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These are the pathogens you might ingest if you undercook your turkey

Tomorrow, millions of Americans will do something they only do once a year: cook a turkey. Not being an everyday activity for most, even many experienced cooks are apt to make a mistake in the cooking process — say, forgetting to take the plastic-wrapped giblets out from the turkey’s cavity; overcooking and burning the bird; or, perhaps worst, undercooking it. 

Why is undercooking a turkey such a problem? Notably, it is far easier to undercook a turkey than, say, smaller, more often-cooked poultry like chicken or duck. And while overcooking means the turkey may be partly inedible, it also means that any residual pathogens — meaning bacteria or the like — have undoubtedly died. Not so with undercooking. If you fail to prepare your turkey correctly, you may wind up ingesting some very scary pathogens. In 2018, one person died and over a hundred became ill due to a salmonella outbreak linked to raw turkey.

“Some of the ‘juices’ from the raw meat may potentially cause food-borne illnesses or other bacterial issues.”

Salmonella certainly isn’t the only concern. All kinds of pestilence writhes within raw turkey meat, and safe preparation isn’t just a good idea — it’s a must to keep everyone at the Thanksgiving table safe. 

Below is a list of some (not all) of the pathogens that can invade a turkey, how to avoid them, and which can be avoided as long as you properly clean and cook your Thanksgiving bird. A general word of wisdom: make sure you have a good meat thermometer, as cooking a turkey to a safe minimum temperature throughout its flesh is key to avoiding many of these.

E. coli

The bacteria Escherichia coli is better known by its short name, E. coli. If you are an animal or a human, the chances are that E. coli live inside your intestines. Don’t worry, though: Most strains of E. coli are harmless, or at least cause nothing more than an upset stomach and mild diarrhea. If you accidentally ingest E. coli from undercooked turkey, however, and it is a dangerous strain like E. coli O157:H7, you could be in trouble. Symptoms of severe E. coli infections include severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Fortunately, this strain is neutralized if you cook your turkey to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit. E. coli, if contracted, can be deadly. In a tragic story from June, a two-year-old girl died from E. coli food poisoning after returning from a vacation in Turkey. There have also been recent E. coli outbreaks ranging from Michigan to Seattle.
 

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Salmonella

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), roughly 400 people die every year from salmonella poisoning, while an estimated 26,000 are hospitalized. Salmonella is passed by birds from one to the other in countless ways, from their nesting to their feeding habits.

If you’re talking about turkeys, however, there is a specific salmonella strain that is most common: the Reading strain. When a Salmonella Reading outbreak occurred in 2018, it led to one fatality and 132 hospitalizations, with experts suspecting that it was accidentally introduced to the turkey supply chain and spread nationally before being identified by Minnesota officials.

Like E. coli, salmonella includes gastric symptoms like severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Infected patients may also experience bloody stools, chills and fevers. However, cooking your turkey to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit should make it safe from salmonella. There have been recent salmonella outbreaks from California (where it was linked to raw salmon) to Israel (where it was linked to chocolates).

Campylobacter

From Illinois to New York City, campylobacter outbreaks happen all the time; the CDC refers to campylobacter as “the most common bacterial cause of diarrheal illness in the United States.” The term campylobacter refers both to the disease itself and the bacterium which causes it. It leads to gastroenteritis, nausea, diarrhea, fevers and other ailments in people that can ultimately be fatal. Campylobacter is often shed through the feces of infected animals like turkey, but can exist in the meat as well.

The CDC refers to campylobacter as “the most common bacterial cause of diarrheal illness in the United States.”

While the symptoms of campylobacter infection (as with the other illnesses discussed here) are primarily gastric (nausea, cramps, diarrhea), they can also become far more severe: Temporary paralysis, arthritis and even spreading to the bloodstream to cause more serious infections. Fortunately, cooking your turkey to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit should kill any wayward bugs in your meat.

How to properly prepare your turkey

As you may have noticed, the theme “cook your turkey to 165 degrees Fahrenheit” has popped up over and over again. Regardless of whether your turkey has one of these three pathogens or something else entirely, that temperature seems to do the job when it comes to making your turkey safe.

Yet cooking your turkey to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit is not always enough. As Salon columnist Michael La Corte recently wrote, it is best to defrost a frozen turkey in the refrigerator because “the temperature is controlled, defrosting can be gradual and consistent and you can collect any residual defrosting moisture or liquids in a large roasting rack, sheet tray or wherever you were planning on actually cooking your turkey.” You should allow 24 hours of defrosting time for every 4 to 5 pounds of turkey that you have. If you choose to use the popular method of putting the turkey in cold water, make sure you change the water every 30 minutes, keep the turkey in its original covering and make sure the nude turkey does not just rest in your sink.

“Some of the ‘juices’ from the raw meat may potentially cause food-borne illnesses or other bacterial issues,” La Corte explains. “Let’s try to stay as far away from those as possible.”

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Parkland mom who lost daughter in shooting ousts DeSantis appointee from school board

A mother of a teen victim at the Parkland shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School has ousted a school board chair that was hand-picked by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Miami Herald reported that Broward School Board member Lori Alhadeff was elected as the chair of the board at the meeting Tuesday.

Torey Alston, the DeSantis appointee was elected as the chair in August, but with a 6-2 vote, Alhadeff ousted the GOP ally. There was a brief attempt by Alston supporters to keep the chair, but it became moot.

“I believe we are the new school board that can set a new path forward to bring leadership, integrity, healing, stabilization, and respect back to this board,” Alhadeff said to audience applause. “Don’t get me wrong: We have a lot of work to do. And I know we might not always agree on items, but I know we’re all here with our hearts and our minds laser-focused on the success of our students.”

Alhadeff lost her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, at the mass shooting. Fellow board member Debra Hixon was elected as the vice chair. Her husband, Chris, was the athletic director and wrestling coach who was also killed on Feb. 14, 2018.

In Aug., DeSantis removed four board members after a grand jury recommended that they be removed over financial mismanagement. He then appointed four of his own people on the board, three of which were removed in the election by the voters.

Read the full report at the Miami Herald.

Try my grandmother’s comforting cornbread dressing which anchors all my holiday meals

Thanksgiving isn’t Thanksgiving without turkey and dressing in my family. Really though, it’s the dressing that’s non-negotiable; there must be dressing. Everything else is up for interpretation and discussion, but what is now known in my family as my dressing (it’s my grandmother’s recipe) must be on the table. Hard to believe what is basically a bread casserole is so important, but it is. 

A quick Google search will tell you straight away that dressing is what we have at Thanksgiving in place of stuffing in the South. Its base is cornbread, and it’s baked in a casserole dish. It has a smoother consistency than stuffing and is beloved in a way I have never known or heard stuffing to be. I’m not saying stuffing is inferior, because the truth is I have never had “Thanksgiving stuffing,” but if I’m honest, I think there is a strong possibility it might be. 

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Dressing is a very special kind of comfort food, and no two recipes are the same. I’d say what they all have in common is that everyone believes their own family’s version is the best, and according to where you hail from in the South, yours will have a few key differences. Take, for example, oyster dressing. I never even tasted it until I was grown, yet it’s very traditional if you grew up along the coast. Other variations like sausage and oyster dressing, grits dressing, pecan dressing, crawfish dressing are just a few of the variations I know of personally, but I didn’t grow up with any of those. There is only one Thanksgiving dressing in my family, the one I will share with you here, which is from my paternal grandmother, Grammy.  

Food memories from childhood are powerful, and for most of us, our childhood Thanksgivings were happy times. Mine certainly were, most often spent with my grandparents in north Mississippi with aunts, uncles and cousins; playing games, riding horses, sitting around the fireplace and having second helpings of our favorite desserts. 

Our palates were formed by these annual meals, so I understand the strong connection people have to their families’ most venerated Thanksgiving recipes. I inherited this dressing recipe and the cornbread recipe from my paternal Grammy, who like my dad was born and raised just north of Oxford, Mississippi in a town called Abbeville, about 50 miles south of the Tennessee state line. By the time I was born, her cornbread recipe and this dressing recipe had crossed over to my mother’s side of the family, who are also from north Mississippi, so it is all I have ever known. Wherever we spent Thanksgiving, Grammy’s dressing was served.

 Most often, we spent the long Thanksgiving weekend at Pop and Grammy’s. After Thanksgiving dinner, my sister and I would get up in the night, go into the kitchen, pull the dressing out from the refrigerator, slice little squares, and eat it cold as our midnight snack. And our cousins did the same thing! Now we were kids who had four or five desserts and homemade cookies within our grasp, but we all went for the dressing — cold dressing at that. That’s how good it is! 

I grew up around, was raised by, and have been lucky enough to continue to be around tremendously good cooks, Grammy being one of the very best. This dressing of hers has been a lauded addition to so many Thanksgiving dinners over the years, from those hosted by trained chefs and gifted home cooks to being included in my early Friendsgiving-potlucks right out of college. Everyone loves it. It provides the perfect savory backdrop to all the traditional Thanksgiving flavors on your plate. 

Yes, it triggers my happy Thanksgiving memories of being at my grandparents house with my cousins and aunts and uncles, riding horses and standing by the fire until my britches got hot to the touch. From the first bite to the last, I feel my grandmother’s presence, and I am so grateful to have my family recipes. But this dressing has also found its light among strangers. Even those who love their own families’ dressing, still love this dressing. And even those who choose to venture out and serve a more gourmet or non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner love this dressing. I have never served it to anyone who didn’t love it.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with good food and lots of cheer. I am making sure to carve out extra time this year to focus on how grateful and thankful I am to have so many friends and family members, people I love so much and who are so supportive and kind, in my life. This year has been one of my most challenging, and perhaps because of that, preparing this Thanksgiving dinner for my family feels more important than ever. Aside from a new dessert (or two), we are opting for a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year, and just like my grandmother did, I’ll make extra pans of dressing to satisfy everyone ‘s need for leftovers.   

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Cornbread 
Yields
1 10-inch cast iron skillet
Prep Time
5 minutes
Cook Time
25 minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1/2 flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Pinch of sugar
1 cup milk
**1 cup mayonnaise (or you can use omit and double the milk to 2 cups) 
1 egg

 

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 425
  2. Mix dry ingredients and set aside
  3. Mix wet ingredients and add to cornmeal mixture, careful to not over beat. Fold in as much as possible.
  4. Place iron skillet in hot oven with either bacon grease or butter until very hot. Remove and pour cornbread batter into skillet and return to oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown on top.
Cornbread stuffing 
Yields
1 large casserole dish
Prep Time
15 minutes
Cook Time
1 hour 

Ingredients

1-2 onions, finely chopped
3-4 stalks of celery, finely chopped
3-4 slices of white bread (dried out), crumbled
**Giblet stock (or stock/broth) to moisten
2-3 boiled eggs, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Sage to taste
2-3 eggs, slightly beaten

 

Directions

  1. Make cornbread and allow time for it to cool.

  2. Crumble cornbread into a large bowl.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl.

  4. Add enough stock/broth so that the dressing is quite runny, a bit thinner than cake batter.

  5. Preheat oven to 400.

  6. Pour into large buttered casserole dish and cook 1 hour.

Cook’s Notes

Cornbread Dressing
There are two things you must keep in mind when you make this dressing. The first is you must test it along the way for seasoning, particularly salt and sage, so don’t add your raw eggs in until you are satisfied with the flavor. The second is the mixture should be runny like batter, so keep plenty of stock on hand to add little by little until it is the right consistency.

Allow time for your cornbread to lower to room temperature before making dressing out of it. Also make sure your white bread is stale or totally dried out. 

Cornbread
Just like Thanksgiving dressing, everyone’s cornbread recipe is a little different. This is my family’s recipe, and it can be altered a bit to accommodate what you have on hand.

The ratio for this cornbread is equal parts liquid to dry, so whatever mixture of milk and mayo you use should equal two cups. I use more milk and less mayo as a rule because that was the way I was taught even though the recipe states the ratio as half and half. You can also replace the milk with buttermilk or a non-dairy milk. 

You must not over beat this cornbread. The best way to combine is to make a well in your cornmeal mixture, pour the milk mixture in, and gently fold the wet into the dry. 

You should put your buttered or greased iron skillet into the oven to get hot before mixing the batter so that as soon as you have the batter ready, it can go into the hot skillet and into the oven. The hot bacon grease or butter should be about 1/8″ thick and very hot so that the batter fries as it is poured in.

I use a 10″ iron skillet, but a 12″ skillet will work as well.
 

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You’re throwing away the most flavorful part of the turkey

A few Novembers ago, during Thanksgiving week, I went to my local butcher shop. As I waited in a nearly block-long line, I watched customer after customer leave with a paper bag straining under the weight of a massive farm-fresh turkey. The man in front of me paid $82 for his turkey; the woman in front of him paid $112.

When I was finally face-to-face with The Butcher — a caricature of a man with a meat cleaver tattoo and a Bob Belcher mustache — I asked if he had any necks for purchase.

“What’s that sweetheart? Necks?” he shouted over the din of customers chatting and meat grinders whirring. “Waddya need ’em for? Your dog?”

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I had a recipe that called for them, I replied.

He called to the back: “Noel, grab me a bag of necks for the lady!”

Noel, a wiry teenage boy who had a pack of Marlboro Lights tucked into the pocket of his grimy white apron, slung a heavy plastic bag onto the countertop scale. I reached for my wallet and jokingly asked, “What’s the damage?”

