Inside Facebook’s (Totally
Insane, Unintentionally
Gigantic, Hyperpartisan)
Political-Media Machine
John Herrman,
The New York Times Magazine
A barrage of political links, ads and other content has filled up your News Feed over the last few months…
The new film Southside With You, now in theaters, presents a novel twist on the tried-and-true “date movie” genre by presenting a fictionalized account of the first date between Barack and Michelle Obama as imagined by writer/director Richard Tanne.
Long before entering the White House for two terms was even a blink in either of their eyes, they were two bright and vivacious up-and-comers in the Chicago legal scene, and the film’s charming tale of two people discovering they’re perfect for each would be engaging even if we didn’t know the real world history that was to unfold following the end credits.
Playing the future First Couple are actors Tika Sumpter (who also produced the film) and Parker Sawyers, and they’re easy chemistry both onscreen and off helps make Southside With You such a pleasing diversion. I had a chance to talk to the pair during their recent swing through San Francisco, and here are some excerpts of our conversation:
Tika, you’ve been involved since the inception of the project. Why this story?
Tika: For me, it was the script. It had heart. It was charming. It was smart. At first I only saw the synopsis, and I thought whoever wrote the synopsis is really smart. The perspective is really cool. And to see, we know who they are now but what was the origin of that? What could it have been? That was interesting to me. And I just thought, it was a cool leading lady role.
Someone who is complex and confident. And it wasn’t a romantic film where a woman is chasing after a guy. But she’s actually the prize. And that they’re walking in each others’ shoes and they’re seeing themselves through somebody else. I just thought there was a lot there, and I wanted to do it. So I wanted to create it and make it happen.
Parker, what’s your initial reaction to this script? Are you overwhelmed by how to portray this character or are you excited by the possibility?
Parker: My initial reaction when I got the script, I didn’t understand it. Like, I didn’t know how this would be made in 2015. I thought, I was like, “Man, they’re just talking or walking but there’s no conflict.” But then, as I dug further, and one of the greatest things about the project as an actor is that we had to find nuances in a three, four page dialogue where we’re just walking and talking. I said, “Well where’s the conflict? Where’s the turn? The give and the pull and the push?”
And then I fell more in love with it just as an exercise in acting. But as far as playing the president, or the future president, I don’t know. If you just focus on the script and focus on who they are, 28 and 25. Lawyer, law student. They have so many things going on already that that’s all I have to focus on. “Oh, I have to study to make sure my school loans are in order. I have to clean my house before my grandmother comes.” That kind of thing. “And then I got to go pick up this girl and I got to make a good impression.”
So then, yeah, then the pressure is a little off because you’re just focusing on the guy.
Obviously the Obamas exist as sort of larger than life figures. What did you learn about them that is not necessarily as well known?
Tika: I didn’t know that Michelle’s family was as close as they were. I didn’t know that she, in high school, she went to this magnet high school kind of thing. And I didn’t know that somebody told her that Princeton wasn’t for her. She modeled too. People in Chicago, everybody has that Obama or Michelle story. They’re like, “I used to see her running every morning.”
And she didn’t wear a lot of makeup and her hair was just pulled back and just the simplicity of these two people who, they didn’t know they were going to, well I don’t think, they didn’t know they were going to get to this level of things. And I don’t know if she even wanted to get to that.
And how can you even imagine that, “Oh, one day…”
Tika: That’s such a big dream. I’m sure they had big dreams but that’s like…
That’s the biggest.
Tika: You’re running in the morning in the South Side and it’s like, “Oh yeah, presidency.” You’re not really probably thinking about that. But it was the simple things about her family. I think one story in A Game of Character, that her brother wrote, is her mom and dad, here and there would smoke cigarettes together and they didn’t like that.
They were afraid of losing their parents to a cigarette, cancer or whatever. And they went and smashed up all of their cigarettes and everything like that. Just little stories like that informed me about who they were. Just family.
Parker: Yeah, for me it’s family as well, for Barack Obama. And well, the absence of a family, like a foundation, I suppose. How he moved around from Hawaii to Indonesia and back to Hawaii. Went to school at Occidental and then to Columbia and essentially was by himself. And I think he, I believe he said Columbia, you just sat inside and read books. And really just escaped.
But such a formidable person came out of that that it’s fascinating to me like just the brain that must have been, like a self-correcting, a self-acquisition, a self-psychiatrist almost. Self-therapeutic. Just sort of, “Alright, well who am I and how do I turn that into something good?”
That’s the insight that I found in a young Barack Obama which explains who he is now and explains why he can walk around so confident at 28 and talk to this girl. And so and I wanted to root his confidence and charisma in something. Not just because he’s…
Tika: Cool.
