TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE
TY BURRELL
AND
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her?
DRUGS AT THE OLYMPICS
FEBRUARY 16, 2014
MEET THE WORLD’S MOST LOVING GIRLFRIEND BY BIANCA BOSKER
02.16.14 #88 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Michael Sam Comes Out... Debt Ceiling Raised JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: Drugs & the Olympics Go Way Back Q&A: Ty Burrell HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
Voices ELIZABETH SCARBORO: On Being a Widow
2-D GIRLFRIENDS “I value her as much as a real person, even though I know she’s not.” BY BIANCA BOSKER
KATHLEEN ANN: I’m a Member of the American ‘Used-To-Haves’ QUOTED
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FROM TOP: NOBLEPINK/FLICKR; JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
CULTURE: A Woman Conductor in a Man’s World THE THIRD METRIC: You Don’t Need to Be Loud to Make Some Noise TASTE TEST: Canned Chili MUSIC: Dog Ears TFU
STILL UNAFFORDABLE Millions of Americans can’t get insured under Obamacare. BY JEFFREY YOUNG
FROM THE EDITOR: A New Kind of Love ON THE COVER: Illustration for
Huffington by Matt Danzig/IMVU
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON 02.16.14
ART STREIBER
A New Kind of Love I
N THIS WEEK’S ISSUE, just in time for Valentine’s Day, Bianca Bosker looks at a kind of love that’s increasingly commonplace in our tech-obsessed culture — the virtual relationship. Bianca puts the spotlight on a Japanese video game, LovePlus, in which players choose to become involved with one of three digital girlfriend characters. “There’s sweet, big-sisterly Nene; intelligent, but clingy Manaka; and shy Rinko, who feels alienated by her new stepmother and half-brother,” Bianca writes. Bianca spoke to LovePlus play-
ers, both male and female. Some are using the game to prepare for real-life relationships, others to get over a past heartbreak. But many describe the support and affection they get from their virtual relationships as “real.” “There’s times where I want to hug Rinko. She’s just being so cute, I want to hug her,” one player tells Bianca. As another player puts it: “I’ve known Manaka to actually slap me a couple times because she got so mad.”
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Honda Toru, a Japanese cultural critic, feels these virtual relationships in fact offer a certain advantage, because they avoid the system of “love capitalism” — gifts and dinners — that can harm reallife relationships. Anthropologist Patrick Galbraith goes a step further: “I would say that a relationship with a LovePlus character is a real relationship.” Still, some aren’t quite at the point where they’re willing to forgo a real-life girlfriend. As Theo Tkaczevski, a 23-year-old American student who happens to be dating Rinko, puts it, “I’m personally of the opinion that 3-D easily beats 2-D.” Elsewhere in the issue, Mallika Rao speaks to female conductor Sera Tokay about sexism in the classical music world, which gained attention last year after a series of insensitive comments from top male conductors in the industry. Consider, for example, Vasily Petrenko’s words — that “a cute girl at the podium” is too distracting. Or Yuri Temirnakov’s: “The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness.”
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Women, these men argue, simply aren’t suited for the field. “A systematically dissuasive policy against women,” Tokay tells Mallika, is used “as a proof of their natural disability.”
I would say that a relationship with a LovePlus character is a real relationship.” In our Voices section, 29-yearold Elizabeth Scarboro gives a moving reflection on the surreal experience of life after being widowed. “You feel your sense of purpose deflating,” Scarboro writes. “When you’re on an airplane, you no longer have the thought that it can’t crash because someone needs you.” Finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric, we share the stories of six public figures who are quiet at heart, from Richard Branson to Will Ferrell.
ARIANNA
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‘MY TRUTH’
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Michael Sam, a former defensive end for the University of Missouri who will enter the NFL draft in May, came out publicly on Sunday. If he is drafted, which experts predict will happen, Sam will become the first openly gay player in the league. There are also no openly gay players in the NBA, the NHL, or Major League Baseball. “I just want to own my truth,” Sam told The New York Times. Sam, who was named a first-team all-American and the SEC defensive player of the year for 2013, said his college teammates knew about his sexual orientation and were supportive. “Michael is a great example of just how important it is to be respectful of others,” Missouri’s football coach, Gary Pinkel, said.
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SOCHI: WEEK ONE
Shaun White, the U.S. snowboarder who rose to fame after taking home gold in both the 2006 and 2010 Olympics, left without a medal, after a fourth-place finish. Women’s ski jumping made its Olympic debut, with Germany’s Carina Vogt winning the gold, and 15-year-old Russian figure skater Julia Lipnitskaia’s dazzling performances led Russia to its first gold medal in the games.
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JETER RETIRES
Congress this week passed a “clean” spending bill raising the nation’s debt ceiling until March 2015. In the GOPcontrolled House of Representatives, 28 Republicans joined almost all the Democrats to pass the bill, which includes none of the extra measures typically favored by conservatives to cut spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. The president is expected to sign the bill. Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said House GOP members decided to go along with the “clean” bill because of the backlash they’ve faced after previous standoffs, including the 16-day government shutdown last year.
Derek Jeter, the Yankees shortstop who has been with the team for two decades, announced Wednesday on his Facebook page that he will retire after the 2014 season. “I will remember it all: the cheers, the boos, every win, all the plane trips, the bus rides, the clubhouses, the walks through the tunnel and every drive to and from the Bronx,” he wrote. One of the great Yankees of history, Jeter has won five World Series championships and played in the All-Star game 13 times.
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SCREEN LEGEND DIES
Shirley Temple, the child star who charmed audiences during the Great Depression, died on Monday in Woodside, Calif. She was 85. Temple starred in films like Curly Top and The Littlest Rebel, but retired from cinema at 21 and went on to a career in politics. She served as the U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2006.
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WIRE TERRIER WINS THAT’S VIRAL YOUR CONFUSING MODERN RELATIONSHIP
The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show concluded Tuesday night when Sky, a wire fox terrier, won the coveted best in show title. This is the 14th time a wire fox terrier has been named America’s top dog at Westminster, and Sky was the winner out of 2,845 dogs that entered the competition. The 2014 runnerup was Ally, a standard poodle. Other favorites included Nathan, a bloodhound, and Matisse, a Portuguese water dog. “It’s like winning an Oscar,” said Torie Steele of California, one of Sky’s owners.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
SPORTS ANCHOR DECIMATES MICHAEL SAM HATERS
WHY I QUIT MY JOB AT APPLE
41 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
ONCE A JANITOR, NOW A PRINCIPAL
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LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
JASON LINKINS
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TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL
DEMOCRATIC SENATORS NEED A BETTER 2014 PLAN THAN ‘STAY AWAY OBAMA’ ROBABLY ONE of the easiest stories you can write in an election year is the one where you find some vulnerable members of Congress running for reelection who would very much
P
prefer that the president take a pass at visiting their districts. So, Politico wrote the one for this year, and now no one else has to: The White House and Senate Democrats are preparing an extensive midterm campaign strategy built around one unavoidable fact: Hardly any can-
Sen. Mark Begich told Politico he doesn’t care to have Obama campaign for him in 2014.
Enter didates in the most competitive states want President Barack Obama anywhere near them. POLITICO spoke with nearly every incumbent up for reelection and aspiring Democratic Senate candidates across the country, but only a handful gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked whether they wanted Obama to come campaign with them. “I don’t care to have him campaign for me,” said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), citing a number of issues on which he is at odds with the Obama White House, such as opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, and also something having to do with timber industry permitting. Not mentioned is Begich’s stance on Social Security, which is also at odds with Obama’s — Begich wants to join an effort to expand it, while Obama wants to cut it through chained CPI. That’s probably because the notion of a vulnerable senator distancing himself from the president for being not liberal enough returns a “404 error” when it’s fed into this paradigm. But I digress.
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The thing I find most compelling about the “people don’t want the president to campaign with them story” is the unanswered question: does this strategy work? Let’s recall that in 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) staged her own “break with Obama” opera, demanding that he “push back against people in our own party that want extremes.” In short order, her campaign web-
If there’s a Democratic politician out there who can legitimately say that the effort made to distance himself from Obama stopped his opponent from trying to tie them together, by all means, let me know!” site filed a report titled, “Lincoln challenges Obama on liberal ‘extremes.’” That was subsequently picked up by Politico. Hoo, boy, you guys, Blanche Lincoln was straight up putting distance between herself and the president. And now she’s known as ex-Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Hey, she was just following a path well-trod by others. In the
Enter lead-up to the 2008 election, Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) told Bloomberg TV that he did not want President George W. Bush to come anywhere near the Granite State: “No, I think the President’s popularity unfortunately is at a fairly low level.” It was a break from the 2002 campaign, in which Sununu was elected over Democratic challenger Jeanne Shaheen. At that time, Bush was a welcome presence on the campaign trail — Sununu brought him to New Hampshire just days before the election. But, in 2008, he took a different path, and now Jeanne Shaheen is in the Senate. Perhaps I’d think more favorably on this distance-yourself-fromthe-presidency strategy if a coherent outcome could be identified. As far as I can tell, the only thing it does is prevent a photograph from being taken of the president with the candidate in question, which could in turn be used in attack ads. But, then ... so what? If there’s a Democratic politician out there who can legitimately say that the effort made to distance himself from Obama stopped his opponent from trying to tie them together, by all means, let me know! Look, I can understand why so
LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
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many Democratic incumbents are jaded. There’s a handful of senators whose votes on the Affordable Care Act were a bit courageous, and now they all have to live with the bungled rollout of the HealthCare.gov website. The Obama White House didn’t cover its end of the deal on a matter those lawmakers had no control over, and now they have to eat it. Strong
Voters would rather hear about how these incumbents plan to make government work better than about how they’re the passive victims of other people’s decisions.” criticism of the thing that screwed them over is warranted. Of course, voters would rather hear about how these incumbents plan to make government work better than about how they’re the passive victims of other people’s decisions. So if they want to be picky about sharing a stage with the president, that’s fine. But sooner or later, they’ll have to come up with a reason why people should vote for them all by themselves.
