Hasta La Gadget!

It seems Taylor Swift is everywhere these days except Nashville. The guy selling newspapers on the corner in the nation’s capital listening to gospel tunes through his ear buds has heard her newest ditty “Shake It Off,” even if it was a muffled version in a passing car. Since her fifth album release and a public battle with Spotify following her decision to remove her music from the free streaming service, something has shifted. Instead of People and Cosmo, this week Swift is gracing the cover of Time and stories about her are littering news sites such Bloomberg and Forbes. It appears she is finally being recognized for the calculating business woman I think she has always been. It’s just taken others time to catch up and realize it. An editorial she wrote in the Wall Street Journal last summer was a warning shot to Spotify: “My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet…is that they all realize their worth and ask for it.”

Earlier this month, Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood made a big to-do about saying farewell to Swift on the annual Country Music Association (CMA) awards, adding that Swift would always have a home in Nashville. I found this to be particularly irritating because Taylor Swift left Nashville a LONG time ago. As in after her debut album that featured her first hit, “Tim McGraw.” And even that album provided clues pointing to the inevitable breakup.

But it has taken the release of “1989″ — the year Swift was born — for everyone, including Swift, to openly admit her breakup with Nashville. And despite the well-intentioned invite from Paisley and Underwood, I don’t predict that Swift is going to pull a Faith Hill and come running back to Nashville. (Read on to find out why my predictions about Swift tend to be accurate). In fact, it is doubtful that Swift and Nashville are ever, ever, ever getting back together. (Seriously, who thought that was a country song?)

As the Time magazine article eloquently puts it, “The old marriage was always one of convenience.” It certainly proved convenient for Nashville, which continues to struggle with its boy bands releasing increasingly bad songs about driving girls in tight jeans around in their pick ’em up trucks while drinking beer. Clearly Nashville needed Swift — who has sold three of the 16 albums this millennium that sold more than a million copies in one week — more than Swift needed Nashville. But the marriage worked for both despite the fact there was nothing remotely country about most of Swift’s music or concerts save the banjo she pulled out to play on her anti-bully anthem, “Mean.”

Full disclosure, I am not a Swift hater. I have admired her since I had the chance to interview her in 2007 for the Reidsville Review, when she was on one of her first tours opening for the legendary George Strait and Ronnie Milsap. I found her to be smart, open, honest, funny and without pretense. I was impressed then with what a savvy, no-nonsense business woman she appeared to be at such a young age. She literally had me at “hello.” When I introduced myself, she ran up to me and gave me a big hug like I was her long, lost friend. I was blown away by how genuine she was then and I believe still is. I gave her a copy of the front page story I had written about her and had her sign one for me. I told her I had done the same thing for Toby Keith following a performance at the Berrien County Fair in Michigan, before he was a household name. I predicted in 2007 that she was going to be even bigger than Keith, a comment that was met with a genuine laugh from Swift. That was clearly an understatement.

Nashville’s “loss” is NYC’s gain. The home of the Grand Ole Opry tried to hang on to Swift for too long despite the fact that she had clearly outgrown her country roots. Now that Swift has bid it adieu for her newly adopted hometown, here’s hoping the new reigning women of country music, the Miranda Lamberts and the Kacey Musgraves, to name a few, will continue to put the country in music that puts those boy bands, yes I am talking about you Florida Georgia Line, to shame.

My front page interview that ran in the Reidsville Review in January 2007 with Swift follows. Would love to get your feedback.

Taylor Swift is paving her own way through Nashville

Taylor Swift brings a maturity to her music that belies her 17 years. Think of the curly headed blonde country singer-songwriter as an edgy Carrie Underwood. But don’t expect Swift to get lost in the crowd of Kelly Picklers singing in Nashville today.

What sets Swift apart is her songwriting ability. Swift wrote or co-wrote every one of the 11 songs on her self-titled debut album that was released in October including her first hit single, “Tim McGraw,” which is which is currently No. 9 on the Billboard hot
country songs chart.

“I want to be edgier,” she says. “Speaking my mind has been what I was raised for. If you are allowed to write your own songs, why not say something that is completely honest?”

That may be one of the reasons Swift was invited to open for country legends Ronnie Milsap and George Strait on their current tour that began earlier this month. The trio is scheduled to perform in the round at the Greensboro Coliseum on Jan. 20. It is the
tour’s only North Carolina stop.

“It was so exciting when I got that magic phone call,” Swift said in a telephone interview from a Wal-Mart parking lot in her adopted hometown of Hendersonville, Tenn., where she was among several country music artists at a charity event before the holidays. Fans paid to tour Swift’s tour bus with her and the money went to pay for toys for needy children. “I’m just so excited to be touring with George Strait. He really is the king of country music.”

