In a blistering condemnation of Donald Trump’s political platform, President Obama told graduating seniors at Rutgers University to be smart and not dumb on Sunday, NPR reports.
“Class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” said Obama, a remark “widely interpreted” as criticism of Trump.
Without naming the presumptive Republican nominee, Obama slammed a number of key Trump policies, including “building walls,” “disparaging Muslims” and “not knowing what you’re talking about.” From CBS News:
“Facts. Evidence. Reason. Logic. An understanding of science,” Mr. Obama said. “These are good things. These are qualities you want in people making policy. These are qualities you want to continue to cultivate in yourselves as citizens.”
“We traditionally have valued those things, but if you were listening to today’s political debate, you might wonder where this strain of anti-intellectualism came from,” he continued. “So class of 2016, let me be as clear as I can be: in politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness, that’s just not knowing what you’re talking about. And yet we’ve become confused about this.”
“Have faith in democracy,” said Obama, acknowledging “it’s not always pretty” as a dark, faintly orange shadow presumably crept overhead.
According to TheSunday Times, former CIA operative Donald Rickard admitted to American involvement in the arrest of Nelson Mandela, who would spend 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa’s first black president in 1994.
Just two weeks before his death earlier this year, Rickard reportedly told British filmmaker John Irvin he led South African authorities to Mandela in 1962, calling Mandela “the world’s most dangerous communist outside of the Soviet Union” at the time. From The Telegraph:
Mandela, Rickard believed, was “completely under the control of the Soviet Union, a toy of the communists”, and was about “to incite” the Indian population of Natal into a communist-led mass rebellion against the apartheid government which could open the door to Russian intervention.
“Natal was a cauldron at the time,” Mr Rickard said “and Mandela would have welcomed a war. If the Soviets had come in force, the United States would have had to get involved, and things could have gone to hell”.
“We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it.”
As recently as 2012, Rickard denied that already widely rumored version of events, telling The Wall Street Journal, “It’s untrue. There’s no substance to it.”
Sunday evening, Mandela’s oldest grandson, Mandla Mandela, called on President Obama to fully disclose the events leading up to his grandfather’s arrest.
“Whilst we were always aware of the West’s role in overt and covert support for the Apartheid state (this) disclosure has put an end to decades of denial revealing the fact that the USA put its imperial interests above the struggle for liberation of millions of people,” Mandla Mandela told The Telegraph. “We call on freedom loving people of the world to come out in condemnation of this betrayal of our nation, the peoples of Southern Africa and all who suffered as a consequence of the USA’s support for the brutal apartheid state.”
The blob monster defeated, the scene fades to black as a title card reading, “THE END,” fills the screen. Seconds later, a faint gurgling begins, soon joined an ominous coda: “OR IS IT??”
On Sunday, Ted Cruz released his final campaign spot, tearfully thanking his supporters in a clip that warns, “TO BE CONTINUED.”
Like the senator’s failed run itself, the video highlights various displays of human emotion frequently interrupted by the bizarre.
According to TMZ, actor Wendell Pierce, best known for his roles on HBO’s The Wire and Treme, was arrested early Saturday morning after allegedly battering a couple during a political dispute.
Citing sources at Atlanta’s Loews Hotel, the gossip site reports that Pierce, who has praised Hillary Clinton, became upset “when the woman declared her support for Bernie.” From WSB-TV:
After a heated conversation, Pierce allegedly pushed the boyfriend and went after the woman, grabbing her hair and smacking her in the head.
The couple called the cops, who arrested Pierce on a charge of battery. He posted a $1,000 bond and was released, TMZ said.
In a statement to WGCL-TV, police confirmed the arrest but could not verify any other details.
“The incident did not rise to anything significant so no special notification was made,” said a police spokesperson. “It was treated like any other arrest a patrol officer conducts. Mr. Pierce made no indication he was famous nor did the officer inquire.”
The Philippines, a nation full of teens who couldn’t even get a ride to the mall on Thursday, just elected as its president Rodrgio Duterte, who wants to impose a national curfew for youths, ban smoking and drinking in public places, and crack down on the karaoke menace. One can only imagine that Filipino children are none too happy with their parents for electing him.
Duterte has served as mayor of the city of Davao for thirty years, and he has already enacted many of his proposed new rules there. “Though taxi drivers still grumble about the 60 kilometer-an-hour (37-mile-an-hour) speed limit,” the Wall Street Journal reports, “many citizens in this city of roughly 1.5 million people seem comfortable enough with Mr. Duterte’s rules.” But does that “many” include 14-year-old boys with rat tails who find no greater thrill in life than throwing toilet paper all over the homes of girls with whom they hope to attend the school dance?
The president-elect wants to close down all karaoke bars after 9 p.m., ban the consumption of alcohol after 1 a.m., and subject the parents of children who go outside without an escort after 10 p.m. to criminal penalties.
His mean streak, however, is not limited to kids who sneak out at slumber parties. Duterte has also pledged to reinstate the death penalty, which the Philippines phased out ten years ago, and to allow cops to shoot people on sight if they are suspected of being involved with organized crime. As the Telegraph notes, he has joked that a gang rape victim was “so beautiful” that he wished he could “have been first” to get to her, and once said on the campaign trail that the Philippines should open more funeral parlors if he were to be elected, because “They will be packed. I’ll supply the dead bodies.” Benigno Aquino, Duterte’s predecessor, called him a “dictator-in waiting.”
As in the U.S., the national voting age in the Philippines is 18. All I’m saying is: this never would have happened if the nation’s scruffy lunchtime detention truants were allowed to fully participate in democracy.
Rowanne Brewer Lane, the former model prominently quoted in the New York Times’ story, “Crossing the Line: How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private,” says the paper got her account wrong. Not factually so much as tonally: She didn’t find Donald’s behavior to be demeaning.
Despite its suggestive headline, the Times report wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. Many of the serious allegations, culled from interviews with more than 50 women, have been reported before. Others, while rude—Trump telling an overweight female employee, “You like your candy,”—don’t justify the story running on the front page of the New York Times.
