Quantcast
Channel: Gawker
Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live

Teachers Want You to Know: We Don't Get Summers Off

0
0

Teachers Want You to Know: We Don't Get Summers Off

A little over a week ago, we posted a story calling for submissions from teachers, administrators, and aides working in America's public schools. The post itself received over 1,000 comments and my inbox was backed up with hundreds of emails from teachers who wanted to share not just horror stories but successes, too. Many told me they found the job fulfilling but the system broken, that the misconceptions about what they do were not only tiring but prohibitive. The comments section of the post had a fair number of non-teaching dissenters.

As one Language Arts and Special Education teacher told us in an detailed comment on the original post:

I think the most galling thing is that people are increasingly mad that teacher's make a decent salary in most states and have a robust benefits package. People are made that they no longer have those benefits and I'm glad I have the union to fight for me and mine. People want to tear that down instead of fighting for their own benefit. It's a race to the bottom and instead of attempting to build up the American worker to some stable plateau we want to just say "well I don't get that, why should you?"

This pushback that the commenter talks about shows up a lot, and is further summarized by an email submission from one of our readers:

I am a former math teacher from Florida. I appreciate your effort to collect teacher horror stories, but I think that undermines the larger, systemic problems. Also, individual stories tend to be countered by the same responses:

1) ...but you get summers off
2) ...no one teaches for the money
3) ...you knew what you were getting into
4) ...you can retire with a full pension at 55
5) ...you would never make it in the private sector
6) My personal favorite ...I had a teacher who... (insert negative story)

In the simplest sense, the biggest problem I see with teaching is that teaches are afforded unlimited accountability/responsibility, with little to no authority.

Everyone who wants to "fix" education is just adding to the problem. For example, The Gates Foundation yields a lot of authority, or at least influence those with authority, but has yet to teach any students.

If you really want to see change in education, give teachers authority, and autonomy.

I do have actual stories, some personal, some borrowed. But, no one seems to understand until they have taught. Actually taught. I don't count Sunday school, or guitar lessons. I'm not sure what your end goal is for this; Maybe it's a series like "Unemployment Stories". But, if you really want to convince people about the ups and downs of teaching, get them to volunteer in a school. The have them share their stories. Then maybe you can get a lawmaker to actually teach.

Since we can't enforce our readers to volunteer at a school (as much as we'd like to!), the following stories—the first volume of our teacher series—will touch on teachers' alleged summers off, and what that actually means to people working within the education profession.

From an email submission, on taking a second job:

Oh, but the summers off! Yes, what a perk. It is, that is undeniable, and I don't claim to not have been aware of this perk when I began my pursuit of teaching. But to make it clear—we don't get paid for the summer, or during the summer. I work all summer at another job, because I have to. And without summer vacation, most teachers, like myself, would probably go insane.

And yet, I fully admit, THIS IS WHAT I SIGNED UP FOR. I knew all of these things when I decided to major in education in college. These are not my issues with my profession. What I didn't knowingly sign up for was the criticism of teachers, the constant doubt of our integrity and our intentions, and the lack of respect for our love of our students and our dedication to their education. Should I have known this was what I was walking into? Perhaps, but how sad is it to think that this is what teachers should expect? It is incredibly disheartening to see the way we are portrayed in the public and to watch these stereotypes perpetuated. Teaching is not easy. We are not in it to make money, or simply to score health benefits (thank you for that one perk, if we even continue to hold on to it), or because we get summers off. It's because we want to teach.

The more this public shaming of teachers continues by those that refuse to understand, the more disheartened we become. When looking towards the future, this is scary. Aspiring future teachers may quickly find other lines of work—for who would knowingly walk into the pit of fire teaching has become (at least in New Jersey, where my experience is based)? As for those of us who are teaching presently, morale continues to get worse. In most other jobs, when an employee is being disrespected or mistreated, he/she can quit and find a new company to work for. Of course, it is never that simple, but the difference here is that we don't just have ourselves to worry about. To restate what was confirmed previously, it is about the students. Where will they be when the good teachers have had enough? Or when the passionate college student decides a business degree will in fact be a more promising path than that of an education degree (and here, I speak from experience again –I've had numerous people ask me with a hint of disbelief and disgust, "You really went to Boston College to become a teacher?). If we want our students to have good teachers, and therefore a good education, we need to respect our teachers and value them for what they do for the kids. It is that simple.

An email submission about working through the summer:

I've been a public school teacher for the last ten years. I teach in a large, diverse, title I high school. I've spent my entire adult life as a classroom teacher. When I first starting writing this, I started ticking off all the things I do over the course of a school year. The long nights of grading after a full day of teaching, the time put in on weekends and during the summer for lesson planning, workshops, meetings and classes to learn the newest practices and theories, the money spent at Target on supplies for my classroom like pencils, paper, markers, and backpacks for the kids that I know will walk into my classroom without them. But I deleted all of that because I think people know those things.

Despite complications, a teacher takes a summer school position:

I am a teacher. In the state I am licensed in I am able to teach preschool, elementary, and high school (social studies). After graduation, I was lucky enough to get a long term substitute teaching job at a public preschool. At that point, I only had my secondary teaching certificate and had the notion that a 10th year, tenured teacher would leave 12+ weeks worth of lesson plans and my fourth quarter would be a breeze. On what was her last day, and day she should have been showing me the ropes, she slapped down a stack of papers in front of me and said "Better late than never to learn how to test them, they're your problem now."

I sat there struggling to figure out how to administer 3rd quarter progress tests to 3 & 4 year old preschoolers while she spent the rest of her afternoon playing Candy Crush on her phone. The following week I discovered her binder of lesson plans were just random pages of Pintrest crafts hastily put together. When I notified the principal, her reply was "They're your problem now..Better start putting lesson plans together." I spent the next 12 weeks scouring the Internet and bugging former teachers and friends I had in the education field for ideas, creating lesson plans, researching early childhood development, obtaining my early childhood certification, and searching for age appropriate toys and materials because the maternity leave teacher sent me a wonderful email warning me she would be returning to "check in" on me to make sure I wasn't using "her" supplies. On top of this, I was also required to participate on committees and events after school- a lot of work for someone making a flat $90/day. I jumped at the chance to teach summer school under the promise that there was an available full time teaching position for the next school year. On my last day of summer school, I was informed the state pulled funding and the position was no longer available. I was heartbroken. Not for the time or money wasted, but for the connections I had made with students. Several families had requested their children be placed in my room, but of course that never happened.

From a commenter responding to a comment saying, "Admit that some people go into the field because they like summers off":

You are aware that teachers only get summers off if they're in dual income households and their partner can afford the 3 months without pay, right?

On the ways in which hours are made up throughout the rest of the year, from an email submission:

We "have summers off." I spend my summers in workshops to get better at teaching. When I'm not in workshop, I spend my time planning. I give up vacation days during the year to take certification tests or go to trainings. I spend one Saturday a month at professional development. Is my summer workload lighter? Yes. That said, I don't know very many people who work around the clock for 40 a year. Most days are 12 hours, if not longer, and you can bet I work part of the weekend. So for a 60-70 hour work week nine months out of the year, I think we can agree that half time the other three months is fair.. at least for what we make. Plenty of people put in long hours, and we all are working hard, but I'd argue we work longer hours than most jobs in this pay bracket. We're not in it for the money, but people need to stop acting insulted when we want to be able to afford to pay our student loans and other bills. Just because we're called to the work doesn't mean we should be broke doing it.

From a commenter discussing an hourly breakdown of work:

You're right, we don't work the typical 8-9 hours a day expected of other white-collar workers. I work 11 hours a day on a normal day (7am - 6pm), I know of very few colleagues who work much less than 60 hours a week. Our holidays, while long compared to most other professions, aren't nearly as long as most people believe them to be; the combination of assessment and planning schemes of work take up a huge chunk of any holiday and regular mandatory re-training (in core subject knowledge, curriculum, safeguarding, SEN etc) and conferences take up a bit of the rest.

Another commenter, on the same subject:

I taught social studies, at a very large school Because a large chunk of my students were low income we rarely gave homework, but we still maintained a lot of activities that were graded. Summers were spent educating myself on new subject standards for the state, workshops, re-working lessons that did not go very well, not to mention department meetings before school, school wide meetings after school, parent meetings when they feel we are failing their child on purpose, and if you are a coach and teach a subject there's even more going on with your schedule (travel for games, 2-4 hour practices with summer camps just to start). Add into when I was teaching during the Great Recession of '08, where every week of the summer had news of more teacher layoffs really brought on the stress of possibly losing your job every summer. Not saying it is the hardest job in the world or the longest hours but it is frankly insulting to the field when people assume that teaching is easy.

If you're a teacher, administrator, or aide, and have more stories to share about what your summers actually look like—even if it's to say you go on long vacations in Majorca—please email me at dayna.evans@gawker.com or leave a comment below.

We are still welcoming submissions about anything regarding the teaching profession—successes, trials, complaints, fixes—and will publish them once every two weeks.

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Shutterstock]


How to Explain Net Neutrality to Your Relatives: A Thanksgiving Guide

0
0

How to Explain Net Neutrality to Your Relatives: A Thanksgiving Guide

Thanksgiving is almost here, and that means turkey, mashed potatoes, and explaining tech-related news stories to your parents and extended family because hey, you read a bunch of blogs and you even know what a yik-yak is!

Lucky for all of us, the year of Bitcoin is over and you're probably safe from having to explain the finer points of the the blockchain to Uncle Nigel, who seems waaay too interested about the part where you can use cryptocurrency to buy heinous porn on the darknet. No, this year there's a good chance you'll be describing "common carriers" and gingerly trying to explain how sometimes government regulation is the answer to your Tea Partier Aunt and her enthusiastically nodding second husband when they ask you what this "net neutrality" thing is all about.

We're here to help. Below you'll find a list of potential questions, fleshed out with some background, tips, and a sample answer to help you wow the dinner table before navigating the discussion back to something more palatable like sportsball or political issues that people actually understand.

So what's up with this net neutrality thing? I heard about it on AM radio.

Every conversation is different, but when it comes to a subject as multifaceted as a free and open internet, it's super important to drip-feed the info. As an internet-er with a Twitter account, there's a good chance you know more about the nuances of the issue than whomever you're talking to. More than you might think, even. (In fairness, they probably know more than you about having children and paying taxes). Unless you're talking to a tween, in which case give up and start texting them emojis.

Metaphors are your friend when you're talking net neutrality, even if they aren't perfect (they never are). Vi Hart has a great video that breaks the whole thing down into physical shipping terms. It's 11 minutes long, but even the first 1:30 will give you something to work with. And this College Humor video is a good overview with some jokes you can steal. No one will be the wiser!

Here's a baseline script to work with:

"You know how you can see every website from every internet connection, and there are no long distance charges or anything? That's because of net neutrality. Every website gets treated the same, so you don't have to pay your internet company extra for certain sites like you have to pay your cable company extra for more cable channels. When you buy an internet connection, you always get the whole internet."

Well that's not true. I have to pay extra for Netflix/Brazzers!

Uncle Nigel getting sassy. And missing the point, but it's fine; that's a good question for a few reasons. It's an example that no metaphor is perfect, but it also lets you introduce another piece of the puzzle: web business that aren't cable companies. Businesses like Netflix. If the internet is like cable TV, these are the "channels," and the point you want to make is that thanks to net neutrality, cable companies don't dictate your access to internet services they way they dictate your access to channels in a cable package. And that's great, because hating cable companies is something everyone can agree on.

Try:

"Right, but that's between you and Netflix. [Insert local cable company here] doesn't get to decide if you can get Netflix, or how much you should pay for access to it."

This is also a great lead-in to the next question. If you're feeling bold, don't even wait for anyone to ask it.

OK but what good does net neutrality actually do?

This is a fun one because here you get to spin a yarn and whip out your favorite "worst case scenario." You've probably already read a few of these—we wrote one ourselves; and that's because it's a great way to get the point across.

