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This wobbly but well-intentioned broadside against racism has been sitting on the shelf since it won the Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2018. What gives? Could it be that this true tale of 1990s KKK resurgence has nothing to say to the here and now? Not if you live in the real world, where incidents like the white-supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, have sparked a resurgence of racist attacks from Parkland to El Paso. Just as Spike Lees BlackKklansman used an incident from the 1970s to show that the alt-right cry of America first! is sadly alive and festering in the Trump era, Burden uses a true story from 1996 to point up a hate movement that is tragically not showing down.

Mike Burden, played by an all-stops-out Garrett Hedlund as a fuse ready to ignite, has been raised on hatred. After a stint in the Army, Burden signs up as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon. He also works as a repo man for South Carolina Klan leader Tom Griffin (a snarling Tom Wilkinson). To this former orphan, Griffin is a father figure who teaches the effectiveness of violence at getting a message across. Propaganda is another method. To that end, Griffin, Burden, and the Klansmen have taken over a movie theater in the small town of Laurens and run it as the Redneck Shop, a KKK museum. The move horrifies the Rev. David Kennedy (Forest Whitaker), a preacher who organizes a protest against this monument to white hoods and photos of black lynchings. When the protest starts to gain heat in real life, Jesse Jackson joined in Griffin sends Burden out with a rifle to silence Rev. Kennedy. That the anointed assassin cant follow through is an epiphany for the young man, whose change-of-heart is sparked by a spiritual awakening and his love for Judy Harbeson (Andrea Riseborough), a dirt-poor, single mother who points to a better way.

The hatemongers impossible-but-true redemption is the crux of the film that actor-turned-filmmaker Andrew Heckler instills with a passion that carries him over rough spots as a first-time writer and director. Hedlund does wonders showing us Burdens hidden resources and the scars hes still carrying. But there are character transitions missing in Burdens transformation that might have taken us deeper into his life, as happened in last years more forceful Skin, in which Jamie Bell tore into the fact-based role of Bryon Widner, a tattoo artist who inked his skin as a message of hate until a good woman helped him see the light.

Still, Heckler deserves props for not smoothing the edges of this incendiary tale. Indeed, Griffin took violent vengeance against Burden and poisoned the community against him. Even the reverend suffered blowback for offering the reformed racist and his lady love shelter in his own home. Dr. Kings message Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that is reprised here. The still pertinent question, however simplistically rendered by the film, is: How long will it take to sink in?

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Burden Review: Real-Life Story of Love and Racism Is Well-Intentioned, Wobbly - Rolling Stone

When the history of this political era is written, major themes will include the unexpected rise of populism and Trumpian nationalism on the right and the rejuvenated fondness for socialism on the left.

The story of how we got to this point will be a rich and complicated one, involving widespread institutional decline, the unhealthy influence of social media, and so many other trends that made it possible for some of the worst of the worst to manipulate American politicsoften while lining their own pockets. All of which was made possible by the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act of 2002, better known as McCain-Feingold. While much has been written and debated about the late Arizona and former Wisconsin senators legacy legislation in the decade since the Citizens United Supreme Court case struck down parts of the law, far less has been said about how the parts not overturned by the Courtparticularly its ban on soft money contributions to political partieshave done immense damage to American politics.

This shift of power away from the political parties resulting from this ban has led to the rise of outside groups and activists with narrow agendas, little incentive to compromise their views, and an eagerness to make themselves players in primaries. While some observers might cheer on this weakening of the elites, it has had the effect of turning the national political parties into glorified public relations shops for the White House when their party has the presidency. At the same time, the party out of power looks not just directionless but held hostage by fear of its own voters to appease small but vocal segments of their baseas seen in the rise of the alt-right in 2016 and the socialist hardcore Bernie supporters of 2020.

All of this was warned of years ago, as in this 2014 Washington Post op-ed by two election lawyers. After detailing the drop in fundraising by the two partiesa drop that meant a significant decline in the parties spending powerthe authors explain that it was the shortfall in fundraising relative to outside groups that most profoundly undercut the parties traditional role in our political system:

Reliable figures on the total amount outside groups raised for election activity are nearly impossible to obtain because much of that activity is carried out through tax-exempt social welfare organizations and trade associations that are not required to disclose what they spend. Nevertheless, one way to gauge the growing spending advantage that outside groups enjoy over political parties is to look at broadcast advertisements, whose sponsors are required to identify themselves.

