Not long after it became abundantly clear that Bernie Sanders would handily win Tuesday’s primary, in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, released a memo to “interested parties” explaining very deliberately and carefully why the former Secretary of State has nothing to worry about, nothing at all.
Actually, Mook writes, Clinton’s narrow victory in Iowa and devastating loss in New Hampshire hasn’t come as a surprise to anyone. In fact, it is “an outcome we’ve long anticipated.”
From the memo:
At the same time as we are competing aggressively in Nevada and South Carolina, it’s important to understand why the campaign is investing so much time, energy and resources in states with primaries and caucuses in March. The reason is simple: while important, the first four states represent just 4% of the delegates needed to secure the nomination; the 28 states that vote (or caucus) in March will award 56% of the delegates needed to win.
And whereas the electorates in Iowa and New Hampshire are largely rural/suburban and predominantly white, the March states better reflect the true diversity of the Democratic Party and the nation – including large populations of voters who live in big cities and small towns, and voters with a much broader range of races and religions.
Mook hits this point repeatedly. “It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a Democrat to win the nomination without strong levels of support among African American and Hispanic voters,” he writes. Clinton “has maintained a wide double digit lead over Sen. Sanders among minority voters in national surveys and in states where African American and Hispanic voters make up a large share of the electorate.”
“That type of support was not created overnight; it has been forged over more than 40 years of fighting for and alongside communities of color. They know her, trust her and are excited about her candidacy.”
He goes on to explain the campaign’s “data-driven approach to maximizing delegates.” Riveting stuff!
Incidentally, Politico reported yesterday that the Clinton campaign was considering a “shake-up.” So, even if Clinton doesn’t have anything to worry about after tonight—really!!!—Mook might.
Just a few minutes ago, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes offered some insight into exactly why Bernie Sandwiches was able to snag New Hampshire so handily. Delicious, delicious Bernie Sandwiches.
Hayes, of course, meant Senator Bernie Sanders—not Bernie Sandwiches, who as far as we know does not exist.
At this point in time, we recommend that the fine men and women of MSNBC please, for the love of god, get Chris a sandwich. It’s going to be a long night, and the man seems hungry.
Gregg Popovich gave his usual surly in-game interview, but then David Aldridge asked a question that intrigued him: did Pop want to know the results of tonight’s primaries in New Hampshire? Yes, yes he did.
That face was probably about Trump ... but maybe it’s not? Maybe he’s a huge Clinton supporter? Popovich donated $5,000 to Barack Obama during the 2012 general election, but has yet to donate this cycle.
I just got back from several days in New Hampshire, attending political rallies across the state and observing thousands of voters in their natural habitat. What have I learned about what will happen in the presidential race? Nothing!
“Well, Hamilton, you’re a bad journalist, a lazy hack, a cynic and a grump with no insight into the proclamations of the American voter.” Yes, yes, all true. Unfortunately, even the good and energetic and enthusiastic journalists that descend upon Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and dutifully watch all the stump speeches over and over and interview people in coffee shops and truck stops and gossip with campaign operatives, I’m sorry to say, learn nothing of value.
Political campaigns are a great feature story. The weirdos, the crooks, the hateful lunatics, the mile-deep ignorance that drives the election of the world’s most powerful person—all of these things can produce great stories. Poetic stories, personal stories, stories of greed and anger and lust for power. These sorts of stories can get at deep truths in the same way that a great novel can, and are certainly valuable because of that, and, by the way, are much more enjoyable to read than dry horse race reporting.
But does political reporting as it is generally practiced in the USA produce any useful and valuable knowledge about the real political state of our country and what direction we are going in? Not really. Go to a Donald Trump rally. Talk to Donald Trump voters. They like Donald Trump. They dislike Wall Street. Go to a Bernie Sanders rally. Talk to Bernie Sanders voters. They like Bernie Sanders. They dislike Wall Street. Go to any politician’s rally. Some people there like the politician. They have various concerns. Talk to the campaign spokespeople. They tell you the candidate is very popular. Talk to other journalists at the bar. They tell you about how they did the same things you did today, in different places.
These methods will give you set of facts that you can easily use to produce standard political stories: “Donald Trump Voters Are Energized.” “Bernie Sanders Voters Engage in Class War.” “John Kasich Fills Room.” “Jeb Bush Campaign Declares Strength.” “Chris Christie Supporters Say They Are Scared of Terrorists.” Etcetera. You will recognize these sorts of stories from every nightly news broadcast and newspaper front page during campaign season. And what real insight into the future of the American electorate have these political reporters gained via these methods? None at all!
You know what sort of political story tells you something of real value? A poll. That is a useful snapshot of the American electorate. Talking to the six people wearing the most outrageous outfits at a Donald Trump speech does not, I am sad to say, provide a statistically significant sample of the electorate. Talking to paid operatives does not provide an impartial look at the state of the race. Certainly, talking to the six most insane people at a Donald Trump speech and to the people craven enough to take jobs on a Donald Trump campaign could provide excellent fodder for a lively feature story delving into the psychological makeup of America’s most dangerous citizens. But that is not the way that political journalism is usually practiced. Usually, professional political reporters follow candidates around to events and talk to a statistically insignificant sample of voters and hear from paid operatives and then—from this set of data that may well be wildly misleading—concoct conclusions about what is or will be happening in the race.
