What are your biggest fears for 2017? Joanna Hausmann and Akilah Hughes hit the streets of New York to ask people what they fear most in 2017.
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The 2017 Oscar nominations are in, and the contrast to years past is striking. After decades of criticism for the ceremony’s often staggering whiteness and maleness, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences responded Tuesday with one of the most racially diverse lineups in Oscar history.
For the first time ever, three black actors were nominated in the same category. Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight snagged eight nominations, including one for best director. Denzel Washington’s Fences got four nods, Hidden Figures received three and OJ: Made in America, I Am Not Your Negro and Ava DuVernay’s 13th were all recognized in the best documentary category.
But the most remarkable thing about the Oscars’ newfound inclusiveness is how incongruous it is with the United States’ political climate. Donald Trump is in the White House, having ridden there on a wave of backlash against a diversifying country. For the first time in years, there seems to be open and mutual opposition between Hollywood and an American president.
In many ways, this year’s Oscar nominations are the anti-Trump — a response to calls for racial equality that delivered more racial equality. The reverse happened in politics last year. Trump and his supporters levied racial animus, fear and legal penalties against protesters calling for equality in their daily lives, resulting in perhaps the most reactionary White House since the Ronald Reagan era.
The chasm between politics and entertainment has rarely seemed wider than it is today. Culture often outpaces politics when it comes to social issues. Films were imagining black people exploring outer space and gay people falling in love, even as real black and gay Americans were fighting for their basic rights in the present.
But this feels different. Trump has repeatedly attacked entertainers who’ve criticized him. He’s had choice words for Alec Baldwin, who parodies the president in Saturday Night Live skits. After Meryl Streep gave a speech at the Golden Globe Awards criticizing Trump for mocking a disabled reporter, the president attacked her on Twitter, calling her an “over-rated” actress and a “Hillary flunky who lost big.”
Aside from Trump, the president’s surrogates and supporters have framed Hollywood backlash against the president in terms of cultural war. Pundits like Tomi Lahren and Meghan McCain have credited Hollywood “elitism” — shorthand for opposition to Trump — with helping Trump win the election, citing the ideological rift between coastal snobs and the citizens of so-called “real America.”
“These entitled Hollywood crybabies still don’t understand how out of touch they are!” Lahren tweeted after Streep’s speech.
It’s notable that these ideological differences hinge on how minorities are treated in public life. Both Hollywood and American politics have done very real damage to people of color in the past — the latter by levying centuries of oppression and disenfranchisement upon them, the former by justifying and perpetuating that oppression through stereotypical representations and limited job opportunities.
The difference now is that Hollywood has grown responsive. Politics has not. It’s unclear how long this shift toward diversity in the Oscars will last or whether it’s just a trend peddled by an industry that craves favorable attention. What matters, for the time being, is that it’s happening. And while the least popular president in recent U.S. history wreaks inevitable havoc on the soul of this country, much of Hollywood has — at least temporarily — dedicated themselves to enriching it.
—Zak Cheney-Rice, The most racially diverse Oscars field in recent history is a rebuke to Donald Trump’s America
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Trump is about to launch a futile investigation into voter fraud
- Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday morning that he will launch an investigation into alleged voter fraud across the United States —a futile effort that is unlikely to turn up a significant number of fraudulent votes.
- “I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time),” tweeted Trump
- Trump has been pushing a lie that 3 million to 5 million people illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election.
- During Jill Stein’s recount effort, Trump’s own legal team said there was no evidence of voter fraud.
- Additionally, people moving or dying isn’t voter fraud. Read more
Update: If Trump is worried about rigged elections, maybe he should start with his Cabinet
- White House Senior Counselor Stephen Bannon, the former head of right-wing Breitbart News, has been called out repeatedly on questions of whether he’s registered to vote in both New York and Florida.
- CNN reported that Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s pick to head the Treasury Department, is also registered to vote in both New York and California.
- Additionally, Heat Street reported that Tiffany Trump, is registered to vote both in New York and in Pennsylvania, where she attended school. There was no immediate evidence that she double voted. Read more
White actors up for 2017 Oscars are twice as wealthy as Academy Award nominees of color
- While actors of color have increasingly gained recognition from the Academy, that hasn’t necessarily translated to financial parity.