The Butcher rolled his eyes into the back of his head and lightly tossed the plastic bag of necks between his two palms like a pitcher preparing for an inning. “I mean, nobody buys these here,” he said.”How ’bout a dollar a neck?”

That was the year my Thanksgiving main cost $10.

That was the year my Thanksgiving main cost $10.

When thinking of a Thanksgiving turkey, it’s easy to mentally divide it into only two categories: white meat and dark meat. If you’re picky (or lucky, depending on your family), you may be able to score a more specific part of the bird, such as the legs or wings. Rarely, however, does anyone clamor for the turkey neck. In fact, in the case of supermarket turkeys, the necks are often removed or relegated to a slimy plastic bag of giblets that gets jammed into the cavity.

But I had just bought Chris Shepherd and Kaitlyn Goalen’s stunning James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, “Cook Like a Local: Flavors That Can Change How You Cook and See the World.” Of Shepherd, Penguin Random House wrote:

A cook with insatiable curiosity, he’s trained not just in fine-dining restaurants but in Houston’s Korean grocery stores, Vietnamese noodle shops, Indian kitchens and Chinese mom-and-pops. His food, incorporating elements of all these cuisines, tells the story of the city, and country, in which he lives. An advocate, not an appropriator, he asks his diners to go and visit the restaurants that have inspired him, and in this book he brings us along to meet, learn from and cook with the people who have taught him.

Flipping through the recipes —  braised goat with Korean rice dumplings and fried vegetables with caramelized fish sauce — I found myself lingering over one in particular: Vietnamese braised turkey necks.

At one of Shepherd’s first jobs as a chef, there was a sous chef named Antoine Ware, who would always ask for the chicken or duck necks left over from butchering whole birds for the menu. He would then braise the necks “into a brilliant stew with brown roux and Worcestershire sauce and serve it over rice for staff meal.” This version, Shepherd wrote, was distinctly Creole in flavor; Ware told him it was something that his mom, who was from Louisiana, used to make.

“Then one day, when visiting my favorite Vietnamese crawfish spot in Houston, Crawfish & Noodles, I saw braised turkey necks on the menu,” he wrote. “I ordered it and couldn’t believe how similar it was to Antoine’s version. It was basically the same thing, plus fish sauce. The synergy of it was amazing; here I was sitting in a Vietnamese restaurant, eating boiled crawfish next to pho, next to turkey neck that reminded me of a Creole friend.”

The subsequent recipe sounded phenomenal. It was packed with nuanced layers of flavor, built from smoked paprika, thyme, garlic, fresh-sliced onion, fish sauce, dark brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce and Crystal hot sauce (of course!). That year, I carefully dried, braised and seasoned the turkey necks. As Shepherd promised, they were indeed delicious. I carefully packed up my Dutch oven with the punchy stew and took it to my best friend’s house, where we spent the day ladling it over fluffy white rice and sopping it up with sourdough toast tips.

It was perfect.

Much like oxtails, turkey necks require a little coaxing to become tender, hence why braising, which consists of lightly frying a cut of meat and then simmering it in a cooking liquid for a prolonged period of time, is an ideal method here.

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And like other cuts of meat that are cartilage, collagen and connective tissue-heavy — again, oxtails, but also like chicken wings and feet — turkey necks are tremendous for making stock. As the cartilage breaks down during the cooking process, which typically happens once meat reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit, collagen breaks down and turns into gelatin, which imbues stock and stews with a tremendously rich flavor.

Thus, if you aren’t looking to depart dramatically from a typical Thanksgiving turkey in the form of, say, Shepherd’s recipe, turkey necks are still worthwhile to seek out this time of year in order to pack extra flavor into seasonal favorites like gravy and stuffing by way of making a richer turkey stock.

And during a year — and a season — in which everything costs a bit more than in years past, thanks to issues like lingering supply chain issues and inflation, turkey necks reign supreme in the affordability department. Right now, you can get more than 2 pounds of turkey necks for $6.91 at H-E-B — which isn’t too far off from the $1 per neck deal that turned me into a convert.

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“Biden jumps the gun on Christmas”: Fox News now complaining White House is “too pro-Christmas”

Over the years, many critics of Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business have mocked the right-wing cable media outlets for claiming that liberals and progressives are carrying out a “War On Christmas.” It’s a claim that’s difficult to back up, as Christmas music, Christmas celebrations and Christmas decorations become ubiquitous in a long list of major U.S. cities that are overwhelmingly Democratic — from Boston and Philadelphia to Seattle to Chicago. Nonetheless, many Fox News and Fox Business hosts have insisted, year after year, that there is a movement among liberals, progressives and Democrats to attack Christmas.

But in 2022, ironically, Fox News is, according to Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, attacking centrist Democratic President Joe Biden for being “too pro-Christmas.”

At 6 PM on Monday, November 21, Fox News announced its “all-American Christmas tree lighting.” But only four later, on far-right host Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, “The Ingraham Angle,” the following words appeared on the screen: “Biden White House Jumps the Gun on Christmas.”

In a November 22 tweet, Gertz was quick to point out how badly Fox News was contradicting itself by lighting its Christmas tree on the same day it was attacking the Biden White House for celebrating Christmas too early. And in a separate tweet, Gertz posted, “New Fox News salvo in the War on Christmas is that Joe Biden is too pro-Christmas.”

It didn’t take Twitter users long to point out how ridiculous they throught Fox News was being. Twitter user Mark Doss, @mzzark17, wrote, “First it was the left has a ‘war on Christmas’. Now it’s ‘Whoa!! Hold on Joe. A little too early to be putting up that Christmas tree.'” And @diana_platts wrote, “It’s actually fascinating when you think about it. When you string together the Trump stories by MSM, you see corruption, criminality, incitement, etc. When you string together the Biden stories on Fox, you get stuff like he’s bringing up Christmas before Thanksgiving.”

Twitter user Tina B. Gibson, @tinabgibby, posted, “Is this a war on Christmas at Fox News?” And Twitter user Terry Futrelle, @tef581, tweeted, “Well, you have to realize that they have 24 hours of hate filled news to get out, each and every day. Content often bites the dust.”

Thanksgiving, my father’s last supper

The Thanksgiving feast was my father’s last supper, one he could barely eat before he was admitted to the hospital, only to die 10 days later in the hospice wing. He couldn’t eat at all that night, nor could the rest of us. We knew something was terribly wrong if Dad was not commenting on a delicious meal. Ever since, grief has attached itself to this holiday. And yet, isn’t it the miracle of healing and memory that we find a way, however long it takes, to get back to that time before the last supper? If this is a tale about the Thanksgiving holiday in the context of loss, it is also a story about the role of memory in the healing process.

Thanksgiving in my family, like many others, brings with it the shadow of death even as it also celebrates ongoing family love. It is almost always bittersweet. When the anniversary of the death of a loved one falls on a holiday, it has an added intensity because it returns to haunt us with the feeling of absence again and again on a day when families gather for a joyful meal together. Time’s passage helps, but only partially.  

Eventually, I found a way to bring my father’s voice back into my life so that I could see him again at the dinner table and hear his mock plea to my mother, “Give the baby some food!” Although I was no longer a kid, he’d turn to me as the youngest of his three daughters, with that gleam in his eyes, and say, “Lee-ah—la! You’ll always be my baby.” But getting back to that time “before” is certainly a process.   

When the anniversary of the death of a loved one falls on a holiday, it has an added intensity because it returns to haunt us with the feeling of absence again and again.

For years after my father’s departure for the hospital, I’d find myself reliving the last stretch as soon as we began preparations for the annual Thanksgiving feast. Something in the November air almost instantly brought back the feeling of dread. I would remember the changes in my father that we resisted acknowledging for fear of losing him. We assumed gall stones — easy enough to address. When he entered the hospital on Thanksgiving weekend, the diagnosis came as a shock. Stomach cancer: untreatable, inoperable, terminal.  “Ominous,” according to my cousin-doctor when I emailed with questions and false hopes. My mother expressed her greatest fear on the way to the hospital. “If he’s going to the hospital on Thanksgiving weekend, what if he doesn’t come home again?” A prophetic fear, as it turned out.

The days in the hospital stretched on as if each one lasted a month, with more and more tests leading to a surgery that we were told would make it an “easier, less painful death,” but would not save him.  We told him as much, for fear that surgery might be a mistake, but he chose the surgery. He whispered, “I’m not ready to say goodbye,” shrugging his shoulders sheepishly. 

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Even with pictures as a reminder of better times with Dad, my mind always took me to the room where he died. I would relive hospital scenes: the moment he fell when he was attempting to get out of bed himself. The nurse came and asked him if he was hurt. He replied, “My body is not hurt. It’s my dignity.” 

He was not without humor through this nightmare. My mother asked, “Aaron, if you go, when will we talk?” And my father replied. “Every Thursday, when Phil Donohue is on, Mollie. Don’t worry!” And he was wise. To me, he said, “When I die, don’t make a fuss! After all…,” and then he ran through a litany of names of loved ones who had died much sooner than he would at 86: his mother, sister, brother, cousins, close friends. “Just read to me,” he said. And I proceeded to read him the op-eds from the New York Times, as he requested, and to talk about world politics, the wrongs of war, foolish politicians, his favorite subjects. 

Something in the November air almost instantly brought back the feeling of dread.

On the day they wheeled him into the operating room, he gave his best smile despite the pain and winked. “Say see you soon — not goodbye!” After the palliative surgery, my mother ran after the surgeon who was rushing down the hallway to his next task. Her voice trembled when she asked him whether my father would now be better enough to come home to play their daily Scrabble games. Ever since retiring, they thrived on Scrabble despite their mutual accusations of cheating. The doctor slapped a piece of paper on the wall as if it would explain everything, and we stared at his illegible scribbling above his incomprehensible medical diagram. He shook his head, and in the voice he clearly used with trembling wives, said, “Sorry, highly unlikely.”

After nine sleepless days and nights in the hospital, I took a flight home to Massachusetts to take care of business. The doctor had reassured me that he would live for at least a few weeks. But the next morning, my sister called to say things had taken a turn, and she was told it was time “to pull the plug.” She added that she could keep him on until my return.  I told her we had expressed our love for each other, and to let him go. Nonetheless, my father stayed alive, if not conscious, and I made it back later that same day, for one more embrace before he died that night.

I wondered if I would ever get past the weight of loss, replaying each year the final moments, the look on his face when he rolled over and uttered simply, “I’m dying,” the sight of my mother beside him in the hospital bed, losing him after 65 years together, my sister and I in each other’s arms on the adjacent bed, listening for the last breath, waiting.  

It took me a decade to hit upon a Thanksgiving strategy. I began to read a banker’s box full of letters my father had written to my sister when she lived in Japan. He had covered the tissue-thin airmail stationary corner to corner with his typing, leaving only a little room for the address. The letters were stashed in a box marked “Dad.” 

“These are for you,” my sister Marilyn said, “for when you miss Dad.” When I pull out that box before Thanksgiving, his voice returns, resurrected in each well-crafted sentence. Scenes from my childhood reappear, and his embellished stories, full of his unique wit, come back as though he will soon show up for Thanksgiving after all.  In some ways, he does.

Perhaps the greatest blessing of the letters is the way in which they recreated scenes from my childhood, long forgotten if not for his language.

When I read the letters, I can see my father again, jolly, plump, reciting a passage from a recent thick book he has read, sitting at the head of the Thanksgiving table. He studied books of jokes from the library before these visits and then attempted to recite them. I can hear his infectious laughter before he’d ever reach the end of these jokes, and I can laugh again, remembering his laughter. It is audible now through memory. I can revisit his stories about his family, told and retold with increasing hyperbole, set in the little tenement where he grew up on the Lower East Side in poverty. He and his twin sister slept in the bottom two dresser drawers in the hallway of the studio apartment inhabited by a family of seven. 

A self-educated man, a victim of the Depression, unable to go to college, my father will forever represent for me what it is to be a true intellectual. He was an autodidact who read more than most college professors. His education was at the 42nd Street library in New York, where he would escape to read and research the subjects of his choice for hours, cutting out of his job at the Post Office to do so.

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When I was little, my father worked the night shift and took care of me during the day while my mother went to work. I have no idea how he had the energy to entertain me, but he did. I remember the little blackboard in our apartment hallway. My father would write Shakespeare soliloquies or poems by Frost and others in bright white chalk and in his childlike print. My job was to memorize and recite the quotes back to him “with expression” at the end of the week. I can see his face as he handed me my Hershey bar reward after explaining the words to me and helping me recite more dramatically and with a better appreciation for the sheer beauty of language.

Perhaps the greatest blessing of the letters is the way in which they recreated scenes from my childhood, long forgotten if not for his language. There are reminders of our outings to as many free cultural events as he could find on weekends in Brooklyn or New York. He would take out enough copies of Shakespeare’s plays for all of us. My sisters, my mother, my father and I would wait on that long line outside the amphitheater in Central Park for a Shakespeare in the Park performance, reading the play out loud from our library copies, each taking a part. I was eight years old when I got to be Portia. By the time we got seats, I understood a little of Shakespeare’s brilliance — or at least the basic plots. On our weekend visits to the Grand Army Plaza library, he would set me up in the children’s section and head to the adult’s. Books took on a life of their own, all associated with my father’s love of language

I saved only one of the many postcards my father sent to me at sleepaway camp in the Catskills. That one yellowing card sits framed on my desk and brings back the day I received it. I was eight and quite homesick until the card arrived. I climbed up to the top of the bunkbed to read it in silence during the rest period.  And there he was in his words, smiling at my reactions to his little narratives. He had turned the little card to type on every section of it, poems and tiny stories for me, upside down, sideways, in all directions. “Leah-Leah-Leah-Lee, Leah-Leah-Lally,” he wrote. Then he told the story of how my second grade teacher bought a fish at the market, and when she cut it open at home, out jumped my best friend, Barbara! He wrote that he had bought me a horse and buggy and it was parked in front of our four-story walk-up apartment for me to ride when I got home.   

