Independent News
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: “The dumbest thing imaginable” has competition
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“President Trump has led the largest mobilization of the public and private sectors since WWII to defeat Covid-19 and save lives,” said Brian Morgenstern, a White House spokesman.
But Mr. Trump’s unwillingness to put aside his political self-centeredness as Americans died by the thousands each day or to embrace the steps necessary to deal with the crisis remain confounding even to some administration officials. “Making masks a culture war issue was the dumbest thing imaginable,” one former senior adviser said.
McConnell calls Jan. 6 certification his “most consequential vote”
Between the lines: Many Republican senators are furious at Hawley for forcing them to take what Trump is setting up as the ultimate loyalty test on January 6th.
- On the call, McConnell asked Hawley to explain what he planned to do on Jan. 6, said a source on the call.
- Then, Indiana Sen. Todd Young pressed Hawley on which states he planned to contest, and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey defended the integrity of his state’s elections.
- There was just one problem: They were met with silence. Hawley hadn’t dialed into the conference call — a fact first reported by Politico’s Alex Isenstadt.
What’s next: Hawley has no plans to back down from his decision to object to the certification of the electoral votes — a ploy destined to fail on Jan. 6.
Sen. Sasse calls effort to overturn electoral college vote a ‘dangerous ploy’
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) on Thursday called the effort in Congress to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college victory a “dangerous ploy,” underscoring the challenge President Trump faces in persuading even members of his own party to join it.
In an open letter to constituents, Sasse wrote that there is no evidence of fraud so widespread that it could change the results and said he has urged his colleagues to reject “a project to overturn the election.”
“All the clever arguments and rhetorical gymnastics in the world won’t change the fact that this January 6th effort is designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans simply because they voted for someone in a different party,” Sasse wrote on Facebook shortly before midnight on Wednesday. “We ought to be better than that.”
60% of Ohio nursing home workers refuse vaccine
As the coronavirus vaccine dribbles out far more slowly than promised, many of the people who can get it are refusing to do so.
Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday said that a whopping 60% of nursing home workers who have been offered the vaccine have refused it.
Here’s Why Distribution of the Vaccine Is Taking Longer Than Expected
Health officials and hospitals are struggling with a lack of resources. Holiday staffing and saving doses for nursing homes are also contributing to delays.
These sorts of logistical problems in clinics across the country have put the campaign to vaccinate the United States against Covid-19 far behind schedule in its third week, raising fears about how quickly the country will be able to tame the epidemic.
Federal officials said as recently as this month that their goal was to have 20 million people get their first shot by the end of this year. More than 14 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines had been sent out across the United States, federal officials said on Wednesday. But, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, just 2.8 million people have received their first dose, though that number may be somewhat low because of lags in reporting.
By the way, vaccine hesitancy amongst healthcare workers is real and needs to be addressed.If you are in charge but not doing the work to persuade, including working with the unions, you are not doing your job.
WaPo:
Wisconsin health-care worker ‘intentionally’ spoiled more than 500 coronavirus vaccine doses, hospital says
Initiating an internal review on Monday, hospital officials said they were initially “led to believe” the incident was caused by “inadvertent human error.” The vials were removed Friday and most were discarded Saturday, with only a few still safe to administer at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wis., according to an earlier statement from the health system. Each vial has enough for 10 vaccinations but can sit at room temperature for only 12 hours.
Two days later, the employee acknowledged having “intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration,” the system, Aurora Health Care, said in a statement late Wednesday.
The latest poll (.pdf) says they won’t win. But it’s just a poll. By the way, FL was 71% early voting, 29% election day. GA is more likely 80-20.
How Does the Coronavirus Variant Spread? Here’s What Scientists Know
Contagiousness is the hallmark of the mutated virus surfacing in the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries.
A variant that spreads more easily also means that people will need to religiously adhere to precautions like social distancing, mask-wearing, hand hygiene and improved ventilation — unwelcome news to many Americans already chafing against restrictions.
“The bottom line is that anything we do to reduce transmission will reduce transmission of any variants, including this one,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University. But “it may mean that the more targeted measures that are not like a full lockdown won’t be as effective.”
What does it mean for this variant to be more transmissible? What makes this variant more contagious than previous iterations of the virus? And why should we worry about a variant that spreads more easily but does not seem to make anyone sicker?
Good riddance 2020! Are you doing anything special to see this sorry year off and ring in 2021?
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If you’re reading this, let me start by congratulating you for making it through 2020. According to data scientists at the University of Vermont who studied social media data dating back to 2008, this year was indeed the worst of the last 12 years. I’m not going to rehash all the reasons why because we’re all still living it in real time, but I do want to know: What are you doing to send this year off and ring in what we hope is a brighter 2021?
In our house, we’ve traditionally had a New Year’s Eve party with delectable treats, a big crowd, and plenty of cheer. Obviously that’s on pause this year. We’re going to have a masked board game night with one couple who have been in isolation for all of December.
We’ll be enjoying a lasagna with fresh pasta sheets, Ina Garten’s Outrageous Garlic Bread, and Samin Nosrat’s caesar salad from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
I’m even going to wear jeans, or as we call them now, hard pants.
