Anthony Weiner, Bobby Kennedy and Me

I liked Rep. Anthony Weiner a lot.
I liked his sense of humor, I liked that he was friends with people like Ben Affleck and Jon Stewart, I liked the way you could still detect a hint of Brooklyn scrapper in his mannerisms even on the floor of Congress.
But what I liked about him most of all was what I think most of my fellow fans liked most too: the fact that he didn’t pull any punches on issues he cared about, even at the cost of diplomacy. Last summer, I saw him on the House floor furiously railing against an attempt to obstruct a package that would provide 9/11 first responders with health care, wielding words like “gentleman” and “shame” with such righteous fury that he might as well have been saying “motherfucker”. At a time when I was thoroughly disillusioned with the complacency of Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House, Rep. Weiner came off as a dedicated rogue cop, waiting outside Chief Pelosi’s office to be told that he got results, but dammit, she did NOT approve of his methods. Clearly, he was a man unafraid to fight the good fight.
Then it turned out he’d been sending pictures of his dick to women who weren’t his wife.
I think his decision not to resign over it was the right one; unlike Eliot Spitzer or current Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, he didn’t do anything illegal, and it doesn’t affect his ability to serve his constituents. That said, I’m still really pissed about the whole thing.
First of all, I’m angry that Weiner’s deception has given credibility to notorious liar and journalistic Antichrist Andrew Breitbart, who helped break the story; we sure as hell didn’t need to see Breitbart’s rumpled, petulant, perpetually drunk-seeming ass on television any more than we already do. But more than that, I’m pissed at a man who seemed so genuine for turning out to be so completely full of shit.
I’m not so naïve that I believe any politician is spotless; you don’t get there in the first place without having a lot of the same skills that make people effective used car salesmen. And yeah, I knew that a lot of Weiner’s high profile had to do with his not-so-secret desire to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York (a goal I imagine he’s scratched off his list by now). But Weiner was just so relentless in his attempts to avoid owning up until it was absolutely unavoidable that I was a little revolted by it (that, and the betrayal of his wife). The Anthony Weiner I admired would have come clean early and gotten back to doing his job. Again, I know I probably deserved it for thinking any congressman was above it all, but it was a nice idea.
Speaking of nice ideas, today is the 43rd anniversary of the death of one of my heroes, Robert Francis Kennedy; what always struck me about Bobby was that he seemed like America’s last hope, an ideological pallbearer for first his older brother, then for Dr. King (and even, if you want to get really metaphysical, the badly damaged idealism of the beginning of the Johnson years) who had survived it all and could help renew us. And yet, I’m well aware Bobby wasn’t perfect; he authorized a wiretap of King when he was attorney general, and he had a reputation as a ruthless political operator. And I honestly don’t know what kind of president he would have been; things were so fucked up at that point that it honestly might not have been possible that anyone was good enough to be the right man to fix things. But none of that really matters, because Sirhan Sirhan’s bullets both shattered that hope and canonized Bobby, making the man not just a fallen human being but, post-mortem, the very idea of hope. Maybe that’s why, long after his death, he still captures my imagination so much. And this isn’t just some starry-eyed, liberal idealist thing; there’s no way Ronald Reagan’s divorced, tax-raising, former union-president, amnesty-granting ass would ever win a primary today. But that doesn’t matter, because his admirers are in love with Reagan the idea, not Reagan the man. And sometimes, for better or for worse, that’s what matters. Me, I’m trying to get off the idea of heroes. There’s nothing wrong with finding a role model and using them for guidance, but if you want somebody to do everything according to how you would do it, the best way is to do it yourself.

Alachua Kedavra

This is Florida Gov. Rick Scott:

This is Voldemort:

Think about it... won't you?

