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Even The Presidential Motorcade Can't Handle This Snowpocalypse

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Even The Presidential Motorcade Can't Handle This Snowpocalypse

Washington D.C. is a notoriously dumb city. It gets snow on a fairly regular basis, and yet it has absolutely no idea how to handle it. Even its supposed best drivers, the agents of the Secret Service, couldn’t drive in the light dusting the city received on Wednesday, and crashed multiple times. And now it’s supposed to get two feet dumped on it.

I’m not exaggerating, or using any form of hyperbole, when I say that the Beltway is full of shit snow drivers. With a grand total of one inch of snow on the ground, there were 70 disabled vehicles needing rescue in Northern Virginia alone.

President Obama’s motorcade, followed closely by reporters, got into three or four fender-benders in just the short trip from Andrews Air Force Base, in suburban Maryland, back to the White House, and the press pool report sounds like it was caught in the middle of an Alaskan tundra:

The vans slipped and skidded on the icy roads, making contact several times with the curb during the more suburban part of the drive. After nearly an hour, the motorcade vehicles started making more aggressive use of their sirens and stoplight privileges.

Poolers counted between three and four fender benders/accidents in the first 20 minutes of the ride, which ended at the White House at approximately 8:40 p.m.

It’s not like the motorcade was speeding, either, taking over an hour to get to its destination during a trip that should, in a normal car on a clear day, take about thirty minutes.

Drivers told local media about a complete lack of salt trucks and plows, as if that really mattered when you’ve just got one inch of snow.

“But Washington’s in the south!” its sycophantic, smarmy defenders say. “Those poor little drivers aren’t used to snow, they must be forgiven for this white clusterfuck.”

Bullshit. Even with 25 of the last 30 winters recording “below average snowfall,” the Washington area’s biggest airport, Dulles, recorded an average of 22 inches of snow. Everyone around D.C. is used to snow by now. They’ve seen it. They know it’s cold. They know it’s slippery.

A massive blizzard is bearing down on the D.C. area right now, and its citizens and city managers will cower into their garages, driven off of the roads by nothing but their own complete incompetence.

By tomorrow night, the city and its surrounding environs will be well and truly fucked.

Photo credit: AP



New York City Runaway Cow Says Goodbye to All That, Settles Down in Jersey

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New York City Runaway Cow Says Goodbye to All That, Settles Down in Jersey

Yesterday, a cow named Freddie briefly held New York City’s attention when he burst forth from the Queens slaughterhouse where he was being held and led police on a chase down Jamaica Avenue. This morning, Freddie was being taken to an animal sanctuary, where he will settle down, enjoy the fresh air and green grass, and live out his years in peace and quiet away from the city.

http://gawker.com/cops-have-a-co...

Like many New Yorkers, Freddie was once intoxicated by the city’s grime and glitter, but after a long affair, grew exhausted with the constant hustle. He will be making his new home across the Hudson River, in New Jersey. Mike Stura, the animal rights activist who negotiated Freddie’s release from Archer Halal Live Poultry, where he was returned after the chase, told DNAinfo that Freddie will “live a happy life” alongside the 75 other rescued livestock animals Stura keeps on his Wantage property.

Freddie’s memoirs on loving and leaving New York are expected to be published in 2017.


Free the Art

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Free the Art

What good is a work of art that sits in a storage space, unseen by anyone? No good at all!!!

A wise man once said... something about a tree falling in a forest, and nobody is around. No matter how great a work of art may be, if nobody sees it or experiences it then its value, in the moment, is nil. Unexperienced art is not art at all, and more than “the notional idea of a good portrait” is the Mona Lisa. The failure to allow humans to experience art robs art of its value. It is cultural robbery! And it should not be tolerated from institutions that ostensibly exist to allow humans experience art.

What is the purpose of a museum? If you said “to allow humans to experience art,” please hang your head in shame as Aesthetics majors chuckle at your lack of sophistication. That is what the purpose of a museum should be. The actual purpose of a museum, among other, lesser purposes like “showing people art and stuff,” is to perpetuate the existence of the museum as an institution. Museums therefore stockpile huge holdings of art in storage facilities so that they can roll it out at such time it is deemed most beneficial for the reputation of the museum. Museums’ relationship to art is similar to billionaires’ relationships with their investment portfolios. The vast majority of the holdings of both museums and billionaires are unnecessary for their survival.

Here is an extremely distressing story by Christopher Groskopf in Quartz detailing exactly how much work by 13 major artists 20 museums around the world have on display and in storage. You, the art-appreciating public, may be surprised to learn that the majority of work by Kandinsky, Georgia O’Keefe, Calder, and Rothko sits unseen in storage. Only a little over half of Picasso’s work is on display. And this survey revealed that zero—zero!—of Egon Schiele’s works are currently being displayed, while the museum surveyed had 53 of his works in storage.

What the fuck is the point?

A space issue? A money issue? Pshaw. For the cost of a single room at the Metropolitan Museum, you could probably rent an entire warehouse in a cheap area of Queens and fill it with hundreds of works of art. Works of art that would be able to be seen by humans. A single great painting that is publicly accessible in a dirty warehouse has an infinitely greater utility than a hundred great paintings locked away in storage where no one can see them. But that would mean prioritizing the needs of humans, rather than the needs of powerful cultural institutions.

Hang the art in the subways. Hang the art in buildings. Hang the art on highway overpasses, and on billboards, and in schools. Hang the art anywhere people can see it. Let people see it. Set the art free. As it is now, museums are acting as prison guards preventing people from viewing a great deal of art. That is ridiculous.

(Also write graffiti all over the museums.)

[Photo of an Egon Schiele you are not allowed to see now: Getty]

Is It OK To Order Delivery During A Snowstorm?

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Is It OK To Order Delivery During A Snowstorm?

Much of the East Coast is about to get slammed by a nor’easter, with areas in and around Washington D.C. set to receive up to two feet or more of snow. Schools have been canceled, airports are functionally shut down, and even D.C.’s Metro is set to shutter for the weekend. But you’re hungry, and you’ve either got nothing on hand, or nothing you’ve got would hit the spot quite like some General Tso’s chicken. What do you do?

My first instinct is to suck it up. You don’t want to go out in that blizzard, so isn’t it a dick move to make a delivery guy go out in it? There’s nothing so pressing that it can’t wait another day to get into your belly, or, if you really can’t wait, just go get it yourself.

But here’s the thing: tips are how delivery guys make their living. Under federal regulations, they don’t have to be paid minimum wage, and aren’t. (By law, their employer is supposed to make up the difference if the tips don’t cover it, but you know your hole-in-the-wall pizza joint isn’t doing that.)

The ethical question then becomes: does a delivery guy, who’s at work and on call anyway, prefer to sit around being dry and warm but doing nothing and earning no money, or does he prefer to go out and get cold and wet and get paid?* I suspect the answer is different for each individual delivery person.

*This should go without saying, but if you do get delivery, tip like you’ve never tipped before. Fifty percent sounds like a good start.

