All Posts Tagged as 'Opinion'

Somehow, there are two more weeks left before Election Day, which is both comforting and nauseating. The next two weeks are critical or maybe they don’t mean shit. Regardless of where you stand on what’s going to happen on November 3, if you’re not quite sure about who you’re going to vote for, let the cast of the Avengers movies (minus Chris Pratt, spicy!!) convince you otherwise... I guess??

Word on the street (thanks Variety) is that the people who played the Avengers in movies are assembling their star power to do a fundraiser for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Here’s the list of people who are participating in this fundraiser: Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, and Zoe Saldana. Who is missing from this list? It begins with a Crisp and ends with a Rat, and yes, you betcha, you got this one right, it’s the Star-Lord himself, hmmmm! The fact that Pratt is not participating in this debacle, when like, almost every other Avenger is, led to widespread (Twitter) speculation that Pratt’s refusal to do so is because he is, in fact, a MAGA-loving, big, red, too-buff Republican.

Fans of Betty White, former star of The Golden Girls, are often worried about her health. Whenever she trends on Twitter, most of her devoted followers become fearful something terrible has happened to the star. Now that White is close to 100 years old, some are dreading the day her death is announced.

Some might want to avoid the topic, but White has given her death some thought. She once said she thought she would die before her Golden Girls cast mates.

I think the toughest thing about loss, and the hardest challenge, is the isolation you feel in its aftermath. You spent so much time sharing your life with someone, talking through issues, even disagreeing about things, and all of a sudden there’s a hole.

The vast majority of Latinos living in the U.S. (around 60.6 million) are not undocumented, but 15.7% lived in poverty in 2019, a number that had been falling, but is still more than double their white counterparts, according to Census data.

Latinos also make up a large portion of the labor force in service sectors that were considered essential after the COVID-19 pandemic started (some 65%) -- like some construction, health care and food service workers -- leaving them at higher risk of being exposed to the disease without the protections typically afforded first responders and other traditional essential workers.

"Why are Latinos dying at a higher rate? Because we have no choice," said Frankie Miranda, the president of the Hispanic Federation, which supports Latino-led non-profits around the country. "We have to go to work, stock the shelves, deliver the food, be the sanitation workers, and of course we don't have the protective gear or any kind of information that can help us really navigate this. We know this for sure because our member agencies -- that were already underfunded and under-resourced -- were the ones that needed to step in and be the first responders for our communities."

When asked why he believes the Mexican community has not jumped into action and demanded racial equality following the Black Lives Matter protests, Alvarez suggested: "We are too afraid. Even if you want to do a peaceful protest, you don't want to be arrested because you can get deported."

Alvarez's case points to another situation that many Latinos say is affecting the community: lack of unity.

It’s not another day in paradise.

Phil Collins is kicking his ex-wife out of his Miami mansion, according to sources close to the singer-songwriter.

Collins, 69, plans to file an eviction lawsuit to remove Orianne Cevey, who says she isn’t going anywhere and recently changed the security codes at the home, according to TMZ.

Cevey, 46, threatened to release potentially embarrassing and false accusations against Collins if he continues with plans to remove her from the sprawling mansion, according to a source.

Actor Blake Jenner has broken his silence regarding claims of mental, emotional, and physical abuse lodged against him by ex-wife Supergirl’s Melissa Benoist.

“I take full responsibility and accountability for the hurt that I inflicted during my relationship with my past partner - emotionally, mentally, and yes, physically.” Rather than leave it at that, Jenner goes on to allege that Benoist emotionally, mentally, and physically abused him during their relationship. “Without absolving myself of any responsibility,” Jenner writes, “it is important to understand that there was mental, emotional, and physical abuse from both ends.”

Former Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman has said older viewers of the BBC series might be put off by same-sex pairings.

The long-running contest announced in September that lesbian boxer Nicola Adams would form one-half of the show’s first ever same-sex couple.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, Goodman said he would only have mixed-gender couples on the show if he had his way.

“A lot of older people are traditionalists – they used to go ballroom dancing and most people’s nans and grandads met probably in a dance hall,” the former judge, who quit the show in 2016, said.

In what’s shaping up to be one of the most counterproductive social media activism campaigns since millions of people posted plain black squares to their Instagram feeds, a legion of largely (though not exclusively) white Twitter gays have attempted to “reclaim” a hashtag most commonly associated with the Proud Boys, a white nationalist hate group.

"white gays “reclaiming” a phrase rooted in white supremacy is very spot on. it was actually on my 2020 bingo card. i’m two away from bingo."

"How many of the white gays "reclaiming" the #proudboys tag you wanna guess have "no Blacks" in their grindr profile"

As many have noted, turning the name of a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group into a photo-op is not just politically empty; it actively obscures the very real presence of white supremacy in the LGBTQ+ community. The trend is a display of vanity masquerading as organizing. It is a manifestation of privilege to believe — and then act on the belief — that one can “reclaim” a potent symbol of white supremacy by reformulating it in the context of Gay Pride. You can claim that “love wins” and that the more powerful way to be a “proud boy” is living out and proud, but the reality is that for millions of Black and brown folks, this is still a terror organization that actively threatens their lives, livelihoods, and right to exist in America.

How can you be sure your child is really your child? Could that innocent-seeming baby be a changeling – a cuckoo in your nest? There is something about the evil elf child, reborn as the alien walking among us, that continues to fascinate and terrify us. So much so, the broadcaster Sky has announced it has commissioned a third version of Village of the Damned from David Farr, the writer of The Night Manager.

