HOOKED ON HEROIN
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LIVE FROM SPACE
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THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
MARCH 9, 2014
COOL CHRISTIAN
THE
BRINGING GOD’S WORD TO MAINSTREAM HIP HOP
BY JON WARD
03.09.14 #91 CONTENTS
Enter POINTERS: Ukraine’s Tug of War... SAT Rehaul JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: Banned in the U.S. Q&A: Live From Space MOVING IMAGE
Voices
FROM TOP: COURTESY OF REACH RECORDS; TORONTO STAR/STEVE RUSSELL/GETTY IMAGES
LINCOLN MITCHELL: Remember When Democrats Cared About Income Inequality?
RAPPING THE GOSPEL “Christians have no idea how to deal with art.” BY JON WARD
MARK GONGLOFF: Of Course Fast-Food Workers Say Crazy Things on Receipts QUOTED
Exit CULTURE: These Celebrities May Want to Stop With the Whole ‘Art’ Thing THE THIRD METRIC: The Secret to Happiness MUSIC: Dog Ears TFU
HEROIN’S MEDICAL COUSIN “This... public health crisis [is] essentially caused by physicians.” BY JILLIAN BERMAN
FROM THE EDITOR: Music With a Message ON THE COVER:
Lecrae Moore for Huffington Courtesy of Reach Records
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
HUFFINGTON 03.09.14
Music With a Message N THIS WEEK’S issue, Jon Ward profiles Lecrae Moore, a fascinating artist straddling the Christian and hip hop worlds. Moore, whose music comes with a distinctly Christian message, has long been a poster child for evangelical Christians spreading their gospel at festivals and events. Over the past two years, however, Moore has started breaking into more mainstream hip hop circles, trying to reach a broader audience. “Lecrae is one of many modern evangelicals who have rejected the path set by the combative ‘Moral Majority’ culture warriors of the 1980s, and instead embraced an assimilation into the mainstream and
ART STREIBER
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its formative institutions, hoping to shape it from within,” Jon writes. At times, this places him awkwardly between two worlds: the Christians who think he’s sold out, and the hip hop listeners who don’t want music with a moral lesson of any kind. But for the most part, his message is subtle enough to appeal to both camps. When BET’s director of music programming, Kelly Griffin, first heard Moore’s music, he equated it to how he felt when he first heard Kanye West. “[Lecrae] makes being a Christian cool. It doesn’t feel preachy,”
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Griffin told Jon. “It doesn’t come off as holier than thou, but speaks to people’s circumstances, experiences, and just life in general, just like regular hip hop.” Elsewhere in the issue, Jillian Berman tells the disturbing story of how a drug company got Americans addicted to heroin. The rise in heroin use over the past decade has run alongside a rise in prescription opioids, which are painkillers that are a “medical cousin to heroin,” Jillian explains. The difference is, opioids are legal when prescribed by a doctor. Nearly four out of five people who recently became addicted to heroin used prescription painkillers first. “We have now this incredibly unusual public health crisis that’s essentially caused by physicians, caused by the health care industry,” Meldon Kahan, the medical director of substance use services at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, tells Jillian. In our Voices section, Mark Gongloff weighs in on a recent incident that stirred public outrage: when a Burger King employee handed an elderly customer her receipt with a profane insult written on it. Mark
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draws on his personal experience in order to bring some much-needed perspective to the story. “I worked in fast food for years, and let me tell you: The customers there... can be the worst part of a pretty terrible job, one that
It doesn’t come off as holier than thou, but speaks to people’s circumstances, experiences, and just life in general, just like regular hip hop.” involves grueling physical labor, rock-bottom pay, miserable working conditions and the feeling like you will never, ever get the smell and feel of grease out of your hair, face or clothing,” Mark writes. Finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric, we look back — more than two thousand years — at a man who may have found the secret to happiness.
ARIANNA
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TUG OF WAR 1 Ukraine’s east-west standoff intensified this week as the nation’s new government
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in Kiev worked to establish its legitimacy. Meanwhile, pro-Moscow leaders in the west voted for Crimea to leave Ukraine and join Russia, and set a referendum for residents of the disputed peninsula to vote on the matter. President Obama said Thursday that the referendum would violate the constitution, and that any decisions on the future of Crimea must include the nation’s new government. “We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders,” he said. The U.S. banned visas for anyone deemed “responsible for or complicit in” threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty Thursday. Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called the Crimea efforts to break away “an illegitimate decision.”
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GROUNDBREAKING SELFIE
The biggest winner at the 86th annual Academy Awards on Sunday night was host Ellen DeGeneres’ record-breaking selfie, which crashed Twitter when it went viral and topped President Barack Obama’s election night post to become the most retweeted tweet in history. The photo, which has now been shared more than 3 million times, includes stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Meryl Streep.
FROM TOP: THEELLENSHOW/TWITTER; JUAN BARRETO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL
3 A CONFLICTED ANNIVERSARY
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Venezuela marked the one-year anniversary this week of the death of leader Hugo Chavez, as demonstrations continued against his successor, Nicolas Maduro. Twenty people have been killed in the worst unrest in the country in a decade, as protesters express discontent over runaway inflation, violent crime and a struggling economy. Venezuelans are divided on the legacy of their former leader, and Maduro has pledged to stay true to Chavez’s policies. While unrest has been significant, Reuters reported “there seems to be little chance of a Ukraine-style change at the top.”
BUDGETARY WISH LIST
President Barack Obama released his 2015 fiscal year budget on Tuesday. The $3.9 trillion blueprint includes funding for some of Obama’s top priorities as outlined in his most recent State of the Union address, and is widely seen as a shift away from an austerity agenda of previous years’ proposals. It includes plans to raise taxes on the rich, expand the earned-income tax credit, and offer more funds to agencies affected by the sequester cuts. It also calls for increased spending on education, public works and research projects. Republicans in Congress are expected to block many of the budget’s initiatives, so it’s more of a wish list and a guide for Democrats going into the 2014 elections than an actual fiscal plan, but Democrats hope to preserve some of its ideas.
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CPAC 2014
At least 10,000 conservatives from across the country arrived Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, D.C., for three days of panels and meetings. Among this year’s highlights are a speech by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and a meet-and-greet with the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre. Panels will include one asking “what’s the deal” with this “Al Gore fever dream” called global warming, one wondering why “conservatives hire tech guys based on ideology and NOT competence,” and one explaining how to “make your blog posts go viral.”
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FROM TOP: MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES; BART SADOWSKI/GETTY IMAGES
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THE SAT REIMAGINED THAT’S VIRAL YOU THINK YOU’RE CRAFTY? PREPARE TO BE PUT TO SHAME.
The College Board announced big changes to the SAT college-entrance exam Wednesday, including a return to the 1600-point scale. The essay will now be optional, students will no longer lose points for wrong answers, and calculators will only be allowed for some of the math portion. “We need to get rid of the sense of mystery and dismantle the advantages that people perceive in using costly test preparation,” College Board President David Coleman said. The College Board plans to partner with the YouTube-based tutoring company Khan Academy to create free test-preparation tools. More details on the redesign are expected in mid-April.
A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories. HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES
THE BEST TIME TO BUY A PLANE TICKET
THESE HISTORICAL FACTS WILL BLOW YOUR MIND
10 COMMON MISTAKES MOST PARENTS ARE MAKING
THREE YEAR OLDS ARE A**HOLES
RICHARD ELLIS/GETTY IMAGES
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JASON LINKINS
HUFFINGTON 03.09.14
RELAX EVERYBODY, NOBODY IS A ‘2016 FRONTRUNNER’ YET DON’T KNOW if it was the anticipation of being snowed, or the zany highs of award season reaching their peak
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with the Academy Awards, but last weekend was a looney-tune time for Washington’s professional 2016 Speculasturbators. Did you know that we already have “frontrunners” for 2016? As in more than one? Ninnyhammers, away! (See
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a “frontrunner” for 2016.
