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"content": "\u003cp>When one thinks of American blackness, there is the unsaid ugly truth that nearly all American blacks who have descended from the historical African diaspora in America have one (or several) rapacious white slave owners in their family tree at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, in the early days of the United States, was the invention of racism for economic necessity. From 1619 until 1865, white male Americans chose to breed a black enslaved workforce through the state-sanctioned rape of black women to build the new nation and support their white supremacist class. Race became the single unifying identifier—determining everything about one’s life starting with this most basic division: enslaved or free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American law was that the “condition of the child followed that of the mother,” backed up by the “one drop rule,” the legal framework that dictated even one drop of blackness made an individual black, never white. The idea of blackness as a pollutant, a taint that would erode the purity of whiteness, was seized by politicians around the world then—and now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of this legacy of sexual violence and anti-blackness, black and white mixed individuals have long been considered black in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To a much larger degree than many people would like to admit, race still determines a vast part of one’s life—social networks and mobility, birth and other medical care, employment opportunities and so on. Indeed, there is an entire genre of literature and film, popularized in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, composed of blacks “passing” for white to avoid this racism. Some of the most famous examples are Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, \u003cem>Passing; \u003c/em>James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 opus, \u003cem>The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; \u003c/em>and the 1959 film \u003cem>The Imitation of Life\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Valentine, the author of the memoir \u003cem>When I Was White,\u003c/em> did not choose to pass for white; her mother made the choice for her. So Valentine was raised as white by white parents in white middle-class communities—only to discover as a young woman that her biological father was actually black. As Valentine endeavors to explore what her new identity means to her, she searches for ways to connect to her blackness. For Valentine, learning that she is black is to reject whiteness; she cannot comprehend how the privileges of whiteness can be held hand in hand with the racism the black body is subject to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valentine has good reason to feel this way; her space of “passing” for white puts her in situations where, because they assume she is one of their own, she hears the racist things white people say when there are no black people around—starting with her own family. Valentine’s pain when her mother refuses to let her attend a school dance because her date is black, dismisses black people as lazy welfare spongers who live in the ghetto or bans Valentine from watching TV shows with black people is palpable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of her white mother’s ongoing racism throughout her childhood, Valentine’s first understanding of blackness is as other—as negative, dangerous and wrong. “I got the message that black was undesirable,” Valentine writes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13863402 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"388\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85.jpg 388w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85-160x247.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px\">At the center of \u003cem>When I Was White\u003c/em> is this immensely complicated relationship between Valentine and her mother. As Valentine seeks to learn more about her biological father, her mother will only say: “Your father was a black man who raped me in college.” Valentine tries to reckon with this, seeking more information from her mother—and in the aftermath of her mother’s ever changing narrative of Valentine’s conception and constant refusals to answer Valentine’s questions, she seeks answers from her mother’s college friends as well. Valentine, torn between respecting her mother’s trauma and wanting to connect with her biological father, struggles to come to terms with the many layers of the situation, navigating the line between the importance of believing women’s accounts of rape and the awareness of the history of white women’s false rape accusations against black men as an excuse for lynching and other racial violence throughout American history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valentine is at her best when we see her sift through this history, creating well-crafted scenes that resonate with depth and emotional weight in a commitment to get to the truth—even if it paints her in a negative light. She reveals that everyone suspected she had black heritage—friends, teachers, even she herself—but to prevent jeopardizing her family dynamic, no one spoke of it. Scared, the young Valentine had also remained silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I worried that acknowledging I was black and had a different father than the one I grew up with could shatter the unity of the family my parents had worked so hard to create,” Valentine writes. Indeed, after taking a DNA test and finding out they are not biologically related, the man Valentine knew as her father moved out of the home he shared with Valentine’s mother and into an apartment of his own 300 miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Black and white biraciality in this country has long been understood as a type of blackness, and the presence of biracial individuals within blackness has added to the power of the black cultural block. Without biracial being considered black, for example, America would not yet have had its first black president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But why, then, is biracial not also a type of white? If you look past the racist origins of the “one drop rule,” what happens to our thinking of racial duality?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One wonders: Why is this mutually exclusive? Why must Valentine choose either black or white? One wonders, too: If the author was Latina and black or Asian and black, would discovering her blackness mean losing her Latinx or Asian identity? We are beyond black and white, beyond the “one drop rule,” in American society. So, should our understanding of multiracial identity evolve too? Can it evolve?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or is the history and continued presence of white supremacy in our culture so virulent that whiteness cannot be held in the same conversation as other multiracial identities?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These and other questions are tackled in \u003cem>When I Was White. \u003c/em>But in a larger sense, Valentine’s memoir documents an experience any black individual in the U.S. has had: From birth you have seen yourself as a normal human being, worthy of just as much respect and personhood as anyone in America. But then, upon that first pivotal experience with racism, you realize that in this society, because of your skin, you are seen as \u003cem>other;\u003c/em> because of your skin you are seen as \u003cem>less than \u003c/em>and treated accordingly—and always with the threat of violence against your body ready to rise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the United States continues to become more brown and black and less white—resulting in a xenophobic backlash against brown and black Americans and a nostalgia by some for white European immigrants—the ideas in \u003cem>When I Was White \u003c/em>become even more necessary. Here, quite simply, is a masterful explication on the formation of self and identity—of learning to trust yourself instead of the lies other people, no matter how close, tell you about who you are.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hope Wabuke is a Ugandan-American poet, essayist and writer. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When one thinks of American blackness, there is the unsaid ugly truth that nearly all American blacks who have descended from the historical African diaspora in America have one (or several) rapacious white slave owners in their family tree at some point.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, in the early days of the United States, was the invention of racism for economic necessity. From 1619 until 1865, white male Americans chose to breed a black enslaved workforce through the state-sanctioned rape of black women to build the new nation and support their white supremacist class. Race became the single unifying identifier—determining everything about one’s life starting with this most basic division: enslaved or free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The American law was that the “condition of the child followed that of the mother,” backed up by the “one drop rule,” the legal framework that dictated even one drop of blackness made an individual black, never white. The idea of blackness as a pollutant, a taint that would erode the purity of whiteness, was seized by politicians around the world then—and now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of this legacy of sexual violence and anti-blackness, black and white mixed individuals have long been considered black in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To a much larger degree than many people would like to admit, race still determines a vast part of one’s life—social networks and mobility, birth and other medical care, employment opportunities and so on. Indeed, there is an entire genre of literature and film, popularized in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, composed of blacks “passing” for white to avoid this racism. Some of the most famous examples are Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, \u003cem>Passing; \u003c/em>James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 opus, \u003cem>The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; \u003c/em>and the 1959 film \u003cem>The Imitation of Life\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sarah Valentine, the author of the memoir \u003cem>When I Was White,\u003c/em> did not choose to pass for white; her mother made the choice for her. So Valentine was raised as white by white parents in white middle-class communities—only to discover as a young woman that her biological father was actually black. As Valentine endeavors to explore what her new identity means to her, she searches for ways to connect to her blackness. For Valentine, learning that she is black is to reject whiteness; she cannot comprehend how the privileges of whiteness can be held hand in hand with the racism the black body is subject to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valentine has good reason to feel this way; her space of “passing” for white puts her in situations where, because they assume she is one of their own, she hears the racist things white people say when there are no black people around—starting with her own family. Valentine’s pain when her mother refuses to let her attend a school dance because her date is black, dismisses black people as lazy welfare spongers who live in the ghetto or bans Valentine from watching TV shows with black people is palpable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Because of her white mother’s ongoing racism throughout her childhood, Valentine’s first understanding of blackness is as other—as negative, dangerous and wrong. “I got the message that black was undesirable,” Valentine writes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13863402 alignright\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"388\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85.jpg 388w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/9781250146755_custom-cd454d4a1310a04e7094e699513173647d738ac3-s600-c85-160x247.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px\">At the center of \u003cem>When I Was White\u003c/em> is this immensely complicated relationship between Valentine and her mother. As Valentine seeks to learn more about her biological father, her mother will only say: “Your father was a black man who raped me in college.” Valentine tries to reckon with this, seeking more information from her mother—and in the aftermath of her mother’s ever changing narrative of Valentine’s conception and constant refusals to answer Valentine’s questions, she seeks answers from her mother’s college friends as well. Valentine, torn between respecting her mother’s trauma and wanting to connect with her biological father, struggles to come to terms with the many layers of the situation, navigating the line between the importance of believing women’s accounts of rape and the awareness of the history of white women’s false rape accusations against black men as an excuse for lynching and other racial violence throughout American history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Valentine is at her best when we see her sift through this history, creating well-crafted scenes that resonate with depth and emotional weight in a commitment to get to the truth—even if it paints her in a negative light. She reveals that everyone suspected she had black heritage—friends, teachers, even she herself—but to prevent jeopardizing her family dynamic, no one spoke of it. Scared, the young Valentine had also remained silent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I worried that acknowledging I was black and had a different father than the one I grew up with could shatter the unity of the family my parents had worked so hard to create,” Valentine writes. Indeed, after taking a DNA test and finding out they are not biologically related, the man Valentine knew as her father moved out of the home he shared with Valentine’s mother and into an apartment of his own 300 miles away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Black and white biraciality in this country has long been understood as a type of blackness, and the presence of biracial individuals within blackness has added to the power of the black cultural block. Without biracial being considered black, for example, America would not yet have had its first black president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But why, then, is biracial not also a type of white? 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"content": "\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em>, Tiffany Haddish snatches a revolver from her just-out-of-jail gangster husband, gets up in his face, and snarls, “It’s \u003cem>my \u003c/em>business now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a strong moment—one that gets at something deeper than the surface pleasures and platitudes of a mob movie led by women; it intimates just how caustic and corrosive running a business can be. How are the consequences of the American Dream—the ruthless ambitions that drive capitalism—gendered?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the question at the center of Andrea Berloff’s film, based on the comic book miniseries by Ollie Masters and illustrated by Ming Doyle. Yet so much of what’s promising about \u003cem>The Kitchen, \u003c/em>including its ability to explore that question meaningfully, is hampered by its need to justify its own existence—to keep convincing you that it’s sufficiently woke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film follows three women (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss) whose Irish gangster husbands (Brian d’Arcy James, Kevin O’Carroll, and Jeremy Bobb, respectively) are sent to jail, leaving the three to pick up the pieces in 1970s-era Hell’s Kitchen. As we watch them assert power and claim turf for themselves,\u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em> does give Haddish and Moss room to flex their genre muscles, but it habitually second-guesses its own decision to tell its story in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The palpable, hesitant self-doubt the film exudes is ironic, given the trajectory of its characters’ ascension in the mob world. Kathy (McCarthy), Ruby (Haddish), and Claire (Moss) have to prove to the family that anything male mobsters can do, they can do better. It feels like the film, too, keeps trying to say this. In several scenes, characters explicate and underline that women can be gangsters, too, and that the world is misogynistic, patriarchal and racist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The character of Little Jackie (Myt Watford), for example—who runs things while Ruby’s husband is behind bars—is written as a stingy, foul, \u003cem>cartoonishly \u003c/em>misogynistic jerk. By showing him shorting the women the money they now need to support themselves and their families, the script tells us everything we need to know about how women are undervalued in that system. But the film relentlessly asserts and overexplains this point, stripping it of any human nuance. Writer-director Andrea Berloff’s script similarly telegraphs what it means when the women take things into their own hands, employing clunky dialogue about how meaningful it is that these characters can do this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlcyEDZVYkw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those moments when the film makes its points about gender and power dynamics using little to no dialogue are its most effective. It’s a lot more interesting, for instance, to watch Tiffany Haddish strut down a crosswalk, hand held out at cars, evoking Pam Grier as she \u003cem>literally \u003c/em>stops traffic, than it is to listen to her intone that they need to remind the family “what the word \u003cem>family \u003c/em>even \u003cem>means\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also more exciting to watch Elisabeth Moss, whose character is heavily shaped by the marital abuse she’s experienced, wield a Magnum at a street harasser than it is to watch her chew her way through ham-fisted speeches about the action she just took, or is about to take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the film settles down and stops trying to rationalize itself, \u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em> can be thrilling. Soon enough, things get appropriately pulpy and nasty, leaning into genre conventions and then inflecting them with female power. As Margo Channing might opine, “Funny business, a woman’s career.” Berloff lets her leads walk the streets like they own them, because they do, adding ghoulish details that drive this home: the body in the alleyway, the bloodstains on the wall, the cross hanging on a wall behind someone as they hack away at a corpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it’s actively exploring ambiguities of power and alliance, transaction and labor, leadership and territory, the film raises intriguing questions about capitalism, gender and race. And it manages to do so while supplying a steady stream of entertaining plot twists. As the relationships among these three women fluctuate and evolve, they emerge as clear, individualized characters, as opposed to mouthpieces delivering talking points about gender politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes roughly a third of the film’s running time for it to stop insisting on itself long enough to dig deeper, beyond the surface optics of its story. In the end, Berloff \u003cem>is\u003c/em> invested in showing us that in the mob—as in the world of “legitimate” business—empires are built on the blood of others. I just wish the film didn’t feel it needed to tell us to buckle our seatbelts; we already knew it was going to be a bumpy night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+The+Overwritten%2C+Undercooked+%27The+Kitchen%2C%27+Mob+Wives+Are+Doin%27+It+For+Themselves&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In \u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em>, Tiffany Haddish snatches a revolver from her just-out-of-jail gangster husband, gets up in his face, and snarls, “It’s \u003cem>my \u003c/em>business now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a strong moment—one that gets at something deeper than the surface pleasures and platitudes of a mob movie led by women; it intimates just how caustic and corrosive running a business can be. How are the consequences of the American Dream—the ruthless ambitions that drive capitalism—gendered?