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"content": "\u003cp>The global response to COVID-19 has made clear that the fear of contracting disease has an ugly cousin: xenophobia. As the coronavirus has spread from China to other countries, anti-Asian discrimination has followed closely behind, manifesting in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/02/11/804750392/coronavirus-affects-bottom-line-for-businesses-in-u-s-chinatowns\">plummeting sales at Chinese restaurants\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/02/26/809741251/san-francisco-chinatown-affected-by-coronavirus-fears-despite-no-confirmed-cases\">near-deserted Chinatown districts\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/us/coronavirus-racist-attacks-against-asian-americans/index.html\">racist bullying\u003c/a> against people perceived to be Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked our listeners whether they had experienced this kind of coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia firsthand. And judging by the volume of emails, comments and tweets we got in response, the harassment has been intense for Asian Americans across the country — regardless of ethnicity, location or age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.npr.org/player/embed/811363404/811927113\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" title=\"NPR embedded audio player\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A common theme across our responses: Public transit has been \u003cem>really\u003c/em> hostile. Roger Chiang, who works in San Francisco, recalled a white woman glaring at him on the train to work, covering her nose and mouth. When he told her in a joking tone that he didn’t have the coronavirus, she replied that she “wasn’t racist — she just didn’t want to get sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Allison Park from Brooklyn told us that when visiting D.C., she saw a man making faces at her on the Metro train. She tried to move away from him, but he wouldn’t stop. After a while, she said, he confronted her outright, saying: “Get out of here. Go back to China. I don’t want none of your swine flu here.” A week later, on a Muni train in San Francisco, another man yelled the same thing to her — “Go back to China” — and even threatened to shoot her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a single cough or sneeze can trigger harassment. Amy Jiravisitcul from Boston said a man on a bus muttered about “diseased Chinese people” when she sneezed into her sleeve. When she confronted him, he told her: “Cover your fucking mouth.” When South San Franciscan Diane Tran sneezed into her elbow in a hallway in a hospital, where she was getting a flu shot, she said a middle-aged white woman yelled a racist slur at her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children have been targeted, too — by other children and adults alike. Devin Cabanilla, from Seattle, told us that a Costco food sample vendor told his Korean wife and mixed-race son to “get away” from the samples, questioning whether they had come from China. \u003ca href=\"https://www.insider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-kid-turned-away-food-samples-at-costco-2020-1\">Company executives later apologized\u003c/a> to his family, but he’s still shaken. “It just reminds me that when people look at us, they don’t see us as American,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirteen-year-old Sara Aalgaard told us that since the outbreak, many middle-school classmates of hers have been targeting the small population of Asian Americans at her school in Middletown, Conn. “People call us ‘corona,’ ” she said, or ask if they eat dogs. Rebecca Wen from North Brunswick, N.J., told us that her 9-year-old son reported that his 11-year-old classmate said: “You’re Chinese, so you must have the coronavirus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anti-Asian harassment isn’t limited to the U.S., either. International outlets have reported harassment in majority-white countries like Australia, where parents in Melbourne\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/sensationalist-media-is-exacerbating-racist-coronavirus-fears-we-need-to-combat-it\"> refused to let Asian doctors treat their children\u003c/a>, and Canada, where around 10,000 Toronto-area people signed a petition \u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/chinese-canadians-denounce-rising-xenophobia-tied-coronavirus-200202191216923.html\">calling for the local school district to track and isolate Chinese-Canadian students\u003c/a> who may have traveled to China for the Lunar New Year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Germany, Thea Suh said that when she sat down on her train to work, the person sitting next to turned away from her and covered his face. A few days later, a woman told her to move her “corona-riddled body” elsewhere. Not once did someone step in to help, she said. “I have also not seen or heard any German politician or major influencer coming to our defenses,” she said. “And I feel like as a part of the so-called \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks\">model minority\u003c/a>, we are being left alone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s another common theme from the responses we got: Witnesses and bystanders were slow to intervene. Allison Park remembers that when the man on the D.C. Metro told her to go back to China, the train was nearly two-thirds full, but no one said anything. At best, she got some sympathetic looks. Amy Jiravisitcul said that the other passengers ignored the yelling, which made her wonder whether they thought she was just making a scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when the harassment has passed, unease still lingers. Jane Hong from New York told us that when she and a fellow Korean American were walking from lunch, she heard a man screaming “yuck” in their direction. Now, she notices whenever people on the street look at her for more than a passing glance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know if ‘paranoid’ is the word,” Hong said. “Now it’s in my head. I wonder if they are thinking, ‘I have to stay away from her, I don’t want to walk near her.’ Now that the seed has been planted in my head, it’s hard to not have that thought cross my mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"hr\">\u003cem>For more on xenophobia and coronavirus, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">listen to this week’s episode of the Code Switch podcast\u003c/a>\u003cem>. We hear from some of these folks, as well as Erika Lee, a historian at the University of Minnesota who studies history, immigration and epidemics.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"description": "The global response to COVID-19 has made clear that the fear of contracting disease has an ugly cousin: xenophobia. As the coronavirus has spread from China to other countries, anti-Asian discrimination has followed closely behind, manifesting in plummeting sales at Chinese restaurants, near-deserted Chinatown districts and racist bullying against people perceived to be Chinese. We asked our listeners whether they had experienced this kind of coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia firsthand. And judging by the volume of emails, comments and tweets we got in response, the harassment has been intense for Asian Americans across the country — regardless of ethnicity, location or age. A common theme",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The global response to COVID-19 has made clear that the fear of contracting disease has an ugly cousin: xenophobia. As the coronavirus has spread from China to other countries, anti-Asian discrimination has followed closely behind, manifesting in \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/02/11/804750392/coronavirus-affects-bottom-line-for-businesses-in-u-s-chinatowns\">plummeting sales at Chinese restaurants\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2020/02/26/809741251/san-francisco-chinatown-affected-by-coronavirus-fears-despite-no-confirmed-cases\">near-deserted Chinatown districts\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/20/us/coronavirus-racist-attacks-against-asian-americans/index.html\">racist bullying\u003c/a> against people perceived to be Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked our listeners whether they had experienced this kind of coronavirus-related racism and xenophobia firsthand. And judging by the volume of emails, comments and tweets we got in response, the harassment has been intense for Asian Americans across the country — regardless of ethnicity, location or age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://www.npr.org/player/embed/811363404/811927113\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" title=\"NPR embedded audio player\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A common theme across our responses: Public transit has been \u003cem>really\u003c/em> hostile. Roger Chiang, who works in San Francisco, recalled a white woman glaring at him on the train to work, covering her nose and mouth. When he told her in a joking tone that he didn’t have the coronavirus, she replied that she “wasn’t racist — she just didn’t want to get sick.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Allison Park from Brooklyn told us that when visiting D.C., she saw a man making faces at her on the Metro train. She tried to move away from him, but he wouldn’t stop. After a while, she said, he confronted her outright, saying: “Get out of here. Go back to China. I don’t want none of your swine flu here.” A week later, on a Muni train in San Francisco, another man yelled the same thing to her — “Go back to China” — and even threatened to shoot her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even a single cough or sneeze can trigger harassment. Amy Jiravisitcul from Boston said a man on a bus muttered about “diseased Chinese people” when she sneezed into her sleeve. When she confronted him, he told her: “Cover your fucking mouth.” When South San Franciscan Diane Tran sneezed into her elbow in a hallway in a hospital, where she was getting a flu shot, she said a middle-aged white woman yelled a racist slur at her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Children have been targeted, too — by other children and adults alike. Devin Cabanilla, from Seattle, told us that a Costco food sample vendor told his Korean wife and mixed-race son to “get away” from the samples, questioning whether they had come from China. \u003ca href=\"https://www.insider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-kid-turned-away-food-samples-at-costco-2020-1\">Company executives later apologized\u003c/a> to his family, but he’s still shaken. “It just reminds me that when people look at us, they don’t see us as American,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thirteen-year-old Sara Aalgaard told us that since the outbreak, many middle-school classmates of hers have been targeting the small population of Asian Americans at her school in Middletown, Conn. “People call us ‘corona,’ ” she said, or ask if they eat dogs. Rebecca Wen from North Brunswick, N.J., told us that her 9-year-old son reported that his 11-year-old classmate said: “You’re Chinese, so you must have the coronavirus.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The anti-Asian harassment isn’t limited to the U.S., either. International outlets have reported harassment in majority-white countries like Australia, where parents in Melbourne\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/sensationalist-media-is-exacerbating-racist-coronavirus-fears-we-need-to-combat-it\"> refused to let Asian doctors treat their children\u003c/a>, and Canada, where around 10,000 Toronto-area people signed a petition \u003ca href=\"https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/chinese-canadians-denounce-rising-xenophobia-tied-coronavirus-200202191216923.html\">calling for the local school district to track and isolate Chinese-Canadian students\u003c/a> who may have traveled to China for the Lunar New Year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Germany, Thea Suh said that when she sat down on her train to work, the person sitting next to turned away from her and covered his face. A few days later, a woman told her to move her “corona-riddled body” elsewhere. Not once did someone step in to help, she said. “I have also not seen or heard any German politician or major influencer coming to our defenses,” she said. “And I feel like as a part of the so-called \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/04/19/524571669/model-minority-myth-again-used-as-a-racial-wedge-between-asians-and-blacks\">model minority\u003c/a>, we are being left alone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s another common theme from the responses we got: Witnesses and bystanders were slow to intervene. Allison Park remembers that when the man on the D.C. Metro told her to go back to China, the train was nearly two-thirds full, but no one said anything. At best, she got some sympathetic looks. Amy Jiravisitcul said that the other passengers ignored the yelling, which made her wonder whether they thought she was just making a scene.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And when the harassment has passed, unease still lingers. Jane Hong from New York told us that when she and a fellow Korean American were walking from lunch, she heard a man screaming “yuck” in their direction. Now, she notices whenever people on the street look at her for more than a passing glance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know if ‘paranoid’ is the word,” Hong said. “Now it’s in my head. I wonder if they are thinking, ‘I have to stay away from her, I don’t want to walk near her.’ Now that the seed has been planted in my head, it’s hard to not have that thought cross my mind.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"hr\">\u003cem>For more on xenophobia and coronavirus, \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">listen to this week’s episode of the Code Switch podcast\u003c/a>\u003cem>. We hear from some of these folks, as well as Erika Lee, a historian at the University of Minnesota who studies history, immigration and epidemics.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>This week, new fashion glossy \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/girls.girls.girls.magazine/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Girls. Girls. Girls. Magazine\u003c/em>\u003c/a> released a rendition of a 2017 \u003ca href=\"https://writingsofafuriouswoman.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/be-a-lady-they-said/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Camille Rainville poem\u003c/a>, read by Cynthia Nixon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Be a Lady They Said” is a swift, three-minute summary of the mixed messages that bombard women from adolescence to old age. In Nixon’s hands, it is a searing indictment of Western beauty standards and sexist social conditioning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Dress modestly. Don’t be a temptress. Men can’t control themselves. Men have needs,” Nixon begins in a rapid-fire delivery. “You look frumpy. Loosen up. Show some skin. Look sexy. Look hot. Don’t be so provocative. You’re asking for it. Wear black. Wear heels. You’re too dressed up. You’re too dressed down. Don’t wear those sweatpants; you look like you’ve let yourself go.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can watch the video in full below. (Please be advised, the clip contains partial nudity.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Amie Harwick's Death is a Confirmation of Women's Worst Fears",
"headTitle": "Amie Harwick’s Death is a Confirmation of Women’s Worst Fears | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Last week, 38-year-old therapist Amie Harwick died from blunt force trauma after a violent encounter at her Hollywood home involving an ex-boyfriend. She had previously taken out two restraining orders against Gareth Pursehouse in 2011 and 2012, one of which quotes her as saying: “He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground [and] kicked me.” Harwick’s last restraining order against Pursehouse ended just two weeks before she died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pursehouse was arrested over the weekend in connection to her death, bailed out of jail on Tuesday, then re-arrested Wednesday. He has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-boyfriend-re-arrested-charged-death-celebrity-sex-therapist-amie-n1139681\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">charged with\u003c/a> one count of murder and another of first-degree residential burglary, with the special circumstance allegation of lying in wait. We also know that Harwick’s roommate narrowly escaped their apartment and \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2020/02/amie-harwick-famed-therapist-who-appeared-in-the-doc-addicted-to-sexting-murdered-in-hollywood-1202861234/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">jumped a wall\u003c/a> to raise the alarm to neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harwick’s case has received a lot of media attention in the days since, due in part to the popularity of her 2014 book, \u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Sex_Bible_for_Women.html?id=YO3UBAAAQBAJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The New Sex Bible for Women\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, as well as her prior engagement to comedian \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/entertainment/drew-carey-amie-harwick/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Drew Carey\u003c/a>. In the wake of the tragedy, Carey postponed taping of \u003cem>The Price is Right\u003c/em> for a week and said in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/entertainment/drew-carey-amie-harwick/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">statement\u003c/a>: “She was a positive force in the world, a tireless and unapologetic champion for women, and passionate about her work as a therapist. I am overcome with grief.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spotlight on Harwick’s death was further prolonged after Wendy Williams made a \u003ca href=\"https://pagesix.com/2020/02/19/brother-of-amie-harwick-rips-wendy-williams-for-making-joke-about-her-death/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tasteless joke\u003c/a> about the fact that her death involved a fall from a third story balcony. Harwick’s brother Chris has since \u003ca href=\"https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/amie-harwick-brother-demands-apology-wendy-williams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">requested an apology\u003c/a> from the talk show host, saying: “Domestic violence is something no one should be joking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last few days, several of Harwick’s friends have gone on the record referring to Pursehouse as a “stalker.” One, \u003ca href=\"https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/18/amie-harwick-murder-restraining-orders/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Hernando Chavez, said\u003c/a> that he had been present at a recent accidental encounter between Harwick and Pursehouse, at which Pursehouse “was irate, angry, aggressive, verbally abusive, distraught, under duress. And she was trying to calm him down, she was trying to help him soothe, she was trying to be compassionate and empathic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we can glean from all of this is that Amie Harwick probably died in the same manner that takes the lives of thousands of Americans annually. The number of homicides by intimate partners \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/domestic-violence-victims.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rose\u003c/a> from 1,875 in 2014 to 2,237 in 2017—1,527 of whom were women. What’s more, according to a study published in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/statistics/homicide-and-injury-from-domestic-violence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>NIJ\u003c/em> (\u003cem>National Institute of Justice) Journal\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, in “70-80%” of those cases, “no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While domestic violence is a problem that affects all genders, there can be no doubt that women are on the receiving end of most of it. According to figures gathered between 2003 and 2014, \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2017/07/21/over-half-of-female-murder-victims-are-killed-by-ex-lovers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than half\u003c/a> of the female murder victims in the US are killed by romantic partners. That figure applies all over the world too. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/06/us/domestic-intimate-partner-violence-fast-facts/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Global Study on Homicide estimates\u003c/a> that half of all female murder victims in 2012 were killed by partners or family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amie’s story, while shocking, isn’t exactly what you’d call new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>America has a long history of beautiful, prominent young women dying at the hands of current or former romantic partners. In 1980, Paul Snider \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stratten\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">murdered his estranged wife\u003c/a>, 20-year-old model Dorothy Stratten. In 1982, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Dunne\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dominique Dunne\u003c/a>—most famous for her role in \u003cem>Poltergeist—\u003c/em>died by strangulation at the age of 22, in an attack by her ex-boyfriend. In 2014, dancer \u003ca href=\"https://www.her.ie/celeb/twilight-actress-stephanie-moseley-shot-dead-by-rapper-husband-in-tragic-murder-suicide-206317\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stephanie Moseley was shot dead\u003c/a> by her husband, Earl Hayes. This month, a 21-year-old man pleaded guilty to murdering Instagram influencer \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bianca-devins-murder-brandon-andrew-clark-858874/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bianca Devins\u003c/a> the day after the two had been to a concert together. Most famously of all, O.J. Simpson was found \u003ca href=\"https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-civil-judgment-versus-criminal-conviction-28300.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">legally responsible\u003c/a> for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in the civil trial that followed his famous criminal acquittal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every time one of these murders takes place it weighs heavily on women everywhere. But Amie Harwick’s death is particularly hard to stomach precisely because of the abundance of caution she practiced while she was alive. Dr. Chavez’s comments about Harwick’s kindness in the face of Pursehouse’s anger will be acutely familiar to every woman who has ever smiled politely through incidents of harassment or abuse, as a means to ensure escape. In addition to taking out restraining orders, Harwick constantly promoted healthy boundaries and self-care on her social media. As one who counseled clients dealing with domestic violence, she knew and used the tools to protect herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just one week ago, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hGd7Fpgk_/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">she posted\u003c/a>: “Let’s remember how much control we actually have over the partners we pick and how we move forward in our romantic relationships.