Missing him now as much as I did then, I do wish he could appear before me again just like he did at the end of my sleepaway camp stay. We all wish we could still run into the outspread arms of the father we lost.  My consolation, however, is real. The last supper can transform through the memories that words evoke. The stories of our lives together can save us from despair after a great loss. This Thanksgiving, I will share my father’s jokes and tales with my children and grandchildren and make a toast to the memories that sustain us.  

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personal essays about grief and loss:

Trump demands to “redo the Arizona election” in Truth Social rant after his candidates all lost

Donald Trump wants Arizona to redo its 2022 election after his entire slate of election-denying Republicans lost their campaigns.

Kari Lake lost for governor, Blake Masters lost for U.S. Senate, Abe Hamadeh lost for attorney general, and Mark Finchem lost for secretary of state of spending their campaigns pushing Trump’s lie of election fraud.

“This election was a disgrace, everything was geared by Republicans toward election day and then, when it finally came around, the Republican machines were systematically broken,” Trump said.

An investigation by The New York Times could not document any voter being denied the right to vote.

“They should at minimum redo the Arizona Election,” Trump said.

That would essentially give the GOP campaigns a “mulligan” — the golf term for a player getting to redo a bad shot without it counting towards the score.

Florida GOP plots to overturn state law to make it easier for Ron DeSantis to run for president

A GOP supermajority in both chambers of the Florida Legislature may change a state law that would allow Gov. Ron DeSantis to continue to serve as governor if he runs for president in 2024.

Republicans House Speaker Paul Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo agreed that DeSantis should not have to resign as governor if he is chosen as the GOP nominee in the upcoming presidential election, Politico reported.

“If an individual who is Florida governor is running for president, I think he should be allowed to do it,” Passidomo told reporters. “I really do. That’s a big honor and a privilege, so it is a good idea.”

DeSantis was recently re-elected as governor and has not yet confirmed any plans to run for president. While former President Donald Trump has announced his third bid for the seat, recent polls have shown rising support for DeSantis among Republican voters, and many leaders are urging him to join the race. If DeSantis does resign for any reason, Republican Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez would take his place. 

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Of course DeSantis flouts the law and human decency — He’s just following Trump’s example

However, Florida law requires anyone running for a new office to submit a letter of resignation ahead of qualification if the terms of the two offices overlap. While this law was overturned in 2008 — to allow then-Gov. Charlie Crist to seek the vice presidency — lawmakers reinstated it four years ago.

The law also included a carve-out for those whose terms were about to end, which allowed then-Gov. Rick Scott, who defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, to remain in office until DeSantis was inaugurated. The carve-out would not apply to DeSantis, who was reelected earlier this month.

Renner claimed one reason they are open to changing the state’s “resign-to-run law” is that lawmakers have been “inconsistent” about it in the past. 

“You will find me to always try to hone toward being principled and consistent,” Renner told reporters. “This is one area that, going back in history — you don’t have to go very far on a kind of two-second Google search — we’ve been totally inconsistent on. If you think that’s based on anything in your hypothetical, you would be right, and I’ll be very open and transparent about that.”

Earlier this month, Politico reported that if DeSantis does choose to run, he will likely wait until after the 2023 session starting in March to announce, which lines up with the time the GOP-run Florida Legislature may consider changes to state election law. The 28-12 majority also allows Republicans to stop Democrats from using administrative rules to slow down the legislative process and gives them the votes necessary to override any unlikely vetoes from DeSantis.

“If Speaker Renner thinks it’s a good idea, I think it’s a good idea” Passidomo said Tuesday. “When you think about it, if an individual who is from Florida, who is a Florida Governor is running for President, I think he should run and do it. I really do.”

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Mac Stipanovich, a former Republican political strategist turned Independent, said no Republican lawmakers would “have the nerve” to go up against DeSantis. “We may as well not even have a legislature for the next four years,” he told the Orlando Sentinel.

DeSantis’ administration was also recently praised by Republican allies for redrawing congressional maps to make them more GOP-friendly. 

“Republicans in Congress owe a big thank you to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose insistence on redrawing the state’s congressional districts led to a four-seat pickup in the U.S. House on Tuesday,” said Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., who may serve as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in January. 

“Florida now has 20 Republican members of the House as a result of the governor’s insistence on his maps,” Buchanan added. “The slim new Republican majority in the House would have been even smaller without Florida.”

DeSantis vetoed the Congressional map drawn by the Florida Legislature, proposing a new plan that increased Republican-leaning seats by four, bringing them to 20 out of 28 seats. His map is credited for helping Republicans gain control of the House during the midterm election earlier this month. 

“The gain in Florida and New York made a big difference for the majority,” said Congressional Leadership Fund President Dan Conston. “Florida’s new map helped quite a bit.”

Voting rights groups harshly criticized the map due to its erasure of North Florida’s historically Black congressional district. They are now in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit to try to throw out DeSantis’ map for being politically motivated. 

U.S. District Court Judge J. Layne Smith in May ruled against the DeSantis-drawn maps, citing violations of anti-gerrymandering provisions in Florida’s constitution. Voting rights groups said in a statement this month that the 2022 midterm elections “were held under a congressional map that was already found to be blatantly unconstitutional by a state court judge, under Florida’s Fair District Amendments.”

“As control of the United States House hangs in the balance, we are once again reminded of the importance of free and fair elections,” they said.

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about Ron DeSantis

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: 8 new floats and balloons to watch out for this year

Thanksgiving has always been a momentous holiday in my household. 

My family’s onging Thanksgiving tradition is spending hours of quality time in the kitchen to prepare each and every holiday dish from scratch. There’s never a dull moment when we’re all beating the clock to hand knead homemade dough for four different pies, prep our own marinade for the big bird and make freshly squeezed orange juice for the cranberry sauce.

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But our most notable tradition is gathering around the television to watch the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Once Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” theme plays at 9 in the morning sharp, our Thanksgiving festivities commence.

For more than 75 years, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been both the biggest and the second-oldest Thanksgiving parade in the United States. The annual shindig kicks off on West 77th Street & Central Park West and ends at noon outside Macy’s Herald Square. What makes the parade so fun to watch is its itinerary of unique floats and balloons, which changes every year.   

From a Minion-themed balloon to a Wonder bread float, here are 8 new floats and balloons to keep an eye out for during this year’s parade:

01
Geoffrey’s Dazzling Dance Party
This float from Toys ‘R’ Us will feature America’s favorite giraffe Geoffrey DJing down the parade line en route to Herald Square. Geoffrey’s Dazzling Dance Party will also be decorated with balloons, bright colors, toys and cold pyrotechnics. A giraffe — which is actually an inflatable costume worn by two people walking in tandem, per the parade’s official website — will accompany the float too.

 

 

 

 
02
People of First Light

Macy’s legacy tree float honors the Wampanoag Tribe, who have inhabited present-day Massachusetts and Eastern Rhode Island for more than 12,000 years. “The float’s pathways symbolize the colors of the four directions, led by Grandmother Eastern Pine Tree, adorned by wampum shells of the water, & surrounded by sweetgrass, sassafras & wild berry plant relatives,” according to Macy’s.  

 

Elders from the Wampanoag Tribe of Mashpee & Cape Cod, Massachusetts will also be in attendance at the parade, sitting in a place of honor atop the float.

03
Baby Shark
Baby Shark, the anthropomorphic internet sensation who made their debut in a now-viral YouTube music video, will appear at the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in a “fin-tastic” float. Alongside Baby Shark is Mommy Shark, Daddy Shark, Grandma Shark and Grandpa Shark and eight starfish and three different species of anemone.

Get ready for that song to haunt your tryptophan-induced dreams.

 
04
Supersized Slumber
Netflix’s fantastical float celebrates the streaming giant’s new adventure film “Slumberland,” which stars Marlow Barkley as the imaginative Nemo and her new friend Jason Momoa as Flip, a satyr con artist. The float itself is a towering supersized bed that has an impressive stride length of 35 feet. There’s also elements of Nemo’s dream-fueled adventures along with appearances from Flip and Nemo’s good friend Pig.
05
The Wondership
Wonder Bread’s colorful float will feature the brand’s iconic red, blue and yellow-colored balloons along with loads of confetti! Alongside the float will be more than 900 “foam” slices of Wonder Bread, which will rise into the sky for Parade-goers to see along the way.

 

06
Bluey
The titular character of the Australian animated series will make her debut at the parade as a balloon. Bluey is 52 feet tall, or as high as a four-story building; 51 feet long, or as long as nine bicycles; and 37 feet wide, or as wide as seven taxi cabs. She was also hand painted by a group of artists with approximately 50 gallons of blue paint.

 

07
Stuart the Minion

The comical character from Illumination’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” is traveling down the Parade route soon with his favorite food, a banana, in hand. Stuart is 37 feet tall, or as high as a three-story building; 40 feet long, or as long as seven bicycles; and 28 feet wide, or as wide as six taxi cabs.

 

Per the parade’s official website, Stuart “is the first Parade balloon to ever use details created by a 3D printer.” That’s, um, bananas.

 

08
Striker the U.S. Soccer Star
This ballonnicle — which is a portmanteau of “balloon” and “vehicle” — from Fox Sports showcases Striker the U.S. Soccer Star executing a bicycle kick in celebration of this year’s FIFA World Cup. Striker is 25 feet tall, or as high as a two-story building; 25 feet long, or as long as four bicycles; and 10 feet wide, or as wide as two taxi cabs.

 

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stories about Thanksgiving:

Trump launches Truth Social war on new special counsel’s wife

Former President Donald Trump raged online after finding out that the wife of the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland is a Democratic donor who was involved in a documentary about former first lady Michelle Obama. 

Justice Department career prosecutor Jack Smith was appointed by Garland to oversee investigations into Trump with the apparent goal of shielding the department from accusations of partiality.

Katy Chevigny, Smith’s wife, was listed as a producer on “Becoming,” the former first lady’s 2020 documentary. She also donated $2,000 to President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, according to FEC records. 

Trump took to Truth Social to rant about Chevigny and Smith, attaching screenshots of her Tweets supporting the Democratic Party and accusing the Department of Justice of being biased in their investigation

“This is just a small amount of information from the wife of the hard-line Radical Left Special Counsel (prosecutor), an acolyte of Eric Holder and Barack Hussein Obama,” he wrote on Tuesday night.

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Eric Trump joined his father on the conservative social media website, attaching a screenshot of Chevigny’s producer credit on the Wikipedia page for “Becoming” as proof of a supposed vendetta against the former president.  

“The wife of the Special Counsel Biden chose to investigate @realDonaldTrump (his likely opponent in 2024) reportedly produced the Michelle Obama documentary,” he wrote. “Yes America, you are reading this correctly.”

Conservatives are up in arms over Chevigny’s Democratic ties, claiming that Biden is using the Justice Department as a political weapon against Trump, though there are no federal laws that restrict spouses of federal law enforcement agents, prosecutors or other officials from political donations or campaign activity. 

“You just can’t make this stuff up,” tweeted Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., who infamously likened those who stormed the capitol on Jan. 6 to tourists. “America cannot stand with a corrupt, two-tiered justice system.”

Former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich added on Twitter: “No wonder Jack Smith accepted this special assignment…The swamp is hard at work!”

“You would think that if the stated purpose to avoid any type of concern about bias were sincere, then they would at least check to see whether or not when you shake the family tree of the special counsel, any virulent Trump haters, Never Trumpers, Biden supporters fall out,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said in an interview with Steve Bannon on Tuesday, 

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Notably, many conservatives did not express the same indignation when Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote to Wisconsin and Arizona lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 elections and begged Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in text messages to not concede. 

The former president is currently in the middle of two separate investigations by the Justice Department: one regarding his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and another into his keeping classified records from the White House in his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office. 

The Trump Organization, and several Trump family members, are also involved in a civil case involving tax fraud launched by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump continues to claim that the various charges brought against him in state and federal court are simply a witch-hunt perpetrated by his political enemies.

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about Trump and GOP’s attacks

Attorneys say Club Q shooting suspect is “nonbinary,” ask court to use “they/them pronouns”

The suspect in the shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub accused of killing five people and injuring 18 others, is non-binary, attorneys said in a court filing.

“Anderson Aldrich is non-binary. They use they/them pronouns, and for the purposes of all formal filings, will be addressed as Mx. Aldrich,” a footnote in a court filing reads by their defense team.

Aldrich, who has not been formally charged yet, has been preliminarily charged with five counts of murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime, according to officials. The assault took place at Club Q – a nightclub that served as a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community. 

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“OK groomer” back on Twitter: Anti-LGBTQ hate gets even uglier after Colorado Springs

Until 2016, Aldrich used the name Nicholas Franklin Brink and petitioned a Texas court for a name change weeks before they turned 16. Brink is reportedly the child of former UFC fighter and adult film star Aaron Brink, who has an extensive criminal history.

