One backpacker was rammed with a four-wheel-drive before being attacked with a shovel, police say.
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We can update Every Mint Every Time we have long network links ....
Tuesday, 31 July 2018
Uber halts development of self-driving trucks
The ride-hailing firm says it will now focus solely on the development of self-driving cars.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NSiW0Q
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NSiW0Q
James Gunn: Guardians of the Galaxy cast back fired director
Chris Pratt says that James Gunn "is a good man" despite his "inappropriate jokes from years ago".
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NTUVXy
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NTUVXy
Largest king penguin colony shrinks 90% in 30 years
The world's largest colony, in the Indian Ocean, has shrunk 90% over 30 years, research suggests.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OufYkk
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OufYkk
The battle to stop ex-IS fighters reaching Europe
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville follows the teams trying to trace ex-IS fighters who have fled Syria.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NWJOwL
Bruce Beach has built a 10,000 sq ft nuclear bunker
At 10,000 sq ft, Ark Two is one of Canada's largest nuclear fallout shelters.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M1xLh7
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M1xLh7
Brexit and your holiday: Five things that could change
How the UK leaving the EU could impact things like flights, visas and mobile roaming.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M55giP
World-famous aerialist on the keys to her success
Christine Van Loo, a seven-time US national acro-gymnastics champion, explains how she got to the top of her game.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2Kb7MCm
Nailing it: How the National Gallery of Ireland is taking the masters to the masses
The National Gallery of Ireland is teaming up with a Dublin based nail bar to recreate the greats in 'minicure' form.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OueHK3
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OueHK3
Canadian puddle splash van driver loses job
Employer confirms driver has been sacked after his anti-social behaviour is caught on dashcam.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2AkvFYi
Russian ministry spokeswoman turns songwriter
Foreign Ministry's Maria Zakharova pens lyrics for popular Russian singer.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2LwsZfz
Intrepid French hunt for sunken warships Cordelière and Regent
The Regent and Cordelière burned together and are now the focus of a French explorer's mission.
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OvguyM
from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OvguyM
The fight to end silence on fashion's waste problem
We asked major labels if they destroyed their excess stock. They weren't all forthcoming.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2uZTZK0
Will EU healthcare for tourists survive Brexit?
Will you be able to use the European Health Insurance Card when the UK leaves the EU?
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2NY5991
Would you quote Rick Astley in your out-of-office?
Not everyone sticks to the standard out-of-office reply - we take a look at the more unusual ones.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2M4q3D2
Letter from Africa: How bruised is President Buhari by defections?
Journalist Mannir Dan Ali considers the Nigerian president's chances of re-election after the loss of key allies.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2AppbHX
Germany gripped by #MeTwo racism debate
Thousands of tweets document racism in German schools, housing and jobs.
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from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/2OrUK6N
DeMon: Hyderabad company with ghost address deposited Rs 3,178 cr
A city-based company that deposited and withdrew Rs 3,178 crore in banks post-demonetisation and is being probed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) has a ghost registered address at Erragadda in Hyderabad.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2v4M4uR
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2v4M4uR
New e-com policy: Cheap online shopping may end
The draft e-commerce policy has proposed that 'deep discounts' be stopped from a specified date to regulate the e-commerce sector. The plan is to include multiple aspects in the legislation — from consumer protection and grievance redressal to ownership, FDI, local storage of data, protecting micro, small and medium enterprises and mergers and acquisitions.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2mU9sXC
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2mU9sXC
Top 5 spells by Indian pacers in England
Indian fast bowlers have used the English conditions to produce some memorable displays. TOI lists its top 5.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2M0MFEq
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2M0MFEq
Kiki dance dare keeps police on their toes
In kiki challenge, people step out of their cars, and dance to the tunes of singer Drake's track ‘In My Feelings’ from his latest album ‘Scorpion’. In Punjab, the music video has been widely circulated on WhatsApp. Local versions of the challenge have been uploaded on sites like Instagram.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OvQOlF
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OvQOlF
Harley eyes India, plans 250 – 500cc bikes
The move comes as part of Harley’s 2022-centric ‘More Roads to Harley-Davidson’ plan, which aims at getting more people into the company’s fold, especially from international markets. The idea is to compete in large and fast-growing segments of global markets
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2AmsRda
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2AmsRda
Musk personally delivers Model 3 to customer
In a recent announcement on micro-blogging site Twitter, Tesla CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Elon Musk revealed that the electric car giant will be working on a new vehicle delivery system that will transport vehicles straight from the Tesla factory to the owners' homes using enclosed trailers.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2M3GPCk
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2M3GPCk
NRC: Reasons for exclusion to remain confidential
The only exceptions to this are those who have been marked ‘doubtful’ voters by the Election Commission and those who have, at any point of time, been referred to Foreigners’ Tribunals and their descendants. These two categories of people, numbering 2.48 lakh, already know that their names would not be included in the draft NRC until cleared by the tribunals.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OsWfkY
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OsWfkY
Live: Opposition stages protest over NRC
A day after NRC final draft release, Parliament is set for a lively session today. Stay with us for live updates and latest news.
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from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2LHRMgV
Kerala: It’s king cobra hatching time in Kannur!
Two consecutive instances of successful hatching of king cobra – one at Parassinikkadavu Snake Park in the district on July 28, with four hatchlings, while the second in a private plantation near Kottiyoor where 23 king cobra eggs were hatched on July 29.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2LQ0Gbb
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2LQ0Gbb
NRC: 40 lakh in Assam labelled ‘illegals’
The Registrar General of India has given one more chance to those who couldn’t make it to the NRC to prove their citizenship. They will have to file claims between August 30 and September 28. The next NRC update will be on December 31.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OsX4KN
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2OsX4KN
How TN is saving more lives on the road
Data from the police Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems shows that between January and June there were 33,026 accidents in the state compared to 33,345 in 2017
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2LRh7UC
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2LRh7UC
Man stars in porn video, sends it to in-laws
The bizarre attempt to hit back at his estranged wife did not go down well with anybody.
