Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Continued Fascination
An excerpt from Slate - (Bold is mine)
O.J.: Made in America
Forget your O.J. Simpson fatigue—ESPN’s 7½-hour documentary is a revelation.
By Jack Hamilton
Twenty years after a California jury declared O.J. Simpson not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman after a trial that changed the way people watch TV, the two best things on American television this year have been FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and now ESPN’s O.J.: Made in America, a 7½-hour documentary that is the best piece of original programming the cable sports network has ever produced. The film is part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, which for the past seven years has produced some of the best sports documentaries around but has never previously come close to producing a work of this magnitude and power.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2016/06/o_j_made_in_america_on_espn_reviewed.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_tis
O.J.: Made in America
Forget your O.J. Simpson fatigue—ESPN’s 7½-hour documentary is a revelation.
By Jack Hamilton
Twenty years after a California jury declared O.J. Simpson not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman after a trial that changed the way people watch TV, the two best things on American television this year have been FX’s The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and now ESPN’s O.J.: Made in America, a 7½-hour documentary that is the best piece of original programming the cable sports network has ever produced. The film is part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, which for the past seven years has produced some of the best sports documentaries around but has never previously come close to producing a work of this magnitude and power.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2016/06/o_j_made_in_america_on_espn_reviewed.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_tis
Pay Gap
An excerpt from Vox -
The jarring pay gap between black and white doctors
by Julia Belluz
Harvard Medical School associate professor Anupam Jena wanted to find out whether the black-white pay gap would persist among this homogenous group.
In a new study, published today in the BMJ, he and other researchers from Harvard and the University of Southern California used race and employment data from two nationally representative surveys to find out.
The picture they paint is alarmingly consistent with overall labor trends: Despite the uniform education levels and credentials among doctors, black physicians still earn significantly less than white physicians. The disparity between female black and white doctors is smaller, but female physicians of both races earned significantly less compared to men, the study found.
More specifically, the adjusted average annual income between 2010 and 2013 for white male physicians was $253,042 — nearly $65,000 more than what black male physicians earned ($188,230). White female physicians got $163,234 and black female physicians about $10,000 less at $152,784.
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/8/11876976/pay-gap-black-and-white-doctors
He Saw Himself
An excerpt from Mimesis Law as seen in Vox -
BROCK ALLEN TURNER: THE SORT OF DEFENDANT WHO IS SPARED “SEVERE IMPACT”
by Ken White
June 8, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — Ten years ago my firm represented a kid on a minor drug charge. This kid played an instrument – for the sake of this story, let’s call it a xylophone. He approached the xylophone like he approached geometry, by which I mean he often showed up for it and probably wouldn’t fail it. But by the time we were done writing about that kid in the sentencing briefs, he was the most xylophone-playing motherfucker ever to walk the Earth. He was the YoYo Ma of xylophones, someone whose skills would make angels weep and the doors of fame and success slam open.
We didn’t do that because people who play xylophones are less criminally culpable than people who don’t. We did it because a defense attorney’s challenge is to humanize their client at sentencing. Judges process dozens of defendants a month, or a week, or even a day. If judges confronted the defendants’ individual humanity as they caged them one after another, they’d go quite mad. It’s impossible and inadvisable.
The trick is to light a spark that catches the judge’s eye, that transforms your client even momentarily from an abstraction or a statistic or a stereotype into a human being with whom the judge feels a connection. Judges are people, and people connect with each other through commonalities – family, hobbies, sports, music, and so forth. At sentencing, a good advocate helps the judge to see the defendant as someone fundamentally like the judge, with whom the judge can relate. It’s harder to send a man into a merciless hole when you relate to him.
Empathy is a blessing. But empathy’s not even-handed. It’s idiosyncratic. Judges empathize with defendants who share their life experiences – and only a narrow and privileged slice of America shares the life experiences of a judge.
That’s one reason that justice in America looks the way it does.
Last week Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Allen Turner to six months in jail. Turner will probably do half of that – about the length of a single quarter at Stanford University, where he was a student. Most people think that was an appallingly and unjustly lenient sentence for what Turner did: brutally sexually assaulting a drunk, unconscious young woman behind a dumpster outside a party.