Swift had just gotten off the road from touring with country music sensation Rascal Flatts, when she got the call to tour with Strait and Milsap from January through March. Swift says she didn’t hesitate to say yes. “I want to be working as much as I can,” she
said. “I give myself five seconds a day to think, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening.’ And then I spend the rest of the time trying to make it last.”

Swift says she is patterning her career after another rising country star, Dierks Bentley, whose current album “Long Trip Alone” was named among Country Music Television’s Top 10 Country albums of 2006. “Dierks was known for not resting until he knew he was going to be around for a while and that’s my plan,” Swift said.

Swift replaced Hickory native Eric Church as an opening act on the Rascal Flatts tour in the fall after Church had some scheduling issues. “They are awesome,” she said about the trio, adding that she fell victim to some pranks on the tour, one on stage in front of 20,000 people. Swift said that four members of the crew snuck up on her and sat down next her on stage while she was playing and began reading newspapers. Another time, she had a 5-minute meet-and-greet with fans before the show and when she
arrived, 500 people were waiting for her. “I signed every single autograph after the show,” she said laughing.

While her friends were going to movies, playing video games or hanging out at the mall, Swift was writing songs. “I have been a paid songwriter since I was 14,” said the farm girl, who was raised near Reading, Pa., and inspired by her opera-singing grandmother. Her efforts paid off.

Liz Rose, who co-wrote seven of the songs, told The Associated Press that Swift was born to be a singer-songwriter. “She’s a genius, coming in with ideas and a melody,” said Rose, 49. “She’d come in and write with this old lady, and I never second-guessed her. I respect her a lot.”

Swift has no intention of slowing down. Despite the fact that she rarely has time to drive what she refers to as her “big splurge,” a silver Lexus hard top convertible, Swift says she loves being busy. “When I do have time to drive it, it’s like heaven on Earth,”
she said, adding she has only had her driver’s license for a year.

Her demanding touring schedule means that Swift also doesn’t have time to attend high school so she is being homeschooled. But she does miss hanging out with her friends, which she got to do some over the holidays and for her birthday in December. Swift says despite how much her life has changed recently, she is still the same girl who wrote on her jacket cover, “to all the boys who thought they would be cool and break my heart, guess what? Here are 11 songs written about you. HA.”

“I really try to be the same person that I am on stage as I am off,” she said. “I don’t do things differently. I don’t try to censor who I am. I think what’s important is to just be who you are.”

Dish Network and Turner have settled their dispute — for now, at least — and the channels that went dark as a result have now been restored. This follows news last month that the two companies were going at it over a contract dispute, something that led to CNN, Cartoon Network, and some other well known channels being pulled. The … Continue reading

On the same day this week that President Obama announced a measure that could give legal protection to 5 million undocumented immigrants, massive protests raged across Mexico against the impunity and corruption that led to the horrific massacre of 43 students. From Mexico City, Sergio Sarmiento and Elena Poniatowska chronicle the events and ponder what’s next. Anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz examines the causes behind Mexico’s corrosive impunity.

Meanwhile, as Xin Chunying writes from Beijing, China is also seeking to establish the rule of law through steadily boosting the role of the National People’s Congress. While stifling dissent, China’s President Xi is taking on both “tigers and flies” in his no-holds-barred assault from the top down on corruption.

Can China’s effort succeed without active public engagement? Can Mexico learn from China and move from angry protest to systemic change?

Also writing from Mexico, Javier Ciurlizza and Mary Speck of the International Crisis Group note how the protesters’ slogan, “I Am Fed Up With Fear,” marks a turning point for Mexico.

As bleak as the troubled world today looks from the angry streets of Mexico, Human Age author Diane Ackerman finds inspiration in the most ingenious things humans are doing this week, from soccer balls that generate electricity to buildings and freeway overpasses that “eat smog.”

Writing from New Delhi, Pawan Khera argues that it would be “disastrous” for India’s development to agree to a climate accord like that just announced between the U.S. and China. Anoop Jain underscores just how far India lags behind China, with 550 million people without even toilets.

In an exclusive, The WorldPost publishes a wide-ranging dialogue between Henry Kissinger and Fu Ying, China’s “iron lady,” about whether the U.S. and her country can co-exist as “equal brothers.”

Greece’s president Karolos Papoulias tells Arianna Huffington, who is in Athens to launch yet another international edition of HuffPost, that the “troika” overseeing Greek eurozone reforms “acts as if they’re speaking to rocks, not people.”