Ultimately it comes down to: "Without net neutrality, [local cable provider] will try to force you to use [their shitty service] by making [good service] cost more/work shittier." The simplest is to just use Comcast and Netflix and Xfinity (Xfinity streaming is Comcast's in-house Netflix if you've never had the pleasure), but by all means substitute something more specific if you can.

The fact that cable companies are local monopolies also starts to factor in here, and chances are your audience knows all about this by virtue of just having cable and not having much of a choice who to get it from. It's a good time to bring up the Time Warner and Comcast merger though, if either of those is the Big Guy in town (and one of them probably is).

Start here:

"Two reasons net neutrality matters. Cable companies have shitty on demand video and other services that compete with the ones you like, and they have your nuts in a vice/have you between a rock and a hard place* since most cable companies are the only game in town. There's basically no one else you can switch to if you don't like what they're doing. So without net neutrality, Comcast can make you use Xfinity streaming unless you pay them more for access to Netflix. And that's on top of what you'd have to pay Netflix too! Or they can just slow down Netflix—and just Netflix—until it's totally unusable.

Without net neutrality, cable companies don't have to let you use the best things; they can just make you use their things unless you pay extra. Instead of making its services better, Comcast can just make other people's services worse."

*varies based on the politeness/drunkenness of company.

It's obviously way more complicated than this, but that's the gist as far as an average joe is concerned. And if you want to get into a more in-depth discussion about peering agreements and the Netflix-Comcast side of the net neutrality love triangle (legitimately fascinating stuff!), by all means. But Uncle Jimmy is probably going to lose a little bit of interest as soon as you're not at least ostensibly talking about him and the things he likes to look at on his 1st gen iPad.

But net neutrality is going away?? Obama even said a thing I think! I read a Twitter about it.

Again, this is annoyingly complicated, but here's the skinny if you aren't caught up: In the U.S. we've been working under something called the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 for a few years now. Mostly it says that internet companies like Comcast and Time Warner and Verizon can't just block shit for no reason, need to be transparent about what they're doing, and can't unreasonably discriminate against different kinds of traffic.

That last one has a little bit of wiggle room but things were going mostly fine-ish until an appeals court decided that actually the FCC actually has no authority to make those calls if ISPs aren't "common carriers." Which is to say if they aren't government-regulated services that have to serve the public without discrimination, like a power company. They aren't, so the rules don't apply.

(The one big exception to the rule is Comcast, which agreed to follow the Open Internet Rule until January of 2018 as part of its merger with NBCUniversal, but that's such a specific case it's really not worth bringing up unless someone specifically says "but I saw Comcast say it's in favor of net neutrality" in which case you should probably just give up and just ask them what they think because clearly they are keeping super close track of this stuff.)

So to boil it alllll the way down, ISPs went to court and finally proved the the emperor in charge of making internet rules (the FCC) has no clothes or legal authority.

Basically:

"The FCC—that is, the part of the government that won't Eminem be himself/makes sure people get fined if a boob shows up at the Super Bowl*— has always been in charge of making net neutrality rules, but in January a court ruled that they really don't have the authority to make rules anyway so now nothing they said before counts anymore. The FCC is still coming up with new ideas, but all the cable companies know they don't really have to listen. And when Time Warner Cable and Comcast become the same company—and a huuge monopoly—things could get really scary and bad for you."

*Again, choose based on the company.

How do we keep that from happening?

Warning: Discussion could get dicey here because the short answer basically "yes; we institute government regulation" and you know how Aunt Diane gets about government regulation. The great thing about talking net neutrality though is that if things do get ideologically heated, you can always just pivot to making fun of cable companies. Maybe even bookmark Ryan Block's hilariously horrible Comcast customer service call so you have it in your back pocket. It's a fun group listen!

Anyway, so there's this thing called Title II, which will reclassify ISPs as common carriers (basically as full-on utility companies) and subject them to a bunch of annoying but necessary governmental red tape. It means that legally, internet connections get all the same regulations and protection that water and electricity and other must-haves get. This plan has its flaws—Title II was written to pertain to phone lines in the 1930s—but it's the best plan that has a chance to work. And don't let anyone get away with any with drawing comparisons to Obamacare because those are bullshit.

See, the problem isn't so much that ISPs are unregulated, but that they tend to be unregulated legal monopolies. If we had better competition, net neutrality would be less of a huge deal because you could just switch away from the shitty ISPs and let them wither on the vine. But the realities of laying cable mean that there's virtually no competition, and getting to a world where cable companies are regulated to keep them from doing horrible things is easier than getting to a world with competition. Of course the cable companies want neither.

Under Obama's plan, we switch ISPs over to Title II, but we leave things a little open; the parts of Title II that are outdated—you know, like anything that refers to "President Roosevelt"—can be ignored at the FCC's discretion. This is all super important context to have as an explainer, but yet again, most of that's safely ignored in a top-level, turkey-heavy discussion. Ultimately, Obama suggested a pretty good plan and now we're waiting for the FCC to take his lead. Hopefully it will, but a lot of the people at the FCC are good friends with/used to work for cable companies, so there's still room for the FCC to just whiff on purpose.

I'd pitch it like this:

"Obama has a plan; he told the FCC that they should reclassify ISPs as "common carriers" using something called "Title II." That would mean the law would treat the internet as a utility, like water or power, and the FCC would have the authority to make rules for them. Cable companies don't like this idea because it comes with a lot of regulation (like net neutrality rules and more), whereas right now they can basically do whatever they want.

Cable companies are arguing that government regulation is a really bad thing and that it'll slow down the growth of the internet, and to a small degree they might be right. A better solution would be more competition so you can just have a choice and switch to the best cable company and let the free market sort it out. But there's really only one option in most places and big mergers mean there will be even less competition. The only half-decent near-term option is to force the ISPs to not be shitty. So that's what Obama is asking the FCC to do."

Are you still dating that Erin girl?

*Sigh*

Try something like:

"No Grandma, she broke up with me in 2008 but I honestly feel like I'm a better person for it."

Anyway, assuming we actually care now about net neutrality what can we do?

This is an easy one because the answer is pretty much nothing. The window for submitting comments to the FCC is closed, so that fun John Oliver call to arms you might have seen doesn't really apply anymore. The only people who have any power over where things go moving forward is the FCC, which will probably (hopefully) vote to go ahead with Obama's plans, and the cable lobbyists who are going to try and convince their FCC buddies to do anything but that.

Congress could step in at just about any time to pass a bill forcing the FCC to do what Obama asked, and at least one bill has been put up to a vote, to no avail. Of course it doesn't help that Congress, like the FCC, is lousy with conflicts of interest.

The FCC has said it's going to wait until next year to make its vote, and for now there's not much to do besides sit on your hands and maybe write a congressmen if you're into that sorta thing. But really the most important thing you can do is just encourage your folks to at least try and follow the thread a little bit because this stuff is important and it's not even close to over yet. Really the most important thing you can do is to be educated on big, complicated issues like this that really matter. And both you and Aunt Becky deserve props for having this convo.

To summarize, it's like:

"Nothing really! The FCC asked the public for comment and a lot of nerds screamed at them to do the right thing, but now we're all just waiting for them to make their decision about whether to follow Obama's plan. They've put off their internal vote until next year so it's just a waiting game unless Congress steps in to tell them what to do, but it won't. Like most really important things there's not really much we can do but watch, wait, and be as informed as we can be. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯*."

*I'm not 100 percent sure how to pronounce that but just try your best. Maybe you can approximate it with your body or something.

Can you pass the gravy?

You've done it. You've managed to explain the broad strokes of one of the most complex and important issues in technology to some genuinely curious folks who may have never have figured it out otherwise. Who knows, maybe they'll even remember this conversation a week from now!

So go ahead and pat yourself on the back real quick before you pass that gravy, and consider closing out with something like this:

"Here you go! So Grandpa, how 'bout that Obamacare?"

"Mute" Kanye West Made a Plane Wait For Him

0
0

"Mute" Kanye West Made a Plane Wait For Him

Kanye West, a delicate, mysterious seahorse of a man swathed in only the most expensive and softest of linens, was late to his commercial flight from Paris to Helsinki yesterday, but no matter. A flight from Paris to Helsinki waits for Kanye West.

Page Six reports:

"The whole flight was waiting on one of those buses that ferries passengers from the gate to the plane. Kanye and his assistant boarded in a huff," our source says. "The assistant sprinted to the bus from the gate with all of the travel documents, while Kanye walked casually behind him. They did not apologize for keeping everyone."

Once West, 37, finally arrived at the aircraft and boarded, he took his seat in first class. As coach class boarded, a European couple asked the 21-time Grammy Award winner for a photo but Mr. Kim Kardashian refused.

"He initially seemed to say yes, but then pointed at the line of passengers behind them waiting to board and declined … mostly through hand gestures. He was almost mute. He was not talkative at all," our source adds.

Kanye must be very fun in a game of charades. Another passenger reported that Kanye gave him a reluctant fist bump.

In Kanye's defense, the flight was scheduled to leave at 7:35 a.m. In my personal experience, I have a lot of trouble interacting with my fans before 9:30 a.m.

[Pic via AP]

The Former Basketball Player Who Brought Down Bill Cosby

0
0

The Former Basketball Player Who Brought Down Bill Cosby

Without Andrea Constand, none of this happens. Bill Cosby is still America's No. 1 dad, still beloved for giving us the Huxtables and Fat Albert, still embraced in too many corners of the country for telling young black men to pull up their pants, still selling out arena after arena.

It's all fallen apart now, swiftly and luridly, with woman after woman after woman—19 of them in all, for now—accusing Cosby of some sort of sexual misconduct. There are plenty of moments you can point to as the precipitant, but every one of them can be traced back to a lawsuit filed by one woman—Constand. Then the director of operations for the women's basketball program at Temple University, Constand in 2005 did what no one else had done before: She put her name on paper in a public record and said that Cosby had drugged and raped her.

What followed was a nightmare. The next two years included a leak from Cosby's team to the future founder of TMZ, two separate attempts by the Associated Press to force open court records, accusations that the National Enquirer sat on celebrity dirt in exchange for an exclusive, allegations of a "secretive avenue of proceeding" for Cosby, a probe into how much mega-agency William Morris did to protect its star, a roll call of Jane Does who said they too had been assaulted, and enough legal smack talk by both sides that a judge issued a reminder on just how to behave. And then, just as it seemed as if the celebrity-gossip racket was about to burst open along with Cosby's reputation, the case was settled.

Constand's lawsuit has resurfaced in recent months, mostly as a footnote to the more recent allegations. (On Tuesday, a 73-year-old woman named Donna Motsinger told the New York Post she was one of the 12 Jane Does listed in Constand's case.) But the formal undoing of an icon began with Constand, a former basketball player who once dreamed of being the first Canadian in the WNBA. Her lawsuit not only opened the door for a lot of other women but revealed the extensive machinery at Cosby's disposal that helped keep the door shut for so long.


Basketball was what brought Andrea Constand to the United States from her home in Ontario, Canada. In high school, she was one of the country's top players, averaging 30 points a game with Albert Campbell Collegiate in Scarborough and playing on the country's junior team and development team, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. She got a full scholarship to play at Arizona, where she struggled her first two seasons but put up 10 points per game in her senior season, helping the Wildcats win the NIT.

"I'm on a mission," she said in a 1997 interview before leaving for Italy to play on Canada's team in the World University Games. "First to help Canada do well, then to play basketball in Italy and finally crack a spot on a team in the WNBA. "

She played in Europe for 18 months, then returned to Toronto in 1999 to train for another shot at the WNBA. She worked in a Nike store and finished her degree before taking a job coaching in a friend's teen basketball program.

That's when Temple's then-new women's basketball coach, Dawn Staley, came calling. She knew Constand from the basketball world and asked her friend to join her at Temple as director of operations for the women's team.

A friend told the Daily News that Constand saw it "as an opportunity to begin a new career path."


