How do you attract developers to a fledgling virtual reality content delivery service for a VR headset that already has a shopping platform? With half a million dollars in cash and prizes, of course! Today, HTC announced the Viveport Development Awar…
There are many mysteries of the deep that we have yet to discover for ourselves, and the richness of the seas have proven time and again that there are ungainly creatures which rule the depths of the oceans in their very own way. For instance, there is the angler fish which is terribly ugly to look at, and yet it is capable of luring its prey within chomping distance with its light-up lure. Well, the £9.99 Pablo the Pufferfish Nightlight might not be a glowfish of any sort, but it is still cute, going down the same road as its predecessors, such as Mari the Narwal Nightlight.
Pablo the Pufferfish Nightlight allows one to bask in the powerful yet soothing glow of an infant sea creature, although you do not have to be worried to death about being poisoned by pufferfish toxin. It is, after all, powered by batteries, allowing you to pop him just about anywhere that requires some light. Not only that, it makes the assumption that most folks and children would have fallen asleep an hour after being tucked into bed, which is why it automatically turns off after one hour in order to conserve energy. It would be best to rely on rechargeable batteries, since Pablo the Pufferfish Nightlight runs on a trio of AAA batteries with an LED lifetime of 100,000 hours.
[ Pablo the Pufferfish Nightlight is non-toxic at all copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Xiaomi’s numbers have been slipping some of late in its native China, but the company’s still announcing handsets at a healthy clip. A month after debuting the Redmi Pro, a high-end take on its budget line, the company is eyeing a rock bottom price point with its latest offering. With a starting price of 899 yuan ($135), the Redmi Note 4 still manages to offer some key upgrades… Read More
Nearly half a million children around Lake Chad face “severe acute malnutrition” due to drought and a seven-year insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, UNICEF said on Thursday.
Of the 475,000 deemed at risk, 49,000 in Nigeria’s Borno state, Boko Haram’s heartland, will die this year if they do not receive treatment, according to the United Nations’ child agency, which is appealing for $308 million to cope with the crisis.
However, to date, UNICEF said it had only received $41 million, 13 percent of what it needs to help those affected in the four countries – Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon – that border Lake Chad.
At the start of 2015, Boko Haram occupied an area the size of Belgium but has since been pushed back over the last 18 months by military assaults by the four countries.
Most of its remaining forces are now hiding in the wilds of the vast Sambisa forest, southeast of the Borno provincial capital, Maiduguri.
UNICEF said that as Nigerian government forces captured and secured territory, aid officials were starting to piece together the scale of the humanitarian disaster left behind in the group’s wake. “Towns and villages are in ruins and communities have no access to basic services,” UNICEF said in a report.
In Borno, nearly two thirds of hospitals and clinics had been partially or completely destroyed and three-quarters of water and sanitation facilities needed to be rehabilitated.
Despite the military gains, UNICEF said, 2.2 million people remain trapped in areas under the control of Boko Haram – which is trying to establish a caliphate in the southern reaches of the Sahara – or are staying in camps, fearful of going home.
Boko Haram is thought to have killed as many as 15,000 people since the launch of its insurgency in 2009.
Responding to its battlefield setbacks, Boko Haram has turned to suicide bombings, many involving children.
UNICEF said it had recorded 38 cases of child suicide bombings so far this year, against 44 in the whole of 2015 and just four the year before that.
(Reporting by Ed Cropley; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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We tend to forget that everything we do leads us to the next place. Like everyone else, I’ve worked less than ideal jobs in my life, but those jobs helped get me where I am today. One of the most interesting and revealing things I did for myself early in my career, at a time when I was feeling stuck, was to draw up a chart that traced all the jobs I’d had up to that point. Together, the plotted jobs gave me a tangible map, showing me precisely where I’d been and what I’d learned about myself and my abilities. Putting together that puzzle of my likes, dislikes and skills was critical to helping me figure out the way forward. When you see all this in black and white, a picture begins to emerge. It’s just as important to know what to eliminate from your life as it is to know what to keep and expand upon. If you feel hopeless because you’re stuck in a job you dislike, then you may not be looking at the big picture, allowing yourself to get buried in the moment instead of looking up and trying to plot your next move. This exercise is designed to give you some perspective.