So what’s the point? That Donald Trump is a man who treats women as second-class citizens is already clear—what’s unclear is who cares. Not Trump supporters, RNC chair Reince Preibus resignedly admitted today.
And not, apparently, at least one of the women featured in the story.
Brewer Lane, who briefly dated Trump as a 26-year-old after meeting him at a modeling job at Mar-a-Lago, told the Times he asked her to change into a swimsuit within minutes of meeting her.
Donald was having a pool party at Mar-a-Lago. There were about 50 models and 30 men. There were girls in the pools, splashing around. For some reason Donald seemed a little smitten with me. He just started talking to me and nobody else.
He suddenly took me by the hand, and he started to show me around the mansion. He asked me if I had a swimsuit with me. I said no. I hadn’t intended to swim. He took me into a room and opened drawers and asked me to put on a swimsuit.
“The 1990 episode at Mar-a-Lago that Ms. Brewer Lane described was different: a debasing face-to-face encounter between Mr. Trump and a young woman he hardly knew. This is the private treatment of some women by Mr. Trump, the up-close and more intimate encounters,” the article concludes.
This morning Brewer Lane responded to the report on Fox & Friends, where she accused the Times of lying about its true intentions, which she believes were to write a hit piece on Trump. Lane also said that although the facts were correctly reported, she did not find Trump’s behavior to be demeaning.
“I came from a shoot like I said, and I started talking with Donald and chatting with him over the course of the first maybe 20 minutes I was there, and we seemed to get along in conversation nicely, and it just very normally and naturally evolved into a conversation. We started walking around the mansion. He started showing me the architecture. We were having a very nice conversation, and we got into a certain part of it and he asked me if I had a swimsuit,” Lane told Fox & Friends this morning. “I said I didn’t. I had not really planned on swimming. He asked me if I wanted one. I said OK, sure. And I change into one, and the part where I went back out to the pool party and he made a comment now that’s a stunning Trump girl right there, I was actually flattered by. I didn’t feel like it was a demeaning situation or comment at all, and that’s what I told the Times, and they spun it completely differently.”
“He was never — he never made me feel like I was being demeaned in any way. He never offended me in any way. He was very gracious. I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous, you know. He was a gentleman,” she concluded.
Which, I think, is the real issue here. Because Trump’s behavior is objectively demeaning—he treats women differently than he treats men. He treats women as sexual objects, whose worth is directly tied to their appearance. Even his own daughter is not immune from these observations. That this particular woman took his behavior as a compliment does not negate how offensive it is. That he surrounds himself with women who are unlikely to object to his behavior, women over whom he holds power, be it financial or otherwise, does not negate how offensive it is.
Still, Brewer Lane felt compelled to defend Trump against her own depiction. Trump, in return, promoted her interview with two tweets, which he has since deleted.
Late last week, Nick Solares, the Restaurant Editor of the food site Eater.com, was placed on leave after apologizing for being involved in the racist punk scene of the 1980s. This is a horrible precedent, for all of us.
Let us establish a few things right up front:
After people began circulating photos of Nick Solares on the skinhead scene, Solares publicly apologized for participating in that scene when he was a teenager, and wrote that he “fully disavow[s] the bigoted and dehumanizing ideologies they represent.”
Nick Solares’ job is writing about food and restaurants.
We all disagree with the ideology of Nazis and skinheads.
With those facts in mind, I would like to put forward a very simple standard for employers: Workplace personnel decisions should be made based on behavior that directly affects the workplace. Workplace personnel decisions—hiring, firing, promotions, demotions, suspensions, discipline, being placed on leave—should not be made based upon things people do or believe in their personal time. This is a crucial standard that prevents your employer from unilaterally running your life.
Nick Solares’ job is covering restaurants. Were he an active neo-Nazi who only covered white restaurants, that would be a relevant workplace issue. Were he an active neo-Nazi who spouted white supremacy at work and advocated the murder of his non-white coworkers, that would be a relevant workplace issue. But neither of these are the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that Nick Solares used to be, many years ago, a skinhead punk, and now he is not, and he has specifically disavowed those beliefs. It is natural to have a visceral reaction to any mention of Nazi ideology, and to want to destroy it, push it away, wipe it out. Any honest reading of the current situation, though, tells us that Nick Solares’ teenage beliefs are not a workplace issue at Eater.com. (Eddie Huang’s thoughtful essay on Solares’ case is a critique of the New York food media as a whole rather than a call for Solares to be punished.) There is no reason for him to be placed on leave, paid or otherwise.
Because most people find racist ideology so vile, Solares has not garnered much public sympathy. He should. He could be you. And if he were you, you would be outraged at your employer’s behavior. Perhaps you are a Green Party member in Kansas who works for a Trump-supporting boss. Perhaps you were a rapper when you were younger and recorded songs with violent, sexist lyrics. Perhaps you are a woman who’s spoken openly about having an abortion. Perhaps you are a Communist on the weekends. Perhaps you did stupid things in college, and there are pictures. As long as these things do not directly hurt your workplace performance, they are none of your employer’s business. Likewise, the fact that your coworker dislikes your political beliefs or something you did or thought in your past is not a reason to discipline you at work, unless you are actively doing something to hurt that coworker. The very existence of someone you disagree with does not constitute assault. You are free to dislike your coworker; you may even feel unsafe due to your coworker’s personal beliefs; but you are not entitled to demand that they be removed from their job for something they did unrelated to work. The relevant issue here is not how you feel about an ideology that Nick Solares used to subscribe to; the issue is that if Nick Solares is doing his job, he should not be placed on leave because his employer dislikes an ideology that he used to subscribe to. This is a line that must be defended. If it is not, your employer will gain an omniscient ability to dictate every facet of your life in exchange for your measly paycheck.