Parker: …cocky and arrogant but in college he’s like, “No, I can do this. I can do that. I can do this. I can do this. Therefore, I’m all right.” That kind of thing.
The juxtaposition I experienced was as I was driving in I’m listening to the news of the day and there’s Donald Trump saying Obama founded ISIS, and then I watch this film and it’s just lovely. And I’m like, where does this come from? What is this disconnect between these quadrants of the electorate? How is it that this one person can be seen so differently?
Parker: There, in the film especially, the absence of privilege is prevalent. It’s just right in front of you. The hole in the car. Euclid Avenue. Very nice street for her to grow up on but it’s not, I just left Martha’s Vineyard yesterday. We had a screening there. And the opulence of it is like — people vacation.
They “summer” there, as verb, growing up. And so, the absence of that and seeing these two on top of race relations back in ’89 and still to this day. You think about all that, and these people made it out. Or, not made it out, but they made it up and up and further up and further up. I think it’s inspiring.
Tika: But also the fact that they didn’t have to go back. They didn’t have to help. They went to Harvard Law. They could have just, they chose to serve the public. They chose to come back and serve the public and not just sit in these high-rises and make all this money. I mean they just recently paid off their student loans eight years ago. So it’s like, they didn’t have to do that. They didn’t have to come back.
Parker: There are some people in certain schools who almost expect to be president and expect to be senator. Or their family expects them to be. And I think Barack and Michelle, and Barack obviously became president, I think he thought that he almost had to as a duty because he probably considered himself still quite lucky. I don’t think there was a war that he had to have, like he didn’t have to dodge a draft or anything. He was probably just like, “I’ve had it pretty good.”
Parker: And I feel like they’re the disconnect, like I don’t know how you can see, or even in the film when you say we’re just basically like a threat of states. Just trying, at everybody’s core, there’s a good person. Like we just want the basic things in life. And, I just don’t see where that connection of this, he’s almost demonized now. And I think at the basis of his foundation, he really thinks people are good people.
And you see that reflected in the film, in the community organizing speech. I think for me, when I look at the presidency of Barack Obama, I look at my kids who, my oldest is nine. And so for him, he’s not “The Black President.” He’s just the president. And I love that for them, their experience moving forward forever is that’s not a thing.
That’s what my daughter said. And she, it’s funny I got the role. We live in London and I got the role. It was last year. And everybody around the neighbor was like, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.” My wife’s optometrist cried. He was just so happy. He’s Indian-British.
But my daughter didn’t understand. And I had to explain to her, “Oh, well he’s president of the United States.” She says, “Yeah, I know.” “The first black president.” And she’s like, “Okay.” But I explained American history and so forth. She says “Oh, wow, good job daddy!” But to her…
Tika: It’s normal.
Parker: And then when Hillary gets in, my daughter will also see a female president.
******
Many thanks to Tika & Parker for their time. Southside With You is now playing in select theaters, and I highly recommend seeking it out. To hear the audio from this conversation, check out the latest episode of the MovieFilm Podcast at this link or via the embed below:
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Kent Nagano and Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Maison Symphonique, Montreal August 12, 2016. Photo: ZEALnyc
Mark McLaren, Editor in Chief, ZEALnyc August 27, 2016
Last week, the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal and its music director Kent Nagano concluded a marathon four-day music festival that attracted some of classical music’s brightest stars and well over 60,000 Canadians in celebration of the city’s rich classical music tradition – a tradition grounded, it seems, in the city’s symphony orchestra.
“It’s very important for us, especially here in Montreal where we have such an enthusiastic audience, such a faithful audience, to go out and really play directly to the public,” says OSM music director Kent Nagano. “Over the last five years, the OSM Couche-Tard Classical Spree has enjoyed a steadily growing success,” reports OSM chief executive officer Madeleine Careau, and attendance at over forty concerts held at Montreal’s Place des Arts grew this year to over 30,000. This support, in addition to an audience of over 30,000 at Montreal’s Olympic Park that opened the festival, suggests that the city of Montreal does, in fact, maintain a special relationship with its home-town orchestra.
OSM music Director Kent Nagano. Photo: Wilfred Hösl/International Classical Artists
The OSM began its festival at Montreal’s Olympic Park with Galaxy of Heroes, an outdoor concert celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Montreal Olympic games and featuring popular orchestral fare from Holst, Mussorgsky, and Wagner accompanying live athletic performances and vintage footage from the ’76 olympic games.
The festival moved to downtown the following day with the debut of an electro-acoustic work by composer Robert Normandeau celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Montreal metro. Organist Philippe Bélanger followed with an impressive (and crowd-pleasing) improvised soundtrack to the silent film For Heaven’s Sake, playing OSM’s newly gifted Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique at Maison Symphonique.
