With all apologies to David Lynch, in “That Thing You Do!” the film isn’t the thing.

Tom Hanks’ directorial debut, which was released to critical praise but was a box office disappointment, doesn’t hinge on the charming, passable performances of its lead actors. It doesn’t get by on its script, which tells the story of an out-of-nowhere rock ‘n roll band and their earworm of a hit song. Written by Hanks, the screenplay is so thin that the star lists out the stock types of each character in the third act. It definitely doesn’t get by on studio glitz; even if the production team did a bang-up job of recreating the early 1960s, they can’t get around the fact that much of this movie is set in a dreary Erie, Pennsylvania. Whether “That Thing You Do!” works for audiences — and the cozy, quick story of a flash-in-the-pan band has resonated with a ton of people since its release in 1996 — depends entirely on if the title song lands. 

Credit for that has to go to Adam Schlesinger, the late pop-rocker and bassist for Fountains of Wayne who wrote the track with nothing more than the film’s title and a few hints at the story. He needed to recreate the sound of the thousands of teenagers who had their heads rearranged by The Beatles and immediately ran to their garages to pick up guitars — and he nailed the teenybopper perfectionism of early Lennon-McCartney joints. The song’s backbeat is crisp. The bassline struts. The emotions are big, dumb and messy, but no one told that to the harmonies. Even the brief imitation of Lennon’s “losing control” scream is laser-precise, meant to boost the song’s momentum and carry it through a cheery and lazy surf solo. Give it a listen; it sounds like it was written by committee and by four bored teens in equal measure. It’s lightning. 

“That Thing You Do!” had to be that good, because no fictional rock band has ever leaned harder on their hit. The film follows the whirlwind, two-month career of The Wonders, a group so replacement-level that we first meet them arguing over “The” band names that are already taken. Drummer Guy Patterson (Tom Everett Scott) is the star of the film but the bassist joining him in the rhythm section, played in the film by Ethan Embry, doesn’t even have a name. (He’s listed as T.B. Player in the credits.) With lead singer Jimmy Mattingly III (Johnathon Schaech) and guitarist Lenny Haise (Steve Zahn) out in front, they go from local sensation to Billboard chart-toppers in weeks and implode just as spectacularly. Across that timespan, the audience is treated to “That Thing You Do!” in part or in full eight times, once every 13 minutes. Whether that’s the result of a threadbare script or just Hanks knowing what he had is up to the viewer to decide. What’s certain is that “Thing” never gets old.

Unlike The Wonders, Schlesinger’s ability to write a world-beating earworm was no fluke. He pulled off that trick multiple times. Just give a listen to “Pretend to Be Nice” from 2001’s “Josie and the Pussycats.” He’s the pen behind 2005’s “Just the Girl” by the Click Five, which laid a mall-emo whine and reverb-heavy drums over The Wonders’ tried and true formula. If you’ve heard of Schlesinger at all — and aren’t a power-pop geek or a “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” superfan — it was likely through his band Fountains of Wayne and their 2003 hit “Stacy’s Mom.” Though that’s not his band’s best — that honor goes to “Radiation Vibe” or “All Kinds of Time” depending on the mood — it’s more proof that Schlesinger had a direct line to the idealized past in his brain. He could channel an undeniable pop hit out of that ether whenever he wanted.  

Talent like his is in short supply in 2026, especially after Schlesinger himself passed away in 2020. Watching “That Thing You Do!” climbing the charts throughout the movie is a peek into an alien musical world, one that was both more regional and more monocultural than the one we inhabit today. 

The song starts as a word-of-mouth sensation, filling a local restaurant as more and more teenagers hear about this new band and their soon-to-be hit from their friends. They press vinyl to sell at shows, and it gets into the hands of disc jockeys at ever-larger radio stations with an increasing number of watts behind their broadcasts. A labelman, played with equal parts tenderness and sleaze by Hanks, swoops in to take the boys on a tour of state fairs. When the song outgrows the blue-ribbon crowd, they’re flown to Los Angeles for one nationally televised performance before falling out in a bit of dressing room melodrama. 

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The Wonders’ origins and skyrocketing fame built by the ability to press a record locally and impress radio programmers who curated their playlists by hand, are practically a fantasy in the consolidated media landscape of today. The idea of one song taking hold among the entire nation’s teenagers is even more ridiculous now that streaming has fractured the musical monoculture. Global connection came with a kind of dispersion, diluting shared connections closer to home while allowing for worldwide discovery.

For proof, just look at the (Wonder-less) Billboard charts today. Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” just broke the record for most weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100. Meanwhile, the chorus of people who claim to have never heard the song grows louder every single day. The debate whether this is a mark of country music classism rages in the pages of the Rolling Stone, itself a bit of a relic from those more culturally unified days. 

“That Thing You Do!” hides its nugget of pop music consensus inside another bygone bit of shared culture: the afternoon cable movie. These easy lifts don’t ask you to think too much. They get in and out in under two hours, often starting as minor hits that become part of the cultural fabric through repetition; they’re on in the background and there when you need them. Films like “That Thing You Do!” are neither notable nor offensive to the typical viewer, and they never make you wonder “Who is this for?” If that question was ever asked, the answer is simple. It’s delivered in three-part harmony in the opening seconds of The Wonder’s lone pseudo-hit, gorgeous and unmissable. 

Who wants to listen to this Beatles pastiche, dreamed up to get Tom Hanks’ film studio off the ground? You.

The post At 30, “That Thing You Do!” is the perfect fake one-hit wonder appeared first on Salon.com.

I couldn’t help but notice some people on social media dunking on a post from @nicksaraev, a self-described entrepreneur helper, who boldly proclaimed on X a few days ago: “I am not joking when I say this. Spotify, Apple Music, and streaming in general is over. AI music is now very, very good. You just don’t know yet because all AI music circulating today is from ~2-3 generations ago. Suno v6 pro et al has solved infinite personalized music.” He followed it up with “Yes, this probably hurts your feelings. It’s still going to happen.”

While my feelings are unhurt, and I don’t really know what “infinite personalized music” means or how it could be “solved,” at the same time, I can easily guess what is implied here and I don’t actually want to know more. As one Bluesky user observed, the inherent idea here comes “when you have no concept of how people engage with music.”

Nonetheless, we don’t seem able to escape this trend. I have a friend who has, on a few occasions, sent me AI-generated raps with his name or a joke inserted as the lyrics. They can be technically proficient, maybe even a little funny, but there is always an underlying cadence of the uncanny valley that I still doubt Suno v6 pro et al. or whatever has totally overcome. Please don’t send me examples; I actually don’t care. It’s not that I’m offended by the idea of generated art; it’s just that it bores me. I’m having plenty of fun engaging with music made with human ears, hands and minds.

Way back in the Bush II and Obama years, I volunteered at my college radio station in the Music Procurement Department or whatever it was called. Our job was to sort through the massive mailer box of padded envelopes and bubble mailers that came in from record labels, big, small and in-between. It was like Christmas every Wednesday afternoon as we shredded packages and stacked CDs, occasional stickers and vinyl, splitting the spoils and loading them into our computers — by hand even! We made notes about what should get added to the radio catalog as fodder for our aspiring DJs — and what should get chucked out or given away for free at radio events.

If we didn’t already know the band, the way we chose which albums to review was often based on cover art, the promo materials we skimmed, or a sticker on the front that read RIYL: Recommended If You Like. Almost every artist would put something like “RIYL: Jay-Z, Radiohead, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Talking Heads.” Sure, totally random indie label from Seattle, all of your bands sound exactly like Nirvana. It could be a pretty boring, sometimes horrifying process — I’ll never forget the thrash metal song we received about Shannen Doherty that sounded like it was recorded in a blender. I still can’t get over the inane lyrics: “Shannen Doherty, Shannen Doherty / You’re in my head. Shannen Doherty, Shannen Doherty / I like bread.” I wish I were making this up.

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But the crate digging, which I also did in physical record stores, was always worth it when you found your new favorite band or heard the summer’s hit track long before any of your friends. I was introduced to so many artists, many of whom I still turn to today. Hot Chip, Sea Wolf, Fleet Foxes, to name a few. It taught me to always give music a chance, no matter how ugly the art or how crusty the jewel case. Usually, you can listen to the song up to when the vocals kick in before giving up or listening longer. By then, you usually know if you’re gonna hate it or not.

I still devour new music this way, clocking a daily average of four hours of tunes familiar and novel. It helps me write and focus and relax and otherwise temper my mood throughout the day. I’m always looking for new artists to try. And I hope I always consume — I hate that word, but there it is — music this way, instead of becoming a curmudgeon who only appreciates the tunes from their youth and thinks anything modern is trash. If you think that, you aren’t digging deep enough. 

The only thing I can think of that’s worse than getting stuck on Greatest Hits or Top 40 is pushing a button and generating “infinite personalized music” with no human influence. It bores the sh*t out of me. It’s not just the lack of discovery, though that is critical, maybe because it scratches those deep primal hunter/gatherer itches. It’s more about the lack of anything personal behind the music. No history, no struggle, no catharsis, no exploration, no humanity. I listen to music because it’s flawed, raw and human, not just noise to fill my day. I have no doubt AI music will keep improving, at least to a point, but I predict few people who actually love music are going to listen that way because it has lost its essence.

 

Yes, I have streamed plenty of AI music on YouTube, often unintentionally when the vaporwave or atmospheric DnB mix I’m vibing to autoplays some slop channel. I can almost always tell when it’s generated. There’s a flatness, like an echo of a song you heard a long time ago, something better. It puts me to sleep and I inevitably switch it off. Maybe it’s gotten better lately. But I still think I’d notice. At any rate, I’d never seek it out.

As a child I was once gifted a “custom” cassette tape with songs “written for me.” Every single track on the album was centered around “Troy,” with my name mentioned as often as possible. I listened to that thing over and over again, until I spilled a bottle of soap in my tape deck and ruined it. But anyway, none of the songs were actually produced with me in mind. It was made by a company called Kidselebration that in 1986 made “personalized” cassette tapes like these for a whole boatload of names. The songs never changed, someone just dubbed in a different name into the song for Kyle, Sarah, Robert, etc. I can’t imagine how much friggin’ work this must have been before Pro Tools, but it was probably just the ‘80s equivalent of a lot of cut-and-paste.

You can listen to the one for “Jessica” here if you really want to. Every time they say “Insert Name,” it sounds totally awkward and weird. But even as a kid, I suspected on some level that this tape wasn’t really for me specifically. Something always felt off. If infinite personalized AI music doesn’t give people the same vibe, maybe they’re not listening hard enough. And please, don’t send me your robot music. Send me anything else.

The post Please don’t send me your robot music appeared first on Salon.com.

I suppose a Richard Nixon revival was inevitable. After all, the 37th president was the modern model of the corrupt, abusive presidency that is currently being perfected by Donald Trump and his corrupt administration. In fact, much of the legal theory of the unitary executive under which the current administration operates sprang from the bowels of right-wing think tanks smarting from Nixon’s fall from grace. 

Many of the norms, rules and laws that governed the executive branch until Trump and his loyalists systematically threw them in the White House dumpster originated in the aftermath of Watergate, so reimagining Nixon as the first victim of the so-called deep state serves as a perfect rationale for what is happening today. For conservatives, the long-awaited historical payback has finally come.

In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that Nixon is suddenly all the rage among young conservatives who are “Nixonmaxxing” all over social media and sporting merch with sayings like “Nixon now, more than ever” and “Pretty girls for Nixon.” One young fan mused, “Is Nixon pulling off the greatest posthumous political comeback in history?” 

Maybe so. This new interest among the Gen Z crowd is actually a well-designed public relations campaign by The Nixon Foundation, which used social media in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his presidency. Short-form videos featuring Nixon saying “I am not a crook” over gangster rap, along with clips from “Mad Men” showing Jon Hamm-as-Don Draper saying, “Kennedy, I see a silver spoon, Nixon, I see myself,” went viral. 

But the fandom is more than just vibes. Podcasters like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson have both recently called Watergate a setup, never mind the evidence or admissions by Nixon’s accomplices like H.R. Haldeman in his diary. Even Vice President JD Vance is in on the act, comparing himself to Nixon in June during an event to promote his memoir at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum: “Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media.” (He’s not wrong.) 

“I’ve always liked Richard Nixon,” Vance said, calling him a political genius. The vice president praised Nixon’s foreign policy acumen, giving him props for the opening of China and the Vietnam peace process, while conveniently leaving out the part about bombing Cambodia. Vance also denigrated the Watergate hearings and investigations that eventually brought Nixon down, saying, “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

Sadly, he’s probably right. Nixon didn’t have the right-wing media machinery that now excuses Trump’s criminality and spreads conspiracy theories — like the trope that the “deep state” is out to get the president. That alone has managed to keep the MAGA base and Republican officials on board with Trump, which is why he was acquitted in two impeachment trials during his first term. After all, Nixon didn’t resign until he was told that he had lost his base in the Senate and faced certain conviction and removal from office. That wasn’t the case in February 2021, of course, when the Senate refused to convict Trump for “Incitement of Insurrection.”

But there is also evidence that even Nixon had his limits. Yes, he grossly abused the office of the presidency, treating the executive branch like his private fiefdom. He ordered the FBI and the CIA to commit crimes. He bribed, blackmailed and paid off potential witnesses against him. But he didn’t burn the tapes, and he dutifully turned them over when the Supreme Court ordered him to do so. And although there was that infamous “19-minute gap” on one of the tapes that would have sealed his fate, many of the conversations revealed a profane, corrupt president. 

But even as Nixon’s overall approval rating sank to 24% during the week before his resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, Republicans — 62% of them — still supported him. These were undoubtedly some of the die-hards who eventually began pushing to roll back the reforms that were enacted in Nixon’s wake.

During a post-presidency with British television presenter David Frost, Nixon famously said, “When the president does it, it’s not illegal.” Those words sounded then — and sound now — like an authoritarian gaffe. But in reality, the idea was based on a very real concept popular among right-wing Republicans, who believed that the president should have unfettered power to enact policies to “protect” the nation. 

After that interview, Nixon penned a 2,500-word essay explaining he didn’t believe the president is above the law, but that the nation’s executive must be granted “some faith in his judgment” and given “room for maneuver.” 

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“His powers are not unlimited,” Nixon wrote. “But neither can be existing law — in a limited way, and at times of special need — and still meet these larger responsibilities.” Apparently, “special need” could be defined as whatever the president says it is, and therein lies the unlimited power. 

This notion forms much of the logic of the unitary executive theory that has been growing among thinkers on the right for decades, and with court cases beginning in the early 1980s, the presidency has been granted more and more such power. This, of course, culminated in Trump v. United States, the 2024 Supreme Court ruling that gave the president near total immunity from prosecution for anything done in office. (The president had already been granted immunity from civil liability by the Court in Nixon v. Fitzgerald in 1982.) Now, the idea that presidents are above the law is gaining steam with yet another “investigation of the investigation,” this time into the special prosecutors who scrutinized Nixon back in 1974.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump Justice Department is now officially looking into that case based upon the conspiracy theories promulgated by Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned historical revisionist and conspiracy theorist who presented “a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters called ‘Watergate As Lawfare,’” making the argument that, you guessed it, the deep state took down Richard Nixon.

