This year’s annual “South By Southwest” conference of upper-middle tier social media managers and brand ambassadors will be interesting for two reasons: Barack Obama will be there to get out of going to Nancy Reagan’s funeral, and there will simultaneously be a lot of men with handguns.
Open Carry Texas is a group whose mission is as simple as its name. They believe that as many people as possible should own and carry loaded weapons. One of the larger, non-legislative obstacles to this ideal is the fact that many Americans have the deeply rational stance that guns are dangerous, in that they make it very easy to murder someone and also pose a great risk of accidentally murdering someone. According to OCT, people only believe that because most people are not around guns very often—and if you force people to be exposed to guns, they’ll gradually lose their natural fear.
This plan was complicated when a member of OCT’s 28,000-strong closed Facebook group posted a threat against Obama:
The group’s leader, CJ Grisham, also made a vaguely ominous comment about the upcoming event:
(Both screenshots were provided to me by a representative for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense Texas, who described Open Carry Texas as an “extremist” group and said they’ve been monitoring the group online)
It’s these two remarks that have turned OCT’s presence in Austin into a national news item this week. Reached by phone, Grisham downplayed both Kriss Elliott’s comments and his own, saying that the former was probably an outsider “plant” placed by anti-gun activists, and that his own “this may get interesting” remark referred to nothing more than Obama-induced traffic jams in Austin.
I asked him to elaborate on this second point: “Anytime the president comes around, everybody flips out and starts freaking out, they start putting their boot down the neck of the Constitution.” He added that “We’re not out there [at SXSW] for president Obama, we’re there to oppose what president Obama stands for.”
Grisham said he’s not planning on attending any actual SXSW events, given that the festival itself bans weapons (“I don’t go anywhere where I’m disarmed”) and he himself doesn’t drink: “I don’t have a lot in common with much of South By Southwest, I love music, [but] there’s an anti-liberty element.”
He was also quick to point out that this will be the third year OCT attends SXSW—so why the fuss now? This year is the first since Texas legalized the open carry of handguns, sure. But the piqued national interest is probably because, no matter the reasoning, a group of (largely if not entirely white) armed men who despise Obama showing up to a place Obama is visiting is generally Not A Good Look.
Despite appearances, Grisham insists his group confrontation isn’t in fact a confrontation: “We don’t force ourselves on anybody,” he told me, adding “We have a problem in this country where we’re comfortable with government being armed but not the people being armed.” So why do this at a music/tech festival that generally attracts a left-leaning yuppie crowd? “The benefit of South By Southwest is the conversation...we get to directly confront the narratives of the anti-gun crowd.”
Again, this sounds very much like a confrontation, especially given the use of the word “confront.” A later remark that “If [SXSW attendees] don’t like the sight of guns in public, turn the other way” added to this characterization.
I asked him how deliberately causing discomfort for a large crowd of nonpartisan festival-goers would help his cause:
“I don’t care that people are uncomfortable, that’s their problem. How someone feels really doesn’t matter when it comes to constitutional principles. As a man who is somewhat disgusted by homosexual behavior, I don’t think I should have to see two men kissing in public, and I will never stop them from doing so, that is their right to be gay, that is their right to kiss in public and grope in public.”
The parallels between proud gay rights activists—If this makes you uncomfortable, thats your problem—and open carry activists was an interesting one that Grisham himself was eager to emphasize:
“People who are anti-gay think people who exercise their right to love whomever they want are confrontational ... People [in this country] are not talking to each other, they’re focused on an object, whether it be a kiss between men or a holstered handgun.”
Asked if he’d say anything to the president should he run into him at SXSW, perhaps eating a taco, Grisham told me “I would want to talk to Obama about are how he’s destroying my military.”
Donald Trump’s rally in Chicago was canceled amid safety concerns this evening after an entire section of attendees turned out to be protestors, sending the arena and surrounding area into chaos.
Trump never actually made it to the University of Illinois at Chicago arena where the event was supposed to take place, which is now apparently surrounded by thousands of protestors and supporters clashing with police.
Altercations were already taking place even before the event was canceled, however. From the Associated Press:
Before the announcement the event wouldn’t take place, a handful of intense verbal clashes took place between Trump supporters and protesters as the crowd waited for his arrival. For the first time during his White House bid, the crowd appeared to be an equal mix of those eager to cheer on the real estate mogul and those overtly opposed to his candidacy.
When one African-American protester was escorted out before the event started, the crowd erupted into chants of “Let them stay!”