Here is my chart:
My takeaways? I liked running a business that connected with customers, that made money, that was creative, collaborative and exciting. I wanted to engage with content that was meaningful to people, especially meaningful to my own community. I loved a good story. I liked upbeat people and upbeat material. I knew how to sell, how to think on my feet, how to call the shots for a company and ― very importantly ― how to balance the books! I’d learned to love math! The next move for me was starting my own TV production company, delivering product to the Latin market.
Here is your chart to fill out:
What are the takeaways for you? What’s the next thing you need to learn to round out your education? What do you love? What can you get passionate about? What do you wish you could delegate to someone else? What is it that you, and only you, can do ― better than anyone else? What industry attracts you: Service? Hospitality? Retail? Manufacturing? Technology? Fashion? Food? Other?
The idea is that a picture starts to emerge ― the puzzle of YOU starts coming together. The pieces of that puzzle will help you see yourself, and your assets, clearly, and will help you determine what kind of an entrepreneur you can be.
Let’s say you’re in your twenties and you’re working as a waitress. You may feel that you’re stuck in a crappy job. But if you can rise above the day-to-day for a moment, consider what you are learning on the job. For one thing, you are learning the workings of a restaurant, and maybe you see what the owner of the restaurant is doing right or wrong. You understand what it takes to provide excellent customer service and to keep your employees happy. You engage with customers face-to-face. You learn the costs of staff, overhead and food deliveries, as well as how to manage orders and efficiencies. You may see areas where the current owner could make improvements. Maybe you’re thinking, “If I were in charge, here’s what I’d do differently…” Maybe you are inspired to own your own restaurant. Maybe you feel inspired to go to school to get a degree in management, in the culinary arts or in business administration. Then, with the next step, and the next level of expertise and earning power, your acquired skills and ambitions change once more. Perhaps you’re in the position to realize your dream of owning your own business by the time you’re 45. Fifteen years later, the years of success in business can allow you to dedicate yourself, in your sixties, to running a nonprofit that speaks to your passion and your mission.
Tease out the puzzle pieces of your life and put them together. There’s not one right configuration. There may be several. This is trial and error, with a purpose. I want you to see every stage as preparation for the next. This is an ascent ― an accumulation of experience and knowledge, guided by the imperative to become an owner in every aspect of your own life, no matter where you are and what your job is. So, it’s not about finding the next job; it’s about acquiring inner-strength, clarity and purpose.
This excerpt was taken from Self Made: Becoming Empowered, Self-Reliant, and Rich in Every Way, by Nely Galán. Copyright 2016 Excerpted by permission of Random House, A Penguin Random House Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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I recently returned from an international seminar where one of the scholars argued a point that is very important for every American to hear before November 8th.
He said that democracies come in many different forms with various structures and systems. But authoritarian regimes all have four characteristics in common:
These things are true whether they describe the authoritarian regimes of history like Mussolini and Stalin, or those of the current period, like Kim Jong-un in North Korea, or Putin in Russia – both of which Donald Trump apparently admires.
And those four characteristics practically define the Trump political message. Trump argues that he will make America “Great Again” — that he will address the legitimate grievances of those whose incomes have stagnated by throwing out the immigrants, the Muslims, the “others” that have made it so — none of which has anything whatsoever to do with the economic pain he alleges to address.
Many Americans have seen what happens when a strong man blames the “other” for a nation’s sense of victimization. It always ends in tragedy, whether for the Jews of Europe or the Tutsis of Rwanda.
Trump has no compunction creating and legitimating conspiracy theories such as his “birther” fantasy that President Obama was born in Kenya and is not the “legitimate” President.
And Trump makes it clear every day that only he can fix the country’s problems — apparently through the force of his own will.
The so-called Alt-Right Movement championed by Brietbart.com, whose CEO is now directing the Trump campaign, is the face of right-wing authoritarian nationalism in the United States.
But it is critical to understand that Trump and his Alt-Right, white supremacist colleagues are not an isolated phenomenon. Right-wing nationalist parties are once again growing stronger and stronger in Europe as well. They too have fed upon the discontent spawned by wage stagnation and growing income inequality that — while not as severe as it is in the United States — has created fertile ground for the revival of grievance-based nationalist fervor. In Western Europe, their villains are the flood of immigrants from the Middle East that have fled the violence of the Syrian civil war, and workers emigrating to the West from Eastern Europe.
