Attorney General Eric Holder plans to push, during his final weeks in office, a new standard of proof for civil-rights offenses, saying in an exit interview with POLITICO that such a change would make the federal government “a better backstop” against discrimination in cases like Ferguson and Trayvon Martin.
Jimmy Fallon has the perfect joke to end the latest round of John Travolta-Idina Menzel chatter.
The two stars’ fates became forever entwined at last years’ Oscars after Travolta accidentally called Menzel “Adele Dazeem.” In Fallon’s “Thank You Notes” segment on “The Tonight Show” on Friday, the host addressed the new talk following Travolta weirdly grabbing Menzel’s face at this year’s ceremony.
“Thank you, John Travolta, for grabbing Idina Menzel’s face at the Oscars,” he said. “Or, as she put it, ‘Let it go, let it go.'”
And with that, we can forever retire all “Let it Go” punch lines.
Fallon also expressed his thanks to Alaska, Netflix and kale.
I was a ninth grade English-Language Arts teacher in Washington, DC when I overheard an intensifying debate between two students about the existence of unicorns.
“There ain’t no such thing… it’s made up.”
“How do you know they never existed? The idea had to come from somewhere.”
As I made a mental note to do a lesson on double-negatives, my philosophical training compelled me to turn this conversation into a teachable moment. There are many things that we have little physical evidence to prove exist, but still believe in. That we can imagine something is aligned with the power of ideas that give rise to many inventions. Someone imagined the creature we call a unicorn, and the thought of something so mystical and alluring has “existed” in our public consciousness ever since.
As a black, queer, and pro-feminist teacher who was straight-passing, it struck me that I didn’t yet “exist” in the world of p-12 education. I didn’t talk about my partner, my friends, or social and civic passions connected to my queer identity. Students and other teachers had no evidence to prove I existed.
I held great anxiety about putting forth into the world the idea of strong black men as teachers – men who are effective, concerned about their students and their achievement, and hold all the complexity, diversity, and nuance that span the human experience.
It’s been nearly 10 years since I overheard that conversation, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot in light of the “Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Classroom” discussions I’ve been leading nationally as Managing Director of Teach For America’s LGBTQ Initiative. Why didn’t I feel it was ok to be myself in the classroom? Was it because I had no black male educators in my own p-12 experience (despite attending schools with substantial black student populations)? Was it because as a student I searched daily for signs of myself in literature and history only to be reminded of my invisibility? Was it because even when I was a teacher myself, I was always among just one or other two black male educators in my school–a microcosm of our national dearth, with less than two percent of U.S. teachers identifying as black males.
I knew that seeing me in the classroom might be the only time some students have interaction with a black male teacher; and that giving my best and making a positive impression might impact the way they saw black men going forward. When I considered the countless negative media portrayals of black men in the media and on television, it deepened the purpose and passion with which I taught.
And I also understood that for some of my black boys I taught, I was the closest thing to a father figure they had. This need for strong black role models was an ever-present expectation, but I didn’t know if there was room in this construct for my LGBTQ identity.
As a cis-gender, masculine black man, it was clear that too much talk about my pro-feminist leanings or “coming out,” would somehow make me vulnerable; that revealing that I was a long time HIV survivor would be considered a distraction to teaching. But I felt weak, and vulnerable, and not very strong at times for holding this black male heteronormative expectation while internalizing the fear and shame that comes when you’re conscientiously hiding aspects of yourself that others aren’t asked to.
There are aspects of ourselves that we are encouraged never to reveal; but I’m not a unicorn. I’m a man. I’m a black man. I’m a black male teacher. I’m a good, queer, black male teacher who is not quite as good when I feel it must be kept a secret.
I eventually did come out to my students in after two students I coached on the basketball team got into an argument where the “f” word was passed around as liberally as the ball itself. It was second semester and I knew the rapport with my students was strong. They knew that I valued and loved them; and that I held high expectations of them both inside and outside of the classroom. So I wasn’t going to let this word fly. The word hurt not just me, but other students in the class who were LGBTQ or had same-sex parents.