Maybe you would never be a skinhead punk. Maybe you cannot imagine your kindly boss ever ousting you from your job for your thoroughly reasonable political opinions. But we create principles to deal with all cases: the unfair bosses, the unpopular people, the supporters of causes that others find repugnant. (A former neo-Nazi in the New York media scene has something in common with, say, a Black Lives Matter protester who works as a schoolteacher in Alabama: they have both demonstrated political views that may prove unpopular to their employers, and they are both entitled to do so without receiving workplace repercussions.) There are plenty of legitimate ways to debate the merits of racist ideologies, and how and whether a past adherence to such ideologies reflects on a person in later life. Being placed on leave by your employer after a public backlash to something that does not directly affect your work is not one of those ways. Your employer is not the judge and jury of your personal political beliefs. Your employer is someone who pays you money to do a job. Allowing employers greater power than that—power to enforce standards of their own choosing about our behavior outside of work—is far scarier than any 1980s skinhead punk show.
It’s long been public knowledge that Trump used to pose as his own publicist during phone interviews, assuming the names John Miller and John Baron to talk up his own accomplishments without appearing to be self-aggrandizing. Now that the Post has published a recording of Trump apparently using the routine on a People magazine reporter named Sue Carswell in 1991, we no longer have to imagine what it sounds like:It sounds weird as hell.
Post reporters Marc Fisher and Will Hobson did not identify the source of the tape, but indicated that it may have come from an associate of Carswell’s. “Carswell shared the microcassette of the call with the source shortly after the interview,” they wrote, and the source shared it with them under the condition of anonymity.
However, in an interview with People.com published today, Carswell said she believed that Trump leaked it himself. “Since I did not duplicate my tape for anyone and the interview was between me and Trump only, only two people could have had a tape and I know for sure mine is lost or in my closet below a bunch of stuff,” Carswell is quoted as saying. “And so Trump, I think, released it for his own warped reasons or for publicity. It was never in the possession of anyone else.”
Carswell’s quote and the line published in the Post don’t directly contradict each other, technically speaking. Carswell only said that she didn’t duplicate the tape, and the Post’s verbiage leaves open the possibility that their source was in possession of the original copy.
But the idea that Trump himself is the leaker seems unlikely. Despite having previously admitted in court to occasionally using the name John Miller, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has since denied that it is his voice on the Carswell call, and has studiously avoided Post reporters’ attempts to get him talking about it on the record. If Trump wanted the recording out there as part of some perverse publicity ploy, he’s doing a great job of making it look like he didn’t. (Of course, as this very story demonstrates, “John Miller” has done stranger things in the name of boosting his public profile, so the self-leaking theory shouldn’t be off the table entirely.)
We’ve reached out to Carswell about the apparent discrepancy and will update this post if she responds. In the meantime, if you know anything about Donald Trump’s secret identity—or if you’re a journalist with another John Miller/Baron tape—email me at andy@gawker.com.
Update (3:30 p.m.): Reached by telephone, Carswell said that she did not share her original copy of the Trump/Miller interview tape or make a duplicate. “Never in my career as a reporter have I duplicated tapes or gave them to people. That tape is still in my possession. I either threw it away when I was moving apartments, or it’s in my closet underneath all this stuff I have,” she said.
Carswell reiterated her theory that Trump is leaker, suggesting that he may have planted the story to distract from more substantiative criticisms of his candidacy, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan’s reluctance to endorse him for president or the call for Trump to release his tax returns.
In an interview with the Mike O’Meara Show podcast, however, Marc Fisher of the Washington Post denied that Trump was the leaker. “I can categorically deny that. That is utterly absurd. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Why would he hand out a recording that makes him appear to be dishonest, in which he sounds somewhat disturbed?” Miller said when O’Meara asked him whether the candidate might be the source of the tape. He added that an “old friend from college” had tipped him off to the existence of the tape.
“No, [Trump] wasn’t” the source of the tape, Fisher wrote to Gawker in an email. “Nor were Hillary Clinton, Oliver Stone, or David Duke.”
Carswell said that when Fisher and Hobson reached out to her for the story, they told her that their source asked them to make sure she approved of them publishing the tape before they did so, but did not divulge any further information about the source’s identity.
“I was fine with it,” Carswell said. “I’m glad that the story is out there.”
Yesterday afternoon, police officers in New Jersey were combing the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area in the eastern part of the state when they came upon an abandoned car. After searching the area, they arrested two men in combat gear who were in possession of various weapons, including high-powered automatic rifles.
One of the men was Bruce J. Post III of Trenton, an ex-felon who was tagged with several weapons charges. In a statement, Lacey Township police chief David A. Paprota said that Post “gave indications of possible white-supremacist involvement.”
Donald Trump has laid out in an interview how he plans to “attack” Hillary Clinton in the general election, predictably leveling criticisms at her over her handling of her husband’s extramarital affairs and the attacks on the embassy in Benghazi—shocking stuff, really.
None of this is new or likelyto change anyone’s perception of Hillary Clinton. Moreover, while Clinton is being investigated by the FBI over her email practices, Trump is facing several two lawsuits over the fraudulent Trump University, including one brought by New York District Attorney Eric Schneiderman, that could well go to trial before November. (Basically, people in gold, glass, and steel houses shouldn’t throw stones.)
Also, the Times reports, Trump is aware that people are tired of watching men sneer at the former secretary.
He said he wanted to be more strategic, by calling into question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment in her reaction to Mr. Clinton’s affairs — people close to the couple have said she was involved in efforts to discredit the women — and in her response to crises like Benghazi.
“Just getting nasty with Hillary won’t work,” Mr. Trump said. “You really have to get people to look hard at her character, and to get women to ask themselves if Hillary is truly sincere and authentic. Because she has been really ugly in trying to destroy Bill’s mistresses, and she is pandering to women so obviously when she is only interested in getting power.”
He acknowledged that Republicans tried to discredit her judgment in the marathon Benghazi hearing in the fall, to little avail. But he said that he would be more pointed and memorable in linking her to the failings and deaths in Libya, and that the debate would have a vastly larger television audience than the hearing. Still, advisers of Mrs. Clinton pointed to her face-off with the Republican-led Benghazi committee as a sign of her unflappability.
In any event, what will probably end up happening is Trump will call Clinton, “Crooked Hillary,” and Clinton will roll her eyes and laugh, and Trump will get mad, and her campaign will make a gif and tweet it. Then Trump will start talking about Benghazi, and the crowd will go wild.