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2mYBxgE
from The Times of India https://ift.tt/2mYBxgE
US spy agencies: North Korea is working on new missiles - Washington Post
Washington Post |
US spy agencies: North Korea is working on new missiles
Washington Post U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country's first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States, according to officials familiar with the ... WaPo: New indicators show North Korea potentially working on missiles US intelligence agencies determine that North Korea is constructing new missiles: report North Korea 'working on new missiles', US officials say |
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Pompeo sets conditions for Iran meeting after Trump says he'll meet without preconditions - The Hill
The Hill |
Pompeo sets conditions for Iran meeting after Trump says he'll meet without preconditions
The Hill Secretary of State Mike Pompeo · Michael (Mike) Richard PompeoTrump admin urges troops in Afghanistan to withdraw from some areas: report Twelve times Trump surprised the Pentagon Trump officials urge patience on North Korea MORE listed specific ... Trump says he's willing to meet Iran's president without precondition Threats aside, Trump says he's willing to meet with Iranians Trump's willingness to meet with Iran is diplomatic over-confidence, Dem says |
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Trump smokescreen fogs up what is fact or fiction - CNN
CNN |
Trump smokescreen fogs up what is fact or fiction
CNN (CNN) As the second disorientating summer of President Donald Trump's presidency unfolds, it's becoming hard to work out what is real, what is smoke and what is pure fantasy. But for Trump, that is the point as he faces imminent and medium-term legal ... Reliable Sources: Moonves remains atop CBS. For now... How Trump Allies Shifted Their Defense as Evidence of Contacts With Russians Grew Late Night Hosts Dig Into Rudy Giuliani For Saying “Collusion Is Not A Crime” |
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A Rush to Block Downloadable Plans for 3-D Printed Guns - New York Times
New York Times |
A Rush to Block Downloadable Plans for 3-D Printed Guns
New York Times Gun control proponents and state officials are racing the clock to try to block blueprints to make guns from 3-D printers from going online Wednesday. The varied efforts, in courthouses and legislatures, are aimed at Defense Distributed, a Texas-based ... Attorneys General Sue Trump Administration To Block 3D-Printed Guns States sue Trump administration to block 3D printed guns 3D-printed guns: 9 states sue Trump administration for an emergency ban |
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The case of San Antonio's stolen shark is solved, a suspect is under arrest and 'Miss Helen' is back home - CNN
CNN |
The case of San Antonio's stolen shark is solved, a suspect is under arrest and 'Miss Helen' is back home
CNN (CNN) What began with a quick grab-and-go theft Saturday at the San Antonio Aquarium -- the suspect leaving a trail of water drops as he hurried away with his dripping prize of a small but very much alive shark -- ended Monday with the safe return of ... Young horn shark stolen from Texas aquarium is safely returned Shark found after surveillance video shows suspects stealing the animal in a stroller Thieves snatch shark from San Antonio Aquarium, wheel it out in a baby carriage |
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Trump Wants To Give the Wealthy Another Tax Cut, With No Vote In Congress - New York Magazine
New York Magazine |
Trump Wants To Give the Wealthy Another Tax Cut, With No Vote In Congress
New York Magazine The Trump had administration is considering a plan to cut taxes for investors. The idea would be to index capital gains for inflation, so that rather than tax the entire gain of an asset, an investor would subtract the value of inflation, therefore ... Trump administration eyes capital gains tax cut for wealthy: NY Times |
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In a new book, Bob Woodward plans to reveal the 'harrowing life' inside Donald Trump's White House - Washington Post
Washington Post |
In a new book, Bob Woodward plans to reveal the 'harrowing life' inside Donald Trump's White House
Washington Post In the worldwide capital of leaks and anonymous dishing that is Washington, secrets can be almost impossible to keep. But somehow over the past 19 months, the fact that America's most famous investigative journalist was quietly chipping away at a book ... Bob Woodward's new book puts readers 'face to face with Trump' Bob Woodward's New Book Will Detail 'Harrowing Life' Inside Trump White House Bob Woodward's New Book Will Chronicle Trump's 'Harrowing' Presidency |
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More than 200 interviews conducted in the case of missing University of Iowa student - CNN
CNN |
More than 200 interviews conducted in the case of missing University of Iowa student
CNN (CNN) More than 200 interviews have been conducted in the investigation into the disappearance of a University of Iowa student, Mollie Tibbetts, according to the special agent in charge. Tibbetts, 20, disappeared nearly two weeks ago near Brooklyn, a ... Mollie Tibbetts case investigators keeping details close to the vest, key questions remain unanswered |
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A Migrant Boy Rejoins His Mother, but He’s Not the Same
By MIRIAM JORDAN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2LVfOnX
If an N.B.A. Workout Isn’t on Instagram, Does it Even Count?
By SCOTT CACCIOLA from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2AAY4tB
After Doctors Cut Their Opioids, Patients Turn to a Risky Treatment for Back Pain
By SHEILA KAPLAN from NYT Health https://ift.tt/2v3sI9D
What’s on TV Tuesday: ‘Please Like Me’ and ‘Frontline’
By GABE COHN from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2KbQhBC
Ceramics Aren’t Enough. Bring on the Spaceships, Italian Town Says.
By JASON HOROWITZ from NYT World https://ift.tt/2vonAfu
Philippine Bombing Kills 10, Showing Insurgents Remain a Problem
By FELIPE VILLAMOR from NYT World https://ift.tt/2KhkD5Q
How Trump Allies Shifted Their Defense as Evidence of Contacts With Russians Grew
By MARK MAZZETTI from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2Kbq7Pz
Former FEMA Official Accused of Sexual Misconduct That Spanned Years
By MATT STEVENS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2LGBip2
Quotation of the Day: Why Global Greening Isn’t as Great as It Sounds
By Unknown Author from NYT Today’s Paper https://ift.tt/2M0WLFu
Review: In a New Orleans ‘House,’ Wealthy Women Are Haunted by Slavery’s Ghosts
By BEN BRANTLEY from NYT Theater https://ift.tt/2mVsj4v
With Trades, Yankees Pitching Staff Remains a Work in Progress
By BILLY WITZ from NYT Sports https://ift.tt/2Kc6uqw
New York City Is Thriving. Why Is Transport Such a Nightmare?