The Good with the Bad

Recently, as some of you may have noticed, I had a brief fit of journalistic frustration (which is like sexual frustration, except Brian Williams has experienced it) at the fact that CNN was running iReports on whether or not android songbird Rebecca Black was pregnant ("This report has not been vetted", noted the story, which is generally an indication that you should not run it). In this fit, I found myself doing something I don't remember ever doing, for multiple reasons: getting nostalgic about the '50s and '60s. Let me explain: yeah, if you were black/a woman/Jewish/Richie Cunningham's brother who mysteriously disappeared, they kinda sucked. But (I thought at the time) here's one thing they had on us: actual news was on the news and in the papers, and bullshit was in tabloids. But, as is usually the case with nostalgia, I soon remembered it wasn't that simple. Take Jack Kennedy; the guy had more girls on the side than a cannibal's buffet plate (albeit slightly less than Warren Harding, apparently), but the media wouldn't touch it. Seems cool at first, if you don't think anyone's consensual sexual activity is actual news (it isn't), but this seeming benefit is endemic of what was a serious problem of the era: the media of the time simply didn't scrutinize the president. While this isn't a problem when it comes to their private faults, it helped enable some of the worst transgressions of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Woodward and Bernstein did a lot to prove that dirt-digging was not only permissible, it could be vital to the workings of democracy, but it wasn't until the Clinton administration that we really opened Pandora's box ("Pandora's Box" is a pornographic remake of "Avatar"). Clinton's Monicagate or whatever dumb name we've given it was the first time a man with Kennedy-esque proclivities had come to power in this era of increased media scrutiny, with the rich and famous no longer on pedestals. And agree or disagree on the whole thing, Clinton's investigation and impeachment wouldn't have been possible without the burgeoning internet. So here we had the people at the top finally being held to account, and regular people were involved. But here was the issue: it was over something completely trivial. In the modern era of online hyperconsciousness, things aren't much better. We've got access to more information than ever before but by and large, we'd rather use it for bullshit. The controversy over Time choosing Mark Zuckerberg over Julian Assange for their Man of the Year is emblematic of the two warring factions: would you rather have all the answers, even if they make you uncomfortable, or would you rather Poke someone? Here's the thing, though: that's a false choice. Yes, the modern world of information-sharing allows for way too much petty triviality to pass through, but it allows the things we need to know as well. I'll take a thousand Tweets about how good this sandwich is if it means one on-the-ground picture from the Jasmine Revolution. I guess what this whole piece comes down to is one question: is it worth having to extend Rebecca Black's fifteen minutes for a media apparatus that can truly watch the watchmen? And the answer is: oh, hell yes.

Almost done...

Hey Richmond, what annoys you?

[Cross-posted from Facebook]

As some of you may know, I recently received a new assignment from Style: they want me to bring my righteous-indignation schtick to local issues. Trouble is, I haven’t really been paying much attention to that kind of thing (unless Libya is in Richmond, and it might be, for all I know), and I’m not up on things in every walk of life, so I thought I’d ask the audience: what in Richmond is pissing you off? It doesn’t have to be political; in fact, I’d kind of prefer it not be. Just tell me what’s going on in our fair city that makes you want to grab a baseball bat and teach some toddlers that life is suffering.



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Just Beat It

The final presentation for Messner's class was today; I feel like it went okay. I'm concerned my latent "Pahk yah cah in the gahden" accent may have flared up a few too many times, but I'm sure that won't be a huge deal. Our slideshow should be up on Richmond.com soon, so I'll make sure to post a link.
Oh, and since I very rarely get to tart up for journalistic purposes, here's what I wore.

As much as I've bitched about it, I think I'm gonna miss Messner's class; it's stressed me out plenty, but in doing that, I understand that it's been great for me as far as doing The Dance. And of course, the people were great too.
In other news, Scott called me in at Style today, and told me he wants me to have some kind of regular feature where I spout off about local issues (he says he's liking my editorial writing, he just wants to give it more of a Richmond focus). It'll essentially be something like a Richmond version of this:

This is a pretty big deal for me, and I'm excited, especially since I'll have more time to follow local news with school just about done. And if there's a local issue you think should get more coverage, drop me a line. See you beautiful people around.

Shadows of a struggle at Virginia Union

Over the past couple months, I've had an assignment to write beat stories for my print journalism class relating to Virginia Union University; it's been one hell of a stressful project, but I'm done now, and I actually kind of like how this one, the final piece, turned out, so I thought I'd post it.


Dr. Raymond Hylton points to one of Virginia Union University’s chapel buildings as he walks the campus. “Dr. King would preach there from time to time,” he says. His tone is casual, but the pride in his voice is unmistakable.

Hylton, Virginia Union’s history chair, makes no secret of the gratification he gets from his school’s role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. “I’m quite proud to be at such an institution with such courageous students,” he says. “It probably gives me a broader perspective than someone working elsewhere, a more humanitarian perspective.”