I had serious doubts we would even end up making it to midnight, but we’ve decided to slug it out together so we can see this year off once and for all.
I considered a sage burning ceremony, but I’ll leave that to the Native communities. I’m not sending 2020 off with cultural appropriation! But I do think this calls for some sort of cleansing ceremony. We are considering a “burning bowl” where you write down the worst of 2020 and burn it once and for all, leaving it behind. Unity has more information on burning bowls and the concept of using them to let go. Will this do anything to ease the pain and anxiety of 2020? Perhaps not, but it certainly can’t hurt.
So that’s our plan for tonight. Are you staying home in pajamas? Will you make it until midnight to ring in a hopefully brighter year?
Tomorrow we begin anew. And I’m hopeful for a brighter day.
‘Let’s cuff him up. He’s still moving’: Cop pushes handcuffs before aid when Andre Hill shot, killed
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An Ohio cop shot and killed an innocent Black man and it occurred to officers on the scene to handcuff the dying man before they even tried to get him help, according to body camera video Columbus police released Thursday. Officers “hung crime scene tape, searched for shell casings and shined flashlights into a garage” on the Oberlin Drive scene as Andre Hill laid on the ground dying without aid for more than 10 minutes, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Adam Coy, the cop who shot Hill, was fired Monday, just days after he turned a non-emergency call to report an SUV being turned on and off into a deadly shooting on Dec. 22.
“Let’s cuff him up. He’s still moving,” one cop could be heard saying in body camera footage taken on the scene.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the victim’s family, said Coy shot Hill within 10 seconds of encountering him. “As this just-obtained bodycam footage clearly shows, @ColumbusPolice officers could have rendered medical aid to Andre Hill after shooting him. But 5 minutes and 11 seconds later, they chose to handcuff his dying body instead,” Crump said in a tweet. “Andre committed no crime!”
Columbus police released more than 12 new video clips from the scene, including footage from responding officer Amy Detweiler’s body camera. Video from both Coy’s and Detweiler’s body cameras fail to include audio of the actual shooting because they didn’t have the cameras turned on when it occurred. It’s only because of a 60-second “look-back” feature of the cameras that the shooting is even depicted in the footage, authorities said. The footage from Detweiler’s camera shows a woman in the doorway of the home Hill was shot outside of.
“He was bringing me Christmas money!” she yelled. “He didn’t do anything!”
Detweiler, who arrived on the scene just after Coy, told investigators that although Coy yelled that he saw Hill holding a weapon, she didn’t see any such threat, according to an internal affairs interview police The Columbus Dispatch obtained. She said she “felt Mr. Hill may need assistance to enter the residence” and that “she was concerned why Mr. Hill was inside the garage.” Coy asked Hill in a “normal tone of voice” to come out of the garage, Detweiler said. Hill was obeying the officer’s command while holding his cell phone in the air when Coy shot him multiple times. Detweiler said before she heard the shot, Coy yelled that “there’s a gun in his other hand, there’s a gun in his other hand!”
WARNING: This video contains violent and graphic images and language.
No such gun was found on the scene. An ambulance wasn’t sent to the location until at least six minutes after the shooting, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The nearest medic, No. 19, was 1.9 miles away and on another call by the time an officer got around to calling for one to help Hill. Although less than one minute after the shooting Coy asked if a medic was en route, an officer doesn’t follow up until about five minutes later. “We do not have one, but we need one,” an officer could be heard saying in body camera video.
Both Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther and Police Chief Thomas Quinlan said they were horrified by the new video, which was shared with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation conducting the criminal investigation. Detweiler was temporarily reassigned, Glenn McEntyre, a spokesman with the Department of Public Safety, told ABC-affiliated WSYX. “This is not an administrative leave,” McEntyre said. “She is on a 60-day special assignment outside of her normal patrol duties.”
RELATED: Ohio cop who shoots Andre Hill within 10 seconds of encountering him is fired
RELATED: Black man left to die by cop who shot him in Columbus, mayor says
RELATED: Body cameras off, police killed unarmed man in Columbus, Ohio
The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot.
Their music will not ‘be forgot’: RIP 2020
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This was a year when a host of musicians transitioned. As we ring out the old year and bring in the new, I’d like to honor some of them who shaped my musical tastes over the years spanning multiple genres.
For those folks who believe in heaven, the choir up above is certainly rocking, the jazz band has St. Peter swingin’, and there are soulful serenades harmonizing with angel’s harps. I like to think about it that way. For those who don’t, it’s sufficient to pay tribute to the gifts they left us, and to play their music in tribute to the riches they recorded for future generations to hear.
The list of those we’ve lost this year is so long, it is impossible for me to cover them all in this one story. However, NPR’s Jazz Night in America offered this moving and comprehensive video tribute, which was posted on Dec. 17, 2020, before they learned of the recent deaths of Stanley Cowell, pianist and composer; Dianne Moser, pianist and educator; and Jeff Clayton, saxophonist and flutist.