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2v2dWjd
Four People, Including a 5-Year-Old Boy, Are Shot and Killed in Queens
By BENJAMIN MUELLER and HANNAH WULKAN from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2v3idmO
Murder Suspect Used Dating Apps to Prey on Women, Police Say
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL from NYT New York https://ift.tt/2KbEEL8
Bob Woodward’s New Book Will Detail ‘Harrowing Life’ Inside Trump White House
By MATT STEVENS and JASON M. BAILEY from NYT Business Day https://ift.tt/2vjb15l
President Trump willing to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani without precondition
President Trump declares Russian sanctions "will remain, as is."
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2v3Mxxn
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2v3Mxxn
President Trump renews government shutdown threat if no border wall funding
President Trump renews his call for border security ahead of funding battle.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2M5UQ2b
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2M5UQ2b
'Nasty' business relationship with Mueller amounts to conflict of interest: Trump
President Trump claimed he had a 'nasty and contentious' business relationship with special counsel Robert Mueller prior to his appointment.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LDbXwn
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LDbXwn
American college student swept out to sea in Israel found dead
TeNiya Elnora Jones was swimming near Tel Aviv when she was swept out to sea.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LOO5oC
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LOO5oC
Carr Fire has now scorched over 100,000 acres in Northern California
The Carr Fire was one several uncontained wildfires raging in California.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2OrOFXW
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2OrOFXW
New video, images released in slaying of President George H.W. Bush's former doctor
Police in Houston have released new surveillance video and images of the gunman in the shooting death of former President George H.W. Bush doctor.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2Alpa7L
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2Alpa7L
Police operations suspended after 2 cops arrested for driving trucks while on duty
All police operations have been halted in a North Carolina town.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2OsXLDP
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2OsXLDP
Robert Wilkie sworn in as new Veterans Affairs secretary
Vice President Mike Pence swore in Robert Wilkie as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on Monday.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2uZmmIs
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2uZmmIs
WATCH: Family of 6 dies in motel fire in Michigan
Kiarre Samuel and five children, ages 2 to 10, were killed, police said.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2AmXIq3
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2AmXIq3
Maryland police officer cleared in shooting of unarmed man in parking lot scuffle
A Maryland police officer was cleared in a fatal shooting in a parking lot confrontation.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2KgsQaq
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2KgsQaq
Ruth Bader Ginsburg plans to stay on the Supreme Court for another five years
Twitter users feared the worst when the Associate Justice's name was trending on Monday.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2KacQXx
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2KacQXx
No charges to be filed against officers in fatal Minneapolis police shooting
No charges will be filed in the shooting death of Thurman Blevins last month.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LASBbd
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LASBbd
Officials identify man shot and killed by police
A man who was shot and killed by a police officer in Pennsylvania was identified as a 44-year-old resident of New Jersey by police on Monday.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LwzCyt
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LwzCyt
WATCH: Panda celebrates birthday with bamboo bread cupcakes
Giant panda Xiao Liwu celebrated his sixth birthday at the San Diego Zoo with plenty of presents and bamboo bread birthday cupcakes.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2NXXckj
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2NXXckj
WATCH: 2-year-old delivers burritos to firefighters in Northern California
Firefighters battling the Carr Fire received a special treat from 2-year-old Gracie: breakfast burritos. The toddler has two uncles and a grandfather who are helping to fight the raging wildfire.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2vmRq47
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2vmRq47
WATCH: Boater finds shelter from waterspout under stilt house
Eddie Ortiz was boating with his family of Key Biscayne, Florida, when the outing was interrupted by a force of nature.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LwJR5I
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2LwJR5I
WATCH: Homeless man receives hundreds of job interviews after tweet
David Casarez, an unemployed web developer, handed out his resume on a Silicon Valley street and a stranger shared his story on social media.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2K7Wcrw
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2K7Wcrw
2 American cyclists killed in attack claimed by ISIS
The cyclists were part of a group of seven who were targeted, authorities said.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2AlFJR6
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2AlFJR6
Stephen Colbert says Leslie Moonves is 'my guy,' but 'I believe in accountability'
CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert took on the network's CEO Leslie Moonves.
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2NYF89E
from ABC News: Top Stories https://ift.tt/2NYF89E
Donald Trump Is Falling in Love With Summits
Turns out that when Donald Trump recently warned Iran’s president on Twitter that more threats against the United States would bring “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE,” it was just the first part of his message. The second was, essentially, “AND IF YOU’D RATHER TALK, I’D LOVE TO!” Or, as he put it on Monday at a press conference with Italy’s prime minister, “I would certainly meet with Iran if they wanted to meet,” with “no preconditions.”
When Barack Obama, who Trump accuses of being soft on America’s adversaries, said he was willing to meet with the leaders of foes such as Iran and North Korea without preconditions back in 2007, he was ridiculed by Republicans and even Democrats like Hillary Clinton as hopelessly naive. But at times Trump has embraced a surprisingly Obama-like approach to the power of dialogue. “I’ll meet with anybody. I believe in meeting,” Trump said on Monday, “especially when you’re talking about potentials of war and death and famine and lots of other things.”
There was a hint of this even during his campaign for president, when Trump offered to have a hamburger with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un; and another hint last fall, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he had turned down a proposed meeting with Trump. Since then, Trump has gotten two major summits under his belt, and he’s treated the summit as something more than a favorite tactic: He has cast it as itself a remedy for the country’s most intractable foreign-policy challenges. Trump meets with Kim and announces, in reference to a danger decades in the making, that there is “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea”; he shakes hands with Vladimir Putin and proclaims, in regard to a decades-old superpower rivalry, that while the U.S.-Russia “relationship has never been worse than it is now … that changed as of about four hours ago.”
The spectacle of such summits surely appeals to Trump’s taste for theatrics and ratings bonanzas—for made-for-TV “wins.” But they’re also critical components of a process Trump appears to have pursued with threats of war with North Korea, trade war with the European Union, and now a showdown with Iran: Escalate tensions in order to de-escalate them, and then claim victory. “Begin by hurling insults at the other side,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in The Washington Post last week, in summarizing the approach. “Threaten extreme consequences. Then meet with the other side, backpedal, and triumphantly announce that you have saved the world from a crisis that your rhetoric and actions caused in the first place.” In the North Korean case, it took eight months for Trump to go from “fire and fury” to offering a summit. In the Iranian case, the shift from threats of unprecedented destruction to offers of unprecedented diplomatic engagement took about a week—though it could always shift back.