Q&A
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Ty Burrell on His Biggest Audition Mistake “The guy who taught [my audition] class had been an actor in like the 50s. And back then you also had to be hand models. And so I went into my first commercial audition, and I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Ty Burrell [raises hands in the air].’”
Above: Ty Burrell visits NASDAQ MarketSite for his upcoming film, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, on Feb. 10. Below: Burrell at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 18.
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DATA
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Drugs & the Olympics Go Way Back
Over the years, Olympic athletes have occasionally eschewed the Games’ lofty ideals in hopes of landing a spot on the medal stand. Here is a look at the dozens
TOP 3 OFFENDING COUNTRIES
7.4% WOMEN
HANS-GUNNAR LILJENWALL
1972 SUMMER
GALINA KULAKOVA •
FRANTIŠEK POSPÍŠIL
Alcohol Sweden Men’s Pentathalon Bronze medal
Ephedrine Soviet Union Women’s Skiing Bronze medal
VALENTIN HRISTOV
1976 SUMMER
Anabolic Steroids Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Gold medal
#1. MEN’S WEIGHTLIFTING
#1. DARBEPOETIN
#2. WOMEN’S CROSS COUTRY SKIING
#2. FUROSEMIDE
#3. MEN’S CYCLING
#3. THG 5 instances. A banned steroid
92.6% MEN
1968 SUMMER
13 medals revoked
5 medals revoked
4 medals revoked
Anabolic Steroids Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Silver medal
ZBIGNIEW KACZMAREK
Anabolic Steroids Poland Men’s Weightlifting Gold medal
ANGEL GUENCHEV
Furosemide Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Gold medal
MARION JONES •
2000 SUMMER
WINTER
LANCE ARMSTRONG • Blood doping United States Men’s Cycling Bronze medal
CIAN O’CONNOR •
Zuclopenthixol & Fluphenazine in horse Ireland Equestrian Gold medal
IVAN TSIKHAN •
Methandienone Metabolite Belarus Men’s Hammer Throw Silver medal
Blood doping United States Men’s Cycling Gold medal
MARÍA LUISA CALLE •
Heptaminol Colombia Women’s Cycling Bronze medal
Testosterone Belarus Men’s Hammer Throw Silver medal
RASHID RAMZI •
CERA Bahrain Men’s 1500M Gold medal
LEONIDAS SABANIS
Excessive testosterone Greece Men’s Weightlifting Bronze medal
VADIM DEVYATOVSKIY Testosterone Belarus Men’s Hammer Throw Bronze medal
KIM JONG SU •
Propranolol North Korea Men’s Shooting 10M, 50M 1 bronze medal 1 silver medal
Darbepoetin Russia Women’s CrossCounty Skiing 5km, 15km, 30km 2 silver medals, 1 gold medal
YURIY BILONOG
ROBERT FAZEKAS
Ethamivan Ukraine Women’s Rowing Bronze medal
Oxandrolone Metabolite Ukraine Men’s Shot Put Gold medal
OLEG PEREPETCHENOV Clenbuterol Russia Men’s Weightlifting Bronze medal
OLGA PYLEVAMEDVEDTSEVA •
2006 WINTER
Carphedon Russia Women’s Biathalon Silver medal
TONY ANDRE HANSEN •
IVAN IVANOV •
Furosemide Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Silver medal
ANTONIO PETTIGREW •
ALAIN BAXTER •
Methamphetamine United Kingdom Men’s Alpine Skiing Gold medal
2004 SUMMER
Hydroxy Diphenhydramine Germany Team Jumping Bronze medal
Refusal to provide complete urine sample Sweden Men’s Discus Throw Gold medal
Erythropoietin/ HGH United States Men’s 4x400 Gold medal
IRINA YATCHENKO
Methandienone Metabolite Belarus Women’s Discus Throw Bronze medal
Anabolic Steroid United States Women’s4x400M Gold medal
ADRIAN ANNUS •
2008 SUMMER
BERNARDO REZENDE •
Oxandrolone Hungary Men’s Weightlifting Silver medal
Tampering With Urine Hungary Men’s Hammer Throw Gold medal
Capsaicin in horse Brazil Horse Jumping Bronze medal
Methyltestosterone Ukraine Women’s Heptathlon Silver medal
SOSLAN TIGIEV •
CRYSTAL COX •
FERENC GYURKOVICS •
LYUDMYLA BLONSKA •
Capsaicin In horse Norway Equestrian Bronze medal
2012 SUMMER
Clenbuterol Russia Men’s Wrestling Bronze medal
LARISA LAZUTINA
BETTINA HOY
Oxandrolone Metabolite Russia Women’s Shot Put Gold medal
ZAFAR GULIYEV
Furosemide Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Bronze medal
OLENA OLEFIRENKO
IRINA SVETLANA • KORZHANENKO KRIVELYOVA
TYLER HAMILTON •
IVAN TIKHON •
Betamethasone Germany Equestrian Gold medal
Clenbuterol Russia Men’s Swimming Bronze medal
SEVDALIN MINCHEV
Furosemide Bulgaria Women’s Weightlifting Gold medal
Darbepoetin Sweden Women’s Cross County Skiing 5km, 10km 1 gold medal, 1 silver medal
Stanozolol Russia Women’s Shot Put Gold medal
1996 SUMMER
IZABELA DRAGNEVA
OLGA DANILOVA •
LUDGER BEERBAUM
ANDREY KORNEYEV •
Nandrolone Germany Men’s Wrestling Gold medal
Stanozolol Armenia Men’s Weightlifting Bronze medal
Darbepoetin Spain Men’s Cross Country Skiing 10km, 30km, 50km 3 gold medals
Methenolone Sweden Men’s Weightlifting Silver medal
ALEXANDER LEIPOLD •
ASHOT DANIELYAN
Pseudoephedrine Romania Women’s Gymnastics Gold medal
Methenolone Finland Men’s 10,000m Silver medal
Furosemide Cuba Judo Gold medal
Nanodrolone United States Men’s 4x400 Gold medal
JOHANN MUEHLEGG •
2002 WINTER
1988 SUMMER
TOMAS JOHANSSON
JEROME YOUNG
ANDREEA RADUCAN
Coramine Spain Men’s Cycling Bronze medal
1984 SUMMER
ESTELA RODRÍGUEZ
1998
JAIME HUELAMO
MARTTI VAINIO •
Stanozolol Hungary Men’s Weightlifting Gold medal
THG United States Women’s 100M, 200M, 4x100M, 4x400M, Long Jump 3 gold medals, 2 bronze medals
tweaked by chemists to elude detection.
Coramine Netherlands Men’s Cycling Bronze medal
ANDOR SZANYI •
Jones had 5 medals revoked, the most of any athlete in Olympic history.
Dianabol Mongolia Men’s Judo Silver medal
Furosemide Great Britain Men’s Judo Bronze medal
Marijuana Canada Giant Slalom Gold medal
7 instances. A diuretic used to lower body weight ahead of competition.
BAKHAAVAA BUIDAA
KERRITH BROWN •
ROSS REBAGLIATI •
AAD VAN DEN HOEK
1976 WINTER
Furosemide Bulgaria Men’s Weightlifting Gold medal
Stanozolol Canada Men’s 100m Gold medal
8 instances. Boosts red blood cells that carry oxygen to muscles.
