#palin calling for rise up

[taiwantalk]

Gop have been doing dog whistle for a long time. Let me remind you all how much of coward they are. they’re sitting comfortably in their chairs and calling for “rise up” and then just let loose a bunch of anarchists to do their dirty bidding.

no self respecting american could give support to that kind of chicken shit. if you want insurrection, then you better call it and say that you’re ready to destroy the constitution. and be ready to go jail for it.

Remember this chicken shit and got people really killed? she belongs in jail that scum.

Good afternoon from this scumbag nra Jan brewer. We don’t forget!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Daily Don]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 30, 2023

Four days ago, on Saturday, August 26, in the early afternoon, a heavily armed, 21-year-old white supremacist in a tactical vest and mask, who had written a number of racist manifestos and had swastikas painted on his rifle, murdered three Black Americans at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida. He had apparently intended to attack Edward Waters University, a historically Black institution, but students who saw him put on tactical gear warned a security guard, who chased him off and alerted a sheriff’s deputy. 

As David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put it two days later, “America is living through a reign of white supremacist terror,” and in a speech to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law on Monday, President Joe Biden reminded listeners that “the U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism, rooted in white supremacy, is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland—the greatest threat.” 

Biden said he has made it a point to make “clear that America is the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world.” He noted that he had nominated the first Black woman, Ketanji Brown Jackson, for the Supreme Court and has put more Black women on the federal circuit courts than every other U.S. president combined. Under him, Congress has protected interracial and same-sex marriages, and his administration has more women than men. He warned that “hate never dies. It just hides.”   

But in his Editorial Board newsletter, John Stoehr pointed out that the increasing violence of white supremacists isn’t just about an “ideology of hate” rising, but it is “about a minority faction of the country going to war, literal war, with a majority faction.” He pointed to former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin’s recent prediction of civil war because “We’re not going to keep putting up with this…. We do need to rise up and take our country back.” Stoehr calls these white supremacists “Realamericans” who believe they should rule and, if they can’t do so lawfully, believe they are justified in taking the law into their own hands. 

Indeed, today’s white supremacist violence has everything to do with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected the right to vote guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870 after white supremacists refused to recognize the right of Black Americans to vote and hold office. Minority voting means a government—and a country—that white men don’t dominate.

In the 1870s, once the federal government began to prosecute those white men attacking their Black neighbors for exercising their right to vote, white supremacists immediately began to say that they had no issues with Black voting on grounds of race. Their issue, they said, was that Black men were poor, and they were voting for lawmakers—some Black but primarily white—who supported the construction of roads, schools, hospitals, and so on. While these investments were crucial in the devastated South and would help white Americans as well as Black ones, white supremacists insisted that such government action redistributed wealth from white people to Black people and thus was a form of socialism. 

It was a short step from this argument to insisting that Black men shouldn’t vote because they were “corrupting” the American system. By 1876, former Confederates had regained control of southern state legislatures, where they rewrote voting laws to exclude Black men and people of color on grounds other than that of race, which the Fifteenth Amendment had made unconstitutional. 

By the end of the nineteenth century, white southerners greeted any attempt to protect Black voting as an attempt to destroy true America. Finally, in North Carolina in 1898, Democrats recognized they were losing ground to a biracial fusion ticket of Republicans and Populists who promised economic and political reforms. Before that year’s election, white Democratic leaders ran a viciously racist campaign to fire up their white base. “It is time for the oft quoted shotgun to play a part, and an active one,” one woman wrote, ”in the elections.”

Blocking Fusion voters from the polls and threatening them with guns gave the Democrats a victory, but in Wilmington the biracial city government had not been up for reelection and so remained in power. Vigilantes said they would never again be ruled by Black men and their unscrupulous white allies who intended to “dominate the intelligent and thrifty element in the community.” They destroyed Black businesses and property and killed as many as 300 Black Americans, then portrayed themselves as reluctant victims who had been obliged to remove inefficient and stupid officials before they reduced the city to further chaos. 

In 2005, white supremacists in North Carolina echoed this version of the Wilmington coup, claiming it was a natural reaction to “oppressive radical social policies” and a “carnival of corruption and criminality” by their opponents, who used the votes of ignorant Black men to stay in power.  

That echo is no accident. The 1965 Voting Rights Act ended the power of white supremacists in the Democratic Party once and for all, and they switched to the Republicans. Then-Democratic South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond had launched the longest filibuster in U.S. history to try to stop the 1957 Civil Rights Act; Republican candidate Richard Nixon deliberately courted him and those who thought like him in 1968.

Republicans adopted the same pattern Democrats had used in the late nineteenth century, claiming their concerns were about taxes and government corruption, pushing voter suppression legislation by insisting they cared about “voter fraud,” insisting their opponents were un-American socialists attempting to overthrow a fairly-elected government. 

This political side of white supremacy is all around us. As Democracy Docket put it last month, “Republicans have a math problem, and they know it. Regardless of their candidate, it is nearly certain that more people will vote to reelect Joe Biden than his [Republican] opponent.” After all, Democrats have won the popular vote since 2008. Under these circumstances and unwilling to moderate their platform, “Republicans need to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat.” 

Republican-dominated state legislatures are working to make it as hard as possible for minorities and younger Americans to vote, while also pushing the election denier movement to undermine the counting and certification of election results. At the same time, eight Republican-dominated states have left the nonpartisan Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a compact between the states that makes it easier to share voter information to avoid duplicate registration and voting, and three more are considering leaving. 

In a special session of the Tennessee legislature this week, Republican lawmakers blocked the public from holding signs (a judge blocked the rule), kicked the public out of a hearing, and passed new rules that could prohibit Democrats from speaking. House speaker Cameron Sexton silenced young Black Democratic representative Justin Jones for a day and today suggested the Republicans might make the rule silencing minority members permanent.

In Wisconsin, where one of the nation’s most extreme gerrymanders gives Republicans dominance in the legislature, Republicans in 2018 stripped Democratic governor-elect Tony Evers of power before they left office, and now right-wing Chief Justice Annette Ziegler has told the liberal majority on the state supreme court that it is staging a “coup” by exercising their new power after voters elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the court by a large majority in April. Now the legislature is talking about keeping the majority from getting rid of the gerrymandered maps by impeaching Protasiewicz.  

The courts are trying to hold the line against this movement. In Washington, D.C., today, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell decided in favor of Black election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who claimed that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani defamed them when he claimed they had committed voter fraud. Not only did Howell award the two women court costs and damages, she called out Giuliani and his associates for trying to keep their records hidden. 

But as the courts are trying to hold the line, its supporters are targeting the courts themselves, with MAGA Republicans threatening to defund state and federal prosecutors they claim are targeting Republicans, and announcing their intention to gather the power of the Department of Justice into their own hands should they win office in 2024. 

After pushing a social studies curriculum that erases Black agency and resistance to white supremacy, Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Monday suggested the Jacksonville shooting was an isolated incident. 

The Black audience booed. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[saltypandapainter]

The Anatomy of a Great Palang Pintu Kereta

™

1. Fruit From the Looms

two. Python’s Give Live Birth

3. The Toad Elevating Second

4. Secret From the Misplaced Python Sketches

five. Brian’s The Lifetime of The Bash

6. Kim Bread Aka John Cleese

7. Around The World In eighty Days

eight. Get By yourself To Mars

9. Retain It Serious

ten. The 12 Fisher Monkey Kings

eleven. Parting Shots

one. Fruit As part of your Looms

Another person the moment said anything alongside the strains that, Monty Python would be to ‘funny’ what chartered accountants are to ‘unexciting’. Who're we to disagree?

The legend of Monty Python emerged nobly from the dusty corridors of Oxford and Cambridge universities. All of the British Python users had their comedic starts off in revue exhibits placed on by these universities. They soon rose for the ranks of duty in just these societies, “In bewilderment we observed a detect board informing us that we at the moment are officers!” recollects John Cleese.

Their perfectly-received show, A Clump of Plinths, transferred to London’s West Finish and afterwards frequented New

Zealand and Ny underneath the new title Cambridge Circus.

Cleese stayed on in New York and during a photograph shoot for a comic strip he achieved American illustrator Terry Gilliam. Terry was quickly folded to the just about every escalating omelet.

The BBC, on the recommendation of producer Barry Took, signed the team – which now provided Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam for any 13-demonstrate collection. Ah, but what to call the exhibit?

Owl Stretching Time. A Horse, A Spoon and also a Bucket. The Toad Elevating Minute were all names from the functioning. But as scheduling for your collection grew to become additional chaotic, the BBC management started to seek advice from the staff being a ‘flying circus’, influenced because of the Crimson Baron’s Earth War One particular fighter squadron. The troupe appreciated the seem of it and randomly extra the time period Monty Python from their escalating listing of alternates. Funny that.

No person is familiar with what occurred to them.

Oh wait, three new sketches of by no means right before found Python content have been just lately learned and performed in the Edinburgh Fringe Competition. The famed sketches ended up prepared by late Python star Graham Chapman and were unearthed by a literary executor in Los Angeles. Each sketch lasts 4 minutes and encompasses a Solid of people which include a gay parrot and an overworked Messiah.

Monty Python’s Lifetime of Brian snagged the funniest film of all time in a poll organized by Whole Movie journal.

The movie satires the rise of organized faith and triggered more controversy than a Kevin Smith baptismal when it had been unveiled again in 1979. It absolutely was banned in many elements of the united kingdom and church leaders accused it of blasphemy. Almost nothing like poor publicity to force the ratings.

Their King Arthur era spoof, Monty Python as well as Holy Grail, trailed by only some places, landing Palang Pintu Kereta it at quantity 5.

Top ten Comedy Films

one. Life of Brian

two. Airplane!