The leader-to-leader summit—and especially the private one-on-one sit-down between those leaders without advisers present—is also a pure distillation of what appears to be Trump’s preferred method of handling international affairs: a coercive, transactional, highly personalized bilateralism in which, as the political theorist Danielle Allen recently put it, “global politics is conducted as a series of deals with Donald Trump.” The summit is the foreign-policy equivalent of Trump’s famous declaration during the presidential campaign that, when it came to America’s many afflictions, “I alone can fix it.” The key to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis is not some unwieldy six-party negotiation, but rather Trump sizing up Kim Jong Un within seconds of meeting him. Trump withdraws from the multinational nuclear deal with Iran and proposes a tete-a-tete with Iran’s leader instead. “We could work something out that’s meaningful,” Trump explained on Monday, “not the waste of paper that the [Iran] deal was.”
Trump administration officials have acknowledged the central role summitry is now playing in the president’s management of foreign relations. “The summit in and of itself is an important deliverable,” Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, told reporters during a briefing call before Trump met Putin in Helsinki, Finland. (National-Security Adviser John Bolton said almost exactly the same thing.) “I would just point to the summit with Kim Jong Un, which has already shown the possibility for reduced tension on the Korean peninsula and certainly throughout Northeast Asia. And if you can imagine what reduced tension could do in the case of U.S.-Russia and Europe-Russia, it would be on a much bigger scale.”
The drawback of this approach is that sometimes a summit is just a summit, not a solution. Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un certainly reduced tensions on the Korean peninsula, but so far it has not resulted in North Korea making any major concessions on its nuclear-weapons program—the reason Trump met with Kim in the first place. The summit with Putin has, in the near term at least, actually increased tensions between the United States and Russia because of Trump’s refusal to confront Putin over Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, without yielding any concrete achievements as of yet—not even a joint summit statement.
On Monday, Mike Pompeo seemed to backtrack a bit on his boss’s offer to meet with Iran’s leaders without preconditions, suggesting to CNBC that the administration would set a high bar for a summit. “The president wants to meet with folks to solve problems,” the secretary of state said. “If the Iranians demonstrate a commitment to make fundamental changes in how they treat their own people, reduce their malign behavior, can agree that it’s worthwhile to enter into a nuclear agreement that actually prevents proliferation, then the president said he’s prepared to sit down and have a conversation with them.” What remains unclear from the administration’s track record is whether, if Iran doesn’t meet those conditions and a summit happens regardless, any of those goals can be accomplished through a conversation alone.
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2NXGMsb
Redneck Muslim
“I’m probably the only person here [at UNC Medical Center] whose grandfather taught them how to tie a noose,” says Shane Atkinson in Jennifer Taylor and Mustafa Davis’s short documentary, Redneck Muslim.
Atkinson is a self-described “Muslim with a Southern accent who can talk about deer hunting.” Born to a Southern Baptist family in Mississippi, he was socialized in the culture of white supremacy. It was only after he began attending a racially integrated school—the first in his family to do so—that Atkinson began to question his learned biases. “Things didn’t really add up,” he says in the film. “Seeing that there’s good and bad in all people caused a lot of confusion for me.”
As Atkinson’s worldview began to expand, he learned about Islam. Eventually, he would convert to the faith and marry a Muslim woman. He served as a chaplain at the University of North Carolina Medical Center and is now an Imam and the founding director of the Southern Hospitality Islamic Center, formerly known as the Society of Islamic Rednecks. Through his work at the Center, Atkinson strives to challenge a common assumption of identity politics: that the terms “Muslim” and “redneck” are fundamentally incongruous.
“In the process of running the group, I realized it provided me with a space to make peace with my past, and move forward as a whole person,” Atkinson told The Atlantic. “Being able to extend that space to other people has been a life-giving experience. I can [tell you that] you can keep your Amercian identity and practice the Islamic spiritual path, but when people actually see it with their own eyes, it clicks on a much deeper level.”
Atkinson’s humility and openness are evident as he meets with leaders of the African-American Islamic community. “Someone was asking me, ‘What would motivate white people to stand up for justice?’” Atkinson says in the film. “[That person thought] we don’t really have anything to gain. Are we just going to give away our privilege? I’m thinking, ‘You gain your humanity by doing that.’”
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2vhHBVe
Photos: The Agonizing Realities of Family Reunification
Last week, a court-ordered deadline passed, one set for the federal government to reunify more than 2,500 children separated from their families when they attempted to cross the United States border. Government officials say they have now reunited more than 1,800 families, but some are still waiting. According to a lawsuit, as reported by Reuters, more than 450 immigrant parents have been deported without their children, and their futures are even more uncertain. For the families who have been reunited, the meetings can be bittersweet—happy endings to weeks or months of forced separation—and their living situations remain the same, with conditions that drove them to seek asylum in the first place. Gathered here are images of recent reunifications, parents who still wait, and some of the detention facilities and centers that housed these children across the United States since June.
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2Or4ga6
Why Doctors Should Read Fiction
The annals of literature are packed with writers who also practiced medicine: Anton Chekhov, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Carlos Williams, John Keats, William Somerset Maugham, and on and on. As doctors, they saw patients at their most vulnerable, and their medical training gave them a keen eye for observing people and what makes them tick.
But if studying medicine is good training for literature, could studying literature also be good training for medicine? A new paper in Literature and Medicine, “Showing That Medical Ethics Cases Can Miss the Point,” argues yes. In particular, it proposes that certain literary exercises, like rewriting short stories that involve ethical dilemmas, can expand doctors’ worldviews and make them more attuned to the dilemmas real patients face.
The paper dissects ethical case studies, which students in nursing and medical school often encounter in classes. Typically, these studies—most based on actual medical cases—summarize a conflict about a course of treatment or another aspect of someone’s care. The students have to decide what the doctor or nurse should do next, or determine what the doctor or nurse did wrong. The idea is to get students thinking about problems they might face in the future, before they actually confront these issues in a pressure-filled clinical situation.
The paper’s author, Woods Nash, a medical-humanities scholar at the University of Houston, points out that ethical case studies have a distinct literary style—or lack thereof. They emphasize action over characterization, and provide a bare minimum of atmosphere. They’re also short—usually a few hundred words—which cuts out most of the nuance and motivation for characters’ behavior. The brevity and lack of nuance aren’t just literary faults, but actually limit the usefulness of case studies, Nash argues.
