ACTUALLY, JOE BIDEN WAS RIGHT | ROBOT LOVE | TODD ENGLISH
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
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THE INSIDE STORY OF LIZ CHENEY’S TONEDEAF CANDI D ACY BYJONWARD
JANUARY 19, 2014
01.19.14 #84 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: South Sudan Crisis Deepens... The Net Is Neutral No More JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: SNL’s Unfunny Race Problem Q&A: Todd English HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
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Voices
BOWING OUT Why did Candidate Cheney put on such an amateurish performance? BY JON WARD
JENNY TROUT: Jennifer Lawrence Body Shames You More Than You Might Realize DAN KENNEDY: Ezra Klein and the Future of News QUOTED
Exit TECH: You Are Destined to Fall in Love with Bots THE THIRD METRIC: Be the Master of Your Own Mind TASTE TEST: The New School of Legal Moonshine MUSIC: Dog Ears
SOURED RELATIONS How to be a parent... when you’re estranged from your own. BY CATHERINE PEARSON
TFU FROM THE EDITOR: Full Steam Ahead
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Full Steam Ahead N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE, Jon Ward takes a nuanced look at how Liz Cheney’s candidacy for a Wyoming senate seat fell apart. Cheney left the race last week, citing family reasons. But her bid was doomed from the beginning, Jon writes, due to her bullheaded tactics. When the former vice president’s daughter found herself up against any sort of adversity, Cheney operated at one
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speed only: full steam ahead. From a public break with her lesbian sister over gay marriage to interactions with her senate challenger, incumbent Mike Enzi, Cheney never gave an inch where perhaps two would have been helpful. In the end, Jon writes, “Cheney’s campaign-trail mishaps were not just the accidents of a first-timer. They were the inevitable byproduct of her basic approach to political combat.” Elsewhere in the issue, Catherine Pearson explores how adults who are estranged from their par-
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
ents deal with the idea of parenthood themselves. For some, the answer is to opt out completely. “There’s not an insignificant number of people who just don’t have any confidence that they could raise children, because they feel like their role models were so terrible,” Joshua Coleman, a San Franciscobased psychologist, told Catherine. For others, their experiences become a sort of guide to what not to do. “For us, it’s really been a lot of talking about, ‘How do we do things differently, so we don’t follow in those footsteps?’” says Joanna, a 33-year-old parent of a 2 1/2-year-old boy. In our Voices section, Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy ponders the significance of Ezra Klein’s likely departure from The Washington Post, where the star journalist’s eight-figure proposal for a new site
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focused on explanatory journalism was rejected. Kennedy compares the situation to a similar missed opportunity at The Post in 2006, when John Harris and Jim VandeHei left the paper to start Politico. “The problem with such sce-
Cheney never gave an inch where perhaps two would have been helpful. narios is that media executives — and business leaders in general — are not accustomed to the idea of giving up control,” Kennedy argues. “Legacy news organizations need to find a way to tap into that success outside the old models of ownership and not worry about obsolete notions of employer-employee relationships.” Finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric, we spotlight nine ways to be the master of your own mind.
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SOUTH SUDAN CRISIS DEEPENS 1 The United Nations said Wednesday that about 413,000 people have now been
displaced by violence in South Sudan, and about 65,000 have sought sanctuary within several U.N. bases in the country. Tension boiled over in the world’s youngest nation in December when President Salva Kiir fired Vice President Riek Machar. The two leaders are from different ethnic groups, and their selection for the positions was meant to make it clear that South Sudan was united after its split from northern Sudan in 2011. However, the current fighting has seen killings along ethnic lines. On Tuesday, between 200 and 300 people fleeing the warfare died when an overloaded barge sank in the White Nile River. A South Sudanese military spokesman said the boat was carrying mostly women and children.
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NEUTRALITY NO MORE
A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down an FCC order requiring Internet service providers to abide by the rules of “net neutrality.” ISPs had been forced to treat all web traffic equally, meaning providers couldn’t block some sites or speed up loading times for others. They can now block pages they don’t like, or charge businesses a fee to have their pages load more quickly, or at all.
LET THERE BE WATER
Officials in West Virginia began lifting prohibitions on tap water use in a nine-county area around the state capital this week, after a chemical spill on Jan. 9 made the water unsafe for drinking and bathing. Up to 7,500 gallons of a chemical used in coal processing leaked into the Elk River upstream from a water treatment plant, causing the closure of schools and many small businesses and leaving 300,000 people without water. The spill spotlighted weak chemical control regulations that allowed the storage of a hazardous chemical so close to a water supply. West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said there was “no excuse” for the incident.
‘MISTAKES WERE MADE’
In his annual State of the State speech on Tuesday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized again over revelations that his staff purposefully closed access lanes to the George Washington Bridge to punish a local mayor who didn’t endorse the governor’s reelection bid. Christie, a possible GOP contender for the presidency in 2016, has maintained he had no knowledge of the plan. He said in the speech that “mistakes were clearly made,” but then turned to other matters, including pension reform and education policy.
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NEW NORMAL
Legislation to restore federal unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless failed in the Senate on Tuesday, making it even more likely that the 1.3 million people who lost the benefits in December are now adjusting to a new normal. The funding previously kicked in when state benefits expired. Eighty-five Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday, urging him to cancel an upcoming recess in order to pass legislation restoring the benefits. However, it appears unlikely any action will occur.
EGYPT TRIES AGAIN
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THAT’S VIRAL 16 SIGNS YOU’RE TOTALLY TYPE A
Egyptians voted on a new constitution this week — the third such vote in three years and the first since the ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, last July. Initial reports indicated the constitution was overwhelmingly approved, with estimations that more than 90 percent of people voted in favor. The referendum paves the way for a new presidential election. The nation’s leadership has cracked down on dissenters and jailed members of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi belonged, classifying the Islamist group as a terrorist organization.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
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ACTUALLY, JOE BIDEN WAS RIGHT UBLISHED EXCERPTS from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ upcoming memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, have put Washington into a tingling tizzy. Chief among the minor bombshells that have been released are Gates’ adjudication of the policies and positions advocated by Vice President Joe Biden. While
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Gates admits that the vice president was “a man of integrity,” he was, to Gates’ estimation, nevertheless “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Which is an extraordinary thing to say! It means that, as Gates calculates it, Biden stopped being a credible foreign policy voice about two years after he was first elected to the Senate. Naturally, because the White House is obligated to do so, ad-
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ newly released book, Duty, created controversy in part because of its criticisms of Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy positions.