These conclusions, based as they are on trifles and guesswork, are often wrong. And yet because they have been arrived at through accepted methods, their wrongness does not often cost the political expert anything. That is how we get to where we are today, when Bill Kristol is a respected political expert despite being wrong in virtually every prediction, and where Peggy Noonan is a respected political expert despite predicting a Mitt Romney victory because she saw quite a few of his yard signs up. On a more mundane level, it is why people employed as mainstream political reporters are invited onto television and taken seriously as experts, even though—to use only the most recent example—last night’s primary was won by two candidates that no mainstream political reporters took seriously one year ago. It is why Scott Walker, who not long ago was the media’s favorite choice for likely Republican nominee, dropped out of the race so long ago that his name is barely ever spoken now. Most political analysis is not based on something solid; it is based on, well, what feels right, the same way average idiots “predict” who they think will win the Super Bowl next year.
It is also based on what everyone else is predicting! There is career safety in numbers.
Predictions are hard. The expert predictive analysis of political pundits is mostly worthless. A statistician with a reliable method of analyzing valid national polls may be able to make a useful prediction about a political race. A political beat reporter who got a five-minute sitdown with Carly Fiorina’s campaign manager will not. If our political media focused on issues rather than on the horse race, they could produce stories with value independent of their resemblance to Las Vegas gambling tip sheets. There are many (important, interesting, informative, true) things to be said about the many contentious political issues that directly affect people’s lives today. Political reporters might, in a parallel universe, view their task as exploring those issues directly, and then comparing their findings to the stances of the various political candidates. But this is not the world that we live in. We live in a world in which people with no inherent expertise in anything at all (reporters like me) are expected to be able to produce grand insights into the future behavior of one hundred million demographically diverse people based upon how energetic the crowd of five dozen at the last Jeb Bush town hall meeting was.
A true genius can mine profound and universal truths from the smallest fact. As long as you believe that most political reporters are true geniuses, our current system is fine.
Fresh off his New Hampshire victory, Bernie Sandwiches joined the women of The View to talk politics, taste the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream named after him, Bernie’s Yearning, for the first time (he likes it!), and, most enjoyably, to gossip about his fellow Presidential hopefuls.
In her most useful contribution to society thus far, Candace Cameron Bure asked Sanders to say “one nice thing” about his fellow candidates. To Sanders, John Kasich is an “old friend,” which is a fact not a compliment, but whatever. Sanders called Hillary Clinton “intelligent.” On the subject of Trump, Sanders dragged his feet until he came up with “humble,” which is just sarcasm. On Ted Cruz, he said, “OK...great gowns, beautiful gowns.” Just kidding. Sanders called Cruz “loud,” which Cameron Bure pointed out is not “nice,” but she accepted as an answer nonetheless because it’s correct.
Once upon a time, technical presidential candidate John Kasich did something not boring and kind of funny, if you can even believe it. He tried to get onstage at a Grateful Dead show in 1991 and when that didn’t work, he threatened to blacklist the band.
The Grateful Dead was playing RFK Stadium. Kasich had a backstage pass through Dwight Yoakam, the opener, and was onstage during Yoakam’s set. When Kasich tried to use his credentials to rejoin the spectating entourage on stage as the Dead played, he was blocked by the tour manager. Kasich pulled the “don’t you know who I am?” card, according to a witness interviewed by Post reporter Lois Romano, and said he could prevent the Dead from ever playing Washington again.
Kasich, for his part, denied some of the details, telling Romano, “Telling the Grateful Dead you’re a congressman is not going to get you onstage. This is way off the mark. . . I said, ‘Hey, why won’t you let me on — I can’t understand why you’re not letting me on.’ I argued with him for a few minutes and then I left. I probably should not have argued with the guy. I don’t think I was angry. I’m a pretty upbeat guy.”
Either way, not the most flattering story, but praise the content gods—finally, a reason to write about John Kasich.
Goldman Sachs is a Very Sophisticated Wall Street Firm which is paid a good deal of money for its expertise in reading the financial markets. How is that going this year?
The dollar versus a basket of euro and yen; yields on Italian bonds versus their German counterparts; U.S. inflation expectations: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was wrong on all that and more...
Goldman Sachs was forced out of three of its top picks for the year last month: a bet on large U.S. banks against the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, a wager on 10-year break-evens, and a call on the Mexican peso and Russian ruble strengthening versus the South African rand and Chilean peso. The latter closed on Jan. 21 for a potential loss of 6.6 percent.
You too can be a Wall Street forecaster. You just need confidence and nothing else.
This afternoon, CNN’s Tom Kludt and Dylan Byers published a brief article about a remark Trump made to the Morning Joe co-hosts on-air. “You guys have been supporters,” Trump said during an interview this morning about his big primary win in the Granite State. “And I really appreciate it. And not necessarily supporters, but at least believers. You said there’s some potential there.”
Noting the “unique relationship” Trump enjoys with the MSNBC show and its hosts—Scarborough has been asked recently about serving as the candidate’s running mate—CNN reported that the pair visited Trump in his room yesterday evening “while the New Hampshire primary results were rolling in,” citing two anonymous sources.
This does not exactly reflect well on Scarborough and Brzezinski’s journalistic objectivity, especially if the visit was congratulatory in nature. And soon after the post went up, Scarborough tweeted at Byers calling him a troll and a liar.
And Byers responded by asking the former congressman to go on the record denying that he was present.
