Some interesting links..
Aug. 28th, 2020 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. What Ellen's Kindness Concealed
The Ellen DeGeneres Show features a recurring segment, called “Cash for Kindness,” that spreads good cheer by lying to people. DeGeneres will send a producer or an audience member out into the world to pretend to be some harried worker—a cater-waiter, a delivery person, a birthday-party magician—and then, in spectacular fashion, spill whatever they’re carrying on the sidewalk. As potatoes go rolling or greeting cards flap in the wind, a trap is laid. DeGeneres watches through hidden cameras to see which passersby do, or don’t, stop to help pick up the mess.
The bit is funny because it is mortifying. Speaking into her producer’s wireless earpiece, DeGeneres feeds her staffer ever-more-distressing banter to recite: There’s an engagement ring in the tiramisus! The greeting cards are supposed to be in alphabetical order! The strangers who stop to help are, you may suspect, a bit nervous that they’ve been roped into some scam—or maybe worse, roped into a situation that will expose the limits of their time, means, or generosity. Eventually, the undercover staffer reveals that they work for Ellen. The random Good Samaritan is brought onto the talk show’s set, and DeGeneres hands them cash: a reward for being kind, but also, it feels, payoff for being messed with.
Like any good prank, especially the pranks DeGeneres loves, cash-for-kindness revels in voyeurism, deceit, and discomfort, all of which get forgiven in the name of a laugh. Yet, like so much of DeGeneres’s comedy, this mischief doubles as do-goodery. It is part of DeGeneres’s grand campaign to merchandise kindness—which is also seen when she says “Be kind to one another” at the end of each show, or when she gets taxi drivers to hug Uber drivers on air, or when she hawks kindness-themed subscription boxes for up to $250 a year. Her aesthetic of cream colors, goofy grins, and uplifting tears, along with her amusing displays of light sadism, have earned her a $330 million empire, a raft of Emmys, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
DeGeneres poses with her trophies at the 33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 2006. (Frederick M. Brown / Getty)
Recent accusations against DeGeneres and her show’s set raise the question of whether her kindness rhetoric covers up something darker. In two BuzzFeed articles last month, Ellen DeGeneres Show staffers alleged sexual harassment, racism, and abusive management by DeGeneres’s top deputies. The accusers disagreed with one another about the extent to which DeGeneres herself was complicit, and she has asserted ignorance of any malfeasance. “I’m so, so sorry for what this has become,” DeGeneres reportedly told staff on a video call announcing the firing of three producers accused of abuse. “I’ve left this to be a well-oiled machine, and I realize it’s not a machine … it’s human beings.” The workplace complaints also drew attention to a number of unverified stories about DeGeneres acting callously to fans, entertainment professionals, and service workers, hinting that DeGeneres has, as Kathy Griffin put it in 2016, a “mean streak that all of Hollywood knows about.” DeGeneres, who previously dismissed rumors of rudeness as lies, last week told employees that she apologizes “for anyone whose feelings I’ve hurt.”
Part of what’s extraordinary about the scandal is how ordinary it is. On SNL, Fox News, and The Rosie Show, for instance, the history of live-taped TV is a history of hostile workplaces, sexual predation, and tempestuous bosses. Celebrity rudeness is so pervasive that it helps fuel a whole industry of gossip publications, and so-called diva antics never canceled the careers of, say, Christian Bale or Aretha Franklin. Yet DeGeneres may well be held to a different standard than other entertainers—because her product is her own persona, because she has centered that persona around niceness, and because the same cultural forces that led her to create that persona still exist today. To look back over her career now is to wonder whether the secret, bitter ingredient in her success has been revealed. Softness has long been her shield—and this scandal, on some level, shows what it was protecting against.
.......
When she announced she was gay, in 1997, she went on Oprah’s talk show and relayed the story of her father kicking her out. “I understand people not understanding,” she said of such intolerance. “I’m fine with that.” Some of those non-understanding people were in Oprah’s audience and got a chance to tell DeGeneres that she was glorifying sin by having her character on the sitcom Ellen come out too. DeGeneres, with directness and poise, addressed their criticisms before landing on broad punch lines. Such unflappable bonhomie made an implicit mockery of the pastor Jerry Falwell and others who called her “Ellen Degenerate.” The stereotype of gay degeneracy seemed absurd when applied to her.