Constand and Bill Cosby became friends while she was at Temple, where Cosby is a familiar presence, particularly around the athletic department. He's a member of the Temple Athletics Hall of Fame, having been on the football and track & field teams during his time at the school in the 1960s, and as recently as a few weeks ago he was helping raise money for the gymnastics team.

Constand went to Cosby's home for dinner parties, or sometimes for dinner just between the two of them. They would talk about basketball, her career, other job opportunities, even her spiritual beliefs. In court filings, both sides agree to that. Then, in January 2004, Cosby invited Constand, 30, over to his Cheltenham home. He told her he wanted to "offer her assistance in her pursuit of a different career," according to her lawsuit. She got there about 9 p.m.

What happened next, according to Constant, is outlined in her suit: Constand told Cosby she "was feeling stressed about making her career decision." He offered her three blue pills, calling them herbal medication, and said they would help her relax. When Constand asked if she needed to take all three, Cosby said yes. She took them and started to shake; she felt dizzy and weak. Her limbs went slack and she felt barely conscious.

When Plaintiff advised Defendant she did not feel well, Defendant led Plaintiff to a sofa, because she could not walk on her own, where he laid her down, under the guise of "helping" her.

Subsequently, Defendant positioned himself behind Plaintiff on the sofa, touched her breasts and vaginal area, rubbed his penis against her hand, and digitally penetrated her.

Plaintiff remained in a semi-conscious state throughout the time of this ordeal.

At no time was Plaintiff capable of consent after the pills affected her, and at no time did she consent to Defendant's acts.

She woke up sometime after 4 a.m. feeling raw, her clothes strewn everywhere. Cosby greeted her in his bathrobe. Four months later, according to the Daily News, she quit her job at Temple, moved back to Canada, and began studying to become a massage therapist. A year later, on Jan. 13, 2005, she went to the police. During the case, Constand's lawyer, Dolores Troiani, went on MSNBC's Abrams Report and explained the year's delay in telling law enforcement.

Because she had to deal with this. She had to find some closure. And it was haunting her, as it does haunt every victim of a sexual assault. This is permanent injury to anyone who has suffered something such as this and you can't do it alone. You need to have therapy; you need to talk about it. And what happened was that she was having nightmares. She was experiencing many difficulties in trying to—in her mental focus and she finally came forward to her mother and immediately went to the police, not weeks later ... She was in school. There was constant talk about consent and touching. And all of that triggered in her, her understanding that she had to come forward and she had to seek help.

This wasn't the first police report to mention Cosby. In 2000, actress Lachele Covington filed a police report saying Cosby had inappropriately touched her after dinner alone in his townhouse It wasn't long before this new report started getting press, and Cosby's team went on the offensive.


Just three days after she went to the police, the calls began. Either Cosby or one of his representatives would phone up Constand or her mother, always offering either an apology or money, she would later tell the court. There were at least four calls, according to Constand, and among the Cosby reps was lawyer Martin Singer, known in Hollywood as one of the go-to pit bulls for celebrities in need of getting a scandal quashed and a master of the nasty letter. Constand said she didn't accept anything. Cosby himself confirmed this, telling Cheltenham police that neither woman asked him for money, "but had only asked him to apologize to Plaintiff and her mother, which he did," according to one filing.

That's not what Cosby's team told reporters, though. Here's one report from the proto-TMZ website Celebrity Justice, based on "sources connected to Bill Cosby." The report even includes "sources" talking to the show's executive producer, future TMZ founder Harvey Levin. Constand would later claim in court that the anonymous"Cosby rep" was Singer.

The Former Basketball Player Who Brought Down Bill Cosby

A second Celebrity Justice "scoop" arrived two days later, hammering the extortion angle with the headline "Cosby's Attorney Claims Accuser After Cash." But Cosby's team soon had a bigger problem than trying to make Constand look bad. A second woman, California lawyer Tamara Green, gave an interview to the Today show, saying that she, too, had been drugged and raped by Cosby.

I heard that there had been a sexual assault, and that by itself didn't prompt me to come forward, but then I heard that this woman had been given pills, was in a position of trust and friendship with this man, and that behind the pills he took her clothes off and groped her and what have you. I thought, you know, after all these years, it's the same M.O. The same old story, and I still didn't come forward.

But when I heard it reported that the district attorney had said that the story was weak, that she had not come forward in a timely fashion, that was for me them saying that they were not going to file the case. That they didn't believe her. It was at that time I decided that if there were only two us, one a long time ago and one right now, then that's two too many.

In the interview, Green also talked about why she didn't go to the police: a mixture of shame, fear, and having to cope with an ill brother whom Cosby had helped.

The first thing you feel is stupid, and then you feel that no one will believe you. This is the great Bill Cosby, he has tremendous wealth, power, a p.r. machine, a reputation, he is Mr. Jell-O, but the worst thing you feel is stupid. There's a shame element involved.

The second element for me was that very soon after the attack, my brother was terminally ill in the Children's Hospital, and Bill went there and gave him a portable radio, glad-handed with all the children and was the hero of the terminal children's ward. My brother died not long after that. I was unwilling at the time my brother was alive to take that away from him.


On Feb. 17, 2005, one week after the airing of Green's interview, then- Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said no charges would be filed in Constand's case due to insufficient evidence. Years later, Castor would say: "At the time I remember thinking that he probably did do something inappropriate, but thinking that and being able to prove it are two different things."


At this point, a third woman was about to go public, this time via the National Enquirer, with accusations that the funnyman had drugged and raped her. Beth Ferrier had reached out to the Enquirer, and the publication had gone so far as to have her take a lie detector test. Ferrier passed "with flying colors," the story's reporter would later tell the Daily Beast.

What did Cosby's team do? In her suit against the Enquirer and Singer, Constand said the comedian's team negotiated with the tabloid and agreed to an exclusive interview with Cosby in exchange for killing the Ferrier story. It worked. On Feb. 21, 2005, Cosby met with representatives of the Enquirer, including editor Barry Levine, in Houston, and "on or about that time" Cosby gave them the "exclusive" interview. The Enquirer even gave a copy of the unpublished Ferrier story to Cosby and his representatives; the tabloid also provided "the interview of Cosby to Cosby and his representatives for his review, prior to publication," the suit said.

Here is the story that ran:

The Former Basketball Player Who Brought Down Bill Cosby

The Former Basketball Player Who Brought Down Bill Cosby

Ferrier did tell her story—to People magazine in 2006. In a recent interview with the magazine, when asked to describe the backlash after speaking out, she said, "I lost everything."


Six days after the Enquirer story ran, Constand filed her civil suit in federal court. She filed under her name, not as a Jane Doe, although at this point, she said in filings, her privacy already had been destroyed by publications and TV stations broadcasting her name and picture. She accused Cosby of battery, assault, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, defamation/defamation per se, and false light/invasion of privacy. Early on, Constand's lawyers listed what they would be exploring during discovery, the process in which both sides gather evidence. They said, "Plaintiff will also seek the admissibility of testimony of ten (10) or more other claimants."

Those 10 would go on to be known as the Jane Does. Constand's legal team filed a request to keep their identities private using a device known as protective order. On April 27, after several days of legal bickering, Cosby's legal team made a request, having decided that Cosby needed a protective order, too.

What Cosby's team requested was extensive. They asked that everything found in discovery be considered confidential and that no one talk publicly about discovery. They wanted all court filings referencing evidence found in discovery to be "filed under seal." The motions said this was necessary to protect Cosby and the rest from "undue embarrassment, oppression, and annoyance and preserving his right to a fair trial." The women's stories, they argued, also must be kept away from the public.

Plaintiff has moved to protect the identity of the Defendant's other alleged accusers from public disclosure, citing their privacy interests and fear of embarrassment. But, tellingly, Plaintiff only seeks to conceal their names, not their allegations. This imbalance would be grossly unfair to the Defendant. While he has no desire to publicize the names of any person who prefer to remain anonymous, the Plaintiff and her attorneys should not be allowed to conceal those names and simultaneously exploit their allegations. In fairness to the Defendant, the names and the allegations should both remain confidential.

Meanwhile, the number of Jane Does grew to 12. Constand's lawyers said they found the names of two more women when going through a police file.


Unfortunately for defendant's victims, he is Bill Cosby, not Dr. Huxtable.

In her legal team's response to Cosby, Constand talked about her life since her identity had become public: reporters surrounding her house, her name plastered across TVs and newspapers, unwanted phone calls to her home, people who claimed they were journalists trying to get inside her home by faking flower deliveries. All the while Cosby, toured the country, cracked jokes, and lectured America about its morals and baggy pants.

Defendant can convene reporters and offer exclusive interviews; defendant can speak to audiences all over the country, proclaiming himself to be a moral man, above reproach. It is simply the fact that the media is neutral and ready to offer a counter-balance to his self-image, and is also prepared to publish plaintiff's account as well as the accounts of the Jane Doe witnesses, that troubles defendant.

To grant defendant's motion is even more inequitable because defendant is a public figure, who lectures to the American public about issues such as morality, and entertains audiences with his humor. Indeed, defendant even made "drugging" a topic of laughter at one of his performances, asking an audience participant if she would claim to be "drugged" by him. ... None of these women are here by choice. Defendant chose to conduct himself in this manner.

Cosby's request for such a broad seal also attracted the attention of the media, and on May 13 the Associated Press asked to join the case so it could file a motion fighting the seal.

Defendant's primary concern, that he will be embarrassed by discovery and by the public filings in this matter, is simply not sufficient to warrant the imposition of a blanket confidentiality or sealing order.

Rounds and rounds of legal filings followed, as each side did its best to portray the other as a selfish manipulator of the legal system and media norms. Finally, U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno issued his first "case management order" in early June, essentially a stern reminder to all the lawyers to behave and follow the conduct rules. The AP wasn't allowed to intervene, but Cosby didn't get the broad seal he wanted. At some point, though, the lawyers hit upon another way of keeping select court records out of the public purview. This battle would be fought again.


Cosby eventually responded with his account of what exactly the pills he'd given Constand were. He claimed they were one and a half tablets of Benadryl.


In filings, each Jane Doe explained why she wanted her identity protected before testifying about what Cosby did:

JANE DOE NO. 1

Jane Doe No. 1 lives in a small town. She is a private person, as is her 87 year old father and 82 year old mother. She is not the type of person to invite media attention, nor does she or her family want it. She believes that she has a moral and civic obligation to participate here as a witness. At the same time, she believes that she and her elderly parents will be unable to cope with significant media attention or publicity, and will find it too stressful. She requests that her identity not be revealed to the media.

JANE DOE NO. 2

Jane Doe No. 2 suffers from and has been treated for bipolar disorder. She does not want her privacy invaded, and feels that such an invasion would be upsetting to her, would be detrimental to her medical condition, and in fact might exacerbate her symptoms. She does not want to be contacted by the news, and does not want her family contacted. She believes that any unsolicited coverage or calls from the media will have a detrimental effect on her and her family, and will be a source of additional stress.

JANE DOE NO. 3

... She believes that defendant's fans or supporters might try to harass her, contact her, or otherwise give her a difficult time. Jane Doe No. 3 is also employed by a gambling casino; she believes that she could in fact lose her job if she is contacted at her place of employment, and further, that she could lose her job if the casino management has a problem simply with her being in the limelight because of her status as a Jane Doe witness here.

JANE DOE NO. 4

Jane Doe No. 4 does not want media attention or media contact, and believes it would be too stressful. She especially wants to protect the privacy of her family. Her husband has been ill, and has undergone brain surgery within the last month. As a result of his medical condition and treatment, she feels it is imperative that she and her family suffer no additional stress.

JANE DOE NO. 5 (later revealed to be Ferrier)

Jane Doe No. 5 is not requesting that her identity be kept private.

JANE DOE NO. 6

Jane Doe No. 6 does not want any notoriety, publicity, or media attention as a result of her involvement as a witness here. She wants her life to remain private and, most importantly, the same. She recognizes the time commitment associated with being a witness in these proceedings; still, she does not want the press interfering with her time outside of the scope of this case, or interfering with her ability to maintain her career or her contacts with her clients.