CNN’s media reporter, Dylan Byers, is implying that Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski watched election returns with Donald Trump last night in New Hampshire. That is not true.
The Morning Joe hosts instead did what anchors are supposed to do — they interviewed the candidate’s senior staff to get background information on their strategy in New Hampshire, and on their campaign’s plans moving forward in South Carolina. The staff then invited the hosts to get Mr. Trump’s reaction to the victory. That discussion lasted less than five minutes. Other networks were allowed interviews as well.
It should be noted that Morning Joe is off to a great start in this election year. In January, the show had 28% more viewers than CNN’s morning show last month. And thus far in February, more people are watching Morning Joe than CNN.
If there’s anything more erratic than what Donald Trump says or thinks, it’s the hues of the flesh surrounding his mouth and brain, that fluorescent, noxious stink-maker known as his face. In New Hampshire last night, the only question more compelling than “can he really win?” was “what color will his face be?”
The Trump epidermis exists in some sort of quantum state, unknowable until observed. But with the power of modern software, perhaps we can pin down part of the spectrum of oranges, reds, and whites that make up the bad man’s creamsicle mug.
Sampling this close-up from CNN’s New Hampshire broadcast reveals a rainbow in itself.
An incredible disparity
The zone around Trump’s cheeks register a hexadecimal color value of #C86E64 and #CC7066. On his upper lip, #CF907C. Bafflingly, around his eye socket, we get #DEA091, a significantly paler hue that gives him a sort of “idiot owl man” look. Trump’s forehead appears as scorched red as the side of a Dust Bowl barn, #CD685F.
It can be used to terrifying effect, such as on this photo from the very same moment, via Getty:
Jesus Christ, man
My god!
What’s interesting here isn’t just the sheer volume of unique colors found on this grotesque political biopsy, but how radically it changes from appearance to appearance. Here is Trump at his last major speech, after losing the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz, also from CNN:
Here Trump appeared with the radiance of a superfund site, rather than the desert tones from New Hampshire:
It varied greatly from network to network, as if modern camera equipment is only capable of mere interpretation, interpolation of reality, not actual representation:
We’re left to wonder, is there any such a “thing” as Donald Trump, a substrate beneath our perception?
Can a man whose cheeks register a hex value of #864232 (as above) in one state and #C86E64 in another (practically night and day for those in design) be said to even fully exist, let alone be fit for office?
What color is Donald Trump’s face?
Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com. Public PGP key PGP fingerprint: PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7
This was how things worked, as Curtis Sliwa recalls it, back in the heyday of the Guardian Angels, from the late ’70s through the early ’90s: In one subway car, Sliwa might break up a fistfight, then move to the next car and find a domestic dispute in progress. In the following car, there might be a drug dealer pushing his product, and in the car after that, a group of young men openly drinking malt liquor 40s and smoking blunts.
He’d developed this protocol, moving backward through the great steel snake of the train and looking for crimes in progress, nearly 40 years ago. He was a 23-year-old McDonald’s night manager in the Bronx, in a city so gripped by fear and decay that he felt called to vigilantism. He always gave special attention when he reached the snake’s tail.
The last car on the subway “is always the most problematic,” Sliwa said, this past Monday evening. “If there are troublemakers on the train, there’s a good chance they’re laying up in the last car, scheming or planning.”
He stood in the doorway of a C Train that was speeding uptown from Columbus Circle toward 155th Street, where a passenger on a southbound C was robbed at knifepoint late last month. He was decked out in the iconic Guardian Angels uniform, red beret and track jacket, beaming like a patrol car light, and it was not without relish that he recollected the bad old days.
A man in a suit and black overcoat scarcely looked up from his e-reader as he leaned against the pole, and a woman seated nearby was so engrossed in her smartphone that one of Sliwa’s troublemakers could have pinched the rolled-up yoga mat from her tote bag and been gone with it before she glanced up and noticed.
New York City’s tabloid press announced last week that the Guardian Angels would be returning to the subway for the first time since 1994, when Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor. At its peak, the organization commanded the city’s imagination, earning magazine cover stories and a mix of laudation and condemnation from public officials for its volunteer subway patrols at a time when many New Yorkers felt that taking the train meant risking being mugged or worse.
The Angels were apparently inspired to bring back their theatrical brand of crime prevention this year after a string of 11 knife and razor attacks on subway trains, including the robbery at 155th Street. By all appearances, the uptick in slashings is a statistical anomaly: Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton have insisted that the incidents are unconnected, and many of the attacks rose from altercations, not prowling criminals carefully choosing their marks. Still, the tabloids and local television stations have covered the crimes with their usual breathlessness. “CUT AND RUN: New slasher strikes fear in subways,” read the New York Post wood on January 28, the first of three subway crime-related covers in less than a week for the paper.
Now, Sliwa estimates, the Guardian Angels comprises 150 or so volunteers, down by several hundred from its 1980s membership. They ride the trains in shifts, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., using Broadway Junction in Brooklyn and Columbus Circle in Manhattan as meeting places for the patrols, which focus on those two boroughs. I’d arranged a ride-along with Sliwa by phone. When I arrived at Columbus Circle at 7 p.m. for our appointment, I met a TV reporter and a freelance photographer. The Angels had booked them for the ride-along too.
