#little scary when compared with fundamentalists

[radfishbucket]

I have many feelings about the first two episodes of The Witch Trials of JKR and would love it if everyone could listen to them so I can read opinions that are not insane Tweets of peuple who havent listened. So far the production and archive work is really good, and rediscovering the Christian tantrum from the early 2000’ is insane

[a-wandering-ghoulette]

MyRock ; issue n°44 (Jan/Feb 2017) A Nameless Ghoul from Ghost interview.

Photos: Manon Violence Interview: Mark Renton

2017 has been the year of all records for Ghost! After an exceptional concert at Hellfest, a nicely lead Download Festival (despite voice problems) and a France tour still in minds, the band then launched a triumphal American tour. Meanwhile, the satanic clergy also draw its awesome “Popestar”, EP lead with drums beating by the heady single “Square Hammer”. Telephonical talk with one Nameless Ghoul to take stock on the past, the present and future of this definitely fascinating band.

//Before continuing, note this issue is still available for international orders on their online shop. Direct link to this issue’s page in source! Don’t be surprised by the first cover shown there, it’s litteraly a two covered mag… The mag is meant to be read in 2 time: you start by one side, no matter which one, and when you reach the middle, you have to close it and flip it then tadaaa you have more to read on the 2nd side!//

(Read the full interview under the cut and feel free to point out mistakes!)

Hello, who’s calling? Nameless Ghoul: Hello! I’m one of the Nameless Ghouls.

Which one? Which instrument do you play in the band? N.G. : I’m our clergy’s official spokesperson. I’m also Ghost’s founder, main composer and, most of the time, I play guitar.

How do you feel at the approach of Papa Emeritus III’s end of reign? Because there’ll certainly be a new Papa Emeritus soon… N.G. : You’re right, we’re close to the end of a cycle. Personally, I always saw change as a good thing. It’s stimulating. We still have a lot of concerts to give in 2017, but I think I can safely say that at the end of the next year, all Nameless Ghouls will be tired of Papa Emeritus III! It’ll be nice to see a new leader coming to guide us.

How would you describe the personality of Papa Emeritus III compared to his predecessors? N. G. : First of all, Papa Emeritus III is an entertainer! He loves projectors, he loves the public, and he loves success. The first Papa Emeritus was someone very rigid, very strict, and very solemn. A real son of a bitch! (laughs) To be honest, we don’t miss him at all! Papa Emeritus II was a pervert a little bit sadistic, and, in hindsight, I think he wasn’t very at ease on stage. He wasn’t a showman, unlike Papa Emeritus III! Him, he’s the guide we missed to rise up the quality of our shows, to reach the step above and communicate with our fans. We will be eternally thankful for his work. I believe he have paved the way for his successor…

Precisely, what are you waiting from the future Papa Emeritus IV? N.G. : Well, I want him to be scary. That he bring back something more tenebrous, while remaining spectacular. Broadly speaking, I want the next album to come back to a gloomier atmosphere.

Fueled by ego

On a more personal viewpoint, what is your relationship with your character? N.G. : What’s exciting me the most with Ghost, it’s that the project is a real challenge for the individuals involved. Everybody is on an equal footing. Furthermore, there’s something really thrilling to embody a character which is a part of yourself, but never totally you. Traditionally, rock stars always reach the point where they fuse with their creature. In the end, rock’s always been fueled by ego. Even if you’re part of a fully honest and underground band, you’ll always have this desire to be under the spotlights, to be recognize, famous and loved. Those pretending the contrary are liars. Roughly, no matter the music you make, you all secretly dream to be a kind of Justin Bieber. (laughs) To be masked is something very different. It’s a kind of anomaly in the entertainment system. Because every day, you never receive the admiration you deserve. When I’m not on stage with Ghost, I’m going back in anonymity. It’s very positive for me. I would say, my character brings me some stability in my daily life. But I’m aware my case is a bit special since I’m Ghost’s main composer and thus I’ll always be linked in a way or another to this project. But being in the obscurity is sometime more complicated to manage for the other Nameless Ghouls…

This mystery surrounding Ghost inevitably attracts the fans curiosity. This year, some of them started a vast quest to discover your identities. We imagine it’s part of the game, but what are you feeling regarding it? N.G. : From the beginning, we knew it’ll be impossible to keep the secret until the end. It’s already a miracle we held this long. (laughs) Personally, it doesn’t matter. I think the work accomplished pays its own way. I mean, our albums, our concerts and our universes are that strong they succeed to supplant the reality. Today, people don’t care to know who’s under Papa Emeritus’ hat. When they come to see us play, they want the real Papa. It’s a bit like if our creature ended up escaping us to live its own life.

2017 has been a successful year for Ghost, with appearances in huge festivals, a colossal American tour and the worldwide success of the EP “Popestar”. How did you live that? N.G. : This year has been amazing on every points, really! We’ve been able to see how much the band has grown by federating more fans. However, I’m not someone who contemplate our success and congratulate myself. The past doesn’t interest me. But the future does. When we take a step forward I always try to have in mind the next one. 5 years ago, we played at the Olympia supporting In Flames and Trivium. It happens that on 11 April next we’ll come back, this time as the headliner. But instead of rejoicing, I like to tell myself: “OK, it’s cool, but what I really want to do is Bercy!”. And if one day we make it to Bercy as the headliner, I know in a corner of my head there’ll be the Stade de France. I’m ambitious. (laughs)

I come from extreme metal.

Ghost is one of the rare bands to link metal to the general public. Do you think it explains this popularity? N.G. : I think, yes. We see more and more diversity in the public at our gigs. Of course, there are metalheads with long hair and battle jacket, but there are also hipsters, girls who usually listen to pop music, and alternative rock lovers. I find it fantastic. You know, musically, I come from extreme metal. It’s been in my genes since my teenage years. I listen to many other things, but it’s where I come from. It’s my identity and it’s what forged my mentality. At the point that, when Ghost began to be successful, I started to feel guilty. I had that feeling I transgressed underground metal’s tactical rules, which are systematic rejection of success and popularity. It took me a lot of abnegation to understand success isn’t nefarious, on the contrary, it’s the reward for an hard work. And deep down I think I was scared to be rejected by my own community, to be treated like a sellout.