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the question at the center of Andrea Berloff’s film, based on the comic book miniseries by Ollie Masters and illustrated by Ming Doyle. Yet so much of what’s promising about \u003cem>The Kitchen, \u003c/em>including its ability to explore that question meaningfully, is hampered by its need to justify its own existence—to keep convincing you that it’s sufficiently woke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film follows three women (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss) whose Irish gangster husbands (Brian d’Arcy James, Kevin O’Carroll, and Jeremy Bobb, respectively) are sent to jail, leaving the three to pick up the pieces in 1970s-era Hell’s Kitchen. As we watch them assert power and claim turf for themselves,\u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em> does give Haddish and Moss room to flex their genre muscles, but it habitually second-guesses its own decision to tell its story in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The palpable, hesitant self-doubt the film exudes is ironic, given the trajectory of its characters’ ascension in the mob world. Kathy (McCarthy), Ruby (Haddish), and Claire (Moss) have to prove to the family that anything male mobsters can do, they can do better. It feels like the film, too, keeps trying to say this. In several scenes, characters explicate and underline that women can be gangsters, too, and that the world is misogynistic, patriarchal and racist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The character of Little Jackie (Myt Watford), for example—who runs things while Ruby’s husband is behind bars—is written as a stingy, foul, \u003cem>cartoonishly \u003c/em>misogynistic jerk. By showing him shorting the women the money they now need to support themselves and their families, the script tells us everything we need to know about how women are undervalued in that system. But the film relentlessly asserts and overexplains this point, stripping it of any human nuance. Writer-director Andrea Berloff’s script similarly telegraphs what it means when the women take things into their own hands, employing clunky dialogue about how meaningful it is that these characters can do this.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/YlcyEDZVYkw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/YlcyEDZVYkw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Those moments when the film makes its points about gender and power dynamics using little to no dialogue are its most effective. It’s a lot more interesting, for instance, to watch Tiffany Haddish strut down a crosswalk, hand held out at cars, evoking Pam Grier as she \u003cem>literally \u003c/em>stops traffic, than it is to listen to her intone that they need to remind the family “what the word \u003cem>family \u003c/em>even \u003cem>means\u003c/em>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also more exciting to watch Elisabeth Moss, whose character is heavily shaped by the marital abuse she’s experienced, wield a Magnum at a street harasser than it is to watch her chew her way through ham-fisted speeches about the action she just took, or is about to take.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once the film settles down and stops trying to rationalize itself, \u003cem>The Kitchen\u003c/em> can be thrilling. Soon enough, things get appropriately pulpy and nasty, leaning into genre conventions and then inflecting them with female power. As Margo Channing might opine, “Funny business, a woman’s career.” Berloff lets her leads walk the streets like they own them, because they do, adding ghoulish details that drive this home: the body in the alleyway, the bloodstains on the wall, the cross hanging on a wall behind someone as they hack away at a corpse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it’s actively exploring ambiguities of power and alliance, transaction and labor, leadership and territory, the film raises intriguing questions about capitalism, gender and race. And it manages to do so while supplying a steady stream of entertaining plot twists. As the relationships among these three women fluctuate and evolve, they emerge as clear, individualized characters, as opposed to mouthpieces delivering talking points about gender politics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes roughly a third of the film’s running time for it to stop insisting on itself long enough to dig deeper, beyond the surface optics of its story. In the end, Berloff \u003cem>is\u003c/em> invested in showing us that in the mob—as in the world of “legitimate” business—empires are built on the blood of others. I just wish the film didn’t feel it needed to tell us to buckle our seatbelts; we already knew it was going to be a bumpy night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+The+Overwritten%2C+Undercooked+%27The+Kitchen%2C%27+Mob+Wives+Are+Doin%27+It+For+Themselves&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Cyntoia Brown Released After 15 Years In Prison For Murder",
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"content": "\u003cp>Cyntoia Brown, who served 15 years of a life sentence for killing a man when she was 16, has been released from a Nashville prison, Tennessee officials \u003ca href=\"https://www.tn.gov/correction/news/2019/8/7/release-of-cyntoia-brown.html\">announced\u003c/a> early Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, then-Gov. Bill Haslam took the unusual step of granting Brown clemency for what \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682938808/cyntoia-brown-jailed-for-murder-is-granted-clemency-by-tenn-governor\">he called\u003c/a> a “tragic and complex case,” a major victory for Brown and her supporters, who for years have maintained that the 2004 killing was an act of self-defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, the fight for Brown’s release has brought prominent lawyers to her defense, a\u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/me-facing-life/\"> PBS documentary\u003c/a> and backing from celebrities including Kim Kardashian West and Rihanna. Her case also \u003ca href=\"https://www.nashvillepublicradio.org/post/cyntoia-brown-s-release-raises-questions-about-tennessee-s-strict-sentencing-rules#stream/0\">inspired the introduction\u003c/a> of state legislation aimed at protecting minors who are victims of sex trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2006, Brown was convicted of aggravated robbery and first-degree murder for killing 43-year-old real estate agent Johnny Allen, whom she went home with after he picked her up for sex at a Sonic Drive-In in Nashville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She told police that she pulled a pistol out of her purse and fatally shot Allen because she thought he was reaching for a gun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She then fled with Allen’s guns and money. She drove away in his pickup truck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prosecutors claimed that Brown shot Allen as part of a plan to rob him, but Brown told police she was acting to protect herself. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison over the killing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Supreme Court\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464338364/supreme-court-opens-door-to-parole-for-juvenile-lifers\"> has ruled that\u003c/a> mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders are not constitutional, but Tennessee prosecutors successfully argued that Brown would technically become eligible for parole after 51 years, in 2055.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown, now 31, was among \u003ca href=\"https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/tennessee-teen-lifers-tennessean-investigation-cyntoia-brown/3079107002/\">more than 180 inmates\u003c/a> serving life sentences in the state for crimes they committed as teenagers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She never testified during her trial, but during her appeals process, Brown, who had been a teenage runaway, took the stand and described how at the time of the killing, she was ensnared in an abusive relationship with a drug dealer known as Cut Throat who forced her into prostitution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her case gained new scrutiny with the rise of the #MeToo movement, as her supporters drew attention to the case using the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown. Criminal justice reform advocates portrayed Brown’s case as an example of the unreasonable incarceration of a teenager who was a victim of sex trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did we somehow change the definition of #JUSTICE along the way??” Rihanna asked in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/Bbwi26PjHf7/?hl=en\">a 2017 Instagram post\u003c/a> about Brown that received nearly 2 million likes. “The system has failed,” Kardashian West \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/933001503123554304?lang=en\">tweeted\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While incarcerated, Brown earned her GED, finished a bachelor’s degree and mentored at-risk youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Transformation should be accompanied by hope,” Haslam said when commuting her sentence to parole in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the National Women’s Law Center \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/nwlc/status/1159101177415557123\">celebrated\u003c/a> the long legal battle that led to Brown’s release, but with a cautionary note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re glad Cyntoia has finally been freed — but we must not forget that she never should have been in prison in the first place. We must continue to seek justice for survivors like her,” the group said on Twitter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her publisher \u003ca href=\"https://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1300&isbn=9781982141103&FilterByName=&FilterBy=&FilterVal=&ob=0&pn=1&ed=&showcart=N&camefrom=&find=&a=\">announced\u003c/a> that Brown will release a memoir in October that will describe her traumatic childhood, how she transformed her life from behind bars and the events that led to her murder conviction and eventual release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Cyntoia Brown, who served 15 years of a life sentence for killing a man when she was 16, has been released from a Nashville prison, Tennessee officials \u003ca href=\"https://www.tn.gov/correction/news/2019/8/7/release-of-cyntoia-brown.html\">announced\u003c/a> early Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier this year, then-Gov. Bill Haslam took the unusual step of granting Brown clemency for what \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682938808/cyntoia-brown-jailed-for-murder-is-granted-clemency-by-tenn-governor\">he called\u003c/a> a “tragic and complex case,” a major victory for Brown and her supporters, who for years have maintained that the 2004 killing was an act of self-defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, the fight for Brown’s release has brought prominent lawyers to her defense, a\u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/me-facing-life/\"> PBS documentary\u003c/a> and backing from celebrities including Kim Kardashian West and Rihanna. Her case also \u003ca href=\"https://www.nashvillepublicradio.org/post/cyntoia-brown-s-release-raises-questions-about-tennessee-s-strict-sentencing-rules#stream/0\">inspired the introduction\u003c/a> of state legislation aimed at protecting minors who are victims of sex trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2006, Brown was convicted of aggravated robbery and first-degree murder for killing 43-year-old real estate agent Johnny Allen, whom she went home with after he picked her up for sex at a Sonic Drive-In in Nashville.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She told police that she pulled a pistol out of her purse and fatally shot Allen because she thought he was reaching for a gun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She then fled with Allen’s guns and money. She drove away in his pickup truck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Prosecutors claimed that Brown shot Allen as part of a plan to rob him, but Brown told police she was acting to protect herself. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison over the killing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The U.S. Supreme Court\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464338364/supreme-court-opens-door-to-parole-for-juvenile-lifers\"> has ruled that\u003c/a> mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders are not constitutional, but Tennessee prosecutors successfully argued that Brown would technically become eligible for parole after 51 years, in 2055.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown, now 31, was among \u003ca href=\"https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/tennessee-teen-lifers-tennessean-investigation-cyntoia-brown/3079107002/\">more than 180 inmates\u003c/a> serving life sentences in the state for crimes they committed as teenagers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She never testified during her trial, but during her appeals process, Brown, who had been a teenage runaway, took the stand and described how at the time of the killing, she was ensnared in an abusive relationship with a drug dealer known as Cut Throat who forced her into prostitution.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her case gained new scrutiny with the rise of the #MeToo movement, as her supporters drew attention to the case using the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown. Criminal justice reform advocates portrayed Brown’s case as an example of the unreasonable incarceration of a teenager who was a victim of sex trafficking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Did we somehow change the definition of #JUSTICE along the way??” Rihanna asked in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/Bbwi26PjHf7/?hl=en\">a 2017 Instagram post\u003c/a> about Brown that received nearly 2 million likes. “The system has failed,” Kardashian West \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/933001503123554304?lang=en\">tweeted\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While incarcerated, Brown earned her GED, finished a bachelor’s degree and mentored at-risk youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Transformation should be accompanied by hope,” Haslam said when commuting her sentence to parole in January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, the National Women’s Law Center \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/nwlc/status/1159101177415557123\">celebrated\u003c/a> the long legal battle that led to Brown’s release, but with a cautionary note.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re glad Cyntoia has finally been freed — but we must not forget that she never should have been in prison in the first place. We must continue to seek justice for survivors like her,” the group said on Twitter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her publisher \u003ca href=\"https://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1300&isbn=9781982141103&FilterByName=&FilterBy=&FilterVal=&ob=0&pn=1&ed=&showcart=N&camefrom=&find=&a=\">announced\u003c/a> that Brown will release a memoir in October that will describe her traumatic childhood, how she transformed her life from behind bars and the events that led to her murder conviction and eventual release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Old Gang is Back Together in 'BH90210' ... Sort Of",