One unique aspect of jazz is that it never stops honoring the musicians who’ve shaped its sound. In 2020, more than 40 of those voices were silenced, and Jazz Night in America felt the need to acknowledge their loss with an original artistic gesture. We chose an artist deeply attuned to the music’s legacy, Grammy-winning trumpeter Keyon Harrold, and a symbolic meeting place, the brownstone stoop. More precisely, our small video team met Harrold on a frigid December evening at Socrates Sculpture Garden in Queens, where Fontaine Capel’s Proposals for a Monument evokes the communal yet often contemplative space that a stoop can be (and the specter of an iconic image, colloquially known as A Great Day in Harlem). Playing trumpet in the cold is no small feat; the tuning of the metal instrument shifts as the temperature falls. Harrold had to adjust to these changes in real time as he performed his poignant ballad “Ethereal Souls.” But he was undaunted, buoyed by the constant encouragement of his son, Keyon, Jr. — another reminder of the lineage embodied in this music, and an unseen force behind this hauntingly beautiful performance.
And this year opened with the news of the death of jazz master Jimmy Heath.
Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of James ‘Mtume’, Roslyn and Jeffery. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21, he performed in the First International Jazz Festival in Paris with McGhee, sharing the stage with Coleman Hawkins, Slam Stewart, and Erroll Garner. One of Heath’s earliest big bands (1947-1948) in Philadelphia included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Specs Wright, Cal Massey, Johnny Coles, Ray Bryant, and Nelson Boyd. Charlie Parker and Max Roach sat in on one occasion.
During his career, Jimmy Heath has performed on more than 100 record albums including seven with The Heath Brothers and twelve as a leader. Jimmy has also written more than 125 compositions, many of which have become jazz standards and have been recorded by other artists including Art Farmer, Cannonball Adderley, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Ahmad Jamal, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie J.J Johnson and Dexter Gordon. Jimmy has also composed extended works – seven suites and two string quartets – and he premiered his first symphonic work, “Three Ears,” in 1988 at Queens College (CUNY) with Maurice Peress conducting.
Flutist Nelba Márquez-Greene, posted these photos.
Wall Street Journal music and arts contributor and founder of JazzWax tweeted:
Nicknamed “Little Bird” for his Parker-like fluidity when he played alto saxophone in the late 1940s, Jimmy didn’t start recording leadership albums until 1959, when producer Orrin Keepnews signed him to Riverside Records. In 1975, he formed the Heath Brothers, with drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath and bassist Percy Heath, who played in the Modern Jazz Quartet.
Jimmy was among the jazz giants who grew up in Philadelphia, a group that included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Philly Joe Jones, Reggie Workman and Shirley Scott. But unlike these musicians, Jimmy was pulled off the scene between 1954 and ’59—a critical five-year period in jazz history when jazz flourished on 12-inch albums. Jimmy’s big band compositions and arrangements on recordings are especially notable for their swing and sophisticated construction.
For a look at Heath’s legacy, the documentary Passing the Torch is a place to start.
Passing the Torch documents a ninety year old Jazz master, Jimmy Heath, mentoring teenage musicians with a thirst for knowledge and an appreciation of America’s homegrown art form, Jazz. Director Bret Primack captures Heath’s gentle, humorous sharing of life lessons and the non-threatening way he guides aspiring artists to musical excellence. An esteemed mentor, Mr. Heath reaches a much younger generation by understanding his role, to be dependable, engaged, authentic, and finely tuned to their needs. Accordingly, these teenagers recognize their unique opportunity, to learn Jazz and life from a man who walked with giants like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. Mr. Heath, came to the Tucson Jazz Festival to play with the Tucson Jazz Institute’s Ellington Band, repeated winners of Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition for high school groups. The collaboration was so meaningful that Doug Tidaback, the nationally recognized Jazz educator and co-founder of the Tucson Jazz Institute, brought Jimmy Heath back for a recording session. Filmmaker and teacher Bret Primack documented the interaction between the Jazz Yoda and this very talented group of teenage musicians. Passing the Torch, a forty-three minute documentary, includes performance excerpts, rehearsals, interviews and behind the scenes moments that celebrate the joy of creation individually, and as part of a group, and the intergenerational sharing of wisdom.
The month of March swept in a harsh pandemic, and also forever dimmed the lights of four musicians—McCoy Tyner, Manu Dibango, Bill Withers and Wallace Roney; Dibango and Roney died of complications from COVID-19.
The announcement for Tyner came from his nephew.
In 2002, Tyner was made an NEA Jazzmaster.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Tyner’s neighbors were jazz musicians Richie and Bud Powell, who influenced his piano playing. Studying music at the West Philadelphia Music School and later at the Granoff School of Music, Tyner began playing gigs in his teens, and first met Coltrane while performing at a local club called the Red Rooster at age 17. His first important professional gig was with the Benny Golson–Art Farmer band Jazztet in 1959, with which he made his recording debut.