JANE DOE NO. 7

... She does not want her friends and family contacted, including her child who is starting a new school,or that child's school. She also fears that her child may be subjected to harassment or ridicule if her name were revealed in the press. She has recently reentered therapy as a result of dealing with the psychological repercussions over the prior events with defendant, after coming forward here. She feels that media attention would exacerbate these stressful life events for her, and therefore, she asks that her identity not be released outside of this litigation.

JANE DOE NO. 8 (revealed on Tuesday to be Donna Motsinger)

Jane Doe No. 8 will likely not be available for purposes of this litigation until mid-October 2005, when her husband's transplant and rehabilitation are complete, and she has returned to Colorado. The stress of this Jane Doe's medical needs and medical treatment is all-consuming right now, and it is unreasonable to ask this Jane Doe to divert her attention from her husband's imminent medical needs.

JANE DOE NO. 9

Jane Doe No. 9 is not seeking, and does not want, any publicity or notoriety in connection with her participation here as a witness. She does not want to be contacted, bothered, or harassed by the media.

JANE DOE NO. 10

Jane Doe No. 10 believes that media attention will be humiliating, and she does not want it. She does not want people showing up at her house, whether it be defendant's fans, the press, or cameramen. She does not want any of these sources contacting her. She understands that as a witness, she will be deposed and will testify subject to cross-examination, but does not seek publicity, and does not want her name disclosed to others outside of this litigation.

JANE DOE NO. 11

Jane Doe No. 11 does not want to be harassed by the media or by others. She values her privacy,and requests that it be respected. She summed up her feelings in the following way: having already been a victim, she feels that she will be victimized again if her name is disclosed outside of this litigation.

JANE DOE NO. 12

Jane Doe No. 12 does not want to be contacted, bothered or harassed by the media, and believes that such contact would be intrusive.

Robreno denied their request to conceal their identities when they testified, citing their "unsubstantiated broad allegations" that were "insufficient to establish good cause."


On Nov. 4, Robreno issued a second case-management order, outlining how discovery would work. It was mostly technical—how requests should appear on the page and the like—and set some deadlines. The final line was not routine:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all requests for discovery, responses and legal memoranda filed pursuant to this order shall be filed UNDER SEAL.

Why did Robreno feel that was necessary? Here is Robreno's explanation, which he tucked away in a footnote.

Certain issues have arisen, inter alia, concerning the permissible scope of inquiry, the role of counsel at deposition and the extent to which a witness may rely upon prior statements in answering questions. The issues have been brought to the Court's attention by way of letters from counsel to the Court. The Court has reviewed the transcripts of the depositions and conferred with the parties.

Yes, that's the entire explanation. The AP would later point out that this decision was made after a telephone conference with the parties that was listed on the docket—but without a description of what was set to be discussed. Also note that the issues were coming up via "letters from counsel" to the court and not motions, which almost always become an easy-to-access public record. These letters were not filed with the clerk's office and were not made available on the public docket, the AP said. The next three pieces of the Cosby case were all filed under seal until Nov. 23, when the AP filed a second request to intervene.


Mr. Cosby is unquestionably a public figure, and his conduct—both as alleged in the complaint and in the litigation itself—is a legitimate matter for public scrutiny.

So argued the AP. Constand's lawyers told the court they sided with the AP—and strongly. Their response to the court said that not only did they want the seals lifted, but they believed the use of them gave Cosby "de facto confidentiality" via an "unorthodox and 'secretive' avenue of proceeding."

It permits Defendant to manipulate public opinion, as he has admitted that he has done, and it also prohibits Plaintiff from fully responding to motions filed by Defendant, which motions raise factual issues concerning matters, which are under seal.

Cosby's team responded as you would expect: They wanted the rules to stay as they were. They even took a shot at the AP, saying the news service appeared to have an "inflated view of its right to access the discovery proceedings in this case."

Again, the AP's motion to intervene was denied. In his explanation, Robreno portrayed the AP as overreacting. He did not address why certain business was being conducted via letters, instead of public court motions.

Once the depositions are concluded, the Court will determine if the notes of testimony and motions and responses containing portions of that testimony shall be subject to a sealing order. Unless a sealing order is entered at that point, the seal will lapse

To this day, more than a dozen filings in the Cosby case remain under seal.


On Feb. 1, 2006, Constand sued the the National Enquirer and Singer. Her suit had one count of defamation against Singer, another against the tabloid and a count against both for false light. Singer, however, would remain one of Cosby's defenders of choice, publicly attacking the growing number of sexual-assault accusations against the comedian as "unsubstantiated, fantastical stories about things they say occurred 30, 40, or even 50 years ago."


The seals created an odd dynamic, with each side filing public motions containing smidgens of details from the closed files, almost like teasers of what was being hidden. Cosby's team used the process to reveal personal information about Constand: her family members, their names and addresses, and where she was studying massage therapy. Constand's team used them to shed light on what was being placed under seal and expose the tactics that kept Cosby's dark side from getting out. There was, for instance, this detail, dropped into some bickering over interviewing Constand's family in Canada.

Following Defendant's telephone conversation with Plaintiff and her mother in January 2005, Defendant had employees of William Morris and his California attorney, Martin Singer, Esquire, call Plaintiff in order to attempt to arrange a meeting or attempt to discuss compensation. Similarly, in the past, Defendant caused a William Morris employee to mail a note and check to a Jane Doe witness.

Yes, that's just a casual mention that mega-agency William Morris might have been mailing money to one of the Jane Does.


Barbara Bowman gave an interview to Philadelphia magazine, published in June 2006, saying that Cosby had drugged and raped her when she was an aspiring actress.

She told a lawyer. The lawyer laughed at her. She never mentioned it to an authority figure again. Bowman won't disclose details of what happened before she's deposed. But when she read about Andrea Constand, she decided that enough was enough—she couldn't sit in silence any longer.

This was the moment when the Cosby case could have blown everything open: the way gossip mags barter and horse trade for scoops, how agencies and lawyers pay women to stay quiet, why so many people were afraid to speak out against Cosby, a man known for playing a kind-hearted TV father and wearing sweaters that said "Hello Friend." And then, soon after the National Enquirer suit was merged with the Cosby case for pretrial purposes, everything stopped. The filings slowed to a crawl in July, and then there was nothing at all in August or September or October—nothing until Nov. 8, 2006, when both sides agreed the case would be dismissed with prejudice. On the same date, Consand's case against the Enquirer reached the same conclusion.

The terms of Constand's settlement with Cosby have never been disclosed. The only hint came two weeks ago, when Cosby's website published a defensive statement that said "decade-old, discredited allegations against Mr. Cosby have resurfaced. The fact they are being repeated does not make them true. Mr. Cosby does not intend to dignify these allegations with any comment." Cosby's team did comment again, a day later, with a very different take.

Joint statement from Dolores Troiani, counsel to Andrea Constand, and John P. Schmitt, counsel to Bill Cosby.

The statement released by Mr. Cosby's attorney over the weekend was not intended to refer in any way to Andrea Constand. As previously reported, differences between Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand were resolved to the mutual satisfaction of Mr. Cosby and Ms. Constand years ago. Neither Mr. Cosby nor Ms. Constand intends to comment further on the matter.

That statement is still on Cosby's website, the top story today under the "News" heading.


Constand stayed in Canada, continued as a massage therapist, and hasn't spoken publicly since about the case. I could find only one interview with Constand—from before her identity was revealed—and in it she doesn't say much, but she sounds incredibly nervous, like one of the Jane Does, which is how anyone would feel.

I tried reaching Constand but never heard back. (Her mother very politely declined to comment.) I wonder how she feels now, watching all of this from another country as America decides that it doesn't like Bill Cosby anymore. He has never been convicted in court of rape, but in the face of so many different accusations with so many similar details there seems to be little question of his guilt. America has decided—after a decade of having the exact same facts.

I don't know what changed. I don't know why now. I can only guess as to what took so long. But I know none of this happens without Constand. She was the first to tell police that Cosby drugged and raped her. It was her case that made Ferrier, Green, and Bowman decide to talk. It's her court filings that still get cited over and over when setting the framework for everything Cosby is accused of doing.

In recent photos, she looks happy. I hope that's true.

Image via Associated Press

If you would like to celebrate the execrable American tradition of "Black Friday" by protesting Walm

Mac and Cheese: An Appreciation

0
0

Mac and Cheese: An Appreciation

Patti LaBelle and I share a common bond: We both love macaroni and cheese.

I should mention here that I love most foods, but mac and cheese holds a special place—especially during the Thanksgiving holiday. It is the Toni Morrison and Luther Vandross of foods—loving and warm; in a league of its own. The savory cheeses trigger the joys of home, and make you want to be a better, more loving person. In the moment, mac and cheese is all that matters.

Stevie Wonder once sang about "living for the city." That was a lie. He was really singing about "living for mac and cheese." Stevie knows.

I cannot tell you the first time I had mac and cheese, but I can tell you of its powers.

Bring a pan of crisp and creamy (but not too creamy; it should never be watery) mac and cheese to Thanksgiving this year. You will instantly become the most beloved person at the gathering (note: this applies to all social occasions). Family and friends and third cousins you've never met will speak your name for generations. They will tell stories of your legend—grand tales of The Time [YOUR NAME HERE] Brought Mac and Cheese to The Glorious Thanksgiving Feast of 2014. "Aunt Caroline's stuffing was terrible, but your mac and cheese changed my life," they will say. You will be a hero.

Patti LaBelle is a hero. Don't you want to be a hero like Patti LaBelle? Of course you do.

Here is a true story: Oprah, 1996 MVP of Black America and all-time records-holding daytime queen, approves of Patti LaBelle's mac and cheese. It is one of her favorite things. Oprah knows what is good for you. Listen to her.

Here is another true story: the first time Elton John tasted LaBelle's five-cheese mac he had an out-of-body experience. "Boyfriend swore he saw Jesus," LaBelle says of the famed singer and composer.

This is not hyperbole. This is the power of mac and cheese. Embrace it.

Walk into the golden, gooey light.

Now, go forth and set Cory Booker straight.

[Illustration by Sam Woolley]

Thank God: Kendall Jenner Was Not Bullied by Models at Fashion Week

0
0

Thank God: Kendall Jenner Was Not Bullied by Models at Fashion Week

Earlier reports indicated that Kim Kardashian's teenaged sister Kendall Jenner was bullied by the other models at fashion week this fall. But Kendall, who has quickly become successful in the fashion industry for you know, whatever reason, told Dazed that no one hates her because she is rich and beautiful.

Bullying "has never happened, ever," she said. "I would see rumors of girls bullying me backstage and putting cigarettes out in my drink, and none of that has happened. Everyone's been really cool to me. I've never had one girl be mean... so far."

Well, maybe not to your face, Ken.

Regardless of whether or not she has any detractors, Kendall does have one very important fan: her sister's husband, Kanye West. She told Dazed,

The other day Kanye hugged me and was like, "Yo, I'm really proud of you." And I was like, "REALLY?!" It's so sweet to hear that.

Sounds like everything's coming up Kendall!

[Photo via Getty]

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

0
0

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

In fiction, kings and queens who succumb to madness are a great time. In reality, not so much. It's no fun having huge chunks of the world controlled by someone who is irrational and unstable. Here are ten kings and queens whose craziness changed the course of world events.