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"content": "\u003cp>How do you do a reboot when there’s absolutely no reason to do a reboot?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The characters on \u003cem>Beverly Hills, 90210 \u003c/em>were never particularly interesting. They were generic rich high-school students who grew into generic rich college students and then generic rich adults. They had money to chase their dreams regardless of talent (Owning a club! Running a newspaper! Having a boutique!). Their problems (Stalking! Diet pill addiction! Gambling addiction! Cocaine addiction! Meth addiction! Joining a cult!) would, in most cases, flare up and then go away, specifically because without them, there was no plot other than everyone sleeping with each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, there is no ever-loving reason to revisit any of these ding-dongs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Refreshingly, the makers of the new show \u003cem>BH90210\u003c/em>, a nostalgia product for people who miss the original show, know there’s no reason to. So they don’t try. Instead, what begins Wednesday night on Fox is a scripted show about the actors trying to decide whether to revive the teen soap they were on when they were young. And all those actors play themselves. Get it? So you’re not catching up with Brenda and Brandon; you’re catching up with Shannen Doherty and Jason Priestley, playing fictionalized versions of themselves in a kind of showbiz comedy-drama-soap-farce about a potential \u003cem>90210 \u003c/em>reboot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcWKGy7df5o\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are strong resemblances between the fictionalized versions of these actors and the real ones: Like the real Gabrielle Carteris, the one on the show is the president of the actors’ guild, and like the real Tori Spelling, the scripted one has had financial problems after using reality television to support herself and her large family for years. But the spouses are played by actors and the details are made up and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Side note: Let’s just say that when I refer to an actor by first name, like “Tori,” I mean the fictional version. When I refer to an actor by last name, like “Spelling,” I mean the actual actor. It will make things … well, marginally clearer.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the first episode, the cast (Jason, Tori, Gabi, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, and Brian Austin Green) gets together at an anniversary panel. After they share a wild night of light infidelity and petty theft, Tori decides that the way to pay her many overdue bills is to convince everybody to come back together for a \u003cem>90210 \u003c/em>reboot. But they may also need Shannen—that’s Shannen Doherty—who we learn is off running an animal sanctuary and has been semi-estranged from the cast for years. (Another element borrowed from real-life rumors, at the very least.) There is a reasonably classy acknowledgment that a core cast member, Luke Perry, has died, but Tori hypothesizes that the rest of them just might be able to rally and put on a new show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, this is a very strange way to make a reboot. It’s not even of any potential value to anybody who isn’t looking at it as nostalgia—in no way would this hold up as a new Fox comedy for a curious person coming to it fresh. There is no straight-faced argument for it as an independent piece of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as a nostalgic doodad, which is all that a lot of these reboots are anyway? It’s kind of cute. And, as previously mentioned, strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no question that they’re flirting with a kind of uncanny San Fernando Valley, where the fictionalized actors are fake but also real, but also fake, \u003cem>ad infinitum\u003c/em>. Because Spelling is in fact an executive producer of \u003cem>BH90210\u003c/em>, just as fictional Tori is driving the reboot and trying to get everyone on board. Brian is married to a very famous woman, just as Green is married to Megan Fox. Jennie has had a couple of failed marriages, just like Garth, and Jason really wants to direct, just like Priestley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a certain number of silly meta-jokes, like the fact that Tori’s husband is played by Ivan Sergei, who was Spelling’s co-star in the legendarily campy TV movie \u003cem>Mother May I Sleep With Danger?\u003c/em> It’s hard not to think that a moment in which Jason is kicked right in the Priestley, as it were, is meant as a little gift to people who found Brandon Walsh to be a self-righteous gasbag. (He was one, FYI.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to give a proper critique of something like this. It’s more like a bonus feature on a DVD than anything else. They’ve only given critics the first two episodes, and Shannen hasn’t even joined the group yet, so who knows how committed they are to making this as wild as it might be. But perhaps because expectations were lower than the top of Brandon’s head (he was short, you see), I must admit that I chuckled at its audacious weirdness. It’s the kind of thing that passes the time while you fold the laundry, and then you never think about it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some days, that’s a blessing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Old+Gang+Is+Back+Together+In+%27BH90210%2C%27+Sort+Of&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are strong resemblances between the fictionalized versions of these actors and the real ones: Like the real Gabrielle Carteris, the one on the show is the president of the actors’ guild, and like the real Tori Spelling, the scripted one has had financial problems after using reality television to support herself and her large family for years. But the spouses are played by actors and the details are made up and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[Side note: Let’s just say that when I refer to an actor by first name, like “Tori,” I mean the fictional version. When I refer to an actor by last name, like “Spelling,” I mean the actual actor. It will make things … well, marginally clearer.]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the first episode, the cast (Jason, Tori, Gabi, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, and Brian Austin Green) gets together at an anniversary panel. After they share a wild night of light infidelity and petty theft, Tori decides that the way to pay her many overdue bills is to convince everybody to come back together for a \u003cem>90210 \u003c/em>reboot. But they may also need Shannen—that’s Shannen Doherty—who we learn is off running an animal sanctuary and has been semi-estranged from the cast for years. (Another element borrowed from real-life rumors, at the very least.) There is a reasonably classy acknowledgment that a core cast member, Luke Perry, has died, but Tori hypothesizes that the rest of them just might be able to rally and put on a new show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the one hand, this is a very strange way to make a reboot. It’s not even of any potential value to anybody who isn’t looking at it as nostalgia—in no way would this hold up as a new Fox comedy for a curious person coming to it fresh. There is no straight-faced argument for it as an independent piece of work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But as a nostalgic doodad, which is all that a lot of these reboots are anyway? It’s kind of cute. And, as previously mentioned, strange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s no question that they’re flirting with a kind of uncanny San Fernando Valley, where the fictionalized actors are fake but also real, but also fake, \u003cem>ad infinitum\u003c/em>. Because Spelling is in fact an executive producer of \u003cem>BH90210\u003c/em>, just as fictional Tori is driving the reboot and trying to get everyone on board. Brian is married to a very famous woman, just as Green is married to Megan Fox. Jennie has had a couple of failed marriages, just like Garth, and Jason really wants to direct, just like Priestley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a certain number of silly meta-jokes, like the fact that Tori’s husband is played by Ivan Sergei, who was Spelling’s co-star in the legendarily campy TV movie \u003cem>Mother May I Sleep With Danger?\u003c/em> It’s hard not to think that a moment in which Jason is kicked right in the Priestley, as it were, is meant as a little gift to people who found Brandon Walsh to be a self-righteous gasbag. (He was one, FYI.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard to give a proper critique of something like this. It’s more like a bonus feature on a DVD than anything else. They’ve only given critics the first two episodes, and Shannen hasn’t even joined the group yet, so who knows how committed they are to making this as wild as it might be. But perhaps because expectations were lower than the top of Brandon’s head (he was short, you see), I must admit that I chuckled at its audacious weirdness. It’s the kind of thing that passes the time while you fold the laundry, and then you never think about it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some days, that’s a blessing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Old+Gang+Is+Back+Together+In+%27BH90210%2C%27+Sort+Of&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Opinion: Even a Grammar Geezer Like Me Can Get Used to Gender Neutral Pronouns",
"headTitle": "Opinion: Even a Grammar Geezer Like Me Can Get Used to Gender Neutral Pronouns | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Letter-for-letter, no part of speech gets people more worked up than pronouns do. Linguistic history is dotted with eruptions of pronoun rage. Right now, the provocation is the gender-neutral pronouns that some nonbinary people have asked to be called by, so that they won’t have to be identified as “he” or “she.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are several of these in circulation. Some are new words, like “ze” and “co,” but some go back a ways—in fact, people have been proposing new gender-neutral pronouns for \u003ca href=\"https://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/epicene.htm\">150 years\u003c/a>, though none has ever caught on. But the most popular choice, and probably the most controversial one, is the familiar pronoun that people describe as the singular “they.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can see why people would pick “they.” In everyday speech we often use that pronoun for a single person, though only when the word or phrase it substitutes for—its antecedent, as it’s called—doesn’t refer to a specific individual. So we say, “Somebody lost their wallet,” or, “If a student fails, they have to retake the course.” Or the person we’re referring to may be simply unknown. Your daughter’s cell phone rings at the dinner table; you say, “Tell them you’ll call them back.” Male or female, one caller or several? The pronoun “they” is like, “whatever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That singular “they” goes back hundreds of years. \u003ca href=\"http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austhlis.html#X2\">Jane Austen’s\u003c/a> novels are bristling with sentences like “No one can ever be in love more than once in their life.” But that use of the pronoun fell into disrepute in the 19\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> century, when grammarians condemned it as incorrect and proclaimed that the so-called generic “he” should be used instead. The idea is that when you write, “Every singer has his range,” the pronoun “his” refers to both men and women—or as they sometimes put it, “the \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/300287\">masculine embraces the feminine\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When second-wave feminists protested in the 1970s that the generic “he” was sexist, they roused a storm of indignation. They were accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-09-vw-8305-story.html\">emasculating\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/10/magazine/on-language-gender-benders.html\">neutering\u003c/a> the language. The chairman of the Harvard Linguistics Department charged that they were suffering from “\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/pronoun-envy\">pronoun envy\u003c/a>.” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/29/magazine/on-language-proximity-talks.html\">William Safire\u003c/a> warned that to accept the use of “they” in place of “he” would be to “cave in to the radic-lib forces of usage permissiveness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In retrospect, those reactions betrayed the obtuseness that the psychologist Cordelia Fine calls “\u003ca href=\"https://wwnorton.com/books/Delusions-of-Gender\">delusions of gender\u003c/a>.” The fact is that the pronoun “he” is never gender-neutral. If Sting had sung, “If you love somebody, set him free,” it would have brought only a male to mind. What the language required was “set them free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The gender-neutral singular “they” has history, English grammar and gender equity on its side, and it’s gradually been \u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/mcintyre/87915039-132.html\">restored\u003c/a> to the written language. Schoolroom crotchets can be hard to let go of. But we’ve largely leveled the linguistic playing field—at least, “he” no longer takes precedence over “she.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that didn’t make any provision for the rainbow of nonbinary and nonconforming \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/28/us/pride-identity.html?searchResultPosition=1\">gender identities\u003c/a> that have risen into public awareness in recent years. The language still required us to choose between “he” and “she” to refer to a specific individual. The singular “they” initially sounded awkward here. We can say, “Somebody named Sandy was brushing their hair” where the pronoun replaces the nonspecific “somebody”—that’s been standard colloquial English for centuries. But when someone says just, “Sandy was brushing their hair,” you’re brought up short. Your first thought is that “they” must refer to some group of people whose hair Sandy was brushing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you can make this work if you tweak your internal grammar so that the pronoun “they” can refer to a specific individual. It takes some practice to get the hang of it, but the human language processing capacity is more adaptable than people realize, even for geezers like me. As I read through an \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/magazine/gender-nonbinary.html\">article\u003c/a> about a nonbinary person who uses “they,” “them” and “their,” the pronouns ultimately sort themselves out. In context, they’re rarely ambiguous, no more than any other pronoun: “Tracy should take better care of themself”; “Pat hasn’t made up their mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That new use of “they” has passed muster with the AP’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/ap-style-change-singular-they-is-acceptable-in-limited-cases/\">style guide\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=they\">American Heritage Dictionary\u003c/a>. In theory, anyone can adopt it, whatever their gender identity. But we’ll still be using “he” and “she” to refer to most individuals who identify as male and female. You can introduce new gender-neutral terms without driving out the gendered ones. “Sibling” has been part of the everyday language for more than 50 years, but we can still talk about brothers and sisters. When someone says, “Taylor has a lot going for them,” it’s a fair bet that that’s the pronoun that Taylor prefers to be called by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a lot to ask—just a small courtesy and sign of respect. In fact, the accommodations we’re being asked to make to nonbinary individuals are much less far-reaching than the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/books/titles/745283921/the-handbook-of-nonsexist-writing\">linguistic changes\u003c/a> that \u003ca href=\"https://public.oed.com/blog/resistance-fertile-language-borne-feminist-movement/\">feminists\u003c/a> called for 50 years ago. Yet the reactions this time have been even more vehement than they were back then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A fifth-grade teacher in \u003ca href=\"https://wapo.st/2YKHqyV\">Florida\u003c/a> whose preferred pronouns are “they,” “them” and “their” was removed from the classroom when some parents complained about exposing their children to the transgender lifestyle. When the diversity and inclusion office at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville published a guide to alternative pronouns in 2015, the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.mic.com/articles/142080/tennessee-budget-bill-bans-gender-neutral-pronouns-tramples-on-free-speech\">legislature\u003c/a> promptly defunded the center and barred the university from promoting the use of gender-neutral pronouns in the future. Like the classic episodes of pronoun rage in earlier eras, these aren’t about pronouns at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Opinion%3A+Even+A+Grammar+Geezer+Like+Me+Can+Get+Used+To+Gender+Neutral+Pronouns&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Letter-for-letter, no part of speech gets people more worked up than pronouns do. Linguistic history is dotted with eruptions of pronoun rage. Right now, the provocation is the gender-neutral pronouns that some nonbinary people have asked to be called by, so that they won’t have to be identified as “he” or “she.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are several of these in circulation. Some are new words, like “ze” and “co,” but some go back a ways—in fact, people have been proposing new gender-neutral pronouns for \u003ca href=\"https://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/epicene.htm\">150 years\u003c/a>, though none has ever caught on. But the most popular choice, and probably the most controversial one, is the familiar pronoun that people describe as the singular “they.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can see why people would pick “they.” In everyday speech we often use that pronoun for a single person, though only when the word or phrase it substitutes for—its antecedent, as it’s called—doesn’t refer to a specific individual. So we say, “Somebody lost their wallet,” or, “If a student fails, they have to retake the course.” Or the person we’re referring to may be simply unknown. Your daughter’s cell phone rings at the dinner table; you say, “Tell them you’ll call them back.” Male or female, one caller or several? The pronoun “they” is like, “whatever.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That singular “they” goes back hundreds of years. \u003ca href=\"http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austhlis.html#X2\">Jane Austen’s\u003c/a> novels are bristling with sentences like “No one can ever be in love more than once in their life.” But that use of the pronoun fell into disrepute in the 19\u003csup>th\u003c/sup> century, when grammarians condemned it as incorrect and proclaimed that the so-called generic “he” should be used instead. The idea is that when you write, “Every singer has his range,” the pronoun “his” refers to both men and women—or as they sometimes put it, “the \u003ca href=\"https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/300287\">masculine embraces the feminine\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When second-wave feminists protested in the 1970s that the generic “he” was sexist, they roused a storm of indignation. They were accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-09-vw-8305-story.html\">emasculating\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/10/magazine/on-language-gender-benders.html\">neutering\u003c/a> the language. The chairman of the Harvard Linguistics Department charged that they were suffering from “\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/pronoun-envy\">pronoun envy\u003c/a>.” \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/29/magazine/on-language-proximity-talks.html\">William Safire\u003c/a> warned that to accept the use of “they” in place of “he” would be to “cave in to the radic-lib forces of usage permissiveness.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In retrospect, those reactions betrayed the obtuseness that the psychologist Cordelia Fine calls “\u003ca href=\"https://wwnorton.com/books/Delusions-of-Gender\">delusions of gender\u003c/a>.” The fact is that the pronoun “he” is never gender-neutral. If Sting had sung, “If you love somebody, set him free,” it would have brought only a male to mind. What the language required was “set them free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The gender-neutral singular “they” has history, English grammar and gender equity on its side, and it’s gradually been \u003ca href=\"https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/mcintyre/87915039-132.html\">restored\u003c/a> to the written language. Schoolroom crotchets can be hard to let go of. But we’ve largely leveled the linguistic playing field—at least, “he” no longer takes precedence over “she.