that came from,” Perry continued.

A reboot of ‘The Boondocks’ was announced in 2019, a month before the death of actor John Witherspoon, who played Granddad. In 2021, it was announced that Sony Pictures had “pulled the plug” on restarting the show."

The trolls are always bringing up Boondocks and it's supposedly, to go after Tyler Perry for getting the show cancelled but this has all the earmarks of a publicity stunt from The Hollywood Mafia. Practically all of Perry's promo consists of attacks but it's far too sophisticated. Clips of his new projects are always included and ALWAYS the most graphic scenes.

The episode was on the same channel as Perry's show, House of Payne

The Executive Producer was Reginald Hudlin, a close business friend of Perry's

The other producers were Sony Pictures, both directly and through a subsidiary; another company Perry has gone business with and they are firmly in the Mafia

The Creator, Aaron McGruder has done little else but they're still promoting him

The episode, like the rest of the show has promotional cultural references, such as mentioning Trump supporter, Ice Cube and a cult that sounds an awful lot like Scientology

"..Robert eventually passes the audition and meets Winston himself, who is revealed to be a devout, closeted evangelical Christian who claims Jesus Christ himself personally inspired him to write. Winston offers him the part of Ma Dukes' love interest and invites him to his compound and inner circle, on condition that he accept Jesus as his savior and renounce Ice Cube and all of his works. At the compound, Winston makes a grand entrance a la Rocky Horror Picture Show, descending on a golden elevator while singing "It's All Right to Cross-Dress for Christ"; from there, Robert quickly realizes Winston leads a cult-like organization, forbidding the compound residents from contacting their family..."

It was a publicity stunt and likely gave Tyler Perry a smooth out at TBS.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

A lawmaker with the ruling party of Georgia has introduced legislation that would strip the rights of same-sex couples, ban depictions of homosexuality in media, and outlaw all LGBTQ+-related gatherings. The chilling legislation bears all the hallmarks of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts at LGBTQ+ erasure.

On Tuesday, Shalva Papuashvili, a leader of Georgia’s revanchist Dream party and the speaker of Georgia’s parliament, introduced legislation targeting what he described as “LGBT propaganda.” The bill, as well as amendments to 18 existing laws, would attack the LGBTQ+ community on several fronts. Same-sex marriages would not be registered, adoption would be limited to “heterosexuals,” and gender transition would be outlawed along with any “medical manipulation for the purpose of gender reassignment,” Papuashvili said. The legislation erases LGBTQ+ people from public spaces by ordering broadcasters, advertisers, and movie theaters to redact all content featuring same-sex relationships and positive portrayals of homosexuality for all ages. In a nod to both Putin and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), the bill bans schools in Georgia from providing information to students that “promotes belonging to the opposite sex, same-sex relations or incest.”

The country of Georgia is going down the same path that Russia and Hungary did: pass a law banning depictions of LGBTQ+ people in media and all public LGBTQ+ exposure.

[fiercynn]

palestinian poets: fady joudah

fady joudah is a palestinian american physician, poet, and translator. he was born in the united states and grew up in libya and saudi arabia before returning to the united states for college. he attended the university of georgia–athens, the medical college of georgia, and the university of texas, where he completed his studies in internal medicine.

he has published five collections of poetry: the earth in the attic (2008), alight (2013), textu (2014), footnotes in the order of disappearance (2018), and tethered to the stars (2021). in 2014, he was a guggenheim fellow in poetry. joudah is also well-known for his poetry translation: he has translated the works of palestinian poets like mahmoud darwish, ghassan zaqtan, mary abu al-hayyat, and many more. he is based in houston, where he works as a physician of internal medicine.

IF YOU READ JUST ONE POEM BY FADY JOUDAH, MAKE IT THIS ONE: "the tea and sage poem"

OTHER POEMS ONLINE LOVE BY FADY JOUDAH

Scarecrow at poetry magazine

Remove at la review of books (along with a fantastic essay called "My Palestinian Poem that 'The New Yorker' Wouldn't Publish)

Mimesis at poetry magazine

WHO HAS NO LAND HAS NO SEA at poets for living waters

Palestine, Texas at Sappho's Torque

The Mother Between Us at the yale review

House of Mercury at northwest public broadcasting

Things You've Never Seen at poets.org

National Park at poetry magazine

Sleeping Trees at poetry magazine

[rogersideup]

Nice to be Kneaded

Chapter 10

The Snap

Series masterlist

Previous Part: Doomsday Next Part: Courage

Word Count: 5,678

Warnings: My blog is 18+ only. All minors or blogs without an age in bio will be blocked. Minors DNI. Mentions of loss, grief, anxiety and depression.

Time and reality felt a bit unreal as you navigated the new situation you were in. One where you had to pretend to be strong on the outside all the while completely melting and distorting into someone you didn't even recognize on the inside.

So much had happened since Steve's departure from Greenwood and arrival back into the public eye in his full long haired and bearded glory.

The battle at hand against Thanos was now anyone had the capacity to talk about, and rightfully so. Everyone was terrified- so scared that stopping the flow of day to day life and staying glued to the front of their televisions with a phone in hand and social media on their screens for the fastest source of breaking news seemed to be the only way anyone knew how to cope.

Unfortunately for you, your love was at the forefront. And when the news broke that Steve Rogers was out of hiding and back into the world of avenging, the mass of Greenwood's population immediately recognized that handsome man as their neighbor, and the perfectly shy and respectful resident who just so happened to be best friends with the girl he lived next door to.

Gossip spread like wildfire through a boring, scanty place like this. You knew speculations involving you and your emotions the night he left was at the forefront of mouths of the people around you.

You could tell that was happening as you tried your best to cope with all the fear everyone else was feeling with the added layer of heartbreak and anxiety waiting for federal officers to come knock at your door and take you away.

Sometimes you just needed a breath of fresh air or anything to occupy your brain other than all of this. So you'd sit on your porch steps and stare at the lawns of your neighbors, each one was perfect groomed. Yours could use a little work, but hey, you had a lot going on right now, and the flowers growing on the bushes in front of Steve's house were such a pretty pink color, it was a shame he wasn't around to enjoy them.

Occasionally, someone on their own mission to clear their minds and get some air would walk passed you and shoot you a sympathetic look, or even worse, a friendly face would walk by and avoid looking at you as if you were the plague itself. After a few of those experiences, you decided to just go for a run on the trail.