10. Ivan the Terrible's Fits Ushered in the Romanovs (1530-1584)

This list could have been all tsars. These rulers were raised under conditions guaranteed to make anyone a sociopath. Most of them saw close relatives murdered by other close relatives. Though abused relentlessly as children, as adults they had both absolute power and a sword of Damocles over their heads. Ivan's father died when he was only three, and his mother was poisoned when he was eight. During his minority an unruly gang of noblemen governed the land, and starved, beat, and neglected the boy and his brother. He took the abuse out on small animals, which he would throw off the roofs of palaces. Hurling things about proved good practice for the tsar-in-training. At 16, Ivan marched into the throne room, grabbed the leader of the noblemen, and threw the man to Ivan's trained hunting dogs.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

Ivan's reign was marked by violent paranoia. When Ivan suspected a nobleman wanted the throne, he dressed the man up as a king, put him on the throne, and gutted him. Ivan created a special police force who rode around with dogs' heads hanging from their saddles and who could murder anyone at any time, in public. Once, when Ivan heard a rumor that a town called Novgorod was rebellious, he killed every single person in the town, sewed the town's archbishop up into a bearskin, and had his dogs hunt the bearman down.

It's hard to write all that and then use the phrase, "conditions deteriorated," but, somehow, conditions deteriorated. Ivan started having fits. In paintings he's depicted as having a prominent nose and forehead. These are the way kind (and probably fearful) artists rendered calluses that Ivan had built up by banging his head on the stone floor in front of religions icons. Ivan would also have fits of rage. During one fit, he kicked his pregnant daughter-in-law in the stomach and caused her to miscarry. His son, an able and promising ruler, yelled at him. Ivan beat his son to death with his scepter, then went into paroxysms of remorse. It was that moment that changed history. Ivan was a member of the ancient Rurik line of nobility. With the only strong heir to the throne swept out of the way, Russia descended into chaos after Ivan's death. At last, nobles cast around for any noble family that the nation could rally around. They came up with an heir called Michael Romanov.

9. Peter the Great Changed the Line of Succession For His Wife-Psychologist (1672-1725)

Peter the Great was, in many ways, a wonderful sovereign. Passionately committed to both his country and to progress and a tireless learner, he spent much of his childhood (imprisoned and under constant threat from his half-sister Sofia) learning army tactics and designing ships. As an adult, he toured Europe, learning about the latest advances in the sciences so he could bring them back to Russia.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

Sometimes he took his love of learning, and his impatience with those who didn't get on board, too far. When he was learning dentistry, he would practice on his nobles. When a group of attendants were upset while watching the dissection of a corpse, he ordered them to walk up to the corpse and take a bite out of it. Then there was his terrible paranoia. Peter was the child of the former tsar's second wife. When he was ten, he saw the relatives of the tsar's first wife toss his uncles and aunts off the roof of a building to the courtyard below, where they were torn apart by supposedly "loyal" soldiers. He was fanatical about loyalty, to the point where he had his own son tortured to death for temporarily fleeing to Sweden.

One person he trusted was his wife, Catherine. Catherine's life was a Cinderella story made into a horror movie. Captured by the Russian army, she was passed around by soldiers. She happened to be passed up the chain of command. Eventually she met the tsar, who became enthralled to her. Peter had fits of terror, and during those fits, Catherine was the only one who could soothe him. She would talk to him, or stay perfectly still, holding him, until he fell asleep. Peter decreed that a tsar should be able to name his own successor, and though he never specified Catherine should succeed him, she did. More importantly, this decree marked a sharp turn away from blood ties and first born sons, and the beginning of a belief that any ruler would do, provided they were a good Russian.

8. Peter III's Madness Created Catherine the Great (1728-1762)

It says something about Peter III that the only reason historians believe that his son, Paul I, was legitimate was that Paul has his "father's instability." Peter was an entirely contemptible ruler, but he was also a pitiable figure. Like many of the Romanovs in line for the throne, he had almost no contact with his parents. Instead, he was raised by a tutor who was horribly abusive to the slow pupil. Peter was regularly beaten, starved, and humiliated. He developed into a creepy blend of manchild and sociopath.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

He didn't consummate his marriage to Catherine, a pretty little German nobody who had been imported as a brood mare, for at least nine years, because he spent every night in bed playing with toy soldiers. When he wanted a little power, he would force his wife to dress up as a soldier and put her through military drills. For a change of pace, he indulged in animal abuse, "training" a pack of hunting dogs by beating them, and conducting military trials and hangings of the rats he found nibbling his toy soldiers. So predictable was his insanity that, in order to get him away from Catherine while she was giving birth to a definitely illegitimate child (instead of just a probably illegitimate child), a minister loyal to her set fire to his own house. He knew the tsar would rush off to see the flames and leave Catherine alone.

Most crazy tsars, unpleasant as they were, kept their throne. Why did Peter get deposed in a coup that left the foreign Catherine free to become one of Russia's most famous rulers? Because Peter was crazy like a Prussian, not crazy like a Russian. Peter was, for some time, considered the heir to the Swedish throne. He was raised to dislike Russia, and he did. He idolized the Prussian leader Frederick the Great, who was, when Peter became tsar, at war with Russia - and losing. At the moment when it looked like Frederick was done for, Peter ordered his army to settle with his idol on very favorable terms. Catherine, who actually was born in Prussia, had spent the first few years of her marriage vigorously Russianizing herself and equally vigorously cultivating the Russian army. The army decided they preferred a Prussian who had decided she was Russian to a Russian who had decided he was Prussian, and Peter was captured, deposed, and killed in short order.

7. Charles VI Signs Centuries of War Into Being (1380-1422)

At last, we shall leave Russia. On to France! Charles the VI was king for a very long time, during which a united, prosperous, and powerful country fell into civil war and chaos. Charles had all the paranoia of the tsars, but none of the aggression. This was a shame, as he arguably had more cause to be aggressive. Charles' brother, Louis of Valois, enjoyed everything that made the people around him miserable, including money, prestige, and other people's wives. "Other people's wives," in this case, included the Queen. People soon began questioning how far Louis would go to get the Queen, when, during a ball, the king and some fellow noblemen dressed up as "wild men" in full-body suits of tar and flax. Charles had happened to wander away from the group when Louis grabbed a torch and, declaring he wanted to figure out who the men were, thrust it at the group. The other men burned to death.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

Charles soon began having spells. Convinced he was made of glass and would shatter if he moved too quickly, he would hardly move for hours on end. He became incoherent and paranoid. Perhaps out of resentment, he grew enamored with Louis' wife, and would demand she stay with him at all times. During these spells, Louis became the de facto king. This made him a formidable opponent. Anyone who made a move to weaken the Count of Valois would find, a month or so later, that they were the enemy of the acting king of France. One night, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, decided to put an end to Louis. He hired a group of conspirators to hack Louis to death in the street (as he was coming from the Queen's apartments). The conspirators weren't particularly talented. They wore the livery of the Duke of Burgundy. It wasn't long before people found out exactly who killed Louis.

The nation erupted into civil war, which the fragile king couldn't quell. John the Fearless went to the English for military support, which they happily gave him, in exchange for land in France. After John the Fearless was killed, the English seemed strangely reluctant to leave. Charles "the Mad" had to declare an English king the heir to France. The treaty didn't hold, because of turmoil in the English court, but it did give England and France an excuse to go to war for the next few hundred years.

6. Emperor Qianfei Starts the Decline of the Song Dynasty (449-465)

Here's another line that could populate the entire list. The members of the Song dynasty enjoyed killing two types of people: (1)their family and (2)everyone else's family. Qianfei started out his life as a prisoner of his own uncle. The young Qianfei was under constant threat until his father killed his uncle, and set the boy free. That turned out to be a mistake, both historically and personally. The boy showed his gratitude by hating his father so much that, when he became emperor at the age of 15, he demanded all his father's portraits be given a large ugly nose. He also repealed all his father's laws at once, throwing the country into chaos.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

It's never a good sign when a mother's last words are, "Somebody bring me a sword and cut me open to see how this animal came out of me." Qianfei killed nearly everyone in his family, starting with his brother His brother was a third son and the last few emperors had been third sons as well. Qianfei was superstitious. He left some of his uncles alive, but caged them and put them on public display. One nobleman who plotted against him got his eyes scooped out. Qianfei put the eyes in honey and called them pickled ghost eyes. In between bouts of murder he engaged in sexual depravity, ordering his female relatives have sex in front of him. If they refused, he killed their family. One aunt did not refuse, and started an affair with Qianfei. When her husband objected, Qianfei faked her death by killing a servant and sending the husband the mutilated body. Then he killed the husband. And he killed the general who suggested that he not kill the husband.

This episode provides the first clue as to why he didn't last long. As Qianfei's paranoia increased, he slaughtered anyone that even looked like a traitor. Once he killed a servant because she looked like a woman who had told him, in a dream, that he would be killed. Then he was killed.

Amazingly this act was not committed by his family, or by the military. (If there is one thing about being a monarch I've learned from making this list, it's never piss off the military.) He was killed by his attendants. Just to drive that home, a group of servants killed the emperor, and nobody objected. That's how bad Qianfei was. One of the caged uncles was put on the throne, but the dynasty was done for. The uncle killed everyone except for another underaged nephew, who succeeded him but who was killed at fourteen, by his general. (See? Military.) The general began the Qi dynasty, and that's all she wrote for the Songs.

(Note: This is a picture of Liu Yu of the Song dynasty, as there don't appear to be any pictures available of Qianfei)

5. Maria of Portugal Lets In Napoleon (1734-1816)

Maria, unlike almost everyone else on this list, had an idyllic childhood. Her father, the King of Portugal, doted on her and her sisters. He spent most of his days taking the court from one beautiful location to another, giving his daughter dolls modeled on the saints, and patronizing musicians and artists. For anyone else, this would have made for a happy life, but that's not the kind of thing one can do when one is king. While the King played around, his minister, the Marquis of Pombal, managed the country. In the Marquis' view, "managing" the country meant imprisoning everyone who questioned him, and killing the rest. When an attempt was made on the King's life, the Marquis rounded up his strongest political enemies, tortured them into confessions, broke their bones on a scaffold, and then burned the scaffold down.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

This might not have touched Maria so deeply if religious mania didn't run in her family. (Her family also ran in her family. She was married to her own uncle. Her son was married to her sister.) When she acceded to the throne, she became tormented by the thought that her beloved father was in hell for being a bad king, and that she was soon to join him. She amnestied all the political prisoners, and gave many positions at court. This did not help things, as decades in a 18th century Portuguese prison do not make for mental health. Many of her counselors and courtiers were as unstable as she was.

When, within the space of a year, her eldest son, her only living daughter, and two of her closest ministers all died, Maria fell apart. Some days she would embrace the fact that she was already damned by talking in an "unchaste" manner. Some days she would pace the halls screaming. Her twenty-six-year-old second son was made regent, but he was a lackadaisical man with no ability to reform an entire court of lunatics. The country was in no shape to meet Napoleon in 1807. The moment he marched on them, the entire family fled to Brazil.

4. Sultan Mustafa Nearly Broke the Ottoman Empire Apart. Twice. (1592-1639)

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

As with the Russian tsars and the Song dynasty, so with the sultans of the Ottoman empire - and for much the same reasons. The sultans' stories are complicated by many wives and many sons. Strap in. Our tale begins with a group of brothers, the most prominent among them being Ahmed I and Mustafa. Ahmed, wanting power to himself, put his eleven-year-old brother Mustafa in "The Cage," a tower with no windows, a brick wall built over the door, and no human contact. Ahmed had a few sons, but died at the exceedingly early age of twenty-eight. His most influential consort knew that her sons were too young to hold the throne, and that any of Ahmed's other sons would probably either kill or imprison hers. Out of The Cage Mustafa came, fourteen years after being put in what was basically an above-ground pit.

Some found it odd that he walked around, always accompanied by two naked slave girls, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was he had a habit of giving important positions to random people he liked - such a man by the side of a road who offered him some water on a hot day. Without a strong and organized central government, the empire started to crumble. Back into The Cage he went, with the two women this time.

He was replaced by Ahmed's oldest son, Osman. The young man might have made a decent ruler. He tried to reorganize the government and put in capable people. But he forbade drinking and smoking, especially for soldiers, and tried to chastise the elite royal guard, called the Janisarries. They rebelled and sentenced him to death by "compression of the testicles." (Does anyone remember what I wrote about not angering the military?)