Enter ministration officials defended Biden’s character. Additionally, Biden is thought to be one of those figures who may be considering a run for the White House in 2016 (he is, after all, the vice president now), so much of the coverage has been of the clutched-pearls, “Ohhhh no [Gates] didn’t!” reality-teevee taunt variety. This prompted Washington Post foreign affairs blogger Max Fisher to vent about the coverage on Twitter, and rightfully so: “I have read 20+ articles on the personality politics of Gates vs Biden/Obama and zero articles on the foreign policy issues they’re debating.” So, in the interest of giving Fisher at least one article that discusses the underlying foreign policy issues, I’ll say this: While it’s swell that White House officials have taken up the matter of defending Biden’s character, they might consider defending Biden on the merits as well. Because I’m sorry to say that Secretary Gates is wrong — Vice President Biden has not had a 40-year reign of error. Not if you recall the war on Afghanistan. Let’s cast our mind back to Oct. 9, 2009, and a story written by Holly Bailey for Newsweek magazine:
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As Gates calculates it, Biden stopped being a credible foreign policy voice about two years after he was first elected to the Senate.” Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?” Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. “And how much will we spend on Pakistan?” Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. “Well, by my calculations that’s a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?” The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region. As well it should have at the time, for Biden was correct in the
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assessment that Pakistan was becoming a dangerous center of al Qaeda’s radicalism, compared with Afghanistan. Backing him was no less a figure than CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, who said in May of the same year that al Qaeda was no longer “operating in Afghanistan,” but rather, was “clearly ... rooted in the border region of Western Pakistan.” Of course, this all came at a time when NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, was largely attempting to execute a counterinsurgency strategy, in an attempt to keep Afghans from
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I’m sorry to say that Secretary Gates is wrong — Vice President Biden has not had a 40-year reign of error. Not if you recall the war on Afghanistan.” falling back under the sway of the Taliban, prop up the Karzai regime, and hold whatever tenuous gains had been obtained from our misadventure in the “graveyard of empires.” Biden took a dim view of that approach as well, and he strongly advocated instead for a counterterrorism approach in Afghanistan as an alternative to the counterinsurgency-feeding troop
Enter “surge” that Gates and McChrystal backed. To Biden’s reckoning, a counterterrorism approach would be less costly, incur fewer military casualties, allow for a lighter military footprint in Afghanistan and a shift to the challenges of Pakistan, while still demonstrating that the United States was resolved to fight extremists in Afghanistan. As Arianna Huffington recounted, in October 2009, Biden was hardly alone in his view, and support for his position transcended mere ideology. The head of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haas, opined, “If Afghanistan were a war of necessity, it would justify any level of effort ... It is not and does not. It is not certain that doing more will achieve more. And no one should forget that doing more in Afghanistan lessens our ability to act elsewhere.” And documentarian Robert Greenwald urged, “The more we fight in Afghanistan, the more the conflict is pushed across the border into Pakistan, the more we destabilize Pakistan, the more likely it is that a fundamentalist government will take over the army — and we’ll have Al-Qaeda like groups with nuclear weapons.” As Foreign Policy’s Michael Had-
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dick noted, by October 2010, the Obama administration had begun inching in the direction of Biden’s original strategy. And Obama’s own fortunes were boosted immeasurably when he accomplished what is arguably the highlight of his career as commander-in-chief — the killing of Osama bin Laden. After all, bin Laden was found to be sheltering in Pakistan. And beyond these anecdotes and
Biden was correct in the assessment that Pakistan was becoming a dangerous center of al Qaeda’s radicalism, compared with Afghanistan.” historical events, there is actual data suggesting that Biden was right to question the efficacy of the counterinsurgency strategy, and as fortune would have it, it’s now published, courtesy of Jason Lyall and The Washington Post’s political science blog, “The Monkey Cage.” In 2010 and 2011, Lyall, along with Graeme Blair and Kosuke Imai, undertook an “endorsement experiment” survey of “3,000 Afghan males in 204 villages in five
Enter predominantly Pashtun provinces,” in order to determine what “happened to support for ISAF once an individual (or his family) was harmed by ISAF” and whether the same phenomena was experienced when individuals were harmed by the Taliban. Their overall research found that “Afghans who experience violence at the hands of NATO forces become less supportive of these forces and more supportive of the Taliban. But Afghans who experience violence at the hands of the Taliban don’t react nearly as strongly against the Taliban.” Lyall is cautious to point out that one shouldn’t conclude that “efforts to influence attitudes are hopeless,” citing evidence that “small, targeted assistance programs among those harmed by ISAF managed to reverse much, though not all, of the outflow of support to the Taliban.” Nevertheless, Lyall bottom-lines the research like so: In the end, the most salient factor in explaining support levels was an individual’s exposure to violence by the warring parties... Cognitive biases that predispose individuals to favor
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(or excuse) the actions of their fellow in-group members, while simultaneously using negative actions by the out-group (like ISAF) to confirm prior prejudices, are powerful frameworks not easily overcome during wartime. Without engaging these underlying psychological biases, however, efforts to win hearts and minds are likely to be expensive, protracted, and, in the end, fleeting. All of which sounds to me like questioning the efficacy of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan was pretty prescient. I don’t expect the idea that “Biden was right” to be universally accepted. Good people can disagree about any of this. Bad people can disagree about any of this. Anyone can call anyone an idiot, including me, if they like. I welcome and accept it, because wouldn’t it be better, for almost everyone involved, to focus our attention on the underlying foreign policy issues, instead of another round of giggles and Downton frowns and politically-scented, palace-intrigue bullshit? I think so. And if I have to resort to trolling to get us there, so be it.
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Q&A
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Todd English on Keeping Up With the Competition “How many more burger places can we actually have in this country?... Once someone sees something happen that really is successful then there’s gonna be multiple restaurateurs or chefs that will do something like that. So yes, it’s more competitive than ever.”
Above: Chef Todd English visits Macy’s Herald Square in New York in 2012. Below: English does a food demonstration in New York in 2011.
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The Week That Was
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Bentiu, South Sudan 01.12.2014 An ostrich runs through empty streets and past destroyed buildings, after government forces on Friday retook the provincial capital of Bentiu from rebel forces. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 01.09.2014 Children play around a man dressed as Batman at the Favela do Metro slum. Families living in this shantytown within a stone’s throw of Rio’s Maracana stadium refuse to have their homes demolished as part of a project to renovate the district before the FIFA World Cup circus pitches camp in June. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Portsmouth, England 01.10.2014 The band of the Royal Marines plays as HMS Illustrious arrives into Portsmouth Harbour. The ships returns with her 650 crew after a five-month deployment to South East Asia delivering relief to victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Sigarang Garang, Indonesia 01.11.2014 Villagers evacuate their cows after their town was hit by ash and mud following further eruptions of Mount Sinabung. The number of displaced people has increased to around 25,000 in Western Indonesia as Mount Sinabung continues to spew ash and smoke after a series of several eruptions since September. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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JENNY TROUT
Jennifer Lawrence Body Shames You More Than You Might Realize Here are some quotes Jennifer Lawrence has made over the years regarding her weight:
“I’d rather look chubby on screen and like a person in real life.” — Mirror “In Hollywood, I’m obese. I’m considered a fat actress, I’m Val Kilmer in that one picture on the
Jennifer Lawrence in November 2013.
Voices beach.”— HuffPost “I eat like a caveman. I’ll be the only actress that doesn’t have anorexia rumors.” — Entertainment Weekly “I’m never going to starve myself for a part. I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner!’ [...]I was trying to get my body to look fit and strong, not thin and underfed.” — Entertainment Weekly “If anybody even tries to whisper the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go f- yourself.” — The Guardian “What are you gonna do? Be hungry every single day to make other people happy? That’s just dumb.”— The Daily Mail Tumblr celebrates her in .gif as a paragon of quirk and body acceptance, but one thing that may have escaped your notice in the orgiastic celebration of JLaw realness that is the Internet, is that Jennifer Lawrence is a fit, attractive, 20-something woman. Let’s concede the point here that she is, perhaps, a size or two above the accepted Hollywood norm. It’s admirable, being the star of a movie franchise aimed at teens, that she is concerned about the effect a too-svelte appear-
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ance might have on her audience, who are already bombarded with negative body messages every day. But how her statements are being delivered — and how zealous and adoring fans have interpreted her words — only reinforce our cultural standards, and perpetuate the myth that only one type of body is acceptable. I’m not going to cover the fact that it’s messed up that a girl like
I want to know, Internet: At what percentage of body fat does a woman earn the right to be a person?” Jennifer Lawrence has to justify her perfectly gorgeous body to every single media consumer in the world. We all know that’s messed up. Let’s focus instead on the fact that in order to appease our own self-doubt about our weight, we, the Internet, have decided to ignore how body-shaming the entire image of JLaw, “Spirit Animal” to fat girls everywhere, really is. First of all, consider her quotes. She would rather look chubby on screen, but like a person in real life? This is a message of positiv-
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Voices ity only for people who consider themselves chubby, and it comes at the expense of women who are thin. Maybe they’re thin because they’re sick. Maybe they’re naturally slender. But when someone says they would rather “look like a person” than look thin, the message between the lines is that thin people don’t look like people. I want to know, Internet: At what percentage of body fat does a woman earn the right to be a person? I’m certain that some of my fellow fatties looked at that quote and rolled their eyes. We know that weighing more doesn’t grant one personhood, because our alleged lack of self-control and dignity are directly linked to that body fat percentage. Fat people are not people in our culture. They’re “fat people.” So, what does that quote do? It’s not empowering to anyone but women who look like Jennifer Lawrence. And it’s not a coincidence that she just happens to be the Coke-bottle standard we’re told men should prefer. I can’t help but think of the .gifs floating around Tumblr, the ones where Lawrence talks about how much food she eats, how she loves McDonald’s fries. Would the Internet have embraced those quotes
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Because Melissa McCarthy actually is a fat woman, she isn’t allowed to make brash statements about body acceptance. She has to apologize for her body.” coming from a larger actress? Someone like Melissa McCarthy? I’ve noticed a funny thing about Melissa McCarthy. Well, besides the obvious, that she’s funny. But I’ve noticed that when Jennifer Lawrence talks about her weight, she talks about how much food she eats, and how she’s never going to diet to be thin. And when Melissa McCarthy is quoted about her weight, this is what she says:
Melissa McCarthy at the ELLE 20th annual “Women in Hollywood” event in October 2013.