There’s a method to all this madness, and it’s best illustrated by the fact that Vance is the one leading the charge. Any ambitious Republican official thinking about the future has to find some way to excuse their complicity in Trump’s corrupt — and likely illegal — behavior. If they have any hope of being elected to national office, their only choice is to try to maintain these MAGA fictions and arcane conspiracy theories after Trump is gone by continuing to deny the reality of what he’s done. One way to do that is to convince people that it was never just about Trump; the deep state has been out to get Republicans ever since Nixon.

If they can’t convince people that their complicity was actually righteous resistance to a secret cabal of bureaucrats and dirty cops fighting to keep Republicans from enacting their righteous agenda, then potential GOP presidential candidates like Vance are likely going to have a hard time overcoming what is likely to be a massive revolt against Trumpism once he is out of office. 

We’re seeing the edge of it now — and it’s not just about the price of gas. The air is finally going out of MAGA, and every single Republican politician who took advantage of it will be held accountable by the voters for what they have done. The GOP’s only hope is to find a Republican somewhere who hasn’t been touched by Trump and MAGA. 

Good luck with that.

The post The dark reasons behind all the Richard Nixon worship appeared first on Salon.com.

The biggest scandal in the modern history of professional sports broke wide open across the Atlantic this past week. How much that reflects larger social, cultural and economic pathologies and whether it affects regular people’s lives in any meaningful way is a complicated question. At the very least, I would suggest that the Manchester City scandal, which has driven the already-overheated British media to new heights of hysteria, isn’t really about soccer or sports. 

Man City (often simply called “City”) is by far the most successful team in the English Premier League over the last 15 years and one of the four or five biggest soccer franchises in the world. Last week an independent legal panel delivered a long-anticipated verdict, finding the club guilty on 114 counts of systematic financial fraud, amounting to more than a billion dollars in fake revenues and sham commercial sponsorships. This scathing judgment only covers the years from 2009 to 2018, but no one thinks the actual or alleged fraud suddenly stopped after that.

Effectively, the verdict amounts to a finding that City cheated their way to the top of world football through a dizzying but blatant series of scams and shell games, allowing the team’s petro-state owners to illegally outspend competitors and pump hundreds of millions into inflated salaries for star players like Norwegian thirst-trap Erling Haaland (he of the formerly golden locks), Kevin De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero, and illustrious coaches, first and foremost among them the Catalan genius Pep Guardiola. 

Along with winning numerous championships and tournaments, Man City changed the nature of the world’s favorite sport and transformed the EPL from a medium-size U.K.-based enterprise plagued by hooliganism, erratic attendance and crumbling stadiums into a global merchandising and marketing empire whose broadcasts, “kits” and online fan clubs extend from Indonesia to Arkansas. 

If you belong to the large proportion of humanity inclined to a shrug-emoji reaction — billionaire oligarchs, overpaid athletes, incalculable sums of dirty money; who cares? — the first thing to say is that you’re absolutely right and that’s the only healthy response. But the salient fact that pushes the Man City narrative beyond a sports-business scandal and toward more cultural, political and even philosophical terrain is that virtually everyone who followed soccer and the EPL understood what was happening all along. That sort of willful blindness or collective cynicism is by no means limited to sports or celebrity culture — and it has become a widespread corrosive force in our society.

At any rate, everyone who was paying attention rapidly perceived the pattern after 2008, when Manchester City — a historically mediocre team with a modest fan base, sad-sack local rivals to Manchester United, who dominated the sport in the 1990s — was acquired by the Abu Dhabi United Group, a private equity firm closely aligned, shall we say, with the royal family of a Persian Gulf autocratic state. (Exactly how closely, and whether ADUG can be considered a separate entity from the Abu Dhabi government, is one of the issues at stake in the byzantine Man City case, now heading into an appeal process that could take years.)

It’s worth noting here that City Football Group, the ADUG subsidiary that has poured all that money into Man City, also owns or operates football/soccer clubs and related real estate projects around the world, including New York City FC in Major League Soccer, which at this moment is constructing an expensive new stadium in Queens, to be named — like everything else in the CFG universe — for Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi’s state-owned carrier. 

Here lies the central conundrum of the Man City scandal, which is, like so much else about this story, a dirty secret that is no secret at all. Abu Dhabi’s petrodollars are deeply embedded in the economies of many Western nations, and any serious effort to punish or exile ADUG’s prize sporting property could have far-reaching ripple effects. That goes a long way toward explaining why U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who has struck such a forceful posture toward Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued only vague blandishments about this explosive case on his own home turf, and clearly hopes the whole thing will simply go away.

In his excellent summary of the City scandal, Alex Shephard of the New Republic observes that the “massive accounting sham” behind the team’s spectacular rise under the Abu Dhabi ownership was concealed only in threadbare fashion, and was widely tolerated for a range of interlocking reasons: 

Manchester City committed fraud on a massive scale primarily as a soft power project for an authoritarian nation because it was allowed to do so. The Premier League chose to look away. The team was good and the money was flowing. Questions about its finances — let alone about its ownership — were swept under the rug. As Manchester City became the best team in the Premier League, the Premier League became the most powerful league in Europe and, by extension, the world.

It isn’t easy to translate this tangled affair into American terms, and in any case I’m here to argue that the real significance of the Man City story is not about big-money skulduggery in professional sports. But let’s imagine that the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Knicks were found to have broken the rules of their respective leagues to such an extraordinary degree that observers seriously suggested that their recent championships should be stricken from the record books and that the teams themselves should be banished from Major League Baseball and the NBA for years to come, if not forever. (Such outcomes are on the table in the City case; so is a slap on the wrist and a large payoff, or a negotiated compromise somewhere in between.)

Let’s further imagine that we had collectively decided that the Dodgers or Knicks were so entertaining to watch that we’d pretend not to notice that they were owned by Kim Jong-un’s first cousin or Vladimir Putin’s niece. (Which if anything is understating the case: ADUG’s proprietor, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, is the brother of Abu Dhabi’s absolute ruler and his regime’s vice president.) Then we’d pretend we were surprised to learn that their entire operation was shamelessly corrupt, when the only genuinely surprising part was that the leagues involved had decided to risk their own survival by exposing the financial misdeeds after all those years of looking the other way.

My point here is that while I’m surprised to find myself writing yet another article in 2026 about soccer — if you presume that betrays some personal interest, you would be correct — this one isn’t really about soccer at all. Whatever ultimate judgment befalls Manchester City after years of legal wrangling is beside the point, although there’s some grim amusement to be found in comments sections on The Athletic, as fans try to “well, actually” or DYOR a verdict that will certainly tarnish the team’s reputation in perpetuity.

This is partly a story, as Shephard says, about sportswashing and the immense soft-power reach of authoritarian regimes like the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, all of which are heavily invested in professional soccer and other global sporting ventures. (Paris Saint-Germain, the biggest team in France and current European champions, was once owned by its fans but is now a property of the Qatari state.) Beyond that, it’s a story about questions almost too large to describe clearly.

It’s a story about a world that pretends to value democracy but is increasingly defined by massive inequality, oligarchy and, for that matter, monarchy. It’s about a world where the billionaire ex-president of the United States had to run for re-election in order to stay out of prison — and it worked. A world where the two most respected organizations in American broadcast journalism, CNN and CBS News, could come under the control of one man, who transparently aims to turn them into propaganda outlets supporting one faction of one political party. 

It’s a story, in other words, about how much we will put up with. Or rather about how much we have convinced ourselves we must accept, given the unimaginable imbalance between the tech billionaires and fossil-fuel despots on one side and the other 99.9% of us on the other, whose only feasible role is to be their servants, their worker drones or their captive audience, or else to be deemed expendable. 

It would be ridiculous to cast the English Premier League as a hero in that larger narrative, as if its current stance had anything to do with standing up against autocratic sportswashing or defending democracy and the rule of law. Man City may even have a point, on the level of libertarian economic theory, that the EPL’s financial rules were unfairly structured to prevent upstart teams from competing with long-established franchises like Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United, and that owners should be allowed to spend as much as they want to put a competitive team on the field. (That is, in fact, exactly how Major League Baseball operates, although its moment of reckoning is right around the corner.)

But there may also be a crude lesson under this dunderheaded clash of the titans that pertains to democracy, and can be seen reflected in the verdict on the Trump regime that we all see coming in this year’s American midterm elections, or in the surge of popular opposition to data centers and to the unrestricted development of AI. To paraphrase the maxim falsely attributed to Lincoln, you can fool a whole bunch of the people for a hell of a long time, but you can’t fool all of them forever. 

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Ultimately, the Premier League must have concluded that the reputational and economic damage of prosecuting its most successful team for obvious financial crimes — which is likely to be considerable — was preferable to the damage of not doing so. EPL leadership stuck a finger in the wind of public opinion, so to speak, and decided their best chance of not killing the golden goose lay in manning up for the principles they had visibly abandoned, or at least pretending to.

You definitely shouldn’t care what becomes of the EPL or Manchester City; I’d be better off if I didn’t either. Erling Haaland and his teammates will be fine, as will the Abu Dhabi royals, although whatever remains of the club’s pre-2008 Mancunian fanbase is likely to suffer bitterly. But you might care about finding the outer limits of the corrosive social and cultural corruption and cynicism to which we have all been subjected — and in which we have all been complicit — and then finding the courage and resolution to resist.

Will I watch Manchester City’s first post-verdict match on Oct. 11, against their archrivals Liverpool? Um, yeah. It’s a news event! I’m doing my job, or that’s what I’ll tell myself. But I won’t pretend my hands are clean.

The post Manchester City’s cheating scandal isn’t really about soccer appeared first on Salon.com.

Lethal injection has proven to be a difficult execution method to get right. It is more frequently botched than any other method. Sometimes, the results are catastrophic, as they were in Wednesday’s failed execution of Christa Pike. 

The 50-year-old, who was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, survived a severely botched execution by lethal injection on Wednesday. The drugs meant to kill her did not do their job, and she is now in critical condition, intubated, unconscious and on a ventilator in a Nashville-area hospital. According to her lawyer, Pike’s prognosis is unclear, as is the question of whether she will suffer a serious brain injury and loss of function.

Amid questions and a media storm, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee ordered a third-party review and paused executions for the remainder of the year. On Saturday he announced that Frank Strada, the head of the state’s prison system, would be stepping down. 

Meanwhile, politicians like Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who is currently running for Tennessee governor, promised that if she is elected and Pike survives, she would try again to execute her — by other means, if necessary. “While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed,” Blackburn wrote on X, “the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims. As your governor, I will do just that.”

Not to be outdone, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., told NewsNation that he would “Prop her up and bring her to a firing squad.”

Such heartless statements should not distract us from the fact that what happened to Pike might have been prevented had the state of Tennessee paid attention to repeated warnings: that her small veins and history of a blood disorder would make lethal injection a cruel procedure. 

Pike’s failed execution also highlights another need. If death penalty states are going to continue to use lethal injections, they should be required to have competent medical professionals on hand to help carry them out. Doctors, good doctors, are needed to help make sure that the process goes as smoothly as possible — and that the condemned person does not suffer needlessly.

In Pike’s case, that did not happen.

The New York Times reported that “The execution team went through at least seven needles trying to find a vein suitable for delivering doses of a lethal drug [and Pike] was left with blistering and burning around the intravenous insertion sites that the execution team ultimately used to deliver the drug.”

According to some outside medical experts, she likely “survived the procedure because the drug, pentobarbital, probably poured into tissue surrounding the insertion sites instead of entering her bloodstream.” If accurate, this apparently happened because the intravenous lines needed to carry the lethal drugs were not placed correctly. 

Pike’s case was not an isolated event. Such problems have occurred many other times, though generally they have not prevented executions from proceeding. The people tasked with the job of finding a usable vein and securing an IV are not phlebotomists with specialized training or nurses. And in states like Tennessee, which does not carry out many lethal injection executions, members of the execution team do not have the chance to perfect their skill by using it a lot.

As Corinna Barrett Lain, a death penalty expert and professor at the University of Richmond School of Law told CNN, lethal injection is “a highly delicate, error-prone procedure that is done by people who are not trained . . . It’s a recipe for disaster from the start.”

In Pike’s case, a doctor was present — but he had a checkered history with executions. Dr. Mark Fowler was reportedly part of yet another bungled execution in Tennessee only months ago, when attempts to establish an IV line in 57-year-old Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of being involved in a triple murder in Memphis in 1994, failed repeatedly. (Following the attempted execution, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gave Carruthers a one-year temporary reprieve.) In the wake of the Carruthers debacle, substantial questions were raised about Fowler’s ethics and competence, but they did not deter Tennessee from calling on him again.

Tennessee is one of 17 states with laws requiring doctors to play some role in the execution process. In those states, “Doctors have signed death warrants, rendered inmates competent, provided intravenous access, monitored vital signs, administered lethal injections and declared death.”

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But at the same time, since the dawn of the lethal injection era, the American Medical Association has held that it is a violation of medical ethics for doctors to participate in executions: “Physician participation in execution is defined as actions that fall into one or more of the following categories: Would directly cause the death of the condemned. Would assist, supervise, or contribute to the ability of another individual to directly cause the death of the condemned.”

According to AMA guidelines, doctors involved in lethal injections cannot choose injection sites, start IV lines to administer the lethal medicine or be involved in prescribing, preparing, administering, or supervising injection drugs or their doses or types.” Other professional associations, including the American Nursing Association and the American Society of Anesthesiologists, have established similar regulations.

The result is that states have been forced to turn to unlicensed medical personnel. Hundreds of them have played a role in executions — but they have done so in the shadows. 

That is not good enough when someone’s life is being extinguished. As is the case with physician assistance in dying, the choice is between professional purity and the need for expertise in making sure the end of life will be as peaceful as possible.

In the wake of Carruthers’ botched execution, a group of more than 40 doctors and nurses came down on the side of purity. They sent a letter to Lee asking him to change the state’s execution process so that medical professionals no longer would have to be involved. “[T]he health care professionals who agree to take part in Tennessee’s executions are those willing to set aside their professional ethics,” they wrote. “The problems that we have seen, such as in Mr. Carruthers’s case, are the predictable result of working with such unscrupulous actors.” 

But here’s a thought: Maybe the problem is not with Tennessee law but instead with the ethical standards that keep reputable medical professionals from participating in executions.

The doctors treating Pike know that “[i]f she recovers, Tennessee might try to kill her again [and]  that their job is to do the best they can for the patient in front of them and not to think about that.’” 

There will be time to do so if the savage cries of politicians like Blackburn and Burchett are heard. But with Pike currently in critical condition from a cruel, mangled procedure, it’s unclear if and when that might happen. But if it does, doctors should do their part to see to it that she is treated with as much compassion in the death chamber as she is in the hospital.

The post Christa Pike’s botched execution was not an isolated incident appeared first on Salon.com.

Before digesting Zoe Kazan’s seven-part reconsideration of “East of Eden,” I never would have suspected that we, as a society, had been conditioned to misread Cathy Ames, the angel-faced succubus at the broken heart of John Steinbeck’s novel.

Cathy has always had her champions, mind you. The internet is laden with Reddit arguments and academic examinations questioning Steinbeck’s portrait of her beastliness. The author himself was conflicted about her, writing Cathy as a dangerous beauty incapable of empathy in his book, yet expressing how dear she was to him in letters to his editor, Pascal Covici. My English teachers and literature professors were probably too tired to parse such nuance, and I don’t blame them.

Besides, Cathy is not an easy empathy object. She killed her parents, drove a man to suicide when she was young, and shot her way out of marriage and motherhood later. She changed her name to Kate Albey but never changed her ways.