Have you ever been confront to animosity from fundamentalists metalheads? N.G. : Oh yes, mostly now! On internet, some start to let their hate flow on Ghost. But it’s OK, I understand. Myself, if I wasn’t in the band, I think I would hate Ghost. (laughs) Because in metal, once a band makes money, they’re sellout. It’s like this and I accept it. It’s also an old metalhead’s thing. People who were here during the rise of the extreme genres grew up with a certain code of conduct, with a more rigid thinking. By the way, I’m going to tell you a secret: some of my best friends abhor Ghost. They hate the band. They don’t understand what we do, they think it’s crap. But it’s nothing. They can. They stay my friends after all. (laughs) It’s different with kids, they are more open minded. But in hindsight, I’m figuring out that me too, in my daily life, I’m an old fart. (laughs) I listen to a small amount of new things. Nothing give me more joy than a good old “Master of Puppets”, a “Seven Churches” by Possessed, or a King Diamond, my hero!

King Diamond & Merciful Fate.

Would you say King Diamond was the biggest inspiration for Ghost, in terms of theatricality? N.G. : Indeed! As far as I remember, I’ve always listened to King Diamond and Merciful Fate. At home, my mother listened to a lot of 60’s and 70’s classic rock, like Beatles, Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. My brother, him, listened to harder stuff like AC/DC, Sex Pistols, Rainbow… I liked all of this, but when my neighbor introduce me to King Diamond I had the feeling to be someone special. I was listening to this crazy stuff that no one else knew at home! I was 8 and, at this age, as you can imagine, I was very marked by his albums’ visuals. King Diamond is the one who open me the door to this gloomy universe which is now find in Ghost.

Kid from the 80’s.

We also guess an interest for the 80’s! If previously you made a cover of Depeche Mode, your EP “Popestar” offer us covers of Echo & The Bunnymen and Eurythmics. N.G. : I’m a kid from the 80’s, it’s the soundtrack of my life. I think it’s mostly thanks to the radio, which was always switch on at home. I like all classics: Mike Oldfield, Nik Kershaw, Eurythmics, Midnight Oil… When I was a teenage, I kind of liked to show of and act like a thoug one who only listen to extreme metal, but secretly, in my bedroom, I listened to Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Bronski Beat. (laughs) And, in the end, Ghost is exactly this: a mix of Kiss, Depeche Mode and Merciful Fate with a bit of Pink Floyd over it, especially “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and “A Saucerful of Secrets”.

On your last EP, there is the heady single “Square Hammer”. It’s the first time you embrace that clearly pop’s codes. Is this song representative of the sound you would like to have on the next album? N.G. : You know, album after album, each time we ask ourselves how far we can go. It was already the case with “Infestissumam”. At the time, we wondered if the song “Ghuleh/Zombie Queen” wasn’t too much. After a moment of hesitation we were like “Fuck! Black Sabbath made ballads so why not us?”. On “Meliora”, we wondered if there weren’t too many ballads. Then, when we composed “Square Hammer”, we found the title too direct, too effective. We were scared our fans wouldn’t understand. We’ve always had this metalhead consciousness tugging us. But in the end, we thought a good song is a good song, no matter the shape. So to answer your question, I think our next disc will wander further more into these melodies, indeed.

You have a break until the resumption of the tour, on March. Will you write the new album while you’re at it? N.G. : Of course! I’m already on it, I have some new songs…  And a good idea where I want to go with this album, but it’s too early to talk about it. The problem is the 2017 tour will extend and I’m not sure we’ll have the time to finish the recording before going back on the roads. I think we’ll finish it in late 2017, with a potential release in 2018. Earlier seems difficult to me! All I can tell you is that visually, the next album’s imagery will come back to something way darker than “Meliora”.

What can we expect for your next date at the Olympia, on 11 April next? N.G. : I saw today that our concert is sold out, it’s amazing! It’ll be very alike shows we gave in the USA this year. We have a stage structure more sizable compared to the last time we came in France. Visually, the show will be impressive, but we’ll also play some rare titles. The only deception is we won’t have the pyrotechnical effects, because they aren’t authorized at the Olympia. So it’ll has to work doubly hard! You know, we love to play in France. We are always very well hosted here. Moreover, what I most loved since the release of “Meliora” it’s to play again and again in France. I really saw our public grow out there when it comes to Hellfest or Rock en Seine. To feel appreciated like this is the greatest reward. Furthermore, the food is succulent in France, people are lovely and you have this attitude a bit impertinent which is rather close to that of Ghost. France, it’s our second home. We’re eager to be back at the Olympia and to party with you! (Translator note: Ooooh you and your sweet like honey words~ We love you too, dear.)

Bonus anecdote:

(Almost) naked with James Hetfield! Our new friend Nameless Ghoul is an ultimate fan of Metallica. Before becoming friend with James Hetfield, he met him in circumstances rather… embarrassing: “Metallica, it’s the greatest band in the world! I hadn’t have time to fully savor their last album but I’m so happy to know they’re alive and in great shape.  It also means they will tour, and thus we’ll get the occasion to meet on the road. James Hetfield has been one of Ghost’s first supports. I had the chance to meet him several times, and since we often message each other. The first time he’s been introduced to me, the situation was rather… surrealistic. We were in our lodge, changing ourselves, and here come James Hetfield suddenly appearing by the door to say hi. And you know what? I was in underwear! It was the most embarrassing situation of my life! I was there, in underwear, in front of my greatest idol! How embarrassing!”

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: Threats from Without (Part One)

*TRIGGER WARNING FOR ABUSE*

This will be a doozy folks...

Razor blades in apples and cookies during Halloween. Day cares run by child molesters and Satanists! Flammable pajamas! Car seats not installed properly! Cavities from bottles! Child Porn! Kidnappers! Toys choking kids! Alar in apple juice! Peanuts stuck in windpipes! Stalkers! Rapists! Radiation from household appliances! Murderers! Gangs! Fetal Alcohol Syndrome! Car jacking! Tylenol causes liver damage! Milk Cartons with missing kids! If you fuck up just a little, your kid is screwed!