Enter Exhibits A and B to your right). Hey, I just double-checked, but it’s apparently only March in the year 2014, so everyone can feel free to just chill, for God’s sake. Look, y’all. I ain’t even trying to put the kibosh on discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of potential 2016 candidates. I’m even OK with making comparisons. But we have to stop abusing this poor word, “frontrunner,” before the English-language’s version of Sarah MacLachlan starts making sad teevee commercials about it. There is no “frontrunner” at this point. There isn’t even a race. But once the race is enjoined, we’ll still really need some new rules governing the use of this word. As things are, we deploy the word “frontrunner” way too readily, using it to describe everybody from candidates who are clearly dominating a race, to candidates who have snagged a slight lead over a pack of contenders, to — as in the above cases — candidates who aren’t even candidates. It’s important to remember that when Chris Cillizza or Conn Carroll declare a frontrunner, they’ve not taken the pulse of America or done anything quantitative to make that determination. They approach it with this
LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
kind of thinking: “Which prospective candidate, if I named them the ‘frontrunner,’ would give my personal #brandz #moar #klout.” But look, I’m trimming my own excesses and taking responsibility for my own abuses, as well. Back in the 2012 GOP primary, as the fortunes of the various candidates waxed and waned over the months, I passed around the term “frontrunner” a little too promiscuously. So, now, I’m taking up the cause
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ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
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of HuffPost Pollster’s own Mark Blumenthal, who wants this term to be used more realistically, so we stop hurting this poor word “frontrunner” so much! Here are some rules, from Mark Blumenthal: 1. “First, to be a frontrunner you need to at least have a real lead, which means statistical significance in some form. But again that’s the easy part.” 2. “Second, we really need a different term to distinguish the true, dominant, likely-to-win frontrunner from a candidate that enjoys an early lead that’s
LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST
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We really need a different term to distinguish the true, dominant, likely-to-win frontrunner from a candidate that enjoys an early lead that’s quite possibly temporary.” quite possibly temporary.” My advice is to consider using terms like “ahead of the pack” or “so hot right now” or “I get sprung when I think of [NAME OF CANDIDATE],” and let the truly dominant candidates take “frontrunner.” Because, honey, you do not want to have headlines like, “Newt Gingrich, frontrunner” on your record. Oof.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.), another 2016 “frontrunner.”
Q&A
FROM TOP: ROBERT MARKOWITZ/NASA; NASA
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Astronauts Aboard the ISS Destiny Laboratory, Live From Space “We’re constantly doing blood draws and urine samples to see how our bodies change and are affected by this 0-G environment.”
Expedition 38 crew members pose for inhouse portraits in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station (above) and NASA’s Johnson Space Center (below).
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE
DATA
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The Most Unnecessary Bans in the U.S. Here are the states where you can’t do things like buy
AK
WY
MT
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•
•
OR •
PAC
N
• MO
• WI
• SD
• ND
• KS
I
•M
Y
•K
• OH • IA
MID WE
IFIC
• IN
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WA •
•M
HI •
COHABITATION • SUNDAY SPRIT SALES • ATHEIST IN PUBLIC OFFICE • SEX TOYS • FREE HAPPY HOUR DRINKS • PUMPING YOUR OWN GAS • CONSUMER FIREWORKS • GAY MARRIAGE •
• NE
booze on a Sunday — or get married if you’re gay.
• IL
CA •
• VT
WEST
ID • CO •
• RI • PA
NORT
UT •
• NY
HE A S T
AZ • NV •
• NJ
SOUTH
NM •
• NH
• ME
TX •
•M
OK •
A
•
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•C
AR
VA •
TN •
SC •
NC •
GA •
FL •
LA •
AL •
MS
•
C
•D
• DE • MD
• WV
SOURCES: FREEDOM TO MARRY, PROHIBITIONREPEAL. COM, TEXAS ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE COMMISSION, AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION, AL.COM, AMERICAN PYRO
Enter Luzon, Spain 03.01.2014
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A man covers his face in oil and soot as he gets ready to start a carnival festival. Preserved records from the 14th century document Luzon’s carnival, but the real origin of the tradition could be much older.
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Kandahar, Afghanistan 02.25.2014 A member of the Afghan National Security Forces keeps watch as U.S. Army soldiers from 4th squadron 2d Cavalry Regiment meet with local Afghan officials at an Afghan National Police outpost. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Caracas, Venezuela 02.27.2014 Protesters run from tear gas fired by the Venezuelan national guard during an anti-government demonstration. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Bogor, Indonesia 02.27.2014 A slow loris grabs a syringe as it is treated by vets at a sanctuary for the endangered animals, which have been confiscated from individuals or markets that illegally sell them as pets. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Vortova, Czech Rep. 03.01.2014 Men dressed in a traditional carnival costume walk from house to house during the folklore carnival parade, which celebrates the departing winter, forthcoming spring and start of the 40-day Lent. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Beijing, China 03.03.2014 Two Armed Police guard in front of Tiananmen Square during the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Bergen, Germany 03.02.2014 Male residents of Bergen perform in Bavarian clothes during the traditional “Pfannenflicker” dance, which goes back to the 16th century and was used to help bring artisans back into the villages after the Black Death. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Siak, Riau, Indonesia 03.03.2014 A firefighter takes a drink after extinguishing a fire burning at a plantation. The air quality reached dangerous levels as forest fires continued to burn in Indonesia’s Riau province after a long period of dry weather. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Washington, D.C. 03.02.2014 Several hundred students and youth who marched from Georgetown University to the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline tied themselves to the fence outside the White House. Many of those protesting were arrested. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Rawalpindi, Pakistan 02.28.2014 Photographs of missing people are covered with rose petals during a march in Rawalpindi. Affected families walked nearly 3,000 kilometers to reach the capital, Islamabad, and protest against the abductions and killings of their loved ones by Pakistani security agencies. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Barcelos, Portugal 03.02.2014 Masked revelers make their way to the Carnival parade, donning giant puppet heads made with a wire frame, wood, coated paper, cloth, and covered with plaster, glue and paint. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Jerusalem 03.02.2014 An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man watches from a balcony as hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews rally in a massive show of force against plans to force them to serve in the Israeli military, blocking roads and paralyzing the city. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Voices
LINCOLN MITCHELL
Remember a Month Ago When the Democrats Cared About Income Inequality? IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS, income inequality has quietly fallen out of its brief prominent place in the public debate and discussion. It’s still mentioned by some economists and some progressive pundits, but something has changed.
A few months ago the president of the United States was making speeches about income inequality; the new mayor of New York placed that issue front and center in his inaugural address; and the pope, of course, was drawing the most attention the issue by pointing out the contradictions between dramatic income in-
President Barack Obama speaks at the Costco in Lanham, Md., on Jan. 29, to highlight the importance of raising the federal minimum wage for all Americans.
Voices equality and the teachings of the Catholic Church. All that seems like a long time ago now. Income inequality itself, of course, has not gone away in the weeks since its brief moment in the media sun. The damage income inequality is doing to the American middle class and to the country more generally, and the potential for organizing around the issue is still real, but it seems that it is no longer receiving a lot of attention in Washington. This is more of a reflection of problems within the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. The Republican Party, after all, has no interest in reducing income inequality, and vacillates between not viewing income inequality as a problem and not believing it exists at all. For them, removing income inequality from the legislative and media agenda is a clear, if perhaps overlooked, victory. The Democratic Party, however, is in a different situation. Leaders of that party, beginning with the president have sporadically talked about the issue while consistently doing very little about it. This is a failure of both politics and policy. Democrats in Congress
LINCOLN MITCHELL
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and in the White House have been unable to propose laws or legislate effectively in a way that will ameliorate income and wealth disparities and the corrosive effect they have on our system. President Obama has raised the minimum wage for federal employees, but this is a far cry from a comprehensive policy. Moreover, this has contributed to the income inequality discussion being limited to a
Democrats in Congress and in the White House have been unable to propose laws or legislate effectively in a way that will ameliorate income and wealth disparities.� debate about raising the minimum wage. While the minimum wage should be raised, that is not the ideal terms for progressives to be fighting the income inequality fight. Creating a comprehensive plan to address income inequality beyond raising the minimum wage, it should be recognized, is extremely difficult. There are no easy answers, although several valuable first steps, to solve this problem. Moreover, the political
MIKE THEILER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
obstacles which will be raised by moneyed interests in both parties are daunting. Nonetheless, the political failure of the Democratic Party on this issue is disturbing. Historically, the U.S. has done much less to create equality of either opportunity or income than almost every other advanced economy, so the default setting in the U.S. with regards to income inequality is to do nothing, or to
LINCOLN MITCHELL
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While the minimum wage should be raised, that is not the ideal terms for progressives to be fighting the income inequality fight.� make it worse. At the moment, protestations by the president and others notwithstanding, the default setting still is in place. Accordingly, legislation addressing income inequality can only be successful if political support for that legislation is strong. The
Obama during a tour to promote policies outlined in his State of the Union speech, including raising the minimum wage.