Voices “I don’t know why I’m not thinner than I am. I don’t really drink soda; I don’t have a sweet tooth, and we eat healthfully at home. We’re all weird for broccoli and pureed-vegetable soup, which we almost always have a big pot of in the fridge — it’s so good!” — Fox News “I just don’t lose weight easily.” — People.com “Sometimes I wish I were just magically a size 6 and I never had to give it a single thought.”— Us Magazine Because Melissa McCarthy actually is a fat woman, she isn’t allowed to make brash statements about body acceptance. She has to apologize for her body. Every single one of those quotes might as well have just said, “Sorry I’m fat and you have to look at me, everyone.” But it’s all she’s allowed to say, in the confines of our culture. If Melissa McCarthy had said, “If anybody even tries to whisper the word ‘diet,’ I’m like, ‘You can go f- yourself,” the response will most assuredly not be, “How brave! How strong! What a good role model!” The response will be, “What a bad example, encouraging people to be unhealthy! We have an obesity epidemic! Open
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your eyes, fat is not healthy, sexy, or acceptable! How very dare she!” Even the mild statements she has made about being comfortable with herself and her body are greeted with backlash from armchair internet physicians bleating about health and lifestyle choices. Imagine if Melissa McCarthy had made so many public com-
When Jennifer Lawrence says it’s ‘dumb’ to go hungry to make other people happy, she’s saying it with the carefree attitude of a woman who probably will never have to make that choice to conform.” ments about food and McDonald’s. It wouldn’t be cute or funny, it would be schtick. Look at the fat woman, being human and hungry for something bad for her! How grotesquely humorous it is when fat people eat! When Jennifer Lawrence makes these comments, it’s acceptable, because her body is still pleasing to our cultural expectation of voluptuous, slim-waisted, long-necked female beauty.
Voices When Jennifer Lawrence says it’s “dumb” to go hungry to make other people happy, she’s saying it with the carefree attitude of a woman who probably will never have to make that choice to conform. Yes, she’ll be asked to diet for a role, and she feels the same pressure to meet cultural expectations as everyone else. But a woman who looks like Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t have to shop for her clothes in online stores because no physical storefronts carry her size. A woman who looks like Jennifer Lawrence probably isn’t going to have a stranger try to stage an impromptu intervention in a Pizza Hut because they’re so, so concerned for her “health.” If a woman who looks like Jennifer Lawrence goes to her doctor to complain of an ailment, she’ll be offered diagnostic tests instead of a diet plan. Jennifer Lawrence can say it’s “dumb” to go on a diet, but Jennifer Lawrence might not be facing weight-related prejudice or illness. Jennifer Lawrence may never be forced to make the choice between going hungry to lose weight versus having a knee and hip replacement at 35. The reason Jennifer Lawrence is allowed to be a body-positive
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role model to young girls and “chubby” women is because she is representative of conventional beauty. Jennifer Lawrence’s public image has been built on a foundation of fat girl drag. She can say she’s “obese” by Hollywood standards, but the claim is laughable when women like Melissa McCarthy also make their living in the same industry and
The reason Jennifer Lawrence is allowed to be a body-positive role model to young girls and ‘chubby’ women is because she is representative of conventional beauty.” aren’t afforded the privilege of unapologetic expression Lawrence enjoys as a conventionally attractive person. The message of body acceptance built on Jennifer Lawrence’s soundbites only empowers those who are willing to ignore the fact that her statements reinforce our current cultural views, rather than subverting them. Jenny Trout is an author and blogger.
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Ezra Klein and the Future of News HAT SHOULD A 21ST-CENTURY news organization look like? A single entity, run from the top, with a common set of values? Or a loose network of related projects, sharing a brand and to some extent a mission but operating semi-independently? Âś With the likely departure of Ezra Klein from The Washington Post, the management of one of our last great newspapers might be showing signs of preferring the former approach. Klein, who founded and runs the widely read
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Voices Wonkblog at washingtonpost.com, is reportedly leaving for a new venture, as yet undefined. According to Ravi Somaiya in The New York Times, Klein sought an eight-figure Post investment in the new project. Klein already has his own Wonkblog staff, but clearly he has something much bigger in mind — perhaps an all-purpose independent news organization along the lines of Talking Points Memo. (Although it wouldn’t be called Wonkblog — the Post owns the name and will be keeping it, writes The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone, who broke the news about Klein’s proposal last month.) We can’t know everything that went into the decision. Maybe it came down to money. But Wonkblog generates a hefty amount of web traffic — more than 4 million pageviews a month, according to a profile of Klein in The New Republic last February. “It’s ‘fuck you traffic,’” a Post source told TNR’s Julia Ioffe. “He’s always had enough traffic to end any argument with the senior editors.” Apparently, that’s no longer the case. Significantly, The Times reports that new Post owner Jeff Bezos was involved in the decision to let Klein leave. Last September,
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It would have been enormously beneficial to the Post if Politico had been launched under its own umbrella. And Politico itself might be better.” shortly after announcing his intention to buy The Post for $250 million, the Amazon.com founder lauded the “daily ritual” of reading the morning paper — which led to some chiding by one of The Post’s own journalists, Timothy B. Lee. Despite Bezos’ well-earned reputation as a clear-eyed digital visionary, he appears to have some romantic notions about the business he’s bought into. And allowing entrepreneurs such as the twentysomething Klein run his own shop inside The Post might not fit with that vision. What makes the likely Klein de-
Ezra Klein’s eight-figure proposal for a new Washington Post venture was turned down.
DAVID RYDER/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
parture even more significant is that in 2006 The Post, under the ownership of the Graham family, allowed John Harris and Jim VandeHei to walk out the door and start Politico. Now, I have a lot of problems with Politico’s gossipy “drive the day” approach. But as Times columnist Ross Douthat has observed, much of the media conversation about Washington politics has shifted from The Post to Politico, threatening one of The Post’s franchises. It would have been enormously beneficial to The
DAN KENNEDY
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
Despite Bezos’ wellearned reputation as a clear-eyed digital visionary, he appears to have some romantic notions about the business he’s bought into.” Post if Politico had been launched under its own umbrella. And Politico itself might be better. So if The Post is reluctant to loosen the reins, are there any other news organizations that are taking a different approach? Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher walked away from their AllThingsD site at The Wall Street Jour-
Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013.
Voices nal and set up a new project called Recode in partnership with NBC. Perhaps the most famous example is Nate Silver, who brought his FiveThirtyEight poll-analysis site to The New York Times a few years ago and then moved it lock, stock and barrel to ESPN. In that regard, I suppose you could say NBC and ESPN have embraced the network approach. To some extent, you might also say that of The Huffington Post, as it combines professional journalists, unpaid bloggers (I’m one) and a dizzying array of content — from Calderone’s excellent media coverage to the notorious Sideboob vertical. Jeff Jarvis recently argued that Patch — AOL’s incredibly shrinking hyperlocal news project — might have stood a chance if AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong had taken a network approach. Rather than running cookie-cutter community sites from the top down, Jarvis asked, what if Patch had offered advertising and support services to a network of independent or semi-independent sites? The problem with such scenarios is that media executives — and business leaders in general — are not accustomed to the idea of giving up control. Calderone
DAN KENNEDY
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
reports that some Post staffers have long grumbled at what they see as “preferential treatment” for Klein, which suggests the depth of the problem. But entrepreneurial journalists like Harris and VandeHei, like Mossberg and Swisher, and like Silver and Klein have a proven track record. Legacy news organizations need to find a way to tap into that success outside the old models of own-
Legacy news organizations need to find a way to tap into... success outside the old models of ownership and not worry about obsolete notions of employeremployee relationships.” ership and not worry about obsolete notions of employer-employee relationships. Reach and influence are what matter. And they are proving to be incompatible with the ambitions of young journalists like Ezra Klein. Dan Kennedy is an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University.