In the video above, the reporter notes that there’s “not a lot of law enforcement is visible. Perhaps they’re... in here. But not a lot of law enforcement visible.”
One Chicago resident tells us, “Congressman [Luis] Guitierrez was major in organizing protestors.”
Long before the event even started, hundreds of protestors and supporters alike were lined up, separated from each other by an equally large swatch of police officers and barricades. According to the Associated Press, “Some Trump supporters walking into the area chanted, ‘USA! USA!’ and ‘Illegal is illegal.’ One demonstrator shouted back, ‘Racist!’ One protester, 64-year-old Dede Rottman of Chicago, carried a placard that read: ‘Build a Wall Around Trump. I’ll Pay for it.’”
Update 8:51 p.m.
Protestors marching before the rally. Image via APProtestors celebrating after the rally’s cancellation. Image via APSupporters face off with protestors inside the arena. Image via AP.Supporters face off with protestors inside the arena. Image via AP.Protestors chant after the rally’s cancellation is announced. Image via AP.
In the video below, you can see one of the many, many fights between supporters and protestors that broke out before and after the rally’s cancellation.
Update 9:00 p.m.
It’s also worth remembering how Donald Trump responded to Bernie Sanders simply having his microphone briefly taken from him by Black Lives Matters protestors, as The Washington Post points out. The incident took place last August, when Trump offered “That will never happen with me. I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself, or if other people will. It was a disgrace.”
Well, Donald. You had your mic taken from you. I guess you chose to go with “other people.”
Update 9:06 p.m.
He speaks!
Sort of.
Update 9:09
You can watch the situation outside for yourself over on NBC Chicago here. It looks like they’ve brought out the horses.
Update 9:25 p.m.
Donald Trump called into Fox News to talk about the cancellation.
“I just don’t want to see people get hurt,” he says. A noble dream that is very much within the realm of possibility—if only he’d stop talking about wanting to punch protestors in the face.
Update 9:50 p.m.
A spokesman for the Chicago Police Department has told the Associated Press that the police never actually told Trump’s campaign that there was a security threat nor did they recommend he cancel the rally. What’s more, “Trump never arrived at the Chicago venue.”
Why Trump said that his meeting with law enforcement is what prompted him to decide to postpone the rally “for the safety of all of the tens of thousands of people that have gathered in and around the arena” is anyone’s guess—because surely President Trump wouldn’t lie to the people.
Update 10:54 p.m.
Maybe she just wanted to point out the moon? The fascist, fascist moon.
After tonight’s chaos at a cancelled rally in Chicago, Donald Trump told CNN’s Don Lemon his political events are “a lovefest” that feature “great love” and that he hopes his tone is “not that of causing violence [...] I don’t do that.” Here are some examples of the GOP presidential favorite endorsing that kind of love between people who disagree: the soft caress of a punch to the face, for example, or reverently tucking another into a paramedic’s stretcher.
Kurt Bardella, the former Breitbart spokesperson who quit his job Friday, tells Don Lemon the outlet straight-up lied about what happened to reporter Michelle Fields. Don Lemon, in response, just about died from the shock of someone answering a direct question on his program.
This week Bardella wrote a deliberately doubtful press release for Breitbart after one of its reporters, Michelle Fields, accused Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of manhandling her at a press conference. (Bardella also reportedly muzzled Fields and instructed her to get her boyfriend “under control” after the boyfriend wrote about the incident on Twitter.)
But the PR flack—who is now on a redemption tour—says he decided to resign because of the way the outlet handled the incident.
“When you get to a point where you can’t 100 percent support who you’re representing, the right thing to do is to step aside and inform them that you can no longer represent them,” he said Friday night during an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon. “I just disagree with the course of which they’ve been covering this, and how they’ve treated Michelle. I think that they’ve been looking for a reason to disprove something, when all the evidence—from the Washington Post reporter’s first-hand account, to the bruises on Michelle’s arm, to all the photos and video clips that we’ve seen—strongly suggest that Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, was the one who did this.”
But Lemon’s biggest shock was yet to come, when he asked Bardella a direct question—and he answered.
Don Lemon: Are you saying they’re lying?
Kurt Bardella: Yes, I am.
Don Lemon: Alright. And you’re saying they’re lying, have they lied all along about certain things, to your estimation?
Kurt Bardella: I think as this unfolded, in the immediate aftermath, I don’t think anyone knew all of the details of what happened. It was obviously a very chaotic, emotional situation, people are in different locations. But I think as it progressed and as the evidence became more clear, there seemed to be resistance from Breitbart in supporting Michelle. And it’s just something I just couldn’t understand, I certainly don’t agree with it, and again, I think that for me, the right thing to do was to try to extricate myself from a situation that I just didn’t feel comfortable with anymore.