3. Withnail & I

four. There’s Anything About Mary

five. Monty Python as well as Holy Grail

6. American Pie

seven. Groundhog Day

eight. Some Like it Warm

nine. Blazing Saddles

10. Planes, Trains and Automobiles

John Cleese rode a roller coaster of fame during the 1970’s taking part in the position of stressed hotelkeeper Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers. He continued his fame with movies like Privates On Parade and Clockwise, then hit throughout the world stardom using a A Fish Termed Wanda in 1988. The follow-up film, Intense Creatures faulted to realize awareness with audiences. Lately audiences know him finest as the new Q while in the James Bond movies and Virtually Headless Ned from the Harry Potter movies. He'll upcoming be found playing father to Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and as the voice Fiona’s Father in Shrek two, Fiona is voiced by Charlie’s Angel’s co-star Cameron Diaz.

Michael Palin has also rocketed to fame due to his flip With all the troupe and in 1977 he teamed with Terry Jones to produce their own individual comedy collection, Ripping Yarns. Michael also appeared aside John Cleese inside of a Fish Known as Wanda, then went on to carry out a truth exhibit for BBC Tv set, named World wide in 80 Times, where he attempted to basically comply with in the footsteps with the Jules Verne literary character, Phileas Fogg, by looking to journey worldwide during the allotted time, but without having flying – Incidentally, it’s Jules Verne’s 175th birthday this 7 days. Throughout the Pole to Pole vacation, he achieved up with Python admirers in Greece and ate snake in China even though battling to meet his deadline.

Eric Idle ongoing his stint during the limelight by teaming with Neil Innes to generate Rutland Weekend Television, a parody of regional broadcasting. He later on appeared in Graham Chapman’s Yellowbeard, Disney’s Honey, I Shrunk the Viewers and Splitting Heirs. His new novel titled, “The Road to Mars” is about two comedians during the 22nd century. Fans most certainly know him right now as the voice of Mr. Vosknocker while in the animated movie, South Park: Greater, Longer and Uncut.

Terry Jones preserved a variety beyond mere comedy, by creating about history, presenting documentaries, penning small children’s guides and heading on to immediate the 1996 Variation of Wind during the Willows, starring his outdated pals – Michael Palin, John Cleese and Eric Idle.

Terry Gilliam lent his talents on the troupe as a director and by generating the extremely distinct animations that turned Monty Python’s Visible trademark. We before long followed it together with his aspect film debut, Jabberwocky, starring Michael Palin. Following helming the Significantly liked, Time Bandits, his fame skyrocketed in Hollywood. But his type led to several conflictions during the biz together with an enormous throw down with Common Studios about his movie Brazil then issues with backers over the extremely costly, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which starred Eric Idle and featured Robin Williams.

His actual achievements accompanied by taking over unconventional studio movies including the critically acclaimed, The Fisher King starring Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges along with the stylistic sci-fi thriller, 12 Monkeys starring Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt and also the Hunter S Thompson extravaganza, Anxiety and Loathing in Las Vegas starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro. These 6 actors all gave many of the finest performances of their job in Gilliam’s films.

“We weren’t remaining satirical mainly because it wasn’t the detail that fascinated us,” Terry Jones claims. “Ours was a rather much more summary humor – just playing around genuinely. What satire There may be, is much more generalized satire.”

Referring to your Lifetime of Brian – “Comedy is about reminding us of the reality of currently being human: we all Use a entire body and all of us ought to die, and it really is all right,” reckons Eric Idle.

“Monty Python is an excellent blend of intellect and silly”, concludes Robin Williams.

[truck-fump]

Sarah Palin Calls For Trump Supporters To 'Rise Up' Over Arrest, Alludes To 'Civil War'

New Post has been published on https://truckfump.life/2023/08/25/sarah-palin-trump-arrest-rise-up_n_64e8fb36e4b05b9ed9ed7d42/

Sarah Palin Calls For Trump Supporters To 'Rise Up' Over Arrest, Alludes To 'Civil War'

The former Alaska governor told Newsmax she wants to ask the prosecutors going after Trump: “What the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war?”

[faulentzer]

This woman really needs to see a mental health counselor.

[liskantope]

So, Herschel Walker will not wind up a Georgia Senator, and the 2022 midterms are finally complete. That was dangerously close, though -- Walker has been hopefully one of the last of these ridiculously (both intellectually and morally) unqualified Republican candidates from a trend that became fully established with the rise of Trump but arguably began 14 years ago with Sarah Palin.

I've mostly held to a posture of declaring in such contests that it's not about policy or Republican versus Democrat, it's about being fundamentally qualified versus otherwise, and so it's outrageous that these contests even come close. This is pretty much in line with what I constantly hear from other left-leaning people. And yet...

Lately I've been coming to see a different perspective on this: many voters are just really pragmatic about trying to get policies they like. And I'm not entirely sure that this is wrong, or that I wouldn't be this way myself. I've just always had the benefit of preferring the policies of the major American political party that feels no real temptation to run candidates of that fundamentally unacceptable kind. As long as the parties stay more or less in their current states, only the Republican party has enough discomfort, resentment, and/or disdain for what we might call Established Expertise to feel any attraction whatsoever to candidates who thumb their noses at it. (The closest the Democrats have come to this in my lifetime may have been Marianne Williamson for president in 2020, and she didn't win the candidacy by a long shot.)

For simplicity, let's just narrow this down to one big issue that people on both sides feel very strongly about: abortion. If you're a very pro-choice Democrat who sees restrictive abortion laws as a huge middle finger to women, as extremely detrimental to the lives of millions of women and to the development of underprivileged communities, then the practical effects of electing someone who will defend the right to choose, regardless of that candidate's personality or basic qualifications for office, might outweigh most everything else. At least, I think most voters of this description, if they're really looking at themselves honestly, would admit that they put effect on policy over every other consideration here, even if it means holding their nose while they vote. Well then, doesn't it make sense, by the same token, that an ardently pro-life Republican, who sincerely believes that millions of babies are being murdered as long as abortion is legal (or who is just dead set against women having autonomy, according to a more cynical and less theory-of-mind-ful liberal) might prioritize that goal over electing someone who seems decently earnest and fundamentally qualified? Millions of human beings are going to be murdered / have their bodily autonomy taken away, depending on our point of view: surely the priority is to put a person in power who we can trust to prevent that! (And add to this a list of other issues that many of us are passionate about, each of whose sides tend to line up and fall under the preferences of one of our two main political tribes.)

I remember in my early years on Tumblr, during the rise of Trump, that Barry Deutsch (haven't heard much from him lately, I hope he's doing all right?) wrote a post that kind of shocked me at the time, about how he would put policy over character even in the case of a candidate who was obviously a rapist. I wanted to argue back and tried, but couldn't entirely deny deep down inside that I knew he was being quite rational, reasonable, and honest in the point he was making (just tried to find this exchange in my archive but am not up for going on a long hunt for it, hopefully my memory serves correctly).

[EDIT: wouldncha know it, a few days later I just ran across it while looking through my archives for something else from around the same period. Here is Barry's post with my response. I'm sort of bemused looking back at this, particularly at my part of it and how sort-of-right but sort-of-wrong I was.]

Just the other day, one of my colleagues mentioned that he couldn't imagine what personally disqualifying characteristics a Democrat running on left-wing positions could possibly have that would make him unwilling to vote for them in an election, because what they're running on is so vitally important. He said that even if they were a known murderer, he would kind of have to vote for them or at least consider it, maybe not because voting for a murderer might degrade his own character, so it would be a real dilemma. This conversation made a real impression on me (not that my thoughts had never before skirted to that kind of dilemma and how I or typical left-wing people would handle it) and is part of is compelling me to post this. And the most interesting thing is, this same colleague, on the subject of Herschel Walker, pretty much expressed the usual outrage over the fact that such a fundamentally unqualified candidate was only narrowly losing, not losing 20-80, parties and policy positions be damned.

If we're going to criticize the American Right for running and voting for clowns and obvious criminals and otherwise horrible and completely unqualified people, then we have to seriously ask ourselves whether we'd support similarly terrible candidates if we trusted them to support the positions we find extremely important. Because if so, it's just a little too easy a rhetorical move to point at and mock the other side for this.

One caveat: the main reason, I think, why most left-leaning people don't really consider my above point, is that it's a pure and very unlikely hypothetical that doesn't easily occur to us: the Left, compared to the Right, has enough respect for Established Expertise and general seriousness that the Democratic party in its current state would never dream of putting up the kind of ridiculous candidate that the Republicans have been trying out. As long as that continues to be the case, we don't have to actually worry about the dilemma my colleague brought up.

Another caveat: leaving aside general clownishness, incompetence, unseriousness, and outwardly bad character, if a candidate blatantly disdains the democratic process which is part of the self-correcting nature of our political system (which the Right is certainly overall far more guilty of today than the Left) by deciding that elections are rigged and shouldn't be trusted if they don't come out in their favor, then since this is sort of a huge meta-issue and in my opinion really does need to come before even most very important policy issues. In the (currently but perhaps not always) unlikely hypothetical situation where the shoe is on the other foot and it's someone with policies I strongly favor acting this way, I'd like to think I know how I would reluctantly feel compelled to respond.

[tes-trash-blog]

🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three  conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black.  20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life. 