Read: Killing it with kindness
Still, the public wasn’t ready for even as gentle a messenger as this one. Ellen was a hit and in its fourth season when DeGeneres came out; in Season 5, viewership dropped and ABC canceled the show. Though DeGeneres’s name is synonymous with LGBTQ assimilation today, back then the knock on her—even from some queer leaders—was that she’d put her character’s same-sex romances in the spotlight too much. In a segment about the sitcom’s failure, Diane Sawyer asked DeGeneres about Elton John and Chaz Bono criticizing her show for being too gay. “In my house, I have things to say about them, but I wouldn’t do it publicly,” DeGeneres replied. In the years since, she’s spoken about the deep anger and disappointment she felt from the backlash to her coming out. What seemed to hurt her wasn’t merely the homophobia itself—it was the way in which her charm couldn’t overcome it.
“I wanted everyone to like me,” she said on Master Class, thinking back to when she was on Carson. “I wanted to be whatever it was, so that they liked me. And that’s a really interesting thing, to be born with that trait, with that quality, and be gay. God goes, ‘Okay, you’re going to be someone who desperately needs approval, desperately wants people to like them, and you’re going to be gay. Good luck. Go on!’”
In the time since her sitcom’s cancellation, a period during which she has spent 17 years as daytime-TV royalty, DeGeneres has gilded her agreeability with kindness. Or not kindness but Kindness, the type you capitalize. This means ostentatious giveaways to audience members, big philanthropic efforts, and dramatic interventions for people in need: excellent uses of fame and wealth. When she controversially palled around with George W. Bush and gave cover to the homophobic comedy of Kevin Hart, she also defended her actions by saying she was trying to be kind, implying that observing nice manners is better than pushing back against intolerance.
Yet if DeGeneres were simply a goody-goody, it’d be hard to imagine her having the longevity she still enjoys. Cutting the schmaltz, all along, has been an intelligent coldness. Her stand-up regards humans from a clinical distance, addressing topics that include airline food and abusive parenting with a bemused “Huh!” On her talk show, she has a tendency to needle guests with mockery, respond to their ebullience with blank stares, or hound them for personal details they’re not willing to give. Instances in which she’s gone so far as to cause memorable awkwardness have gone viral in recent months—see her Dakota Johnson party-invite catastrophe, or the time when she tried to get a pregnant Mariah Carey to drink champagne. Yet in most celebrity interviews, what DeGeneres conveyed was, simply, a healthy irreverence: She has a bullshit meter.
esidential Medal of Freedom to DeGeneres in 2016. (Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty)
She gets a big kick out of humiliation too. Ellen DeGeneres Show viewers know how much she loves to sneak up on staffers and startle them; the footage isn’t so cute given what’s now alleged of the work environment. On Ellen’s Game of Games, a wacky competition show airing on NBC, she comes off as a calm, collected comic-book villain, plunging participants down trap doors or shooting them with fog geysers. Recently, in talk-show episodes taped during the shutdown, she has had her producer Andy Lassner—who generally plays the role of court stooge on her set—sequestered outside her mansion’s glass walls, looking in forlornly. Unintentionally, it’s the perfect visual to accompany the now-popular impression of DeGeneres as emotionally walled off from the “regular” folks who work for or admire her.
Psychoanalyzing a star by comparing their performances with rumors about their private behavior is a dicey exercise. It's also an unavoidable one when the star is as big as DeGeneres and the cognitive dissonance created by those rumors is so great. That someone who has shown such smarts, self-awareness, and generosity might leave a trail of destruction in her personal encounters is baffling. That an avatar of kindness could have been oblivious to, or even enabled, abuse on her set is disturbing. It is natural to wonder whether having to continually modulate herself to be, per the title of her recent Netflix special, Relatable, has had an effect on how she acts when cameras aren’t rolling. It is also natural to wonder if this is simply another story of fame’s bubble having a corrupting influence.
For the Ellen DeGeneres Show’s happy-go-lucky antics to go on without first dispelling the cloud around it seems unfathomable, and the firings of its allegedly abusive producers do not address the larger problem of DeGeneres’s tarnished image. Perhaps with time, DeGeneres will make amends with anyone she may have hurt and explain herself honestly. Maybe the show will morph (already, staffers have been told they will be given more time off). Or maybe she’ll find a new outlet for her talents, an outlet that lets her flaunt her edge without harming others.