Soon he began working with Coltrane, a relationship that produced some of the most influential music in jazz. From 1960 to 1965, Tyner played a major role in the success of the Coltrane quartet (which included Elvin Jones on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass), using richly textured harmonies as rhythmic devices against Coltrane’s “sheets of sound” saxophone playing.
After leaving the quartet, Tyner demonstrated his tremendous melodic and rhythmic flair for composition on such albums as The Real McCoy, which featured “Passion Dance,” “Contemplation,” and “Blues on the Corner,” and Sahara, which featured “Ebony Queen” and the title track. Tyner has continued to experiment with his sound, pushing rhythms and tonalities to the limit, his fluttering right hand creating a cascade of notes. In particular, he has explored the trio form, recording with a series of different bassists and drummers, such as Ron Carter, Stanley Clarke, Art Davis, Al Foster, Elvin Jones, and Tony Williams. In the 1980s, he recorded with a singer for the first time, Phyllis Hyman.
Ben Ratlett closed his NYT obituary with this glimpse into Tyner’s perspective on his work.
He resisted analyzing or theorizing about his own work. He tended to talk more in terms of learning and life experience.
“To me,” he told Mr. Hentoff, “living and music are all the same thing. And I keep finding out more about music as I learn more about myself, my environment, about all kinds of different things in life.
“I play what I live. Therefore, just as I can’t predict what kinds of experiences I’m going to have, I can’t predict the directions in which my music will go. I just want to write and play my instrument as I feel.”
When Bill Withers died I posted the news here on Daily Kos, and watched the tributes pour in from around the globe. He touched so many people with his songs.
His official website details his history:
“When you have a talent you know it when you’re five years old– it’s just getting around to it.” ~B.W.
Slab Fork, West Virginia, a town of about 200 residents, was Bill’s place of birth. The youngest of six children, he was raised in nearby Beckley, in coal mining country. Withers’ father, a miner, died when Withers was 13. At 17, enlistment in the Navy was Bill’s ticket out. Withers arrived in Los Angeles in 1967. His self-financed demos on which Watts 103rd Street Band member Ray Jackson served as arranger and keyboardist, led Jackson to introduce him to Forrest Hamilton. Hamilton then introduced Withers to Clarence Avant of Sussex Records who tapped Booker T. Jones to produce Bill’s debut album. This resulted in the album Just As I Am with the Grammy-winning “Ain’t No Sunshine” and the much-loved “Grandma’s Hands.” The pragmatic Withers — who was now able to leave his straight gig at an aircraft company — subsequently assembled the remaining members of the Watts 103rd Street Band for U.S. and international tours.
The second album, Still Bill, lauded as “a stone-soul masterpiece” by Rolling Stone magazine, delivered soon-to-be standards “Lean on Me” and “Use Me.” Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall followed. After the release of +’Justments in 1974, Withers severed ties with Sussex to sign with Columbia (who subsequently re-released his back catalog.) 1975’s Making Music, Making Friends showcased more classics, “Hello Like Before” and “Make Love to Your Mind”; 1976’s Naked & Warm, with the idyllic love song to his adopted home, “City of the Angels”; 1977’s Menagerie, with the much-covered “Lovely Day” and 1979’s ‘Bout Love, and the single “Don’t It Make It Better,” a top 30 R&B single, continued the run of top-charting releases.
“Just the Two of Us” with Grover Washington, Jr. was a career pinnacle, garnering four Grammy nominations with Withers accepting the award for Best R&B Song. “Soul Shadows” with The Crusaders marked an additional collaborative project of the period and “In The Name Of Love” with Ralph MacDonald received a 1984 Grammy nomination for vocal performance.
I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t heard, and loved “Lean on Me.”
The “Merry Month of May,” wasn’t joyous where the music world was concerned. On May 9, the man who many people consider to be the true king and founder of rock ‘n’ roll died. I will never forget moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from New York in 1957 and hearing Little Richard on the radio for the first time. I was only nine years old then, but instantly fell in love with not only his music, but his flamboyant persona. I couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly listen to and buy the watered-down milquetoast white “covers” of his songs.
Tim Londergan discusses some of the history of Pat Boone’s sanitized covers of Little Richard’s hits.
A few early black rockers took a tolerant view of being ‘covered’ by white artists (they might say ‘The covers reached a larger audience than my records ever could, and thus more people enjoyed the music I created’), But others were infuriated that their artistic product was being ripped off. This was particularly irritating as the cover was often decidedly inferior to the original, or the cover version was simply a note-for-note copy of the original. To compound the insult, it was not unusual for race records publishers to sell the rights to the song for a pittance.
Little Richard is definitely in the “pissed off” category on this issue. He feels that he invented rock and roll — and it’s hard to argue with a guy who gave lessons in showmanship to both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones when they opened for his British tours. It was irritating to Little Richard that Pat Boone covered several of his songs (in addition to Tutti Frutti, Pat covered Long Tall Sally, Good Golly Miss Molly and Rip it Up), but it was particularly galling that Boone’s cover of Tutti Frutti outsold his original! This still rankles the proud Richard Penniman; in an interview with Washington Post writer Richard Harrington, he stated:
They didn’t want me to be in the white guys’ way … I felt I was pushed into a rhythm and blues corner to keep out of rockers’ way, because that’s where the money is. When ‘Tutti Frutti’ came out … They needed a rock star to block me out of white homes because I was a hero to white kids. The white kids would have Pat Boone upon the dresser and me in the drawer ’cause they liked my version better, but the families didn’t want me because of the image that I was projecting.