The calculus on whether to order food will change based on a few variables. How close is the restaurant? If it’s just a few blocks, maybe it’s not so bad—but then again, if it’s just a few blocks, you can go get it yourself. Do the delivery guys drive, or ride a bike? A car is a warmer, drier place to be in a blizzard, but it’s also less safe. Do you really, really want that pad Thai? You can’t possibly want it that badly. Or maybe you can.

I throw the question out to you. Is it defensible to order delivery in a snowstorm? If so, how much should you tip? I’m genuinely eager to hear from former or current delivery guys on what their preferences were.

Who Keeps Killing the World’s Oldest Men and Women?

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Who Keeps Killing the World’s Oldest Men and Women?

In June, the world’s oldest woman Jeralean Talley died at a mere 116. On Tuesday, official world’s oldest man Yasutaro Koide died at 112-years-young. Then on Tuesday again, the unofficial world’s oldest man, Andrew Hatch, died at the ripe age of 117. And now, as we pass the wizened, old man crown to 112-year-old Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, we must ask ourselves: Who’s murdering our oldest men and women?

A quick glance at the Gawker archives alone reveals a sinister pattern. Almost as soon as one oldest man or woman grabs the title, he or she perishes within months, if not almost immediately. All of it far too convenient to attribute simply to chance.

Unfortunately, we have far more questions than answers. What does this killer want from our wisest citizens? Why have they been able to run afoul of the law for so long? And who is going to warn Yisrael?

If you have any information at all on this eradicator of elders, please do let us know.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com. Image via AP.

Drunk Guy Accidentally Shoots Woman During Benghazi Movie Screening

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Drunk Guy Accidentally Shoots Woman During Benghazi Movie Screening

During an evening showing of 13 hours yesterday, a theater full of Benghazi enthusiasts in Renton, Washington bore witness to a different sort of disaster when an allegedly drunk 29-year-old dropped his gun, accidentally shooting one of his fellow theater-goers in the chest. As of this morning, the 40-year-old woman was listed as being in “serious condition.”

http://gawker.com/i-watched-mich...

Speaking to a local ABC affiliate, one witness said:

It got about 15-20 minutes into the film and I believe the lady in front of us that got shot was actually talking to her husband or significant other and that’s when we heard the loud pop.

The shooter fled the scene as soon as the gun went off, but thankfully, the man’s father called 911 later that night, explaining that his son “was distraught and told him that he dropped his gun at a Renton movie theater and it discharged.” Why he was fumbling around with his gun in a movie theater in the first place, however, remains unclear.

The suspect is currently in police custody, and 13 hours is still vastly underperforming at the box office.

[h/t KOMO News]


Always, Always Walk Down the Escalator

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Always, Always Walk Down the Escalator

It has come to our attention that some trolls and anarchists have been spreading false information about urban transportation efficiency—right when people need the truth the most. We are here to assure you that is always right to walk down an escalator.

http://gawker.com/please-walk-do...

Slate, a website which has an editorial policy of always saying the reverse of things that are obviously true, has published a piece today that—while I am not privy to the internal workings of Slate’s editing process—I can only assume is a spiteful attempt to cause safety hazards in the New York City subway system just before a weekend snowstorm. Is this “ethical?” Take it up with the experts, friend.

What I do know is that the headline of this piece, “Don’t Walk on Escalators. It’s Faster if Everyone Stands,” is the journalistic equivalent of shouting “Keep sleeping!” to a sleeping baby—when the house is on fire, and the baby should wake up. Simply irresponsible and in wanton disregard of human decency. As this very website has clearly explained in the past, if you are not physically injured for some reason, you should always walk down the escalator, because some of us would like to actually catch the next train that is arriving, rather than stand on an escalator smiling like a dullard while our train pulls out of the station just below us. Despite the fact that walking down escalators is plainly the polite thing to do, Slate would have you believe that some statistical mumbo-jumbo should make you think that something that is true is not true. Specifically:

Research from the University of Greenwich in 2011 indicated that on average about 75 percent of people will stand on escalators while the other 25 percent walk. Right away you can see how reserving half of an escalator’s real estate for only one-quarter of the people who use it might not make sense. And people tend to create more following distance on the walking side of the escalator versus the standing side. Transport for London’s simulations preliminarily showed that using a whole Holborn station escalator for standing would allow 31.25 more people per minute to board the escalator (112.5 people on the escalator per minute versus 81.25 people per minute with a walking lane).

From this, they argue that everyone should stand on the escalator because everyone standing on the escalator allows more total people per minute to ride the escalator.

Here is the point that Slate dully misses: I don’t care about total people per minute riding the escalator. I care about me and the other people who need to get where we’re going. We are going to walk on the escalator. Why? Because it is faster to walk down an escalator than to stand on it as it carries you down. (Try it and see.)

The fact that any able-bodied adult has chosen of their own free will to stand, not walk, on a down escalator proves that they don’t give a shit how fast they get where they are going. They are slow. They are not the concern of those of us who need to get where we’re going. If us walking down the escalator in order to get where we’re going in a timely manner causes the standers on the other side of the escalator to proceed more slowly, so what? They’re not in a hurry anyhow. They can fucking wait. Their time has no value—they demonstrated that the moment they chose not to walk down the escalator.

Once again, the troll haven Slate.com has demonstrated that it cares little for the comfort and security of New York residents, just as the site did when it rudely beat us at softball. Not to overwhelm the juvenile minds at Slate, but I will end this fact-based essay by noting that in their rush to instruct the public that “Everyone should stand on escalators” because it is allegedly faster that “Some people walk and some people stand on escalators,” there was one possibility that was left unexplored...

Everybody walk on escalators. (If you can’t then take the elevator, or a fireman’s pole.)

[Photo: Flickr]

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

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Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

Over the past few years—well, frankly, since the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973—we’ve seen a proliferation of evidence that a woman’s right to have an abortion is actively being curtailed by our nation’s representatives. But it’s easy to forget that if you lived before 1973, your lifetime likely spanned just a sliver of an excruciatingly long stretch of time, in which our country transformed from a place where a legal abortion was unimaginable to a place that would legalize abortion in the highest court.

While now the anti-choice movement is associated with religious conservatism, the people primarily responsible for making abortion illegal in America the first time were doctors. The first precursors to anti-abortion laws were passed in the mid 1800s as a way to control dangerous drugs sold by quacks for at home use that might terminate a pregnancy but also killed women. From there, as the quacks became less of a threat to the medical profession, doctors sought new and more specific ways to control the same issue—that of medical activities being otherwise commercialized, activities which they thought should be in their court.

As Leslie J. Reagan explains in her excellent book When Abortion Was a Crime:

The antiabortion campaign grew in part, James Mohr has shown, out of regular physicians’ desire to win professional power, control medical practice, and restrict their competitors, particularly Homeopaths and midwives.

http://www.amazon.com/When-Abortion-...

Laws like the Comstock Law of 1873, which made it illegal to disseminate information about contraception or abortifacients, allowed those in the growing medical establishment—helped by state officials—to criminalize those who were practicing abortion, except in cases where the woman’s life was in danger. Those procedures were called therapeutic abortions. (The eugenics movement helped too.) Doctors who were not interested in making abortion illegal were threatened with these laws, and forced into compliance, as they would be the ones prosecuted if they ignored them.