You still hadn't gotten any better at running that five mile loop that you and Steve had tackled that one day in the summer. But the pain the running caused you still wasn't any greater than the pain of hearing your neighbors whispering about you as you jogged passed them in the opposite direction.

Being outside was too difficult, and being inside surrounded by news broadcasts and reminders of Steve scattered around your house was too painful, so you tried waiting your life away at the bakery.

It was the only place nobody could bother you. The doors remained locked at all hours of the day as to not force your employees to work, and logistically, nobody wanted to leave their houses when it felt like the world was about to end due to a purple dictator, so you hid away there.

Admittedly, with every order cancelled and no in store customers, there was nothing to do. So you just sat in all the cozy nooks and crannies you had created in the lobby with your own two hands and just enjoyed them for the first time ever. You watched movies, read books, kept the blinds drawn with the closed sign flashing in bright pink neon on the front door, and pretty much only went home to shower and sleep.

The stupid glass front door, the only part of the bakery that was visible from the outside looking in with all the blinds drawn. The stupid stupid front door Georgia could see you from when she peeped in and knocked.

You were angry she had disrupted your little corner of peace in a world that was on fire, and you knew you had no option but to get up and open the door to let her in.

Not a word was said as you reluctantly held the door open for her to enter, then allowing it to close on its own accord as you sat down cross legged in your favorite floor seating nook. You kept your eyes to the cushion in front of you as she sat and settled next to you, her stare felt judgmental but you knew this wasn't your best look.

Sweatpants and a hoodie, Steve's hoodie, but you weren't ready to talk about that yet. Your hair was very obviously air dried and thrown up into a claw clip at the back of your head, not a single lick of makeup on your face, your sneakers were left by the front door but at least your socks matched today. That was one small win you could account for on your daily highs and lows chart.

You gained the courage to look at her, and in true Georgia fashion, she looked great. But you knew her, she wasn't the type to leave her house unless her face was perfectly covered in the same makeup she wore every day and her hair was perfectly styled with not a strand out of place. Her shoes were always squeaky clean and her clothes existed in a whole different realm in which wrinkles and pet fur never existed.

"I haven't seen you around in a while, Sweet Pea, I've been worried about you." She stared, same sympathetic tone everyone had been using around you even in passing that you had quickly grown to resent.

You were now the naïve girl that fell for the magic tricks that Captain America pulled out of his cowl. Well, at least that's what everyone thought, and that's what you would allow them to think. If you had to lie straight to Georgia's face, so be it. But you would never say a single bad thing about Steve, she would never get that gratification she came to seek.

"Yeah, well" You shrugged, struggling to find the words. "I've been busy."

Georgia looked around, the bakery a dimly lit ghost town "With what? Romcoms and a bag of Spicy Doritos?"

"Easy to watch, always have a happy ending" You agreed. "Most of them don't take place in the middle of a universal war... and spicy is better than the original, so"

"I knew that boy was bad for you, I've never seen you so down in the dumps." She started earning a nasty glare from you. "Stop trying to kill me with your eyes."

"If you're here to say I told you so, I'm only going to try harder." You warned, no sprinkle of remorse in your tone.

"That's only half of why i'm here." She shook her head. "Just because I said I wasn't going to stick around to watch him break your heart didn't mean I wasn't going to be here to help you put the pieces back together."

"Who said I needed help?" You questioned, emotional regulation had completely flown out of the window. "You don't get to pick and choose when you get to be a friend to me. It's all or nothing."

"I was wrong for what I did." Georgia admitted. "I take full accountability for that, Sugar. But I'm worried about you, really really worried."

"Didn't seem too worried before we knew who he really was" You spat. "If this is a whole trap to try and get me to speak poorly of the one person on this planet you genuinely hate, well then I'm definitely not sorry to tell you it's not going to work."

"He hurt you, baby." Georgia persisted. "He was so manipulative you didn't even notice 90% of his life story right in front of your face. You said it to me before, there was something weird about him and now we know what it was. Captain America living in our neighborhood and coming into your home and your heart and you had no idea."

"Oh just me huh? I was the only clueless one in this entire rotten washed up town?" You questioned right back. "Sure, he had a secret but he was always kind to me. He was nothing but gentle and caring, so I don't want to hear anything about how he hurt me. I don't want a single peep of this narrative everyone in Greenwood has about him or me, or what our time together was like."

"If he was so gentle, why were you crying so hard outside of his house a few nights ago?" She questioned

"That was a few nights ago?" You rhetorically questioned.

"How long ago did you think that was?"

"Not important" You shook your head. "I was crying because he had to leave."

"Really? That's all? That's the only reason?" She continued to press.

"Was the news a lot to process? Absolutely." You confirmed. "But I was really fucking sad that someone I love so dearly was leaving to be thrown into a very dangerous situation. Wouldn't that make you sad too?"

"Again with the mouth, sweet cheeks, you're going to give me a heart attack"

"Again, I'm a grown woman, not a child."

"You did not love that man." She scolded.

That immediately put a sour taste in your mouth. "I'm sorry?"

"You we're attracted to him because he was handsome, and you liked him because he gave you time and attention. That's not love, darlin', that's not even a romance. That was a fling."

"Why do you keep trying to minimize my relationship with him?" Anger furrowed your brows and squinted your eyes.

"Because you love too much. Too fast, to hard. I'm being realistic." She insisted. "That was a criminal in your home taking advantage of your love."

"So was it a fling or was it my love being taken advantage of? You're being condescending. How could he take advantage of my love if I never loved him in the first place?" You called her out.

"Dare I remind you he's the number one most wanted criminal in the world?" She completely disregarded your question.

"And who are you relying on keeping you safe right now?" You asked.

Georgia sat in silence, too unwilling to put her pride aside to even come close to answering that.

"That's what I thought." You grumbled. "So let me ask you one last question. Are you here because you were worried about me, or are you here because you wanted me to hate him as much as you do?"

More silence, she wasn't budging.

"Get out of my bakery." You shook your head.

She gracefully stood up and made it all the way to  the door, and as far as pushing the handle in before she stopped. "At what point does this get better?"