Welcome to the 1980s where childhood danger became the new obsession along with designer goods, buns of steel, big hair, cell phones, and greed being good. In many decades that traced the growth of mothers in the workplace (check the 1940s), there was moral panic about juvenile delinquents and latchkey kids going bad, there were 19.5 million working mothers by 1984, also 6/10 women with children under eighteen. Mothers of preschool children working had doubled since 1970 and it was 15% higher for African-American women because unemployment for black fathers was 10.2% compared with 5% for white fathers. And these women were not making the big bucks to afford clothes and lifestyles seen on Dynasty and Falcon Crest, where they’d mostly work in retail, clerical, service, or factory positions and daycare workers earned less than most clerks of liquor stores. 

In 1984, aside from the fictitious case of the disappearance of Barbara Holland and the re-appearance of the thought to be dead Will Byers the previous year, there were two media events that captured the public fascination with child endangerment: the McMartin daycare scandal and the premiere of The Cosby Show (it was a more naive time) which was a typical sitcom except it featured two parents who worked outside the home in white-collar professions and focused on an African-American family. It showed the contradictions of what 1980s moms lived with: you can’t trust your kids with just anyone or leave them alone, you can have a demanding job and the loving family made for tv, act as paranoid as an FBI agent, be the spontaneous mom, and be constantly aware.

These media panics also happened around the same time the Reagan Administration was a big thing; he was aided by the regressive STOP ERA and Religious Right which led to a huge anti-feminist backlash in policies and the media. Women’s magazines scared moms about what could go wrong with their kids and exploited the fears of the public. Around the same time the McMartin daycare scandal was a thing, the government refused to fund daycare centers for millions of kids and was a result of such coverage. The War Against Women had started and programs benefiting women and children were in it’s crosshairs as being “too expensive” and “trickle down economics” will help anyways. So while the Chrysler Corporation and the Savings and Loans industry were given financial life rafts, programs like WIC (Womens, Infants, and Children) were cut mortality rates for infants of color (which declined in the 1970s) started climbing again and family leave was virtually non-existent. Parents magazine published a later-debunked warning in 1982, that children in daycare will become hoodlums. Moms were also warned kids will pick up lice (also in Little League or in the classroom) from daycares. 

The roots of this sensationalization of childhood perils stared in the mid 1970s with it’s peak a decade later, where Ladies Home Journal dumped Bruno Bettelheim for Geraldine Carro’s “Mothering” column where she was a mom giving guidance to other moms where she acknowledged that “motherhood rates mixed reviews” and she promised to offer opinions rather than impose them as “For too long, we’ve been living by other people’s books” and featured short pieces with titles on how to pick a pediatrician or teach the kids to cook safely. What was meant to soothe and offer empowerment ended up striking terror with warnings about all the things that could kill kids and that summer camps were the sources of “close to 100 deaths and 250,000 accidents” in 1974 and moms were urged to investigate the camp’s accreditation, the camper-counselor ratio, the number of life preservers in boats, all the codes were met by state standards, the lifeguards had Red Cross training, and all the counselors were experienced. Imagine what happened when Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp came out...

If you tossed your baby in the air, you could risk whiplash and hemorrhage of blood vessels feeding into the brain. But kids can’t get new babysitter and crib on the same day or kid will freak and kids got poisoned a lot from eating plants and flowers. Also kid’s sleepwear had to be flame retardant but washed with warm water, high-phosphate laundry detergent, no soap or bleach, no fabric softener or they will be rendered non-retardant. Ages where kids need to learn swimming was disputed, even Santa was scary or teaches them to lie, buy simple toys, costumes needed to be flame retardant and have reflective tape strips on the costumes and bags, kids needed flashlights or can only trick or treat in the daylight hours, kids can’t wear masks anymore, and all treats need to be examined.  Then in 1977, Carro asked how parents can protect kids without making them fearful. Hrrrrmmmmmm......

There have been missing children before in the past, even in that sweet long ago when people hardly bothered to lock their front doors at night, one of the most notorious early cases that have been exploited by the media was the Etan Patz case where 6 year old Etan was kidnapped in downtown New York City on May 1979, before getting on his school bus, there was a huge effort to find him locally and in the media but the case has remained unsolved until 2010 when his killer was found and it was 9 years since he was declared dead. Perhaps the most influential case was that of Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted, who was kidnapped from the toy department at a Florida store and was made into a TV movie. In March 1984, the missing for a month ten year old Kevin Collins made the cover of Newsweek magazine. The media had exploited these tragic cases with wildly exaggerated figures soon circulated in the media, what was a small number of cases became sensationalized to make people think kids were being snatched every time they took a breath.

On March 28 1984 NBC’s Tom Brokaw reported “The fear is thick around Denver these days. A number of kidnappings have made everyone nervous--parents, children, and police.” Parents were driving their kids to school rather than let them wait on the bus stop and left the school after seeing their kid enter the building, such stories hardly explored what could be done as a society and community to protect children. No you were on your own.

Late March 1984, headlines talked about a daycare on Manhattan Beach, California, this daycare being McMartin Preschool where seven nursery teachers were arraigned on over 100 counts of child molestation. Virginia McMartin, age 76 and on a wheelchair, presided over the day care center where she and her family members allegedly drugged, fondled, and molested at least 125 children and killed cuddly animals in front of them. 90% of Los Angeles residents surveyed believed that Ray Buckey and his grandmother Virginia to be guilty. Children were interviewed by therapists where they were videotaped and used puppets. As it turned out, the children were badgered by therapists who used leading questions and threats to get the kids talking. From 1989 to 1990, California received at least 440, 000 reports of child abuse, 84% deemed to be unfounded, and 8,448 of the cases were defined as sexual abuse. Suddenly, as the media warned, you couldn’t trust very many people with your children. In other news, the founder of Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis, John Clark Donahue was forced to resign after allegations of molesting three boys and Little Rascals Day Care in North Carolina became notorious when it was the owner and cook (owner’s conviction was overturned). There was news of fathers molesting their daughters. On May 21st, there was a Los Angeles teacher brought to court on charges of molestation at the elementary school and both ABC and CBS reported that a religious boarding school for boys in Walterboro, South Carolina had beaten and abused boys. Then in June, CBS and ABC reported on a fundamentalist commune in Island Pond, Vermont that was raided with 100 children taken from their homes because it was alleged their elders and parents abused them. The FBI got involved, saying groups of people abuse kids and circulate a book titled “How to Have Sex with Kids”. Obviously these stories had the subtext that no place was safe. In 1985, CBS announced that a church run day care had children suffering broken bones linked to violence (a total of eleven broken arms and legs) and Missouri exempted church run centers from licensing. 