In hindsight, the mainstream medical community played the role the conservative religious leaders of today do, making themselves the moral deciders of society. In a dig through the New York Times archives, newspaper headlines from the mid 1800s to early 1900s reflected as much. But eventually, that position of authority would punish the doctors themselves, as the laws their predecessors had helped develop got them arrested when they tried to do their job and help save lives.

A small piece from 1852 on 29-year-old Washington D.C. resident who died by suicide describes her matter-of-factly as having “been for a month or more taking medicine to produce abortion, but being unsuccessful had just tried a new medicine, consisting of powders.”

The doctor, the article goes on to say, “examined her condition, and told her she had murdered herself. She told him she was bound under oath not to tell who had given her the medicine.”

She was poor. Just before her death she said she was not able to support her family during her confinement. This appeared to be a reason for her wretched act.

There was a warrant out for the arrest of the doctor in that case, and hundreds of similar cases were reported as the decades went on, all described in the same way papers would discuss burglaries or murders—doctors convicted of manslaughter for performing abortions, women who were “seduced” who ultimately died from abortions gone wrong (“She was 23 years old and very pretty”). In many of them, the doctors come off as the villains, the women as people who got what was coming to them.

In the 1870s, new articles popped up, this time on legislation being passed to prevent “abortionists” from working, like making it illegal to advertise abortion services. Similar small articles on doctors and women being arrested continued, but by the turn of the century, there was an increase in pieces on discussions around birth control in other countries, likely because of a valid fear of the world’s growing population.

As Reagan outlines in her book, it’s the 1930s when the more obvious shift to a movement to re-legalize abortion took place. Part of this was due to the work of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who had been arguing forcefully since the 1910s that a greater use of birth control would (duh) decrease the abortion rate, an argument the group would continue to make as the decades passed.

Articles about doctors being arrested for participating or starting “abortion rings” and “plots” continued into the 1950s, however. There’s something to be said for the space these were getting in the papers—articles that once spoke of abortion as an everyday (if illegal) occurrence, noteworthy only for its sensational nature, began to gain nuance (which can also likely be attributed to paper’s like the Times shifting away from a more tabloid-y style). According to Reagan, it was at this point that the early glimmers of the pro-choice movement slowly started to gain momentum.

In the mid-1950s a small group of physicians and public-health workers initiated the earliest efforts to reform the abortion laws. The hospital system itself, which prevented doctors from providing abortions to patients and forced them to care for the damages to resulting from illegal abortions, generated physicians’ demands for legal change. Medical reformers soon linked up with leaders in the legal profession, and this professional alliance advocated reform of abortion law.

By 1962, their work had trickled up to the point where it was receiving actual coverage. You’d see headlines like this one:

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

Articles on religious groups from Unitarians to Catholics that had shifted their official stance on abortion became more frequent as well.

The real change, however, was in the medical community, which had once been responsible for making abortion become a dangerous extralegal practice but was now (for the most part) visibly helping push along the movement to legalize it again. This change can be seen through studies that suggested doctors were becoming more lenient when deciding what women needed therapeutic abortions, or in doctors groups like like the Medical Community for Human Rights or the Association for Humane Abortion, whose president said in 1965:

Dr. Hall described the present law as “inhumane and unrealistic” and declared that “the reputable physician often performs therapeutic abortions, in respectable New York hospitals, which are not strictly legal.”

Dr. Alan Guttmacher, founder of the Guttmacher Institute and president of Planned Parenthood, also spoke out for legalization, actually arguing that the laws were “punitive, inhumane, and demeaning for the physician.” The first woman to head the NYU Medical Alumni Association spoke adamantly against archaic laws holding back gynecology, and therefore women. (The American Medical Association, however, dragged their feet, arguing in 1965 that it was “not appropriate at this time” to suggest that abortion be legalized.)

Around this time, you start to see articles indicating that members of the government had been convinced to think it was time. Nations around the world were beginning to provide birth control services for “needy” families, and leaders and state legislatures like New York were pushing through legislation that would disable bans like the Comstock Law.

The more liberal papers that these articles appeared in started vocalizing their dissent as well. Op-eds popped up regularly in the Times, and coverage of the dangers of abortion grew, turning into extensive articles that outlined how expensive and often life-threatening it was for women (particularly poor women) to try to end their pregnancies. The entertainment industry responded as well. On television, censorship had become more lax, “illustrating a growing permissiveness of the medium,” reflecting “a more liberal society,” a change was generally happening across all of Hollywood. While there was pushback against those who wanted to discuss abortion frankly, networks were suggesting that abortion should be legal as early as 1962, like on an episode of The Defenders called “The Benefactor”, which the show’s regular advertisers boycotted.

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

Or that same channel’s documentary on the topic:

The Program, admirably narrated by Walter Cronkite under the title of “Abortion and the Law,” did not quite come out in favor of changing the abortion laws, but in effect did take the next closest step.

Unsurprisingly, the general public was pro-legalizing abortion, and more vocal about it too. A 1966 poll found that most Americans favored legalizing abortion, including Roman Catholics. Women who wanted to get abortions were less afraid, and more vocal about it, suing states where they had been denied access, paving the way for Roe v. Wade. Women felt safe enough to speak on the record about educating others on how to perform safe legal abortions, though they could end up being described as a “38-year-old spinster” with “the eyes of a zealot,” as Patricia Theresa Maginnis of San Francisco was when she was discovered leading “abortion classes” (Maginnis herself had reportedly been pregnant three times and given herself two of her three abortions).

By the late 1960s, the push had worked: abortion was starting to be legalized in some states, like Ohio, Colorado and New Jersey. As was the case when marijuana or gay marriage was legalized in certain states, doctors in states where abortion had become legal were flooded with calls from women desperate to have safe, legal abortions, and willing to travel to get them. The shift was mirrored around the world as well.

You know what happened next: Roe v. Wade made it to the Supreme Court. But what you can see from the headlines right before it was decided is a country that had gone from not considering women’s rights frequently at all to finding themselves inundated with the issue. The shift had been spurred by doctors and law advocates, but the people truly responsible for mass media coverage were women’s rights activists, who, as Reagan explains, “retheorized the meaning of abortion.” Where bylines on articles about abortion and others women’s issues were once written by men, women were writing the articles they wanted to see—and big ones at that.

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

Remembering the Decades-Long Abortion Fight You Weren't Alive to Witness

These women demanded a voice, and the force of their impact is perhaps best illustrated through this one example of a representative who spoke up. Let’s consider the case of Michigan State Senator Lorraine Beebe, who in 1969 did something we now might consider a relatively commonplace heartwarming viral moment:

Michigan’s only woman state Senator stood brushing tears from her face today while her male colleagues applauded after she told of her own abortion in a dramatic but futile attempt to win passage of legislation liberalizing the state’s 100-year-old abortion statute.