Steinbeck never points to a definitive incitement to explain her behavior, instead writing, “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents” to open a chapter devoted to Cathy’s backstory.

When read in the author’s voice, that seems like a conclusive diagnosis. But to hear Florence Pugh deliver it as Cathy’s belief, and the establishing paradigm of Kazan’s limited series, changes things. Once we discover more about Pugh’s Cathy—once we’ve seen her do the horrible acts I’ve listed—her observation that the only true freedom in this world is economic freedom makes more sense.

“For the modern woman,” she adds to that thought, “that presents a problem.” In her time, and in her opinion, a sensible woman’s paths to financial freedom were limited to hoping for a windfall or making one’s fortune off others’ backs as a madam. In other words, you can be forever reliant on the universe’s mercy or merciless in bending it to fulfill your ambition. That doesn’t magically justify Cathy’s criminality. But she isn’t completely wrong, either.

 

 

Central to both Steinbeck’s novel and Kazan’s update is the author’s interpretation of the Hebrew word timshel, which he translates as “thou mayest.” Adam’s servant, Lee (Hoon Lee), who raises the twin boys Cathy abandons, explains that the term expresses free will. It’s a blessing of agency that sounds much easier to accept when you have more options than Cathy.  Besides, she says in the opening scene’s voiceover while clawing her bloodied, broken body across a dirt field toward the home of Charles Trask (Mike Faist) and his brother Adam (Christopher Abbott), “normalcy” is relative: “Everyone is normal to himself.”

Netflix’s Cathy-centered take on “East of Eden” comes before us at a very different time than the one in which Zoe Kazan’s grandfather Elia introduced his acclaimed 1955 film. It arrives in a season dotted with trauma plots serving as gateways to female rage – some well executed, like Hulu’s extraordinary “Furious,” and others slicked in a messy goo of “been there, done that” tropes, a la “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.”

We’re also witnessing, from a distance, the legal perils of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts labor and delivery nurse tried, on TV, for killing her three children, all under the age of 5, before attempting suicide in January 2023.  Clancy pleaded not guilty, and her trial recently ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury.

The question of why she did what she did may remain unanswered. During her trial, Clancy’s defense argued that postpartum psychosis drove Clancy out of her mind. The prosecution’s argument is simpler and meaner, almost reminiscent of Steinbeck: Clancy’s actions were premeditated, her way of escaping a life she didn’t want anymore. Now Clancy’s lawyers are arguing she should be found not guilty due to a lack of sufficient evidence that she killed her children, and by lack of criminal responsibility due to insufficient evidence she was not in psychosis at the time. Another status hearing is scheduled for Nov. 2.

(Courtesy of Netflix © 2026)

When Steinbeck first introduced Cathy Ames to the public in 1952, and when Elia Kazan brought his version to the screen three years later, we were only allowed the slightest glimpse into her soul. Elia Kazan’s movie, written by Paul Osborn, barely covers the last third of Steinbeck’s 600-page epic. It also omits Lee and focuses primarily on James Dean’s Cal Trask, one of Cathy’s sons, leaving most of her story to secondhand whispers. When a lawman confirms to Cal the rumor that Cathy, known by then as the nearby town’s madam, Kate, shot his father, Cal muses, “He must have done something to hurt her.”

“No, sir,” the man counters. “He gave her everything that any woman could ask for.”

But how would he know? Zoe Kazan’s Cathy, which closely hews to Steinbeck’s original vision, defies easy assumptions about a woman’s wants and needs. Nothing about her, or the way Pugh plays her, is simple.

“East of Eden” parallels the Biblical story of Cain and Abel first through Adam and Charles Trask, then again through Adam’s twin sons Aron and Caleb. Cathy, meanwhile, deciphers the key to life through Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” a story about a girl like her who survives an upside-down world.

Both Steinbeck and Zoe Kazan infer that something happened to Cathy when she was very young. The filmmaker does this through spare imagery: a man baiting a little girl in a blue dress with sweets, coaxing her to follow him into a dark hole that could lead to Wonderland or much darker places. With this, Cathy’s favorite book and her mysterious violation teach her it’s better to be a predator than prey, to be the queen calling for her the heads of her enemies instead of a man’s pawn.

(Courtesy of Netflix © 2026)

Cathy Ames is a complicated symbol, as the countless people who glommed on to Clancy’s case want her to be. Viewers accustomed to crime stories about perpetrators whose behavior is explained, perhaps even justified, by what they survived may see Clancy as another alleged trauma plot come to life—a sum of biological and social hazards, as Elizabeth Bruenig wrote in The Atlantic.

“And some elements of it seem inarguably true, such as the idea that Clancy’s psychiatric care was woefully uncoordinated,” Bruenig added. “But this theory also has the odd effect of making Clancy the star of her own murder trial, for whom the viewer at home may be encouraged to root, which risks eliding the gravity of what she did.”

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We must be clear that differences between the entirely fictional Cathy and Clancy, a real and suffering person, are vast. But if the best fiction can also be instructive, maybe the last moral of Kazan’s “East of Eden” can help us hold multiple truths at once. Cathy’s reasons for doing terrible things may be understandable, even relatable, while the transgression remains unforgivable. A person may even warn us by crying for help or, as Cathy does, advising those on the verge of falling into her trap to turn back.

“You’re so kind to me, and I’ll only ever bring you trouble,” she purrs when it’s clear that Adam is smitten with her. But he refuses to listen and marries her anyway. When Cathy discovers she’s pregnant, she warns him that she’s going to leave the first chance she gets, even attempting to self-administer an abortion with a knitting needle. Not to worry, a kindly male neighbor assures Adam — her maternal urges will kick right in after the babies are born. They do not.

Instead, Cathy makes good on her many cautions, leaving her wailing infants and bleeding husband behind for a new life and a fortune earned by cunning, a con and poison. But for a few twists of fate, she could be any of us. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Pugh’s exquisite, gorgeously brutal rendition leads more of us to her defense.

“East of Eden” is streaming on Netflix.

 

The post Netflix’s “East of Eden” asks if we’ve misread its monster appeared first on Salon.com.

Recently, between medical appointments, I ended up at a grain-bowl-and-salad place in a suburban strip mall, the kind of sleek fast-casual restaurant that looks a little like an Apple Store decided to start serving brown rice and green goddess dressing. There were a few customers in scrubs and two self-order kiosks, both broken. The menu wasn’t posted anywhere else, except via a QR code printed on the back of several glossy takeout menus behind the register, which the cashier repeatedly warned us not to take because they only had a few.

The bowls themselves were fine. Watching them come together was more memorable: the cashier held each plastic container practically at arm’s length as he scooped, two vapes clacking around in his apron pocket, with the air of someone completing a task wholly unrelated to food. What arrived cost about $14 and tasted perfectly acceptable. It was also, somehow, shockingly anonymous.

There’s a word for this feeling now: slop. 

It describes several overlapping anxieties about modern restaurant food, but its prehistory belongs, at least partly, to the ghost kitchen.

In March 2020, as dining rooms shut down, Chuck E. Cheese launched Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings, a delivery-only brand operating out of its existing kitchens. The name was technically an Easter egg: Pasqually P. Pieplate is the chef in Chuck E. Cheese’s animatronic house band. 

To anyone not conversant in Chuck E. Cheese lore, though, Pasqually’s looked on Grubhub like a new pizza-and-wings joint. CEC maintained that the pizza itself was different — thicker crust, more sauce — but plenty of customers still felt tricked when they realized the restaurant at the address they’d ordered from was, in fact, Chuck E. Cheese.

The revelation inspired a small genre of internet consumer detective work. “Now I look up the addresses of places on delivery apps before I try something ‘new,’” one Reddit user wrote after discovering that an apparent new Indian restaurant was another business operating under a second name. Elsewhere, someone warned that “Pasquale’s Pizza and Wings on delivery is just Chucky Cheese.” In the same thread, though, came the rebuttal: there were good ghost kitchens. You were simply ordering from the lousy ones.

That argument feels almost quaint now. Ghost kitchens asked diners to accept a peculiar new distance between the restaurant being advertised and the human reality of the meal. What diners surrendered wasn’t necessarily quality so much as a little hospitality, a little transparency and, increasingly, the expectation that a restaurant represented somebody’s particular idea of what a restaurant should be.

From there, the abstraction moved onto the plate.

The “slop bowl” became internet shorthand for the familiar fast-casual mash-up — grains, greens, globally inspired protein, sauce, perhaps an avocado surcharge — assembled with the logic of a cafeteria line and an over-$10 price. The joke has always contained some affection; people like these bowls because they are easy, reliable and customizable. But the name also catches their underlying sameness. There is a reason so much online energy is devoted to “hacking” them: swapping sauces, doubling proteins, gaming the system in hopes of coaxing a little more pleasure from something designed, above all, to be frictionless.

And now the same aesthetic has escaped the bowl. AI slop has begun appearing on restaurant menus, signs and advertisements, offering food imagery that looks optimized for appetite without necessarily resembling anything a person could cook. My digital feed is littered with truly uncanny generated sandwiches, but I’ve only encountered a few in the wild: outside a cafe, a poster for a coffee drink topped with marshmallow “pearls” so perfectly round and iridescent that they looked less edible than cultured in a lab; on the train, hamburger ads where the meat resembled slabs of smooth, steak-rippled marble. The images have the visual grammar of food photography without much evidence that food has ever been involved.

Diners, meanwhile, are already expressing an aversion to the whole thing. Late last year, CNN’s Jordan Valinsky noted that Cava, Chipotle and Sweetgreen — “the big three slop slingers” — were all reporting softer business among younger customers, particularly those between 25 and 35. Some of that was straightforward economics. On Chipotle’s final earnings call of 2025, CEO Scott Boatwright said younger customers weren’t defecting to another chain so much as returning to the grocery store. “They feel the pinch,” he told analysts, “and we feel the pullback.”

Yet alongside that financial retreat, though, there is a more aesthetic refusal taking shape. In one food group I follow, posts about AI restaurant marketing increasingly read like miniature boycott pledges. “If you use AI to advertise your restaurant, market, or anything else,” one person wrote, “I will know that you don’t care about food or the planet and I will never ever patronize your business.” Another was more prescriptive: “Take pictures of your food. Spend a little time and effort to make your own flyer.” 

The complaint isn’t merely that the pictures are creepy. Diners are reading them as evidence: if a restaurant cannot be bothered to photograph its own food, hire an artist or make an ugly little flyer itself, what exactly is being communicated about the care happening elsewhere? 

That inference may not always be fair. Restaurant margins are brutal, and a generated image costs less than a photo shoot. But fairness is almost beside the point. Once diners begin treating evidence of human effort as part of the product, efficiency itself can start looking suspicious.

Which may explain the newest addition to the slop lexicon: PE, or private-equity, slop. The term is less a description of any particular food than a prediction about what happens when the people optimizing a restaurant become increasingly distant from the people cooking in it.

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Consider Los Tacos No. 1. The New York taco shop opened in 2013, earned a devoted following for its al pastor and handmade tortillas, and eventually grew to nine locations. As The Guardian reported, when it announced this September that it had taken an undisclosed investment from private-equity firm TSG Consumer to pursue what a press release called “thoughtful, founder-led growth,” customers immediately began writing its obituary. Social posts predicted “the beginning of the end,” along with smaller portions and worse food. The response became so intense that Los Tacos’ founders issued a reassurance that sounded almost like parody: “No, we’re not going to start charging extra for guac. We’re not switching to horse meat. And no, we’re definitely not messing with the tacos.”

The tacos had not, at that point, been messed with. That’s what makes the reaction interesting. “PE slop” names an anticipatory fear: that somewhere down the line, somebody who has never stood over the grill will notice that a particular ingredient costs slightly more, or a particular process takes slightly longer, and ask whether anyone would really notice if it disappeared.

My colleague Alex Galbraith recently argued that food may be where consumers most easily recognize the otherwise abstract mechanics of private equity. Newspapers can become thinner and health care more Byzantine in ways that are difficult to trace back to an investment firm. Lunch is more intimate. 

Galbraith points to a recent interview with comedian Stavros Halkias who summed it up like this: “Everybody understands that Wendy’s has gotten s**ttier. The spicy chicken sandwich now uses shredded lettuce. Right there, that is private equity. That is someone saying ‘We don’t want a fresh head of lettuce that costs more money. So, we’re going to give you bagged sh**ty lettuce. I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but people will notice.”

I don’t think all these things are “slop” because they’re necessarily bad. I think we’ve reached a point of saturation with food that feels devoid of human authorship. For years, restaurants have been encouraged to become frictionless, scalable, customizable and infinitely replicable. Now diners seem increasingly sensitive to the moment when all that optimization scrubs away specificity.

The opposite of slop isn’t necessarily handmade, independent, expensive or even particularly beautiful. A chain can have it; a bowl can have it; a restaurant backed by investors can have it. It’s simply the sense that something looks and tastes the way it does because somewhere along the line a person said, I like it this way, so I make it this way.

This isn’t an argument for turning every anonymous strip mall back into a village of idiosyncratic mom-and-pop shops. It’s something smaller, and probably more achievable. After years of food designed to work everywhere for everyone, diners may simply be hungry again for evidence that somebody meant it.

The post We’re over restaurant slop appeared first on Salon.com.

It makes perfect sense that Emerald Fennell’s debut film, “Promising Young Woman,” is divisive. In fact, divisive isn’t quite the right word. Since its 2020 release, “Promising Young Woman” has become a lightning rod for heated conversation — quite a far cry from its initially warm reception, which led to five Oscar nominations and one win. 

Much of this radioactivity results from Fennell’s proclivity for pushing buttons (a habit I defended earlier this year). But in the case of “Promising Young Woman” — about Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a directionless 30-year-old who spends her free time pursuing cosmic justice for her late best friend Nina, whose death was the byproduct of a brutal sexual assault — the discourse is understandable. Fennell wanted to make audiences uncomfortable right out of the gate. And to create this air of discomfort, Fennell crafted a movie that darts from hopeful to despairingly bleak in the blink of an eye. 

Fennell’s acid-tongued rape-revenge film is caustic and cruel; a feel-bad film for, as Salon described it then, “the #MeToo times.” And though Cassie’s extracurricular pursuits echo that cultural reckoning, some distance reveals that “Promising Young Woman” is less about justice than protection. Revisiting the movie through this lens offers plenty of important wisdom that its detractors were quick to shrug off. But what’s tragic is that such a reappraisal has come at the cost of another woman’s safety.

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Over the past two weeks, Cornell University has faced a very public and very courageous rebellion, similar to the one Cassie attempts to mount in “Promising Young Woman.” The unrest is courtesy of four exemplary student journalists at the college’s newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, who published the names of seven male students named in a lawsuit against the university by an anonymous Jane Doe. The plaintiff alleges that, during a party at the school’s Chi Phi fraternity in 2024, she was coerced into taking drugs and gang raped by seven fraternity members. 

Shortly after, Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell police, leading the school to assemble a sexual assault task force and conduct an internal investigation. Although students were alerted to the allegations, they never received the results of the school’s investigation. On September 16, nearly two years after the initial report, Jane Doe filed her suit against Cornell. The Cornell Daily Sun, having followed the case from the beginning, made the bold decision to publish all seven defendants’ names on the paper’s front page in an editorial titled, “Cornell Won’t, We Will.”