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that didn’t make any provision for the rainbow of nonbinary and nonconforming \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/28/us/pride-identity.html?searchResultPosition=1\">gender identities\u003c/a> that have risen into public awareness in recent years. The language still required us to choose between “he” and “she” to refer to a specific individual. The singular “they” initially sounded awkward here. We can say, “Somebody named Sandy was brushing their hair” where the pronoun replaces the nonspecific “somebody”—that’s been standard colloquial English for centuries. But when someone says just, “Sandy was brushing their hair,” you’re brought up short. Your first thought is that “they” must refer to some group of people whose hair Sandy was brushing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you can make this work if you tweak your internal grammar so that the pronoun “they” can refer to a specific individual. It takes some practice to get the hang of it, but the human language processing capacity is more adaptable than people realize, even for geezers like me. As I read through an \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/magazine/gender-nonbinary.html\">article\u003c/a> about a nonbinary person who uses “they,” “them” and “their,” the pronouns ultimately sort themselves out. In context, they’re rarely ambiguous, no more than any other pronoun: “Tracy should take better care of themself”; “Pat hasn’t made up their mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That new use of “they” has passed muster with the AP’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2017/ap-style-change-singular-they-is-acceptable-in-limited-cases/\">style guide\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=they\">American Heritage Dictionary\u003c/a>. In theory, anyone can adopt it, whatever their gender identity. But we’ll still be using “he” and “she” to refer to most individuals who identify as male and female. You can introduce new gender-neutral terms without driving out the gendered ones. “Sibling” has been part of the everyday language for more than 50 years, but we can still talk about brothers and sisters. When someone says, “Taylor has a lot going for them,” it’s a fair bet that that’s the pronoun that Taylor prefers to be called by.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a lot to ask—just a small courtesy and sign of respect. In fact, the accommodations we’re being asked to make to nonbinary individuals are much less far-reaching than the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/books/titles/745283921/the-handbook-of-nonsexist-writing\">linguistic changes\u003c/a> that \u003ca href=\"https://public.oed.com/blog/resistance-fertile-language-borne-feminist-movement/\">feminists\u003c/a> called for 50 years ago. Yet the reactions this time have been even more vehement than they were back then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A fifth-grade teacher in \u003ca href=\"https://wapo.st/2YKHqyV\">Florida\u003c/a> whose preferred pronouns are “they,” “them” and “their” was removed from the classroom when some parents complained about exposing their children to the transgender lifestyle. When the diversity and inclusion office at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville published a guide to alternative pronouns in 2015, the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.mic.com/articles/142080/tennessee-budget-bill-bans-gender-neutral-pronouns-tramples-on-free-speech\">legislature\u003c/a> promptly defunded the center and barred the university from promoting the use of gender-neutral pronouns in the future. Like the classic episodes of pronoun rage in earlier eras, these aren’t about pronouns at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Opinion%3A+Even+A+Grammar+Geezer+Like+Me+Can+Get+Used+To+Gender+Neutral+Pronouns&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Want To Feel Happier Today? Try Talking To A Stranger",
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"content": "\u003cp>The doors open wide, you enter, and they close behind you. As the elevator begins its ascent, you realize it’s just you and one other person taking this ride. The silence soon grows uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pop quiz. What’s your go-to move?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A) Stare at your shoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>B) Pull out your cellphone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>C) Make brief eye contact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>D) Initiate chitchat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your answer was B, you’re like far too many of us, eyes glued to our phones, attention focused on the digital world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us tend to do just about anything to avoid conversation or even eye contact with strangers. And smartphones make it easier than ever to do that. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218304643\">recent study\u003c/a> found that phones can keep us from even exchanging brief smiles with people we meet in public places. But a body of research has shown that we might just be short-changing our own happiness by ignoring opportunities to connect with the people around us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='mindshift_49569' hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/11/moodmandala-1180x714.png' target='_blank']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several years ago, University of British Columbia psychologist \u003ca href=\"https://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/\">Elizabeth Dunn\u003c/a> and her colleague \u003ca href=\"https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/sands04300/gillian-sandstrom\">Gillian M. Sandstrom\u003c/a>, tested whether \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550613502990\">short conversations with strangers\u003c/a> could lift moods. They asked participants to enter a busy coffee shop and grab a beverage — half would get in and get out, and half would strike up a conversation with the cashier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found that people who were randomly assigned to turn this economic transaction into a quick social interaction left Starbucks in a better mood,” Dunn says. “And they even felt a greater sense of belonging in their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same researchers \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214529799\">found\u003c/a> that these seemingly trivial encounters with the minor characters in our lives — the random guy at the dog park or the barista at our local coffee shop — can affect feelings of happiness and human connection on a typical day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social anxiety, however, could be preventing these types of interactions, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/e/nicholas-epley\">Nicholas Epley\u003c/a>, a University of Chicago behavioral scientist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, during a daily train ride, he noticed something paradoxical. People — social creatures — were basically ignoring one another. Why, he wondered, if connecting with others makes us happy, do we so often avoid it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either solitude really is more enjoyable than talking to strangers, he figured, or we have mistaken assumptions holding us back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His curiosity led to \u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0037323\">a series of experiments\u003c/a> revealing that train and bus commuters who interacted with other passengers experienced a more pleasant ride — even when they believed they would prefer the solitude of, say, reading a book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is fear that the person sitting next to us won’t enjoy talking to us that makes us keep to ourselves, Epley found. But when we do talk to each other, those social interactions with strangers tend to be both less awkward and more enjoyable than most people predict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13847875' hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/12/too-tired-3-copy_custom-47083b7dd7325a378de021d80a85a45b11539c47-s800-c85-768x568.jpg' target='_blank']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If striking up small talk with a stranger sounds daunting, you might be relieved to hear that even something as simple as making eye contact offers benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one likes feeling invisible when someone walks past. The Germans even have a term for it — \u003cem>wie Luft behandeln\u003c/em>, which means “to be looked at as though air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.purdue.edu/hhs/psy/directory/faculty/Williams_Kip.html\">Kipling Williams\u003c/a>, a Purdue University psychologist, studied how people felt when a young woman walked by them and either made eye contact, made eye contact while smiling, or completely ignored them. \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611427921\">Even brief eye contact\u003c/a> increased people’s sense of inclusion and belonging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just that brief acknowledgment, that brief glance — with or without a smile — made them at least temporarily feel more socially connected,” Williams says. And it works both ways. Those that had been “looked through” felt even more disconnected than the control group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, how can we dodge the risks of loneliness and stop short-changing our own happiness?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might be easier than you think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes very little to acknowledge somebody’s existence,” Williams says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Start with folks like the cashier in a grocery store or the barista at your local coffee shop, Dunn says. You’ve got to interact with them anyway, so you might as well make an effort to turn it into a friendly exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And be mindful that using your smartphone sends a signal that you’re not interested in interacting with the people around you. Put it away and you easily remove that barrier, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mood boost of talking to strangers may seem fleeting, but the research on well-being, Epley says, suggests that a happy life is made up of a high frequency of positive events, and even small positive experiences make a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Happiness seems a little bit like a leaky tire on a car,” Epley explains. “We just sort of have to keep pumping it up a bit to maintain it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t mean we need to set out on some grand quest to connect at every possible turn. Instead, he recommends paying closer attention to those times when the urge to offer a compliment or strike up a conversation arises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure, there may be a bit of fear or reluctance holding us back, but it’s worth overcoming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next time you walk into an elevator, consider leaving the phone in your pocket, acknowledging the presence of that other person, and maybe even saying “hello” or “good morning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows? It could wind up putting a smile on your face and theirs.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Paul Nicolaus is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer specializing in science, nature, and health. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The doors open wide, you enter, and they close behind you. As the elevator begins its ascent, you realize it’s just you and one other person taking this ride. The silence soon grows uncomfortable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pop quiz. What’s your go-to move?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A) Stare at your shoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>B) Pull out your cellphone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>C) Make brief eye contact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>D) Initiate chitchat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your answer was B, you’re like far too many of us, eyes glued to our phones, attention focused on the digital world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of us tend to do just about anything to avoid conversation or even eye contact with strangers. And smartphones make it easier than ever to do that. A \u003ca href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563218304643\">recent study\u003c/a> found that phones can keep us from even exchanging brief smiles with people we meet in public places. But a body of research has shown that we might just be short-changing our own happiness by ignoring opportunities to connect with the people around us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Several years ago, University of British Columbia psychologist \u003ca href=\"https://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/\">Elizabeth Dunn\u003c/a> and her colleague \u003ca href=\"https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/sands04300/gillian-sandstrom\">Gillian M. Sandstrom\u003c/a>, tested whether \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550613502990\">short conversations with strangers\u003c/a> could lift moods. They asked participants to enter a busy coffee shop and grab a beverage — half would get in and get out, and half would strike up a conversation with the cashier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We found that people who were randomly assigned to turn this economic transaction into a quick social interaction left Starbucks in a better mood,” Dunn says. “And they even felt a greater sense of belonging in their community.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same researchers \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167214529799\">found\u003c/a> that these seemingly trivial encounters with the minor characters in our lives — the random guy at the dog park or the barista at our local coffee shop — can affect feelings of happiness and human connection on a typical day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Social anxiety, however, could be preventing these types of interactions, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/e/nicholas-epley\">Nicholas Epley\u003c/a>, a University of Chicago behavioral scientist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One day, during a daily train ride, he noticed something paradoxical. People — social creatures — were basically ignoring one another. Why, he wondered, if connecting with others makes us happy, do we so often avoid it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Either solitude really is more enjoyable than talking to strangers, he figured, or we have mistaken assumptions holding us back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His curiosity led to \u003ca href=\"https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0037323\">a series of experiments\u003c/a> revealing that train and bus commuters who interacted with other passengers experienced a more pleasant ride — even when they believed they would prefer the solitude of, say, reading a book.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is fear that the person sitting next to us won’t enjoy talking to us that makes us keep to ourselves, Epley found. But when we do talk to each other, those social interactions with strangers tend to be both less awkward and more enjoyable than most people predict.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If striking up small talk with a stranger sounds daunting, you might be relieved to hear that even something as simple as making eye contact offers benefits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No one likes feeling invisible when someone walks past. The Germans even have a term for it — \u003cem>wie Luft behandeln\u003c/em>, which means “to be looked at as though air.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.purdue.edu/hhs/psy/directory/faculty/Williams_Kip.html\">Kipling Williams\u003c/a>, a Purdue University psychologist, studied how people felt when a young woman walked by them and either made eye contact, made eye contact while smiling, or completely ignored them. \u003ca href=\"https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611427921\">Even brief eye contact\u003c/a> increased people’s sense of inclusion and belonging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Just that brief acknowledgment, that brief glance — with or without a smile — made them at least temporarily feel more socially connected,” Williams says. And it works both ways. Those that had been “looked through” felt even more disconnected than the control group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, how can we dodge the risks of loneliness and stop short-changing our own happiness?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It might be easier than you think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes very little to acknowledge somebody’s existence,” Williams says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Start with folks like the cashier in a grocery store or the barista at your local coffee shop, Dunn says. You’ve got to interact with them anyway, so you might as well make an effort to turn it into a friendly exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And be mindful that using your smartphone sends a signal that you’re not interested in interacting with the people around you. Put it away and you easily remove that barrier, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mood boost of talking to strangers may seem fleeting, but the research on well-being, Epley says, suggests that a happy life is made up of a high frequency of positive events, and even small positive experiences make a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Happiness seems a little bit like a leaky tire on a car,” Epley explains. “We just sort of have to keep pumping it up a bit to maintain it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t mean we need to set out on some grand quest to connect at every possible turn. Instead, he recommends paying closer attention to those times when the urge to offer a compliment or strike up a conversation arises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sure, there may be a bit of fear or reluctance holding us back, but it’s worth overcoming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next time you walk into an elevator, consider leaving the phone in your pocket, acknowledging the presence of that other person, and maybe even saying “hello” or “good morning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Who knows? It could wind up putting a smile on your face and theirs.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Paul Nicolaus is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer specializing in science, nature, and health. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>What’s worth writing about at a time in history where both everything and nothing seems worthy of our attention? Anything, argues Jia Tolentino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tolentino is the author of the phenomenal essay collection \u003cem>Trick Mirror. \u003c/em>She rose to prominence as the deputy editor of \u003cem>Jezebel, \u003c/em>a place where she helped redefine what feminist discourse looks like on the internet. \u003cem>Jezebel\u003c/em> was then owned by the media group \u003cem>Gawker,\u003c/em> known for a kind of gonzo journalism that, since its closure, we’ve seen less of as the idea of monetizing anything subversive on the internet feels increasingly impossible. In this special corner of the web, Tolentino’s writing made the argument that both political transgressions and dumb memes were ripe for thoughtful—and often very fun—feminist criticism. That might mean a \u003ca href=\"https://jezebel.com/she-told-me-i-was-beautiful-a-chat-with-the-horse-from-1732849308\">semi-fictional interview \u003c/a>with the horse from a Taylor Swift music video, but it also might mean a\u003ca href=\"https://jezebel.com/all-the-greedy-young-abigail-fishers-and-me-1782508801\"> longform work of reportage\u003c/a> implicating herself in a story of generational class privilege.