WorldPost Middle East Correspondent Sophia Jones reports from Istanbul that, despite formal legal protections, “turkish women are still dying over the right to divorce.” Former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown calls for the establishment of an International Children’s Court to end the global violation of children’s rights.

In a video appeal, Bono reminds the world that epidemics like Ebola are what happen when promises of aid to Africa are broken. On the ground in Liberia, Dr. Phuoc Le talks candidly about what it means for a physician to treat Ebola patients with a “no touch” policy.

Finally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tragically flared once again in Jerusalem. Baroness Warsi writes that “violence always breeds violence” and there is no hope if that cycle is not broken. Beatriz Becerra, a Spanish member of the European Parliament, worries that recognition of a “Palestinian state” is an artifice destined for failure. And in this week’s Forgotten Fact series, The WorldPost looks at a controversial response that Israel has brought back to terror attacks.

WHO WE ARE

EDITORS: Nathan Gardels, Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute on Governance and the long-time editor of NPQ and the Global Viewpoint Network of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate/Tribune Media, is the Editor-in-Chief of The WorldPost. Farah Mohamed is the Managing Editor of The WorldPost. Kathleen Miles is the Senior Editor of the WorldPost. Alex Gardels is the Associate Editor of The WorldPost. Nicholas Sabloff is the Executive International Editor at the Huffington Post, overseeing The WorldPost and HuffPost’s 11 international editions. Eline Gordts is HuffPost’s Senior World Editor.

CORRESPONDENTS: Sophia Jones in Istanbul; Matt Sheehan in Beijing.

EDITORIAL BOARD: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Arianna Huffington, Eric Schmidt (Google Inc.), Pierre Omidyar (First Look Media) Juan Luis Cebrian (El Pais/PRISA), Walter Isaacson (Aspen Institute/TIME-CNN), John Elkann (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa), Wadah Khanfar (Al Jazeera), Dileep Padgaonkar (Times of India) and Yoichi Funabashi (Asahi Shimbun).

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Moises Naim (former editor of Foreign Policy), Nayan Chanda (Yale/Global; Far Eastern Economic Review) and Katherine Keating (One-On-One). Sergio Munoz Bata and Parag Khanna are Contributing Editors-At-Large.

The Asia Society and its ChinaFile, edited by Orville Schell, is our primary partner on Asia coverage. Eric X. Li and the Chunqiu Institute/Fudan University in Shanghai and Guancha.cn also provide first person voices from China. We also draw on the content of China Digital Times. Seung-yoon Lee is The WorldPost link in South Korea.

Jared Cohen of Google Ideas provides regular commentary from young thinkers, leaders and activists around the globe. Bruce Mau provides regular columns from MassiveChangeNetwork.com on the “whole mind” way of thinking. Patrick Soon-Shiong is Contributing Editor for Health and Medicine.

ADVISORY COUNCIL: Members of the Berggruen Institute’s 21st Century Council and Council for the Future of Europe serve as the Advisory Council — as well as regular contributors — to the site. These include, Jacques Attali, Shaukat Aziz, Gordon Brown, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Juan Luis Cebrian, Jack Dorsey, Mohamed El-Erian, Francis Fukuyama, Felipe Gonzalez, John Gray, Reid Hoffman, Fred Hu, Mo Ibrahim, Alexei Kudrin, Pascal Lamy, Kishore Mahbubani, Alain Minc, Dambisa Moyo, Laura Tyson, Elon Musk, Pierre Omidyar, Raghuram Rajan, Nouriel Roubini, Nicolas Sarkozy, Eric Schmidt, Gerhard Schroeder, Peter Schwartz, Amartya Sen, Jeff Skoll, Michael Spence, Joe Stiglitz, Larry Summers, Wu Jianmin, George Yeo, Fareed Zakaria, Ernesto Zedillo, Ahmed Zewail, and Zheng Bijian.

From the Europe group, these include: Marek Belka, Tony Blair, Jacques Delors, Niall Ferguson, Anthony Giddens, Otmar Issing, Mario Monti, Robert Mundell, Peter Sutherland and Guy Verhofstadt.

MISSION STATEMENT

The WorldPost is a global media bridge that seeks to connect the world and connect the dots. Gathering together top editors and first person contributors from all corners of the planet, we aspire to be the one publication where the whole world meets.

We not only deliver breaking news from the best sources with original reportage on the ground and user-generated content; we bring the best minds and most authoritative as well as fresh and new voices together to make sense of events from a global perspective looking around, not a national perspective looking out.