Even “Rockwellian”, small-town, Christian (and White) American places were dens of abuse. Jordan, Minnesota featured 24 defendants (factory workers, housewives, and a grandma) who were part of a “sex ring” and charged with more than 400 counts of sexually abusing dozens of children including their own kids. As Michaels and Douglas noted, a central theme was the failure of government agencies to oversee day care centers and catch molestation in time but Reagan’s administration kept their fingers in their ears singing “La la la can’t hear you la la la”. Geraldo Rivera did a sensationalist show on Satanism that played on adult fears of their teens. And Priests were being outed as having molested altar boys and other young men, like a priest in Henry, Louisiana where he admitted sexually abusing at least 35 boys and was sentenced to 20 years hard labor. The media was talking childhood abuse more seriously with 22% of adults saying they were victims of sexual abuse as children who never told anyone or when they did, nothing was done to the abuser. 

Back to old Virginia McMartin, follow-up stories assuring people that child care centers weren’t dens of rampant abuse weren’t publicized for example. Raymond Buckey’s defense attorney found two doctors who said that one of the children told them that it was his own father who “poked” him in the anus and the boy’s mother Judy Johnson who circulated the charges against them was known to be mentally ill and had trouble distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not. She also accused a Los Angeles school board member of molesting her son and claimed kid was injured by an elephant and forced to drink baby’s blood. The children initially denied abuse, Kee MacFarlane the therapist had the kids name gas station attendants, community leaders, and store clerks as molesters and she came up with the name “naked movie star” for a game the teachers supposedly made the kids play. Jurors viewing the tapes of the interviews were appalled and it turned out Kee had an affair with Wayne Satz, television reporter for KABC who broke the McMartin story. After nearly 6 years and $15 million, Ray Buckey and his mother were found not guilty and there was a hung jury and still not found guilty. Sadly he was viewed as a loner who liked to go commando in shorts and a mama’s boy with more shorts than brains. Virginia died in 1995, Peggy McMartin Buckey died in 2000, and Ray Buckey who was incarcerated for five years during the trials later went to law school and changed his name and moved elsewhere to have a family. Meanwhile in Jordan, cases were falling apart with one couple getting aquitted and vowed to regain custody of their three sons. Only one person plead guilty: James Rud, who lied and implicated others. 

“It was all Momma’s fault!” I’m exaggerating but the public imagination linked day care centers with child sexual abuse, molesters targeted kids from “broken homes” (read single moms not like dysfunctional families with distant parents) and you couldn’t trust Mr. Wilson next door. The subtext clearly targeting working mothers or moms considering going into the workplace and leaving their kids in programs after school before picking them up. Of course Susan Faludi in her book Backlash, revealed that kids were twice as likely to be abused at home than in day care but media panics tend to focus on what’s juicy rather than facts. In her study of working moms in magazines, Kathryn Keller stated:

Each negative image of day care and the implication behind it that women should not be working but should be at home with their children was countered by a positive image.

Moms were surrounded by mixed messages that served them guilt and paranoia, it was nice that issues that were swept under the rug were given the attention they deserved, but it was used as an indictment of non-traditional family structures and women not feeling they have to sacrifice their autonomy at the service of their families or stay in terrible marriages for “the good of the children”. It’s best I leave this dreary part (before heading to sitcoms and humor and magazines) with Tamme Dawson from GLOW to empower all women and snap back at the powers that be.

[answerisalways42]

Yvonne Strahovski. Interview and Feature in Vogue Australia July 2018.

Serena Joy Waterford may be a fictional character' - and a cold-hearted, brutal, vengeful one at that - but so believable is Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski in portraying her and her infertile state in The Handmaids Tale that when Strahovski tells me she's pregnant, it's hard not to shout "Praise be!" The breakout star of the Hulu original series is delighting in discussing her hitherto closely guarded secret, giving her first interview to \logue Australia since announcing on Instagram in mid-May that she and her husband, actor Tim Loden, were expecting their first child.

“I’ve been dying' to talk about it," Strahovski enthuses, before confiding the concerns she had for her unborn baby during the recent shooting of season two of The Handmaids Tale, given the unrelenting sadism and seething hatred that drives Serena Joy.

The Sydney-born, Los Angeles-based actress is in Melbourne shooting Angel of Mine, Luke Davies's adaptation of the 2008 French film L'Empreinte de L’Ange, directed by Strangerlands Kim Farrant and starring The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Noomi Rapace. It's three years since Strahovski has been in Australia, and many more since she made an Australian film. It often surprises fans of the cult TV series The Handmaids Tale to learn Strahovski is Australian, so convincing is her American accent. The only child of Polish immigrants, Strahovski grew up in Maroubra, Sydney, a studious child obsessed with dancing, acting and the outdoors. She honed her craft at the University of Western Svdney before landing roles in local television dramas, including Double the Fist in 2004 and headLand a year later. She decided to try her hand in LA, auditioning for the role of Sarah Walker in Chuck three days after arriving. She planned to stay a couple of months and now calls it home, 11 years later.

The Emmy Award-winning series Chuck ultimately ran for five years and Strahovski has played a host of strong, complex characters ever since: serial killer Hannah McKay on the TV series Dexter; Rene Carpenter in The Astronaut Wives Club and Emma on the upcoming filmThe Predator among many others. Still, there will be audiences worldwide who have only come to know Strahovski through The Handmaids Tale, creator Bruce Miller's 2017 adaptation of Margaret Atwood's bestselling 1985 novel set in a dystopian future that sees America overtaken by a fundamentalist regime, the few remaining fertile women forced into sexual servitude to bear children for the Commanders of the Faithful. Starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, a handmaid determined to fight back against her commander (Joseph Fiennes) and his barren wife (Strahovski), series one earnt eight Emmys and two Golden Globes and captivated television viewers worldwide, airing as it did in a post-Trump America that made Atwood's depiction of new land Gilead seem frighteningly plausible. Strahovski hadn't read Atwood's novel but was so captivated by the character of Serena Joy and the story laid out in the pilot that she signed on immediately. "I found her quite mesmerising, because I didn't have all the answers to her and didn't have her backstory [back then]," Strahovski explains. "So, to me, all that loneliness, bitterness and emotional instability were the first things I noticed about this character, and I loved the complexity of her and the rest of the characters."