The next two days were filled with an ear-staggering collection of concerts, large and small, in four different Place des Arts venues. Violinst Pinchas Zukerman and pianist Nelson Freire headlined, joining the OSM for orchestral fare (Bruch, Milhaud, Mozart) and solo recitals (Freire offered a particularly intimate peak at the Brahms Piano Sonata no. 3 in F minor op. 5 at Place des Arts’ Cinquième Salle). The OSM played multiple concerts of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony featuring a quartet of Canadian vocalists and the utterly accomplished OSM Chorus. It wrapped the festival with a rare performance of Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony which again featured the new Casavant organ (Op. 3900) at Maison Symphonique.
And throughout in chamber ensembles and small recitals, a host of today’s exciting (truly) and leading musicians marched through Place des Arts. The young and gifted German violinist Arabella Steinbacher led a performance of Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings in F minor, op. 34 and thrilled with Prokofiev. The vivacious Avi Avital, the world’s leading classical mandolinist, played Vivaldi and Beethoven in both solo recital and with OSM. Spanish cellist Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas played Schumann and Chopin with Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin and Franck and Piazzolla with pianist Suzanne Blondin. New York pianist Gille Vonsattel brought gravitas to Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Debussy and offered a compelling partner to Ms. Steinbacher in Prokoviev and Mozart. OSM concertmaster Andrew Wan and other OSM instrumentalists appeared frequently, as did the National Youth Orchestra of Canada.
OSM’s Couche-Tard Virée Classique is a pretty impressive undertaking – some remarkable music-making over the course of a very short time. At its most intense, my listening began with Vivaldi at 10:30am, and concluded with Saint-Saëns at 11:00pm. Between were impressive performances that delighted the ear.
The following are short reviews and excerpts of select OSM Couche-Tard Virée Classique performances.
__________
For Heaven’s Sake with Improvised Organ Soundtrack by Philippe Bélanger
In an interview with ZEALnyc moments before he began his performance, organist Philippe Bélanger claimed that, like his audience, he had “no idea what he would hear” during an improvised soundtrack to the silent film For Heaven’s Sake. I suspect this is a bit of showmanship on the part of Bélanger, who accompanied the film from Maison Symphonique on the newly gifted Casavant (Op. 3900) Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. Whether Mr. Bélanger’s performance was truly improvised or carefully planned, it was unarguably thrilling. The improvised soundtrack, taking its cue from the film, was nicely shaped, entertaining, and at its moments of conflict, compelling. Mr. Bélanger reports that accompanying For Heaven’s Sake, which clocks in at just under one hour, is a relatively simple task when compared to the lengthier Ben Hur (over two and a half hours) which, with its long chariot race, is particularly popular with silent movie audiences.
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Beethoven Ninth Symphony, Kent Nagano Conducting
OSM played multiple performances of Beethoven’s popular symphony, offering a showcase not only for the orchestra and its relatively new Maison Symphonique, but for a quartet of skilled Canadian vocalists and the very fine Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal Chorus. Nagano drove the performance with characteristic passion and detail, and the OSM retains its exciting sound in its home (I had last heard them at Carnegie Hall, “a sound with tremendous polish but little varnish, and the result is exciting”). Exciting also was to hear the fine OSM Chorus, with a sound that is also polished with impressive diction and a passion to meet its orchestral partner. The Maison Symphonique provides an arresting environment for the chorus, with lighting that cinematically highlights individual choristers. (I suspect that this lighting was working on stage left, but not on stage right on the evening of August 12.) And while the chorus placement is visually impressive, the distance from the house makes the choral sound slightly remote. This is a small complaint, and both the OSM and its chorus offered a superb performance of this orchestral favorite.
Johannes Brahms Quintet for Piano and Strings in F minor, op. 34
Performances outside of Maison Symphonique began impressively at Place des Arts’ Cinquième Salle with a touching performance of Brahms’ grand masterpiece. Young German violin sensation Arabella Steinbacher began the first of three Virée Classique appearances leading an intimately sublime performance with Andrew Wan (violin), Neal Gripp (viola), Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas (cello), and pianist Gille Vonsattel. The small hall provided the listener with close look at both the work of this impressive roster of individual players and the ensemble, in a reading that was nicely shaped and texturally rich.
Viva Vivaldi! with Pinchas Zukerman, OSM and Guests
In a star-studded morning concert, the biggest star of this salute to Vivaldi may have been Maison Symphonique itself, which with its rich wood interior and oscillating curved walls, is an impressively happy environment for the smaller forces of baroque ensembles. Within the relatively large space, the sound of the morning’s smaller ensembles danced deep in the middle of the hall, providing a sound that while nicely blended, brought the appearance that the performers were considerably closer to the ear than their actual physical distance. OSM chief operating officer Marie-Josée Desrochers says that this particular acoustic effect has influenced programming in future seasons, with next year’s highlighting the symphonies of Haydn.