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/B4WTMk7p-ql/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Put simply: Amie Harwick did everything right. She did all of the things women are told to do if they want to stay safe. And in the end, it didn’t matter. One friend, \u003ca href=\"https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/17/family-therapist-amie-harwick-murdered-in-hollywood-hills/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rudy Torres, expressed frustration\u003c/a> over Harwick’s death in an interview with \u003cem>CBS2\u003c/em>: “The system will not act until something happens, and it’s always too late for them. It’s always too little too late. I was there when it all started, and they didn’t do much for her then—definitely didn’t do anything for her now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='pop_52170,arts_13866072,arts_13865685' label='These Stories May Interest You']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another friend of Harwick’s, Diana Arias, has set up a \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/adam-b-schiff-justice-4-amie-domestic-violence-laws-updated?source_location=topic_page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Change.org petition\u003c/a> in an attempt to finally prompt meaningful updates to domestic violence laws. The campaign has four clear requests: the abolition of expiration dates for restraining orders, mandatory long-term counseling for offenders, the creation of a national register for domestic abusers, and the option for survivors to testify in court via livestream instead of in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People shouldn’t have to die to make changes,” Arias wrote. “As she helped countless numbers of other people in life, we need to use Amie’s passing as a catalyst for change.” At the time of writing, the petition has over 53,000 signatures and rising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Last week, 38-year-old therapist Amie Harwick died from blunt force trauma after a violent encounter at her Hollywood home involving an ex-boyfriend. She had previously taken out two restraining orders against Gareth Pursehouse in 2011 and 2012, one of which quotes her as saying: “He has suffocated me, punched me, slammed my head on the ground [and] kicked me.” Harwick’s last restraining order against Pursehouse ended just two weeks before she died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pursehouse was arrested over the weekend in connection to her death, bailed out of jail on Tuesday, then re-arrested Wednesday. He has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-boyfriend-re-arrested-charged-death-celebrity-sex-therapist-amie-n1139681\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">charged with\u003c/a> one count of murder and another of first-degree residential burglary, with the special circumstance allegation of lying in wait. We also know that Harwick’s roommate narrowly escaped their apartment and \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2020/02/amie-harwick-famed-therapist-who-appeared-in-the-doc-addicted-to-sexting-murdered-in-hollywood-1202861234/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">jumped a wall\u003c/a> to raise the alarm to neighbors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harwick’s case has received a lot of media attention in the days since, due in part to the popularity of her 2014 book, \u003ca href=\"https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Sex_Bible_for_Women.html?id=YO3UBAAAQBAJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>The New Sex Bible for Women\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, as well as her prior engagement to comedian \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/entertainment/drew-carey-amie-harwick/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Drew Carey\u003c/a>. In the wake of the tragedy, Carey postponed taping of \u003cem>The Price is Right\u003c/em> for a week and said in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/18/entertainment/drew-carey-amie-harwick/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">statement\u003c/a>: “She was a positive force in the world, a tireless and unapologetic champion for women, and passionate about her work as a therapist. I am overcome with grief.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The spotlight on Harwick’s death was further prolonged after Wendy Williams made a \u003ca href=\"https://pagesix.com/2020/02/19/brother-of-amie-harwick-rips-wendy-williams-for-making-joke-about-her-death/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tasteless joke\u003c/a> about the fact that her death involved a fall from a third story balcony. Harwick’s brother Chris has since \u003ca href=\"https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/amie-harwick-brother-demands-apology-wendy-williams\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">requested an apology\u003c/a> from the talk show host, saying: “Domestic violence is something no one should be joking about.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last few days, several of Harwick’s friends have gone on the record referring to Pursehouse as a “stalker.” One, \u003ca href=\"https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/18/amie-harwick-murder-restraining-orders/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dr. Hernando Chavez, said\u003c/a> that he had been present at a recent accidental encounter between Harwick and Pursehouse, at which Pursehouse “was irate, angry, aggressive, verbally abusive, distraught, under duress. And she was trying to calm him down, she was trying to help him soothe, she was trying to be compassionate and empathic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we can glean from all of this is that Amie Harwick probably died in the same manner that takes the lives of thousands of Americans annually. The number of homicides by intimate partners \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/domestic-violence-victims.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rose\u003c/a> from 1,875 in 2014 to 2,237 in 2017—1,527 of whom were women. What’s more, according to a study published in the \u003ca href=\"https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/statistics/homicide-and-injury-from-domestic-violence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>NIJ\u003c/em> (\u003cem>National Institute of Justice) Journal\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, in “70-80%” of those cases, “no matter which partner was killed, the man physically abused the woman before the murder.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While domestic violence is a problem that affects all genders, there can be no doubt that women are on the receiving end of most of it. According to figures gathered between 2003 and 2014, \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2017/07/21/over-half-of-female-murder-victims-are-killed-by-ex-lovers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than half\u003c/a> of the female murder victims in the US are killed by romantic partners. That figure applies all over the world too. The \u003ca href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/06/us/domestic-intimate-partner-violence-fast-facts/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Global Study on Homicide estimates\u003c/a> that half of all female murder victims in 2012 were killed by partners or family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amie’s story, while shocking, isn’t exactly what you’d call new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>America has a long history of beautiful, prominent young women dying at the hands of current or former romantic partners. In 1980, Paul Snider \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Stratten\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">murdered his estranged wife\u003c/a>, 20-year-old model Dorothy Stratten. In 1982, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Dunne\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dominique Dunne\u003c/a>—most famous for her role in \u003cem>Poltergeist—\u003c/em>died by strangulation at the age of 22, in an attack by her ex-boyfriend. In 2014, dancer \u003ca href=\"https://www.her.ie/celeb/twilight-actress-stephanie-moseley-shot-dead-by-rapper-husband-in-tragic-murder-suicide-206317\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stephanie Moseley was shot dead\u003c/a> by her husband, Earl Hayes. This month, a 21-year-old man pleaded guilty to murdering Instagram influencer \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bianca-devins-murder-brandon-andrew-clark-858874/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bianca Devins\u003c/a> the day after the two had been to a concert together. Most famously of all, O.J. Simpson was found \u003ca href=\"https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-civil-judgment-versus-criminal-conviction-28300.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">legally responsible\u003c/a> for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in the civil trial that followed his famous criminal acquittal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every time one of these murders takes place it weighs heavily on women everywhere. But Amie Harwick’s death is particularly hard to stomach precisely because of the abundance of caution she practiced while she was alive. Dr. Chavez’s comments about Harwick’s kindness in the face of Pursehouse’s anger will be acutely familiar to every woman who has ever smiled politely through incidents of harassment or abuse, as a means to ensure escape. In addition to taking out restraining orders, Harwick constantly promoted healthy boundaries and self-care on her social media. As one who counseled clients dealing with domestic violence, she knew and used the tools to protect herself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just one week ago, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hGd7Fpgk_/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">she posted\u003c/a>: “Let’s remember how much control we actually have over the partners we pick and how we move forward in our romantic relationships.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Put simply: Amie Harwick did everything right. She did all of the things women are told to do if they want to stay safe. And in the end, it didn’t matter. One friend, \u003ca href=\"https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/17/family-therapist-amie-harwick-murdered-in-hollywood-hills/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rudy Torres, expressed frustration\u003c/a> over Harwick’s death in an interview with \u003cem>CBS2\u003c/em>: “The system will not act until something happens, and it’s always too late for them. It’s always too little too late. I was there when it all started, and they didn’t do much for her then—definitely didn’t do anything for her now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another friend of Harwick’s, Diana Arias, has set up a \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/adam-b-schiff-justice-4-amie-domestic-violence-laws-updated?source_location=topic_page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Change.org petition\u003c/a> in an attempt to finally prompt meaningful updates to domestic violence laws. The campaign has four clear requests: the abolition of expiration dates for restraining orders, mandatory long-term counseling for offenders, the creation of a national register for domestic abusers, and the option for survivors to testify in court via livestream instead of in person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People shouldn’t have to die to make changes,” Arias wrote. “As she helped countless numbers of other people in life, we need to use Amie’s passing as a catalyst for change.” At the time of writing, the petition has over 53,000 signatures and rising.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The Suicide of Caroline Flack, Tabloid Gossip and the Power of UK Newspapers",
"headTitle": "The Suicide of Caroline Flack, Tabloid Gossip and the Power of UK Newspapers | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>The outpouring on social media arrived swiftly after the news of Caroline Flack’s death. The 40-year-old \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/106271/dear-american-television-please-dont-ruin-love-island\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Love Island\u003c/em>\u003c/a> host and one of the U.K.’s most popular TV stars was found in her London apartment, dead from an apparent suicide, on Feb. 15. Her death came less than three weeks before she was due in court over the alleged assault of her boyfriend (she had pleaded not guilty), and years after unrelenting press coverage about her personal life had begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fans and fellow celebrities quickly took to Twitter and called out the press for overburdening Flack in the months before her death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/matthaig1/status/1228749821881847808\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/mrdanwalker/status/1228749830350045185\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/LukeGoss/status/1228815633648762881\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The publication under the most immediate scrutiny was \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em>, a daily tabloid that has long been \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_(United_Kingdom)#Circulation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the biggest-selling newspaper\u003c/a> in the U.K., despite a number of national scandals in which the outlet has been accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/28/katie-hopkins-migrants-ipso-sun-cockroaches\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">xenophobia\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/14/sun-page-3-visible-tip-misogynys-iceberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">misogyny\u003c/a> and, most famously, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">victim blaming\u003c/a>. When news of Flack’s death broke, \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em> was quick to remove a recent\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/15/the-sun-takes-down-article-about-caroline-flack-from-website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> negative story\u003c/a> it had published about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth though, is that all of the U.K.’s daily tabloids had paid keen attention to Flack’s personal life throughout her career—in December, \u003cem>The Daily Mail\u003c/em> wrote a story about her “\u003ca href=\"https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7789585/Inside-Caroline-Flacks-car-crash-love-life.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">car crash love life\u003c/a>.” That kind of scrutiny first started with her controversial relationship with Harry Styles when he was 17 and she was 31, continued after a brief dalliance with Prince Harry (before he’d met Meghan Markle), and was ongoing at the time of her death thanks to the alleged assault of her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, who she was said to have struck with a lamp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that despite consistent negative coverage about her relationships, it’s hard to find anyone in Flack’s life with anything bad to say about her. Harry Styles arrived at Tuesday’s BRIT Awards wearing a black ribbon, and moved many with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkgBUvgNeoM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">emotional performance\u003c/a> of “Falling.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFSFpHjsLY0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not only was Lewis Burton still in a relationship with Flack at the time of her death, he had withdrawn his complaint about the alleged assault (the charges were instead brought by Britain’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/andrew-castle/caroline-flack-charges-cps-prosecution/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crown Prosecution Service\u003c/a>) and publicly defended her in the midst of the controversy and imminent trial. After \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em> published photos of a blood-soaked sheet purported to be from injuries Flack inflicted on Burton, he \u003ca href=\"https://www.the-sun.com/news/206179/gruesome-pic-of-scene-after-caroline-flacks-boyfriend-was-assaulted-shows-mostly-her-blood/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote on Instagram\u003c/a>, “This isn’t my blood and I didn’t get hit over the head with a lamp. Can everyone stop now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/B8nqjfWBwjA/\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BBC Radio DJ and friend to Flack, Laura Whitmore, said on the air the day after her death: “I’m not going to pretend that she was perfect. But is anyone? She lived every mistake publicly under the scrutiny of the media … To the press, the newspapers who created clickbait, who demonize and tear down success, we’ve had enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the wake of Flack’s death, an online petition was quickly set up demanding the \u003ca href=\"https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/flacks-law?bucket=email-blast-17_2_2020_carolines_law&source=twitter-share-button&utm_campaign=blast2020-02-17&utm_source=twitter&share=8890be77-fce2-4300-a78e-3394269360c9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">creation of a law\u003c/a> (specifically “Caroline’s Law”), “that would make it a criminal offense, not dissimilar to Corporate Manslaughter, for the British Media to knowingly and relentlessly bully a person, whether they be in the public eye or not, up to the point that they take their own life.” It had received over 737,000 signatures at the time of writing. (A further 218,000 people signed a petition asking for \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/secretary-of-state-for-digital-culture-media-and-sport-launch-government-inquiry-into-the-british-tabloids-following-death-of-caroline-flack?recruiter=1043035832&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a government inquiry\u003c/a> into Flack’s death.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such suggestions may seem like an overreaction in America, but the U.K. has been struggling with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13866072/the-bullying-of-meghan-markle-continues-a-long-tradition-for-royal-wives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">questions around press conduct\u003c/a> and intrusion since the death of Princess Diana in 1997. At that time there was speculation that not only did the press hound her literally to death, but that the British public’s outpouring of grief afterwards was somehow related to guilt over its own enthusiastic consumption of stories that violated her privacy. [aside postid='arts_13866072,arts_13863206']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the years since, however, little has changed. Between 2005 and 2011, investigations by both the Press Complaints Commission and \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> revealed that British newspapers, including \u003cem>News of the World\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Daily Mirror\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Sun—\u003c/em>all owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation—had indulged in police bribery and phone hacking. Victims of the latter included celebrities, royals, politicians and, worst of all, the families of high-profile murder and terrorism victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These revelations resulted in the closure of \u003cem>News of the World\u003c/em>, multiple arrests and hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation payments. But the smallness of the U.K. (geographically, it’s almost half the size of California) in combination with the sheer power of its handful of daily newspapers (\u003ca href=\"https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/116529/news-consumption-2018.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">40% of people\u003c/a> in the U.K. regularly read newspapers, versus \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">16% of Americans\u003c/a>) leaves the British people concerned about tabloid bullying and violations in an ongoing manner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There can be no doubt that Caroline Flack was shown little kindness by the U.K. press in the run-up to her death, and it’s clear that she read what was written about her. In late 2019, she posted both of these headlines (with her own comments) to her Instagram stories:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13875084\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 683px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13875084\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1.png\" alt=\"Instagram/ @carolineflack\" width=\"683\" height=\"636\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1.png 683w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1-160x149.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Instagram/ @carolineflack\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We cannot know how much influence press scrutiny had on Flack’s decision to end her own life. There can be no doubt that her upcoming trial, as well as her uncertain future as the host of \u003cem>Love Island\u003c/em> were also factors in her demise. But it’s fair to assume that too much tabloid scrutiny can wreak havoc on people’s mental health, both famous and otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his book \u003cem>So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed\u003c/em>, Jon Ronson writes: “I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be.” Later, he concludes: “And so … when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices—that’s democracy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the wake of Flack’s death, the British public is doing just that, repeating a mantra that she herself posted to Instagram back in December: Be kind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/B5tO1tRFbEI/\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The outpouring on social media arrived swiftly after the news of Caroline Flack’s death. The 40-year-old \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/106271/dear-american-television-please-dont-ruin-love-island\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Love Island\u003c/em>\u003c/a> host and one of the U.K.’s most popular TV stars was found in her London apartment, dead from an apparent suicide, on Feb. 15. Her death came less than three weeks before she was due in court over the alleged assault of her boyfriend (she had pleaded not guilty), and years after unrelenting press coverage about her personal life had begun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fans and fellow celebrities quickly took to Twitter and called out the press for overburdening Flack in the months before her death.