In fact, the leader of the British right-wing nationalist party, Nigel Farage, spoke at Trump’s rally last night in Jackson, Mississippi.
Of course, the right-wing nationalists of Europe ignore entirely the fact that the major cause of income stagnation is the fact that billionaires like Trump have taken an increasing share of their country’s economic output, just as they have in the United States.
Incomes are not flat for most Americans because the economy as a whole has failed to grow. In fact, per-person gross domestic product in the United States has increased 48 percent over the last 30 years. America is wealthier per person today than at any other time in its history.
Incomes are not flat because immigrants and poor people have taken money from the pockets of ordinary workers. Incomes are flat because billionaires like Donald Trump have siphoned off virtually every dime of that per-person economic growth and kept it for themselves.
They have used their political influence to manipulate the tax system, and cut their own taxes so they often pay lower tax rates than their secretaries or janitors. One of the few Trump tax returns that is publicly available showed that in the early seventies he paid virtually no taxes.
Now, he has steadfastly refused to disclose his more recent tax returns — either because they too would show how little he has paid, or because they would show he is not as wealthy as he claims, or because they would lay bare his deals with oligarchs and other unsavory business schemes — or all of the above.
And Trump has made a tax proposal that would give himself even more tax breaks.
A tiny fraction of wealthy Americans have siphoned off most of the increased income generated by our economy over the last three decades, and at the same time they have managed to avoid paying taxes on much of that increase. That has left most ordinary Americans with three bad options:
This is not rocket science. If the increased economic growth had been equally distributed, we would all be 48 percent better off economically today than we were 30 years ago. But wages for most workers have remained stagnant. That growth went somewhere — and we know from the data where; it is no mystery. It did not go to immigrants. It did not go to the poor. It did not go to pay “lazy workers.” Virtually all of it went to the Donald Trumps of the world.
Right-wing authoritarian narratives may not be supported by the facts — but they have a deep emotional appeal to ordinary people looking for someone to blame for their own economic frustration. And that makes those narratives very dangerous.
Right-wing authoritarian nationalism ripped apart the world 75 years ago in the form of World War II. It once again poses a threat to democratic societies. If it is allowed to succeed, it will endanger the democratic institutions and values in the United States and Europe.
Worse, if it is allowed to grow unchecked, authoritarian nationalism has one logical conclusion: violence and war.
Just ask the people of Europe and East Asia — and the American Veterans of the “Greatest Generation” — how well the rise of authoritarian nationalism worked out in the 1930s and ’40s. Ask the relatives of the literally millions who died.
The Marshall Plan, the European Union and NATO were all created following World War II to prevent the nightmare recurrence of authoritarian nationalism in Europe. The EU and NATO have both begun to show the strains of pressure from resurgent right-wing nationalists’ forces. And most Europeans are terrified at the prospect that Trump might become President of the United States — destroy these critical institutions — and fan the flames of xenophobia.
We can already see what fanning the flames of xenophobia can do. Several months ago David Petraeus, former U.S. Commander in Iraq and head of the CIA, wrote a piece in the Washington Post with the headline: “Anti-Muslim Bigotry Aids Islamic Terrorists.”
The piece was explicitly aimed at Donald Trump.
Experts on the Middle East and radical jihadist terrorism are virtually unanimous in their view that Donald Trump’s victory would be a bonanza for ISIS. In fact, ISIS is already using Trump’s pronouncements in its recruiting videos.
The entire ISIS narrative — and its appeal to young Muslims — rests upon their argument that Islam is engaged in a massive historic struggle with the United States and the West. They argue that the U.S. is leading a great final “crusade” to take Muslim lands, Muslim oil, Muslim’s heritage — to destroy the Muslim religion.
Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric does more to legitimate that narrative than all of their clever social media work — all of their horrific violent videos — put together.
Just as bad, Trump makes it infinitely more difficult for the United States to engage moderate Sunni Muslim countries to join with us in the battle against ISIS.
And his rhetoric even plays into the hands of Iran’s hard-line Shias that are engaged in a struggle for power with the growing moderate Muslim and secular elements of Iranian society.