Judge Persky clearly empathized with Brock Allen Turner. Turner was a championship swimmer and a Stanford student; Judge Persky was a Stanford student and the captain of the lacrosse team. Judge Persky said that sending Turner to prison would have a “severe impact” on him, that he did not believe that he would be a danger to others, and that he was young. Turner’s victim was not spared a severe impact, despite her youth and lack of criminal record. Her statement was harrowing. Her sentence is lifelong.
http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/brock-turner-the-sort-of-defendant-who-is-spared-severe-impact/10288?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%206/8/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All
BROCK ALLEN TURNER: THE SORT OF DEFENDANT WHO IS SPARED “SEVERE IMPACT”
by Ken White
June 8, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — Ten years ago my firm represented a kid on a minor drug charge. This kid played an instrument – for the sake of this story, let’s call it a xylophone. He approached the xylophone like he approached geometry, by which I mean he often showed up for it and probably wouldn’t fail it. But by the time we were done writing about that kid in the sentencing briefs, he was the most xylophone-playing motherfucker ever to walk the Earth. He was the YoYo Ma of xylophones, someone whose skills would make angels weep and the doors of fame and success slam open.
We didn’t do that because people who play xylophones are less criminally culpable than people who don’t. We did it because a defense attorney’s challenge is to humanize their client at sentencing. Judges process dozens of defendants a month, or a week, or even a day. If judges confronted the defendants’ individual humanity as they caged them one after another, they’d go quite mad. It’s impossible and inadvisable.
The trick is to light a spark that catches the judge’s eye, that transforms your client even momentarily from an abstraction or a statistic or a stereotype into a human being with whom the judge feels a connection. Judges are people, and people connect with each other through commonalities – family, hobbies, sports, music, and so forth. At sentencing, a good advocate helps the judge to see the defendant as someone fundamentally like the judge, with whom the judge can relate. It’s harder to send a man into a merciless hole when you relate to him.
Empathy is a blessing. But empathy’s not even-handed. It’s idiosyncratic. Judges empathize with defendants who share their life experiences – and only a narrow and privileged slice of America shares the life experiences of a judge.
That’s one reason that justice in America looks the way it does.
Last week Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Brock Allen Turner to six months in jail. Turner will probably do half of that – about the length of a single quarter at Stanford University, where he was a student. Most people think that was an appallingly and unjustly lenient sentence for what Turner did: brutally sexually assaulting a drunk, unconscious young woman behind a dumpster outside a party.
Judge Persky clearly empathized with Brock Allen Turner. Turner was a championship swimmer and a Stanford student; Judge Persky was a Stanford student and the captain of the lacrosse team. Judge Persky said that sending Turner to prison would have a “severe impact” on him, that he did not believe that he would be a danger to others, and that he was young. Turner’s victim was not spared a severe impact, despite her youth and lack of criminal record. Her statement was harrowing. Her sentence is lifelong.
http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/brock-turner-the-sort-of-defendant-who-is-spared-severe-impact/10288?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%206/8/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All
First Dates
From The Washington Post -
Your romantic first dates? Restaurants hate them.
By Lavanya Ramanathan
The guy had left the table for only a minute.
But as soon as he was out of sight, his date whipped out her phone, opened Tinder and started swiping.
“It was deceitful, a little bit,” says Chris McNeal, general manager of Bar Dupont, who’d watched the scene unfold, slightly aghast that this is how people find love in the modern age. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seen a Tinder meetup turn sour.
First dates — those angst-filled encounters when two strangers size each other up as romantic prospects — fill restaurants and bars so often that the staff is keenly aware when you’re on one.
“They’re moderating how much alcohol they drink,” McNeal says. “They have that twitchy-eye thing where, like, they don’t know each other.”
Your first-date banter? Banal. And the bartender is pretending that he hasn’t seen you twice already this week. With different women. Using the same, somewhat-creepy lines.
Greg Algie, co-owner of the Fainting Goat, a popular Washington first-date destination, has witnessed more than one Tinderella arrive, get a glimpse of the person they’re supposed to meet — and head right back out the door.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/your-romantic-first-dates-restaurants-hate-them/2016/06/07/bf45adfc-1df5-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_rainbow
Your romantic first dates? Restaurants hate them.