"When you stop putting words in my mouth and speaking on situations you don't know anything about." You told her the cold, hard truth. "Especially situations you could know all about but don't because you pushed me away over the opinion of someone you didn't even give a chance to."

And with one swift push to the door, she was gone faster than she came knocking, and you pressed play on your romcom again.

That night you went home and took a long, hot bath. Relaxing music playing quietly, your favorite candle lit, and the lights turned off. Just existing at a time like this took everything out of you, so all you could do was put yourself in relaxing, non stressful circumstances to help keep yourself stable.

Although you managed to clear your head for a bit, your mind never stopped thinking of Steve. All you could do was wonder where he is and what he was up to. You hoped he was safe, and unharmed, you hoped he was doing okay, and feeling okay.

For his sake and everyone else's, you hoped that the group of Avengers would figure it out soon. But for your sake, you hoped it would all be done and over with so maybe you could just hear his voice over the phone, you would even be okay with a letter in your mailbox or an email from a decoy account. Just anything, really anything at all to know he was alright.

Just when you started to feel a little better about the whole thing, the blip happened.

You'd never forget the chill deep in your bones the moment it happened, the rumble in the sky that rattled the ground. For a moment, your windows shook. Then, you heard chaos from outside. Crashing, honking car horns, shouting, screams of terror, sobbing.

Your heart dropped to your stomach and you bolted out of the front door, completely missing the way the news anchors turned to dust on the TV as you ran off your porch and into your driveway.

It looked to be just as chaotic as it sounded, a car crashed into a street lamp with nobody the driver's seat, neighbors all frantically asking if they've seen other neighbors that have seem to have gone missing, screams for help coming from people running inside. Then you saw it with your own eyes, Andy from two doors down running up to you, quickly as he could.

"Andy, Andy what's going on?" You asked, eyes bulging out of your head, hands shaking, your legs threatening to buckle underneath you. You had never been this scared in your entire life.

"Phoebe and Willow" He explained frantically, both his hands reached out and grabbed onto your shoulders. You recognized the name of his wife and infant daughter. "They were here just a second ago I swear, I was holding her she was giggling then they just disappeared, dissolved"

"What- what do you mean? Dissolved?" You questioned frantically, he couldn't pull himself together, and that scared you even more.

"I don't want that to happen to me. I'm scared, they just, went away."

"Okay, okay" You nodded, grabbing onto his forearms. "What's happening? Do you know anything about this?"

"No, no, I'm scared. Everyone is dying, they're gone. I don't want it to happen to me"

"It's okay, you're okay" You tried to calm him down regardless of your own internal terror. You looked around to try and find any solution, any ounce of comfort.

Then you noticed people drifting away with your own eyes, bodies slowly turning to dust that would flutter to the floor and blow away in a gust of wind.

"I feel so weird" Andy said, you looked back at him while tightening your grip on his arms.

"It'll be okay" You nodded, trying to convince yourself of that too.

Then, his face and body completely relaxed and the arms that were once in your hands vanished before your eyes leaving nothing but air in its presence.

That's when you started running. Jogging at first, then sprinting. House to house, person to person, helping where you could. There were people with injuries all around due to people fading away in dangerous situations.

You ran up to and turned off a lawnmower that was once being operated by a person who vanished, you helped an older lady up off the floor who was very gently struk by the car before it it the street lamp, then you ran into Andy and Pheobe's house to make sure that their stove was off, and things like hair straighteners and candles were off and not hazardous. You looked out for newly stray dogs and cats, maybe even kids looking for their parents.

All the while you were terrified of vanishing yourself, but in a moment like that it was imperative to help until you couldn't anymore.

It wasn't until a full 24 hours later that you were sure you weren't going to go anywhere, that's when the news started reporting more reliable information about what had really happened.

Although no accurate or official census had been taken in such short notice, they predicted half the population of earth had been blipped. Just completely turned to dust at the hands of Thanos. Then two days later footage had been released of the Avengers and the moments leading up to the blip.

It was incredibly hard to watch the footage, it came with every warning under the sun before they played it on any screen, or any platform.

They all tried with all of their might, and in the footage they all seemed exhausted. Wanda trying her hardest to destroy the mind stone in visions head while everyone else tried to keep Thanos away from it.

The hulk went straight through him, T'challa tried but he was no match, War Machine was thrown way far off to the side, Bucky came shooting but he was also tossed off, Natasha, Groot, then Steve slid in on his knees.

You wanted to look away, you wanted to cover your eyes, you knew you shouldn't watch it anymore, but the moment you saw him you just couldn't stop peaking between your fingers.

There was a large gash on his forehead, his skin was littered with dirt and little shields on each of his arms with what looked like claws coming out of the bottom. He got close enough of stab him in the leg with the claws, then upper cut his jaw with his fist in that splitting moment of pain. You were rooting for him as he caught the Gauntlet in his two hands and tried pulling it off with all of his might, then came the part you wish you never saw.

Thanos punched him right in the face, so hard that Steve immediately fell face down to the floor and didn't move a single muscle. You felt like you were going to throw up as Wanda kept him at bay with one hand, and destroyed the stone with the other. Then, Thanos reversed time, got the stone, and snapped before the footage cut out.

You almost screamed at the screen for more, you just needed some proof that Steve was alive because he looked pretty lifeless after getting sucker punched by a titan. You watched him fall to the floor over and over and over again trying to find any movement of his body, any teeny sliver of hope that he was alive and out there somewhere.

Then came the google searches, you searched his name every few minutes to see if there was any news of his status of being. Alive or dead, you needed to see proof. But it never came.

That's when you hit your lowest point, for weeks you were glued to your laptop just trying to find any ounce of hope. For Steve's life, and for the world in general. But this time you were less apologetic about your state of being, this was the greatest tragedy of history and your love might've been dead.

So yes, you were going to cry over a bowl of ice cream in bed... for a week in a row... with no pants on.

When you thought things couldn't get worse, they did. After not being able to get into contact with your Mom since the blip, one of her friends reached out to you on Facebook and confirmed she was one of the dusted. Half of your employees were gone, and you loved them all with your whole heart.

Eventually the world around you started to get back on its feet a bit more every day. Businesses rebuilt, fires were put out, people found strength and comfort in community.