The first, filmed in 1960, is a cult classic of understated British horror. The 1995 version, starring Christopher Reeves, translated the nightmare to small-town America.

Both were based on John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, in which a whole village briefly loses consciousness. Nine months later, eerily identical alien babies with telepathic powers are born to the women. They are smarter and grow faster than normal – and are soon threatening not just their “parents”, but all humankind.

Teenagers are again euphorically embracing revolution, literally toppling statues in joyful Black Lives Matter protest and skipping school to protest climate change.

Meanwhile, the widespread use of social media in itself can produce a hive mind effect. Although social media was intended to support free speech and allow anyone to share their opinion, the effect of a Twitter pile-on can be to crush nuance, doubt or divergence. Commentators, such as Gavin Haynes, have highlighted the resulting purity spirals in which nobody can stand alone.

Both the single-minded power of the Chinese state and the collective force of an online horde echo the strength of the Midwich aliens versus the fragmented, conflicted arguments of the humans opposing them. The aliens’ power was that they were not individuals – they were parts of a single entity with a single idea – to survive. As in Wyndham’s time, we again face a real contrast between individualism and groupthink.

Research has shown that we tend to follow a script at the beginning of a courtship: we ask many of the same questions to get to know a potential partner in those early days of dating. But now, a new study reveals that breakups function in much the same way, by following certain steps to help us through what can be an emotionally messy process.

1

A partner loses interest in his or her significant other. (He watches more football.)

5

The partners spend less time together. ("I wonder how his emergency business trip to the Bahamas went?")

8

The partners communicate their feelings with each other. ("I hate you, you old shrew.")

The first began in 1989 with the film simply titled Batman, directed by Tim Burton. The movie introduced viewers to Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, all with that dark and gothic style that has made Burton’s work stand-out. Three years later, Burton returned to Gotham City with Batman Returns, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny DeVito as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin. Batman Returns is considered among the best superhero movies ever, but it also drew a lot of criticism due to its darker tone, and Burton didn’t return to direct more Batman movies. Instead, Joel Schumacher was brought in and directed Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, both with different actors playing Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer and George Clooney, respectively). Burton not only gave Gotham a darker tone, but he also understood the city better than Nolan and Snyder did years later.

7. Former Grey's Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington

Costco has reportedly removed Palmetto Cheese from store shelves after the owner of the pimento cheese brand called Black Lives Matter a "terror organization."

Brian Henry, the founder of Palmetto Cheese and mayor of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, made a public Facebook post on Aug. 25 saying he was “sickened by the senseless killings in Georgetown.”

According to The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, Henry apologized at a news conference and called his comments “hurtful and insensitive.” He also asked people calling for a boycott of Palmetto to reconsider.

“There is a concerted effort to boycott Palmetto cheese,” Henry said. “Please consider the hundreds of South Carolina jobs that depend on its success. We humbly ask for your support.”

Kristie Higgs, 44, had been employed at Farmor’s School in Fairford, Gloucestershire, for seven years, but was sacked for gross misconduct in 2018 over Facebook rants about LGBT+ inclusive education.

In one post, sharing a petition from anti-LGBT+ lobbying group CitizenGo, Higgs accused schools of “BRAINWASHING OUR CHILDREN” [sic] through inclusive relationships education, claiming: “[This] means, for example, that children will be taught that all relationships are equally valid and ‘normal’, so that same-sex marriage is exactly the same as traditional marriage, and that gender is a matter of choice, not biology, so that it’s up to them what sex they are.”

Higgs described inclusive education as a “vicious form of totalitarianism”, adding: “Please sign this petition, they have already started to brainwash our innocent wonderfully created children and it’s happening in our local primary school now.”

But this week, Higgs announced that she would be taking legal action against Farmor’s School, claiming that she was subjected to discrimination and harassment on the grounds of her religious beliefs.

On top of the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic, which is limiting the ways families and professionals can live, work and take care of each other, many people are now contending with environmental threats like wildfires and hurricanes. And that’s with everything else going on in 2020.

The understandable physical stress all this causes makes doing work, at times, impossible. Lara Hogan is a management coach based in Portland, Oregon, which in the second week of September recorded the worst air quality in the world among major cities as fires raged nearby. Towards the end of that week, Hogan was feeling lightheaded, experiencing a “weird cough,” and could not focus on her job, she said.

“It was much harder to do that work, like thinking, speaking, answering questions, normal stuff,” Hogan said. She asked herself, “Can I do a good job for the people I’m trying to support?”

A conversation-shifting hashtag #LatinidadIsCancelled, started by Afro-Indigenous (Zapotec) writer Alan Pelaez Lopez, outlines just how mestizx, white-centering, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-queer the culture remains. (This was the first of a few examinations of anti-Blackness and Latinidad as they arose in popular culture, and the one which summed it up most cohesively.) This has prompted scholars, activists, and everyday Afro-Latinx individuals to reconsider their use of the word Latinx, as well as the "Afro-" or "Black" label placed before it, and whether ethnicity itself is enough to identify with Latinidad (a term used to describe the “shared culture” of Latinxs).

“For those who embrace Latinidad, it's a double-edged sword,” said Zaire Dinzey-Flores, a member of Black Latinas Know Collective and an associate professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and Sociology at Rutgers University. “For those who don't fit the image that has been boosted by this term [Latinx] and this concept [of Latinidad], it almost works as a violent term… toward those of us—and I’ll say us because I’ll include myself in that—who cannot exist outside of the violence of even the production of Latin America.”