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

[ribcagecarnival]

NO. 4 (Obama the Gleek)

Glee premiered in May 2009. I was about to transfer to a new middle school and Obama was four months into his first term. At just shy of 12 years old, I considered that pilot episode to be the best episode of television I’d ever seen. In seventh, eighth, and ninth grade, my mother and I watched the show religiously every week. In 2010 and 2011, we attended the concert tours—at one of them, we foolishly purchased VIP tickets that gave us virtually no perks, but through a cracked door, we saw Cory Monteith, and he waved at me before security shuffled him away to what I presumed was the actual VIP room, where he would participate in a real meet-and-greet. Monteith died in July 2013, the same day that George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin. By 2015, when the show ended, I hadn’t watched for years, and Donald Trump was entering the presidential race. And now, in early 2021, two more members of the original cast have died, Trump went from joke candidate to fascistic president to twice-impeached private citizen, and the entire world is in the throes of the worst viral pandemic in just over a century. Obviously I spent part of 2020 rewatching Glee. All art is a product of its time, either reflecting it back to us directly or functioning as a vision of what’s to come. Glee belongs firmly in the former camp. The progressive aspects of the show would not have been possible in the conservative pre-Obama era of American media, but plenty of premises and plot lines that passed for merely transgressive at the time would be shut down by contemporary cancel culture. Kurt’s coming out storyline in season 1 was a heartfelt, tender portrait of teen sexuality and coming-of-age that felt unprecedented and nuanced in 2009. But having an able-bodied actor play a wheelchair-bound teen (Kevin McHale) would have brought the full force of the online mob if it happened a decade later. A moment that has come under scrutiny on Twitter and TikTok comes from season 1, when Mercedes (Amber Riley) asks Mr. Schuester (Matthew Morrison) if the club can perform more Black music, to which Rachel (Lea Michele) snaps that it’s “glee club, not krunk club.” There are countless memes joking that in spite of the dizzying number of romantic pairings on the show, the OTP of Glee is Mr. Schue and jail—his bizarrely intimate relationships with his students were only ever called out by the show’s antagonist, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), and it was always played for laughs. The most heartbreaking episode of Glee is Season 5, Episode 3, “The Quarterback,” which is a tribute to the late Cory Monteith. But it is arguably more difficult to watch a moment from the following season, in which a group of McKinley alums crash an adolescent Tea Party Patriots meeting in order to recruit members for the rebuilding glee club. The episode is from 2014, but the remarks made by the student attendees are downright depressing when you know that 2 years later, Donald Trump would be the president-elect of the United States. In season 4, when a new cheerleader named Kitty (Becca Tobin) is introduced, she makes remarks about the “lame stream media” that are snuck into a litany of insults as rapidly as machine gun fire. The audience never has a moment to meditate on the significance of these jokes, because pre-2016, we didn’t have to. At the time, having characters parrot the fringe commentary of Sarah Palin and Fox News commentators was a shorthand meant to indicate that said characters would either undergo a change of heart or be permanently vanquished. Glee’s run spanned Obama’s time in office, and the Hope & Change candidate’s ascent did not make room for the victory of villainy. We had entered the Liberal Gilded Age. One thing I forgot about Glee was how often it mentioned the failing economy. As we all know, Obama inherited a broken economy from his predecessor, and the entire country was wracked by home foreclosures and unemployment. But as a preteen, all those references were lost on me in favor of glittery show choir competitions and the Finn/Rachel romance. The constant mention of budget cuts seemed more like an arbitrary plot device than a grasp at historical accuracy. Watching the show as an adult, however, the economic currents underpinning the show are impossible to ignore. Sue Sylvester often mocked the glee club for having a warped, rosy, show-biz view of reality, but they always prevailed. Even when they were temporarily down, they would rebound, and they would eventually win. But Sue, the comically evil opponent to the superficially valorous glee club, was right. You could not fix the evils of the world by simply celebrating diversity, accruing celebrity guests, and singing a feel-good song. Yet this has been the Democratic establishment’s strategy since 2009. And it hasn’t worked for a long time. The secondary characters, much like real American citizens of the time, were desperate for real change and real solutions. This is not an Obama Exposed essay—of course, he made progress on certain issues. But most of what the country got were charming late-night appearances, secret concessions to conservativism as the Democratic establishment shifted further to the right, and an increasingly divided populace that left both the progressive wing of the Democratic party and the growing alt-right movement increasingly agitated with the state of the union. I loved Barack Obama when I was a teenager. But over the course of the Trump presidency, I became radicalized. I saw the flaws in his administration that wreaked havoc both domestically and internationally, and that ultimately enabled Trump to carry out much of his hateful agenda over the last four years. Just as I have outgrown the version of myself that watched Glee uncritically as an adolescent, I too have outgrown the fractured politics I parroted before I was of voting age. Glee characters are prone to flights of fancy, acts of supposed altruism that often wind up harming themselves or others, and inspirational speeches that are ultimately meaningless. Mr. Schuester is offered the opportunity for a transgender student to have private access to a single-stall bathroom in exchange for a moratorium on student twerking. At first, he refuses. It takes the full length of an episode for him to realize that this thing is not worth fighting for. And even then, it’s seen as some huge sacrifice for the club! This, to me, is a perfect allegory for the Democratic party—an institution that is purportedly invested in betterment and equality, but in reality was more concerned with optics and symbols. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Mr. Schue would have wept seeing BLACK LIVES MATTER murals being unveiled, and likely would have said that instead of looting the protestors should’ve just knelt and sang a Journey medley to the cops. Rachel Berry would have gone to a protest for a photo op while carrying a sign that said IF HILLARY WON I’D BE AT BRUNCH RIGHT NOW. I know this as deeply as I know that Spongebob Squarepants is gay and Daffy Duck is Black. Some things are just TRUE. In 2009, simply having queer and PoC characters centered on television was groundbreaking. In 2020, this is no longer enough. Simply acknowledging that marginalized people exist is not sufficient activism. In media, we deserve nuanced and complex stories that don’t subject them to even more of the stereotyping we’ve been experiencing for decades. And in politics, we deserve more legitimate structural change—reparations, secure voting rights, anti-discrimination laws, a livable minimum wage, universal healthcare that includes access to safe abortions—and less empty virtue-signaling. Glee is a tremendous way to escape from the horrors of our current state of affairs. But it is not merely a camp masterpiece. It is a cautionary tale. The circumstances that gave us Glee—an Obama presidency, decreasing voter turnout, the rise of the social internet, increased representation for queer and PoC and disabled people—are the same circumstances that gave us Trump. We don’t merely need our lives to be visible, we need them to be viable. We need to weaponize our passion and empathy against tyranny. We need to rebuild the world for the versions of ourselves that first loved Glee, without reverting back to who we were when it first aired.

[phroyd]

Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say.

Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece.

Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from The Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

Hagler said DeJoy “sought and received legal advice” from a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission “to ensure that he, New Breed Logistics and any person affiliated with New Breed fully complied with any and all laws. Mr. DeJoy believes that all campaign fundraising laws and regulations should be complied with in all respects.”

He added that DeJoy “encouraged employees and family members to be active in their communities, schools, churches, civic groups, sporting events and the politics that governs our nation.”

“Mr. DeJoy was never notified by the New Breed employees referenced by the Washington Post of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, and he regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason,” he added.

A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

In a statement, XPO spokesman Joe Checkler said the company “stays out of politics but our employees have the same individual right as anyone else to support candidates of their choosing in their free time. When they do so, we expect them to adhere strictly to the rules.”

The accounts of DeJoy’s former employees, which have not been previously reported, come as his brief tenure so far at the helm of the U.S. Postal Service has been marked by tumult. After his appointment in May, he swiftly instituted changes he said were aimed at cutting costs, leading to a reduction of overtime and limits on mail trips that postal carriers said created backlogs across the country.

Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it. . . . The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

A pattern of requests

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

In his office, DeJoy prominently displayed pictures of himself with former president George W. Bush; Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie; former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and others, according to former employees.

Several employees said DeJoy reveled in the access his fundraising afforded him.

At a local PGA tournament sponsored by New Breed, he played alongside top North Carolina Republicans such as then-Gov. Pat McCrory and Sen. Richard Burr, according to schedules posted online. “He always had to be the guy in the golf cart with the politicians,” said one person who worked with him who attended the tournaments.

As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments — first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors — through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal — you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

Another manager also said he was not aware of employees being reimbursed, but acknowledged that workers were asked to make donations.

William Church, a former New Breed vice president, said he handed out many bonuses to his employees in the company’s aerospace division and never had knowledge of such payments being connected to political contributions. He said bonus targets in his division were rigid and well-established.

Church, who donated over $21,000 to Republican candidates while at New Breed and said he received substantial bonuses, said he never felt pressured to make the contributions and was never reimbursed for them. “Ask my wife, boy, she would have loved that,” Church said.

Asked whether he believed employees could have felt pressure to attend fundraisers, Church responded: “Now, what’s in somebody’s heart when they’re doing it, when the CEO invites you to one of these things and they think, ‘Oh, I should do that?’ — I don’t know.”

Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

'You feel the pressure'

DeJoy did not always seem destined for a life as an influential GOP power broker. As a young man in New York working at his father’s trucking business, DeJoy donated to Democrats, including the party’s 1988 presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, according to federal campaign finance filings.

After his marriage to Wos, a physician born in Poland who emigrated to New York as a child, DeJoy followed her into conservative politics.

Under DeJoy, New Breed expanded from trucking to logistics, managing delivery and returns of the first iPhones sold by Verizon, airplane parts for Boeing and Disney merchandise, including shipments of MagicBands, employees said.

By the late 1990s, as the family business flourished, thanks in part to contracts with the U.S. Postal Service, DeJoy moved New Breed to North Carolina — and closer to the work it was doing repositioning mail crates, folding mail bags, and other logistical work that the government had begun to outsource.

The move provided new political opportunities for the couple. Wos embraced North Carolina Republican politics and, by the early 2000s, was stepping into national campaigns. She helped lead fundraising efforts in the state for Elizabeth Dole’s 2002 Senate run, and then for Bush’s reelection campaign, according to campaign statements and news articles from the time.

DeJoy began to marshal his resources to support GOP candidates, as well. On one day in February 2002, DeJoy donated $50,000 to a Republican Party fund supporting Bush’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another $10,000 came from DeJoy’s brother, Michael, who worked then for New Breed in New York. Another 10 New Breed employees also chipped in $1,000 each that day to Bush, and another $900 or $1,000 each to Dole, campaign finance data show.

In response to a request to Wos for comment, Hagler said, “Dr. Wos had her own career, and she was not involved with New Breed Logistics.”

Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

Ted Le Jeune, a New Breed project manager in North Carolina, said he made a $500 contribution to the Bush campaign in November 2003 after DeJoy took him aside for a discussion in a conference room about donating.

