Chris Stirewalt, a former Fox News politics editor who was fired from the network last year, will testify Monday before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Stirewalt told the “Morning in America” program on NewsNation, where he now works as political editor, that he was invited to give evidence and will do so next week. As reported by the Huffington Post and other news media.
Stirewalt became the subject of abuse from former President Donald Trump’s supporters after the network was the first to declare Joe Biden the winner of Arizona in the 2020 presidential election.
The journalist was fired by Fox News in January 2021 as part of what the network called a restructuring.
“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed,” Stirewalt wrote in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times later that month.
“The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying,” he continued.
He has been a vocal critic of the network’s latest programming choices, including Tucker Carlson’s “Patriot Purge” show. Stirewalt compared Carlson’s documentary to the “garbage” shared by Alex Jones on his Infowars website.
“What Fox allowed in Tucker Carlson’s documentary which said that Jan. 6 was potentially a false flag operation undertaken by the federal government and that Americans were being put in Guantanamo over pictures of waterboarding, was beyond reckless,” Stirewalt told the “Talkline” podcast with Hoppy Kercheval on West Virginia’s MetroNews in December 2021.
“Fox had the opportunity to use its position to tell the truth for the good of the country and failed to use the power and resources that it had to stand up to Donald Trump,” Stirewalt said.
While it is unclear what exactly Stirewalt will testify about, Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said Monday’s 10 a.m. hearing will lay out Trump’s lies and show how those motivated the Capitol rioters.
“When the committee reconvenes next week, we’re going to examine the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol to try to stop the transfer of power,” Thompson said at the end of Thursday’s hearing. “We’re going to take a close look at the first part of Trump’s attack on the rule of law when he hit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of Jan. 6.”
After Thursday’s hearing, Stirewalt argued former Vice President Mike Pence is emerging as a “hero in the story.” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said during the hearing that it was Pence who made efforts to deploy the National Guard on Jan. 6.
“President Trump gave no order to deploy the National Guard that day and he made no effort to work with the Department of Justice to coordinate and deploy law enforcement assets,” Cheney said. “Vice President Pence did each of those things.”
Stirewalt was one of the good guys at Fox News who was fired because he told the truth. And we know that Fox can’t stand the truth!
Golf Pro Phil Mickelson at the center of the LIV controversy!
Dear Commons Community,
After months of speculation, statements and debate, the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf* tour kicked off its first event in London. It took only about five hours for another LIV-associated controversy to hit.
The controversy centered around veteran golf reporter Alan Shipnuck, whose publishing of a quote from LIV Golf star Phil Mickelson on Saudi Arabia in February triggered a seemingly existential threat to the tour when it was still trying to convince players to defect from the PGA Tour.
Mickelson did not play competitively again after Shipnuck published the quotes, up until he followed through on his stated intentions and teed off in London on Monday. Shipnuck was on hand for Mickelson’s round and attempted to attend his subsequent news conference.
“Attempted” is the key word in that previous sentence, as Shipnuck tweeted LIV Golf security had unceremoniously ejected him from the Mickelson conference.
The Fire Pit Collective, a media company co-founded by Shipnuck, tweeted video of the controversy hours later while also claiming the guards had twice put their hands on Shipnuck.
Shipnuck then tweeted a screengrab of a text exchange with LIV Golf commissioner Greg Norman, in which he asks the Hall of Famer if he’s aware of what just transpired. Norman said he did not hear about it, which Shipnuck immediately indicated to be false with a picture of Norman watching said conflict.
The full exchange:
Shipnuck: Are you aware that I just got muscled out of Phil’s press conference by a couple of your goons? Luckily for you guys I kept my cool and deescalated the situation. Please call me to discuss.
Norman: Did not hear. Thanks for letting me know.
Shipnuck: That’s funny because: [Picture of Norman watching Shipnuck speak with security guards]
It appears there still might be some hard feelings about Shipnuck’s role in bringing attention to the human rights outrages that Saudi Arabia is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to distance itself from. You would think the supposed fault lies more on Mickelson, the actual source of the quotes, but, well, LIV Golf needs Mickelson around a heck of a lot more than Shipnuck.
There was also golf played, with Charl Schwartzel leading at 5-under after one round. Mickelson sits tied for seventh at 1-under.
There is trouble in golf world!
Tony
*NOTE: LIV is not an acronym but the Roman numeral 54 which is the lowest score you could shoot if you were to birdie every hole on a par-72 course. It is also the number of holes to be played in each event.