Fiennes has spoken candidly about the difficulty he has in portraying the violence his character commits against Offred each month during the so-called 'ceremony' in which he effectively rapes his handmaid in a bid to get her pregnant, while his wife watches on. Strahovski says there is a conscious effort to keep the set light-hearted, but there is no escaping the violence. "We're faced with these incredibly demanding, horrible themes and scenes... it's really about being in the moment. Between 'action' and 'cut', you just have to go there." There is no let-up in series two, a departure from Atwood's book, although "the divine Margaret Atwood" (as Strahovski calls her) has remained on board as a consultant. “I've found it's been a little bit more harrowing, actually," she explains. "There have been some moments when I've even noticed crew members audibly uncomfortable while we've been in a half-arsed rehearsal, not even doing it properly. We're really pushing it, and you can feel it on set. It's definitely a show where we throw it out there and it's confronting, and it's meant to be confronting." Possibly most confronting is the fact that present-day America has proved closer to Atwood's Gilead than she could have considered, a world in which movie moguls and politicians alike have allegedly committed acts of sexual misconduct, albeit a world in which women are finding their voice and fighting back. How does Strahovski feel about bringing a new life into this world? "It's a good question," she ponders. "It's a little scary. I do have to have faith that things will start changing, given that new voices are being raised and heard [through] the women's march or the Florida kids' gun rally. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned, but I also have faith in the people I surround myself with and the ideals I have. We just have to keep moving forward."

Strahovski has her own remedies for escaping the madness and spends as much time as she can outdoors. In fact, much of her life is spent away from the red carpet glamour. Here's a woman who chose to marry her partner in a quiet ceremony in Paso Robles, California, on a day that proved so hot the couple jumped into a nearby lake fully clothed to cool off; a woman who prefers her simple, elegant wedding band to the customary bling. And instead of flying directly to Toronto to begin shooting Handmaids season two, the couple threw a few clothes and their beloved dogs into the car and drove across America, making regular camping stops to go fly-fishing and hike the national parks along the way in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. "It's something I'm very committed to in my life; it'll always be a love of mine," she says. “Just getting out, getting on the road and doing whatever I want, with no plans. It'll be interesting to see how that goes [post-baby]" she adds with a laugh.

For the time being, she's enjoying the 10-or 11-hour shoot days in and around Melbourne on Angel of Mine, a relative luxury compared with the unregulated shooting hours in the US and Canada. A psychological thriller, the film continues the motherhood themes for Strahovski, depicting the story of a woman's descent into madness following the death of her daughter and her subsequent belief that another woman's child is, in fact, her own. Strahovski is using an Australian accent for the first time in many years, something that leaves her feeling a little uncomfortable, given how naturally she now speaks in her adopted homeland's accent. "It does help being here in Melbourne and surrounded by an Australian crew and having friends here in Melbourne who are keeping it real for me and my weird, mashy accent," she says. Neither Serena Joy nor Angel's Claire is meant to be pregnant, so hiding the fact has been an interesting exercise.

Her next project is season three of The Handmaids Tale and Strahovski says she's intrigued to see where it goes, as it too will have moved beyond Atwood's storyline. "I know there are a couple of ideas on the table just by talking to Bruce Miller, but we're now in brand-new territory," she reveals. Before that begins, however, she'll be returning home to LA for a well-earnt rest and some nesting ahead of the birth of her baby, which coincides with filming recommencing on Handmaids. ''I'm due for a break," she says. "It's been a little bit nonstop, and as my pregnancy carries on, I probably should take a break and buy a crib and do those baby things. I've got to go home and focus on my peanut."

[beinglibertarian]

Shortcuts & Delusions Special Edition: The Absurdity of Gary Johnson

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutly free that your very existance is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus

Obituary:

Libertarian satirist and vengeful deity Dillon Eliassen (spelled with an E for comedic purposes), whose work I sincerely admire, has died. Spiritually. Only spiritually. He is to be succeeded in spiritual death by a micronation of homeless people, his fellow members of the Fictitious Cement Workers’ Union, and Being Libertarian’s very own Editor-in-Chief Martin van Staden.

Dillon “The Jesuit” Eliassen (née Ottovordemgentschenfelde) was probably born on Christmas morning 1949, somewhere in Canada. Known for his youthful shenanigans, Dillon brought a smile to the faces of all who encountered him at San Quentin. While fighting for our freedom on the blood-soaked soil of Vietnam, Dillon gave birth to a mostly healthy yet premature appendix, and he named it me.

Let us begin.

Introduction:

Dillon left off with an in-depth analysis of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome,’ a very real ‘condition’ that ‘I’ have personally heard firsthand accounts of on multiple occasions. This was a fitting place to conclude. The torch was not passed to me, but I am hereby picking it up off the ground, wiping the dirt and canine feces from its gleaming bronze exterior, and running with it in the exact opposite direction of any achievable goal.

I am Nathaniel Owen. If you don’t recognize my name, it’s because I am legitimately the least important person you’ve never heard of. I’m unknown for my efforts to bear the heaviness of the Imperial Antarctic Crown, and my occasional bouts of productive cyber-vigilantism. In 2014 I made a mistake, and today that mistake is Being Libertarian. They locked me in the CEO’s office until I pay for this crime.

Like my obvious relatives, Nathaniel Bacon, Nathaniel Branden, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, I am a revolutionary. I haven’t got a Che t-shirt, and I never attend the meetings. But like many communist tovarisch, I do have an iPhone. In the postmodern age, that’s a clever weapon to have! Climate scientists, for instance, have indicated that it’s really all the humble revolutionary needs these days. I am constantly confused as to the value of my executive role at Being Libertarian but remain the least confused as to why I maintain this position.