By Lavanya Ramanathan
The guy had left the table for only a minute.
But as soon as he was out of sight, his date whipped out her phone, opened Tinder and started swiping.
“It was deceitful, a little bit,” says Chris McNeal, general manager of Bar Dupont, who’d watched the scene unfold, slightly aghast that this is how people find love in the modern age. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seen a Tinder meetup turn sour.
First dates — those angst-filled encounters when two strangers size each other up as romantic prospects — fill restaurants and bars so often that the staff is keenly aware when you’re on one.
“They’re moderating how much alcohol they drink,” McNeal says. “They have that twitchy-eye thing where, like, they don’t know each other.”
Your first-date banter? Banal. And the bartender is pretending that he hasn’t seen you twice already this week. With different women. Using the same, somewhat-creepy lines.
Greg Algie, co-owner of the Fainting Goat, a popular Washington first-date destination, has witnessed more than one Tinderella arrive, get a glimpse of the person they’re supposed to meet — and head right back out the door.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/your-romantic-first-dates-restaurants-hate-them/2016/06/07/bf45adfc-1df5-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_rainbow
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Compounded F*ckup
An excerpt from VerySmartBrothas -
WHEN PEAK WHITE PRIVILEGE AND PEAK RAPE CULTURE CREATE THE PERFECT FUCKSHIT SOUFFLÉ
Damon Young
If you are a person who…
1. cares at all about concepts like social justice, racism, gender equality, feminism, patriarchy, and privilege
…and…
2. carries a frustration with people who have either been unable or unwilling to possess a nuanced understanding for what any of these concepts mean
…convicted rapist Brock Turner, his father Dan, and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky just provided a Fisher Price-meets-Trump University-level lesson plan for recognizing White privilege and rape culture. You will never find a plainer, less sophisticated, and easier to grasp example of these particular strains of pervasive shitty. Anyone who reads the details of this story and still comes away unconvinced these things exist is either trolling, a member of the Turner family, or “Simple Jack’s” replacement for the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived.
Of course, you can’t make a fuckshit soufflé without the proper ingredients.
http://verysmartbrothas.com/when-peak-white-privilege-and-peak-rape-culture-create-a-fuckshit-souffle/
WHEN PEAK WHITE PRIVILEGE AND PEAK RAPE CULTURE CREATE THE PERFECT FUCKSHIT SOUFFLÉ
Damon Young
If you are a person who…
1. cares at all about concepts like social justice, racism, gender equality, feminism, patriarchy, and privilege
…and…
2. carries a frustration with people who have either been unable or unwilling to possess a nuanced understanding for what any of these concepts mean
…convicted rapist Brock Turner, his father Dan, and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky just provided a Fisher Price-meets-Trump University-level lesson plan for recognizing White privilege and rape culture. You will never find a plainer, less sophisticated, and easier to grasp example of these particular strains of pervasive shitty. Anyone who reads the details of this story and still comes away unconvinced these things exist is either trolling, a member of the Turner family, or “Simple Jack’s” replacement for the dumbest motherfucker that ever lived.
Of course, you can’t make a fuckshit soufflé without the proper ingredients.
http://verysmartbrothas.com/when-peak-white-privilege-and-peak-rape-culture-create-a-fuckshit-souffle/
Basket Building
From Atlas Obscura -
Ohio's Famed 7-Story Basket Building Might Be Doomed
Tough times for the big basket business.
By Erik Shilling
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ohios-famed-7story-basket-building-might-be-doomed?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160608&bt_email=fayesharpe@gmail.com&bt_ts=1465332417306
Ohio's Famed 7-Story Basket Building Might Be Doomed
Tough times for the big basket business.
By Erik Shilling
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ohios-famed-7story-basket-building-might-be-doomed?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160608&bt_email=fayesharpe@gmail.com&bt_ts=1465332417306
He Refused to Be a Part of This Mess
An excerpt from Rolling Stone - (bold is mine)
Muhammad Ali Was a Hero, But His Enemies Have a Legacy Too
Pentagon learned from the epic mistake of making a martyr of the world's most gifted and famous athlete
By Matt Taibbi
Ali was famously a person who could make a stage out of anything. Even his weigh-ins turned into acts worthy of Carnegie Hall. But on April 28, 1967, the U.S. government handed him the biggest stage of his life.