“Can you say, ‘I am pregnant’ and be desperate about it? You don’t know what it’s all about,” Senator N. Lorraine Beebe, a Republican of Dearborn, who is the mother of two children, said:

“You do not have the right to impose your morals or religious convictions on us,” said Mrs. Beebe in reply to critics’ statements that abortion was tantamount to murder and a denial of the unborn child’s civil rights. “We have religious freedom in this country.”

She continued:

“I am a woman who had a therapeutic abortion in a Catholic hospital,” Mrs. Beebe told a silent audience. “And don’t think I didn’t come face to face with my conscience. But I never, never would have had the opportunity to have children if I didn’t have this.”

According to the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, Beebe’s speech “marked the end of [her] political career. Defeated for re-election in 1970, her family was threatened, her house was fire-bombed, and her tires were slashed.”

She may have been one of the first on record to speak out in such a way—consciousness-raising circles that served as safe spaces for women to discuss their troubles had only just started to gain traction—but we know what happened next. Beebe’s actions have been mirrored by the actions of the many women who would follow her, those demanding to be heard by their colleagues, as Wendy Davis did in 2013 when she filibustered a Texas abortion law, or speaking to the people who should be listening to them, as Sandra Fluke did in 2012 when she attempted to testify in front of panel of all men at a Congressional committee on insurance and birth control. Or the thousands of non-famous women (and men) who have protested the abortion laws put in place in the forty-plus years since Roe v. Wade was decided on this day in 1973. This war—as is true of most skirmishes—has had many battles, the opposition led by almost as many generals. One side, however, has always had one thing in common: Women.


Contact the author at dries@jezebel.com.

Top images, from left to right: abortionist Madame Restell, Wikimedia Commons; Margaret Sanger, AP; a woman protests in New Jersey in 1969, AP.


The National Review Makes Its Case Against the Republican Party

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The National Review Makes Its Case Against the Republican Party

Donald Trump, the National Review tells us, is a huckster, a dangerous demagogue, and an irresponsible fool. The first voice that the National Review brings out to tell us so, in the anti-Trump blurb collection that the magazine promoted to the New York Times yesterday and released to the bedtime internet last night, is the voice of Glenn Beck.

Trump, Beck warns us, is the latest avatar of “ever-expanding government,” a proven sympathizer with the Obama Administration’s tyrannical goals. “While conservatives fought against the bank bailouts,” Beck writes, “Donald Trump called them ‘something that has to get done.’” This is an interesting reconstruction of the politics around the question of whether to let the finance industry collapse; “it needed to be done,” was also how the Republican presidential nominee at the time described the bailout of AIG. (The bailout “was, unfortunately, necessary,” Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said.)

The more notable historical oddity, though, is that the National Review should give that space to Glenn Beck at all. The magazine originally defined its place in the conservative intellectual world through William F. Buckley bold attacks on the John Birch Society and the paranoid conspiratorialist wing of the Republican Party. Beck is a neo-Bircher who built his career by weeping on television about the wicked machinations of America’s hidden enemies. Yet there he is, leading off Buckley’s magazine’s effort to explain why Donald Trump doesn’t belong in the conservative movement.

The further one reads through the National Review’s anti-Trump pleadings, the more sense Beck’s participation makes. If Buckley declared that his magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop,” the Trump package stands alongside history muttering “History? History, history... Hmm, nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

There are, at this point, two fairly straightforward thoughtful arguments that a conservative publication could make against the rise of Donald Trump. One would be a pragmatic or tactical one: Despite his theatrical contempt for liberal elites, Trump is unpredictable and insufficiently committed to the conservative movement’s plans and goals. Where a President Ted Cruz would fill the federal bench with names from a Federalist Society spreadsheet (or a spreadsheet Cruz himself had prepared for the Federalist Society), for all anyone knows, a President Trump might appoint Nancy Grace to the Supreme Court. That would surely make liberals mad, but it wouldn’t get the big job done.

The other argument that a conservative publication could make against the rise of Donald Trump would be an unsparing self-examination and self-criticism, reckoning with the currents of brutish populism that have run from Nixon through Reagan through George W. Bush to the present-day circus, and humbly apologizing for its role in creating them. Any real attempt to write Donald Trump out of the Republican Party needs to engage, head on, with the fact that Donald Trump is currently polling far ahead of the field with people who identify as Republican voters. What is the conservative movement if it is not the way that voters who identify as conservative are moving?

Instead, the National Review’s anti-Trump contributors offer a wishful litany of things that they would like to hold that conservatism means, and they refer to the established practice of conservative politics as merely a regrettable series of failures to live up to its principles. “Republicans promise free-market alternatives but end up caving in to pressure or carrying water for the GOP’s own big-government special interests,” writes David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth.

“The Trump voter is moderate, disaffected, with patriotic instincts,” writes plagiarist Ben Domenech, now publisher of the Federalist. “He feels disconnected from the GOP and other broken public institutions, left behind by a national political elite that no longer believes he matters.”

“At the beginning of the current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, it appeared that the party had one of the strongest arrays of candidates in many years—successful governors, senators, business and professional leaders, etc.,” Reagan Administration attorney general Edwin Meese III writes. “Today, however, the political atmosphere is polluted by the vicious personal attacks that the Republican contenders have unleashed against one another.” The candidates are wonderful; it’s the candidacies that are unspeakable.

The most elaborate expression of this worldview comes from the radio host Michael Medved:

Trump’s brawling, blustery, mean-spirited public persona serves to associate conservatives with all the negative stereotypes that liberals have for decades attached to their opponents on the right. According to conventional caricature, conservatives are selfish, greedy, materialistic, bullying, misogynistic, angry, and intolerant. They are, we’re told, privileged and pampered elitists who revel in the advantages of inherited wealth while displaying only cruel contempt for the less fortunate and the less powerful. The Left tried to smear Ronald Reagan in such terms but failed miserably because he displayed none of the stereotypical traits. In contrast, Trump is the living, breathing, bellowing personification of all the nasty characteristics Democrats routinely ascribe to Republicans.

The candidate who most embodies the terrible things that Democrats say about Republicans, then, is also the candidate who is most attractive to Republicans. This is truly an awkward state of affairs for the party. How could this have come to pass?

Mark Helprin ventures the belief that Trump was sent to weaken the Republican Party “at the suggestion of Bill Clinton,” which is a self-pitying crackpot theory but at least engages with ideas of cause and effect. The others mostly evade the question altogether, returning to the simple argument that conservatism is good and Donald Trump is bad, so Donald Trump has no place in conservative politics.

In a guest appearance in the anti-Trump package, William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, finds that line of reasoning to be conclusive:

In a letter to National Review, Leo Strauss wrote that “a conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.” Isn’t Donald Trump the very epitome of vulgarity?

Speaking of vulgarity, as Jamelle Bouie noted on Twitter, another project that brought together William Kristol’s Weekly Standard and the National Review was a pair of luxury cruises to Alaska in the summer of 2007, one for each magazine, in which editors and writers met with, and began actively promoting, a then-obscure governor named Sarah Palin. “Go for the gold here with Sarah Palin,” Kristol said on Fox News Sunday the next summer, when John McCain was looking for a running mate.