Don Lemon: Mr. Bardella, why would they not support her and support the Trump version of the story?
Kurt Bardella: Well I think that anyone who has watched Breitbart coverage, who reads the site everyday, it’s very clear, and they haven’t hidden this at all, but they’ve been very supportive of the Trump campaign. And I think that there was a desire to want to believe the Trump campaign and believe the statement that Corey and Donald Trump put out
Here is what Lemon has to say about conducting a successful interview: “I think that’s the first time that I’ve ever been speechless on television, because usually when I ask people a direct question, they don’t answer directly. And when I said, ‘Are they lying?’ you said yes. And I said, ‘Where do I go from there—he answered honestly.’ Thank you!”
In the midst of a rally that broke into violence, a CBS News journalist was caught in the fray, arrested while he says he was just doing his job.
Sopan Deb, a reporter who’s been covering Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump during his campaign run, was on the floor at Trump’s disastrous rally in Chicago Friday night, capturing the melee as it unfolded.
After he exited the building to capture protests outside, Deb was thrown to the ground and arrested, charged with resisting arrest by the Illinois State Police.
A report from CBS News on the incident notes that in his footage of the arrest, Deb does not appear to be resisting. He also identified himself as a member of the media, saying, “I have I.D. Press credentials I can show you.”
Deb was put in the back of a police van, and eventually released and given back his camera.
A Donald Trump rally in Cincinnati Sunday afternoon is still on, despite reports to the contrary from Trump’s own supporters.
On Saturday, Reuters reported that the rally for the Republican presidential frontrunner in Ohio planned for Sunday afternoon had been called off because of security concerns:
Eric Deters, a local spokesman for Trump’s campaign, said the candidate’s secret service security detail could not complete its preparation work in time to hold the event at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, the website said.
A man by the name of Eric Deters appears to live in the Cincinnati area, and he has been recording videos supporting Trump and sending out tweets about the rally lately. Deters was suspended twice from practicing law in Kentucky, once involving false statements made in a libel suit. In a series of messages, Deters confirmed to Gawker that he had said the event was cancelled; he claims that it was cancelled and rescheduled to a different venue.
But Trump, ever quick to the trigger with those tiny fingers, fired back on Sunday, saying it was still scheduled.
A spokeswoman for Trump, Hope Hicks, told Raw Story in an email: “We don’t know Eric Deters. There has been no cancellation.”
Deters, who provided a photo of him standing next to Donald Trump as proof of his connection to the campaign, said that he is the volunteer northern Kentucky chair of Trump’s campaign, and that the national campaign “wouldn’t know me. Lol.”
Guglielmi says the university’s police department also did not recommend that Trump call off the event. He says the decision was made “independently” by the campaign.
Trump cancelled the rally in Chicago due to what organizers said were safety concerns after protesters packed into the arena where it was to take place.
Trump afterward told MSNBC in a telephone interview that he canceled the event because he didn’t “want to see people hurt or worse.” He said he thinks he “did the right thing.”
For context, here is what “the right thing” looks like:
During a rally in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday, the Republican presidential frontrunner was standing in front of a jet bearing his name and in front of a crowd shouting the same. All of a sudden, a protestor reportedly shouted something behind him, causing Trump to wheel around in shock, and security to run on stage. The moment was a jarring one:
That being said, it’s a far cry from the violence faced by protesters—even by members of the press—at these same rallies. Last night in Chicago, while one BlackLivesMatter protestor was bleeding from his head, a CBS News reporter was arrested and pinned down by a policeman’s boot.
Trump has said that his supporters should feel free to “knock the crap out of” protestors at his events. But as he learned today, turning a campaign event into a WWF-style all-out battle royal comes with its drawbacks.
Update: Another angle of the incident shows a man rushing the stage, jumping a barrier before he was headed off by security.
Bernie Sanders coming for those tasty delegates nom nom nom.
A number of states actually allow 17-year-olds to vote in the primaries if they will be 18 at the time of the general election. It’s also allowed in the District of Columbia, but the rules are inconsistent, even from party to party. For example, in Wyoming the Democrats lure teenagers to their caucuses, but Republicans want no Young Republicans at the voting booths in their hipster jeans. Bah!
The Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, had announced that 17-year-olds would not be allowed to vote in the primaries for the 2016 election, and Sanders’ legal team got to suing. Before that case could come through, a judge ruled on a similar one that essentially made the decision. Husted is not feeling the Bern, and objects to what he perceives as a sweeping change just days before the the primary:
This last minute legislating from the bench on election law has to stop. Our system cannot give one county court the power to change 30 years of election law for the entire state of Ohio, 23 days into early voting and only four days before an election...
We will appeal this decision because if there is a close election on Tuesday we need clarity from the Supreme Court to make sure that ineligible voters don’t determine the outcome of an election.
All images from the trailer for History of Magic in North America.
All this week, J.K. Rowling has been publishing History of Magic in North America, one part a day for four days. When it’s been at its best, it’s been sloppy; when its not at its best—which is most of the time—it’s uninformed and under-researched. At its worst, it is downright offensive, and here’s why.
To read this, you kind of need to know that it’s all publicity for the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, which has a British wizard traveling to American and encountering a growing threat to American witches and wizards. The movie takes place in the 1920s, so the history only goes up to that point.
Each of the four parts Rowling wrote this week are fairly short, but even so, each one is breathtakingly shallow. Rowling reveals a lack of knowledge of American history that makes this an extremely hard read. She also either doesn’t realize the sensitive nature of some areas she’s treading on or does not care.
Native Americans
Who could have predicted that a white lady from the UK would have problems with appropriating Native American culture? Oh, wait, that should have been completely obvious to anyone even thinking of doing what J.K. Rowling did. When you’re combining a history of magic with Native Americans, you’re falling into an already prevalent trope of making them “mystical.” And Rowling not only didn’t avoid that trap, she leaned into it:
The Native American wizarding community was particularly gifted in animal and plant magic, its potions in particular being of a sophistication beyond much that was known in Europe. The most glaring difference between magic practised by Native Americans and the wizards of Europe was the absence of a wand.
The magic wand originated in Europe. Wands channel magic so as to make its effects both more precise and more powerful, although it is generally held to be a mark of the very greatest witches and wizards that they have also been able to produce wandless magic of a very high quality. As the Native American Animagi and potion-makers demonstrated, wandless magic can attain great complexity, but Charms and Transfiguration are very difficult without one.
Associating Native Americans with “animal and plant magic”—with, it should be noted, no more detail than that—is leaning so hard on a stereotype it’s hard not to find it offensive. It’s also not great that she says that wands originated in Europe, which reads very much as a Europe being the center of innovation and building in the magic world. You know, Native Americans and their “Earth magic” while European wizards were the ones smart enough to make wands.
Rowling may say that great things can be done without a wand, but it doesn’t offset the implications—that Native Americans may have raw power, but it’s refinement that only comes from Europe. Implications that she, with her background, was completely blind to.
Later, Rowling also writes that wizards who came to America fleeing the authorities “sought to blend in among the increasing tide of No-Majs, or hide among the Native American wizarding population, who were generally welcoming and protective of their European brethren.” Oh good, the friendly native. There’s another stereotype she should have avoided.
Rowling also included this bit in “Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century”:
The legend of the Native American ‘skin walker’ – an evil witch or wizard that can transform into an animal at will – has its basis in fact. A legend grew up around the Native American Animagi, that they had sacrificed close family members to gain their powers of transformation. In fact, the majority of Animagi assumed animal forms to escape persecution or to hunt for the tribe. Such derogatory rumours often originated with No-Maj medicine men, who were sometimes faking magical powers themselves, and fearful of exposure.
I don’t think I can sum up the problems with this portion better than Cherokee scholar Dr. Adrienne Keene, who wrote:
What you do need to know is that the belief of these things (beings?) has a deep and powerful place in Navajo understandings of the world. It is connected to many other concepts and many other ceremonial understandings and lifeways. It is not just a scary story, or something to tell kids to get them to behave, it’s much deeper than that. My own community also has shape-shifters, but I’m not delving into that either.
What happens when Rowling pulls this in, is we as Native people are now opened up to a barrage of questions about these beliefs and traditions (take a look at my twitter mentions if you don’t believe me)–but these are not things that need or should be discussed by outsiders. At all. I’m sorry if that seems “unfair,” but that’s how our cultures survive.
The other piece here is that Rowling is completely re-writing these traditions. Traditions that come from a particular context, place, understanding, and truth. These things are not “misunderstood wizards”. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s appropriative in the worst way. Harry Potter occasionally mentioned monsters from various other cultures as real, which was incidental enough not to be a problem. TheHistory of Magic in North America is all about another group, and the way Rowling writes doesn’t exhibit a deep understanding of her subject. It feels more like she googled “Native American legends” and picked the top result.