On this morning, Vivaldi did indeed live. Both pianist Gille Vonsattel and cellist Amanda Forsyth gave sure accounts of his music for keyboard and cello. Of particular charm was mandolinist Avi Avital, who brought a plucky reading of Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in A minor RV 356 adapted for mandolin. Mr. Avital is the world’s leading classical mandolinist, and hearing him perform, it is hard to believe that the instrument won’t become a standard guest in concert halls, just as the guitar joined its ranks several decades ago. Mr. Avital’s playing is secure and exciting with sure tuning and powerful interpretive instincts – both sensitive and spunky. Look for Mr. Avital at a concert hall near you – very soon.
Steinbacher and Vonsattel play Mozart & Prokofiev
Both outstanding soloists returned to the intimate Cinquiéme Salle for an impressive recital of violin and piano. It may have been just past noon, but following Mozart’s Violin and Piano Sonata no. 18 in G major, K. 301, the duo performed an impassioned reading of Prokofiev’s Violin and Piano Sonata no. 1 in F minor, op. 80. In an interview with ZEALnyc, Steinbacher reveals that Prokofiev and Shostakovich are composers particularly close to her heart, and this reading of Prokofiev, played on the 300 year old Booth Stradivarius which has been her performing instrument for over a decade, cast no doubt as to her understanding of this music. Steinbacher plays with both technical acumen and lovely passion. Her technique is both nimble and secure, and she pulls from her instrument a huge range of sound, all securely grounded in tuning and tone. Her interprative pallette is equally reaching – she plays Mozart with as much intention as she does the often emotionally wrenching music of Prokofiev. Superstars reign in classical music, and look for Steinbacher (following Perlman, Bell, Mutter, Zukerman) to join this list very soon. In Vonsattel, she found a happy partner who plays with impressive skills of his own and empathetic sensitivity.
Spanish Cellist Adolof Gutiérrez Arenas plays Franck and Piazzolla
The young Spanish cellist Adolfo Gutiérrez Arenas made several appearances at OSM’s Couche-Tard Virée Classique including an early and successful collaboration with Arabella Steinbacher, Andrew Wan, neal Gripp, and Gilles Vonsattel in a compelling performance of the Brahms Quintet for Piano and Strings in F minor, op. 34. Later, he joined pianists Charles Richard-Hamelin and Suzanne Blondin for duo recitals. With Blondin, he played Franck’s monumental Violin Sonata in A Major (cello version) and Astor Piazzolla’s Le grand tango. At this stage, Arenas’ sound isn’t huge, but it is expressive – important for the work of both Franck and Piazzolla. His tuning is a tad rich (though more contained in the Brahms earlier in the week) and his heartfelt interpretation of Franck suffered slightly as a result. His interpretation of Piazzolla, on the other hand, was as moving as it was accurate. Look for this talented soloist down the road.
Camille Saint-Saëns with OSM and Kent Nagano
The final concert of the festival again featured the Maison Symphonique’s organ, now in a night of orchestral music by Camille Saint-Saëns. OSM has spent time with the composer of late, last year recording his three violin concertos with OSM concert master Andrew Wan as soloist. Saint-Saëns Tarentelle for Flute, Clarinet and Orchestra op. 6 began the festival’s final performance and featured OSM principals Timothy Hutchins (flute) and Todd Cope (clarinet).
But frankly, the star of the night was, again, the Maison Symphonique and its Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. More about these two.
The Maison Symphonique was inaugurated in 2011. With a seating capacity of 2,100, 70% of its interior is finished in blond wood, fostering a warmth of sound and a visually cool, modern interior. European seating in the house, though perhaps inconvenient to concert-goers, creates a uniform visual line in the hall while chorus seating behind the stage mirrors the seating levels within the house. This stage seating builds to a dramatic reveal of the organ, the pipes of which (the largest playfully inverted as they hang from the ceiling) act as frame and proscenium to the stage below.
Inaugurated in 2014 and at a reported cost of $4 million, Maison Symphonique’s Grand Orgue Pierre-Bélanger is the product of the French organ builder Casavant and includes nearly 6,500 pipes. The organ was donated by Jacqueline Desmarais as a tribute to OSM’s founder and first general manager who ran the OSM from 1939 to 1970. Many a U.S. concert hall looks to electronic instruments these days to fulfill organ needs, and it is a stark reminder of the Montreal’s European personality that, in such a time and at such an expense, this organ was commissioned and installed. The organ console sits dramatically high over the stage, producing more visual excitement in the hall as the organist reigns over proceedings, while at the same time engulfed by the instrument he plays.