Out came Mustafa again. At this point, he had a habit of simply sitting around giggling to himself. In between giggle fits, he would go around looking for his nephew, Osman, forgetting the man was dead. When reminded that his other nephews were alive, he made plans to kill them. He also went back to his old tricks, appointing random people to important positions. Tax revenue from the provinces was choked off. The officials in the provinces were one step from declaring themselves local kings. To put a cap on things, the Safavid Persian Empire attacked and grabbed what is now Iraq. Back into The Cage Mustafa went, for good this time.

3. Sultan Ibrahim Bankrupts the Ottoman Empire and Starts a Two Decade War (1615-1648)

Mustafa was succeeded by Murad IV, one of the nephews that he'd considered killing. Murad IV was a ruthless but effective ruler. His last act, before dying, was ordering the execution of his last surviving brother. He had nothing against little Ibrahim -although as it turns out he should have. Murad simply believed that the line was "cursed" by madness and needed to be annihilated. Sadly for at least 279 women, Ibrahim's mother successfully pleaded for her son's life.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

Ibrahim had spent his entire life in The Cage, with only occasional contact with humans. He came out with what can be tactfully described as a lust for life. Made frantic by his years of deprivation, he acquired everything he could, and lashed out violently at anyone who might take his possessions away.

He quickly accumulated 280 concubines in a harem. One day, when he saw a young cow's genitals he had a cast made of them, circulated it throughout the empire, looking for a woman to match them. (Here is our second horrifying version of Cinderella.) At last, a woman was found. She became his favorite concubine. He nicknamed her "sugar lump" or "sugar cube." Sugar didn't care for competition, so she told the fanatically jealous Ibrahim that one of the women in the harem was unfaithful, only she didn't know who. Ibrahim had all 280 tied up in sacks and thrown in the Bosphorus. Only one survived when her sack came undone. She was taken aboard a French freighter bound for Paris - which was probably the minimum safe distance from Ibrahim.

This he got away with. What finally did Ibrahim in was deciding that one of his concubines should be the daughter of the Grand Mufti - the interpreter of religious law. He kidnapped the girl, but returned her after a few days, so she was not among the women drowned. Meanwhile, he was fanatical in acquiring all the gold and jewels he could, to make up for his first twenty years of deprivation, pulling jewels from temples and threatening to stuff his ministers with straw if they objected. Just to put a further strain on resources, Ibrahim started a war with Venice. He soon couldn't pay the Janissaries. They might have felt guilty deposing, sending to The Cage, and eventually executing their sultan. How fortunate that there was an interpreter of religious law there to assure them that it was the right thing to do. The war with Venice outlasted Ibrahim by 22 years.

2. Justin II Lost Half of Italy While Playing Bumper Cars (520-578)

Justin II, like most of the other monarchs on this list, spent his formative years wondering if he was going to be murdered. He was one of the potential heirs to the Byzantine Empire, and he grew up under the empire's most notorious couple, Justinian and Theodora. Of the two, only Justinian was left, but all the potential heirs knew they could get the chop either before or after the emperor's death. Justin was one of two Justins in a whole crop of cousins. He had been Theodora's favorite, the child of one of her sisters, and Justinian remained a uxorious man. So this Justin got crowned. The other Justin got killed.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

Let's be fair. Justin II inherited a tough situation. Justinian's foreign policy had consisted of expanding militarily as far as he could, then paying his new neighbors not to attack him. Although not something that one would think about while saluting a flag, it was a crackerjack idea. Tribute was not anywhere near as expensive as war. Unfortunately, the empire was going through some tough financial times, and Justinian had been borrowing to cover his annual payments. Justin believed he would do better by refusing payment to the Persians in the east while playing the tribes to the north against each other. It did not go well.

It was then, under the strain of multiple nearing armies, that Justin started to disintegrate. While ministers asked him what they should do, he would claim that he heard voices and climb under his bed to escape them. Those were good days. On bad days, he would violently attack the servants, biting them on the arms and head. Legend has it that he literally ate a couple of his servants. In desperate self-preservation, the servants tried to think up some way to keep the emperor too distracted to eat them all. They came up with a throne on wheels. The servants raced him around the halls of his palace in the throne, trying to keep him amused with the speed.

In the end Justin II fared pretty well - perhaps better than he deserved considering his last words as emperor were complaints about his servants. He regained some of his senses, and handed over power to one of his generals. (Military. Military. Military.) He lived out his life in obscurity, unmurdered.

1. Ludwig II of Bavaria Went Uphill After He Went Downhill (1845-1886)

Ludwig II of Bavaria is also known as the Swan King, or the Fairy King, names he no doubt would have encouraged during his lifetime. He liked the idea of being a king, but wasn't particularly good at it. How not good? He lost his whole nation within two years. Two years into his reign, Bavaria was swallowed up by Prussia. King Ludwig was allowed to retain his title and some powers, but beyond the title, he wasn't much interested in government.

10 Monarchs Whose Madness Changed History

He was interested in the things that have made him, subsequently, a beloved monarch. He built a succession of stunning palaces. He hired theater managers to revolutionize theater in Munich, setting new standards of drama for the western world. He was the most important and enduring patron of Wagner. (Well. They can't all be winners.) What's more, he did all this with royal funds. Naturally, he accrued a lot of debt.

It was this debt that caused a council to declare him insane and unfit to rule. That's right building too many pretty things and funding the arts qualified as madness. Standards for insane monarchs really dropped in the 19th century. Today, many people believe that Ludwig was unfairly condemned. It's tough to say whether the fact that Ludwig was found dead in a shallow lake, along with the doctor who diagnosed him, three days after he was deposed strengthens or weakens their case. Whatever the conclusion, Ludwig II was the one mad monarch who left his country a great legacy. Bavaria remained the cultural center of Prussia for the next sixty years, many people enjoy Wagner for some reason, and to this day Ludwig's palaces draw millions of visitors. And not even one member of the clergy was dressed up as a bear and hunted by dogs.

[Via The Secret Lives of Tsars, Absolute Terror, Blood Royal, 1000 Words for 1000 Days, Maria I of Portugal, Mustafa I of Turkey, Ibrahim I of Turkey, Murad IV, Bavaria's Mad King Ludwig May Not Have Been So Mad After All, King Ludwig II, Justin II.]


How Long Will I Be Stuck in This Airport? A Thanksgiving Travel Forecast

0
0

How Long Will I Be Stuck in This Airport? A Thanksgiving Travel Forecast

If you're one of the tens of thousands of people who are trapped in one of the United States' many fine airports on this Thanksgiving Eve, you may find yourself wondering when the hell you're going to get out of here and on to your destination. Here's a quick forecast for your (eventual) departure.


New York/LaGuardia

Number of Cancelled Flights: 107 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: Almost all of them.

Current Weather: Very low clouds, gusty winds, light snow, planes are required to operate on instruments right now (IFR).

Your Forecast Departure: You could be one of the lucky few who manages to get out today as opposed to tomorrow or Friday. A comet could smash through the atmosphere and wipe out civilization, too. Anything is possible! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Misery Number: 7 (trips to a curiously-scented Hudson News for a Diet Coke.)


New York/JFK

Number of Cancelled Flights: 15 departures so far today

Number of Delayed Flights: A good number of them.

Current Weather: Same as LaGuardia.

Your Forecast Departure: Since the number of cancellations is far lower than the hundreds of flights that depart JFK every day, you'll probably get out today!

Misery Number: 4 (times that creepy guy will stare into your eyes while he picks his teeth with his boarding pass.)


Newark Liberty

Number of Cancelled Flights: 83 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: Most of them.

Current Weather: Very low clouds, gusty winds, rain/snow mix, visibility around one mile.

Your Forecast Departure: Maybe tonight, but if you're stuck in Newark at this point, you're probably not getting out until tomorrow.

Misery Number: 8 (babies screaming.)


Philadelphia

Number of Cancelled Flights: 82 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: Almost all of them except for that one cowboy pilot who just knows he can nail that landing.

Current Weather: Low clouds, snow, gusty winds, marginal visibility.

Your Forecast Departure: Tonight, if the precipitation stops and your plane is already at the gate...otherwise, tomorrow.

Misery Number: 9 (calls from your mother asking if you're sure there are no other flights today???)


Washington National

Number of Cancelled Flights: 34 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: 70 or so at the moment.

Current Weather: Clouds around 1,000 feet, a stiff 17 MPH wind from the north, good visibility, no precipitation at the moment.

Your Forecast Departure: If your plane is there, you're golden. If your plane is stuck down the cancellation chain...you might make it to where you're going by tomorrow.

Misery Number: 5 (times your friend will tell you she will always call it NATIONAL Airport and not REAGAN Airport, because it's already named after a president, thankyouverymuch.)


Charlotte

Number of Cancelled Flights: 12 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: More than a hundred.

Current Weather: Mostly cloudy with light winds.

Your Forecast Departure: Probably today, but the vast majority of people flying through Charlotte come or go on a regional jet, and those are the first ones delayed or cancelled due to bad weather or cancellations down the chain.

Misery Number: 2 (jerks who refuse to stand to the right so we can walk to the left.)


Chicago O'Hare

Number of Cancelled Flights: 15 departures so far today.

Number of Delayed Flights: 160 at the moment.

Current Weather: Cold, cloudy, breezy.

Forecast Departure: Probably today, unless you're heading to the East Coast.

Misery Index: 2 (gagging whiffs of whatever it is they're cooking at that god-awful place two gates over.)


Minneapolis

Number of Cancelled Flights: 19 departures so far today, almost all due to planes stuck on the East Coast.

Number of Delayed Flights: A few of them, but delays are only about an hour coming and going.

Current Weather: Low clouds, poor visibility, intermittent snow.

Your Forecast Departure: Probably today!

Misery Number: 1 (senator with a wide stance)

Hopefully you'll be able to get to where you're going today in a timely manner and in one piece. If you're stuck at an airport, take in the fine scenery of snow gently falling on top of the airplanes that aren't taking you anywhere. Happy Thanksgiving!

[Image: AP]


You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Video: Cops Shot, Killed 12-Year-Old Two Seconds After Arriving at Park

0
0

Authorities released video this afternoon of a police officer fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice this weekend in a Cleveland park. In the video, you can see police opening fire at Rice, who was carrying an airsoft gun, within two seconds of arriving on the scene.

The shooting took place Saturday afternoon at Cudell Recreation Center. Apparently, a concerned citizen spotted Rice with the toy and called 911.

"The guy keeps pulling it out," the 911 caller said, according to WKYC. "It's probably fake, but you know what, he's scaring the (expletive) out of (inaudible). ... He's sitting on the swing right now, but he keeps pulling it in and out of his pants and pointing it at people. Probably a juvenile, you know? … I don't know if it's real or not, you know?"

Officers claim they asked Rice to put his hands up and he didn't comply. In the video above, the police car comes to a stop at 0:19, and by 0:21 the boy is already doubled over and falling to the ground, mortally wounded. Rice was rushed to the hospital, where he died Sunday morning.

Yesterday, Rice's family released a statement:

"We feel the actions of the patrol officer who took our son's life must be made public. It is our prayer and request for citizens in the City of Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio to remain calm at this time. We ask for the public to demonstrate peacefully."

Scheming Mom Tricked Son Into Thinking He Had Cancer to Raise Thousands

0
0

Scheming Mom Tricked Son Into Thinking He Had Cancer to Raise Thousands

Sandy Nguyen was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail, five years probation, and 125 hours of community service for admitting to having collected tens of thousands of dollars after convincing friends, family, and her own son that he was dying of leukemia. Nguyen would apparently shave her son Jaiden's head every day before school to keep up the ruse.