Yet even now it is clear why DeGeneres had to forge an image of overdetermined cheer to get where she is. Earlier this month, I wrote an article critical of DeGeneres and her defenders, and I heard a lot from readers who were glad I had. Some of those readers’ emails cheered the potential downfall of the “heterophobic” “Ellen degenerate,” a “dyke” with a “femdom need for control.” She has hustled so intently, her whole career, to head off the bigots who would reflexively assume her to be a monster. Hollywood history makes clear that no one group has a monopoly on misbehavior. But now looms the sad possibility that in having her facade ripped away, one of pop culture’s greatest people pleasers may have finally given the worst portions of her audience what they’ve always wanted.
2. Meet the Black Women Who Rode Motorcycles Cross-Country for the March on Washington
Porsche Taylor is, as she puts it, “definitely being attacked by the road” right now. She’d hit rain in New Mexico (translation: slick roads and slow speeds). In Texas, her 80-mile-per-hour pace often not possible (traffic was merged into one lane due to construction). And pretty much everywhere in between, unlit highways meant not riding past sundown. Still, with only four days to get from Long Beach, California to Washington D.C. she was determined to stick to the itinerary. All 2,700 miles of it.
“Yeah we’ll need to pick it up and go a bit faster,” she says, speaking from the road, which thankfully, has opened up again. She’s cruising through big-sky country, passing by wide-open plains and dusty cattle ranches and…then she’s got to go. “I’ll call back once I maneuver around these big trucks,” she says. “I’ve got to get my girls past them or we could really get hurt.”
These are the realities when your ride is a candy-gold 2020 Indian Challenger—a motorcycle. Behind Porsche: a group that includes an EMT, a community college employee, a former member of the Army. One on a purple, three-wheeled Spyder, another riding a black and chrome Harley Davidson. All headed for the March on Washington with Black Girls Ride, a movement founded by Porsche to increase the representation of women in motorsports.
When they left from the west coast at 6 a.m. on Monday, there were just four women taking part in the cross-country trek, but two more joined in along the route. Once in Washington, they’ll meet-up with hundreds of other riders who all traveled from around the country.
For the women of Black Girls Ride, being on a bike is all about “wind therapy” and a sisterhood and a passion, but this time, they’re riding for something else. “After watching what happened to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others, it really stirred something up in us,” says Porsche, speaking from the road using a hands-free system that allows her to take calls from her helmet. “We knew we wanted to fight these injustices from the front line. I feel like I’m watching civil rights regress in this country and if we don’t stand up and speak up, we’ll be right back where we started.”
It was in Arkansas that the ride got especially emotional. There, checking into a hotel at the end of a long day of riding, the group heard the full story of Jacob Blake when a video of what happened to him appeared on television. “It was just a feeling of disbelief,” she says. “The thing is, I should have been outraged, but it happens so often that the element of surprise is kind of lost. It was just a reminder that this is what we’re fighting. This is why we’re riding.”
[Kind of inspiring. But I keep thinking - during a pandemic???]
3. Oh...no. Chadwick Boseman - star of Black Panther dies of Colon Cancer at 43
"Chadwick Boseman, star of “Black Panther,” has died at 43, after a four year battle with colon cancer.
Before he was cast as the Marvel Studios superhero, Boseman’s career first exploded with his portrayals of Black American icons Jackie Robinson (in 2013’s “42”) and James Brown (in 2014’s “Get on Up”). Boseman also appeared in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” and playing Thurgood Marshall in 2017’s “Marshall.”
“It is with immeasurable grief that we confirm the passing of Chadwick Boseman,” the statement read. “It was the honor of his life to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.”
Fucking hell, 2020. Anyone else, want to punch 2020 in the nose right about now? Or get in a time machine and undo everything that happened in 2016. Where's a good Tardis when you need one?
4. The Life and Death of Richard Swift for the insane music critics/experts on my correspondence list (you know who you are, fellas).
On May 7th, 2018, Richard Swift posted a black-and-white image of his recording studio, National Freedom, to Instagram. Situated in a converted barn behind his home in Cottage Grove, Oregon, the studio was full of the tools of his trade: a triple stack of keyboards, the custom C&C drum kit made especially for him by the company, a Coles 4038 ribbon microphone on permanent loan from the band Death Cab for Cutie, a typewriter and a sea of vintage guitars. “‘THE HEX’ NOVEMBER // 11 songs performed by me for family and friends,” the caption said.