“I was of the same political orientation, so it was not coerced in any way and there was no quid pro quo,” Le Jeune said in an interview. Le Jeune said he has not donated to any political campaign since then.

In 2002, DeJoy and New Breed employees contributed more than $87,000 to support Dole, and before the 2004 presidential election, more than $121,000 to Bush.

Wos was named a Bush “Ranger,” an honorary term for those who delivered at least $200,000 for the Texan’s reelection bid. In a recess appointment before the election, Bush appointed her ambassador to Estonia, a post she held for two years.

Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush, declined to comment. Wos did not respond to a request for comment about her appointment.

By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give — and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.

In the North Carolina headquarters, Joel Shepard, who had joined New Breed as director of transportation after stints at Ryder and UPS, said he got a call from Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, making sure Shepard knew that he, too, was invited.

Shepard had never donated to a political candidate before, and he wrote a check for $1,000. He said he did not feel pressured, however. He said he admired Giuliani and “wanted to do it.”

Shepard said he still recalls the donation because he mistakenly wrote the check from an account that was low on funds and it bounced. Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, “came to me and said, ‘Joel, your check bounced.’ I had to write her another one,” he recalled.

In all, dozens of New Breed employees contributed more than $85,000 to Giuliani’s campaign during the primary, including a $16,000 in excess contributions that the campaign returned after Giuliani dropped his bid because multiple employees gave identical contributions that were twice the legal limit.

The only other GOP presidential contender to receive donations from New Breed employees during that year’s primary was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, campaign finance records show. Together, two employees gave him about $550.

Expanding influence

After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

By 2013, Warburg Pincus, a New York-based private-equity firm that had acquired a controlling stake in New Breed eight years earlier, had begun agitating for the company to go public or find another way to return value to its investors, according to three former New Breed employees with knowledge of the company’s finances. News articles in subsequent months quoted people familiar with the company saying Warburg was exploring a sale.

DeJoy tested the market for an initial public offering, filing a confidential draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to correspondence detailing concerns about the offering flagged by the SEC, which remain archived on the agency’s website.

As the agency began scrutinizing the company’s finances, the SEC appeared to question a lack of information about New Breed executive bonuses and how the company decided they had met their goals for the payments in the previous year. “Please disclose the target and how the target was met or not met or advise,” the SEC’s accounting branch chief wrote in a June 2013 letter to DeJoy. It is unclear whether or how the company responded.

Ultimately, New Breed did not go public. Instead, Warburg Pincus sold it to XPO Logistics the following year for $615 million, according to company announcements and SEC records.

A spokeswoman for Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

The month the deal closed, New Breed employees made a slew of political donations in a two-day period — more than $407,000. Almost three-quarters of that went to support Tillis’s Senate bid.

Clarke, Hauck and DeJoy were among 10 New Breed employees who led the giving. On Sept. 29, each gave identical donations of $12,600 to the Thom Tillis Victory Committee, campaign finance data shows. The next day, the same 10 employees each gave $10,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.

Since then, five of those individuals have significantly cut back their political contributions, and one has not given again at all, FEC filings show.

Young, who retired that fall, said he sent a note to DeJoy this summer congratulating him upon being named postmaster general. DeJoy may have the skills needed to improve the agency, Young said. But the fundraising that permeated New Breed will remain a mark on his legacy there, he said, adding: “He had an agenda, and would take advantage of people.”

DeJoy never replied to his note, Young said. One of the last things he heard from anyone at New Breed came about a year after he left. Hauck, who by then was working with DeJoy at XPO, called and asked Young to donate to Tillis and other Republicans. “I said, ‘No, thank you.’ ”

Jacob Bogage, Alice Crites, Dan Zak and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this report. Ken Otterbourg reported from Greensboro, N.C.

Phroyd

[politicalprof]

2019 in books:

David McCullough, 1776: A highly accessible, if somewhat naive, depiction of the year that defined the prospects for American independence. I wouldn’t go there for deep, critical analysis. But for a story of a year, it is well done.

Michael Palin, Erebus: HMS Erebus was a British naval vessel that spent much of its career in Arctic and Antarctic exploration. If you are interested in Victorian era explorations of hard places, a fascinating read.

Emilio Corsetti III, 35 Miles from Shore: The story of an airline crash in the early 1970s in the Caribbean. What happened, why, how, who survived and what we learned. Interesting if not brilliant.

Raymond Thorp, Crow Killer: Old-fashioned tale of the inspiration behind the Robert Redford movie Jeremiah Johnson. As much fantasy as history. But it offers a flavor of a time and a subgroup few Americans would know.

James Corey, Caliban’s War: The second book of “The Expanse” series. The protomolecule is working its mojo, and Earth, Mars and the Belters are none too happy with one another. A fun read of a massive space opera.

Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing: Set in the context of the collapsing Eastern Front during WWII, this story proceeds from the fractured point of view of the Germans who are about to be turned into refugees fleeing oncoming Soviet forces. The book, notably, does not make these Germans sources of sympathy: the mood is dissonant and disordered. A real piece of literature.

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall: Because who doesn’t want a point-of-view account of a key counselor to Henry VIII, one who rose to extraordinary wealth and power despite his humble birth and then managed the, how shall we say, removal of Kathrine as Queen? Replaced by Anne Boleyn? Who wouldn’t want to read it? It’s excellent, by the way.

James Corey, Abaddon’s Gate: Book three of The Expanse, and the protomolecule has remade humanity’s relationship to the universe. But we’ll probably screw that up, too. Another good story, filled with actual thought about the problems of space travel and space living.

MIchael Krondl, The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice: Venice, Lisbon and Amsterdam each in their turn dominated the global spice trade -- a trade that was one of the main stimuli for early colonialism and imperial conquest, and which strongly influenced the rise of the modern corporation as a linch-pin of global capitalism. The book is not as good as it should be, but the story is one that few people know, but should.

Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies: Hey, it’s time to get rid of Anne Boleyn everyone! Or, at least, to separate her head from her body. And let’s manage the English Reformation, too ... all just a few years before losing our own head. Welcome to the early/middle 1500s in England everyone!

Leigh Perry, A Skeleton in the Family: Who doesn’t have a skeleton living in their house who helps solve mysteries. I mean, who doesn’t?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: So my son has started reading Harry Potter. So I have started reading Harry Potter. I liked this book: it’s tight, it’s focused, it’s a fun read. I see the appeal.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The answer to the questions: “What if the angels and demons charged with over-seeing Earth as humans go from the Garden of Eden to Armageddon decide that they like Earth and don’t want Armageddon to happen (even if their allies do)? And what if the Anti-Christ were raised in a perfectly mundane family in a perfectly mundane English village? How might it all turn out?” To delightful and funny effect.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Meh. Okay. Not as good as book one. But still a good story.

Gilbert King, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America: A broad pastiche of events surrounding one of the many civil rights cases of the 1940s and 50s: the abuses and murders of several African American men accused of raping a white woman in Lakeland, FL, in 1949. With a whole lot of associated discussions of other cases, the NAACP, corrupt and criminal law enforcement, race riots, and the like. A good read. And how can it be that the bastard George HW Bush, put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court to fill a seat once held by the staggering legal figure that was Thurgood Marshall. Shameful is the only word.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Certainly better than the Chamber of Secrets. A darker turn. But beginning to get padded as readers demanded “more” if not “better.”

James Corey, Cibola Burn: Book 4 of The Expanse ... and I didn’t like it. It seemed like filler, a book written to a contract deadline. Maybe it will pay off in the end. But another one like that and I’m not going to care.

Tom Phillips, Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up: Did you know our oldest known ancestor, Lucy, probably died by falling out of a tree? If stories about how people have messed things up, have suffered both intentional and unintentional consequences, turn you on, do I ever have the book for you. Schadenfreude much?

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Dear lord is this book long. Why? No doubt because the fans wanted it to be. But it is as gratuitously padded as any book I have ever read. It’s okay. But I wasn’t particularly impressed. Perhaps another six Quidditch matches would have helped ....

Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: Thought the HBO miniseries was scary? It was tame. I mean: the Soviets, with their level of “technical prowess” and their industrial “quality control checks” ran the facility. Heck, Chernobyl wasn’t even their first disaster. Let’s just put it this way: the actual fuel piles in each of the FOUR Chernobyl reactors were so big that: 1) different sections had different characteristics, and didn’t all operate at the same rates or temperatures; and 2) the monitoring equipment couldn’t record how all of the pile was operating at any time. Happy now? Russia still has 10 Chernobyl-style reactors in operation. Enjoy your good night’s sleep everyone!

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Yes, yes: I know. This isn’t Order of the Phoenix. Well, I read Order of the Phoenix many years ago, and thought it was deeply annoying. A pile of words with little point. A way to keep the audience happy with long passages about very little.

Meanwhile, I, like my son, roared through Half-Blood Prince. A ripping good tale. Much tighter than the last several of the series.

JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: A fine read. A bit slow getting going: let’s go here! Let’s go there! Let’s recap the plot! But after the first 1/3 or so, the story got moving and I enjoyed it. Didn’t expect great literature; didn’t get great literature. But then again, I deeply appreciate how much pleasure my son got from this, and how excited my daughter is to engage with it. If it hadn’t been conceived and written, it seems like there’d be a Harry Potter sized hole in the universe.

Neil Gaiman, American Gods: In all honesty, I didn’t really like the first 2/3 of this book: too many tangents; too many sub-stories for the sake of sub-stories. And I’m still not sure I think it was a great book. But I really enjoyed the last third of it, and there were moments, vignettes, and sentences that truly blew me away. So I am glad I stayed with it.

Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade: A sci fi story of soldiers apparently engaged in a war with Mars who are transported to the battlefield as beams of light. One gets unhinged from time. I am not sure it was worth the work, and I came to understand it was based on a short story and so, at times, it seemed a bit one-trick pony-ish. But it had its share of moments.

Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: A bit slow going at first, but it grows more compelling as it moved forward. This is the story of the 1936 crew (rowing) team at the University of Washington that went to Berlin and won the gold medal as Adolf Hitler watched. An interesting story about crew as a sport (about which I knew basically nothing), and life in Depression-era Washington state -- with a little, somewhat gratuitous, commentary about life in Nazi Germany layered in. One takeaway? The actor Hugh Laurie’s father was the lead oarsman on the British crew at Berlin in 1936. Hugh Laurie rowed crew at Cambridge as well.

James Corey, Nemesis Games: The next in the Expanse series. Much more enjoyable than the last one, but still a bit strained. One heck of a plot “twist.” A perfectly lovely way to relax; didn’t change my life. Some interesting character twists. But also a lot of “here are some giant developments (a lot of giant stuff) that give us lots of things to write about going forward!”

Alan Stern and David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons: the story of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Interesting behind the scenes look at how the mission got funded, planned and implemented. Accessible in terms of the explanations; thick with bureaucratic story-telling and summary. It turns out this stuff is really, really hard. Interesting, but it didn’t blow me away.

And to end the year, I am reading: Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal: What if 13 year old Jesus had a buddy who, 2000 years later, wrote a gospel that filled in those missing years of Joshua’s (as Biff calls Jesus) life? Well, here’s your answer.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #451

Top Ten British Films of My Lifetime

Here we are with another of my semi-regular “this has nothing to do with anything but I just thought about it” lists. Nothing to tie into, nothing to celebrate, just a moderately interesting topic. Hopefully.

I don’t feel like people talk about British films the way they did in the nineties. Maybe that’s just because I'm not a teenage wannabe film director reading Empire anymore so I'm not picking up on a meta-narrative or looking for ways into the industry, but I think it’s more the changing nature of the film “biz”. The nineties proved that there was a functioning film industry in Britain, and the subsequent rise (or return) of huge blockbusters filming here has meant that there’s always a lot of money flowing through British studios and companies. Star Wars, the Wizarding World, and James Bond are just three franchises where, whichever country owns the rights or the IP, there’s still a strong UK flavour to the productions, even if they have American actors and directors. Even indie films get money from all over the globe now, further muddying any attempt to define the nationality of a film. For a long time there, the Coens were making films for Working Title, so arguably they were British films too.

I'm going to insert a depressing caveat here and say that, with Covid shutting the cinemas and the government’s reluctance to offer ongoing support to the industry, there is a chance that our position as a great location or a destination for a raft of production and post-production services may be under serious threat. Like with Thatcherism, we could end up seeing a return to the bad old days of the eighties, when despite stone-cold gems emerging, the industry did struggle. But anyway.

Basically, I don’t always know if a British film is a British film these days, and their Britishness does not get ballyhooed as much as it did 25 years ago.  But all the same, for reasons undefinable (because Lord knows I’m not feeling very patriotic at the moment), I have here decided to list my Top Ten British Films. I’ve focused on “in my lifetime” because, well, it’s easier, and there are fewer huge films that I've missed. But like I always say, I'm not a journalist or a professional film critic, so there certainly are some huge films that I've missed. Off the top of my head, three very big films I've never seen are Naked, Sexy Beast and In God’s Country; maybe they would be on the list. Also, with the 2020 of it all, I've seen virtually nothing this year (Farmageddon and – is it British? – Cats are the only Brit-flicks I saw at the cinema before the Dark Times; if you’re after a review, well, Farmageddon is better). But, look, this is my list and It's utterly arbitrary, as always.

Rule Britannia, etc.

Paddington 2 (2017): yes, it’s utterly delightful, which we need more of in this day and age, but it’s also exquisitely constructed on a technical level. It's phenomenally well-shot, Paddington himself is an extremely good effect, the scripts are tight, the performances spot-on (give Grant an Oscar!)… honestly, this film is perfect. I try to be arch or cynical but I can’t. It's a masterpiece and it does not get enough love.

Withnail & I (1987): as sublime a piece of screenwriting as you’re likely to find, the film is also bolstered with two stand-out performances for the ages (three, really, if you include Uncle Monty). Simultaneously a hilarious character comedy, a gritty but nostalgic look at a lost decade, and an utterly tragic tale of self-destruction.

Brazil (1985): one of those films that’s disturbingly, increasingly prescient. A grim look at the future through a dirty lens, a visual tour-de-force, Michael Palin playing a delightful monster, pathos, romance, tragedy… almost certainly Gilliam’s best film.

Trainspotting (1996): utterly seminal; stands alongside Pulp Fiction as one of the definitive films of my youth. Boyle’s direction is so assured, Hodge’s screenplay distils an unfilmable novel into something utterly cinematic, and McGregor delivers an unforgettable performance. Cool, slick, funny, strange, tragic, and very, very British.

In Bruges (2008): another film with two people swearing a lot and just having terrific dialogue, this time against an ironically beautiful backdrop. A neat character study, great performances, devastatingly sad, just damn funny. Also inspired my wife and I to take a real holiday to Bruges, so top marks.

Hot Fuzz (2007): probably, on balance, the best of the Cornetto Trilogy, perfecting the intense montage-heavy style but giving us a bigger canvas, excellent action, a neat puzzle box of a plot (the forward-referencing is at its peak here), a series of increasingly amazing cameos, and arguably the best incarnation of the classic Pegg/Frost double act.

United 93 (2006): unlike many on the list, not one I’d relish watching again; a blisteringly tense, heartbreaking interpretation of the last moments of flight United 93 on 9/11. Taking something seemingly unfilmable, Greengrass gives us a thriller of the highest calibre, a director working at the top of his game to make something unbearable but unmissable.

Ex Machina (2014): it’s rare that a film can be a tense chamber piece and also a groundbreaking sci-fi and also a great special effects movie, but Ex Machina is that, as well as a directorial debut (Dredd rumours notwithstanding). Gleeson and Isaac are incredible in their cat-and-mouse relationship, Vikander is a revelation as Ava, and the whole thing is shot through with such assuredness, walking well-trod paths but absolutely giving us something new and interesting.

Notting Hill (1999): I kinda had to have a “traditional” romcom in here, of the kind popularised by the writing of Richard Curtis; I think common logic says Four Weddings is the best but I’ve always preferred Notting Hill as it’s simultaneously more focused (just dealing with Grant and Roberts) but also has a bigger canvas as it touches on celebrity and fame. As a piece of popular writing it’s exceptional; funny and genuinely romantic and moving, with a great central couple you’re always rooting for.

Brassed Off (1996): sneaking into my Top Ten, displacing the likes of The Descent, Richard III, and 12 Years a Slave, simply because its message of resilience in the face of governmental cruelty and its quiet depiction of nurturing northern socialism is striking a chord at the moment. Stephen Tompkinson should have been able to launch a Hollywood career off the back of this performance, and the late, great Pete Postlethwaite is a beacon of tragic, stoic heroism, especially in the climax of the film. The Fully Monty went into similar areas to greater financial success, but Brassed Off is the sadder film, the film that stays with you longer.

Right, there we are; a definitive list. Sorta. I’m kind of surprised there are so many relatively recent films up there; I thought it’d be full of stuff from the late eighties and mid-nineties (I’m note sure why I feel that “mid-nineties” needs a hyphen whilst “late eighties” doesn’t, but there you go). As I flicked through my mental album, however, I realised that a lot of films from that period I hadn’t seen in twenty years or more, and I just didn’t feel like I could justly rank them; A Fish Called Wanda, Time Bandits, The Company of Wolves, Educating Rita, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover, Secrets and Lies, Mona Lisa… all of these might have been included if either my memory was better or if I’d whacked a DVD on more recently.

Anyway, there you. Brits are good at some things. Obviously those things don’t include feeding hungry children or successfully negotiating international trade agreements, but there you go. Can’t have everything.

[meldelen]

Dragons of Summer Flame - A (very sad) review

"So you would not apologize to her. You would not ask for forgiveness. What, then, did you want to say to her?" Raistlin was silent long moments. He had turned back to the bookshelves and was staring now at the shadows that surrounded the books, staring at a time that would never happen. "I wanted to tell her that sometimes, in my long sleep, I dreamt of her," he said softly.

Just for this moment, this sad, sad book is worth it.

Why sad? Because after the constant rise that the Chronicles and Legends have been, this closure is a bitter disappointment.

Dragons of Summer Flame is the conclusion of the cycle started with the Dragonlance Chronicles. Honestly, I’ve not re-read the 6-9 books that would go between the Legends and the present one I am going to review - series known as Dragonlance Tales and published as The Second Generation - because I don’t own copies nor did I ever. I didn’t enjoy them enough to buy them. Neither does this one, and it’s in my possession because it belongs to my husband, specifically.

From the Dragonlance Tales, a series of short stories in the style of the Preludes and other prequels and spin-offs, it was only memorable the moment when Palin Majere - younger son of Caramon and Tika and nephew of Raistlin - passed his Test for be a mage. And that's because of the chance of seeing Raistlin again, who’s mostly dead, although the idea that he survived to suffer daily the torture of Prometheus at the hands of his goddess has its macabre appeal. In the end it is just a hoax, like that abomination called Raistlin's Daughter, which I don't know how the authors could have come up with, since it fits the character like a slipper on top of a television.

But let us go to the present volume, Dragons of Summer Flame, a duology that includes The Knights of Takhisis and The War of the Gods in Spain. I said it’s a bitter disappointment, and not because it’s bad in itself - the story’s very original and very well written - but because the authors suffer what I call SAS (Successful Author Syndrome) that has led them, basically, to write a lot of fanservice and pull flashbacks because they already assume that readers will settle for it.

The story revolves around the second generation of the Dragonlance's heroes, that is, their children (or alleged children) and their actions to prevent Chaos, the father of all the gods of Krynn, who has managed to escape his confinement in the Graygem of Gargath, destroy the known world and all gods with it. As I said, it’s not a bad plot. The book rarely gets boring, although it does depending on the section. It has very positive things, such as giving more consistency to the social context, for example, of the city of Palanthas, providing more lore and depth to the story, something that they have rarely done until then. The idea of the evil knights adopting a honor code and polite behaviors to their enemies is also excellent. Not to mention the humor, as good as is always was in this series.