I found the photographer Jill Freedman on a packed subway car. I was doing what lots of people do during their commute to and from work—scrolling mindlessly through Instagram. Another photographer I follow re-posted one of her photos with something along the lines of: “Jill Freedman is on Instagram, finally.” I tapped through to her page and found mostly black and white photos of New York City over the past 40 years. After reaching the bottom of her profile, I knew I had to speak to her.
I’m lucky enough to have worked with and befriended a lot of photographers through my career, but there was something about Jill’s work particularly that drew me in. I read up on her as much as I could, and started to understand a profile of a prolific and probably under-celebrated woman documentary photographer from the 1970s. Photos of urban life of decades past make you imagine yourself there, imagine how things might be different. Freedman saw and documented a corner of New York life I wasn’t around for, and her photographs—a number of which you’ll see here—are organic and magnetic.
Avenue B block party, 1985.
Jill’s photography career spans several decades and personal milestones. She documented the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in the wake of MLK’s death, slept in a firehouse for middle-of-the-night calls, traveled with the circus and followed cops on their beats. She has seen New York through five decades of gentrification, shifting neighborhoods and crime. Jill’s work can be found in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, among others.
Jill, now in her 70s, makes her home in Harlem. Lately, she’s been combing through her deep archives for future books and reaching a fresh batch of fans through her relatively new social media presence (especially on her increasingly popular Instagram account). After I initially reached out, we spoke several times, interrupted only by her assistant Stephen arriving with coffee or a quick puff of her inhaler. With a voice befitting her former life as a chain-smoker, Jill told me about her life’s work.
Jill Freedman.
AB: What was your early life like?
JF: I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, waiting to grow up to get to New York. I went to college there, high school, college. I majored in sociology, cultural anthropology. We had a little jazz group, tenor bass, tenor sax, and me. I was the vocalist, the girl singer. We used to sing at dances and a steelworker bar. It was really fun. Jazz is my love. We cut high school every Friday to go there.
After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in ’61, I told them to send the diploma to my mother and I took a ship that left from New York. I was on the ocean for two weeks headed to Israel. I wanted to get out in the world.
Courtesy Jill Freedman. 1968.
Learning by traveling.
I always had travel lust. I took the first ship leaving and I was in Israel for 10 and a half months. First I was in the Kibbutz and learning the language. When I ran out of money, I became a singer. I had a guitar and seven chords that I knew how to play. I went and sang in Paris for a while and then ended up living two years in London, which I loved. I lived in London ‘62 to ‘64.
I came back to the U.S. at the end of ‘64 to figure out what I wanted to do, and then I just figured I’d get right back to London. I didn’t. I came back and I moved to New York, which is where I’d always wanted to be. And then... I fell in love with the city.
Church ladies, 1968.
Did you keep singing in New York?
No—I think it would be called a market research firm or something; you know, when they would get groups and have them write commercials and stuff. Then I would analyze the benchmark. Then I thought: “I can’t go through life without doing something that means something to me.” I had a friend that was a copywriter. He used to take me out twice a year to dinner, really expensive places. I thought, “This can’t be a bad gig.”
I was depressed for a couple of months trying to figure my life out, and then one day I woke up and out of nowhere I wanted a camera. A friend lent me his Pentax and I went right out in the street and shot a few rolls. I read the instructions, how you do it, etc. When I had them developed I realized, that’s it: I’m a photographer.
So, I worked as a copywriter for two years at a great agency in New York, Doyle Dane Bernbach [now DDB Worldwide]. It really taught me to write. I wrote some great ads. My first week there my copy chief took me and my art director to lunch, and I had my first two-martini lunch. Very grown-up. Sorry if I’m rambling.
Courtesy Jill Freedman. Abingdon Square Park, Manhattan, 1970.
Don’t worry about it. I love the stories.
I do, too. I guess we’re all good bullshitters. I could listen to a story anytime as long as it’s good. It doesn’t have to be true.
I think the reason I picked up the camera was because I was so against the war in Vietnam. In ‘65 I read all the pros and cons and I said, “Well of course we should not be there.” I wanted to shoot the anti-war stuff. It was a nation that was beginning to really protest.
Also, I think that way back when I was a kid I found Life magazines that my parents had put in the attic. They were the ones from the—I don’t know if it’s Bergen-Belsen [Nazi concentration camp], but the liberation of it. They had those pictures, and I never forgot the face on the pile of the corpses. There was a beautiful woman’s face on her skeleton body that they starved to death.
I used to look at those pictures when I was very little. After school I’d go up to the attic and look at them and cry, and then go play ball. After about a year my parents realized what I was doing and they burned the magazines. I think that that’s probably why in the end I wanted photography.
Stuff like that sticks with you.
It affected me so deeply. If I could take pictures like that, that would affect anyone the way those affected me, that’s doing something. That’s doing something with your life.
Ladies’ break room. 1986.
So how did you leave your job?
One day in Central Park I see a guy, and he’s wearing overalls and a straw hat. He’s got a mule. He might have been chewing on straw, who knows. He’s talking about the Poor People’s Campaign. This was right after they killed Dr. King. That was his latest project, and that’s what got him killed because he was talking rich and poor and against the Vietnam War. It was not just black and white civil rights; it was human rights.
I quit my job like an idiot. All these great flourishes: “Today, I’m a photographer.” They really loved me there and they knew I wanted to be a photographer because I showed them every week. With every paycheck I built up my darkroom and finally got a Nikon for my first camera.
So I went down to Washington for the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. Dr. King had had a rally every day so that they couldn’t ignore us. You couldn’t just ride your train past us and not see us, all that. We were out in the street every day, demonstrating. It took a week marching down and sleeping in churches or people’s homes and then six weeks in the mud and shacks where it rained every day.
That became my first book, Old News: Resurrection City. I wanted to do it. I wanted to document it. I felt this would be the last big nonviolent demonstration and I wanted to be there.