But the National Review’s writers are interested only in a history that begins today, or tomorrow. Two different entries accuse Trump of being soft on Vladimir Putin, a charge amplified by the magazine’s editors in their accompanying anti-Trump manifesto:

He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually suggested a few weeks ago a war crime—killing terrorists’ families—as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the Russian thug.

The last turn of phrase, about the eyelashes, comes fairly close to a famous firsthand account of encountering Putin, one that the editors of the National Review must be familiar with: “I looked the man in the eye.... I was able to get a good sense of his soul.” The speaker then was George W. Bush—whose shadow, or Dick Cheney’s, can be spotted at one or two other places in that passage about what a president must not do. The notion that a mean, blunt neophyte can do a better job of policy than a canny expert seems contemptible to the National Review today, but it was a notion that helped get Bush into the White House and Palin onto the ballot.

The National Review may be upset enough by Trump to challenge him, but it’s not upset enough to challenge the National Review. The editors write:

If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster. The movement concerned with such “permanent things” as constitutional government, marriage, and the right to life would have become a claque for a Twitter feed.

What is the word “if” doing in that first sentence? Trump is already a candidate with strong conservative support. The real question for the National Review is why, for all this great show of intellectual effort on the Trump question, it still treats that as a hypothetical.

Photo via Getty

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

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Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

Attention, society: Please consider this Facebook photography project conceived by Ohio University’s Delta Gamma sorority called “Defying Stereotypes.” The project, featuring black and white photos of sisters standing next to handwritten statements of defiance, seeks to do just that. Does it succeed?

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

No.

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

Not really.

At best, the project illustrates that the Delta Gammas have been mishearing what society has been saying about them. Does “society say” that sorority girls don’t get internships in New York City?

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

The sisters seem similarly confused about how best to deny the mean rumors society is supposedly spreading about them. The second part of this sentence doesn’t negate the first:

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

What does this even mean?

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

This just seems like a lie.

Sorority Girls Battle Stereotype That Sorority Girls Are Self-Aware

What the Delta Gammas have shown society with this project is that they don’t have a lot of original ideas.

http://gawker.com/frat-and-soror...


State Department Can’t Release Next Round of Clinton Emails Because It’s Too Snowy

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State Department Can’t Release Next Round of Clinton Emails Because It’s Too Snowy

The State Department already isn’t great at keeping track of emails. But keeping track of emails in the snow? Please, they’re not gods.

The department tried to explain this in a filing earlier today, in which they asked for a month extension on the next round of a 55,000-strong Clinton email release.

http://gawker.com/leaked-private...

Basically, the State Department’s request explains that in the push to meet the final deadline, it suddenly realized that about 7,200 pages needed to be sent out to various agencies for review. Though while delivery to some of the agencies has been completed, “delivery of the remaining documents has been interrupted by the storm, and is anticipated to be completed next week.”

But it promises that it can get its homework done by February 29.

As long as there’s no rain or snow or high levels of UV rays or a particularly pollen-y day. For real this time.


500 Days of Kristin, Day 363: Kristin Doing Fine

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers

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Donald Trump put a new veteran-focused campaign ad up on Facebook today, but it was pulled down before most anyone could see it after commenters pointed out that the footage clearly depicted Russian veterans wearing the distinctive St. George ribbon and pins with the Communist hammer and sickle.

Above you see the original ad. “Our great veterans are being treated terribly,” Trump intones his most serious voice. “The corruption in the Veteran’s administration, the incompetence is beyond. We will stop that.” The ad then cuts away from Trump sitting at his desk and to footage of faceless decorated veterans who happen to be wearing a distinctive orange-and-black ribbon.

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers

You see it there pinned to the nice man’s lapel. This Washington Post article from 2014 explains the history of the ribbon, which is traditionally “associated with Russian military valor” but recently has come to be adopted by right wing Russian separatists.

You can also see the man to the left of the frame proudly displaying the hammer and sickle.

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers

The ad as it currently appears now cuts to a still of Trump cradling the face of a presumably American veteran with a prosthetic arm.

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers

Much better.

This isn’t the first time that Trump’s campaign has bonked a campaign ad, and it isn’t even the first time Trump’s campaign they’ve done so by using footage of foreign soldiers in a video meant to inflate Trump’s patriotism. Back in July 2015, when the Trump candidacy still seemed like a prank, he tweeted an image that used a stock photo of fake Nazi soldiers.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-c...

Trump’s first TV ad, cut earlier this month, purported to show Mexicans streaming across our southern border. In actuality, the footage, pulled from an Italian TV station, was of migrants crossing into Morocco.

http://gawker.com/donald-trump-s...

Further, a tipster pointed out to us today that a Trump immigration ad from four days ago posted to Facebook shows a still image of migrants atop a train.

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers

Though the implication, once again, is that we’re looking at our border, the image actually comes from a Daily Mail article about citizens of Central American countries fleeing into Mexico.

How would you find that photo? Well, you might Google “immigrants on trains.”

Trump Pulls Veterans Campaign Ad That Depicted Russian Soldiers


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

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Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Get set for the weekend with an under-desk elliptical, a $70 Logitech Haromony, a life-changing alarm clock, and more great deals. Bookmark Kinja Deals and follow us on Twitter to never miss a deal. Commerce Content is independent of Editorial and Advertising, and if you buy something through our posts, we may get a small share of the sale. Click here to learn more.

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Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If you can’t find the time to get to the gym every day, this under-desk elliptical lets you squeeze in some light exercise while you fill out your TPS reports.

This typically sells for about $70 more on Amazon, and today’s $100 deal is the best price we’ve ever seen. It is a Gold Box deal though, so the deal is only available today, or until sold out. [Under Desk Elliptical by FitDesk, $100]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SIBYETQ/...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

The world is full of fitness trackers that can count your steps and estimate calories, but today only, we’ve found two deals on wearable devices that help you with your posture. Both options provide gentle haptic feedback whenever you slouch, and sync to your smartphone so you can track your habits over time. I know I could use one of these.

Lumo Lift Posture Coach and Activity Tracker ($50) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N9P8GMW/...

UPRIGHT Posture Trainer ($100) | Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Upright-1-UPRI...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If you’ve been in the market for a ~250GB SSD, you’ve already had two great deals to choose from this week. If you missed out though, here’s a third. [Crucial BX200 240GB SSD, $57]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3814762023...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

The Nexus 5X is one of the best midrange phones you can buy, and you can pick one up for $312 unlocked today. That’s about $38 less than usual, and while it was slightly cheaper around the holidays, this is still a great bargain if you’re in the market for a new handset. [Nexus 5X, $312]

http://gizmodo.com/the-nexus-5x-r...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1518764258...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

It might not be something you use often, but everybody should keep a power inverter in their glove box, just in case. If you don’t own one, this is a no-brainer at $20. [SNAN 300W Power Inverter DC 12V to AC 110V Car Inverter, $20 with code SNAN300W]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B019IFYMQU


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If you’re hosting a Super Bowl party in a few weeks (or just, you know, like snacks), Amazon’s offering 20% off various chocolate products, and 25% off Cheez-Its and Pringles today. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any chicken wing coupons.