At an armed forces examining station in Houston, he refused to step forward to a white line when his name was called. That one step would have signified his willingness to be drafted.
The awesome drama of that moment made Ali hated at the time, but also turned him into a martyr to history. The symbolism of a man who made his living fighting refusing to fight was extraordinarily powerful.
Ali furthermore brilliantly used the moment to link America's bloody quagmire overseas to the domestic warfare that had broken out in places like Watts, Rochester, Newark, Cleveland, Detroit, and Division Street, Chicago.
"My conscience won't let me shoot my brother or some darker people," Ali said. "And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger."
Asking Ali to step forward that day in Houston was an epic strategic blunder. The last thing Lyndon Johnson or his successor Richard Nixon needed was to have Americans of any age, but particularly young people, making a connection between racism at home and wars of colonial domination abroad.
But by demanding that a man as prideful and magnetic as Ali submit to becoming a cheerleader for the bloodshed in Vietnam, that's exactly what they did.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/muhammad-ali-was-a-hero-but-his-enemies-have-a-legacy-too-20160605#ixzz4AunxnDuH
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Muhammad Ali Was a Hero, But His Enemies Have a Legacy Too
Pentagon learned from the epic mistake of making a martyr of the world's most gifted and famous athlete
By Matt Taibbi
Ali was famously a person who could make a stage out of anything. Even his weigh-ins turned into acts worthy of Carnegie Hall. But on April 28, 1967, the U.S. government handed him the biggest stage of his life.
At an armed forces examining station in Houston, he refused to step forward to a white line when his name was called. That one step would have signified his willingness to be drafted.
The awesome drama of that moment made Ali hated at the time, but also turned him into a martyr to history. The symbolism of a man who made his living fighting refusing to fight was extraordinarily powerful.
Ali furthermore brilliantly used the moment to link America's bloody quagmire overseas to the domestic warfare that had broken out in places like Watts, Rochester, Newark, Cleveland, Detroit, and Division Street, Chicago.
"My conscience won't let me shoot my brother or some darker people," Ali said. "And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger."
Asking Ali to step forward that day in Houston was an epic strategic blunder. The last thing Lyndon Johnson or his successor Richard Nixon needed was to have Americans of any age, but particularly young people, making a connection between racism at home and wars of colonial domination abroad.
But by demanding that a man as prideful and magnetic as Ali submit to becoming a cheerleader for the bloodshed in Vietnam, that's exactly what they did.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/muhammad-ali-was-a-hero-but-his-enemies-have-a-legacy-too-20160605#ixzz4AunxnDuH
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
Deltas(?) in Dubai
From Essence Magazine -
Monday, June 6, 2016
I Wonder . . .
If this guy was black, would the results be the same?
An excerpt from The Root -
#WhitePrivilegeMuch: College Rapist Gets Light Sentence Because Prison Would Be Bad for Him
The judge’s lenient sentence is just the latest example of white privilege run amok.
There is nothing scarier than a white man losing his power. Good thing Brock Turner won’t have to face the full weight of what that really means. If you haven’t already heard, Turner is the young, white ex-Stanford University swimmer whose dreams are more precious than the woman he raped.
On Jan. 17, 2015, Turner sexually assaulted a 23-year-old unconscious woman behind a dumpster after they both left a campus party. Turner stopped assaulting the woman only after he was spotted by two students, who chased him off of the victim and held him until the cops came. Turner cried only after learning that the cops had been called. Maybe then he realized what his actions meant to his dreams.
During his trial, it was revealed what a toll the rape had taken on Turner. He doesn’t have the appetite he once had for rib-eye steaks. His dream of swimming in the Olympics had been dashed. He used to have a welcoming smile, and now, that has faded. All of which his father made sure to point out in his letter asking for clemency for his son.
Poor Turner.
That’s what Turner’s father said in his statement, comparing what his son lost for “20 minutes of pleasure.”
Poor white man.