“Minor wishes to protect himself and his future from any connections to birth father and his criminal history. Father has had no contact with minor for several years,” said the petition filed in Bexar County, Texas.

Aldrich became the target of online bullying at age 15, with their name, photos and aliases posted online, according to The Washington Post. A YouTube account under Brink’s name was created in 2010 with a crude animation under the title “Asian homosexual gets molested.”

Months later, a petition was filed in a Bexar County court requesting a legal name change for Brink with two of their grandparents’ names on the document. Their grandparents were their legal guardians at the time. 

In June 2021, Aldrich was arrested for an alleged bomb threat, leading to a partial evacuation of the Colorado Springs neighborhood where their mother lived, The Washington Post reported. 

Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report by Alrdich’s mother who said they were “threatening to cause harm to her with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition,” according to a news release from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office.

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Aldrich faced arrest-only charges of felony kidnapping and menacing in the incident, but no formal charges were pursued and their case was sealed, the District Attorney’s Office said, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

The incident has raised questions about why Colorado’s 2019 red flag law was not used to apply to Aldrich and whether it could have prevented the shooting at Club Q. The law allows citizens or law enforcement to petition a court for someone’s firearms to be confiscated if they pose a threat to themselves or others. 

It’s unclear if Aldrich had purchased firearms prior to the June 2021 arrest.

But the town’s Republican Mayor John Suthers said that “we don’t know” whether the gun law would have applied in the case and possibly prevented the incident.

“Law enforcement agencies in appropriate circumstances should take advantage of it,” Suthers said. “Hopefully there will be a time when there can be a specific discussion about any prior interaction with law enforcement.”

A video obtained by CNN revealed details about Aldrich’s 2021 incident, showing a standoff between Aldrich and sheriff’s deputies who responded to reports of a bomb threat.

Aldrich appears to be ranting about the police and challenges them to come inside the house.

“I’ve got the f**king sh*theads outside, look at that, they’ve got a bead on me,” Aldrich says in the video. “You see that right there? F**king sh*theads got their f**king rifles out… If they breach, I’mma f**king blow it to holy hell.”

A later video shows Aldrich leaving the house barefoot with his hands up walking to sheriff’s deputies. Authorities did not find any explosives in the home, according to CNN.

Aldrich is the grandchild of state Rep. Randy Voepel, a Republican assemblyman, who attracted attention when he compared the January 6 attack on the US Capitol to the Revolutionary War, CNN reported. It’s unclear how close Voepel, the father of Aldrich’s mother, was with Aldrich.

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about the Club Q shooting

“Hissy fit”: White House reporters whine about not getting invited to Naomi Biden’s wedding

The day before President Joe Biden’s eldest granddaughter Naomi married Peter Neal at the White House on Saturday, November 19th, Press Secretary Karen Jean-Pierre stated that “they have decided to make this wedding private. It is a family event. It is — and we are going to respect Naomi and Peter’s wishes.”

Indeed, this is what occurred. The nuptials were a celebration that was kept from the leering eyes of the public. One exception was granted, however, to Vogue reporter Chloe Malle and photographer Norman Jean Roy, who were given exclusive access to the First Family last week for a photo shoot.

That “special digital cover,” containing the collection of pictures and interviews with the Bidens, was published on Monday. And it drew the ire of members of the White House Press Corps.

Bloomberg News White House correspondent Nancy Cook quoted Jean-Pierre in a retweet of Vogue’s story, implying that the White House had not been forthright about who would be permitted to attend the wedding.

“There is a photo in the spread of the bride and groom with their wedding cake. Wonder if that was also shot days before? I have no idea either way, just asking,” Cook added.

Similarly, Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, posted that she “had reporting in Oct about Vogue being tapped to cover this and I was waved off. Official explanation is that Vogue wasn’t there the day of. Loophole = the family staged a ‘wedding at the WH’ shoot beforehand. ‘Private’ per Jean-Pierre = not for the White House press corps.”

CNN White House correspondent Kate Bennett also complained that “they WERE there — the reception photo, the kissing the groom on the White House lawn video, the family photo, them going up the stairs to the residence…”

A short while later, Ashley Parker, the senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post, accused the Bidens of dishonesty and equated it with the unending torrent of falsehoods that flowed from former President Donald Trump and his administration.

“I spent four years covering the Trump WH and two years covering the Biden WH. What’s fascinating is that they both lie, albeit in v different ways. Trump team was shameless, whereas Biden team is too cute by half,” Parker said.

Reactions to Parker were harsh.

“The prolonged meltdown over Naomi Biden and her husband not inviting the WH Press Corp to their wedding is really something. Just because something occurs at the White House, that doesn’t make it public. What’s next, demanding the Bidens let you sleep in their bed?” Drew Savicki asked.

“‘Joe Biden won’t let us film him in the shower, is that a problem for transparency?'” he continued. “I could be wrong here but Naomi Biden and her husband are not government officials. Why should they be obligated to invite the WH Press Corps?”

“I disagree with this political viewpoint. I believe that Trump lying about the winner of the 2020 election is substantive much worse than the Biden White House only inviting select reporters to Naomi Biden’s wedding, and that it is irresponsible for reporters to compare the two,” said senior Vox correspondent Ian Millhiser. “I do not believe that the fact that I am a journalist entitles me to attend Naomi Biden’s wedding.”

‘It’s not up to the White House to decide who covers Naomi Biden’s wedding. The Constitution reserves that power for the state legislatures,” joked Semafor politics reporter David Weigel

“Are you f’ng kidding me with this?!? Comparing lying about a deadly pandemic, lying about AN ELECTION HE LOST (for starters) is anything related to the private wedding of the President’s granddaughter!!!! Have we learned NOTHING!??!” Jo responded to Parker.

“This is the kind of false equivalence that misleads people,” Occupy Democrats Executive Editor Grant Stern wrote next.

“I remain skeptical about your abilities as a journalist,” replied BrooklynDad_Defiant!.

“If you believe there’s a comparison between Trump WH and Biden WH when it comes to lying, then you’re a liar,” quipped Chidi.

“Let’s be honest: DC reporters wanted access to Naomi Biden’s wedding to get access to her dad, Hunter,” MSNBC columnist Marisa Kabas opined. “Pretending to be mad that vogue did a photoshoot two days earlier and framing it as some conspiracy rings pretty false.”

Grace Segers of New Republic tried to offer an explanation.

“I think the frustration here is that press *was* invited to cover the wedding – but select press, in a curated way, and it feels like a microcosm of how the WH press is treated,” she tweeted.

But that too was immediately panned.

Cook, Rogers, and Bennett, meanwhile, were not spared the internet’s sardonic wrath.

“Of all the things demanding our attention days, the last thing to garner mine is reporters’ faux outrage over not being invited to turn a private family celebration into grist for the media mill. I love news, but this isn’t it,” Qannaq fired back at Rogers.

“Oh good grief. Are you really complaining because the bride and her family didn’t want the WH press corp causing scenes at her wedding?” Catherine pondered.

McKenzie Wilson, the communications director for Data Progress, shared an astute observation.

“It said in the article under the wedding cake photo ‘Photographs by Corbin Gurkin,’ who must have been their wedding photographer: https://corbingurkin.com,” she pointed out on Cook’s thread.

SayMaySmith drew an inescapably obvious conclusion.

“The Bidens excluded the White House press corps from the wedding because they didn’t want you shouting questions at the grandfather of the bride the whole time,” they said. “And judging by the hissy fit you’re throwing they made the right decision.”

Judith Light isn’t afraid of aging: “These are the crone years”

Judith Light isn’t afraid to be afraid. The Emmy-winning, Tony-winning, GLAAD Media Award-winning actor has forged a one-of-a-kind career in entertainment, swinging from theater to film to television, in groundbreaking series like “Who’s the Boss?,” “Ugly Betty,” “Transparent,”  and more recently in “Julia,” “Shining Vale” and “The Politician.”

Costarring now with Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor Joy, and Nicholas Holt in the twisty new thriller, “The Menu,” she tells Salon that when it comes to taking on risky roles, she just leaps. “Do you look back at your life and say, was I too scared to do something?” she asks, “Or do you do it, and then you find out that it’s all okay?”

During her recent appearance on “Salon Talks,” Light discussed the allure of her new “terrifying and funny” film, enjoying her “crone years” and what her own dream dinner would be. (Hint: It’s probably yours too.) Watch our conversation here or read it below. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It is difficult to talk about this film because there are so many surprises that we don’t want to give away. Variety called it a “restaurant thriller.”

I think that’s a perfect description of it. It’s a restaurant thriller. We were at this SAG event last night and Anya [Taylor-Joy] said something that I thought was really remarkable. She said, “In this movie, every single person is hungry.” That really defines a lot of what goes on, that each person has their own hunger, their own longing, their own need. It’s not spelled out, there’s not a lot of exposition, but you really begin to understand who these people are. You have to be reminded, I think that all of us do, how much, as a society, we strive to be in the in-crowd. We strive to be in the A-list. We have to be at the best restaurant. We have to be the top person. It’s all about superiority. It’s a comedy, it’s a horror, it’s a drama. In places, it’s terrifying. In places, it’s exciting and incredibly humorous. At the core of it is the message of, who are you and how will you live before you die? That really defines a whole element of this film that I find incredibly compelling. 

“Does anything scare me? Everything scares me. Life is so fragile.“

You have a script like this that’s so extraordinary but you have to fill in all the blanks. It’s very unusual in that way. Everybody who’s watching this has to put what their feelings are, what their thoughts are, the way they’re living. So while you’re being entertained, at the same time you have this opportunity to be let in as an audience in a way that few films actually can do. I think this is its own genre. 

You have so many theater heavyweights in this movie. You, Janet McTeer, John Leguizamo, Ralph Fiennes. It’s a movie that also takes place seemingly almost in real time. I’m wondering what you think that you as an ensemble coming from that theater background brought to the chemistry of playing with each other as actors?

I don’t know that our theater background brought the chemistry. I know that Mark Mylod, our director, really filmed this like a play, so we were with each other for all 12 to 14 hours a day of shooting. Mark was using everybody to film, so you’re watching a 360-degree view of everybody else’s point of view on someone else. The brilliance of this is the editing, so that Mark was telling this story through the eyes of everyone.

You also have another Tony Award winner heavyweight who plays my husband, my good friend, Reed Birney. A lot of times you do a film and you don’t see people from scene to scene. You do stuff and then you show up and you see the film and you say, “Oh gosh, I didn’t know they were in the film. I didn’t know that they were doing that.” But the real essence of this is this ensemble. Perhaps it is the theater background that so many of us have, but I think it’s also who these people were and how Mark picked each person because that really carried with it a kind of understanding and weight to the film, that he knew that we could fill in the blanks and that he would help us do that. It was a lot of different pieces, and when you have those kinds of people that have worked in the theater, you know that that you’re a team, and that’s not always the case when you’re doing film or television work.

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When I look at your career, I see so many groundbreaking roles. I look at these stories that were really the first of their kinds, whether it’s “Who’s the Boss?” or “Transparent” or “Ugly Betty” or any of the other stories that you’ve been a part of for a long time. Is that something that you choose because you’re also an advocate and an ally and an activist?

I have a great team, great management, great agents, great publicists, great hair and makeup people. I use my team, I get guidance from them on everything. I make my own decisions, but I get guidance from everyone. I use my intuition as to, who will I be working with? What does the script tell me? Is this a story that will be something that I will learn from in my own life? And will this be something that will serve an audience? Will they be curious about it? Will they be compelled by it? So a lot of it goes into the choice making, and the team goes into the choice making as well.

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You can’t just be a solo person moving through your work or your career, it has to come together in all aspects of that. A lot of these things were groundbreaking, and yes, I am an advocate. But it’s really interesting you talk about “Transparent,” and Joey Soloway, who was the creator, that genius, there was a whole time when I had a conversation with them, it was a dialogue, and I was doing a play in New York, and Joey and I never talked about the piece so much, we didn’t talk about “Transparent.” We talked about our advocacy. And it was out of that that they chose me to be a part of “Transparent.” I didn’t set out to do that. It wasn’t a calculated thought. But the minute that I spoke with Joey, I knew that it was something that I really wanted to do. There’s a lot of different stops on the way to making the choice for something like that, that ends up being groundbreaking. The universe just gives you these lovely things and you say yes to them.

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Joey Soloway unpacks “white male liberal” Hollywood: “It’s patriarchy, even coming from the left”

You have said that you see part of your role as a performer as educating people, and that does seem to be part of the story of your career.

I don’t set out to educate people. I think people want to be entertained. I don’t think anybody wants to be educated. If you learn something in the process of it, that’s great, but that’s never been my context. It’s always, will I illuminate something? Will I elevate something? Will I inspire something through this piece of work that I’m a part of? Because it’s like, will you serve the piece and then will you serve your audience? So it comes all down to food and restaurants anyway. What are you serving?

It’s all serving, absolutely. 

“It’s terrifying and funny and completely entertaining. I think audiences are going to love it.”

That’s the point. I mean, as a human being, we’re all in a service industry. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to serve each other. We’re here to support each other. We’re here to be a part of each other and part of a team. Again, it goes back to the question of this film, it’s like, who will you be and how will you live? How will you live your life? What are the choices that you will make that will elevate or bring something down?