For years, Swift had been working on a series of songs dedicated to those closest to him: his wife, Shealynn, daughters, Madison and Kennedy, son, Adrian, and the legions of friends and colleagues who had been affected by his destructive behavior of the last few years. He planned to make two records in 2018. The Hex, which was released digitally by Secretly Canadian in September (and later on CD and vinyl), details Swift’s struggles, and his journey through tragedy and loss. Its planned follow-up, The Fix, would chronicle the path forward through those dark places.
In the months leading to that Instagram post, Swift had canceled recording sessions at the last minute, or had become unreliable or unconscious during those in progress. He’d become so combative with his family that they had moved out. The pair of albums were meant as an olive branch, and a turning point in his struggle with alcoholism. A commitment to getting better.
Less than two months later, he died.
During his life, Swift was an unlikely triple threat: a prodigious solo artist, studio whisperer and accomplished sideman. He transcended humble beginnings as a Christian artist to become a visible indie-rock figure steeped in the dreamy, orchestral aesthetics of Harry Nilsson and Burt Bacharach, and later the raucous sounds of Captain Beefheart and Howlin’ Wolf, before either were fashionable in the new millennium. He then pivoted to become an in-demand producer and supporting musician, recording albums by the Pretenders and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, and touring with The Shins and The Black Keys.
The Hex tells another story about Swift’s last years. Some of its songs had been released on his Tumblr as early as 2011, while others are previously unknown. Each word and tone testifies the immense talent of a man who was a friend to so many, a father, husband, brother and son, an unrelenting joker, another poignant tragedy in addiction’s grasp. How a little boy from Orange County became one of indie rock’s most admired musicians is all there, in a gorgeous and crushing swan song that plays out with the drama and richness of the black-and-white aesthetic he celebrated.
“The thing about Rich is that he wasn’t just great at drums or piano — he was better at everything than everybody,” says Dan Auerbach, who started his side band the Arcs with Swift in 2015. “He was better at synthesizers. He was better at singing harmonies. He was a great guitar player. He was an incredible bass player. He could build a track from nothing to completely finished in an hour. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Personally? I've never heard of him and have no clue who he is. But I'm positive the music experts on my correspondence list have. Haven't you?
5. On a brighter note.. Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World's Oldest Continuously Run Libraries
6. Okay...I understand the whole concept behind networking, but this is taking things a step too far.. Candidate sends a prospective employer a gift wrapped resume, framed picture of himself, and a cake.
Plus, there’s a whole category of pushiness in the pursuit of a job, like the job candidate who sent a framed photo of himself to his would-be interviewer:
I returned to my office one afternoon to find a beautiful gift bag on my desk. I thought that maybe it was from a secret admirer or an early birthday present. Inside I found a folder, a card, something wrapped in tissue, and a large round tin. Inside the folder was a multi-page resume on very thick, expensive paper. Inside the tin was a cake. The card included a hand-written note saying that he thought he was the perfect candidate for the job and somehow used the word “cake” in a pun. And inside the tissue paper? A framed color photo of the candidate …
I was so incredibly creeped out by this gesture. I didn’t know whether to laugh or execute a restraining order. I was afraid to eat the cake and couldn’t look at him and didn’t even call him for an interview.
Or consider this horror story from someone who works for a company known for its excellent perks and benefits:
[Candidates] have taken to outright stalking our employees. I freelance occasionally and have a separate website for my freelance business. I receive dozens of calls and emails to my freelance number and email account daily from people who want to “chat about the open position.” My husband—who has a different last name—runs a small retail shop. He’s had people come into his store and tell him that they did internet sleuthing and found out he was married to an employee of my company, and would he please pass on their resume?
Three things I hate with a fiery passion: Dating, Job Hunting/Networking, and Apartment Hunting.
At a meetup group once - I was discussing job hunting with a professional career coach.
Career Coach: I tell all my clients the same thing, approach it the same way that you would hunting for an apartment or dating. In particular dating.
Me: Dating?
Career Coach: Yes, you are dating the prospective employers - to determine if it is a good match.