Voices responsibility for building that consensus lies with the leadership of the Democratic Party, and ultimately with the president. While it is only a few weeks since President Obama was explicit in highlighting income inequality as a serious issue, since that time there has been little by way of a concerted and consistent effort to generate broad support for the notion that this is a major problem. Clearly Obama should be given more time to prove his commitment to this, but it also remains puzzling why it took Obama until the second year of his second term to draw direct attention to the problem. This all suggests that it is very likely that income inequality will continue to slip back in the president’s, and thus his party’s, agenda, just as gun regulation did once the horrific killings at Sandy Hook receded from the national consciousness. Failing to address problems of this kind is bad for the country for host of reasons ranging from the hollowing out of the middle class, to the strain on the social fabric and increase of poverty related problems. It is also bad for the Democratic Party because
LINCOLN MITCHELL
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if the party does not effectively take on these big important, but difficult, issues, support and confidence in that party will gradually also begin to erode. Given the persistence of media campaigns and political attacks against the
It is very likely that income inequality will continue to slip back in the president’s, and thus his party’s, agenda, just as gun regulation did once the horrific killings at Sandy Hook receded from the national consciousness.” minimum wage, labor unions and the poor in general, the path of least resistance for the Democratic Party is to stop talking about income inequality and go back to seeking to address the results of income inequality as if they are not rooted in more fundamental problems. The opportunity for real leadership to change this still exists, and is perhaps more important than ever. Lincoln Mitchell works in political development.
Voices
MARK GONGLOFF
HUFFINGTON 03.09.14
ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES
Of Course Fast-Food Workers Say Crazy Things on Receipts, Their Job Is Awful
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HEN YOU READ that story recently about the Burger King customers who were called “bitch ass hoes” on their order receipt, you may have felt shock, outrage and sympathy for the customers. ¶ I felt a little of that, but something else, too: I felt empathy for the employee who typed up the receipt and then got fired over it. ¶ That’s because I worked in fast food for years, and let me tell you: The customers there can be the absolute worst. They can be the worst part
Voices of a pretty terrible job, one that involves grueling physical labor, rock-bottom pay, miserable working conditions and the feeling like you will never, ever get the smell and feel of grease out of your hair, face or clothing. Of course, I don’t condone giving a customer a receipt that calls them a bitch ass hoe, or says “fuck you,” like another infamous Burger King receipt did recently. Burger King had every right to fire those employees. But I can kind of understand how it happened. In my time working at a Hardee’s in West Columbia, S.C., I personally never dealt much with the customers. I stayed in the back, flipping burgers and frying fries (and chicken patties, and fish filets, and apple pies, all of which went into the same vat of scalding brown grease). But we could all hear the customers loud and clear. Drivethrough orders were broadcast over speakers throughout the store. Jerks at the register were also typically loud enough to be heard all the way back in the kitchen. We could hear when people berated the women who ran the registers. (They were
MARK GONGLOFF
almost always women, unless they wore a manager’s tie.) Being rude, cursing at them, belittling them, accusing them of getting orders wrong when we could all hear they hadn’t. The people who worked the registers were on the front line of a daily trench war that ended only when the store closed late at night and started over again at the crack of dawn the next day. We were in that war with them, and we partied with them and sometimes dated or married them. When customers were rude to them, everybody took it personally. You might think employees can fight back in these situations, but too often your tip or your manager’s good graces depend on just putting your head down and dealing with whatever cruel thing the customer throws at you. I’m not saying that all fastfood customers behaved badly. Most didn’t. Most people who eat at fast-food or other restaurants treat their servers with something between indifference and grudging politeness. That’s fine. That’s the social compact. Then there are the rare customers who treat their servers like actual human beings, not
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Voices only being polite but also smiling and making small talk with them about the weather or whatever. Those are the people who sometimes get extra apple pies or chocolate chip cookies slipped in their bags, gratis. But then there are the customers who treat servers like dirt. I don’t know what percentage of customers at any given restaurant fall into this category. It’s small, but it’s not small enough. And these people are everywhere, even at fancier places than Hardee’s. I have no idea what led to those Burger King receipt incidents. Let’s just go ahead and assume the customers in those cases didn’t deserve the harsh treatment they got. But I do know the frustration that comes with working at a job that strips you of your dignity on a daily basis. Sure, it’s paying work, which is better than the alternative. Many of the people who do the work aren’t high school kids, as I was, but adults trying to support families. Still, it can be easy to lose perspective in the heat of the moment. I can fully imagine these Burger King employees, in moments of weakness, needing a way to vent their frustrations, maybe by typing
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“FUCK YOU” into the cash register. They may not even have realized it was going to show up on a receipt and cost them their jobs. But be warned, rude customers: Most people in the restaurant industry won’t make that mistake. They will get their revenge in quieter ways. Let’s just say that when Tyler Durden pissed in the lobster bisque in Fight Club, it did not en-
Too often your tip or your manager’s good graces depend on just putting your head down and dealing with whatever cruel thing the customer throws at you.” tirely come as a shock to me. That absolutely revolting scene (trigger alert: Dane Cook is involved) in Waiting, the 2005 movie with Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris? Only slightly over the top. As Reynolds says at the end of that scene: “Don’t fuck with people that handle your food.” Mark Gongloff is a chief financial writer at The Huffington Post.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/MASSOUD HOSSAINI; AP PHOTO/GENE J. PUSKAR; ANSONSAW/GETTY IMAGES; CINDY ORD/GETTY IMAGES; WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
QUOTED
HUFFINGTON 03.09.14
“ We don’t need new ideas to determine if this is wrong, it just is.”
— HuffPost commenter murphdogspeaks on “Comcast, Time Warner Cable To Face ‘Monopsony’ Claims In Antitrust Case”
“ Afghans died in a war that’s not ours.”
— Afghan President Hamid Karzai
to The Washington Post, in his first interview with a U.S. newspaper in two years
“ When your ‘art’ cannot be distinguished from trash, it’s really not that great of an artwork.”
“ Hillary could speak to young women through Internet.”
— Hillary Clinton’s senior adviser Lisa Caputo
in a 1995 memo outlining recommendations for media outreach
— HuffPost commenter Patient_Zero
on “Cleaning Woman Mistakes Contemporary Artwork For Trash, Throws It Away”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JORDAN STRAUSS/INVISION/AP; FLOORTJE/GETTY IMAGES; ALLISON MICHAEL ORENSTEIN/ GETTY IMAGES; BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
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QUOTED
It’s 90 percent white men over 70 who need money... You just need to give them two or three presents and they’re in your pocket.
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“ You would think, in this day and age, that one of them would say, ‘hey, let’s not do this.’”
— HuffPost commenter happyblackman on “8 NJ Wrestlers Out Of Meet After Lynching Photo”
— Julie Delpy
on Oscar voters, to So Film magazine
“ At 67... I no longer worry about what others think. It is very liberating.”
“It’s the worst.”
— Retiring Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)
on this Congress compared to previous Congresses in history
— HuffPost commenter Sandra_Garrett on “19 Reasons Getting Older Is The Best Thing That Will Ever Happen To You”
03.09.14 #91 FEATURES THE COOL CHRISTIAN
COURTESY OF REACH RECORDS
HOOKED
THE
COOL
CHRISTIAN BY JON WARD
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When Hip Hop Lets the Saints In
who’s who of conservative celebrities gathered in November in Asheville, N.C., to honor and praise Billy Graham, the famed Christian evangelist, on the occasion of his 95th birthday. Inside the hotel ballroom, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin rubbed elbows with Rupert Murdoch, Glenn Beck, Greta van Susteren and Rick Warren. “Billy Graham, we need you around another 95 years,” Palin said. “We need Billy Graham’s message to be heard, I think, today more than ever.”