The BBC’s Late Night Line-Up broadcast this fascinating (and outrageous) interview with Little Richard, prior to his concert performance at The London Rock and Roll Show, at Wembley Stadium, on August 5, 1972.
This is a clip from the aforementioned Wembley gig, taken from the 1973 film, The London Rock and Roll Show. Watching this it struck me, that so many musicians that followed in him, borrowed liberally from parts of the Little Richard persona—Prince and Michael Jackson, instantly came to mind.
Though like most Black teenagers who grew up during the ‘60s, I loved R&B and rock ‘n’ roll, however jazz was still my first love, especially vocals. I have talked frequently here about having had the good fortune to attend the High School of Music & Art in New York City (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School) where a right of passage for new students was to sing “Cloudburst” by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross and Annie Ross’ “Twisted.”
Vocalese was “our thing” and a piece of my life ended when I read of her death on July 21.
Her nephew posted this notice to Twitter.
BBC News had this announcement:
Born in Mitcham, south London, Ross was the daughter of Scottish vaudevillians John and Mary Short, who took her to Los Angeles when she was four. In 1938, Ross made her film debut in Our Gang Follies, in which she sang traditional song The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond. She went on to play Judy Garland’s younger sister in 1943’s Presenting Lily Mars.
Ross became one of the early practitioners of “vocalese”, a singing style in which original lyrics are set to an instrumental jazz solo. At 22 she wrote the lyrics to the vocalese song Twisted, a track that was later covered by Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell and others. That led Duke Ellington to ask her to stand in for Billie Holliday at the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York. Ross went on record seven albums with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, including 1957’s Sing a Song of Basie.
Though many jazz fans are familiar with Ross as part of the LH&R trio, she also recorded solo albums, like “Skylark” prior to hooking up with the group.
In this interview she talks about her love for singing, and the documentary film about her life, No One But Me, premiering at the 2012 Glasgow Film Festival.
This is by no means a complete list of musicians who passed on in 2020. As I mentioned above, the list is far too long for one story. I’m hoping you will join me in the comments section and post the music of artists we lost in 2020 who you admire and treasure, as we play out the old year and enter the new.
Activists for homeless community protest maskless Christian concert planned for downtown Los Angeles
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How are we rounding out 2020? Most of us are staying safe and staying home, donning masks and heading into nature, or going out for essential work and errands and trying to stay as safe as possible. Some people, however, are attempting to hold maskless worship concerts. Yes, really.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, evangelical singer and pastor Sean Feucht, no stranger to maskless rallies to protest COVID-19 restrictions, has planned some concerts over New Year’s in the Los Angeles area in spite of community members vehemently asking him not to. Why? Because we’re, of course, still in a literal pandemic. On Dec. 30, homeless activists protested followers of Feucht in downtown Los Angeles over the maskless event, and the videos are pretty stunning.
Some background: The “skid row” location is particularly important because many of the people in that part of downtown Los Angles are unhoused. Unhoused people are vulnerable to begin with, but especially given the way we understand the novel coronavirus to spread, holding a maskless event for people who may not have access to face masks, regular hand-washing, or other hygiene opportunities is notably reckless.
How did this go down? According to the Times, roughly as you might expect. Activists encouraged Feucht followers to wear masks and use sanitizer. Some followers reportedly refused these options, while some arrived wearing masks. According to the newspaper, it wasn’t clear whether Feucht himself was actually present.
Who was present? The police. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Los Angeles Police Department officers would be available in case any violence arose during the event. Though the Times reported no incidents of violence, the paper did note that there was no social distancing among Feucht supporters to speak of.
Videos reportedly from the protest have gone viral on Twitter.
And some real help came hours before the maskless concert, too.
Disturbingly, according to local outlet CBS Los Angeles, two more events are planned in the LA area in the coming days. On Thursday, one outreach event is scheduled for a tent city in Echo Park. In the evening, a concert is scheduled in the parking lot of a church in Valencia.
If you heard about the maskless worship protest held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. back in the fall, you’re right in guessing that Feucht was behind that one, too. If you’re wondering how that came to be allowed, it’s because the Trump administration granted the permit.
We’ve seen a number of churches across the nation be linked to coronavirus clusters and outbreaks. Even still, a handful of churches in California have fought to hold indoor services. In fact, some have defied COVID-19 restrictions and refused to shut down. That’s scary in itself, but potentially exposing some of the most vulnerable among us—our unhoused neighbors—is downright wrong.