I watched the entire two-hour televised hearing of the January 5th House Committee last night and found it a credible presentation of a seditious act by deranged individuals bent on bringing down our government that was planned by Donald Trump and members of his inner circle. If you did not see it, the full video of the hearing is above. Here are some key takeaways courtesy of the Associated Press.
“The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol laid the blame firmly on Donald Trump Thursday night, saying the assault was hardly spontaneous but an “attempted coup” and a direct result of the defeated president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
With a never-before-seen 12-minute video of extremist groups leading the deadly siege and startling testimony from Trump’s most inner circle, the 1/6 committee provided gripping detail in contending that Trump’s repeated lies about election fraud and his public effort to stop Joe Biden’s victory led to the attack and imperiled American democracy
“Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the panel, during the hearing, timed for prime time to reach as many Americans as possible.
“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” Thompson said. “The violence was no accident.”
The hearings may not change Americans’ views on the Capitol attack, but the panel’s investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee’s final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.
Testimony showed Thursday how Trump desperately clung to his own false claims of election fraud, beckoning supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6 when Congress would certify the results, despite those around him insisting Biden had won the election.
In another, the former president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, testified to the committee that she respected Barr’s view that there was no election fraud. “I accepted what he said.”
Others showed leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers and Proud Boys preparing to storm the Capitol to stand up for Trump. One rioter after another told the committee they came to the Capitol because Trump asked them to.
“President Trump summoned a violent mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the panel’s vice chair who took the lead for much of the hearing. “When a president fails to take the steps necessary to preserve our union — or worse, causes a constitutional crisis — we’re in a moment of maximum danger for our republic.”
There was an audible gasp in the hearing room when Cheney read an account that said when Trump was told the Capitol mob was chanting for Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged for refusing to block the election results. Trump responded that maybe they were right, that he “deserves it.”
At another point it was disclosed that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a leader of efforts to object to the election results, had sought a pardon from Trump, which would protect him from prosecution.
When asked about the White House lawyers threatening to resign over what was happening in the administration, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner scoffed they were “whining.”
Police officers who had fought off the mob consoled one another as they sat in the committee room reliving the violence they faced on Jan. 6. Officer Harry Dunn teared up as bodycam footage showed rioters bludgeoning his colleagues with flagpoles and baseball bats.
In wrenching testimony U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards told the panel that she slipped in other people’s blood as rioters pushed past her into the Capitol. She suffered brain injuries in the melee.
“It was carnage. It was chaos,” she said.
The riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police…
…The committee chairman, civil rights leader Thompson, opened the hearing with the sweep of American history. saying he heard in those denying the stark reality of Jan. 6 his own experience growing up in a time and place “where people justified the action of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching.”
Republican Rep. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, outlined what the committee has learned about the events leading up to that brisk January day when Trump sent his supporters to Congress to “fight like hell” for his presidency.
Among those testifying was documentary maker Nick Quested, who filmed the Proud Boys storming the Capitol — along with a pivotal meeting between the group’s then-chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, the night before in nearby parking garage. Quested said the Proud Boys later went to get tacos.
Court documents show that members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were discussing as early as November a need to fight to keep Trump in office. Leaders both groups and some members have since been indicted on rare sedition charges over the military-style attack.
In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.
The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.
Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ushered the creation of the 1/6 panel through Congress and rejected Republican-appointed lawmakers who had voted on Jan. 6 against certifying the election results, eventually naming seven Democrats and two Republicans.
In the audience were several lawmakers who were trapped together in the House gallery during the attack.
“We want to remind people, we were there, we saw what happened,” said Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. ”We know how close we came to the first non-peaceful transition of power in this country.”
Representative Cheney had one of the most important comments of the evening when she stated:
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Maria Mavrides, who is on the faculty at Hunter College in the School of Education, has just written a policy brief on the effects of early education centers. It is based on her study that analyzed the impact of PreK for All (PKFA) expansion on the general education early childhood landscape in New York City by comparing and contrasting policymakers’ discourse and the experiences of directors, teachers, and parents. It is being disseminated by the New York City Research Network and the Day Care Council of NYC and the data will be used in discussions with Mayor Eric Adams and his staff next month!
A new study found deaths rates are improving faster in Democratic counties than Republican ones.
Experts are calling this phenomenon the “mortality gap,” and say state policies, individual health decisions and a shift in party demographics may be widening it.
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at mortality rates using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and compared them to federal and state election data from 2001 to 2019.
The team compiled data from more than 3,000 U.S. counties in all 50 states and found mortality rates decreased by 22% in Democratic counties but dropped only 11% in Republican counties, according to the study published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal (see graph above).