Today is my favorite day of the year, second only to New Year’s Eve. For me, today acts as a reminder of the closest thing I have ever encountered to universal truth; a realization that haunts, comforts, astounds and enchants me. Yesterday, we were but individuals rolling boulders up a hill. Today, we will try again to roll the boulders up that hill. Tomorrow, yet again, we will return to this habit. You have been doing this with me since the day you were born.

I like to count the number of seconds it takes the boulder to reach the bottom of the hill each sunset. In the morning, we will start over.

We Are All Sisyphus:

It’s quite pointless, analytically speaking. You probably don’t remember being born, nor were you an integral part in making that happen to you. No number of artifacts can preserve the complexity of an individual human being, and even if one could live immortally in the memory of others, time turns existential into the mythological.

The universe is dying. It will live scarcely longer than we will. You appear to have come into existence at random, in a time and place inherently foreign. As a child, you wander into a adulthood without happening on the answer key to any questions relating to how or why you exist in the first place. Much less, how or why the universe itself exists. A consequence of this is that We, The People tend to convince ourselves conveniently that the answers to such questions not only exist, but can be found in such subtle hiding places as your local political party, whatever holy book you were raised to read, your arbitrary interpretations of the signs and seasons presented to us by the light of the cosmos, or even in our own imaginations.

And we know because we can’t avoid knowing, that whatever facade we’ve sold ourselves is, in fact, still a facade even if we fall for it.

Every day spent living is a performative affirmation that something about you, even if you can’t figure out exactly what it is, still wants to find those answers. If this weren’t the case, the players of this game would be dropping like flies when they discover that there is no point in playing and no conceivable way to win and that eventually there will be no evidence that you ever played at all. In short, that life itself is highly unlikely to be worth the trouble.

Albert Camus, French philosopher, and journalist, was plagued with thoughts like those stated above. Camus became a constitutive inspiration of the Existentialist Movement (a tradition of philosophy asserting the importance of human experience in the appraisal and interpretation of ideas), partially during the Second World War, while serving in fierce defiance as the Editor-in-Chief of the French Resistance newspaper ‘Combat’ amidst the Nazi occupation of his homeland, and continuing this roll into the post-war world.

Though such matters in the realm of fundamentals and absolutes can be difficult to define, you may have wondered similar things about yourself, and perhaps continue to. Camus was particularly perturbed by the sheer fact that the universe itself and all that exists within it have no objective meaning or purpose. The rational insights we are both blessed and cursed with poke holes in all our mortally limited attempts to invent meaning of our own, and in the Modern Age, the old ideas of Abrahamic deities, universal truth, and inherent ethical rules, each of which having been rudimentary to the shaping and formation of modern society in some way, have been penetrated into philosophical Swiss cheese.

The Non-Aggression Principle is a rather useful little limerick when one doesn’t overthink it. But like all things implying morality, thinking it all the way through will lead you to fundamentals that cannot possibly be confirmed or denied. What, exactly, makes murder wrong? What about robbery? Or socialism? Or the unfairness of free markets? When all is said and done, is it really going to matter whether every little thing we chose to do was right, or wrong, or equitable, or unfair? At the top level, with capital crimes especially, it is not hard to find that the supermajority of humanity agrees on some basic ethical positions. But when applying these basics, they become more complicated. By the point that we are discussing the specific rights and wrongs of typical human behavior, no two people will find themselves in agreement on the application of what they may believe are universal, self-evident principles.

Camus asserted, rather poignantly, that suicide has always been an option. And the scariness, confusion, and uncertainty of existing in such an uncertain world have apparently not driven you to it. And why shouldn’t we die now? It all adds up to the same summary. Nothing is permanent. It’s very possible that nothing matters. Yet we, practically all of us, seem to be making the conscious choice each day to live on. It’s as though if we pull away some of that upstanding rationalism gifted to us during The Enlightenment, there is some other part of us playing such an integral role in our existence that it stabilizes and confirms our will to exist at all.

Camus was a hero in several ways, and today is his day. There are very few people who want to legalize murder, yet droves of people who wish to legalize marijuana, and to many hearty fundamentalists, these may be comparable issues. Sin is sin, oppression is oppression, and aggression is aggression. To many libertarians, and to what should be our collective shame, such things as unionizing the local labor force, stealing a sandwich from a street vendor, violently raping a helpless victim, and aborting the fetus conceived in such tragic circumstances are all comparably “aggressive,” and may not even be considered in terms outside of “aggression” regardless of how useful a new approach or perspective may be when considering such cases.

At the risk of losing all of my libertarian acquaintances, I will admit that once upon a time, I charged my iPhone (yes, my revolutionary weapon of choice) using a stranger’s charging cable without asking when he wasn’t around. I aggressed. I haven’t repented and I’m not sure my soul will be where yours will be on judgment day.

The point is, it makes so little difference whether we are right or wrong about what is “aggression” and what is not “aggression,” that it’s a wonder anybody even cares to discuss it for more than a few than a few minutes.

I do not care who builds the roads, or who decides what color to paint the bathrooms at Beacon Hill, or which Union and/or Confederate heroes/villains are memorialized in stone. I do not care to pay taxes of a meager nature. Of course, I will consistently support lower taxes; it’s my own self-interest at stake. I will not, however, declare that anyone who doesn’t concern themselves with it as deeply as myself to be a “sheep.” Sheep are blind followers. To the best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone who doesn’t fit that description, and yes, this includes myself. I’m no determinist, but I know that I know essentially nothing about the mechanics of what REALLY makes something moral or immoral. I also know that you don’t know either.

The universe you live in doesn’t care what you think. It doesn’t “care” in any way about anything, as far as we can tell. Clinging so staunchly to principles may as well be escapism from the dread and uncertainty of having existed in the first place. Cults operate by exploiting this inherent dread, and unlike the average man on the street who will immediately deny any experiences of being uncertain about his own existence, cults can see through this bullshit. The Liberty Movement should be no cult.

“The Absurd” is a boulder. Every second you live is an exercise in pointlessness. Searching for meaning, embracing the experience of uncertainty, and cracking a smile as your shoulders yet again shove that boulder up the hill… these are exercises in defiance. It is no coincidence that Albert Camus, espousing the conviction (or lack thereof) that no objective truth or purpose may ever be identified, was willing to put his life on the line to dignify and endorse the French Resistance Movement, and despite his eventual death in a car crash, his words live on.