To demonstrate these shortcomings, he turns to fiction. In his new paper, he distills a typical ethics case study from a short story called “Fetishes” by the physician-writer Richard Selzer. In the story, a middle-aged woman named Audrey faces a hysterectomy. On the eve of the surgery, her anesthesiologist informs her, rather bluntly, that she’ll have to remove her dentures beforehand. Audrey doesn’t want to, because her husband—an anthropologist who regularly travels for months at a time—was out of the country when she got them and still doesn’t know she has them, even decades later.
Audrey argues that letting her husband see her without them will shatter her “dignity.” The anesthesiologist pooh-poohs her concerns and orders her to remove them for her own safety. Audrey eventually confesses her dilemma to a younger resident with a physical handicap (a limp), who establishes a much better rapport with her. He agrees to slip them back in during her recovery, before her husband can see.
In his paper, Nash reduces this 10-page story to a stark 215-word summary, then analyzes it using a typical ethical framework in medicine known as principalist ethics. He notes that many bioethicists would criticize the anesthesiologist for not respecting Audrey’s autonomy and dismissing her concerns about the dentures. But the analysis would also be blind to the subtler dynamics that make the story resonate, he argues. It’s not a story about lack of autonomy as much as about a woman whose male doctors (including the dentist who pressured her into getting dentures in the first place) condescend to her. The short summary also overlooks how the younger resident connected with Audrey—by establishing a human bond first, instead of simply walking in and dictating treatment.
Audrey “perceives [the doctors] as behaving smugly, belittling her because she is a woman, and relishing the power they wield over her,” Nash writes. “Until these underlying issues are resolved, recommendations to communicate more openly, respect patient autonomy, and reduce risks would remain insufficient.” Such recommendations, he adds, “do not penetrate to the problem’s roots.”
So how can students penetrate to the roots? Nash proposes a simple exercise, one he’s employed in his classes for three years. He has each student read a story like “Fetishes” and reduce it to a case study. Then the students read their classmates’ summaries of the same story, and examine how they differ—in the underlying assumptions, or the details emphasized or omitted. Among other lessons, Nash says the exercise teaches students that “the style of a case is not ethically neutral” and that “there can be no definitive statement of a case.”
Short stories aren’t perfect, either. Like doctors, fiction writers have their own biases and limitations, and the traditional Western canon represents a rather narrow (and mostly white and male) perspective. But unlike the pseudo-objective tone of case studies, stories like “Fetishes” at least attempt to promote overlooked points of view. And instructors certainly could seek out stories by authors of diverse backgrounds.
Overall, Nash says he’d prefer to “jettison” medical-ethics case studies entirely. He writes in an email, “The real world is messy, of course, and ethics cases often teach us (implicitly) to clean up that mess by oversimplifying it.” Furthermore, case studies “are themselves a byproduct and reflection of clinical practice’s overemphasis on efficiency. Not just in primary care, but in many areas of medicine, doctors spend far too little time really listening to patients and trying to appreciate the depths of their patients’ problems.”
Other scholars agree that medical-ethics case studies have limitations. Leslie McNolty and Matthew Pjecha, program associates at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, praised Nash’s paper overall, especially the idea of rewriting short stories to help teach inexperienced medical and nursing students.
But they caution against too sweeping a condemnation of case studies. “In nearly every discussion of real ethical issues, you’ll hear someone say [things like], ‘I wish I knew more about her husband,’ or ‘why’s she so afraid of dementia,’” McNolty says. When presented with case summaries, in other words, people often do ask questions and seek out more information.
Along those same lines, Pjecha notes that “people actually using [case studies] in ethics committees in hospitals”—as opposed to students in classes—“are aware of how austere and truncated they are.” Often, someone who treated the patient on which the case is based will be present to answer more questions. Overall, Pjecha says, ethics committees see case studies “as an important first step, but then you unpack it further, and it spins into a story.”
Still, Nash stands behind the idea of eliminating case studies. “Good short stories are far more effective means of teaching students and health-care professionals to wrestle with the mess, to pay attention to narrative perspective and detail, and to become more comfortable with ambiguity,” he says.
They’re also, Nash points out, much better reads. “Why continue to use ethics cases if short stories are better at inviting realistic reflection and more enjoyable to read and discuss?” It’s a sentiment that Chekov, Maugham, and others who wrestled with such issues in both their life and work would appreciate.
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2AmoDCD
Trump's Increasingly Desperate Attacks on Mueller
The president and his team are on the offensive against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That’s not new, of course.
What is new is the tone of the attacks, which have come over the last 24 hours via Donald Trump’s Twitter account and interviews with Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani and Trump sound increasingly desperate, and their talking points are increasingly nonsensical. Giuliani has also resurfaced an old talking point that wasn’t particularly effective before: that collusion with the Russians isn’t a crime. They seem to be throwing everything including the kitchen sink at Mueller and seeing what hits him.
Although this is a tense moment for Trump legally, Mueller is not the most obvious target. There’s an escalating battle between Trump and Michael Cohen, his former fixer, but that concerns a case in New York that’s separate from the Mueller probe. Starting this week, Mueller’s team will try the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in federal court in Virginia, but the trial hasn’t been mentioned in their attacks.
Michael Cohen's astonishing claim about the Trump Tower meeting
Whatever the acute cause, Trump is acting defensive. In a series of tweets on Sunday, the president went after Mueller:
There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2018
....Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama....And why isn’t Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2018
Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2018
It’s a classic Trump cocktail of fact, innuendo, and nonsense. Mueller really does have 17 attorneys. Many, though not all, of them have given to Democratic candidates in the past, most in small amounts, but some in thousands of dollars. The part about the probe being illegal because it is based on the Steele dossier is nonsense.
The third tweet contains the real mystery. Trump claims that Mueller has a contentious business relationship with him. He additionally argues that the fact that he interviewed Mueller to replace James Comey as the FBI director should preclude him from leading the probe.
This represents a surprising new interest in conflicts of interest for the president, who has pooh-poohed concerns about conflicts of his own at every turn, including refusing to divest from his substantial personal holdings. (A federal judge last week allowed a lawsuit centered on his conflicts to proceed.)
Even if his newfound concern was sincere, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t make sense that Trump would have a personal dispute with Mueller so hostile that it would preclude his work as a special counsel, but not so hostile that it prevented Trump from considering him for an important job.