According to political scientist Michael Franz, since McCain-Feingold, the number of advertisements that political parties sponsor relative to other groups has fallen precipitously. In pre-reform 2000, the Republican and Democratic parties aired two-thirds of all advertisements in the presidential general election. In post- / reform 2004, that figure dropped to one-third; in 2008, it was less than one-fourth. By 2012, just 6 percent of all advertisements were sponsored by the political parties.

As a consequence, both the Republican and Democratic national committees have atrophied to the point that they are no longer able to exercise some core functions. Both national parties used soft money to support an extensive grass-roots network through their state party committees. As those funds dried up, the state parties shriveled. This hollowing-out has left the parties barely able to engage aggressively with outside groups on the left or right.

With the parties hollowed out, proper candidate vetting fell apart. Republicans were first to be affected by this after George W. Bush left office. Free from any reprisal from the increasingly toothless Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or the ideologically friendly White House, outside organizations like the Club for Growth and former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMints Senate Conservatives Fund wreaked havoc in primaries across the nation. Instead of helping Republicans in winnable Senate seats, they often ensured Democratic successes by securing primary victories for heavily flawed candidates. Or theyd challenge an incumbent, who would still defeat their preferred candidate but be left beaten, blooded, and bankrupt.

All of which seems like a test run for 2016, when these and similar groups stuck to the sidelines as the RNC was helpless (or too scared of a third party run) to stop Donald Trumps hijacking of the party and the conservative movementa hijacking fueled by the very discontent with conservative elites these groups created.

As for the Democrats, their fracturing looks to have only been postponed by the Obama presidency. Like Republicans under Bush, the coalitions cohesion was maintained when their party held the White House. But underneath the Hope and Change was a simmering discontent, a worry about losing everything to Republicans in the 2010 midterms. This fear birthed the lefts own purity groupslike Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, whose muscle wasnt truly flexed until the 2018 primary victory of New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). The far left, too, showed that it was capable of knocking off its own congressional leadership.

Much has been said recently about how 2020 is a repeat of 2016, particularly about how an outsider with no true ties to a political party has essentially taken it over. With Bernie Sanderss early victories this presidential primary season, it looks as if there is little chance that Democrats will be able to stop him from being their nominee.

So with both parties shells of their former selves, the McCain-Feingold law will have helped pave the way for a nationalist and (possibly) a socialist to win the White House. Not exactly a legacy to be proud of.

Excerpt from:
McCain-Feingold Gave Us Trump. Its Giving Us Bernie, Too. - The Bulwark

click to enlarge

Stock photo of laughing woman wearing headphones and standing in front of two popular online memes

Each day, the chaos of the internet is filled with wretched news stories and terrible opinions. It would be an unrewarding slog if it werent for the beacon of hope that brings us all together: memes. There is no political event or pop culture moment that cant be turned into a meme, and no meme that cant be remixed into oblivion. But for some, accessing these memes is no easy task. Around 8 million Americans have some type of visual impairment, according to 2012 data from the Census Bureau. While much of the internet is accessible to people with visual impairments through screen readers, which transfer text into audio or Braille, translating images, including memes, for the visually impaired is more difficult.

A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been working to make memes more accessible, combining audio text and music cues to mirror the effect of a visual meme. Twitter, for example, was founded as a text-based social media platform, at first making it easily accessible through screen readers. But now, millions of images and gifs are uploaded every day, and only 11% of them are paired with a caption that describes the image.

The real question was, can you really just write out what's in the meme, or will that kill the joke? says Cole Gleason, a Ph.D. student at CMU and one of the authors of the paper Making Memes Accessible.

Memes, like any good joke, can lose some of their spark when trying to translate, as any young person whos ever tried to explain a meme to an old person would know.

We recognize that, for all images on the internet, this is a very hard problem, but focusing in on some of these subsets like memes isn't actually as difficult because they had certain constraints, he says.