In the two hours that followed, Sliwa bounced up and down the decidedly unfrightening West Side of Manhattan, riding the C, B, and F trains between West 4th and 168th Streets and back. He was accompanied by about 10 other Angels in full regalia. By Angels tradition, each one had a nickname: Benjamin “EQ” Garcia, a quiet man from an East Harlem housing project who joined the group in 1986; Sylvia “Hell Girl” and Milton “Sensei” Oliver, a married couple of Bronx building superintendents, ’87 and ’82, respectively; and Ivan “Blue Blood” Cruz, a 16-year-old high school student from Bushwick, 2014. (Sliwa’s own nickname is “Rock.”) Cruz, among the youngest in a group that was roughly split between old-timers and relatively new recruits, wasn’t sure how late he’d be able to stay out on patrol. He had school in the morning.
The group’s leader stood stoically as they rode, keeping watch over subway cars that were, most often, fully sedate. He shook hands with the many straphangers who recognized him from the Guardian Angels or his subsequent act as a conservative talk radio host, a job he’s held on and off since 1991. He’s currently on, with WABC on weekdays, in a Crossfire-style show from noon to 3 p.m. and then solo from 5-6.
At each station, Sliwa stood with head and shoulders protruding from the train car’s door, a pose he ostensibly struck in order to signal to his fellow Angels in other cars, but which doubled as a striking photo-op for the cameras that traveled along with him.
If the Guardian Angels’ reemergence at this particular moment feels strange or unnecessary, it’s because New York City is currently enjoying its safest period in decades, according to NYPD statistics. Sliwa does not deny that crime is significantly lower than it was in 1979, when he founded the group, but believes the city may be on the brink of a downturn.
“That it’s the safest city it’s ever been—that’s nonsense. Nobody believes that,” he said, citing Bratton and former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly’s recent spat over the alleged manipulation of crime stats.
Sliwa believes that even if crime may be technically down, the perception of crime is up, and that perception is at least as important as statistics. When the city feels dangerous, regular working New Yorkers become afraid and their criminal counterparts become emboldened, he said. Eventually, the perception of danger becomes an actuality.
Ed Mullins, who heads the union representing NYPD sergeants, recently echoed this view. “It’s the safest summer on record according to the stats, but what’s the perception of the people?” Mullins told the Wall Street Journal in September. “The cops I talk to don’t know what to do, and the people don’t feel that way. The perception is the reality.”
Sliwa and Mullins’ theory remains unproven, but if it turns out to be true, it is worth asking where the perception of danger is coming from. The New York Post, which generally supports the Angels and vehemently opposes Mayor de Blasio, has printed the phrase “bad old days” dozens of times since the mayor took office in 2014, once going so far as to badly photoshop de Blasio’s face onto Taxi Driver anti-hero Travis Bickle.
When squared with the mostly tranquil lived experience of present-day New York, it is hard to view the Post’s obsession with a return to the squalor of earlier decades as anything other than a campaign to discredit the progressives who currently hold municipal power. The miseries of the gentrified and unequal city are real enough, but the homeless are not close to driving down the real estate prices of the buildings they may shelter against. Neighborhoods are not going bad.
Similarly, the only symptoms of peril at Columbus Circle Monday night were the men and women in red who congregated there, preparing to fright crimes which they never encountered. Those most dismayed with the perception of danger in New York may be the same as those who work hardest to create that perception.
Sliwa and the police unions see things differently. It is the NYPD’s scaled-back use of aggressive measures such as stop-and-frisk under de Blasio and Bratton that has left people afraid, not conservative alarmists, they say. “Cops, before, were encouraged to be proactive, even sometimes to the detriment of the department. There’s no doubt about it—the ‘cowboy cop’ syndrome,” Sliwa said. “But overall it was good for the city. Now, it’s almost like they’re told to be passive...it’s like the cops are in limbo.”
The Guardian Angels leader credits Bratton’s use of so-called “horizontal patrols” during his first term as commissioner, under Giuliani in the mid-1990s, for reducing subway crime. Sliwa performs these patrols himself when he rides the subways, walking an entire train from front to back and watching for suspicious activity. He believes that crime could be curbed today if cops performed horizontal patrols more often as well. Bratton’s proposals for dealing with the spike in slashings—barring repeat offenders from using the trains entirely, and urging riders not to sleep on their commutes—were met with wide criticism and ridicule, including from Sliwa.
After Giuliani took office, the Angels gradually receded from view, and the narrative about them today largely holds that the mayor’s tough approach to crime simply rendered them happily irrelevant. Their fade to the background may also have to do with the credible case that Sliwa’s famous derring-do was largely a myth. In 1992, he admitted that he staged a series of hoaxes in the Angels’ early days, claiming to break up a rape, a mugging, and other crimes that never actually happened, in hopes of gaining public support. The same year, the transit police union announced its plan to sue Sliwa over a kidnapping attempt he fabricated against himself in 1980, which he claimed was perpetrated by transit cops who were angry at him for making them look bad. Speaking to a New York magazine reporter for a cover story on the Angels in 1980, Sliwa’s attorney was unable to produce a single name connected to the 92 citizen’s arrests the group claimed in the press to have effected in its first year.
Then-mayor Ed Koch gave a press conference that year criticizing the Canarsie-born leader’s pursuit of the limelight, which at one point included a three-day hunger strike protesting the mayor’s failure to recognize the Angels for one of their more impressive exploits. “Good Samaritans don’t ask for rewards,” Koch said. “I suggest they join the police force if they want to continue their efforts to increase public safety. Look, I don’t know everything about the Guardian Angels but I do know they love publicity and that one of them has sold his life story to television and that the more publicity the better.”