Dragons of Summer Flame. Cover art by Matt Stawicki.

BUT, unfortunately, they take it for granted that, as far as characterization, dialogues and character development are concerned, at this point their readers are unconditional fans and will accept anything. Nope, gentlemen, anything is not enough, no matter how great you were with the Chronicles and wonderful with the Legends. Unforgivable mistakes? Hold my tea:

1. Bring back characters that are already dead. Sorry, but in my modest view, this is a bad author resource. Yes, we loved them, we miss them, but they are dead. Leave them alone. Removing them from the grave is not going to make them better or more lovable. Sometimes the last memory, painful as it is, is the best memory we can have of a character. So leave them alone. The authors abuse visions, flashbacks, or even the physical return (it's a kind of magic!) of beloved characters from the past. Nope, it’s a mistake, because they don’t even play a prominent or relevant role. They are only there out of nostalgia, fanservice and to serve as motivation for the second generation of characters, who are alive. NO, NO, AND NO. 

Raistlin was dead, a martyr to his own ambition, from villain to hero in an instant, a living legend forever in Krynn. Why bring him back stripped of his magic, but still suffering his ill health, so that everyone rubs in his face his many past mistakes, suddenly forgetting that he also died because of them? You’re mean, people. Kitiara, Sturm, Flint, they are dead, let them rest in peace, it’s very annoying constantly bringing them back in visions or flashbacks. Even Tanis, who dies in this book, is soon brought back in another vision. Oh, c’mon!

2. The characters of the second generation are not well developed, they don’t have autonomy or their own personality, I don’t get to love them as I loved their parents. Why? Well, because the authors have made them live in the shadow of their parents (or uncle), stripping them from their self-agency.

About Tanin and Sturm Majere I hardly remember a thing, they start the book already dead, and I can't figure out if they were developed much in the Tales. Palin Majere is a shadow of his uncle, poor thing. I say this because there’s nothing wrong with him - he’s handsome, he’s young, he’s brave, he’s kind - and therein lies the problem, he’s a certified Gary Stu. But he lives with the expectations of being like his uncle, all the time compared to Raistlin, which is absurd, because Raistlin is/was incomparable. His evolution isn’t believable, because we know that he’s a mediocre mage - at best - and in the end we see him guided by his uncle, endowed with invaluable artifacts like the staff and the book of Magius, and doing an OP super-spell that hurts Chaos. Come on, please. We are not blind: victory belongs to Raistlin, who’s the one leading him throughout the book. And that final statement that he’s the greatest mage in Krynn? Please. We all know WHO is the greatest mage in Krynn - and poor Palin doesn't even get to the tip of his golden heel.

Steel Brightblade is Sturm 2.0 despite his mother, Kitiara, suddenly super interested in him - although she’s dead - constantly tries to turn him towards evil. Usha "Majere" is really nobody - thank you, glorified authors, for confirming that she’s NOT Raistlin's daughter and fixing this mess a bit - apart from being another Mary Sue who’s only there to be a link between the Irda - practically just taken out of the sleeve of the authors - and the other mortals. Oh, and to be Palin's love interest, of course.

The only decent character is Tasslehoff again, who, thanks to the gods, although more mature, remains faithful to his essence - and then they go and kill him. And how. Life sentence for Weis and Hickman for doing this to him.

Dragons of Summer Flame. Cover art by Larry Elmore.

3. Flashbacks, repetitions, memories, nostalgia, repeated explanations throughout the same book of events that we already know - and reencounters. Many reencounters. Tense reencounters. Happy reencounters. Reencounters. And the only reencounter that we don't have, the only one that I wanted, that I really needed, never happens - the one with Raistlin and Crysania. Yes, I admit it, it's very problematic. It’s to reunite the victim and her aggressor. Only that a part of me refuses to victimize Crysania, because as Raistlin well says, she knew - mostly - what she was getting into, and besides, Raistlin is totally unrepentant, he doesn't regret anything. But you get to see him reunited with the one that IS his true, real victim - his twin Caramon. In this bloody book full of unnecessary reencounters by mere fanservice, couldn't you have given me this one? Life sentence for Weis and Hickman for doing this to ME.

Anyway, I leave this ranting because I won’t solve anything either. Dragons of Summer Flame, and in general, all the books dedicated to the second generation are an example of why sometimes it’s better to stop writing about the same thing and give rest to your beloved characters. This epilogue, to be honest, was superfluous, better to have closed with the Legends. As a friendly reader out there says, seeing what Weis and Hickman have done to our beloved characters makes you want to shave your head and attack someone's car with an umbrella - only in quarantine I shouldn't and I also like my hair.

SAS. Successful Author Syndrome. When you have succeeded, it’s best to quit. And if you're still going to write more - among other reasons, because the bosses make you - at least leave your dead rest in peace. It’s the golden rule.

Needless to say, I haven't even bothered to read more Dragonlance books from this point on.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

There will likely be months of debate over who presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden should pick as his running mate — and what criteria he should use in making that decision.

We already know one such criterion: Biden has pledged to choose a woman. But what else is he looking for in a vice presidential nominee?

One view of the vice presidential selection process, often expressed by people who themselves work for campaigns, is that the presidential nominee is making a personal choice, opting for someone whom he or she connects with and feels would be a strong partner in governing. Another view, according to research we (Adler and Azari) have done, is that the vice presidential choice often reflects broader dynamics in the party. In this view the nominee often chooses a running mate who connects with some broader goal of the party or who helps appeal to some faction or ideological bloc in the party that is not well represented by the candidate at the top of the ticket.

It’s really hard for us to establish whether Biden enjoys chatting more with Sen. Kamala Harris or Sen. Amy Klobuchar, so we’re going to take a party-centered approach to this question. We can look at the Democratic Party and some of its goals and use those as a rubric to evaluate some of Biden’s potential running mates. We have focused here on women who are either governors or senators — the traditional resumes of a vice presidential pick — but have also included a few noteworthy figures who don’t hold statewide office.

Goal 1: Help with electability, real or imagined

Helps: Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Hurts: Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

Beating President Trump is almost certainly the Democratic Party’s main goal at the moment. So which potential running mates would make the Democratic ticket more electable?

Let’s talk about actual, factual electability first — that is, helping Biden defeat Trump by bringing voters to his coalition who wouldn’t otherwise be there. The electoral effects of vice presidential choices are somewhat complicated to study because the sample size is so small — we’ve had only 18 presidential elections since the end of World War II.

The broad consensus among scholars is that the electoral effect of running mates is not clear and obvious — and probably somewhat modest. In other words, we should not assume that choosing Harris or former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams would boost Biden with black voters, that Baldwin, Klobuchar or Whitmer would attract voters in the Midwest, or that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto would help in Nevada. Nor should we assume that any of these female politicians would particularly connect with female voters. For example, in their upcoming book, “Do Running Mates Matter?,” political scientists Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko downplay a lot of the electoral effects of running mates, based on their research. They argue that there is little evidence that picking a person from a particular region helps in that region or that choosing a person from a demographic group helps with voters in that demographic. They also reject the idea that running mates boost the tickets in their home states, a conclusion other scholars and experts have reached as well.

Other academics are slightly more bullish on running mates’ potential electoral impact. Historically, vice presidential picks have boosted the ticket by 2-3 percentage points in their home states according to political scientists Boris Heersink and Brenton D. Peterson. Some scholars have found that Republican Catholics are less likely to vote for the GOP ticket if the Democratic running mate is Catholic and that in 2008 then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin boosted turnout among fellow conservatives. Devine and Kopko themselves argue that vice presidential choices matter because they can affect how voters see the presidential nominee in ways that sometimes have electoral effects. According to their research, Sen. John McCain’s selection of Palin as his running mate caused a rise in negative views of McCain because of voters’ perception that Palin was unqualified for the position.

“Any time you talk about a running mate winning votes, you’re really talking about voters choosing a suboptimal president in order to elect their preferred vice president; otherwise, the running mate didn’t actually change votes but just reinforced a preexisting preference. So, suffice it to say, we’re pretty skeptical that such effects will occur very often or to a significant degree,” Devine told us in an email message.

He added, “By choosing a woman — or, say, an African-American woman, in particular — Biden … would be sending a message to voters about who he is — specifically, that he is someone who values diversity and the role that women — or African American women, in particular — play in American society and in the Democratic Party. That message probably would help to win him some votes. But we’re not exactly talking about ‘delivering’ large blocs of voters.”

So let’s say the electoral impact of vice presidential choices is complicated. Here’s what’s not in dispute: Party elites, presidential campaign advisers and sometimes presidential nominees themselves often believe that vice presidential candidates will have an outsize electoral impact, whatever the reality is. For example, according to his memoirs, McCain felt that Palin might attract moderate Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary.

So who do party elites think is the best vice presidential nominee to help Biden electorally? They consistently said that Warren was weak on electability when she was running for president, so this metric won’t help her cause.

Abrams has an electability perception problem too. She is nothing like Palin, but Democratic elites we have talked to are wary that voters won’t like pairing someone who has never held an elective office higher than state representative with a 77-year-old presidential nominee. A wide body of research suggests that presidential nominees generally pick a running mate who has a lot of political experience, usually at the national level, likely to address concerns about whether the running mate is ready to be president if necessary.

Party elites tend to indicate that the Democrats’ path to victory is winning white voters in the Midwest — as opposed to firing up more liberal voters or increasing support among people of color. So this metric (party elites’ perceptions of electability) would likely favor Baldwin, Klobuchar and Whitmer in particular.