We libertarians are the quintessentially anti-establishment political identity. When our fists are clenched around the chains of dogma and theoretical universal principles we may as well be chained to the same despotic foundation we’re trying to help others liberate themselves from. To think for one’s self, one must realize the degree to which the nuances and practicalities of the world we live in influence us. Peddling promises of applying some universal ethic that we, as representatives of the Liberty Movement, can’t even agree on the parameters of is no different than selling a religious experience; a method by which to keep the conscience clean, and supply some convenient, flimsy certainty that will never stand up to the scrutiny of the skeptical. If our universal truths were as permanent as they are constructed to be, we would never change our minds or opinions.

This rant will resume in 365.25 days when National Absurdity Day returns in all its glory, memento mori, and calendarial obscurity.

And speaking of scrutiny, I’m going to have to toss in a trigger warning. This isn’t even my first trigger warning. I’m a professional.

**TRIGGER WARNING** What you are about to read may cause severe bouts of Trump Derangement Syndrome. If you are a leftist, please do not read the following paragraphs while in close proximity to sharp objects. Symptoms may include blood shooting from the eyes, indecipherable screaming, close encounters of the fourth kind, and varying degrees of irritable face syndrome. Please notify a physician if you encounter itchiness of the spleen, cirrhosis of the autobiographical memory, or diarrhea of the oral cavity.

Why We MUST Defeat Gary Johnson You’re probably wondering about the guy in the title of this article who, thus far, has been absent from said article. In fact, he’s absent from things quite often, I’m told.

Gary Johnson is not a real libertarian. Why libertarians get starry-eyed in his presence is beyond me, with his espousal of blatant communism and acceptance of homonormative deconstructionist Islamomarxism. Johnson as a representative of libertarianism is a clear sign that the left is invading the liberty movement, further eroding private property norms and propping up support for the deep state agenda of the globalists.

Johnson has pretended to support unfettered free market capitalism, and even went as far as to insist that tearing down barriers of entry could give the average person better, fairer access to goods and services. “The model of the future is the sharing economy. It’s Uber. It’s Airbnb. I think it’s gonna be Uber everything.”

“Uber everything” sounds like a great idea until you take your morning Red Pill and see that this is just code for white genocide. Without a heterogenous government of the people, who will stop immigrants from driving Uber taco trucks and parking them on every street corner, forestalling traditional values and private property norms. Americans would lose their jobs, possibly to immigrants. Even libertarian heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sees through Gary Johnson’s thin veneer of egalitarian lies!

He ran for president. Twice. On the second try, he broke every Libertarian Party presidential vote count record in the party’s history, surpassing even the likes of Our Lord and Savior Dr. Ron Earnet Paul. Mark my words, we will never forgive Gary Johnson for not being Ron Paul. His tax cuts were clearly a Democrat ruse to give spending power to the politically correct internationalist cabal of globalist elites like George Soros, Walt Disney, and Oliver Cromwell.

After making the Libertarian Party lose twice, Gary Johnson snuck in one more attack on libertarian legitimacy by losing in New Mexico in a Senate race where he only claimed 15.4% of the vote, singlehandedly handing victory over to communist Democrat Vladimir Len- I mean… Martin Heinrich (if that’s his real name).

Gary Johnson must be stopped. He cannot be allowed to run for office again, regardless of what degenerate socialist feminazis say about “free speech” and “democracy.” Democracy is a secret codeword known to the Fourth International for white genocide and subversion of private property norms. To Make America Great Again

, we must Physically Remove

this man that even the Democrats recognize as a tyrant. Socialists say that Gary Johnson is no threat to the system. This means Gary Johnson is probably a socialist (and a threat to the system the Founding Fathers put in place to protect our freedoms) because everything socialists say are lies.

What further evidence do you need? So far, I have used some of the most Red Pill buzzwords on the market, and even considered using “optics,” “LOLbertarian,” “SJW,” “libertine,” “postmodernism” and “open borders.” Libertarianism is an obvious right-wing ideology. We have standards, you know.

I won’t keep you here. Now that I’ve owned you with facts and logic, you are free to go.

Outro: Left intentionally long and with minimal editing, everything written above makes a single point that, in context, doesn’t mean anything. Most things, and probably all things, don’t mean anything. But that observation is no taskmaster; true freedom is the freedom to waste your time, and the time of others, in a way that is archetypically you. There are no strict parameters here. Drifting a little off the straight and narrow shouldn’t be cause for panic. If there was a takeaway in this article, I don’t know what it is. Perhaps there is a Gary Johnson in all of us, rolling a boulder up Mount Everest just to watch it roll back into the ravine, much like the Libertarian vote count will in 2020.

Do as thou wilt, and don’t overthink it.

Happy National Absurdity Day, comrades.

سُبْحَانَ اللہِ

The post Shortcuts & Delusions Special Edition: The Absurdity of Gary Johnson appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[garyjminter]