Alcohol United States Men’s Swimming Bronze medal
Codeine Czechoslovakia Hockey Silver medal
BLAGOY BLAGOEV
RICK DEMONT •
MITKO GRABLEV •
BEN JOHNSON •
TOP 3 OFFENDING DRUGS
TOP 3 OFFENDING EVENTS
#1. RUSSIA - 12 ATHLETES #2. USA - 11 ATHLETES #3. BULGARIA - 7 ATHLETES
MEN VS. WOMEN
of athletes who been awarded an Olympic medal only to have it stripped after a positive test for a banned substance. — Chris Greenberg
Methylhexaneamine Uzbekistan Men’s Wrestling Bronze medal
NADZEYA OSTAPCHUK
Methenolone Belarus Women’s Shot Put Gold medal
DAVIDE REBELLIN • CERA Italy Road Race Silver medal
DARYA PISHCHALNIKOVA •
Oxandrolone Russia Women’s Discus Throw Silver medal
2014 WINTER
SOURCES: SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, ESPN, SPORTS-REFERENCE.COM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, LA TIMES, CBS, BBC, DAILY MAIL, CNN, USA TODAY, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, OLYMPIC.ORG MIKE POWELL /GETTY IMAGES (PETTIGREW); GARY M PRIOR/ ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES (BAXTER, IVANOV); MIKE POWELL/ ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES (ARMSTRONG); CLIVE MASON/GETTY IMAGES (MUEHLEGG); ZOOM SPORTS/ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES (DANILOVA); STU FORSTER/GETTY IMAGES (JONES); MICHAEL STEELE/ GETTY IMAGES (TIKHON, BILONOG, BLONSKA); JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (ANNUS); MATTHEW STOCKMAN/GETTY IMAGES (COX); DOUG PENSINGER/GETTY IMAGES (HAMILTON); ROBERT LABERGE/GETTY IMAGES (GYURKOVICS); KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (LEIPOLD); FPG/GETTY IMAGES (KULAKOVA); ANDREAS RENTZ/BONGARTS/GETTY
IMAGES (KORZHANENKO); ALEXANDER HASSENSTEIN/BONGARTS/ GETTY IMAGES (KORNEYEV); MARK SANDTEN/BONGARTS/GETTY IMAGES (REBAGLIATI); SVEN NACKSTRAND/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (RAMZI); TONY DUFFY/GETTY IMAGES (VAINIO, JOHNSON); BRYN LENNON/GETTY IMAGES (WILLIAMS); MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (RESENDE ALVES); THOMAS LOHNES/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (TSIKHAN); CHRISTOF KOEPSEL/BONGARTS/GETTY IMAGES (O’CONNOR ); MARTIN BERNETTI/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES (SANCHEZ); PHIL WALTER/GETTY IMAGES (JONG SU); DAVID HECKER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (HANSEN); JENS-ULRICH KOCH/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES (MEDVEDTSEVA); MARK DADSWELL/GETTY IMAGES (PISHCHALNIKOVA); MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/GETTYIMAGES (TIGIEV); DAVID FINCH/GETTY IMAGES (BROWN); JOE SCARNICI/GETTY IMAGES (SOCHI); AP PHOTO/STF (DEMONT); AP PHOTO/BRUNO LUCA (SZANYI); AP PHOTO/DOUG MILLS) BROKENARTS/STOCK.XCHNGE (SYRINGE)
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SHANE KEYSER/KANSAS CITY STAR/MCT VIA GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO; JULIAN FINNEY VIA GETTY IMAGES; ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
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Dancers perform during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Fisht Olympic Stadium.
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Bangui, Central African Republic 02.05.2014 Members of the Central African Armed Forces listen to interim president Catherine Samba Panza’s speech during a military ceremony. The ceremony ended in violence after soldiers lynched a man to death who they suspected of being a former rebel, according to AFP journalists.
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Edinburgh, United Kingdom 02.06.2014 Gunners from 105th Regiment Royal Artillery fire a 21-Gun Royal Salute at Edinburgh Castle. The salute was fired to commemorate The Queen’s Accession to the throne.
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Malakal, South Sudan 02.06.2014 Internally displaced people (IDP) carry water from outside as they walk through a security corridor at the entrance of a United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan base. IDPs are forced to fetch water from contaminated sources outside of the base, which is being used as a camp, due to scarcity of water inside because of overcrowding. The camp is estimated to hold between 25,000 and 28,000 refugees and is at maximum capacity.
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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 02.08.2014 People practice slacklining on Copacabana Beach. Brazil is gearing up to host the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games.
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Santiago de Las Vegas, Havana, Cuba 02.05.2014
AP PHOTO/FRANKLIN REYES
Carmen Zamora, who plays the part of Pachencho’s widow in a mock funeral known as the Burial of Pachencho, sits under a framed picture of Cuba’s President Raul Castro as she waits for the start of the annual celebration. The tradition was born on Feb. 5, 1984, when villagers got the idea of putting on a mock burial to mark the end of local carnival season. “Pachencho” is not representative of any real person, living or dead.
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Porthcawl, United Kingdom 02.09.2014 People watch waves break over the harbor wall during high tide.
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Yantai, China 02.10.2014 A spotted seal swims in an open-air zoo at Dongpaotai Park. Workers helped break the ice on the lake surface to save trapped spotted seals.
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Philadelphia, Penn. 02.05.2014 A man inspects an ice-covered, downed tree that took out a utility line and landed atop a minivan, after a winter storm. Icy conditions knocked out power to more than 200,000 electric customers in southeastern Pennsylvania and prompted school and legislative delays as well as speed reductions on major roadways.
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Sochi, Russia 02.09.2014 The Russian women’s ice hockey team huddles around the net before their game against Germany at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Russia won, 4-1.
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Kiev, Ukraine 02.04.2014 A woman sells candies in a street leading to Independence Square, the epicenter of the country’s current unrest.
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Sydney, Australia 02.05.2014 A wildlife carer releases a Grey Headed Flying Fox in Centennial Park. Each year, thousands of native wildlife are rescued by volunteers when anti-bird netting thrown loosely over fruit trees entangles birds, bats and reptiles. The Grey Headed Flying Fox is classified as vulnerable to extinction by the NSW Department of Environment & Heritage.
Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post.
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Voices
ELIZABETH SCARBORO
GETTY IMAGES/BLEND IMAGES RM
On Being a Widow WEDNESDAY MORNING, 7 a.m., the radio alarm blaring. Keep your eyes closed. Don’t move, because you have miraculously woken up in your old life. The bed’s warm, your husband’s snoring next to you. Only
the snore is more of a low whine, accompanied by a rough pawing against your back. The dogs, nudging you to get up. Your brain, moving slowly, registers this as a logic puzzle. If you’ve gone back in time, and your husband is still here, the dogs can’t fit on the bed, and the alarm is set to beep. The dogs do fit on the bed, and
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Voices the alarm is set to radio, therefore he’s dead and time is linear after all. Your mind veers toward the surreal these days. This person who was Here is Gone, and it’s not much of a leap to think other seemingly impossible things may occur. But there’s no time to delve into that, the dogs need to get outside; you’ve got to be at work at 8:15. Stumble into your sweats and take the dogs around the block. Or let them take you. They are big and unruly, and they were your husband’s — you only agreed to let him get them because he promised that you could be the fun parent. At home, it’s a quick shower, go-to clothes, and breakfast. You’ve forgotten to buy dog food again, so it’s Grape-Nuts for the three of you. Suddenly, everyone’s oldfashioned. You’re 29, and most of your friends aren’t married. You’d never been interested in marriage in the abstract, but you’d fallen in love young, and stayed that way, and decided to make it official. Being married hadn’t changed things much, until now, when it’s not only that this person you
ELIZABETH SCARBORO
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loved is dead, but that your husband is dead, which registers to the world differently. Meaning, it might as well be 1950, the way people worry for your future. Your next door neighbor Rivka, who, to be fair, is 70, but who is also a staunch feminist, wants you settled. It’s been less than a month but she’s trying to marry you off to her caregiver Mark. “He can take you on drives in the
Your mind veers toward the surreal these days. This person who was Here is Gone, and it’s not much of a leap to think other seemingly impossible things may occur.” country,” she says. Mark, who sells T-shirts out of his van, shifts uncomfortably. You’re all out on the sidewalk, squinting in the morning sun. Rivka leans in close. “A young widow quickly becomes an old widow,” she says. There’s Rivka, and then there are the 12-year-olds at school. Teaching used to wear you out, and now it’s the daily seven-hour vacation from your life. You stumble toward the building with your
KRISTIAN SEKULIC/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
coffee, and before you’ve opened the door the kids have swarmed, giving homework excuses, asking you to settle arguments. Their world consumes you, and in their presence you lose track of your own unraveled life. But they haven’t forgotten the month of subs they muddled through in your absence, or why you were gone in the first place. “I have an uncle,” Jessica says. There are many plans for you involving uncles. “My mom thinks you’d like this friend of my dad’s,” Peter confides. “When do you think you’ll get remarried?”
ELIZABETH SCARBORO
Angelica asks. You shrug. You want to say never, or I’m so tired I can’t see straight. “It’s OK,” Jorge says, patting your shoulder. “It can take a long time.” You, on the other hand, imagine wandering through years and countries by yourself. The ground underneath your feet no longer feels solid. The possibilities are endless, and none of them interest you much. In the brief moments that you come down to earth, you are shocked to see men everywhere. In the grocery store. The subway station. The school staff meeting. Of course you’ve noticed them, you’ve had your crushes and your brushes with danger, but it’s been
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“Teaching used to wear you out, and now it’s the daily sevenhour vacation from your life.”