It seems like in the past couple of years you have gravitated in a direction that’s been exploring horror in things like “American Horror Story” and “Shining Vale,” and this, which is a thriller. Is that something that is a newer interest of yours or something that you’ve always wanted to do and now you have a different space to pursue?

It just came to me. The character was fascinating. The team was fascinating. The script was . . . Fascinating is not the right word. Compelling, exciting, resonated for me. You talk about “Shining Vale” which is on Starz. That came to me. Jeff Astrof brought that to me. But what it’s really dealing with is women and menopause, women and mental illness, so there was something else that was tied to it, that it’s not just this genre and it’s horror and it’s drama and it’s comedy, it has a substantive level that matters to me, and it matters to me in talking about it in the marketing of it, so that we really use the vehicle of the work that we do in order to talk about these other issues.

Related

“Shining Vale” creator on the horror of midlife: “Depression and possession share similar symptoms

Women and mental illness, well, anybody and mental illness, it’s an issue in our country and around the world and something that we have not dealt with in a way that’s powerful enough to make sure that people are not sidelined, abused, shut off from a society, that there’s an understanding and a compassion and a kindness around that. So it wasn’t the horror of it, it just hasn’t been that for me. And this script, I really wanted to work with Mark, and then I saw all the other people that were involved and it was just like, oh, so this is also a horror movie at the same time. It’s terrifying and funny and completely entertaining. I think audiences are going to love it.

Horror and thrillers can be that conduit into these difficult conversations. As you point out, “Shining Veil” is also about aging and the ways in which we treat women in our culture, and that women get marginalized as they get older. You, however, have said that you are coming into, and I’m quoting, “the best years of my life.” I want what you have, Judith. Tell me what does best mean to you now at this point in your life, professionally, creatively, personally?

You talk about women and aging and how women are sidelined and something that really means a tremendous amount to me is one’s ownership of the years, the experiences, the aging. I don’t hold it as aging. I hold it as gaining wisdom. If I’m the same as I was yesterday, then I’m not really learning anything. It’s not just the best time of my life, it’s this moment, so it better be the best. 

“The universe just gives you these lovely things and you say yes to them.”

These are the crone years. These are the wise years. These are the gathering of the experiences through time. The way that people relate to me around the way I choose to live or the choices that I make, the response has been really generous and gracious. Yes, I know that we talk about women and aging in Hollywood, and it’s a conversation that’s still happening, but it’s like, where will we put our focus? Again, goes back to the same thing, the same context. How will we live? Who will we be? Where are we putting our energy that either supports us, feeds us, is a gift to people around us, or a gift to the people who watch us? It’s a moment. It’s a moment. If you’re in this moment, and I know it sounds like, “Oh my God, we’ve heard it a million times, just be in the now. Be in the now.” It’s like right now, there’s nothing else except you and me and all of my fabulous friends here. This is it. This is all we have. And if you’re not embracing that fully . . . And so that’s the way I feel now in my life more than ever. And I would say that that’s probably what makes it best, that I’m more in the moment, as much as I can be. 

That comes, I imagine, out of a lot of practice and learning how to do that as well as you are doing it.

You’ve got to practice. It’s a muscle. I mean, the programmed mind will take you away, it’ll drag you down to a place where you don’t want to be. If you can just stay aware for a moment and say, oh, right, I’m not present. I’m not present. So what do I have to do? And that’s so for the work, but it’s especially true for life. Where am I right now?

I have to ask you, this is a movie about food, about foodies, about food culture. I know reading from other interviews from you, you lead a pretty healthy lifestyle. You lean mostly vegetarian, slightly vegan. What is your dream meal? If you were going to a place like Hawthorne and having the ultimate meal, what would it be? 

Pizza and ice cream. 

“The way that people relate to me around the way I choose to live or the choices that I make, the response has been really generous and gracious.”

Me too.

Without question, pizza and ice cream. I mean, there’s maybe a few other things thrown in. Pizza and ice cream.

I am a foodie, and I’ve always been a foodie. I cook, my husband cooks. My husband’s an amazing cook. Amazing. I have Gourmet magazines from 1976. I would just read about food. I have copious cookbooks. We had a restaurant in Aspen, Colorado in 2008. There’s this food culture, but there’s something about it that’s beyond food. Like you said, it’s not just the food. It’s about nurturing. How do we learn to nurture ourselves?

That’s another thing that I think is present in this film. None of these people have nurtured their souls. They’ve only thought about how they can make it in the world and be on the A-list. And it’s an empty pursuit. 

You are in this movie that’s a little scary, to say the least. Yet you say you’ve never played the ingénue, you always play these very strong, courageous characters. Is there anything in the world that scares you?

Everything. What do you mean, does anything scare me? Everything scares me. Life is so fragile. We are so vulnerable and when you’re in touch with that, things scare you. And then you say, What are you scared about? And if you stay in the moment and you just take one step after another, it doesn’t have to overwhelm you.

Even if I’m scared about something, I do something anyway. I mean, years ago I hadn’t been on stage in 22 years and I took a part in a play where I had to shave my head and be bald and be naked on stage. It’s this beautiful play written by this gorgeous, amazing woman, Margaret Edson, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, and it was called “Wit.” It was about a woman dying of fourth stage ovarian cancer, and I thought, “I can’t do this.” First of all, they’re not going to cast me. And then they did. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Do you live life with regret? Do you look back at your life and say, was I too scared to do something? Or do you do it, and then you find out that it’s all OK and you’re OK, and you gained something remarkable from the experience? But everything scares me. Doesn’t everything scare you?

Yeah. I have kids. 

Right. You ask anybody, in the dead of night, in their heart of hearts, are they scared? Of course we’re scared. So what?

It’s about being scared, but then getting up in the morning and doing something anyway in spite of it.

Just go. Just go. Just do it.

Just go. And maybe along the way, see some fun movies and be entertained.

Go see “The Menu.”

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“Salon Talks” with Mary Elizabeth Williams

“Straight from Donald Trump’s playbook”: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro contests validated election loss

In a move that critics compared to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overturn the 2020 election, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday officially contested his loss to leftist challenger Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, citing a software bug in the country’s electronic voting machines that independent experts say had no effect on the contest’s outcome.

The results of last month’s runoff election—which da Silva, the Workers’ Party (PT) candidate and former two-term president, won by more than 2.1 million votes—have been validated by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE). That means Bolsonaro’s challenge is highly unlikely to succeed.

TSE President Alexandre de Moraes said in a statement Tuesday that “the electronic voting machines were used in both the first and second rounds of the 2022 election.”

“Thus,” he added, “under penalty of dismissal of the complaint, the plaintiff must add to the complaint so that the request covers both rounds, within 24 hours.”

Bolsonaro, an outspoken admirer of Brazil’s former U.S.-backed military dictatorship—in which he served as an army officer—repeatedly threatened to reject the results of the election if he did not win.

Some observers fear the lame-duck incumbent’s election challenge could spark protests by supporters similar to demonstrations by truck drivers and others in the days following the October 30 runoff—or even an insurrection akin to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by backers of Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen.

The international hacktivist collective Anonymous called Bolsonaro’s gambit “straight from Donald Trump’s playbook,” an assessment echoed by progressives in Brazil and abroad.

“Bolsonaro’s action at the TSE is chicanery that must be punished as bad faith litigation,” asserted PT national president Gleisi Hoffman. “No more dubious gamesmanship, irresponsibility, insults to institutions and democracy. The election was decided by the vote and Brazil needs peace to build a better future.”

Congressmember-elect Erika Hilton, a member of the Socialism and Liberty Party and a São Paulo city councilmember, sardonically suggested Tuesday that Bolsonaro—who has been unusually quiet since losing—was “coming up with the brilliant idea of annulling votes only in the electronic ballot boxes he lost.”

Hilton, one of three transgender progressives elected to Brazil’s Congress last month, accused Bolsonaro of trying to “translate Trump’s tactic into Portuguese,” adding, “which also didn’t work.”

“Shame on them!”: Trump complains SCOTUS he packed with own picks “always” rules against him

Former President Donald Trump this week lashed out at the United States Supreme Court after it refused to intervene to block congressional access to his tax returns.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the former president complained not only about the ruling on his taxes, but also about the court’s refusal to hear a lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election.

“Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do!” Trump complained. “It is unprecedented to be handing over Tax Returns, & it creates terrible precedent for future Presidents. Has Joe Biden paid taxes on all of the money he made illegally from Hunter & beyond.”

In fact, Trump was the only president in roughly five decades who did not release his tax returns prior to taking office. President Joe Biden’s taxes have been publicly available for years.

“The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, and has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price,” Trump continued. “They refused to even look at the Election Hoax of 2020. Shame on them!”

Trump appointed one third of the justices who currently sit on the Supreme Court and they have consistently made rulings favored by the American conservative movement, most famously when they struck down the precedent established by Roe v. Wade earlier this year.

The creamiest, dreamiest mashed potatoes have this secret ingredient

I'd venture to say that my usual proclivity within food is texture-seeking. So, mashed potatoes have never really been my jam.

I don't think I've ever asked for or ordered a heap of mashed potatoes as a side at a restaurant. When mashed potatoes — which are the epitome of softness and nary ever have even a smidgen of crunch or texture — come into the equation, I'm not often chomping at the bit to eat them.

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Honoring my dad with Bell's seasoning and family recipes this Thanksgiving

However, there's exactly one day of the year on which I cosplay as a tater-hound and lean into this holiday classic: Thanksgiving. 

My mashed potatoes are enriched with cream and shredded cheddar cheese. They're also (obviously) laced with butter and (usually) some creamy element of sorts like mascarpone, labneh or crème fraîche. I prefer my mashed potatoes on the thicker side, decisively cementing their place as a mash versus a purée or perhaps even a thick soup.

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I aggressively season the cooking water and usually opt for Idaho or russet (but Yukons here and there are also delicious). I often throw in some whole garlic cloves alongside the spuds, and I always only use a handheld potato masher. If you're not in the mood for hand-mashing, feel free to use a food mill, mechanized hand blender or ricer. But be careful if opting for a Vitamix or food processor: Potatoes can get strangely gummy or even glue-y in these applications.

While topping your taters with some pats of butter or chopped chives is always a great move, the frenzied air on Thanksgiving sometimes doesn't allow for such frills. No matter your approach, ingredient choices or utensils, I hope your Turkey Day mashed potatoes are everything you hoped for and then some. 

Creamy Cheddar Mashed Potatoes with Mascarpone and Chives
Yields
6 servings
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
35 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds potatoes, peeled (only for certain kinds, such as Idaho or russet) and chopped into cubes
  • 5 garlic cloves, peeled
  • Kosher salt
  • 1 stick unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 cup mascarpone
  • 1 bunch chives, finely minced

 

 

Directions

  1. Add the chopped potato cubes and garlic cloves to a large, heavy pot. Fill with cold water, transfer to the stove and bring to a boil. Once boiling rapidly, season very generously with salt. (This is the first stage of seasoning your potatoes. If you don't salt them here, you'll never truly be able to season them perfectly post-cook.)
  2. Test for doneness after about 20 minutes, using a fork to check and see how easily it pierces the potato. Once the potatoes are fork tender or even slightly starting to fall apart, drain them in a colander. Return the drained potatoes to the pot and place on the same burner. Ensure the burner is turned off.
  3. Begin mashing, using a potato masher, food mill, hand blender, ricer or similar tool.
  4. Once the potatoes are sufficiently mashed, add the stick of butter and let the residual heat melt it. Once softened considerably, add the heavy cream and mascarpone, blending the dairy in with a wooden spoon (or your potato masher).
  5. When entirely smooth and everything has been melted and incorporated, taste for the final seasoning. You'll probably need a bit more salt — but be careful if you used salted butter.
  6. Transfer to a large, warmed bowl and top with pats of butter and minced chives.

Cook's Notes

  • For the potatoes: Idaho or russet produce a very different end product than Yukons, but I'm not opposed to fingerlings, red bliss, sweet potatoes, etc. All potatoes can work for mashed potatoes, really, so always feel free to use your favorite tuber.
  • Cook the potatoes judiciously and thoroughly: No matter how much elbow grease you put into it, an undercooked potato simply won't mash up perfectly, resulting in an uneven final product with little bits of slightly undercooked potato. I'd venture to say that a slightly overcooked or waterlogged potato is preferable to an undercooked tater — at least when it comes to this dish — as the structural integrity of the spud doesn't matter once it's mashed into smithereens.
  • For the dairy: In addition to heavy cream and/or mascarpone, other great choices are whole milk, non-dairy milk, buttermilk, fromage blanc, half-and-half, sour cream, vegan crème fraîche and so on and so forth.
  • For the butter: Because I prefer to control the sodium content myself, I aim for unsalted butter. If you prefer the "built-in" salinity of salted butter, go wild.
  • I'm not a black pepper guy across the board, and I really don't like it in mashed potatoes. As always, feel free to add a heaping amount if that is your journey.
  • For the herbs: Chives are the classic, but I always love some scallions. Another interesting flavor addition would be finely chopped fresh dill. Or go in a more colcannon direction, and incorporate kale or spinach for a heftier green texture and flavor.

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about Turkey Day

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Yet another mass shooting in US as gunman kills at least 6 in Virginia Walmart

A gunman opened fire inside a Chesapeake, Virginia Walmart late Tuesday, killing at least six people and wounding others in the latest mass shooting in the United States, which has seen more than 600 this year alone.