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tolentino, at only 30 years old, is now a staff writer at \u003cem>The New Yorker\u003c/em>, where she’s carried over her trademark brand of freewheeling wit and intelligence. That same energy is found all over \u003cem>Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, \u003c/em>a collection that feels somehow riskier than her usual output, unburdened by the demands and constraints of a big, mainstream publication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trick Mirror \u003c/em>was written between the spring of 2017 and the fall of 2018, and finds Tolentino making her way through a time in American history that often communicates in the language of absurdity. It’s a period that, writes Tolentino\u003cstrong>, \u003c/strong>taught her\u003cstrong> “\u003c/strong>to suspend … desire for a conclusion, to assume that nothing is static and renegotiation is perpetual, to hope primarily that little truths will keep emerging in time.” Tolentino finds these little truths in just about every corner of American cultural life. Her best pieces read like viral Twitter threads written by the Frankfurt School, seamlessly blending cynical humor with academic rigor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The collection opens with “The I In The Internet,” which might be the only thing you read this year that mentions both Bari Weiss and Geocities in the same space. Here, Tolentino talks about how the internet demands, reflects, and distorts our public selves in a way it didn’t always do. She reminisces about the simpler days of the internet—when expressing our digital selves could almost be considered wholesome—by walking us through her Angelfire page adorned with \u003cem>Dawson’s Creek \u003c/em>references and Smash Mouth lyrics. That long-defunct version of the internet, she argues, has been replaced by one that thrives off our faux-outrage cycles, considers our support and dissent for others on Twitter as central to our self hood, and that feeds us news designed to “make us feel self-righteous and also mad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories about the toxicity of the internet are not new, but what’s interesting here is how our writer is so uniquely implicated in her subject. As somebody who could be considered \u003cem>very online\u003c/em> even during the early days of the internet, and who is now dependent on the internet for her livelihood, there are few forced to navigate it’s machinery the way she is. “I don’t know what to do with the fact that I myself continue to benefit from all this: that my career is possible in large part because of the way the Internet collapses identity, opinion and action,” she writes. It’s this kind of constant self-awareness and inward inquiry that give \u003cem>Trick Mirror \u003c/em>its most chewable moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Always Be Optimizing,” Tolentino critiques establishment feminism while offering up a new definition for the contemporary female ideal, one that “looks like Instagram.” This is an optimized woman: one that invests in Sweetgreen, Barre and Lululemon in order to keep up with a “hyper-accelerated capitalist life.” In “Ecstasy”—the collection’s most elliptical and daring essay—Tolentino draws a loose comparison between the rapture she feels taking MDMA to the feelings of religious fervor she saw in her childhood. In “We Came from Old Virginia,” she writes about the ugly history of sexual assault at University of Virginia, and attempts to understand how and where the infamous \u003cem>Rolling Stone\u003c/em> article “A Rape on Campus” fits into that history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a risk in describing the stories in \u003cem>Trick Mirror\u003c/em> the way I’ve just done: turning them into clear and simple one-sentence summaries. In many ways, it’s the impossibility of tying together those neat narrative bows that Tolentino intentionally resists here. It’s also that ambiguity and lack of resolution that will, undoubtedly, create a roadblock for some readers. More often than not, the essays here end up concluding with a well-articulated shrug of the shoulders. If you’re expecting feminist praxis, or ways of repairing the many broken and flawed systems being critiqued in \u003cem>Trick Mirror, \u003c/em>you won’t find much of either here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s an undeniable catharsis in seeing such a great writer lucidly communicate the conditions of our most absurd forms of misery. I can’t stop thinking about the way Tolentino describes the shame of turning off her social-media blockers and reveling in the pleasures of the internet like some unhinged degenerate. “I’ll sit there like a rat pressing the lever, like a woman repeatedly hitting myself on the forehead with a hammer, masturbating through the nightmare until I finally catch the gasoline whiff of a good meme,” she writes. It’s a line that made me genuinely laugh—until I thought more about the nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Trick+Mirror%27+Finds+Hope+That+Little+Truths+Will+Emerge+Amid+Absurdities+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What’s worth writing about at a time in history where both everything and nothing seems worthy of our attention? Anything, argues Jia Tolentino.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tolentino is the author of the phenomenal essay collection \u003cem>Trick Mirror. \u003c/em>She rose to prominence as the deputy editor of \u003cem>Jezebel, \u003c/em>a place where she helped redefine what feminist discourse looks like on the internet. \u003cem>Jezebel\u003c/em> was then owned by the media group \u003cem>Gawker,\u003c/em> known for a kind of gonzo journalism that, since its closure, we’ve seen less of as the idea of monetizing anything subversive on the internet feels increasingly impossible. In this special corner of the web, Tolentino’s writing made the argument that both political transgressions and dumb memes were ripe for thoughtful—and often very fun—feminist criticism. That might mean a \u003ca href=\"https://jezebel.com/she-told-me-i-was-beautiful-a-chat-with-the-horse-from-1732849308\">semi-fictional interview \u003c/a>with the horse from a Taylor Swift music video, but it also might mean a\u003ca href=\"https://jezebel.com/all-the-greedy-young-abigail-fishers-and-me-1782508801\"> longform work of reportage\u003c/a> implicating herself in a story of generational class privilege.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tolentino, at only 30 years old, is now a staff writer at \u003cem>The New Yorker\u003c/em>, where she’s carried over her trademark brand of freewheeling wit and intelligence. That same energy is found all over \u003cem>Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, \u003c/em>a collection that feels somehow riskier than her usual output, unburdened by the demands and constraints of a big, mainstream publication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Trick Mirror \u003c/em>was written between the spring of 2017 and the fall of 2018, and finds Tolentino making her way through a time in American history that often communicates in the language of absurdity. It’s a period that, writes Tolentino\u003cstrong>, \u003c/strong>taught her\u003cstrong> “\u003c/strong>to suspend … desire for a conclusion, to assume that nothing is static and renegotiation is perpetual, to hope primarily that little truths will keep emerging in time.” Tolentino finds these little truths in just about every corner of American cultural life. Her best pieces read like viral Twitter threads written by the Frankfurt School, seamlessly blending cynical humor with academic rigor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The collection opens with “The I In The Internet,” which might be the only thing you read this year that mentions both Bari Weiss and Geocities in the same space. Here, Tolentino talks about how the internet demands, reflects, and distorts our public selves in a way it didn’t always do. She reminisces about the simpler days of the internet—when expressing our digital selves could almost be considered wholesome—by walking us through her Angelfire page adorned with \u003cem>Dawson’s Creek \u003c/em>references and Smash Mouth lyrics. That long-defunct version of the internet, she argues, has been replaced by one that thrives off our faux-outrage cycles, considers our support and dissent for others on Twitter as central to our self hood, and that feeds us news designed to “make us feel self-righteous and also mad.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stories about the toxicity of the internet are not new, but what’s interesting here is how our writer is so uniquely implicated in her subject. As somebody who could be considered \u003cem>very online\u003c/em> even during the early days of the internet, and who is now dependent on the internet for her livelihood, there are few forced to navigate it’s machinery the way she is. “I don’t know what to do with the fact that I myself continue to benefit from all this: that my career is possible in large part because of the way the Internet collapses identity, opinion and action,” she writes. It’s this kind of constant self-awareness and inward inquiry that give \u003cem>Trick Mirror \u003c/em>its most chewable moments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In “Always Be Optimizing,” Tolentino critiques establishment feminism while offering up a new definition for the contemporary female ideal, one that “looks like Instagram.” This is an optimized woman: one that invests in Sweetgreen, Barre and Lululemon in order to keep up with a “hyper-accelerated capitalist life.” In “Ecstasy”—the collection’s most elliptical and daring essay—Tolentino draws a loose comparison between the rapture she feels taking MDMA to the feelings of religious fervor she saw in her childhood. In “We Came from Old Virginia,” she writes about the ugly history of sexual assault at University of Virginia, and attempts to understand how and where the infamous \u003cem>Rolling Stone\u003c/em> article “A Rape on Campus” fits into that history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a risk in describing the stories in \u003cem>Trick Mirror\u003c/em> the way I’ve just done: turning them into clear and simple one-sentence summaries. In many ways, it’s the impossibility of tying together those neat narrative bows that Tolentino intentionally resists here. It’s also that ambiguity and lack of resolution that will, undoubtedly, create a roadblock for some readers. More often than not, the essays here end up concluding with a well-articulated shrug of the shoulders. If you’re expecting feminist praxis, or ways of repairing the many broken and flawed systems being critiqued in \u003cem>Trick Mirror, \u003c/em>you won’t find much of either here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there’s an undeniable catharsis in seeing such a great writer lucidly communicate the conditions of our most absurd forms of misery. I can’t stop thinking about the way Tolentino describes the shame of turning off her social-media blockers and reveling in the pleasures of the internet like some unhinged degenerate. “I’ll sit there like a rat pressing the lever, like a woman repeatedly hitting myself on the forehead with a hammer, masturbating through the nightmare until I finally catch the gasoline whiff of a good meme,” she writes. It’s a line that made me genuinely laugh—until I thought more about the nightmare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Trick+Mirror%27+Finds+Hope+That+Little+Truths+Will+Emerge+Amid+Absurdities+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Former President Barack Obama weighed in on the mass shootings this past weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, saying on Monday that Americans “should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1158453079035002881\">released on Twitter\u003c/a>, Obama did not mention President Trump by name, but his reference seemed clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obama denounced language from “leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such language, Obama said, “has no place in our politics and our public life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that “it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much — clearly and unequivocally.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1158453079035002881\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obama’s statement Monday was a rare occasion when the former president, who has generally avoided commenting on politics since leaving office, spoke out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From the time Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, he has been accused of making racist and anti-immigrant remarks. He accused Mexico of sending “their worst people” to the U.S., people he said who were “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More recently he was \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/07/16/742236610/condemnation-of-president-delayed-by-debate-can-lawmakers-call-trump-tweets-raci\">condemned by the House of Representatives\u003c/a> for his remarks about four Democratic members of Congress, all women of color, who he said should “go back” to where they came from. He also launched an attack on House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., saying Cummings’ Baltimore-based district was “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/07/28/746019426/leaders-in-baltimore-and-maryland-denounce-trump-tweets-attacking-elijah-cumming\">a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside tag='gilroy, gilroy shooting' label='More On Gilroy']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/08/05/748190808/trump-calls-for-strong-background-checks-following-el-paso-and-dayton-shootings\">remarks about the mass shootings\u003c/a> on Monday, Trump said that “hate has no place in our country.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In one voice,” Trump said, “our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least 31 people were killed in El Paso and Dayton. Texas authorities said they were close to linking the El Paso suspect to an anti-immigrant screed that was posted online shortly before the attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump called for perpetrators of mass shootings to be eligible for the death penalty and for increased attention to mental health. Trump did not repeat calls he tweeted earlier in the day to strengthen background checks for guns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obama’s statement, released after Trump’s remarks, said no other nation “tolerates the levels of gun violence that we do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calling for tighter gun controls, Obama said, “We are not helpless here. And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Former President Barack Obama weighed in on the mass shootings this past weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, saying on Monday that Americans “should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a statement \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1158453079035002881\">released on Twitter\u003c/a>, Obama did not mention President Trump by name, but his reference seemed clear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obama denounced language from “leaders who demonize those who don’t look like us, or suggest that other people, including immigrants, threaten our way of life, or refer to other people as sub-human, or imply that America belongs to just one certain type of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such language, Obama said, “has no place in our politics and our public life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He added that “it’s time for the overwhelming majority of Americans of goodwill, of every race and faith and political party, to say as much — clearly and unequivocally.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/08/05/748190808/trump-calls-for-strong-background-checks-following-el-paso-and-dayton-shootings\">remarks about the mass shootings\u003c/a> on Monday, Trump said that “hate has no place in our country.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In one voice,” Trump said, “our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At least 31 people were killed in El Paso and Dayton. Texas authorities said they were close to linking the El Paso suspect to an anti-immigrant screed that was posted online shortly before the attack.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trump called for perpetrators of mass shootings to be eligible for the death penalty and for increased attention to mental health. Trump did not repeat calls he tweeted earlier in the day to strengthen background checks for guns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Obama’s statement, released after Trump’s remarks, said no other nation “tolerates the levels of gun violence that we do.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Calling for tighter gun controls, Obama said, “We are not helpless here. And until all of us stand up and insist on holding public officials accountable for changing our gun laws, these tragedies will keep happening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' Examines What Led to Ferguson and Baltimore Protests",