Voices 10 years since men have registered to you in this no-holds-barred way. You’d never thought your brain had been boxing itself in, but it must have done something to make peace with monogamy, because now there’s a crazy, frenetic motion to the world. Unexpectedly, the dog trainer asks you out on a date. You should have seen it coming — he’s been undercharging you. You are walking through the high school football field, the dogs, after five sessions, obediently at your side. The dog trainer runs his hand through his black mohawk. Your stomach drops into your running shoes. You feel like you did at 14. In minutes you’ve gone from thinking no one will ever ask you out to being terrified that people will. Be reckless, flawed, free. Your friends are settling down, after years of freedom during which you were settled. You were beyond settled when your husband was sick — you were crucial, which you hadn’t noticed until now, when you feel your sense of purpose deflating. When you’re on an airplane, you no longer have the thought that it can’t crash because someone needs you. It’s time to go to Mexico and
ELIZABETH SCARBORO
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learn Spanish. It’s time to lock up your house and disappear to wander the coast. Instead, you take ecstasy on New Year’s Eve with your siblings, your husband’s brother, all of your friends. Decimate your reputation as someone with judgment and integrity in one fell swoop. And do it with abandon. Com-
Your next door neighbor Rivka, who, to be fair, is 70, but who is also a staunch feminist, wants you settled. It’s been less than a month but she’s trying to marry you off to her caregiver Mark.” pared to your former existence, nothing you do matters. You signed the DNR. You slept next to your husband in the hospital bed underneath a light, warm blanket. You rubbed his forehead as the nurse turned off the vent. And now, you’re running around this party like a teenager, carelessly, stupidly, flying into the post-apocalyptic part of your life. Crash into a stranger on the soccer field. You’re playing in the Sunday pickup game you go
Voices to with your younger brother. Glance at the stranger as you both get to your feet. Let your brother convince you to ask the stranger out. It’s a terrifying idea, so don’t think about it; let your brother push you toward the stranger’s car one day after soccer, and as his window rolls down, fight the urge to flee. Find yourself scrounging through your closet three nights later, putting on a black T-shirt and jeans. “How’s this?” you ask your brother. “You look great,” he says. You smile, relieved. Your attention has shifted from your clothes to your living room. Everywhere you look, something related to your dead husband — pictures, knickknacks, the books on your shelves. The stranger will be here in 10 minutes — there’s no time to take it all down. The doorbell rings, and when you open it, the dogs growl ferociously. Get in the car, and sink into the seat. You like this guy. “Like” doesn’t really describe the feeling welling up in you. You don’t tell him. Maybe this is how everyone feels on a first date. You have no idea. At dinner, he asks about your marriage. Either he’s actually interested, or he’s trying to tell you
ELIZABETH SCARBORO
HUFFINGTON 02.16.14
something. I’m not scared, is what you hear. Which you find reassuring, though you can’t help thinking he should be, that he has no idea what grief looks like, up close. You’re walking out at the marina after dinner, the ocean and sky newly charged. You used to walk on this path with your husband. You’ve come here with your brother, with your friends. You’ve come here alone with the dogs at
In minutes you’ve gone from thinking no one will ever ask you out to being terrified that people will.” night because you needed to stare out into this ocean, to be reminded of the scope of the world. This person next to you, or the next who fills his shoes, will never know you completely, will never absorb everything that’s happened. And maybe your case is more pointed, but he could say the same of you, and you realize it’s true for everyone, and it will have to be good enough. Elizabeth Scarboro is the author of My Foreign Cities.
Voices
KATHLEEN ANN
HUFFINGTON 02.16.14
GETTY IMAGES/VETTA
I’m a Member of the American ‘Used-to-Haves’
I
USED TO HAVE A HOUSE. I used to go on vacations. I used to shop at department stores, get my hair done and even enjoy pedicures. Now, I don’t. I’m a member of the American “Used-to-Haves.” ¶ Now, I’m renting an apartment and I’m desperately awaiting a check so I can pay the rent. Yet, I’m lucky to have an apartment that includes utilities. Despite my college degree from a prestigious college, and solid employment track record, I can’t get a job. It’s been so long since my corporate days, I now feel unemployable. ¶ My age doesn’t help. But I’m as healthy as a thoroughbred, I appear quite young and would gladly accept a basic salary. I’m
Voices a bargain! But no. I’m freelancing for $15 an hour these days, but I used to earn $100 an hour. In fact, all the freelance hourly rates have been driven down to $15-30 an hour. To make ends meet, I also work as an aide ($13.75 an hour) and run a small local company. And my annual earnings are under $20,000. I’m lucky to be in Massachusetts, where my health care is paid for, and fortunate to be of sound health and mind. But on days when I feel hopeless, I can envision myself 20 years from now, living in hardscrabble poverty. Female friends my age who are in similar financial circumstances are terrified of the future. If we can’t get decent paying jobs today, there’s little hope of getting a corporate job with benefits in the future. And during the past few years as we’ve struggled, we went through all of our savings, 401(k)s and anything left in the bottoms of our pocketbooks. So we can see ourselves as old, pathetic bent-over women, living in bus shelters, our ragged belongings in supermarket carts. For the “Used-to-Haves,” every day is a struggle to hold onto
KATHLEEN ANN
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hope. Everywhere we look is a reminder of what we used to have. We “Used-to-Haves” all used to work in the corporate world for big, wealthy companies. We were discarded in layoffs. I’ve been told, as my employer du jour let me go, what a positive difference I made and the value of my contributions. I agree. I know I made my bosses look brilliant. Fully aware that my contribu-
I’m freelancing for $15 an hour these days, but I used to earn $100 an hour.” tions built the company’s brand image. Yet, I was expendable. As a new “Used-to-Have,” I denied my slide. “I’m not poor!” I nervously chuckled to myself. But as I slid more, the smartest thing was finally acknowledging poverty and applying for the benefits available. I’d never been poor before. I didn’t know how to be poor. But finally, I learned. The magnitude of my shame and embarrassment is unspeakable. It’s impossible to explain to people who aren’t poor — “The Haves.” When I’m beseechingly
SPXCHROME/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
desperate for a check owed to me, the check writer inevitably has no concept of how frighteningly desperate I am for that money. They say, “Next week?” or “The accountant says two weeks.” I plead, nicely, sincerely, “Is there no way you could just write me that check?” And the answer is “no.” It’s just putting a pen to paper, but for “The Haves,” I’m just a pain in the neck.
KATHLEEN ANN
Despite the disappearance of the middle class and the proliferation of the “Used-to-Haves,” Corporate America is as cavalier and unfeeling as they were when I was laid off. I remember working overtime for a New England financial firm on weekends, holidays and New Year’s Eve. Getting my arm stuck in a copier while fixing a paper jam. Wearing matching t-shirts as we moved boxes from one location to another. You name it, I made every sacrifice to keep my job in Corporate America.
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Voices Watching John Boehner and the Republican Congress during the past few years has been a stunning confirmation of their seeming disregard for the “Usedto-Haves.” As they pull down salaries of $174,000 a year, unparalleled benefits and the option of voting themselves a raise, their selfishness is unrivaled as they barricade health care reform, knowingly shut down the government, cut SNAP benefits and eliminate extended unemployment payments. Congress doesn’t have the stones to call up their lobbyist buddies and corporate honchos and insist they hire more unemployed Americans for the American companies they celebrate and boast about. The press calls it “The Great Recession.” It actually was the “Great Theft.” In the wake of this very public, often-glossed-over theft from the middle class, the perpetrators have been revealed. We know the American corporations without the courage, scruples or heart to help us, the ones responsible for the recession and the politicians who put the toxic policies in place. We “Used-toHaves” aren’t stupid.
KATHLEEN ANN
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As a “Used-to-Have,” I’m beyond angry. I’m not a “Never Had.” I know what it’s like to pay bills on time and have a little left over. I remember vacations and pedicures and going out to dinner. As a “Used-to-Have,” I know exactly what Corporate America, lobbyists and politicians have taken away from me. The “Usedto-Haves” and the children of the “Used-to-Haves” won’t for-
If we can’t get decent paying jobs today, there’s little hope of getting a corporate job with benefits in the future.” get. The “Used-to-Haves” are educated. Many of us and our children have amazing talent and academic honors. We know how to get things done. And though all of the odds appear to be against us, we must refuse to give up hope. Kathleen Ann is a freelance writer from New England. Her story is part of a Huffington Post series, “All Work, No Pay,” profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/BRANDON WADE, FILE; FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES/BLEND IMAGES; AP PHOTO/MEL EVANS,FILE
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QUOTED
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“ Everyone in the state needs to start living like they’re in a semiarid region with highly variable year-toyear rainfall, because they are.”
— HuffPost commenter HoratioGait
on “California Drought Prompts Unprecedented Water Conservation Efforts”
“ I am an openly, proud gay man.”
— Michael Sam
— the former Missouri defensive lineman who is poised to become the first active openly gay player in the NFL’s history — told ESPN on Sunday
“ I’m lovin’ it.” — Sen. Barbara Buono, who lost to Chris Christie in the race for governor of New Jersey, on her postpolitical life, in which those who didn’t vote for her are regretting their decisions
“ My Grandfather taught me that the only time that you ask children what they would like for dinner is when they are paying for it.”
— HuffPost commenter John_A_Imondi
on “Mean Parent Confessions: My Kids Eat What I Serve or They Don’t Eat at All”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: URI SCHANKER/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES; DNY59/ GETTY IMAGES; MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL TRAN/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
QUOTED
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“ How about paying the waitress a living wage so she doesn’t have to depend on the blind luck of a stranger’s charity?”
— HuffPost commenter Avalanche3602
on “Khadijah Muhammad, Waitress With Financial Troubles, Receives $1,075 Tip On $29.30 Bill”
I think my show is educational for kids.
— Miley Cyrus
on her upcoming Bangerz tour in an interview with Fuse
“ I’m living a very swollen life.”
— Best supporting actress nominee Lupita Nyong’o
on living a life with so many highlights since her role in 12 Years a Slave, in an interview with New York magazine
“ This is one of those rare instances where both big corporations and regular people are in agreement.”