“We wanted to see whether the political affiliation had an association with death rates in the U.S.,” said corresponding author Dr. Haider Warraich, associate physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. “Over these two decades, the mortality gap between Republican and Democratic counties has really widened quite considerably.”
Mortality rates in Democratic counties dropped from 850 deaths per 100,000 people to 664, but in Republican counties, mortality rates declined from 867 to 771. The mortality gap widened across leading causes of death in the U.S. including heart disease, cancer, drug overdoses and suicide.
Democratic counties also saw greater reductions in deaths from chronic lower respiratory tract diseases, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease.
But when Warraich and colleagues stratified the data by race and ethnicity, they found there was little difference between the improvements in mortality rates of Black and Hispanic residents in Democratic and Republican counties.
“The real reason why we think this gap occurred between Democratic and Republican counties is because of what’s going on with white Americans,” Warraich said. “White Americans who live in Democratic areas are much more likely to have great improvements in health compared to white people who live in Republican counties.”
Although Black and Hispanic Americans in Republican counties saw greater reductions in mortality rate compared to their white counterparts, the study still found Black residents experienced an overall higher mortality rate than any other race and ethnicity, regardless of the county’s political leaning.
Health experts say Democratic counties are more likely to adopt policies that benefit health outcomes.
Study authors observed a substantial drop in mortality rates in Democratic counties after the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Warraich said. More Democratic states than Republican states adopted Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which expanded health insurance coverage to people with low income.
“These data can open people’s eyes to the fact that policy matters and it’s having a real effect on people’s lives,” he said.
However, health experts say individual behavior can’t be discounted as research has shown people living in Democratic counties are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors, experts say.
“From what we’ve seen over time, many health behaviors have become divided over political lines,” Warraich said. “Democratic-leaning people are more likely to accept vaccination, practice social distancing, and more likely to engage in healthier habits.”
The widening gap may also be due to a shift in party base, said Dr. Peter Muennig, professor of health policy and management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, who is not affiliated with the study.
White, working class Americans who were once a part of the Democratic party shifted to the Republican party when former President Donald Trump began his campaign, he said. This shift also pushed wealthier Americans towards the Democratic party.
“The takeaway is that we’re seeing social shifts that mean that the Democratic party is increasingly pulling in healthier people and the Republican party is pulling in sicker people,” Muennig said.
Although the study period ended before the pandemic, health experts worry the coronavirus may have further widened the mortality gap between Republican and Democratic counties.
Although the studies highlight an ideological divide, health experts hope they can bring lawmakers from both sides together to improve health outcomes.
“It’s my hope that this paper instead of further widening the partisan divide can actually sensitize people in wanting to come together for a common cause,” Warraich said. “That common cause being that we all want to live long and healthy lives.”
The Republican Accountability Project, an organization of Republican conservatives opposed to former President Donald Trump, released a new ad (see video above) promoting the hearings by the bipartisan House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“A lie drove the attack,” the ad states. “Now, it’s time to learn the truth.”
The group said the spot will run on TV during local news as well as online in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin ― states where Trump and his supporters tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost.
“Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election lit the spark that caused the January 6 attack,” Sarah Longwell, the group’s executive director, said in a news release. “It’s time for the American people to hear the truth.”
In the past few months, the Republican Accountability Project has released a series of ads going after Trump’s biggest enablers within the GOP, and has vowed to work against their reelection.
The hearings will air live on the three major broadcast networks as well as on CNN and MSNBC.
Kayla Bassknight, a doctoral student here at Hunter Collegerecently wrote a policy paper on issues related to immigration in higher education. It might be of interest to those wanting to be brought up-to-date on the complex regulations and guidelines regarding this topic. It also focuses on how toprovide equitable educational resources for undocumented individuals.
Below is an abstract.
Tony
——————————————————————————–
Immigration in Education
Kayla Bassknight
Abstract
The United States is a nation of immigrants, and for many years has benefited economically from the contributions, talents, and values of immigrant families. According to the U.S. Department of Education, undocumented students represent one of the most vulnerable populations served in education. The University of Southern California’s Pullias Center for Higher Education stated perceptions and stigmas associated with immigration in the United States are deeply rooted in the nation’s societal framework. Undocumented individuals often face significant financial and cultural barriers yet overcome these challenges to achieve academic success in higher education. In addition to the talents and tenacity of undocumented students, institutional policies and programs alongside quality counselors, administrators, and educators, align to increase undocumented students’ access, resources, and support necessary to achieve an equitable educational experience. Immigration policies such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, have positively impacted educational opportunities for immigrant students. After briefly analyzing the historical perceptions of immigration and immigration as it relates to education, the author will discuss additional ways through which to provide equitable educational resources for undocumented individuals.