Voices
QUOTED
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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HANDOUT/GETTY IMAGES; MATT SAYLES/INVISION/AP; GETTY IMAGES/DORLING KINDERSLEY; 4UTAH; ANDREW MEDICHINI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“ More like, 7 cheeses I have never heard of.”
“ Gravity proves that George Clooney would rather float away and die than spend another minute with a woman his own age.”
— HuffPost commenter Carl_J_ Speed_II
on “10 Cheeses You Are Probably Pronouncing Wrong”
— Tina Fey
during the opening monologue of the Golden Globe Awards, which she co-hosted with Amy Poehler
“ It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day.”
— Pope Francis, in his State of the World address
“ Sir, your not eating affects gay people as much as their marriage affects you...”
— HuffPost commenter Macklyn
on “Trestin Meacham, Utah Man, On Hunger Strike To Halt Gay Marriage”
Voices
QUOTED
My spiritual pain is unbearable. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MATTHEW RAMBO/ ANDREI KORSHUNOV/KOMMERSANT PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES; BEN HIDER/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/EVAN AGOSTINI; GETTY IMAGES/MASKOT; ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
— Mikhail Kalashnikov,
designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, in a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church shortly before his death, expressing fears he was personally guilty for those it killed
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
“ Please stop. Reconsider. Don’t be handmaidens to this grotesque tragedy.”
— Art critic Jerry Saltz
in a letter to MoMA’s trustees, asking them to reject the New York museum’s expansion plan
“ My best marriage advice is not to take marriage advice from any celebrity.”
— HuffPost commenter Jeff_Seifert
on “Michael Douglas And Robert De Niro Share Marriage Advice”
“ Ok cool, now how do I tie my shoes..”
— HuffPost commenter newplasticmachine
on “This Is How You Should Be Shampooing Your Hair”
MARC PISCOTTY/GETTY IMAGES
01.19.14 #84 FEATURES
GIVE NO GROUND HOW TO BE A PARENT WHEN YOU DON’T TALK TO YOUR OWN
GIVE NO GROUND
THE INSIDE STORY OF
LIZ CHENEY’S
TONE-DEAF CANDIDACY
BY JON WARD
PREVIOUS PAGE: AP PHOTO/CLIFF OWEN
>> When Liz Cheney moved to Wyoming, in 2012, her path to the Senate seemed clear enough. Cheney had a famous name, a high-profile media presence, an impressive CV, and plenty of money. The Republican incumbent, a backbencher named Mike Enzi, was expected to retire. Most political pros would have had an easy time gaming out the next few moves: First, meet Enzi to divine his intentions. Make sure to kiss the ring. Maybe offer a nudge while you do so. Then sit back and let him to do the right thing. When it’s done, offer some gracious praise on the occasion of his retirement. And then await a coronation. It’s a good bet that’s how Dick Cheney, a famously effective backroom operator, would have handled it. His cable-bred daughter, though, was not content to quietly make Enzi an offer he couldn’t refuse: She simply called him up and informed him she was moving toward running against him. Not for the last time in the campaign, the shock and awe approach backfired. “I think Enzi would have dropped out if she hadn’t announced so early,” one Enzi donor says. “But Enzi did not want to be seen as being shoved out.” Last week, it was Cheney who left the race, citing family reasons.
(An insider describes the issue as something non-life threatening involving one of her daughters.) But there were political considerations, too. Cheney was trailing badly in early polls and having trouble finding a Washington firm to set up a super PAC. Which all added to the aborted campaign’s central mystery: Why did this well-prepared, well-connected, well-known political figure put on such an amateurish performance when she finally ran for office on her own? Cheney’s campaign was marked by a Palinesque series of news stories involving ham-handed politics and small-time personal dramas: There was the kerfuffle over whether her dad was an old fly-fishing
Previous page: Liz Cheney addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 18, 2010.
GIVE NO GROUND
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CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
[Cheney’s] cable-bred daughter... was not content to quietly make Enzi an offer he couldn’t refuse: She simply called him up and informed him she was moving toward running against him. buddy of Enzi’s. (The senator says yes, the former veep says no.) There was the time her mom told former Sen. Alan Simpson to shut up when he announced his support for Enzi. (She was incensed that he’d stiff someone who’d campaigned for him as a preteen.) There was a $220 fine for in-state residential claims
on her fishing license application. (Cheney hadn’t lived in Wyoming long enough to avoid the out-oftowner fee.) And, when that was reported in the local press, there was a controversy over whether she had wished death on the state’s well-loved small-town papers. (She said she was only talking about the liberal national media.) There was also a much more serious break between Cheney
Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi (R) in 2009.
GIVE NO GROUND
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DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES
“ If the enemy takes a shot at you, you never, ever, ever admit any level of accuracy on their part. You always, always refute it. It is the centerpiece of their DNA.” and her sister over gay marriage. Candidate Cheney’s position was that states should decide for themselves. But she also said that she believes marriage is only between a man and a woman. That drew Facebook rebukes from Mary Cheney, who has two daughters with her wife. The whole tableau,
transpiring on social media, had a touch of Jerry Springer about it. You might say this pattern of cable-style bombast and public embarrassment is at odds with the taciturn Cheney brand. Pull back the camera a bit, though, and it starts to look less strange. “The Cheney women are very protective of, as we called him, The Man. That’s what we called him inside the system, The Man, capitalized,”
Dick Cheney, his wife Lynne, their two children — Liz (left) and Mary — and their Basset Hound Cyrano at their home in Casper, Wyo., in March 1978.
GIVE NO GROUND
says Kevin Kellems, Dick Cheney’s communications director during his vice presidential years. “You protect The Man at all costs. And two, if the enemy takes a shot at you, you never, ever, ever admit any level of accuracy on their part. You always, always refute it. It is the centerpiece of their DNA.” It’s a tendency that blossomed in the fiery days after 9/11, and grew strong still as Dick Cheney’s reputation collapsed with the Bush administration. “Give no ground was the operating principle of the Cheney operation. Give no ground, ever.” In prosecuting this principle, Cheney doesn’t primarily trade in the insider tactics associated with her dad. Rather, she takes after her mom, the academic-turned-culture warrior who was a polarizing Clinton-era cable denizen in her own right. “People that are mad at her are mad because they think this is all about ambition and she’s more like her mother than her father,” says the Enzi donor. With a major exception: Lynne, who ran the National Endowment for the Humanities back when Dick was a mere congressman, has her own professional identity. Liz, despite her own personal interests, has spent much of her
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career in the Dick Cheney business. In 1978, when former White House chief of staff Dick Cheney briefly relocated to Wyoming to run for Congress, 12-year-old Liz campaigned with him. (At one stump speech, preteen Liz shot back at a pair of hostile questioners who wanted to know why her dad was so eager to move back to Washington; she remembers the incident as the first time she truly put on the Cheney jersey.) In 1989, when former Representative Dick Cheney became secretary of defense, recent college graduate Liz joined the administration, too. When former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney ran for vice president, newly minted lawyer Liz followed her dad into the campaign and onto the public payroll. And when former Vice President Dick Cheney’s legacy fell into disfavor under Barack Obama, Liz, now a 47-year-old mother of five, became one of the new president’s most vociferous critics. In its way, the give-no-ground approach worked when it came to defending Dick Cheney: After all, a flack isn’t supposed to acknowledge differing views. Once Liz was out to become The Man, though, it proved a serious liability. For a mainstay of the Bush-Cheney GOP, navigating Obama-era Republican politics required rein-
GIVE NO GROUND
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Liz, despite her own personal interests, has spent much of her career in the Dick Cheney business. vention. Liz’s slashing style made it impossible to do any of that gracefully. Aiming to displace the congenial Enzi by displaying unrivaled disdain for the president, she was erratic about just which direction the criticisms should come from. In standard neocon form, Cable Cheney had demanded Obama launch military intervention in Syria. Running as a
2014 populist, Candidate Cheney opposed authorizing strikes there. Cable Cheney praised NSA spying to Sean Hannity in June. Candidate Cheney criticized it to the Casper Star-Tribune months later. Likewise, Cheney the tea partier vowed to be zealous about spending, explaining how ideologues in the bureaucracy protect discredited pet projects. But in the Bush years, she had overseen a textbook example of pricy idealism: a $400 million, largely unsuccessful effort to
Liz Cheney (left) joined then-Vice President Cheney and her mother on a 10-day trip to the Middle East in 2008.