Organist Jean-Willy Kunz Grand Orgue Pierre Béique at maison Symphonique, Montreal Canada August 13, 2016. Photo: ZEALnyc
And over the course of OSM’s Virée Classique, the Grand Orgue established itself as a truly fine instrument. Distinctly flexible at the hands of Philippe Bélanger earlier in the week, with Saint-Saëns the organ demonstrated its subtlety. The composer’s Organ Symphony is by no means a concerto – the instrument is not featured as a solo instrument. Rather, it acts as another orchestral ‘section’ adding new tonal color, and in this case an excitingly rich palette. Organist Jean-Willy Kunz is masterful in his registration choices, and the organ acted as a delightful community member – adding a compelling non-orchestral color without dominating. The first of the organ entrances was sublime – soft, delicate strings blended with the orchestra to create an utterly unique sound – a sound that beat in waves. As the piece moved toward completion, its chordal language moved to that of the organ, which rose appropriately to the dominant color.
Throughout, OSM’s unique sound thrilled. Their strings are firm, emphatic and beautiful. The brass and winds, proud and confident. The balance among this youthful collection of musicians is spot on, but it is a balance in which individual components maintain a bright presence. In an era when individual sounds among orchestras become rare, OSM under the leadership of Kent Nagano is a happy exception.
Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal adds a rare new orchestral instrument to its family in October. Read about OSM’s new octobass here.
The International Contemporary Ensemble appears at Mostly Mozart. Read what Joshua Rosenblum had to say here.
Jazz and vibraphone legend Bobby Hutcherson passed away this week. ZEALnyc’s Dan Ouellette recounts his time with Hutcherson here.
The New York City opera season is just around the corner. Read ZEALnyc’s preview here.
Cover Photo, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at Maison Symphonique, Montreal Canada. Photo: ZEALnyc.
Mark McLaren writes frequently on classical music and theater.
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(Barack Obama, speaking of race, in Philadelphia, March 18, 2008)
In the midst of his first campaign for president, Barack Obama was forced to explain his long association with a pastor spotlighted for racially incendiary remarks from the pulpit of an African American church in Chicago.
“The anger is real,” Obama said then, speaking not only of the “memories of humiliation and doubt and fear” that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s generation raised amid racial segregation still bear. He addressed “a similar anger” among white Americans who’ve worked hard yet “feel their dreams slipping away” only to see “an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed…
“Opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense,” candidate Obama said in Philadelphia, in March 2008, with words that still apply near the close of his second term. “This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”
The president, his public job approval riding above 50 percent in his final year, will return to Philadelphia in September, this time campaigning for his intra-party rival in that 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton, immersed now in countervailing accusations of bigotry and racism in a contest with Republican Donald Trump.
“From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” Clinton said in a multi-faceted assault on Trump’s lack of character or qualification for the nation’s highest office delivered this week in Reno. “He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties,” she said of “a man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the Internet.”
And with the hiring of campaign CEO Stephen Bannon, publisher of the breitbart.com site favored by the “Alt-Right” – which the Wall Street Journal describes as a mostly online movement that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity” – Clinton suggested that “the de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the Alt-Right. A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.”
“It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook,” Trump complained in his own attempt at a prebuttal in Manchester, N.H., before Clinton’s address in Nevada. “When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument: ‘You’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist.’ It’s a tired disgusting argument.”
For a couple of weeks now, in an attempt to convince moderate swing voters that he is not a racist, Trump has made an odd appeal to African American voters who tend to vote 9-1 Democratic in presidential contests: “What the Hell have you got to lose?” It’s Clinton, he contends, who views black Americans simply as votes to be won, and he argues that for generations “millions of African-American and Hispanic-American citizens… have been betrayed by Democratic policies.”
Yet this war of words is not merely another manifestation of the “racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years,” as Obama put it. Some contend that the reporting of the week’s cross-fire between the candidates – which continues on Twitter and will loom large in the Sunday morning talk shows – is actually purveying a “false equivalency.” The idea here is that Clinton actually possesses far more ammunition in her case against Trump than he holds in his claim that she’s “a bigot.”
And it’s no coincidence that Trump is launching his first appeal to minorities at a juncture in which Clinton has gained a double-digit lead in some national polls.
“I think Trump is fairly desperate at this point and to a certain extent has painted himself into a corner,” says Carl Tobias, professor of law at the University of Richmond. “His outreach to African Americans seems to ring hollow, and once Obama is out there talking, that is sure to help Clinton in a lot of ways, certainly with that constituency.”
In a contest dominated by two of the most unpopular nominees in the history of modern opinion polling, there may be little gain for either in a debate on racism.