That’s what the judge said when he decided that, even after a jury found Turner guilty of rape and he faced a maximum sentence of 14 years, he would only serve six months in a county jail. He wouldn’t even be sentenced to prison because the judge said he felt it would have “a severe impact on him.” A columnist for the San Jose Mercury News wrote that Turner’s sentencing was correct.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/uncategorized/2016/06/whiteprivilegemuch-college-rapist-gets-light-sentence-because-prison-would-be-bad-for-him/?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26
An excerpt from The Root -
#WhitePrivilegeMuch: College Rapist Gets Light Sentence Because Prison Would Be Bad for Him
The judge’s lenient sentence is just the latest example of white privilege run amok.
There is nothing scarier than a white man losing his power. Good thing Brock Turner won’t have to face the full weight of what that really means. If you haven’t already heard, Turner is the young, white ex-Stanford University swimmer whose dreams are more precious than the woman he raped.
On Jan. 17, 2015, Turner sexually assaulted a 23-year-old unconscious woman behind a dumpster after they both left a campus party. Turner stopped assaulting the woman only after he was spotted by two students, who chased him off of the victim and held him until the cops came. Turner cried only after learning that the cops had been called. Maybe then he realized what his actions meant to his dreams.
During his trial, it was revealed what a toll the rape had taken on Turner. He doesn’t have the appetite he once had for rib-eye steaks. His dream of swimming in the Olympics had been dashed. He used to have a welcoming smile, and now, that has faded. All of which his father made sure to point out in his letter asking for clemency for his son.
Poor Turner.
That’s what Turner’s father said in his statement, comparing what his son lost for “20 minutes of pleasure.”
Poor white man.
That’s what the judge said when he decided that, even after a jury found Turner guilty of rape and he faced a maximum sentence of 14 years, he would only serve six months in a county jail. He wouldn’t even be sentenced to prison because the judge said he felt it would have “a severe impact on him.” A columnist for the San Jose Mercury News wrote that Turner’s sentencing was correct.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/uncategorized/2016/06/whiteprivilegemuch-college-rapist-gets-light-sentence-because-prison-would-be-bad-for-him/?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26
The More Things Change . . .
Living in a poor neighborhood changes everything about your life
by Alvin Chang
In 1940, a white developer wanted to build a neighborhood in Detroit.
So he asked the US Federal Housing Administration to back a loan. The FHA, which was created just six years earlier to help middle-class families buy homes, said no because the development was too close to an "inharmonious" racial group.
Meaning black people.
It wasn't surprising. The housing administration refused to back loans to black people — and even people who lived around black people. FHA said it was too risky.
So the next year, this white developer had an idea: What if he built a 6-foot-tall, half-mile-long wall between the black neighborhood and his planned neighborhood? Is that enough separation to mitigate risk and get his loan?
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods
by Alvin Chang
In 1940, a white developer wanted to build a neighborhood in Detroit.
So he asked the US Federal Housing Administration to back a loan. The FHA, which was created just six years earlier to help middle-class families buy homes, said no because the development was too close to an "inharmonious" racial group.
Meaning black people.
It wasn't surprising. The housing administration refused to back loans to black people — and even people who lived around black people. FHA said it was too risky.
So the next year, this white developer had an idea: What if he built a 6-foot-tall, half-mile-long wall between the black neighborhood and his planned neighborhood? Is that enough separation to mitigate risk and get his loan?
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods
Defiance At It's Best
An excerpt from the AP -
Ali's confidence, cockiness made him symbol of black pride
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
For Muhammad Ali, the idea of being a humble athlete — someone pre-packaged and palatable for white America — was never an option.
Instead, he demanded respect not only as a boxer but as a brash, unbought and unbossed black man and endeared himself to African-Americans as a symbol of black pride. He radiated courage and confidence, skill and showmanship.
"He became the incarnation of black defiance, black protest and black excellence at the same time," said Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime friend of Ali's.
http://bigstory.ap.org/df5dc823ab17402b8f7b2f46ca48fffa
Ali's confidence, cockiness made him symbol of black pride
By JESSE J. HOLLAND
Instead, he demanded respect not only as a boxer but as a brash, unbought and unbossed black man and endeared himself to African-Americans as a symbol of black pride. He radiated courage and confidence, skill and showmanship.
"He became the incarnation of black defiance, black protest and black excellence at the same time," said Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime friend of Ali's.
http://bigstory.ap.org/df5dc823ab17402b8f7b2f46ca48fffa
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