Me: Okay, I suck at dating, this explains a lot.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show features a recurring segment, called “Cash for Kindness,” that spreads good cheer by lying to people. DeGeneres will send a producer or an audience member out into the world to pretend to be some harried worker—a cater-waiter, a delivery person, a birthday-party magician—and then, in spectacular fashion, spill whatever they’re carrying on the sidewalk. As potatoes go rolling or greeting cards flap in the wind, a trap is laid. DeGeneres watches through hidden cameras to see which passersby do, or don’t, stop to help pick up the mess.
The bit is funny because it is mortifying. Speaking into her producer’s wireless earpiece, DeGeneres feeds her staffer ever-more-distressing banter to recite: There’s an engagement ring in the tiramisus! The greeting cards are supposed to be in alphabetical order! The strangers who stop to help are, you may suspect, a bit nervous that they’ve been roped into some scam—or maybe worse, roped into a situation that will expose the limits of their time, means, or generosity. Eventually, the undercover staffer reveals that they work for Ellen. The random Good Samaritan is brought onto the talk show’s set, and DeGeneres hands them cash: a reward for being kind, but also, it feels, payoff for being messed with.
Like any good prank, especially the pranks DeGeneres loves, cash-for-kindness revels in voyeurism, deceit, and discomfort, all of which get forgiven in the name of a laugh. Yet, like so much of DeGeneres’s comedy, this mischief doubles as do-goodery. It is part of DeGeneres’s grand campaign to merchandise kindness—which is also seen when she says “Be kind to one another” at the end of each show, or when she gets taxi drivers to hug Uber drivers on air, or when she hawks kindness-themed subscription boxes for up to $250 a year. Her aesthetic of cream colors, goofy grins, and uplifting tears, along with her amusing displays of light sadism, have earned her a $330 million empire, a raft of Emmys, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
DeGeneres poses with her trophies at the 33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 2006. (Frederick M. Brown / Getty)
Recent accusations against DeGeneres and her show’s set raise the question of whether her kindness rhetoric covers up something darker. In two BuzzFeed articles last month, Ellen DeGeneres Show staffers alleged sexual harassment, racism, and abusive management by DeGeneres’s top deputies. The accusers disagreed with one another about the extent to which DeGeneres herself was complicit, and she has asserted ignorance of any malfeasance. “I’m so, so sorry for what this has become,” DeGeneres reportedly told staff on a video call announcing the firing of three producers accused of abuse. “I’ve left this to be a well-oiled machine, and I realize it’s not a machine … it’s human beings.” The workplace complaints also drew attention to a number of unverified stories about DeGeneres acting callously to fans, entertainment professionals, and service workers, hinting that DeGeneres has, as Kathy Griffin put it in 2016, a “mean streak that all of Hollywood knows about.” DeGeneres, who previously dismissed rumors of rudeness as lies, last week told employees that she apologizes “for anyone whose feelings I’ve hurt.”
Part of what’s extraordinary about the scandal is how ordinary it is. On SNL, Fox News, and The Rosie Show, for instance, the history of live-taped TV is a history of hostile workplaces, sexual predation, and tempestuous bosses. Celebrity rudeness is so pervasive that it helps fuel a whole industry of gossip publications, and so-called diva antics never canceled the careers of, say, Christian Bale or Aretha Franklin. Yet DeGeneres may well be held to a different standard than other entertainers—because her product is her own persona, because she has centered that persona around niceness, and because the same cultural forces that led her to create that persona still exist today. To look back over her career now is to wonder whether the secret, bitter ingredient in her success has been revealed. Softness has long been her shield—and this scandal, on some level, shows what it was protecting against.
.......
When she announced she was gay, in 1997, she went on Oprah’s talk show and relayed the story of her father kicking her out. “I understand people not understanding,” she said of such intolerance. “I’m fine with that.” Some of those non-understanding people were in Oprah’s audience and got a chance to tell DeGeneres that she was glorifying sin by having her character on the sitcom Ellen come out too. DeGeneres, with directness and poise, addressed their criticisms before landing on broad punch lines. Such unflappable bonhomie made an implicit mockery of the pastor Jerry Falwell and others who called her “Ellen Degenerate.” The stereotype of gay degeneracy seemed absurd when applied to her.