Goal 2: Balance the ticket demographically — particularly on race and ethnicity

Helps: Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Abrams, Cortez Masto

Hurts: Baldwin, Klobuchar, Warren, Whitmer … basically anyone who is white

Close to 40 percent of registered Democratic voters identify as Asian, black, Hispanic or something other than white.1 And the Democratic Party cares deeply about racial diversity. An all-white ticket might happen, but it would get lots of blowback. The same is likely true of an all-male ticket — hence, Biden’s pledge. Already, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, whose endorsement of Biden seemed to help the former vice president win big in South Carolina, is calling for him to name a black woman as his running mate.

This kind of demographic balancing has occurred in the past two Democratic primaries. The major contenders to be Obama’s running mate in 2008 were all white men, and the top contenders to be Clinton’s running mate in 2016 were nearly all men.

Currently, only one woman of color is a governor (Lujan Grisham), and only four are U.S. senators (Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, Cortez Masto, Duckworth, Harris). So it’s likely that Cortez Masto, Duckworth, Harris and Lujan Grisham all will get a serious look from Biden and his team and that they will also consider more nontraditional choices, like Abrams and U.S. Rep Val Demings of Florida, in part to meet the party’s demand for a racially diverse ticket. (Hirono will turn 73 on Election Day, and we doubt Biden would pick a running mate who’s nearly his age.)

Goal 3: Balance the ticket ideologically

Helps: Abrams, Harris, Warren

Hurts: Klobuchar

The other main balancing goal that presidential nominees typically have, in addition to demographics, is ideology. In 1988, the Democratic nominee, Gov. Michael Dukakis, sought to counteract his reputation as a Massachusetts liberal by choosing one of the party’s more moderate figures, then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas. In 2012, the GOP nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, considered insufficiently conservative by some Republicans, chose as his running mate someone beloved by the GOP’s right wing: then-Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

By this metric, Klobuchar would not be an ideal running mate for Biden. She has a somewhat centrist record, as does he, and took fairly similar positions to the former vice president during the Democratic primary, such as panning the idea of Medicare for All. Choosing her as his running mate would intensify the criticism of Biden from the party’s left wing, who would likely complain that he is expecting liberals to vote for him while essentially ignoring their wishes.

Warren, of course, is firmly on the left. Harris is pretty left, based on her voting record in the Senate. But as California’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017, Harris took some conservative stances and as a 2020 presidential candidate didn’t embrace Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All approach or a wealth tax. Abrams hasn’t taken Sanders-style stances on economic issues, but she is well known for her work on voting rights issues, which might lead to her being perceived by voters and activists as being left. Also, some political science research suggests that black candidates are often perceived to be more liberal than they actually are. In other words, if Biden picks Abrams or Harris, he could both appease some on the left and not annoy more centrist people in the party who may not like Warren.

Goal 4: Help Democrats gain a Senate majority

Helps: Duckworth, Harris

Hurts: Baldwin, Warren

This is a newer factor, without a lot of historical precedent in either party. But control of the U.S. Senate is in play in 2020. And if the Republicans retain the most of the seats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could block much of what a new Democratic president tries to do, just as the Kentucky Republican limited Obama while he was in office. For this reason, some Democratic activists are wary of picking a sitting Democratic senator for the vice presidency if there is any possibility that person will be replaced by a Republican.

If Duckworth or Harris became vice president, the Democratic governors of their respective states would pick their replacements, who would serve until a special election is held in 2022. Democrats would be favored to keep those Senate seats because Illinois and California lean heavily Democratic. Minnesota (Klobuchar) and Nevada (Cortez-Masto) also have Democratic governors who would appoint a replacement through 2022, but they are more swing-y states, so Democrats could eventually lose those seats in 2022. In Massachusetts (Warren) and Wisconsin (Baldwin), there would be a special election in 2021. The incumbent in the Bay State would likely be a Republican since GOP governor Charlie Baker would pick the person. (Democrats in Massachusetts do have some potential workarounds, however.) This dynamic is a real problem for Baldwin, though, since Republicans might be slightly favored in a special election in Wisconsin.

This is an informal list of criteria. You could certainly include other measures — ours are not necessarily exhaustive or even the best measures. But the history of vice presidential selections suggests that the process is not dominated by questions that perhaps should matter the most, such as:

Is this person best qualified to run the nation if the president cannot finish his term in office?

Is this person a great manager who can help lead the executive branch of the government?

Is this person well versed in policy?

Is this person the best choice to become the next-in-line presidential candidate for the party?

Perhaps Biden’s considerations will change as a result of the novel coronavirus, which means the next president could enter office with a true national crisis on his hands. But we’re skeptical that the vice presidential selection will be much different than in the past.

In any case, looking at the party-based criteria, here’s how things shake out for Abrams, Harris, Klobuchar and Warren, who The New York Times recently reported are senior Democratic Party officials’ leading choices for Biden’s running mate. (We’ve also included Duckworth, who’s a more obscure senator than Warren, but we wanted to note how favorably she looks compared with her in terms of these party-based metrics):

Harris: three positives, no negatives.

Abrams: two positives, no negatives.

Duckworth: two positives, no negatives.

Klobuchar: one positive, two negatives.

Warren: one positive, three negatives.

You might be thinking, “Harris was a dud as a presidential candidate,” but often that doesn’t matter. And as with George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Biden, the person who gets elected vice president is often someone who at some point flirted with a presidential run or actually ran for the top of the ticket and lost. What this exercise suggests is that Harris fits the party’s goals fairly well for a running mate alongside Biden — she’s to the left of him ideologically, she’s not white, the party won’t lose a Senate seat if she becomes vice president, and some people in the party will assume she helps with electablity by appealing to black voters in particular. We’re not predicting that Biden will pick her — he might decide that perceived electability trumps everything else and go with Klobuchar or Whitmer or another Midwestern white woman. He might decide that Warren’s policy chops are particularly useful in the midst of a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic and that placating the party’s left wing is important for symbolic and electoral reasons. But Biden is a party man, and Harris is a party choice.

[arbitrarylau]

terry & michael- "How Not To Be Seen”

@keithmoonie requested a story of Terry Jones and Michael Palin’s friendship. here it is! sorry it’s a little lengthy, but I hope that it’s quality enough to compensate. it takes place in their university days, in an ambiguously sixties setting. enjoy!!

(and sorry in advance for any typos or errors)

-------------------------------

Terry could hear the distant music of adolescence lingering in the air of the hallway– a sensation he often comprehended but seldom experienced. The path to the dormitory felt like a rite of passage, transferring him from the world of medieval solace to the normal world of university students. By the time he reached his destination, quite evident from the students loitering recreationally in the hallway, it was far too late to question his decision. Overstepping a dazed girl on the floor and pushing cautiously on the slightly opened passage to a Bacchic ritual, he was exposed to every contemporary method of intoxication. Marijuana, alcohol, LSD, and indirectly, yet seemingly utilized by many partiers, the intoxicating desire to gain sexual gratification by the end of the evening. It was at this point Terry fought the urge to run back to his room and continue reading about European history.

Yet he dominated his subconscious and positioned himself inanimately near the wall.

“Hey there,” he heard, shifting his observant quietness into interactivity. Terry saw a girl standing before him, smoking a cigarette. She had long blonde hair, and bangs concealing her forehead, and clothes that soothingly draped over her body, turning her into a personification of the decade’s culture.

“Oh, hello there,” Terry chuckled nervously.

“Don’t see you around these things, really. What’s your name?”

“Terry. Terry Jones,” he introduced, his eyes flickering momentarily to the side in a failed attempt to maintain composure. “What’s your–”

“Nancy. What brings a chap like you here on a Saturday night?”

Terry hesitated, trying to decide upon the most valid response. Time was limited, so he spoke honestly.

“I’ve been spending too many weekends studying. I thought that I’d maybe, well, try it out, you know?”

“Oh, so you’re pretty inexperienced then, eh?”

She took a step closer to him, lifting her hand to his arm, letting it gently slide down with unclear suggestion. Terry felt as if the wall had closed in slightly. He tried to hide the flustering red glow of his cheeks.

“I’m, oh, well, I don’t know. It depends on which way that you, mean.”

She raised an eyebrow, seemingly intending to play upon his nervous ramble.

“What sort of things do you know?” With this, she tilted her head slightly, with an innocent quality about the way her hair flowingly followed.

“I know… medieval history. Some of it, anyways. I’m learning it now,” he answered humorously in his own mind, although ambiguously in reality. Nancy smiled widely, inhaling more smoke.

“One second,” she said gleefully, yet with a slight twinge of suspect. Terry watched the glowing enigma walk away into the dimly lit activity of the party. He wished Michael could have come. But he didn’t want his friend’s absence to excuse this much-needed social stimulation. This was the right choice, he told himself. Partway into his unnerved contemplation, Nancy returned with two other girls.

“Medieval history, eh?” a brunette said, slumping onto her left leg. Another brunette on Nancy’s other side intently observed Terry, in an effort unescaped from his awareness.

“Oh, yes. I’m taking several courses on it right now.” He let the corner of his mouth rise, warming to her interest. The pressure was alleviating.

“Are you looking to be a historian?” she said, her ponytail swaying with her exuberant behaviour, comparatively to that of Nancy.

“Yes! That’s the goal!”

Terry felt a rush of excitement through his chest. He had entered an unknown world and discovered familiarity and empathy.

“You know, Linda has a thing for historians,” she added, referring likely to the third girl. The other one grinned in response.

“There’s nothing sexier than a historian,” she sighed, her eyes jaded with pleasure.

Nancy let the cigarette wedged between her long fingers slide out between her lips, puffing a cloud of smoke right into Terry’s face.

“Why don’t you teach us something?”

He looked between the three, simultaneously perceiving them as students and potential tormentors.

“Well, there were pretty distinct social classes around the time, with the monarchy–” (he saw Linda conceal her face momentarily, exposing a raised eyebrow and parted lips once she regained composure) “at the peak of importance…”

“Oh, go on,” Nancy prompted, trying to break his hesitant lecture.

“…anyway, they were important.” Terry felt increasingly congested. The weight of his clothing felt multiplied; his skin vigorously tempted to compensate for the heat. He pulled at the collar of his dress shirt, which greatly advertised his innocent individuality. “Are you actually interested in all of this?”