“I think everybody all the way around is going to hold their noses and vote, which is unfortunate,” Tobias says. “I think people almost stop listening at this point. I don’t know where the high ground is, but nobody seems to be on it.”
Trump arrived at this fight with a history of questionable acts and remarks. In November 2014, the Twitter aficionado tweeted this about the president: “Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!” Asked by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl at the time what he meant by that, Trump said: “He has set a very poor standard. I think that he has set a very low bar and I think it’s a shame for the African American people… And by the way, he has done nothing for African Americans.”
Before that, Trump was among the highest-profile and most vocal proponents of the rumor that Obama is not a naturally born American citizen. Clinton running mate Tim Kaine, campaigning on the campus of historically black Florida A&M University the day after the Trump-Clinton exchange over racism, said: “Donald Trump was a main guy behind the scurrilous, and I would say bigoted, notion that President Obama wasn’t even born in this country.”
The actual accusation of racism reached its highest volume in the campaign underway after Trump accused the federal judge handling a lawsuit alleging fraud at Trump University of bias because he’s “a Mexican” and Trump wants to build a border wall against illegal immigration. It was the Republican Party’s own House Speaker Paul Ryan who delivered the strongest rebuke of Trump’s remark about Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a Mexican-American born in Indiana who has fought Mexican drug cartels as a prosecutor. Ryan said: “Claiming a person can’t do their job is sort of the like the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
Trump also has seized upon some stray Clinton comments to make his case for bigotry. “Hillary Clinton needs to address the racist undertones of her 2008 campaign,” he tweeted to his 11 million followers on Friday, offering a video montage of news clippings. In one, Clinton is pictured on an old episode of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” delivering a speech in which she said: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act.” In that clip, it’s the late host Tim Russert who suggests to Clinton: “It’s as if you are minimizing, ‘I have a dream.’ It’s a nice sentiment, but it took a white president to get blacks to the mountaintop.” The comment goes unanswered by Clinton.
It was during her contest against Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries that Clinton suggested that Obama is an eloquent speaker lacking a record of action and it’s proven political leaders who’ve brought about real change. “I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” she said. “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished.”
Obama was forced to deny that his campaign was circulating the remark to rally black voters. “Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson. I didn’t make the statement,” Obama told reporters. “I haven’t remarked on it, and she, I think, offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King’s role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act. She is free to explain that, but the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous.”
Trump is playing another remark attributed third-hand and without direct quotation to Bill Clinton. Two years after that 2008 campaign, in their book Game Change, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin reported about the former president attempting to convince Sen. Ted Kennedy to support Hillary Clinton. “Bill then went on, belittling Obama in a manner that deeply offended Kennedy. Recounting the conversation later to a friend, Teddy fumed that Clinton had said, A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” In the years since, the unattributed comment has been repeated in news accounts as an alleged direct quote.
Then there is the business of the “super predators,” which Trump is replaying online. “How quickly people forget that Crooked Hillary called African-American youth SUPER PREDATORS’ – has she apologized?” Trump tweeted this week. In the 1990s, after President Clinton won passage of the Violent Crime Control Act, the first lady warned in a 1996 speech of “the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators…’ no conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.” In this year’s Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders took issue with the remark: “It was a racist term,” he said in their final debate, “and everybody knew it was a racist term.” Clinton later allowed: “I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”
“The Clinton’s are the real predators,” Trump has tweeted.
For her part, Clinton claims Trump has demeaned the African American community with his portrayal of black neighborhoods as “war zones.”
“He doesn’t see the success of black leaders in every field… the vibrancy of black-owned businesses… or the strength of the black church,” she said in Reno. “He doesn’t see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive…And he certainly doesn’t have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color.”
She has reached far back into the billionaire’s own business career to portray a record of racism. “When Trump was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants,” she said. “Their applications would be marked with a “C” – ”C” for “colored” – and then rejected.”
The New York Times reports that the legacy of discrimination in Trump housing developments started with the developer’s father. In the 1960s, as Civil Rights legislation was advancing in Washington, the Times reports: “Over the next decade, as Donald Trump assumed an increasingly prominent role in the business, the company’s practice of turning away potential black tenants was painstakingly documented by activists and organizations that viewed equal housing as the next frontier in the civil rights struggle. The Justice Department undertook its own investigation and, in 1973, sued Trump Management for discriminating against blacks. Both Fred Trump, the company’s chairman, and Donald Trump, its president, were named as defendants. “Absolutely ridiculous,” the son said.
“When it was over,” The Times reports today, “Mr. Trump declared victory, emphasizing that the consent decree he ultimately signed did not include an admission of guilt.” But the paper’s investigation – ”drawing on decades-old files from the New York City Commission on Human Rights, internal Justice Department records, court documents and interviews with tenants, civil rights activists and prosecutors – uncovered a long history of racial bias at his family’s properties, in New York and beyond.”