And what is the supposed “nasty & contentious relationship” the two men share? Trump didn’t say, and appearing on CNN Monday morning, Giuliani refused to elaborate. He claimed that he didn’t know, and that if the president didn’t explain, it was incumbent on Mueller to do so. Of course, lodging an accusation like this without offering any substance is just innuendo. As Giuliani, a former prosecutor, knows well, the burden of proof is on the prosecution.
The most likely bet is that what Trump is talking about isn’t new at all. The president reportedly tried to have Mueller fired in June 2017, citing an old disagreement over fees at a Trump golf course in northern Virginia. But if that’s one of the “conflicts,” it’s a trifle. As The Washington Post reported in January, “The dispute was hardly a dispute at all. According to a person familiar with the matter, Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.”
As it happens, the Justice Department has guidelines for what constitutes conflicts of interest—not just interpersonal issues, but donations to campaigns as well. There’s no public evidence that Mueller and his team haven’t followed them. Moreover, Giuliani admitted that he assumed that Mueller had disclosed the mystery conflict, be it golf-related or something else, to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein when the special counsel was appointed.
It’s not unusual for Giuliani to undercut the president’s case during his interviews, including in recent media appearances. His extended chat Monday with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota was no different. Hearing a conversation with Giuliani makes the president’s speaking style seem linear and coherent by comparison, but at several moments the lawyer made notable comments.
For one, Giuliani essentially admitted that Trump’s strategy for grappling with his legal headaches is distraction.
“When you’re getting beaten up by all kinds of anonymous tweets coming from [Cohen’s lawyer] Lanny Davis and Cohen, and you put out something like that, you have every right to say, ‘You explain it, Mueller. Stand up and be a man,’” Giuliani said. The performative machismo here aside, the Cohen case is in New York and is separate from the Mueller case—so Giuliani is highlighting how the attacks on Mueller are a misdirection.
Giuliani also accused Mueller of acting in “bad faith” in arranging an interview with the president, a rich accusation given that Giuliani keeps making conflicting statements about whether Trump will agree to an interview and on what grounds. In fact, as Giuliani noted, there are disagreements within the president’s own legal team about whether he should agree to an interview. One wonders how Mueller could negotiate in good faith with a divided Trump team.
More importantly, Giuliani mentioned both on CNN and on Fox & Friends that collusion is not a crime.
“I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime,” Giuliani said on Fox News. “Collusion is not a crime.”
“They are not going to be colluding about Russians, which I’m not, I don’t even know if that’s a crime, colluding about Russians,” he said on CNN. “You start analyzing the crime. The hacking is the crime.”
Mueller just uncovered a core Russian conspiracy
But his message seemed in conflict with itself. Echoing Trump’s “No Collusion!” tweet from Sunday, Giuliani later denied that any collusion had occurred. Why question the legal importance of collusion if you’re confident nothing of the sort occurred?
The Trump team is shifting the goalposts in an important, if erratic, way, but it’s also true that they’ve moved them before. Although instant reaction to the Giuliani interviews posited this as a sea change, it’s really a return to an older talking point. One year ago—after the Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer was first revealed—the president went at jarring speed from insisting there was no collusion to saying that if collusion occurred, it was right and proper and standard operating procedure for political campaigns. (Experienced political hands of both parties refuted this.) In December, the president’s legal team—much of which has since departed—again resurfaced the point that collusion is not illegal.
This is all beside the point. Just because collusion is not a crime doesn’t mean that crimes couldn’t have been committed in the course of collusion—that’s exactly what Mueller is investigating. Nor does the lack of a law against collusion make it acceptable. As Camerota asked, “Isn’t all of this unbecoming for a president of the United States?” Giuliani said he didn’t know.
Nonetheless, Giuliani claimed in a recent interview with Axios that the special counsel’s investigation is going nowhere. “Why don’t you write a report and show us what you have, because they don’t have a goddamn thing,” he said. “It’s like a guy playing poker. He’s bluffing and he’s only got a pair of twos.”
That’s a strange thing to say in the same week that Mueller is putting Trump’s former campaign chairman on trial. Mueller has also delivered a slew of other indictments, and he’s moving faster than his predecessors. It’s also unlikely that Giuliani, in his days as a U.S. attorney, would have been willing to dump the evidence he had before he’d completed an investigation simply because a subject demanded it.
Even though Giuliani’s and Trump’s claims are baseless or incoherent, and even though there seems to be no organization behind them, their effort might be working. A July CNN poll showed public approval of the Mueller probe down to 41 percent, following a steady decline. The special counsel’s personal approval is down, too. Even if what’s actually happening is just more polarized views of Mueller, that follows Trump’s typical strategy of divisive plays to his supporters.
Low approval won’t deter Mueller, who is said to be immune to public pressure, from his work. But since Mueller has reportedly told the White House that he will follow Justice Department directives that say a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, Trump’s fate will be decided not by the legal system but by the political ones. From a legal and logical point of view, the latest comments from Trump and Giuliani hold no water. From a political point of view, that may not matter.
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2NYK8LJ
Les Moonves and the Familiarity Fallacy
“Les Moonves is a close friend. I’ve known him for 40 years. He is a kind, decent, and honorable man. I believe him and I believe in him.”
That was Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman herself, defending the chief executive and “programming wizard” of CBS after Ronan Farrow’s long-in-the-works expose—detailing allegations of sexual impropriety against Moonves and other powerful men at the network—was published late on Friday. Carter’s defense was echoing several others, many of them high-ranking women at CBS, including Sharon Osbourne, the CBS Sports publicist LeslieAnne Wade, and Moonves’s wife and employee, Julie Chen, who came forward this weekend to defend Moonves’s character in general and his respect for women in particular. As Jo Ann Ross, the president and chief advertising revenue officer at CBS Corp, summed it up: “My experience with him on a professional and personal basis has never had any hint of the behavior this story refers to.”
In that, the women were also echoing the defenses of the 60 Minutes executive producer, Jeff Fager, offered in Farrow’s report by his prominent colleagues Lesley Stahl (“In my own experience, Jeff is supportive of women and decent to women”) and Anderson Cooper (“I work there part time, but in all the years I’ve been there I’ve never seen Jeff engage in any inappropriate behavior”). They know him, the insiders explain, in a way that readers of Farrow’s story—about Moonves and Fager, but also about a trickle-down culture of misogyny and impunity at CBS—simply could not. They have firsthand knowledge, the insiders remind the rest of us. They have All Access, as it were. And so they are able to see things in a way that the rest of us are not.