The editorial sparked immediate national attention, putting Cornell and Greek life — long the subject of intense scrutiny for its hypermasculine culture promoting sexual assault — in the public’s crosshairs. With discrepancies abound, a startling lack of clarity about Cornell’s systems (despite the school publishing a tail-between-its-legs FAQ), and the local district attorney revisiting the case, the rigor of Cornell’s Title IX investigation now looks shaky at best. In as little as two weeks, Jane Doe, The Cornell Daily Sun’s intrepid staff, and thousands of angry students and spectators around the country have turned their eyes toward Ithaca, New York, hoping this case might finally bring real change. 

This is what protecting each other looks like. Safeguarding isn’t only about what we do for one another before a tragedy, but how we respond in the days, weeks, months and years that follow.

It’s not entirely surprising, then, that “Promising Young Woman” has found its way back into the conversation surrounding what’s happening at Cornell. Some years before the film takes place, Cassie drops out of med school, consumed by remorse and, later, grief. Reminders of Nina and the assault linger around the campus’ every corner, exacerbated by the school’s dean (Connie Britton) choosing not to pursue an investigation into, or discipline for, Nina’s assault. The film isn’t only about justice; it’s about the people standing in its way. Faculty incompetence directly echoes the Cornell case. But, then again, so does Cassie’s greater endeavor. 

More than revenge, Cassie wants to embarrass potential assailants and jolt them, however briefly, out of their repugnant misogyny. She wants to scare them straight, in hopes that they won’t touch another woman without her consent ever again. Cassie understands this is probably futile, especially in the patriarchy’s grand scheme. But it’s something she can do not only for Nina, but for every other vulnerable woman.

Before we go further, though, I should be clear that I don’t disagree with the notion that comparing a real-life rape allegation to Fennell’s film is in poor taste. My intention here is not to say, “Hey, this unspeakable event unfolding in the headlines right now? It’s just like that movie!” My objective is to use the existing comparisons to reexamine “Promising Young Woman,” try to understand Fennell’s intentions, and look at the bleak truths her movie stares straight in the face. If you dislike or even detest this film, I don’t seek to negate your feelings. I only posit that it’s important to understand art — especially contentious art about pertinent crises — on a cellular level to learn what it, and our responses to it, can teach us.

 

Revisiting the film for the first time in six years this week, I was caught off guard. Reputation is a funny thing — how easily it can subconsciously skew one’s perception, even when we try our best to remain impartial. I remember finding “Promising Young Woman” to be contemplative. Yet the steady post-Oscar blowback and general friction surrounding Fennell made me certain I’d overrated it. But this isn’t exactly a film one jumps at the chance to rewatch just for their edification.

Though I’d say we’ve reached a point where that undertaking is worthwhile. “Promising Young Woman” is not a compare-and-contrast film, where overly didactic morality coaching encourages the viewer to say, “Ah, yes, now I understand rape culture.” Here, Fennell asserts that rape culture is our culture, that patriarchy and misogyny seep through the cracks of every single surface. Having come face to face with its most brutal consequences, Cassie’s rose-colored glasses have been removed, stomped on, ground to a pulp and had their remains burnt to ash. Even when life offers her a grain of solace or happiness, the morsel is already rotting from the inside out. The decay just hasn’t made itself known yet.

Between pretending to be wasted at bars to trick predators into taking her home, Cassie learns that one of Nina’s rapists, Al (Chris Lowell) — now a successful doctor — is getting married. Seeing Al prosper while Nina’s memory fades is enough to push Cassie into full vigilanteism, working her way through the parties complicit in Nina’s death. In her quest, Cassie discovers that there is cellphone video footage of Nina being assaulted, reluctantly handed over by her ex-classmate, Madison (Alison Brie). “I don’t know how we could’ve watched that, and all thought it was funny,” Madison admits. 

This aspect mirrors a frightening contemporary pattern reflected in the Cornell case, in which an alleged Snapchat thread from the Chi Phi house is presented as evidence. Social media has bolstered the narcissistic machismo already present among many men and ubiquitous in fraternity life. In a recent thread discussing her article on the “burnerverse” — a male social media subculture that seeks to exploit young women — Wired senior writer EJ Dickson explained the connection between social media and abuse. 

“Sexual assault has always been a thing; ‘boys will be boys’ has always been a thing,” Dickson writes. “What’s new is the main character syndrome. It’s the complete lack of respect for others in favor of building up a narrative around yourself as a ketamine-blowing, hard-partying Zyn bro that doesn’t give a f*ck about anyone but yourself.”

Take that dichotomy between the self-importance running like a virus through young men and the prudent actions taken by The Cornell Daily Sun staff. Egotism reigns in our modern world, and only those brave enough to stand up to it can impede its rule. Cassie’s methods may be unorthodox, but they’re driven by her ardent desire to remind people that someone is always watching. Her approach is to shame and reveal, but not always to get justice. As Fennell reminds us at the end of the film, justice — if it ever comes — often arrives too late, and at the expense of too many lives.

That ending, which I won’t spoil here, is where the film most often divides. It is certainly alienating and somber. But I’d argue that Fennell intends to galvanize thought and action, not outrage. No conventional idea of justice, be it carceral or social, can reverse the harm that’s already been done. Given the fact that these problems have only worsened in the six years since the film’s release, the conclusion is pragmatically bleak. Anything less would be a fallacy, a dream of a world that we don’t, and might never, live in.

But amid darkness, there is hope, too. The film’s great strength is in remarking on how much tertiary damage sexual assault does. It’s not only the survivors who are left to pick up the pieces, but the people who love and take care of them, too. The aftermath is anything but simple, and that “Promising Young Woman” is so vexing only proves there is no easy way to make sense of the senseless. The most we can offer is our voices, actions and constant vigilance; to refuse ignorance together and demand accountability as a community. That’s Fennell’s challenge: When something is hard, and when the pain is gratuitous, don’t turn the other cheek, don’t let the heart-wrenching horror slip away. Do something, anything. And then do more.

The post The Cornell case puts “Promising Young Woman” back in focus appeared first on Salon.com.

On Thursday afternoon in Dallas, in what looked like a farewell tour, the president of the United States told his Texas followers to “Hold your nose” and vote for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, a man he also described as a “pain in the ass.”

Donald Trump then sped off in the presidential limo known as the Beast — at nearly 100 mph, according to pool reports — and headed for an event in Oklahoma. Republicans gazed in mock wild wonder, palms outstretched, claiming they have no idea why they’re staring at potentially historic losses in the midterm elections next month. 

Afterwards a MAGA supporter told me that Trump’s performance was just “presidential humor.” And fair enough. Donald Trump has spent a lifetime being, in effect, the Wednesday night open-mic comic at a backroom bar in some college town in Missouri. 

Neither capable of growth nor understanding, he’s that guy with just one punchline. He’s a one-trick pony: “Sir, she said. Sir.” He’s the most talentless man ever caught in the bright glare of the light he demanded from the world.

But he is persistent. That’s his superpower. The grift? Oh, that part he learned from experience. But he’s naturally persistent, and out of that grew the corruption, fearmongering and boundless anger — all driven by his superpower. He learned to be transactional. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.  

The first Trump administration was an accident, largely brought about by the split I witnessed firsthand between Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ supporters at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia during the last week of July 2016. What a shock: The Democrats destroyed their chances through infighting. Who knew?

Trump never thought he’d win that election. Some Republicans, who later fled the party, never accepted him as a legitimate heir to the GOP’s legacy when he did. Now, critics and fans alike have pointed out that there’s no doubt he’s the rightful heir to the Republican Party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush; more corrupt than Nixon, a happy practitioner of Reagan’s economics and more of a mean-spirited-wimp than Hunter S. Thompson ever thought Bush could be. 

Trump’s refusal to bust up monopolies while cutting staff to the National Park Service and selling off public lands has removed any illusions that he might be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. His lack of military service takes him out of the realm of being a Dwight Eisenhower Republican. As for Abraham Lincoln, Trump has tried his best to divide a nation, not unite one. 

Since Trump never thought he’d win in 2016, he never really planned anything; he let the Republican establishment run things until he got comfortable sleeping in the big chair in the Oval Office and declaring each week “infrastructure week” while doing nothing about it. 

Then came COVID, and in 2021 Trump found himself out of power after, of course, refusing to concede the election and inciting a failed insurrection. That failure fueled his persistence and led to his 2024 re-election. The failure also fueled his anger. His subsequent 34 felony convictions in New York and the federal investigations into his actions became motives for Trump to seek and destroy all who tried to bring him to justice.

His persistent greed, anger and need for revenge empowered him during his first 100 days back in office in 2025, leading to sweeping, Nazi-esque changes sold to the public by discrediting or co-opting the media. 

Meanwhile, the former East Room of the White House looks like Dresden during postwar reconstruction; the Kennedy Center is starting to resemble a Greek ruin; the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is empty and broken, and for some reason that can only be understood under the influence of hallucinogens and Red Bull, he now wants to build a triumphal arch and stuff it with weapons.

We have no idea why we’re at war with Iran and no idea how to negotiate a peace. Trump’s latest attempt at that answer came in the Oval Office on Wednesday when he said, for what must be the fifth or sixth time, that he could just blow Iran up. 

At least 58 people have died after being remanded to ICE facilities. Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin shrugs that off and says nothing ICE does is controversial and he’s not running “Holiday Inns — these people broke the law.” His superpower seems to be life-ending, militant ignorance.

Then there’s Russia, Ukraine, China and a host of other scandals. Those include but aren’t limited to spending taxpayer money on political ads, the price of diesel fuel, the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, antisemitism, misogyny and the L.A. mayor’s race. 

While covering Trump is always a challenge, covering his minions is another story. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri, who made his bones trying to kill the Affordable Care Act and challenging the results of the 2020 election, made a complete fool of himself this week in the Senate while attacking former special counsel Jack Smith. 

Schmitt’s superpower is apparently making an ass of himself in public. By misrepresenting nonsensical evidence, he accused Smith of perjury. When called out for his sophomoric display, he then went on right-wing media and lied some more.

Smith, who still reminds me of Coach Beard in “Ted Lasso,” explained that his prosecution wasn’t politically inspired. It was driven by facts. “My service has spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations. I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties,” he said. “My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law and the core principles on which our country was founded,” Being driven by facts and principles is a pretty decent superpower and should describe most people, including reporters, lawyers, scientists, politicians and clerics. 

“The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence,” Smith said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.”

That conclusion shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone after all this time. Trump told me in the Brady Briefing Room, six weeks before the 2020 election, that “If you stop counting the votes” there wouldn’t need to be a peaceful transfer of power. He’d just stay on indefinitely.

Trump thus teaches us that persistence pays off even if the proposition is criminal and the facts aren’t in your favor. That’s why he currently commands the center ring of the circus.

Meanwhile, down in Texas, we have the aforementioned Sideshow Ken Paxton, one of the most loathsome individuals ever to climb out of the primordial ooze and declare himself a human being. This is a man so vile that even Trump hates him, and so do the Trump-happy Texas Republicans who have been known to embrace faith healers and hunt snakes in shorts and cowboy boots. They tried to rid themselves of Paxton, but he somehow slipped away.

Paxton’s superpower is his lack of spine and his greasy nature. That, combined with Trump’s (ahem) support, is the reason Paxton isn’t in prison. 

But time has its way with everyone. After more than a decade of deploying his superpower, Trump is noticeably faltering, even conceding from the Oval Office this week that his party may lose the midterms. The man who has traded on fear, corruption and grift for so long that he looks like a cartoon Tasmanian devil without the charm has now come to resemble Otis, the sleepy town drunk in “The Andy Griffith Show” (look it up, for heaven’s sake). 

Waiting in the wings is “Hillbilly Elegy” JD Vance, worming his way through the crowd. That’s his superpower: He’s a bearded human worm. If you don’t like him, you might place a bet on Marco “The Juggler” Rubio. His superpower is handling a variety of tasks without the loud explosive thud of total failure often seen from Trump, Vance and Pete Hegseth, who’s more like the the secretary of fashion than the “secretary of war.” That makes “Li’l Marco” a bright star in Trump’s dark firmament, even if it’s evident nobody likes him.  

Hegseth, on the other hand, is among the dimmest. His superpower seems to be the ability to cosplay a vain summer camp counselor in the Adirondacks from a bad Hallmark comedy.  

For the comic book fans out there, the Republicans are led by a Yellow Lantern with fading powers, delusional in his beliefs and actions, too fearful to change and faced with the overpowering realization that his time in power is quickly coming to an end. 

He even sent an email to supporters Thursday claiming “This could be my final four weeks as president.” Sure, it was another grift, as well as fatalistic and totally disingenuous. 

They may have to pry Trump out of the Oval Office with a crowbar and a handful of sedatives in 2029, if he lasts that long. But next month’s midterm elections, should they go as badly as Trump obviously fears, will mean the effective end of his presidency. What comes after that could be chaos. Don’t expect mature or professional behavior from a party that can’t tell the difference between an NBA game in Atlanta and a women’s college basketball game in Silver Spring. Just realize it’s the same party that wants to punish transgender Americans while rewarding the ultra-rich. 

The only question that matters is this; Does Trump have enough juice left in his Yellow Lantern ring for one last fearful victory? At his mini-convention in Dallas he told his followers to “cheat like hell.” At the same time Trump asked everyone to vote as if he were on the ballot; unfortunately for the Republicans, many will do just that. At this point, it’s almost as if Trump is campaigning for the Democrats. 

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Seems appropriate. Most of the Democrats are counting on winning by simply saying, “I’m not Trump.”

Folks, they’re not putting Vance out in the field for the Donald’s sake. He’s there for the same reason: Because he’s not Trump. Soon enough, JD could graduate from the sideshow to the center ring.

Should Trump and the Republicans suffer the historic midterm blowout everyone sees coming — barring armed confiscation of ballot boxes — the president will play the victim, a martyred hero who will claim the elections were rigged and blame Joe Biden, China, Canada, our NATO allies and Iran. If he somehow finds a miraculous recharge for his ring, he will use his superpower to foment further revenge and retribution. Every failure is fuel for the next fiasco.

I’ve been told that everyone has a superpower. If so, I’ll defer to what my father told me was mine: asking annoying questions. I still have a few for you, Mr. President.

The post Trump’s superpower is fading. Can he recharge before the midterms? appeared first on Salon.com.

Jane Doe, a former Cornell University student who has filed a civil lawsuit alleging gang rape at the hands of seven Chi Phi fraternity members, has struggled since she first reported the incident to the police in November 2024, a few weeks after night a frat party turned ugly. “Her life has been destroyed,” her attorney Thomas Giuffra told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Unlike most of the alleged assailants, Doe left college after what Giuffra has described as a “horrifying” semester in which she had to attend classes “where she saw these guys on a fairly regular basis.” 

She was not from “a wealthy family,” he said. “This was her dream and it was taken away from her at a young age in just a horrific fashion.”

But according to some on the right, Doe has not suffered enough for reporting her alleged assault to the police and then later suing the accused, the university and the fraternity. It’s not enough that she saw no charges filed, or that reportedly only two of the accused were expelled from campus. On top of her existing pain, therefore, many of the MAGA faithful are punishing her further by calling her a liar, implying she’s a slut and even threatening to out her, which would put her personal safety at risk. Whatever their intent, by doing this, they are sending a strong message to any victim of rape who might feel tempted to seek justice: Stay silent, or you’ll be next. 