Sliwa’s hunger strike, staged at City Hall, was aimed at convincing Koch to officially credit the Angels for saving MTA Officer Robert Miller’s life from a group of three attackers who snatched his nightstick at the Bowling Green subway station earlier in the year. The mayor was not the only person who disputed Sliwa’s version of events. “It was a routine arrest,” Miller told New York at the time. “It was a matter of three guys in their early twenties with a few drinks...Nobody was beating me over the head with my own nightstick, and I didn’t lose my gun or radio or anything. I realized the incident was being blown out of proportion by the press when I kept getting calls asking me loaded questions like ‘Were you glad to see the Angels?’ I kept telling the press the truth, but the story came out cockeyed anyway.”
At one point Monday, Sliwa, Hell Girl, and Sensei conducted a horizontal patrol of a downtown C Train. The line’s older R32 trains, with their sticky floors and rickety corrugated exteriors, give no illusions about the fact that they have been in service since even before the founding of the Guardian Angels, and would have given a fittingly seedy and nostalgic backdrop to the Angels’ work that night. But they were riding a glossy R160, among the newest trains in the system, and most passengers were sitting quietly, wearing the sullenly placid expression that is the default for evening commuters.
The Angels handed out business cards to passengers as they walked, urging them to join or support the group. Augustin Camacho, a courier and longtime Uptown Manhattan resident, jumped from his seat as Sliwa walked by, recognizing the leader by name. “They’re protecting people,” Camacho said later when asked for his opinion of the Angels. “Hell yeah! They’re doing a great job.”
As the train neared 95th Street, Sliwa entered the last car, the notorious hangout for troublemakers and schemers. It was nearly empty. A young nurse named Lauren was among the five or so passengers. She said she did not recognize the Angels. She works odd hours at her current profession, and previously bartended and waited tables to put herself through nursing school. Her mother is always reminding her to stay vigilant when riding the subway at night, she said, but she has never felt unsafe. “I mean, it’s New York,” she said after Sliwa entered the car in his unmissable outfit. “You just get used to seeing different groups, people from all walks of life. You don’t really think much about it, to be honest.”
The most hardened criminal in the rear car appeared to be a man in a Yankees hat who was flagrantly defying the MTA’s unenforced encouragement against eating and drinking on the train. The man tore into his sandwich with vigor and disregard for the informal rule, but when chunks of meat and mayonnaise spilled from his jaws and threatened to fall the floor, he was careful to catch them in his crinkly black deli bag.
Image via Jim Cooke/photo by the author. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.
Back in August, ex-Virginia governor Jim Gilmore was included in the group of 17 Republican candidates who participated in one of two inaugural debates in Cleveland. Yesterday, in New Hampshire, he received less votes than dropouts Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, 73-year-old retired public school custodian Richard Witz, and Democratic candidate Vermin Supreme, who wears a galosh on his head.
All of which raises the question: Do you know Jim Gilmore is? Take the below quiz to find out!
Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com / quiz images via AP, top image by Jim Cooke
Dr. Mehmet Oz took the opportunity to air footage shot in December for his January episode featuring Sheen that was previously withheld at Chachoua’s request. In it, Chachoua once again makes the false claim that Sheen has been cured of HIV. “Right now, you’re not infectious. Right now, we could have sex. I don’t want to, but we could,” Chachoua tells Sheen in the clip. Also featured is a breast cancer “examination” and “treatment,” in which Chachoua asks Sheen to feel his patient’s breast and then mimics how giddy she must feel to have just been felt up by Sheen. This, by the way, happened not in a lab or office, but in a hotel room. “We see he’s not a doctor, but he is an expert on breasts!” Chachoua exclaims.
Additionally, Chachoua tells Sheen on camera that he’ll give him samples of his HIV cure to bring back for Dr. Oz to have tested. Sheen revealed on the show that Chachoua did not provide any samples, and furthermore that he asked Sheen if he could help break Chachoua’s kids into the music business. Chachoua also expressed, per Sheen, the desire to open clinics in Los Angeles. Oz revealed that through a private investigator, he confirmed that Chachoua is not a registered doctor in the U.S. “Which is why he said on Bill Maher that he treated me in Mexico for two months,” added Sheen, who says that he met with Chachoua in Mexico for about 32 hours and was otherwise treated (illegally, it turns out) by Chachoua in Los Angeles.
Much of the Dr. Oz episode was devoted to debunking Chachoua’s Real Time claims. Sheen said Chachoua’s discussion of Sheen’s condition to Maher was “wildly inappropriate,” adding, “I was not dying.” (However, Sheen added that Chachoua said he was dying when they met from a piece of shrapnel in his heart.) Chachoua’s claim that his treatment made the HIV levels in Sheen’s blood undetectable was also denied. Also, Chachoua did not clear Comoros of HIV, according to Savlator Niyonzima, the UNAIDS country director of Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius & Seychelles.
In fact, Sheen claims that Chachoua might not have injected himself with Sheen’s blood. “Thinking back on it, his back was to me…he might have switched the needle…It wasn’t like, ‘Here look,’ bang and presented right in front of me,” said Sheen.
Oz said that Chachoua turned down the opportunity to appear in last month’s Sheen-centered episode of Dr. Oz, which made his Real Time appearance a surprise. Oz also said that he reached out to Maher for a comment, but Maher didn’t respond.