The Shia religious and Republican Guard leadership in Iran completely despises ISIS and radical Sunni jihadists like Al Qaeda. To bolster their position they spin out conspiracy theories of their own — that ISIS is actually the creation of the United States that was organized to check Shia power and legitimate the presence of the United States in the Middle East.
Then comes Trump, who actually says President Obama founded ISIS.
In his recent “national security” speech, Trump claimed that the United States should have occupied Iraq’s oil fields — completely legitimating the Jihadist narrative that the United States wants to take Muslim resources.
The logic of Trump’s rhetoric about ISIS — and for that matter his approach to Iran and his proposed abrogation of the agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — will, if he is elected, inevitably lead to another major ground war in the Middle East.
That is exactly what ISIS is praying for. They desperately want to draw the U.S. into that kind of conflict on the ground throughout the Middle East — a conflict that they believe will allow them to recruit thousands of young people and ultimately end in an apocalyptic defeat of the West.
As Petraeus put it in his Washington Post article: “….those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realize they are playing directly into the hands of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.”
Trump has become the leader of a right-wing, authoritarian nationalist movement that could be a grave danger to our own democratic institutions and to any hope we have for a more peaceful world.
But we can stop him. Sound the alarm. Make sure your friends and neighbors understand that Trump is not just another conservative candidate. Donald Trump is dangerous. And the one thing that could allow him to succeed is complacency and low voter turnout in the most important election of our lifetimes.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. He is a partner in Democracy Partners and a Senior Strategist for Americans United for Change. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.
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Donald Trump is starting to recover support among Republicans, according to one poll. Voters seem to be willing to split their ticket when voting for president and Senate. And opposing gay marriage is increasingly a political liability. This is HuffPollster for Thursday, August 25, 2016.
TRUMP BEGINS TO REBOUND AMONG REPUBLICANS – Kathy Frankovic: “With two well-known (and generally disliked) presidential candidates, changes in voting support are likely to come only slowly and incrementally. And the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, though suggesting an upwards tick for Republican Donald Trump, underscores this point, with some of the positive changes coming mostly from his supporters. Last week, nearly half of Trump’s supporters characterized their vote for him as being one that was being cast against Democrat Hillary Clinton, and not one that was mostly for him. This week, Trump’s voters clearly feel better about him: six in ten say they are voting for the New York businessman. Political independents who are supporting Trump are more likely to say they are mainly voting against Clinton…Trump has picked up support from Republicans, something he needed to do. Last week, just 75% of Republicans said they would support their party’s nominee. This week, 84% say they will vote for Trump, about the same percentage as Democrats who say they will support Clinton.” [YouGov]
NORTH CAROLINA STILL LOOKS LIKE A TRUE BATTLEGROUND STATE – Two new polls in North Carolina show Clinton and Trump running very close. A CNN/ORC poll indicates Clinton is leading by 1 point, and a Monmouth University poll gives her a 2-point lead. Clinton leads by 3 points in the HuffPost Pollster average, driven by a large lead in prior polls. The Senate race between Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Deborah Ross is also tight, although the incumbent Sen. Burr seems to have the edge. The CNN/ORC poll has Burr up by 5 points, and Monmouth puts him up by 2 points. The HuffPost Pollster average shows him leading by 3 points.
Senate candidates are running ahead of Trump in many races – The North Carolina Senate race is one example of a Republican candidate running ahead of the party’s presidential candidate in the state. That indicates that voters are willing to say they’ll split between voting for a Republican for Senate, and voting for someone else for president. Whether they do that in the voting booth is unknown. Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden charted the differences in presidential and Senate race polling.
OPPOSING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IS NOW A POLITICAL LIABILITY – Betsy Cooper, Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch and Robert P. Jones: “Today, more than six in ten (62%) Americans say they favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally, compared to just three in ten (30%) who say they are opposed. Support for same-sex marriage has increased rapidly in recent years….Americans are also less likely today to see a conflict between same-sex marriage and their own religious beliefs. Today, only about four in ten (41%) Americans say same-sex marriage goes against their religious beliefs, down from 51% in 2013 and 62% in 2003….Consistent with the shifts in public opinion, opposition to same-sex marriage has become a potential liability for political candidates. A plurality (44%) of Americans say they would definitely not vote for a candidate who opposes same-sex marriage. Another 22% say they would consider voting for such a candidate, but with reservations. Only one in five (20%) Americans say they would definitely vote for such a candidate.” [PRRI]
“When we’ve asked in previous polls for Americans to rank the importance of various issues for their vote, issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, these kinds of classic culture war issues, always rank toward the bottom….Having said that, these issues have obviously functioned historically, particularly in the Republican Party, as symbolic,” PRRI’s CEO, Robert P. Jones, said Wednesday in a call with reporters. “What I think this poll shows is that even among Republicans, these issues are really losing their power as a culture war wedge issue…Among Democrats, it is much more becoming almost a litmus test issue.”