At some point you felt the same way as well. You'd leave you house a bit more each day, and escaped in trying your hardest to reopen the bakery. It still wasn't the most practical time to open the doors and start the ovens again, but you just really, really missed it. Baking had been your outlet for stress relief and control for most of your life, and this was the first time you didn't immediately turn to it the second things went bad.

So, instead of tying your apron on and preheating an oven, you preheated the business instead. You completely overhauled and gave the website a facelift. Spent hours searching for and writing new recipes that you'd eventually test bake. You overhauled the business model, took a head count of you employees that were still around and had long conversations about their willingness and readiness to work again.

Everyday you tried to sit on your porch for a bit of sunshine, but even with the sun out a chill never left your bones. You spent most mornings on the chair tucked away in the corner, angled away from Steve's house because every time you looked at it, it was nothing but a painful reminder of his unaccounted status of being.

It didn't help that someone hung a sign on the front of his garage door. It read The Greenwood home of the great Captain America. A big star painted right below the words. Residents would come by and leave notes around it, some on pages of loose leaf notebook paper, some on brightly colored neon construction paper. Pooled on the ground in front of the garage and below the sign was what looked like a vigil. Bouquets of flowers laid amongst plastic toy shields, family photos in matching Captain America shirts and kids dressed in costumes, candles, and teddy bears.

You didn't know what the notes said or if any of those flowers were even alive anymore, but you did know that every time you had worked yourself up to even go look at what anyone in Greenwood or neighboring towns had to say to your sweet Steve, your legs would lock up before you could even make it up the driveway.

A lump would form in your throat, panic would spread from your heart all throughout your body, leaving red splotches all over your chest. Your mind couldn't get passed the fact that it looked like a memorial. If you didn't know any better, you would've believed that news sources all around the world had confirmed his death and all the folks around here were paying their respects.

You could see a few letters from the sidewalk in front of his house. Some of them read thank you in big, bold letters. So that's what you were trying to convince yourself of. Steve was simply being thanked for his service.

Although the mental block of Steve's busy driveway remained, you found that you could go into his house as you promised you would if you just kept your eyes to the floor while approaching the front door and didn't look up until you had unlocked it.

You tried your absolute best to keep his house in good shape, even his front lawn that was frequented by fans of his from whenever they were traveling from. Everyone's lawns were now a big haphazard. You could tell exactly which homes were unoccupied now, the grass was tall and the weeds were taller. Again, yours could use some work but a few wildly wispy rose bushes were the least of your concern.

Another bowl of cookies and cream, more googling, more staring at the framed picture on your wall, another night of the same devastation.

You looked at that painting every single night, the grass field was so beautiful, he captured it so perfectly. At the time, sitting there with him was so simple and now it seemed as though there would never be enjoyment in anything again.

An unusual thought occurred to you as you admired it that night, for some reason you just wanted to touch his name sighed on the back. Maybe you just wanted to feel close to him when it felt like he was no longer even in the same world as you, maybe you had finally lost your mind.

You crawled across your bed and reached for it on the wall. Taking it off the hook and popping open the back of the beautiful frame, to your surprise when the back panel was removed there was a note shoved between the canvas and the frame.

Frantically, your fingers unfolded it as fast as they could to reveal Steve's adorable handwriting.

Sunflower,

If you're reading this, that means I've probably been gone from Greenwood for awhile. I'm writing this on your kitchen island the day I have to leave, you're at work right now so I'm sorry I snuck in. The second I'm done writing this, I'm going to hide it for you to find hopefully when you need it the most.

Did I have the courage to tell you that I love you in person before I left? If not, I'm sorry. Also, surprise! Loving and knowing you was one of the most privileged experiences I've ever been given the opportunity for, and I cherished every moment you were by my side. You made a colossal impact on some of the most painful, yet malleable years of my life. I'm not quite sure I'll ever be able to string together the proper words to express my gratitude, but I am incredibly grateful to have ever been yours.

I hope you're doing well, and I hope we did everything we could to keep you safe. Sometimes things get touchy, distance makes our minds wander and fill with doubt, but please know that no matter what happens, I'll never stop thinking of you. You're always on my mind, and that's something I'm in no rush to ever change.

You have forever friends in the Avengers, and the moment this all settles I promise you'll reap the benefits. Your kindness will come back around, you deserve nothing but the best, my love.

But in the meantime, if you need us. If you need me. If you need anything, I'll be there.

All my heart,

Steven G Rogers.

(678)-136-7092

(Ps; I don't care how long it's been, call me when you can. This phone line is just for you, sweet girl. If I don't pick up, I'll call back the second I can.)

You cried as you clutched that note to your chest and determined your mind had officially been lost. If you had found this just a few days ago, your phone would've been flying towards your hand as if it was the strongest magnet in the world, your fingers would type in the number and it would be ringing faster than you could've even read the note.

But that was not the case, because you had found it today. Today when you let the thoughts of his possible demise sit in your head just a little too long and allowed it to sink in as a real possibility. So now, if you called the number and there was nothing but a ringtone and being asked to leave a voicemail, you'd have your answer as to what happened to him.

You weren't ready for that yet. Every waking moment of every dragged out day felt like nothing but survival. At this stage in trying to get back up on your feet, anyone really needed to do their best to protect their hearts from more loss and more pain. So, you folded that paper back up and tucked it between the painting and the frame and hung it back up on the wall.

The very thought of calling him remained on the forefront of your mind and the center of your heart for almost one full month before you had a particularly good day.

A few of your employees expressed that they missed you and the bakery, so you opened the doors for them. You all spent hours baking with each other and finally decided it was time to reopen the doors for good. So you sat down and made the plan, wrote up a schedule, posted an opening date. You felt hopeful for the first time in a while, so you decided you'd call Steve once the reopening happened.

The week in between posting the reopening date and the actual opening day, major news outlets started reporting on Nice to be Kneaded, because Captain Americas favorite bakery is opening back up for business.

Turns out everyone wanted a bite of Steve's favorite sweets, and on opening day there was a line wrapped around the building and the parking lot was completely full before you even got there at 4 in the morning.

It was hectic therefore after. With only half the staff and an infinite line of customers, and news press constantly harassing you on the daily to try and interview you about your time with the Avenger, you found yourself exhausted constantly.

You baked overnights and all morning long to try and keep up with the demand, but not even a 50 to 60 hour workweek was enough to keep up with it all, it was just simply too overwhelming.