At one of the head tables, right next to Kathie Lee Gifford, sat a 34-year-old rapper who looked out of place among the mostly older, white VIPs. Lecrae Moore had not been raised a Christian, and had not grown up listening to Graham preach. His childhood role models had been rappers like Tupac, and he had spent his teenage years running the streets. But Lecrae — who was featured in Graham’s recent “final sermon” video — has also become an ambassador for Christendom. His delivery is just a bit different. Over the last several years, Lecrae has become a successful rap artist with a rare message that is explicitly Christian. His 2008 album Rebel became the first rap album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Gospel chart, and his 2012 record Gravity won a Grammy for best Gospel album. He has also become a staple of the Christian music festival circuit, headlining concerts in front of thousands of fans. But over the past two years, Lec-
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THE COOL CHRISTIAN
rae has been trying to break out of what he calls the “Christian ghetto,” to some success. He was part of last year’s Rock the Bells tour with Wu-Tang Clan, Common, Black Hippy and J Cole; has become a regular guest on BET’s 106 & Park and has recorded songs with artists such as Pete Rock, Big Krit and Chaka Khan. One BET executive compared his first listen to Lecrae to the first time he heard Kanye West. Lecrae’s attempt to infiltrate popular culture while retaining a clearly Christian message is a difficult task, but he embodies a larger
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trend inside Western Christianity. Lecrae is one of many modern evangelicals who have rejected the path set by the combative “Moral Majority” culture warriors of the 1980s, and instead embraced an assimilation into the mainstream and its formative institutions, hoping to shape it from within. Lecrae doesn’t want to forsake his beliefs. He wants to take his message with him. But some of Lecrae’s fans have already accused him of selling out, because he appears on stage with other rappers who are non-Christians, or records songs with them. As Lecrae said last summer, a few hours before he took the stage at the Creation Festival, one of the
Lecrae Moore at the Grammy Awards in 2013, after winning best Gospel album for his 2012 record Gravity.
THE COOL CHRISTIAN biggest and oldest stops on the Christian music festival circuit, “It’s such an uphill battle.” THE MORNING AFTER Graham’s birthday bash, Lecrae flew to Las Vegas to attend the Soul Train Awards. “That was completely different worlds,” he said. He has been spending an increasing amount of time in the mainstream hip-hop world. He first burst the Christian bubble in the fall of 2011 when he performed in a freestyle showcase as part of BET’s annual awards show — “Hey, this what happen when hip-hop lets the saints in,” he quipped then — and the network has continued to promote Lecrae heavily. “I will equate that feeling I got when we identified Kanye West,” Kelly Griffin, director of music programming at BET, said of the first time he heard Lecrae. “Like, ‘Wow, we want to take a chance on him.’” In October, Lecrae found himself inside a cramped New York sound booth next to Sway Calloway, the 43-year-old MTV personality, rapper and journalist whose daily radio show, Sway in the Morning, is broadcast nationally on SiriusXM. “We got a hybrid artist here,”
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Calloway told listeners. “Now, even I used to say he’s a Christian rapper. But he’s a rapper — who is a Christian.” A quiet grin spread across Lecrae’s face. That’s a distinction he likes to make often. The way he explains it is you don’t call it Christian architecture, or a Christian pharmacy, or Christian pottery, when it is simply done
SOME OF LECRAE’S FANS HAVE ALREADY ACCUSED HIM OF SELLING OUT, BECAUSE HE APPEARS ON STAGE WITH OTHER RAPPERS WHO ARE NON-CHRISTIANS, OR RECORDS SONGS WITH THEM. by a Christian person. Rather, to be a Christian and also be an architect, or pharmacist, or potter, is supposed to mean that an individual performs those professions to the best of their ability, and with passion and excellence. And as Lecrae points out, hiphop is full of rappers who practice Islam or incorporate messages of the Five Percent Nation, such as some members of Wu-Tang Clan.
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They talk about their faith in their rap, but they are not labeled “Muslim rappers.” Yet even as BET hailed him as the next Kanye, Lecrae drew a distinction between himself and the artist better known as “Yeezus.” “I deeply respect what he’s doing artistically. I do think there’s a lot of brilliance,” Lecrae said. “There’s a line between being egotistical and being genius or great. And I think he plays with that a lot.” Still, he continued, saying of Kanye’s most recent album, “I hear a broken person, if I’m going to be honest, when I listen to it.” “I’d say even the writing, like, from my end, from my perspec-
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tive it’s not as thought-provoking,” he said. “It feels a little hasty, a little like, ‘Let me just get this off my chest,’ versus, ‘How do I say this in a unique way?” Uniqueness is a quality that has largely been lacking in Christian music. The genre didn’t really exist until the 1970s, some time after the advent of rock-and-roll. Its creation was the product of a desire among many evangelicals to resist a culture they felt was increasingly non-Christian. But the genre’s downfall — like many of the cultural artifacts that have come out of evangelicalism over the last several decades — was that instead of creating better alternatives, it just made knockoffs. John Jeremiah Sullivan captured this in a memorable 2004 piece he
Lecrae performs at an Apple store on July 17, 2012, in New York City.
THE COOL CHRISTIAN wrote for GQ magazine about his own trip to the Creation Festival. “Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off-brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that’s because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please … while praising Jesus Christ. That’s Christian rock,” Sullivan wrote. Or as Cartman, of South Park, put it: “All right guys, this is going to be so easy. All we have to do to make Christian songs is take regular old songs and add Jesus stuff to them. See? All we have to do is cross out words like ‘baby’ and ‘darling’ and replace them with, ‘Jeeesus.’” This subculture was created by the belief throughout much of American evangelicalism that all Christians were required to verbally proselytize for their faith as often as possible. Music wasn’t good — or in other words, approved of — unless it was didactic. “There’s this whole subtle idea
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behind Christian music that you always have to be telling people about Jesus. It’s ludicrous, because no one who isn’t a Christian would ever want to listen to that music,” David Bazan, a musician who performs under the name Pedro the Lion, told Andrew Beaujon for the 2004 book Body Piercing Saved My Life.
“ THERE’S THIS WHOLE SUBTLE IDEA BEHIND CHRISTIAN MUSIC THAT YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT JESUS. IT’S LUDICROUS, BECAUSE NO ONE WHO ISN’T A CHRISTIAN WOULD EVER WANT TO LISTEN TO THAT MUSIC.” Lecrae’s goal is to deliver a message of faith and hope to a non-believing audience. But a “faith stigma” can prevent that audience from ever hearing him in the first place, he said. So endorsements from influentials like Sway are a big step toward gaining wider acceptance. Lecrae “makes being a Christian cool,” Griffin, the BET director, said.
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“It doesn’t feel preachy. It doesn’t come off as holier than thou, but speaks to people’s circumstances, experiences, and just life in general, just like regular hip-hop.” FOR A LONG TIME, Lecrae didn’t think Christianity was cool himself. He was born in Houston, Texas, to a single mother and moved around a lot as a kid, to Dallas, Denver and San Diego, where he lived with his grandmother. He spent most of his teenage years making mischief. “They nicknamed me ‘Crazy ‘Crae,’” he told Complex magazine in 2012. “I would just do whatever, whenever, however. I’d get drunk,
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jump out of a third-story balcony. So I just lived reckless. I think I just didn’t really know what I was living for. I was just living for whatever happens today and that was the extent of it for me.” “He was a heavy drinker, party animal, he was a ladies’ man,” said Torrance Esmond, an old friend who is now the executive producer at Lecrae’s record label, Reach Records. “He used to just do the real silly stuff and you’d be, like, ‘Dude, what are you doing? Why are you driving 125 miles an hour down I-94 on Friday night?’” Lecrae’s conversion to Christianity was gradual. When he was 17, a friend from high school invited him to a Bible study. “I went, and I had never seen Christians who dressed like me
Lecrae visits the 106 & Park studio on Oct. 17, 2013, in New York City.