Salem
Salem plays a starring role in the second part of The History of Magic in North America. In Rowling’s chronicle, the biggest problems faced by newly immigrated witches and wizards were the Scourers, described as “unscrupulous band of wizarding mercenaries of many foreign nationalities, who formed a much-feared and brutal taskforce committed to hunting down not only known criminals, but anyone who might be worth some gold.”
Of course two Scourers were among the judges in Rowling’s world and Salem ended up being the basis for most of the American wizarding society:
The famous Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93 were a tragedy for the wizarding community. Wizarding historians agree that among the so-called Puritan judges were at least two known Scourers, who were paying off feuds that had developed while in America. A number of the dead were indeed witches, though utterly innocent of the crimes for which they had been arrested. Others were merely No-Majs who had the misfortune to be caught up in the general hysteria and bloodlust.
Twenty people were executed as a result of the Salem witch trials. I’m not saying it wasn’t an example of mass hysteria and persecution, but I am saying that Rowling’s fictional history posits the effect of the events in the town of Salem was to keep wizards and witches from settling anywhere in America, leading to fewer members of the American magical community than anywhere else. Apparently this continued up to the early 20th century.
All of this because of SALEM. Just Salem.
Look. Twelve of the 13 “original colonies” existed by the end of the Salem Witch Trials, and J.K. Rowling is telling us that they did not just denude Massachusetts of witches and wizards, but also prevented them from immigrating to New York? That’s how affecting the deaths of 20 people were? But somehow the magic court couldn’t be bothered to declare the trials unlawful in 1702?
There’s a constant problem in Rowling’s writing of “North American history,” which is that it’s incredibly superficial, even for a fictional history. While I fully understand that all four of these stories are really just publicity stunts for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, maybe she would have been better served not doing history.
The MACUSA
In the Potterverse, Salem created the American magical political system, the Magical Congress of the United States of America, in 1693. What we know about the MACUSA is that it was founded to capture, try, and punish Scourers. That is literally all we know about how it works.
This is nitpicking, but I am the kind of nerd who wants to know how this is set up. Are there representatives from all the colonies? How do they apportion them? Did the MACUSA in any way influence the Continental Congress?
I wish there was generally more parallelism between the American magical community and America. Rowling has the “Keeper of Treasure and Dragots” which is “roughly equivalent to the Secretary of the Treasury.” Why can’t the name be closer? The British Ministry of Magic has departments, why can’t the titles of people working for the American magical government be closer to their real-life equivalents?
The way a society is governed isn’t a small detail. You brought it up in a “history,” so tell us more. AND the movie this is promotional material for starts with your main character visiting the MACUSA. If Rowling didn’t write these histories to include useful supplemental material for the movie, why did she even bother with them?
American Magical Secrecy Is the Result of a Sex Scandal
OF COURSE IT IS. This is America! In Rowling’s telling, the daughter of the Keeper of Treasure and Dragots, Dorcas Twelvetrees, fell in love with a No-Maj who happened to be the descendant of a Scourer, meaning that he both believes in magic and wants to kill them all (I’m assuming that Rowling means that Scourers taught their kids to hate and kill wizards and the tradition keeps on, not that you can literally inherit a belief in magic).
So Dorcas spilled everything to the guy she just met, and he stole his wand to show to the press. It’s only because he accidentally tried to murder some No-Majs by mistake that he ended up in jail and discredited.
All of this because of someone that was as “dim as she was pretty.” I hate this. I hate that Rowling used this cliché. I hate that a flighty woman endangered everyone in the wizarding community because that’s not only a well-worn trope, it’s one rooted in sexism. This whole premise is bad and I’m disappointed Rowling used it.
Segregation
After Dorcas’ indiscretion, this happened:
Dorcus’s indiscretions led to the introduction of Rappaport’s Law. Rappaport’s Law enforced strict segregation between the No-Maj and wizarding communities. Wizards were no longer allowed to befriend or marry No-Majs. Penalties for fraternising with No-Majs were harsh. Communication with No-Majs was limited to that necessary to perform daily activities.
First of all, the word “segregation” is a really loaded one in American history. If it’s not meant to be an allegory, then Rowling needs an American editor to tell her that she can’t throw the word around like this.
Second of all, if it is meant to be an allegory—and this stuff smacks of anti-miscegenation statutes—Rowling is not suited to tackling this subject. If this is supposed to be an allegory of racism in America, Rowling needs to talk to some people. Preferably some actual African-Americans.