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The publication under the most immediate scrutiny was \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em>, a daily tabloid that has long been \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_(United_Kingdom)#Circulation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the biggest-selling newspaper\u003c/a> in the U.K., despite a number of national scandals in which the outlet has been accused of \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/28/katie-hopkins-migrants-ipso-sun-cockroaches\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">xenophobia\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/14/sun-page-3-visible-tip-misogynys-iceberg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">misogyny\u003c/a> and, most famously, \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">victim blaming\u003c/a>. When news of Flack’s death broke, \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em> was quick to remove a recent\u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/15/the-sun-takes-down-article-about-caroline-flack-from-website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> negative story\u003c/a> it had published about her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth though, is that all of the U.K.’s daily tabloids had paid keen attention to Flack’s personal life throughout her career—in December, \u003cem>The Daily Mail\u003c/em> wrote a story about her “\u003ca href=\"https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7789585/Inside-Caroline-Flacks-car-crash-love-life.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">car crash love life\u003c/a>.” That kind of scrutiny first started with her controversial relationship with Harry Styles when he was 17 and she was 31, continued after a brief dalliance with Prince Harry (before he’d met Meghan Markle), and was ongoing at the time of her death thanks to the alleged assault of her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, who she was said to have struck with a lamp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s worth noting that despite consistent negative coverage about her relationships, it’s hard to find anyone in Flack’s life with anything bad to say about her. Harry Styles arrived at Tuesday’s BRIT Awards wearing a black ribbon, and moved many with his \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkgBUvgNeoM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">emotional performance\u003c/a> of “Falling.”\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/bFSFpHjsLY0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/bFSFpHjsLY0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Not only was Lewis Burton still in a relationship with Flack at the time of her death, he had withdrawn his complaint about the alleged assault (the charges were instead brought by Britain’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/andrew-castle/caroline-flack-charges-cps-prosecution/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Crown Prosecution Service\u003c/a>) and publicly defended her in the midst of the controversy and imminent trial. After \u003cem>The Sun\u003c/em> published photos of a blood-soaked sheet purported to be from injuries Flack inflicted on Burton, he \u003ca href=\"https://www.the-sun.com/news/206179/gruesome-pic-of-scene-after-caroline-flacks-boyfriend-was-assaulted-shows-mostly-her-blood/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote on Instagram\u003c/a>, “This isn’t my blood and I didn’t get hit over the head with a lamp. Can everyone stop now.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>BBC Radio DJ and friend to Flack, Laura Whitmore, said on the air the day after her death: “I’m not going to pretend that she was perfect. But is anyone? She lived every mistake publicly under the scrutiny of the media … To the press, the newspapers who created clickbait, who demonize and tear down success, we’ve had enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the wake of Flack’s death, an online petition was quickly set up demanding the \u003ca href=\"https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/flacks-law?bucket=email-blast-17_2_2020_carolines_law&source=twitter-share-button&utm_campaign=blast2020-02-17&utm_source=twitter&share=8890be77-fce2-4300-a78e-3394269360c9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">creation of a law\u003c/a> (specifically “Caroline’s Law”), “that would make it a criminal offense, not dissimilar to Corporate Manslaughter, for the British Media to knowingly and relentlessly bully a person, whether they be in the public eye or not, up to the point that they take their own life.” It had received over 737,000 signatures at the time of writing. (A further 218,000 people signed a petition asking for \u003ca href=\"https://www.change.org/p/secretary-of-state-for-digital-culture-media-and-sport-launch-government-inquiry-into-the-british-tabloids-following-death-of-caroline-flack?recruiter=1043035832&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a government inquiry\u003c/a> into Flack’s death.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such suggestions may seem like an overreaction in America, but the U.K. has been struggling with \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13866072/the-bullying-of-meghan-markle-continues-a-long-tradition-for-royal-wives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">questions around press conduct\u003c/a> and intrusion since the death of Princess Diana in 1997. At that time there was speculation that not only did the press hound her literally to death, but that the British public’s outpouring of grief afterwards was somehow related to guilt over its own enthusiastic consumption of stories that violated her privacy. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the years since, however, little has changed. Between 2005 and 2011, investigations by both the Press Complaints Commission and \u003cem>The Guardian\u003c/em> revealed that British newspapers, including \u003cem>News of the World\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Daily Mirror\u003c/em> and \u003cem>The Sun—\u003c/em>all owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International corporation—had indulged in police bribery and phone hacking. Victims of the latter included celebrities, royals, politicians and, worst of all, the families of high-profile murder and terrorism victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These revelations resulted in the closure of \u003cem>News of the World\u003c/em>, multiple arrests and hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation payments. But the smallness of the U.K. (geographically, it’s almost half the size of California) in combination with the sheer power of its handful of daily newspapers (\u003ca href=\"https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/116529/news-consumption-2018.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">40% of people\u003c/a> in the U.K. regularly read newspapers, versus \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/12/10/social-media-outpaces-print-newspapers-in-the-u-s-as-a-news-source/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">16% of Americans\u003c/a>) leaves the British people concerned about tabloid bullying and violations in an ongoing manner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There can be no doubt that Caroline Flack was shown little kindness by the U.K. press in the run-up to her death, and it’s clear that she read what was written about her. In late 2019, she posted both of these headlines (with her own comments) to her Instagram stories:\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13875084\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 683px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13875084\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1.png\" alt=\"Instagram/ @carolineflack\" width=\"683\" height=\"636\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1.png 683w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-3.39.33-PM-1-160x149.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Instagram/ @carolineflack\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We cannot know how much influence press scrutiny had on Flack’s decision to end her own life. There can be no doubt that her upcoming trial, as well as her uncertain future as the host of \u003cem>Love Island\u003c/em> were also factors in her demise. But it’s fair to assume that too much tabloid scrutiny can wreak havoc on people’s mental health, both famous and otherwise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In his book \u003cem>So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed\u003c/em>, Jon Ronson writes: “I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be.” Later, he concludes: “And so … when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices—that’s democracy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the wake of Flack’s death, the British public is doing just that, repeating a mantra that she herself posted to Instagram back in December: Be kind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "a-mural-of-tom-hanks-and-too-short-in-oakland-goes-deeper-than-paint",
"title": "A Mural of Tom Hanks and Too Short in Oakland Goes Deeper Than Paint",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">I\u003c/span> really thought I was \u003cem>doing\u003c/em> \u003cem>something\u003c/em> when I took a picture of a nearly finished mural of Tom Hanks and Too $hort and then \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/OGpenn/status/1222571572185055234\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">posted it\u003c/a> to social media. I mean, I really put my phone in my pocket, thinking I actually did something good for people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-13833985\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_-160x184.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"184\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_-160x184.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_.jpg 180w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My rationale? The mural was a huge street-side tribute to two vastly different hometown luminaries. I figured it would uplift folks, and help take their minds off the deflating news cycle about the unimpeachable president, the spread of an international virus and the dire housing situation in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, that picture put a number of the issues we’re facing into perspective—issues that I didn’t notice until the mural was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took less than three days for the mural to be covered. All of the work from the artists, whose Instagram handles are \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pierremadethat/\">@pierremadethat\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/charles.utero.the3rd/\">@charles.utero.the3rd\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/funkysquash/\">@funkysquash\u003c/a>, on the broad side of the building at San Pablo Avenue and Castro Street was erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What once was a short-lived mural depicting a young and spunky Tom Hanks from the movie \u003cem>Big\u003c/em> and an image of Too $hort from the \u003cem>Life Is… Too $hort\u003c/em> era—big donkey rope chain in tow—was gone. Poof! The details in the photo, all the easter eggs in the illustrations that accompanied Hanks’ image: a computer mouse from \u003cem>You’ve Got Mail\u003c/em>, the Wilson ball from \u003cem>Cast Away\u003c/em>, and a nod to \u003cem>Toy Story\u003c/em> in the form of a cowboy hat. Behind $hort were a number of details, too, including a boom box and some unidentified booties of women in thongs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was homage to two guys who spent their formative years in Oakland, who made it big in entertainment and who speak highly of their East Bay roots in nearly every interview I’ve ever seen. What could be wrong with that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874868\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874868\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A Work in Progress\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Work in Progress. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">“T\u003c/span>he level (of) keebler cracker and gmo wheat toast fkery in these pictures is ridiculously pitiful,” wrote Refa One, a well-known activist and artist from West Oakland, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/oakmaroons/posts/2665314293585655?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCEiibWYkc0UOEBORd7mld8IUIZ9ij7SpHPEXZzG11yll845j72wqdXYfahW3B5vQsKg4u66WP0-c3XfOpH-hSrebJr3OfEWbyvN3pZI5v5pi8hCf-aXKKQMRxrdBeE5EKT3v5jLwASZZ-k6DWuosGNZ0aDvO90xfR1DCgapXTSNTwVhwT8jyEFmcMMfT4JNa1zWo_y4mvg3hRCRbu-ogjrzryDjcK4wQetfh8_wkHCJtyDYPwLtTPzf7O5PGu00eRkMGwCSEmsfDLfhgxbd6JODOoija6lnbCrm8IlavCqROMHexOYAfkywNzgKowzQ9ZU6SXuYpTKTfc1pM0E09TC7A&__tn__=-R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a Facebook post\u003c/a> with the image of the mural. “I’m still processing the amount of thirsty accolades this work is receiving from Negropeans that have embraced defeat by the gentrifying colonizers hell bent on mascot iconography of a displaced BLACK people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damn man, I hate to admit it, but I was one of those “Negropeans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not too long after Refa One made the Facebook post, the mural was covered with a massive blotting of light blue paint—similar to the color the \u003ca href=\"https://exhibits.stanford.edu/fitch/browse/black-panther-party-oakland-california-1968-1972?page=2&view=slideshow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Panther Party’s school uniforms\u003c/a>. “Mural in Progress. Reserved for Black Panther Party,” was the only message left on the elongated wall that parallels the 980 freeway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, I went down to the corner of San Pablo and Castro Street, and took a close photo of the new coat of paint and the message inscribed on the wall. I posted the picture on social media, and in came the questions: “Why’d they cover it?” “Who did it?” “What’s coming next?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I called Refa One.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is about African people controlling the visual landscape in their community, particularly against all forms of gentrification,” said Refa One, a longtime Oakland-based creator who heads the international arts collective \u003ca href=\"http://www.aerosoulart.com/\">Aerosoul\u003c/a>, and the son of two Black Panther Party members. He’s also the artist behind numerous murals in Oakland, including one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13851520/rightnowish-refa-one-spraypaint-in-hand-honors-west-oaklands-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huey P. Newton in West Oakland\u003c/a> and one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11753459/bart-unveils-oscar-grant-mural-and-street-sign-at-fruitvale-station\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station\u003c/a>. “And in this particular situation,” he added, “we’re dealing with visual culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874866\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874866\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The image of Tom Hanks and a nod to his movies.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The image of Tom Hanks and a nod to his movies. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He told me he had a few issues with the mural of Hanks and $hort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For starters, it depicts Tom Hanks, a multimillionaire who speaks proudly of his Oakland roots, but has yet to make a public statement about inequity in Oakland, Refa One said. And that’s for a city where the housing crisis has been noted as an emergency by local, state and international officials; an emergency that has \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/stepping-up-for-homeless-black-people-in-oakland/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">disproportionately impacted black people\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the image of Too $hort, known for misogynistic lyrics, is an issue too, Refa One added. It’s on the side of a wall that butts up against San Pablo Avenue not too far from the Greyhound Bus Station, which over the decades has been a hot spot for sex trafficking, an issue that’s plagued Oakland for longer than Too $hort has been rapping. And it has disproportionately impacted black women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then Refa One noted that two of the three artists involved in the mural were white folks, and not from Oakland. He questioned what right they had to paint the walls in a traditionally black community. “Can I go to Chinatown and paint whatever I want? Can I go to Piedmont and paint there?” he asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, when you put it like that, I get it. So did the other artists. They told me that they understood the politics behind Refa’s point and ambition to paint over their work, and deferred any further comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a good thing,” one of the artists \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B8E2hvIp50u/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote\u003c/a> on Instagram. “Excited for what’s going up next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874867\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874867\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-800x576.jpg\" alt=\"The image of Too $hort and details from aspects of his career.\" width=\"800\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-800x576.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-768x553.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The image of Too $hort and details from aspects of his career. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s a long history of African American culture being compromised and remade to fit the palate of white America. Elvis Presley re-recording “Hound Dog” and selling 9.5 million more copies than the original \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hound-dog-is-recorded-for-the-first-time-by-big-mama-thornton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Big Mama Thornton version\u003c/a>. The long-running TV show \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>, a spinoff of \u003ca href=\"https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/01/the-gentrification-of-city-based-sitcoms/513302/\">Living Single\u003c/a>. Hell, famed slavery abolitionist \u003ca href=\"https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/educate/truth.html\">Sojouner Truth\u003c/a>‘s first language was Dutch, and when she learned English, she spoke in a Dutch accent. Yet her famous speech, “Ain’t I A Woman,” is usually thought to have been spoken in “\u003ca href=\"https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a stereotypical ‘southern black slave accent\u003c/a>,'” because that’s how (white) historians believed all enslaved Africans spoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s deeper than some paint on the walls. It’s about the importance of controlling your story, no matter the medium, because from that comes control over your life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And on that note of self-determination shown through community art, Refa One told me about a time he was painting a piece in Campbell Village, a well-known public housing project in West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know how to do \u003cem>this\u003c/em>?” Refa One said a young man asked, watching him paint while playing with a group of friends. “We thought only white people did this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Refa One said he talked to the group of children, and told them, “The first people on the planet to ever paint murals, and to express their culture in that fashion, were African people just like us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13851523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13851523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-800x535.jpg\" alt=\"Refa One in West Oakland.\" width=\"800\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-1200x802.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Refa One, of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/aerosoul_ig/\">@aerosoul_ig\u003c/a>, in West Oakland. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He invited the youngsters to pick up some paint and participate in the production of the piece, giving them “collective ownership of their walls.” Which is especially important in the black community, where we’re constantly combating self-hatred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been conditioned to believe that anything happening positively in our community must come from the outside,” said Refa One, in reference to numerous images of African American leaders painted by white artists in Oakland. “Oftentimes the community is ignorant to the fact that we’re being ‘mascotted’ by white folks who consider themselves the ambassador to our culture, and how it should be used and decimated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he can’t simply paint over those walls. It’s a Catch-22. “At that point it becomes difficult to remove those images, because people’s overall thought is that it’s positive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a town where black folks have been disproportionately killed, over-policed, under-educated, sex trafficked and pushed out by the masses, putting up images of black folks \u003cem>is\u003c/em> like sports teams having mascots. Mascots derived from cultural aspects of the natives, who’ve been killed off of the very land where they now toss a pigskin or pitch a four-seam fastball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damn, it \u003cem>is\u003c/em> just like sports: it’s easy to root for a team because you like their mascot or star players, but you better do your research on who’s really in control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise you’ll be cheering for the “Negropeans.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">I\u003c/span> really thought I was \u003cem>doing\u003c/em> \u003cem>something\u003c/em> when I took a picture of a nearly finished mural of Tom Hanks and Too $hort and then \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/OGpenn/status/1222571572185055234\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">posted it\u003c/a> to social media. I mean, I really put my phone in my pocket, thinking I actually did something good for people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-13833985\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_-160x184.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"184\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_-160x184.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/OGPenn.Cap_.jpg 180w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My rationale? The mural was a huge street-side tribute to two vastly different hometown luminaries. I figured it would uplift folks, and help take their minds off the deflating news cycle about the unimpeachable president, the spread of an international virus and the dire housing situation in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, that picture put a number of the issues we’re facing into perspective—issues that I didn’t notice until the mural was gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It took less than three days for the mural to be covered. All of the work from the artists, whose Instagram handles are \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pierremadethat/\">@pierremadethat\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/charles.utero.the3rd/\">@charles.utero.the3rd\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/funkysquash/\">@funkysquash\u003c/a>, on the broad side of the building at San Pablo Avenue and Castro Street was erased.