Reuters reported that local police “have so far not provided any details about the suspected shooter, but several media outlets have identified him as a manager at the store.” The shooter was found dead at the scene.

“The police were not clear whether the shooter died of self-inflicted injuries,” Reuters added. “They believed that the shooting happened inside the store, but said that one body was found outside.”

State Sen. L. Louise Lucas, the Democratic president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate, tweeted that she is “absolutely heartbroken that America’s latest mass shooting took place in a Walmart in my district in Chesapeake, Virginia tonight.”

“I will not rest until we find the solutions to end this gun violence epidemic in our country that has taken so many lives,” Lucas wrote.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said he is “sickened by reports of yet another mass shooting, this time at a Walmart in Chesapeake.”

The Virginia shooting comes days after a gunman killed five people at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs. The suspect is facing murder and hate crime charges.

How gun culture and anti-LGBTQ hate came together in Colorado Springs

Back on May 24, an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Even in a country where mass shootings are as common as they are in the United States, that one was a shocker. Just as shocking was the government response to the shooting.

Even as the local government stonewalled the press, virtually the entire top level of state leadership, led by Gov. Greg Abbott, descended on Uvalde to hold a town meeting just days after the event. They praised the “first responders” and angrily denounced anyone who suggested that maybe it was a bad idea to allow disturbed 18-year-olds to acquire semiautomatic weapons.

Months later, there are only a few more answers for the families of those slain children and the teachers who tried to protect them. There was a massive cover-up that is only now coming to light. But 60% of the citizens of Uvalde voted for Greg Abbott anyway. His Democratic rival, Beto O’Rourke, ran on a gun safety platform and apparently the good people of that community couldn’t abide that, even as 19 children from their own community were lying in their graves. That is the power of America’s gun culture.

I will confess that vote shook me. I would have thought that at least in that town the reality of unfettered gun access would have hit home.

The Gun Violence Archive has recorded at least at least 601 mass shootings through mid-November of this year. Of those shootings, 20 involved five or more fatalities. Many were carried out either by people with some twisted agenda of their own, like the Uvalde killer, or were motivated by some personal grudge. But there has been a spate of mass shootings in recent years that appear to be the direct result of right-wing propaganda as well, particularly the onslaught of online hate, where what was once fringe is now mainstream.

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“OK groomer” back on Twitter: Anti-LGBTQ hate gets even uglier after Colorado Springs

Rarely have we seen the mainstreaming of right-wing propaganda and the fetish for guns come together so perfectly as we did this past weekend in Colorado Springs, when an angry young man stepped into a gay bar and started shooting, killing five people and wounding 19.

The accused shooter is 22 years old and, according to a recent court filing, identifies as nonbinary. This individual already had run-ins with police after a bomb threat that led to a standoff at their family home in El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs. There is video of that incident showing the alleged shooter rampaging through the house in combat gear, daring the police to come and get them. But those charges were dropped and the case was sealed, for unclear reasons. But as Tim Miller of The Bulwark reports, we can certainly make a reasonable guess. Even though 80% of Colorado citizens backed the “red flag” signed by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, 37 of the 64 counties in the state have decided to ignore it, calling themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.” El Paso County is one of them.

In other words, local officials could have prevented this accused killer from legally purchasing guns if they had followed the state’s duly enacted laws instead of acting like defiant criminals themselves. They won’t even try to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of someone who has demonstrated an eagerness for violent confrontation with police. It’s inexplicable.

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Then there is the target of this attack, a gay bar and restaurant called Club Q that was hosting a drag show the night before the Transgender Day of Remembrance — a day honoring the many trans people killed in horrific hate crimes. Drag performances have been around for generations, but over the past couple of years, as the right-wing media has become obsessed transgender people, conservative politicians both locally and nationally have seized on them as a way to gin up some old-fashioned gay-bashing. They have apparently managed to convince millions of Americans that LGBTQ people are somehow “grooming” children into becoming trans, after one of their rising-star propagandists decided this was an excellent way to get the base excited. Drag shows are suddenly enemy No. 1. 

So we have seen Republican Senate candidates shouting incoherently about pronouns and others babbling about “grooming,” which might seem like  bizarre fringe behavior if it weren’t for the violence and bullying being inflicted on many highly vulnerable LGBTQ people in our families and communities.

Here’s an example of the rhetoric being bandied about, this time from the woman who seems to be pulling the strings behind the incoming speaker of the House of Representatives:

Just days after the mass shooting, Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson featured a discussion that basically threatened more violence:

In case you think this is just coming from the likes of Greene or Carlson, consider new GOP dreamboat Ron DeSantis, who has banned classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools and took on one of the state’s largest employers when it (belatedly) stood up for its LGBTQ employees and patrons. DeSantis is as mainstream as it gets in the modern-day GOP. For that matter, 37 of the 50 Republican senators voted against protecting same sex marriage just this week.

And let’s not forget the gun-toting congresswoman from Colorado, who perfectly encapsulates the convergence of nihilistic gun culture and loathing for LGBTQ people.

After the murders, Boebert tweeted that “the violence must end and end quickly,” but I think we can be pretty sure she isn’t talking about enforcing the gun laws in her state or disavowing the disgusting homophobia and anti-trans crusade that she has pushed ever since she entered politics.

No one seems to have told these people that this anti-trans crusade backfired on them badly in the midterm elections earlier this month. On the list of issues that motivated people to vote, gender-affirming care for trans youth or trans participation in sports was literally in last place. The right is getting no tangible benefits from all this, except the thrill that people they hate are under threat.

Normal people in this country agree with Richard Fierro, the heroic military veteran former soldier with four tours of combat under his belt who stopped the gunman in Club Q and saved countless lives. He was attending the drag show with his family and friends and told the New York Times, “These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it. I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever the hell they want.”

The Republicans claim that they are the keepers and protectors of “traditional” American values, and in a certain sense they are. There is a long tradition of violent, hateful bigotry in this country. But Richard Fierro represents the values that decent Americans are proud to uphold. 

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about the assault on LGBTQ rights

“Goodbye Cannon”: Experts say judge’s controversial pro-Trump order doomed after “hostile” hearing

A federal appeals court appears likely to shut down the special master review of secret government documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, sided with the former president to appoint a special master to comb through the documents for potentially privileged information, selecting longtime federal Judge Raymond Dearie from a list proposed by Trump’s attorneys. Legal experts have repeatedly questioned Cannon’s intervention in the case, especially after she overruled Dearie on key issues as he pressed Trump’s attorneys to provide evidence backing their arguments.

During a tense 40-minute hearing in Atlanta, a three-member panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals appeared likely to side with the Justice Department’s appeal that Cannon erred in appointing a special master in the first place, according to The New York Times.

Related

“Trump’s worst day ever”: Appeals court says Mar-a-Lago judge “abused” discretion by backing Trump

The panel in their questions expressed concern that Cannon had “acted without precedent” by ordering the review and had “overstepped by inserting herself into the case” and trying to prevent the government from using the seized documents in its investigation, the outlet reported. Two of the judges were fellow Trump appointees.

Lawyers for the DOJ argued that there was no precedent for Cannon to interfere in a case where no charges had been filed and that she should never have gotten involved in the first place because there is no evidence the August search of Mar-a-Lago was unlawful.

Judge Andrew Brasher, a Trump appointee, pressed Trump attorney James Trusty to cite a “single decision by a federal court other than this one” that had issued a similar ruling. Trusty tried to sidestep the question, arguing that the “raid” on Trump’s property was itself unprecedented, before Judge Britt Grant, another Trump appointee, called him out for describing a lawful search as a “raid.”

“None of the judges asked any skeptical questions of the Justice Department,” the Times report added.

Brasher and Grant were previously on a different three-judge panel that unanimously overturned part of Cannon’s order barring the FBI from reviewing about 100 documents marked classified in their investigation, siding with the DOJ’s argument that she abused her authority and never had jurisdiction in the first place. The Supreme Court later rejected Trump’s appeal of the ruling.

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Trump and his lawyers have made a series of dubious claims to defend the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, arguing at various times that some were his personal property and at others that he had declassified the documents before leaving office. Trump and his attorneys have also stoked baseless claims that the FBI may have “planted” evidence during the search. They have provided no evidence when pressed on the claims by Dearie.

At one point in Tuesday’s hearing, Chief Judge William Pryor, a George W. Bush appointee, questioned why Trump’s lawyers had asked for a special master in the first place without establishing that the search was illegal.

“If you can’t establish that it was unlawful,” he said, “then what are we doing here?”

Trusty during the hearing claimed that the warrant itself was a “general warrant” that was too broad.

“It seems to be a new argument,” Pryor responded. “This really has been shifting sands of the arguments.”

Legal experts roundly predicted a quick decision against Trump in the case that would end the special master review and give the DOJ access to thousands of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

“It is apparent that the Court of Appeals is hostile to Trump’s position and likely to side with the DOJ,” tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

Related

“I find it bizarre”: Experts think it’s fishy how Trump Judge Aileen Cannon landed Mar-a-Lago case

“This really looks to be on fast track for reversal,” agreed former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, adding that it was “very satisfying to hear the 11th circuit – in the persons of two Trump judges and another Republican – basically demolish every one of Cannon’s completely lunatic reasons for inserting herself in the case in bizarre and unprecedented ways to Trump’s advantage.”

Put another way, wrote Cal Berkeley Law Prof. Orin Kerr, “the judges on the panel responded to Trump’s arguments exactly like you would expect them to respond to the same arguments made by anyone else not named Trump.”

Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe predicted a 3-0 ruling from the court.

“Goodbye Cannon,” he wrote.

“The common refrain is ‘you can’t predict a case from oral argument.’ Um, this one you can. The only question is how fast Trump will lose. He will lose badly,” tweeted former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an oral argument go worse for a litigant,” he added. “And a shame it has taken so many months just to overrule Judge Cannon’s nonsense.”

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, noted that it was a “bad day in court for Trump” all around. The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected his bid to block his tax returns from Congress, clearing the way for the House Ways and Means Committee to obtain years of his financial records. A New York judge ripped Trump’s company lawyers in court for delay tactics in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million fraud lawsuit against Trump and his family. And Trump’s longtime personal accountant on Tuesday testified against his company in Manhattan criminal court, where prosecutors allege a yearslong tax-dodging scheme.

“It’s not that the courts have turned against Trump,” Litman, the former U.S. attorney, wrote on Twitter. “It’s that his arguments have always been completely lousy, and have amounted to claims that the law doesn’t apply to him. Most of them have just taken a while to proceed to definitive consideration by the right court.”

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about Judge Aileen Cannon

Inside the COP27 fight to get wealthy nations to pay climate reparations

For more than three decades, the developing world has demanded that wealthy countries pay up for the “loss and damage” that vulnerable nations are already experiencing due to climate change. Those calls were finally met early Sunday morning when the 27th United Nations climate change conference, or COP27, came to a close in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. 

A new global pact establishes a fund “for responding to loss and damage” and creates a transitional committee to work out who will contribute to the fund, which developing countries will be eligible to draw from it, and how it will be governed. Negotiators for developing countries and nonprofits cheered the decision, noting that it was long overdue. 

“It’s a historic moment,” Nabeel Munir, a Pakistani diplomat and chief negotiator for the G77 developing countries, told the Guardian. “[It’s the] culmination of 30 years of work and beginning of a new chapter in pursuit of climate justice.”

The loss and damage fund is just the sixth special fund to be created in the United Nations’ 30-year history of tackling climate change. Nations last agreed to set up the $100 billion Green Climate Fund in 2010.

Efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to a warming world — referred to as mitigation and adaptation, respectively, in climate talks — are two of the major pillars of the Paris Agreement, the landmark 2015 global pact to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Loss and damage is the third pillar. When efforts to mitigate and adapt fail or fall behind, the effects of climate change such as more frequent and intense extreme weather, sea-level rise, and forced migration are borne by the world’s most vulnerable. Loss and damage funding would offset the economic and non-economic costs of the climate crisis in countries that did little to contribute to the problem. 

Just two months ago, establishing a separate fund for loss and damage restitution was an ambitious — perhaps even elusive — goal. The United States, European Union, and other wealthy countries were adamantly opposed for fear that admitting to their historical role in the climate crisis would open them up to unlimited liability, putting them on the hook for billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Some estimates put the price tag on loss and damage between $290 billion and $580 billion per year by 2030. 

But that opposition melted away in Egypt. Developing countries put up a united front at COP27, pressure escalated from nongovernmental organizations, media attention grew, and a last-minute reversal from the European Union left the U.S. isolated in its opposition. 

“We can’t celebrate, because it’s already so late to have such a fund established,” said Harjeet Singh, a longtime follower of climate negotiations and the head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, an international coalition of more than 1,800 environmental groups. “People needed it years ago. However, it does speak to people’s power and all the pressure that came from the outside on both developing and developed countries. That made it happen, and that is something to be celebrated.” 

The first glimmers of progress in the loss and damage debate happened last year, at climate talks in Glasgow. Scotland became the first government in the developed world to recognize loss and damage and pledged about $2.3 million toward funding it. Activists were buoyed by what they called the “de-tabooing” of the issue, but ultimately, COP26 ended with disappointment for the Global South, with only a meager agreement for a “dialogue” on the issue.

The U.S. and other rich nations’ opposition remained so strong that they initially tried to prevent the topic from making it onto the official COP27 agenda. But escalating pressure from activists and developing countries, as well as devastating floods that left a third of Pakistan, a country that has contributed less than 1 percent of carbon emissions historically, under water this summer, brought renewed attention to the issue. 