I’m happy that President Obama finally has moved forward with immigration reform. But the six-year-long White House Bad Messaging Plague (WHBMP) continues unabated. We’re in danger of losing the public on this issue even before the first work permit is issued.

President Obama’s executive order removes the loaded guns pointed at the temples of five million human beings, who also happen to be undocumented U.S. immigrants. It is an act of compassion and mercy that has eluded House Speaker John Boehner for years, his utterly hypocritical nattering about the urgent need for immigration reform notwithstanding. If Boehner had ever looked up from his shot glass, he might have seen their sad eyes and felt some urge to confer simple dignity on them.

But that’s not how the White House is telling it. Last night, I received the White House talking points, embargoed until 6 pm. (I received them at 6:03 pm, but nevermind.)

● The President will “help secure the border.” (This is the first thing — the very first thing! — that they said.)

● The President will hold undocumented immigrants “accountable.” How is he holding them “accountable” for entering or remaining in America without permission? By letting them stay.

● The President will “fix our broken immigration system.” How will he fix it? By not enforcing it.

● The President will “prioritize deporting felons not families.” Just as he has deported commas from that phrase, I guess. (Good alliteration, though.)

Please understand: I’m in favor of President Obama’s action — very much so. But this framing just… stinks.

Here is a test for you: Is there anything in these talking points that could not have come out of the Bush White House? Answer: No.

I’ve seen a poll or two in my life, so I understand that the terms “secure the border,” “accountability,” “fixing the broken [fill in the blank]” and “families” poll very well. Families, yay! Felons, boo! I’m very happy, and indeed relieved, that we Democrats now have established our bona fides as the anti-felon party.

I noted that the White House’s very lengthy (i.e., numbingly repetitive) talking points never mention Boehner or the Republicans — not even once. Instead, the White House extends its devastating six-year-long attack on “Congress,” which has succeeded in: (a) driving Congress’s approval rating down to single digits; (b) delivering the House to the Republicans in 2010; and (c) delivering the Senate to the Republicans in 2014. If some Higher Being did a global search and replace on every White House statement since Jan. 20, 2009, searching for “Congress” and replacing it in each instance with “Republicans in Congress,” Democrats would have supermajorities right now in both Houses.

Here is the basic problem: Fox News has gotten into their heads. If you think that the primary purpose of immigration reform is “securing the borders,” then your name is Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity, not Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney or Josh Earnest.

With all due respect, this is a pitiful effort to put a right-wing mask on a left-wing policy – and a meritorious and virtuous left-wing policy at that. But as Professor George Lakoff has demonstrated, even when you rebut the right wing’s arguments, you’re inadvertently reinforcing them. (As he puts it, “Don’t think of an elephant!” You can’t. Once the subject of elephants comes up, you’re going to think about elephants, whether you like it or not.)

Look, this is important. The basic rules of existence for five million people are in play. Please, just this once, can’t we be progressives? What is so wrong with that?

Let’s try it this way: Every one of us draws a ticket in the womb lottery. Six Waltons had winning tickets; they were born billionaires. The victims of fetal alcohol syndrome have losing tickets; they suffer from terrible physical and mental disabilities.

There are seven billion people alive today. Only a quarter of a billion of them won the womb lottery, and they were fortunate enough to be born in the United States. Almost 50 million more worked the system well enough to acquire U.S. citizenship. But there are over 10 million people who love America so much — so very much — that they left behind their communities, their families, their property, their jobs, and they came here or remain here without the permission of our government. They didn’t win the womb lottery, so it’s too late for them to be born here. They feel that they were born in the wrong country. Their passports are not blue. But they want to fix that problem. They want to make it right. They can’t be American citizens by birth, but instead, they desperately want to be American citizens by choice.

Isn’t that a good thing? That people love what we have created so much that they want to be a part of it, and contribute to it. This isn’t a threat, it’s a heartfelt compliment.

My mother is an immigrant. My grandparents were immigrants. We are all the sons and daughters of immigrants, and we are all the children of God. Can we please, please respect each other, and live together in peace and dignity?

Think of it this way: for whatever reason — lax enforcement of immigration laws, oppression in other countries, the need to survive, whatever — these five million people are our new sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law. The polite thing to do is to welcome them. Repeat after me: “Welcome to the American Family, and thank you for contributing to the American Experience.”

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

Tesla Motors announced in early September that Nevada had been selected as the destination for its Gigafactory, something that has since been criticized as the result of manipulation and other unsavory tactics. Elon Musk has now addressed these reports, saying that he loves “backhanded compliments as much as the next person,” but that the claims aren’t true. He goes on … Continue reading