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“CHRISTIANS HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DEAL WITH ART. THEY SAY, ‘HEY LECRAE YOU CAN’T DO THAT. THAT’S BAD. THAT’S SECULAR. YOU CAN’T TOUCH THAT. HEY LECRAE, YOUR ENGINEER IS NOT A CHRISTIAN. HE CAN’T MIX YOUR STUFF. HE’S GOING TO GET SINNER COOTIES ON IT.’”
THE COOL CHRISTIAN or talked like me, so I thought they were Martians from another planet!” he told an interviewer in 2012. “When I saw them, I said, ‘Oh you guys are human!’ They loved me genuinely and that’s really what started it.” A year or two later, he attended a Christian conference with friends, and a sermon he heard there resonated deeply with him. He ended up marrying a woman he met at the Bible study, Darragh Moore. They have three children together. By 2002, he was visiting youth detention centers with a Christian organization. Sometimes he would rap, and he began to see how music could be a way to spread the gospel. Two years later, Lecrae founded Reach Records with a friend, Ben Washer, and soon after they released Real Talk, the first of Lecrae’s six albums. Over the last two years he has also released two mixtapes, Church Clothes and Church Clothes 2, both of them hosted by DJ Don Cannon, who is now vice president of A&R at Def Jam Recordings. “I think we’ve made a lot of room, and people are beginning to see me as my own entity, as kind of my own category,” Lecrae said.
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SEATED INSIDE his tour bus, parked on a rain-soaked field in central Pennsylvania at the Creation Festival last summer, Lecrae admitted that his attempts to break out of the Christian music world were not sitting well with
“ [LECRAE] MAKES BEING A CHRISTIAN COOL. IT DOESN’T FEEL PREACHY. IT DOESN’T COME OFF AS HOLIER THAN THOU, BUT SPEAKS TO PEOPLE’S CIRCUMSTANCES, EXPERIENCES, AND JUST LIFE IN GENERAL, JUST LIKE REGULAR HIP-HOP.” some of his more hard-core fans. “It’s so counter-cultural to all this,” Lecrae said of his vision, gesturing past the walls of his bus and toward the scores of muddy teens and youth-group leaders trudging among campsites and up and down Hallelujah Highway. “Christians have no idea how to deal with art,” Lecrae said more recently, during a September speech to Christian leaders. “They say, ‘Hey Lecrae you can’t do that.
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That’s bad. That’s secular. You can’t touch that. Hey Lecrae, your engineer is not a Christian. He can’t mix your stuff. He’s going to get sinner cooties on it.’” “This is real. I wish I were making this up,” he said. Lecrae’s songs are still centered around a Christian worldview and approach to life, but to some Christians, the outside world is something to be shunned, not engaged. “So Lecrae modestly mentioned Jesus, yet he passionately bopped his head to extreme negative rap,” one fan wrote on YouTube. “Aren’t we as Christians called to be set
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apart from such profanity; rather than to be taking pride or joy in it?” “Lecrae is a secular rapper now. … The world got to him. And now he’s rapping for the world. … Lecrae, what happened?!” lamented another. These types of comments populate Lecrae’s Instagram feed, his YouTube videos. Fans even criticized Lecrae’s wife for wearing a dress that they thought was too short. It’s enough to make Christianity unappealing to even its most faithful adherents. But this reaction is the product of decades of evangelical thought. Evangelicals adopted an isolationist mindset for much of the 20th century. Non-Christians, the
“People are beginning to see me as my own entity, as kind of my own category.”
THE COOL CHRISTIAN thinking went, carried sin like a virus, and the point of following Jesus was to remain as pure as possible. Christians established their own communities, educational institutions and music festivals, separate from the rest of the world. The rise of the religious right, led by Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority in the 1970s and ‘80s, represented an acknowledgment by evangelicals that their retreat from culture was not working. America and the West in general were moving so far away from their point of view that they needed to fight back. “For many Christians cultural engagement simply meant opining on politics … or denouncing a slouching-toward-Gomorrah view of the culture around us,” said Russell Moore, the recently installed head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. The crucial miscalculation made by Falwell and his followers was believing that they had the upper hand, that they outnumbered their culture war opponents. It may have been easy to think that when many Christians lived in conservative states, surrounded by others
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who thought like them. But in fact, the country was changing — demographically, ethnically and culturally — in ways that have now made religious conser-
“ WE TALK ABOUT BEING REVOLUTIONARY AND ABOUT BOB MARLEY AND THE LEVEL OF HIS INFLUENCE AND WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE AS A MUSICIAN. AND IT WASN’T JUST DONE BY SAYING GREAT THINGS OVER MEDIOCRE MUSIC. IT WAS DONE BY SAYING GREAT THINGS OVER GREAT MUSIC.” vatives increasingly a minority. America is a more pluralist, urbanized nation now than ever. EVEN DURING THE DAYS when fundamentalist thought dominated evangelicalism, there was a resistant, if minority, strain that insisted there was a different way. Wellknown author C.S. Lewis captured it succinctly in a 1945 essay. “What we want is not more lit-
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tle books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects — with their Christianity latent,” Lewis wrote. There was an aesthetic and moral driver behind this sentiment: If you are an artist, make art, not instructional materials, because that is the right thing to do and that is how you reflect positively on your creator. The same goes for science, or politics. But Lewis’ exhortation was inherently strategic. His point, essentially, was that the best way to influence how people think is
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not to hit them over the head with your point of view, but rather to shape subtly the things they assume to be true about the world. Lecrae acknowledged that the question of influence is behind his desire to be known first as a musician, rather than a member of a religion. “I’m digesting C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller and so on and so forth, Francis Schaeffer,” Lecrae said, referencing some of the most influential evangelical thinkers of the last half-century. “I’m seeing how they’ve affected culture and politics and science and so on and so forth, with implicit faith versus explicit faith.”
“On my worst days, I ask myself, ‘Am I everything these Christians say I am? Am I the hypocrite, am I falling off?”
THE COOL CHRISTIAN “And so, what I’ve just wanted to do is do that, which has been a little more difficult for me because I did start off very explicitly. That’s what Christians know me for,” he said. Lecrae’s first albums emphasized spelling out his beliefs more than making the best music possible. “So when I venture outside of that now, it’s almost as if I’m punting everything that I believe because I’m not as explicit.” And so it is with modern evangelical Christianity; almost by necessity, because it is no longer the majority view, evangelicalism has become more sophisticated in its understanding of the way faith interacts with the world outside the walls of church. Yet at the same time, it is still grappling with a loud minority who are the offspring of decades of bifurcated thinking. “The hard-lined wing of evangelicalism that would criticize someone like Lecrae for ‘selling out’ is a very small piece of the evangelical world these days. If anything, American evangelicalism prizes recognition and engagement in mainstream culture these days,” said D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power, and now the president of Gordon College.
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Moore said that evangelicalism has seen a “recovery of a broader Reformed and Lutheran emphasis in evangelicalism on vocation, with artistic gifts seen as potentially God-honoring even if they are not strictly means to ministry or evangelism.” Lecrae believes that the best way to change popular culture, and
“ THE MOST STRESSFUL PART IS COMING FROM THE CHRISTIAN SIDE. BECAUSE EVERYBODY HAS A STANDARD AND A CONVICTION THAT THEY BELIEVE YOU NEED TO BE LIVING BY.” ultimately to make a difference in people’s lives, isn’t to attack others, but to build trust through personal relationships. In 2007 he moved to Atlanta, the center of the Southern rap world. It was a professional decision, giving him the opportunity to network and build his career. But it has also given him a chance to speak about his faith to influential members of the hip-hop community. “I live in Atlanta because Lud-
THE COOL CHRISTIAN acris lives in Atlanta,” Lecrae said at the Christian leader conference last fall. “And because T.I. lives in Atlanta, and because Lil Wayne comes to Atlanta to hang out all the time, and because Rick Ross’ engineers are in Atlanta. I live in Atlanta because I’m from that world, and I can engage that world, and I can go to these studios, and I can have conversations, and I can wrestle with things back and forth with them.” “If I was scared that that would somehow jump on me and corrupt what I’m doing, I’m rendered ineffective,” he said. “They would never hear the truths that God has invested in me.” Lecrae has befriended Kendrick Lamar, who in the past year has become the hottest name in rap. “I’m on the phone with [him] on a consistent basis just talking through life issues,” Lecrae said at the Creation Festival. Esmond, Lecrae’s producer, said that in the times he has seen Kendrick and Lecrae hang out, it’s clear that “Lecrae ain’t trying to get nothing from Kendrick.” “He ain’t pressing to do no song with him. He ain’t trying to go on tour with him … Kendrick recognizes that,” Esmond said. “[Lec-
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rae] is more concerned with being a real friend to Kendrick.” Lecrae told me in a recent phone call that he looks to Bob Marley, the famous reggae artist, for inspiration. “We talk about being revolutionary and about Bob Marley and the level of his influence and what that looks like as a musician,” he said. “And it wasn’t just done by saying great things over mediocre music. It was done by saying great things over great music.” Nonetheless, when Lecrae sat in his tour bus at the Creation Festival last summer talking about his critics, it was clear the pressure from both sides had worn him down. “The most stressful part is coming from the Christian side. Because everybody has a standard and a conviction that they believe you need to be living by,” he said. “On my worst days, I ask myself, ‘Am I everything these Christians say I am? Am I the hypocrite, am I falling off? Am I too concerned with all this stuff? Am I even making a difference with this music?’” he said. “On my best days,” he continued, “I’m like, ‘I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, and this is exactly what I was built for.’” Jon Ward is a senior political reporter at The Huffington Post.