I almost hope it isn’t meant to be her attempt to tackle racial prejudice. Why? Because on one side you have wizards who are the one propagating the laws and on the other, people who are trying to kill them. The blame for the bad blood is a bit too evenly distributed to be a valid allegory.
So, again, either Rowling didn’t talk to anyone before tossing this shit around or she thought she was making an important point about American culture. Either way, it’s bad.
And now, some smaller problems that, while absurd, are least not offensively bad:
Wand Permits
Here’s what Rowling has to say:
Legislation introduced at the end of the nineteenth century meant that every member of the magical community in America was required to carry a ‘wand permit’, a measure that was intended to keep tabs on all magical activity and identify the perpetrators by their wands.
You’re telling me that a country which is perfectly okay with some pretty loose restrictions on guns has also somehow developed a parallel society which forces everyone to register their wands? Sure. Fine. Whatever.
The MACUSA Is Headquartered in New York
Because of course it is. What’s the point of doing a movie if you can’t have your protagonist have his big important meeting in New York!
New York, a city famous for immigrants and diversity, is the home to a government which a) manages a smaller population because no one immigrated here b) is hilariously homogenous, since laws force them to only marry their own kind c) has laws preventing them from intermingling with others and ensuring secrecy. New York, a city where I’m pretty sure a wizard could do anything and most people would just shrug and get on with their day. At least the irony’s strong here.
Literally the only reason the MACUSA’s headquartered in New York City is because it makes a pretty background for a movie set in the 1920s.
The Last Line
Witches and wizards didn’t participate in Prohibition. The wizard President, according to Rowling had this response:
‘The Gigglewater’, as she famously told her Chief of Staff, ‘is non-negotiable.’
Leave me here to die.
One of the many things that made Harry Potter so great was the specificity. Rowling was drawing on real places to create Wizarding Britain. It was all based on things she knew backward and forwards.
But American history and culture are not her fields. And the beliefs of the various Native American tribes and their histories was something she was especially not qualified to speak on. If you absolutely have to include these things, speak to some people.
Creating a second history for an existing place that is not your own is not easy. It requires a lot of research. Research Rowling clearly didn’t do.
Michelle Fields, whose account of the altercation has been corroborated by Washington Post reporter Ben Terris as well as by video that appears to support her story, took to Fox News to answer Megyn Kelly’s questions about the event.
Kelly also asked Fields about her reaction to the response from her employer, the conservative site Breitbart, which called into question Fields’ telling of the story at first, claiming that it probably wasn’t Lewandowski who had grabbed her. Fields said:
“I think the facts show that this happened, and it’s a shame that my bosses have decided to come out against the facts.”
Fields filed criminal charges against Lewandowski, and says she is still waiting for an apology she was promised. Judging by his and Trump’s reaction so far, it’s probably not coming anytime soon.
“STOP tweeting about the story. Stop speculating about the story,” Pollak told staffers in one message, and reminded them that “you were given explicit instructions.”
“You may wish to defend your colleague, and that is commendable — but keep in mind that when you do so, you are also putting other colleagues under direct public pressure, so you are actually hurting some to help another,” Pollak said in one of the chats. “That is why we have to be patient, and coordinate our responses.”
The Islamic State has only one real rule that keeps captured female prisoners from being raped, and it’s based on an obscure ruling in Islamic Law that says “a man must ensure that the woman he enslaves is free of child before having intercourse with her.”
The New York Timesinterviewed three dozen Yazidi women who escaped capture about what they were subjected to during their imprisonment. The effect of the law is that ISIS soldiers force birth control on the women in various ways. One teenage girl, who was sold seven times, says she didn’t know for months that the pill she was made to swallow each day was a contraceptive:
Soon after buying her, the fighter brought the teenage girl a round box containing four strips of pills, one of them colored red.
“Every day, I had to swallow one in front of him. He gave me one box per month. When I ran out, he replaced it. When I was sold from one man to another, the box of pills came with me...”
...When prospective buyers came to inquire about her, she overheard them asking for assurances that she was not pregnant, and her owner provided the box of birth control as proof.
That was not enough for the third man who bought her, she said. He quizzed her on the date of her last menstrual cycle and, unnerved by what he perceived as a delay, gave her a version of the so-called morning-after pill, causing her to start bleeding.