Founded immediately after the Civil War, Virginia Union’s place in the movement’s history was cemented on February 22, 1960, when a large group of politically-minded students marched to heavily-segregated downtown Richmond to demand service. At Thalhimer’s Department Store, 34 students (including Charles Sherrod, who would go on to be field secretary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)were threatened and eventually arrested by police for trespassing. “Now, they didn’t stay in jail long;” added Hylton. “They were quickly bailed out and then were escorted down to the Eggleston Hotel where they were cheered, they were congratulated, and where the Campaign for Human Dignity was launched.” This group used Martin Luther King Jr.’s tactics of organized, nonviolent resistance to protest against segregation and institutional racism in the Richmond area and as a result, said Hylton, “most of the stores who had been discriminating gave in within about a year of the launching of the Campaign.”

On Virginia Union’s campus today, students say the school heavily emphasizes this place in history. “We have different plaques that explain the history of Virginia Union,” said Union student Isaiah Freeman, who said he wasn’t aware of the school’s connection to the civil rights movement until he began classes. “We also have to take a course our freshman year that also teaches us about past events leading to the present day VUU.”

Union student Rashard Byrd said he researched the school’s historical significance, which was “one of the many reasons I decided to attend VUU”, but he believes knowing about the incident ahead of time puts him in the minority. “Most students don’t research anything besides tuition,” he said, “but they’re starting to become aware through chapel and professors.”

Regardless of how familiar they were with the story, students still look to the “Union 34” as inspiration. Freeman said it was a positive motivator “knowing that I go to a place where people actually fought and worked hard to make it become what it is today.”

Dr. Hylton says the same values that compelled the Union 34 to take action are taught at Virginia Union today. “The administration tries to remind faculty to inculcate these ideas into our curriculum,” he said, “and of course, we do have very much so, in our mission and goals, a civic engagement component.”

With many of the issues that spurred the civil rights movement still relevant today, Virginia Union student Emily Piercy believes there are always further lessons to be learned from the activists’ examples. “We have a saying at Union, that we’re walking on ‘hallowed grounds and dear old walls’,” Piercy said. “Knowing that you are attending a school that produced such great people that went on to change the world makes you believe that you can go on and do the same things.”

Osama bin Laden, interconnectivity and accidental journalism

"Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine (we all live in each other's shadows)." -Irish proverb

This past weekend, a loathsome maniac who did horrific damage to New York was cut down to size in a place he expected to be safe. And after Donald Trump went to the White House Correspondents' Dinner, Osama bin Laden was killed.
If you're like me, you probably didn't learn that for the first time when President Obama made the announcement; rather, Twitter and Facebook were abuzz with the news about an hour early, while Obama was still preparing and news desks were asking when it was okay to even speculate. That's right; after bringing down Hosni Mubarak, the Damn Kids with their social media Tweeters decided to scoop the news media and the leader of the free world. I couldn't look away from my Facebook feed the night of the announcement, just because it was all so damn cool. "Wow," I thought Aspiely, "I'm witnessing history being documented as it occurs. Cool." (I'm not much more articulate mentally than I am in person.) On some level, I wanted to take a screenshot of the entire thing and preserve it somewhere. "Where were you when you heard?" "Online, making tasteless jokes about it."
But the role of social media in the story of bin Laden's death didn't end there. Some of you may have heard about the Pakistani computer programmer who accidentally documented the entire raid via Twitter; I couldn't help but be reminded of another case of "where were you when you heard" that was accidentally documented, that is, the Zapruder film. As I thought about that and I looked at my feed, at an ever-expanding picture of the zeitgeist, I couldn't help but think that everything had changed, for the world in general and for journalism in particular. Every one of us is becoming our own news archive, and at the risk of sounding like an after-school special, we have, I think, a responsibility to be the face of our time that we want to show the future. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you found your grandfather's Facebook status from the forties about how much he hated the Japanese?
I realize this post is starting to get kind of meandering and Aspielicious (kill me if I ever say that out loud), but given the nature of the point I'm trying to make, I think that's forgivable. Rene Belloq was wrong; we're no longer just passing through history. And now, I'm gonna close with this disheartening image.

Words of Hurt (Style Weekly, 11/23/2010)

[Since this is largely a place to archive my work, I'm going to start posting the stuff I've gotten published in the past.]