“This is the Poor People’s Campaign, 1968, but in Paterson, New Jersey. The people were out on the street, watching us march on our way to Washington. So we marched through six different towns on the way down. We’d sleep in their homes and churches.” 1968.
You took the leap, and it obviously worked out for you in the end.
I got to follow my passion. Suddenly I went to a life of total uncertainty. On the other hand, I still have no boss. Nobody’s the boss of me. I was doing what I love.
What was it like living in New York at that time? You were in your late twenties.
It was fucking fantastic! There were all these cute guys around. You could work in the darkroom until midnight and then go out to the bar and find one. It was beautiful. It was great being a young woman in New York. As far as photography, I never considered myself a woman photographer, a female photographer.
“Greenwich Village, when it was still Greenwich Village before the yuppies decimated it. Bleecker and Sullivan. I lived on Sullivan, and that was caddy-corner to me. Those were two girls out for the day, and then an old fellow who came from the Mills Hotel around the corner. It’s a wonderful moment.” 1978.
You’re just a photographer.
I’m a photographer. I could shoot circles around most men, so it’s all bullshit. Although, it is a boys’ club and everything else really is. Women—you don’t see them exhibited or getting the gigs that men do. That’s just the way it is. Hold on, losing my breath a bit. Let me use my inhaler.
After the publishing of Old News: Resurrection City in 1971, Freedman spent the rest of the ‘70s and early ‘80s shooting what ended up in several more books: 1975’s Circus Days, 1977’s Firehouse and 1982’s Street Cops. She spent those years putting herself in places that others wouldn’t necessarily care to be—filthy circus grounds, the boys’ clubs that were NYC firehouses and the drug-filled warzone that was then Times Square.
Courtesy Jill Freedman. 1976.
JF: I used to drink in a bar in the village called Lion’s Head. It was full of newspaper people. The Village Voice was around the corner, and a lot of guys from the papers would come and drink. It was a great bar full of great bullshitters. I knew a fireman that drank there occasionally and he had done a book. I thought, “Wow. That could be a really good story, about firemen.” I was so against that frigging war and I thought, what’s the opposite of a soldier going and killing people they don’t know? A fireman saving people they don’t know. I got permission, and finally ended up with a rescue team that covered all of the Bronx and Harlem.
What came next?
People were saying, “What are you going to do next after firemen? Cops?” I said, “Get out of here. I hate them!” because of Vietnam and all that. Then I would hear sirens and wonder what I was missing. I was like a retired fire horse. It killed me.
Finally I started thinking, “Wait a minute.” I’ve never seen a book about good cops. All the books I’ve read are about the bums, princes of the city, all the scumbags. What is the job simply of being a cop in a big city like New York, and why doesn’t our society work for a lot of people, probably most people. Simply, what is the job? Who are these guys? I dedicated this one to the good guys, the ones who care and try to help.
I started in Alphabet City, 9th Precinct Lower East Side, and it was really rough. When I was doing Firehouse it was when the Bronx was burning. I ended up doing doubles from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. and then midnight to 8 a.m. I ended up in Midtown South—that’s Times Square, 42nd Street, when it was really still New York, still Times Square and all the sleaze you could want within one block. It was gorgeous before it became Disneyland and fast food.
Courtesy Jill Freedman. 1976.
I worked with cops I thought were good cops. That meant they had to have heart, a sense of humor, know the streets, be street smart, and some humanity.
I also love to drink and I used to drink them under the table. I used to get my best stories at 3 in the morning. I love to see men cry. I really do.
Fireman saves cat, 1973.
Was any part of it frightening? It had to be.
I was scared all the time with both [Firehouse and Street Cops]. I’m an adrenaline junkie like the rest of them. It was scary. This book, I made a distinction. I started off with a Hitchcock quote: “Don’t get too excited, it’s only a movie.” The point was this is not a movie or TV. You get shot in the gut, you turn gray. It’s not red like catsup. It’s gray like dead. You don’t talk for three minutes before they shoot you.
I really hate violence. I hate to see it the way it’s portrayed in film and TV. I just hate it. I’m really nonviolent because of Dr. King. I am nonviolent, but a killer in my heart. I stole that from Bernie.
Are you a big Bernie Sanders supporter?
Oh, yes. Definitely.
“That was a Roseland Ballroom matinee. In the evening, they had two bands—music that you could dance to. I think that was probably a Wednesday or Sunday matinee. The two men are fawning over the one woman, one trying to light her cig, and the other guy with the mustache and pinky ring looking at it all.” 1976.
The city was obviously a lot more dangerous back then. You must have seen a lot of gentrification.
The city now, it’s not the city. It’s a place for rich people. I’m glad I lived here. It was a small city because of all the neighborhoods. I’m doing that book now. I’ve started [posting] on my Facebook and on my Instagram.
You know, that’s how I found you! Instagram.
That’s great. I’ve been on it less than two months. I am loving it. I’m putting on a picture a day from all my archives. It’s so much fun, my God.
You get a lot of new people to see your work very quickly.
That’s what it’s about. You take a picture so people can see it. It’s a way of saying, “Hey, look at this!” Except it’s already gone. “Look at what?” “You missed it.” That’s what a photo is.
“Sisters,” courtesy Jill Freedman. 1976.
What do you think about people using mostly their phones to take pictures now?
I resisted all this at first because I said, I’m not going to have the visual garbage. I’m not going to do that because there’s so many crappy pictures. Really, to my loss. It was silly. I guess I wasn’t ready for it, which I am now. I’m pretty private. There can be very gregarious moments and then I enjoy reading and being alone and stuff. Now that I found it, I absolutely love it. I’m going to learn how to use the phone. In the meantime [my assistant], Stephen, I email him the image and he puts them up for me.
I think that the selfie thing is obnoxious. Total narcissism. They’ve gotten to the point where they’re not there, their phone is, the camera. They’re in a place that they don’t even see.
Speaking of selfies, do you mind sending me a photo of yourself for the post on Jezebel?
Stephen could send a scanned photo of me from ‘65. We just found it in an unmarked book… Stephen is emailing it now.
I got it! That was fast.
I really like this one! It really looks like…me.
Jill Freedman, 1965.