According to the Arapahoe County District Attorney's office, Nguyen, 29, first started telling her family and others that her six-year-old son Jaiden had been undergoing cancer treatments since September 2012. Nguyen's scheme was finally discovered after a doctor at Children's Hospital of Denver heard about the story and checked her claims against medical records that didn't exist. From CBS Denver:

Various community and school fundraisers raised some $25,000 for the family, and police say Nguyen took at least $16,000 of that money to pay for a trip to Disneyland with her family. Investigators said some of the money raised during the scheme was found in the family's home.

At the sentencing hearing Nguyen's defense said the scam began after Nguyen's son was diagnosed with a skin condition and that she did not set out to deceive people. But she failed to stop the situation when donations started pouring in.

KUSA reports that students at Jaiden's school, Rolling Hills Elementary, gave up their allowance money for his cause, and asked their grandparents for donations, too. When investigators questioned Jaiden, he told them "he believed he had cancer and was going to die."

Nguyen's lawyer argued in court that while the mother did nothing to stop the lie from spreading, "none of this happened for personal gain."Every single penny" was apparently kept in Nguyen's home because she "didn't know what to do with it."

"While other parents convince their children to dream of a great and limitless future, Sandy Nguyen convinced her son that death hovered over him and that his life was in jeopardy," Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler said in a statement.

The mother was apparently pregnant at the time of her arrest by police, and her children, including Jaiden, are currently in the custody of their father. Nguyen pleaded guilty to to one count of charitable fraud and one count of child abuse. She will serve her 90-day jail sentence on work release, working during the day and sleeping in jail at night.

[Image via Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department]

Writer's $600 Sneakers Render Him Incapable of Relating to Loved Ones

0
0

Writer's $600 Sneakers Render Him Incapable of Relating to Loved Ones

Every November, media types, ourselves included, trot out the trope that spending time with family during Thanksgiving is necessarily a difficult thing. Your sister is hateful, your uncles are racist, your nana's candied yams are a brutal, sunset-hued chore to be endured. Today, we meet the saddest victim of these holiday communication breakdowns: a poor soul whose excellent taste in footwear left him unable to bond with the people he cherished most.

In an essay titled "Why You Should Never Wear $600 Sneakers to Thanksgiving Dinner," GQ's Jake Woolf offers a cautionary tale against stunting on your loved ones this holiday season. He begins:

Last year, I decided to wear my Visvim FBT sneakers home to Thanksgiving.

True to the title of the piece, the newly released pair of Visvim FBTs to which Woolf refers to retails for $630.

What started as excitement to stunt on some country folk quickly became a barrage of inquiries I couldn't even begin to succinctly answer. Explaining niche fashion to a person who knows literally nothing on the subject is like being a senator and being asked to summarize how to pass a bill in one or two sentences. The difference is no one expects a senator to be able to do that.

Explaining the manifold appeal of owning luxury goods that make you look like Zoolander's Hansel isn't quite the same thing as summarizing the nuances of our country's legislative process, but to follow Woolf's metaphor, asking a senator to do it in one to two sentences isn't really all that unreasonable. Here, John Boehner's office—a member of the lower house, but bear with me—does it in eight shark GIFs.

The country folk, Jake Woolf soon learns, are not such easy souls on which to stunt:

The stress of feeling the need to explain myself was enough to make me regret my decision. But then, my aunt blindsided me when she asked, "Where can I buy a pair?" She's a yoga instructor, so I should have known she'd be into this crunchy stuff. But how could I delicately explain that in order to procure a pair, she'd have to buy them online, plus pay customs upon their arrival, and that even then the price might make her head explode? How do you explain that $600 sneakers aren't the craziest thing on the planet? And what does it say about me, her nephew in the big city, that I find it sensible to drop that kind of dough on shoes? Don't you need to, like, pay rent and cable bills? She'd wonder. I wouldn't be surprised if she concluded I must be selling drugs. Worst of all, if I told her what I'd shelled out she'd likely rat me out to my mom, whose trademark gaze of disappointed makes me sad just to think about. But I had to say something—there's only so many times you can eject from a conversation by saying you "need more wine" before people start to think you've got even bigger problems. I ended up deflecting her curiosity by telling her I would email her a link for where to buy them at a later date. Being the wonderful nephew I am, I never did.

The problem here isn't necessarily the fixation on high-dollar footwear—we all have our inexplicable habits!—but the act of treating your own family like heathens, then peddling a shared knowingness about their unsophistication to your readers. Someday, Jake Woolf may overcome the crushing embarrassment, meet his mother's trademark gaze of disappointed, and find it in himself to explain that he's proud to wear $600 Japanese booties. Until then, we'll always have this 800-word essay about it.

Ferguson and the Fight for Recognition

0
0

Ferguson and the Fight for Recognition

At a September townhall meeting in Harlem, Carl Dix, a longtime Uptown fixture and mouthpiece, stood before the microphone in the auditorium of the Schomburg Center and called for mass rebellion. "It's going to take a revolution," he said, "nothing less, to end this and the horrors of the system once and for all."

Dix's statement came at the climax of a bloody New York summer marked by unending police brutality, and his sentiment was justified. Dix was right. This was war. Specifically, this is, and has always been, a war for recognition.

Testifying before a grand jury in September, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson said that Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old he'd shot and killed a few weeks earlier, "had the most intense, aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon." A demon. Both Brown and Wilson are big men—6'4", over 200 pounds. If they stood facing each other they'd see eye-to-eye. Wilson didn't see Brown's eyes, didn't see his face, didn't see an 18-year-old kid: He saw a demon. And he pulled the trigger.

To be a black in America is to be constantly at war, to be hated and loved, to be fetishized and tossed to the side, to be told you are worthless, it is to be in a perpetual triple-state of existence with the nigger the world says you are, the person you actually are, and the person you aren't. It is to be constantly disoriented, stuck between reality and perception and unsure how to properly negotiate that relationship, swallowed by the lies and anger and resentment and hatred of those around you. To be black is to be fully consumed by someone else's view of you despite knowing otherwise. It is to be trapped, to be caged in, yelling, praying, trying to do more, trying to be kinder, stronger, smarter. To be a black is to unbalanced at all times, teetering and falling, and ultimately failing.

That is a frightening reality to confront, to battle day in and day out. It is exhausting—although "exhausting" doesn't quite grasp the all-encompassing psychological and physical fatigue the black body endures daily—continually having to prove your decency. To perform just right, so that people whose first response to you is "demon" will recognize your humanity.

I want to tell you that I am shocked. I am not. I want to tell you things will be all right. They will not. The decision not to indict Wilson joins an ugly American tradition. It's a familiar feeling. I have been here before. I am gutted, less than, three-fifths whole.

The bodies are piled high. It is a relentless, slow-moving genocide: Renisha McBride. Rekia Boyd. Jordan Davis. Ezell Ford. John Crawford. Oscar Grant. Ramarley Graham. John Crawford. Aaron Campbell. Jonathan Ferrell. Trayvon Martin.

The bodies are rising still. Michelle Cusseaux. Angelia Mangum. Maria Godinez. Marlon Horton. Tjhisha Ball. Kendrec McDade. Kimani Gray. Timothy Russell. Malissa Williams. Ervin Jefferson. Victor Steen. Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. And still so many more.

These killings have amassed to a collective discontent. Brown's execution was but the tipping point in a long-practiced, long-profited American pastime of neo-lynchings. Black bodies no longer hang from trees, twisting like strange, bloodied fruit in the southern breeze, but instead meet their end in train stations, housing complexes, on streets, and in department stores in Cleveland, New York City, Oakland and Chicago.

History binds us. There have been marches for voting rights, appeals against housing discrimination, rallies for equal goods and services, sit-ins for access to discriminatory educational structures, and peaceful protests demanding the end to a system of horrors that wholly believes in the disempowerment of disenfranchised people. Our humanity has always been at stake. It is the thread that ties Ferguson to Selma; that ties Emmett Till to Michael Brown.

I am a black man who arrives in the middle of a vast history: a history of people who have battled against oppression and fought against unequal liberties, a history of people who have fashioned their blackness—my God, their very humanity—as sword and shield for one very simple instrument: justice.

I am a black man. But I am black first—that is the terror and false intimidation you identify, that is the demon you see running at you, only I am unarmed and helpless, fighting against a system that functions on my very suppression. I am exhausted but I keep going anyway.

I am a black man living in America and I have felt its meaning all the way to the marrow of my being.

I am a black man. But I am not tragically colored. I am just tired of explaining. And I think Michael Brown was tired, too.

[Photo via Getty]

Travelers Will Shove One Million Cinnabons Into Their Heads By Sunday

0
0

Travelers Will Shove One Million Cinnabons Into Their Heads By Sunday

A proper rite of passage when traveling through America's lavish airport system is pushing a hot, thick Cinnabon in your craw as you "run" pathetically to catch your flight. At times of desperation, like when the Burger King is out of BK Chicken Fries™ and an unripe banana™ simply won't do, Cinnabon is a jetsetter's best friend.

As it turns out, we're all part of the same monstrous family of gorgers because from Wednesday to Sunday evening, Cinnabon expects that travelers in American airports will consume up to one million Cinnabon cinnamon rolls with absolutely no remorse. On average, that's 8,300 cinnamon rolls an hour.

Via Businessweek:

Cinnabon starts planning for the holidays in September, organizing regional "Jollybon meetings" to prepare the workforce for the impending rush. This means staffing up and training—the busiest locations may see the number of workers double during the holidays—and ordering more ingredients.

Take note that a single Cinnabon Classic cinnamon roll has 880 calories, but if you take one walk to the bathroom every half-hour that your flight is delayed, you can burn off all those cinnamon dough juices by next Thanksgiving.

[Image via Wikipedia]

This Jason Sudeikis Sketch Was Cut From SNL, Good Enough for Late Night

0
0

On the latest episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers, the 131-part television documentary about Seth Meyers' time at Saturday Night Live, guy who makes that face Jason Sudeikis got a chance to see his favorite old, unproduced SNL sketch finally make it to air.

"The Juggling Flyer Sketch," in which Sudeikis' hatable character is unable to believe that no one is taking his offer of juggling lessons seriously, apparently wasn't good enough for SNL but it's definitely good enough for the historical reenactment portion of Late Night: The Seth Meyers Story.

The biggest laugh in the 11-minute sketch comes from Sudeikis deftly playing off a flubbed line by John Lutz, but it's still better than a lot of the material that's made the cut since Sudeikis left the show.

Meyers should definitely keep Second Chance Theatre going as a recurring segment—outside of The Sorkin Sketch, it's been the best thing about his Late Night tenure so far.

[h/t Uproxx]


Let's Keep the Friday in Black Friday, Our True Family Holiday

0
0

Let's Keep the Friday in Black Friday, Our True Family Holiday

I remember sitting at the table with my parents, my father's parents and his brother, my mother's sister, and a couple of other people whose exact connection to our family I was too young to glean. The only image of Thanksgiving I had at the time, it quickly became the ideal for the holiday, which all others would be compared. Whatever conversations happened around the table were beyond my grasp, and I wasn't adventurous enough to try every food in front of me, but the warmth of family stuck with me.

Then people moved, others passed away, and about a decade later, we had the last Thanksgiving gathering at my grandparents' house, with just my parents and grandmother. A day of togetherness lost its power.

But our final cross-generational Thanksgiving in 2006 also marked the first time my parents and I participated in Black Friday. We woke up early to go to the now-defunct Circuit City, to try and get a bit of Christmas shopping done early, to take part in the post-Thanksgiving spike in retail sales. We found ourselves in a line of hundreds in the cold morning, eagerly anticipating the moment the doors would open.

We—well, my mother—bought what we needed, but the experience wasn't merely practical. I had gotten a first taste of that rush, and I was ready to do it all over again when the opportunity came around.

The following year my grandmother was too sick to prepare a Thanksgiving meal, and so the day just became an over-elaborate afternoon lunch. As a three-person unit that rarely ate any meals together and was prone to awkward silences when put at table together, my family found it hard to be amped up about the holiday, even as we continued, and still continue, to go through the motion. The stilted conversations, the amount of work it took to prepare the food versus the amount of people that were going to eat it; the thought at the back of my mother's mind and front of her mouth that she was putting in so much effort into a singular meal on what was her time off from work—all contributed to a weariness around this particular fall Thursday.