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What once was a short-lived mural depicting a young and spunky Tom Hanks from the movie \u003cem>Big\u003c/em> and an image of Too $hort from the \u003cem>Life Is… Too $hort\u003c/em> era—big donkey rope chain in tow—was gone. Poof! The details in the photo, all the easter eggs in the illustrations that accompanied Hanks’ image: a computer mouse from \u003cem>You’ve Got Mail\u003c/em>, the Wilson ball from \u003cem>Cast Away\u003c/em>, and a nod to \u003cem>Toy Story\u003c/em> in the form of a cowboy hat. Behind $hort were a number of details, too, including a boom box and some unidentified booties of women in thongs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was homage to two guys who spent their formative years in Oakland, who made it big in entertainment and who speak highly of their East Bay roots in nearly every interview I’ve ever seen. What could be wrong with that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874868\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874868\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"A Work in Progress\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/83915355_10102711897512530_1065418198855188480_n-1.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Work in Progress. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">“T\u003c/span>he level (of) keebler cracker and gmo wheat toast fkery in these pictures is ridiculously pitiful,” wrote Refa One, a well-known activist and artist from West Oakland, in \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/oakmaroons/posts/2665314293585655?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARCEiibWYkc0UOEBORd7mld8IUIZ9ij7SpHPEXZzG11yll845j72wqdXYfahW3B5vQsKg4u66WP0-c3XfOpH-hSrebJr3OfEWbyvN3pZI5v5pi8hCf-aXKKQMRxrdBeE5EKT3v5jLwASZZ-k6DWuosGNZ0aDvO90xfR1DCgapXTSNTwVhwT8jyEFmcMMfT4JNa1zWo_y4mvg3hRCRbu-ogjrzryDjcK4wQetfh8_wkHCJtyDYPwLtTPzf7O5PGu00eRkMGwCSEmsfDLfhgxbd6JODOoija6lnbCrm8IlavCqROMHexOYAfkywNzgKowzQ9ZU6SXuYpTKTfc1pM0E09TC7A&__tn__=-R\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a Facebook post\u003c/a> with the image of the mural. “I’m still processing the amount of thirsty accolades this work is receiving from Negropeans that have embraced defeat by the gentrifying colonizers hell bent on mascot iconography of a displaced BLACK people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damn man, I hate to admit it, but I was one of those “Negropeans.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not too long after Refa One made the Facebook post, the mural was covered with a massive blotting of light blue paint—similar to the color the \u003ca href=\"https://exhibits.stanford.edu/fitch/browse/black-panther-party-oakland-california-1968-1972?page=2&view=slideshow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Panther Party’s school uniforms\u003c/a>. “Mural in Progress. Reserved for Black Panther Party,” was the only message left on the elongated wall that parallels the 980 freeway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next day, I went down to the corner of San Pablo and Castro Street, and took a close photo of the new coat of paint and the message inscribed on the wall. I posted the picture on social media, and in came the questions: “Why’d they cover it?” “Who did it?” “What’s coming next?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So I called Refa One.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is about African people controlling the visual landscape in their community, particularly against all forms of gentrification,” said Refa One, a longtime Oakland-based creator who heads the international arts collective \u003ca href=\"http://www.aerosoulart.com/\">Aerosoul\u003c/a>, and the son of two Black Panther Party members. He’s also the artist behind numerous murals in Oakland, including one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13851520/rightnowish-refa-one-spraypaint-in-hand-honors-west-oaklands-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huey P. Newton in West Oakland\u003c/a> and one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11753459/bart-unveils-oscar-grant-mural-and-street-sign-at-fruitvale-station\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station\u003c/a>. “And in this particular situation,” he added, “we’re dealing with visual culture.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874866\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874866\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"The image of Tom Hanks and a nod to his movies.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCkKU8AAllIP.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The image of Tom Hanks and a nod to his movies. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He told me he had a few issues with the mural of Hanks and $hort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For starters, it depicts Tom Hanks, a multimillionaire who speaks proudly of his Oakland roots, but has yet to make a public statement about inequity in Oakland, Refa One said. And that’s for a city where the housing crisis has been noted as an emergency by local, state and international officials; an emergency that has \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/stepping-up-for-homeless-black-people-in-oakland/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">disproportionately impacted black people\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the image of Too $hort, known for misogynistic lyrics, is an issue too, Refa One added. It’s on the side of a wall that butts up against San Pablo Avenue not too far from the Greyhound Bus Station, which over the decades has been a hot spot for sex trafficking, an issue that’s plagued Oakland for longer than Too $hort has been rapping. And it has disproportionately impacted black women.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then Refa One noted that two of the three artists involved in the mural were white folks, and not from Oakland. He questioned what right they had to paint the walls in a traditionally black community. “Can I go to Chinatown and paint whatever I want? Can I go to Piedmont and paint there?” he asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, when you put it like that, I get it. So did the other artists. They told me that they understood the politics behind Refa’s point and ambition to paint over their work, and deferred any further comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a good thing,” one of the artists \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B8E2hvIp50u/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote\u003c/a> on Instagram. “Excited for what’s going up next.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13874867\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13874867\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-800x576.jpg\" alt=\"The image of Too $hort and details from aspects of his career.\" width=\"800\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-800x576.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-160x115.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w-768x553.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/02/EPeCCmBVAAEqE_w.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The image of Too $hort and details from aspects of his career. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-size: 4.6875em;float: left;line-height: 0.733em;padding: 0.05em 0.1em 0 0;font-family: times, serif, georgia\">T\u003c/span>here’s a long history of African American culture being compromised and remade to fit the palate of white America. Elvis Presley re-recording “Hound Dog” and selling 9.5 million more copies than the original \u003ca href=\"https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hound-dog-is-recorded-for-the-first-time-by-big-mama-thornton\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Big Mama Thornton version\u003c/a>. The long-running TV show \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>, a spinoff of \u003ca href=\"https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/01/the-gentrification-of-city-based-sitcoms/513302/\">Living Single\u003c/a>. Hell, famed slavery abolitionist \u003ca href=\"https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/educate/truth.html\">Sojouner Truth\u003c/a>‘s first language was Dutch, and when she learned English, she spoke in a Dutch accent. Yet her famous speech, “Ain’t I A Woman,” is usually thought to have been spoken in “\u003ca href=\"https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a stereotypical ‘southern black slave accent\u003c/a>,'” because that’s how (white) historians believed all enslaved Africans spoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s deeper than some paint on the walls. It’s about the importance of controlling your story, no matter the medium, because from that comes control over your life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And on that note of self-determination shown through community art, Refa One told me about a time he was painting a piece in Campbell Village, a well-known public housing project in West Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You know how to do \u003cem>this\u003c/em>?” Refa One said a young man asked, watching him paint while playing with a group of friends. “We thought only white people did this.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Refa One said he talked to the group of children, and told them, “The first people on the planet to ever paint murals, and to express their culture in that fashion, were African people just like us.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13851523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13851523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-800x535.jpg\" alt=\"Refa One in West Oakland.\" width=\"800\" height=\"535\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-800x535.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-1020x682.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street-1200x802.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/RefaOne.street.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Refa One, of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/aerosoul_ig/\">@aerosoul_ig\u003c/a>, in West Oakland. \u003ccite>(Pendarvis Harshaw/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He invited the youngsters to pick up some paint and participate in the production of the piece, giving them “collective ownership of their walls.” Which is especially important in the black community, where we’re constantly combating self-hatred.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been conditioned to believe that anything happening positively in our community must come from the outside,” said Refa One, in reference to numerous images of African American leaders painted by white artists in Oakland. “Oftentimes the community is ignorant to the fact that we’re being ‘mascotted’ by white folks who consider themselves the ambassador to our culture, and how it should be used and decimated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He says he can’t simply paint over those walls. It’s a Catch-22. “At that point it becomes difficult to remove those images, because people’s overall thought is that it’s positive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in a town where black folks have been disproportionately killed, over-policed, under-educated, sex trafficked and pushed out by the masses, putting up images of black folks \u003cem>is\u003c/em> like sports teams having mascots. Mascots derived from cultural aspects of the natives, who’ve been killed off of the very land where they now toss a pigskin or pitch a four-seam fastball.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Damn, it \u003cem>is\u003c/em> just like sports: it’s easy to root for a team because you like their mascot or star players, but you better do your research on who’s really in control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise you’ll be cheering for the “Negropeans.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "What Fictional Pandemics Can Teach Us About Real-World Survival",
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"content": "\u003cp>We’ve been telling stories about pandemics for a very long time. From an eighth century BCE poem about a \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erra_(god)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Babylonian plague god\u003c/a> to the Old Testament’s ten plagues of Egypt to, well, the AMC megahit zombie show \u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em>, now in its tenth season.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79io403T1EM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long ago, we understood mass outbreaks as divine punishment for human transgressions—but our stories about disease have changed over time. Although still fantastic, modern stories about disease tend to be rooted in political and social realities. Last year, the 800-page novel \u003cem>Wanderers\u003c/em> combined science fiction and horror with a techno-thriller focus on the rise of artificial intelligence and white nationalism in the aftermath of a pandemic. Author Chuck Wendig explains the appeal of writing a story where entire populations get sick and die: “Bringing these things into a book is like, you know, an ancient summoning. Summoning a demon into a summoning circle. Because that’s how you fight it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how does fiction fight something like disease? In its own way, says writer and filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, by helping us make sense of the real world. Barnaby says today’s books, TV shows and movies based on pandemics explore how people live upon and move around a planet defined by compromised ecosystems, borders and barricades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with the aftermath of globalism,” he points out. “And I think you’re starting to see people make the link between how you treat the environment and the way the environment treats you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0hkO5UjSpw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Barnaby’s new movie, \u003cem>Blood Quantum\u003c/em>, is about a fast-spreading virus that turns people into zombies, but those with a certain amount of Native American heritage are immune. Barnaby, who belongs to the Mi’kmaq tribe in Canada, says indigenous people have been telling stories about pandemics for generations. “And they’ve been dealing with disease since first contact, so they’re well versed in catastrophes,” he says dryly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Blood Quantum\u003c/em> hasn’t been released quite yet—it’s currently screening in festivals and it’ll be on the horror movie channel Shudder later this year. Barnaby sees stories about pandemics almost inevitably as about scapegoating and cultural anxieties. Discrimination and racism against Asians has intensified globally since the spread of coronavirus, as has been widely reported. On Netflix right now, a pandemic drama called \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/80066079\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Containment\u003c/a>\u003c/em> plays into stereotypes of Middle Eastern people as dangerous infiltrators—a Syrian refugee in Atlanta is patient zero, essentially a terrorist whose body is a weapon, a vector of disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In works by writers of color, pandemics sometimes serve as a metaphor for colonialism, says Maxine Montgomery, an English professor at Florida State University. In her writing on apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature by black women writers such as Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, the human cost of pandemics, and the disproportionate suffering of vulnerable populations, are frequently invoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smallpox, other viruses as well, that are linked inextricably to slavery and colonialization,” Montgomery says. “In ways that suggest that slavery has residual consequences that we’ve not fully recognized or acknowledged.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYSyuuLk5g\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Something’s missing from mainstream pandemic thrillers, she says, including \u003cem>Contagion\u003c/em>, the 2011 film that saw a spike on iTunes right about when the World Heath organization declared coronavirus a global emergency. And that’s a hard look at the issue of who gets treated when an epidemic breaks out, and who’s excluded from institutional safety nets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the fiction Montgomery studies, rescue rarely comes from the scientists at the Center for Disease Control or from research hospitals. “It’s always a matter of characters reaching back,” she says, to mend a deeper malady. Reconnecting with folk traditions isn’t likely to be adopted as a public policy recommendation, but Montgomery suggests the questions provoked by these stories are essential ones: “How we see people who are afflicted by disease. How we respond to them in terms of human empathy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Author Chuck Wendig says he hopes his novel \u003cem>Wanderers\u003c/em> does the same thing. “You know, I didn’t want to write a book that was fatalistic or nihilistic in how it dealt with people,” he says. There’s darkness and death in the stories we tell about pandemics, he adds, but that’s not what these stories are really about. They’re really about how we survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced for radio by Petra Mayer and Kelli Wessinger, and adapted for the Web by Petra Mayer.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=What+Fictional+Pandemics+Can+Teach+Us+About+Real-World+Survival&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>We’ve been telling stories about pandemics for a very long time. From an eighth century BCE poem about a \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erra_(god)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Babylonian plague god\u003c/a> to the Old Testament’s ten plagues of Egypt to, well, the AMC megahit zombie show \u003cem>The Walking Dead\u003c/em>, now in its tenth season.\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/79io403T1EM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/79io403T1EM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Long ago, we understood mass outbreaks as divine punishment for human transgressions—but our stories about disease have changed over time. Although still fantastic, modern stories about disease tend to be rooted in political and social realities. Last year, the 800-page novel \u003cem>Wanderers\u003c/em> combined science fiction and horror with a techno-thriller focus on the rise of artificial intelligence and white nationalism in the aftermath of a pandemic. Author Chuck Wendig explains the appeal of writing a story where entire populations get sick and die: “Bringing these things into a book is like, you know, an ancient summoning. Summoning a demon into a summoning circle. Because that’s how you fight it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how does fiction fight something like disease? In its own way, says writer and filmmaker Jeff Barnaby, by helping us make sense of the real world. Barnaby says today’s books, TV shows and movies based on pandemics explore how people live upon and move around a planet defined by compromised ecosystems, borders and barricades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You’re dealing with the aftermath of globalism,” he points out. “And I think you’re starting to see people make the link between how you treat the environment and the way the environment treats you.”\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/d0hkO5UjSpw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/d0hkO5UjSpw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Barnaby’s new movie, \u003cem>Blood Quantum\u003c/em>, is about a fast-spreading virus that turns people into zombies, but those with a certain amount of Native American heritage are immune. Barnaby, who belongs to the Mi’kmaq tribe in Canada, says indigenous people have been telling stories about pandemics for generations. “And they’ve been dealing with disease since first contact, so they’re well versed in catastrophes,” he says dryly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Blood Quantum\u003c/em> hasn’t been released quite yet—it’s currently screening in festivals and it’ll be on the horror movie channel Shudder later this year. Barnaby sees stories about pandemics almost inevitably as about scapegoating and cultural anxieties. Discrimination and racism against Asians has intensified globally since the spread of coronavirus, as has been widely reported. On Netflix right now, a pandemic drama called \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.netflix.com/title/80066079\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Containment\u003c/a>\u003c/em> plays into stereotypes of Middle Eastern people as dangerous infiltrators—a Syrian refugee in Atlanta is patient zero, essentially a terrorist whose body is a weapon, a vector of disease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In works by writers of color, pandemics sometimes serve as a metaphor for colonialism, says Maxine Montgomery, an English professor at Florida State University. In her writing on apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature by black women writers such as Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, the human cost of pandemics, and the disproportionate suffering of vulnerable populations, are frequently invoked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Smallpox, other viruses as well, that are linked inextricably to slavery and colonialization,” Montgomery says. “In ways that suggest that slavery has residual consequences that we’ve not fully recognized or acknowledged.”\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/4sYSyuuLk5g'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4sYSyuuLk5g'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Something’s missing from mainstream pandemic thrillers, she says, including \u003cem>Contagion\u003c/em>, the 2011 film that saw a spike on iTunes right about when the World Heath organization declared coronavirus a global emergency. And that’s a hard look at the issue of who gets treated when an epidemic breaks out, and who’s excluded from institutional safety nets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the fiction Montgomery studies, rescue rarely comes from the scientists at the Center for Disease Control or from research hospitals. “It’s always a matter of characters reaching back,” she says, to mend a deeper malady. Reconnecting with folk traditions isn’t likely to be adopted as a public policy recommendation, but Montgomery suggests the questions provoked by these stories are essential ones: “How we see people who are afflicted by disease. How we respond to them in terms of human empathy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Author Chuck Wendig says he hopes his novel \u003cem>Wanderers\u003c/em> does the same thing. “You know, I didn’t want to write a book that was fatalistic or nihilistic in how it dealt with people,” he says. There’s darkness and death in the stories we tell about pandemics, he adds, but that’s not what these stories are really about. They’re really about how we survive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was produced for radio by Petra Mayer and Kelli Wessinger, and adapted for the Web by Petra Mayer.