THERE’S NO EVIDENCE THAT TRUMP IS ATTRACTING MORE PEOPLE TO RALLIES – HuffPollster: “Donald Trump’s surrogates might want to stop pointing to the crowds he attracts as proof that he isn’t running behind Hillary Clinton…. To put this year’s crowd photos into perspective, we asked Americans in a recent HuffPost/YouGov poll whether they’d been to any rallies in 2016. We found out two things: Only a small percentage had, and even by that metric, Trump wasn’t clearly ahead. Just 8 percent said they’d been to an event for Clinton, only 6 percent said they’d been to an event for Trump, and 3 percent said they’d attended an event in support of another presidential candidate…. And even those numbers probably constitute an overly generous measure of how many Americans are taking part in political activities. People like to think of themselves as politically aware, which can lead them to overstate how active they actually are.” [HuffPost]
TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER TURNS TO POLL TRUTHERISM – Igor Bobic: “Polling on the 2016 presidential race undercounts secret Donald Trump voters, the businessman’s newly minted campaign manager argued this week during an interview with the U.K.’s Channel 4. Kellyanne Conway, a respected pollster with decades of experience in Republican politics, dismissed polls showing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton comfortably in the lead by claiming they ‘cherry-picked polling numbers that are put out there by media outlets that are also bent on his destruction.’ ‘Donald Trump performs consistently better in online polling where a human being is not talking to another human being about what he or she may do in the election,’ Conway maintained in the interview that aired Wednesday….Of the most recent 20 surveys of the race, not a single one shows him ahead.…as HuffPost’s Sam Stein and Ariel Edwards-Levy reported earlier this month, pollsters for both parties say there is little evidence to suggest that Trump voters are being seriously undercounted.” [HuffPost]
HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL! – You can receive this daily update every weekday morning via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and click “sign up.” That’s all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).
THURSDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ – Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Frank Newport finds no evidence of increasing anti-immigration sentiment. [Gallup]
-Reuters launches a new polling simulator. [Reuters, more from CJR]
-David Wasserman digs into claims that Republicans are gaining substantial numbers of new voter registrations. [538]
-Michael Lipka profiles Americans who don’t identify with any religious group. [Pew]
-The future of the CBS/New York Times poll looks uncertain. [Politico]
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
BREXIT AND TRUMP “Nigel Farage, a key figure in the successful campaign to get Britain out of the European Union, lent his support to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying Trump represented the same type of anti-establishment movement that he masterminded in his own country.” [Reuters]
DEATH TOLL NEARS 250 IN ITALY EARTHQUAKE Officials fear the number could continue to rise. And here are photos of the devastation, along with before and after shots of the decimated towns. [Reuters]
12 DEAD AFTER ATTACK ON KABUL’S AMERICAN UNIVERSITYSeven students were killed when two gunmen stormed the complex following a car bomb explosion. [Reuters]
COLOMBIA, FARC REACH HISTORIC PEACE DEAL “Colombia’s government and leftist FARC rebels unveiled a final peace deal on Wednesday to end a 50-year-old guerrilla war, one of the world’s longest conflicts which took the resource-rich country to the brink of being a failed state.” [Reuters]
HELLO, ANOTHER EARTH? “An Earth-like planet is orbiting the sun closest to ours, scientists announced Wednesday. The planet, called ‘Proxima b,’ orbits a star called ‘Proxima Centauri’ and has a temperature that would allow liquid water to exist there.” [Lee Speigel, HuffPost]
BE RIGHT BACK, ROAD-TRIPPING TO THE NEW NATIONAL PARK The tens of thousands of acres of Maine forest previously owned by one of the co-founders of Burt’s Bees are now federally protected ― just in time for the 100-year celebration of the National Park Service today. [Hilary Hanson, HuffPost]
HOPE SOLO SUSPENDED FOR SIX MONTHS, NATIONAL TEAM CONTRACT TERMINATED For calling Sweden’s team a “bunch of cowards” after her team’s Olympic loss. [Reuters]
FIGHTING ISIS WITH GRAFFITI When getting caught for street art means a death sentence. [CNN]
For more video news from The Huffington Post, check out this morning’s newsbrief.