By the time I hit my mid-twenties, after years of dating both inside and outside of the United States, I came to a terrible, lonesome conclusion: American men don’t find me attractive.
The first time a guy actually asked me out, I thought he was messing with me. I was studying abroad in London, and years of steady rejection, along with daily reminders from my male bully that I was “too dark,” or “too black,” ensured that I would never believe this guy when he said I was beautiful. I was inoculated against compliments. So I told him to fuck off.
What I didn’t know then, and wouldn’t understand until I returnedto London for an internship after my college graduation, was that he hadn’t been playing a cruel trick. After spending some time abroad—following my semester in London, I bounced back and forth for vacations, an internship, and graduate school—it began to dawn on me that while I had been made to feel like a hideous, lumbering monster in the United States, as soon as I left the country I became interesting and attractive to men.
Life in London was a revelation. It sounds kind of ridiculous, but I can’t imagine who I would be or what I would think of myself if I hadn’t been lucky enough to travel overseas. Kelis’ Milkshake could have logically provided the soundtrack to my entire trip; it was like an eighties movie montage where the dorky girl finally takes off her glasses and makes all the boys sweat. It’s likely that my experiences were just a regular Tuesday to other twenty-somethings, but for me they were life-changing—for example, one time I met a guy at a party and danced with him all night. Pretty un-extraordinary, right? We later dated until the romance fizzled for very normal reasons. It was a radical experience.
When I left the U.S., it felt like someone had turned on a light switch; it felt like the switch was flipped off the second I returned. On season 2 of Parks and Recreation, there’s an episode in which a delegation from Venezuela comes to visit; all of the men start lusting after Donna, which confuses her co-workers. Donna says to the camera: “I’m not surprised. I’ve been to South America, I do very well there.” I felt the truth of this acutely. Before my first trip abroad, I asked a longtime crush to go to the movies with me. He enthusiastically agreed, and I was thrilled. But soon he told me that he was being harangued by his friends for agreeing to go out with me, and he called off the date. He joked that he wouldn’t be able to find me in the dark, anyway, since I was so dark-skinned.
The more I traveled and lived abroad, the more the contrast was amplified. From Scotland to Italy to the Dominican Republic to just across the border in Canada, I was met with the same positive reaction. It was the inverse of my experience in America, where, from east to west coast, cities to suburbs, men treated me with indifference. After each trip, I’d return to the United States confident, excited and determined. I imagined that I’d cleared an imaginary hurdle, freed from the nun’s life I’d resigned myself to. Things will be different now, I’d tell myself. But they never were.
I was naive, and yet I was determined to figure out what made my dating experiences in America so different from my time abroad. I knew Americans could be very specific about our dating preferences, in the same way we are about everything else we consume. It seemed likely that the U.S. has a more narrow view of what’s attractive, exemplified by a British cousin of mine who looks like me and is rarely boyfriend-less. “What’s your type?” is often the first question you’ll hear in the U.S. when someone wants to set up a friend; a question I have yet to encounter elsewhere. What took me longer was to understand how often the answer to that question includes racial preferences and biases.
I was reluctant to fully accept what I subconsciously knew was a huge problem, but this willful ignorance couldn’t stand for long. I read the OKCupid studyHow Your Race Affects The Messages You Get, which plainly stated that “men don’t write black women back” regardless of much they responded to others. One of my best friends, who is also black, called me when she read the study, nearly giddy. “Finally! This is what I’ve been saying, but nobody believes me,” she said. “Now there’s proof! If anyone asks me why I haven’t met anybody yet, I’m sending them this study.” She closed her OKCupid account. Her glee at finding evidence was understandable; it’s incredible, though, what counts as good news when you’re dealing with something painful. Soon, I closed my account, too.
I also read the Psychology Todayblog post that claimed to scientifically prove that black women were less attractive than other women, and along with the rest of the country, I read John Mayer’s bizarre Playboyinterview in which he dismissed black women as partners because of his “David Duke cock.” The Psychology Today post was eventually removed from their site, but its defiant, almost celebratory bigotry was a product of the same broken system that would allow Mayer, whose work is rooted in black culture, to feel comfortable referencing the KKK to express his aversion toward black women.
By the time I hit 30, I felt resigned to this state of things. A few months ago, I found myself back in London, briefly, for a close friend’s wedding. It had been years since I’d visited, and I was so deep into American mode that I didn’t recognize when men were flirting with me. When a guy asked me to get a drink with him, I was startled, then delighted—then crestfallen that I’d have to return home the next morning, where the light would promptly switch off again. There is, of course, no single solution to any puzzle this complex, but what’s undeniable on a personal level is this: American men don’t find me attractive.Like the HP face-recognition program that didn’t recognize black faces as human faces, I, too, am generally not recognizable as a romantic option.
While I remain stateside, dreaming of my next trip abroad, I’m happy and lucky to have other types of love in my life that are just as important as romantic love. But like anyone else, I want companionship, or at least a random make-out. It smarts to think that my chance of having that is dramatically diminished while I stay within these borders. And no shining memories of a London internship can temper that fact.
Jihan Crowther is a writer. You can find her at jihancrowther.com and on Twitter @jin_crow.
Carly Fiorina suspended her campaign for president this afternoon, having failed to claim any delegates in the New Hampshire primary. This is good for the country, but also kind of sad, because there is so much that Carly Fiorina has left unsaid.