“Nobody in here is gay, so why does it matter?!”
And therein was the perfect invitation. I let the students know that as a “gay” man I was personally hurt by the comments.
“Coach is gay!”
Mouths dropped. A few students applauded. The buzz lasted for a few of the remaining periods during the day.
But it was never an issue after. Students still turned in homework and asked for extra credit. Athletes I coached still had line drills. The world did not collapse because a unicorn of a man showed up. In that moment, a strong black man stepped up to speak truth to power.
Weeks later a new student entered my class. When he let that “f”-word slip, one of the young men I’d reprimanded before beat me to the punch.
“Yo man, we don’t do that here.”
“Oh… I’m sorry dude.”
And that is when I knew that beyond etymology and sentence diagramming and outlining, beyond how to set screens or block out for rebounds, I’d imparted a very valuable lesson to my students. Everyone deserved a safe space in which they could learn. Who better to impart this sense of compassion and affirmation than a strong, black man? Queer too. Maybe even a bit unicorn.
The common thread between people who hire me to do websites, consulting, buy my books, listen to my podcast, or take my courses is this: they want a bigger audience. Hell, I too wouldn’t mind a bigger audience of rat people sometimes.
I recently gave a talk on audience growth, and while I don’t have all the answers, I do know a few things. I’ve learned both from my own experience and that of the people I work with (some of whom have much larger audiences than mine).
First things first, this information falls entirely short if you do not start with the audience you’ve already got.
Your current audience–the people who are already listening, buying, engaging–these should be the most important people to you. Far above anyone you wish you were reaching. If it’s 10 people, 100 people, or even 1,000 people–if you’re not doing right by them, right now, none of this will make a lick of difference (aside: do differences lick?). Make sure you’re listening, communicating, and helping the people who are already paying attention to you.
The next thing to think about is your message.
This isn’t what you’re selling or what you’re writing about. It’s not even who you are. Your message is what you stand for. It is bigger than any single thing you do or say. It’s like a rallying flag that you use to direct your forward motion. It’s what makes you stand out beyond anyone else who has similar skills as yours.
Your message helps craft what makes your unique voice cut through the noise. It’s what draws people to you (even if many other people are talking about the same topic or building similar products).
Unless your message is interesting to both you and your audience, one of you will get bored and drop off.
You may think that developing your own unique voice is easy, since, hell, it’s your voice. Sadly, this is not the case, especially in writing. Finding your voice takes work. It’s part internalization, part confidence, and part a damn lot of practice. I’m not sure developing your voice as a creator is something you can ever completely win at–you have to continually check in with yourself to see if it consistently aligns.
Your current audience, your message, and your voice are the groundwork. Next you need to consider why audiences grow. Why do some people build sizeable groups of people who pay attention to them, and some people aren’t able to?
Growth happens when your audience shares what you do with their own audience.
Think about it. In order for your numbers to grow, people need to first hear about you. How do they do that? By listening to people they already listen to. If those people they’re already listening to mention you, you’ve got a good chance of adding them to your audience ranks.
In order for someone to want to share you with their own people, think about why you would share someone else’s work. Chances are, they said something smart, interesting, entertaining, or useful. You feel good about learning from them, you align with their message, so you want to tell others (and you do). Now you’re helping them grow their audience.
At the heart of it, audience growth requires each of the following things to be present:
Your audience is not made up of numbers or stats or metrics.
Your audience is a group of individuals who share a common idea, value, motivation, or pain. Each one is more unique than they are similar. It’s easy to overlook the humanity when staring at numbers on a screen, but there are people on the other end of each of those numbers. People, each with their own lives, struggles, and satisfactions.
Looking merely for growth is not enough, and frankly, it’s a horrible goal. You can’t just wish it into being. You need to take lots and lots of small steps towards it: test ideas, analyze results, and adapt/change as necessary. Save the magic bullet for infomercials (they’re awful blenders at any rate).