Understanding that you needed some time for yourself as to not burn out too fast, you took a night off. The night you were going to call Steve. 

You planned on it, you even got the note out, held your phone in your shaky hands for a while. You turned on your comfort show, sat on the couch and stared at the screen. You thought of that night when Steve came over and fell asleep on you, the first time you cuddled. You thought of maybe cleaning up a bit first, there were some dishes in the sink and your coasters were scattered along the table.

But after some pacing and mind work, you just had to do it.

You typed in the numbers one by one, took in a big shaky breath, then pressed call.

Each ringtone felt like a stab to your gut, and each one felt longer than the previous. Every second was like a big footstep through heavy mud, guiding you towards the answer you desperately needed.

Just as one ring stopped and another one about to sound, there was heavy pounding on your door. It made you fly up and out of your spot on the couch in absolute panic, phone landing on the rug below the couch.

You didn't even have time to make it to your front door to even answer the damn thing before it was busted open, and what felt like an entire army of big men in tact suits came rushing at you with weapons drawn.

Of course you knew what you did, you understood the crime you committed, but you also knew this was too much.

If the time ever came you were expecting a few cop cars, maybe even the FBI. But this? It was so terrifying and sudden that you fell straight to the floor. As they shouted out you to comply, all you could do was cover your ears and cry.

If there's one lasting impression your last partner made in your life, it was the fear of men. Especially big men shouting angrily and reaching for you.

Two men in unmarked black tact suits pulled you up by your arms while one watched, the other 6 surrounding with fully loaded weapons leaving red laser dots all over your body. The moment you were lifted onto your feet, the backs of your knees were kicked in, forcing a harsh landing onto the fronts of your knee caps into a kneel.

They all shouted so loudly and all over each other that you couldn't make out the words of any one individual in the room, nor could you hear them reading your rights to tell you they were going to hand cuff you.

Once your hands were cuffed behind your back, you were aggressively yanked up once more, than they all went silent except for who you assumed was the leader of whoever these people were.

He shouted at you to stop crying, and as they pushed and pulled you out of your house and towards an black unmarked van, he shouted at you to stop tripping over yourself. But the funny part was when you asked who these people were with, or where you were going and what they we're going to do with you, he was oddly silent.

As you stumbled over your own two feet with the barrel of a gun pressed into your spine and pushing you forward, you could feel an extra pair of eyes on you. So you looked up and across the way.

None other than Georgia, leaning over the railing of her front porch, mug of tea in her hand. She sipped it slowly like this was a form of entertainment. When your crying eyes met hers, she almost seemed happy to see you that way. 

You could tell she was the one who called to report you, you could see it in her small sinister smirk. All you could think of while they quite literally pushed you into the back of the van was that it was a shame that would be the last familiar face you'd see for a while.

The van doors were slammed shut, a guard in full scale armor and a helmet sat in the corner with a gun ready to go, and the lead guy pounded on the doors twice to signal it was ready to leave.

The only thing scarier than the arrest itself was feeling the van pull off the driveway, and knowing that somewhere inside your home was the result of a phone call you never got to know.

But the biggest shame of all? A voice you completely missed amidst the chaos echoing from where your phone fell below the couch.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Sunflower, are you there?"

"What's happening?"

Next Part: Courage

Tag List: @patzammit @bemysugarbean @buckymydarlingangel @happinessinthebeing @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory @differenttyphoonwerewolf @themotherof10 @lokislady82 @talesofadragon @spikeluv84 @xxxalicerogersxx @Avid-fic-reader-05 @royalwriteroftheuniverse @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @bitchy-bi-trash @crazyunsexycool @openup-yourmind @selella @kattreffic @benedict-squirtle @magnificentsaladllama

Have any thoughts or theories? Head cannons or scenarios you want me to write of nomad Steve and baker reader? Submit them to my inbox! I’ll add them to the more fun stuff masterlist here!

[essektheylyss]

God, the Georgia conspiracy trial is likely to actually be broadcasted. Good luck to the studios trying to use lack of content to turn public opinion against the Hollywood strikes when we're all tuning into CSPAN to watch OJ-meets-Watergate on steroids.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Eurovision is hosted between all the countries who are members of the European Broadcasting Union, an alliance of public service broadcasters who share news, footage, shows, sports broadcasting rights, and technical standards.

It's not limited to Europe: as well as Israel, Azerbaijan, and Armenia (as mentioned in the post), it also includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Georgia and Turkey.

Most of these countries don't compete in Eurovision, mostly due to Israel's participation. Turkey competed until 2012, Morocco participated once in 1980, Georgia still competes, and Tunisia and Lebanon announced their intention to compete in 1977 and 2005 respectively but failed to send an act.

Ah, that explains it.

[stargirlsuicide]

can you tell me about the impact fascism has had on the current socio political state of italy and why heavily right wing and authoritarian politics are so popular currently?

omg yea of course

a lot abt this but 2 main things : 1 heavy censorship and 2 aesthetic focused politics

for some context italy has a national public broadcast RAI which is state owned and its required to pay for it in your taxes.

RAI is pretty much the biggest media outlet in italy and is known to have very strict censorship laws. they air some of the most important events : the sanremo music festival and the labour day concert.

all the speeches have to be read and approved before being said live. thats not even really a major deal cause these are some of the most viewed events in italy of course they would want to prevent people from saying certain types of things. the issue is in what they choose to censor tho. during the may 1st concert of a couple years ago, fedez (rlly famous italian singer) exposed right wing politicians by quoting homophobic lines theyve stated publicly like smth along the lines of 'all gays should be burned in an oven' and his speech wasnt approved and RAI had issues with him cause they wouldnt have allowed it to be said live if it went through checking first.

most recently a speech that was made to be aired during april 25th (liberation day and end of the fascism regime) was censored and had to be posted on twitter by the author

not regarding the censorship but in the sanremo music festival 2023 volley player paola egonu made a speech (approved by RAI) that resulted in backlash cause according to peoples reactions 'there is no racism cause we let her host for 1 night so she shouldn't complain'

for my second point 'aesthetic based politics' its a bit of a more complicated issue actually. if you watch a speech by the prime minister georgia meloni you would notice she brings up workers, the traditional family and god, all things that were also referenced by mussolini a lot. in the speech that made her gain more traction as a political figure and the speech she made before becoming prime minister she uses fear mongering to turn people to her side, in the first one she says legal documents saying 'parent 1 and parent 2' instead of mother and father means the downfall of the traditional family unit and in the more recent one she says the downfall of the economy will cause a crisis for the workers and the tradional family.

so right win politicians play a lot into the 'im one of you' side of things, that theyre working class and truly care about the people. matteo salvini (who used to be the major right wing politician) also used this for racist propaganda saying we 'cant let immigrants in cause theyll steal our jobs' ultimately it all plays into the same tactic of pretending the 'issue' will harm working class people just to get people on their side which was also a. fascist talking point during the regime

[talkstothemoonandstars]

In Georgia, cameras could sharpen the focus on Trump in the courtroom

ATLANTA — If Donald Trump is indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, it will not be the first time the former president will answer to criminal charges in a courtroom. But this time, the entire process will likely play out on live television.