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

One thing I’ve learned in my extensive personal research into toaster ovens is that, with very few exceptions, you need to spend about $200 to get a good one. Sure, there are hundreds of cheap metal boxes with three knobs that will (inconsistently) brown your bread or heat up a slice of pizza, but when it comes to features, speed, and above all, consistency, you really do get what you pay for.

That logic certainly applies to the Cuisinart Chef’s Toaster Convection Oven, which is marked down to $220 today on Amazon. Instead of fiddly knobs, you get a digital screen with precise information. Rather than two small heating elements, you get five, plus convection fans to distribute that heat evenly. And while cheap toasters might hold two or four pieces of bread, this can easily accommodate up to six standard slices (or nine if they’re small), and customize the toast time to achieve your preferred level of doneness. Yes, it’s an investment, but as I said before, you get what you pay for. [Cuisinart Chef’s Toaster Convection Oven, $220]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Logitech’s UE Mini Boom Bluetooth speaker earned a Wirecutter recommendation as the best portable Bluetooth speaker, and you can score a refurb from eBay today for $37 shipped, the best price we’ve ever seen. [Refurb Logitech UE Mini Boom Bluetooth Speaker, $37]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2521036334...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If you didn’t get a life-changing wake-up light for Christmas, the high-end model is down to $110 today, which is a match for the best price we’ve ever seen [Philips HF3520 Wake-Up Light, $110]

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3520...

http://gizmodo.com/a-light-up-ala...


No, nobody needs this ridiculous gesture-control armband. But dammit, I want to try it. Amazon’s knocking $40 off its usual $200 price tag, today only, so if you have a tax refund on the way, this could be a fun splurge. [Myo Gesture Control Armband, $160]

http://www.amazon.com/Myo-Gesture-Co...

http://gizmodo.com/5986714/could-...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

This seemingly-basic remote might not look like much at first blush, but it can actually control eight of your favorite home theater devices, and even turn your smartphone into a universal remote as well.

You’re probably used to seeing Logitech Harmony remotes with screens built-in, but it turns out that you already carry a much better screen in your pocket. So in addition to controlling your TV, cable box, game console, stereo, and more from the remote itself, the Logitech Harmony Smart Control can now do the same from your iPhone or Android from anywhere in the house. That’s especially handy when your favorite show is about to start and you can’t find the remote anywhere. Today’s $70 deal is the best is a match for the best we’ve ever seen, but I’d expect it to sell out quickly. [Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Smartphone App and Simple Remote, $70]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Logitech-H...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Motorola’s absurdly tiny, second generation Hint Bluetooth headset went on sale less than half a year ago for $130, but if you act fast, you can grab a set for $80. [Motorola Hint, $80]

http://gizmodo.com/moto-hint-revi...

http://gizmodo.com/motorola-sneak...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Motorola-M...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

I saw something like this on Shark Tank, and I remember thinking it looked like fun. You probably won’t be able to play it for a few months, but at this price, I’d be willing to wait. [Franklin Sports Spyderball Pro with Logo, $21]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

We’ve seen a lot of motion-sensing night light deals, but this one can automatically turn on when it detects a power outage, and will even work as a flashlight for up to 90 minutes while untethered from the wall. [Etekcity LED Night Light, Flashlight: Rechargeable Emergency Light, $14 with code 8FZJEC8C]

http://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-LED-N...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

In today’s edition of “Silly Things That Are Actually Kind of Useful,” we have a $16 beanie with tiny Bluetooth speakers built right in. I’m sure the sound quality isn’t amazing, but it should be adequate for listening to Serial, or even some summery songs to make you feel less cold and miserable. [DOB Bluetooth Beanie, $16 with code WZSKOFJS]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Most cheap kitchen scales have a small plate for weighing ingredients, but this one opts for an oversized, removable tray. If you’re cooking for a whole family, this can really improve the consistency of your meals, and even help with cleanup. [Freetoo Precision Digital Kitchen Scale with Removable Tray, $14 with code 8TFQBHQS]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015F68ATG

http://lifehacker.com/5840209/why-yo...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

SOLD OUT

If you’ve been itching to upgrade to 4K, and you aren’t opposed to a refurb, this highly-rated Vizio M-series set is all the way down to $400 today on Woot. That’s $228 less than buying it new from Amazon, where it happens to have a 4.2 star review average. [Refurb VIZIO 50" 4K UHD Full-Array LED Smart TV, $400]

http://www.woot.com/offers/vizio-5...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

It’s a bit cold outside, especially for those of you on the east coast, so we rounded up some of the web’s best outerwear deals for men. Head over here to see the full list.

http://deals.kinja.com/outerwear-deal...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If you missed out on last summer’s surprise gaming sensation, Rocket League is down to $14 on PC today. [Rocket League, $14]

http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-League-...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

$.50 per tool is usually a good threshold when shopping for a deal on a mechanics tool set. This Husky set checks in at $.31 per tool. If you like to tinker with cars, you should absolutely give it a look. [Husky Mechanics Tool Set in Metal Box (200-Piece), $65]

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-Mechan...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Contigo’s Autoseal line ran away with our Kinja Co-Op for favorite travel mug, and the new Metra model, which features a non-slip grip sleeve and bottom pad, just got its first discount from $25 to $20. [Contigo Autoseal Metra Travel Mug, $20]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...

http://co-op.kinja.com/the-best-trave...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Whether you’re about to buried in snow, or just want to be prepared, you’d be hard pressed to find a better deal on a basic snow blower. [Snow Joe 10-Amp Electric Snow Shovel with Light, $63]

http://www.target.com/p/snow-joe-10-...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

My favorite deal of 2016 is back in stock and ready to get you through to the spring. [Hanes Comfort Blend Sweatpants, $7]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4010216041...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Mpow’s excellent, minimalist, universal magnetic smartphone vent mountis back down to $5 today. [Mpow Grip Air Vent Mount, $5 with code HV8X67VR]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YE6D7I8

These ridiculously cheap mounts are among the most popular products we’ve ever listed, and carry both Lifehacker Editorial and Lifehacker Hive Five recommendations.

http://bestsellers.kinja.com/the-15-most-po...

http://lifehacker.com/the-aukey-magn...

http://lifehacker.com/five-best-car-...

Love yours? Tell us why and we’ll include your story in future posts about the product!


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

If your closet looks anything like mine, you could definitely use this shoe organizer. It’s $10, has great reviews, and holds 12 pairs, so there’s not a lot to complain about here. [Ohuhu Over-the-Door Shoe Organizer / Shoe Storage, 24 Pockets, $10 with code 8Q664OI9]

http://www.amazon.com/Ohuhu-Over—Or...


Today's Best Deals: Bluetooth Beanie, Wake-Up Light, Under-Desk Elliptical, and More

Tide Pods are the easiest way to do laundry, and you can get an 81-count tub for just $15 today on Amazon. You’ll need to clip the $5 coupon, and order via Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program, but you can always cancel that subscription once you receive your first delivery. [Tide PODS 81-Count, $15 after $5 coupon]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...