So instead, what my mother and I increasingly took joy in was the madness surrounding Black Friday. More and more of Thursday was ritually carved off to make sure we would be ready for the next day's shopping. Rather than the forced togetherness of Thanksgiving, we found ourselves joining together to calculate what time stores would open in the early morning, or whether X percentage off one item was better or worse than a gift card worth Y.

We'd wake up Friday morning with a slate of stores we planned to go to. We would try to hit up multiple stores if the prospect of all three of us gaining another set of gift cards was at play. This became our way to come together as a family, not under our own roof, but under the warm glow of department store lights.

Over the last couple of years, though, we saw the magic of our particular holiday begin to fade. Stores opened earlier and earlier in an effort to compete with each other. Once we saw that a store was willing to open at midnight, it became hard to figure out our schedule. We still committed to going out to a couple of stores that were opening at ridiculous hours. Then we went back home and napped, getting out again to stake out a couple of other stores in the morning.

Our enjoyment of Black Friday as a family pastime ended on that day. It was still thrilling, and there was something fun about hanging out with other people on the same bizarre "deals over sleep" wavelength, but it was too much. We had lost the spirit of Black Friday.

This year, the war on Black Friday has reached new heights. Store after store is seeking to ignore the midnight boundary and open for business on Thanksgiving Day. Other stores are refusing, dividing the retail community. What was a busy weekend is just becoming a busy week.

Were all those cumulative hours spent outside department stores really worth it? Probably not. But after the first couple of years, we weren't doing it for the deals. Black Friday was our way to come together as a family. Lately, I've taken a more active role in assisting with the preparation of Thanksgiving food and the conversation with my mother quickly turns to the following day: Is there anything we need to get? What places do we want to go to? And most importantly: What time are stores opening this year?

David Turner is a writer who has previously written for The Fader, Pitchfork, and Spin. He tepidly embraces consumer culture everyday and can be reached on Twitter @_davidturner_

[Image by Jim Cooke, source images via Norman Rockwell and Getty]

Your Thanksgiving Football Forecast: Cold in Detroit, Nice in Dallas

0
0

Your Thanksgiving Football Forecast: Cold in Detroit, Nice in Dallas

Gathering around the television to watch football is almost as much of a Thanksgiving tradition as eating half your body weight in turkey and stuffing. The weather can be a make-or-break factor in football games, but will it make a difference this Thanksgiving?

Chicago Bears vs. Detroit Lions—12:30 PM—Detroit, Michigan

The Bears are traveling to Detroit tomorrow to play the Lions at Ford Field. The weather looks like it'll pretty raw for folks *walking from their cars to the stadium—early afternoon temperatures at kickoff will sit in the mid-30s with some light snow showers possible. Light winds will make the cold air feel even colder—a 10 MPH wind with a 35°F air temperature results in a wind chill value of around 26°F.

It's worth noting that there shouldn't be any accumulation from the snow showers—it'll be more of an annoyance than anything you'll have to sweep or shovel on your way to your car, because the stadium is indoors.

Philadelphia Eagles vs. Dallas Cowboys—4:30 PM—Arlington, Texas

You couldn't ask for a nicer afternoon than what folks *outside of AT&T Stadium will experience during the Eagles/Cowboys game on Thursday evening. Temperatures will sit in the upper 50s around kickoff and slowly drop to around 50°F by 9:00 PM. with the aid of clear skies and radiational cooling. It might get a little uncomfortable if you're not a fan of chilly weather (and you're outside the stadium!), but it could be worse (see the "history" blurb below).

Seattle Seahawks vs. S.F. 49ers—8:30 PM—Santa Clara, California

The weather in Santa Clara for the Seahawks/49ers game on Thursday night will be very similar to what they'll experience in Texas. Clear skies, light winds, and temperatures at kickoff in the upper 50s, cooling into the 40s after midnight.

Thanksgiving Football Weather History

Back in 1993, weather conditions led to one of the most memorable Thanksgiving football games in recent memory. A winter storm dropped a coating of snow and sleet in Dallas during a game between the Cowboys and the Miami Dolphins. Immediately after Dallas blocked a field goal attempt by Miami, Cowboys player Leon Lett slipped on the ice and fell into the football, ultimately costing the Cowboys their win. Ouch.

[Image: AP]


CORRECTION: Ha! Both the Detroit and Dallas games are indoors, which was overlooked by the weather guy who wrote this post (and who is also not a fan of football). Asterisks denote the areas where I've corrected the parts that mention "folks in the stands" or something to that effect. My apologies for the embarrassing error. Live and learn.


You can follow the author on Twitter or send him an email.

Creed Singer Scott Stapp Is Broke and Living in a Holiday Inn

0
0

Creed Singer Scott Stapp Is Broke and Living in a Holiday Inn

Creed has sold something like 30 million albums in the United States, but today lead singer Scott Stapp revealed that he is "penniless" and living in a Holiday Inn.

That is according to a 15-minute video titled "Public Statement #1," which you can watch over on his Facebook page. According to Stapp, he recently looked over his finances and realized that his money had been secretly stolen. Via Rolling Stone:

"About eight weeks ago, I began an audit of not only my record company but my personal finances," Stapp says. "During the course of that audit, a lot of things were uncovered. A lot of money was stolen from me, or royalties not paid, and that's when all hell began to break loose."

He says further that he was recently living in his truck without money for food or gas.

Earlier this week, the Miami Herald reported that Stapp's wife, ex-Miss USA Jaclyn Stapp, filed for divorce and asked for full custody of the couple's children. In her filing, Jaclyn released recent text messages she says she received from Scott, including:

"Florida is not safe. Biological weapons on the way. U have to leave with kids and meet me in Atlanta."

▪ "I'm coming to get you Satan and children. No mercy. You know how this ends. God created you and now God is ending you."

▪ "God is also telling me something about Palm Springs and Nashville so there's a connection somehow. He's also telling me DEA for some reason."

▪ "Wells Fargo working out my account problems. I'm out of gas. Haven't eaten all day. I'm asking if they can spot me $1,000 so I don't fall over from malnutrition."

▪ "I wouldn't doubt it if the CIA is behind Alcoholics Anonymous."

Jaclyn says in the divorce papers that Stapp has recently been using drugs. In the video posted to Facebook, Stapp insists he is sober.

[image via Getty]

​Wednesday Night TV's Saving All Thanks for Tomorrow, When It Counts

0
0

Tonight's the night, the last night of the week before the holiday bullshit starts. On the one hand you want to make it count, but on the other hand isn't this kind of your Friday? Who wants to go out—the answer is nobody. So let's bundle up, rest up, see what's on the ol' snoozebox before the real toils begin.

AT 8/7c.

  • I just want you to know that on the Great American Country network—which is the location of my favorite television show, Farm Kings, so I know it is a real thing—there is a show called Celebrity Motor Homes. Let that sink in a second before I tell you that it begins its third season tonight. What I am saying to you is that somehow, there has been enough material in the category of "celebrity motor homes" to produce three seasons of television.
  • Given the options, I would have to suggest watching Survivor over watching The Making of Peter Pan Live on NBC.
  • On Disney XD, Gravity Falls gets a visit from "The Love God." When you picture the God of Love, who do you see? I picture former CIA Director and Army General David "Peaches" Petraeus, as you probably remember.
  • On Hell's Kitchen the eight remaining Chefs are subjected to a blind taste test, with all wrong answers putting their teammates into dunk-tank danger. The team that gets the most un-dunked will then visit the Santa Monica pier, while the losing team will be set the fuck on fire, because were you not listening? This is not "Summer Camp" Kitchen, this is not "Mommy's Embrace" Kitchen, this is Hell's Kitchen. This Kitchen is Hell.

AT 9/8c.

  • Forego CBS's crappy dumb gross Criminal Minds and just watch the "Super Meth" episode of Drugs, Inc. on National Geographic. That's my unconventional advice.
  • NBC's got a two-hour Thanksgiving roundup of old SNL sketches, if you're like that, whereas if you're more of a Tyler Perry kind of person, which is what I find myself becoming, somebody's getting a cliffhanger of a mammogram on Tyler Perry's For Better Or Worse on the OWN.
  • HGTV's Property Brothers have a spinoff of their show about them which is also about them, specifically about them going Property Brothers on themselves. Property Brothers Brothers.
  • On Animal Planet there's some kind of TV movie with Martin Sheen that's based on the same source material that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.
  • (Existence.)
  • I have decided to learn the difference between all these DA and ID shows that seem like the same show, and then pass that info to you if it's interesting or I think you need it. First up, ID's Your Worst Nightmare, which ends its first season tonight with an episode titled, weirdly, "The Killer Besides Me." What makes this show different from the other shows is its use, we're told, of "classic suspense film techniques." (Oh for real? How respectable!)

What is your worst nightmare? My worst nightmare is, I have a giant animal in my home, very hairy, in the corner, and you can always hear it breathing, and it gives off a musky heat. It has black eyes that betray no emotion, and its plans seem like they're probably beyond my ability to comprehend. Although it doesn't really need anything, I still feel an overwhelming sense of protectiveness and duty toward it—even though I can sense that it is very dangerous, and one day could seriously injure me.

AT 10/9c.

  • Hot In Cleveland's new episode is called "Naked & Afraid," which is not at all as enticing as DA's one-hour special called When Turkeys Attack!
  • Food Network's Kitchen Inferno is like, I don't even get how it works. It seems like several tiny episodes of Chopped all in a row, crossed with that show where the ladies hold briefcases. Like I already find cooking very challenging, I don't need it to also involve an obstacle course or making wagers.
  • On Stalker, as usual, somebody is stalking somebody while the people who try to stalk the stalkers and make them quit that stalking are also themselves getting stalked. It's a real puzzler how that all will work out!
  • ID's Love the Way You Lie is the one where they follow competing narratives about a crime the whole time, like a he said/she said kind of thing, and then I guess you just decide for yourself?

Because I'll tell you one narrative that doesn't lack for complexity and that's MTV's Snooki & Jwoww. That's why at 11/10c. there's an afterspecial so they can walk you through everything that just happened and make sure it is clear to you. Meanwhile, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis are up to their old tricks on VH1, with no explanation of why this weird timeslot, and of course there is always Web Therapy on Showtime.

Morning After is a home for television discussion and appreciation, brought to you by Gawker and the inspiration for the novel Moby Dick. What are you watching this weekend? What are we missing out on? Recommendations and discussions down below.

Animal Rights Campaigners: Stop Eating Cats at Christmas Dinner

0
0

Animal Rights Campaigners: Stop Eating Cats at Christmas Dinner

Animal rights campaigners in Switzerland would appreciate it if the three percent of the country's population that eats domestic cats and dogs would kindly stop eating them, the BBC reports.

Although the sale of cat and dog meat is banned in Switzerland, it's still legal to eat your own domestic animals, something Swiss animal protection group SOS Chats Noirague claims a small segment of the population is secretly doing. (They're looking at you, Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura, and Bern.)

Cat is a traditional Christmas dish in some areas, "often cooked for the festive season in a similar way to rabbit—with white wine and garlic," the BBC reports.

Dog meat is mainly used for sausages and to cure rheumatism.

SOS Chats has started a petition to parliament to outlaw the consumption of les poor little chats et chiens, which has now collected more than 16,000 signatures. The organization led a successful charge to ban the sale of cat skins last year, but hunting stray cats remains legal because ministers felt a spay and neuter campaign would be too costly.

SOS Chats claims Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard—who in 2008 helped to implement a law that requires all dog owners to take courses in the care of their animals—has said the "tradition" of eating dogs and cats shouldn't be banned through legislation.

"A political leader told us parliament won't do anything unless people revolt," SOS Chats' Tomi Tomek told the BBC.

[h/t BBC]

Viewing all 24829 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images