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=What+Fictional+Pandemics+Can+Teach+Us+About+Real-World+Survival&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://fridababy.com/collections/mom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Frida\u003c/a>, a mother and baby retailer, released a commercial this week in support of its range of postpartum recovery products. In the one-minute ad, a new mom is seen struggling to walk, use the bathroom and deal with cumbersome pads. Frida says it released the commercial on YouTube because the ABC network refused to air it during Sunday’s Oscars. “It’s just a new mom,” the new intro to the ad states, “home with her baby and her new body for the first time. Yet it was rejected.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GePXGfRP04&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The clip is an unflinching look at what new mothers physically cope with in the days and weeks following vaginal birth—something that remains taboo in American media. While television and movies have become more honest in recent decades about the realities of \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/call-the-midwife/home/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">birth\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/106974/a-brief-history-of-terrible-menstruation-education-videos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">menstruation\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://filmdaily.co/obsessions/postpartum-depression-tv-and-movies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">postpartum depression\u003c/a>, the physically messy and painful aftermath of childbirth remains absent from our screens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13912860']We caught up with seven moms to find out how they feel about the Frida Mom commercial, as well as ABC’s decision. They had a lot to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Renee Pickup, mother of one\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“I think for the most part we don’t show this stuff because we want to exalt motherhood and the newborn time as this super positive, beautiful thing—without realizing how disenfranchising and dehumanizing that is for women. We’re not supposed to matter—not even to ourselves. We pretend it’s all beautiful, and not painful or lonely. Motherhood as martyrhood.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stephanie Reeder, brand new mom\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“I’m pissed that they would ban this ad because the recovery is never talked about and it’s been the very worst part for me. The ad is totally accurate. Not only are you exhausted and sleep-deprived, but the pain is unreal—every bone and muscle in your whole body is trashed. Then the stinging of pee and the absolute terror of trying to poop—which is still an issue for me, five weeks postpartum, by the way. Honestly, once baby is here, no one really cares about what mom is going through. No one wants to talk about the nitty gritty of childbirth. It’s always been that way. This ad wasn’t refused airtime because of nudity, it was refused broadcast because of patriarchal ideas of what women should look like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rhiannon, mother of three kids under 4\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“Wow. That ad actually made me feel happy-sad! Just the rawness and honesty! I totally felt like that lady looks after birth. I couldn’t close my legs as I walked, so I shared her waddle. I bled \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em>. I’m guessing she has hemorrhoids too. All I had were maternity pads and big [panties]. I thought I was ruined down there forever because it’s not something people talk about. I haven’t seen or heard of these products she’s using, which is probably because the adverts are banned and nobody talks about this! It’s certainly not sexy, but I don’t really understand why they’d stop someone from advertising these products. Probably because it makes men feel uncomfortable? It’s ridiculous. I suppose a network might think it would make its viewers uncomfortable and that might affect its ratings. But it wouldn’t make me feel that way—I find it strangely comforting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachel Eling, mother of two\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n[aside postid='arts_13915669']“In the first few days, going to the [bathroom] is terrifying. If you have stitches, or a small tear that’s left to heal naturally, or even if things are just a bit—I don’t know—\u003cem>sore\u003c/em> because you just passed an eight-pound person through a very small passage, urinating feels like pouring acid on an open wound. Because essentially you’re pouring acid on an open wound! \u003cem>And\u003c/em> you’re bleeding heavily for at least 6 weeks. Motherhood on screen is either dysfunctional and abusive, or nurturing and idyllic. On film—mainstream film and TV anyway—women’s bodies are for sex, looking at and for killing. When Margot Robbie gets an Oscar nom for a film where she barely has any lines, we know that a woman’s body is the most important thing about her—and that body had better not be leaking. Of course this isn’t for Hollywood!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Brooks, mother of one\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“That ad is \u003cem>super\u003c/em> accurate. I still have those mesh panties! I also bought Depends, based on recommendations. I have no idea why this ad would be refused airtime, other than the fact that she doesn’t look perfect. American society is obsessed with sex but entirely unwilling to see a version of a woman in a minor state of undress that doesn’t fit with what is broadly considered attractive. This amount of nudity is only considered vulgar if the woman doesn’t look the way we want her to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachel Roberts, mother of one.\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“This is very realistic—the stitches and the feeling that your insides are about to drop right out through your vagina at any point. No one tells you about it. After birth, the nurse made me go and have a bath and I felt like I was going to die. I was just lying in this hospital bath bleeding, without my baby and terrified. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling of being scared to walk because of the pain, and the amount of blood loss. The truth is, it’s actually really f–king messy and not cute in any way. I think it isn’t put out there because it ruins the ‘romantic’ newborn baby thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lucy Walters, mother of two.\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“I related to all of that clip. Honestly you can go to all the midwife appointments, and all the anti-natal classes, yet no one tells you how awful it is afterwards. Not to mention that first pee after having a baby. You’re there trying to work it out, thinking ‘Maybe it will be easier if I sit this way, or aim this way?’ Or the fact that everyone acts like your vagina might be a bit sore, but the reality is that even sitting up in bed is a challenge. This ad is great because it actually shows people the reality: ‘This is how you will feel, but there are things that will help. You’re going to feel ruined, but don’t worry, it’s normal.’ We need that because when it happens to you the first time, you don’t think it is. We deserve the honesty of seeing what it’s really like before we have to do it.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Frida Mom claims that ABC refused to air their ad for postpartum products during the Academy Awards. We caught up with seven moms who had something to say about it. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://fridababy.com/collections/mom\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Frida\u003c/a>, a mother and baby retailer, released a commercial this week in support of its range of postpartum recovery products. In the one-minute ad, a new mom is seen struggling to walk, use the bathroom and deal with cumbersome pads. Frida says it released the commercial on YouTube because the ABC network refused to air it during Sunday’s Oscars. “It’s just a new mom,” the new intro to the ad states, “home with her baby and her new body for the first time. Yet it was rejected.”\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/3GePXGfRP04'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3GePXGfRP04'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The clip is an unflinching look at what new mothers physically cope with in the days and weeks following vaginal birth—something that remains taboo in American media. While television and movies have become more honest in recent decades about the realities of \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/call-the-midwife/home/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">birth\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/106974/a-brief-history-of-terrible-menstruation-education-videos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">menstruation\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://filmdaily.co/obsessions/postpartum-depression-tv-and-movies/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">postpartum depression\u003c/a>, the physically messy and painful aftermath of childbirth remains absent from our screens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Stephanie Reeder, brand new mom\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“I’m pissed that they would ban this ad because the recovery is never talked about and it’s been the very worst part for me. The ad is totally accurate. Not only are you exhausted and sleep-deprived, but the pain is unreal—every bone and muscle in your whole body is trashed. Then the stinging of pee and the absolute terror of trying to poop—which is still an issue for me, five weeks postpartum, by the way. Honestly, once baby is here, no one really cares about what mom is going through. No one wants to talk about the nitty gritty of childbirth. It’s always been that way. This ad wasn’t refused airtime because of nudity, it was refused broadcast because of patriarchal ideas of what women should look like.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rhiannon, mother of three kids under 4\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“Wow. That ad actually made me feel happy-sad! Just the rawness and honesty! I totally felt like that lady looks after birth. I couldn’t close my legs as I walked, so I shared her waddle. I bled \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em>. I’m guessing she has hemorrhoids too. All I had were maternity pads and big [panties]. I thought I was ruined down there forever because it’s not something people talk about. I haven’t seen or heard of these products she’s using, which is probably because the adverts are banned and nobody talks about this! It’s certainly not sexy, but I don’t really understand why they’d stop someone from advertising these products. Probably because it makes men feel uncomfortable? It’s ridiculous. I suppose a network might think it would make its viewers uncomfortable and that might affect its ratings. But it wouldn’t make me feel that way—I find it strangely comforting.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachel Eling, mother of two\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“In the first few days, going to the [bathroom] is terrifying. If you have stitches, or a small tear that’s left to heal naturally, or even if things are just a bit—I don’t know—\u003cem>sore\u003c/em> because you just passed an eight-pound person through a very small passage, urinating feels like pouring acid on an open wound. Because essentially you’re pouring acid on an open wound! \u003cem>And\u003c/em> you’re bleeding heavily for at least 6 weeks. Motherhood on screen is either dysfunctional and abusive, or nurturing and idyllic. On film—mainstream film and TV anyway—women’s bodies are for sex, looking at and for killing. When Margot Robbie gets an Oscar nom for a film where she barely has any lines, we know that a woman’s body is the most important thing about her—and that body had better not be leaking. Of course this isn’t for Hollywood!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alexis Brooks, mother of one\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“That ad is \u003cem>super\u003c/em> accurate. I still have those mesh panties! I also bought Depends, based on recommendations. I have no idea why this ad would be refused airtime, other than the fact that she doesn’t look perfect. American society is obsessed with sex but entirely unwilling to see a version of a woman in a minor state of undress that doesn’t fit with what is broadly considered attractive. This amount of nudity is only considered vulgar if the woman doesn’t look the way we want her to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rachel Roberts, mother of one.\u003c/strong>\u003cbr>\n“This is very realistic—the stitches and the feeling that your insides are about to drop right out through your vagina at any point. No one tells you about it. After birth, the nurse made me go and have a bath and I felt like I was going to die. I was just lying in this hospital bath bleeding, without my baby and terrified. Nothing can prepare you for that feeling of being scared to walk because of the pain, and the amount of blood loss. The truth is, it’s actually really f–king messy and not cute in any way. I think it isn’t put out there because it ruins the ‘romantic’ newborn baby thing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "The 'Biggest Loser' is Back—and Atrocious as Ever",
"headTitle": "The ‘Biggest Loser’ is Back—and Atrocious as Ever | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Everything you need to know about\u003cem> The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> is right there in the way that it disappeared from screens in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NBC didn’t officially cancel the reality competition. Rather, the network allowed the show to quietly slink away under a dark cloud of controversy. So it’s both astonishing and disappointing that, last week, \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> returned to television—albeit on a smaller channel (the USA Network, owned by NBC) and with significantly less fanfare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGSxaNQoIU\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In its original 17 seasons, the show—a reality competition in which plus-sized people competed to lose the most weight—was deeply problematic. The demonization of fat and canonization of skinny was initially the most glaring issue. (Let’s not forget that people in the BMI \u003ca href=\"https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20090625/study-overweight-people-live-longer#1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“overweight” category actually live longer\u003c/a> than people in both the “normal” and “underweight” ones.) The show’s penchant for routinely humiliating contestants didn’t help matters. And later, damning testimonies from prior participants totally undercut \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s insistence that it was all about good health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2007, a Season 3 contestant said she had shed pounds by \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/fashion/18Loser.html?_r=1&oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">consciously dehydrating herself\u003c/a> to a dangerous degree, and in 2009, the winner of Season 1 confessed to doing the same thing. Ryan Benson told \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/business/media/25loser.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The New York Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em> that extreme fasting made him so unwell that, by his finale, he was urinating blood. He has since gained almost all of the weight back—an incredibly \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-050516-L2&=&=&em_pos=medium&emc=edit_el_20160505&nl=el&nl=at-times&nl_art=0&nlid=16129359&ref=headline&te=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">common occurrence\u003c/a> for ex-contestants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there were three major death knells that finished \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s original incarnation. One was the controversial 155 pound weight loss that left Season 15 winner Rachel Frederickson looking \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jihelvZxa7E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">extremely thin\u003c/a> to a point that visibly shocked even renowned \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/09/jillian-michaels-lizzo-fat-shaming/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fat-shamer\u003c/a> Jillian Michaels. The second was a 2016 study that proved that competing on the show slowed down contestants’ \u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21538\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">metabolisms\u003c/a> so much that it was nearly impossible to keep the weight off. The third was an \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/nbc-undertook-investigation-biggest-loser-contestants-were-supplied-drugs-1128067\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">internal investigation NBC\u003c/a> had to conduct after contestants told the \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2016/05/22/biggest-loser-fed-us-illicit-drugs-to-lose-weight-ex-contestants/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> they had been given FDA-banned diet pills while on the show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throwing \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> back on TV at this particular cultural moment—one in which a new wave of body positivity seems to actually be gaining some mainstream traction—doesn’t just feel like a step backwards. It feels like a conscious attack. Its return came less than a week after Lizzo and her ballet-dancing \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thebiggrrrls/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Big Grrrls\u003c/a> proved on the Grammys stage that being plus-size and fit aren’t mutually exclusive. And it premiered the same week that the second season of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkjStfMAtLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aidy Bryant’s \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—a show based on the radical notion that fat people are outgoing, successful, sexually desirable people—hit Hulu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFlvxnou9UQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s new marketing strategy promises a show about “overall well-being,” not just thinness, almost nothing has changed. The grand prize ($100,000 now, instead of the $250,000 of old) still goes to “the one who loses the most,” and, glaringly, Bob Harper is still the host. This despite a 2016 report in the \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2016/05/22/biggest-loser-fed-us-illicit-drugs-to-lose-weight-ex-contestants/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that suggested he facilitated diet pill use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The humiliation of already self-conscious people continues to be a central theme. When not being filmed vomiting into buckets in the gym, contestants are forced to take their shirts off before they’re publicly weighed at the end of each episode. To make matters worse, their shame continues to be exploited in an attempt to give the show emotional depth. In the first new episode, Katarina, Kristi, Kim and Teri all cry on the scales; Jim looks despairing and says he’s “mad”; and Micah describes his shirtless weigh-in as “one of my biggest fears because I hate the way my body looks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just like \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> of old, the new show works extraordinarily hard to portray plus-size people as sad husks of humanity, unable to achieve their dreams, inherently undeserving of love and probably on the verge of death—and it frequently uses contestants’ own words to do it. Phi, an already attractive and stylish 36-year-old counsellor says, “As long as you help me get sexy, I’m here for it.” Terri, a 47-year-old flight nurse—meaning she rescues people in a helicopter for a living—says: “I’m at that stage in my life where I either make the dreams happen, or let them go—and I’m not ready to let them go yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new\u003cem> Biggest Loser\u003c/em> does attempt changes, they’re minor to the point of tokenism. At one point, Harper sits the contestants down on couches and promises to “give them a place just to get together and talk,” only to instead terrify them all with test results that tell them how likely they are “to die of an obesity-related complication.” (No word on how many years into the future those deaths may occur, so most contestants assume it’s imminent and cry accordingly.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has also been a shift with the coaches, most notably with red team coach Erica Lugo, a single mom who lost 160 pounds after the birth of her son. First impressions paint her as both likable and sympathetic. “I wanna change the way that others think about those that struggle with their weight,” she says. “Lazy, fat, gross—I know those words were thought about me at one point. These people are none of those words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An attempt to make blue team coach Steve Cook—whose entire career has been spent in the sports and fitness industries—more sympathetic with a confession of binge-eating between photoshoots is far less successful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the new coaches continue to peddle the idea that fat equals sick. At various points, Cook says the show will “literally save your life.” In the gym, Lugo asks the oldest contestant there, “If we don’t do this now, where are we going to end up?” He responds dutifully: “Dead.” This messaging works: at one point Phi despairs, “I don’t want to die prematurely because I ate my life away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinning health and weight loss to one another with so little nuance doesn’t just peddle falsehoods that are already overly ingrained in society, it enables fatphobia. That the show is continuing with the same-old, same-old—even after so many holes were picked in its ideas and methodology the first time around—speaks volumes about how much America is still willing to otherize plus-sized people. Let’s just hope it slinks back into the darkness a lot sooner than it did the first time around.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Controversies about extreme fasting drove 'The Biggest Loser' off air. Now it's back—and almost nothing has changed. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Everything you need to know about\u003cem> The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> is right there in the way that it disappeared from screens in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NBC didn’t officially cancel the reality competition. Rather, the network allowed the show to quietly slink away under a dark cloud of controversy. So it’s both astonishing and disappointing that, last week, \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> returned to television—albeit on a smaller channel (the USA Network, owned by NBC) and with significantly less fanfare.