I knew him, Horatio, and he is supportive of women and decent to women: It is a common refrain in #MeToo stories that involve the famous and the powerful. (Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, defending their friend Murray Miller after the actress Aurora Perrineau came forward with allegations that the writer had sexually assaulted her when she was 17: “While our first instinct is to listen to every woman’s story, our insider knowledge of Murray’s situation makes us confident that sadly this accusation is one of the 3 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year.”) The refrain was there when several women who had been his colleagues on Saturday Night Live joined together to defend Al Franken. (“We would like to acknowledge that not one of us ever experienced any inappropriate behavior.”) And when more than 60 women who work in the media, including Rachel Maddow and Andrea Mitchell, signed a letter in defense of Tom Brokaw. (“Tom has treated each of us with fairness and respect … We know him to be a man of tremendous decency and integrity.”) And when Nancy Alspaugh, Matt Lauer’s ex-wife, defended him after the allegations against him were made public by declaring, “He’s been the best person that’s ever held that job and I couldn’t imagine that anything that he would have done—that would have been so out of character for him—that would have caused that reaction.”
The impulse, of course, is understandable, even as it throws into relief the human complexity that underscores every #MeToo story shared in the media: It’s human to want to defend the person you know. To want to believe that the person you know, personally, is different, that the person you work with and joke with would never, could never. That he is the exception. That he is the 3 percent.
And yet. That kind of familiarity doesn’t scale to a defense. There’s saying I know him, and then there’s assuming that the knowing itself is an exoneration. It’s one of the common logical fallacies at play in the ongoing discussion of #MeToo as it radiates and reverberates and continues. What I know him overlooks, of course, is the obvious: An abuser will not abuse everybody. Not just because of matters of dull pragmatism, but also because people are complex and variable and, as a rule, containing of multitudes. In 2015, the writer Nona Willis Aronowitz wrote an essay, “(Not) All Men,” considering how easy it is to recognize abuse—or sexism more broadly—when it is perpetrated by men you don’t know. And, conversely, how easy it is to rationalize the same thing when it is perpetrated by men you know and love. One of the “major obstacles in the Fight Against Patriarchy,” Aronowitz wrote, “is that a sexist guy will always seem like an outsider—a bad-news ex-boyfriend, perhaps, but not your male feminist friend, your super chill brother, your gentle dad.” It’s the logic of as the father of daughters, in reverse: Familiarity breeding not just empathy, but also exculpation.
I thought about Aronowitz’s essay when I was reading Farrow’s report on CBS. I thought, too, about the differences between nouns and verbs in the reckoning #MeToo is bringing about, the way behavior—the verbs—can seem clean-cut in their moralities, while the bigger picture, with its mess of nouns, can be so much more complicated. I thought on the one hand about the obvious: that it is assault for someone to pin down on a couch a colleague who had come to his office for a business meeting, her hands over her head, so that she “can’t breathe,” and “can’t move.” That it is assault for him to try to kiss her, “violently,” such that she begins to feel like “a trapped animal”—such that her life begins to flash before her eyes. And that it is a different kind of violation—but a violation, still—for him to attempt to edit the interaction after the fact, by calling their mutual colleagues to tell them what a great meeting it had been. For him to tell her that she’ll “never work at this network again.”
And then I thought about all the complications, the kinds that are summoned when people—so many people—come forward to defend Moonves on the grounds of his full personhood: the fact that he has a wife of almost 14 years who is, so far, publicly standing by him; that he is a father to an 8-year-old son; that he has publicly championed feminist causes; that he helped to found the Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace—a commission chaired by Anita Hill. The fact that Moonves acknowledges trying to kiss Illeana Douglas but denies, CBS told Farrow in a statement, “any characterization of ‘sexual assault,’ intimidation, or retaliatory action.” And the related fact, of course, that Les Moonves has overseen the transformation of CBS from a languishing network into a hit-making powerhouse. All the standard can-you-separate-the-art-from-the-artist questions, translated to the realm of corporate oversight and corporate profit.
Here is Terry Press, the president of CBS Films, commenting on the New Yorker story in a statement posted to her personal Facebook page:
I do not believe that it is my place to question the accounts put forth by the women but I do find myself asking that if we are examining the industry as it existed decades before through the lens of 2018 should we also discuss a path to learning, reconciliation, and forgiveness?
To reach a point where we can accept some space between zero accountability and complete destruction, we must first grapple with the issue of equivalency. If we paint episodes of vulgar (and deeply regrettable) behavior from 20 years ago with the same brush as serial criminal behavior, we will never move forward and more importantly, we eschew the complicated nuances of context for the easier path of absolutes.
It’s a comment that, in its entirety, is full of straw men and scapegoats (no one, in 1997, the year that Illeana Douglas alleges Moonves assaulted her, thought pinning a colleague down on the couch and forcibly kissing her was a normal thing to do). But it also echoes the kind of grappling that the colleagues of alleged abusers are left to do when stories of their abuse are made public. Charlie Rose’s CBS This Morning colleague Gayle King, after the allegations against him were published: “What do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something so horrible? I’m really grappling with that.” The comedian Sarah Silverman, on the allegations against “one of my best friends of over 25 years,” Louis C.K.: “Can you love someone who did bad things?”
These are painful questions. They are reminders that #MeToo is not a movement that is taking place in the distance, over there, but one that is taking place right here—right inside the home we all share. The American media has a tendency to talk about #MeToo stories in terms of obvious monstrosity: villains, victims, the clarity of evil. It’s language that is used because it’s true—what could be more monstrous than what Harvey Weinstein is alleged to have done, over all those years?—but also because it is, in its way, reassuring. Monsters, after all, are not known for their subtlety; they wear their villainy on their (scaly/slimy/hardware-studded) surfaces, making it undeniable and evident. There is comfort, and there is distance, in that obviousness. The monster may be trying to get into your house, but you have seen his fiendishness clearly against the flat horizon and therefore locked the door.