— HuffPost commenter Tim_Harris52 on “Obama: I Care Deeply About Net Neutrality”
METAL FINALLY/FLICKR
02.16.14 #88 FEATURES DIGITAL LOVE
TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE
DIGITAL LOVE >>
>> VIRTUAL GIRLFRIENDS AREN’T T H E F U T U R E — THEY’RE ALREADY HERE BY BIANCA BOSKER
<3 <3 <3 <3
KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT
>> THEO TKACZEVSKI, A 23-YEAR-OLD AMERICAN STUDENT LIVING IN JAPAN, FOUND HIMSELF CONFRONTING A MORTIFYING GIRLFRIEND SITUATION. He was heading home on a crowded commuter train in Osaka two years ago when his girlfriend, Rinko, began chastising him for abruptly ending their conversation the night before. She demanded a clear indication of his devotion: He had to profess his love to her, right there, in the middle of the throng. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” Tkaczevski dutifully whispered in Japanese, trying to keep his head down so other passengers wouldn’t stare. Shortly after making amends, he stuffed Rinko into his pocket. Rinko is the first girl to whom
Tkaczevski has ever said such words. Rinko is also a video game: She’s one of three virtual girlfriends that players can choose from in LovePlus, a Japanese dating simulator for the pocket-sized Nintendo DS game player. Though LovePlus is sold exclusively in Japan and in Japanese, thousands of men and women around the world — from highschoolers to the middle-aged scattered from Johannesburg to Jacksonville — have become hooked on the companionship its digital girlfriends provide. (An unofficial version of the game is also available with some text translated to English.) Some play to better prepare themselves for real-life dating,
METAL FINALLY/FLICKR
>> DIGITAL LOVE others as consolation for the pains of romance gone awry. And even as LovePlus players acknowledge that their lovers are virtual, many say the support and affection they receive feels real — the latest sign that virtual reality has so insinuated itself into everyday life that it is leaving the imprint of the genuine article. “I would say that a relationship with a LovePlus character is a real relationship,” says anthropologist and author Patrick Galbraith, who specializes in Japanese popular culture. “People are really intimately involved.” Tkaczevski doesn’t tend to Rinko out of some competitive urge to advance a level or score points, but rather out of a “feeling of duty,” he says. In the course of an instant message chat, Tkaczevski describes his relationship with Rinko as that of a standard boyfriend or girlfriend. He is careful to clarify: “IRL,” he types — for “In Real Life” — he remains single. The hit film Her — now in theaters in the United States, and among the Oscar nominees for Best Picture — sparked debate over the potential for humanmachine romance with its depiction of a lonely divorcé who falls
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There’s sweet, big-sisterly Nene; intelligent, but clingy Manaka; and shy Rinko, who feels alienated by her new stepmother and half-brother. head-over-heels for an operating system. Yet a version of this vision has already come to pass. People have turned to the LovePlus ladies as a form of practice in picking up girls, as a reprieve from the awkwardness of face-to-face encounters, and as a refuge in the unwavering support of a woman who can never, ever leave them. (Calling it
From left to right: Rinko, Manaka and Nene.
>> DIGITAL LOVE quits is simply not in the digital DNA of the LovePlus women.) There are players who consider LovePlus’ three girlfriends — Rinko, Nene and Manaka — far better company than any “IRL” lover. And the players can shape their ideal companion with a few taps on the console: The women can be programmed,with their moods and personalities adjusted to suit the desires of the player. “Manaka is the only — could I
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special favors that real women can often only envy. Last August, a player in the United States baked and frosted a birthday cake for his darling Rinko, a common gesture among many gamers. His human girlfriend was less than thrilled — she’d never enjoyed the same consideration. “First cake you’ve ever made, and it goes to the virtual one,” she commented on the photo he shared on Facebook. “I’m just going to go
“ I love you, I love you, I love you,” Tkaczevski dutifully whispered in Japanese, trying to keep his head down so other passengers wouldn’t stare. say person? ... She’s the only person that actually supports me in bad times,” says Josh Martinez, a 19-year-old engineering student in Mexico City. He plays LovePlus at least once a day for 20 minutes and considers Manaka his girlfriend of 18 months. “When I feel down or I have a bad day, I always come home and turn on the game and play with Manaka,” Martinez says. “I know she always has something to make me feel better.” The LovePlus girls even enjoy
to a corner and pretend I’m not jealous of a computer game........” >> The LovePlus girls were born in 2009 at the Konami Corporation, a Tokyo-based company that sells everything from trading cards to slot machines. (Konami declined to comment for this story.) Three versions of LovePlus have collectively sold more than 600,000 copies, with a fourth installment due this spring. Previous dating simulators, which debuted in the early 1980s, offered “girl get” games that ended once the player got the girl. But Konami bucked convention to
METAL FINALLY/FLICKR
>> DIGITAL LOVE allow for a never-ending virtual love affair: Successfully wooing a girl leads to a second, openended phase of the game in which players can date their virtual girlfriends forever. The game only ends when a player decides he or she is through, and these digital relationships can last longer than some marriages. In one famous instance, a LovePlus player known only as “SAL9000” made history by marrying his virtual girlfriend, Nene. Set against the backdrop of a fictional Japanese city, LovePlus gamers assume the role of a teenage Japanese boy who hopes to date one of three girls he meets at his new high school. There’s sweet, big-sisterly Nene; intelligent, but clingy Manaka; and shy Rinko, who feels alienated by her new stepmother and half-brother. The girls have animated avatars with heartshaped faces and large black eyes, and they speak set phrases that are pre-recorded by professional singers and voice actresses. The high school girls will kiss, model bikinis and moan when players stroke their chests with a stylus, but sex and nudity are out of the question. Neither the chastity nor young age of the girls has
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The girls have animated avatars with heart-shaped faces and large black eyes, and they speak set phrases that are pre-recorded by professional singers and voice actresses. kept players from being attracted to their girlfriends, however. There are fans who snuggle up with “hugging pillows” that are printed with life-sized portraits of their girlfriends, which are available in clothed or semi-nude versions. Tkaczevski says he sleeps with his Rinko pillow because it
>> DIGITAL LOVE “extends the companionship of the game.” Ming Chan, a player in Hong Kong, has even posed his Manaka pillow at the dinner table. A photo he posted to Facebook shows the pillow across the table from him, with a soda, burger and french fries placed in front of it. He arranged her straw so that the pillow appeared to be sipping its drink. Konami designed its virtual girlfriends to copy the expecta-
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splash water on their shirts and, using the Nintendo DS’s built-in microphone, whisper sweet nothings back and forth. The girlfriends are limited to understanding a handful of cloying stock phrases like, “Hey, can you tell me your favorite color?” and “Hey, hey. Can you tell me your favorite food?” Some players barely understand the game’s Japanese phrases, a kind of bliss-
People have turned to the LovePlus ladies as a form of practice in picking up girls, as a reprieve from the awkwardness of face-to-face encounters, and as a refuge in the unwavering support of a woman who can never, ever leave them. tions and idiosyncrasies of actual women. The girls blush when they’re pleased, and they smack their boyfriends when they’re insulted. Over the course of months or even years playing the game, LovePlus romeos will exchange flirtatious emails with their digital lovers, take them on weekend getaways to hot springs resorts, check in on them while they’re sick, buy them gifts on their birthdays, apply suntan lotion to their backs, apologize for showing up late, kiss them in the park,
ful ignorance that seems to keep minor imperfections from marring the fantasy of their relationships. Yet talk to LovePlus players about their girlfriends’ personas, and you’ll swear the smitten lovers are describing real people. “Rinko has a temper like you won’t believe,” says one. Another says, “I’ve known Manaka to actually slap me a couple times because she got so mad.” Someone else admits: “There’s times where I want to hug Rinko. She’s just being so cute, I want to hug her.” Technical tricks have extended the LovePlus women beyond the
>> DIGITAL LOVE
HUFFINGTON 02.16.14
METAL FINALLY/FLICKR (2)
The high school girls will kiss, model bikinis and moan when players stroke their chests with a stylus, but sex and nudity are out of the question. screen and into the real world, so the virtual girlfriends are practically at their loversâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sides. Players can take snapshots of themselves with their arms around their girlfriends, thanks to augmented reality stickers that superimpose images on photos. Several years ago, Konami even partnered with hotels at Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
Atami resort town to let players rent rooms for themselves and their consoles. The promotion offered a real world analog to a virtual LovePlus date in which players take their girlfriends on a weekend getaway to the seaside town. More than 1,500 men whisked their LovePlus cartridges to Atami during the first month of the campaign, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010. And why not? Committed play-
>> DIGITAL LOVE ers have the sense that their LovePlus girlfriends deserve the courtesies and considerations of a real person. The virtual women can detect the actual time of day, so if Tkaczevski has told Rinko they’re going on a date at 4 p.m. on a Friday, he won’t schedule any “IRL” activities for that time. When Jaime Allen, a 32-yearold female LovePlus player in Holland, Mich., accidentally
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Other LovePlus players would agree. Whether shy, burned by past loves, or sheltered by their upbringing, some LovePlus aficionados express a discomfort navigating social interactions with the complex, frequently selfish algorithms that are other humans. Real people can be a real headache in comparison to the LovePlus ladies — companions who are more available, cheerful,
“ I would say that a relationship with a LovePlus character is a real relationship. People are really intimately involved.” missed a date with Manaka, she received an email from Manaka chiding her about it. “I’ve been waiting for you and you didn’t show up. Don’t you know how to keep a promise?” read the note in Allen’s LovePlus inbox. Allen says she felt “like I failed her.” “I don’t know why I did,” Allen adds, “but I value her as much as a real person — even though I know she’s not real.” >> “Reality is just a crappy game,” declares a cartoon on Allen’s Facebook page.