GIVE NO GROUND
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
HELEN H. RICHARDSON/THE DENVER POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
Candidate Cheney was at her most awkward... as she sought to distance herself from the city that defined her. promote democratic reform in the Middle East. In fact, that’s a rare case where Cheney acknowledges having learned something from a mistake. What’d she learn? That her dad, who’d been skeptical of such efforts, may have been right. Candidate Cheney was at her most awkward, though, as she
sought to distance herself from the city that defined her. At campaign events last fall, she talked up her Wyoming roots and dressed in boots. But when I chatted with her at one stop, her jeans were so new that her hands were stained blue from touching them. And a candidate more savvy about the carpetbagger charge might have moved somewhere other than Jackson Hole, which
Liz Cheney (right) speaks on a panel to sell the slogan “W Stands for Women” during the 2004 BushCheney re-election campaign.
GIVE NO GROUND
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
MARC PISCOTTY/GETTY IMAGES
Why did this well-prepared, well-connected, well-known political figure put on such an amateurish performance when she finally ran for office on her own? most state residents view as the place where interlopers from Hollywood buy vacation houses. Like, say, Cheney’s 3,472 square foot, four-bed, four-bath house, listed at $1.9 million. Likewise, while she railed against the Beltway establishment, she didn’t much mention that her husband is a D.C. power lawyer by way of his own Bush administration stints,
or that their McLean, Va., home is a seven-bedroom, seven-bath, $2 million spread. (When Cheney was growing up, the revolving door was far less lucrative: Her family owned a place in Casper where she had to catch flooding water with pots and pans when a visiting Gerald Ford failed to secure the upstairs shower curtain; their Virginia house was “a nice tidy little house like we all had back then,” according to a high school friend.)
Liz Cheney fields reporter questions at a news conference the day after she launched her Senate campaign on July 17, 2013.
GIVE NO GROUND
Cheney’s remarks on gay marriage were even more jarring. Though not technically inconsistent with her 2009 assertion that “freedom means freedom for everybody and this is an issue that states have to decide for themselves,” the new emphasis on her personal opposition added a dollop of family betrayal to the
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mind, is not something that merits self-examination. Rather, it’s a weapon, fit only for one thing: counter assault. Cheney’s campaign-trail mishaps were not just the accidents of a firsttimer. They were the inevitable byproduct of her basic approach to political combat. Within hours of Cheney’s an-
Cheney’s campaign was marked by a Palinesque series of news stories involving ham-handed politics and small-time personal dramas. too-abrupt reinvention. Cheney’s parents, who support gay marriage, rallied around her when the spat went public: Give no ground, as always. One evening last fall, Cheney told me an anecdote about Tom Lantos, a liberal House Democrat: “He said to me, sitting in his office, he said, ‘Don’t ever forget: The dogs bark and the caravan moves on,’” Cheney said. “It’s like, you know, they’re going to yell and scream at you, but it’s partly tactical on their part.” And there’s the essence of Cheneyism. Criticism, in her
nouncement, there were signals that her submission to the Wyoming Way — pay your dues, respect your elders — had begun to pay off. Simpson, who remains a powerful icon in the Cowboy State, was full of beneficence,telling me Cheney was basically part of his family and that she had a very bright political future in the state. But she will have to do something that hasn’t come naturally to her: wait a few years. Jon Ward is a senior political reporter at The Huffington Post.
This article was produced as part of a partnership with The New Republic, where it also appears.
HOW TO BE A PARENT… …WHEN YOU’VE STOPPED TALKING TO YOUR OWN
HOW TO BE A PARENT...
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
PREVIOUS PAGE: GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR OPEN
BY CATHERINE PEARSON
When she gazes at her 4-monthold daughter, Toni finds it hard to believe that her own father has not reached out to her for months. Growing up, the 24-year-old preschool teacher from Texas had a strained relationship with her father. He was an alcoholic, she said, who frequently lied to her and struggled with mental health issues. When her parents divorced in
2012, Toni recognized an opportunity to sever ties. Last September, not long after her own daughter was born, she wrote her father a letter, explaining that she no longer wanted any contact with him. “Part of my thinking was, ‘I don’t want to voluntarily put bad people in my daughter’s life,” Toni said. “I kind of see it as protecting her.” Toni was surprised and hurt when she didn’t hear from her father. A part of her, however small, thought her letter might spur him to action. “I look at my daughter and I say, ‘I don’t care what she says to me, I could never not be a part of her life,” said Toni, who like all of the estranged adults in this article, asked that only her first name be used. “Sometimes, I don’t know whether I’m sad or angry. … Right now, I think I’m both.” There are no clear estimates of how many grown children in the U.S. are estranged from their parents, either by their own choice or their parents’. But experts say estrangement is on the rise, and far more common than is widely believed, presenting challenges for a new generation of men and women on the brink of parenthood. Estrangement is neither an illness nor a condition that can be diagnosed, but the fracturing of a family can be no less devastating — and there are no clear treat-
HOW TO BE A PARENT...
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
COURTESY OF MIKE
ments or doctors to help. With few obvious avenues of support available to them, men and women who are estranged from their parents are often left alone to wrestle with what, exactly, it means for them to become moms and dads themselves. Where do you turn for guidance and support when your own parental relationships are emotionally fraught and your role models have fallen short? A ‘SILENT EPIDEMIC’ Few psychological investigations have delved into the causes of parental estrangement. In some cases, adult children cut off contact with one or more parents because of mental health or substance abuse issues; in others, they are fleeing emotional and physical abuse, or were abandoned. According to Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco-based psychologist and author of When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You And Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along, the uptick in parental estrangement is also due, in part, to broad cultural factors. “In the past five decades, there’s been much more emphasis on the self — it’s a culture of individualism,” Coleman said. “Chil-
“ I did have a lot of fear. It took a lot of [my wife] saying, ‘Look. You are not them. You are you. You are a good person.’” dren ask, ‘Does this work for me?’ ‘What am I getting out of this relationship?’ ‘Does it make me happy?’ That’s a big force.” Another is divorce. Coleman estimated that roughly 80 percent of the families he works with in his private practice have experienced divorce, which increases the risk of estrangement. Children may become allies with one parent, he said, or may be poisoned against one parent by the other. (Studies suggest that “parental alienation,”in which one parent
Mike believes that in many ways, estrangement has made him a better father, despite his fears.
HOW TO BE A PARENT...
turns a child against the other, occurs in 10 to 15 percent of divorces involving children.) While the contributing factors vary, the hush that surrounds parental estrangement is a constant, Coleman said, which is why he calls it a “silent epidemic.” “It feels shameful to admit to. People worry that if they do talk about it, on either side, they are going to be blamed,” Coleman said. “There aren’t the normal kinds of support groups that exist for other sorts of traumatic or life-stressing experiences.” A CONTINUING CYCLE? With so little awareness, children who are estranged from their parents often feel isolated and afraid of falling into familiar patterns, so much so that in some cases, they simply opt out of parenthood altogether. “There’s not an insignificant number of people who just don’t have any confidence that they could raise children, because they feel like their role models were so terrible,” said Coleman. But others, like Mike, a 35-year-old who lives in Virginia, work through it. Mike, who served in the military for four years and
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
now works in logistics operations for the government, has had virtually no contact with his father since his parents divorced when he was a baby, and his father left (though he did try, unsuccessfully, to reach out to his father when he was a teenager). Growing up, he regarded his mother as a hero who sacrificed
Experts say estrangement is on the rise, and far more common than is widely believed. for him, he said, even though she frequently kicked him and hit him with “anything in reach.” By his mid-20s, when he returned from the military, his view of her soured. “My mother would say things like, ‘You owe me. You ruined my life,’” Mike said. “She knew I would feel bad, and that I would give her what she wanted.” Mike helped her buy $2,000 worth of furniture he could not afford, and a $12,000 car that she defaulted on that was in his name. She was, he said, “unkind” to the woman he fell in love with, who eventually became his wife. She tried to sabotage their relationship, writing letters to his future wife’s father, accusing Mike of be-
HOW TO BE A PARENT...