\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/qaGSxaNQoIU'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/qaGSxaNQoIU'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In its original 17 seasons, the show—a reality competition in which plus-sized people competed to lose the most weight—was deeply problematic. The demonization of fat and canonization of skinny was initially the most glaring issue. (Let’s not forget that people in the BMI \u003ca href=\"https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20090625/study-overweight-people-live-longer#1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">“overweight” category actually live longer\u003c/a> than people in both the “normal” and “underweight” ones.) The show’s penchant for routinely humiliating contestants didn’t help matters. And later, damning testimonies from prior participants totally undercut \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s insistence that it was all about good health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2007, a Season 3 contestant said she had shed pounds by \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/fashion/18Loser.html?_r=1&oref=slogin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">consciously dehydrating herself\u003c/a> to a dangerous degree, and in 2009, the winner of Season 1 confessed to doing the same thing. Ryan Benson told \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/business/media/25loser.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The New York Times\u003c/a>\u003c/em> that extreme fasting made him so unwell that, by his finale, he was urinating blood. He has since gained almost all of the weight back—an incredibly \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_id=NYT-E-I-NYT-E-AT-050516-L2&=&=&em_pos=medium&emc=edit_el_20160505&nl=el&nl=at-times&nl_art=0&nlid=16129359&ref=headline&te=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">common occurrence\u003c/a> for ex-contestants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But there were three major death knells that finished \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s original incarnation. One was the controversial 155 pound weight loss that left Season 15 winner Rachel Frederickson looking \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jihelvZxa7E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">extremely thin\u003c/a> to a point that visibly shocked even renowned \u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/09/jillian-michaels-lizzo-fat-shaming/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fat-shamer\u003c/a> Jillian Michaels. The second was a 2016 study that proved that competing on the show slowed down contestants’ \u003ca href=\"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.21538\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">metabolisms\u003c/a> so much that it was nearly impossible to keep the weight off. The third was an \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/nbc-undertook-investigation-biggest-loser-contestants-were-supplied-drugs-1128067\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">internal investigation NBC\u003c/a> had to conduct after contestants told the \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2016/05/22/biggest-loser-fed-us-illicit-drugs-to-lose-weight-ex-contestants/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> they had been given FDA-banned diet pills while on the show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throwing \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> back on TV at this particular cultural moment—one in which a new wave of body positivity seems to actually be gaining some mainstream traction—doesn’t just feel like a step backwards. It feels like a conscious attack. Its return came less than a week after Lizzo and her ballet-dancing \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thebiggrrrls/?hl=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Big Grrrls\u003c/a> proved on the Grammys stage that being plus-size and fit aren’t mutually exclusive. And it premiered the same week that the second season of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkjStfMAtLI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aidy Bryant’s \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—a show based on the radical notion that fat people are outgoing, successful, sexually desirable people—hit Hulu.\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/PFlvxnou9UQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/PFlvxnou9UQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>And while \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em>‘s new marketing strategy promises a show about “overall well-being,” not just thinness, almost nothing has changed. The grand prize ($100,000 now, instead of the $250,000 of old) still goes to “the one who loses the most,” and, glaringly, Bob Harper is still the host. This despite a 2016 report in the \u003ca href=\"https://nypost.com/2016/05/22/biggest-loser-fed-us-illicit-drugs-to-lose-weight-ex-contestants/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that suggested he facilitated diet pill use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The humiliation of already self-conscious people continues to be a central theme. When not being filmed vomiting into buckets in the gym, contestants are forced to take their shirts off before they’re publicly weighed at the end of each episode. To make matters worse, their shame continues to be exploited in an attempt to give the show emotional depth. In the first new episode, Katarina, Kristi, Kim and Teri all cry on the scales; Jim looks despairing and says he’s “mad”; and Micah describes his shirtless weigh-in as “one of my biggest fears because I hate the way my body looks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just like \u003cem>The Biggest Loser\u003c/em> of old, the new show works extraordinarily hard to portray plus-size people as sad husks of humanity, unable to achieve their dreams, inherently undeserving of love and probably on the verge of death—and it frequently uses contestants’ own words to do it. Phi, an already attractive and stylish 36-year-old counsellor says, “As long as you help me get sexy, I’m here for it.” Terri, a 47-year-old flight nurse—meaning she rescues people in a helicopter for a living—says: “I’m at that stage in my life where I either make the dreams happen, or let them go—and I’m not ready to let them go yet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new\u003cem> Biggest Loser\u003c/em> does attempt changes, they’re minor to the point of tokenism. At one point, Harper sits the contestants down on couches and promises to “give them a place just to get together and talk,” only to instead terrify them all with test results that tell them how likely they are “to die of an obesity-related complication.” (No word on how many years into the future those deaths may occur, so most contestants assume it’s imminent and cry accordingly.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There has also been a shift with the coaches, most notably with red team coach Erica Lugo, a single mom who lost 160 pounds after the birth of her son. First impressions paint her as both likable and sympathetic. “I wanna change the way that others think about those that struggle with their weight,” she says. “Lazy, fat, gross—I know those words were thought about me at one point. These people are none of those words.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An attempt to make blue team coach Steve Cook—whose entire career has been spent in the sports and fitness industries—more sympathetic with a confession of binge-eating between photoshoots is far less successful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the new coaches continue to peddle the idea that fat equals sick. At various points, Cook says the show will “literally save your life.” In the gym, Lugo asks the oldest contestant there, “If we don’t do this now, where are we going to end up?” He responds dutifully: “Dead.” This messaging works: at one point Phi despairs, “I don’t want to die prematurely because I ate my life away.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pinning health and weight loss to one another with so little nuance doesn’t just peddle falsehoods that are already overly ingrained in society, it enables fatphobia. That the show is continuing with the same-old, same-old—even after so many holes were picked in its ideas and methodology the first time around—speaks volumes about how much America is still willing to otherize plus-sized people. Let’s just hope it slinks back into the darkness a lot sooner than it did the first time around.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Goodbye to 'The Good Place'",
"headTitle": "A Goodbye to ‘The Good Place’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Endings are sad, but without them, nothing matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was only one of the lessons of the thoughtful, emotional finale of NBC’s \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, which itself ended after four seasons and only 52 episodes. But, as the show itself stressed in its last couple of installments, heaven is not continuing forever: It’s leaving at the right time, when you’ve done your work. When you’re ready.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creator Michael Schur, who also was behind \u003cem>Parks & Recreation\u003c/em>, has a kind of grudging, aggravated optimism that echoes in a lot of his work. \u003cem>The Good Place \u003c/em>was full of reminders of how petty and nasty people can be when they’re not specifically trying to discipline their worst instincts. It was also emphatic about the fact that it’s almost impossible to successfully weave your way through the complicated world of trying to be decent, given the way our current systems of commerce and government work. Similarly, the people we knew in Pawnee, Ind., were constantly besieged by smallness and disappointment—remember how Leslie Knope’s beautiful dream of elected office ended the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, like \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, became a show about the fact that even given those setbacks and disappointments, people can be good, can do good, can grant each other grace. And more than \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Good Place \u003c/em>became a playfully direct and explicit exploration of that idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier on, the show was more about Eleanor, a self-proclaimed dirtbag in life trying in the afterlife to become good through concerted effort, with the help of her friends: Chidi, her teacher; Tahani, her nemesis-turned-friend; Jason, the Floridian dingdong DJ she adored; Janet, who is not a girl \u003cem>or \u003c/em>a robot; and Michael, her tormentor-turned-ally. She learned to sacrifice, to tell the truth, to be better, to persevere. And she became a leader. She learned to step in when no one knew what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This season, though—especially the last few episodes—seemed less about learning what it means to be good, which all of our friends on the show already were, and more about accepting what it means to be human. Longstanding notions of heaven, on which Schur and his extraordinary writers were riffing throughout the series, have a very particular weirdness to them that I think was ultimately too much for that limited, humanist, often frustrated optimism to swallow: that paradise is doing whatever you want, forever. [aside postid='pop_105436']\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One problem with a traditional heaven (pardon me while I critique ancient notions of the afterlife; it’s that kind of television show) is that while it works well as a reward, as a carrot to dangle as the payoff for being good while on earth, it is so far removed from human experience that it doesn’t say very much about humanity. It’s a very flat, all-the-flavors-of-ice-cream, I-want-a-pony notion of heaven. But when we long for happiness on earth, is it for that? Is it because we want all the flavors of ice cream and a pony? Doing whatever we want forever?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the penultimate episode, “Patty,” the group reached the real Good Place, where they learned that, indeed, it’s fun to do whatever you want. But they also learned that a frictionless existence is meaningless. They learned, as the show explicitly stated in the finale via a cameo from the philosophy professor Todd May, that mortality gives meaning to human life, so some kind of ending is necessary to make even the afterlife a place of true happiness. To be human is to know you are not forever; to know you are forever is to lose your humanity. Thus, Eleanor and friends developed a system in which even people in heaven could decide that the time had come for it to be over. Again: Heaven is not never leaving; it’s leaving at the right time, when the work is done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason was the first to realize, after playing a perfect game of \u003cem>Madden\u003c/em> with his father, Donkey Doug, that he was ready to go. He said goodbye to Janet, coming to terms with the deeply relatable fear that he’d be forgotten, and he went into the redwoods where the show put its last door. And then, in true Jason fashion, he just kind of hung around, chilling, waiting for one last chance to see Janet. Like a monk, she pointed out. He didn’t get it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tahani went a different direction. Like the party planner she always was, Tahani decided to become an architect, designing entire afterlives in her peacock bow tie. She likes to plan, she likes to design, she likes to do for others—and now, she figured out how to do it from a place of generosity (as well as, sure, a desire to continue to get credit for her great ideas; she’s only post-human, after all).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnq6IRgt4yE&t=16s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then Chidi. Eleanor’s selfishness was now translated through love, and she tried to tempt him to stay with trips to Athens and Paris, asking him over and over to tell her all about philosophy again. He was willing to stay for her, but inevitably, because he had taught her well, she realized—and explained very clearly, in specific language of moral philosophy—that this was selfish of her, and that she had to let him go. So she did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there was a part of the finale I didn’t quite think resonated, it was the visit to Mindy St. Claire to persuade her to go through the system and attempt to qualify for the Good Place. I’ve always found the idea of the Medium Place very funny, and Maribeth Monroe is always marvelous in the role. But here, the idea that this was part of Eleanor’s final work that needed to be done didn’t \u003cem>quite \u003c/em>seem of a piece with the rest of the finale, even if her explanation that Mindy was the person she might have been if she hadn’t met her friends was very sweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did seem spot-on was that Eleanor couldn’t leave until she saw to Michael. One of the show’s best swerves has been its reversal of the relationship between Michael and Eleanor from one where he was like a benevolent father to one where he is more like her well-meaning but disoriented teenage son. And Michael had the same problem that all of Eleanor’s friends had in the afterlife when they first got to the Good Place: he had no end in sight. He wasn’t even able to walk through the door, as he learned in the finale’s funniest sequence, in which Michael discovered that he didn’t disappear after passing through, even if he tried to hide behind a tree to make it seem like he did. (If all this show had done was bring out this dopey, broad part of Ted Danson’s comedic talent, it would have been worth it.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No, Michael needed a chance to be human. Human, with all the annoyances and limitations and—this was perhaps what was stressed the most—uncertainty that humanity brings. And, granted his humanity, he delighted in burning his hands on a microwave dinner and playing with his giant dog (named Jason) and all the dumb, ordinary things he had never gotten to experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then Eleanor could pass through the door, completing the journey she took when she died after being hit by some grocery carts … and then a truck. She began as a fraud, or so she believed, and ended up saving the world. She learned humanity from a bunch of very flawed people, none of whom understood it perfectly themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a weird, often extremely goofy, ultimately very profound 52 episodes those were. Not everything worked: I don’t think the new humans introduced this season as test cases ever clicked at all, despite good performances from the actors. At times, the systems of demons and trains and places and tests became so convoluted that I gave up, and I still probably couldn’t ace a test on exactly what happened in some of those systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I understood its final philosophical stance perfectly. Fragility and preciousness are not paired out of some regrettable irony; they are reliant on each other. It’s because we know our time with people will end that we can find ourselves flooded with gratitude for their presence. The friction of our limitations is what necessitates effort (of all kinds), and effort—rewarded and not—is where we find meaning. Surround yourself with friends who love you and love them deeply, and you will grow. It’s worth applying every part of yourself, including your intellect, to the question of how to do the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was so much in this series to admire: outstanding performances from the core cast and tons of guests, wonderful writing, weird jokes (Knish From A Rose 4-ever), a positively divine official podcast, glorious production design, inventive visual effects and, yes, the decision to exit when it was time. Maybe too early. Maybe. But isn’t that the way it goes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schur has talked about the fact that after the end of \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, NBC was willing to try just about anything he wanted to make. So naturally, he made a philosophical comedy about decency that regularly quoted philosophers, took strong positions on frozen yogurt (suitable only for a \u003cem>fake\u003c/em> heaven), pulled off some remarkable surprises and packed a year of sobbing into a 75-minute finale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humanity is beautiful and weird and frustrating, and joy and loss are twins. That’s a lot to get out of a show that also taught me to yell “BORTLES!” when I’m trying to get out of trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Goodbye+To+%27The+Good+Place%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Endings are sad, but without them, nothing matters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was only one of the lessons of the thoughtful, emotional finale of NBC’s \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, which itself ended after four seasons and only 52 episodes. But, as the show itself stressed in its last couple of installments, heaven is not continuing forever: It’s leaving at the right time, when you’ve done your work. When you’re ready.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Creator Michael Schur, who also was behind \u003cem>Parks & Recreation\u003c/em>, has a kind of grudging, aggravated optimism that echoes in a lot of his work. \u003cem>The Good Place \u003c/em>was full of reminders of how petty and nasty people can be when they’re not specifically trying to discipline their worst instincts. It was also emphatic about the fact that it’s almost impossible to successfully weave your way through the complicated world of trying to be decent, given the way our current systems of commerce and government work. Similarly, the people we knew in Pawnee, Ind., were constantly besieged by smallness and disappointment—remember how Leslie Knope’s beautiful dream of elected office ended the first time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003cem>The Good Place\u003c/em>, like \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, became a show about the fact that even given those setbacks and disappointments, people can be good, can do good, can grant each other grace. And more than \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, \u003cem>The Good Place \u003c/em>became a playfully direct and explicit exploration of that idea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier on, the show was more about Eleanor, a self-proclaimed dirtbag in life trying in the afterlife to become good through concerted effort, with the help of her friends: Chidi, her teacher; Tahani, her nemesis-turned-friend; Jason, the Floridian dingdong DJ she adored; Janet, who is not a girl \u003cem>or \u003c/em>a robot; and Michael, her tormentor-turned-ally. She learned to sacrifice, to tell the truth, to be better, to persevere. And she became a leader. She learned to step in when no one knew what to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This season, though—especially the last few episodes—seemed less about learning what it means to be good, which all of our friends on the show already were, and more about accepting what it means to be human. Longstanding notions of heaven, on which Schur and his extraordinary writers were riffing throughout the series, have a very particular weirdness to them that I think was ultimately too much for that limited, humanist, often frustrated optimism to swallow: that paradise is doing whatever you want, forever. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One problem with a traditional heaven (pardon me while I critique ancient notions of the afterlife; it’s that kind of television show) is that while it works well as a reward, as a carrot to dangle as the payoff for being good while on earth, it is so far removed from human experience that it doesn’t say very much about humanity. It’s a very flat, all-the-flavors-of-ice-cream, I-want-a-pony notion of heaven. But when we long for happiness on earth, is it for that? Is it because we want all the flavors of ice cream and a pony? Doing whatever we want forever?