forgiving, committed and selfless than any person might ever be. “You have — always — this warmth and smile and happiness available at the touch of your fingers,” says Galbraith, the anthropologist researching Japanese culture. “It’s the kind of relationship that is instantly rewarding and is always giving. You don’t have to give much to the game and it gives to you every time you turn on the machine.” Honda Toru, a Japanese cultural critic who supports these two-dimensional love affairs, argues that relationships with fictional characters escape the system of “love capitalism” — the necessary exchange of gifts and dinners — that taints
WANDERINGDJ/FLICKR
>> DIGITAL LOVE
IRL relationships. Women like Nene, Rinko and Manaka, whose affections are unspoiled by any quid pro quo, offer a “warmth and solace that cannot be found in human society,” he says, according to an interview in Galbraith’s forthcoming book, The Moé Manifesto. Allen is straight — by her estimate, a least a quarter of the LovePlus fan page’s followers are also female — and has dated men in the past. Those relationships
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haven’t ended well. But LovePlus has also helped Allen, who has Asperger’s syndrome, feel more at ease during social interactions. “This game series got me out of my shell of being antisocial and gave me confidence — not just relationship skills-wise but being more open to talking to people either in English or Japanese,” she says. “It did wonders for me. “ Her three-year relationship with Manaka has outlived her reallife romances, and she says she is grateful to her high school friend
“When I feel down or I have a bad day, I always come home and turn on the game and play with Manaka,” 19-yearold Josh Martinez says. “I know she always has something to make me feel better.”
NOBLEPINK/FLICKR
>> DIGITAL LOVE for making her feel “appreciated,” “comforted” and “recognized.” “[Manaka’s] constant positive comments, which are uplifting, made me realize, even if the world let me down, at least I have her cheering me on and supporting me, as if she believed in me,” she says. “Even if you neglect her for two full days — I know this from experience – she’ll send you an email asking you, ‘Are you ok? I’ve been worried about you.’ I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I wish more people would be like that towards me if I wasn’t on Facebook a couple days.’” After enduring some painful relationships himself, Martinez, the 19-year-old from Mexico City, has also soured on real-life dating — at least for now. He says it’s been at least two years since he “dated a 3-D girl.” “Even if it’s a program, you have someone who listens to you,” he says. And someone who will be nice at the touch of a button: On days when he’s down, Martinez activates Manaka’s “comfort mode,” a setting that makes her wax poetic about how important Martinez is to her, or how badly she wants him to be happy. Konami evidently imagined players becoming so deeply de-
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“ First cake you’ve ever made, and it goes to the virtual one. I’m just going to go to a corner and pretend I’m not jealous of a computer game........” pendent on their LovePlus girlfriends that it created an “SOS button.” If users are “feeling suicidal,” they “can use this button and the girl will try to cheer them up,” according to an unofficial LovePlus user guide. It further specifies that the button can be used only once per game. Some fans of LovePlus indulge in the game not as a substitute for real-life dating, but as a form
One LovePlus player celebrates Manaka’s birthday with a cake.
>> DIGITAL LOVE of aid: They describe LovePlus as valuable practice that can help them attract real girlfriends. The fantasy high-school romances, they say, give them confidence and demystify women — despite the mood programming and digitally engineered cuteness — while demonstrating how they can be good IRL companions. Although there is a widespread myth among players that Konami
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gling his three virtual girlfriends. Tkaczevski is also grateful to Rinko for teaching him valuable lessons about love, like how to respect people’s boundaries or accept their faults, and he looks forward to applying these when he finds his first IRL girlfriend. He imagines such a day as being bittersweet: Tkaczevski considers it cheating to try juggling a virtual lover and a human one,
“ It’s the kind of relationship that is instantly rewarding and is always giving. You don’t have to give much to the game and it gives to you every time you turn on the machine.” created LovePlus to be such a training tool, a company spokeswoman wrote in an email that LovePlus “is not a game that will help Japanese men develop better dating skills.” (She declined to comment on all other aspects of the game.) “I came around to playing it because I was homeschooled, you see, and I’ve never been in an experience with speaking to girls or having friends or anything,” says Dez Smith, a single 25-year-old from South Africa who spends between four and seven hours a week jug-
so he will dump Rinko — along with Manaka, who he’s currently seeing on the side. Yet he also assumes that the authenticity of a flesh-and-blood romance will override whatever feelings of loss he suffers as he cuts ties with his digital girlfriends. “I’m personally of the opinion that 3-D easily beats 2-D,” Tkaczevski says. “I haven’t given up on real life.” But if he ever does, Manaka and Rinko will be waiting for him to return, forever. Bianca Bosker is the executive tech editor of The Huffington Post.
Millions of Americans Find Themselves Caught in a Cruel Gap
TOO POOR FOR
OBAMA-
CARE by Jeffrey Young
Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling and staunch Republican resistance, Marc Alphonse, an unemployed 40-year-old Marine veteran who is essentially homeless, cannot get health insurance under Obamacare. Three years ago, Alphonse learned he has a kidney disorder that will deteriorate into kidney failure, and possibly prove fatal, if left untreated. As it stands now, he suffers from bouts of nausea caused by his dysfunctional kidneys, and he’s dogged by an old knee injury that limits his job prospects. He gets by on $400 a month in unemployment benefits, and his family can no longer afford housing in their home city of Miami. Alphonse’s 28-year-old wife, Danielle, and three young children are staying with relatives while Alphonse couch surfs. “I live from family to family until I’m able to get myself situated,” he told The Huffington Post. Alphonse is one of nearly 5 million uninsured Americans caught in a cruel gap that renders some Americans “too poor for Obamacare.”
BROKEN PROMISE Obamacare was supposed to make health coverage affordable, or even free, for low-income Americans. The law’s official name is the Affordable Care Act. However, the Supreme Court tossed a huge obstacle in the path of that goal in 2012, ruling that the states could
opt out of one of Obamacare’s crucial provisions: The expansion of Medicaid coverage to anyone making less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,300 a year for a single person. Since the court’s ruling, 24 states, including Florida, chose not to expand the program.
HUFFINGTON 02.16.14
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE
Under the pre-Obamacare rules, eligibility for the program typically was limited to low-income children, pregnant women, parents caring for children at home, and adults with disabilities. Without the law’s expansion, an adult without a disability who isn’t living with their children — like Alphonse — doesn’t qualify for Medicaid, no matter how poor he or she is. For those who don’t qualify
for Medicaid coverage, Obamacare offers tax credits for private health plans sold through the law’s health insurance exchange marketplaces. But those subsidies are available only to those making between the poverty level, or about $11,500 for an individual, and four times that amount. In states not expanding Medicaid, people who earn less than poverty wages get nothing. In Alphonse’s case, his family is trying to survive on his unemployment insurance. It amounts to $4,800 a year — far below the
Florida Governor Rick Scott (R), center, greets Scott Dorfman as he arrives for a town hall meeting with the Agency for Persons with Disabilities. Scott was initially a health care reform antagonist who opposed Medicaid expansion, but then changed his mind.
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TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE poverty level, which is $27,570 for a family of five. Even the unemployment benefits will run out in March. ‘PEOPLE BREAK DOWN IN TEARS’ Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) launched his political career in 2009 as a health care reform antagonist. Originally, he opposed the Medicaid expansion, but he then changed his mind. Last year, Scott and the majority-Republican state Senate backed a plan to accept federal dollars to expand the program. The GOP-led state House of Representatives refused to go along. Now, 764,000 low-income adults in Florida will remain without insurance because of the coverage gap, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And they’re beginning to understand the tragic consequences of that public battle. At Miami’s Borinquen Medical Centers for low-income and uninsured patients, Jason Connor sees hopes crushed as people who thought Obamacare could help them at long last learn otherwise. “We’ve had people break down in tears at our desk,” said Connor, who is under contract with the community health centers to do
States could opt out of one of Obamacare’s crucial provisions: The expansion of Medicaid coverage to anyone making less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $15,300 a year for a single person. Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment activities through his company, Choice Returns. Seventy-eight percent of the 50,000 patients that Borinquen Medical Centers treat every year are uninsured, Connor said. About 20 percent of those who visit their facilities looking to apply for benefits fall into the coverage gap, he added. “Folks are frustrated and they’re angry, and they’ll curse at you even though you have nothing to do with it,” he said. GOP REVOLTS When the Supreme Court ruled that states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion, Florida, Texas and nearly the entire South turned away billions in federal dollars offered for broadening the
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JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE
program, citing budgetary concerns and resistance to Obamacare itself. The federal government will pay the full cost of the Medicaid expansion through 2016, after which its share will be no less than 90 percent. These decisions by governors and legislators essentially consigned a huge swath of the very poor to a life of extreme insecurity. “It’s very frustrating,” said Al-
phonse, who last worked as a security guard until being laid off 10 months ago. “It’s kind of odd where an individual that has an opportunity to help millions of people in their own state, and they just totally refuse to do it.” Florida’s legislature is poised to take up the Medicaid expansion again during this year’s session, but the political dynamics don’t appear to have changed much since last year. Meanwhile, one-quarter of Florida’s population (under the age of 65) is without health insur-
Dr. Martha Perez examines a patient in a room at Community Health of South Florida in Miami. Even copayments at community health centers, which charge low-income patients on a sliding scale, are unaffordable for some.