How segregated is your culture consumption? It’s time for a year-end gut check
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If you’re white, it can be all too easy to normalize your whiteness. The powers that be put whiteness at the dead center of our politics and culture—think about how often white people are framed as the real Americans or the most meaningful voters in our politics—and you, a white person, could go through your life thinking that’s an accurate reflection of the world around you. It’s not. But it’s on us white people to try to undo that in our own lives, and culture can be a key part of that, a way to stretch beyond simple opposition to overt racism or dutiful nods to diversity.
Let’s be clear here that structural racism is far more important than whether you as an individual white person personally listen to or watch or read culture produced by people of color. But the two issues aren’t completely detached, either. For one thing, there are industries involved here. According to a recent analysis, 95% of fiction published by the top U.S. publishers between 1950 and 2018 was by white authors, and it wasn’t just the early years of that sample skewing things: 89% of the books published in 2018 were by white authors. Unless you think that writing skill is that unevenly distributed, there’s a racist imbalance within the industry that you can help do something about by eliminating the “we just publish what sells” excuses.
In the movie industry, diversity is improving in front of the cameras, but not so much in writing and directing roles. That can lead to situations like the one actor Leonard Roberts recently wrote about in Variety, in which the diversity of the cast on the television show Heroes did not translate to equity. Roberts, as a Black man, saw his role diminished and his voice unheard, and was ultimately fired because his white female costar refused to be professional, let alone decent, about working with him, and the producers chose her over him.
On an individual level, how do you know where structural racism is erasing vast swaths of life in the U.S. from your view if you don’t look? Nonfiction is of course invaluable here, but many of us take in more art and culture, and the latter can offer shades of feeling and experience that nonfiction won’t. (You can also try talking to your nonwhite friends, but you’re going to want to be really careful not to force them to be your teacher and absorb your ignorance out of friendship. Also, your specific Black or Brown friends do not speak for all Black or Brown people. Neither does any given book or movie or other work of art, but you can check out a lot of those.)
So, white people: What books by people of color have you read in the past year? What movies have you seen? What music have you listened to?
This year the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic and the election, as well as a case of shingles that robbed me of a month or so of reading time, reshaped this list. For much of the year, at the end of a day of reading and writing about the news, I just didn’t have the mental space for many nonfiction books.
All this said, let me be clear: These are books I like or at least value, even if they’re difficult. I’m not suggesting that white people read books by people of color as a dreadful chore. I’m suggesting that other white people, too, can go out and find books (or movies, or music) that you like that will provide you with a lens onto how the world you inhabit is shaped by your whiteness. Now, if you can’t find any art or culture created by people who aren’t just like you that you enjoy, that might be a conversation to have with yourself.
As an additional note, I’ve often written about my love of romance novels. I’m so glad to see them increasingly getting recognition as something other than not just a guilty pleasure but a shameful one. Five of the books here—Farrah Rochon’s The Boyfriend Project, Mia Sosa’s The Worst Best Man, Alisha Rai’s Girl Gone Viral, Jasmine Guillory’s Party of Two, and Sonali Dev’s Recipe for Persuasion were on NPR’s best books of 2020 list, and Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t was a New York Times notable book.
Books I read:
- Michele Harper, The Beauty in Breaking. Harper weaves together her family story—from her father’s abuse to her divorce—with lessons learned, and taught if anyone is willing to listen, as a Black emergency room doctor. For a sample of the book’s power, check out this short piece by Harper.
- Dawn Marie Dow, Mothering While Black. This book expands on Unequal Childhoods, Annette Lareau’s classic of sociology of the family, to consider more deeply how Black women conceive of and practice motherhood.
- Farrah Rochon, The Boyfriend Project and Huddle with Me Tonight and Field of Pleasure and I’ll Catch You
- Courtney Milan, The Duke Who Didn’t. As The New York Times put it, “By turns consciously tender and fiercely witty, this is an unalloyed charmer about Chloe Fong, a stubborn Chinese-British sauce maker, and Jeremy Yu, the half-Chinese Duke of Lansing, who’s head over heels for her, but can’t seem to say so.” Milan is also one of the authors who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for groups doing field organizing in the Georgia Senate runoffs, so, you know, buy her books!
- Alyssa Cole, How to Catch a Queen and When No One is Watching and The A.I. Who Loved Me and Be Not Afraid and Agnes Moor’s Wild Knight. When No One is Watching represents a shift from romance to thriller for Cole, a book sometimes described as Get Out meets Rear Window. As someone who doesn’t read a lot of thrillers, it was too stressful for me to finish in the run-up to the elections, but I also couldn’t wait to get back to it after the compelling early chapters. How to Catch a Queen is a spinoff of Cole’s Reluctant Royals series, which produced the New York Times notable book A Princess in Theory in 2018. Cole joined Milan as one of the Romancing the Runoff organizers, so again, buy her books.
- Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion. The word “persuasion” in the title is a direct nod to Jane Austen’s book of that title, as is the book’s plot. It’s an homage without being derivative, and a lovely book about family and heritage as well as romance.
- Alisha Rai, The Right Swipe and Girl Gone Viral
- Adriana Herrera, Mangoes and Mistletoe and Here to Stay and American Fairytale and American Dreamer and American Sweethearts and American Love Story
- Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone
- Sandhya Menon, When Dimple Met Rishi and There’s Something about Sweetie and 10 Things I Hate about Pinky and Of Curses and Kisses. The first three titles are young adult romances about navigating life, love, and parental expectations as an Indian American teenager.
- Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
- Vanessa Riley, A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby
- Jasmine Guillory, Party of Two. Guillory’s earlier The Proposal remains my favorite of her books, but I will always look forward to a new book from this author.
- Ruby Lang, House Rules
- Grace Lin, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
- Mia Sosa, The Worst Best Man. Per NPR, “a salty-sweet delight.” Indeed—and with lots of amazing food descriptions, salty-sweet is apt in more ways than one.
- Melissa Blue, Grumpy Jake
- Farah Heron, The Chai Factor
- Rebekah Weatherspoon, Xeni. Weatherspoon runs the valuable resource WOC in Romance.
- Sherry Thomas, A Study in Scarlet Women and The Luckiest Lady in London and Beguiling the Beauty
- Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, Big Friendship
- Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
New York ‘COVID conga line’ leaves at least one person hospitalized with COVID-19
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Despite a nationwide increase in COVID-19 cases and health professionals urging Americans not to gather, some people are still hosting packed holiday parties. Last week a video of maskless individuals partaking in a conga line during a holiday party at a New York restaurant went viral on social media. Since then at least one party attendee has been hospitalized with COVID-19. Additionally, New York’s Liquor Authority has suspended the restaurant’s liquor license, NBC News reported.
The party hosted by the Whitestone Republican Club was held at Il Bacco, an Italian restaurant in Queens, on Dec. 9. Despite claims by the hosting organization that safety precautions were followed, social media posts depicted little to no social distancing with barely any masks in sight. While it is unclear how many people attended the party, at least 50 can be seen dancing on the floor or sitting at a nearby table in the footage shared on social media. Photos of the gathering posted on Facebook also depict at least half a dozen attendees without masks.
The event took place five days before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned indoor dining following an increase in COVID-19 cases within the state. Mask mandates have been in place for public settings since April, but indoor dining had resumed shortly amid the pandemic. Addressing the video, Cuomo called it a “COVID conga line.”
“If you do not take precautions, your likelihood that you will get the virus is higher,” Cuomo said in a statement. “COVID conga lines are not smart. That’s my official position.” Local politicians were seen in attendance at the party including Former Queens Assembly candidate James Martionsky and current City Council candidate Vicke Paladino; Paladino led the conga line.
As a result of backlash, the Whitestone Republican Club posted a statement last week claiming that Cuomo and media outlets were exaggerating the situation. “But we are not the mask police, nor are we the social distancing police. Adults have the absolute right to make their own decisions and clearly many chose to interact like normal humans and not paranoid zombies in hazmat suits,” the statement said.
According to the Queens Daily Eagle, the hospitalized man has been identified as Jim Trent, chairman of the board of the Queens Village Republican Club. While only he was hospitalized, his wife too tested positive for the virus in addition to another unidentified couple. Trent told the Queens Daily Eagle that he fell sick within two days of attending the party. He claimed he did not understand how he got infected as he thought he was safe and “wasn’t doing anything risky.”
“I wasn’t on the conga line. I ate by myself,” Trent told the Queens Daily Eagle. “I don’t know how I got this.”
Despite it being highly possible Trent contracted COVID-19 from the party, he told the Queens Daily Eagle he had no regret in attending, noting that “it was a wonderful time and a great party, but I’m not happy I got sick.”
Upon hearing the news of Trent’s COVID-19 complications, Thomas Paladino, chief strategist of his mother’s city council campaign, issued a statement to BuzzFeed News criticizing the media’s portrayal of the event.
“The media hysteria around this is shameful, it really is,” Thomas Paladino said. He added that while he has not spoken to Trent he was glad Trent did not regret attending the party and was recovering.
“It speaks very poorly of our society and our media and ourselves that an ordinary holiday party is now being made into something that we’re supposed to feel ashamed of,” Paladino said.
He compared the COVID-19 spreader to a holiday party at which he fell down the stairs and broke his ankle. “Do I regret going to the party? Maybe,” Paladino told BuzzFeed News. “Is it the party’s fault? No. Life happens.”
As of Thursday morning, more than 19.7 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, according to The New York Times database. Since the beginning of the pandemic, New York alone has seen at least 936,647 cases of COVID-19 and more than 37,000 deaths in the state as a result.
Unemployment claims fall slightly Christmas week to a still-steep 787,000
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Christmas week saw a slight decline in new jobless claims compared to past weeks, according to the Department of Labor’s newest report. Initial numbers show 787,000 new jobless claims, down from a revised 806,000 the previous week.
There are caveats to that modest decrease, however. It’s likely to be revised upwards, and the four-week average is still trending upward. Pandemic unemployment numbers continue to be far higher than pre-pandemic averages.
We don’t yet know how successful this next round of stimulus will be at staving off additional layoffs, but it is likely that pandemic safety restrictions across the country will soon tighten due to runaway infection levels and a critical lack of hospital resources in some regions.