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the penultimate episode, “Patty,” the group reached the real Good Place, where they learned that, indeed, it’s fun to do whatever you want. But they also learned that a frictionless existence is meaningless. They learned, as the show explicitly stated in the finale via a cameo from the philosophy professor Todd May, that mortality gives meaning to human life, so some kind of ending is necessary to make even the afterlife a place of true happiness. To be human is to know you are not forever; to know you are forever is to lose your humanity. Thus, Eleanor and friends developed a system in which even people in heaven could decide that the time had come for it to be over. Again: Heaven is not never leaving; it’s leaving at the right time, when the work is done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jason was the first to realize, after playing a perfect game of \u003cem>Madden\u003c/em> with his father, Donkey Doug, that he was ready to go. He said goodbye to Janet, coming to terms with the deeply relatable fear that he’d be forgotten, and he went into the redwoods where the show put its last door. And then, in true Jason fashion, he just kind of hung around, chilling, waiting for one last chance to see Janet. Like a monk, she pointed out. He didn’t get it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tahani went a different direction. Like the party planner she always was, Tahani decided to become an architect, designing entire afterlives in her peacock bow tie. She likes to plan, she likes to design, she likes to do for others—and now, she figured out how to do it from a place of generosity (as well as, sure, a desire to continue to get credit for her great ideas; she’s only post-human, after all).\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/Bnq6IRgt4yE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Bnq6IRgt4yE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>And then Chidi. Eleanor’s selfishness was now translated through love, and she tried to tempt him to stay with trips to Athens and Paris, asking him over and over to tell her all about philosophy again. He was willing to stay for her, but inevitably, because he had taught her well, she realized—and explained very clearly, in specific language of moral philosophy—that this was selfish of her, and that she had to let him go. So she did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there was a part of the finale I didn’t quite think resonated, it was the visit to Mindy St. Claire to persuade her to go through the system and attempt to qualify for the Good Place. I’ve always found the idea of the Medium Place very funny, and Maribeth Monroe is always marvelous in the role. But here, the idea that this was part of Eleanor’s final work that needed to be done didn’t \u003cem>quite \u003c/em>seem of a piece with the rest of the finale, even if her explanation that Mindy was the person she might have been if she hadn’t met her friends was very sweet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What did seem spot-on was that Eleanor couldn’t leave until she saw to Michael. One of the show’s best swerves has been its reversal of the relationship between Michael and Eleanor from one where he was like a benevolent father to one where he is more like her well-meaning but disoriented teenage son. And Michael had the same problem that all of Eleanor’s friends had in the afterlife when they first got to the Good Place: he had no end in sight. He wasn’t even able to walk through the door, as he learned in the finale’s funniest sequence, in which Michael discovered that he didn’t disappear after passing through, even if he tried to hide behind a tree to make it seem like he did. (If all this show had done was bring out this dopey, broad part of Ted Danson’s comedic talent, it would have been worth it.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No, Michael needed a chance to be human. Human, with all the annoyances and limitations and—this was perhaps what was stressed the most—uncertainty that humanity brings. And, granted his humanity, he delighted in burning his hands on a microwave dinner and playing with his giant dog (named Jason) and all the dumb, ordinary things he had never gotten to experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then Eleanor could pass through the door, completing the journey she took when she died after being hit by some grocery carts … and then a truck. She began as a fraud, or so she believed, and ended up saving the world. She learned humanity from a bunch of very flawed people, none of whom understood it perfectly themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a weird, often extremely goofy, ultimately very profound 52 episodes those were. Not everything worked: I don’t think the new humans introduced this season as test cases ever clicked at all, despite good performances from the actors. At times, the systems of demons and trains and places and tests became so convoluted that I gave up, and I still probably couldn’t ace a test on exactly what happened in some of those systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But I understood its final philosophical stance perfectly. Fragility and preciousness are not paired out of some regrettable irony; they are reliant on each other. It’s because we know our time with people will end that we can find ourselves flooded with gratitude for their presence. The friction of our limitations is what necessitates effort (of all kinds), and effort—rewarded and not—is where we find meaning. Surround yourself with friends who love you and love them deeply, and you will grow. It’s worth applying every part of yourself, including your intellect, to the question of how to do the right thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was so much in this series to admire: outstanding performances from the core cast and tons of guests, wonderful writing, weird jokes (Knish From A Rose 4-ever), a positively divine official podcast, glorious production design, inventive visual effects and, yes, the decision to exit when it was time. Maybe too early. Maybe. But isn’t that the way it goes?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schur has talked about the fact that after the end of \u003cem>Parks\u003c/em>, NBC was willing to try just about anything he wanted to make. So naturally, he made a philosophical comedy about decency that regularly quoted philosophers, took strong positions on frozen yogurt (suitable only for a \u003cem>fake\u003c/em> heaven), pulled off some remarkable surprises and packed a year of sobbing into a 75-minute finale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humanity is beautiful and weird and frustrating, and joy and loss are twins. That’s a lot to get out of a show that also taught me to yell “BORTLES!” when I’m trying to get out of trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Goodbye+To+%27The+Good+Place%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Why a Day Like Sunday Hasn't Been Seen in 900 Years",
"headTitle": "Why a Day Like Sunday Hasn’t Been Seen in 900 Years | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Maybe symmetry is inherently pleasing. Perhaps it is the whiff of cosmic clout. Or it could be that in our divided times, uniting over something as indisputable as the date is just the divertissement we crave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/lisamurkowski/status/1224033773773295617\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the case, Sunday’s super-rare date of 02-02-2020, the only eight-digit global palindrome of the century, has people talking, with #PalindromeDay trending on Twitter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1223970983717081089\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palindrome derives from the Greek word for running back again, and defines a number, word or phrase that is the same read forward and backward. (Think: “Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/StigAbell/status/1223870626408079365\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palindromic dates have long been viewed as carrying \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363286759/on-armistice-day-in-u-k-a-sea-of-red-poppies-remembers-the-fallen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">special significance\u003c/a> and even \u003ca href=\"https://themysticmedium.com/palindromic-numbers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spirituality\u003c/a>. Adding to the universal appeal and rarity of Sunday’s date is its achieving the eight-digit palindrome pinnacle, working in the cross-cultural formats of MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/patch72/status/1223924022213214208\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://faculty.up.edu/ainan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aziz Inan\u003c/a> is professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland and a palindrome aficionado. Tracing back and looking ahead over centuries, he mines palindromes like gems and says the last time we had an eight-digit palindrome date was 908 years ago on 11-11-1111.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I tell my students they are lucky to have such a date in their lifetime,” Inan \u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2020/01/super-bowl-sunday-is-a-big-day-for-a-portland-professor-because-hes-a-palindrome-expert.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tells The Oregonian\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/TundeTASH/status/1223992831615868928\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the U.S. was marking the palindrome of 11-02-2011, in the U.K., it was 02-11-2011, or just another Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Sunday, the Brits got in on the fun. The math department at the Solihull School in the U.K. calculated some palindromic bonuses; Sunday also happens to fall on the 33rd day of the year, with 333 days remaining in the year. (2020 is a leap year and with the added day in February has 366 days.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/SolSchMaths/status/1223874879428136960\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ivanka Trump \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1223950232683192321\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">points out \u003c/a>to her 7.6 million Twitter followers that most of us won’t be around on the the next eight-digit palindrome date of 12-12-2121.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1223950232683192321\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After that, it will be 908-year wait until the next one on 03-03-3030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other palindromes using fewer digits, like 8-10-18, are more commonplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some couples view palindromes as dates to seize the day and take the plunge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little Vegas Chapel tweeted Sunday, “Today marks the first specialty date of the month! Congratulations to all the wonderful couples getting married on this day of 2/2/20!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in China, where officials are trying to get ahead of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, the date saw a surge of couples registering to wed, spurring the government to advise couples to postpone their weddings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The civil affairs administration said the registration process involves an official portrait, requiring people to remove their masks, a move deemed too risky in the outbreak that’s infected more than 14,000 people and killed more than 300.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where marriage registrations have been announced or promised for February 2 this year, you are advised to cancel it and explain the situation to others,” the notice said, \u003ca href=\"https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/china-urges-no-weddings-short-funerals-contain-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to VOA\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ministry also asked for funerals to be held in a “simple and expeditious manner to avoid gatherings of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+A+Day+Like+Sunday+Hasn%27t+Been+Seen+In+900+Years&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Maybe symmetry is inherently pleasing. Perhaps it is the whiff of cosmic clout. Or it could be that in our divided times, uniting over something as indisputable as the date is just the divertissement we crave.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Whatever the case, Sunday’s super-rare date of 02-02-2020, the only eight-digit global palindrome of the century, has people talking, with #PalindromeDay trending on Twitter.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Palindrome derives from the Greek word for running back again, and defines a number, word or phrase that is the same read forward and backward. (Think: “Madam, in Eden, I’m Adam.”)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Palindromic dates have long been viewed as carrying \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363286759/on-armistice-day-in-u-k-a-sea-of-red-poppies-remembers-the-fallen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">special significance\u003c/a> and even \u003ca href=\"https://themysticmedium.com/palindromic-numbers/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spirituality\u003c/a>. Adding to the universal appeal and rarity of Sunday’s date is its achieving the eight-digit palindrome pinnacle, working in the cross-cultural formats of MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://faculty.up.edu/ainan/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aziz Inan\u003c/a> is professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland and a palindrome aficionado. Tracing back and looking ahead over centuries, he mines palindromes like gems and says the last time we had an eight-digit palindrome date was 908 years ago on 11-11-1111.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I tell my students they are lucky to have such a date in their lifetime,” Inan \u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2020/01/super-bowl-sunday-is-a-big-day-for-a-portland-professor-because-hes-a-palindrome-expert.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">tells The Oregonian\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>While the U.S. was marking the palindrome of 11-02-2011, in the U.K., it was 02-11-2011, or just another Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But on Sunday, the Brits got in on the fun. The math department at the Solihull School in the U.K. calculated some palindromic bonuses; Sunday also happens to fall on the 33rd day of the year, with 333 days remaining in the year. (2020 is a leap year and with the added day in February has 366 days.)\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Ivanka Trump \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1223950232683192321\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">points out \u003c/a>to her 7.6 million Twitter followers that most of us won’t be around on the the next eight-digit palindrome date of 12-12-2121.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>After that, it will be 908-year wait until the next one on 03-03-3030.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other palindromes using fewer digits, like 8-10-18, are more commonplace.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some couples view palindromes as dates to seize the day and take the plunge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little Vegas Chapel tweeted Sunday, “Today marks the first specialty date of the month! Congratulations to all the wonderful couples getting married on this day of 2/2/20!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in China, where officials are trying to get ahead of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, the date saw a surge of couples registering to wed, spurring the government to advise couples to postpone their weddings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The civil affairs administration said the registration process involves an official portrait, requiring people to remove their masks, a move deemed too risky in the outbreak that’s infected more than 14,000 people and killed more than 300.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Where marriage registrations have been announced or promised for February 2 this year, you are advised to cancel it and explain the situation to others,” the notice said, \u003ca href=\"https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/china-urges-no-weddings-short-funerals-contain-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according to VOA\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ministry also asked for funerals to be held in a “simple and expeditious manner to avoid gatherings of people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+A+Day+Like+Sunday+Hasn%27t+Been+Seen+In+900+Years&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>For non-football types, the Super Bowl halftime show can be the only life raft in a confusing sea of frowning men wearing shoulder pads and over-long commercial breaks. And, since 1993, when Michael Jackson turned in his game-changing, five-song performance in Pasadena, standards for a successful halftime have been incredibly high.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No wonder. Super Bowl \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_television_ratings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">viewing figures\u003c/a> haven’t fallen under 100 million since 1981, and are more commonly closer to the 150 million mark—and that’s in America alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_20247']When it’s done right, the halftime show can be a source of national pride (as when \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH5tHgXS-2M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U2 tried to heal\u003c/a> the nation after 9/11). It can have an immediate and lasting impact on pop culture (Katy Perry’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD1QrIe--_Y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Left Shark\u003c/a> will live on as a\u003ca href=\"https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/super-bowl-xlix-halftime-left-shark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> meme\u003c/a> forever). And it can bring the country together during turbulent times (everyone stopped thinking about 2017’s divisive inauguration the second \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txXwg712zw4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lady Gaga threw herself\u003c/a> off the top of that stadium).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s easy to forget quite how much the pre-Jackson Super Bowl halftime, well, sucked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going all the way back to the beginning, the first three halftime shows (’67-’69) consisted simply of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGj3SFf_VOk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">marching bands\u003c/a>. In 1970, when the NFL decided to jazz things up \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/06/carol-channing-super-bowl-broadway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">for Super Bowl IV\u003c/a> in New Orleans, it saw fit to give America \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGj3SFf_VOk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a surreal reenactment\u003c/a> of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Cannons, on-field “deaths” and Carol Channing singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” were all involved. (All of which makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGRfz5_Cuo8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Eyed Peas’ \u003cem>Tron\u003c/em> musical \u003c/a>in 2011 look perfectly reasonable.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Channing was invited back again two years later, when Ella Fitzgerald and Al Hirt performed a rendition of “Mack the Knife” as part of a single-song “tribute to Louis Armstrong.” And by ’73, Andy Williams had been dragged in to pelt the crowd with two easy listening gems while the Michigan Marching Band did its thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny-1Q6qxn-A\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact that the flashiest thing about Williams’ performance was his belt, in subsequent years, the decision was made to return to simpler times. For the next 15 years, marching bands performing a grab bag of “themes” dominated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These regimented “salutes” ranged from fairly reasonable celebrations (America’s bicentennial, “the Big Band era,” Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary), to totally random subjects (Duke Ellington, the Caribbean, Motown). And in between, there were moments of abject surreality (“World of Children’s Dreams,” “KaleidoSUPERscope” and “Beat of the Future,” anyone?)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occasionally, flagrant advertising would interrupt proceedings—even more so than Pepsi does now. The most egregious example of this was 1977’s “It’s a Small World.” Produced by The Walt Disney Company, the halftime exhibition featured grinning but under-utilized Mouseketeers, a human reproduction of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” ride and, for reasons that remain unclear, green-hooded figures waving white sheets in formations that made… nothing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K-7je-6Dk0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>1987’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSXMNbK2e98\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary\u003c/a>” special with George Burns, as well as New Kids On The Block’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOt6CjYaHc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">weird, child-laden\u003c/a> set in 1991 also served as thinly-veiled Disney commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13863975']As late as 1989, the Super Bowl halftime show was such a mess, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqusO8PegFI&t=381s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the NFL thought nothing of bringing in Elvis Presto, a magician and Elvis impersonator\u003c/a> who spent his time on the field doing one large-scale card trick for the stadium, then a bunch of smaller illusions while singing “Do You Love Me” by The Contours—instead of, you know, an Elvis song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most noteworthy halftime of that period came in 1988 with a show that answered the question: What happens when you have too many ideas and decide to do all of them at the same time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final result, featuring 88 grand pianos, 44 Rockettes, four dudes on roller skates, an untold number of “dancersizers,” hundreds of cheerleaders, “the biggest big band ever to swing” and—wouldn’t you know it?