Throughout her campaign, Fiorina developed a habit of alluding to certain “inappropriate” words without actually saying them. Now that her days on the trail are over, she will never again get the opportunity to utter those words on the national stage. Carly, you missed your chance.
As we say goodbye to the terrible former CEO and her final shred of relevance, let us remember the words she would not say.
The V-word
In an interview with Boston Herald Radio in December, Fiorina referred, confusingly, to the “V-word.” What’s the V-word? See if you can guess, based on how she refused to say it:
I’ve now been called the V-word as well by the Cruz campaign. Yes V, and I won’t say that word either. But suffice it to say—V as in Victor—when I told my story, my American dream story of my life, a prominent member of the Cruz campaign said that I had gone full V-word.
She meant “vagina.”
The B-word
In the same interview, Fiorina also referred to another gendered insult she’d received over the course of her career. “I have been called several B-words,” she said.
Damn. Could have said “bitch” on the radio.
The ??? word
Perhaps Fiorina’s greatest missed opportunity to say a bad word in public came in January, when she told a South Carolina crowd that Donald Trump was just like Kim Kardashian.
“You know, Donald Trump is the Kim Kardashian of politics,” she said. “He has a big mouth. She has a big ‘you-know-what.’”
Did the people of South Carolina know what????
Unfortunately, no one will ever again ask Fiorina what she meant, because she is no longer running for president. For the crime of running a dismally boring campaign, she has been sentenced to a lifetime of saying “butt” only to herself.
The first thing you’ll hear in the premiere of YouTube Red’s new show Scare Pewdiepie is its host, Felix Kjellberg, screaming. Of course it is.
“This show takes what I already do, getting scared of horror games, but taking it to the next level,” Kjellberg, a.k.a. YouTube superstar Pewdiepie, explains. Think of it as an elaborate prank show, except all of the japes are based on the horror games Kjellberg has grown famous for playing.
Scare Pewdiepie’s schtick will be familiar to anyone who already watches or likes his channel. Every week there’ll be a new 20 minute episode based loosely on a popular video game. The seventh episode, which has been made available for free, is based on 2013's Outlast.
The show actually has a slight reality TV bent, thanks to the constant juggling of Kjellberg’s unfiltered responses and the show’s ploys to drum up fake drama behind the scenes. In the first episode, for example, Kjellberg meets the crew taping the show, including a production assistant called Nicki. Nicki is a big fan. A really big fan.
From the onset, she constantly tries to flirt with him, and it’s awkward as hell to watch. At one point, Kjellberg is trying to fill out medical paperwork, and Nicki starts touching him and even trying to read over his shoulder. It’s an invasion of privacy that turns out to be the last straw, and she gets fired. She ends up coming back later, turning into a Pewdiepie stalker who won’t take no for an answer. They have to get him a security detail, a restraining order, and everything.
It’s all pretty clearly staged, of course. Scare Pewdiepie isn’t very subtle about its layers of artifice, nor does it attempt to be. Kjellberg acts his way through it all anyway, sometimes even joking about the ridiculous situations the showrunners put him through.
YouTube may be the Internet’s television, but YouTube programming is often very different from the kind of fare we generally think of as “TV.” Scare Pewdiepie brings the two worlds together, and the result feels a little awkward.
Pewdiepie made his name on low-budget DIY productions. The videos that made him famous were personal, even intimate; just a guy in a room with a camera. Scare Pewdiepie certainly boasts higher production values than the average Pewdiepie video, and the show does know how to make the man scream. But it doesn’t feel like a Pewdiepie production; it has the glossy sheen of Hollywood.
Scare Pewdiepie is a production of YouTube Red, a premium service that costs $9.99 a month. That sheen may well be what YouTube Red wants people to pay for in the first place.
These days, Pewdiepie’s main YouTube channel has actually been moving away from the sorts of outsized horror screams that made him famous. It almost seems like the new show is trying to bank off the Pewdiepie of 2014, not the Pewdiepie of today.
It’s an open question whether his fans will care, whether they’ll recoil at his new, polished look and opt instead for the lower-budget Let’s Plays on his main channel. In the meantime, Scare Pewdiepie remains a pretty fun, pretty silly show. It’s cliched and sometimes cheesy, and not particularly surprising or novel in its use of tired horror tropes. But, as it turns out, watching a Swedish man yell at the top of his lungs as shit hits the fan is still pretty funny.
Reporters at the Huffington Post were provided with an unsigned memo which seems to outline for local governments and jail administrators how they might continue making lots of money from the phone companies. When the FCC implemented caps on the per-minute rates for calls last year—which were sometimes as high as $14—it also discouraged companies from giving commissions on their revenue to jail administrators.
Those commissions were an important part of the scam. Providers who charge the most for service are capable of giving jails the largest kickbacks, meaning the jails are more likely to continue using those providers. The inmates, meanwhile, continue getting screwed with exorbitant costs. Take away the kickbacks, and the providers have much less power to incentivize administrators to employ them. The jails and their phone providers both lose.
HuffPo’s anonymous document, which may or may not have been created by one of the phone companies, provides a solution for the state and local governments who administer prisons: continue taking the money, but do it in terms that don’t include the word “commission,” so as to sneak under the FCC’s radar. From HuffPo:
The anonymous document that recently came to light lays out a straightforward way to get around this FCC order: pretend that commissions don’t exist, charge prisoners and their families a whole new set of fees and call them something else.