In the 12th century, King Henry II of England was locked in a political clash with Thomas Aÿ Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. According to tradition, the frustrated king cried out, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Shortly after, without the king's knowledge, four of his knights murdered the archbishop.

The king was shocked, but really, he shouldn't have been. His knights had simply taken his words to their logical conclusion. Nearly a thousand years later, this hypocrisy has resurfaced in the religious right.

During the past several weeks there have been six suicides of gay teens in response to relentless bullying; the brutal torture of three gay men by a Bronx street gang; and the outing of 100 gay Ugandans by a local newspaper, complete with the exhortation, “Hang Them!” What has been the response of the Pat Robertsons of the country, normally so quick with an opinion on homosexuality no one asked for? Why, a combination of insincere “yes-but” condolences and callous self-absolution.

Consider an opinion piece from Anthony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which appeared in The Washington Post in October. Perkins, who once allegedly purchased a mailing list from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, writes: “Some homosexuals may recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal — yet they have been told by the homosexual movement, and their allies in the media and the educational establishment, that they are ‘born gay' and can never change. This — and not society's disapproval — may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.” He also links to an American Psychologist magazine article to point out an apparent link between homosexuality and mental illness, ignoring that the same article finds a strong relationship between those mental health issues and bullying or discrimination.

In other words, Perkins is responding to these tragic deaths by claiming that gay teens commit suicide not because of bullying, but from a combination of people telling them that they are who they are and that they're just inherently crazy, and one of our nation's most respected newspapers gave him the space to do it.

He was nearly topped by American Family Association Director Bryan Fischer, who has called homosexuality “domestic terrorism” and bizarrely claimed that Adolf Hitler and the entire military wing of the Nazi Party all were gay. Fischer specifically addressed the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who leaped from the George Washington Bridge after his sexual encounter with another man was streamed over the Internet by his roommate, writing: “Mr. Clementi … was not only embarrassed but apparently deeply ashamed and consequently took his own life. There's no evidence that I've seen that indicates that he was being bullied or harassed by others for his sexual preference. In some profound way, what he did was contrary to his own deep sense of what is right and what is wrong. He likely died full of guilt and shame, which is a terrible way to die.” Fischer apparently believes that the shame and guilt many outed gay teens experience occurs in a vacuum and has nothing to do with, say, his own demonizing statements: “There is an overwhelming correlation between homosexual preference and pedophilia. This is further evidence that homosexuality is in fact sexual deviancy.”

Neither Fischer nor Perkins, both enormously influential in their circles, can bring themselves to condemn the bullying that led to the end of a life, or even acknowledge that it took place. This is hardly an isolated phenomenon, given the recent right-wing freakout over a Montana anti-bullying school curriculum that was deemed too pro-gay, and its witch hunt against Kevin Jennings, Barack Obama's openly gay appointee to the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, spelled out explicitly last September with Fox News' Sean Hannity decrying, “I want him fired!”

And then there was the disturbing candor of Arkansas school board member Clint McCance, who wrote on his Facebook page, “The only way [I'm] wearin [purple] for them is if they all commit suicide” and “I enjoy the fact that [homosexuals] often give each other AIDS and die.”

Every time someone suggests that words have consequences, someone is going to cry censorship, so let's be clear: You have the legal right to hate gay people. Short of openly inciting violence, you have the right to verbally express that hatred. But you don't have the right, morally, to tell frightened, marginalized young people that they're disgusting and immoral and worthless and then wash your hands of it when they take those sentiments to such tragic, illogical conclusions. It seems somewhat contradictory for people who are supposed to be emulating Christ to insist instead on emulating Pilate.

The Dance

I've got a lot of older stuff to dump on here, but I wanted to have a post explaining a term I'll be using a lot, "the Dance". If you're reading this, you probably know I have Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, which, among other things, hinders my ability to communicate with people. Heather, one of the first times we spoke at length, you asked how I reconciled that with wanting to pursue a career in journalism, a field that necessarily involves getting out and talking to people. Well, it can be pretty hard, needless to say. I really don't want to sound whiny, but it's a hell of a thing, running into the fray while this disorder I have is trying to pull me away from people, and I have to balance that unstoppable force and immovable object. "The Dance" is what I call the attempt to do both. I think I'm getting a little better- for a recent assignment, I had to do man-on-the-street interviews at Virginia Union University and I feel like I did way better than I have on that kind of thing in the past- but it's not going to be something I'm ever perfect at. Just wanted to let everyone know what the term meant, since I'll be using it a lot and discussing its effects a lot.