—Chubby Checker, is the single most entertaining (and unintentionally hilarious) halftime show of all time. Behold its majesty:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrksVDVO6w\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last 25 years, the strides made by the Super Bowl halftime show are immense. But we still find reasons to quibble. For every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLrOSZi2pfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Destiny’s Child reunion\u003c/a>, there is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wL8sAr1Ym0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bruno Mars trying\u003c/a> (and failing) to make it work with Red Hot Chili Peppers. For every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NN3gsSf-Ys&t=105s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prince flawlessly powering through\u003c/a> a thunderstorm, there is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwkhEqVq4s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adam Levine\u003c/a> assuming that removing his shirt constitutes a grand finale. And for every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-0nbHFi4o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">inter-generationally loved Bruce Springsteen set\u003c/a>, there’s an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ik_8QjM3U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">M.I.A. middle finger\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/20175/nipplegate-revisited-why-america-owes-janet-jackson-a-huge-apology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Janet Jackson nipple guard\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='pop_20175']Right now, there are three guarantees when it comes to the Super Bowl halftime show. It \u003cem>will\u003c/em> be spectacular, it \u003cem>won’t\u003c/em> please everyone and, even at its worst, it’s still about a million times better than it was in its fledgling years. So this Sunday, if you happen to end up sitting next to someone complaining, feel free to send them a gentle reminder of how bad things used to be. The \u003cem>Peanuts\u003c/em>-related fever dream below ought to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4zzu4Jrl4o\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>When it’s done right, the halftime show can be a source of national pride (as when \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH5tHgXS-2M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U2 tried to heal\u003c/a> the nation after 9/11). It can have an immediate and lasting impact on pop culture (Katy Perry’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD1QrIe--_Y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Left Shark\u003c/a> will live on as a\u003ca href=\"https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/super-bowl-xlix-halftime-left-shark\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> meme\u003c/a> forever). And it can bring the country together during turbulent times (everyone stopped thinking about 2017’s divisive inauguration the second \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txXwg712zw4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lady Gaga threw herself\u003c/a> off the top of that stadium).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it’s easy to forget quite how much the pre-Jackson Super Bowl halftime, well, sucked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Going all the way back to the beginning, the first three halftime shows (’67-’69) consisted simply of \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGj3SFf_VOk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">marching bands\u003c/a>. In 1970, when the NFL decided to jazz things up \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/feb/06/carol-channing-super-bowl-broadway\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">for Super Bowl IV\u003c/a> in New Orleans, it saw fit to give America \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGj3SFf_VOk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a surreal reenactment\u003c/a> of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Cannons, on-field “deaths” and Carol Channing singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” were all involved. (All of which makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGRfz5_Cuo8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Black Eyed Peas’ \u003cem>Tron\u003c/em> musical \u003c/a>in 2011 look perfectly reasonable.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Channing was invited back again two years later, when Ella Fitzgerald and Al Hirt performed a rendition of “Mack the Knife” as part of a single-song “tribute to Louis Armstrong.” And by ’73, Andy Williams had been dragged in to pelt the crowd with two easy listening gems while the Michigan Marching Band did its thing.\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/ny-1Q6qxn-A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ny-1Q6qxn-A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Despite the fact that the flashiest thing about Williams’ performance was his belt, in subsequent years, the decision was made to return to simpler times. For the next 15 years, marching bands performing a grab bag of “themes” dominated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These regimented “salutes” ranged from fairly reasonable celebrations (America’s bicentennial, “the Big Band era,” Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary), to totally random subjects (Duke Ellington, the Caribbean, Motown). And in between, there were moments of abject surreality (“World of Children’s Dreams,” “KaleidoSUPERscope” and “Beat of the Future,” anyone?)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Occasionally, flagrant advertising would interrupt proceedings—even more so than Pepsi does now. The most egregious example of this was 1977’s “It’s a Small World.” Produced by The Walt Disney Company, the halftime exhibition featured grinning but under-utilized Mouseketeers, a human reproduction of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World” ride and, for reasons that remain unclear, green-hooded figures waving white sheets in formations that made… nothing.\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/-K-7je-6Dk0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/-K-7je-6Dk0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>1987’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSXMNbK2e98\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hollywood’s 100th Anniversary\u003c/a>” special with George Burns, as well as New Kids On The Block’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOt6CjYaHc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">weird, child-laden\u003c/a> set in 1991 also served as thinly-veiled Disney commercials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As late as 1989, the Super Bowl halftime show was such a mess, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqusO8PegFI&t=381s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the NFL thought nothing of bringing in Elvis Presto, a magician and Elvis impersonator\u003c/a> who spent his time on the field doing one large-scale card trick for the stadium, then a bunch of smaller illusions while singing “Do You Love Me” by The Contours—instead of, you know, an Elvis song.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most noteworthy halftime of that period came in 1988 with a show that answered the question: What happens when you have too many ideas and decide to do all of them at the same time?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The final result, featuring 88 grand pianos, 44 Rockettes, four dudes on roller skates, an untold number of “dancersizers,” hundreds of cheerleaders, “the biggest big band ever to swing” and—wouldn’t you know it?—Chubby Checker, is the single most entertaining (and unintentionally hilarious) halftime show of all time. Behold its majesty:\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/wqrksVDVO6w'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/wqrksVDVO6w'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the last 25 years, the strides made by the Super Bowl halftime show are immense. But we still find reasons to quibble. For every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLrOSZi2pfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Destiny’s Child reunion\u003c/a>, there is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wL8sAr1Ym0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bruno Mars trying\u003c/a> (and failing) to make it work with Red Hot Chili Peppers. For every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NN3gsSf-Ys&t=105s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prince flawlessly powering through\u003c/a> a thunderstorm, there is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwkhEqVq4s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Adam Levine\u003c/a> assuming that removing his shirt constitutes a grand finale. And for every \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-0nbHFi4o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">inter-generationally loved Bruce Springsteen set\u003c/a>, there’s an \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ik_8QjM3U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">M.I.A. middle finger\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/20175/nipplegate-revisited-why-america-owes-janet-jackson-a-huge-apology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Janet Jackson nipple guard\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Right now, there are three guarantees when it comes to the Super Bowl halftime show. It \u003cem>will\u003c/em> be spectacular, it \u003cem>won’t\u003c/em> please everyone and, even at its worst, it’s still about a million times better than it was in its fledgling years. So this Sunday, if you happen to end up sitting next to someone complaining, feel free to send them a gentle reminder of how bad things used to be. The \u003cem>Peanuts\u003c/em>-related fever dream below ought to do it.\u003c/p>\n\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/X4zzu4Jrl4o'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/X4zzu4Jrl4o'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "On Overcoming Childhood Phobias to Finally Enjoy 'Miss Peregrine'",
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"content": "\u003cp>I’m going to eat a little crow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, creepy things creep me out, and not in a good way. One of my earliest memories is of a group of dancers dressed in black, pulling toilet paper from where their eyes should be; I was two years old, they were on \u003cem>The Muppet Show\u003c/em>, and I have never recovered. Right there in the middle of Kermit and Fozzie came this absolutely terrifying act (terrifying to a two-year-old, and shoot, maybe to a much older person) whose commentary on human interaction was COMPLETELY lost on toddler me, and set me up for plenty of nightmares. Though I have since learned that \u003ca href=\"https://www.mummenschanz.com/3/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mummenschanz\u003c/a> is a highly respected theater troupe, they set me up to be very wary of creepiness, and I’ve lived my life avoiding it as best I can.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eazq_8jCOg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SO, several years ago, when Ransom Riggs debuted \u003cem>Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children\u003c/em>, I bought it, opened it, and shelved it right away. Perhaps if I had opened the book to any of the 352 pages other than page 115, it wouldn’t have languished for lo, these past nine years. But page 115 was all it took for me to put the book away for almost a decade. What’s on page 115 that prompted such a reaction? Cue the Mummenschanz mimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Page 115 shows a photograph of two young children dressed in extremely creepy, vintage white clown costumes, one masked child pulling a very long curled ribbon from the masked mouth of the other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BUT, when the I had the opportunity to see Riggs as he kicked off his \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em> tour, I had to give my two-year-old self a stern talking-to and get with the program. \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em> is the fifth book in the \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> series, so not only did I have to face page 115, I had some serious catching up to do. I would love to say I was really grown up about it, but I made sure to start reading in broad daylight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(And I’m glad I did, because there’s another picture of the creepy clown kids on page 50.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was all set to grit my teeth, act my age, and get it over with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the STORY.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boy, can Ransom Riggs tell a story. If he’d been stuck in rainy 1818 Switzerland with Lord Byron, and Mary and Percy Shelley and taken up Byron’s challenge to write a ghost story, \u003cem>Miss Peregrine \u003c/em>would have given \u003cem>Frankenstein\u003c/em> a run for its money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I read the first three books in two days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are anything like me and came to the party quite late, the \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> series tells the story of Jacob Portman, grandson of the master storyteller and soon-to-be-revealed hero Abe Portman, his journey of self-discovery, teenaged angst, Welsh islands, romantic drama, and oh yes, time loops, ymbrynes, hollowgasts, Wights, and a cast of endearing (and at times quite annoying) peculiars who can control bees, raise the dead (for a little while at least), float, have two mouths, are invisible, shoot fire and see monsters no one else can see—all with the help of a generous sprinkling of vintage photographs, some creepy in their own right, some not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know how to explain it without giving it away, but I will say I don’t know that I will ever look at an old photo the same way again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I sat in the broad daylight, tearing my way through \u003cem>Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Library of Souls\u003c/em>, I found myself scanning the photos of my grandparents and great grandparents that hung around me. I tried to imagine the mind of Ransom Riggs, who, when he began \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em>, found the photos first and the story second. What might he have dreamt for the people in my photographs? My grandmother in 1928, with her flapper dress on, head high, leg hitched up on the running board of an old car? My Native American grandmother, merely a blur in the background while the foreground is populated with chickens? A framed letter from some distant cousin, telling my great-grandmother in 1922 that another cousin Ida is lonesome in the country? What would their peculiarity have been?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riggs’ methods are as fascinating as his stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My deep dive into the world of \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> has had to slow down a bit as piano recitals, 100 days of school, the science fair, and stomach viruses dominate my time, and I wish it hadn’t. Jacob and the peculiars are in America now, literally the Wild West of peculiar-dom, and I want to know what happens, creepy photographs and all (fans of the creepy will not be disappointed by the newly-released \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em>. Let’s just say I plan on flipping pages 92 and 93 super-fast.) Will Jacob and his friends decipher the prophecy and save peculiar-kind? Is the title a direct reference to the 1177 Persian poem of the same name, or is it just a coincidence? (I’m betting the former, and if so, what does it portend?) What does the photo showing a girl in bed surrounded by pictures of Elvis have to do with anything? I have to find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And WHY do I have to find out? Because the moment I started reading \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em>, I couldn’t wait to share it with my son. It’s just the sort of story he’ll want to read in, oh, about three years, maybe four depending on how he can take the clown kids, but he’s never been scarred by the Mummenschanz mimes, so maybe he has a leg up. Actually, I want to share this series with everyone, kid or adult. It’s really that fascinating a story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Mr. Riggs, clown kids aside, I offer my apologies for keeping you on the shelf for so long. Perhaps I will write a strongly-worded letter to Mummenschanz and ask them to add a disclaimer to any upcoming \u003cem>Muppet Show\u003c/em> appearance. In the meantime, I’m happy to eat a little crow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or in this case (really bad joke coming), eat a little peregrine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Juanita Giles is the founder and executive director of the Virginia Children’s Book Festival. She lives on a farm in Southern Virginia with her family.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Eating+Crow+With+%27Miss+Peregrine%27+%E2%80%94+And+Enjoying+It&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I’m going to eat a little crow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, creepy things creep me out, and not in a good way. One of my earliest memories is of a group of dancers dressed in black, pulling toilet paper from where their eyes should be; I was two years old, they were on \u003cem>The Muppet Show\u003c/em>, and I have never recovered. Right there in the middle of Kermit and Fozzie came this absolutely terrifying act (terrifying to a two-year-old, and shoot, maybe to a much older person) whose commentary on human interaction was COMPLETELY lost on toddler me, and set me up for plenty of nightmares. Though I have since learned that \u003ca href=\"https://www.mummenschanz.com/3/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mummenschanz\u003c/a> is a highly respected theater troupe, they set me up to be very wary of creepiness, and I’ve lived my life avoiding it as best I can.\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/3eazq_8jCOg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3eazq_8jCOg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>SO, several years ago, when Ransom Riggs debuted \u003cem>Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children\u003c/em>, I bought it, opened it, and shelved it right away. Perhaps if I had opened the book to any of the 352 pages other than page 115, it wouldn’t have languished for lo, these past nine years. But page 115 was all it took for me to put the book away for almost a decade. What’s on page 115 that prompted such a reaction? Cue the Mummenschanz mimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Page 115 shows a photograph of two young children dressed in extremely creepy, vintage white clown costumes, one masked child pulling a very long curled ribbon from the masked mouth of the other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BUT, when the I had the opportunity to see Riggs as he kicked off his \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em> tour, I had to give my two-year-old self a stern talking-to and get with the program. \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em> is the fifth book in the \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> series, so not only did I have to face page 115, I had some serious catching up to do. I would love to say I was really grown up about it, but I made sure to start reading in broad daylight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(And I’m glad I did, because there’s another picture of the creepy clown kids on page 50.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I was all set to grit my teeth, act my age, and get it over with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the STORY.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Boy, can Ransom Riggs tell a story. If he’d been stuck in rainy 1818 Switzerland with Lord Byron, and Mary and Percy Shelley and taken up Byron’s challenge to write a ghost story, \u003cem>Miss Peregrine \u003c/em>would have given \u003cem>Frankenstein\u003c/em> a run for its money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I read the first three books in two days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you are anything like me and came to the party quite late, the \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> series tells the story of Jacob Portman, grandson of the master storyteller and soon-to-be-revealed hero Abe Portman, his journey of self-discovery, teenaged angst, Welsh islands, romantic drama, and oh yes, time loops, ymbrynes, hollowgasts, Wights, and a cast of endearing (and at times quite annoying) peculiars who can control bees, raise the dead (for a little while at least), float, have two mouths, are invisible, shoot fire and see monsters no one else can see—all with the help of a generous sprinkling of vintage photographs, some creepy in their own right, some not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know how to explain it without giving it away, but I will say I don’t know that I will ever look at an old photo the same way again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I sat in the broad daylight, tearing my way through \u003cem>Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City\u003c/em>, and \u003cem>Library of Souls\u003c/em>, I found myself scanning the photos of my grandparents and great grandparents that hung around me. I tried to imagine the mind of Ransom Riggs, who, when he began \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em>, found the photos first and the story second. What might he have dreamt for the people in my photographs? My grandmother in 1928, with her flapper dress on, head high, leg hitched up on the running board of an old car? My Native American grandmother, merely a blur in the background while the foreground is populated with chickens? A framed letter from some distant cousin, telling my great-grandmother in 1922 that another cousin Ida is lonesome in the country? What would their peculiarity have been?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Riggs’ methods are as fascinating as his stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My deep dive into the world of \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em> has had to slow down a bit as piano recitals, 100 days of school, the science fair, and stomach viruses dominate my time, and I wish it hadn’t. Jacob and the peculiars are in America now, literally the Wild West of peculiar-dom, and I want to know what happens, creepy photographs and all (fans of the creepy will not be disappointed by the newly-released \u003cem>The Conference of the Birds\u003c/em>. Let’s just say I plan on flipping pages 92 and 93 super-fast.) Will Jacob and his friends decipher the prophecy and save peculiar-kind? Is the title a direct reference to the 1177 Persian poem of the same name, or is it just a coincidence? (I’m betting the former, and if so, what does it portend?) What does the photo showing a girl in bed surrounded by pictures of Elvis have to do with anything? I have to find out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And WHY do I have to find out? Because the moment I started reading \u003cem>Miss Peregrine\u003c/em>, I couldn’t wait to share it with my son. It’s just the sort of story he’ll want to read in, oh, about three years, maybe four depending on how he can take the clown kids, but he’s never been scarred by the Mummenschanz mimes, so maybe he has a leg up. Actually, I want to share this series with everyone, kid or adult. It’s really that fascinating a story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Mr. Riggs, clown kids aside, I offer my apologies for keeping you on the shelf for so long. Perhaps I will write a strongly-worded letter to Mummenschanz and ask them to add a disclaimer to any upcoming \u003cem>Muppet Show\u003c/em> appearance. In the meantime, I’m happy to eat a little crow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or in this case (really bad joke coming), eat a little peregrine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"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?",
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"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"radiolab": {
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},
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"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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