GETTY IMAGES/JOHNER RF
ing physically abusive, and out to steal the family’s money. Eight years ago, Mike cut all ties with his mother, and he and his wife moved to another state. As they thought about becoming parents, he worried about his own parents’ legacy. He fretted that he might somehow pass along a “crazy gene,”) as well as how his relationship with his parents might sculpt his own parenting. When he and his wife attended a childbirth education class and were asked to share their fears, other attendees talked about no longer being able to hang out with friends, or sleep deprivation. “My concerns were like, ‘Am I going to be a good parent?’” “I did have a lot of fear,” Mike added. “It took a lot of [my wife] saying, ‘Look. You are not them. You are you. You are a good person.” A MORE THOUGHTFUL PARENT Unsurprisingly, experts say that many men and women with extremely troubled parental relationships often are particularly mindful of how they want to act as parents themselves, as well as the behaviors they hope to avoid. Psychologists use the term “posttraumatic growth” to describe
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
people who are changed for the better by a traumatic event, and it is both an outcome and a process, explained Richard Tedeschi, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In Tedeschi’s estimation, half to two-thirds of people who survive a trauma — whether it’s a particular event, an illness, a troubled relationship or any experience in which their “philosophy of living” comes into question — later undergo changes that they value and maintain. “People go through a process of rethinking what they believe about themselves and their world,” Tedeschi said. “They come to new conclusions about themselves and their future.”
HOW TO BE A PARENT...
For her part, Joanna, a 33-yearold former high school teacher who has stayed home with her now 2½-year-old son since his birth, feels estrangement has been a positive force in her parenting. Joanna has not seen her father since she turned 17, when he refused to sell his portion of the home where Joanna and her three siblings had been raised to her mother and soon-to-be-stepfather. It caused a “huge rift,” she explained, and “a bunch of horrible things were said.” She and her siblings decided that they no longer wanted their father in their lives, and he, in turn, made no effort to speak to them again. The estrangement is not something Joanna thought much about until she became pregnant. Then — full of hormones and on the precipice of parenthood — she began to ruminate, thinking how strange it might feel for her father to not know her baby, or what she would do if he ever called. After her son was born, she and her husband talked, deliberately and often, about how, exactly, they wanted to parent in direct response to her father’s behavior. “For us, it’s really been a lot of talking about, ‘How do we do
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
things differently, so we don’t follow in those footsteps?’” she said. They make a point of not yelling, and regularly stop and make sure they’re tending to the basics: Are they treating their son nicely? Does he feel like his parents are present? Are they talking about things as a family? For his part, Mike agrees that being estranged from his parents
Where do you turn for guidance and support when your own parental relationships are emotionally fraught and your role models have fallen short? motivates him to be a better father — though fear, about what might happen should things go wrong, always lingers. “I hesitate to say that I’m different, but I do think I’m self-aware, as a parent, because of the things that I’ve gone through,” he said. “I don’t want to fail him. I don’t ever want to feel like I wasn’t the best I could be for him.” Catherine Pearson is a senior reporter at The Huffington Post.
Exit
TECH
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES
You Are Destined to Fall in Love With Bots BY BIANCA BOSKER
A
FRIEND RECENTLY confessed that when he first met his fiancée, he suspected she
was a bot. At the time, figuring out whether the chats on the dating site
came from a fembot or female meant the difference between dismissing spam and pursuing romance. But we’re nearing the point where our dearest partners could just as easily be a line of code as a human being. One day, we might even prefer the bots. Spike Jonze’s new film, Her, presents one vision of how these
Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore in Spike Jonze’s Her.
Exit man-machine love affairs might unfold. Set in the not-so-distant future, the love story is eerily plausible. Theodore, a depressed divorcé, falls in love with “the first artificially intelligent operating system,” Samantha, and, like most human couples, the two have sex, bicker, vacation and even double-date. To some, this digital romance might seem as plausible as talking animals or zombies. Look closer, however, and you’ll see that these cyber-soulmates are not only coming, but, in some respects, are already here. Our devices are becoming more sensitive to our feelings, more in tune with our desires, more in sync with our activities, more gifted at expressing themselves and more adept at understanding our language. We may be approaching an era when we use our computers not to access one another, but for the companionship of the software itself. It’s a love affair with “no one.” And where that leaves the humans — who are more selfish than software — may be anyone’s guess. “There already are people who display the behavior of the character in Her with machines far
TECH
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
less capable than the operating system shown in that movie,” said John Sullins, a professor at Sonoma State University who studies the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. “What we would need is an operating system that would have the ability to both recognize human emotions and display appropriate reactions ... When that happens, everyone’s going to be in love
As these devices become more personal and they get to know us, that bond and relationship we feel with our devices will only start to strengthen.” with their machines.” In his book, Love and Sex with Robots, artificial intelligence expert David Levy predicts robots and humans will be falling in love by 2050. (He likens naysayers to the skeptics who believed the world was flat.) A 2013 survey found that 57 percent of cell phone owners felt a “personal connection” to their virtual assistants, and more than half had named their artificial helpers.
MIKE FUENTES/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Exit
Talking about technology as though “it” were a “he” or “she” with feelings is a precursor to seeing machines as having their own agency and motivations. That’s in turn the first step toward people falling in love with their gadgets and believing the software can love them back, experts say. “We have this device that has become a companion, and when we talk to people, they describe it in that way,” said Steve Brown, a futurist at Intel who focuses on evolving trends in technology. “As these devices become more personal and they get to know us, that bond and relationship we feel with our devices will only
TECH
start to strengthen.” Nonsense, many counter, pointing to how ignorant and ineloquent our gadgets remain. And to a large extent, they’re right. Software systems still have trouble understanding what we say — much less the emotional tone of our voices or body language — so phrases like “Let me spend my life with you” are more likely to trigger confusion than affection. While algorithms are good at predicting what we might like from Amazon, they’re still awful at guessing our mood, or dispensing thoughtful life advice. A human friend can sense you’re depressed and try to cheer you up. Your phone, on the other hand, will just keep pushing irritating Facebook alerts.
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Google’s Moto X lets people converse with their smartphone by speaking to it from across the room.
Exit Yet as you read this, engineers are tackling the very challenges that stand in the way of creating human-like machines. Companies are determined to make computers interact with us as naturally as we do with each other. With this goal in mind, they’re pioneering programs that can understand our language, decode our gestures, talk to us, recognize our emotions and, with impressive accuracy, guess what we’d like to do next. Google’s Moto X already lets people converse with their smartphone just by speaking to it from across the room. Nuance, which powers Siri’s speech recognition abilities, imagines creating different personas for its virtual assistants, a vision Siri’s original creators shared. Companies like Affectiva have created emotion-recognition systems that enable algorithms to gauge our moods, then adjust what they show us accordingly. One day Facebook could try to cheer you up when you’re down, or Siri could sense you’re worried and whisper kind words to calm you down. Cars are already trying to step in for stressed and sleepy drivers.