How a Big Drug Company Inadvertently Got Americans Addicted to Heroin
HO O K ED By Jillian Berman
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When she was 18, Arielle would come home every day and embark on what she calls an “Easter egg hunt.” She wasn’t looking for candy. Arielle was hunting behind stairwells and inside closets in her suburban Long Island home for the OxyContin bottles her cousin brought home from work at a pharmacy and was hiding from her mother around the house. “I found them one day, and I wanted to try them because all of my friends were already hooked,” said Arielle, who asked that her last name be withheld to avoid hurting her chances of getting a job. “I would see [my cousin] nodding out on the couch and not really being present, and that was how I wanted to feel. My best friend had just passed away, so I
was numbing out the feelings.” It took about a year before Arielle moved from prescription painkillers into the illegal drug that killed her best friend: heroin. She snorted it for the first time after tagging along with a friend who was going to buy some. “I was like, ‘I love it,’” she said. Heroin was cheaper than prescription pills — about $10 a bag, compared to $60 to $80 per pill — and gave her a more potent high. Her friend helped her inject the drug. “It was a feeling that I don’t think anyone should experience. Because once you experience it, you want to experience it over and over again,” she said. “ Next thing I know, I’m addicted.” Arielle landed in a Long Island jail last year after she was caught breaking into a house and stealing
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money to buy drugs. Now 26 and living at a substance abuse treatment center, she says she’s all too aware that her story isn’t unique. Between 1996 and 2011, the number of people who ended up in substance abuse treatment centers in Suffolk County, where Arielle lives, as a result of heroin jumped 425 percent, according to a 2012 special grand jury report from the county’s Supreme Court. During the same period, the number of people who landed in substance abuse treatment for opioid pill use spiked 1,136 percent, the report found. Long Island is one of many areas of the country where heroin addiction is reaching harrowing levels, according to Gregory Bunt,
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the medical director at Daytop Village, a New York-based substance abuse treatment center. The crisis is getting renewed attention after actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman died in January from an apparent heroin overdose. The rise in heroin use mirrors a decade-long spike in abuse of prescription opioids — painkillers that are a medical cousin to heroin, but are legal as long as they’re prescribed by a doctor. In recent years, more prescription drug abusers have started turning to heroin for a cheaper high as the price of pills skyrockets on the black market, Bunt said. Two factors have contributed to the cost increase: opioid addiction boosting demand and doctors becoming more cautious about prescribing opioids, decreasing supply, Bunt said. Another reason for the price in-
By 2003, nearly half of the doctors prescribing OxyContin were primary care physicians.
HOOKED crease: The Drug War, according to a January 2012 report from Radley Balko. Government crackdowns have made it difficult for even reputable doctors to prescribe pain pills. To fill the void, doctors and others looking to make a buck off the prescription pills created socalled “pill mills” — offices that prescribe pain medication in high volume and often serve people addicted to the drugs. The result: Nearly four out of five people who recently started using heroin used prescription painkillers first, according to a 2013 study from the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. “A lot of people who got in trouble with the prescription opiates are switching over to heroin, and they get more for their buck, so to speak,” Bunt said. In his experience, he added, much of the heroin available today is laced with other additives, like additional painkillers — making it more dangerous. “Once you inject the heroin that’s available today, you’re at very high risk for fatal overdose,” he said. For decades, opioid painkillers, like oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, had been used successfully to treat conditions like intense pain at the end of life for
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cancer patients and acute pain after an injury like a broken bone. But everything changed when OxyContin — and the marketing campaign that came with it — started in the 1990s, experts say. The drug, developed by Purdue Pharma, had a time-release mech-
“ It was a feeling that I don’t think anyone should experience. Because once you experience it, you want to experience it over and over again.” anism that spaced out its effects over a longer period of time. In dozens of seminars in ritzy hotel conference rooms across North America, the company sold doctors on the idea that the time-release function made OxyContin perfect for a population of patients who were suffering from chronic pain. Representatives also argued that the drug’s spaced-out effects made it less likely that patients would get addicted — which was the main factor deterring many physicians from prescribing opioids for chronic pain. “This campaign focused on convincing doctors that they shouldn’t
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worry about addiction, so the medical community was taught to believe that addiction to opiates was relatively rare,” said Andrew Kolodny, the director of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. The pitch was convincing, Kolodny said, because no doctor wants to believe that they’re keeping a patient in pain unnecessarily. By 2001, OxyContin had exceeded more than $1 billion in sales, and by 2003, nearly half of the doctors prescribing OxyContin were primary care physicians, according to a 2004 report from the Government Accountability Office.
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“As prescriptions began to take off, it led to an epidemic of opioid addiction,” Kolodny said. “We all became much more likely to have opioids in our homes, so it created a hazard.” “We have now this incredibly unusual public health crisis that’s essentially caused by physicians, caused by the health care industry,” said Meldon Kahan, the medical director of substance use services at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. In 2007, Purdue and three of its top executives pleaded guilty to misleading doctors, regulators and patients about OxyContin’s risk of addiction. The company agreed to pay more than $600 million
“Buck,” who is 23 and addicted to heroin, shoots up Suboxone, a maintenance drug for opioid dependence that is also highly addictive.
HOOKED in fines. In 2010, Purdue developed a version of the drug that was harder to crush and snort or inject than the original, aimed at deterring abuse. In April, the FDA banned the original OxyContin and all of its generic versions from hitting the market. Purdue Spokesman Raul Damas wrote in an email statement to The Huffington Post that “like any public health issue, opioid abuse is the result of many factors, not just one drug or one company.” Brand-name OxyContin represents a small share of oxycodonebased drugs on the market, and Purdue has taken steps to curb the addiction epidemic, like paying for addiction hotlines and working with law enforcement to help them better identify pills that are frequently abused. “The recent increase in heroin abuse is an unfortunate result of many different factors, and what often gets lost is that prescription opioids play an important role in helping patients and physicians address the very real issue of chronic pain.” Damas wrote. “Purdue has led the development of abuse-deterrent opioids, but these efforts need to be complemented by public education and
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treatment, so that we address demand, as well as supply.” People typically become addicted to the prescription pills in one of two ways, Kolodny said. The majority of younger users, like Arielle, find the pills lying around at home or at friends’ houses. But the
“ We have now this incredibly unusual public health crisis that’s essentially caused by physicians, caused by the health care industry.” other demographic suffering from prescription painkiller addiction — middle-aged Americans — typically get the pills from their doctors for things like chronic back or head pain. Once their bodies adjust, their doctors have to up the doses to mitigate the pain. Betty Tully experienced this phenomenon firsthand. She went to her doctor in January of 2001, looking for a fix for the pain that had plagued her lower back for decades. Tully’s doctor said he had just the thing, a new “miracle drug” that could help her pain without putting her at risk of addiction. He started her
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on 20 milligrams of OxyContin. Soon, she was asking for more, so he upped her doses. “By June, I was an absolute zombie. I couldn’t work anymore, I couldn’t drive my car anymore. I left my car running one day on the street,” the former real estate agent said. “I was calling his office and screaming that I needed this medicine.” By the end of 11 months, Tully was on 280 milligrams of OxyContin per day. The mother of two, who had held down jobs since she was 12 years old, refused to leave the house for fear she’d miss a dose and go through terrible symptoms of withdrawal
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like nausea and profuse sweating. When she decided to get clean, it took her six years to completely get off the drug, and she says she’s lucky she was able to finally kick the habit. Indeed, according to Kolodny, “middle-aged women getting pain pills from doctors” are dying from overdoses at some of the highest rates in history. In 2010, 40 percent of U.S. drug overdose deaths were women, many of whom died from abusing prescription pills. “I should be among those statistics,” Tully said. “There’s not many people that can take that much and be breathing every day.” Jillian Berman is an associate business editor at The Huffington Post.