In 2017, the #MeToo movement took the nation by storm. A veritable flood of women, and some men, spoke out about their own experiences with sexual abuse, leading to a slew of firings, lawsuits, arrests and social opprobrium of the accused, especially since so many accusers produced compelling evidence. Despite this, it was barely weeks before the backlash began, with countless articles about how #MeToo had gone “too far,” despite scant evidence that innocent men were getting entangled. That response swelled until it overcame #MeToo, which has largely faded into the background. 

 

The Cornell case shows, though, that far from going too far, the #MeToo movement didn’t go far enough. Much — if not most — of the time, alleged victims still face far more serious consequences than their accused assailants, and for many people and institutions, it still feels much easier to make the issue go away by suppressing accusations than dealing with these cases which are, admittedly, often complex. 

There is no doubt that the Cornell case is messy. By her own account, the victim was initially consenting, though perhaps not enthusiastically, to a threesome with two fraternity members. But the situation apparently took a turn when she took ketamine during the encounter and more fraternity members joined in, even communicating about “free p—y” on Snapchat. She describes hiding and swatting the new men away, but being too incapacitated to fight back.

“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” she told police during a November 2024 interview. 

It took time for the alleged victim to get to the point where she was ready to file a report, which right-wing pundits have seized on as evidence that she was not really raped. The New York Times, using campus police documents and witness statements, laid out the timeline showing that she initially reacted with confusion and shame. While she didn’t call it “rape,” she was clearly unhappy about what had happened. Over the course of a few weeks, she came around to first texting one of the accused that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” and then filing a police report. 

“After rape, it’s common that victims don’t realize what happened was rape,” explained Anne DePrince, a psychology professor at the University of Denver and author of “Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence Against Women.” 

Victims “feel some shame about reporting it,” especially if they initially “liked the boy or they wanted to go to an event,” Sharon Gandarilla-Javier, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told me. She noted that it’s also common for someone to initially consent to one activity that then becomes “totally different than what they expected.” 

Journalists and feminist writers have been cautious in addressing this case, making it clear that the claims haven’t been tested in court and that New York’s rape laws may not be enough to secure an indictment, much less a conviction. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has reopened the case, arguing that this new lawsuit presents evidence he didn’t have when he initially made the decision to not charge the accused. New reporting also shows that Van Houten was given a condensed version of Doe’s report to Cornell police, one that omitted her use of the word “raped.” 

But on the right, there appears to be no similar care when lobbing unproven — and unevidenced — accusations that Doe is lying. 

“Her account has radically changed,” The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro said on Tuesday’s episode of his podcast, insisting “it turned out that the details of the police report did not amount to anything like rape.”

While he may be proven right if prosecutors can’t secure an indictment, this is not the same thing as saying that all Doe reported was “bad things happening with consent,” as Shapiro claimed. She herself said she was “raped,” and as many have pointed out, the very fact that she filed a police report is relevant. Calling the police suggests that a person believes they are reporting a crime. 

Matt Walsh, also of the Daily Wire, accused feminists of “rushing into the next Duke lacrosse/UVA-style hoax” and argued on X that the situation was nothing more than “a disgusting drug and alcohol fueled orgy,” where “the drunk men have just as valid a claim to being raped.” This, of course, ignores the fact that the alleged victim did not get on Snapchat to advertise “free p—y” to strangers, as well as her own testimony that she pushed them away and tried to hide.

The story “gets transformed from a night of regrets that the young woman is ashamed of into a night in which she’s a victim,” former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said on her podcast, where she also threatened to release the accuser’s name.

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Feminists and journalists are wise to use words like “alleged” and to be clear that the evidence has not been fully evaluated in a court of law, and it is true that there remains much about this case that is unknown. Still, there are the Snapchats and text messages, including one where the alleged victim uses the word “nonconsensual” and another where the accused wrote “I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night.” This alone makes it hard to believe the accusations are a “hoax,” as Walsh suggested, even if there are outstanding legal questions about whether a consensual encounter turned into something illegal. 

For people who insist on the principle of “innocent until proven guilty,” many on the right have proven themselves quick to make claims about the alleged victim’s motives. It’s worth remembering that E. Jean Carroll won a defamation civil suit against Donald Trump after he accused her of lying when she claimed he sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. There is a demonstrable psychological and reputational toll on alleged victims when they face public accusations that they are lying, especially when they come from high-profile people who also insinuate that the victim is an immoral person because of their sexual history.

In this case, no one is required to have an opinion about the accuser’s character. They don’t know her history or her life or why she was even at the party, beyond her stated desire to have some fun. They could, like most decent people, consider the allegations and assume that, even if there is not a crime here, what is described should never happen to anyone. Shutting up is free.

But the past decade of Trumpism has largely been built on stirring up male anger at women’s growing equality. Paranoid and unsupported claims that women have immense power to ruin men with false accusations have been the bread-and-butter of a MAGA media industry designed to exploit men’s resentment for profit. Their audiences yearn to hear that Jane Doe is the real bad guy here, and so attacking her without a single shred of real evidence against her is an opportunity that many right-wing pundits can’t seem to pass up. 

Despite the hysterical claims of its critics, #MeToo was never about ruining the lives of innocent men. In a very real sense, the movement was about leveling the playing field, which is so dramatically tilted against victims that it makes justice nearly impossible to achieve. No one truly disputes the importance of due process to handle accusations of sexual violence. That’s why Jane Doe is going through the court system. It’s also why it’s good that, in light of new information, the district attorney is re-opening the case. 

But due process is endangered if victims can’t report allegations without facing  public abuse and threats of being falsely accused themselves that it becomes psychologically impossible to live their lives. As its name suggested, that was the whole point of #MeToo: to create enough solidarity between victims and allies to make it safe for victims to speak out without their lives being destroyed. If the right really believes in the value of due process, then they would let it play out, instead of dogpiling and harassing accusers so that future victims are too scared to report crimes. 

The post Cornell assault case shows #MeToo didn’t go far enough appeared first on Salon.com.

Few things are more difficult to get down in immutable ink than the history of professional wrestling.

Born on the carnival circuit, the pseudo-sport maintained a here today-gone tomorrow feeling until relatively recently. Promoters scraped out regional fiefdoms where transient performers would fight for a spell before jumping ship in search of better deals. Sometimes they took their name with them; other times they molded themselves to whatever gimmick their new promoter needed on the roster. It makes a mess of any timeline, and that’s before you get to the kayfabe — the illusion — of it all, the fact that all these real men and women are deadly serious about keeping up their fake characters. 

Grasping for concrete facts can leave you with two immutable bits of data: when a wrestler was born and when they died, with everything in between being a show on some level. Get enough of those dates together, and it’s hard not to notice a pattern: These sideshow athletes don’t live very long. 

Gorgeous George, one of the most famous faces of wrestling’s Golden Age, didn’t make it to his 50th birthday. “Macho Man” Randy Savage and his ex-wife/manager Miss Elizabeth both died before reaching Social Security eligibility. High-flying technical wrestler Eddie Guerrero died at 38. Windham Rotunda, who freaked out the WWE for years as a swamp-dwelling cultist named Bray Wyatt, passed away at the age of 36. And earlier this week, All Elite Wrestling star Pac died in the parking lot of an Illinois chain restaurant, just a day after his most recent match. HIs cause of death is still unknown. 

Born Benjamin Satterley in a blue-collar community in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, he first came to national attention stateside in the WWE, where he wrestled under the decidedly English name Neville. He took the cruiserweight title twice before jumping for AEW in 2018. His star rose exponentially as a regular heel for the young promotion. At the time of his passing, he was only 40 years old.

Playing a fake brute who’s willing to take a folding chair to the face to settle a disagreement is hell on a body. Learning how to fall and pretending you have superpowers can’t cancel out physics. If a 240-pound man turns you upside down and drives your head into a padded floor, you’re going to feel it the next day (and probably several days after). The wear and tear is cumulative, adding up over time like it does for all contact sports. Just take a boxer’s blown-out ears and a running back’s trick knee and expand it to account for the fact that, in wrestling, shots to the back of the skull are frequently necessary to move the story along. Recruiting almost exclusively among the huge and jacked — it’s easier to appear larger-than-life on camera if you’re real-world large — makes the list of heart conditions start to pile up. It’s all a recipe for a brief career, and a correspondingly short life.

The situation is exacerbated by wrestling’s employer-employee relationship. Staying true to its seasonal carny roots, almost all professional wrestlers are gig workers. The average star of WWE or AEW signs on as an independent contractor, meaning they are responsible for their own health insurance and are subject to being fired for nearly any cause. The situation has been even worse for wrestling’s women, who spent decades subject to the whims of Mary Lillian Ellison, better known as The Fabulous Moolah, a wrestler-promoter-extortionist who controlled virtually all of women’s wrestling, loaning out talent to regional promotions and taking cuts of stars’ pay.

Unlike the four major professional sports in the U.S., wrestlers have no pension and no retiree health benefits. If you wrestle for a living, you’re faced with significant pressure to perform for as long as you can, through as many injuries as you can. Unsurprisingly, the list of premature wrestler deaths is heavy on accidental painkiller overdoses and acute toxicity from mixing medications with alcohol. 

The central role of the promoter — and the lack of genuine athletic competition in matches — puts wrestlers and management on remarkably unequal footing. It’s hard to cause trouble for a boss who can simply write rabble-rousers out of the scripted action. Attempts to unionize the talent were mounted in the 1980s, first by hoo-rah heel Sgt. Slaughter, and then by wrestler-turned-governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura. The latter seemingly bought into some of the era’s storylines and ringside magic, believing that a rousing speech to the wrestlers in the locker room would convince them to strike. But he was ratted on by company star Hulk Hogan, and promoter Vince McMahon quickly summoned Ventura to let him know that any future outbursts of class consciousness would come with walking papers. 

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“Vince . . .  basically threatened to fire me if I ever brought it up again and read me the riot act,” Ventura explained on The Steve Austin Show. ”I then did WrestleMania 2 and immediately left and did ‘Predator’ and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild now, my union that I get retirement from now, healthcare from, all of that from.”

The situation only got worse as WWE muscled out nearly all regional promotions. McMahon’s anti-union behemoth spent decades as the only game in town for professional wrestlers who wanted the reach of a televised promotion. In recent years, AEW has pitched itself as an antidote to the WWE, but its roster is also almost entirely composed of independent contractors. Stars like CM Punk and Ray Fenix have complained loudly about the way the promotion handles wrestler health.

Pac is the second wrestler who performed in an AEW ring to have died just this month. Andy Williams, the former guitarist for metal-core act Every Time I Die who wrestled under the name “The Butcher,” died after collapsing during a match with an independent, regional promotion on Sept. 5 at 48. (His contact with AEW expired in April, after which he became a free agent.) Williams’ official cause of death is pending, awaiting final autopsy results.

Wrestling’s treatment of its employees is a bit too abstract to be listed on either man’s autopsy report. Coroners are in the business of endings, putting a neat period on decades of damage with phrases like “cardiac arrest.” Still, anyone who has followed wrestling for years can see the way it hobbles its heels and heroes alike. In a sport that heavily encourages everyone watching to follow the narrative, it’s hard not to notice a pattern.

The post AEW wrestler Pac’s death exposes pro wrestling’s labor problem appeared first on Salon.com.

Along with a few other TV critics, I have the dubious distinction of attending the last party at the late Hollywood producer Robert Evans‘ Woodland estate before its storied pool house burned down in 2003. There, I rubbed elbows with famous comedians and an assortment of UPN and WB starlets. But the guests I remember most clearly were a woman in her 40s, possibly, and her daughter, who was perhaps in her mid-20s. They were remarkable because they’d been surgically altered to look like twins. By that, I mean both women bore evidence of similar procedural enhancements, most noticeably lips plumped like party balloons and sharp cheekbones.

Plastic surgery is common in Hollywood, but this was something novel. This mother-daughter duo wasn’t in a show. They were there because they were part of Evans’ wealthy, powerful social circle. And they weren’t trying to maintain an existing aesthetic but to stand out with the best version of perfected artificiality money could buy.

That memory sat at the bottom of my mind’s darkest well until I watched Erin Lee Carr’s “The Swan: Behind the Mirror.” Indeed, I had blocked out most memories of that 2004 Fox reality train wreck until Carr’s documentary reached into my mind’s cobwebby attic and retrieved its cabinet of horrors.

For those who also blanked it out or were too young to clearly remember the details, “The Swan” recruited a bevy of normal-looking women convinced by magazine ads, the tabloid industry and other media that they were, in fact, ugly ducklings. “I wanted some big-a** cans,” one of Carr’s subjects said, explaining that was the age of Pamela Anderson and Maxim cover girls, women she wanted to be.

Yes, this horrendous TV egg could only have hatched in a place like Hollywood, where mother-daughter spa days might also mean going under the knife.

When I say “The Swan” was one of the vilest shows ever made, that is coming from a person who has seen a quarter-century’s worth of terrible television. Lest you think my opinion is an outlier, here’s what my predecessor Heather Havrilesky had to say about it when it first aired:

The funny thing is, it doesn’t just make you depressed about plastic surgery and sad women and sleazy TV executives. It also makes you depressed about the war in Iraq, the frailty of the human ego, the undeniable soul-sucking lameness of our culture, and the impossibility of real beauty at a time when such confused animals roam the earth.

Somehow, despite each episode’s invasive gawking at each participant’s ghastly surgeries, the lasting legacy of “The Swan” and other shows – it didn’t exist in a vacuum – was not simply to normalize cosmetic surgery but to establish it as part of a system of social signifiers.

At the lowest consumer-friendly rung rest affordable fillers and Botox injections. At the top, in the realm of multimillionaires and billionaires, you will find the Hall of Mar-a-Lago faces. A library of radically changed visages, sliced and sculpted to fit the funhouse-mirror beauty standards set by a handful of influential men.

Dr. Randal Haworth was among the specialists creator Nely Galán recruited in 2003. Galán declined to be interviewed for Carr’s documentary, having been thoroughly raked over the coals once the public’s visceral disgust with “The Swan” got it canceled after its second season.  

But Haworth offered his view, which he may now regret. At first he opines that plastic surgery is surgical psychiatry before likening himself to an interior designer and then, in explaining his role in the series, saying, “My goal was, as a plumber, can I perform early hyperesthetic surgery on these people?”

Off-screen, Carr calls out the weirdness of a plastic surgeon describing himself that way. “You’re literally talking about toilets,” she says. “And women.”

“That was unintended,” he replies, only digging himself in deeper when he explains that, like plumbers or electricians, he was there to do a job.

So. The women in “The Swan” weren’t quite latrines, but the man who got intimate with their flesh and bone didn’t exactly see them as people either.

With “The Swan: Behind the Mirror,” Carr does a service to the participants this production tortured for ratings and to the modern TV audience by not only reminding us how exploitative it was but also establishing it as a benchmark for the beauty industry.

Of course, the first idea is likely to gain much more traction than the second, if the public’s shocked reaction to Netflix’s “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model” is an indicator. “ANTM” and “The Swan” were contemporaries, after all. Before “The Swan” aired, ABC ran “Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest People,” made memorable by ‘80s star Lorenzo Lamas, one of its judges, using a laser pointer to point out contestants’ flab and cellulite for viewers at home.

“Extreme Makeover” had also been airing since 2002, showing ordinary men and women undergoing plastic surgery, receiving style makeovers and adopting fitness routines. “The Swan” was not a singular occurrence, then, but part of an era hawking cosmetic improvement, whether surgical or noninvasive, as the key to succeeding at life.