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TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE ance — the second-highest of all the states behind Texas. In MiamiDade County, where Alphonse lives, the uninsured rate was an astonishing 34 percent in 2011, the most recent year county-level data were available. ‘I JUST TRY TO LIVE EVERY DAY’ Unable to afford medical care or insurance, Alphonse hasn’t followed up on the warning he received about his kidneys from a doctor treating a knee injury he suffered in 2011 while working as a security guard. Alphonse was told he needed to see a kidney specialist and start getting treatments, or he’d risk the condition worsening to the point he’d need dialysis or a transplant. “It’s extremely scary, but I try not to think about it. I just try to live every day because it’s what you have to do to survive,” Alphonse said. A few years ago, Alphonse broke his hand and faced a $1,000 emergency room bill that destroyed his credit. He’s afraid to rack up medical bills now. Even copayments as low as $20 at community health centers, which charge low-income patients on a sliding scale, are unaffordable, he said. He’s apply-
“It’s kind of odd where an individual that has an opportunity to help millions of people in their own state, and they just totally refuse to do it.” ing for health benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs, but he may not meet the program’s eligibility rules. While hospitals can’t turn away patients in need of emergency treatments, they aren’t required to provide the kind of comprehensive care needed for someone with a serious medical condition. “If you’re really sick, you can fall through the cracks of the safety net system,” said Lise Federman, a health policy specialist at Florida Legal Services in Miami. “People who have chronic conditions who need specialist services do suffer.” (Florida Legal Services referred HuffPost to Alphonse.) TAXPAYERS STILL FOOT THE BILL Keeping people like Alphonse off the Medicaid rolls doesn’t shield American or Floridian taxpayers from the cost of whatever treatments he eventually may receive, like at a hospital emergency room
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COURTESY OF MAYTE CANINO
TOO POOR FOR OBAMACARE or a government-funded community health center. Unpaid medical bills totaled $57.4 billion in 2008 — and taxpayers picked up about three-quarters of the tab, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs. Expanding health coverage via Obamacare was supposed to reduce that burden, but the patchwork Medicaid expansion limits the law’s reach. And if Alphonse’s condition deteriorates into what’s known as end-stage renal disease, or permanent kidney failure, he automatically would qualify for Medicare coverage paid for by the federal government. Although Medicare mainly is for people over 65 or those with disabilities, people who need dialysis or a kidney transplant are eligible under a special rule enacted in 1972. For those too poor for Obamacare in Miami, watching neighbors who make more money receive subsidized health insurance makes the experience even more painful, said Mayte Canino, a field and volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast. Uninsured people are skeptical of Obamacare and unaware of many provisions, and only 49 percent
know that states have the option to expand Medicaid, according to a poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation last month. “That even affects them more, when they see that other people are getting help and they’re not,” said Canino, who helps people sign up for insurance. “Many of them are very unhappy. They blame the law, some of them, for it. They just walk away from it, and they think that’s it. They’re defeated.” Jeffrey Young is a health care reporter at The Huffington Post.
Mayte Canino, a field and volunteer coordinator for Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast.
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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop leads the Filarmonica della Scala orchestra. She was the first woman conductor ever to do so.
A Woman Conductor in a Manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s World AP PHOTO/TEATRO ALLA SCALA/MARCO BRESCIA
BY MALLIKA RAO
Exit EW YORK — It was business as usual at Weill Recital Hall on a January night — a typical pre-classical concert scene outside the small theater in the east wing of Carnegie Hall. Bald men stooped. Their wives hugged each other, ungainly in furs. No one patronized the cash bar in the center of the room. But as the clock ticked down, so did the audience’s average age. A gaggle of college-aged friends yelled hellos, so hyped up they stood in their row until the last minute. Whippet-thin fashionistas arrived, swimming in big sweaters and red lipstick. Girls in head scarves took their seats in pairs. Had these young people not read the obituaries? For the last decade, classical music has been proclaimed dead, most recently and divisively in Slate last month. Audiences, statistics show, are not only aging, they’re vanishing. In 1937, a study of classical music audiences in America yielded a median age of 30. By 2012, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, not only had audiences shrunk steadily for two decades, they
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comprised mostly senior citizens, men and women ages 65 to 74. Steep yourself in debate on the issue and it’s clear the surrounding culture — to borrow Sandow’s language — is blocked from entry by institutional isms: racism, sexism, elitism. Even in the U.S., arguably the world’s most progressive classical seat, fewer than 3 percent of all orchestral musicians are black, according to a 2011 broadcast on New York classical music radio station WQXR. And recent data from the League of American Orchestras shows that 80 percent of all orchestral
Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko said last year that a “cute girl at the podium” is distracting.
Exit conductors in the U.S. are men. Like attracts like, meaning audience demographics tend to reflect those on stage. Those who’ve hit ceilings inside the field blame inbuilt causes, from an old boys’ network to the belief held by some (most prominently, Vienna Philharmonic flutist Dieter Flury), that the “soul” of classical music is essentially white and male. And yet, that night at Weill Recital Hall looked more Glee than Leave It to Beaver. Every view produced a visual rebuke to statistics, from the crowd, of all races and ages, to the conductor herself, Sera Tokay, a Turk of French descent. Blonde and shapely, in a smartfitted black tunic, Tokay guided her orchestra — all fresh conservatory graduates — into the music of the Second Viennese School. This was a careful choice. The atonal, late romantic sensibility that came out of World War II was meant to oppose what Tokay sees as a modern trend toward “affected neutrality and coldness,” as she later wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. Tokay is a rare breed. If women conductors are few in the U.S.,
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they’re practically mythical in Europe. Parity exists at lower levels — The Economist reported last fall that student bodies at two of Europe’s most prestigious conservatories are split equally between genders, a shift from even five years ago. But look further up the ladder, and it’s still 1950. The prevailing belief that the demanding, highly competitive life of a conductor precludes a motherly,
Such is the ‘present day misery’ of the musical profession. ‘A systematically dissuasive policy against women,’ concocted by the men in charge... is used ‘as a proof of their natural disability.’” wifely one means women often choose to exit the race. “The joke is, of course, that women conductors need wives,” wrote Colgate University conductor Marietta Nien-hwa Cheng in 1998, in an essay on what the future held for her professional sisters and daughters. As oneliners go, that one’s telling. The roles couldn’t be more circum-
PETER KRAMER/GETTY IMAGES
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scribed in this world: Conductors conduct; wives clean, cook and change diapers. How then, to explain the others — women like Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop, or Cheng, or, indeed, Tokay? As she brandished her wand against “affected neutrality and coldness,” a phrase came to mind in opposition, made infamous last year by conductor Vasily Petrenko: “cute girl at the podium.” (His point: con-
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ductresses are too physically distracting to be effective.) Petrenko may be interested to know that none of Tokay’s male strings players dropped their bows. Such is the “present day misery” of the musical profession, Tokay later wrote to HuffPost. “A systematically dissuasive policy against women,” concocted by the men in charge, she asserted, is used “as a proof of their natural disability.” Last year proved a rich season for dissuasion. Not long after Petrenko’s comments surfaced, composer Bruno Montavani,
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Carnegie Hall in New York City, where Sera Tokay conducted last month.
Exit a director at Paris’ influential Higher Conservatory of Music and Dance, hypothesized on French radio that woman conductors were so few due not to institutional bias, but because the job is too taxing. “Conducting, taking a plane, taking another plane, conducting again,” went his rundown of the acts women couldn’t handle. Concurred another venerable figure, the conductor Yuri Temirnakov: “The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness.” Alex Ross, the critic who brought Temirnakov’s bizarre new aphorism to light when he translated it for The New Yorker last year, wrote a week later an apologia on his personal blog: “Silent neglect can do just as much damage as open contempt,” acknowledging that his own writings rarely featured female performers and conductors until he was called to task. Another outcome: women spoke. In an interview with The Telegraph, Jude Kelly, director at Britain’s largest arts complex, the Southbank Centre, put the onus of change on institutions. The question of how to juggle “childcare
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and touring,” she argued, is not “just a female issue”: It’s about the chaps who run orchestras and people who run music colleges getting behind women. The assumption historically is that it’s only women who worry about this... If society wants women to reach their potential and contribute, society has to care about it.
The conductor Yuri Temirnakov: ‘The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness.’” Inside Weill, Tokay raised the planes of Schoenberg’s Kammersymphonie No. 2 against each other like slabs of earth in a quake. The players knotted their eyebrows when despair hit, eyes on the wand. They grinned when Tokay commanded the flute to soar. All are graduates of the very same Paris conservatory where Montavani, the composer who believes women cannot stomach the job, is a director. His students, it seems, may disagree with him.