Why Americans Care About the Royal Wedding

On Friday, Prince William, the grandson of a powerless figurehead, will marry Kate Middleton, and America has been embarrassingly captivated by the whole spectacle. I’ve heard a lot of people of a similar mind to me on this say they don’t understand the fascination with the royal wedding, but I can’t entirely agree. Don’t get me wrong; if what they mean is that it’s a ridiculous, meaningless occasion, I completely agree. But on some psychological level, I think it makes perfect sense for Americans to be this infatuated with the wedding.

It’s got nothing to do with sincere Anglophilia; last summer, England saw some genuinely intriguing goings-on during a contentious election, but it received scant coverage from the American media; satirical newspaper The Onion eloquently summed up Americans’ attitude with a brief headlined “Tony Blair Apparently Not Prime Minister of UK Anymore”. Ditto the protests that have been sweeping the country over austerity measures by prime minister David Cameron’s government. No, Americans’ love affair with the royal family has more to do with our national mindset than anything else.

Here’s the sad truth: American pop culture has become structured almost entirely around celebrity as a concept. In our society, fame, talent and celebrity are three entirely separate universes, and the third is vastly preferable to the first two. Take one of the royal wedding’s high-profile guests, Kanye West, for example; West is an excellent, consistently innovative musician, and yet- largely by his own design- he’s much more famous for publicly behaving like a tool at every opportunity. Or look at Charlie Sheen; he’s a decent actor in both dramatic and comedic roles, and he was in some of the best films of the eighties, and yet now he’s a nationwide phenomenon because he’s stopped acting to be a full-time creepy, misogynistic junkie. In perhaps the inevitable culmination of the difference between celebrity and talent, one of the guys from “Jersey Shore” (you can’t honestly expect me to know which is which) has been approached for a three-album deal by 50 Cent, himself a mediocre rapper who owes his celebrity largely to the mystique of his criminal past. And now, with the wonder of online social media, we not only can we treat these people’s antics as news, we can do the same thing with their every banal thought. The idea of infamy has been pretty much engineered out of existence; the worst possible fate is instead obscurity.

What does all this have to do with the royal wedding? It’s the exact same principle at work, and that’s why Americans follow it so closely. Prince William’s mystique and his fame have nothing to do with anything he has accomplished; they are entirely the result of his parentage and his general existence. That's just a fact. He, like his father and his grandmother, was born to be famous. In a reality-television culture obsessed with people famous for being famous, it’s only natural that we should admire the ultimate form of that principle: people who claim the divine right to be where they are. They’ve refined the vapid celebrity-worship that we thrive on and made it seem classy; they’re the Kardashians for the squeamish. Hell, Princess Diana beat Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in the field of “attractive, privileged people frowning at the problems of the Third World as though that solves them” by several years.

In fact, royal wedding mania is such a distinct product of celebrity culture that when actual world events threaten to intrude on it, they’re forced to the sidelines. Recently, human rights advocates publicized the fact that the couple had invited Bahrain’s crown prince, currently engaged in the brutal suppression of an uprising by his people; the prince declined his invitation and the media was content to largely pass the story by. Lesson learned: stay away from our fairy tale, yucky geopolitics.

One of the principles we as Americans pride ourselves on, and rightly so, is our foundation on the revolutionary idea of a state without kings or queens, but that’s only partly true. It’s true in the more important sense, that we don’t put power over our nation in the hands of a single sovereign who inherited the position. But if we view “royalty” in a broader sense, that is, people who didn’t earn anything, who lucked into their power, and yet are still given our adulation and undivided attention, we could teach the Britons a thing or two.

First post

Okay, for those of you who don't know me, I'm an aspiring journalist, and I've gotten some stuff published, but I feel like I'm annoying people by putting so much of it on Facebook. This is essentially a place to put my journalism writing so it'll be in a safe place. Other times, it'll be a place to post about movies, my life or other tangential topics. I don't know how often I'll update, but I'll try to make it semi-regular. It depends on what I think of.