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Jeb Bush: I Want to Kill a Terrorist With My Bare Hands

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There are several issues with what Jeb says in the above video.

First, killing a man with your “bare hands” is almost certainly not going to earn a “G” rating from the MPAA.

Second, there is no “G” rating in the United States TV parental guidelines system. Jeb was looking for “TV-Y.”

Third, Jeb—you ok, man?



Meet Hollis Wong-Wear & Jamila Woods, the Women of Color Behind Macklemore's 'White Privilege II' 

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Meet Hollis Wong-Wear & Jamila Woods, the Women of Color Behind Macklemore's 'White Privilege II' 

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have released an eight-minute song featuring Jamila Woods, “White Privilege II,” about white privilege, beginning with Macklemore’s own feeling about whether he can meaningfully participate in a Black Lives Matter march and spiraling into different movements questioning what his own white privilege means.

On a certain level, “White Privilege II” is Macklemore acknowledging his core audience; this song is not necessarily for people of color, it is exactly for the presumably young white kids who consume his every move but perhaps don’t listen to other rappers, as he points out with an interlude in the song. (“You’re the only rap I listen to” when leveled at non-black rappers is thinly veiled code for racial bias, and is no doubt constantly leveled at white rappers like Macklemore in particular.) It is the sound of Macklemore (aka Ben Haggerty) trying.

It’s to the rapper’s credit that he asked two, very talented women of color—Seattle musician and longtime collaborator Hollis Wong-Wear and Chicago singer Jamila Woods, both activists—to work on this song in an active and meaningful collaborative way. Jezebel spoke with Wong-Wear and Woods about the thought process behind it, and where they’ll all take it from here.

JEZEBEL: How did you come to work on this song?

Hollis Wong-Wear: I’ve been working with Ben and Ryan for years now, on and off, in a variety of different capacities. I guess my involvement in the song really started with conversations. When we get together we start from a place of exploratory creative writing—not sitting down to write a song but just processing, and that’s been part of our creative relationship for a number of years.

After that moment of the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, Ben had reached out and was processing. I’ve been open to talking with him as a sounding board. I said, you know, these questions would be really cool if we pulled in somebody who’s on the ground and organizing under the banner of Black Lives Matter in Seattle. So we pulled in my friend Nikkita Oliver, an amazing lawyer and activist, and we really started having an in-depth conversation about what does it mean for Ben to authentically leverage his privilege, his platform, his wealth, his success.

That’s really how it was borne, just recognizing that at the end of the day he is an artist, that the process of coming together would be an inherently creative one and that it would be holistic. That it wouldn’t just be “How can we make the best song possible,” but really like, “How do we use this creative process as a way of better understanding what accountability looks like?”

Jamila Woods: Hollis called me one day and was like, Hey, would you be comfortable talking to Ben about this? I had a phone conversation with Ben where he said, I’m gonna play by play all the things I’ve written so far and if that sounds interesting to you, I’d love to have you come out and just listen to the song and talk about it and see if it’s something you could be involved in. Hearing him describe it, one of the things that first struck me about it was that it was tackling a multitude of issues. I thought it was interesting to think of that sort of intersectionality of a white artist in hip-hop, and cultural appropriation, and how white people can be involved in black liberation struggles. How all of that is interrelated really stuck out to me as a unique angle. I wanted to hear it and coming out [to Seattle] was very low-pressure; it was like you can come, you can hear it, you can leave, it wasn’t agreeing right away. But it definitely took being in the room and talking about the issues. It was a really process-oriented thing and the conversations we had were just as important, if not more so, than the actual product.

That process is really interesting—that you spoke with him how he could leverage his position for activism.

Woods: I think part of it was when I got there, the song wasn’t all the way conceived. Parts of it were, but parts of it weren’t really working. For example, the parts where you hear people talking was something we came up with all together, because it was wanting to represent these different voices but in a more authentic way than us scripting it ourselves, imagining what people would say. We came to the idea of actually talking to people and hearing what they actually thing. When I said, Yeah, I’m down to write something, the prompt was initially a call to action for the audience.

A while of it was figuring out how to wrap my mind about how I would enter the song, because writing with a specifically white audience in mind and a call to action to this subject was something I never thought about, ever. So it was like, What do I say, and how do I say it? We had a lot of conversations like that.

Wong-Wear: There was a lot of analysis about bringing in a collaborator and bringing in a featured artist like Jamila, ensuring that it was done in a way that amplified her perspective and her artistry, and wasn’t used as a crutch… Ensuring that it was a true collaboration, not just a coda.

Woods: I was thinking about, in general, in conversations around race, the burden on people of color to explain and have all the airtime. The intention of the song is to reach a white audience or at least an audience that’s not always engaged in these issues, but to me the only part that felt natural was at the end, and to insert myself when I felt like I didn’t have anything to say at that moment didn’t really feel right.

Yes—and you making sure that it was a true collaboration did immediately bring to mind the idea that white people are often looking to people of color to explain racism and white privilege to them. It’s interesting to hear the song, because I don’t know of a case where any other white pop musician has discussed this so explicitly, to this degree. In conversations, was he very mindful about the collaboration aspect?

Woods: I feel like it was a learning process, because I feel like—I can’t speak for him, but from the perspective of it wanting to be a collaborative process, usually when you collaborate on the song, you don’t really want to share airspace with your collaborator. But in this case, Ryan or Ben would be like Oh, it would be great to have you here, but I would be like No, I think I’d be better here; I think we learned through the process about what felt right.

Hollis, just to be clear, what was your exact role in the process?

Wong-Wear: I was almost in an advisory capacity. There were a couple days of really intensive 12-hour sessions with me and Ben and Ryan and Jamila, writing, ideating, reading and incorporating, talking things out, saying something and realizing it was problematic and editing. I really enjoy digging into the creative process and, really, just being a steward of creative processes. I realize these are a lot of vague terms; I’m a songwriter, but a lot of what I was drawn to and what I found really meaningful was more navigating and connecting this process to the larger community, whether that was in Seattle or beyond. And just thinking about both the micro-moment of this song, and where it is situated on a point on a continuum for Ben and Ryan’s company. A lot of the conversation was just like, Is this going to be a good thing in the world? Does this need to come out? That’s not to forsake the creative process, and I understand that sometimes processes happen without any explicit or external product, and that’s okay and sometimes that’s best. Navigating those questions was a large part of my involvement, which I really enjoyed, because it felt like an authentic place of leadership.

Woods: I really think the whole process would not have been possible without Hollis. It felt like the writer’s block or standstills that happen between people trying to make something together, Hollis would be the un-blocker of those things. Like, constantly thinking about how to change the perspective, or think about a thing from a different angle. If we were in a workshop, she was the facilitator.

What do you mean about this song just being one point on a continuum for Ben and Ryan’s company? This song is a conversation starter, not something you just drop and just move on. What comes after this?

Wong-Wear: The company has initially engaged with four different entities listed on the website of the release, and each of those organizations are deeply invested in direct action mobilizing or anti-racist education curriculum and modes. Each showcases a breadth of leadership approaches. Each of the organizations are points of reference and insight for their company, and the ones that have really just been doing the work.