Why do you even need growth? When I was doing just web design, I only needed a few dozen clients a year. That was the perfect number of people paying attention for me to make a living.
For smaller products or services (like $5-10 ebooks), more are required. But, there’s also enough. Enough people where it still feels like a friendly small town and not a hostile city. Enough people where you can make a difference, and moreover, help them succeed. Because if you can help your audience truly succeed, they’ll reward you for it.
So when you’re thinking about what you can do to grow your own audience, consider these points we’ve just covered. I don’t have “5 easy tips to get the numbers you want, guaranteed,” but these ideas are worth thinking about if you want more people to pay attention to your work.
I’m sure that, once upon a time, my vagina was “peachy”. Probably before I had kids — you know, that time when all my insides suddenly came out.
I remember it vividly. I’d just had my first baby and, like a lot of women, the labour hadn’t quite gone to plan. What I mean by that is, after the first twelve hours of labour, I got my birth plan and rammed it down my husband’s throat. After 24 hours, I had consumed all the drugs the hospital could offer and was in an epidurally induced haze of Hello Magazine and jelly tots. I had lost all feeling pretty much everywhere. I couldn’t even remember my own name.
So when it was time to push, I hadn’t got a bleedin’ clue what I was doing. I was making the right noises — I think. Sort of mooing. And I was holding my breath so my face went red. And I tried and tried and tried to shift the sodding alien that appeared to be stuck in me, by imagining — as we all probably did — that we were having the most enormous, melon-shaped poo.
It appeared that I may have pushed a little too hard. Because when Tween had slithered his way out, quite a lot of my vagina kept him company. I was too high to care, too impressed by my own powers of drug-induced pushing to notice that part of me had exploded. Nurses came and looked and tutted, and there were mutterings, and suddenly a needle, and then AN AWFUL LOT OF PAIN (which, quite frankly, I’d had enough of for one day).
And then, thankfully, sleep.
The next day, A MAN came to look at the battleground of my netherparts, and told me in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that my stitches had all come out.
“What have you been doing?” he asked, sternly.
I looked at him, bemused. What The. Actual. Fuck. did he think I’d been doing? Getting it on with my husband after giving birth to a 10 pound baby with an inside out vagina? Or masturbating, perhaps, because I couldn’t stand a single night without some form of sexual gratification? Or just wiping my wee off REALLY HARD?
“Never mind. It will heal naturally.” And then, an afterthought: “Given time.”
At that point in my life, I really didn’t care. My baby was in special care (had he been smothered by my moving vagina? Perhaps we’ll never know). I was glad that he was alive. To be honest, I wasn’t really thinking too much about my lady parts.
Time passed, and I was aware that — although healing ok — my vagina didn’t have the same…form… as before. My labia or “beef curtains” (as one boyfriend fondly called them) drooped so far between my legs that they could have really done with their own bra to hold them in. Tucking them up worked for a while but, inevitably, after a few hundred yards of walking, they would fall out and start swinging like a cats cradle.
One day I made the mistake of putting a mirror between my legs and having a good root about. It was shocking. My nethers were unrecognizable, and seemed to have morphed into chopped liver (with added gristle).
This is roughly what a normal vagina looks like:
And mine:
I have never examined my vagina again.
When I was married, it was ok to have a shattered front bottom. My husband understood what had happened — he’d been there, for God’s sake — and so he could never, ever, EVER express any form of disgust. Which he no doubt felt, but was forced to cover it up unless he was happy never to have sex ever again.
But now I’m single, what do I do? When I’m about to go to bed with a bloke, do I say, “Umm…bit embarrassing this…but do you like chopped liver?” Do I turn out the lights and hope he doesn’t notice? Or do I celebrate it and dangle my curtains in his face?
I don’t know. So for now, at least, I’ll keep on tucking in the hanging bits and hoping for the best.