The “Napalm Girl” photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children fleeing an errant aerial attack on their village, taken 50 years ago this month, has rightly been called “a picture that doesn’t rest.”
It is one of those exceptional visual artifacts that draws attention and even controversy years after it was made.
In May 2022, for example, Nick Ut, the photographer who captured the image, and the photo’s central figure, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, made news at the Vatican as they presented a poster-size reproduction of the prize-winning image to Pope Francis, who has emphasized the evils of warfare.
In 2016, Facebook stirred controversy by deleting “Napalm Girl” from a commentary posted at the network because the photograph shows the then-9-year-old Kim Phuc entirely naked. She had torn away her burning clothes as she and other terrified children ran from their village, Trang Bang, on June 8, 1972. Facebook retracted the decision amid an international uproar about the social network’s free speech policies.
Such episodes signal how “Napalm Girl” is much more than powerful evidence of war’s indiscriminate effects on civilians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image, formally known as “The Terror of War,” has also given rise to tenacious media-driven myths.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, left, is visited by AP photographer Nick Ut in 1973. After taking the photograph of her fleeing in agony in 1972, Ut transported her to a hospital.AP photo
Widely believed – often exaggerated
What are media myths?
These are well-known stories about or by the news media that are widely believed and often retold but which, under scrutiny, dissolve as apocryphal or wildly exaggerated.
The distorting effects of four media myths have become attached to the photograph, which Ut made when he was a 21-year-old photographer for The Associated Press.
The napalm attack was carried out by propeller-driven Skyraider aircraft of the South Vietnamese Air Force trying to roust communist forces dug in near the village – as news accounts at the time made clear.
The headline over The New York Times’ report from Trang Bang said: “South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops.” The Chicago Tribune front page of June 9, 1972, stated the “napalm [was] dropped by a Vietnamese air force Skyraider diving onto the wrong target.” Christopher Wain, a veteran British journalist, wrote in a dispatch for United Press International: “These were South Vietnamese planes dropping napalm on South Vietnamese peasants and troops.”
The myth of American culpability at Trang Bang began taking hold during the 1972 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate George McGovern referred to the photograph in a televised speech. The napalm that badly burned Kim Phuc, he declared, had been “dropped in the name of America.”
McGovern’s metaphoric claim anticipated similar assertions, including Susan Sontag’s statement in her 1973 book “On Photography,” that Kim Phuc had been “sprayed by American napalm.”
Americans’ views about the war had turned negative long before June 1972, as measured by a survey question the Gallup Organization posed periodically. The question – essentially a proxy for Americans’ views about Vietnam – was whether sending U.S. troops there had been a mistake. When the question was first asked in summer 1965, only 24% of respondents said yes, sending in troops had been a mistake.
But by mid-May 1971 – more than a year before “Napalm Girl” was made – 61% of respondents said yes, sending troops had been mistaken policy.
In short, public opinion turned against the war long before “Napalm Girl” entered popular consciousness.
Ubiquitous? Not exactly
Another myth is that “Napalm Girl” appeared on newspaper front pages everywhere in America.
Many large U.S. daily newspapers did publish the photograph. But many newspapers abstained, perhaps because it depicted frontal nudity.
In a review I conducted with a research assistant of 40 leading daily U.S. newspapers – all of which were Associated Press subscribers – 21 titles placed “Napalm Girl” on the front page.
But 14 newspapers – more than one-third of the sample – did not publish “Napalm Girl” at all in the days immediately after its distribution. These included papers in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston and Newark.
Only three of the 40 newspapers examined – The Boston Globe, the New York Post and The New York Times – published editorials specifically addressing the photograph. The editorial in the New York Post, then a liberal-minded newspaper, was prophetic in saying:
“The picture of the children will never leave anyone who saw it.”
I agree. Whenever I think of the Vietnam War, this photo always comes to mind!
San Francisco residents voted overwhelmingly yesterday to recall progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin following a heated campaign that captivated the country and bitterly divided Democrats over crime, policing and public safety reform in the famously liberal city.
Recall proponents cheered the results at a victory party, with California state leaders of the hotel and retailers associations lauding Boudin’s removal as a sign that visitors, shoppers and workers will be prioritized again in a city that relies heavily on tourism. They rejected Boudin’s efforts to paint them as Republicans.
“This election does not mean that San Francisco has drifted to the far right on our approach to criminal justice,” said Mary Jung, a chair of the recall campaign, in a statement. “In fact, San Francisco has been a national beacon for progressive criminal justice reform for decades and will continue to do so with new leadership.”