Austin Bryant is a freelance writer who has written for Kinfolk Magazine, Deadspin, Noisey and other places. He lives in Boston, Mass., and is pretty bad at Twitter.
Photos courtesy Jill Freedman. She’s on Instagram.
All of which is to say that Geffen’s sorta secret Instagram feed—which is currently followed by only 3,400 people—is sadly throughly sanitized. The only pecs on display are... his:
There are some funny photos, such as this close-up shot of Leonardo DiCaprio aboard Geffen’s $300 million yacht Rising Sun:
Also, a fresh-faced and soul-patched Bruce Springsteen... aboard Geffen’s $300 million yacht Rising Sun:
Lemme ask a question: Do you like yachts?
Do you like celebrities posing on yachts?
Well then this is actually a pretty decent Instagram.
But from a beefcake perspective it’s severely disappointing, is basically what I’m saying.
This addition to the growing list of nom de Trumps comes from vintage Associate Press wires. Meet “Donald Baron,” who briefly appeared in print 36 years ago.
Before “publicist” “John Miller” anxiously fantasized to People about all the pretty daughters of wealthy men that wanted to bang Donald Trump, the real estate mogul made a shitty splash in the New York Times when he destroyed two irreplaceable Art Deco sculptures.
On June 6th, 1980, the Times reported that the developer, who had been enjoying tens of millions of dollars in tax abatements, demolished the Bonwit Teller Building to make room for a “$100 million 62-story bronze-colored glass tower.” Two stone bas-relief sculptures on the building’s facade “that had been sought with enthusiasm by the Metropolitan Museum of Art” were “smashed by jackhammers” on Trump’s orders, without warning. Enter “Trump spokesman John Barron,” a “Vice president of the Trump firm” who told the Times that they “don’t know what happened to it” but three independent appraisers had supposedly decided that the sculptures were “without artistic merit” and the Met wouldn’t want them anyway. (The Met, of course, was “flabbergasted” by this.) At the same time, the Associated Press attributed these quotes to a different “Vice president of the Trump firm”—someone named “Donald Baron.”
This “Donald Baron” appears in a small batch of archived local newspapers that reprinted the AP wire that day. The discrepancy didn’t stick out, the alias didn’t stick and in 1990 court case, Trump would come out as “John Barron” (his favorite alias), making that shady interaction with the Met shadier.
Trump originally said that the Met could have the sculptures “so long as the cost of removal wasn’t prohibitive” and estimated the cost at $32,000. Four days after the sculptures were smashed to pieces, Trump paused the Barron roleplay to personally say that it was actually going to cost $500,000 and that his “biggest concern was the safety of people on the street below,” though no one ever contacted the Met for safety tips.
“Who cares?” he would finally tell Vanity Fairin 1991. “Let’s say that I had given that junk to the Met. They would have just put them in their basement.”
In 1999, when he was already scheming on Presidency, Trump got offended by “absolutely gross, degenerate stuff” by Chris Ofili at the Brooklyn Museum and offered some more cultural advice: “As President, I would ensure that the National Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort.” The NEA didn’t actually fund that show, but the Baron doesn’t concern himself with small details of a thing he’s talking about.
On Friday, Gawker reported that YouTube and Facebook would simultaneously livestream BuzzFeed’s live interview with the President of the United States, which took place today at 2:50 p.m. But it turns out that only the former service was able to hold up their end of the bargain. As you can see in the video below, Facebook Live abruptly stopped working before the interview even began.
It’s not clear what caused Facebook Live to malfunction. As a result, BuzzFeed began directing viewers on Facebook to an (identical) livestream hosted by YouTube—which directly competes with Facebook for advertising revenue sold against videos.
YouTube’s stream held steady for the rest of the interview. Then things got kind of strange. Shortly after the exchange concluded, BuzzFeed immediately uploaded a video of the interview (that had just occurred, on YouTube) to Facebook Live, where the interview began broadcasting with the “Live” label:
Even though it had already occurred! As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last week, Facebook Live allows publishers to upload pre-recorded video to the platform, but this is probably the first time it’s hosted a pre-recorded video depicting a interview with a major politician that was designed, in part, to promote Facebook Live as a medium where you witness events as they actually happen. Not as they happened on a competing video platform 30 minutes ago.
Anyway, you can watch the interview on YouTube here:
Facebook and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A BuzzFeed spokesperson told Gawker, “We are still looking into the technical problems.”
Disclosure: Facebook recently began paying news organization, including the New York Times and BuzzFeed, to produce videos for its Facebook Live platform. Gawker Media, Gawker’s parent company, recently joined the same program.
It’s honesty week at Gawker Media, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned here, it’s this: Never forget not to not NOT judge a book by its cover. Inspired by BuzzFeed, we’ve put together a list of the most wrong and cruel things people think based on our appearances.
1. “That because I’m a redhead, Carrot Top is my dad!”
“People think Carrot Top is my dad just because I have red hair. He is!”
3. “That just because I look like someone who doesn’t necessarily have a basement full of severed ears, that I don’t actually have a basement that’s absolutely brimming with severed ears.”
7. “That just because I look Martian, have wall-to-wall red carpet in my apartment, and make constant references to how much better life is on a different planet, that I’m actually from Mars.”
11. “That people with glasses can’t start an eyelash bar, be a working mother, have a baby with Tyga, successfully establish a side narrative on America’s most prominent reality TV franchise, create their own emojis, and be intersectional feminists too.”
“Robert Kardashian is the kindest man I’ve ever met.”
I don’t know about you, but when I log onto Facebook, I’m hoping to see pregnancy announcements from couples I went to high school with, self-congratulatory status updates from my professional peers, and photos of the latest gator crimes and horse frauds being perpetrated in the Sunshine State. That’s why the Florida Agricultural Crimes Intelligence Unit is my new favorite page on the social network.
The FACIU is a non-profit organization, founded in 1981, whose stated aim is “sharing information on crimes affecting the agricultural communities throughout Florida and surrounding states.” While the FACIU is not a law enforcement agency, its members are acting cops and sheriff’s deputies who specialize in agricultural crime, and it is contracted by police departments across the state to provide training to officers on topics such as animal diseases and heavy farm equipment.