The difference between the two shows resembles the divide between workaday vanity and Mar-a-Lago maximalist aesthetic uniformity. “Extreme Makeover” pitched each contestant’s journey as personal, ending with them showing their “new, improved” selves to their friends and family.

Producers on “The Swan” not only pressured participants to undergo a series of grueling procedures and painful recoveries (that Carr’s documentary reveals were insufficiently managed), but they also made them compete against each other in a pageant. Very much like an election, in other words, only one populated with women who were scalpel-sculpted, lifted, tanned and tucked to surgical specifications.

Or, in Haworth’s telling, maybe just one surgeon’s.

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To be clear, that difference does not make “Extreme Makeover” less morally reprehensible. The fact that it outlived “The Swan” by several years only enhanced its role in mainstreaming elective cosmetic surgery. More than two decades after these aired, we’ve swerved between an age of unattainable thinness being pushed as a cultural ideal and a time of healthy-at-any-size body positivity from which we’re slowly regressing. The first runs of these shows probably missed Gen Z. Not millennials, sadly. And yet, Sephora and other cosmetic retailers love that their obsession with anti-aging begins in their teens and 20s. These products are marketed to them as “skin-loving,” not as wrinkle creams.

As the recent, depressing discourse about the difference in Jasmine Guy’s appearance between when she starred in “A Different World” four decades ago and how she looks in the reboot rages on, we’re reminded that Americans still have a deeply ageist view of daring to grow old gracefully.

For the record, Guy is a physically fit woman in her 60s who has not undergone cosmetic surgery, whom many women would kill to look like. And if she had gotten all the lifts and tucks we expect of a TV star, we’d be criticizing her for that too.

But her appearance is her choice and doesn’t serve anyone but herself which, in these days of grotesque facial augmentation being associated with a dehumanizing strain of conservative politics, is downright refreshing.

Carr’s documentary closes by showcasing the sisterhood shared by the women who survived “The Swan” – women seduced by a sales pitch predicated on the assumption that cosmetic surgery would change their lives. Most of them found that wasn’t true.

But at least one participant in “The Swan” still believes in its promise. “It was empowering,” insists Haworth in “Behind the Mirror,” “because it shows you that beauty is power.” Reflected power, sure. But whose?

“The Swan: Behind the Mirror” is streaming on Hulu.

 

 

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Before it became reality, the biggest fear around a second Donald Trump administration was an increased level of competence. The candidate and his team displayed shocking measures of discipline and consistent messaging throughout the 2024 race, with much of the credit going to campaign manager Susie Wiles, who became his White House chief of staff. As a result, some feared that the shambling jankiness of his first term would be replaced by an efficient, experienced administration that would carry out a ruthless, quasi-fascist platform with few hiccups. 

That hasn’t happened. Once in office, Trump replaced the GOP’s establishment scolds who curtailed his worst impulses in his first term with loyalists who were just as green as him. The result has been constant outrage over blatant graft and executive overreach, as Trump is unable to stop blabbing about his — possibly illegal — dealmaking and unconstitutional policy goals. But look to the Republican Party’s backbenchers: You’ll see what MAGA could do with a figurehead who can keep their trap shut. 

A loyal Trump acolyte, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry has happily deployed bored-looking National Guard troops to New Orleans and the U.S.-Mexico border for little more reason than pleasing the president. He has successfully pushed a law to require the display of the Ten Commandments in schools, and he rarely shies away from red meat conflicts with his state’s few Democratic strongholds. Little surprise, then, that Landry was hailed as MAGA’s next-generation hero by Rolling Stone in 2024.

But when the time comes to pass Republican policies he truly cares about, or to hand out contracts and favors to his preferred businesses, Landry goes eerily quiet. Unlike Trump’s premature crowing over his massive ballroom or countless would-be Iran ceasefires, the governor has a tendency to let his work speak for itself. 

When it was published, Landry’s profile in Rolling Stone made hay out of his ability to go dark. Lately, though, when he gets quiet, it’s out of legal necessity. His administration has proven remarkably open to signing non-disclosure agreements while working out public deals with megacorporations.

According to a report from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Landry administration has signed nearly 300 NDAs since he took office in 2024. The Gulf States Newsroom uncovered a further 100 NDAs between the governor’s office and its employees, restricting what they can share about their time on the job. Reporter Drew Hawkins, who spoke to employees of former Louisiana gubernatorial administrations, said the broad gag orders on public employees was unprecedented.

“[T]hey’ve never seen anything like this,” Hawkins told New Orleans television station WWL. “They don’t know about anybody else signing them. They never signed them, and then you know one of them reviewed it and went through it point by point and talked about just how wild this would be to enforce.”

The result of all these hush-hush agreements is most noticeable in recent headline deals with SpaceX and Meta. The former was given the OK to build a massive spaceport in coastal Louisiana in between two wildlife refuges. While the under-wraps deal was being worked out, Landry signed laws exempting aerospace operations from property taxes, nuisance liabilities and public records requests. The final deal, approved in a public meeting of a new development board announced just 24 hours before, granted SpaceX more than $24 billion in tax breaks to build a rocket-launching facility no locals had even heard about.

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A similarly tight-lipped dealmaking process led to Meta’s announcement of its largest data center to date in rural Northeast Louisiana. The project, dubbed Hyperion, will cover six square miles of Richland Parish. The tax breaks granted to Meta, again without public input, total more than $3 billion.

For his part, Landry kept quiet about the agreements until the last possible moment. But once the ink was dry, he was downright boastful about them. “I have no problem letting the people in the state of Louisiana decide whether what we put together was worth it,” he said, telling the Times-Picayune that he was motivated by pragmatism and a desire to drag his economically underperforming state into the future. “You don’t do these deals in the public,. At some point, you have to give the people elected to lead this state the opportunity to lead.”

Since Louisiana’s have a habit of ending up in prison, some level of backroom chicanery is to be expected in the Bayou State. At the moment, Landry’s NDA-heavy approach is largely a Louisiana phenomenon. But the ethically dubious practice of burying public-private deals under NDAs could be put to use elsewhere. 

Landry’s down-low dealmaking offers a blueprint for post-Trump Republicans looking to push through potentially unpopular agreements and policies, including those involving data centers and artificial intelligence. While the president may no longer be able to harness the support he enjoyed by virtue of being loud-mouthed himself, his followers can work quietly to carry on his project under a blanket of keep-quiet agreements — springing them on the public when the deals have already been made.

The post We’ll never know the art of Jeff Landry’s Meta, SpaceX deals appeared first on Salon.com.

It seems like a million years ago now, but there was a moment back in 2024, in the heat of that weird presidential campaign, when everyone was talking about the radical blueprint for Donald Trump’s restoration. Project 2025 was so extreme, in fact, that his campaign had Trump disavow it publicly. He usually said that he hadn’t read the plan and didn’t intend to, but at times he went further. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 20, 2024, Trump said, “Like some on the right, severe right, came up with this Project 25 . . . They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left. You have the radical left and the radical right, and they come up — I don’t know what the hell it is, it’s Project 25 . . . and then they read some of the things, and they are extreme, seriously extreme.”

Trump probably wasn’t lying when he said he hadn’t read it, but his advisers obviously believed he should keep his distance from the plan, which didn’t poll well, and when people found out what was in it, they were appalled. Project 2025 was a far-right manifesto, filled with the kind of pie-in-the-sky fantasies that denizens of conservative think-tanks had been churning out for decades in the hopes of influencing Republican administrations. 

One such organization, the Heritage Foundation, had been publishing “Mandate for Leadership,” its so-called policy guide, since 1981 and updating it as necessary. But Project 2025 was different from the group’s previous effort. This time, the Heritage Foundation had organized a formal transition operation, created training sessions, personnel lists and a day-one playbook for Trump to hit the ground running with a flurry of executive orders and personnel changes. 

This effort was largely guided by its co-author, Russell Vought, who served in the first Trump administration as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Having worked for years for the Republican Study Committee in the House, a group of far-right members dedicated to social conservatism, tax cuts and the destruction of the federal safety net, Vought was an experienced bureaucrat with a specific vision: to shrink the federal workforce and bring as much power under the direct auspices of the president as possible. As a self-described Christian nationalist, he also believed that the U.S. should espouse fundamentalist Christianity, and that the country has no obligation to engage in global initiatives that do not directly benefit its own people.

Vought was an active member of a group formed after the 2012 election called Groundswell, which included an eclectic group of influencers and activists such as Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and far-right political operative Steve Bannon, who had come to believe that Republicans needed to be much more radical in their methods and their goals. Seeing the federal workforce as nothing more than sinecures for dangerous liberals, Vought and his comrades planned mass firings under new rules such as Schedule F, which would reclassify thousands of federal workers as at-will employees, making them exempt from civil service protections. And if they could not be fired, he would make their lives so difficult that they would quit. As Vought famously explained:

We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.

Vought believed that the way to secure a mandate for this agenda, even under Democratic presidents, was to cut the federal workforce so massively that the government would be unable to function beyond the most basic services. We will have to see just how well that works out for them in the future. But the destruction is already monumental.

In the months after Trump returned to the White House, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency wreaked havoc on the federal government. Thousands were fired and departments were shuttered, leaving chaos everywhere. That’s the tech-bro style. 

But Vought is a different breed. He is a patient and methodical destroyer. Vought believes that we are living in a “post-constitutional” time in which the “precedents and legal paradigms that have wrongly developed over the last 200 years” must be thrown off. And even while Trump’s presidency appears to be on the verge of collapsing from the weight of historically low poll numbers, Vought is quietly accomplishing his mission of comprehensive deregulation mostly under the radar. 

On Tuesday, the administration ended Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students, effectively allowing them to be bullied and discriminated against in America’s schools. But since this is a man who joyfully prescribes “trauma” as a political tactic, it’s not entirely surprising that his crusade would eventually reach schoolchildren.

Vought’s influence is also being felt on Capitol Hill. As the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has made her role a centerpiece of her reelection campaign. For years, she has argued to Mainers that her value lies in the seniority and influence she yields. But Collins should think again: One of Vought’s primary strategies for securing the unitary executive is through confrontation with the legislative and judicial branches. That conflict is currently playing out in the courts. But under a supine GOP congressional majority that has been willing to cede the powers granted to them by the Constitution, he is winning — and making more moves. 

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According to the New York Times, an Oval Office meeting grew heated when Vought attempted to have the president rescind National Institutes of Health grants to universities that did not align with the MAGA agenda. Trump was on board with the idea, since it would have targeted Harvard University, an institution he sees as his enemy. After fierce pushback from members of both parties, the pair pulled back. But that reprieve could be temporary; conventional wisdom says they are likely to try again after the November midterms are over, when Vought’s new initiative to confront Congress begins in earnest.

Then, on Wednesday, Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wis., blocked a Democratic bill that would have stopped Vought’s recent pocket rescission of $810 million in domestic spending previously approved by Congress. (In a statement released days before the vote, Collins decried the move.) The money had been earmarked for programs focused on immigrants, refugees, civil rights, climate change and children. Johnson said the issue will likely have to be decided by the Supreme Court, which approved Vought’s rescissions in 2025 because they pertained to national security. These funds do not, but it won’t be surprising if the Court’s conservative majority, which has been largely sympathetic to the unitary executive theory, finds another reason to allow it.

If Vought and the administration were to win at the Supreme Court, Congress might as well just go part-time to approve presidential appointments, name post-offices and pass one big pile of money for the presidential monarch to spend as he pleases. Article I of the Constitution will be effectively dead.

Under Vought’s leadership, the damage to the federal government is already overwhelming, and it’s unclear if a Democratic congressional majority or administration will be able to fix it. But then, that’s part of the plan too. Trump’s presidency may be faltering, but Vought’s dream is being realized every single day.

The post Trump’s failure hides Project 2025 success appeared first on Salon.com.

Since moving to Italy from the U.S., I’ve noticed how much more spontaneous social interactions are here. It’s common for me to run into someone I know and have them invite me to coffee on the spot. Instead of receiving a text, I’m more likely to get a voice message or a phone call from someone I just met. But this is only true of the friends I’ve made here. When communicating with friends back home, I text them or send voice messages. But mostly, I do the dance of having to schedule a catch-up like it’s a work meeting. So when The Cut writer Kathleen Walsh published an essay recently about feeling like she should be able to cold call her friends, it resonated with me deeply. “In the past 20 years, a new social boundary seems to have calcified among people my age,” Walsh wrote. “It is no longer appropriate to pick up your phone and call your friend whenever you feel like it.”

In February 2026, a YouGov survey found that 68% of surveyed Americans said text messaging had replaced at least some of the phone calls they used to make. More than one-third of those surveyed said text messaging had replaced most of their calls. While there isn’t any data to quantify its frequency, as Walsh pointed out, if a phone call does happen, it’s becoming increasingly more common to text before you call. But in a time when loneliness has been declared a public health crisis, Americans are saying fewer words to each other, and it’s trendy to be nostalgic for the ’90s – why isn’t the friendly cold call making a comeback? 

There are a few reasons. Despite all the public discourse around loneliness and the need to connect, the cold call violates some of the communication norms we’ve spent decades developing. Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas, said one reason is simply that phone calls are sometimes disruptive to people’s lives. “There are lots of reasons people shouldn’t or normatively don’t take phone calls, and they’re totally valid,” he said. For example, when someone is at work or in a public setting. In fact, Hall added, when mobile phones first became more widespread, there was a backlash against taking private calls in public. Texting first, to arrange a phone call, is now seen as the more polite approach. 

Adding to the phone-calls-may-be-disruptive argument, Hall said in today’s digital-heavy world, people are constantly being bombarded by notifications on their phones. A friendly cold call could be viewed as yet another interruption, and a demanding one. Then there’s another reason at play: humans love to screen phone calls. From the invention of the answering machine to caller ID, Hall said people “really enjoy” having the ability to control when, and whether, they answer the phone. 

“I think that the politeness norm is actually a sign of good relational practice to say that I’m respecting the fact that there are lots of times not to take a call, and I’m also going to show this person some respect by doing so,” Hall said. “But when we use texting to replace important, meaningful conversations, or long catch-ups, because we do not want to put the effort of time into maintaining our relationships, that I think, is the big loss.”

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That doesn’t necessarily mean this new social norm of having to text before you call has serious consequences, or that phone calls are the only way to maintain friendships. Throughout history, every new form of communication has generated some type of anxiety. The rise of phone calls once led people to worry about in-person interactions. However, Hall says he believes phone calls are better than texting when it comes to connecting meaningfully with people. But is there something lost when they no longer feel spontaneous?

“Most of our communication is spontaneous,” Matt Abrahams, a professor and author of “Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot,” said. “And good things happen in spontaneous communication.” He used small talk as an example, which can lead to a deeper understanding, deeper trust, and connection for people. “I do believe we miss out on things when we’re not allowing ourselves to have some of these spontaneous interactions.”

But for many people, a cold call from a friend or family member has become synonymous with an emergency. “A ringing phone now reads as an emergency, and most of us have been conditioned to meet surprise with a small spike of alarm,” Christa Smith, a psychologist in Georgia, said. Smith agreed, a pre-arranged call is “courteous,” but it has also turned connection into an appointment. “And appointments get postponed.” 

“Spontaneity is how a relationship says ‘I thought of you for no reason,’” she said. 