Read: Killing it with kindness
Still, the public wasn’t ready for even as gentle a messenger as this one. Ellen was a hit and in its fourth season when DeGeneres came out; in Season 5, viewership dropped and ABC canceled the show. Though DeGeneres’s name is synonymous with LGBTQ assimilation today, back then the knock on her—even from some queer leaders—was that she’d put her character’s same-sex romances in the spotlight too much. In a segment about the sitcom’s failure, Diane Sawyer asked DeGeneres about Elton John and Chaz Bono criticizing her show for being too gay. “In my house, I have things to say about them, but I wouldn’t do it publicly,” DeGeneres replied. In the years since, she’s spoken about the deep anger and disappointment she felt from the backlash to her coming out. What seemed to hurt her wasn’t merely the homophobia itself—it was the way in which her charm couldn’t overcome it.
“I wanted everyone to like me,” she said on Master Class, thinking back to when she was on Carson. “I wanted to be whatever it was, so that they liked me. And that’s a really interesting thing, to be born with that trait, with that quality, and be gay. God goes, ‘Okay, you’re going to be someone who desperately needs approval, desperately wants people to like them, and you’re going to be gay. Good luck. Go on!’”
In the time since her sitcom’s cancellation, a period during which she has spent 17 years as daytime-TV royalty, DeGeneres has gilded her agreeability with kindness. Or not kindness but Kindness, the type you capitalize. This means ostentatious giveaways to audience members, big philanthropic efforts, and dramatic interventions for people in need: excellent uses of fame and wealth. When she controversially palled around with George W. Bush and gave cover to the homophobic comedy of Kevin Hart, she also defended her actions by saying she was trying to be kind, implying that observing nice manners is better than pushing back against intolerance.
Yet if DeGeneres were simply a goody-goody, it’d be hard to imagine her having the longevity she still enjoys. Cutting the schmaltz, all along, has been an intelligent coldness. Her stand-up regards humans from a clinical distance, addressing topics that include airline food and abusive parenting with a bemused “Huh!” On her talk show, she has a tendency to needle guests with mockery, respond to their ebullience with blank stares, or hound them for personal details they’re not willing to give. Instances in which she’s gone so far as to cause memorable awkwardness have gone viral in recent months—see her Dakota Johnson party-invite catastrophe, or the time when she tried to get a pregnant Mariah Carey to drink champagne. Yet in most celebrity interviews, what DeGeneres conveyed was, simply, a healthy irreverence: She has a bullshit meter.
esidential Medal of Freedom to DeGeneres in 2016. (Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty)
She gets a big kick out of humiliation too. Ellen DeGeneres Show viewers know how much she loves to sneak up on staffers and startle them; the footage isn’t so cute given what’s now alleged of the work environment. On Ellen’s Game of Games, a wacky competition show airing on NBC, she comes off as a calm, collected comic-book villain, plunging participants down trap doors or shooting them with fog geysers. Recently, in talk-show episodes taped during the shutdown, she has had her producer Andy Lassner—who generally plays the role of court stooge on her set—sequestered outside her mansion’s glass walls, looking in forlornly. Unintentionally, it’s the perfect visual to accompany the now-popular impression of DeGeneres as emotionally walled off from the “regular” folks who work for or admire her.
Psychoanalyzing a star by comparing their performances with rumors about their private behavior is a dicey exercise. It's also an unavoidable one when the star is as big as DeGeneres and the cognitive dissonance created by those rumors is so great. That someone who has shown such smarts, self-awareness, and generosity might leave a trail of destruction in her personal encounters is baffling. That an avatar of kindness could have been oblivious to, or even enabled, abuse on her set is disturbing. It is natural to wonder whether having to continually modulate herself to be, per the title of her recent Netflix special, Relatable, has had an effect on how she acts when cameras aren’t rolling. It is also natural to wonder if this is simply another story of fame’s bubble having a corrupting influence.
For the Ellen DeGeneres Show’s happy-go-lucky antics to go on without first dispelling the cloud around it seems unfathomable, and the firings of its allegedly abusive producers do not address the larger problem of DeGeneres’s tarnished image. Perhaps with time, DeGeneres will make amends with anyone she may have hurt and explain herself honestly. Maybe the show will morph (already, staffers have been told they will be given more time off). Or maybe she’ll find a new outlet for her talents, an outlet that lets her flaunt her edge without harming others.