If you’re not a Florida farmer, however, you might be less interested in the FACIU’s role in the state’s crime-fighting community than you are in the zany stuff it posts on Facebook, such as this photo of a gator stealing a watermelon from Friday.
That particular meddling reptile garnered a fair amount of news coverage, but plenty of the FACIU deep cuts are just as delightful. Take this khaki-clad man of leisure riding a giant metal chicken, for instance.
Or this BAD bull who’s just dyin’ to bust loose.
There’s this walking cane that doubles as a 12-gauge shotgun.
Life is difficult, and the moments of joy that stick their noses up from the mud like giant fruit-thieving lizards are what make it worth living. Bring more spontaneous joy into your life. Like the Florida Agricultural Crimes Intelligence Unit Facebook page.
Police search through a Brooklyn high school during an active shooter drill on May 15, 2016 (NYPD)
Police in the US run active shooter drills all the time. But yesterday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the New York Police made sure they’d be ready for anything—by including a fake drone attack against a high school in Brooklyn.
Sunday’s drill simulated an attack by multiple active shooters (a rarity) using improvised explosive devices (even more rare) and included a drone strike against the school (unheard of in the US, though the same can’t be said of Pakistan).
It was conducted at Leon M. Goldstein High School in Brooklyn and was notable for the amount of technology involved to simulate the terrorist plot. The “drone strike,” involved a computer simulation using the latest DHS technology for measuring an incoming barrage.
Police search through a Brooklyn high school during an active shooter drill on May 15, 2016 (NYPD)
The simulation began with the sounds of bullets and explosions, leading NYPD officers, DHS counterterrorism teams, and NYFD crews to deal with the mock hostage situation. Near the end of the simulation, the people who were playing victims informed police that they overheard the terrorist shooters talking about drones.
“Hey, they said something about a drone! I heard them talking upstairs about a drone!” the simulated victims told responders, according to a CBS New York video of the event.
But these weren’t exactly Predator drones. The simulation included a hobby drone that was supposed to be neutralized. It wasn’t clear if the drone was supposed to represent a weaponized threat or merely a surveillance tool for the mock terrorists.
[Update 7:40pm: A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson that I reached out to earlier got back to me and said that the drone was meant to simulate a “chemical release against responders on the ground” to measure the medical team’s efficiency in responding.]
A school shooter simulation involving a drone (screenshot from CBS New York)
The staged events also included crowd evacuation simulation software, secure voice and image communications via a company called Mutualink, and SOCET GXP technology for satellite views and building navigation.
“[Our] role in this exercise is to see if new tools and equipment that have been designed to help responders in an active shooter situation perform as they should,” said Dr. Reginald Brothers, the DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology, in a statement.
Police search through a Brooklyn high school during an active shooter drill on May 15, 2016 (NYPD)
“Analyzing video footage from the exercise, combined with gaining responders’ feedback to determine what worked—and what needs work—informs our efforts to better equip responders like the NYPD and FDNY so they may be as prepared as possible when they are facing high-pressure, challenging situations,” he continued.
Police search through a Brooklyn high school during an active shooter drill on May 15, 2016 (NYPD)
We have yet to see an active shooter situation in the US involving unmanned aerial tech, but I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Other police departments, like the LAPD, have expressed interest to the Department of Homeland Security in using drones as a defensive weapon against terrorist attacks and active shooter situations. Police already use remote controlled robots for everything from bomb disposal to communicating with holed-up gunmen.
I guess the addition of drones is practically inevitable for the active shooter situations of the future—situations that Americans are already all-too-familiar with.
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You can score 10 AAs, four AAAs, and a smart charger all for $26, today only. For comparison’s sake, a good price on four AAs and a charger is about $16, so you’re getting 10 extra batteries here for just $10 extra. Like all Gold Box deals though, this price is only available today, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it sold out early.
The new Roku streaming stick is all you need, and Amazon just knocked $10 off its base price, the first discount we’ve ever seen. Even if you already have the old model, it might be worth $40 just for the ability to stream audio to your mobile device, enabling pseudo-wireless headphones so you can watch TV in bed without waking your significant other.
In case you missed out last week, you can once again snag an extra year of PlayStation Plus for $40. I know it seems like we’re seeing this deal every week right now, but these gift card deals tend to be feast or famine; it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if the deal disappeared for three months.
If you use a desktop computer, this will of course keep your machine running without any interruption in the event of a power outage, which means you won’t lose any unsaved work. But even if you only use laptops and mobile devices at home, this could still run lamps, your router and modem, or even a TV until the power comes back on.
Nikon’s D3300 is one of the easiest entry level DSLRs to get started with if you want to learn the basics of photography, and BuyDig will sell you a refurb complete with two lenses, a bag, a Wi-Fi adapter, and more for just $399 with promo code DXPRO100.
A few months ago, I bought the this exact drive in order to build a my own DIY external SSD to store photos, and it’s worked incredibly well so far. Seeing this price though, I wish I’d waited.
The new DJI Phantom 4 sure looks impressive, but for $800 less, you can pick up the still-completely-amazing Phantom 3 Advanced today. You’ll lose out on features like the (finicky) accident avoidance and 4K video, but the camera still boasts an impressive 2.7K resolution, it can hold its position indoors thanks to a downard-facing sensor array.
This Paderno spiralizer can cut your favorite fruits and vegetables into versatile stings and strands, and the four-blade model is on sale for an all-time low $35, today only. It’s the perfect gift for the home chef who has everything.
Every modem rental fee you pay to your ISP is padding for their bottom line, and a total rip-off for you. Fortunately, you can buy your own modem for a relatively small upfront cost, and knock a few bucks off your monthly bill.
Need a new pair of running shoes? Amazon will sell you a pair of Asics 33-FA shoes for men and women for just $50 right now, the lowest price on the web. There are two men’s and one women’s style available, but the women’s shoe is available in two different colors.