Dr. Frankenstein’s Monsters

Today is my late Dad Jim's birthday, and Halloween is nigh...So I will tell you a sad, scary tale of greed, betrayal and death. "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!" Rather, one of Dr. Frankenstein's monsters is dead: ISIS founder/cult leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is now among The Departed. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was recruited and supported in his early days by U.S. politicians including U.S. Senator John McCain and CIA officials. His ISIS soldiers were former soldiers of The Departed U.S. ally Saddam Hussein's armies looking for a job. They joined the only game in town with enough oil money to pay them---ISIS. Before Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of ISIS, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was our Iraqi Frankenstein monster, recruited at age 26 by U.S. and British intelligence to assassinate populist Iraqi Prime Minister Qasim, who refused to "play ball" with U.S. and U.K. Big Oil. But our Iraqi Frankenstein Monster Saddam Hussein--whom we supplied with "weapons of mass destruction" during Saddam's meaningless, murderous decade-long border war with our former ally Iran, which killed almost a million people---got "too big for his britches" when he invaded Kuwait. We let our Iraqi Frankenstein Monster Saddam stay in power for awhile...But after the 9/11 terrorist suicide plane crashes into the Twin Towers, U.S. politicians and the American people were thirsty for revenge. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11--in fact, he despised the Al Qaida leaders who planned and carried out 9/11, whom he hated and feared as rivals to his Precious Ring of Power. The 9/11 terrorist attack was financed by billionaire Saudi Arabian construction heir Osama bin Laden, of the bin Laden family, the second wealthiest clan in Saudi Arabia and close allies of the Saudi Royal Family. Osama bin Laden married the daughter of the Chieftain of the fundamentalist Afghan Taliban. The administration of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush fully supported our Saudi Arabian Frankenstein Monster Osama bin Laden. We trained and supplied with weapons his Al Qaida terrorists and his Afghan Taliban allies, whom Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush even compared to our own Founding Fathers as "freedom fighters" during "Charlie Wilson's War" against the U.S.S.R.'s occupation of Kabul. But "seasons change, people change...." Our training and supplying of weapons to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida cult and their "Freedom Fighters" in the Afghan Taliban did not turn out well for the victims of 9/11. After failing to locate Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush and VP Dick ("Halliburton") Cheney placed some of the blame for 9/11 on our other creation, Iraqi Frankenstein Monster Saddam Hussein. Despite 80,000 of us who traveled to Washington, DC to protest and try to prevent our invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld administration and Congress green-lighted their made-for-TV "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad. Some ISIS soldiers and supporters suffered the loss of babies, children, wives, brothers, sisters and parents crippled, mutilated, burned alive or blown to pieces during our "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad. This "Shock and Awe" made for TV show was ordered by President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton and overseen by Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Director and Adviser Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz, radio cheerleader Rush Limbaugh and many others eagerly played supporting roles. U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and British Petroleum played key supporting roles as well. Our "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad and invasion and occupation of Iraq had the gleeful legal and financial support of almost 100% of the U.S. Congress---the Imperial Senate and House of Lords, including future U.S. Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton---and the corporate Mass Media. But "power abhors a vacuum," and after our Iraqi Frankenstein Monster Saddam Hussein was hanged, our new Iraqi Frankenstein Monster Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and ISIS rose to fill the void and seize the Precious Ring of Power and Iraq's oil money....... In "Star Wars," a naive young Luke Skywalker asks a little old green man with big Elfin ears to help him find Yoda, "The Great Jedi Warrior." The little old man softly replies to Luke, "War does not make one great." That tiny, ancient green man with big Elfin ears was the sadder but wiser "Great Jedi Warrior"--now an old Jedi Master--named Yoda. 

[medialiterates]

I’m Freaked the F*** out, Guys

A quick warning: As the title may suggest, this post is a little dramatic for effect; I wouldn’t get the tin hats out yet. Also, any coarse language and political beliefs expressed below belong only to the writer and are not representative of the Media Literates blog.

Did you watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Wednesday? That show makes me nervous every week. It’s fascinating and nerve-racking to see a world that’s so different from our own and yet so similar. But the thing that makes me most uneasy is that it could happen. And soon.

In class, we watched Snowden and for comparison, I watched Citizenfour. Both good movies. Both hammered home the problems with mass surveillance. Both left you with the sinking feeling that you’re living in a dystopian society. Snowden  goes for the shock factor, showing us how our most intimate moments may be surveilled. adverse affects it has on free speech. Citizenfour elicits even more affecting shock when you realize that this is real life, and when you see what surveillance can do to free speech. Since we learned that our government has been spying on its citizens for a decade, many of us - myself included- have carried on with the mindset that we have nothing to hide, so have at it”. Glenn Greenwald makes the case against this mindset in his TED Talk. He explains this mindset and pervasive surveillance as a means of societal control, saying, “Mass surveillance creates a prison in the mind.” When we are under the impression that we might be watched, we behave “better”; we make it so we “have nothing to hide”. As this pertains to free speech, we may curtail our criticism of those in power.

That hasn’t seemed to be an issue yet. I doubted that Obama was going to arrest me for disagreeing with the use of drone strikes. But this is starting to hit home for me. We find dystopian fiction compelling because it is conceived in a world just close enough to our own to make us uneasy. Many people have made the comparison to 1984 when discussing mass surveillance, but I prefer to think of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. As it’s been a decade since I read the book, I may instead refer more specifically to the television program, which I think is faithful where it counts.

The Handmaid’s Tale, written originally in 1985, was a dystopian novel set in what used to be the US. The time in which the story is set appears to be the near future, and women have lost the ability to have children. This biological hardship led to the rapid descent of society into a fundamentalist, Abrahamic totalitarian state run by wealthy (white) men. In turn, they force the women who can have children into sexual slavery and downgrade other women into a status of second-class citizenship.

This alone is scary for women today, as we continue to be underrepresented in positions of power and we’ve just seen a President elected who has been outspoken in his disrespect for us. The kicker is, though, the way the men in the book know which women are fertile: at some point before this governmental shift, all the women went to be tested and tagged for fertility, ostensibly for medical and scientific reasons (if everyone around you became barren, you’d want to know what’s going on down there, too). They allowed themselves to be tagged. Like livestock. Red: “Viable for breeding”. Then when the time came, all anyone needed to do was round up the women with the red tags.

We have all been quietly and willingly allowing ourselves to be tagged over the last two decades. We’re searchable. We can be categorized by any number of traits and watched. Electronic surveillance is not limited to the federal government, either; local police departments like the San Jose PD use it to monitor “South Asian, Muslim and Sikh protestors” (according to the ACLU). It’s not hard to connect a handle to a person, and finally, to a location. Meanwhile, my doctor’s clinic has started putting my medical records online so that I can access them from home, ensuring that a curious person with the right tools can get to know me inside and out.

Which brings me back to my panic. We’re tagged, we’re profiled, We’re just waiting for them to round us up.

On that uplifting note, let me tell you what I loved about Digital Media Studies. First, I appreciate the increased level of media literacy that I’ve achieved through this class. Making connections that go beneath the surface in media and thinking about the consequences of our media are important skills that make my day more interesting. Second, I’ve enjoyed learning about the economics of digital media. The way policy affects the market and the resultant players in the market is fascinating. Coming from a business background, it is impossible for me not to compare the two. I think my favorite part of the course was weighing the pros and cons of an event from both the corporate and shareholder perspective as well as the media producer and consumer perspective. The questions raised throughout the course were through-provoking, analytical, and relatable.