Beyond experts in communication, the trend of having to text before you call is also divisive. Melanie Tornroth, a 45-year-old working mom, said she absolutely expects people to text before calling first. “Receiving cold calls from friends and family is now a huge pet peeve of mine,” she said. “The only person I will cold call is my mom because I know she prefers it and will always answer the phone.” When someone calls her out of the blue, it can feel intrusive and give her a lot of anxiety. “I have so much on my plate on a daily basis,” she said. “If a family member or friend calls, I feel pressure to answer, but I am rarely just sitting around doing nothing with time to chat.”

Conversely, Jackie Domanus, a 44-year-old mom of three in California, prefers spontaneous phone calls. In fact, she is known for cold calling her friends. “I just call,” she told me. “I’ve stopped sending or answering texts for the most part; I’m just over it,” she added. Domanus emphasized that she works alone and misses people and their voices, which could be part of her don’t-text-just-call stance. “Call me, or it’s not that important,” she said.

 

Mary Westheimer, a 71-year-old in Phoenix, Arizona, also prefers phone calls over texts.  “Please do not text me to ask if you can call me,” she said.

For people who are tired of having to schedule calls with their friends, Smith suggested agreeing with two or three of your closest people that a text before a call is never needed. “Some people are anecdotally growing tired of having to schedule calls with friends,” she said. 

Kissy Black, a 50-something in Nashville, was one of those people. She said she and her daughter got into a habit of texting to schedule a call, which “created some perceived hurdles to keeping in touch.” But recently, they instituted a “cold call rule” allowing them to call each other anytime, day or night, without texting first.

“Now, when one of us calls, we just say ‘cold call, cold call,’ which immediately makes us both laugh and kicks off our conversation,” Black said. “As a result, we are talking at least 300% more than we used to.”

As for me, any friends or family reading this can expect more cold calls. And if you can’t answer, no problem. I am personally team bring the friendly cold call back.

The post The quiet cost of scheduling every conversation appeared first on Salon.com.

It was a bit tense watching Jack Smith get grilled before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. During his testimony, the former special counsel defended himself against accusations of partisanship in his failed effort to prosecute President Donald Trump two years ago. The chaos of the current era has made the 2024 presidential campaign feel like it was a decade ago, but it’s important to recall that Smith secured indictments on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the other on his alleged mishandling of government records, including the classified documents he had stored at Mar-a-Lago. Both cases fell apart as Trump was elected to a second term.

Now Republicans, including Trump, are pushing for Smith himself to be prosecuted. This wasn’t the first time he has been dragged before Congress so lawmakers could get the soundbites needed for Fox News hits. But to his credit, Smith doubled down and said he would prosecute the president all over again.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith said during the hearing, adding, “If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans took the opportunity to lob insults and accusations at Smith for hours. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz accused him of bringing “the Department of Justice into disrepute,” while Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy was more graphic, telling Smith “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri claimed Smith “will go down as a total dirtbag” and also attempted to corner the former special prosecutor into possible perjury, accusing him of attending an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 as a pretext for meeting with Fani Willis, the local district attorney who prosecuted Trump in Georgia. But Schmitt — or some staffers who will soon be looking for employment — apparently confused the Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes — which are different teams, as it turns out. Smith had watched the Hawkeyes play in Maryland. (As a non-sports person, I confess I might have made the same mistake, except I check my facts.) Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., did Schmitt the favor of pointing out his error, quipping “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.” 

This only seemed to further anger Schmitt, who is reportedly angling to be Vice President JD Vance’s running mate in 2028.

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The whole bit, including a poster board of Smith’s blown-up text messages, was amazingly lazy, even for this Congress. It seemed as if some aide suffering from conspiracy-brain didn’t bother to check the details, or maybe they asked ChatGPT for help. Still, getting the facts wrong probably won’t hurt Schmitt. He got in the abusive remarks that will earn him MAGA’s seal of approval.

Not surprisingly, Democrats also defended Smith. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith nonstop are petty, personal and political,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said. Cory Booker of New Jersey claimed “This is gaslighting of the American people,” telling Smith, “I am so sorry that they’re attempting to put investigators on trial while ignoring the extraordinary conduct that that they are duty bound to really investigate.”

Maybe this all seems like theatrics, more fodder for the cable news spectacle. But the stakes for Smith are real, and this charade could also carry severe consequences for Americans. Since the moment he returned to office, Trump has worked overtime to take down his enemies. That hasn’t been too successful yet — emphasis on yet — but this is about much more than potentially putting Smith behind bars. By playing the victim, the president benefits from controlling the narrative, and perhaps rewriting history, which becomes even more critical as we approach the midterms and he continues promoting the lie he won the 2020 election. So Smith continuing to give the president and his MAGA trolls the proverbial finger isn’t just satisfying — it’s necessary. 

I’m not a Smith fanboy, though I certainly admire him for serving as a specialist prosecutor investigating war crimes in the Kosovo War. It feels misguided to turn public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., into heroes or thirst traps just for doing their jobs. Still, it’s worth noticing when someone in the hot seat does more than pay lip service to the idea of a just and accountable society, knowing that the consequences extend much further than their own personal freedom.

The post We all need Jack Smith’s defiance right now appeared first on Salon.com.

In “Primetime” — Lance Oppenheim’s psychological crime thriller about the rapid ascent and swift fall of the “Dateline NBC” segment “To Catch a Predator,” and its host, Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) — television is a complex ecosystem where hyperawareness is paramount to survival. To prosper in this broadcast biome, close surveillance is key. Attack too early and risk being mauled; retreat and risk going hungry, growing weaker and becoming the prey. 

Though a skilled hunter, even a reporter like Hansen can’t go up against an apex animal like ABC’s “Lost” when it comes to ratings and audience share. To assert dominance and secure his spot on the food chain, Hansen needs to observe the waters and hook a big fish. His cohort Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) — the founder of Perverted-Justice, the vigilante group in charge of luring the “Dateline” prey — believes he’s found just that in an internet chat room.

“This is big, the biggest,” Erck says. “A whale.” Oppenheim douses their conversation in blue, with the eerie artificial light of a computer illuminating both men from below. The effect erases the color from Pattinson’s eyes, fusing his iris and pupil into a black circle, like a shark that’s caught the scent of fresh blood. Emboldened by his animalistic observation, Hansen decides to weaponize Erck’s information and go in for the kill.

To anyone who’s spent even a modicum of time online in the last 20 years, this attack pattern looks familiar. In the World Wide Web’s wilderness, casual users, corporations and government intelligence alike collect data about everyone and everything, building digital footprints and algorithmic profiles that sit hidden just behind our newsfeeds. Gen Z and digital natives grew up in this extreme surveillance state, emboldened by controversial legislation like the Patriot Act and USA Freedom Act, which allowed unprecedented surveillance as a post-9/11 counter-terrorism measure. And while younger people have been raised in a vigilantly monitored world, that doesn’t make the lack of privacy any less disconcerting.

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Certainly, that’s why Gen Z has taken to “Primetime,” a film set in an era most of the generation is too young to remember firsthand, but one that has had a critical impact on their lives and well-being. In 2006, “To Catch a Predator” sat at the intersection of the surveillance state, militaristic nationalism motivated by the backdrop of the Iraq War, and digital culture proliferated by cellphones that were affordable and could accompany us anywhere. By the time Gen Z bled into Gen Alpha, all of these things morphed into one well-oiled machine, a self-regulating ouroboros. Though we may all be steeped in this reality, it’s unsurprising Gen Z would feel cheated out of a life where surveillance wasn’t constant — where they didn’t have to wonder whether a person on the train is scrolling on their phone or covertly taking a photo. 

Naturally, “Primetime” has become a point of fascination for zoomers, who made up 69% of the film’s opening weekend audience. While younger viewers adore Pattinson and the movie’s distributor, A24, alike, it’s the film’s subject matter that’s driving their conversations. “Primetime” traces a straight line from today back to the mid-aughts, clarifying the connection between pivotal historical events and their contemporary consequences. And though I didn’t find that the film actually said much about those events, it’s easy to see why so many people under 30 argue otherwise. Buzzy new films like “Primetime” rarely reflect the modern surveillance state’s inflection points as well as older media like “To Catch a Predator” can. But if Gen Z is really interested in retracing history’s steps to learn about surveillance culture, “Primetime” is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Whether or not that tip feels sharp depends largely on one’s relationship to our everyday insanity. Most zoomers likely grew up perceiving “To Catch a Predator” and Hansen through memes — chat logs removed from their disturbing context, or compilation videos of the show’s “funniest” moments. That perception in itself is upsetting, not only because it trivializes survivors’ experiences, but confirms just how much the show succeeded in turning criminal intent toward minors into entertainment. For those who already understood these inherent problems, “Primetime” doesn’t pose many new questions, which gives one the sickly feeling that the film is repeating some of Hansen and the show’s mistakes. For others, who are only beginning to understand “To Catch a Predator” as a planet that orbited the surveillance state’s blinding sun, Oppenheim’s film may be rife with new threads to pull. 

The film’s strongest narrative aspect in this regard is how accurately it reflects Perverted-Justice’s sting tactics, which made many “To Catch a Predator” cases unprosecutable or their evidence inadmissible by wading into entrapment. The team would hunt down potential predators in chat rooms and, in many instances, encourage prey to do things they were initially reticent to do or flat-out didn’t want to engage in. Occasionally, when the alleged predators would express their reluctance, the Perverted-Justice decoys would play mad or upset.

To build out a profile on their prey, the decoys would use chats to draw personal information out of their subjects. Furthermore, the on-camera interventions and arrests were largely faulty, too. Hansen wasn’t a cop; he never read anyone their rights. And the police lying in wait would greet the predator with unnecessary aggressive, martial force. The surveillance state is the primal wilderness, where anything goes, and “To Catch a Predator” employed the laws of the jungle: Identify, lure, attack, kill.

The methods are strangely akin to those employed in the concrete jungle, where badly behaved teens act with as much life-altering, brutal force as the characters in “Primetime.” If “To Catch a Predator” is the paradigm of reality television’s reflection of the surveillance state, the original “Gossip Girl” — which aired concurrently, however briefly, with Hansen’s show — is the prototype for the insidious ways surveillance is weaponized. That might sound like an offbeat comparison, but just because a teen soap is, well, a teen soap, doesn’t mean it has no cultural merit. 

“Gossip Girl” is an especially ideal time capsule for understanding how cellphones and all digital technology became useful tools for constant civilian monitoring. For anyone unfamiliar, the series follows a group of privileged teenagers living in New York’s Upper East Side, whose lives are chronicled by the anonymous titular blogger. Gossip Girl knows all of their desires and vices, their wins and their foibles. “She” walks among these spoiled brats, yes, but also relies on a steady stream of tips from readers. Photos, videos, intimate details; any hearsay is fair game, and Gossip Girl will go to the ends of the Earth to prove it— right up to the point where it’s revealed that Gossip Girl was actually not a “she” at all, but a male classmate.

This is all deliciously compelling on its own, but the series’ writers do a great job of emphasizing that these takedowns are products of the world we live in now. Gossip is currency, and anyone looking to climb the social ladder can use it to pay their way to the top — at the cost of their soul, of course. Characters blackmail one another left and right, sometimes with criminal intent. And while it’s entertaining to watch, the real marvel is how prescient the series is today.

 

“Gossip Girl” burst onto the scene in 2007 just as the cellphone was becoming the staple accessory for every teenager in America. The iPhone was four months old when the show premiered, and the series’ writers keenly understood the technology’s wicked possibilities. Surveillance was no longer a military or government tactic; it was for everyone with a wireless connection.

And while, like “To Catch a Predator,” one might argue that “Gossip Girl” encouraged this phenomenon by turning surveillance into entertainment, I’d say the show more often depicts its awful consequences. While the teenage characters already see the amateur espionage as part of their lives, the show’s adults are horrified by Gossip Girl and “her” web of tipsters. With age comes sagacity, and that transition sits parallel to the zoomers’ fervent response to “Primetime.” 

The surveillance state perseveres by making itself invisible, an incontrovertible part of everyday life, especially for those who have grown up inside it. Sometimes, it’s much easier to see the boundary lines between the material and the intangible when someone or something points them out. “To Catch a Predator” and “Gossip Girl” are two sides of the same coin; the former an arm of dystopia, the latter a critic. “Primetime” may try to play both of these sides to its detriment. But what it lacks in searing critique of its subject matter, “Primetime” makes up for by showing viewers of all ages where older media and younger generations collide. Often, the best way to understand the world now is by revisiting its past, warts and all.

The post Why Gen Z sees itself in “Primetime” appeared first on Salon.com.

Donald Trump has never been one for subtlety, so it follows that his taxpayer-funded “public service announcement” instructing Americans to love him would literally feature a gospel choir singing the words “Love Me.” Along with many of his closest allies, the president is a fan of pseudo-science, so perhaps he believes the repetition will have a hypnotic effect on viewers, reversing through pop psychology trickery the free-fall that has beset his approval ratings.

This is just one of three separate ads, totaling $1.5 million so far, that feel less like a sincere effort to persuade voters and more like an expensive effort by the White House to soothe the temperamental 80-year-old. Either way, what’s indisputable is that Trump is becoming increasingly frustrated that the chicanery he has used throughout his life no longer seems to be working.

The president has perhaps the most staggering track record of defrauding Americans of any hustler in the country’s 250-year history. His glib assertions of being the greatest genius who knows more than any other person about any subject under the sun have served him well for decades, and his 34 felony fraud convictions and civil fraud cases paint a picture of a man who always seems to find marks who will believe his transparent, self-aggrandizing lies.

Before he won the White House in 2016, “The Apprentice” managed to convince millions of viewers that a man who managed to lose nearly a billion dollars was some great businessman. Even when Trump argued that he, unlike medical experts, understood the salutary effects of household cleaners to treat Covid-19 patients, his followers stayed by his side, some of them putting their trust in MAGA quackery over science-based healthcare like vaccines. The cult of personality built around his persona of presidential greatness remains a puzzling swindle. 

But on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump did what he usually does these days when presented with a microphone: He whined at length at how he isn’t getting the love he believes he deserves. 

“Nobody talks about all the incredible things,” the president complained, saying America has “the best economy we’ve ever had.” He added, laughably, that people are “twice as wealthy” as they were as two years ago under the Biden administration. Then he repeated his false promise that, if Republicans win the November midterms, the government would issue a “dividend” check of $5,000 to every adult American. 

It may be easy to laugh at this stuff, but it’s worth taking a moment to remember that Trump has always been this way. Polls, however, suggest that Americans are finally waking up. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating at a dismal 32% — hitting, in other words, the very bedrock of his MAGA base. Worse for him, only 13% of Americans, according to an analysis by G. Elliott Morris, are willing to tell a pollster they buy the president’s $5,000 check lie, showing that even people who claim to approve of him can’t be bothered to trust him any longer. 

People could be learning from experience. As Catherine Rampell of the Bulwark detailed, the $5,000 check promise is only the latest in a long list of false second-term promises that Americans would be receiving fat checks from the government. Her “partial list” includes these examples:

• $5,000 stimulus checks via a “DOGE dividend” (February 2025)
• $2,000 stimulus checks via a “rebate” or tariff “dividend” (July 2025, August 2025, November 2025, December 2025, February 2026)
• Checks of indeterminate value that would redirect money that would have been spent on Affordable Care Act subsidies (November 2025)
• $500 Obamacare “rebate” checks (September 2026)
• $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win the midterms (yesterday) 

Thankfully, there now appears to be a limit to the number of times a fraudster can promise the check is in mail before even some MAGA voters start to wonder if they’re being had. Most clung to two big reasons to justify their vote in 2024: the president’s promises to lower prices and end foreign wars. Trump broke both in a dramatic fashion, starting a war with Iran and a trade war with, well, much of the world, both of which have escalated inflation, particularly of fuel prices. Even his most ardent followers are reminded of his lies every time they buy groceries or gas. Running ads that repeat his failed promises only serve to remind people of the broken trust. 