With a sudden shift to seriousness, they all nodded apprehensively.

“Please, go on–” the nameless girl urged, only to then break into a restricted laugh. She slapped her hand to her mouth in a sorry attempt to conceal it.

“Jane!” Nancy shouted accusingly at her, gaining Terry’s momentary affection. Her connotation crumbled as she continued, “you ruined it.”

With that, Terry felt the crushing confirmation of his foolery. He cleared his throat to seem unaffected, desperately avoiding a vengeful desire to hit his shoulder against Jane. He entered into the centre of the spacious dorm room, ironically an escape of clearer exposure. He heard the other two girls giggling harmoniously. He came face to face with a taller male student, his hair ruffled, and his shirt ambitiously unbuttoned. The student looked Terry up and down, grinning slyly.

“Did you forget your paperwork?”

Every unbearable and dreadful emotion hit Terry like a vehicle– embarrassment, exclusion, regret, frustration. He turned to the door, in which he vigorously intended to utilize, seeing Michael standing in the frame as if he were an appropriately-timed theophany of salvation. Terry approached and passed his friend, leaving his incomplete sympathies behind.

“Terry!” he heard Michael call out in concern. Terry stepped over the same girl from before, emerging himself in the collective of people on the path back to his room.

“Hey!”

This shout was more aggressive and concise, drawing his attention. Terry turned around in a similar fashion to the others in the compacted hallway. He met eyes with Michael, who paused, and then grabbed a cup from the floor.

“Hey look, everyone. I can do a handstand! I’m going to do one, so move out of the way.”

He lifted the cup to his face, tilting it back too strongly, the substance pouring all over his chin and neck. A few chuckles could be heard throughout the slightly-passive audience, from those students who believed they were better than the supposed drunkard on display. Michael placed the cup down and rolled up his sleeves. He squatted, positioned his arms to support his knees, and abruptly threw the bottom-half of his body up. Like an inverted pendulum, his legs powerfully fell forward, throwing him onto his back. Everyone laughed (the intoxicated: hysterically). A smile of realization fought the scowl on Terry’s face. Michael groaned, sitting up, looking at his best friend. This meeting of minds was pure and meaningful.

“Fuck all of this,” Michael stated as he slowly limped down the hall toward Terry. “Let’s go.”

Without any notice from the bacchants, Terry threw his arm around Michael as they left the adolescent air behind them.

“I thought you had your drama club meeting,” Terry pondered as they reached the stairwell.

“It ended early. I figured you’d want company.” Michael winced and grabbed the fabric against his tailbone. They continued walking, the eerie silence of the university echoing.

“…You didn’t have to do that. I know what you were doing. But you seem hurt now.”

Michael shook his head, smiling softly at Terry.

“…You’re right. That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I’ll never be able to handstand again.”

“Your career is at its end,” Terry continued tonally.

“Hey, why don’t you tell me about that lecture. You were really excited about it.”

“Oh! So, we learned about social classes…” Terry began, blushing shyly, blissfully pronouncing what was, to him, something far more relevant than the forces of intoxication.

(The End)

[irenethehistorynerd]

What do Napoleon, the son of a French lawyer, and being kind to prisoners of war have to do with the Swedish monarchy? Significantly more than you would think. In 1810, Jean Baptiste Bernadotte was elected Prince Royal of Sweden, and eight years later became the founding king of the dynasty that rule Sweden to this day, proving that, contrary to what Michael Palin said, sometimes you do vote for a king. To understand the Bernadotte's rise to power, you have to understand late eighteenth century Europe. In the summer of 1789, Louis XVI, an absolute monarch from a long line of absolute monarchs attempted to solve his financial issues using the nominal democratic system France already had in place. This went poorly, and resulted in the common people calling for a new constitution, taking the Bastille, forcing Louis and his family from their opulent home in Versailles, and culminated in a lot of very wealthy and important people losing a very important appendage to the guillotine. "What does this have to do with the price of meatballs in Sweden", you ask? Well, the act of dethroning and de-heading Louis, scion of the long and noble line of Bourbon, sent a shock across Europe. After all, if the French monarch could be thrown out of power, and a 'democracy' instituted in less than two years, were any of the other absolute monarchs of Europe safe? With the English kicked out of their American colonies, and the French monarchy quite literally headless, it seemed that the age of the 'enlightened despot', or the benevolent philosopher dictator was coming to an end. This was particularly worrying to the Swedish king Gustav III who was a great admirer of Marie Antoinette. He was a little more politically savvy than Louis XVI, and he survived his initial summoning of the Riksdag--or the (at the time) nominal Swedish democratic system. However, he made enemies, and bit a bullet Abraham Lincoln style in 1792. Gustav III left his throne to his thirteen year old son, Gustav IV, or Gustav Adolf. The years in which Gustav IV's uncle served as regent were the best of his reign. Gustav Adolf grew into a paranoid and arrogant king, which lead to him losing Finland, Pomerania, and the Aland islands. He was forced to abdicate, and handed the throne to his uncle, Charles XIII. Charles XIII wasn't so much the best choice for king as he was the only choice for king. The House of Vasa had been struggling since the abdication of Queen Kristina in 1654, and Charles had only tenuous claims to the throne himself. Furthermore, Charles was childless and a bit senile. It was clear to Charles and the ruling class of Sweden that if they wanted to continue to have a monarchy, they would have to elect somebody. The year was 1809. Now, the 'election' of a monarch wasn't an uncommon thing, the Vasa's themselves had been elected. In cases where a royal line was dying out without an heirs, or in the case of creating an entirely new country, the nobility of a country would take a look at all the princes of Europe, and see who they liked. This sort of thing had been happening since medieval times, and in the tumultuous world of nineteenth century Europe, it was nothing to balk at. Two distant cousins of Charles XIII were nominated as heirs, but one was an idiot, and the other died. There was a whole host of unsuitable candidates for Crown Prince of Sweden, and a significant portion of the Riksdag were sick of it. They wanted a successful monarch, someone who wasn't an idiot who would lose Finland. And who was more successful than the plucky young Corsican ruling France? There was no way in hell that any self respecting Swede was going to invite Napoleon to be their king--they were an independent country after all. But maybe one of his brothers, or one of his Marshals, the military geniuses who had won Napoleon his vast empire. Enter Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. A commoner from Southern France, he ran away from his apprenticeship as a lawyer at age eighteen to join the French army. Like Napoleon, he had used the chaos of the French Revolution to rise rapidly through the ranks, eventually becoming a general. He supported Napoleon on his campaigns, eventually being made the French Minister of War, a Marshal, and then the Prince of Ponte-Corvo, a small principality in Italy. Bernadotte was an attractive candidate for a number of reasons. He was a proved general, a proved administrator, and he already had an heir. He was extremely popular in Sweden, having received and made peace with Swedish officers independently of Napoleon's commands. He was also unemployed, which was very convenient for the Swedes. Most importantly, he had been kind to the right person back in the day. Baron Otto Morner was about to become the brother-in-law to the Swedish Chancellor, and he was a big fan of Bernadotte. Bernadotte had been a major player in the Battle of Lubeck, during which Bernadotte and the French had roundly kicked Prussian and Swedish ass, but, like, nicely. Bernadotte captured a contingent of Swedish soldiers, and was so nice to them that Otto Morner was still a huge Bernadotte stan four years later. While in Paris, Morner brought the proposition to Bernadotte, who was incredulously flattered. There was a lot going against Jean Baptiste Bernadotte however, and he knew it. He didn't speak Swedish, he wasn't Lutheran, and all of this was seemingly happening behind Napoleon's back. Napoleon and Jean Baptiste had never been great friends, and they certainly weren't bosom friends at the time, but Bernadotte said that the religion and the language thing could be fixed easily, and that, should Emperor Napoleon and King Charles agree, he would be happy to have his name up for consideration. There was a hiccup. Morner hadn't been acting entirely officially. He was just a lieutenant, not an ambassador. An ambassador had, in fact, been sent to Napoleon, asking him on his opinion on who should succeed Charles XIII. Napoleon had backed King Frederick VI of Denmark-Norway, hoping to unite Scandinavia under a friendly flag. When he found out that Jean Baptiste had been offered the position, he wasn't crazy about Bernadotte being on the Swedish throne, but he loved the idea of a Frenchman on the throne. He went to his ex-stepson, Eugene, the Viceroy of Italy, and offered the position to him. Eugene refused. Napoleon decided to, well, not support Bernadotte, because if Bernadotte failed it would be embarrassing for Napoleon, but he wasn't not not supporting Bernadote. Jean Baptiste discussed it with his wife, and after getting Napoleon's 'do it if you want', formally submitted his name for consideration. Baron Morner was an enthusiastic hype-man, campaigning for Bernadotte much like how modern pundits campaign for elected officials. Though there was a significant faction in favor of Frederick VI, and King Charles still wanted to elect his idiot cousin, Jean Baptiste was elected unanimously. There were a few hurdles that had be overcome before Jean Baptiste could become Prince Royal, however. He had to become a Lutheran, that was non-negotiable. He also had to promise not to give any Swedish posts to Frenchmen, and allow Charles XIII to adopt him. Jean acceded, and took the name Charles John, becoming king Charles John XIV, or Carl Johann XIV to the Swedes. The new Charles was good to his word, and any worries of a French takeover of Sweden were assuaged for good in 1813 when Charles and Swedish forces joined the sixth coalition to fight against Napoleon. Charles was Crown Prince for about eight years, from 1810 to 1818. During this time, he conquered Norway, and unified Sweden and Norway again. By the time he became King, he had thoroughly won over his new people. Jean Baptiste Bernadotte's legacy lives on today in the ruling family of Sweden. The current king, Carl Gustav XVI is the great, great, great, great grandson of Jean Baptiste. When Carl Gustav's daughter, Crown Princess Victoria, becomes Queen Regnant, she will be the eighth Bernadotte monarch.