"headTitle": "‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Examines What Led to Ferguson and Baltimore Protests | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>If the past five or so years have taught America anything about policing, it’s that a lack of trust between police and communities of color is an ongoing problem. But why?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her tightly focused and morally important book, \u003cem>Hands Up, Don’t Shoot\u003c/em>, Jennifer E. Cobbina, associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, analyzes how the deaths of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/24/366370100/grand-jury-reaches-decision-in-michael-brown-case\">Michael Brown\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/18/486460729/most-senior-police-officer-in-freddie-gray-case-is-found-not-guilty-of-manslaugh\">Freddie Gray\u003c/a> at the hands of police resulted in sustained protests in Ferguson, Mo., and in Baltimore — and how we got there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13862943\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 259px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13862943\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot.jpg\" alt=\"'Hands Up Don't Shoot,' Jennifer E. Cobbina. \" width=\"259\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot.jpg 259w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot,’ Jennifer E. Cobbina.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What recommends the book in part is that, unlike many academic books, it doesn’t presume prior knowledge on the part of the reader. To her credit, Cobbina is careful to establish historical and cultural context for the deep-seated distrust so many African Americans feel toward law enforcement in a way that makes the book accessible to a wide readership (a paperback version is available for a significantly lower price than the hardcover).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She begins with the historically unjust, power-imbalanced relationship African Americans have had with the police, writing that the “relationship between Blacks and law enforcement has been contentious throughout American history … Faced with the threat of slave insurrection and the chronic problem of slaves fleeing captivity, many state legislatures in the South in the 1700s passed restrictive laws controlling and regulating the movement of slaves through what was known as ‘slave patrol.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She goes on to note that after slavery, during Reconstruction, numerous Southern states moved to pass what were known as “Black Codes,” which were “criminal laws that created new offenses, such as ‘loitering’ and ‘vagrancy,’ punishable by fines, imprisonment, and forced labor for up to one year … Black Codes opened up a market for convict leasing, in which people in prison were contracted out as laborers to the highest private bidder for state profit.” Chillingly, she concludes that “while Black people were rarely imprisoned during the era of slavery, criminalization had become the resolution for dealing with freed Blacks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast-forward from Reconstruction to our era of mass incarceration today — and problems of policing and justice pertaining to race persist. Cobbina chooses to focus on Ferguson and Baltimore as representative cases for good reason: Both are African American-majority cities with high poverty and histories of racial disparity, and both experienced high-profile deaths of African Americans involving police that catalyzed large-scale protests. And protesters had a lot to protest about. In reports from \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf\">2015 \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/883296/download\">2016\u003c/a> respectively, the Department of Justice found significant evidence of racial bias in policing in Ferguson and, in Baltimore, policing that stood in violation of federal anti-discrimination law and the Constitution. [aside postid='arts_13852433']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given all of this injustice, Cobbina does something else that sets her book apart: She gives a voice to people directly affected by law enforcement practices by allowing them to speak for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, Justin, a black resident of Baltimore, recounts how he was walking with a friend who was carrying a crushed empty beer can in a bag he was going to throw away across the street when a police officer arrived and said “get on the ground” more than once. Justin was confused by the seemingly disproportionate command, and confused, he couldn’t square the officer’s tone with the still nebulous offense. Then, according to Justin, the officer said, “If I tell you to get on the ground again, I’m going to shoot you in the back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there are outright claims of violence, such as this one from Darryl, a black resident of Ferguson:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"edTag\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>“I mean, I got locked [up] by them before where they beat me up, man, when I had a seizure … When they released me to the hospital I still had active warrants … [When] I came back to file a complaint they locked me up again … and I got assaulted again … I had knots on my head when I got out of there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>When Michael Brown in Ferguson and Freddie Gray in Baltimore died at the hands of the police, each community decided it was time to act. Tremaine, a black Baltimore protester, put it simply: “It is our duty. This is our duty, I believe that if someone — if you, for instance, committed a crime, and I saw it and did nothing I am worse than you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some eyewitnesses to Brown’s death say he had his hands up before he was shot repeatedly. Cobbina writes that in Ferguson, the “initial shock of Brown’s violent death turned into disbelief and seething rage. Not only did many perceive that a deep sense of injustice had taken place but … they also found themselves the recipients of unjustifiable police contact.” According to Cobbina’s research (for the book, she drew from interviews of nearly 200 residents of Ferguson and Baltimore within two months of the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray), among Ferguson protesters “63 percent reported personal and 76 percent reported vicarious experiences with police that were negative in nature prior to Brown’s death.” [aside postid='arts_13862605']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Baltimore, many residents and protesters were angered by what they saw as the inhumane treatment that led to Gray’s death. And, like in Ferguson, prior negative experience with police led protesters out into the streets there, too. In Baltimore, like in Ferguson, the protests served a dual purpose. They were expressions of outrage at the specific deaths of African Americans at the hands of the police, yes. But they were also about reforming (or abolishing) a system of policing and criminal justice that is historically and therefore structurally in no small measure set against the interests and the well-being of African Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After police violence in Ferguson and Baltimore, communities protested in anger and defiance. And that anger was just the beginning; the end will only come when black lives are consistently treated as equal in value to white lives in the eyes of the law. There’s a lot of history to face before America gets there, but the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore set the country further on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cobbina aptly quotes Maya Angelou, who wrote that “history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12935470\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-800x42.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"42\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-160x8.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-768x40.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-240x13.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-375x20.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-520x27.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"http://npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv id=\"storytext\" class=\"storytext storylocation linkLocation\">\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nicholas Cannariato is a writer and editor based in Chicago.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>If the past five or so years have taught America anything about policing, it’s that a lack of trust between police and communities of color is an ongoing problem. But why?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her tightly focused and morally important book, \u003cem>Hands Up, Don’t Shoot\u003c/em>, Jennifer E. Cobbina, associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, analyzes how the deaths of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/24/366370100/grand-jury-reaches-decision-in-michael-brown-case\">Michael Brown\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/18/486460729/most-senior-police-officer-in-freddie-gray-case-is-found-not-guilty-of-manslaugh\">Freddie Gray\u003c/a> at the hands of police resulted in sustained protests in Ferguson, Mo., and in Baltimore — and how we got there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13862943\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 259px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13862943\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot.jpg\" alt=\"'Hands Up Don't Shoot,' Jennifer E. Cobbina. \" width=\"259\" height=\"389\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot.jpg 259w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/hands-up-dont-shoot-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">‘Hands Up Don’t Shoot,’ Jennifer E. Cobbina.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What recommends the book in part is that, unlike many academic books, it doesn’t presume prior knowledge on the part of the reader. To her credit, Cobbina is careful to establish historical and cultural context for the deep-seated distrust so many African Americans feel toward law enforcement in a way that makes the book accessible to a wide readership (a paperback version is available for a significantly lower price than the hardcover).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She begins with the historically unjust, power-imbalanced relationship African Americans have had with the police, writing that the “relationship between Blacks and law enforcement has been contentious throughout American history … Faced with the threat of slave insurrection and the chronic problem of slaves fleeing captivity, many state legislatures in the South in the 1700s passed restrictive laws controlling and regulating the movement of slaves through what was known as ‘slave patrol.'”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She goes on to note that after slavery, during Reconstruction, numerous Southern states moved to pass what were known as “Black Codes,” which were “criminal laws that created new offenses, such as ‘loitering’ and ‘vagrancy,’ punishable by fines, imprisonment, and forced labor for up to one year … Black Codes opened up a market for convict leasing, in which people in prison were contracted out as laborers to the highest private bidder for state profit.” Chillingly, she concludes that “while Black people were rarely imprisoned during the era of slavery, criminalization had become the resolution for dealing with freed Blacks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast-forward from Reconstruction to our era of mass incarceration today — and problems of policing and justice pertaining to race persist. Cobbina chooses to focus on Ferguson and Baltimore as representative cases for good reason: Both are African American-majority cities with high poverty and histories of racial disparity, and both experienced high-profile deaths of African Americans involving police that catalyzed large-scale protests. And protesters had a lot to protest about. In reports from \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf\">2015 \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/883296/download\">2016\u003c/a> respectively, the Department of Justice found significant evidence of racial bias in policing in Ferguson and, in Baltimore, policing that stood in violation of federal anti-discrimination law and the Constitution. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given all of this injustice, Cobbina does something else that sets her book apart: She gives a voice to people directly affected by law enforcement practices by allowing them to speak for themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, Justin, a black resident of Baltimore, recounts how he was walking with a friend who was carrying a crushed empty beer can in a bag he was going to throw away across the street when a police officer arrived and said “get on the ground” more than once. Justin was confused by the seemingly disproportionate command, and confused, he couldn’t square the officer’s tone with the still nebulous offense. Then, according to Justin, the officer said, “If I tell you to get on the ground again, I’m going to shoot you in the back.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then there are outright claims of violence, such as this one from Darryl, a black resident of Ferguson:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"edTag\">\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp>“I mean, I got locked [up] by them before where they beat me up, man, when I had a seizure … When they released me to the hospital I still had active warrants … [When] I came back to file a complaint they locked me up again … and I got assaulted again … I had knots on my head when I got out of there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>When Michael Brown in Ferguson and Freddie Gray in Baltimore died at the hands of the police, each community decided it was time to act. Tremaine, a black Baltimore protester, put it simply: “It is our duty. This is our duty, I believe that if someone — if you, for instance, committed a crime, and I saw it and did nothing I am worse than you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some eyewitnesses to Brown’s death say he had his hands up before he was shot repeatedly. Cobbina writes that in Ferguson, the “initial shock of Brown’s violent death turned into disbelief and seething rage. Not only did many perceive that a deep sense of injustice had taken place but … they also found themselves the recipients of unjustifiable police contact.” According to Cobbina’s research (for the book, she drew from interviews of nearly 200 residents of Ferguson and Baltimore within two months of the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray), among Ferguson protesters “63 percent reported personal and 76 percent reported vicarious experiences with police that were negative in nature prior to Brown’s death.” \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Baltimore, many residents and protesters were angered by what they saw as the inhumane treatment that led to Gray’s death. And, like in Ferguson, prior negative experience with police led protesters out into the streets there, too. In Baltimore, like in Ferguson, the protests served a dual purpose. They were expressions of outrage at the specific deaths of African Americans at the hands of the police, yes. But they were also about reforming (or abolishing) a system of policing and criminal justice that is historically and therefore structurally in no small measure set against the interests and the well-being of African Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After police violence in Ferguson and Baltimore, communities protested in anger and defiance. And that anger was just the beginning; the end will only come when black lives are consistently treated as equal in value to white lives in the eyes of the law. There’s a lot of history to face before America gets there, but the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore set the country further on the way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cobbina aptly quotes Maya Angelou, who wrote that “history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12935470\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-800x42.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"42\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-160x8.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-768x40.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-240x13.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-375x20.jpg 375w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Spine-1-520x27.jpg 520w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"http://npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv id=\"storytext\" class=\"storytext storylocation linkLocation\">\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Nicholas Cannariato is a writer and editor based in Chicago.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Hulu's 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' Can't Live Up to the Classic Romcom",
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"content": "\u003cp>The idea of an anthology TV series inspired by \u003cem>Four Weddings and a Funeral\u003c/em>, the 1994 film that established Flopsy-Haired Hugh Grant as a romantic comedy staple, is a solid one. I wish I were here with better news about how it turned out. I hung in with it as long as I could; there are ten episodes, and I watched all seven that they’ve made available to critics. I really wanted to like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hulu’s \u003cem>Four Weddings and a Funeral \u003c/em>was created by Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton, both of \u003cem>The Mindy Project—\u003c/em>so far, so good. While \u003cem>Mindy \u003c/em>was inconsistent, it did some smart things with romantic comedy tropes. Its star is Nathalie Emmanuel, who recently wrapped up her run as Missandei on \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>, and she’s entirely up to the challenge of playing Maya, a charming young American working for a politician she’s also having an affair with. When the affair goes bad, she heads to London to get away and to attend the first of the weddings, between her best friend Ainsley (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and the charming but flaky Kash (Nikesh Patel). Once that wedding is over, she decides to stay. Thus does the real story begin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in London are more of Maya’s friends: Craig (Brandon Mychal Smith), who’s keeping a secret from his girlfriend Zara (Sophia La Porta); Duffy (John Reynolds), who’s been secretly pining for Maya for years in the way people used to think was cute; and Ainsley’s British bestie, Gemma (Zoe Boyle), who isn’t happy about Maya showing up to nudge her aside in Ainsley’s life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news comes from the natural charms of Emmanuel, as well as from some very pretty settings and shots. There’s also a woman named Fatima (Rakhee Thakrar) who appears after a few episodes, and who brings a sparkle to her story. The bad news is the writing—just about all of the writing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=604JeF9RNu8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re going to write romantic comedy, it’s important to understand what things are romantic. Duffy’s charmless, sad-sack act in the early going, which presumes but does not establish some rooting interest in Maya’s one day returning his feelings, is not romantic. (If I may throw in a reference: It’s harder to do what Mary Stuart Masterson does in \u003cem>Some Kind Of Wonderful \u003c/em>than it looks.) There’s a moment when it seems like Duffy’s arc is getting better, then it gets worse again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Craig’s story with Zara begins as a reasonably grounded tale about the effects of secrets on couples, but it turns into an absolutely bizarre reality-show plot that is never once welcome when it shows up in a scene. It never earns a moment of the screen time it receives, and it’s not as funny as a send-up of such shows as I think the writers who created it meant for it to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ainsley is stranded in a bunch of strange anecdotes about the store she owns, and despite efforts to zazz her up a little by adding a short appearance by Andie MacDowell as her mother and even romcom VIP Dermot Mulroney as a rich guy who drops in late in the proceedings, she’s never interesting. Never. And it’s not the actress’ fault. It’s the writing. There’s just not enough reason to care about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most promising romantic chemistry in the series is between Maya and Kash, who meet by chance early on when she’s on the way to his wedding—without, of course, each of them knowing who the other is. But they spend very little time in each other’s company for several episodes after that, which saps the show of the energy of the connection. To stretch an individual story of two people over 10 episodes of TV is really hard, and there are two ways to try to do it: You write a story between them that’s 10 episodes long, or you tease it once and then take a long break. The first one is better; the second is easier. This show does it the second way. And without spoiling things too much, by the time they get back to it, it’s not as appealing a direction as it once was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are things here that work nicely—Kash’s interactions with his dad and his little brother are charming and sweet. An unexpected lunch Maya has with her ex’s wife provides some surprising wisdom. But on the whole, these stories aren’t comedic or romantic, particularly. Some of the pieces are there, but the satisfaction of seeing them click into place is missing. Characters meant to seem charming seem creepy, and decisions meant to seem whimsical seem destructive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably by the end, there actually will have been four weddings and one funeral. But that’s regrettably just about the only way the show lives up to the billing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Four+Weddings+And+A+Funeral%27+On+TV+Can%27t+Live+Up+To+A+Classic+Romcom&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The idea of an anthology TV series inspired by \u003cem>Four Weddings and a Funeral\u003c/em>, the 1994 film that established Flopsy-Haired Hugh Grant as a romantic comedy staple, is a solid one. I wish I were here with better news about how it turned out. I hung in with it as long as I could; there are ten episodes, and I watched all seven that they’ve made available to critics. I really wanted to like it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hulu’s \u003cem>Four Weddings and a Funeral \u003c/em>was created by Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton, both of \u003cem>The Mindy Project—\u003c/em>so far, so good. While \u003cem>Mindy \u003c/em>was inconsistent, it did some smart things with romantic comedy tropes. Its star is Nathalie Emmanuel, who recently wrapped up her run as Missandei on \u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>, and she’s entirely up to the challenge of playing Maya, a charming young American working for a politician she’s also having an affair with. When the affair goes bad, she heads to London to get away and to attend the first of the weddings, between her best friend Ainsley (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and the charming but flaky Kash (Nikesh Patel). Once that wedding is over, she decides to stay. Thus does the real story begin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also in London are more of Maya’s friends: Craig (Brandon Mychal Smith), who’s keeping a secret from his girlfriend Zara (Sophia La Porta); Duffy (John Reynolds), who’s been secretly pining for Maya for years in the way people used to think was cute; and Ainsley’s British bestie, Gemma (Zoe Boyle), who isn’t happy about Maya showing up to nudge her aside in Ainsley’s life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news comes from the natural charms of Emmanuel, as well as from some very pretty settings and shots. There’s also a woman named Fatima (Rakhee Thakrar) who appears after a few episodes, and who brings a sparkle to her story. The bad news is the writing—just about all of the writing.