Yet even now it is clear why DeGeneres had to forge an image of overdetermined cheer to get where she is. Earlier this month, I wrote an article critical of DeGeneres and her defenders, and I heard a lot from readers who were glad I had. Some of those readers’ emails cheered the potential downfall of the “heterophobic” “Ellen degenerate,” a “dyke” with a “femdom need for control.” She has hustled so intently, her whole career, to head off the bigots who would reflexively assume her to be a monster. Hollywood history makes clear that no one group has a monopoly on misbehavior. But now looms the sad possibility that in having her facade ripped away, one of pop culture’s greatest people pleasers may have finally given the worst portions of her audience what they’ve always wanted.
2. Meet the Black Women Who Rode Motorcycles Cross-Country for the March on Washington
Porsche Taylor is, as she puts it, “definitely being attacked by the road” right now. She’d hit rain in New Mexico (translation: slick roads and slow speeds). In Texas, her 80-mile-per-hour pace often not possible (traffic was merged into one lane due to construction). And pretty much everywhere in between, unlit highways meant not riding past sundown. Still, with only four days to get from Long Beach, California to Washington D.C. she was determined to stick to the itinerary. All 2,700 miles of it.
“Yeah we’ll need to pick it up and go a bit faster,” she says, speaking from the road, which thankfully, has opened up again. She’s cruising through big-sky country, passing by wide-open plains and dusty cattle ranches and…then she’s got to go. “I’ll call back once I maneuver around these big trucks,” she says. “I’ve got to get my girls past them or we could really get hurt.”
These are the realities when your ride is a candy-gold 2020 Indian Challenger—a motorcycle. Behind Porsche: a group that includes an EMT, a community college employee, a former member of the Army. One on a purple, three-wheeled Spyder, another riding a black and chrome Harley Davidson. All headed for the March on Washington with Black Girls Ride, a movement founded by Porsche to increase the representation of women in motorsports.
When they left from the west coast at 6 a.m. on Monday, there were just four women taking part in the cross-country trek, but two more joined in along the route. Once in Washington, they’ll meet-up with hundreds of other riders who all traveled from around the country.
For the women of Black Girls Ride, being on a bike is all about “wind therapy” and a sisterhood and a passion, but this time, they’re riding for something else. “After watching what happened to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others, it really stirred something up in us,” says Porsche, speaking from the road using a hands-free system that allows her to take calls from her helmet. “We knew we wanted to fight these injustices from the front line. I feel like I’m watching civil rights regress in this country and if we don’t stand up and speak up, we’ll be right back where we started.”
It was in Arkansas that the ride got especially emotional. There, checking into a hotel at the end of a long day of riding, the group heard the full story of Jacob Blake when a video of what happened to him appeared on television. “It was just a feeling of disbelief,” she says. “The thing is, I should have been outraged, but it happens so often that the element of surprise is kind of lost. It was just a reminder that this is what we’re fighting. This is why we’re riding.”
[Kind of inspiring. But I keep thinking - during a pandemic???]
3. Oh...no. Chadwick Boseman - star of Black Panther dies of Colon Cancer at 43
"Chadwick Boseman, star of “Black Panther,” has died at 43, after a four year battle with colon cancer.
Before he was cast as the Marvel Studios superhero, Boseman’s career first exploded with his portrayals of Black American icons Jackie Robinson (in 2013’s “42”) and James Brown (in 2014’s “Get on Up”). Boseman also appeared in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods,” and playing Thurgood Marshall in 2017’s “Marshall.”
“It is with immeasurable grief that we confirm the passing of Chadwick Boseman,” the statement read. “It was the honor of his life to bring King T’Challa to life in Black Panther.”
Fucking hell, 2020. Anyone else, want to punch 2020 in the nose right about now? Or get in a time machine and undo everything that happened in 2016. Where's a good Tardis when you need one?
4. The Life and Death of Richard Swift for the insane music critics/experts on my correspondence list (you know who you are, fellas).
On May 7th, 2018, Richard Swift posted a black-and-white image of his recording studio, National Freedom, to Instagram. Situated in a converted barn behind his home in Cottage Grove, Oregon, the studio was full of the tools of his trade: a triple stack of keyboards, the custom C&C drum kit made especially for him by the company, a Coles 4038 ribbon microphone on permanent loan from the band Death Cab for Cutie, a typewriter and a sea of vintage guitars. “‘THE HEX’ NOVEMBER // 11 songs performed by me for family and friends,” the caption said.