After receiving assurances that the U.S., European Union, and other developed nations wouldn’t be held liable, the issue eventually made it onto the formal agenda for the first time ever. It was a historic move and one that resulted in “cautious optimism,” Michai Robertson, a negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, told Grist.

To understand what followed over the next two weeks, it’s crucial to understand the various political factions and their positions in climate negotiations. Countries at COP27 largely fall into one of two groups: developed and developing, as defined in 1992, three years before the first COP conference. On one side are developed countries in the G7, which include the wealthiest nations and largest historical polluters. And on the other side are developing nations, which are further grouped into the G77, Small Island Developing States, Least Developed Countries, the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Alliance of Small Island States, among others.

But these divisions based on the economic stature of countries in the 1990s has become a growing source of tension in climate negotiations. Countries in the G7 are largely responsible for historical emissions, making up nearly 80 percent of the total carbon emissions between 1850 and 2015. In the last few decades though, growing economies in the developing world such as China and India have seen their emissions increase dramatically. China is now the largest annual emitter, followed by the U.S. and India. These shifts have led to finger pointing and blame games during climate negotiations, with the G7 trying to rope China and other wealthy countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia into paying for climate action.   

During the first week of COP27, the U.S. and other G7 nations seemed firmly entrenched in their opposition to a direct funding scheme for loss and damage. Instead, they emphasized the need for a broad array of “funding arrangements,” from considering the use of existing climate funds to early-warning systems for disaster risk reduction. They proposed setting a deadline for 2024 for discussing those arrangements, but didn’t promise any specific outcomes at the end. Meanwhile, the G77, China, and other developing countries, as well as nonprofits, called for a specific “mechanism” or “facility” or “fund” that would begin disbursing money in two years. 

By the middle of the second week, with each camp digging in its heels, tensions were running high. The outgoing chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, Molwyn Joseph, told the press that establishing a loss and damage fund at COP27 was a “red line” for the group and that they were discussing walking away from negotiations if their demands weren’t met. Meanwhile, advocacy groups began observing attempts to break up the unity between the various negotiating blocs representing the developing world. 

Led by Germany, the G7 in partnership with a group of climate-vulnerable countries had proposed an insurance initiative as one way to address loss and damage. The countries committed more than $200 million toward subsidizing insurance programs for developing countries and setting up other social security schemes. It was a move that most advocates saw as a distraction from the call for a separate fund for loss and damage. The U.S. and European Union also began indicating that they wanted a broad pool of donors to contribute to loss and damage funding, not just developed countries. 

“They are looking for any possible way to break up the bloc,” Brandon Wu, head of policy and campaigns at the social justice advocacy group ActionAid USA, told Grist. “One of those tactics is trying to say countries like China and India are different from some of the most vulnerable countries and they need to be contributors to this fund.”

But the developing nations stayed unified. China, which already contributes to climate financing through a separate $3.1 billion South-South Climate Cooperation Fund and other channels, said it would be willing to contribute toward compensation for loss and damage on a voluntary basis. Then on Thursday, in what appeared to be an attempt to show a unified front just one day before the official close of COP27, leaders from the G77, Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean, Alliance of Small Island States, and Least Developed Countries held an “emergency press conference” to reiterate the need for a fund. “We are seeking to find common ground even at this late hour,” said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate minister, on behalf of the G77 and China. “The clock is ticking.”

The turning point came just a few hours later. With little warning, at a late night meeting of negotiators, the Vice President of the European Union, Frans Timmermans, floated an “offer” in the “spirit of trying to find compromises.” The EU would support the demand for setting up a separate loss and damage fund “for the most vulnerable countries.” It would receive funding from a “broad donor base” and would be set up at COP27. The proposal mostly capitulated on the demand for a fund set up immediately, but expanded the contributor pool to include emerging economies and wealthier developing countries. Having held firm against any sort of fund, the U.S. was reportedly blindsided. 

“It actually just goes to show how blatant the U.S.’ obstruction is,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director at the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “[The EU and U.S.] work hand-in-hand to advance a shared strategy. When they get to the point when they’re ready to publicly distance themselves from the U.S., you know they’re doing dirty.”

The EU proposal broke the logjam. With the U.S. isolated in its opposition to the fund, it quickly reversed its position. In about 24 hours, the COP27 presidency, headed by Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, released text that explicitly called for a new, separate fund to support loss and damage costs in vulnerable countries.

The fund is a massive step forward, but the agreement in Egypt punted on many thorny issues. For one, the pact is neutral on whether countries like China, which are classified as “developing” but are now major carbon emitters, will pay into the fund. The text also opens up questions about which countries will be eligible for appropriations from the fund. There are no concrete dollar amounts for funding. As a result, the fund is essentially an empty bank account at the moment. The battle over fund donors and recipients will play out over the coming year once a transitional committee is appointed. 

“There’s hard work ahead to get this fund operational and ensure it serves the needs of communities hit hardest by climate extremes and slow-onset disasters,” Rachel Cleetus, a policy director and lead economist at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “But today, fittingly, at this ‘Africa COP,’ the most important and long-awaited first step on that path has been secured.”

Deprivation in childhood linked to impulsive behavior in adulthood: study

Inflation is running high around the globe, largely fueled by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic. As a result, many households are having to choose between eating and heating.

Deprivation has a terrible immediate effect on children — as anyone who has experienced real hunger knows — but it can also affect things like impulsive behavior in later life.

“Trait impulsivity,” the preference for immediate gratification, has been linked to spending more on food, especially unhealthy, highly calorific food. Studies have shown that children who experience poverty and food insecurity tend to have a higher body-mass index as adults than those who do not.

In a study published in Scientific Reports earlier this year, my colleagues and I showed that children who experience deprivation make more impulsive choices than children who don’t.

We studied 146 children, with an average age of eight, living in some of the most deprived areas of England and compared them with children living in some of the most affluent neighborhoods.

Children were given a choice between taking home a small amount of money (for example, £1) or getting £10 a week, or even more a year later. How long a person is willing to wait for the larger amount of money can be used to calculate a “discount rate” that shows how much the waiting time reduces the value of the money.

An impulsive person might prefer £1 now because the value of £10 in six months is “discounted” to less than £1 right now. This means that, for them, the £10 is discounted by £9 over the six-month wait.

A less impulsive person might be willing to wait six months for £10 but not wait for a whole year for £15. This means that, for them, the value of the £15 is discounted by £5 over the additional six-month wait. This discount rate is a measure of how impulsive someone is.

The results showed that children living in the most deprived areas had significantly higher discount rates than children living in the least deprived areas, regardless of age or intelligence, indicating that deprivation was the causal factor in the children’s choice.

A stable trait

This preference for immediate outcomes is a stable personality trait that remains constant throughout a person’s life.

In our most recent study, published by the Royal Society, we investigated impulsivity in over 1,000 older adults aged between 50 and 90. We found that older adults, living in the most deprived areas, show the same preference for smaller-sooner financial outcomes as the children in our first study.

We also found that a person’s job predicted the choices they made. Adults working in technical or routine occupations, such as mechanics or cleaners, chose to receive smaller amounts of money than wait for larger amounts compared with people in professional occupations, such as engineers or scientists.

These findings are concerning because impulsivity doesn’t just predict obesity. These findings tell us a lot about why people living in poorer areas tend to be unhealthier than people living in wealthy areas.

People who experience deprivation as children are more likely to choose to do things that, although they might be pleasurable in the short term, are unhealthy in the long run. This includes overeating, taking drugs, smoking cigarettes and gambling.

We know, too, that impulsivity can help to explain why some people go on to become addicts, while other people can avoid some of the more harmful effects of drugs and alcohol.

Deprivation is one of many factors that can lead to impulsive behavior throughout a person’s lifetime. Genetics also plays a role in impulsivity. Policymakers can’t do anything about a person’s genes, but they can influence the nation’s long-term mental and physical health by minimizing child poverty. Failing to do so will have long-term implications for the children living through today’s cost of living crisis.

Richard Tunney, Professor of Psychology, Aston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Nancy Pelosi’s historic run as speaker comes with a lesson: Quit while you’re ahead

Both political junkies and students of history can agree: When it comes to the long line of speakers of the House of Representatives, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who resigned her position in the Democratic Party’s congressional leadership this month, will be remembered as the GOAT (Greatest of All Time). The 82-year-old Democrat from San Francisco was never a flashy politician and certainly wasn’t an inspiring figure like former President Barack Obama. Still, in all the ways that counted, she was likely the most effective person to ever hold her position, both in terms of managing an unruly caucus and being able to push her party in more progressive directions. 

“History will note she is the most consequential Speaker of the House of Representatives in our history,” President Joe Biden said in a statement honoring the first female speaker. In stepping down after her long tenure as Democratic House leader, both as speaker and in opposition, Pelosi is clearing the way for a younger generation to assume the mantle of leadership. 

Former Obama speechwriter and current podcast host Jon Lovett dug into more detail in his comedy show last weekend, arguing that during the Obama years alone, Pelosi had “passed the Recovery Act, Dodd-Frank, the end of ‘don’t ask don’t tell,’ and the Affordable Care Act.” Even more importantly, Lovett said, she was “someone who made sure the House she led was not the limiting factor in how progressive [Democratic] policies would be.” Even when progressive bills couldn’t get through the Senate, she would pass them anyway just to advance the conversation, even if doing so irritated some of the more conservative members of her caucus. 

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Indeed, as Lovett pointed out, the passing of the Affordable Care Act was as close to a miracle as you’ll ever see in politics. That bill had been in the final stages when Sen. Ted Kennedy died and was replaced with a sub-replacement-level Republican named Scott Brown. (Who is now in a much more suitable position as a high school basketball coach.) Kennedy had devoted his political career to passing universal health care, but with his death that bill seemingly went up in smoke, as he had been the 60th vote necessary to get past a Republican filibuster. 

It was Nancy Pelosi, through sheer political talent and grit, who saved the whole damn thing. As Amy Davidson Sorkin of the New Yorker recounts, it took “a feat of high-risk legislative acrobatics: get the House to pass a Senate bill that many representatives already thought was unacceptable, and then pass certain fixes through the arcane process of ‘reconciliation.'” By any measure, it should have been an impossible task. But Pelosi pulled it off even though, as Obama recounted later, she was furious at the Senate Democrats she saw as “cowardly, shortsighted and generally incompetent.”

(Her view of Senate Democrats seems largely unchanged, at least as far as we can tell from the way Pelosi spoke to Sen, Chuck Schumer, then the minority leader, during the Jan. 6 insurrection.) 

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Pelosi is both the most effective and most progressive House speaker of all time. She even voted against the Iraq War when most Democrats were too afraid of being cast as pro-terrorist to resist George W. Bush’s disastrous Middle East adventure. Yet nowadays she’s mostly spoken of in progressive circles as if she were an embarrassing stain on their shirts. Even when one offers praise of Pelosi in that environment, it is customary to offer the reflexive caveat that one is “no fan” of hers. This expectation was particularly unnerving in the days after a right-wing conspiracy theorist literally broke into her house and attacked her husband. So many on the left felt the need to throat-clear about how they didn’t much like her before opining that she and her family members should not be murdered. 

Nancy Pelosi is both the most effective and most progressive House speaker of all time. So why do progressives have to talk about her with a bunch of reflexive caveats?

A lot of what drives this knee-jerk impulse to crap on Pelosi flows from the Twitterized degradation of political discourse: Amplifying the flaws of others in order to make yourself look perfect. The elevation of aesthetics over substance is what leads people to judge Pelosi as “cringe” because she is too old to care that U2 isn’t cool. (What should be “cringe” is worrying about whether elderly politicians are sufficiently cool.)  And, of course, there’s sexism, which manifests on the left largely as the view that female leaders are either perfect or are absolute trash. 

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But there is one sense in which the ugliness toward Pelosi and overly harsh judgments of her career have a basis in reality: She hung in there for way too long. Like far too many others in Democratic leadership positions, Pelosi let her politician-sized ego tell her that she was indispensable, justifying a desire to hang onto power rather than graciously giving way to the next generation. To be fair, unlike a lot of other geezers who won’t let go — from 81-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders to Biden, who just turned 80 this past weekend — Pelosi had a record of historic success to feed her sense of being irreplaceable. 

Unfortunately, there are good reasons to look at Pelosi’s past few years and argue that the time in which she was a forward-thinking leader has passed, and that someone younger would have been better at recreating the spark she had in the Obama years. Despite her gloriously uncensored contempt for Donald Trump, her leadership during his presidency suggested Pelosi had evolved into a far more timid and cautious politician than ever before. She created unnecessary rifts with some of the most interesting and progressive young members of her caucus, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. In the latter part of her career, Pelosi was running well behind where the voters were, when she used to be someone who led the way.

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That was especially evident in her reluctance to use the oversight powers of the House to constrain Trump. She dragged her feet on impeachment, despite Trump’s repeated and flagrant criminality, until the Ukraine extortion scandal forced her hand. And while she pushed the second impeachment through after Jan. 6 in an urgent and timely manner, her desire to put a “bipartisan” gloss on the congressional investigation of that insurrection ended up wasting valuable months. Now the Jan. 6 committee is racing the clock to get criminal referrals to the Justice Department, and will end up doing much less than it could have to hold Trump legally accountable. 