LESLIE JONES’ PERSONAL WEBSITE HAS BEEN HACKED Well-wishes have poured in for the comedian, who has been the object of much online vitriol this year. [HuffPost]
INSIDE FACEBOOK’S INFLUENCE ON 2016 “Such news exists primarily within users’ feeds, its authorship obscured, its provenance unclear, its veracity questionable. It exists so far outside the normal channels of news production and distribution that its claims will go unchallenged.” [NYT]
THAT TIME BALTIMORE FORGOT TO TELL THE PUBLIC ABOUT ITS VIDEO SURVEILLANCE “Since January, police have been testing an aerial surveillance system adapted from the surge in Iraq.” [Bloomberg]
THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE CANCELED A SHOWING OF ‘BIRTH OF A NATION’ And scheduled a moderated discussion about the film and the rape scandal surrounding its creator, Nate Parker, instead. [Variety]
EVER HEARD OF TWENTY ONE PILOTS? Meet the band that’s able to sell out arenas when most people have never even heard of them. [The New Yorker]
HOW TO DO DRUG DEVELOPMENT FOR LESS THAN A BILLION DOLLARS A look at the successful nonprofit methods of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative. [Nature]
~ Hackers could be stealing your money through your phone. Check out these tips to protect yourself.
~ If you aren’t teary-eyed by the end of the “Manchester by the Sea” trailer, check your tear ducts.
~ New Maroon 5 music is coming…
~ Ryan Lochte is headed to “Dancing with the Stars.”
~ Do we care about the continuous drama in Justin Bieber’s love life?
~ Pro tip for the next Olympics ― maybe don’t give your athletes all theexact same luggage.
~ This guy has a plan to reverse global warming that involvesgeoengineering and shooting particles into the atmosphere.
~ Meet the new American Girl doll, a 1960s aspiring singer who lives in Detroit.
~ Southwest pilots are picketing over executive compensation.
Send tips/quips/quotes/stories/photos/events/scoops to Lauren Weber lauren.weber@huffingtonpost.com.
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In the early 1940s, a young southern writer by the name of Flannery O’Connor spun a tale about an extremist politician and his base that resonates deeply today.
An election campaign is on for the governorship of a southern state. Every time the mild mannered college teacher Rayber goes to get a shave or a haircut, the men who work in the local barbershop are talking and laughing about their favorite candidate, the wildly racist strongman, Mr. Hawkson, known as “Hawk,” and they often repeat with enthusiasm something outrageous he’s just said at a public rally.
Hawk’s campaign is all bluster and insults. He’s got pet-names for his opponents, diminishing “effeminate” epithets that his followers relish and love to repeat. The head barber at one point says that all his talks are “killeroos,” as he recounts to the roomful of chortling and celebrating men some of their candidate’s most recent racist statements. Rayber is shocked that they’re speaking so crudely while quiet George, a young African American man, sweeps the floor of the shop toward the back. The professor has to speak up.
“A great many people,” Rayber said, “consider Hawk a demagogue.”
He wondered if George knew what demagogue meant. He should have said “lying politician.”
“Demagogue!” The barber slapped his knee and whooped. “That’s what Hawk said!” he howled. “Ain’t that a shot! ‘Folks,’ he says, ‘them Mother Hubbards says I’m a demagogue.’ Then he rears back and says sort of soft-like, ‘Am I a demagogue, you people?’ And they yells, ‘Naw, Hawk, you ain’t no demagogue!’ And he comes forward shouting, ‘Oh yeah I am, I’m the best damn demagogue in this state!” And you should hear them people roar! Whew!”