Postscript: By the way, if you are properly concerned about the way your labia look, Women’s Health Victoria have this wonderful website which will no doubt set your mind at rest: http://www.labialibrary.org.au/
On a recent date, after just enough wine and too many previous dull evenings, I found myself in a very intimate and glaringly honest conversation with my dinner companion, talking about everything other than current events and the weather.
It turns out we had both had affairs, and during our communion we agreed that people don’t have affairs because they want sex, they have affairs because they are seeking a relationship or emotional connection. Of course the topic led to whether either of us would do it again, and the resounding answer was no.
Affairs are dreadful and beautiful and painful and exquisite. At least mine was. It evolved from a long friendship at a time in my life when I felt alone and unseen. This person validated my persona when it was getting lost in the thick forest of motherhood, and housewifery, and mid-life, and unfulfilled opportunities and ambitions. My husband didn’t do anything wrong or intentionally push me away, but like many couples, we had become set in roles and patterns that didn’t necessarily represent who we were as people. Rather than talk about our frustrations and dissatisfactions, we — or I at least — sought affirmation in the arms of another man.
Had I known the emotional price I would pay and the scope of collateral damage, I may have chosen differently.
That is not to diminish the feelings and experiences of my love affair. It was for love. I couldn’t have done it for any other reason. During my affair that endured for many seasons, there were periods of brightness and happiness and adoration, as well as stretches of angst and despair and emptiness.
When you have a conscience, and an affair, the two become intertwined. When your brain and heart become enmeshed in a thicket of conflicting emotions, there is little space for anything else in your life. I was either blissful or remorseful; enthusiastic or exhausted; in love or in hate. Things fell by the wayside. Dinner didn’t get made, spelling didn’t get quizzed, dentist appointments were forgotten. Once on top of everything, I was suddenly in control of nothing, especially my emotions. I had to construct a wall around my heart, saving it for the person that I loved and not allowing the person to whom I was married to have access to any part of me, lest I find that I was “cheating” on two people at once. That would have been too overwhelming to process.
I think many people who have affairs find themselves at a point of hopelessness before they seek engagement with someone other than their spouse. The affair offers an alternative to the unhappiness or boredom or daily drudgery that was never alluded to in the process of maturing. We are told to do certain things, seek this path, measure against this criteria, and all will be well, but nobody gives any guidance as to an appropriate reaction or course of action when things aren’t going well, especially when we really have nothing to complain about.
Perhaps I was seeking myself by engaging in an affair. The affirmation of me as a beautiful, dynamic, sexual being was a happy byproduct of the relationship, especially after years of being exhausted, shrouded in diaper bags and stained clothing. I could tell myself that I was daring, and passionate, and spontaneous — identifiers that often get buried in the milieu of playdates, and teacher conferences, and business dinners.
What I didn’t comprehend at the time was that I was in fact distancing myself from the personal values that I held most dear — honesty, reliability, the ability to be fully present in a situation.
There were many who paid a price for my affair, especially my parents and children. My actions had implications that I continue to feel to this day. I am divorced, living peacefully, but not a day goes by during which some action or comment causes me to think how much less complicated or cumbersome the situation would be if only…
That’s not the real reason that I would never again have an affair. If I am fortunate enough to cultivate a meaningful connection with another man, I want it to be a relationship in which we wouldn’t allow ourselves to get to a point of such dissatisfaction, or unhappiness, or boredom, that we would choose to seek validation in the arms of another.
I want a relationship that values honesty, even if the message is hard to hear, and one where we trust the other person enough to put everything — the good, the bad and the downright ugly — on the table for discussion. A tall order indeed, but perhaps…
Also on HuffPost:
WASHINGTON (AP) — For six years, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been on a collision course over how to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a high-stakes endeavor both men see as a centerpiece of their legacies.
The coming weeks will put the relationship between their countries, which otherwise remain stalwart allies, to one of its toughest tests.
Netanyahu is bound for Washington for an address to Congress on Tuesday aimed squarely at derailing Obama’s cherished bid for a diplomatic deal with Tehran. At the same time, Secretary of State John Kerry and other international negotiators will be in Switzerland for talks with the Iranians, trying for a framework agreement before a late March deadline.