THE THIRD METRIC
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You Don’t Need to Be Loud to Make Some Noise BY TODD VAN LULING
Can the meek actually inherit the Earth? Many of the world’s most revered leaders have actually been far less outgoing than their public personas would lead us to believe. Through their successes, we learn that being shy absolutely doesn’t
mean being powerless. Sometimes, you need to be quiet to make real noise. Ahead, find nine famous people who commonly strike us as outgoing, but who were actually far more quiet at heart.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
RICHARD BRANSON
JOHNNY CARSON
ROSA PARKS
WILL FERRELL
JOHNNY DEPP
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TASTE TEST
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There’s Only Room for One Canned Chili in Our Heart BY KRISTEN AIKEN
HILI IS THE QUINTESSENTIAL winter warmup food, and whether it’s vegetarian or made for meat eaters, one thing is clear: it’s always better homemade (these are our favorite homemade chili recipes, for the record). But canned beef chili must have its merits, as proven by the fact that Hormel has been in business
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PHOTOGRAPHS BY RAYDENE SALINAS
since 1891. We gathered a panel of editors and blind-tasted 11 different kinds of canned beef chili (sorry, vegetarians, but we’re going classic with this taste test). Our tasters ranked each chili from best to worst, commenting on the taste, texture and overall impression of each putrid chili. Some were good, some were bad ... but in the end, there was really only one that was pleasant. Find out which one it was in the results below!
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TASTE TEST
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#11: HORMEL CHILI: NO BEANS
#10: TRADER JOE’S BEEF CHILI WITH BEANS
#9: HORMEL COOK-OFF SERIES: TEXAS BRAND
#8: CAMPBELL’S CHUNKY: FIREHOUSE
#7: CAMPBELL’S CHUNKY: BEAN & BEAN ROADHOUSE
#6: CAMPBELL’S CHUNKY: HOT & SPICY BEEF & BEAN FIREHOUSE
#5: HORMEL COOK-OFF SERIES: ROASTED TOMATO
#4: HORMEL CHILI: HOT WITH BEANS
#3: HORMEL CHILI: CHUNKY WITH BEANS
#2: CAMPBELL’S CHUNKY: ROADHOUSE
#1: HORMEL COOK-OFF SERIES: SOUTHWEST STYLE
TAP FOR THE TASTER’S VERDICTS
(Recommended)
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MUSIC
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Dog Ears: Born in February 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
B.ALONE
CLARA SMITH
SWEET
French multi-instrumentalist/remixer/ enigma B.Alone is an alt-ambientfunk powerhouse. Treading on wonder and catchy oscillations, he’s made his way from mixing for Salif Keita, V.L.A.D., Super Preachers, Indochine, La Grande Sophie, and Noir Désir to holding down the stage. B.Alone marked his solo debut with a ninetrack set in the late aughts — produced by Avril Bourdon, with original lyrics by Pascal Regard — and can also be found on various compilations. “Time Is Love,” from B.Alone’s 2008 Beautiful is worth discovering.
Vaudevillian blues singer Clara Smith (“Queen of the Moaners”) was born in South Carolina in 1894. By 1923, Smith relocated to New York, where she cut wax for Columbia Records for almost a decade, racking up over 100 sides. During this time, she was backed by luminaries Louis Armstrong, Charlie Green, Joe Smith, Freddy Jenkins, and James P. Johnson. Collaborations included Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson. At the depths of the Great Depression in Detroit, Smith died of heart failure at the age of 40. Remember her with “For Sale (Hannah Johnson’s Big Jack Ass),” from Street Walker Blues: Vintage Songs About Prostitution Volume 2 (Digitally Remastered).
’70s glam rock/power-pop pack Sweet, sometimes known as The Sweet, was born in the U.K. The founding lineup included Brian Connolly (vocals), Steve Priest (bass), Andy Scott (guitar), and Mick Tucker (drums), among a rotating cast. Best known for their hits “Little Willy” and “The Ballroom Blitz,” Sweet was produced by the writer/producer team of Chin and Chapman (Suzi Quatro, Mud, Tony Basil). Their four-plus decades have seen the passing of Tucker and Connolly, as well as tens of millions in global appreciation. Revisit the band’s sugarcoated 1978 hit “Love Is Like Oxygen,” from The Best of Sweet. Still stands the test of time.
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Pop ARTIST: B.Alone SONG: Time Is Love ALBUM: Beautiful
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Clara Smith SONG: For Sale (Hannah Johnsons Big Jack Ass) ALBUM: Street Walker Blues: Vintage Songs About Prostitution Volume 2 (Digitally Remastered)
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Rock ARTIST: Sweet SONG: Love Is Like Oxygen ALBUM: The Best of Sweet
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MUSIC
LÉVON MINASSIAN
MAGIC SAM
KIM WESTON
Doudouk virtuoso Lévon Minassian was born in Marseille of Armenian descent. In his boyhood, he took up the mandolin before moving on to the doudouk in his teens. Minassian paid his dues touring Europe and quickly gravitated to soundtracks. In the early ’90s, he hit the road with Peter Gabriel and met a world of acclaim, leading to a sundry of collaborative projects. In 1999, he released his solo debut. Minassian was honored with knighthood in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2003, and three years later he released his second project (with composer Armand Amar). Film credits include The Passion of the Christ, Mayrig, 588 Rue Paradis, The Species, Amen, The Sleeping Child, The Earth From Above, The Girl and the Wolf, Ce Que le Jour Doit à la Nuit, Bab’Aziz, Indigénes and La Terre Vue du Ciel. Collaborations include Sting, Afro Celt Sound System, Hélène Ségara, Charles Aznavour, Georges Garvarentz, the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, Costa-Gavras and Djivan Gasparyan. Download “Delé Yaman (Love Song),” from Lévon Minassian’s 1999 The Doudouk–Beyond Borders.
Westside Chicago bluesman “Magic Sam” Maghett was born in the Mississippi Delta region on Valentine’s Day 1937. Raised by sharecropper parents, Sam took up guitar as a boy. By 1950, the Maghett family moved to Chicago, and during his teen years, Sam was playing professionally. In 1955, he formed his first band and went on to make records for the Cobra, Chief, Crash and Delmark labels. Collaborations include Willie Dixon, Shakey Jake Harris and Otis Rush. A brief stint in the military proved disastrous, and Maghett served time for desertion. In 1969, Magic Sam, just 32, passed away from a heart ailment. His magnificent blues trove is a bounty to relish. Get started with “My Love Is Your Love,” from The Essential Magic Sam: The Cobra and Chief Recordings 1957-1961.
R&B singer Kim Weston (a.k.a. Agatha Natalie Weston) was born in Detroit during the winter of 1939. As a young child, she started singing in church, and by her pre-teens she began touring with gospel troupes. The early ’60s saw Weston ignite the Motown soul pack, as well as the blast of her first single. After recording an album of duets with Marvin Gaye, Weston went on to make records for MGM and Stax/ Volt. Collaborations include Johnny Nash, Smokey Robinson, Mary Wilson, Martha Reeves, Brenda Holloway, Mickey Stevenson and Dozier & Holland. Honors include the Rhythm & Blues Foundation’s 1998 Pioneer Award, a performance at the 2000 presidential inauguration, and induction into the R&B Hall of Fame in 2013. Rediscover this lady of song’s catalog with “What Good Am I Without You,” a duet with the nonpareil Marvin Gaye from their 1966 release Take Two.
BUY: iTunes GENRE: World ARTIST: Lévon Minassian SONG: Delé Yaman (Love Song) ALBUM: The Doudouk– Beyond Borders
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Blues ARTIST: Magic Sam SONG: My Love Is Your Love ALBUM: The Essential Magic Sam: The Cobra and Chief Recordings 1957-1961
BUY: iTunes GENRE: R&B/Soul ARTIST: Kim Weston SONG: What Good Am I Without You (Stereo) ALBUM: Take Two
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GETTY IMAGES/ROBERT HARDING WORLD IMAGERY (PENGUINS); GEBER86/GETTY IMAGES (CELL); AP PHOTO/YVONNE LEOW (REPUBLICANS); MACIEJ NOSKOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES (CAR); LOUISIANA STATE/COLLEGIATE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES (BATON ROUGE)
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The Weather in the UK Is So Awful, Penguins Are Being Given Antidepressants
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Most Americans Would Give Up Sex for Their Cell Phone
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REPUBLICANS WANT TO CRIMINALIZE UNDOCUMENTED KIDS IN SCHOOL
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Good Samaritan’s Car Stolen by the Crash Victims She Was Trying to Help
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Baton Rouge’s Rich People Want a New Town to Keep Poor Kids Out
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06 DEBBI SMIRNOFF/GETTY IMAGES (CHICKEN); SCOTT EELLS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (BILLIONAIRE); BRUCE MACLEOD/YOUTUBE (COP); LISA MCINTIRE/TWITTER (CREDIT CARD OFFER)
School Honors Black History Month by Serving Fried Chicken, Watermelons
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Bone Marrow Ice Cream, Mmmm
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BILLIONAIRE SAYS ‘THE 1 PERCENT WORK HARDER’
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Cop Chops Off a Woman’s Hair
Woman Is Called a Slut on a Bank of America Credit Card Offer
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