Memes are hard to define, and best identified with a you know it when you see it mentality, but most often feature a viral image or gif accompanied by a joke format. The memes Gleason and his colleagues have worked with are what you might call vintage memes from an earlier era of the internet, back when people werent even sure how to pronounce meme. (Its meem, like dream.) The memes feature common images overlaid with a repeated joke format. Think of old friends like Success Kid or Philosoraptor or the Socially Awkward Penguin.

Gleason says the benefit of working with this type of meme is its simplicity. If we know that the format of the joke is this and we can extract the text, we can probably figure out a way to put those together, he says.

Instead of having an audio description that describes toddler clenching his fist followed by the joke, the researchers accessible memes create an audio version of the joke text, set to mood-appropriate background music. The idea is to create a sound that mimics the feeling. Think of a victorious sound for Success Kid bragging Put candy bar in the shopping cart without mom noticing, or a pensive, dream-like tune for Philosophizing Raptor asking, Do vegetarians eat animal crackers?

As part of the research, Gleason and his colleagues talked to blind Twitter users about their experiences on the platform, and whether or not they had a desire to better understand memes. Some said yes, some didnt care, and some were already well-versed in them. Many of the users they spoke to didnt necessarily like the soundtracked version of the memes because they were used to alt-text that worked with screen readers.

But Gleason still thinks theres hope for making it work. His goal is to set up a crowd-sourcing site where people could submit memes and other people could create sounds for them.

To some, making memes better accessible to people with visual impairments or other disabilities might not seem like groundbreaking, or even necessary work. But memes are an essential part of the internet. At their best, they bring people together to laugh at and riff off a joke (at worst, its a medium for alt-right trolls to express their demonic tendencies).

You see this in accessibility where people are like, Why are you working on memes when you could be helping blind people get to work or do their jobs? says Gleason. People forget to prioritize recreation or fun.

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Even memes should be accessible, and researchers at CMU are trying to figure out how - PGH City Paper

The actress, filmmaker and activist, one of the first "silence breakers" to share her story, claiming that the mogul sexually assaulted her in a Park City hotel room in 1997, says: "Hopefully now this will be the first day of the rest of my life."

I'm currently sitting on my bed and I have my arm around my puppy Pearl Kali, a Havanese from Cuba named Kali after the warrior goddess. A therapist told me that I needed a puppy for chronic PTSD and so, here we are. I'm looking at her while staring at a horizon that I haven't seen since I was raped in 1997. I haven't had a free moment from this man since then.

God bless the women who testified: Annabella Sciorra, Miriam Haley, Jessica Mann, Dawn Dunning and Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young. I can imagine what it felt like for them to be on that stand because, essentially, its like standing there naked in front of the world, allowing people to put tiny pinpricks in you as they try to pull the skin off. Death by a thousand cuts during a trial that was reality versus gaslighting. Its brutal and harrowing but they were brave. Donna Rotunno, Harveys lawyer, came at them with this kind of wink to the incel movement and by using the same trigger words as the alt-right dudes. These women had to literally look at the belly of the beast while the beast that hurt them is standing behind the beast. It was a Herculean effort and there aren't enough words to describe how I feel for them or what I feel for them.

Justice is a privilege and thats a really twisted thing to say. Justice should be the norm, not a 2 percent conviction rate on rape cases. Most women, men, boys, girls or anybody who has ever been hurt myself included will never have that moment where they can sit across from the person who hurt them and point at them and say, That was the person who hurt me. Thats a privilege and thats a sick privilege to have. I wonder how long it would have taken if wed all been black or Latina? I have so many thoughts about the cultural aspect of it all, but theres also a personal aspect. It's two separate things for me and I haven't had as much opportunity to process the personal of it until now, until tonight, when I feel like I have the weight of a thousand boots off my back.

I can breathe now. Obviously, I breathe a minimal amount to stay alive but I've gotten used to living with such a weight on me. Now I feel that I can breathe for the first time in years. The weirdest part is I feel connected to the girl who walked in that hotel room that morning for a meeting, and I have not felt her for a long, long time. I mean, I know her because shes frozen in time in a few of the movies I made, but when I see pictures of myself from around that time, Im like, damn, she was a baby. Now, it feels like she and I are high-fiving. [Rose pauses and starts crying.] These are happy tears. I'm crying tears of relief for the first time.

