EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally posted on November 11th 2015. BY JONATHAN VALANIA Thirty-eight years after the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, the windshield of pop culture is still fogged up with the huffing and puffing of critics of hyperventilating over the game-changing filth and the fury of The Sex Pistols — for which John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, served as acerbic, bug-eyed jester raging against the machinery of a corrupt Establishment and a necrotic music biz with a voice like Godzilla’s death ray — so I will spare you the lecture. Except to say this: in the fullness […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Weaponization Of Social Media
FRESH AIR: The New York Times just reported that in 2016 Rick Gates, then-deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump, requested proposals from an Israeli company to create fake online identities and use social media manipulation to help defeat Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election. The proposals were apparently never acted on, but we know that Russian operatives made effective use of Facebook and Twitter in seeking to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. Our country is hardly the only one in which political opinions have been manipulated by millions of fake […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
FRESH AIR: These are highly charged times for politics reporters. Just ask Greg Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist who has broken a number of stories related to the Trump administration’s ties to Russia. Miller says that he’s been “trolled a lot” because of his work. But after revealing that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions with Russian officials prior to Trump’s inauguration, Miller experienced something new: notes from grateful readers. “Weird things happen that had never happened to me as a reporter,” Miller says. “Several of us started getting cards, actual letters in the mail, […]
WORTH REPEATING: Devin Nunez Has A Secret
Illustration by ED STEED via Esquire ESQUIRE: Nunes has always been reliably conservative, but on some issues, he has broken with his party. He has long supported moderate immigration reform, for instance, including amnesty for many undocumented people living and working in the U.?S. But as Trump has instituted a draconian policy of zero tolerance for all undocumented people and argued that every undocumented individual should be deported, Nunes has been silent. More recently, as Trump and the House Republicans have celebrated Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the agency’s aggressive tactics, Nunes has followed suit. On CaRepublican.com—a Nunes-created news site, […]
SIDEWALKING: Thank You For Your Service
Image of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford projected on the edifice of the New York State Supreme Court in downtown Manhattan Friday night to Saturday morning.
WORTH REPEATING: ‘I Believe Anita Hill’
[Illustrations by ALEX FINE] EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview originally published on December 7th, 2011. We are re-posting it now, for obvious reasons. BY JONATHAN VALANIA In advance of her reading at the Free Library to promote her 2011 book Reimagining Equality: Stories Of Race, Gender And Finding A Home, we were afforded the opportunity to speak with Anita Hill, professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University. Discussed: The fantasia of a Post-Racial America; the mendacity, narcissism and hypocrisy of Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain; the right wing’s racializing the blame for the 2008 financial crisis; how […]
HILLARY CLINTON: Tryanny Is On Our Doorstep
Artwork by SARAH SOLE HILLARY CLINTON: It’s been nearly two years since Donald Trump won enough Electoral College votes to become president of the United States. On the day after, in my concession speech, I said, “We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” I hoped that my fears for our future were overblown. They were not. In the roughly 21 months since he took the oath of office, Trump has sunk far below the already-low bar he set for himself in his ugly campaign. Exhibit A is the unspeakable cruelty that his administration has inflicted on […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Veteran journalist Bob Woodward has written about every U.S. president since Richard Nixon — nine in total. But in all his years covering politics, he has never encountered a president like President Trump. Woodward’s latest work, Fear: Trump In The White House, paints a portrait of Trump as uninformed and mercurial. The book describes moments when staff members joined together to purposefully block what they believe are the president’s most dangerous impulses — sometimes by surreptitiously removing papers from the president’s desk. “There were drafts of a proposal to get out of the Paris climate accord that were […]
RACIAL JUSTICE: Just Do It
THE NEW YORKER: In July of 1988, Nike released the first of its ads under the slogan “Just Do It.” The spot featured Walt Stack, an eighty-year-old man, ebulliently trotting across the Golden Gate Bridge as part of his daily seventeen-mile run. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime,” Stack says. “I leave them in my locker.” The same year, Nike released the first of a series of ads that paired the director Spike Lee with Michael Jordan, who was with the Chicago Bulls at the time. The wildly popular Spike-and-Mike ads didn’t fall […]
GOD LEVEL TROLLING: In Stringer Bell We Trust
via @JoshTerry RELATED: I’m Part Of The Resistance Inside The Trump Administration
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Today we’re starting a series featuring interviews with Emmy nominees. They’ll find out if they’re winners on Monday, September 17. We’re starting with John Oliver, whose satirical news show Last Week Tonight is nominated in nine categories, including Outstanding Variety Talk Series, Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Interactive Program. Oliver moved to the U.S. from England in 2006 to become a correspondent on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. Oliver started his HBO show in 2014. He typically starts the show with a comic, trenchant review of the week’s news, and then he takes a […]
NPR 4 THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When U Can’t
FRESH AIR: Today we join people throughout America on both sides of the political aisle in remembering Senator John McCain. His memorial service will be held at the National Cathedral next Saturday, one week after his death from brain cancer at the age of 81. We’re going to listen to an interview I recorded with him in 2000 after his best-selling memoir Faith Of Our Fathers was published in paperback. But we’ll start with the interview I recorded with him in 2005 after the publication of his book “Character Is Destiny.” This was five years after he’d lost the Republican […]
THE BASSMAN COMETH: Talking Tech, Trump And The End Of Americana With Wylie Gelber Of Dawes
Photo courtesy of COLDSMOKE APPAREL BY SOPHIE BURKHOLDER In their nearly ten years as a band, Dawes has earned a reputation for old timey, scuffed denim sonics and sepia-toned Americana narratives that sound like this 21st Century version of the Laurel Canyon Sound. But on “Living In The Future,” the lead-off track from their latest album Passwords, Dawes plumbs the darker premonitions of America circa now with a colder, harsher sound that conjures the paranoia and darkness of the Age of Trump. Currently on tour with the Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Dawes play the Wells Fargo Center on Friday August 24th. […]