“The terms ‘site commission’ and ‘commission’ must never be used in any context or in any forum,” the document explains. Instead, the document recommends getting state or local governments to pass laws allowing prison phone companies to charge new fees to replace commissions. These companies, the document notes, should avoid being present at relevant government meetings.
The provenance of the memo is weird and murky. HuffPo obtained it from a lawyer who represents a group of families who were subjected to the phone charges, and who also submitted it to the FCC. In his FCC filing, the attorney admits that he has “not been able to confirm the authorship of the document,” and he did not comment on where he obtained to HuffPo. So it might be nothing. But if jail phone companies did want to keep paying off the people who run jails, this seems like a good way to do it.
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If you’ve somehow managed to avoid reading Harry Potter up to this point, or if your hardcover copies are just starting to fall apart, a brand new Kindle compendium brings you all seven books in a single download for just $15.
This debuted a few days ago at $56, so we’re not really sure what the “usual” price will be. Regardless, $2.14 per book is way better than buying them separately. [Harry Potter: The Complete Collection (Kindle), $15]
The LG Watch Urbane is absolutely one of the best looking Android Wear watches on the market, and you can get your own for $180 today on eBay. That’s $170 less than its original selling price, and the best deal we’ve seen. If you’re on the fence, be sure to check out Gizmodo’s impressions. [LG Watch Urbane, $200]
As you might expect, this discounted Logitech Harmony remote can interface with over 270,000 popular home theater devices, but it’s also set up to control Philips Hue lights, Nest thermostats, and other smart home devices. Plus, the included repeater can turn any smartphone into a full-featured remote, which is great when you can’t find the real thing. [Logitech - Harmony Home Control, $100]
We’re 41 days into 2016, and if you’re still clinging tight to that New Year’s resolution to work out and build more muscle, Amazon’s here to help with great discounts on EAS protein products.
Inside, you’ll find dozens of powders, shakes, bars, and more in a variety of flavors and formulas. Just note that there are three pages of deals—Amazon likes to hide the navigation buttons—and that these prices are only available today, or until sold out. [EAS Protein Gold Box]
The vast majority of recent PS4 deals have been centered around the Uncharted console bundle, but if Call of Duty is more your speed, today’s your lucky day.
This Hoover Cyclonic is the simple, cheap stick vacuum that all other simple, cheap stick vacuums aspire to be, and you can own it for just $65 today. I’ve owned this exact model for several years, and couldn’t be happier. [Hoover Cyclonic Stick Vacuum, $65]
Whether you’re starting the next big podcast, or just want your video calls to sound a little better, this 4.3 star rated USB microphone will blow away the tiny mic built into your laptop. [Samson USB Microphone, $30 with code EQNDRAIF]
The Moto X Pure “does Android better than Google,” and Amazon will sell you one today for just $375. These were $25 cheaper around Black Friday, but if you couldn’t quite pull the trigger back then, I wouldn’t hesitate today. [Moto X Pure, $375]
The flashlight on your phone is alright for stumbling to the bathroom at night, but sometimes, you just need a big, hulking spotlight to get the job done. This LED model from Stanley is rechargeable, waterproof, and marked down to an all-time low price today. [Stanley FL5W10 Waterproof LED Rechargeable Spotlight, $20]
Dorco makes some of the best razors on the market, including the ones you get every month in your Dollar Shave Club box. If you don’t mind buying directly from the source though, you can save even more with an excellent promo code today, plus free shipping. [$10 off any $20 Dorco order, promo code SECRETFIFTY]
Want to get into espresso without breaking the bank? This refurbished Cuisinart can make a single or double shot with 15 bars of pressure for just $75. Sure, there are better espresso makers out there, but you’d be hard pressed to find one for under $100. [Refurb Cuisinart 15-Bar Espresso Maker, $75]
Amazon’s Prime Pantry program is great for stocking up on household goods and non-perishable foods without actually having to visit a store, but the $5.99 per box shipping charge has always been a drag. This month though, if you buy five select items, you can get that fee waived.
There are hundreds of eligible items running the gamut from granola bars to bandages to toilet bowl cleaner, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding five that you need. Just add them to your box (plus anything else that will fit), and use code PANTRYFEB at checkout to get free shipping. [Free Prime Pantry shipping with five eligible purchases, promo code PANTRYFEB]
Bonus: If you already have a no-rush free shipping credit in your account, this deal actually appears to stack, netting you an extra $6 discount.
Whether you need more space to store your photos, an extra hard drive for your Xbox One, or a backup drive to replicate all of your files, you usually won’t find a better price than $70 for a 2TB portable drive. [Toshiba Canvio Basics 2TB Portable Hard Drive, $70]
Rather than try to sell you on this pillow, I’m going to turn it over to our deal researcher Corey, who actually owns one:
The pillow slowly conforms to my head position each night and remains comfortable. If it ever gets flat or bulgy in a way that’s not to my liking, a couple squishes here or there makes it perfect. Never going back.
If you’re trying to eat healthier at work, this portable salad holder includes separate compartments for all of your different ingredients, including the dressing, plus a perfectly sized ice pack to keep everything cold and crisp. [Stay Fit Deluxe Salad Kit, EZ Freeze, $8]
I was hoping Amazon would have a deal on the Echo today in light of its Super Bowl commercial appearances, but alas, we’ll have to settle for a $40 Fire tablet and $20 off Kindle e-readers.
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