Boudin, 41, was a first-time political candidate who narrowly won office in November 2019 as part of a national wave of progressive prosecutors who pledged to seek alternatives to incarceration, end the racist war on drugs and hold police officers to account.
But his time in office coincided with a frustrating and frightening pandemic in which viral footage of brazen shoplifting and attacks against Asian American people drove some residents to mount a recall campaign of the former public defender and son of left-wing activists.
Partial returns Tuesday night showed about 60% of voters supporting the recall, but Boudin remained defiant in a speech to supporters, saying he was outspent by “right-wing billionaires.” He said voters were understandably frustrated by the pandemic and a city government that has failed to deliver on safety, housing and equity.
“We have two cities. We have two systems of justice. We have one for the wealthy and the well connected and a different one for everybody else. And that’s exactly what we are fighting to change,” he said, adding that justice was on their side.
It was unclear Tuesday what the resounding recall of Boudin could mean to the progressive prosecutor movement nationally and in California, where reform candidates were competing against more traditional law-and-order candidates in a handful of races, with mixed results.
California’s progressive attorney general, Rob Bonta, who was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was leading with 57% of the vote Tuesday night, easily advancing to the November general election. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a critic of Boudin who ran as an independent, did not advance.
In Los Angeles County, the campaign to recall progressive District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement the results showed that Gascón, the former prosecutor of San Francisco, could be next.
But Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, said the movement toward more liberal approaches to criminal justice was growing as more people understand that tough-talking prosecutors do not result in safer communities.
“If one can read anything into tonight’s outcome, it should be the distorting impact of a low turnout recall process easily swayed by special interests and coming at a time of deep frustration and trauma, rather than clear and considered opposition to a prosecutor committed to ending failed tough-on-crime policies,” she said.
Mayor London Breed, who had backed a more moderate Democrat in the 2019 district attorney race, will name Boudin’s replacement after the results are certified by the elections office and approved by the Board of Supervisors.
Boudin could also run in November when the race is back on the ballot.
Boudin’s time in office was marked by a bruising battle with the San Francisco Police Department, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin shot back that he could not prosecute cases when police failed to bring evidence and made arrests in just 5% of cases.
San Francisco has long struggled with open drug dealing, vandalism, auto theft and home burglaries. Political experts say the political newcomer who narrowly won in 2019 was in the crosshairs of outside forces that made him an easy target for public frustration.
Boudin was a baby when his parents, left-wing Weather Underground radicals, served as drivers in a botched 1981 robbery in New York that left two police officers and a security guard dead. They were sentenced to decades in prison.
While campaigning, he spoke of the pain of stepping through metal detectors to hug his parents and vowed to reform a system that tears apart families. Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003 and died of cancer in May. David Gilbert was granted parole in October.
The recall campaign against Boudin was backed by many of the same people who successfully ousted three liberal members of the San Francisco school board in February. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, easily beat a Republican-led recall last year.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
Dear Commons Community,
On Sunday, Maureen Dowd in her weekly column compared the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. I was dubious about the connection but it actually worked. Here is an excerpt:
“Over the years, when I felt twinges of envy, gazing at other people’s glamorous travelogues on Instagram or visiting friends who seemed to have the perfect lives, I summoned these comforting lines: “The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
It is a fantastic reminder that people who seem to have it all — looks, talent, money, love — can make themselves miserable, while people who are not blessed with any of those things can be perfectly content. It is within our own power to be happy — or to self-destruct.
I knew John Milton wrote those lines of blank verse I loved. But I only just realized, while taking a course on Milton with Prof. Julie Crawford at Columbia University, that it’s from “Paradise Lost.” The line I use to banish the blues is the same line Satan uses to banish the blues after he goes to war against God and is dumped out of Heaven, through stench and smoke, onto a fiery lake of damnation.
Milton’s line is a great insight in a world where illusion rules, and where social media can amplify mis-perceptions and spark depressions. What you see is not necessarily what is happening. It all depends on your perspective.
Some think it was wrong to get hooked on the lurid spectacle of the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial.
And it is true that, watching the degrading spiral of the once-happy pair as it unspooled in court, could make you wince: how she allegedly left feces on his bed, how he texted an actor friend that he wanted to drown and “burn Amber” and then sexually defile her corpse. The best man at the wedding testified that shortly after the ceremony, Depp joked, “Now I can punch her”….
…But the Fall came quickly, and bad acts followed. The once-radiant couple was, as was mankind, Unparadised.”
Aren’t we all glad that the trial is over!
Tony
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