TECH
HUFFINGTON 01.19.14
Having computers act more like people will make them easier to use, say engineers. At the same time, training them to merge seamlessly with our lives could also make them more appealing friends. Even without this progress, it turns out our own software makes us inclined to accept machines as companions. We’re programmed, for example, to
We’re programmed... to think that others love us, even when all evidence points to the contrary.” think that others love us, even when all evidence points to the contrary. A study by psychologists at Harvard and Princeton Universities concluded that people believed they were loved when told “I love you” — even if that declaration had followed desperate pleading like, “Just tell me that you love me.” At the University of Calgary, computer scientists found people were quick to ascribe intentions to a mechanical wooden stick. Some thought the pole was threatening
Exit them or angry; others that it was dancing or thinking deeply. “[U]sers’ ability (or is it need?) to be deeply engaged with abstract robotic motion is, we believe, powerful,” the researchers concluded. The potential for a powerful bond, even with something as rudimentary as a stick, raises an uncomfortable question: What if the robots make better lovers than humans? In Her, chatting with people is far more awkward than speaking with software. The women Theodore dates are needy, complicated and downright weird. One reaches climax during phone sex only after she makes Theodore pretend he’s choking her with a dead cat. Another interrupts a passionate kiss to offer meticulous feedback on how he’s using his tongue. But Samantha needs only ask a few questions and to read through Theodore’s hard drive to instantly acquire the perfect personality to meet his needs. “You just know me so well already,” he marvels during his first conversation with Samantha. Already, Google Now could discover my interest in Japanese cookbooks or Ken Burns documentaries before my fiancé. Un-
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like Google’s virtual assistant, he doesn’t have the benefit of instantly collecting my searches, or analyzing every message in my inbox. For the early adopters who have begun bonding with machines, the appeal, in part, is that “it’s hard to get people to do exactly what you want,” observed Sullins. Our extended interactions online may be acclimating us to relationships that progress
For the early adopters who have begun bonding with machines, the appeal, in part, is that ‘it’s hard to get people to do exactly what you want.’” entirely on our terms. Computer scientist Alan Turing pioneered a test by which a computer could be judged truly intelligent: If a person couldn’t tell she was speaking with a machine, then the machine had passed. In this day and age, another standard — this one for gauging artificial affection — may be necessary. This new Turing test will check not whether we can tell that our companion is a computer, but whether we care.
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THE THIRD METRIC
Be the Master of Your Mind GETTY IMAGES/FSTOP
BY CAROLYN GREGOIRE
ANY OF US spend an exorbitant amount of time and energy — not to mention money — taking care of our bodies, and trying to keep ourselves looking
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and feeling our best. But when it comes to the mind, less attention (literally) is paid. Taking care of the mind can come as an afterthought, and often we think of the mind as something outside of our own control. “Our life is the creation of our mind,” according to Buddhist
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Exit scripture. Buddhist philosophy developed an entire science of training the unruly mind to help anyone overcome its constant fluctuations to achieve stillness, and eventually, enlightenment. But even if it’s not enlightenment you’re after, developing a good relationship with your mind is critical to building a life that is successful on your own terms. Here are nine habits of mind to start cultivating right now for less stress, more creativity, less distraction and more enjoyment in life. MAKE TIME FOR STILLNESS. Meditation has been around for thousands of years, and it’s perhaps the single most powerful tool out there for gaining mastery over your mind. The mental health benefits of meditation are virtually endless, from addiction recovery to reduced anxiety and depression to enhanced creativity and improved cognitive function. Meditation can actually increase neuroplasticity, making it possible to literally rewire the brain. “Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of
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the brain to change and optimize in a way we didn’t know previously was possible,” neuroscience researcher Zoran Josipovic, who has conducted brain-imaging studies on Buddhist monks, told the BBC in 2011. PURSUE MEANING OVER PLEASURE. Not all happiness is created equal, and in your own pursuit of joy and bliss, keep in mind that
Whether they realize it or not, people often approach computers and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper.” the type of happiness you’re after can make all the difference. A recent UCLA study found that eudaimonic happiness — that which was linked to having a larger purpose or sense of meaning in life — was linked with healthy gene activity, whereas hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, happiness was not. Those who were happy because they had a sense of purpose in life had lower inflammatory gene expression and higher anti-
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viral and antibody gene expression than others. “Eudaimonic happiness is something you build up over a lifetime,” Shimon Edelman, cognitive psychologist and author of The Happiness of Pursuit, told The Huffington Post. “In a sense, it’s a great consolation for older people — it’s nice to know that on that component, people can get more and more happy as they age if they led good lives.”
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READ, READ, READ. Consider reading your mind’s daily greens. Simply reading a book can lower stress levels, help you sleep better, keep your brain sharp, and also stave off Alzheimer’s. But before you turn to your Kindle, take note: Reading on screens may drain more mental resources and make it harder to remember what we’ve read after we’re done, as compared to reading on paper, according to Scientific American. “Whether they realize it or not, people often approach computers
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Reading can lower stress levels and help your sleep better, ultimately keeping your brain more vigilant.
Exit and tablets with a state of mind less conducive to learning than the one they bring to paper,” according to the article. LET IT BE. Sweating the small stuff is one of the most toxic things you can do to your mind — not only can it take over your thoughts, but dwelling on what’s beyond your control has been shown to be a contributing factor in the development of depression. You know that unfinished project that’s been nagging at you? Try just letting it go. According to Arianna Huffington, a great way to complete a project is by dropping it. Huffington recently explained at a Women in Business event in Toronto: “One of my favorite sayings is ‘100 per cent is a breeze, 99 per cent is a bitch’... That doesn’t mean ignoring my other needs, but it means when I’m in it, I’m really in it. And that means often saying no to good things, to things that you might want to do, but get in the way of sleep, or get in the way of being with your children, or whatever it is that’s also very important to you. Just have a conversation with yourself and say these projects are done, over, and then you have energy for
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the things you’re really going to commit yourself to.” FLEX YOUR MEMORY MUSCLE. Thanks to technology, we’re taking in more information than ever before, but we’re also losing our ability to retain that information. A recent poll found that millennials are even more forgetful than seniors, due, at least in part, to their reliance on technology.
In addition to boosting creativity (and being a generally enjoyable activity), daydreaming can actually make you smarter.” Keeping your memory sharp requires some time and attention — but your brain will thank you for it. Certain cognitive tricks and exercises can significantly boost your powers of memory, and make sure that you hold on to those things you never want to forget. UNPLUG AND RECHARGE. Constant digital distractions can take a toll on the mind — overreliance on technology has been
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linked with increased stress levels, reduced focus and productivity, stunted creativity and poor sleep quality. And Internet addiction is increasingly being recognized as a very real psychological problem. Many of us never take a break from our devices, even when we’re supposed to be relaxing (nearly 60 percent of Americans stay plugged in to work while they’re on vacation). But allotting yourself some tech-free time could make you more focused, less stressed, and happier. “[A digital detox] is almost like a reboot for your brain and your soul,” Cisco executive Padmasree Warrior told The New York Times. “It makes me so much calmer when I’m responding to e-mails later.” LET YOUR MIND WANDER. In addition to boosting creativity (and being a generally enjoyable activity), daydreaming can actually make you smarter. According to NYU psychologist Scott Kaufman’s theory of personal intelligence, mind-wandering is an adaptive trait that helps us to achieve personally meaningful goals, and it helps us to access
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spontaneous forms of cognition like insight, intuition and the triggering of memories and stored information. Kaufman recently wrote in Scientific American that mind-wandering can offer significant personal rewards: These rewards include selfawareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal-driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experi-
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Daydreaming can make you smarter, more self-aware and creative.
Exit ences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion... From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50 percent of their waking hours engaged in it. LINGER ON THE POSITIVE. Want to wire your brain for happiness? You can start by savoring those tiny moments of joy in your day, whether it’s the smell of fresh coffee or a smile from a loved one. Lingering on these positive moments can help to overcome the brain’s “negativity bias,” which causes us to store negative memories in our brains more easily (and strongly) than positive memories. “[Lingering on the positive] improves the encoding of passing mental states into lasting neural traits,” Hardwiring Happiness author Rick Hanson recently told The Huffington Post. “That’s the key here: we’re trying to get the good stuff into us. And that means turning our passing positive experiences into lasting emotional memories.”
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BUILD DAILY RITUALS. Habit is one of the most effective ways to make any positive change in your life. By developing habits, good behaviors that may have once required a feat of willpower to put into action become automatic — which is why they can also be so difficult to break. “For the things that you decide matter… the only way to ensure that things that aren’t urgent but
A recent UCLA study found that eudaimonic happiness — that which was linked to having a larger purpose or sense of meaning in life — was linked with healthy gene activity, whereas hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, happiness was not.” are important happen is to build rituals,” The Energy Project CEO Tony Schwartz told The Huffington Post. “Build highly specific behaviors that you do at precise times over and over again until you don’t have to use energy to get yourself to do it anymore — until it becomes as automatic as brushing your teeth at night.”