“It takes a lot of nerve to ask people he’s ignored and mistreated for decades, ‘What do you have to lose?'” Clinton said this week. “The answer is everything!”
Clinton went on to enumerate the support Trump has attracted from white nationalists such as David Duke, whose backing Trump took some time to disavow. She spoke of Trump’s plans for a religious test for Muslims entering the United States – a requirement to disavow Sharia law. “Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border,” she said. “Come to think of it, there actually may be one place that does that. It’s the so-called Islamic State.”
And finally, Clinton says, Trump’s campaign is being run by the publisher of a platform, Breitbart, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as embracing “ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas – all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.'”
“There’s an old Mexican proverb that says, ‘Tell me with whom you walk, and I will tell you who you are,” Clinton said. “We know who Trump is. A few words on a teleprompter won’t change that. He says he wants to ‘make America great again,’ but his real message remains ‘Make America hate again.”‘
Obama, who plans to campaign for Clinton in Philadelphia on Sept. 13, went there in March 2008 to disavow the comments of a pastor he’d known for years – while standing by the man himself and offering a social context for his sentiments.
This time, Obama plans to speak of Clinton’s ideas for improving the economy. But his words from 2008 still resonate today.
“Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said then. “We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.”
Ironically, Obama in 2008 took a turn at describing the very electorate to whom Trump has appealed in his own campaign for president this year:
“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race,” Obama said then. “Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one handed them anything. They built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pensions dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and they feel their dreams slipping away…
“Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many,” Obama said in Philadelphia. “And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide and blocks the path to understanding.”
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While the streaming music industry has exploded over the last few years, with monthly subscription models becoming one of the most common ways people listen to music, it’s also gotten to the point where the market is dominated by just a handful of companies, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal. Because things like pricing and music catalogs remain mostly the … Continue reading
The Nissan Pathfinder used to be an adventurous, off-road sport-utility vehicle, then one day Nissan decided to switch gears. For better or worse, depending on who you talk to, it’s no longer the same vehicle as it was before 2013; had Nissan renamed it, in fact, I don’t think it would have had any arguments. What was once a rugged … Continue reading
The dream of large OLED screens has, for the past few years, seemed perpetually on the horizon. LG has had OLED TVs on the market for a while, but they’re still far more expensive than comparable LCDs. If you’ve wanted to get your OLED fix recently,…
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the national anthem before the team’s Friday night preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, and on Saturday, he explained why.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL.com’s Steve Wyche. “To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The protest makes Kaepernick the latest athlete to use his platform to call attention to problems facing African-Americans across the country, particularly the issue of police killings. Four NBA stars ― Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Paul ― called attention to the issue in an on-stage speech at the ESPY Awards in July. Anthony has also marched in protests in Baltimore; and Wade and James, along with their then-Miami Heat teammates, donned hoodies to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2013.
Players from three WNBA teams wore shirts that bore the “Black Lives Matter” slogan during pre-game warmups in July. And during previous seasons, an assortment of NFL and NBA players have warmed up in T-shirts honoring African-Americans killed by police, and spoken out against police brutality after their games.
Kaepernick did not tell the 49ers of his plans not to stand for the anthem. He also sat through the song during a previous preseason game.
“This is not something that I am going to run by anybody,” Kaepernick told NFL.com. “I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. … If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”
Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the anthem is similar to a protest from former Denver Nuggets player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, whose choice to sit down through the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before NBA games in 1996 blew up into a nationwide controversy. Abdul-Rauf, a converted Muslim, eventually served a one-game suspension before striking a compromise with the NBA that required him to stand but allowed him to bow his head in prayer during the anthem. The flag, Abdul-Rauf said then, was “a symbol of tyranny, of oppression.”
The Nuggets traded Abdul-Rauf after the 1996 season, and his career never rebounded from the controversy.
The 49ers said that they respected Kaepernick’s decision to exercise his rights of expression.
“The National Anthem is and always will be a special part of the pre-game ceremony,” the team said in a statement, according to NFL.com. “It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens. In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.”
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The woman who sparked mass transit chaos when she brought live crickets and worms into a New York City subway car Wednesday and subsequently flew into a rage has revealed she is an actress who staged the incident to prove a point.
Though early reports said the woman released the critters into the train car herself, a woman named Zaida Pugh posted a new, lengthier video of the incident on Facebook late Friday. The clip showed a young man clearly knocking a container of the crickets and worms out of her hands, sending it flying into the air.
Fusion, which noted that the video was “suspiciously well-produced,” contacted Pugh to ask her about it, and she admitted she was behind the whole thing.