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The anxiety that Gayle King and Sarah Silverman—and, I think, the anxiety that Lynda Carter and Lesley Stahl and Jo Ann Ross are getting at, too—is the kind that comes with the monsters who are not so obvious about their monstrosity. The accusations leveled against Matt Lauer and Al Franken and Murray Miller and, now, Les Moonves and Jeff Fager—and their colleagues’ defenses of them—are reminders of that unsettling intimacy. They force everyone to confront the truth that is the ultimate conclusion of Ronan Farrow’s investigation: Venality has a way of hiding in plain sight. It lurks and lingers, not only in the lives of alleged victims, but also in the lives of the friends of the alleged perpetrators. And in the TV shows we watch to unwind after a long day. And in the systems that, through a thoroughly modern alchemy, take art and capitalism and spin them into products that delight and entertain. To reckon with #MeToo, in that sense, is also to reckon with the banality of monstrosity. It is to reckon with the systematization of harassment. It is to reckon with the fullness of the physics at play in what one of Ronan Farrow’s sources observed to him: “There are no bridges at CBS. There is only Les Moonves.”
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2v3KYzy
Can HBO Give Deadwood a Proper Ending?
HBO’s acclaimed series Deadwood ended on an abrupt note in 2006, canceled in a manner that was once commonplace in the world of television and now would be practically unheard of. Deadwood, created by the highly regarded but mercurial TV auteur David Milch (a co-creator of NYPD Blue), was a revisionist Western set in the famed South Dakota town during the 1870s, overflowing with baroque profanity and philosophizing about the American frontier. Though it was not quite the ratings hit of HBO’s crown jewels The Sopranos and Sex and the City, it was a critically beloved show that got plenty of Emmy nominations. After three years, HBO pulled the plug.
For years, Milch has ruminated on the regret he feels over Deadwood’s sudden end; the show never got to the epic showdown he had promised, involving the real-life figures Al Swearengen (played by Ian McShane) and George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), nor did he get to dramatize the actual town’s fate (it burned to the ground in 1879, though it was later rebuilt). “If I’m given strength and time, we’re definitely going to do more Deadwoods,” he said in a 2007 interview, acknowledging the “abrupt rupture” of its cancellation. For years, rumors bubbled up that HBO was close to striking a deal with Milch to make a TV movie that would wrap up the Deadwood narrative, but they never came to fruition until last week, when the network finally gave the green light.
Had Deadwood premiered in 2014 rather than 2004, at the beginnings of the “Peak TV” era, rather than the premium cable “golden age” of a decade prior, it never would have been canceled. Now even the most marginal hits are championed by their networks as centerpieces, and any show that garners Emmy attention is practically guaranteed to stay on the air. Big Little Lies was made as a miniseries and still got a renewal from HBO; the streaming network Netflix has renewed low-buzz shows like Altered Carbon and Ozark despite their mixed reviews.
Deadwood is rightly regarded as one of the greatest shows in TV history, along with HBO’s other totemic contributions The Sopranos and The Wire (which it aired alongside). But unlike those two dramas, it never got a proper conclusion, ending on a confused, if at times poignant, note. The death of one semimajor character played a big role in the inadvertent series finale, “Tell Him Something Pretty,” but so did the antics of a theater troupe that was entirely irrelevant to the larger plot. And though so many of Deadwood’s outstanding cast have gone on to other great opportunities, huge talents like McShane, McRaney, Timothy Olyphant, Paula Malcomson, and Robin Weigert couldn’t hope to top the depth and complexity of the roles Milch wrote for them.
The show’s cancellation was only partly because of its ratings—they were relatively strong by the standards of premium cable, on a par with Six Feet Under, which ran for five seasons. It was an expensive show to produce, given its vast ensemble cast, extravagant sets (most of which still stand in California), and the unpredictable nature of Milch, who was known for running over schedule and delivering script pages the morning of filming. A 2016 Hollywood Reporter feature claimed that he was in $17 million of debt, despite earning some $100 million making television, because of his penchant for gambling.
When Deadwood was canceled, Milch was already busy working on another TV project for HBO, the truly bizarre surfing drama John From Cincinnati, which crashed and burned after one season. He then moved on to Luck, centered on the world of horse racing and starring Dustin Hoffman, but it was canceled in the middle of the production of its second season because of concerns over a series of animal deaths that occurred during filming. All of that, combined with Deadwood’s incomplete ending, have cast a serious pall over Milch’s career.
So why not let the magic of Peak TV reverse that trend? The revival of a beloved pop-culture property is now a cornerstone of every network’s marketing strategy. But it usually brings back TV that delighted viewers in the ’80s and ’90s: Will & Grace (on NBC), Murphy Brown (returning to CBS), Twin Peaks (transmuted to Showtime), and, of course, the intense flash in the pan at ABC that was Roseanne.
From the 2000s, only two big shows have returned, and as with Deadwood, each was pitched as the undoing of some great mistake. They both happened on Netflix. First, there was Arrested Development, brought back in 2013 seven years after Fox canceled it. Like Deadwood, Arrested Development was an Emmy-laden show that ran for three years to critical acclaim and ended in 2006 on a note that felt undeniably rushed. But its fourth season was jarring and critically divisive; a fifth season premiered this year and was swept up in controversy over the continued presence of the actor Jeffrey Tambor.
Second, there was Gilmore Girls, brought back by Netflix for four feature-length episodes. Gilmore Girls ran for a healthy seven seasons on The WB, but its creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, left after the sixth, and the final year was a disaster, its finale a tepid mess. The Netflix edition, subtitled A Year in the Life, gave the reins back to Sherman-Palladino and let her end the series on her own terms. But in both cases, reviews were mixed and fans of the original shows were far from universally pleased.
It’s hard to end a TV show well. Deadwood certainly exists as a prime example of how strange television narratives can be, and how harshly business decisions can change the art you’re enjoying. But as our recent slew of revivals has shown, successfully bringing back a show is even harder to pull off—viewers may tune in for the name brand alone, but satisfaction is hardly guaranteed. Even without an ending, Deadwood is arguably the apex of the television medium. Bringing it back feels both alluring and dangerous, a chance to improve on greatness, but with the potential to end on an even more bitter note. That challenge is Peak TV epitomized—risky, somewhat superfluous, but creatively thrilling nonetheless.
from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2K84Oyy
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