A heroin addict prepares to shoot drugs intravenously.
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These Celebrities May Want to Stop With the Whole ‘Art’ Thing BY MALLIKA RAO
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Exit LEASE TO MEET a new term: fartist, a portmanteau of “famous person” and “artist.” James Franco, our civilization’s leading fartist, believes everything he touches turns to art. Shia LeBeouf, who has been balancing art making with plagiarism of late, is an up-and-comer in the field. In an open letter published in The New York Times, Franco explains the rules. The system actors volunteer themselves into is
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a confining one. Every so often, it’s good to shake off those selfimposed shackles by behaving crazily enough to provoke a reaction from the unsuspecting public. This is art. All is not tolerated though. A colleague should not, Franco warns, “use up all the good will he has gained as an actor in order to show us that he is an artist.” Well then — which of our greatest fartists are using up too much good will?
1. JAMES FRANCO CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Took a goofy part in General Hospital, while simultaneously — as he makes clear in the NYT — courting Oscars; made a great parody of an even greater music video. LOWLIGHTS: Missing a ton of classes-others-wanted-totake during his whirlwind tour of America’s higher institutions all while keeping on loudly making art no one seems to want. Billing himself as a “modern day ‘Renaissance Man’” on his Artspace profile. RECEPTION: Even Thought Catalog has grown weary. GOODWILL-OMETER: The best case scenario for James Franco is that he’s doing a great performance art piece on how to use up all the goodwill.
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2. SHIA LEBEOUF
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CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Disturbing a jaded reporter with a crying spell during his ongoing bag hat stare show #IAMSORRY. “The wet spot on his bag kept growing. I couldn’t take it anymore,” wrote the only witness in the room, a Defamer staffer. LOWLIGHTS: Stealing this, this, this, and this, as well as the concept for the above highlight. RECEPTION: “Shia labeouf music video meaning” is a suggested Google search term. People are at the very least mildly curious about the spirit of what he’s doing. QUALIFIER: A follow-up reveals the search is for a video he starred in, not the one he directed. GOODWILL-OMETER: Shia LeBeouf is drinking deep from the goodwill cup. It could really go either way at this point.
3. KRISTEN STEWART CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Publishing the poem My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball/Freedom Pole in the unpretentious pages of Marie Claire. LOWLIGHTS: Doing interviews that by Franco’s definition could be performance art, but are definitely not. RECEPTION: While amateurs called it the worst poem of all time, poetry professors are down with MHIAWF/FP. “I thought the second stanza was very delicate with sound play,” wrote one. GOODWILL-OMETER: The question may be moot here. How much goodwill is Kristen Stewart even coming in with? Girl’s got nothing to lose. (Bless her.)
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4. MACAULAY CULKIN
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CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Making the kind of art a grown up Kevin McAllister nursed on millions of dollars would make. For instance, this painting of E.T., Waldo and the devil at a Korn concert. And, obviously, his “pizzathemed Velvet Underground cover band,” the Pizza Underground. LOWLIGHTS: Drawing in audiences due to curiosity, but not being able to keep them. RECEPTION: “Gimmick’ is too strong a term,” says Brad Pfeifer, 31, a Bushwick musician.” (From a NY Post review of a Pizza Underground show). GOODWILL-OMETER: There’s arguably no harsher critic than a 31-year-old Bushwick musician. Based on Brad’s lukewarm review, aka high praise, Macaulay Culkin still has goodwill to spare.
5. JAY-Z CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Getting a bunch of art world luminaries, including Marina Abramovic, into a gallery for a six-hour rap marathon for his music video Picasso Baby. LOWLIGHTS: Swiping the marathon concept from... Marina Abramovic. Offering a vague reason for his guest list. If he really wanted to close the gap between the “haves and the have nots,” why stage a supersecret inviteonly party for the cool kids? RECEPTION: Romancing the art world had the accidental effect of exposing its flaws. “The discussion [inside] might be the best part of the enterprise,” wrote a Vulture commenter. “You can see people who are really smart about this stuff getting a little flummoxed. Don’t want to get taken in by a hustle, but don’t want to miss something cool and interesting either. It’s a legitimate dilemma when you let a new element like Jay Z in.” GOODWILL-OMETER: If immunity exists in Franco’s paradigm, Jay-Z has it.
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FROM TOP: STACIE MCCHESNEY/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES; STACIE MCCHESNEY/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES
Bush has little to lose. He may actually be accruing goodwill, an outcome Franco did not even consider.”
6. GEORGE W. BUSH CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Making people question all the political beliefs they hold dear by turning out some mad weird bathtub self-portraits. Who is this man? And now he’s painting skulls? LOWLIGHTS: You might think they’re the dog paintings because the subject is so predictable. But then you get into how many dogs Bush has painted and we’re back at a weird highlight. RECEPTION: “Bad reputations are mitigated by good (or, in the instance of Bush, surprisingly not-terrible) art,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Juli Weiner, finding shades of Alex Katz in the W oeuvre. “Bush’s transmutation from iPodthreatening lameness monster into smiling blog mascot aligns closely with his painting career.” GOODWILL-OMETER: Much like Kristen Stewart, Bush has little to lose. He may actually be accruing goodwill, an outcome Franco did not even consider.
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The Secret to Happiness May Have Been Discovered Almost Two Millennia Ago BY CAROLYN GREGOIRE
NE OF THE GREATEST texts about happiness and living well wasn’t written by a self-help expert, spiritual leader or psychologist. It was written by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it may completely change your perspective on dealing with life’s challenges. In 167 AD, Aurelius wrote The Meditations, a 12-book compendium of personal writings, originally written in Greek, that reflect his
O
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Exit extensive study of Stoic philosophy. Aurelius is now regarded as one of the most famous proponents and philosophers of Stoicism, an ancient Greek and Roman school of thought originating in the Hellenic period concerned with how to cultivate a mindset to deal effectively with any events or emotions. Meditations is based around a single, simple precept: “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” The last of the Five Good Emperors, Aurelius ruled over Rome for 20 years until the time of his death in 180 AD. He is widely regarded as one of the most respected emperors in Roman history. “Marcus Aurelius was a true paradox — an emperor with almost unlimited power to control his world and circumstances, who nevertheless had a deep understanding that happiness and peace do not lie in the outside world,” Arianna Huffington writes in her forthcoming book, Thrive. Meditations is “undoubtedly one of history’s most effective formulas for overcoming every negative situation we may encounter in life,” Ryan Holiday writes in The Obstacle Is the Way.