For years, Swift had been working on a series of songs dedicated to those closest to him: his wife, Shealynn, daughters, Madison and Kennedy, son, Adrian, and the legions of friends and colleagues who had been affected by his destructive behavior of the last few years. He planned to make two records in 2018. The Hex, which was released digitally by Secretly Canadian in September (and later on CD and vinyl), details Swift’s struggles, and his journey through tragedy and loss. Its planned follow-up, The Fix, would chronicle the path forward through those dark places.
In the months leading to that Instagram post, Swift had canceled recording sessions at the last minute, or had become unreliable or unconscious during those in progress. He’d become so combative with his family that they had moved out. The pair of albums were meant as an olive branch, and a turning point in his struggle with alcoholism. A commitment to getting better.
Less than two months later, he died.
During his life, Swift was an unlikely triple threat: a prodigious solo artist, studio whisperer and accomplished sideman. He transcended humble beginnings as a Christian artist to become a visible indie-rock figure steeped in the dreamy, orchestral aesthetics of Harry Nilsson and Burt Bacharach, and later the raucous sounds of Captain Beefheart and Howlin’ Wolf, before either were fashionable in the new millennium. He then pivoted to become an in-demand producer and supporting musician, recording albums by the Pretenders and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, and touring with The Shins and The Black Keys.
The Hex tells another story about Swift’s last years. Some of its songs had been released on his Tumblr as early as 2011, while others are previously unknown. Each word and tone testifies the immense talent of a man who was a friend to so many, a father, husband, brother and son, an unrelenting joker, another poignant tragedy in addiction’s grasp. How a little boy from Orange County became one of indie rock’s most admired musicians is all there, in a gorgeous and crushing swan song that plays out with the drama and richness of the black-and-white aesthetic he celebrated.
“The thing about Rich is that he wasn’t just great at drums or piano — he was better at everything than everybody,” says Dan Auerbach, who started his side band the Arcs with Swift in 2015. “He was better at synthesizers. He was better at singing harmonies. He was a great guitar player. He was an incredible bass player. He could build a track from nothing to completely finished in an hour. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Personally? I've never heard of him and have no clue who he is. But I'm positive the music experts on my correspondence list have. Haven't you?
5. On a brighter note.. Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World's Oldest Continuously Run Libraries
6. Okay...I understand the whole concept behind networking, but this is taking things a step too far.. Candidate sends a prospective employer a gift wrapped resume, framed picture of himself, and a cake.
Plus, there’s a whole category of pushiness in the pursuit of a job, like the job candidate who sent a framed photo of himself to his would-be interviewer:
I returned to my office one afternoon to find a beautiful gift bag on my desk. I thought that maybe it was from a secret admirer or an early birthday present. Inside I found a folder, a card, something wrapped in tissue, and a large round tin. Inside the folder was a multi-page resume on very thick, expensive paper. Inside the tin was a cake. The card included a hand-written note saying that he thought he was the perfect candidate for the job and somehow used the word “cake” in a pun. And inside the tissue paper? A framed color photo of the candidate …
I was so incredibly creeped out by this gesture. I didn’t know whether to laugh or execute a restraining order. I was afraid to eat the cake and couldn’t look at him and didn’t even call him for an interview.
Or consider this horror story from someone who works for a company known for its excellent perks and benefits:
[Candidates] have taken to outright stalking our employees. I freelance occasionally and have a separate website for my freelance business. I receive dozens of calls and emails to my freelance number and email account daily from people who want to “chat about the open position.” My husband—who has a different last name—runs a small retail shop. He’s had people come into his store and tell him that they did internet sleuthing and found out he was married to an employee of my company, and would he please pass on their resume?
Three things I hate with a fiery passion: Dating, Job Hunting/Networking, and Apartment Hunting.
At a meetup group once - I was discussing job hunting with a professional career coach.
Career Coach: I tell all my clients the same thing, approach it the same way that you would hunting for an apartment or dating. In particular dating.
Me: Dating?
Career Coach: Yes, you are dating the prospective employers - to determine if it is a good match.
Me: Okay, I suck at dating, this explains a lot.
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Date: 2020-08-29 05:24 pm (UTC)You put your finger on it there. So much of today started then, even this.
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Date: 2020-08-29 10:01 pm (UTC)