Unlike federal or Manhattan courts, where the former president appeared for his three previous arraignments, Georgia law requires that cameras be allowed into judicial proceedings with a judge’s approval.

In 2018, the Georgia Supreme Court, in an order amending the law to include smartphones, underscored the importance of transparency: “Open courtrooms are an indispensable element of an effective and respected judicial system. 

“It is the policy of Georgia’s courts to promote access to and understanding of court proceedings not only by the participants in them but also by the general public and by news media who will report on the proceedings to the public.”

And unlike in New York, where Trump told the world he had been indicted but the public had to wait days until the document was unsealed, Georgia requires that indictments be made public immediately. 

The presiding judge has the final say on camera access. Media organizations are required to file a formal request, known as a Rule 22, for the judge’s consideration. The filing is often considered more of a formality, as the requests are almost always granted.

[mariacallous]

Andrew Chakhoyan: TIFF falls into the Russian propaganda trap

“I didn’t see Russians committing war crimes,” said Russian-Canadian director Anastasia Trofimova, whose film about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russians at War, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September. Given her tenure at RT (formerly Russia Today) — a propaganda outlet linked to Russian security services — this statement was as predictable as it was revolting.

But it takes two to tango. While Trofimova spent years spreading Moscow’s lies with RT, the decision to feature her “documentary,” which falsely portrays invading Russian troops as victims, was ours. Even more troubling, the free world — represented by Canada in this instance — helped finance it with $340,000 from the Canada Media Fund and TVO, Ontario’s public broadcaster.

To top it all off, the Toronto International Film Festival thought it was righteous to insist that the screening must proceed as planned, despite outcry from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, and others. Not only do TIFF organizers appear seduced by the Kremlin propaganda, they channel it — insinuating that peaceful protests are a threat to the “safety of all festival guests.”

How can we still be infatuated with the “great” Russian culture after the atrocities in Mariupol, the Bucha massacre, videos of beheadings, and the horrific images of returning Ukrainian POWs looking like they had escaped from Auschwitz?

Why did we miss the wake-up call of the Georgia invasion? Crimea annexation? The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014? Have we learned nothing since Russian tanks crossed Ukraine’s sovereign border in scenes eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s march across Europe? Can we not understand that by giving false narratives a platform and amplifying the voices of Russian propagandists, we risk complicity in their deceit?

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t personally committing atrocities in Ukraine — “Russians at War” are, with overwhelming public support back home. The film is a sleight of hand that strips Russian people of their agency — precisely what their government wants.

Trofimova may claim she “didn’t see” these crimes, but why are we still blind to what’s unfolding before our eyes?

Wilful ignorance is the answer. Our desire for balance turns into a dangerous trap when we start treating Russian aggression as just another “perspective” deserving a fair hearing — where the crimes of a malevolent, imperialist state are weighed against the suffering of its victims in a framework of false equivalence. The language of empathy and understanding, so vital in many global contexts, turns into a tool of subversion weaponized by FSB and GRU — Moscow’s omnipotent security agencies that run propaganda channels like RT.

Moreover, decades of underestimating Russia’s intentions and capabilities have left many western societies blind to the manipulation embedded in “cultural products” like Trofimova’s film. In the pursuit of diplomacy, the West has repeatedly offered Russia opportunities to reframe its image despite the overt threats of nuclear Armageddon pushed by anchors on state-run TV channels or senior officials alike.

Even the glorification of Russian “great power” status plays a role. We appear charmed by the farcical myth of Russian cultural and historical greatness, forgetting that Moscow spent billions gaslighting the West, infiltrating our academic, artistic and cultural institutions.

The idea of pacifism, like many other concepts, has been perverted by the Kremlin, suggesting that the victim who refuses to be murdered or subjugated holds the key to “conflict resolution.” Even if we set aside the idea of punishing the aggressor to prevent future violence, we must be honest: the power to “stop the killings” is not with the victim.

For a long time, I have subscribed to the noble idea of not questioning people’s motives, but now I am a committed consequentialist. If you parrot Kremlin talking points and call for peace while conveniently forgetting to name the aggressor, I presume you are carrying Moscow’s water, wittingly or not. In times of war, the burden of proof must shift; one’s motives deserve to be questioned if one’s words or actions serve an inherently evil cause.

Trofimova’s documentary isn’t just an isolated misstep, nor is it a case of artistic license gone astray. It symbolizes something deeper: the West’s enduring refusal to wake up to the realities of Ruscism (Russian fascism). But as history has shown, wilful blindness only emboldens the aggressor and makes future horrors inevitable.

Our moral obligation extends beyond thoughts and prayers. Russia will continue committing war crimes until we — societies that value dignity, freedom, and the rule of law — take decisive action to stop it. While we falter in doing what’s right, the least we owe to Ukraine and ourselves is the moral clarity of distinguishing the aggressor from the victim.

Trofimova’s film distorts the reality of Moscow’s genocidal actions, and our passive response to these machinations makes us complicit. Given that the collective West has committed to Ukraine’s fight but failed to commit to Ukraine’s victory, let us at least avoid aiding Moscow’s disinformation, and admit when we’ve fallen into a Kremlin trap.

[ericdeggans]

The fun and fear of guest hosting All Things Considered

As a longtime NPR nerd, I have often listened to the smooth, smart anchors leading broadcasts of our newsmagazines and wondered: Could I do that?