In between are Israel’s elections March 17, which have heightened the political overtones of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington.
The prime minister is speaking to Congress at the request of Republicans. His visit was coordinated without the Obama administration’s knowledge, deepening tensions between two leaders who have never shown much affection for each other.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street, said Netanyahu was “crossing some lines that haven’t been crossed before and is putting Israel into the partisan crossfire in a way it has not been before.”
But the largest pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has tried to play down the partisanship.
“AIPAC welcomes the prime minister’s speech to Congress and we believe that this is a very important address,” spokesman Marshall Wittmann said. “We have been actively encouraging senators and representatives to attend and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response from both sides of the aisle.”
Nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers plan to sit out Netanyahu’s speech, calling it an affront to the president.
Stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb has become a defining challenge for both Obama and Netanyahu, yet one they have approached far differently.
For Obama, getting Iran to verifiably prove it is not pursuing nuclear weapons would be a bright spot in a foreign policy arena in which numerous outcomes are uncertain and would validate his early political promise to negotiate with Iran without conditions.
Netanyahu considers unacceptable any deal with Iran that doesn’t end its nuclear program entirely and opposes the diplomatic pursuit as one that minimizes what he considers an existential threat to Israel.
Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and exists only to produce energy for civilian use.
“Through scaremongering, falsification, propaganda and creating a false atmosphere even inside other countries, (Israel) is attempting to prevent peace,” Iran’s top nuclear negotiator said Saturday in Tehran. “I believe that these attempts are in vain and should not impede reaching a (nuclear) agreement,” said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
U.S. and Iranian officials reported progress in the latest talks on a deal that would freeze Tehran’s nuclear program for 10 years, but allow it to slowly ramp up in the final years of the accord.
Obama has refused to meet Netanyahu during his visit, with the White House citing its policy of not meeting with foreign leaders soon before their elections. Vice President Joe Biden and Kerry will both be out of the country on trips announced only after Netanyahu accepted the GOP offer to speak on Capitol Hill.
The prime minister is scheduled to speak Monday at AIPAC’s annual policy conference. The Obama administration will be represented at the event by U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and national security adviser Susan Rice, who criticized Netanyahu’s plans to address Congress as “destructive” to the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
The Iran dispute has spotlighted rifts in a relationship that has been frosty from the start. Obama and Netanyahu lack any personal chemistry, leaving them with virtually no reservoir of goodwill to get them through their policy disagreements.
Within months of taking office, Obama irritated Israel when, in an address to the Arab world, he challenged the legitimacy of Jewish settlements on Palestinian-claimed land and cited the Holocaust as the justification for Israel’s existence, not any historical Jewish tie to the land.
The White House was furious when Netanyahu’s government defied Obama and announced plans to construct new housing units in East Jerusalem while Biden was visiting Israel in 2010. Additional housing plans that year upended U.S. efforts to restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The tension between Obama and Netanyahu was laid bare in an unusually public manner during an Oval Office meeting in 2011. In front of a crowd of journalists, the prime minister lectured Obama at length on Israel’s history and dismissed the president’s conditions for restarting peace talks.
Later that year, a microphone caught Obama telling his then-French counterpart in a private conversation that while he may be fed up with Netanyahu, “You are sick of him, but I have to work with him every day.”
Despite suspecting that Netanyahu was cheering for his rival in the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama tried to reset relations with the prime minister after his re-election. He made his first trip as president to Israel and the two leaders went to great lengths to put on a happy front, referring to each other by their first names and touring some of the region’s holy sites together.
The healing period was to be short-lived.
Another attempt at Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed. Israeli officials were withering in their criticism of Kerry, who had shepherded the talks, with the country’s defense minister calling him “obsessive” and “messianic.” The Obama administration returned the favor last summer with its own unusually unsparing criticism of Israel for causing civilian deaths when war broke out in Gaza.