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Beyond bigger propaganda, Trump has no other ideas for how to change the situation. On top of the ads, last week the White House launched “Trump TV,” which was billed as an alternative to cable news but mostly runs pro-Trump content so poorly produced that it makes AI slop seem compelling. As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye chronicled, the viewership started at a paltry 8,000 people and, by the next day, had faded to fewer than 1,000. It would have likely been even lower if it weren’t for journalists watching it to report on the emptiness of the enterprise. 

Perhaps the surest sign that these efforts are more about placating Trump than persuading voters is the his travel schedule. The president is avoiding visiting states with close congressional races, where he risks being shunned by Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from his unpopularity. Instead, he is mostly sticking to deep red states like Alabama and Oklahoma, where they can still scare up enough MAGA diehards to fill stadiums and, crucially, give Trump hours of reassurance that he’s still got fans. On Tuesday, he spoke at an event heralding our era as a “golden age” due to AI. As a political maneuver, his words were baffling, as most Americans deplore the economy and loathe AI. But being surrounded by billionaires while applauding himself with gold-related talk is Trump’s happy zone, and keeping the president there appears to be all that matters to his West Wing staff. 

For the worrywarts of the left, there remains plenty to be concerned about. Ahead of the midterms, Democrats are facing intense gerrymandering and voter suppression, which could blunt the wins currently projected by the polls. Even if the party were to take both the Senate and the House, Trump will still occupy the Oval Office for two more years. Armed with the criminal immunity granted him by the Supreme Court, he has no reason to stop blatantly flouting the law in a myriad of ways, ranging from his attacks on the Kennedy Center and prosecuting the Iran war without congressional approval to his own mysterious swelling wealth. 

Still, even though it’s almost certainly illegal, there is an upside to Trump using taxpayer money for ego-gratifying TV ads and propaganda. The more time he spends on his futile efforts to restore the glory days when only half of Americans opposed him, the less energy he has for the work of actually governing. Everything he’s done in that arena has been an unmitigated disaster. Keeping Trump distracted from making serious decisions is a good thing for us all.

The post Trump can’t trick Americans into loving him appeared first on Salon.com.

The Merikins are the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans who fought alongside the British during the War of 1812. At the war’s end, the British granted these fighters and their families land in Trinidad and Tobago as part of their freedom.

The third verse of the “Star-Spangled Banner” served as a threat to African Americans who sought liberation — particularly those fighting against the United States like the Merikins — from Francis Scott Key, an unabashed racist whose racism influenced his professional legacy.

After years of playing it at sporting events out of choice or paid patriotism, Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for it:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color . . . There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview following his now-infamous kneel.

Following a lengthy and seemingly self-imposed silence, as others sought to narrate his protest and commitment to social justice, Kaepernick has reemerged in the public square on an impressive press run promoting his book, “The Perilous Fight,” to whoever will listen, including the platforms of Karen Hunter, Katie Couric, Van Lathan, Trevor Noah, and “The View.”

Kaepernick’s book discusses his life up to this point, from his childhood and adolescence to his current justice activities and life with his wife, Nessa Diab, and daughter. He takes time to explain the multifaceted origins of his activism, from the challenges of being a Black boy raised by white parents, to his experiences as a Black athlete in a space predicated on controlling Black bodies, to his awakening through literature by Black scholars and activists.

But like many Black people who were awakened by the murders of Black people by the police, Kaepernick was alarmed by the December 2015 murder of Mario Woods by San Francisco police. For refusing to drop his knife, Woods was shot twenty times by police. Police justified the killing, saying they feared for their safety, but the body camera footage said otherwise.

Kaepernick watched the Mario Woods video at his parents’ home, as his mother questioned Woods’ role in his murder. Upon reflecting on his attempt to explain to her the gravity of the situation and her lack of response, Kaepernick gained clarity:

“. . . the encounter helped bring even more clarity to the last twenty-eight years of my life, and why I was always frustrated and unsatisfied during my childhood when issues concerning race arose,” Kaepernick writes. “It was obvious my parents loved me as their son, but accepting their son was Black and dealing with that reality was not of much concern. Hell, I had white boys call me ni**er and try to tie me to a tree, yet I never told my parents. Even my mother told me I looked like a thug when I wore cornrows.”

Woods’ murder, followed by the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the not-guilty judgment for the officer who murdered Freddie Gray, compelled Kaepernick into protest at the start of the 2016 NFL season. While Kaepernick’s protest garnered acknowledgment and some support, it also led to his banishment from the NFL and the hijacking and appropriation of his protest, along with critique and ridicule of perceived inaction. 

But Kaepernick pursued racial justice work: from the Know Your Rights Camps (KYRC) to the KYRC Autopsy Initiative, both founded with his wife and partner, radio personality Nessa Diab:

“I was hearing criticisms accusing me of just being an angry Black man without a plan. I wanted to buttress my protests on the field with action on the ground, to build an infrastructure that could start effective change where it might make a difference . . . I didn’t want to look back on this time and agonize that I should have and could have done more.”

Equally fascinating was his pulling back the curtain, so to speak, on the culture of football, particularly the NFL, where the expectation for players is to follow orders and “shut up and play.” He explained this by detailing various interactions with teammates, coaches, team executives, and even sports agents.

“Football breeds a culture of obedience. On the field, these guys were major alpha males — the biggest, baddest, most dominant dudes on the planet. But once they stepped off the field, they were just employees waiting for the boss to tell them what to do.”

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But the culture of the league also forced him to examine the implicit racism as early as his participation in the NFL Combine, asking himself, “Do all of those A’s over sixteen years of schooling plus the 3rd highest grade on the Wonderlic not mean anything? Is their stated concern over my intelligence genuine, or is there something . . . having to do with racist stereotypes?”

While all his experiences up to 2016 were instructive, they couldn’t buffer the shock and disgust of the backlash to his protest. While he did receive support, he couldn’t anticipate Nate Boyer’s attempts to profit from the protest and steal credit from Kaepernick teammate Eric Reid for the idea to kneel. Kaepernick couldn’t anticipate the Islamophobia and misogyny aimed at his wife. Nor could he anticipate the president of the United States calling him and his colleagues “sons of bit*hes.”

Who could possibly be prepared for any of that? Then again, maybe Kaepernick should have been.

His two near-death experiences made him fearless. Overcoming numerous challenges in his football career made him steadfast. Welcoming his wife into his life, and the growth that came with it, grounded him. His childhood experiences with whiteness shaped him. Therefore, when it was time to take a stand for Black people, he didn’t ask for permission, because he was already empowered to do so. And a Black athlete empowered to stand for Black people is an athlete who should expect to be persecuted, like Curt Flood, whom Kaepernick mentioned.

His protest didn’t make white people comfortable. There were no performative photo-ops with politicians or any ride-alongs with police. There was confrontation. I suspect he anticipated some of the whitelash. After all, Kaepernick didn’t appear shocked that his white family was embarrassed by his protest, with his mother calling it “disgraceful.” What he may not have anticipated was the extent of the cover Black players and notable Black folks gave the NFL.

 

I wonder if Kaepernick anticipated hearing a player tell him he needed “to go ask my owner if it’s okay to protest.” Did he anticipate Dr. Harry Edwards being co-opted by the 49ers, Ray Lewis by the Ravens, and the players’ coalition by team owners? Did he anticipate Michael Vick suggesting that he cut his hair to get a job in the NFL? Did he anticipate being sold out by Jay-Z for personal gain, followed by hit pieces and being dissed in a freestyle many years later?

The truth is that all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk, and if he wasn’t aware before the protest, he certainly is now. 

But Kaepernick doesn’t leave readers feeling that his work was in vain, or that he is without hope. He shares that his family, his wife and daughter, provide him with a newfound motivation to make justice a reality for Black people and all other people of color. He closed his book saying, with a Clarion call of sorts to his readers:

“Our children can’t develop to their full potential if they are constantly worried about what awaits them outside the doors of their home, or if they are on edge because of the fear of ICE agents invading their schoolyard or playground . . . What are we doing to our nation’s children when we are constantly undeserving their needs and sending them into schools that feel like war zones? They can never reach their peak in such circumstances. We must consider these factors when we think about how we are policing our communities and educational environments. We all want the same things for our children.”

But it begs the question that we all must answer: We all want the same things for our children, but do we all want the same things for each other? Colin Kaepernick has decided to move forward in hope. He’s asking us to do the same.

The post Colin Kaepernick knows what kneeling cost — and he’d do it again appeared first on Salon.com.

When prolific filmmaker Werner Herzog first met the Chaplin twins, Freda and Greta, the internet as we know it did not exist. If it had, it’s likely that the mystifying story of these sisters — who had a brief flash of fame in the ’80s when their neighbor sought a restraining order against them after a sexual dalliance with the two of them turned hostile — would have already run its course. According to reports, Freda and Greta not only looked and dressed alike, but spoke in unison, as if they shared a single brain. No doubt the TikTok amateur detectives would’ve momentarily shifted from true crime to the Chaplin twins, trying their damnedest to debunk what only the sisters could truly understand. One can’t possibly grasp the closeness two people share until they’ve experienced firsthand the joy and indescribable pain that come with the kind of enmeshment written in fate’s codex.

Though to his credit, Herzog tried his best. In his memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All,” he describes tracking down the Chaplin twins with a newspaper photograph of the building they lived in. “You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would’ve matched,” Herzog writes. He watched them vacuum together, walking side by side with four hands on the machine at once until they got stuck between two chairs, sending them into a tizzy. Trying to open a can of sardines could’ve gravely injured them had the twins not gotten into a screaming match in the process. Ever the humanist, fascinated by ordinary people taking on otherwise herculean tasks to the point of obsession, Herzog resolved decades ago to make a film inspired by the sisters. He even had a title.

“Bucking Fastard,” Herzog’s long-gestating, extraordinary feature born from his time with the Chaplin twins, takes its name from an obscenity they shouted in court while on trial for the restraining order — a slip of the tongue allegedly uttered at the same time. History contends whether or not this really happened. But Herzog’s film makes it, and everything else, seem entirely possible. Screening at this year’s New York Film Festival, “Bucking Fastard” is a loaded cannon, currently waiting for a distributor to light the fuse to send Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Kate and Rooney Mara, respectively) soaring hand in hand into a world desperately in need of their peculiar wisdom. 

Playing versions of the Chaplins, the Holbrooke sisters share shades of classic Herzog characters while being quite unlike any of the eccentrics he’s brought to life before. Set in the present day, the sisters feel out of step with time, as if a glitch in the system spawned them here, letting them observe the world without understanding what it’s like to really live in it. As such, Jean and Joan are the only people who truly understand one another. But having a companion who sees everything the same way we do does not necessarily equate to love. Either sister’s sense of self is fundamentally rooted in the other. Their crippling codependence is alienating, as if there really were only one of them.

As Herzog moves the sisters between reality and film’s dreamy latter half, he plunges into the fizzy static that comprises their cosmic connection, examining their solitude as only he can. “Bucking Fastard” is a remarkable exploration of loneliness that only decades of tender rumination and appreciation could provide. For the wistful, lovelorn loner, it’s an imperative reminder that being attached at the hip can still be isolating, no matter how much two people think alike.

Herzog impresses this notion from the very beginning: A dream shared by Joan and Jean, in which the sisters stand in a corridor flanked by caged birds. “We could not be sure we saw the same birds,” they recall. “Only that there were cages on both sides.” The introduction sits right between poetic and blunt, and this same small, temporal crevice is where the Holbrooke sisters spend their time. Jean and Joan’s shared existence would otherwise make their days dull and predictable, but their bizarre circumstances let them see beyond their own purview and into someone else’s, even if only for a blip. They revel in the fascination they stir. Still, other people’s reactions to their similarity only remind the sisters of the bond they can’t break. Their gift is a curse. That’s the funny thing about love: No matter how perfect it is — no matter how much it seems like it’s written in the stars — there will always be the suspicion, somewhere in the back of your mind, that life might have something else to offer.

I’m at a point in my own life where much of my time is consumed by this very thought, facing forks in the road that feel more like cliffs. At 32, I like to feel fairly confident that, when it comes to relationships, I know the difference between love and comfort. But then something will happen that reminds me of life’s sheer unpredictability, and that matters of the heart are purely unknowable. After years of certainty, I’m no longer sure that true love is someone who knows you to the point of an echo. Is such sheer, universal familiarity the root of love — the kind of connection that everyone from Keats to Keaton wrote about — or does it trap you in one place, stunting your growth? How can anyone live like this, so doubtful about what is right and wrong? This is what leaps of faith are for, sure. But eventually, you reach an age where you put more emphasis on faith than the leap itself. If pleasant contentment is guaranteed if you just stay put, why take the risk?

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So much of Herzog’s career has been about weighing the hazards of happiness. Whether he’s challenging Fitzcarraldo (and himself) to lift a 320-ton steamship over a mountain, revealing the tragedy of Nosferatu’s immortality, or illuminating the perils of a life in nature, Herzog has dedicated his life’s work to pondering what we’ll do for our passions. In this way, “Bucking Fastard” feels like the culmination of it all. As the film progresses, Herzog intimately considers humanity’s relationship to the insurmountable. Could there be a place, somewhere in this vast Earth, where Joan and Jean don’t have to sacrifice their codependent sisterly bond to enjoy life’s pleasures?

As soon as they begin to wonder, the Holbrooke sisters — almost imperceptibly — begin to drift apart before snapping back in place. But maybe that’s progress. It could be enough. Perhaps this existence is more about riding the ebb and flow than it is mapping the course.

I’d be remiss not to heap praise on the sisters Mara, who bring something to the screen that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Their bond is, no surprise, electric. But it’s their palpable trust in one another that’s staggering. Always in the same frame, they exude a preternatural comfort that extends beyond familial ties and speaks to their shared life paths. Both Rooney and Kate are keenly aware of how petrifying it can be to be perceived, and how galvanizing it can be as well, and they bring both senses to their shared performance. It’s a sight to behold. For what “Bucking Fastard” lacks in Herzog’s early directorial style, it makes up for by focusing its lens on the magic happening in front of it. It’s like watching stars being sewn into the fabric of the universe.

 

Naturally, the Mara connection is the selling point here. But it’s also what grounds Herzog’s very airy, funny film. Every time the filmmaker’s typically unconventional ideas threaten to tilt the movie too far askew, the sisters bring “Bucking Fastard” back on the straight and narrow. (Well, as straight and narrow as a film about two horny, completely in-sync sisters can be.) They beautifully elucidate Herzog’s complex notions of loneliness, reminding us that the heart’s desire to cling to something familiar and safe can also be its undoing. Such closeness is inherently limiting, even when it’s ideal, too. “Bucking Fastard” relishes those contradictions, supposing that there might be some version of life where they can coexist in harmony. Herzog doesn’t have the answer to that question, and he doesn’t pretend to. He only knows that it’s enough to wonder.

“Bucking Fastard” screens from Wednesday, September 30, at the New York Film Festival. The film is currently seeking distribution.

The post In Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” two can be as lonely as one appeared first on Salon.com.