I think that’s a lot of it: what is the place of an artist-activist? What is the place of an aspiring activist who wants to be involved? And it has to come from the insight and the leadership of those who have been doing the work and leading the movement for years. I think to that end, there was obviously a concerted commitment to ensure that this wasn’t a finale of any sort. This is the conclusion of the process of the song—the song is released now—but this is the first moment for them to be explicitly working to align and support with that kind of organizing.

Woods: Thinking about ways to engage with the song and not only online but in person with community organizations; bringing in different groups of people who might not ever be in the same room discussing this topic is something we’re working on as well. In Chicago, and other places where we have networks, we’re trying to bring the audience that would respond on Twitter, the Macklemore fanbase from college campuses in the area or people who hear that the event is coming, and then also different local organizing groups. And then young people that would respond to the song in some way artistically. I work at a nonprofit where we do spoken word poetry and hip-hop in high schools, so the idea of also featuring young people of color responding to the song in addition to discussing what are ways people could tangibly be involved in issues that are specific to their local place.

In working on this song, who did you perceive the audience to be?

Woods: At one point, we imagined a sector of people who would listen to the song, white listeners, who may be offended or alienated by it.

But also, I think part of the issue that the song even mentions in the scene of Ben at a protest and not knowing how to participate—or if he should participate—that’s something I’ve just seen people express. Even at protests. Sometimes there are issues where there are white people participating in protests and then the people of color who are leading the protest feel like it’s not the most productive way. I think there are a lot of white people who would feel maybe this is speaking to that feeling. Whether or not they totally agree, it’s always good to name those things. Even though the answer is definitely not put forth in the song, it can encourage people to discuss that. Otherwise there can continue to be silence about it, or people feeling isolated or like it’s not something they can talk about.

Wong-Wear: Again, talking about the nuanced dynamic of elevating voices of color without hiding behind them, I think that we have seen such an absence of white people in mainstream media call attention to racism. The more comfortable that white people with influence are with engaging in these issues without being afraid that they’re doing it wrong, or whatever. I think that white privilege even is difficult for white people to wrap their heads around, and there’s so much defensiveness and personalization with it, and if there’s any influence that can get white people to stop taking what it means to be racist personally, it’s deeply important. Because that’s the only way that work is going to begin: if white people really start understanding what it means to be racist. It’s really important for white people to understand what white supremacy means; that it’s not necessarily an extreme thing, but it defines the way that every system we live within operates.

Being able to use that language—for white people to be able to have it in their mouths—is important. I don’t think it gets put there, unfortunately but expectedly, unless somebody white tells them that it’s important. Because that’s the way white supremacy works!

Yes, the irony, using white supremacy to battle white supremacy.

Wong-Wear: Yeah! I think Nikkita said it really well: she said this song is the product of a system. What does it mean that this song will have the reaction that it will have, and will it be effective in engaging white people who don’t see this as part of their experience? Because white people don’t live in a racialized world.

Jamila Woods’s upcoming album is out this Spring on Closed Records. Hollis Wong-Wear’s band The Flavr Blue’s new album is out now, and will tour in February.


Images via Hollis Wong-Wear and Jamila Woods

Paul Ryan Forgot to Turn Off His Lamp

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Paul Ryan Forgot to Turn Off His Lamp

Speaker of the House and noted fiscal conservative Paul Ryan has been livestreaming the view from his office all day and into the night. He also, apparently, forgot to turn off his lamp.

If you look closely at the still ongoing stream, you’ll notice a reflection on the right side of the screen. Is it a lamp?

Paul Ryan Forgot to Turn Off His Lamp

It sure looks like a lamp.

Paul Ryan Forgot to Turn Off His Lamp

Yes. That is definitely a lamp.

Some quick research reveals that leaving a typical lamp on overnight costs about eight cents. That’s eight of our hardworking tax cents, thrown away by Paul “Lamp Boy” Ryan’s very own hands.

We’ve reached out to the Speaker for comment, and will update if and when he decides to face the American taxpayers like a man.


Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Shooter Kills Four in Canada After Reportedly Chatting About It on Social Media

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A school shooting in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan on Friday left four dead and others wounded, according to the the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The shooting occurred at the 900-student La Loche Community School, which teaches students from kindergarten through high school, around lunch time. The shooter, whom The New York Times is reporting to be an unidentified male, now taken into police custody.

The shooter also reportedly chatted a friend about his intentions just before he went to the school with a gun. From the Canadian Press:

Desjarlais-Thomas forwarded to The Canadian Press a screenshot of a chilling exchange that had taken place on social media a short time before the shooting between a young male and his friends.

“Just killed 2 ppl,” wrote the young male. “Bout to shoot ip the school.”

“Why?” asked a friend. “Why?”


Thousands of Snowstorm Motorists Punished for Their Hubris With 17-Hour Traffic Jam

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Thousands of Snowstorm Motorists Punished for Their Hubris With 17-Hour Traffic Jam

Thousands of people in Kentucky learned a very valuable lesson about cars and snow on Saturday: do not mix them.

During the epic snowstorm walloping the eastern U.S. that has left 100,000 without power and at least eight people dead, Kentucky State police reported that an enormous traffic jam on Interstate 75 has held drivers at a standstill for more than 17 hours. Kentucky’s WBIR reports that drivers have been abandoning their cars in the cold and heading to hotels.

According to the Associated Press, as of 9 a.m. on Saturday the interstate was moving slowly, and that the back-up was caused by a series of traffic accidents.

So far, North Carolina, New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, New Jersey and Tennessee have all declared states of emergencies. Over 9,000 flights have been cancelled so far.

But in the midst of all this misery and hassle, some cruel folks are gleefully reveling in schadenfreude, feeling not a shred of compassion for those affected.

[Image via Twitter]


Michael Bloomberg Is Mulling a Presidential Bid

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Michael Bloomberg Is Mulling a Presidential Bid

Perhaps while soaking in his $13,000 copper bathtub or perhaps while staring at his $62,400-per-week tank of tropical fish, Michael Bloomberg got an idea.

This was not just any old idea, this was a grand idea. Grander than becoming the mayor of New York City. Grander, even, than becoming a billionaire. Bloomberg, once the richest politician in the United States, thought to himself, “Maybe I should just run this whole dang thing!”

The New York Times reported the news of Bloomberg’s possible campaign on Saturday:

Mr. Bloomberg, 73, has already taken concrete steps toward a possible campaign, and has indicated to friends and allies that he would be willing to spend at least $1 billion of his fortune on it, according to people briefed on his deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss his plans. He has set a deadline for making a final decision in early March, the latest point at which advisers believe Mr. Bloomberg could enter the race and still qualify to appear as an independent candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.

Bloomberg will reportedly only run (on an independent ticket) if Hillary Clinton does not receive the Democratic presidential nomination, because he doesn’t feel he could beat her, reports the Times.

So now, we wait until March cometh, when we will know if Bloomberg will try to add the White House to his ever-expanding list of houses. Until then, we can all relax with a Big Gulp in our metal tubs and wait for it all to unfold.


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