The U.S. and Israel have hit rocky patches before.
The settlement issue has been a persistent thorn in relations, compounded by profound unhappiness in Washington over Israeli military operations in the Sinai, Iraq and Lebanon during the Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations that led those presidents to take or consider direct punitive measures. Yet through it all, the United States has remained Israel’s prime benefactor, providing it with $3 billion a year in assistance and defending it from criticism at the United Nations and elsewhere.
“We have brought relations back in the past and we will do it again now because at the end of the day they are based on mutual interests,” said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and informal adviser to Netanyahu. “The interests of Israel and the U.S. are similar and sometime identical and I think that is what will determine in the end and not feelings of one kind or another.”
I didn’t realize how stressful planning a wedding is until I was planning mine. Emotions run high, bank accounts run low and time keeps ticking down while your to-do list goes up. The last thing you need is a crappy wedding guest.
We’ve all been guilty of being a sucky guest at one time or another (myself included) but here is a sure-fire way to never be that person again.
RSVP ASAP
When you get a wedding invitation there is a date to respond by — don’t go by that date. Respond as soon as you open the invitation unless, for some reason, you don’t know if you can make it. Everything hedges on the guest count: food, centerpieces, table configurations etc. The sooner you get the response in the better. I will forever hold dear my friends Natalie and Corey for being my first RSVPs.
RSVP. PERIOD.
Send your response card! Don’t verbally tell the bride or groom you’re coming. That’s rude and unhelpful. They have enough on their minds and don’t need to be mentally tabulating the people who “say” they’re coming. Commit, send the card and PLEASE don’t make them chase you down after the RSVP date has come and gone. They care enough to invite you to their wedding, care enough to mail something back that they’ve already stamped for you.
PLUS NONE
If you’re not invited with a plus one, don’t assume you can bring one, ask to bring one or pout because you can’t. People are money in wedding world and one more person here or there means cutting corners elsewhere. Asking or writing in “and guest” on your response card puts the couple in a terrible position. This night isn’t about you and the rando you’re dating or your need to have someone to slow dance with. If you loathe the idea of going stag to the wedding, politely decline the invitation.
GIVE A GIFT NO MATTER WHAT
Whether you’re attending the wedding or not, send a gift. Your newlywed friends aren’t greedy gift grubbing a-holes for expecting something from their invited guests. Even if their parents are paying, all couples end up shelling out a ton of cash and odds are they don’t have enough money for new sheets or a new frying pan. If you can’t afford a nice gift or something on their registry then send a gift card or a nice bottle of wine. Anything works if it lets them know that you care about this massive step they’re taking in their lives.
IGNORE THE ONE YEAR RULE
If you wait to send a gift or a card for the etiquette allowed ‘one year,’ your friends will think you’re thoughtless and rude (obviously, if you have financial issues they will understand). Particularly if you missed their wedding or (the worst thing you could possibly do) if you said you were coming and no-showed after they paid for your plate you need to send something ASAP. A lot of time, effort and money go into planning a wedding. Flaking and not sending a gift really tells them you give zero f**cks about their marriage and, frankly, them.
Trust me, every bride and groom remembers the terrible guests and the ones who were shining stars. Don’t forget, these people are your family & friends and you may need them for bail money one of these days.
Don’t know your tulle from your trumpet? Unsure of what an empire waist looks like? Read through this comprehensive guide before shopping for your wedding dress.
More from Bridal Guide:
The Biggest Wedding Gown Trends for 2015
75 Wedding Hairstyles for Every Length
Song Ideas for Every Part of Your Wedding Day
100 Sentimental Wedding Ideas You’ll Love
Cheat Sheet to Ace Your Maid of Honor Speech
Oh how Swatch has changed its tune in the last 8 months or so. First there was the denial they were collaborating on the upcoming Apple Watch, adding that they didn’t see why these newfangled smartwrist gizmos were all the rage with the kids these days. Shortly after there was a change of heart (or at least someone wised up) … Continue reading
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
