Salon.com > Katie Ryder

A better border is possible

Sat, 26 May 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Ever since Mitt Romney became the presumptive nominee in the Republican primary, something curious has happened to his hardline stance on immigration: It's largely disappeared. Though he previously supported “attrition through enforcement” – a deeply disturbing approach already in practice in some states that sets out to make working and living conditions so bad for undocumented immigrants that they, in theory, “self-deport” -- Mitt recently claimed he would "study" Marco Rubio's more forgiving immigration bill.

But as Romney clumsily half-courts the Hispanic vote, conditions at our southern border are growing more dire. The brutal drug-related violence that has long gripped Mexico is on the rise. Two weeks ago, 49 bodies missing their heads, hands and legs were found near Monterey, Mexico. A message left nearby indicated the Zetas cartel was responsible. One week earlier, 18 dismembered bodies were found in Guadalajara. One week before that, 23 bodies, with indications of torture, were found hanging from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border. They are casualties of an apocalyptic drug war, a thriving human smuggling trade and, more broadly, a deeply dysfunctional relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.

Filmmakers respond to Greenwald article

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:00:00 +0000

On Sunday, Glenn Greenwald reported that Laura Poitras – the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated filmmaker behind "My Country, My Country" and "The Oath" – has been subject to extraordinary and deeply troubling scrutiny by American officials. Poitras has been detained by the U.S. government 36 times in the last six years – almost every time she’s returned to the country from work abroad. The filmmaker has repeatedly been subject to harassment, intimidation and unwarranted, invasive searches, while her phone, laptop, reporter’s notebook and other materials have been confiscated and copied. Last week, she was prohibited from taking notes on her own interrogation because her pen “could be used as a weapon."

As Greenwald pointed out, Poitras' case is a glaring example of the government’s continued disregard of Fourth Amendment rights as they apply to journalists and documentary filmmakers working on subject matter related to U.S. military operations, American foreign policy and any other domain claimed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Kinkade’s world of parody

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Thomas Kinkade, the self-anointed Painter of Light™, and artist behind the once-profitable later-fraudulent Thomas Kinkade Signature Galleries enterprise, died unexpectedly on Friday of natural causes. Kinkade’s appeal to his fans, as Laura Miller wrote on Salon today, is in its “aura of harmless coziness, of modest domestic beauty and comfort” – the same things that make his work a giant, glaring bull’s-eye for parody. On dozens of websites, artists and Photoshop dabblers have taken Kinkade’s images of glowing, pastoral peace and added … we’ll call them contradictory splashes. We've put together a slide show of some of the most memorable.

Secrets of creation

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

In his new book of collected essays, "Magic Hours," Tom Bissell writes that literary and artistic success have always been, overwhelmingly, a matter of luck. The works of Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, though great, are known today as classics because of the slightest, fortuitous turns of circumstance – turns entirely beyond the authors’ control. "Moby-Dick" was met with near universal scorn, until it was found by a sympathetic critic in a used bookstore in 1916, 25 years after Melville’s death. A remaindered copy of "Leaves of Grass" was also happened upon – this time bought from a book peddler and given to a critic as a gift.

For some ambitious writers and creators, this can be reason for panic, as it was for Bissell as a young man. But over the course of "Magic Hours’" sharply observed, lushly descriptive and often extremely funny pages, Bissell (a former Salon writer and the author of "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter") presents a case for art-for-art’s-sake, regardless of what may come. And, though Bissell has no aspirations to be included in the “how-to” genre of nonfiction, "Magic Hours" subtly discloses a type of directive for new and young artists making their way. Quite simply and hopefully, it seems to be: tell the truth about yourself and everything else, and pay attention.

After the climax

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:59:00 +0000

We’ve learned in sultry old romances and indie films about ill-advised affairs that we like to smoke between the sheets. People like to fix late night sandwiches, cuddle, talk about the future, take a shower. Every sitcom ever made posits that men don't want women to talk after sex. And everyone seems to think it matters who falls asleep first.

But does it really? In recent years, a small number of researchers have been working to develop the science of post-coitus -- a field that's barely been touched.

I spoke with Daniel Kruger and Susan Hughes, evolutionary psychologists at the University of Michigan and Albright College in Pennsylvania who have been working on uncovering the secrets of post-sex behavior. “There is so much attention, in the popular literature in psychology and even in evolutionary research, looking at everything leading up to the act of sex,” said Kruger. “But then there isn’t anything about what happens after. It’s as if the attitude is, ‘oh, of course sex is the end goal, right?’ We’re making the point that the time that couples spend together after sex is an important part of healthy sexual relationships.”

The Girl Scout haters’ biggest mistake

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:39:00 +0000

Last week Indiana State Rep. Bob Morris claimed, in an open letter magnificently disdainful of facts, that Girls Scouts of the USA financially supports Planned Parenthood and is a force of pro-sex, pro-abortion, pro-homo indoctrination, determined to reach our American daughters. Since his original refusal to sign an Indiana statehouse resolution honoring the 100th anniversary of the GSUSA, Morris has made a nonsensical apology, saying that he “should never have written the letter,” while holding to the counterfactual argument that the GSUSA is partnered with Planned Parenthood.

Inside the new hate

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:00:00 +0000

It's easy to interpret the verbal bile of recent American politics as a new height in prejudiced and conspiracist thinking: a new hate. In the last few years, Sarah Palin has created the concept of Obama's “death panels,” Glenn Beck has argued that George Soros was a collaborator with the Nazis during WWII -- even though Soros is Jewish -- and Donald Trump staked his presidential campaign on the idea that our president, black as he is and Muslim as his name seems to be, had not sufficiently proven his rights to citizenship in our country. More recently, Newt has taken to calling Obama the "food stamp president," a title that is as racially charged as it is inaccurate.

But Arthur Goldwag, author of the new book "The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right," argues that the racist and conspiracist approach of today's far-right pundits is largely the same as it was 50 years ago. Their language and theories are taken (sometimes verbatim) from right-wing populist vitriol at early times in American and European history, dealing in tropes well-worn by pre-WWII American Nazis, Joe McCarthy and fanatical anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic Protestant preachers of the 19th century.