Last Saturday and Sunday, I found out, when I got the chance to fill in for Michel Martin as guest anchor on Weekend All Things Considered.

I knew from a stint guest hosting CNN’s late, lamented media analysis show Reliable Sources years ago, that even a temporary host can have lots of influence over a show. The key is to assemble a lineup of interviews and stories which are informative and newsy, but also show off the host’s strengths by speaking to their expertise, enthusiasms and abilities.

For me, it was also an opportunity to pull together some dreamed-about interviews, backed by the appeal to the subject of appearing on a newsmagazine which reaches millions of listeners over a weekend. My biggest fear: breaking news which would require lots of live anchoring; fortunately, the news gods smiled down and people seemed to chill out for the holiday weekend.

Here's links to some of the stories we offered over those two days. Their quality is a real testament to the staff at Weekend All Things Considered, who were supportive, understanding of a newbie’s nerves and so good at their jobs, it made speaking to an audience of millions exhilarating and fun – and only a little bit scary.

This is one of my favorite interviews: blerding out on comic book lore with Ryan Coogler, director of Wakanda Forever, which stands at the top of the box office. We talk about the death of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman, making longtime antihero Namor a Mayan (and those ankle wings!) and how two guys wrote a female centered, big budget Marvel movie. Click here to listen.

I’m a late-night TV nerd. So it was beyond fulfilling to get two of the smartest comics in late night to spend a little time talking about the future of late night TV and whether it makes sense to call out comics out for monologues which seem, for some, to encourage and/or minimize antisemitism or prejudice. The Daily Show’s Roy Wood Jr. and The Amber Ruffin Show’s Jenny Hagel were super smart, super funny and super thoughtful in this discussion, which you can hear by clicking here. Another version can be found in our podcast Consider This.

Flying to Washington DC on Thanksgiving night, I was astonished to see tech journalist Kara Swisher taking apart Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk in a series of tweets where she called him her biggest disappointment in 25 years as a tech reporter. During a staff a meeting the next day, I asked the team: Do you think we could get Swisher to talk with us about what happened? Turns out, they could, and we talked about Elon, whether we’re seeing the twilight of the tech bro and the future of Black Twitter. Listen here.

One thing NPR does well is spotlight up and coming artists before they become household names. So I was proud and honored to feature a revealing interview with Elegance Bratton, director/writer of the new film The Inspection, a movie based on his own life about a Black, gay homeless man -- rejected by his homophobic mother – who seeks refuge in the Marines. After the interview was done, Elegance told us he had dreamed of being interview by NPR about one of his films for years. We were happy to make that one come true – click here to listen.

A talk with Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Radio on the start of voting in the state’ contentious Senate runoff election between Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.

A conversation with expert Manuel Zamarripa on how to process the trauma from media coverage of mass shootings.

Discussion of the podcast White Hats, which dissects the complex and often bloody history of a group typically lionized in film and TV shows: The Texas Rangers.

Words with Senator Amy Klobuchar on her plans to convene a hearing on Ticketmaster’s dominance of the concert ticketing industry after their massive failure to sell tickets to Taylor Swift’s new concert tour.

[afrotumble]

Simone Biles has won her 9th all-around national championship | Georgia Public Broadcasting

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Nichols at The Nation:

Donald Trump has made no secret of his determination to govern as a “dictator” if he regains the presidency, and that’s got his critics warning that his reelection would spell the end of democracy. But Trump and his allies are too smart to go full Kim Jong Un. Rather, the former president’s enthusiasm for the authoritarian regimes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdoğan, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán suggests the models he would build on: managing elections to benefit himself and his Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting and constraining press freedom; and undermining civil society. Trump, who famously demanded that the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential voting be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of democracy without the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what propaganda experts Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead once described as “demonstration elections,” in which, instead of actual contests, wins are assured for the authoritarians who control the machinery of democracy. The outline for such a scenario emerges from a thorough reading of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership, which specifically proposes a Trump-friendly recalculation of the systems that sustain American democracy. The strategy for establishing an American version of Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” is not spelled out in any particular chapter of Mandate. Rather, it is woven throughout the whole of the document, with key elements appearing in the chapters on reworking the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In the section on the DHS, for instance, there’s a plan to eliminate the ability of the agency that monitors election security to prevent the spread of disinformation about voting and vote counting.

How serious a threat to democracy would that pose? Think back to November 2020, when Trump was developing his Big Lie about the election he’d just lost. Trump’s false assertion that the election had been characterized by “massive improprieties and fraud” was tripped up by Chris Krebs, who served as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the DHS. The Republican appointee and his team had established a 24/7 “war room” to work with officials across the country to monitor threats to the security and integrity of the election. The operation was so meticulous that Krebs could boldly announce after the voting was finished: “America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.” At the same time, his coordinating team declared, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” This infuriated Trump, who immediately fired the nation’s top election security official.

In Mandate’s chapter on the DHS, Ken Cuccinelli writes, “Of the utmost urgency is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts. The federal government cannot be the arbiter of truth.” Cuccinelli previously complained that CISA “is a DHS component that the Left has weaponized to censor speech and affect elections.” As for the team that worked so successfully with Krebs to secure the 2020 election, the Project 2025 document declares that “the entirety of the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee should be dismissed on Day One.” The potential impact? “It’s a way of emasculating the agency—that is, it prevents it from doing its job,” says Herb Lin, a cyber-policy and security scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

This is just one way that Project 2025’s cabal of “experts” is scheming to thwart honest discourse about elections and democracy. A chapter on public broadcasting proposes to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of a larger plan to upend NPR, PBS, and “other public broadcasters that benefit from CPB funding, including the even-further-to-the Left Pacifica Radio and American Public Media.” More destabilizing than the total funding cut that Project 2025 entertains is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations.” That could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM)—a move that would open prime territory on the dial for the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the FCC reserves for noncommercial broadcasting. And don’t imagine that the FCC would be in a position to write new rules that guard against the surrender of those airwaves to the Trump-aligned religious right.

[...]