Rayber is stunned. He doesn’t know what to say. There are so many issues at stake in this election. There are too many obvious things deeply wrong about this man, Hawk. The progressive but timid college teacher can’t figure out where to start. He wishes the barber would read some things. The man says he doesn’t have to read nothing. All he has to do is think, using horse sense. No big words are going to make any difference. Doesn’t Rayber know that Hawk is gonna keep those other people in their place and make sure everybody like him and the teacher make more money if he’s elected? Rayber tries to point out that a little extra money isn’t going to mean anything if the state collapses under the weight of Hawk’s total incompetence and crazy beliefs. So he vows to defend his own sensible candidate some time soon in the barbershop and enlighten all of them. The barbers laugh more and say that he just can’t use the phrase ‘goodgovermint.’ That’s not allowed, they snicker.
Rayber goes home and writes a two page statement about the vast differences between the candidates. At first, it’s hard. The real issues are so obvious. Where should he begin? How do these men not see such things already? He laboriously writes out what’s wrong with Hawk and what’s right about the clearly better candidate, the reasonable and progressive Darmon. He then takes this little two page speech to a friend, the philosophy professor Jacobs, explains what’s going on, and reads it aloud to practice and get some feedback. The philosopher says, simply, “I never argue.” Rayber insists: But what if you’re right? “I never argue,” Jacobs repeats, knowing the futility of what his friend is attempting.
Our hero goes back to the barbershop and reads his treatise aloud, hoping to refute and reform these men, using the real issues and clear reason. They laugh and laugh and laugh. In the end, he punches the barber and runs out of the shop.
The seventeenth century French scientist Blaise Pascal, as well as the prominent eighteenth century British philosopher David Hume, both understood that, for most people, reason is the servant of passion and can rarely undermine or overturn its commitments. Emotion trumps all. So when a political candidate appeals to the basest and most fundamental fears, resentments, and sources of personal bitterness, no amount or quality of reasoning can possibly make a difference. You either walk away, or someone throws a punch.
It’s a sad commentary on the human condition. And in this classic story, “The Barber,” Flannery O’Connor anticipated well what’s going on in our current presidential election. She captures in the character of Rayber the total confidence of progressives in being right, the accompanying astonishment that anyone could possibly support someone like Hawk, and our often Quixotic approach to any attempt at explaining what’s what and turning things around.
Aristotle believed that politics is about how best to live well together. As such, in principle, political discussion should be among the most ennobling forms of discourse. When I recently suggested this during a breakfast in New York City at a table of corporate leaders overlooking the Statue of Liberty, everyone laughed so suddenly and loudly I thought a few might choke on their eggs. There can clearly be a huge gap between theory and practice. And it’s one we’re all experiencing quite vividly right now. And yet, despite Rayber’s ratiocinative failure in the story, and my own experience of strict limits in similar efforts throughout the current campaign, I remain stubbornly convinced that cool and sensible reason has a role to play. Or else, our democracy is doomed. And if you happen to disagree, please don’t tell me. I’d hate for somebody to have to get punched.
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Hyde Lounge was a nightclub located on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and North Laurel Avenue in Hollywood. Along with Les Deux, Club LAX and Guy’s, it was one of the best known celebrity hotspots during the mid-aughts.
Those were the years when celebrity gossip seemed to ramp up and there was no shortage of scandal. TMZ had launched in November 2005 and gossip weeklies saw significant circulation increases over the next couple of years as stars like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan provided a constant stream of news. It was in this climate, a full decade ago, that a now-classic moment in pop culture occurred.
On Aug. 25, 2006, Tara Reid strolled up to the velvet rope outside Hyde Lounge, pausing to smile and wave to one of the many photographers in the crowd, before making her way toward the club’s doors. When she reached the club’s doorman, she hugged a man waiting to get in and said, “How funny was last night?” — at least, that seems to be what she said. It’s difficult to hear over the sound of Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose” blaring from the club. That’s also the reason we can’t hear exactly what the doorman said as he informed the actress that he wasn’t going to let her in.
It’s at that moment the camera pans to the right, as Paris Hilton and a relatively unknown Kim Kardashian sashay arm-in-arm past a throng of paparazzi, walking right into the club without giving Reid a second thought.
Reid and Hilton had partied together for years, but Reid had more recently assumed the role of interim BFF after Hilton and Nicole Richie split up ― at least, it seemed that way until Kardashian came along. Why Reid fell out of favor with Hilton is anyone’s guess, but the actress revealed in 2014 that she hasn’t spoken to Hilton since.
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