Trump loyalists in USAGM are rewriting contracts to keep Biden from firing them
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Michael Pack is Trump’s head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the agency that supervises Voice of America and this government’s other international broadcasting efforts. He was a Steve Bannon ally back before Steve Bannon found himself indicted, and he has been described as “paranoid” in his management style. Even among Trump agency heads, Pack stands out for his devotion to sabotaging his agency by purging it of the supposedly anti-Trump and disloyal and replacing them with fellow far-right hacks.
He is also taking steps to ensure that the next administration will not be allowed to take the agency back. As a Bannonite fascist, Pack has devoted himself to purging journalists whose reports may make Dear Leader look bad, to summarily ending whatever government rules and regulations prohibit that behavior, packing the agencies with far-right loyalists and now rewriting government contracts to declare that he and those other embedded Trump allies cannot be fired for at least two years.
As reported by NPR, Pack and the new Trump-allied boards of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia have added “binding contractual agreements intended to ensure they cannot be removed for the next two years.” The boards were previously bipartisan. Pack fired the bipartisans and installed, of course, unqualified hacks.
This means that while Joe Biden can quickly boot Pack from his role as agency head, Pack and his allies will still be able to sabotage efforts to un-sabotage the networks for at least half of a new Democratic presidency.
Being able to manipulate what news is reported and how it is reported is, in every autocratic regime, essential. Having gained substantial power over how news is reported by U.S.-sponsored radio, or at least having gained the power to remove any journalists whose reporting angers them, the Trumpians are not going to easily give it up.
Democrats get crafty with ‘Collard Green Caucus’ to get out the vote. GOP uses guns
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It’s go-time, with early voting in Georgia’s Senate runoff coming to an end in many counties Thursday, so count on Democrats to find inventive ways to get out the vote in often overlooked communities. Count on the state’s GOP to do the exact opposite. Black Voters Matter, a voter empowerment organization working to ensure exactly what its name suggests, is hosting a Collard Green Caucus Thursday to feed more than 9,000 families on top of the 10,000 plus families the organization has already fed in food donation events this holiday season. “This will bring the total to almost 20,000,” LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, tweeted. “We campaign, educate & take care of our folks needs.” Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who’s running in the runoff against Rev. Raphael Warnock, held a gun raffle.
The Georgia runoff is Jan. 5. Click here to request an absentee ballot.
Adventure Outdoors owner Jay Wallace bragged at a rally for Loeffler in the parking lot of his Smyrna store on Halloween that she is “the Second Amendment senator.” Wallace told the Rome News-Tribune, “She’s the real deal. Not only for the Second Amendment, I know for a fact that she’s been a customer for a while. She purchases a lot of firearms.”
To some, supporting the Second Amendment right to bear arms may be enough of a qualification for the U.S. Senate, but many Georgia voters have been craving more. Brown is targeting those voters with outreach efforts. “Right now, as we speak, I’m in Valdosta, Georgia, on the Black Voters Matter bus. We have been going around the state distributing groceries to thousands of families,” she told the digital media website Refinery 29. “We’re giving away toys, we’ve got ‘Soul Santa,’ we’ve got music. Part of what we’re doing is recognizing that the holiday season can be a difficult time, so we’re providing some relief to people and letting them know that we care about them more than their vote, we care about them as people and we know it’s an economically tough time for people.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has been even more devastating in already cash-strapped communities. The state has lost nine rural hospitals in the last 10 years, Sen. David Perdue’s Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff tweeted. While hospitals aren’t yet rationing care as a result of the pandemic, they are having to make tough decisions about the time and resources they can utilize, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Thursday. “Patients who don’t get bathed each day or don’t get meals on time, because there’s not enough staff. Patients just out of surgery who need a nurse dedicated to watch only them, but instead have to share,” the newspaper reported. “Patients in pain from a broken bone who wait hours for sedation because there are no ER beds, while ER patients wait for the ICU beds their lives may depend on. These things are happening now.”
“Where’s David Perdue been?” Ossoff asked in his tweet.
Loeffler and Perdue’s pandemic response has focused on lining their own pockets. Loeffler “benefited from stock transactions she made beginning on the same day she received a private briefing for senators early in the COVID-19 outbreak,” The Pointer Institute reported.
As of Perdue, the nonprofit detailed: “On Jan. 24 — the same day that Trump administration health officials privately briefed senators on the threat posed by the coronavirus — Perdue bought shares worth as much as $65,000 in DuPont de Nemours, which supplies personal protective equipment used to avoid exposure to the coronavirus.” He also invested up to $245,000 in Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that produced a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ossoff made mention of the trading in a viral debate moment on Oct. 28 in Savannah. “Well, perhaps Senator Perdue would have been able to respond properly to the COVID-19 pandemic if you hadn’t been fending off multiple federal investigations for insider trading,” Ossoff said. “It’s not just that you’re a crook, senator. It’s that you’re attacking the health of the people that you represent. You did say COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu. You did say there would be no significant uptick in cases. All the while, you were looking after your own assets and your own portfolio.”