Sunni scholars who initially ruled on the issue suggested a period of abstinence of one menstrual cycle to ensure a woman is not impregnated, but most fighters circumvent the waiting period with modern medicine. While not all of them are observing the rules, either through inconsistency of application or plain defiance, the use of birth control would explain the low pregnancy rate coming from Yazidi escapees:
Of the more than 700 rape victims from the Yazidi ethnic group who have sought treatment so far at a United Nations-backed clinic in northern Iraq, just 5 percent became pregnant during their enslavement, according to Dr. Nagham Nawzat, the gynecologist carrying out the examinations.
It is a stunningly low figure given that the normal fertility rate for a young woman is between 20 percent and 25 percent in any given month, four to five times the rate that has been recorded so far, said Dr. Nezar Ismet Taib, who heads the Ministry of Health Directorate in Dohuk, which oversees the clinic where the victims are being treated.
“We were expecting something much higher,” he said
The majority of the women interviewed were relieved that they would not be carrying their abuser’s children, but in at least one case, a pregnancy provided an opportunity for escape. A woman’s captor pressured her to ask for an abortion, but was too ashamed to demand it from the doctor himself. When he left her alone, she jumped the fence and made her way to her family. She gave birth to a baby boy two months after crossing out of Islamic State territory.
Memory is a funny thing, and it’s even funnier when you’re in the midst of a bitter fight for the highest political office in the country.
In one recent slip-up, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton showed us the folly of memory, and how it can leads us to do some very careless things. Amy Chozick, a reporter for The New York Times, tweeted out something Clinton said at a campaign event in St. Louis on Saturday, an effort to disparage her adversary Sen. Bernie Sanders’ history on health care reform.
Soon enough, we had our answer—via Mike Casca, a rapid response coordinator for Sanders’ campaign.
A video of the speech, in which Clinton called for a health care overhaul at Dartmouth College, can be seen here. Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Epstein added a note from Clinton to Sanders in 1993, thanking him for his “commitment to real health care.”
Memories, like the corners of our minds, are soft and mushy.
In 2007, while her high school nemesis Lauren Conrad starred on the wildly popular MTV Laguna Beach spinoff The Hills, Kristin Cavallari debuted a new reality show of her own. It was a nine-episode web series called RealityLASIK, which documented Kristin’s experience getting LASIK eye surgery.
Really!
According to a 2007 press release, the program was supposed to be a “breakthrough online docu-drama...which documents Kristin Cavallari’s pursuit of the latest in vision correction surgery and her decision to ultimately undergoing [sic] Advanced CustomVue™ LASIK with the IntraLase Method™.”
In the premiere episode above, Kristin tells two LASIK marketing professionals why she wants LASIK eye surgery. “Well, you know, I’ve been wearing contacts since I was in the eighth grade,” she says. “They’re just a pain for me to take them out every night, put them in every morning, you know, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I can’t see the clock, I don’t know what time it is. And I always get mascara on them...”
It continues that way for some time.
All nine episodes are still available on the Maloney Vision Institute’s website (Dr. Maloney stars as the LASIK surgeon on the show). One intrepid blogger recapped all the episodes in 2007, but before you read, please be advised that the recaps contain spoilers.
To give you a sense of RealityLASIK’s narrative arc, here is a list of the episode titles:
Between Netflix, Sling TV, Hulu+, and HBO Now, it’s easier than ever to declare cable independence, but even if you subscribe to ever streaming service under the sun, you’ll still want a good HDTV antenna to pick up your live local stations.
If you already have your hands on one of Samsung’s newest Galaxy phones, Amazon’s running a Gold Box deal today on cases and armbands to keep it safe. [Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge Case and Armband Sale]
SwissGear makes some of the best laptop bags on the market, and this $31 messenger bag will actually let you go through airport security without taking out your laptop. It’s a minor convenience, but any little shred of dignity you can wrest back from the TSA is worth it. [SwissGear SA8733 Black TSA Friendly ScanSmart Computer Messenger Bag, $31]
We’ve all had to throw away leftovers or cuts of meat and cheese that spent a little too much time in the fridge or freezer, but vacuum sealing your foods can keep them safe from freezer burn pretty much indefinitely, and dramatically extend their shelf life everywhere else.