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Never got a chance to read Meditations? Here are five of the most important takeaways from the Roman Emperor’s magnum opus. YOUR OWN HAPPINESS IS UP TO YOU. Life’s happiness, Aurelius said, “depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” The crux of his philosophy is the notion that while we cannot control what happens to us, we can control our reactions to the events of our lives — and this gives us im-
Life’s happiness, Aurelius said, ‘depends upon the quality of your thoughts.’” mense strength and freedom. It’s easier said than done, yes, but Aurelius’s own life is proof positive of this maxim. The emperor faced great struggles throughout his life, and his reign was marred by near-constant warfare and disease. His brother and parents also died at a young age. Aurelius learned how to live within his soul — or “inner citadel,” as he put it — a place of peace and equanimity. Living from
Exit this space, he believed, gave him the freedom to shape his own life by controlling his thoughts. LIFE MAY NOT GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT, BUT IT WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU NEED. Aurelius accepted that trials and challenges were an unavoidable part of life, but his belief that life and the universe were fundamentally good helped him to accept the tough stuff. The argument goes like this: Because life as a whole is as good as it can be, the parts of life are as good as they can be, so we should love, or at least accept, every part of life. But Aurelius took it even one step further, arguing that obstacles are actually our greatest opportunities for growth and advancement. They force us to reexamine our path, find a new way, and ultimately empower ourselves by practicing virtues like patience, generosity and courage. “The impediment to action advances action,” he wrote. “What stands in the way becomes the way.” THERE IS GOOD IN EVERYONE. Aurelius isn’t expressing blind optimism when he advises his readers to find common ground with
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others and seek the good in every person they encounter. In politics and life, Aurelius had experienced how people could be selfish and hurtful to others — he lived through wars and uprisings — and yet, he chose not to let the actions of others get to him. Instead, he always remembered that there is some of the “divine” in each of us: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. Aurelius believed that all men are made to cooperate with one another, like the “rows of the upper and lower teeth.” TRUE PEACE COMES FROM WITHIN. Many of us live frantic, high-oc-
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Exit tane lives — and we may fantasize about getting away from it all by going on a meditation retreat or taking time off from work to travel. But, as Aurelius strongly believed, you don’t need to escape your environment to find a sense of calm. We can access serenity any time in our own minds. “People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills,” Aurelius wrote. “There is nowhere that a man can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind ... So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.” Taking a “mental retreat” through a meditation practice — or simply by bringing more mindfulness into your day — has been linked to mental health benefits. Meditation has been shown to improve memory and attention, lower stress levels, enhance emotional well-being and sleep quality and boost creativity and productivity. TREAT LIFE AS AN ‘OLD ANDFAITHFUL FRIEND.’ Perhaps the most memorable passage of Meditations encourages us to view life as being, in the words of the poet Rumi, “rigged in [our]
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favor.” It’s a powerful way of reframing any obstacle we encounter. Aurelius wrote: True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: ‘You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.’ And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I
Aurelius believed that all men are made to cooperate with one another, like the ‘rows of the upper and lower teeth.’” was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art — and this art called ‘life’ is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?
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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
LORD HURON
KURT VILE
IAN HUNTER
L.A.-based alt-pop quintet Lord Huron is the wistful brainchild of Michigan-born multi-instrumentalist/visual artist and frontman Ben Schneider. Founded in the Obama era, the current ensemble comprises a few fellow Michiganders — drummer Mark Berry, guitarist Tom Renaud, and bassist Miguel Briseño — and Californian guitarist Karl Kerfoot. Lord Huron has released a handful of projects, including tracks for films Carrie and Endless Love. Dive into Lord Huron’s “The Stranger,” from the 2010 Mighty–EP.
Philly-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kurt Vile (former lead guitarist for The War On Drugs, with singer/guitarist Adam Granduciel) glides with poetic brushes that earn your attention. Backed by The Violaters (Jesse Trbovich, Rob Laakso and Kyle Spence), Vile has issued a series of solo albums and collective releases to date. Collaborations/shared stages include Sore Eros, Steve Gunn, The Black Heart Procession, Tom Sharpling and Ty Segall. Get started with “Freeway,” from Kurt Vile’s 2008 solo debut Constant Hitmaker.
Rock legend Ian Hunter was born on England’s border with Wales, at the precipice of WWII. A youthful love of Sir Norman Wisdom, Hank Marvin, Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and champagne set Hunter’s trajectory into rock royalty. The legend held court in rock band Mott The Hoople, and has released dozens of albums during his decades-long career. Collaborations include David Bowie, Billy Fury, Mick Ronson and Mick Jones (The Clash). Shared stages include Roger Daltrey, Meat Loaf and Bryan Adams. Discover Hunter’s treasure “Words (Big Mouth),” from his 2007 release Shrunken Heads, with soaring guitarage by Mark Bosch.
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Alt Pop ARTIST: Lord Huron SONG: The Stranger ALBUM: Mighty—EP
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Rock ARTIST: Kurt Vile SONG: Freeway ALBUM: Constant Hitmaker
BUY: iTunes GENRE: Rock ARTIST: Ian Hunter SONG: Words (Big Mouth) ALBUM: Shrunken Heads
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THE HIGH LLAMAS U.K. art-pop clan The High Llamas is captained by Sean O’Hagan, with co-pilots Rob Allum, Marcus Holdaway, Jon Fell, Pete Aves and Dominic Murcott. Founded in the early ’90s, the band — in between the raindrops of time — has released more than a dozen projects to date. Collaborations include Super Furry Animals, Tim Gane (Stereolab), John Bennett and The Heavy Blinkers. Their music evokes the everchanging flavors of Violet Beauregarde’s Wonka gum. Discover The High Llamas with “Fly Baby Fly,” from their 2011 release Talahomi Way. BUY: iTunes GENRE: Pop ARTIST: The High Llamas SONG: Fly Baby Fly ALBUM: Talahomi Way
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BASSEKOU THE ELECTED KOUYATE & NGONI BA Ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate was born in Garana, Mali, beside the Niger River. Raised in a musical home, Bassekou set off for the capital city of Bamanko in his late teens and soon after was playing with Toumani Diabaté. After various collaborations, Kouyate founded his Ngoni Ba ensemble. Among its members are Kouyate’s wife Amy Sacko (vocals), Omar Barou Kouyate (ngoni), Fousseyni Kouyate (ngoni), and Moussa Bah (bass ngoni). The group elegantly fuses its griot roots with American resonance. In 2013, Kouyate & Co. played the British Proms and released their third full-length. Collaborations include Kasse Mady Diabaté, Kélétigui Diabaté, Bonnie Raitt, Bono, Ali Farka Touré, Taj Mahal, Béla Fleck and Carlos Santana. Discover “Ladon,” from Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba’s 2009 project I Speak Fula (Bonus Track Version). BUY: iTunes GENRE: World ARTIST: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba SONG: Ladon ALBUM: I Speak Fula (Bonus Track Version)
SoCal alt-pop unit The Elected is the brainchild of San Diego native guitarist/songwriter Blake Sennett (of Rilo Kiley distinction and also behind Night Terrors of 1927 with Jarrod Gorbel). A revolving cast, including drummer Jason Boesel and multiinstrumentalist Mike Bloom, rounds out the lineup. Founded in the early aughts, The Elected has issued three releases to date, the latest with Sennett pulling double duty as producer and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) guest-starring. Download “Go for the Throat,” from The Elected’s 2011 project Bury Me in My Rings. BUY: iTunes GENRE: Alt Rock ARTIST: The Elected SONG: Go for the Throat ALBUM: Bury Me in My Rings
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GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR OPEN (TURTLE); GATOR’S DOCKSIDE (RECEIPT); DORI OCONNELL/GETTY IMAGES (FOOD); DAMON THIBODEAUX (SOLITARY); GETTY IMAGES/VETTA (DECLARED DEAD)
42,000 Sea Turtles Were Legally Killed Last Year
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A Restaurant Is Charging Customers for Obamacare Costs That Don’t Exist Yet
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THE WORLD WASTES 25 TO 33 PERCENT OF THE FOOD IT PRODUCES FOR CONSUMPTION
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‘I Spent 15 Years in Solitary Confinement for a Crime I Didn’t Commit’
05 Man Who Was Declared Dead Wakes Up in a Body Bag
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MPHILLIPS007/GETTY IMAGES (DONUTS); GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF (PIZZA); SHANEKATO/GETTY IMAGES (MEAT); FRED LEE/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGES (O’REILLY)
Doughnut Shop Won’t Sell Doughnuts Because They’re Too Unhealthy
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Meet the World’s First ‘Sexual Home Appliance’
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SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SAYS DEEP-DISH SHOULDN’T BE CALLED PIZZA
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10 Slaughterhouse Allegedly Sold Meat From Cows With Cancer
Bill O’Reilly Says ‘Gangsta Rappers’ Are a ‘Disease’
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