If you remember the old label makers that literally pressed the letters into a piece of tape, this is a bit more advanced than what you’re picturing. The Dymo LabelManager 160 can print in eight fonts at six sizes, along with clipart and special characters, and you can even preview the entire label on its LCD screen before you print. Every time we post this deal, it sells out quickly, so you’ll want to grab yours fast.
For a lot of you, it’s already pool season, and for everyone else it will be soon. Today’s Amazon Gold Box deal brings the pool to you in the form of a 12’ circular above ground pool for under $100, complete with free shipping. It’s not wide or deep enough to really go for a swim, but it’s perfect for lounging on a hot day.
The kit includes a pump to circulate the water, and the drain will hook up to a garden hose so you can empty it into a storm grate instead of your back yard. To be honest, I don’t know how they can afford to ship something this big for $96, but I’d take advantage while you still can. Remember, this price is only valid today, or until sold out.
Logitech’s new G610 Orion mechanical gaming keyboard is already racking up great user reviews, and Amazon’s taking $20 off both the brown and red switch model today, the first discount they’ve ever posted.
While most mechanical gaming keyboards look like props from a Transformers movie, this would look right at home in an office, if you want to use it to get work done as well.
If you own a phone, or especially a laptop, that’s powered by USB-C, Anker’s PowerCore+ is your best bet for keeping it running while on the go. This pack has been down to $50 on a few occasions before, but that’s as low as it ever goes.
When it comes to cleaning hard floors, you’ve basically got three options to choose from, if you don’t want to get down on your hands and knees:
A regular old mop, which can leave your floors wet for hours.
A Swiffer WetJet, or any similar product that uses chemical spray that can leave a residue and disposable (i.e. expensive) cleaning pads.
A steam mop, which cleans using regular old water that dries within seconds.
Now, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but the choice seems rather obvious to me, especially when you can get a highly rated Hoover steam mop for just $67 today only on Amazon. That’s not an all-time low, but we usually see it for $75-$85.
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Mike Webb is running for U.S. Congress in Virginia’s 8th district, and he would really appreciate your vote. He would also appreciate, judging from a screenshot uploaded to his Facebook page earlier today, a little alone time with the pages “IVONE SEXY AMATEUR” and “LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BOOTY.”*
For over six (!) hours and counting now, Webb has had the below post sitting on his campaign page with porn tabs hanging out for all the world to see.
Now, to be fair “IVONE SEXY AMATEUR” and “LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BOOTY” could be anything.
Except that some quick googling reveals that, no, both of those are in fact pornographic videos. Which is fine! Curiosity is natural. Congratulations to the hopeful Congressman for sticking to his guns.
But, you may be asking yourself, was this embarrassing bit of technological transparency worth his special alone time reward? Judging from the users’ responses...
...sure, maybe.
We’ve reached out to the Webb for comment, and will update if and when we hear back. Hopefully his hands will free up soon.
*Update 6:07 p.m.
The full title of the second film is in fact “LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BOOTY,” not “LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BODY” as was previously stated. Gawker regrets the error.
Update 6:32 p.m.
Webb has a brand new Facebook post up that seems like it maybe addresses the porn tab controversy—though it’s impossible to say for sure. We’ve copied the relevant(?) portion below:
Curious by nature, I wanted to test the suggestion that somehow, lurking out in the pornographic world there is some evil operator waiting for the one in a gazillion chance that a candidate for federal office would go to that particular website and thereby be infected with a virus that would cause his or her FEC data file to crash the FECfile application each time that it was loaded on the day of the filing deadline, as well as impact other critical campaign systems. Well, the Geek Squad techs testified to me, after servicing thousands of computers at the Baileys Crossroads location that they had never seen any computer using their signature virus protection for the time period to acquire over 4800 viruses, 300 of which would require re-installation of the operating system. We are currently awaiting their attempt at recovery of files on that machine accidentally deleted when they failed to backup files before re-installation, a scenario about which Matthew Wavro speculated openly to me before we were informed by the Geek Squad that that had indeed occurred....
But, now let me tell you the results of my empirical inquiry that introduced me to Layla and Ivone. Around Powerball lottery time, January 9, 2016, I calculated the odds that my friend Rev. Howard John Wesley and I working independently arrived at the same prayer plan, and I was able to determine that there was about a one in a billion chance that that could have occurred in the way that it did. (https://www.facebook.com/search/top/…). Well, as much as folks like Duffy Taylor want to hope that the Devil is waiting for Christian candidates on a particular pornographic website to infect his or her FEC data file is even more improbable than my Paul and Silas story, and I know that Duffy Taylor is not a man of faith belief; so, I don’t know how he empirically arrives at his conclusion. I couldn’t see the probability or possibility without a RAND computer.
But, that is the news that will never be printed, but no matter. We found a few more “silent majority” worms today, but we also picked up a few more of the faithful. So, not a bad day, at all.
Mike Webb offered the following comment to Gawker via email:
One commenter about a half hour ago told me that I needed to hire a new social media director, and others earlier were concluding that the candidate declared DOA in his press debut before Christmas in the local press—six months before a Republican challenger ever gets picked up—today is toast for sure. But, when I read that post about the social media director, we were up 42 likes on Facebook, and I don’t know how many on Twitter. Just now, I looked at Facebook, again, and we are up 75, far outpacing my rival who defeated me with establishment support in the nomination convention.
From a faith based perspective and as a preacher’s kid, I probably would not be comfortable with “adult” topics, but politically, within certain parameters, as a conservative with many libertarian ideas, it can and should be discussed. In this campaign and in the exploratory phases we touched on dating sites and the song” that entraps many in Nigerian scams and we have on many occasions discussed the taboo topic of forcible sexual abuse that in 2014 in Virginia found young white girls below the ages of 17 exponentially more likely the victims than any other than victims of this crime, and, in our own Falls Church, we have some brave parents continue to break the silence with their “We Support the Girls” campaign. So, from that perspective, I do not really see a problem with the viewing of some tabs on a screenshot, even if it does show the scrutiny to which some candidates for office are subjected. In December one viewer blew up images from my social media page to suggest that I was engaging in subliminal messaging.