- In fact, when you compare the combined net worths of white vs. nonwhite nominees for the acting awards, you’ll find that white actors have more than twice as much as everyone else:
- $485 million vs. an estimated $211 million overall for actors of color. Read more
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IUD insertions reportedly up 19% since Donald Trump’s election
- After Trump won the election, many uterus-having people realized that control over those uteruses may be about to slip from their grasp.
- As such, an alarm sounded on social media: Get an IUD asap.
- According to Vox, quite a few people seem to have followed through — numbers compiled by analysts at AthenaHealth show a 19% spike in IUD insertions and prescriptions between October and December 2016.
- There was no such increase in the final months of 2015. Read more
Sales of ‘1984’ skyrocket after Kellyanne Conway invents “alternative facts”
- Sales of 1984, George Orwell’s famous 1949 sci-fi novel about a dystopian future ruled by oligarchical mega-states, have skyrocketed.
- This is after Trump’s counselor Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts” to describe blatant lies.
- According to Mashable, 1984 rose to the sixth-highest place on Amazon’s best-seller list as of Tuesday afternoon. Read more
Michigan EPA says Flint’s water is fine — but what do residents have to say?
- Michigan environmental officials announced on Tuesday that lead levels in Flint’s water no longer exceed the federal limits.
- The Associated Press reported that the EPA’s findings were “good news for a city whose 100,000 residents have been grappling with the man-made water crisis.“
- Republicans in Congress ended their investigation into the Flint water crisis in December, stating that their efforts hadn’t uncovered anything they didn’t already know.
- The city has allocated $27 million dollars to replacing "at least 7% of its lead service lines” by June 30 of this year, suggesting there’s an end in sight for Flint residents without clean water. Read more
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The Netherlands fights back against Trump with “international fund” for reproductive rights
- Trump signed an executive order Monday to reinstate the global gag rule.
- The rule effectively denies federal funding to any nongovernment organizations worldwide that provide abortion services, or even just offer educational information about abortion.
- The Netherlands is stepping up to the plate with an “international fund” to support birth control, reproductive health and abortion access in the developing world, the Independent reported Wednesday.
- Lilianne Ploumen, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, announced the plans Tuesday, saying it will “compensate this financial setback as much as possible,” the Associated Press reported. Read more
BREAKING: Mary Tyler Moore has died at 80, helped change who women could be on TV
TV icon Mary Tyler Moore died Wednesday in the company of friends and family, according to her spokesperson. TMZ first reported her hospitalization. The actress struggled with her health in the past, battling type 1 diabetes for years and undergoing surgery to remove a benign tumor in her brain in 2011. She passed at age 80.
This was a woman who, to borrow a lyric, could turn the world on with her smile. Her charm, grace, determination and gumption both on-screen and off were infectious. She and her character changed the way TV thought about women protagonists, and her influence is still felt all over network and cable programming today. Read more
Trump is about to launch a futile investigation into voter fraud
- Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday morning that he will launch an investigation into alleged voter fraud across the United States —a futile effort that is unlikely to turn up a significant number of fraudulent votes.
- “I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time),” tweeted Trump
- Trump has been pushing a lie that 3 million to 5 million people illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election.
- During Jill Stein’s recount effort, Trump’s own legal team said there was no evidence of voter fraud.
- Additionally, people moving or dying isn’t voter fraud. Read more
Democrats introduce a bill to prevent Donald Trump from launching a nuclear war
- Senator Ed Markey and Rep. Ted Lieu introduced legislation intended to prevent Trump from using nuclear weapons in a first-strike scenario without the explicit approval of Congress on Tuesday.
- The legislation is titled the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017."
- The two legislators issued a press statement on the bill co-signed by William Perry, who served as secretary of defense in former President Bill Clinton’s administration. Read more
The US was just demoted from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy”
- For the first time, the United States has officially slipped in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s rankings of global democracy.
- The U.S. went from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy” — putting us at the same level as countries like Singapore, Italy and India.
- The EIU is the research and analysis branch of the Economist, which releases a democracy index every year that evaluates countries on such metrics as civil liberties and political participation.
- High scorers earn the rating of “full democracy,” while the lowest are labeled “authoritarian regimes.”
- And for the first time, the U.S. score fell below the 8-point “full Democracy” threshold, landing instead in “flawed Democracy” territory.
- But this revelation isn’t all the work of the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump. The report notes that the U.S. has be slipping in the rankings for some time. Read more