A slowed-down Pelosi is still a more effective leader than Chuck Schumer, who stood by helplessly while Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema tore up most of Joe Biden’s agenda.

Still, if Nancy Pelosi lost a step in recent years, that still makes her a far more effective leader than most on Capitol Hill. Schumer spent most of the past two years standing by helplessly while two recalcitrant Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, tore up the vast majority of Biden’s agenda. He couldn’t even get basic bills to protect reproductive rights and voting rights past the filibuster shredder. But in the House, Pelosi’s talent at holding her diverse coalition together continued to be a marvel. The full $2 trillion Build Back Better bill, a bill codifying abortion rights, the voting rights bill: The House passed all, often with total or near-unanimous Democratic support.

Even in stepping down from leadership, Pelosi’s skill at herding cats is evident. There had been questions about whether 83-year-old Majority Leader Steny Hoyer or 82-year-old Majority Whip Jim Clyburn would try to take her place but those two octogenarians have been persuaded to join their leader in stepping aside for the next generation. Her leadership on that transition is even fueling questions about whether Joe Biden can be convinced to do the same. 

The moral of this story is simple: The best way to preserve your legacy is to follow casino best practices, and get out while you’re ahead. In the long run, Pelosi probably will be remembered as she should be, as a towering leader and genuine progressive who often pulled off the impossible. But her stubbornness in hanging onto power just a little too long has unquestionably tarnished that legacy. That’s especially true in an era where people have goldfish-length memories and your reputation is only as good as the last time someone griped about your imperfections on Twitter.

But hey, we’re apparently about to bear witness to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, which ought to be as good a reminder as anyone could want of how much better we were off with Nancy Pelosi, past her prime or not. 

“OK groomer” back on Twitter: Anti-LGBTQ hate gets even uglier after Colorado Springs

Barely 24 hours after a gunman killed five people and injured 19 others at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, Elon Musk’s new Twitter responded to the massacre by reinstating the account of James Lindsay, the right-wing activist responsible for popularizing the anti-LGBTQ slur “OK groomer,” which over the last 10 months has been used to imply that demands for LGBTQ rights or representation are tantamount to child molestation. In August, Lindsay was banned from Twitter for using a variation on the term, which under Twitter’s old regime was prohibited as a form of hateful conduct. But by Monday night, not only was Lindsay back, but “OK groomer” was trending on the platform under its new ownership. 

Lindsay’s reinstatement — alongside a number of other accounts previously suspended for anti-LGBTQ content — was just one response to the massacre at Colorado’s Club Q that quickly disappointed any hopes that the massacre might conceivably prompt conservative self-reflection after a year of demonizing LGBTQ people and their allies as pedophiles. Instead, across right-wing news and social media, a few common themes developed: First, that progressives were exploiting the slaughter to score political points; second, that allegations of “grooming” or “pedophilia” in fact have nothing to do with gay people; and third, that if the “grooming” doesn’t stop, the violence will continue. 

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Since last spring, the prominent right-wing Twitter account Libs of TikTok has been a major player in driving anti-LGBTQ animosity, with an ongoing series of posts highlighting LGBTQ events around the country, often including dates, locations and names and pictures of people involved. Last June, it became clear that such posts were being used as a roadmap for harassment or violent confrontations, including a particularly hateful protest outside a Dallas gay bar that was holding an all-ages drag brunch to celebrate Pride Month, which resulted in patrons and their children being chased back to their cars and far-right protesters calling for all attendees to be shot. 

Last Sunday morning, as news of the Club Q shooting spread, Libs of TikTok published another such notice, alerting its 1.5 million followers to a drag performance happening elsewhere in Colorado. Meanwhile, the account’s creator, Chaya Raichik, who includes the term “stochastic terrorist” in her bio,  joked on her personal account about safe spaces and told an LGBTQ news outlet to “Cry more.” 

Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter reassured his nearly half-a-million followers, “I don’t think we have to tolerate pedophiles because some asshole shot up a gay bar.”

Other prominent right-wing figures were equally flippant. Herschel Walker, the Republican Georgia Senate nominee currently engaged in a runoff against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, released a new campaign ad attacking trans athletes. Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing group Turning Point USA tweeted, “There is no such thing as ‘family friendly’ drag queen shows.” Seth Dillon, CEO of the right-wing website Babylon Bee (also recently reinstated by Musk), tweeted, “Incitement: the act of speaking while being disliked by Democrats.” 

Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter reassured his nearly half-a-million followers, “I don’t think we have to tolerate pedophiles because some asshole shot up a gay bar. Frankly, a lot of people trying to convince us we need to tolerate pedophiles seem to be happy to use any excuse to silence our opposition.” 

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh, who has spent months leading attacks on doctors and hospitals that offer gender-affirming medical care to trans youth, posted a video calling anyone who connects the dots between the past year’s anti-LGBTQ campaigns and the massacre “scumbags” and “demons.” 

“They want the kids at the drag shows, they want them in the sex-change clinics,” said Walsh. “But they dare not defend either stance out loud. So instead, they must resort to the worst kind of emotional manipulation… in this case gleefully exploiting the deaths of the very people they pretend to care about.” 

On Twitter, Walsh wrote, “Leftists are using a mass shooting to try and blackmail us into accepting the castration and sexualization of children. These people are just beyond evil. I have never felt more motivated to oppose everything they stand for, with every fiber of my being.” 

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Walsh’s Daily Wire colleague, Candace Owens, likewise responded, “I just want to make sure I’m correct in understanding that the Left is using the tragedy in Colorado to make the argument that unless conservatives get on board with experimenting on children’s genitals with puberty blockers, then nightclub shootings will continue to happen.” In her own video appearance, Owens suggested that the shooter and trans people were both mentally ill. 

In his opening monologue on Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered a perfunctory condemnation of violence before pivoting first to an attack on hospitals that provide care for trans youth and then to a new narrative that arose Monday on right-wing Twitter: that high-end fashion label Balenciaga is promoting child pornography. This claim was evidently sparked by a photo shoot for the brand featuring a child holding a teddy bear dressed in what Carlson called “a bondage outfit,” as well as a different ad for a handbag displayed on a desk of scattered papers, one of which references a Supreme Court decision involving child pornography.

Tucker Carlson offered a perfunctory condemnation of violence before pivoting to a brand new right-wing narrative: The high-end fashion label Balenciaga is promoting child porn.

“Here is a high-end retailer promoting kiddie porn in an ad on Instagram and nobody notices!” Carlson said, going on to charge that the mainstream media was refusing to report on this outrage for sinister reasons: “They’re reserving all their energy to attack you for noticing! You’re a stochastic terrorist if you point it out!” 

Tying the segment back to the massacre in Colorado, Carlson went on to claim, “This has nothing to do with gay people! This is an attack on the sexual fixation on and mutilation of the genitals of children, of kiddie porn. It has nothing to do with gay people!” Adopting a cartoonish voice, Carlson continued, “You’re not allowed to notice it, or else you’re ‘committing violence’! You’re ‘complicit in mass murder’!” 

By Tuesday, all these responses had become common conservative narratives. Schlichter repeated Carlson’s argument, tweeting, “We will not stop calling out the groomers, who you despicably link to regular gay people.” Chaya Raichik accused her critics of inciting violence against her. But another, even more disturbing narrative arose as well: LGBTQ people had brought the violence upon themselves, and more was waiting if they persisted. 

A right-wing group called Gays Against Groomers — which was featured on Carlson’s show the day before the shooting — posted a series of tweets arguing that radical LGBTQ activists had provoked a backlash of violence against them. “If you want to see gay rights and LGBT people continue to be attacked, just keep sexualizing, indoctrinating and mutilating kids,” the account wrote in one tweet Sunday night. “Leave the kids alone and we’ll all be left alone.” In another, the group wrote to one LGBTQ activist, “We are saying the backlash and growing intolerance of our community is due to people LIKE YOU who will not stop going after kids.” 

The group’s website also published an essay on Monday entitled “Radicals are Putting Our Community in Danger,” which argued that blame for the shooting “lies largely with the radicalized members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have pushed beyond common sense boundaries and into an invasive space that often courts the idea of normalizing the sexualization of children.” 

The essay went on, “The more radicals push and invade spaces they have no business invading (and wouldn’t, if they were comfortable with themselves), the angrier it will make extremists on the opposite side of the spectrum. …A line has been crossed, and a target is now on the backs of everyone under the LGBTQ umbrella, not just the radicals.” 

In a series of tweets, right-wing influencer Tim Pool suggested that Club Q had invited the violence by scheduling an all-ages drag brunch for the day after the shooting.

Other right-wing social media accounts took up that argument with even nastier implications. In response to a post by the Anti-Defamation League condemning the violence, one user wrote that the shooting wouldn’t have happened “if LGBTQ ‘folks’ weren’t on a full blown campaign of provocation toward families,” going on to describe Pride marches as the martial display of a “conquering army” and warning that trying to “twist [parents’] children into degenerates has consequences.”

More well-known accounts, like that of right-wing personality Tim Pool, took that even further. On Tuesday, Pool posted a number of tweets suggesting that Club Q had invited the violence because it had planned an all-ages drag brunch the morning after the shooting.

“We shouldnt [sic] tolerate pedophiles grooming kids. Club Q had a grooming event. How do [sic] prevent the violence and stop the grooming?” Pool asked in one. In another, he wrote, “the grooming of children is not stopping. people are calling for more violence. I do not think legislators will stop the grooming. People will not stop calling for violence. so you tell me what happens next.” In two others, Pool referenced others’ calls to put “pedophiles in woodchippers,” warning that things would get worse. 

In yet another, he argued that anyone who objected to the term “groomer” as a slur against LGBTQ people was the one actually “calling all LGBT people pedophiles” and thus was responsible for “inciting violence against them. STOP. PROTECTING. GROOMERS. STOP. INCITING. VIOLENCE.” 

On Tuesday afternoon, James Lindsay tweeted a similar ultimatum, writing, “The people calling out the groomers are the ones desperately trying to prevent violence.” When asked to explain what he meant by that, Lindsay retweeted a meme a fan had posted: a person depicted as “The Left” about to take a sledgehammer to a cracked concrete dam, just barely holding back a body of water labeled “Right-Wing Death Squads.” 

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from Kathryn Joyce on the far right

Children who contract COVID are more likely to suffer seizures, epilepsy: study

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is unusual, among other reason, for the oddly wide range of symptoms associated with being infected. Some patients lose their sense of smell, others experience heart failure or suffer from strokes — while others (perhaps unsurprisingly for a respiratory disease) with COVID-19 experience any one of a number of lung ailments. As doctors in hospitals and clinics throughout America grapple with the long-term ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical scientists are acquiring as much raw data as possible about the ever-growing spectrum of symptoms.

The latest COVID-19 discovery is a particularly troubling one given that it relates to children.

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As explained in a recent study in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, patients who were infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (which causes COVID-19) are at a higher risk of suffering seizures and epilepsy than patients who suffered influenza infections. (Influenza, like COVID-19, is also associated with a wide spectrum of symptoms). The authors also found that the threat of seizures and epilepsy is greater in children — and in people whose earlier COVID-19 illness was less severe, rather than more so.

“The neurology workforce should be prepared for a significant increase in the number of patients with seizures and epilepsy.”

In their research, the researchers accessed data from the linked electronic health records of over 81 million patients — finding in the process that overall 0.69% of COVID-19 patients experienced new onset seizures, while 0.30% of them experienced new onset epilepsy. While there are possibly other risk factors that could have contributed to those ailments, the statistical correlation is too great to be dismissed as coincidental.

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Perhaps more importantly: Because millions of people were infected with COVID-19, even seizure and epilepsy rates of less than 1 percent will still impact thousands of potentially unsuspecting people.

“Although the incidence of new onset seizures and epilepsy post-COVID infection was low, in view of the large number of people world-wide who have been infected with COVID-19 the neurology workforce should be prepared for a significant increase in the number of patients with seizures and epilepsy,” the authors explained in an editorial attached to the study.

 “It may be that the developing brain is more prone to epileptogenic mechanisms driven by COVID infection relative to what happens with flu.”

Salon spoke by email with corresponding author Arjune Sen, a professor of neurology and head of the Oxford Epilepsy Research Group. While the scientists cannot identify a reason why children are more likely to suffer seizures and epilepsy after COVID-19 infections, there are some plausible hypotheses.

“We know that COVID affects children very differently compared to adults and it may be that the developing brain is more prone to epileptogenic mechanisms driven by COVID infection relative to what happens with flu, but why that may be needs more work,” Sen wrote to Salon. He added that there will also need to be additional research on whether certain COVID-19 variants are driving this change, whether these symptoms are less likely to occur among vaccinated individuals, and what the exact mechanisms are behind these neurological sequelae.

That said, Sen was unambiguous about one thing: The need for widespread vaccination, since “even milder infection and infection in children can associate with post-COVID neurological sequelae.”

Dr. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association and who was not involved in the study, told Salon that the new research “tells us that when the brain is invaded it can cause injury that results in seizures.” He also hypothesized that “children are especially susceptible because they were not eligible for vaccination until late in the pandemic, and the general perception that persists today (which is wrong) that they have minimal impacts resulting in a lag in childhood [COVID-19] immunizations. We increasingly are finding that getting infected with the SARS virus even if asymptomatic can have serious medical implications.”

Benjamin concluded, “This strengthens the public health need to reinforce vaccination for COVID for all populations and continued vigilance to avoid reinfection.”

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