“It was a prank,” she told Fusion. “I’m an actress. That was me.”
Pugh has gained notoriety for other viral stunts in the past, most infamously for a graphic video last year in which she pretended to stab a baby to death.
Although that video was a clear-cut hoax — in that no babies were hurt — the cricket-throwing incident was a little more nuanced. According to Pugh, the part where people push her and knock the bugs out of her hands – releasing them into the train car – was planned in advance. And her breaking down and trying to climb out the train windows was just acting.
But the crickets and worms — 300 of each, she told the New York Post — were real, she said. (She also said she did really urinate on herself.) In comments on her Facebook page, Pugh repeatedly refers to herself as “pranking the news” by getting them to cover the incident. But did she really?
If she actually unleashed hundreds of worms and crickets into the train car, it’s not really pulling one over on the news if they then report that a woman unleashed hundreds of worms and crickets into a train car. Whether or not her “breakdown” was genuine or just acting seems a bit secondary.
Ezra Mechaber, whose tweet about the “panic” on the train was widely cited by news outlets, maintains he was not part of the act.
“Absolutely not in on it,” he told The Huffington Post in a Twitter message. “That woman’s intentions may have been a ‘prank’ but the fallout was very much real.”
Although Mechaber initially wrote that someone pulled the train’s emergency brake ― which stops the train in place ― the NYPD told Fusion that the brake was never activated.
Incidentally, another widely cited tweet mentioning “crickets in subway” around the same time as the incident turned out to be totally unrelated. The Twitter user later clarified that she works at a Subway sandwich store and there were some crickets in the building.
An anonymous police source also told the New York Post that Pugh could wind up facing charges for the stunt.
Pugh told the Post that she did it to raise awareness about “what homeless people go through and how people treat them.”
It’s unclear how acting like an exaggerated caricature of a person with a mental illness and getting some actors to pretend to attack you would help anyone who is homeless.
It also seems pretty mean to the crickets.
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Trump hate. I don’t like these feelings. I don’t want these feelings. I have spent a long lifetime learning – or trying to learn – forgiveness. It is the most difficult but the most desirable of emotions – for to forgive not only lifts the burden of anger and hatred from the “forgiver” but it restores to the “forgiven” the humanity that we have denied him or her, even it he or she does not deserve it. Forgiveness is not about the deserving – it it were they would be no need to forgive. All this is easier said than done. I have been fortunate in not feeling hate for many people – those who have done me some real or perceived injury I prefer to remove from my life by simply saying “gone” – to be forgotten – out of the address book and out of my life. But the antipathy that I feel for Donald Trump awakens my boyhood feelings about Barkin – the kid who tried to bully me – and pretty much succeeded – at at summer camp in Maine (little did he know until too late that he was messing with the wrong kid – Sherman the ten year old heartless avenger – lacking a cape and magical powers but possessing the means to be truly mean) and in a greater sense there was my hatred for all the fascist leaders who controlled the Europe of my youth and who murdered millions. That was serious hatred, not to be confused with Barkin.
Since I was a kid during WW2 I imagine it was a hereditary hatred that my anti-fascist parents had passed on to me. And Hitler and his henchmen gave us the faces we needed to hate.
When I see a photo of Trump I am reminded of the legion of dictators, racists, and bad guys who peopled the newsreels of my boyhood days – all of them the recipients of my fear and loathing – and I had hoped never to feel this way again. Hate is that genie in the bottle – hard to lure back and cork up again once you have allowed it to escape. So in order to dampen the rage I feel when I listen to Trump’s exploitation of hatred on TV, I go to the very people whom he is vilifying and instead of hating him I try to fill my psyche with love for them. Doesn’t work. It is easier to hate one man than to love an entire group – we can only feel real emotion towards the individual – we can wish to protect the maligned group – but love? that is harder – so I keep stumbling back to rage at Trump, who has so cruelly and wantonly destroyed my life’s equilibrium and threatens my world.
If the polls are right he will be soundly defeated come November. But I also hope to defeat the disgust and contempt I feel for this man – one who has endangered not only the country we share but the families we love. For nothing good can flow from him – and so I find myself hating Trump for many reasons – his bigotry – his exploitation of the ignorant – his greed for money and power – but I think I hate him most for his making me hate him. Thank God the holidays that celebrate love come in December, and I hope they arrive with an antidote for Trump hatred. With any luck they will help to wash away the hatred that Trump has unleashed. But the truth is I don’t just want him defeated – I want him humiliated – living in exile in his golden palace at Mar-a-glow or whatever they call that pile on pretension in Palm Beach – let it be this Napoleon’s Elba, And let me go back to the business of exiling hate – while loving and enjoying the love of those who surround my life.
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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.