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TASTE TEST
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The New School of Legal Moonshine BY REBECCA ORCHANT
OONSHINE IS ONE of America’s oldest traditions. From George Washington, to the Prohibition years and beyond, the one thing that’s remained true is that moonshine was made without the blessing or involvement of the U.S. government. But moonshine
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has seen a rise in popularity in recent years outside the places where it’s traditionally been made and enjoyed. From the mountains of Appalachia to the concrete jungle of New York City, the people want their moonshine. This has given rise to a whole new school of legal moonshine distilleries, churning out the clear liquor for a whole new audience of consumers. Moonshine even has its
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TASTE TEST
Exit own reality show now. You might be thinking, “Isn’t legal moonshine an oxymoron?” Although for most of our lives moonshine has been considered contraband, it wasn’t always illegal. Moonshine simply refers to unaged whiskey that’s bottled straight off the still. Since we at HuffPost Taste love booze, the tradition behind moonshine and the taste buds of our readers, we threw ourselves a little moonshine taste test. We pulled together a few of the most recognizable brands that have hit the market in recent years, as
well as a few wild cards. The great thing about moonshine is that it varies greatly from region to region, and it seems like every whiskey distillery has its own version. Moonshine is usually distilled from corn, malted barley, rye or some combination thereof. We tasted only original recipes, although many distilleries infuse their moonshine with fruit and other flavoring agents — the only thing that’s not allowed is aging time in a barrel. Check out what our tasters thought ahead.
TAP FOR THE TASTERS’ VERDICTS
TIM SMITH’S CLIMAX MOONSHINE
OLE SMOKY TENNESSEE MOONSHINE
BUFFALO TRACE WHITE DOG, MASH #1
HUDSON NEW YORK CORN WHISKEY
MIDNIGHT MOON MOONSHINE
KINGS COUNTY DISTILLERY MOONSHINE
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MUSIC
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Dog Ears
In which we spotlight music from a diversity of genres and decades, lending an insider’s ear to what deserves to be heard. BY THE EVERLASTING PHIL RAMONE AND DANIELLE EVIN
MIDDLE CLASS RUT Middle Class Rut is the swaggering Sacramento-based rock duo comprised of vocalists Zack Lopez (guitar) and Sean Stockham (drums). As teenage co-founders of Leisure, Stockham and Lopez inked their freshman deal with DreamWorks at the hit of the aughts. By 2006, they refreshed as Middle Class Rut and toured the globe. Shared stages include Panic! at the Disco, Weezer, Linkin Park, Chevelle, Janus, My Chemical Romance, Social Distortion and Alice in Chains. Middle Class Rut offers up a high-octane oeuvre to date. Get “One Debt Away,” from their 2010 project No Name No Color (Deluxe Edition). Play it loud! BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Rock ARTIST: Middle Class Rut SONG: Cornbread ALBUM: No Name No Color (Deluxe Edition)
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND The Velvet Underground was a revolution and a rock band, founded by the late poet/pianist/guitarist Lou Reed and Welsh violist/composer John Cale in mid-’60s New York City. Doing residency at Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village, the band met pop artist Andy Warhol, who invited them to perform at his “Up-Tight” Film-Makers’ Cinematheque series in February 1966. That led to the fateful introduction to chanteuse/ model Nico, soon after drummer Maureen Tucker joined the outfit. The Velvet Underground’s brutally urbane sound has landmarked the genre and continues to define the edge. The rock royals’ catalog includes scores of greatness to collect. Download the sonically addictive “The Gift,” from The Velvet Underground’s 1968 White Light/White Heat. BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Rock ARTIST: The Velvet Underground SONG: The Gift ALBUM: White Light/White Heat
THE JAM Influential Brit mod-punk pack The Jam was founded in Surrey in the early ’70s by Paul Weller (guitar), Bruce Foxton (bass), and Rick Buckler (drums), with guitarist Steve Brookes rounding out its freshman lineup. In 1977, the rising tide of punk/pop buoyed Weller & Co. to U.K. pop stardom, leading to a handfulplus of full lengths and more than a dozen top-charting singles. By the early ’80s, Weller moved on to The Style Council and then went solo towards decade’s end. Foxton joined Still Little Fingers from 1990 till the mid-aughts and collaborated with Buckler in recent years, as well as with Weller in 2012. Return to 1983 with “Shopping,” from The Jam: Gold. BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Punk/Rock ARTIST: The Jam SONG: Shopping ALBUM: The Jam: Gold
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GERTRUDE SAUNDERS Blues singer and actress Gertrude Saunders was born in North Carolina in 1903. She came up in the Roaring ’20s blues-jazz era, where the competition among divas was fierce. Saunders and her blazing charm made her early footprints on Broadway in Liza, Shuffle Along (alongside Josephine Baker), and Irvin C. Miller’s Red Hot Mama. The beauty’s romantic alliance with Bessie Smith’s husband, producer Jack Gee, caused an inferno of anguish in Smith, as Gee siphoned off his wife’s coin into Saunders’ career, which flowered in prewar times. Film appearances by Saunders include Sepia Cinderella, Big Timers and The Toy Wife. She passed away in 1987. Discover the belle with “You Can’t Have It Unless I Give It to You,” from the Document Records collection Female Blues Singers Vol. 13: R/S (1921-1931). BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Gertrude Saunders SONG: You Can’t Have It Unless I Give It to You ALBUM: Female Blues Singers Vol. 13: R/S (1921-1931)
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HANK WILLIAMS
SIDNEY BECHET
American paramount country crooner Hank Williams was born Hiram King Williams in Alabama in 1923, one of two surviving children to a rail engineer/WWI vet and a boardinghouse landlady. The untouchable icon of country music made his professional mark in his mid-teens at WSFA radio, and by the late ’30s he founded The Drifting Cowboys. In the early ’40s, Hank was a standing-room-only draw on the local circuit. Music impresarios Roy Acuff and Fred Rose took to Williams and seasoned him for the attentions of MGM Records. Soon after, in 1947, he had his first chart-topping hit, “Move It On Over.” The Louisiana Hayride radio show and scores of hits followed, including legendary titles “A Long Gone Daddy,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Cold Cold Heart,” and No. 1 “Love Sick Blues,” opening the gate for his run at the Grand Ole Opry. Years of hard living took his life at the unsettling age of 29. Williams’ body was found in the back of his Cadillac en route to a show in Virginia. Posthumous credits include several hits and inductions into the Grammy Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Country Music Hall of Fame, as well as a Pulitzer Special Citation. Revisit “Window Shopping,” from 20 of Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits.
Jazz marvel Sidney Bechet was born in 1897 in New Orleans, the son of a shoemaker. Sidney discovered music at age 8, and his genius made its trajectory to clarinet and saxophone. By Bechet’s late teens, he set off to Chicago with Clarence Williams, then London with Will Marion Cook’s Southern Syncopated Orchestra. While overseas, Bechet garnered the attention of Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet, ultimately landing much of his work in Paris and London. In the ’30s, Bechet founded The New Orleans Feetwarmers with trumpeter Tommy Ladnier. During the ’40s, he landed in NYC, and by the ’50s, he moved to France for good and racked up international hits. Collaborations include King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker, Noble Sissle, and Bob Wilber. The virtuoso passed away in 1959. With a bevy of classics to collect, remember Sidney Bechet’s 1947 “Love for Sale,” from The Aristocrat of Jazz: Sidney Bechet.
BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Country ARTIST: Hank Williams SONG: Window Shopping ALBUM: 20 of Hank Williams’ Greatest Hits
BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: Jazz ARTIST: Sidney Bechet SONG: Love for Sale ALBUM: The Originals–The Aristocrat of Jazz: Sidney Bechet
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Lake Michigan Is Full of Ice Balls the Size of Boulders
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House Republicans Quietly Passed a Bill Gutting Hazardous Waste Legislation
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A 3-HOUR ORGASM SENT ONE WOMAN TO THE HOSPITAL
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GOP Congressman Who Says ‘There’s No Such Thing As Free Lunch’ Gets Free Lunch All the Time
05 Students at U.S. Military Academies Believe They Have to Put Up With Sexist Behavior, Report Finds
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06 Dead Cows Are Washing Up on Beaches
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The Polar Vortex May Have Cost the Economy $5 Billion
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THIS MAN’S BLOOD ALCOHOL LEVEL WAS TOO HIGH FOR A BREATHALYZER TO DETECT
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Restaurant Refuses to Serve Pakistanis... in Pakistan
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Americans Are Eating More Butter Now Than They Have in the Past 40 Years
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