It can be an extremely hard push as an activist or global re-educator, whatever you want to call it, trying to unwire millennia of tradition brought on a certain subject and yet being a trauma survivor myself who has to do the work that triggers an act of trauma. Gee, no wonder I short-circuit sometimes? But if somebody were to ask, is Rose more angry with Harvey or the complicity machine? I would definitely say the complicity machine because I do believe there's something deeply wrong with him that he'll never fix in his head.

Hopefully, now this will be the first day of the rest of my life as I attempt to see what life would have been like without someone trying to kill me or paint me as an insane person. I had an entire career before. I do a fuck ton of creative things besides talk about stupid Harvey Weinstein. Thats what I find exciting about this moment. I understand that people are terrified of me out there and I don't know what to do about them. I cant hold onto that because while I had to help take down their cult leader, its OK to not be in a cult, you know? I should know, I was in one. Its actually OK to say this is fucked up and I dont need someone like him in my life. What if its time for someone else to just come in and make amazing movies? I just feel, energy-wise, that the planet would be better off if he wasnt on it. Thats my hippie answer.

What I do know is that tonight, a predator is off the streets. Recently, Ive been watching new TV shows and movies and Ill see an actress and say to myself, Wow, he would have raped her. Thats totally his type. Now, I get to hope to God that these women will get to live their lives, have careers and do everything they want to do and achieve what they want to achieve. And I get to be centered and free. That's my gift.

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Rose McGowan on Weinstein Verdict: "I Can Breathe for the First Time in Years" - Hollywood Reporter

Courtesy of bloomberg.com

By Eva Lynch

Germanys leading political party, Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the near political future of the country were thrown into chaotic disarray when Merkels heir apparent resigned earlier this week.

Merkel announced in October 2018 that she would not seek reelection as leader of the CDU, but would continue her tenure as Chancellor until Germanys next federal election, set for 2021 at the latest. While she declined to officially name a successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, often fondly referred to by her initials AKK, was widely seen as the most likely choice.

Merkels consistency, which has characterized her leadership tenure, remains true even as she moves toward exiting the political stage; once she makes a decision, she does not back down from it. Supposedly, she made her informal choice in Kramp-Karrenbauer as her successor long ago and began grooming her for the position ever since. AKKs ascension to party leader was carefully planned by Merkel, including her experience as the CDUs secretary general. Merkels hope in this choice was reportedly to continue her legacy of moderate policies by installing a leader with political views similar to her own. With this strategy now in shambles, Merkels attempt at the smoothest transition of leadership possible has now sent the biggest shockwaves through Germany since World War II.

Kramp-Karrenbauer, whose likelihood of succeeding Merkel was boosted by her promotion to Minister of Defense in 2019, became involved in politics in the 1980s when she was elected chairwoman of her hometown of Pttlingens CDU association. While she originally accepted Merkels succession little more than a year ago, Kramp-Karrenbauer has since reversed this decision during a CDU party meeting on February 10. She stated her plans for resignation of her chairship later this year; further, she stated she does not plan to put herself in the running for Chancellor in 2021.

Though she has not named a single reason for her decision, recent criticism Kramp-Karrenbauer has faced regarding her handling of controversies surrounding the recent local elections in the German province of Thuringia may be to blame. Free Democrat Thomas Kemmerich was elected state premier after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party joined the CDU in endorsing him. Kramp-Karrenbauers response to questions of collusion in the election, as this is the first candidate to have won an election with the help of the alt-right since World War II, sparked the criticism that is speculated to have led to her resignation.

Kramp-Karrenbauer said that she would remain party chairwoman until the CDU decides on a suitable candidate for Chancellor; this process could take until the end of the year, if not longer.

In the same response to alt-right collusion, AKK blamed her predecessor in part for her dismal fate, commenting that Merkels decision to separate Chancellor and the party chair weakens the CDU and set her up for failure as chairwoman.

Now, German citizens eyes are trained on the future of the CDU. It is unlikely that any proposed successor would accept party chairship without a guarantee of candidacy for the chancellorship, given Kramp-Karrenbauers experience thus far, meaning Merkels timeline may be significantly accelerated. According to the CDUs most recent statements, they will reconvene on April 25 in a special congress to decide on a new party leader and candidate for chancellor.

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The Future of the German Conservative Party: Following Angela Merkel Out? - Catholic University of America The Tower