While project 2025 seeks to rewire the FCC to favor Trump’s allies, it also wants to lock in dysfunction at the Federal Election Commission, the agency that is supposed to govern campaign spending and fundraising. Established 50 years ago, the FEC has six members—three Republicans and three Democrats—who are charged with overseeing the integrity of federal election campaigns. In recent years, however, this even partisan divide has robbed the FEC of its ability to act because, as a group of former FEC employees working with the Campaign Legal Center explained, “three Commissioners of the same party, acting in concert, can leave the agency in a state of deadlock.” As the spending by outside groups on elections “has exponentially increased, foreign nationals and governments have willfully manipulated our elections, and coordination between super PACs and candidates has become commonplace,” the former employees noted. Yet “the FEC [has] deadlocked on enforcement matters more often than not, frequently refusing to even investigate alleged violations despite overwhelming publicly available information supporting them.”

John Nichols wrote in The Nation about how Project 2025’s radical right-wing wishlist of items contains plans to wreck and subvert what is left of America’s democracy.

See Also:

The Nation: June 2024 Issue

[phoenix-joy]

Author & Timestamp: Margaret Talbot October 22, 2018 (almost 6 years old as of May 2, 2024)

Polychromy refers to "decoration in many colours, esp in architecture or sculpture". - Collins Dictionary. Extract of a much longer article (please note: I have shortened some sentences where possible and broken up some paragraphs by added spacing. I did this to try to make it a little easier for other neurodivergent people to read):

Researchers demonstrate the process of applying color to the Treu Head, from a Roman sculpture of a goddess, made in the second century A.D. Ancient sculptures were often painted with vibrant hair colors and skin tones. - Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for The New Yorker

For Abbe, [...] a professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia, the idea that the ancients disdained bright color “is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art.” It is, he said, “a lie we all hold dear.”

[...]

[...] Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art [...] said, of polychromy, “It’s like the best-kept secret that’s not even a secret.”

Jan Stubbe Østergaard, a former curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum, in Copenhagen, and the founder of an international research network on polychromy, told me, “Saying you’ve seen these sculptures when you’ve seen only the white marble is comparable to somebody coming from the beach and saying they’ve seen a whale because there was a skeleton on the beach.”

[...]

[...] debate about ancient sculpture has taken on an unexpected moral and political urgency. [In 2017], a University of Iowa classics professor, Sarah Bond, published two essays [...] arguing that it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white—and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other.

For classical scholars, it is a given that the Roman Empire—which, at its height, stretched from North Africa to Scotland—was ethnically diverse. In the Forbes essay, Bond notes, “Although Romans generally differentiated people on their cultural and ethnic background rather than the color of their skin, ancient sources do occasionally mention skin tone and artists tried to convey the color of their flesh.”

Depictions of darker skin can be seen on ancient vases, in small terra-cotta figures, and in the Fayum portraits, a remarkable trove of naturalistic paintings from the imperial Roman province of Egypt, which are among the few paintings on wood that survive from that period. These near-life-size portraits, which were painted on funerary objects, present their subjects with an array of skin tones, from olive green to deep brown, testifying to a complex intermingling of Greek, Roman, and local Egyptian populations. (The Fayum portraits have been widely dispersed among museums.)

Bond [had] been moved to write her essays when a racist group, Identity Evropa, started putting up posters on college campuses, including Iowa’s, that presented classical white marble statues as emblems of white nationalism. After the publication of her essays, she received a stream of hate messages online. She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece. When they are told that their understanding of classical history is flawed, they often get testy.

[In early 2018], the BBC and Netflix broadcast “Troy: Fall of a City,” a miniseries in which the Homeric hero Achilles is played by a British actor of Ghanaian descent. The casting decision elicited a backlash in right-wing publications. Online commenters insisted that the “real” Achilles was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and that someone with skin as dark as the actor’s surely would have been a slave.

It’s true that Homer describes the hair of Achilles as xanthos, a word often used to characterize objects that we would call yellow, but Achilles is [mythological], so imaginative license in casting seems perfectly acceptable. Moreover, several scholars explained online that, though ancient Greeks and Romans certainly noticed skin color, they did not practice systematic racism. They owned slaves, but this population was drawn from a wide range of conquered peoples, including Gauls and Germans.

Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. [...] Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, “Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition [of the Hippocratic humours]. In the North, you have plenty of thick blood. Whereas, in the South, you’re being desiccated by the sun, and you have to think about how to conserve your blood.”

Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.

[...] Tim Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge, writes that the Greeks “would have been staggered” by the suggestion that they were “white.” Not only do our modern notions of race clash with the thinking of the ancient past; so do our terms for colors, as is clear to anyone who has tried to conceive what a “wine-dark sea” actually looked like.

[...]

On the website Pharos, which was founded [...] in part to counter white-supremacist interpretations of the ancient world, a recent essay notes, “Although there is a persistent, racist preference for lighter skin over darker skin in the contemporary world, the ancient Greeks considered darker skin” for men to be “more beautiful and a sign of physical and moral superiority.”

[In 2017], high-school students participating in a summer program at the RISD Museum, in Providence, were so fascinated to learn about polychromy in classical statuary that they made a coloring book allowing gallery visitors to create brightly hued versions of the objects on display.

Christina Alderman, who runs the program, told me, “The moment they found out that the statues were originally painted, I just lost them to that idea. They were, like, ‘Wait, are you serious? I’ve played video games set in ancient times, and all I see are white sculptures. I watch movies and that’s all I see.’ It was a real human response—they kind of felt they’d been lied to.”

A marble head of a deity wearing a Dionysiac fillet, from the first century A.D. Traces of red pigment remain on the lips, eyes, and fillet. Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said the fact that ancient statues were once painted is “like the best-kept secret that’s not even a secret.” - Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

A bust of a young African boy, sculpted in the first century B.C. Ancient sculptures of African people were often made of basalt and painted with reddish-brown layers to create a lifelike effect. Mahogany-colored paint is still visible on the boy’s face. - Courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg

/endofextract

[I edited this blog post to provide a definition of polychromy and fix a couple of typos. - May 3, 2024]

[every-single-day]

so I was watching old award shows from my state and recognized Brody half way thru and instantly thought of ur blog lmao

https://www.pbs.org/video/georgia-public-broadcasting-2017-shuler-awards/

(hoping the link works idk if u need a vpn- if it does the medley starts around 1 hour 7 minutes in)

Thank you for sharing!! I love living rent free in your minds I’m gonna give each and every one of you a forehead kiss (with consent)

Also, do you happen to have access to the 2015 medley? 👀👀 it’s the only one I haven’t been able to find