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/604JeF9RNu8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/604JeF9RNu8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re going to write romantic comedy, it’s important to understand what things are romantic. Duffy’s charmless, sad-sack act in the early going, which presumes but does not establish some rooting interest in Maya’s one day returning his feelings, is not romantic. (If I may throw in a reference: It’s harder to do what Mary Stuart Masterson does in \u003cem>Some Kind Of Wonderful \u003c/em>than it looks.) There’s a moment when it seems like Duffy’s arc is getting better, then it gets worse again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Craig’s story with Zara begins as a reasonably grounded tale about the effects of secrets on couples, but it turns into an absolutely bizarre reality-show plot that is never once welcome when it shows up in a scene. It never earns a moment of the screen time it receives, and it’s not as funny as a send-up of such shows as I think the writers who created it meant for it to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ainsley is stranded in a bunch of strange anecdotes about the store she owns, and despite efforts to zazz her up a little by adding a short appearance by Andie MacDowell as her mother and even romcom VIP Dermot Mulroney as a rich guy who drops in late in the proceedings, she’s never interesting. Never. And it’s not the actress’ fault. It’s the writing. There’s just not enough reason to care about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most promising romantic chemistry in the series is between Maya and Kash, who meet by chance early on when she’s on the way to his wedding—without, of course, each of them knowing who the other is. But they spend very little time in each other’s company for several episodes after that, which saps the show of the energy of the connection. To stretch an individual story of two people over 10 episodes of TV is really hard, and there are two ways to try to do it: You write a story between them that’s 10 episodes long, or you tease it once and then take a long break. The first one is better; the second is easier. This show does it the second way. And without spoiling things too much, by the time they get back to it, it’s not as appealing a direction as it once was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are things here that work nicely—Kash’s interactions with his dad and his little brother are charming and sweet. An unexpected lunch Maya has with her ex’s wife provides some surprising wisdom. But on the whole, these stories aren’t comedic or romantic, particularly. Some of the pieces are there, but the satisfaction of seeing them click into place is missing. Characters meant to seem charming seem creepy, and decisions meant to seem whimsical seem destructive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Presumably by the end, there actually will have been four weddings and one funeral. But that’s regrettably just about the only way the show lives up to the billing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Four+Weddings+And+A+Funeral%27+On+TV+Can%27t+Live+Up+To+A+Classic+Romcom&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Before Wanda Sykes became a comic, she worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency and had top security clearance. But she always loved telling jokes, and when a local radio station sponsored a talent show that included a comedy category, she decided to audition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They put me on the show … [and] I fell in love with it,” she says. “I love doing stand-up. … That’s where I feel like I can be free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sykes quit the NSA and began focusing on comedy. She told political jokes throughout the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. In 2009, she became the first African American woman to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyRog2w4DI\">host the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now she takes on President Trump in the Emmy-nominated Netflix special \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81011598\">Not Normal\u003c/a>. Sykes insists the jokes don’t come easily under the current administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You would think, ‘Oh boy, there’s so much to make fun of,’ but really I can’t write anything funnier or more ridiculous than what Trump actually says,” Sykes says. “It’s like doing a parody of a parody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On getting booed at a charity event in Boston within a week of Trump’s election for criticizing him\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was my fault, because it wasn’t my show. When I say “fault,” I don’t mean that … I take responsibility for being booed. I take responsibility [for] being a comic and not reading the room. I’m in Boston and it was a benefit for the \u003ca href=\"https://camneelyfoundation.org/\">Cam Neely Foundation\u003c/a>, and my friend \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102962938\">Denis Leary \u003c/a>asked me to do it, and I’ve performed there before and it’s a great charity and it’s usually a fun night … but this was right after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Denis goes up and he does some Trump jokes and people laugh. And then another comic goes up and he does a couple jokes, whatever, some Trump stuff, and people laugh — another white guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\n‘They weren’t ready to see a black woman who happens to be a lesbian also making fun of the president.’ \u003ccite>Wanda Sykes\u003c/cite> \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>And so then I go up, and [with] the first joke I get some laughs — it was a Trump joke — and then the second joke [I said,] “Hey, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a president who’s racist, homophobic, sexist, but this is just the first one that we can confirm.” And the crowd just turned then. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then I got it. I was like, “Oh, shoot. That’s right. I forgot. I’m a black, lesbian female, and they aren’t ready for this yet.” It’s like, white guys, sure, go ahead. Come on out … because we see it every night on late-night TV: white guys making fun of the president. … But they weren’t ready to see a black woman who happens to be a lesbian also making fun of the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On coming out publicly at a 2008 LGBTQ rally in Las Vegas \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t even know that I was going to do it. It wasn’t planned at all. I was in Vegas performing … and there [was an LGBTQ equality] protest in Vegas. … So it’s like, Hey … let’s go out and support and protest. So I get there, and it’s a large crowd and the head of the [LGBTQ] center, she’s speaking and she said, “We have someone out here who’s an ally, and she’s a strong voice for the community. And I’m just going to put her on the spot and see if she will come up and say a few words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, I’m looking around in the audience thinking, “Is Drew Barrymore here? Is Pink here? What’s going on?” I’m looking around for the ally, and then she says, “Wanda Sykes.” I’m like, “Oh, no. I’m part of the family. I’m not the ally.” So I go up and it just happened and \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6UdoCIYvIw\">I made the speech\u003c/a>. … When I got back to the hotel room, I’m looking at CNN and now I’m on the crawl, and I was like, “Oh boy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On having a white wife and white children and joking that she feels like a minority in her own house \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It feels weird when I think about it, but [when] it’s just the four of us, then I don’t think I think of it then, but when her family is there or we have a bunch of friends over, I do kind of look around and I go, “Man, there’s a lot of white people in my house right now.” And it’s not like I don’t like it or it makes me uncomfortable. It’s just I noticed it. … Sometimes I’ll call a friend like, “Hey man, what you doing? Want to come over?” And he goes, “What? You got too many white people in your house?” I’m like, “Yeah.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what she likes about motherhood \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes you out of yourself. Just to be able to love something so much and want to be there and take care of them and not worry about yourself. It’s just good to know that I have that capability. … I thought I was so self-absorbed, but wow, look at me! Look at me parenting and being caring about something else other than myself! It’s just beautiful. I’ve learned a lot about myself. So I guess that is kind of like about me again. Damn it! I thought I had this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and electing to do a double mastectomy \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have an incredibly strong history of cancer on my mom’s side. … I’ve lost aunts to breast cancer, ovarian cancer. My uncles, all the boys on her side, they’ve had prostate cancer. … We just had kids. The kids were maybe 2. So I was like, Look, I just wanted this taken care of — and my doctors, they also advised the same thing. … It was tough, but I feel great and I got some perky boobs out of it!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Lauren Krenzel and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Wanda+Sykes+Loves+Stand-Up%3A+That%27s+Where+%27I+Can+Be+Free%2C%27+She+Says&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Before Wanda Sykes became a comic, she worked as a procurement officer for the National Security Agency and had top security clearance. But she always loved telling jokes, and when a local radio station sponsored a talent show that included a comedy category, she decided to audition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They put me on the show … [and] I fell in love with it,” she says. “I love doing stand-up. … That’s where I feel like I can be free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sykes quit the NSA and began focusing on comedy. She told political jokes throughout the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. In 2009, she became the first African American woman to \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyRog2w4DI\">host the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now she takes on President Trump in the Emmy-nominated Netflix special \u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/81011598\">Not Normal\u003c/a>. Sykes insists the jokes don’t come easily under the current administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You would think, ‘Oh boy, there’s so much to make fun of,’ but really I can’t write anything funnier or more ridiculous than what Trump actually says,” Sykes says. “It’s like doing a parody of a parody.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On getting booed at a charity event in Boston within a week of Trump’s election for criticizing him\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was my fault, because it wasn’t my show. When I say “fault,” I don’t mean that … I take responsibility for being booed. I take responsibility [for] being a comic and not reading the room. I’m in Boston and it was a benefit for the \u003ca href=\"https://camneelyfoundation.org/\">Cam Neely Foundation\u003c/a>, and my friend \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102962938\">Denis Leary \u003c/a>asked me to do it, and I’ve performed there before and it’s a great charity and it’s usually a fun night … but this was right after the election.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Denis goes up and he does some Trump jokes and people laugh. And then another comic goes up and he does a couple jokes, whatever, some Trump stuff, and people laugh — another white guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\n‘They weren’t ready to see a black woman who happens to be a lesbian also making fun of the president.’ \u003ccite>Wanda Sykes\u003c/cite> \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>And so then I go up, and [with] the first joke I get some laughs — it was a Trump joke — and then the second joke [I said,] “Hey, this isn’t the first time we’ve had a president who’s racist, homophobic, sexist, but this is just the first one that we can confirm.” And the crowd just turned then. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then I got it. I was like, “Oh, shoot. That’s right. I forgot. I’m a black, lesbian female, and they aren’t ready for this yet.” It’s like, white guys, sure, go ahead. Come on out … because we see it every night on late-night TV: white guys making fun of the president. … But they weren’t ready to see a black woman who happens to be a lesbian also making fun of the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On coming out publicly at a 2008 LGBTQ rally in Las Vegas \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t even know that I was going to do it. It wasn’t planned at all. I was in Vegas performing … and there [was an LGBTQ equality] protest in Vegas. … So it’s like, Hey … let’s go out and support and protest. So I get there, and it’s a large crowd and the head of the [LGBTQ] center, she’s speaking and she said, “We have someone out here who’s an ally, and she’s a strong voice for the community. And I’m just going to put her on the spot and see if she will come up and say a few words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, I’m looking around in the audience thinking, “Is Drew Barrymore here? Is Pink here? What’s going on?” I’m looking around for the ally, and then she says, “Wanda Sykes.” I’m like, “Oh, no. I’m part of the family. I’m not the ally.” So I go up and it just happened and \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6UdoCIYvIw\">I made the speech\u003c/a>. … When I got back to the hotel room, I’m looking at CNN and now I’m on the crawl, and I was like, “Oh boy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On having a white wife and white children and joking that she feels like a minority in her own house \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It feels weird when I think about it, but [when] it’s just the four of us, then I don’t think I think of it then, but when her family is there or we have a bunch of friends over, I do kind of look around and I go, “Man, there’s a lot of white people in my house right now.” And it’s not like I don’t like it or it makes me uncomfortable. It’s just I noticed it. … Sometimes I’ll call a friend like, “Hey man, what you doing? Want to come over?” And he goes, “What? You got too many white people in your house?” I’m like, “Yeah.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On what she likes about motherhood \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It takes you out of yourself. Just to be able to love something so much and want to be there and take care of them and not worry about yourself. It’s just good to know that I have that capability. … I thought I was so self-absorbed, but wow, look at me! Look at me parenting and being caring about something else other than myself! It’s just beautiful. I’ve learned a lot about myself. So I guess that is kind of like about me again. Damn it! I thought I had this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On being diagnosed with early stage breast cancer and electing to do a double mastectomy \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have an incredibly strong history of cancer on my mom’s side. … I’ve lost aunts to breast cancer, ovarian cancer. My uncles, all the boys on her side, they’ve had prostate cancer. … We just had kids. The kids were maybe 2. So I was like, Look, I just wanted this taken care of — and my doctors, they also advised the same thing. … It was tough, but I feel great and I got some perky boobs out of it!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-800x78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Better Stunts & Actors, Just As Derivative: 'Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw'",