It sounds like an expensive proposition, but today only, Woot’s selling this well-reviewed FoodSaver Starter Kit for just $45 shipped (find reviews on the Amazon listing for the black model), complete with everything you need to get started. Of course you can use this to store meats in the freezer for a long time, but it can also keep cheese from molding, lettuce from wilting, or cookies from going stale, just for starters. Think about how much food you throw away, and you’ll get a sense of just how quickly this purchase could pay for itself. [Foodsaver Gamesaver Sport Vacuum Sealer, $45]
ExOfficio’s Give-N-Go boxer briefs were a finalist in our recent best men’s underwear Co-Op, and you can once again get a pair for $15, one of the lowest prices we’ve seen. That’s still pricey for a single pair of underwear, but reviewers say it’s worth it. Note: The price is only available on certain colors, so click around if you’re not seeing the deal. [ExOfficio Men’s Give-N-Go Boxer Brief, $15]
When it comes to smartphone dash mounts, magnetic solutions have dominated the sales charts over the last year or so. But if you don’t want to obstruct a vent, or use a case with your phone, a good old-fashioned suction cup mount might be the way to go.
iOttie makes some of the most popular solutions on the market, and their compact Easy Flex 3 is marked down to $11 on Amazon right now, an all-time low. [iOttie Easy Flex 3, $11]
Of course, if you do want to try a magnetic mount, Mpow’s solution has been on sale for $5 all week long. [Mpow Grip Magnetic Car Mount, $5 with code YNGL8BMN]
If you hurry, here’s a rare opportunity to save on PSN credit. While you can frequently find better deals on full games from other retailers, this would be a great deal if you like to buy DLC. [$50 PSN Gift Card, $43]
Steaming your clothes might not get them as crisp as ironing, but it does a decent enough job in a fraction of the time, and for $15, why not? [Pure Enrichment PureSteam Fabric Steamer, $15 with code STEAMR15]
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“Luckily, I, Hillary Clinton, share all of your exact same beliefs, and I always have,” says a parody Hillary Clinton, a salient statement that pretty much summarizes why Democratic voters don’t like their own presidential frontrunner.
Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon revived her Clinton impression this weekend, and then began an entire new character as she actually morphed into adversary Sen. Bernie Sanders, right before our eyes.
And speaking of Sanders, Larry David also returned to the show with his Sanders impersonation, too:
The Star Talk host is obviously more versed on the astral dance of the cosmos than the primal earthbound dance of lurve.
He tweeted this on Friday and though it’s good that Tyson has never had painful sex, it’s a disturbingly incorrect assertion:
Wrong, wrong, wrong as many science writers were quick to point out over and over and over:
This really makes me appreciate what my cats’ moms went through to bring them into the world so they could sleep on my good coat. May they never go extinct and end their persistent assault on couch arms.
How are we supposed to feel about Neil deGrasse Tyson now? It’s not just that he was very obviously wrong about a number of well-known biological facts in the animal kingdom, it’s the lack of imagination about sex that I found disturbing. This puts everything back in perspective though:
Donald Trump, ever a font of wisdom, started off his Sunday with a doozy of a blanket statement: “I don’t accept responsibility.”
The Republican presidential frontrunner took to “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning to discuss the systemic violence associated with his campaign events, arguing that he does not condone violence while simultaneously condoning violence. Trump has, in the past, promised to pay legal fees for supporters who use violence against rowdy protestors.
Host Chuck Todd brought up an incident at a recent Trump rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in which a supporter sucker-punched a protestor without warning as he was leaving the venue.
The the 78-year-old white man, John McGraw, was booked on charges of misdemeanor assault and battery and disorderly conduct last week. In response, Trump acknowledged that he was considering paying the man’s legal fees:
“The man got carried away, he was 78 years old, he obviously loves this country and maybe he doesn’t like seeing what’s happening to the country. I want to see the whole tape ... I’m going to look at it. I want to see what was behind it, because this was a strange event ... I’ve actually instructed my people to look into it [paying his legal fees].”
The clip also includes a lengthy discussion of Trump’s fear of protestors holding tomatoes, which he describes categorically as “very damaging. Not good!”
“He is drawing in, like moths to a flame, those who most want to act out on their animosities, drives and beliefs. It is the kind of climate where someone will eventually get killed,” writes TalkingPointsMemo editor Josh Marshall, in a searing look at why people act the way they do at Donald Trump’s rallies.
In his retirement from public office, John Boehner is a man whose lawn maintenance has become far more important than the looming crisis in his political party. “I’m not really interested in getting in the middle of all this,” the former Speaker of the House said, just before he inserted himself back into the middle of all this.
In the lead up to Tuesday’s voting, Boehner endorsed fellow Ohian Gov. John Kasich for the Ohio Republican primary on Saturday night, according to The New York Times.
The speech, delivered to a small group in Butler County, Ohio, and marked the first public appearance since Boehner ended his speakership a broken, blubbering man. As to why he chose Kasich, Boehner, likely thinking of the greener pastures where he now belongs, sitting quietly under an oak tree with a glass of iced tea, said: “He’s my friend.”