"headTitle": "Better Stunts & Actors, Just As Derivative: ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>While we were all arguing whether Idris Elba should be the new 007, he opted to become the next T-800 instead. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em>, the most agreeable of the innumerable \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> presentations, \u003cem>The Wire\u003c/em>‘s Stringer Bell plays a straight-up Terminator, with stainless steel innards, glowing orange eyeballs, and a Google-glass-like POV datastream that gives him helpful notifications such as ATTACK IMMINENT whenever bickering-buddy good guys Dwayne Johnson (aka Hobbs) or Jason Statham (aka Shaw) cock a fist in his direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s an observation top-billed Johnson makes himself while fleeing (!) the cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier, though Elba’s character—he’s called Brixton, like in the old Clash song “Guns of…”—prefers the sobriquet “Black Superman.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he has \u003cem>also\u003c/em> got more than a little Darth Vader in him, in that he’s shown to be doing the bidding of a unseen superior with a digitally scrambled voice who scolds Brixton for his failures while his more-machine-now-than-man-body is welded back together, post-battle. The disembodied voice of Supreme Leader Snoke or whatever even orders Brixton to attempt to turn Hobbs & Shaw to the Dark Side instead of simply rubbing them out! There’s petty larceny, there’s grand theft auto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say: This sidebar presentation is still a genuine \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> movie, in the sense that almost everything in it has been shamelessly chop-shopped from the work of more innovative filmmakers and squished into a less memorable, more quickly digestible form, and calibrated to flatter its stars to the maximum extent possible. It breaks ground only in the area of punctuation, as its title contains two ampersands and a colon, a sequence of keystrokes seldom seen even in this late (?) hour of the Franchise Age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b736ZM_KfEk\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This one comes to us from director David Leitch, who collaborated with his old stunt-team partner Chad Stahelski on \u003cem>John Wick\u003c/em> before striking out on his own to direct, in short order, \u003cem>Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2\u003c/em> and now this. Given his deep background staging fights and stunts and chases in-camera, it’s not surprising that the set pieces are generally crisper and more dimensional here than in the mainline \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> films. Johnson and Statham are both considerably more athletic (and charismatic) performers than original-recipe \u003cem>F&F\u003c/em> star/producer Vin Diesel, who must not be upstaged, so getting rid of that clumsy tomato can allows them to cut loose, humor-wise and fisticuffs-wise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one sprinkling of novelty comes in the final 15 minutes, when Hobbs leads his allies back to his ancestral home in Samoa (as played by the Hawaiian island of Kauai) for a last stand (like 007 did in \u003cem>Skyfall\u003c/em>) after figuring out how to turn off their enemies’ electronically-locked firearms (like the one 007 had in, um, \u003cem>Skyfall\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The binding aesthetic of the mayhem is still a bit sterile—it just doesn’t have the element of (seemingly) genuine danger that has made the \u003cem>Johns Wick\u003c/em>s, the last three \u003cem>Missions: Impossible\u003c/em> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/406009465/a-visceral-inventive-blockbuster-roars-to-life-in-mad-max-fury-road\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mad Max: Fury Road\u003c/a> all standouts of this genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are still some imaginative bits, like when several members of the Hobbs family daisy-chain their monster trucks to the front of a tow truck that’s attempting to pull Brixton’s helicopter out of the sky like a multi-ton barrel of monkeys. But all the other set pieces have a weird dearth of extras in them—the seeming absence of any bystanders is what makes a high-speed chase through London, for example, feel so low-stakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plot this time is so far-out that it’s wasted, frankly, on a film that just wants to use it as the scaffolding between nitrous-oxide buggy chases and extended stand-up routines from surprise comic guest stars. Brixton is part of some trans-humanist techno cult called Eteon that wants to thin the herd (like Thanos!) using “a programmable virus” (like the one in \u003cem>Mission: Impossible II\u003c/em>!) and electronically upgrade the survivors to usher in the next phase of human evolution—or something like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One scene reveals that this group has minions who sit at rows of computer terminals surrounded by clouds—seriously, it looks like the way Powell and Pressburger depicted Heaven in \u003cem>A Matter of Life and Death\u003c/em>, 70 years ago. Through these terminals, these goons can exert \u003cem>total control over the global media\u003c/em>, which is how it takes exactly one line of dialogue for Brixton to publicly frame Hobbs, Shaw and new-player Vanessa Kirby (she’s Shaw’s MI6-agent sister, Hattie) as traitors (like Steve Rogers and, on more than one occasion, Ethan Hunt). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That media coup doesn’t really explain why our trio of heroes is being sought by multiple law-enforcement agencies. In fact, the film provides zero evidence they’re the subjects of a global manhunt; Hobbs simply announces it at one point. Maybe it’s the kind of thing he needs to say to psych himself up for combat. The movie never bothers to demonstrate the effects of its MacGuffin supervirus either, which might give this genial flexfest some sense of urgency. Many scenes begin with this sort of exposition-as-dialogue, as though the actors are trying to remind themselves what they’re supposed to be doing on this particular shooting day. Anyway, the three of them are forced to lam it, and Shaw (that’s Statham, remember, the short one) makes sure his frenemy Hobbs’ fake I.D. gives him the pseudonym “Mike Oxmall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say it out loud. That’s the level this series operates on. Whether you find that funny or you don’t, you’re entirely correct. When it wants to up the sophistication, it points the camera at a Mini Cooper like the one Statham drove in the 2003 remake of \u003cem>The Italian Job\u003c/em> (the 1969 original is one from which the \u003cem>Fast\u003c/em> series has pilfered several big scenes) and has him say, “I used that for a \u003cem>job\u003c/em>… in Italy.” Wink! \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The general sloppiness is the hallmark of a Chris Morgan Productions production. Morgan is the man whom \u003cem>H&S\u003c/em>‘s press notes identify as the “narrative architect” of the \u003cem>Fast\u003c/em> series. That’s not be confused with the “saga visionary,” which is the honorific Diesel has chosen for \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__feature.variety.com_vin-2Ddiesel-2Da-2Dfurious-2Dmind_&d=DwMFaQ&c=E2nBno7hEddFhl23N5nD1Q&r=KZTZ4YO4JbNxwe-axLXEmQ&m=jzI-IPDMpSjqfNUdmzf2GktWKkvDQmu4FjNxrPepnHA&s=aSlOoTvJVkh6YJKG61M7dO_LNQ6ZqXM1niOW4vnkGgs&e=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">himself\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any case, Morgan now shares screenplay credit with Drew Pearce, who helped out writer-director Shane Black on \u003cem>Iron Man 3\u003c/em> and writer-director Chris McQuarrie on \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/426883093/rogue-nation-fulfills-the-mission-of-a-reliable-blockbuster-series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, and who made \u003cem>Hotel Artemis\u003c/em>. In other words, there’s an actual writer on the show this time, which explains why \u003cem>Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em> has something else that’s new to this series: real jokes, “Mike Oxmall” notwithstanding. (Statham has \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sports.yahoo.com_jason-2Dstatham-2Dcredits-2Dunsung-2Dhero-2Ddrew-2Dpearce-2Dfor-2Dsaving-2Dhobbs-2Dshaw-2Dscript-2Dexclusive-2D101320358.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=E2nBno7hEddFhl23N5nD1Q&r=KZTZ4YO4JbNxwe-axLXEmQ&m=jzI-IPDMpSjqfNUdmzf2GktWKkvDQmu4FjNxrPepnHA&s=H2yeXbHuSGydy7zcW587dp9brkxSQ7_IONZpGF-UqFU&e=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">called Pearce\u003c/a> the “unsung hero” of the film for improving substantially upon Morgan’s draft. Imagine the contribution Pearce must have made for a lowly screenwriter to be praised on a press junket by name.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em> sets up as many sequels as its stars will show up for, but in the meantime, this is another entry that has forgotten that Statham’s character murdered Han, the charming racer played by Sung Kang, several movies ago, before someone decided to retcon Shaw into a good guy. Hey, this series only has one self-identified architect and one self-proclaimed visionary. It can’t be expected to sweat the small stuff. But it could use more sweat overall. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Copyright 2019 \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The \"genial flexfest\" of a spinoff is the \"most agreeable\" of the franchise, which once again slickly repackages set pieces from other, better, more innovative action films. ",
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"description": "The "genial flexfest" of a spinoff is the "most agreeable" of the franchise, which once again slickly repackages set pieces from other, better, more innovative action films. ",
"title": "Better Stunts & Actors, Just As Derivative: 'Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw' | KQED",
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"headline": "Better Stunts & Actors, Just As Derivative: 'Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw'",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>While we were all arguing whether Idris Elba should be the new 007, he opted to become the next T-800 instead. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em>, the most agreeable of the innumerable \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> presentations, \u003cem>The Wire\u003c/em>‘s Stringer Bell plays a straight-up Terminator, with stainless steel innards, glowing orange eyeballs, and a Google-glass-like POV datastream that gives him helpful notifications such as ATTACK IMMINENT whenever bickering-buddy good guys Dwayne Johnson (aka Hobbs) or Jason Statham (aka Shaw) cock a fist in his direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s an observation top-billed Johnson makes himself while fleeing (!) the cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier, though Elba’s character—he’s called Brixton, like in the old Clash song “Guns of…”—prefers the sobriquet “Black Superman.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he has \u003cem>also\u003c/em> got more than a little Darth Vader in him, in that he’s shown to be doing the bidding of a unseen superior with a digitally scrambled voice who scolds Brixton for his failures while his more-machine-now-than-man-body is welded back together, post-battle. The disembodied voice of Supreme Leader Snoke or whatever even orders Brixton to attempt to turn Hobbs & Shaw to the Dark Side instead of simply rubbing them out! There’s petty larceny, there’s grand theft auto.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say: This sidebar presentation is still a genuine \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> movie, in the sense that almost everything in it has been shamelessly chop-shopped from the work of more innovative filmmakers and squished into a less memorable, more quickly digestible form, and calibrated to flatter its stars to the maximum extent possible. It breaks ground only in the area of punctuation, as its title contains two ampersands and a colon, a sequence of keystrokes seldom seen even in this late (?) hour of the Franchise Age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/b736ZM_KfEk'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/b736ZM_KfEk'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>This one comes to us from director David Leitch, who collaborated with his old stunt-team partner Chad Stahelski on \u003cem>John Wick\u003c/em> before striking out on his own to direct, in short order, \u003cem>Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2\u003c/em> and now this. Given his deep background staging fights and stunts and chases in-camera, it’s not surprising that the set pieces are generally crisper and more dimensional here than in the mainline \u003cem>Fast & Furious\u003c/em> films. Johnson and Statham are both considerably more athletic (and charismatic) performers than original-recipe \u003cem>F&F\u003c/em> star/producer Vin Diesel, who must not be upstaged, so getting rid of that clumsy tomato can allows them to cut loose, humor-wise and fisticuffs-wise. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one sprinkling of novelty comes in the final 15 minutes, when Hobbs leads his allies back to his ancestral home in Samoa (as played by the Hawaiian island of Kauai) for a last stand (like 007 did in \u003cem>Skyfall\u003c/em>) after figuring out how to turn off their enemies’ electronically-locked firearms (like the one 007 had in, um, \u003cem>Skyfall\u003c/em>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The binding aesthetic of the mayhem is still a bit sterile—it just doesn’t have the element of (seemingly) genuine danger that has made the \u003cem>Johns Wick\u003c/em>s, the last three \u003cem>Missions: Impossible\u003c/em> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/406009465/a-visceral-inventive-blockbuster-roars-to-life-in-mad-max-fury-road\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mad Max: Fury Road\u003c/a> all standouts of this genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there are still some imaginative bits, like when several members of the Hobbs family daisy-chain their monster trucks to the front of a tow truck that’s attempting to pull Brixton’s helicopter out of the sky like a multi-ton barrel of monkeys. But all the other set pieces have a weird dearth of extras in them—the seeming absence of any bystanders is what makes a high-speed chase through London, for example, feel so low-stakes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plot this time is so far-out that it’s wasted, frankly, on a film that just wants to use it as the scaffolding between nitrous-oxide buggy chases and extended stand-up routines from surprise comic guest stars. Brixton is part of some trans-humanist techno cult called Eteon that wants to thin the herd (like Thanos!) using “a programmable virus” (like the one in \u003cem>Mission: Impossible II\u003c/em>!) and electronically upgrade the survivors to usher in the next phase of human evolution—or something like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One scene reveals that this group has minions who sit at rows of computer terminals surrounded by clouds—seriously, it looks like the way Powell and Pressburger depicted Heaven in \u003cem>A Matter of Life and Death\u003c/em>, 70 years ago. Through these terminals, these goons can exert \u003cem>total control over the global media\u003c/em>, which is how it takes exactly one line of dialogue for Brixton to publicly frame Hobbs, Shaw and new-player Vanessa Kirby (she’s Shaw’s MI6-agent sister, Hattie) as traitors (like Steve Rogers and, on more than one occasion, Ethan Hunt). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That media coup doesn’t really explain why our trio of heroes is being sought by multiple law-enforcement agencies. In fact, the film provides zero evidence they’re the subjects of a global manhunt; Hobbs simply announces it at one point. Maybe it’s the kind of thing he needs to say to psych himself up for combat. The movie never bothers to demonstrate the effects of its MacGuffin supervirus either, which might give this genial flexfest some sense of urgency. Many scenes begin with this sort of exposition-as-dialogue, as though the actors are trying to remind themselves what they’re supposed to be doing on this particular shooting day. Anyway, the three of them are forced to lam it, and Shaw (that’s Statham, remember, the short one) makes sure his frenemy Hobbs’ fake I.D. gives him the pseudonym “Mike Oxmall.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Say it out loud. That’s the level this series operates on. Whether you find that funny or you don’t, you’re entirely correct. When it wants to up the sophistication, it points the camera at a Mini Cooper like the one Statham drove in the 2003 remake of \u003cem>The Italian Job\u003c/em> (the 1969 original is one from which the \u003cem>Fast\u003c/em> series has pilfered several big scenes) and has him say, “I used that for a \u003cem>job\u003c/em>… in Italy.” Wink! \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The general sloppiness is the hallmark of a Chris Morgan Productions production. Morgan is the man whom \u003cem>H&S\u003c/em>‘s press notes identify as the “narrative architect” of the \u003cem>Fast\u003c/em> series. That’s not be confused with the “saga visionary,” which is the honorific Diesel has chosen for \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__feature.variety.com_vin-2Ddiesel-2Da-2Dfurious-2Dmind_&d=DwMFaQ&c=E2nBno7hEddFhl23N5nD1Q&r=KZTZ4YO4JbNxwe-axLXEmQ&m=jzI-IPDMpSjqfNUdmzf2GktWKkvDQmu4FjNxrPepnHA&s=aSlOoTvJVkh6YJKG61M7dO_LNQ6ZqXM1niOW4vnkGgs&e=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">himself\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In any case, Morgan now shares screenplay credit with Drew Pearce, who helped out writer-director Shane Black on \u003cem>Iron Man 3\u003c/em> and writer-director Chris McQuarrie on \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/426883093/rogue-nation-fulfills-the-mission-of-a-reliable-blockbuster-series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, and who made \u003cem>Hotel Artemis\u003c/em>. In other words, there’s an actual writer on the show this time, which explains why \u003cem>Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em> has something else that’s new to this series: real jokes, “Mike Oxmall” notwithstanding. (Statham has \u003ca href=\"https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__sports.yahoo.com_jason-2Dstatham-2Dcredits-2Dunsung-2Dhero-2Ddrew-2Dpearce-2Dfor-2Dsaving-2Dhobbs-2Dshaw-2Dscript-2Dexclusive-2D101320358.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=E2nBno7hEddFhl23N5nD1Q&r=KZTZ4YO4JbNxwe-axLXEmQ&m=jzI-IPDMpSjqfNUdmzf2GktWKkvDQmu4FjNxrPepnHA&s=H2yeXbHuSGydy7zcW587dp9brkxSQ7_IONZpGF-UqFU&e=\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">called Pearce\u003c/a> the “unsung hero” of the film for improving substantially upon Morgan’s draft. Imagine the contribution Pearce must have made for a lowly screenwriter to be praised on a press junket by name.) \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hobbs & Shaw\u003c/em> sets up as many sequels as its stars will show up for, but in the meantime, this is another entry that has forgotten that Statham’s character murdered Han, the charming racer played by Sung Kang, several movies ago, before someone decided to retcon Shaw into a good guy. Hey, this series only has one self-identified architect and one self-proclaimed visionary. It can’t be expected to sweat the small stuff. But it could use more sweat overall. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
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},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
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"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
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